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By Roger D Harris, Francisco Dominguez and María Paez Victor

“Nothing is easier than to be idealistic on behalf of others.” – Karl Marx, 1858

Under cover of night, the US military kidnapped the lawful Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and National Assembly deputy Cilia Flores on January 3, 2026. Collateral damage included over 100 fatalities of civilians and Cuban and Venezuelan guards.

This unprovoked surprise attack flagrantly violated international law. The hegemon acted in full expectation that it could operate with impunity. Even the neighboring left-leaning governments of Brazil and Colombia offered only mild rebukes. Then Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil said, “we found ourselves alone.” That is the context in which subsequent developments need to be understood.

The egregious military action culminated a quarter of a century of US and allied (particularly Canada and the UK) machinations against Venezuela: asphyxiating sanctions, stolen assets, diplomatic isolation, cyber-attacks, assassination attempts, mercenary invasions, and establishing an ersatz parallel government. For the two months preceding the invasion, the US navy blockaded oil shipments. Still the empire’s goal of regime change was not achieved.

The revolution’s resilience compelled the US to escalate

Washington and its allies failed to destroy Chavismo, the movement founded by Hugo Chávez and carried forward by his successor Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela did not collapse or degenerate into chaos after the decapitation. Domestic peace prevailed.

The US-backed and funded far-right opposition did not seize power, but found itself ever more marginalized and in disarray.

The Chavista leadership continued in a seamless constitutional succession with Vice President Delcy Rodríguez sworn in as acting president. The unity of the top command held firm, backed by the National Assembly and supreme court. Likewise, the civic-military union and the communes and grassroots Chavista institutions fully supported the government.

Relying on its overwhelming military superiority, Washington made a Mafia-style offer you can’t refuse. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Rodríguez on that day of infamy and delivered an ultimatum to collaborate with the US or face the country’s military destruction and the murder of her and other leaders. Variations of this scenario are corroborated by both the corporate press and Chavista sources.

Trump explicitly threatened: “There is more where that came from.” The alternative was the devastation currently being rained down on Iran, a country with far greater military capacity. With US forces deployed throughout the region and off its coast, a military confrontation would have meant annihilation, including the destruction of the oil industry. Rodríguez did what any responsible leader would do given the existing options; she made a tactical retreat in the face of overwhelming force.

Venezuela did not surrender

All the Chavista state institutions and the powerful universe of grassroots organizations that sustain the revolution remain intact. Yet US imperialism, by having a gun pointed to the government’s head, is in a position to exert substantial coercion leading to unpalatable decisions, such as Alex Saab’s deportation.

These accommodations reflect pressures that those of us on the outside can only imagine. How the solidarity movement should respond is a central question.

Former Chávez official Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein describes the current negotiations as an exercise in essential national self-preservation. He observes: “What is at stake is the survival of the State and the republic, which if lost, would make the discussion on any other topic banal.” As former Venezuelan foreign minister Jorge Arreaza said, “everything is now negotiated,” with Washington obliged to be in daily give-and-take with Caracas.

Legislative reform had long been on Maduro’s agenda. However, revisions to laws governing the exploitation of hydrocarbons and hard minerals involved offering generous conditions to international capital in order to attract much-needed foreign investment (which Cuba is also doing).

The new amnesty law, another planned initiative, is a key instrument promoting reconciliation and denying extremist elements arguments to incite violence. The law strictly excludes “anyone who has committed war crimes, human rights violations, homicide, drug trafficking, or treason.”

The government is in negotiations with the moderate opposition. Such successive rounds of dialogue were a recurring feature of the Maduro presidency.

Rodríguez has counseled prudence and strategic patience. Notably, the core Chavista leadership, the military, Socialist Party, and communal formations have remained united under tremendous pressure – pressure designed to fracture that unifying accord.

Long-sought gains achieved

The US has reversed itself and in practice recognizes the Venezuelan government as legitimate. The Bolivarian project has not only persisted but forced its greatest adversary to come to some accommodation.

Not since 2019 had the US allowed transactions with Venezuela’s central bank and major state banks. US restrictions had previously cut Venezuela off from the global financial system, preventing access to dollar-denominated transactions and US financial channels. Oil sales to the US have resumed, with some revenues returning to the domestic economy. The US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) is again engaged with Venezuela. Rodríguez has stated that Venezuela is not seeking IMF loans, but access to its own frozen funds.

Although sanctions largely remain in place, special licenses and a temporary easing of economic restrictions for earthquake relief have provided some breathing room for Venezuela’s besieged economy while also facilitating oil flows to the US. The concessions are limited and reversible, leaving the broader structure of US economic warfare intact. Still, the arrangement is preferable to the total oil blockade imposed immediately before the January 3 assault.

Rodríguez has repeatedly demanded that Venezuela be free of sanctions, while formally seeking the release of Venezuelan assets abroad to address the devastation caused by the earthquakes. She has even appealed to King Charles III for the return of 31 tons of Venezuelan gold held by the Bank of England.

Changed political landscape

The balance of forces confronting today’s Venezuelan leadership is substantially less favorable than under Chávez, so judging its compromises by an idealized Chávez-era standard is mistaken.

Some internationals invoke Chávez to discredit the current leadership. Overlooked is that during Chávez’s presidency, Venezuela sold oil almost exclusively to the US, when dependency was significant. Ignoring the changed context, infantile leftist claims are made that Chávez never compromised and that “one does not negotiate with the enemy,” forgetting the famous advice from Fidel Castro during the 2002 coup: “Don’t immolate yourself, Hugo.”

Chávez governed during a commodities boom that provided the Bolivarian project with resources for material benefits markedly unavailable today under sanctions. The geopolitical context has shifted significantly since Chávez’s time, especially under the present “Donroe Doctrine.” Not since Maduro’s victory in July 2024 has a left-leaning candidate won in Latin America. The last seven presidential elections have been swept by the right. Until this broader reactionary trajectory is reversed, further retreats are likely.

The purpose and cumulative impact of the illegal unilateral coercive measures have been to erode public support for the government. Years of comprehensive sanctions – despite the 2021-2025 economic recovery following an approximately 75% GDP contraction – have left Venezuela in a vulnerable position. Currently the Venezuelan economy is operating at roughly 30% of its pre-sanctions level.

The Rodríguez government is trying to buy time to recover the economy, although the June 24 earthquakes dealt a terrible blow. According to the United Nations, direct physical damage is estimated at over $37 billion, representing over a third of Venezuela’s gross domestic product.

Most Venezuelans want domestic peace and a return to prosperity, not a confrontation with the empire.

“Unity is the most important thing – without it, nothing is possible; with it, everything is possible.”

Those were the words of Fidel Castro as he was organizing the Cuban Revolution in 1956. Most dangerous for the sister Bolivarian Revolution is the suggestion that the current leadership has betrayed the cause and that a truly leftist “third way” can be fostered to replace them. There have always been competing factions within the Bolivarian movement. But political choices must ultimately be resolved within Venezuela itself, without interference from internationals.

These “third way” analyses, rejecting both Caracas and Washington, typically fail to address what Venezuelans could realistically do at this historical juncture – long on what’s wrong but short on viable alternatives.

It was not so long ago that it was the likes of far-right María Corina Machado who highlighted “cracks and fissures within the Chavista ranks” and anticipated “the beginning of a social explosion” against the elected Venezuelan government. Now some solidarity activists are saying the same.

The “tragic essence” of left disunity in Bolivia should be a cautionary lesson of what could happen in Venezuela. The Chavista leadership is painfully aware of this, hence their vigorous effort to establish the broadest united front against US colonization. Rather than being traitors to the cause, the Rodríguezes and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello represent the most militant Chavistas – fighters from the very inception of the revolution.

What solidarity requires

Constructive criticism and solidarity activism need not be counterposed. Dissident opinions are appropriate when contextualized and given as part of a collaborative effort to advance common goals – not as individualistic venting.

Some among the left have appointed themselves as guardians of the faith judging negatively from afar the very difficult and risky tactical retreat undertaken by the Bolivarian leadership, even though it prevented a suicidal military confrontation with US imperialism.

The international left’s angst and disappointment regarding Venezuela’s retreats is understandable. But the Global South is not about to fulfill the revolutionary aspirations of those living in the belly of the beast. That, it should be clear, is the task for people in the imperial core.

As a Venezuelan activist friend said: “You gringos tell us how to make our revolution when our problem is you have failed to make yours.”

Venezuelans will determine their path without foreign interference, either right or left. Solidarity necessitates efforts to accompany and uplift, not dictate. Internationals living in the US, Canada, and the UK need to place the primary focus on our own imperialists. All other contradictions are secondary.

The solidarity movement must unite in the broadest alliance around the defense of national sovereignty and the right to self-determination, strongly opposing the farcical New York trial of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, demanding the lifting of all sanctions, and calling for the return of stolen assets.

El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.

(A united people will never be defeated.)

Roger D. Harris is a founder of the Venezuela Solidarity Network in North America.

Francisco Dominguez is the national secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign in the UK.

María Paez Victor is the founder Louis Riel Bolivarian Circle in Canada.

13 August 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States spent $21 trillion on its military between 2001 and 2024 (in constant 2024 dollars), equal to the combined military spending of the next eighteen countries. Iran barely made that list at all, spending only 2% of what the US did, and SIPRI estimated Iran’s 2025 military budget at only $7.5 billion. So how is Iran holding its own against the multi-trillion-dollar US war machine?

A critical difference between the US war on Iran and previous US and allied bombing campaigns against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Gaza, is that the US and Israel have failed to destroy Iran’s air defense system and cannot fly warplanes over Iran without risking the loss of planes and pilots to enemy fire. Iran has wisely built its critical defense infrastructure underground, with arms factories, weapons stockpiles and launch sites sheltered safely beneath its impenetrable mountainous terrain.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed on March 10th that the US had “total air dominance” over Iran, but that is still not true. Instead, US forces are mainly attacking Iran with stand-off weapons from outside Iran’s borders, radically depleting US stockpiles of extraordinarily expensive weapons.

Even though US warplanes avoid entering Iranian airspace, the Congressional Research Service has reported that the US has lost at least four F-15 fighters, an F-35, an A-10, seven KC-135 refueling planes, an E-6 AWACS plane, two MC-130J special operations aircraft, a helicopter, a high-altitude Triton drone and 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones.

By contrast, during the full-scale invasion of Iraq in 2003, US forces lost only one A-10 and six helicopters, after systematically destroying much of Iraq’s air defenses through a low-intensity bombing campaign conducted under cover of the so-called no-fly zones, which the US, UK and France unilaterally imposed after the First Gulf War in 1991.

In 2003, the US Armed Forces dropped 13,000 tons of bombs and missiles on Iraq in the first 30 days of the war. But only 800 tons, or 6%, of those munitions, were cruise missiles and other stand-off weapons like the ones the US is now relying on against Iran.

The US has already depleted a third of its stand-off and air defense weapons stocks, including JASSM and Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-2, -3 and -6 anti-aircraft missiles, as well as half its stocks of Patriot and THAAD interceptors and the new Precision Strike Missiles that are replacing the shorter-range ATACMs. These missiles range in price from $700,000 each for JASSMs up to $12 million each for THAAD interceptors, and many will take years to replace.

So the US is using multi-million dollar missiles that are irreplaceable in the short term to try, and often fail, to interceptShahed drones that cost Iran between $20,000 and $50,000 each. This is a stark contrast from Iraq in 2003, when the US weapon of choice was its 500 lb. GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bomb, which cost only $22,000, and the 7,000 bombs used to attack Iraq were easily restocked.

To make up for the Navy’s dwindling missile stocks in the war zone, the US is flying B-1 bombers from a British airbase at Fairford in England to fire Tomahawk missiles at Iran. So many planes are now flying from so far away to attack Iran that the US has also had to send dozens more aerial refueling planes to reinforce the sixty it already hadstationed in Israel.

The Russians have demonstrated in Ukraine that the capacity to quickly ramp up production of relatively inexpensive artillery shells and drones can be more critical in a war than spending trillions on big-ticket weapons programs. Meanwhile, the corrupt US military-industrial complex has built a gold-plated revolving door between the US arms industry, the Pentagon top brass and a captive, co-opted civilian government. It has produced ever more expensive weapons, but it has lost nearly every war it has fought.

The only wars the US has won since 1945 were three short wars to recover small neocolonial outposts in Grenada, Panama and Kuwait, as the US took advantage of the weakening of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Otherwise, from Korea in the early 1950s to Iran today, the U.S. armed forces have lost every single war, while inflicting mass destruction on countries and people the US government claimed to be liberating. As the saying goes, “With friends like us, who needs enemies?”

Like many US industries, the post-Cold War US arms industry has become consolidated around a cabal of five firms(Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon (now RTX), General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman), whose continued growth depends on ever-greater profits from increasingly expensive warships, warplanes and weapons, while endless wars and “threats” serve to justify siphoning more and more of America’s national wealth into their coffers.

The US government and corporate media have told Americans for decades that these extraordinary military expenditures and endless wars are something to be proud of, and many Americans have swallowed this perverted myth of US military prowess. The Pentagon works hard to bolster its public image, spending $2 billion per year on recruitment and retention, and $1.14 billion on advertising contracts in 2023 alone.

But that narrative is beginning to crack. As with many aspects of the US political and economic system, more and more Americans are questioning what they have been taught about the US military, and veterans themselves are often the most outspoken critics.

Writing in Business Insider about the problems facing US military recruiters, Kelsey Baker reported that many veterans of the “Global War on Terror” now discourage their own children from joining the military. Three of the recruiters Baker spoke to said guns had been drawn on them by the parents of teenagers they were targeting for recruitment, and one recruiter recalled an irate parent calling him a “baby killer” and a government slave.

In Iran, the United States is caught between escalating a catastrophic, unwinnable war it should never have started and the urgent need to rethink the illegal, corrupt, policy of aggressive war it has pursued since 2001.

The September 11 attacks were carried out by 19 al-Qaeda hijackers—not by the countries that the United States went on to invade and occupy. Yet our leaders responded to those horrific crimes with a multi-trillion-dollar investment in new weapons and imperial military expansion—a decision driven by precisely the “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell speech in 1961.

US occupation forces in Afghanistan and Iraq were defeated by lightly-armed resistance forces defending their own countries. Yet America’s leaders ignored their own failures and defeats, continuing to blindly climb the escalation ladder—first confronting Russia through the war in Ukraine and now taking on Iran in its own territory.

We should note that it was under Democratic administrations that the US backed a coup in Ukraine in 2014 and then rejected a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in April 2022, while Trump, a Republican, assassinated Iran’s top military leader in 2020 and launched wars on Iran, in cahoots with Israel, in 2025 and 2026. The US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, like the illegal occupation that spawned it, still enjoys bipartisan support in Congress, but not from the American people its members claim to represent.

Many Americans understood the dangers of the United States’ militarized response to the crimes of September 11th, 2001, even before the Pentagon embarked on its spending spree and unleashed mass destruction on country after country.

Chalmers Johnson wrote his prescient and widely-acclaimed book, Blowback, in 1999, explaining how US militarism and imperialism inevitably sow the seeds for cataclysmic events like the 9/11 attacks. He followed it with three more books in his American Empire Project before his death in 2010.

Former Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz told NPR a week after 9/11, “It is never a legitimate response to punish people who are not responsible for the wrong done…We must make a distinction between punishing the guilty and punishing others. If you simply retaliate en masse by bombing Afghanistan, let us say, or the Taliban, you will kill many people who don’t approve of what has happened.”

By the time the United States was preparing to invade Iraq in 2003, international outrage was so widespread that it produced the largest global street protests in history, with up to 36 million people protesting in 60 countries. But US leaders ignored the world’s rejection of their lies, both at the UN and in the streets, and insisted on pretending that Iraq had chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons, and was somehow responsible for the crimes of September 11th.

The brainwashing of US occupation troops in Iraq was so complete that, even three years into the war, in February 2006, 85% of US occupation forces in Iraq told a Zogby poll that their main mission there was to “retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9/11 attacks.”

The lies, brainwashing, torture, civilian massacres and other war crimes that have corrupted the last 25 years of American military history—together with the outrageous cost—have turned the American people squarely against more new wars. But incredibly, they have failed to persuade Members of Congress to exercise their constitutional responsibility to stop feeding the out-of-control US military-industrial complex with record amounts of money, weapons and false pretexts for war.

Trump has requested a record $1.5 trillion in military spending for FY2027. The House-passed NDAA authorizes $1.15 trillion in discretionary military spending, with additional funding outside the NDAA bringing the administration’s overall military-spending plan to $1.5 trillion. The Senate has so far blocked its version of the NDAA.

The draft NDAA also includes unprecedented provisions to further integrate US and Israeli weapons production and intelligence sharing.

Trump’s frustration over the US-Israeli failure to defeat Iran stems from the same delusion of US military supremacy that infected his predecessors, especially since the end of the Cold War.

But in his 2018 book Losing Military Supremacy: the Myopia of American Strategic Planning, Andrei Martyanov warned that huge US investments in aircraft-carriers and other big-ticket warships and warplanes were rapidly being rendered obsolete by a new generation of Russian and Chinese missiles capable of traveling much faster and farther than the most advanced missiles in the US arsenal.

Now Iranian missiles and drones have fundamentally altered the military balance in the Middle East. They have driventhe US military out of its bases in the Persian Gulf and are forcing US aircraft carriers to stay 1,000 miles from the coast of Iran. US Central Command has had to relocate its regional headquarters from Qatar to Jordan, but Iran has attacked it there too.

Now the United States is repositioning more of its forces in the Middle East to Israel. This raises the stakes, and increases the risks, of any future escalation in the war on Iran, and it further expands the entangling US military alliance with the genocidal state of Israel, which most Americans now oppose.

On August 8, Iran reiterated six points from the Memorandum of Understanding that Trump already signed on June 17, and insisted that the United States must comply with them before it will reopen the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping.

Western commentators have described these as tough new conditions, but they are neither new nor tougher than before. They simply make explicit what was already implicit—for example, by specifically mentioning Palestine and Yemen, whereas the original memorandum merely called for ending the war “on all fronts, including Lebanon.” The United States and Israel started this war, and the United States has the power to end it by negotiating in good faith, based on the memorandum it already agreed to.

The American people have sacrificed enormously to pay for this obsolete, overpriced, and ineffective war machine. Many have paid with their lives, their limbs or their health. All of us pay the opportunity cost of our leaders’ warmongering and reckless squandering of our national wealth, leaving us without the basic support systems that our neighbors in other developed countries take for granted, from universal free healthcare and quality public education to living wages and paid vacation time.

The US government’s corrupt priorities leave our most serious problems unaddressed, while undermining global efforts to address them, from the destruction of the climate and the natural world to the ever-present danger of nuclear war.

As this year’s primary election results suggest, most Americans want a society that cares for its people, with a government that addresses our most urgent needs. That must surely include dismantling this failed, corrupt, out-of-control and absurdly expensive war machine.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, now in a revised, updated 2nd edition.

13 August 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Iran has made ending Israel’s genocide in Gaza one of its conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil shipping route, a senior Iranian official has said, tying the fate of the strategic waterway directly to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said the strait would not be reopened unless the United States changed its conduct and accepted Tehran’s conditions. Among those conditions, he said, Washington must end its wars across the entire region, including in Gaza and Lebanon, release frozen Iranian funds, and meet further demands conveyed through mediators.

Rezaei said the United States is being the source of instability in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Gulf of Oman, and said the waterway would remain closed until Washington altered its behavior. He added that any agreement reached between Iran and Oman over passage through the strait would be treated separately from the broader question of its closure.

The inclusion of Gaza in Iran’s demands links the reopening of a waterway through which a large share of the world’s oil and gas passes to the halting of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It signals that Tehran intends to keep the war on Gaza at the center of any regional settlement, using its leverage over global energy routes to press the United States to rein in Israel and end its attacks not only on Gaza but across the region, including in Lebanon.

13 August 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad

For more than six decades, the United States has attempted to make the Cuban people pay for their decision to pursue an independent, socialist path. The latest phase of this economic war has targeted the island’s most vulnerable artery: its energy supply. Six months after Washington intensified pressure on countries and companies supplying oil to Cuba, the policy has not produced democracy or improved the lives of ordinary Cubans. It has produced darker homes, immobilised buses, interrupted hospitals, and greater difficulty in moving food from farms to cities.

The immediate task is to prevent a humanitarian disaster. The larger task is to replace coercion with sovereign cooperation and to help Cuba build an energy system that cannot again be strangled by a foreign power.

Six Months of Deepening Crisis

On 29 January 2026, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order establishing a mechanism for additional tariffs on goods from any country that directly or indirectly supplied oil to Cuba. Washington presented the measure as a defence of US national security. Its practical purpose was unmistakable: to force third countries to choose between a small, economically distressed Caribbean nation and access to the enormous US market.

The tariff actions authorised under this, and several other emergency orders were terminated on 20 February. But the declared emergency remained in force, as did the wider sanctions system, threats against suppliers and uncertainty surrounding ships bound for Cuba. The result has been described as an effective oil blockade: not necessarily a permanent line of US warships, but a system of secondary pressure capable of frightening governments, banks, insurers, shipping companies, and traders away from legitimate commerce with Cuba. The blow fell on an economy already under extraordinary strain. Cuba had long depended on imported petroleum, particularly from Venezuela, while producing only part of its requirements. Venezuelan deliveries declined after the US attack on that country on 3 January 2026, Mexican supplies came under US pressure, and Cuba lacked the foreign exchange to buy sufficient fuel elsewhere. Ageing thermal plants, delayed maintenance, hurricanes, inflation and the loss of tourism income compounded the damage.

Fuel scarcity spread through every part of social life. Technical failures in the fragile grid repeatedly became island-wide blackouts. Electricity cuts stopped water pumps, while refrigerators failed, spoiling scarce food and medicines. Families were forced to cook, study, and sleep in extreme heat without dependable power.

Transport was similarly paralysed. Fewer public buses operated, petrol stations closed or rationed supplies, and workers struggled to reach their jobs. When diesel is unavailable, crops cannot easily be harvested, and food cannot be transported from rural producers to urban consumers. Garbage collection and sanitation deteriorate. Ambulances, hospitals, and clinics must ration generator fuel even as shortages of medicines and basic supplies grow. Flights were cancelled or rerouted because Cuban airports could not guarantee aviation fuel, further damaging tourism – one of the country’s principal sources of hard currency.

The burden is unequal. Households with dollars can sometimes obtain food, transport, batteries or solar equipment; workers and pensioners dependent on pesos have far fewer options. Women carry much of the additional unpaid labour of finding food and water and caring for relatives. Rural communities, persons with disabilities and patients requiring refrigerated medicines face particular risks. The central victims of the US policy are all the Cuban people.

An Exit Based on Peace, Sovereignty, and Reconstruction

The way out must begin with an immediate humanitarian energy arrangement. Cuba requires predictable deliveries, not occasional cargoes dependent on political permission. The United Nations, together with willing Latin American and Caribbean governments, should establish a monitored fuel corridor. Shipments could be earmarked for power generation, hospitals, water and sanitation, food production, public transport, and disaster preparedness.

An exemption is meaningless if banks do not process payments, insurers do not cover vessels, and shipping companies fear punishment. Participating governments should provide payment guarantees, insurance and legal protection for humanitarian suppliers. The United States should issue durable, general licences rather than case-by-case waivers.

Second, emergency relief must open the door to negotiated de-escalation. Washington and Havana should begin structured talks, supported where useful by CARICOM, CELAC, Mexico, and other trusted intermediaries. The principle must be reciprocity without coercion. The United States should suspend measures that punish third-country trade and set out a verifiable timetable for lifting sanctions. Negotiation cannot mean demanding regime change as the price of allowing a population to meet its elementary needs. Nor should humanitarian necessities be held hostage to every unresolved dispute between the two governments.

Third, Cuba has already begun to diversity its suppliers and energy system. Contracts with several producers, joint purchasing with Caribbean partners and regional storage reserves could reduce costs and cushion sudden interruptions. Technical cooperation could help stabilise old generating equipment while new capacity is built. Over the medium term, the most durable answer lies in renewable and decentralised energy. Cuba has abundant sunlight and significant potential for solar power, biomass and carefully located wind generation. Rooftop solar systems on clinics, schools, farms and apartment buildings, coupled with batteries, would reduce demand on the national grid. Community microgrids could keep water pumps, refrigeration and communications operating when a major plant fails. Bagasse from the sugar industry and agricultural residues can contribute to generation if projects are managed sustainably. Renewables must not become a slogan that ignores material constraints: projects need finance, spare parts, trained technicians, batteries, and recycling systems.

For countries of the Global South, Cuba’s predicament is not a distant bilateral quarrel. Secondary sanctions and tariff threats establish the dangerous principle that a powerful state may dictate the lawful trading partners of every other nation. Defending Cuba’s right to purchase energy is therefore part of defending a democratic international order. The Global South should oppose extraterritorial coercion, support humanitarian supplies and renewable-energy cooperation, and work with other states to insulate legitimate trade from unilateral sanctions.

The Cuban people have survived six decades of pressure through social organisation, international solidarity and remarkable endurance. Endurance, however, should not be romanticised. No people should be required to live indefinitely without reliable electricity, transport, food or medicine to prove their commitment to sovereignty. The just exit is neither capitulation nor isolation. It is the lifting of collective punishment and international cooperation based on equality. That path can bring the lights back on while preserving Cuba’s right to determine its own future.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa, written with Grieve Chelwa.

14 August 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Syed Mohammad Raghib

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed on 7 August 2026 by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye, represents one of the most consequential developments in the security architecture of the Muslim world in recent years. Its central principle is strikingly similar to NATO’s Article 5: an armed attack against one member is to be treated as an attack against all three. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has explicitly compared the arrangement to NATO’s collective-defence principle, while Pakistani officials have described it as a “purely defensive” arrangement that is not directed against any particular country. Yet the agreement immediately raises a larger geopolitical question: Is this the beginning of a “Muslim NATO”? and if so, against whom? The answer is more complicated than either its supporters or critics suggest. The agreement is not formally an anti-Iran, anti-Israel, anti-India or anti-Western alliance. Nevertheless, its strategic logic is clearly shaped by the rapidly changing security environment of the Middle East and South Asia.

A New Security Triangle

The significance of the Mecca Agreement lies partly in the extraordinary combination of capabilities represented by its three members. Pakistan contributes a large, experienced military and is the Muslim world’s only acknowledged nuclear-armed state. Türkiye contributes one of NATO’s largest armed forces, substantial defence-industrial capabilities and rapidly expanding expertise in drones, electronic warfare and advanced military technologies. Saudi Arabia contributes enormous financial resources, strategic geography, energy power and considerable influence in the Arab and Islamic worlds. The three countries therefore bring together military manpower, nuclear deterrence, technology, finance and strategic geography. This combination is considerably more significant than a conventional diplomatic partnership.

The global military environment also makes the agreement understandable. As per the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that global military expenditure already reached approximately $2.9 trillion in 2025, following another substantial increase in defence spending. Türkiye’s military expenditure rose by 7.2% in 2025 to about $30 billion, while Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s largest military spenders. Saudi Arabia has particularly strong reasons to reconsider its security architecture. Riyadh has historically relied heavily on American military protection, but repeated regional crises have encouraged Saudi policymakers to diversify their strategic partnerships. The Mecca Agreement can therefore be understood partly as an effort to build greater regional strategic autonomy.

Why Pakistan?

For Pakistan, the agreement represents an opportunity to strengthen its strategic position in both the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. Pakistan has longstanding military relations with Saudi Arabia. Pakistani military personnel have historically provided training and security assistance to the Kingdom, while Saudi Arabia has remained an important economic and diplomatic partner for Islamabad. The 2026 trilateral agreement expands this relationship into a broader multilateral security framework. Pakistan’s most important strategic asset is its nuclear deterrent. The inclusion of a nuclear-armed country gives the agreement a psychological and strategic weight that most proposed Islamic security organisations lack. But Pakistan also has to be careful. Its geography places it between India, Afghanistan, Iran and the Arabian Sea. Islamabad cannot afford to become militarily committed to every conflict involving Saudi Arabia or Türkiye. A collective-defence clause could therefore create difficult choices if one member enters a conflict that another member considers unnecessary or dangerous.

Why Saudi Arabia and Why Türkiye?

For Saudi Arabia, the Mecca Agreement is perhaps the most important component of its emerging strategy of security diversification. The Kingdom possesses enormous financial resources and has invested heavily in advanced aircraft, missile defence, drones and other military systems. Yet sophisticated weapons do not automatically create an independent military-security architecture. Saudi Arabia therefore needs partners with military experience, technology and strategic depth. Pakistan offers military manpower and nuclear deterrence. Türkiye offers advanced defence technology and a growing indigenous military-industrial complex. The arrangement consequently gives Riyadh access to two major Muslim military powers without requiring the Kingdom to abandon its existing relationships with the United States. This point is crucial: the Mecca Agreement does not replace Saudi-American security relations. Turkish officials have stressed that the new arrangement complements existing alliances rather than replacing them. Saudi Arabia is therefore attempting to move from dependence toward strategic diversification.

Türkiye’s participation gives the agreement an entirely different dimension. Türkiye is already a NATO member. It therefore occupies a unique position: it belongs simultaneously to the Western military alliance and to an emerging Muslim security arrangement. Rather than indicating that Ankara is abandoning NATO, the Mecca Agreement demonstrates Türkiye’s increasingly multidirectional foreign policy. Türkiye has developed a significant defence industry, particularly in unmanned aerial systems, naval platforms, missiles, electronic warfare and other military technologies. The new pact envisages joint exercises and deeper cooperation in areas including unmanned systems, electronic warfare, artificial intelligence and defence production. For Ankara, the agreement also expands its influence across the Arab world and strengthens its role as a security actor beyond NATO’s traditional geographical framework.

Is It Really a Muslim NATO?

Calling the Mecca Agreement a “Muslim NATO” is politically attractive but analytically premature. NATO is a highly institutionalised organisation with 32 members, permanent structures, integrated military commands, common planning mechanisms and decades of operational experience. The Mecca arrangement currently consists of only three countries. Its institutional mechanisms are still being developed, including a ministerial committee and a Saudi-based secretariat. Moreover, the three countries do not share identical strategic interests. Pakistan’s primary security concern remains India and its regional environment. Saudi Arabia is primarily concerned with Gulf security, missile and drone threats, maritime security and regional instability. Türkiye has interests stretching from the Black Sea and Mediterranean to Syria, Iraq, the Caucasus and the wider Middle East. Thus, the agreement is better described initially as a trilateral collective-defence framework rather than a fully developed Muslim NATO. However, its potential evolution is important. Türkiye has indicated that the arrangement could eventually expand, with Egypt mentioned as a possible future participant. If Egypt and other significant Muslim states eventually join, the character of the organisation could change dramatically.

Is this against Iran and Israel?

The most immediate question is whether Iran is the unnamed target. Officially, the answer is no. Pakistani and Turkish officials have explicitly rejected the idea that the agreement is directed against Iran or another particular state. Strategically, however, Iran is impossible to ignore. The agreement emerged during a period of intense regional tensions involving Iranian missile capabilities, attacks and counter-attacks, and broader instability surrounding the Gulf and Red Sea. Saudi Arabia has serious security concerns about Iranian missile and drone capabilities, while Türkiye and Pakistan have their interests in maintaining regional stability. Nevertheless, an explicitly anti-Iranian alliance would be extremely risky. Iran is itself a major regional power and a Muslim country. A Sunni-led military bloc explicitly organised against a Shia-majority Iran could transform a geopolitical rivalry into a sectarian confrontation. That would be disastrous for the Muslim world.

Israel is another possible interpretation. The political environment surrounding the agreement includes continuing disputes over Gaza, Palestine and Jerusalem. In April 2026, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and other Muslim-majority states jointly condemned Israeli actions affecting the status quo at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif and criticised settlement expansion. Consequently, the three countries share important political positions concerning Palestine. But the Mecca Agreement does not establish a military commitment to fight Israel. Turning it into an explicitly anti-Israeli alliance would immediately create enormous strategic complications for Saudi Arabia and Türkiye, both of which maintain important relationships with Western states. Its deterrence value may therefore be more important than an offensive purpose.

What about India?

For India, the agreement deserves careful attention but not alarmism. Pakistan’s participation naturally creates concerns in New Delhi because Islamabad’s relations with Saudi Arabia and Türkiye are already strategically important. If the agreement develops into a broader military organisation, India will have to examine whether it affects the regional balance of power. Yet Saudi Arabia has extensive economic relations with India, while Türkiye also maintains substantial commercial ties with New Delhi. There is no evidence that the Mecca Agreement is designed as an anti-India military alliance. The key concern for India would arise only if collective defence becomes operationally linked to Pakistan’s bilateral conflicts. That would fundamentally alter the character of the agreement. In a recent interview with Karan Thapar in the Wire, former Indian diplomat Mr Shayam Saran said that each of them has different objectives, but New Delhi also keeps eyes on the development in the region, as 9 million Indians are working in the Gulf countries.

The Nuclear Question

The most sensitive issue is Pakistan’s nuclear capability. A trilateral defence pact involving a nuclear-armed state inevitably raises questions about escalation. If an attack on Pakistan were automatically treated as an attack on Saudi Arabia and Türkiye, the crisis could potentially acquire a much wider strategic dimension. Conversely, Pakistan’s nuclear capability may provide the alliance with a deterrent effect. The fundamental logic is that potential adversaries may hesitate before attacking any one member because they could face a coordinated response from three major military powers. This is the classic logic of collective deterrence, but it also creates the danger of entrapment. One member’s conflict could potentially draw the others into confrontation.

The Real Purpose: Strategic Autonomy

The most convincing interpretation of the Mecca Agreement is therefore neither “Muslim NATO against Iran” nor “Muslim NATO against Israel”. It is an attempt to build greater strategic autonomy in an increasingly uncertain international system. The United States remains enormously powerful in the Middle East, but regional states increasingly recognise that external security guarantees can never be completely predictable. The wars and crises of recent years have encouraged regional powers to develop their own partnerships. The Mecca framework provides Saudi Arabia military depth, Pakistan economic and strategic opportunities, and Türkiye a new platform for regional leadership. It also reflects a broader transformation: Muslim-majority countries are increasingly seeking to become security providers rather than permanent security consumers.

Conclusion

The Mecca Agreement of 2026 is undoubtedly historic, but calling it a fully operational “Muslim NATO” today would be a premature conclusion. Its importance lies in its potential rather than its current institutional strength, which is limited by the lack of a headquarters and other necessary structural setups. The agreement is officially defensive and is not directed against a named country. Yet its strategic environment reveals three major concerns: Iranian regional power, Israeli-Palestinian conflict and uncertainty about external security guarantees, particularly American ones. India is an important indirect consideration because of Pakistan’s membership, but there is currently no evidence that the pact was created as an anti-India alliance. The more profound question is what happens next. If the pact remains limited to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye, it will function primarily as a powerful trilateral security arrangement. If Egypt and other major Muslim countries join, it could evolve into something much larger, a genuinely new collective-security organisation for the Muslim world. The greatest challenge will be maintaining unity without creating a new cycle of bloc confrontation. The Mecca Agreement may therefore be less about “Muslim NATO against whom?” and more about “Can Muslim states finally create a collective security system of their own” after six months long US-Iran war. That is the real strategic test of Mecca h Agreement 2026.

Dr Syed Mohammad Raghib completed his PhD from the School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi.

14 August 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ismail Al Sharif

“I’ll say it frankly: We should have exerted more pressure on Israel to adopt a different approach in Gaza” – Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor to ex-President Joe Biden.

A striking phenomenon is recurring in American politics: Some presidents, cabinet members, and senior officials become more outspoken in their stances toward the Israeli occupation entity after leaving office, expressing regret for decisions that contributed to the injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian people.

This may be due to their liberation from diplomatic and partisan constraints, the pressures of Zionist lobbies, and the influence of tainted money, or perhaps their consciences awaken belatedly as they feel closer to death, realizing the enormity of the injustice they participated in or condoned.

Examples of this are numerous. Among the most prominent is former US President Jimmy Carter, who, after leaving office, shifted from a traditional pro-Zionist rhetoric to criticizing the Israeli occupation and its policies. Then there is Chuck Hagel, former US Secretary of Defense, who held the United States responsible for the Zionists’ continued aggression and described their practices as terrorism— but only after his retirement, of course.

Robert Gates, the former Secretary of Defense, also criticized war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, calling him ungrateful.

More recently, Jake Sullivan, former National Security Advisor, and Antony Blinken, Biden’s lackluster Secretary of State, joined the ranks of those who have expressed regret. Both men have blood on their hands from the blood of Palestinian children and played a shameful role in supporting the Israeli entity during one of the greatest acts of genocide in modern history.

This was revealed in a lengthy investigation published in The New Yorker magazine last 20th July, titled “How Biden Enabled Israel’s Aggression Against Gaza – and Iran,” with the subtitle: “Top officials from the previous Administration now express regret over their failure to rein in Netanyahu.”

However, this regret will not absolve them for they knew full well that the Zionists were committing genocide in Gaza. On 5 March, 2024, five months after the start of the genocide, Mirjana Spoljarić, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), sent a confidential letter to President Biden. The ICRC, in addition to its humanitarian mission, is obligated under the Geneva Conventions to provide states with information and advice to help them avoid committing war crimes.

In her letter, Spoljarić reminded President Biden that the organization had condemned the “horrific” massacre perpetrated by Hamas against Israelis on 7 October 2023 and that it had continued to press the movement “tirelessly” for the release of the “hostages” it was holding.

However, this time she appealed to Biden with “grave concern,” warning that Israel, which had continued to bombard Gaza with heavy munitions since that October, was ignoring the ICRC in an unprecedented manner.

In her letter, she wrote: “The way Israel conducts hostilities is inconsistent with the laws of armed conflict, particularly the obligations to protect civilians, to distinguish between military objectives on the one hand and civilians and civilian infrastructure on the other, to ensure the humane treatment of detainees and the dead, to protect medical facilities and personnel, and to provide and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.”

Despite these clear warnings, the United States remained a key partner in the genocide, providing weapons, money, and political and international cover to Israel. And now some of its officials come to shed crocodile tears for the children of Gaza!

I say to them: You have no right to repent now, after all these martyrs, after all these tragedies, to say: “We are sorry, we made a mistake.” You knew, and you had the power to pressure and prevent, but you chose to support, arm, and cover up. You bear the burden of what happened, and the blood of the children of Gaza will haunt you and pursue your names to the dustbin of history.

This piece by Ismail Al Sharif was originally published in the Arabic Addustour daily and reprinted in English in Crossfirearabia.com.

14 August 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ramzy Baroud

It is now official: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flatly rejected the core conditions of the Board of Peace framework, explicitly stating that Israel will neither adhere to a ceasefire nor withdraw its forces from Gaza.

During a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu stated with unambiguous language: “Israel rejects the 15-point document published by the Board of Peace for Gaza”.

In a previous conversation with lead envoy Nickolay Mladenov, Netanyahu set conditions—such as demanding unilateral operational freedom for the Israeli military to strike inside Gaza at will—that render a genuine peace agreement structurally impossible.

The Israeli army leadership, under Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, reinforced this posture by outlining three uncompromising “red lines” to the political establishment: complete operational freedom to eliminate perceived threats anywhere in the Strip, strict control over all weapons entering or exiting Gaza, and zero military withdrawal unless Hamas is completely disarmed.

One can fault Netanyahu for many things, including ongoing genocide. But in recent years, he has been remarkably straightforward about his intentions; therefore, no one can claim that Netanyahu has fooled anyone.

Earlier this year, while speaking at a conference in an occupied West Bank settlement, Netanyahu explicitly boasted that he had instructed the Israeli military to expand its physical footprint and permanently occupy at least 70 percent of the Gaza Strip—a massive expansion far beyond the temporary administrative demarcation lines established in previous truce outlines.

Meanwhile, his far-right ministers have pushed the government’s rejectionist stance even further. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Missions Minister Orit Strock issued a joint demand for an emergency cabinet meeting to roll back authorization for the deployment of the International Stabilization Force (ISF).

The ISF, designed under the Board of Peace framework as a transitional peacekeeping body, was meant to oversee humanitarian security, starting with pilot recovery zones in Rafah.

Yet Smotrich and Strock claimed the security cabinet was “misled” into approving the force, arguing that allowing international personnel into Gaza endangers Israeli operational freedom and directly contradicts their explicit war aims.

These latest moves, along with the military’s strict “red lines,” confirm what recent months of relentless bombardment have made clear: the Israeli government has no intention of ending its genocide in Gaza or relinquishing control over the besieged and devastated territory.

But highlighting such positions will make no difference, aside from once more accentuating Israel’s total lack of desire for peace and its intention to perpetuate conflict.

While true, such realization on its own is worthless considering that what is taking place in Gaza and the West Bank is beyond horrific, and that the daily killing of Palestinians makes the term “ceasefire” a cruel joke.

While diplomats debate frameworks, Israeli strikes continue to claim civilian lives daily—bringing the post-truce death toll to over 1,250 and the total killed since October 2023 to more than 73,000.

Therefore, action is needed, and urgently so. Indeed, Israel’s official position leaves the international community with no choice but to take direct, coordinated action across five key fronts:

First, Arab, Muslim, and allied governments must leverage every available international platform, starting with the UN General Assembly and Security Council, to formally condemn Israel’s violation of the Gaza peace framework and expose its bad-faith negotiations.

States must move beyond symbolic statements and invoke mechanisms like the ‘Uniting for Peace’ resolution to bypass Western vetoes, push for binding sanctions, and implement a universal arms embargo against Israel.

Second, a renewed global campaign must recenter Gaza and the West Bank, exposing Israel’s broader territorial objectives—specifically the systematic ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the quiet, administrative annexation of the West Bank.

Civil society, trade unions, and grassroots organizations worldwide must pressure their respective national governments to sever diplomatic, economic, and military ties with Israel until it complies with international law.

Third, International legal bodies must accelerate their proceedings. Pressure must be renewed on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to execute arrest warrants for senior Israeli leadership, while the International Court of Justice (ICJ) must enforce provisional measures and issue definitive rulings regarding Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention.

Legal compliance must be treated as a non-negotiable prerequisite for international relations.

Fourth, a unified international media push is necessary to counter state-sponsored propaganda, keeping public focus fixed on Israel’s long-term strategic plans: the permanent displacement of Gaza’s population and the formal takeover of Palestinian land.

Independent media outlets, journalists, and cultural institutions must challenge official narratives that frame Israeli aggression as self-defense, centering the lived realities and testimonies of Palestinians under siege instead.

Fifth, the international community must bypass Israeli obstruction to ensure massive quantities of food, medical supplies, and shelter materials enter Gaza immediately to prevent widespread starvation and winter exposure.

International aid agencies must establish protected humanitarian corridors by global mandate, refusing to allow Israel to use manufactured famine and humanitarian denial as weapons of war.

With Israel’s intentions fully unmasked, the global community must shift from passive mediation to active enforcement.

Israel wants to normalize genocide, just as it normalized the illegal siege on Gaza before that, the military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza before that, and the ongoing displacement of Palestinians since 1948.

We must resolutely reject the premise that the slaughter of the innocent can ever become an accepted routine.

Knowledge of the atrocity is not enough. Expressing solidarity in words alone is not enough. Concrete, decisive action is required today—and holding the perpetrators accountable remains entirely within our power if the world finds the political courage to act.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

14 August 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Asad Ismi

Video: The “Secret Intelligence” Memorandum and The History of U.S. War Crimes (1945-): Michel Chossudovsky

[https://rumble.com/v3txhqg-michel-chossudovsky-middle-east-war-a-false-flag-leading-to-more-false-flag.html]

Update. Israel’s Secret Intelligence Memorandum

An official “secret” memorandum authored by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence “is recommending the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula”, namely to a refugee camp in Egyptian territory. There are indications of Israel-Egypt negotiations as well as consultations with the U.S.

The 10-page document, dated Oct. 13, 2023, bears the logo of the Intelligence Ministry … assesses three options regarding the future of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip … It recommends a full population transfer as its preferred course of action. … The document, whose authenticity was confirmed by the ministry, has been translated into English in full here on +972. See below, click here or below to access complete document (10 pages)

[https://www.scribd.com/document/681086738/Israeli-Intelligence-Ministry-Policy-Paper-on-Gaza-s-Civilian-Population-October-2023]

Option C constitutes the basis for carrying out a Genocide against the People of Palestine.

M. Ch. Global Research, November 1, 2023, November 27, 2023

Introduction

Israel’s genocidal bombing of Palestinians in Gaza has (as of October 30) resulted in 8,306 deaths of civilians including more than 3,000 children. In the words of Canadian journalist Andrew Mitrovica,

“This is not an onslaught. It is not an invasion. It is not even a war. It is a genocide.” …The monstrous plan is as plain as Netanyahu’s wretched character: Be done with Gaza by erasing Gaza.

Israel’s Operation “To Wipe Gaza Off the Map” including the false flag agenda was carefully coordinated with U.S. military and intelligence. It is part of a broader military agenda of US-NATO.

America’s unspoken military practice from World War II to the present consists in routinely targeting civilians, which constitutes a crime against humanity. Netanyahu is Washington’s proxy.

“Are Special Units of the U.S. Military Fighting Alongside the Israelis”?

It should be understood that Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilians in Gaza is part of a longstanding U.S. military strategy of killing civilians. America is in this regard fully supportive of its Israeli proxy.

In recent developments Israeli officials have justified its killing of civilians in Gaza by pointing to the bombing of the German city of Dresden (a civilian target) as well as many other German cities by the U.S. and Britain towards the end of World War II.

Similarly, the U.S. applied the same strategy of targeting Japanese civilians with fire bombs towards the end of World War II.

America’s Strategy of Killing Civilians (1945- )
Since World War II, America’s military strategy has deliberately targeted civilians as well as “civilian objects” including hospitals, schools, churches, residential areas. The evidence is overwhelming.

While this practice is categorized as a crime against humanity, the United States has never been the object of prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The history of US-led wars confirms that murdering millions of civilians is an integral part of America’s global war agenda.

During and since World War II , the United States has killed more than 40 million people in a number of countries, most of them civilians, either directly or through proxy by its puppet regimes:

• Germany–World War II: (several cities bombed by U.S. including Dresden, Nuremberg, Hamburg, Cologne); Number of people killed: 600,000 (according to Israeli official’s recent statement)
• Japan-World War II:  442,000 civilians killed by U.S. and U.K. fire bombing.
• Korean War 1950-53: Three million civilians killed by U.S. carpet bombing.
• Vietnam War (1962-1975): 3.8 million civilians killed by U.S. bombing and invasion.
• Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (1962-1975): A total of 4.3 million people killed by U.S. in all three countries.
• Iraq War (2003): Three million Iraqis killed by U.S. invasion.
• The U.S.’ so-called “War on Terrorism” has killed up to 4.6 million people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Pakistan according to a Brown University report.   
• Pakistan 1971: Up to three million ethnic Bengalis killed by the Pakistan army (a U.S. proxy) in East Pakistan (the country’s biggest province). Due to this East Pakistan separated from Pakistan and became Bangladesh.  
• The invasion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by U.S. proxies Rwanda and Uganda beginning in 1998 has killed more than 6.9 million civilians. This genocide continues.

The above is a partial list which does not include Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Indonesia, Angola, Mozambique and Latin America. Also of relevance are deaths resulting from famines and mass poverty enforced by U.S. policies globally, especially by sanctions.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (who assumed this post in 1997) was asked by the CBS interviewer Leslie Stahl in 1996 about the deadly effect of U.S. sanctions on Iraqi children. Stahl: “We have heard that half a million children have died. Is the price worth it?”

Albright replied,

“I think it is a very hard choice but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

The number of Iraqi children killed by U.S. sanctions up to 1996 was 575,000. Currently, Washington has imposed sanctions on 39 countries.

As Kevin Reese and Margaret Flowers put it in their 2020 Global Research article,

“Economic sanctions are an act of war that kills tens of thousands of people each year through financial strangulation.”

The list of U.S. war crimes above confirms that:

The Israeli genocide of Palestinians does not emanate from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but from the U.S. Empire.

The mass murder of civilians has been part of U.S. military doctrine since World War II and Washington has attempted to “normalize” this practice in one war after another.

World War II. Germany and Japan
“The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians” said U.S. President Harry Truman in a radio address on August 9, 1945. “We will use [this weapon] so that military objectives…are the target and not women and children.”

Of course Hiroshima was a city of 350,000 civilians and not a military target. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky in his article on the Hiroshima bombing, calls Truman “a liar and a criminal”.

“Had [Truman] been misled by his advisers that Hiroshima was a military base and that it was OK to bomb… was he stupid and uneducated?”

The U.S. firebombing of Tokyo on March 9, 1945, is considered the single most deadly air raid in history killing more than 100,000 civilians, injuring a million and making another million people homeless.

The bombing destroyed half of Tokyo.

Kisako Motoki, then 10 years old, lost her parents and brother to the bombing. She recalls:

“I saw melted bodies piled up on top of each other as high as a house. I saw black pieces, bits of bodies everywhere on the ground and burnt corpses in the water. I couldn’t believe this was happening in this world.”

Haruyo Nihei, another survivor of the Tokyo bombing, says U.S. claims that its planes were bombing factories are “false”. “There were no big military factories in the areas they bombed on March 9” she explains, “they did it as punishment. I believe they should be held accountable for war crimes.”

Curtis LeMay, the U.S. Air Force general, who ordered the bombing of Tokyo said:

“[U.S. forces] scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night… than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.”

LeMay admitted that

“if he had been on the losing side, he would be charged with war crimes.”

The Korean War (1950-53)
US military sources confirm that 20 percent of North Korea’s population was killed off over a three-year period of intensive bombings. Every single family in North Korea lost a loved one in the course of the Korean War.

According to General Curtis LeMay who was head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War:

“After destroying North Korea’s 78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians… over a period of three years…we killed off 20% of the population…perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerence of another.”

North Korea lost up to 30% of its population (more than three million people) due to U.S. bombing according to War Veteran and Global Research Associate Brian S. Willson:

“Everyone I talked with, dozens and dozens of folks, lost one if not many more family members during the war especially from the continuous bombing…deliberately dropped on virtually every space in the country…The pained memories of the people are still obvious and their anger at ‘America’ is often expressed.”

General MacArthur Says “Sorry for the Human Suffering”

Image: Truman and MacArthur, 1950

The criminal bombings of Pyongyang in 1951 ordered by president Truman, had been opposed by General Douglas MacArthur who was commander of allied forces in Korea:

“A defiant Douglas MacArthur appeared before Congress and spoke of human suffering so horrifying that his parting glimpse of it caused him to vomit.

“I have never seen such devastation,” the general told members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. At that time, in May 1951, the Korean War was less than a year old. Casualties, he estimated, were already north of 1 million.

“I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man,” he added, “and it just curdled my stomach.” (quoted by the Washington Post, August 10, 2017)

As Chossudovsky explains in his September 2013 article on the Korean War:

“The Korean War set the stage for a global process of militarization and U.S.-led wars… In the words of U.S. General Wesley Clark quoting a senior Pentagon official,

‘We’re going to take out seven countries in five years starting with Iraq then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off, Iran. (March 2, 2007)

.

The Vietnam War

From 1965 until 1975, the United States military dropped “more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, double the amount dropped on Europe and Asia during World War II…It remains the largest aerial bombardment in human history.”

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. expanded the style of genocidal warfare it had perfected in Korea, bombing three countries at the same time, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Image: Vietnam War protestors march at the Pentagon in Washington, DC on October 21, 1967.

The bombing of Vietnam was accompanied by a ground invasion of a million American and allied troops who devastated the country for ten years generating a holocaust.

3.8 million Vietnamese civilians were killed in the war, 5.3 million civilians were wounded and 11 million Vietnamese were made refugees. Another 4 million Vietnamese were doused with 20 million gallons of the toxic chemical herbicide called Agent Orange dropped by U.S. planes leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

The spraying of Agent Orange destroyed three generations of Vietnamese children (up to the present) many thousands of whom were and are born with serious mental disorders and physical deformities. Many babies were still-born or without brains, arms and legs.

“It’s suffering on an almost unimaginable scale” says Nick Turse author of the 2013 book Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (Macmillan).

According to Turse, “indiscriminate killing was a deliberate strategy of the U.S. military.” And this strategy was “dictated at the highest levels of the [Pentagon].” Turse explains that the military was obsessed with body counts:

“So when they were not able to achieve victory through attrition, through the body count, the only recourse was to increase the firepower and this was turned loose on the Vietnamese countryside.”

The role of racism was also central to U.S. strategy. Similar to Israeli officials calling Palestinians “human animals” the U.S. military dehumanized the Vietnamese.

“The idea was that the Vietnamese were not really people” says Turse “they were subhuman, mere ‘gooks’ who could be killed or abused at will. I talked to veterans who told me that from the moment they got into basic training, they were told, ‘Never call them Vietnamese, call them gooks or dinks, slopes, slants, rice-eaters.’ Anything to take away their humanity, to dehumanize them and make it easy to see any Vietnamese–all Vietnamese as the enemy.”

Demolishing Iraq: Iraq War I. The Gulf War (1991)
More than thirty-two years ago, the so-called “Gulf War” (Iraq War I) was launched against Iraq on January 17, 1991.

Of relevance to Palestine, extensive crimes against humanity were committed by the US and its NATO allies under the banner of a “peace making operation”.

Remember: The 1991 Gulf War: The Massacre of Withdrawing Soldiers on “The Highway of Death”

There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it’s impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.”

Those extensive crimes against humanity were the beginning of a long and unending war against the people of Iraq.

Destroying Iraq. Iraq War II (2003- )

During April 2004, the Iraqi city of Fallujah was almost completely destroyed by the U.S. military which showed no regard for its massive killing of civilians as documented by Felicity Arbuthnot who reported from Iraq on this massacre. She quotes Brigadier-General Mark Kimmett who was asked by a reporter:

“You talk about a clean war in Fallujah but the Iraqis have an image through television, from what is happening in Fallujah including killing children.

Is there a way that you can convince Iraqis through your point of view that you have only utilized force against terrorists?”

As Arbuthnot puts it,

“With his hallmark contempt for humanity, Kimmit replied:

“With regards to the solution on the images of Americans killing innocent civilians, my solution is quite simple, change the channel..to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station.

The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda and lies.”

Image: Depleted uranium shells, Fallujah

“Marines killed so many civilians that the municipal soccer stadium had to be turned into a graveyard”.

According to Felicity Arbuthnot:

The Americans invaded, chillingly: “house to house, room to room”, raining death and destruction on the proud, ancient “City of Mosques.”

One correspondent wrote: “There has been nothing like the attack on Fallujah since the Nazi invasion and occupation of much of the European continent – the shelling and bombing of Warsaw in September 1939, the terror bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940.”

Arbuthnot emphasizes that Fallujah was in fact made “a free fire zone” by the U.S. military:

“two hospitals were demolished…and at the General Hospital, patients and doctors were initially handcuffed, the ‘liberators’ regarding it as a ‘centre of propaganda’, since the staff talked … of the numbers of dead and wounded they were treating. The ‘non-American wounded were in essence left to die’ as a result. “

Arbuthnot quotes a Lt. Col Pete Newell as saying that U.S. forces wanted

“Fallujah to understand what democracy is all about.”

US Military Doctrine and Israel’s Ongoing Genocide
Israel’s current genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza is a continuation of the horrendous civilian killings carried out by the US and its NATO allies since the Second World War.

The atrocities committed in Palestine are similar to those committed in Fallujah. Washington’s fingerprints are on the Gaza genocide. Netanyahu has the unconditional support of the Biden administration.

From Dresden to Gaza (1945-2023): The Death of 40++ Million People
From Dresden to Gaza, the U.S.’ “hallmark contempt for humanity” has resulted in the death of more than 40 million people.

The people of the Global South are in the way of Washington and its proxies who covet the valuable mineral resources these people happen to live over or near.

The massacres of Gazans, Congolese and Iraqis (among others) facilitate access to these minerals (natural gas in the case of Gaza) ensuring the continuing impoverishment of the Global South and the resulting enrichment of the U.S. empire.

***

The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) stands in solidarity with the People of Palestine.

13 August 2026

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Dr. Radwan Masmoudi

July 25 marked five years since Tunisian President Kais Saied suspended the elected parliament, dismissed the government and began ruling by decree. He called it a rescue mission, a necessary response to a paralyzed political class and a country in crisis, while promising to fight corruption, restore dignity to ordinary Tunisians and build a “new republic” answerable directly to the people. Instead, Saied has achieved none of his promises while securing unchecked and indefinite power at the expense of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution and its people.

As Tunisians marked the anniversary of that day, many were not celebrating. Instead, thousands took to the streets at night, blocking roads and burning tires because their electricity had been cut for hours, their water had stopped running in the middle of a heat wave and the medicine many of them depend on to stay alive had either disappeared from pharmacy shelves or had become unaffordable.

The convergence of the anniversary with the multiple crises facing Tunisia and its people, both imposed by the president and stemming from his inability to provide basic services as he has deepened repression, is not incidental. These developments represent the clearest evidence yet of what five years of concentrated, unaccountable power produces.

Saied has achieved none of his promises while securing unchecked and indefinite power at the expense of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution and its people.

• Radwan Masmoudi

In 2021, Saied’s coup against democracy and the constitution was met with a mixture of relief and alarm. Many Tunisians, exhausted by a decade of fractious coalition governments, corruption scandals and a political class that seemed more interested in infighting than in governing, welcomed the disruption. Others, including those of us who had spent years working to build Tunisia’s fragile but genuine democratic institutions after 2011, warned that dismantling checks and balances always ends in worse governance and no one left to correct it.

That warning has now been borne out in the most basic, yet avoidable, outcomes: whether the lights stay on and the pharmacy shelves are stocked. A president who alone rewrote the constitution to concentrate nearly all executive, legislative and judicial authority in his office no longer has a parliament to blame, an independent judiciary to point to, political rivals to blame or a coalition partner to deflect responsibility. The total failure of the Tunisian state today is, structurally and undeniably, Saied’s legacy.

This summer’s crisis is not simply about extreme heat. Tunisia’s state electricity and gas utility, the Société Tunisienne de l’Electricité et du Gaz (STEG), has acknowledged that the national grid is under severe strain, the product of years of deferred maintenance and under-investment. Outages have extended beyond 24 hours in some regions. Deaths have been reported after oxygen machines and other medical devices lost power in patients’ homes and hospitals. Pharmacies have warned that the same outages are ruining heat-sensitive medications. That development compounds a separate crisis in which the prices of numerous medicines have risen sharply, reportedly by several hundred percent for some products, pricing chronic patients out of treatments they can no longer afford.

Rather than treat this as a governance emergency, Saied has reached for a familiar scapegoat: attributing unrest and social breakdown to shadowy external forces. Most recently, he blamed drug trafficking networks for what is happening in the streets. This is not a serious answer. It is a deflection, and Tunisians are not accepting it.

None of these developments are unfolding in a political vacuum. Since the coup, Tunisia’s prisons have been filled with journalists, lawyers, judges, opposition politicians and civil society figures prosecuted under vague charges often tied to Decree 54 of 2022, which criminalizes the spread of “false information.” Independent monitors have documented severe overcrowding, with the prison population reaching nearly 33,000 inmates, or roughly 200% above capacity in some detention centers.

The convergence of the anniversary with the multiple crises facing Tunisia and its people, both imposed by the president and stemming from his inability to provide basic services as he has deepened repression, is not incidental.

• Radwan Masmoudi

Defenders of the president insist Tunisia remains free and that Saied is no dictator. That claim is difficult to reconcile with a judiciary that lost its independence when the president dissolved the High Judicial Council, the elected body responsible for overseeing it. Saied’s efforts to crush Tunisia’s media environment by outlawing criticism of the president carry real consequences, including long prison terms.

This is why the current protests, whatever their immediate trigger, cannot be reduced to a story about faulty power lines. When citizens have no functioning parliament to petition, no independent courts for appeals and face increasing risks when speaking out publicly, electricity and water outages become more than governance issues. For the state, they transform these failures into a referendum on its leadership, an unacceptable position for a governing model that rejects accountability.

Tunisia’s weakened international standing further harms the country and its people. Tunis’ isolation from its traditional Western and European partners over the past five years has coincided with deepening security and economic ties with Algeria. The precise terms of security cooperation along the shared border remain opaque, which is itself a problem in a country with a constitution that once prided itself on parliamentary oversight of exactly these kinds of arrangements. Recent travel advisories from Western governments citing terrorism risk in the Tunisian-Algerian border region serve as a reminder that this frontier remains genuinely volatile. Tunisians deserve to know the terms of any security arrangement affecting their sovereignty and security, rather than being expected to trust assurances from a government that has shown little appetite for transparency.

It is premature to predict that public frustration will foster a movement that brings down Kais Saied. Tunisia’s opposition remains fragmented, civic space has narrowed considerably and the tools available to Tunisians to organize and mobilize have been deliberately weakened. It would be equally wrong, however, to dismiss what is happening as a passing episode of summer heat and bad luck. The pattern is now unmistakable: A coup against democracy that concentrated all power in one man’s hands has produced a state that can no longer keep water running or the lights on, provide affordable medicine or tolerate criticism that might otherwise help it fix these problems.

For the United States, the European Union and the international community still engaging Tunis, this anniversary should prompt difficult questions that have been avoided: whether continued engagement on Saied’s terms, without meaningful conditions tied to judicial independence, press freedom and the release of all political prisoners, is sustainable, or whether it is simply subsidizing the consolidation of power that produced this crisis in the first place. Tunisians did not go into the streets this summer to defend an abstract principle. They went out because their government has failed at the most basic tasks of governing.

Five years after the coup, that failure deserves an honest re-evaluation, not another conspiracy theory about drug smuggling or migrants.

Link to Article

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Radwan A. Masmoudi, Ph.D.

President

Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID)

1405 South Fern Street, Suite 703

Arlington, VA 22202

Tel. 202-304-2940

radwanmasmoudi@gmail.com

www.CSID-online.org

13 August 2026

Source: dawnmena.org

New York, New York

August 13, 2026

The United Nations made a promise to the people of Kashmir. Seventy-eight years later, that promise remains conspicuously unfulfilled. Sometimes the most powerful question is the simplest one: How long can an international promise be ignored before the world stops calling it a promise? For Kashmiris, the answer is now measured in generations.

Dr. Ghulam N. Mir, President, World Kashmir Awareness Forum (WKAF) and Executive Producer, Saffron Kingdom, a Kashmiri film, said “On the 78th anniversary of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan’s August 13, 1948 resolution, the Washington-based WKAF took that question directly to the streets of New York City. The organization rented highly visible digital advertising trucks and sent them through strategic locations around the city, including areas surrounding the United Nations Headquarters. The message was impossible to miss.”

Dr. Mir explained that “Bright digital screens carried calls for the United Nations to revisit its longstanding commitments concerning Kashmir and the right of its people to determine their political future. The digital trucks usually reach an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people each day—including diplomats, international visitors, tourists, observers, and ordinary Americans. That was precisely the point.”

Dr. Imtiaz Khan, Kashmiri American scholar said that “In an age when attention is increasingly scarce, advocacy must go where people are. And there is perhaps no more appropriate place to raise the Kashmir question than New York, home of the institution whose own resolutions remain at the center of the dispute.”

Dr. Khan added that “The August 13, 1948, UNCIP resolution stated that “the future status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir shall be determined in accordance with the will of the people.” That was not a slogan invented by Kashmiri activists. It was language contained in a United Nations-backed resolution. Yet nearly eight decades later, Kashmiris continue to ask why the principle of self-determination that the international community once recognized has become so difficult to discuss.

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Chairman, World Forum for Peace & Justice said that “WKAF’s digital campaign put that question bluntly before the international community. Its messages included: “India took away Article 370: But not our dreams, not our identity”; “Demand for statehood is a deception: Kashmiris demand right of self-determination”; “Kashmir Election Just a Deception: Plebiscite the Only Solution”; “Kashmiris Reject Indian Occupation: UN Resolution only Solution”; “No Election, No Selection: UN Resolution the Only Solution”; and “Decades elapsed, sufferings not diminished: UN resolutions for Kashmir remain unfulfilled.”

Fai added that “These are deliberately provocative messages. But provocation is sometimes necessary when an issue has been allowed to disappear from the world’s attention.”

Dr. Fai urged the United Nations, democratic governments, and the international community to intensify diplomatic efforts toward a peaceful and durable settlement of the dispute and to ensure that the rights, dignity, and political aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir remain central to any future resolution.

Sardar Taj Khan, Senior Vice Chairman, Kashmir Mission, USA and main organizer of the event said that “the aspirations of the Kashmiri people, and the hopes of those around the world who support a peaceful resolution of the dispute, remain unfulfilled to this day. Peace continues to elude the region. Despite the massive military presence, he said, unarmed Kashmiris in the region and across the globe remain resilient, defiant, and hopeful about their future. “The United Nations may be weak, but the Kashmiri people remain resilient and hopeful,” he said.

Raja Mukhtar, National spokesperson, JKLF, USA and co-organizer of the event said that “Kashmir cannot simply be characterized as an “internal matter” for India because the dispute has been addressed by the United Nations Security Council since 1948. He said the Security Council resolutions of that period contemplated a process leading to a plebiscite concerning the future of Jammu and Kashmir. He further argued that sentiments of Aazadi remain strong and continue to grow. He cited Mohammad Yasin Malik as an example of a Kashmiri leader who, despite prolonged incarceration and difficult conditions, has remained committed to his political cause.

Sardar Zarif Khan, President, Kashmir American Welfare Associaiton (KAWA) said that “while Kashmir continues to suffer, the world’s democracies have largely limited themselves to expressions of concern. He criticized what he described as the international community’s failure to translate concern into sustained diplomatic action. In his view, the limited public response to developments in Kashmir has allowed India greater latitude to pursue policies that, he argued, could fundamentally alter the region’s demographic and political character. Without meaningful diplomatic and economic pressure, he warned, Kashmir’s distinct identity could be seriously diminished within a generation.

Sardar Shoaib Irshad, Joint Secretary of the KAWA called upon the Government of India to respect international law and cooperate with efforts toward a peaceful settlement of the dispute. He argued that a negotiated resolution could also reduce the enormous economic and human costs associated with the continuing military presence in Kashmir. He further expressed concern that current policies could alter the demographic character of the region.

Advocate Sardar Imtiaz Khan Garalvi said that the Kashmir dispute can ultimately be resolved only through a peaceful political process that takes into account the aspirations of the Kashmiri people. He rejected the use of military power as a substitute for a political settlement and warned against a “might-makes-right” approach to international relations. The lives, dignity, and hopes of Kashmiris, he said, should not be sacrificed to geopolitical calculations.

Sardar Aftab Roshan Khan said that the global Kashmiri diaspora leadership has unanimously resolved to continue efforts to protect the unique and historic identity of Jammu and Kashmir against what it considers growing challenges. He appealed to people of conscience and the international community to raise their voices regarding what he described as the severe human rights abuses suffered by the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

Finally, Dr. Fai emphasized that the Security Council’s historical resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir remain an important part of the international record concerning the dispute. He called upon India and Pakistan to address their longstanding differences along with genuine Kashmiri leadership through peaceful means and urged renewed international efforts toward a settlement consistent with the relevant United Nations framework and the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai can be reached at:
WhatsApp: 1-202-607-6435
gnfai2003@yahoo.com