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By Bharat Dogra

Wars and conflicts have been one of the biggest causes of human suffering, and this suffering has been increasing over the recent centuries of ‘progress’, now coming to a point where humanity faces an existential crisis due to wars and weapons, including weapons of mass destruction.

However there is another important aspect of wars which is very serious in terms of the distress caused but has received very little attention. The reference here is to the extreme suffering and pain suffered by animals, birds and other forms of life as a result of wars.

During the greater part of recorded history several animals particularly horses were widely deployed in battlefields and in supporting work like carrying loads for battles and war-campaigns. Till as late as World War 1 we learn that as many as 16 million animals including horses, mules, donkeys and camels (in desert areas) were used in this war and almost half of them perished in this war.

While so many animals have died in wars, their death was seldom mourned and their sacrifice was seldom remembered, let alone honored (although there are a few exceptions; for example the valiant horse of Rana Pratap named Chetak is still widely remembered and honored). Animals injured in battlefield in very painful ways are almost never picked up for treatment and keep writhing in pain till they die.

While the role of animals in battlefield has declined rapidly in recent times, this does not mean that the mortality and distress of animal, birds and other forms of life caused by wars have decreased. In fact due to the use of increasingly more destructive bombs and other weapons, their distress and mortality have in fact increased.

When very heavy bombing takes place, we get reports of how many people have been killed or injured, but we do not generally hear how many pets, farm animals, poultry birds, wild animals and birds, butterflies, and aquatic life have perished, or else have been injured and very adversely affected in various ways. These numbers are likely to be very high. Some of the more delicate forms of life including small birds and butterflies may suffer grave harm from the noise, fumes and harmful after-effects even when they are some distance away from bombs and shells.

The harm is likely to be much higher and longer-lasting when very dangerous chemical weapons are used. The massive use of Agent Orange in Vietnam forest areas is perhaps the worst case of wild life being harmed most seriously in a war, although this was entirely avoidable and in addition was also blatantly illegal.

Unexploded bombs can continue to kill and disable even a long time after the war is over, and while warning signs can keep away human beings, animals continue to become victims more easily. This harm can be greater in the case of the widely dispersed smaller explosives of cluster bombs.

Many animals also fall prey to landmines and die or are crippled in very painful ways. Landmines can take a long time to remove even after a war is over. While warning signs and instructions can prevent the accidental deaths of human beings to some extent, animals cannot be protected in this way.

Huge fires including oil fires have been an increasing feature of wars, particularly those in the Middle-East. These fires, their heat and their very widely dispersed suffocating smoke can be very harmful for the more delicate animals and most particularly for birds, including migrant birds. As the gulf region is a much favored place of migrant birds, these birds as well as their migration routes and patterns have been badly affected in recent decades of wars, including the various Iraq wars. It is likely that millions of birds have perished, or else have been affected in other harmful and painful ways. Oil slicks and oil spills caused during wars have also been harmful for migrant birds, fish and all life in oceans.

In Gaza Israeli bombs and drones have been destroying the basic life-nurturing conditions in recent times. Obviously, apart from the very harmful impact this has on the people of Gaza this also harms the animal, birds, aquatic life and other forms of life in very serious ways.

Wars lead to food shortage and even starvation type conditions in many regions. When even human beings are short of food, then it is only to be expected that animals will also face serious food shortage and in many cases water shortage as well. More of them are likely to be slaughtered and hunted in these conditions. Birds also face more dangers of being hunted.

Care provided for domesticated and farm animals is difficult to continue during wars, and this also leads to their higher mortality and suffering. Animals of nomadic pastorals can suffer serious harm in war times as they move from one place to another in disturbed conditions and conflict zones.

Zoos are likely to be neglected in such difficult times as wars, and many animals may die due to starvation in captivity, even if they manage to escape the bombings.

Hence it is very clear that animals, birds and all forms of life face very serious risks in times of wars and conflicts. This aspect of the serious harm from wars should get more attention at the level of the peace movements and in terms of the overall opposition to wars.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Saving Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, A Day in 2071 and Man over Machine.

3 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By P J James

Introduction 

Impermanence or dynamic nature of every phenomenon is a core principle in philosophy and science. The same law, that every social phenomenon is constantly changing and transforming itself, is applicable to history and political-economic systems also. For instance, several empires, including the Roman empire that spanned over a millennium, have risen and fallen or replaced by contending powers. Two centuries of capitalist-imperialist system is also no exception to this historical trajectory. The flourishing industrial capitalism of more than a century from mid-18^th century to the last quarter of the 19^th century took place mainly under the leadership of Britain which, on the one hand, performed the role of ‘workshop of the world’ and on the other, remained as world’s leading colonial power with an ‘empire upon which the sun never set’. However, towards the last quarter of the 19^th century and by the turn of the 20^th century, industrial or competitive capitalism gave way to monopoly finance capitalism or imperialism, when USA emerged as the leading capitalist-imperialist power, though UK continued as colonial leader. And the US had to wait till the Second World War for the eventual transition from “Pax Britannica” to “Pax Americana”. 

Thus, the US took over the position of postwar imperialist hegemon and leader of the Anglo-Saxon camp when Second World War came to a close. Of course, in this transformation as supreme global arbiter, the US has undergone many strategic policy shifts with ascending and descending phases during the colonial period and in the postwar neocolonial-neoliberal phase. However, with the beginning of the 21^st century, especially after the world economic crisis or “global meltdown” of 2007-08, its stature as world’s leading manufacturer and biggest trader has been lost to China. Following the sharp decline in US gold reserve which was 75 percent of world total in 1945 to less than 20 percent as of now, that resulted in a loss of trust in dollar’s continuity as world currency, has unleashed a “de-dollarisation” trend too, in which China has its overt and covert role. And of late, as a manifestation of the inability to carry out the super-power responsibilities incumbent on it including the maintenance of around 750-800 military bases across 80 countries of the world, US imperialism has been backtracking from its international commitments, especially to UN-affiliated institutions, which, to an extent, were political tools propped up by US itself that enabled it to carry on the tasks as postwar neocolonial arbiter.  

However, this irreversible and multidimensional declining trend of US imperialist hegemony is now accelerated further by the second coming of Donald Trump as 47^th US president. Trump’s policies, codified as “Trumpism” (or “Trumponomics”), are characterised by extreme ‘economic nationalism’, the main pillars of which are assertion of US hegemony and boosting of the economy through highly ‘protectionist’ and ‘isolationist’ trade policies coupled with corporate tax-cuts, business deregulation and drastic reduction in social welfare spending. Being symbolised or encapsulated in the motto MAGA (Make America Great Again) and “America First”, Trumpism has already sent shock-waves among traditional US allies, especially among Anglo-Saxon imperialist circles. Meanwhile the biggest-ever bullying tariffs imposed on countries by Trump in tune with his isolationist and protectionist perspective are now boomeranged as a looming threat towards “stagflation” – a situation of economic stagnation coupled with high inflation – on US itself. However, unable to face retaliation from China coupled with pressure from US allies, Trump has forced to keep his unilateral tariff move in abeyance, engaging in a series of trade talks with countries. Meanwhile, domestic opposition to Trump’s policies are surging on an unprecedented scale. According to reports, compared to the 2.4 percent growth in 2024, US GDP is going to be plummeted to its half, i.e., 1.2 percent in 2025. Of course, while these developments and their outcomes call for an objective evaluation, it would be in order here to briefly situate the important policy shifts that marked both the ascending and descending phases US imperialism over a century. This will also enable to situate Trumpism from a concrete historical perspective.  

Emergence of US as Supeme Neocolonial Arbiter under Keynesianism  

As already noted, though Britain continued as the colonial leader, US had become the leading imperialist power by the turn of 20^th century itself. By the time of First World War, US became world’s principal creditor, and along with pound sterling, countries had begun to accept dollar also as a major reserve currency. Still, it needed the Second World War for setting the stage for dollar to be recognised as the international currency totally replacing pound. In the meanwhile, the Great Depression of 1929-34 fuelled by speculation and “Wall Street Crash” led to a collapse of the US economy together with the entire imperialist world. It shattered the very foundations of imperialism by halting the process of capital accumulation itself. As its manifestation, the index of industrial production almost halved in US (and in other imperialist countries too) where unemployment rate rose from 3.2 percent in 1929 to 24.9 percent in 1933. However, Soviet Union, which was outside the orbit of imperialist capital flows at that time, experienced a doubling of its GDP during this period. At the political level, the Great Depression led to the growth of ‘economic nationalism’ and national chauvinism that facilitated fascism in Italy and Germany and in other European countries. 

However, such an outcome was avoided in US, and later in other imperialist countries through the adoption of “Keynesianism” that called for an alteration in imperialist policy by rejecting the orthodoxy associated with “laissez-faire” or free market policies which relied on the “invisible hand” of market forces in maintaining adequate levels of employment, production and purchasing power of the people. Contrary to this view, to avoid social upheavals such as fascism on the one hand, and Soviet-type revolution on the other, Keynes suggested appropriate ‘state programming’ of the economy through large-scale state-led investment in heavy industry and arms production together with a ‘euthanasia’ for speculative capital that triggered the Great Depression. In fact, Keynesian redefinition of the role of the state got wide acceptance in imperialist circles at that specific historical context when the ‘threat of Communism’ was looming large over Europe and America. Thus, US as the leading imperialist power, started applying the ‘Keynesian medicine’ in the form of ‘New Deal’ in two stages, during 1933-35 and 1935-39. In general, Keynesianism meant the shift from laissez-faire to state intervention as a policy of finance capital, leading to the emergence of ‘welfare state” with enlarged economic and social functions of the state including progressive taxation and increased public expenditures.  

When Second World War began, the ‘New Deal’ merged into the war economy such that during the five years from 1939 to 1945, it was mainly through war-oriented production under the Military-Industrial Complex that the GDP of US rose by around 75 percent, and unemployment becoming practically nil. To be precise, the relative political-economic and military strength of US substantially grew during the War, and when Second World War came to an end in 1945, US accounted for almost half of the combined GDP of capitalist-imperialist world, along with around three-quarters of world gold reserve under its custody.  Following US-initiated ‘decolonisation’, Britain was relegated to the background and US formally took over as leader of the postwar imperialist camp. A series of political, economic and military arrangements, such as UN and its Security Council, IMF and World Bank with US alone having veto power in them, NATO, SEATO, CENTO, etc., also came into being. Above all, backed by US political-economic and military power, replacing the pound sterling, dollar became the global currency to be used as international medium of exchange, store of value, and means for deferred payments. 

The upshot of the argument is that while global Keynesianism and prime role of state as initiator of development including state-led welfare provision, not only created the material basis for overcoming the Great Depression by putting US as the imperialist hegemon, but the same became an ideological weapon for US-led imperialism in the global anti-Communist offensive. And, the quarter century following Second World War came to be characterised as “golden age of capitalism”, as during this period that ended by early 1970s, output expanded by around 5 percent per annum in all major imperialist countries taken together, which was unprecedented in capitalist-imperialist history. Unemployment rate also remained very low due to the strengthening of ‘Welfare State’. This boom provided by ‘Keynesian welfare capitalism’ at a global level was firmly rooted in the political-economic and military hegemony of US imperialism, especially in the absence of competition from rival imperialist powers. Simultaneously, it also acted as imperialism’s ideological-political weapon against the continuing Communist threat and national liberation movements till the 1970s.  

Reaganomics and US-led Neoliberalism followed by 21^st Century Neofascism   

In fact, Keynesianism emerged in the 1930s for treating economic stagnation or depression on the one hand, and as ideological weapon against Communism, on the other. However, by the beginning of 1970s, imperialism began facing persistent “stagflation” – combination of stagnation and inflation – that defied the central logic of Keynesianism. More serious was the challenge faced by dollar that had an unparalleled hegemonic position in the ‘golden age’, which the pound-sterling could never attain even in the heydays of British imperialism. However, coupled with stagflation, dollar holdings outside US went on increasing resulting in an absolute decline in mandatory US gold holdings as per Bretton Woods agreement.  US gold stock that was around 70 percent of imperialist world’s total in 1945, dropped to 21 percent in 1972, while that of European Common Market countries rose to 41 percent of world’s total in the same year. The consequent “crisis of confidence” in the Bretton Woods system based on dollar-gold standard compelled Nixon, through an official proclamation on 15 August 1971, to withdraw the convertibility of dollars into gold including a series of stringent measures against people such as wage controls coupled with many protectionist measures against the rest of the world.    

All these developments led to the collapse of the ‘welfare state’ and its policy of international Keynesianism. The ideological-political setbacks of the Left including its failure to evaluate the international situation and appropriately intervene, also enabled US-led imperialism to use the new crisis as an opportunity for abandoning Keynesianism and embrace neoliberalism. Starting with Thatcherism in Britain and Reaganomics in USA, neoliberalism initiated a neoconservative redefinition of political economy that replaced state-led development with global market-oriented policies comprising financial deregulation, drastic reduction in corporate taxes, curtailing hard-earned rights of the workers, trade liberalisation and privatisation of public enterprises. It emphasised a downsizing and rollback of the state, confining its role as a ‘facilitator’ of corporate accumulation. Since raising the profit rate from stagnating productive sphere became difficult, neoliberalism initiated new avenues of financial speculation. Through globalisation, since 1980s, neoliberalism abolished all restrictions on global financial mobility leading to the building up of a financial superstructure sitting on the top of world economy, comprising both imperialist and neocolonial countries. Unless Keynesianism in which financial expansion had moved more or less in tandem with production and employment, under neoliberal globalisation, the financial sphere, being cut off from production, geared itself for self-expansion through unhindered speculation. Meanwhile, the collapse of Soviet regime along with that of Eastern Europe by the turn of 1990s provided the US to take on the leadership of a ‘unipolar’ world for a brief interregnum, aggressively implementing neoliberalism at a global level. However, the laws of motion of neoliberal imperialism again altered the situation by the first decade of the 21^st century.   

One of the direct outcomes of the unabated speculation and growth of the ‘bubble economy’ entirely disconnected from the process of production under neoliberalism, of which US is a typical example, was the ‘global meltdown’ and financial crash of 2008 whose epicentre also was US. In spite of the pumping of around 4 trillion dollars, euphemistically called “quantitative easing” in to the coffers of US speculators and similar policies in European Union, and in China with its own specificities, instead of boosting the productive economy, it boosted financial speculation further. Intensification of neoliberal policies sharpened the social contradictions, and the brunt of this burden has fallen on the shoulders of workers, immigrants, refuges and all oppressed, and their struggles against the ruling system also began surging across the world. As a response to this, unholy nexus between the reactionary corporate-financial oligarchs and their political leadership has given rise to far-right neofascism (fascism under neoliberalism) at a global level whose material basis has been internationalisation of corporate capital.  

Meanwhile, following capitalist restoration since the 1980s and traversing the path of ‘bureaucratic state monopoly capitalism’, China had emerged as an imperialist power by the turn of the 21^st century. Its entry into WTO in 2001 was a milestone in its full-fledged integration with global market and international finance capital. With its inexhaustible source of the cheapest labour, China also transformed itself as the most profitable destination of investment and production for both local companies and MNCs from western imperialist powers. Within a span of two decades, Chinese bureaucratic-state monopoly capitalism became the biggest gainer of neoliberal globalisation. And, during the period after 2008 world crisis, while US and EU faced economic setbacks, China has transformed itself as world’s biggest manufacturer and commodity exporter. Through one trillion-dollar worth of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) launched in 2013, world’s largest capital export strategy in imperialist history, China has already laid down the material basis for its capturing ‘neocolonial spheres of influence’ across Eurasia, Africa and even Latin America, effectively challenging US and EU imperialists in the process. And, as already noted, even in the case of 21^st century technological revolution including that of AI, China is much ahead than that US- led imperialist bloc, as proved by the threatening impact on Silicon Valley by cost-effective and potentially more efficient DeepSeek from China.    

 Trump’s Undermining of both US Hegemony and Anglo-Saxon Global Dominance 

The emerging trends in US and at a global level under neofascist Trump’s second term should be seen in the broad historical background as elucidated above. Suffice it to confine this discussion to a few of the core political, economic and military trends in this regard. 

Loss of Domestic Coherence that Acted as Basis of US Hegemony 

Trump’s second coming in January 2025 backed by his unholy nexus with 13 leading US tech giants and financial oligarchs led by world’s richest billionaire Musk, is in disarray now. Musk, who was in charge of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) specifically created for downsizing the government and rolling back it from welfare and social expenditures, has already resigned due to irresolvable differences with Trump’s short-sighted and reckless policies. Trump’s so-called neoliberal “big beautiful bill” that, among other things, extended further tax-cuts initially suffered a devastating defeat in the House Budget Committee because of opposition from Republicans who joined with Democrats to vote it down. Even the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has predicted an impending catastrophic stagflation and economic doomsday ahead for US consequent on Trump’s isolationist policies. As a typical Islamophobic neofascist, Trump’s tirade against immigrants and foreigners have crossed all limits. Domestically, in the process of ruthlessly suppressing opposition to his policies, Trump is undermining judiciary and rule of law, autonomy of universities, media freedom and long-established rules and procedures of US administration.  

Ever since American Civil War, federalism has provided the internal coherence and strength for US. While preventing concentration of power with the central regime, it divided power between the Central and State governments, ensuring both unity and` diversity, which no US president has challenged so far. For instance, Trump is continuing the dismantling of US federalism by sidelining California governor, and use of military to quash people’s protests in Los Angeles against his immigration policies, and in the process, even politicising the military. He has even threated to invoke the rarely used 1807 Insurrection Act that grants executive powers to president to deploy military to deal with domestic issues. Vehemently opposing such fascist moves including Trump’s most inhuman deportation of immigrants to Afro-Asian-Latin American countries, against his patronage of Zionist genocide of Palestinians including his criminal and illegal attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, millions of people are rising up in Washington and all major states across US, challenging Trump’s presidency.   

More specifically, the anti-Trump “No King” protests have taken place in 2000 cities in US attended by millions of people including university students, scholars, intellectuals and wide spectrum of democratic sections, quite unprecedented in US history.  All well-meaning people are coming forward against the patriarchal, Evangelist Trump’s dehumanizing language towards differently-abled people like LGBT including even those with disabilities like autism, against racial minorities, and undocumented people. And, the social-democratic leader Bernie Sanders and Democrats including even disenchanted Republican law-makers have raised bipartisan challenges to Trump’s pro-Zionist military involvement in Iran. All these developments and the widespread opposition against Trumpism have already imparted irreparable damage to the US image as “paradise of democracy” that formed the solid domestic basis for US projection as world hegemon.  In other words, the growing people’s resistance against Trumpism which has assumed the character of an anti-Trump movement across US is now speeding up the erosion of the domestic base essential for its global hegemony.  

Undermining of NATO and Trump’s Withdrawal from Multilateral Agreements 

 Secondly, the decline and downfall of US hegemony is integrally linked up with the shaking of the postwar strategic US-EU alliance. The European powers who were weakened by the Second World War had also accepted the 1941 Atlantic Charter or the Anglo-American blueprint prepared jointly by the eclipsing and rising global hegemons that envisaged the essential political, economic and military arrangements for the postwar world. Accordingly, the UN system including all its affiliated and specialised institutions, the Bretton Woods Monetary system (IMF and World Bank with US veto power in them) and the dollar as world currency, and a whole set of military arrangements such as NATO, SEATO, CENTO, etc. and world-wide US military bases were the essential tools at the disposal of postwar neocolonial order led by US. And through Marshall Plan, or European Recovery Program, US took the initiative for reconstructing war-torn Europe. The NATO or Transatlantic Military Alliance led by US and founded in 1949 that included Canada and 10 EU members (which expanded overtime to include 32 members) began as the largest US-led neocolonial military organisation that strengthened the Anglo-Saxon global dominance. To be precise, it has been this Western imperialist or Anglo-Saxon military bloc that acted as the foundation for US hegemony on the one hand, and provided effective ideological-political weapon against Soviet bloc on the other.  

However, the short-sighted, reckless and isolationist MAGA approach of Trump has already subverted the very basis of this US-EU alliance so assiduously built up over decades as the central pillar of postwar US hegemony. In continuation of his repeated and senseless statement on Canada, calling it the “51^st state”, threatening of taking over of Greenland from Denmark, and Panama Canal from Panama and even Gaza from Palestinians, coercing of Ukraine for arriving at a deal for its rare minerals, softening of the US approach to Russia, etc., have alienated all erstwhile US allies. However, most important is Trumpism’s weakening of US-EU alliance including NATO, though the NATO-led Ukraine war had imparted a European cohesion till Trump’s coming to power in January 2025.  Now, most of the European powers, and the Eurosceptic and xenophobic far-right in particular, no longer consider US as a reliable ally, and for them, the postwar American shield for Europe or the security guaranteed by US through NATO in return for EU’s recognition of US as world leader, has become meaningless. Moreover, in the context of Trump’s unilateral tariffs, the EU members have begun seeking trading partners from ASEAN, Mercosur and including even building up of bilateral trade relations with China. 

One of Trump’s threats was to withdraw from NATO and questioning of the merits of NATO’s Article 5 – which says that an attack on any NATO country is an attack on all of them. Article 5 was inserted to protect Europe from Soviet Union during Cold War. However, according to Trumpism, in the post-Cold War world situation, the huge NATO expenditures of US is an obstacle for the road towards MAGA. As such, in addition to repeatedly criticising EU members for not meeting their defence quota of 2 percent of GDP, Trump has demanded an increase in their defence spending to 5 percent of GDP, which the EU members of NATO in its recent meeting have agreed in principle, even as left-leaning Spain revolted against it. Trump’s attempt to make deals directly with Putin bypassing EU members of NATO has sent shock waves across leading European powers such as France, Germany, Italy, etc., who were safely enjoying the military protection of US till now in the absence of a European military. This has prompted European Commission to move towards greater defence integration independent of NATO with the scope of potential European military force. Its immediate outcome is European Commission’s “ReArm Europe” plan having an outlay of over 800 billion euros (900 billion dollars) within four years. Even discussion on an independent European nuclear defence umbrella is also in full swing. The ultimate outcome is a weakening of the strategic US-EU cohesion in the days ahead.  

In fact, together with the undermining of US-EU alliance, Trump had initiated US withdrawal from several international agreements and treaties during his first term itself. Examples are the Tans-Pacific Partnership, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, 1951 Refugee Convention, UNESCO, UNHRC, and even WHO, though Trump’s withdrawals from the last three were later rescinded by Biden. However, there are reports that Trumpism may repeat and intensify this process based on its “America First” policy that focuses on bilateral deals and disregards multilateral agreements. Of course, the most vicious form of this bilateral deal today is the long-standing US-Zionist alliance by which the latter acts as former’s postwar ‘military outpost’ in Middle East, regarding which there is unshakeable unanimity among Republicans and Democrats. However, Iran’s counter-attack on US military bases in Qatar and Iraq following US illegal bombing of Iranian nuclear sites and Trump’s unilateral announcement of cease-fire, and seeking the help of China to pacify Iran, amply prove the demise or fragmentation of postwar unipolar US dominance in the Middle East. The inhuman and undignified deportation of immigrants, travel-ban restricting entry into US from 12 countries, imposition of visa restrictions to 7 countries, and so on, are other manifestations of ‘splendid isolation’ inherent in Trumpism.  

Trump’s Bullying Tariffs and Surrender before China  

The series of highly protective Trumpian tariffs on all countries exporting goods to US that raised average effective US tariff rate from 2.5% to around 27% during January-April 2025 is quite unprecedented in over a century of US imperialism. Immediate response to Trump’s tariff war against other countries was a plunge of the stock markets in US, EU and Asia. Initial estimates had put Trump tariffs’ impact at around $1.4 trillion worth of US imports by April 2025. However, following strong domestic opposition and resentment from EU, coupled with the challenge from Chinese retaliatory tariffs, Trump was forced to partially rollback his unilateral tariffs. As such, the estimated average tariff rate is reduced to around 15% in June 2025. In the unprecedented tariff war, Trump has invoked extra-ordinary powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose universal tariffs affecting all imports into US. The consequent countermeasures resorted by EU leading to loss of European market for even Tesla like US companies have backfired on US itself. It is reported that Trumpian policies including tariff wars will decrease US GDP growth rate to 1.2 percent in 2025 from 2.4 percent in 2024. The stock market crash, business uncertainty, chaotic environment in market and, above all, the threat of inflation, have prompted the crony capitalists including Musk who were in unholy nexus with Trump, to part company with him. Meanwhile, even federal courts have ruled Trump’s use of IEEPA for tariff war as unconstitutional, though appeal on the case is scheduled for 31 July 2025.  

However, Chinese retaliation through both tariff and non-tariff barriers following Trump’s imposition of 145% tariff on China was a severe blow to Trump. During his first term itself, the trade war initiated against China was a total failure. After his second coming in 2025 with the motto MAGA, Trump reiterated his accusation against China for its intellectual property thefts, long-standing unfair trade practices including dumping of US market with cheap Chinese products resulting in huge trade deficit for US, forced transfer of American technology, etc. But China’s tit-for-tat imposition of 125% tariff on US was quite unexpected for Trump with the economistic mindset of a real-estate developer rather than that of a seasoned politician. At the same time, China could ease the impact of reduced exports to US by easily diverting its exports to South and Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America. This would have serious disruption on US economy leading to a loss of $1.6 trillion in GDP. However, sensing the danger, Trump managed to strike a deal with China. Accordingly, US will reduce tariffs on Chinese products to 30% and China will cut the tariffs to 10% for three months. Since China’s productivity is high and exports are very competitive, it is easy for China to absorb the 30% tariff without damage. However, contrary to Trump’s earlier demands, China has not opened its markets to US tech giants, or agreed to buy more planes and pharmaceuticals from US. To be precise, the trade war against China initiated by Trump exposed one thing: i.e., the US needs China more than China needs the US.  

De-dollarisation Gaining Momentum under Trumpism 

 Though de-dollarisation – the shift away from dollar – has been an increasing trend consequent on the abandonment of dollar-gold convertibility since the stagflation of 1970s, Trumpism is now acting as a catalyst for it. Dollar as world currency, reinforced by US Treasury and Bretton Woods Twin, has been one of the foundations of US hegemony. Today, the trend towards de-dollarisation is intertwined with the declining phase of US imperialism. In essence, since the unshackling of gold standard, in tandem with relative decline of US economy, the trust in dollar has been eroding and today dollar continues as global currency only in the absence of an alternative arrangement. Meanwhile, concerted efforts on the part of China towards regional and bilateral agreements for alternative payment mechanisms are strengthening. As a result, the share of dollar in global central bank reserves has been steadily falling, now reaching around 57% compared to 85% in mid-1970s. And, in view of the recession haunting US, the reserve currency status of dollar is likely to decline at a faster rate, enabling China to internationalise its own Yuan in its digital version as Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). 

It is in this overall context that Trump’s protectionist tariffs coupled with his isolationist political-economic policies further undermine dollar’s position in international monetary system. Though total replacement of dollar with another alternative currency is not imminent, China’s initiative in the realm of digital currency for cross border payments using CBDC with members of RCEP, bilateral payment mechanism with Saudi, UAE, and Iran, coupled with its move in BRICS for internal payment arrangements among members or even the creation of an alternative currency, etc., are impending threats to dollar. However, Trump’s isolationist policies breaking the Anglo-Saxon alliance have created favourable conditions in Europe also to end the reliance on dollar and seek an alternative international payments mechanism. Further, as global public opinion is growing against isolationist and protectionist policies of unpredictable Trump including his threat to impose 100% tariffs on countries that opt to trade using alternative currencies, coupled with reports of stagnation in US will further erode global investors’ faith in dollar. In the ultimate analysis, in a multipolar world order in which US will be one among the leading players, a post-dollar multipolar currency system is a viable alternative.   

Conclusion 

US imperialism, which has been the postwar world hegemon, is now on its descending phase like an old lion without manes. In fact, Trumpism and its disruptive and reckless policies are catalyst for this inevitable decline. For instance, US is still world’s largest military machine having one of the largest stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction with world-wide military bases and accounting for over 40% of world military spending (China being second), which itself is unsustainable given the crumbling economic foundations of US. From a political-economy perspective, US is much weaker than China. While US has higher nominal GDP, based on Purchasing Power Parity, US GDP is only 75% of China. Today, 60% of the countries of the world is China’s trading partners; US has only 30%.  US industrial production or manufacturing today is only half that of China. China is the largest trading partner of Latin America which was once called the ‘backyard’ of US, while China’s trade with the entire Africa is three times that of US.  Coming to the crucial issue of export of capital, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that envisages an investment of $1 trillion in infrastructures such as, roads, ports, airports, etc. till 2049, and spanning Asia, Africa, Europe and even Latin America, is the largest capital export program in imperialist history. In the process, many countries have already become China’s neocolonial dependencies.    

Even as many US-led global agreements and treaties have ceased to exist or are in disarray, since its entry into WTO by the turn of the 21^st century, and in tandem with its transformation as a leading imperialist power capable to challenge US on many fronts, China has taken the initiative for establishing and/or leading many political-economic agreements such as SCO, BRICS, RCEP, AIIB, etc., along with innumerable bilateral arrangements. As already noted, in the sphere of “frontier technologies” such as AI, Digitisation, Biotechnology, etc., imperialist China is much ahead than that of US or Anglo-Saxon powers. And, as proved by its Afghan debacle (in which the role of China was less-discussed) and the latest Iranian strike at its military bases in Qatar and Iraq, following the criminal bombing of Iranian nuclear sites, US hegemony is often challenged due to the shifting of global geopolitics from West to the East. Compared to the earlier phases of crisis, when temporary recoveries were for possible for US through Keynesianism and Reaganomics, today Trumpism has imparted an irreversible dimension to US decline.  

As mentioned at the outset of this note, since every phenomenon is constantly changing, the unfolding global situation is not going to be a repetition of the two centuries of Anglo-Saxon imperialist trajectory. Obviously, during the preceding quarter century of neoliberal globalisation, and under internationalisation of corporate capital, though China has transformed into a major imperialist power capable to challenge the US, it’s modus operandi is entirely different from that of Western imperialist bloc. As an inexhaustible source of cheap labour for super-exploitation, while integrating itself with global corporate capital, China’s neocolonial domination and building up ‘spheres of influence’ are not a text copy of the US-led Anglo-Saxon model. At the same time, the inherent crisis of world imperialism as manifested in geo-political tensions, economic, cultural and ecological crises that threaten the very sustenance of humankind are applicable to China also. Unless the working and oppressed peoples of the world are coming forward with a political alternative, the crisis confronting humankind in manifold ways will intensify further, irrespective of whether US is replaced by another hegemon or another imperialist bloc, or a by a different multipolar order. 

P J James is General Secretary, CPI (ML) Red Star 

3 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ghulam Mohammad Khan

The common masses, relegated to the role of spectators in the grand theatre of war, grasp little beyond its visceral spectacle of destruction and suffering, a tragic farce where the script is written in the opaque jargon of realpolitik and the dialogue delivered by the ventriloquists of power. As Carl von Clausewitz famously said, war is merely “the continuation of politics by other means”, yet this aphorism rings hollow when politics itself becomes a masquerade of hypocrisy, where the powerful flout the very rules they sanctimoniously impose upon the weak. Wars, as Michel Foucault might argue, are not merely clashes of armies but “the grid of intelligibility” for modern power relations, where annihilation is never total—ideological differences, like Hydra’s heads, regenerate with each decapitation. The irony is delicious: wars cannot end because they are not designed to; they are the perpetual motion machines of hegemony, lubricated by the grease of political duplicity. 

The world, of course, cannot always afford these grim performances. Yet, the stage is forever set, thanks to what Slavoj Žižek terms “the sublime object of ideology,” where nations fetishise their own moral exceptionalism while orchestrating proxy battles. The powerful, like overzealous schoolmasters, preach peace through the UN’s “pious incantations” (to borrow Edward Said’s critique of Orientalist discourse), even as they arm insurgents and draft treaties in invisible ink. Power, as Nietzsche warned, is a “monster of cold calculation,” and its contemporary avatars deploy it in strange ways, outsourcing violence like a gig economy of domination. One nation becomes another’s blunt instrument, a geopolitical fall guy, allowing the puppeteers to wash their hands like Pontius Pilate in a tailored suit. War is not the failure of diplomacy but its grotesque masterpiece; a satire written by the powerful, starring the powerless, and reviewed by no one.

Talks and negotiations, those quaint relics of diplomatic theatre, have been reduced to a pantomime in the shadow of modern techno-capitalist hegemony, a hollow ritual where, as Jürgen Habermas might lament, the “public sphere” has been supplanted by the algorithmic calculus of power. The illusion of dialogue persists, but it is a Potemkin village of discourse, incapable of transcending what Pierre Bourdieu called the “invisible mechanics of symbolic domination” wielded by so-called nation-states. Peace, that most fickle of commodities, is now contingent not on justice but on its utility to the powerful, a perverse inversion of Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace, where stability is no longer a universal ideal but a luxury good, auctioned to the highest bidder.

The myth of the benevolent superpower, a Hobbesian Leviathan in a tailored suit, crumbles under scrutiny. The notion that uniformity guarantees stability is as credible as a Twitter apology from a sanctioned oligarch; what it ensures, rather, is what Noam Chomsky derides as “the manufacture of consent” through spectacle and coercion. A superpower, by definition, cannot exist without the scaffolding of structural violence—what Walter Benjamin might diagnose as the “law-preserving” function of power, masquerading as order while enforcing subjugation. Its rhetoric drips with the irony of Orwellian doublespeak: it extols “development” while extracting tribute, preaches “peace” while arming insurgents, and boasts of “progress” while reducing vassal states to economic appendages.

Meanwhile, the relentless fetishisation of technology and hyper-militarisation, what Paul Virilio termed the “dromocratic” acceleration of warfare, has rendered the very concept of a superpower obsolete. In the digital age, power is no longer monopolised by states but diffused through Silicon Valley’s server farms and shadowy private militias. The economic equations shift like quicksand, and the superpower, like a gambler doubling down on bad bets, clings to supremacy through financialised coercion and algorithmic surveillance. This is no longer politics but “simulacra”, a hollow spectacle where drones replace diplomats and stock markets dictate sovereignty.

Modern nation-states, in their Faustian bargain with militarisation, have cultivated an almost libidinal obsession with weaponry, what Paul Virilio might call the “aesthetics of disappearance,” where the spectacle of destruction eclipses the human cost. The arms industry, a terrible parody of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” no longer merely serves war; it manufactures war to sustain its own vampiric economy, transforming conflict into a perverse Keynesian stimulus for the chosen few. Eisenhower’s prophetic warning about the “military-industrial complex” now reads like a user manual: weapons are not tools of defence but products, and wars are their most effective marketing campaigns. 

Consider the recent India-Pakistan air skirmishes: when French Rafale jets were reportedly downed, the global response was not horror but a hunger. Arms dealers salivated at the spectacle, think tanks churned out white papers on “air superiority gaps,” and the MIC (Military-Industrial Complex) whispered to governments: you need newer, deadlier toys. Baudrillard would laugh at this hyperreal arms race, where the simulacrum of security masks the absurdity of a world addicted to its own annihilation. 

The irony? This “business of death” (as Seymour Melman dubbed it) thrives on the very instability it claims to mitigate. Like a snake eating its tail, the MIC demands eternal war to justify its existence, a logic so circular it would make Hegel dizzy. Meanwhile, the global South bleeds, Silicon Valley rebrands war tech as “innovation,” and politicians, draped in the flag, recite the catechism of “national security” while signing billion-dollar contracts. The only “trickle-down” here is blood, and the invisible hand? It’s now a fist, clenched around a missile. If war is the health of the state (as Randolph Bourne argued), then the MIC is its dealer, peddling destruction on credit, and the world, like a junkie, keeps coming back for more.

War, in its contemporary iteration, has been reduced to a horrible spectacle of thanatopolitics, where, as Foucault would argue, the biopolitical management of populations gives way to their systematic annihilation under the guise of “security”. The insatiable hunger for advanced weaponry has transformed conflict into a self-perpetuating industry, where nations are not merely participants but shareholders in a global economy of death. The Iron Dome and David’s Sling, those big monuments to militarised paranoia, consume budgets with the gluttony of a Wall Street hedge fund, while Gaza’s children are priced at $0.00 on the balance sheets of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

The proposed “Golden Dome of America” isn’t just a defence system, it’s a theological apparatus, a modern-day Moloch demanding sacrificial blood to sustain its algorithmic priesthood. As Walter Benjamin warned, every document of civilisation is also a document of barbarism, and today’s barbarism wears a tailored suit, delivers PowerPoints on “strategic deterrence,” and secures shareholder approval before drone strikes. The Gaza genocide, for that is what the ICJ has deemed it “plausible” to call, lays bare the hypocrisy of a world order where “rules-based international law” is enforced with bunker busters and white phosphorus. The new barbarians aren’t the ones wielding primitive rockets; they’re the ones who, in Žižek’s terms, fetishise their own humanism while reducing Palestinians to “collateral damage” in a spreadsheet.

This is the neoliberal necropolis: where war isn’t an aberration but a business model, sanctified by the bipartisan liturgy of “national security” and monetised by the Raytheons of the world, who fight wars in boardrooms long before the first missile is launched. The Gaza slaughter, with its 40,000 corpses and counting, isn’t a failure of the system; it’s the system working as designed. As Marx might warn, the MIC has become the ultimate “vampire capital,” sucking dry the veins of the Global South to feed the insatiable appetite of the Golden Dome’s shareholders. The only “deterrence” here is against empathy itself. 

In today’s wars, the most terrible spectacle is not merely the massacre of hundreds, women, children, the elderly, but the orchestrated pantomime of moral justification that follows, where language is twisted into a weapon more insidious than any drone strike. As George Orwell warned in Politics and the English Language, political speech is “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable”, and nowhere is this more evident than in the hollow invocation of “self-defence” by nations that rain precision-guided barbarity upon schools, hospitals, and homes. The victims—children who cannot spell “geopolitics,” let alone comprehend their own obliteration—are reduced to statistical footnotes in what Noam Chomsky calls the “manufacture of consent”, a process where atrocity is laundered into policy through euphemisms like “collateral damage” and “military necessity.” 

The irony is so thick it curdles: these very nations, their hands still dripping with the blood of the Global South, appoint themselves as arbiters of civilisation, lecturing the world on barbarism while their bombs rewrite the definition of “human rights” in real time. The Geneva Conventions? A suggested reading list. International law? A flexible rubric, adjustable to the whims of power. The sheer audacity of this moral contortionism would be laughable if it weren’t so lethal. 

Consider the lexicon of extermination: “targeted strikes” (for levelled neighbourhoods), “neutralising threats” (for incinerating toddlers), and “right to defend” (for the privilege of impunity). This is Newspeak in its purest form—a linguistic regime where, as Orwell predicted, “war is peace” and “ignorance is strength”. The nations orchestrating these slaughters are not just violating laws; they are rewriting reality, gaslighting the global public into believing that rubble is progress and that mourning parents are “terrorist sympathisers.”

And where is the shame? Absent, dissolved in the acid bath of exceptionalism. Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” has been upgraded to the glamour of impunity—a system where war criminals give TED Talks and Nobel Peace laureates oversee arms deals. The victims, meanwhile, are posthumously tried for their own deaths: Were they human shields? Were they too slow to evacuate? Did they fail to appreciate the advanced warning of their own annihilation? The blame, like the bombs, always falls downward. 

Amidst this theatre of modern warfare, where generals play chess with human lives and politicians sanitise slaughter with press releases, there exists one irreducible truth: the absolute, unrelenting suffering of the poor and powerless. While the wealthy debate just war theory in climate-controlled conference rooms (channelling Carl von Clausewitz’s detached academicism), the poor bear the visceral brunt of conflict. War never starves the arms dealers in their golden high-rises, but ensures the working poor must choose between bread and medicine when oil prices skyrocket, a brutal demonstration of what David Harvey terms “accumulation by dispossession” in its most naked form. The same governments that subsidise billion-dollar defence contracts feign helplessness as vegetable prices become unaffordable, as if inflation were some act of God rather than a direct consequence of their militarised economies. Judith Butler’s concept of “grievable lives” finds its perverse inverse here—these are the ungrievable poor, whose deaths from malnutrition or preventable disease never make headlines, but whose suffering props up the entire war machine. Winter becomes a death sentence for those who can’t afford heating; summer a kiln for those without shelter. The Canadian author Naomi Klein would recognise this as the logical endpoint of disaster capitalism.

This is the great unspoken contract of modern conflict: that war, like all neoliberal projects, is a wealth transfer mechanism disguised as geopolitics. The poor don’t die in trenches anymore; they perish slowly in slums, their lives stretched thin between unpayable debts and unattainable dreams, what Lauren Berlant might call “slow death” under late capitalism. Their suffering lacks the cinematic glory of battlefield heroics, making it invisible to a world addicted to what Guy Debord called “the society of the spectacle.” While think tanks produce elegant theories of deterrence, the hungry mother knows war’s true face: the empty pot, the unaffordable blanket, the medicine that might as well be on Mars.

Dr. G.M. Khan is Assistant Professor, HKM Degree College Bandipora, Kashmir, India

3 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Haider Abbas

A few days back, after Israel-Iran so called ceasefire on June 25, news came that Iran has captured 700 Mossad operatives working for Israel inside Iran. Israel had killed Iran’s top military brass right on the onset of Israel-Iran war on June 13. Mossad is Israel intelligence agency.  Iran has been wrecked due to this internal sabotage which of course has resulted in the killing of its own President Ibrahim Raisi, fingers are being pointed towards Azerbaijan, Hamas chief Ismail Hannieh, Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrullah and numerous nuclear scientists like Mohsin Fakrizade etc.  Now Iran is into hot pursuit of the internal moles and on July 2, Iran has been able to apprehend what was ostensibly going to be the biggest inside attack on Iran.

It has been reported by Xinhua ¹ on July 2, that over 50 with alleged ties to Israel have been caught and two killed as well in Iran’s South Easter province of Sistan and Baluchistan, as informed by Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). What was their agenda? Particularly, when Israel defence minister Katz has gone on record to state that soon Israel army is to prepare to enter Iran to finish-off its nuclear programme and foment a regime change, by killing Iran’s supreme leader Ayatullah Khamenie.

Israel capabilities to torpedo Iran’s internal security may have this time got into a bumpy ride, as an attack, which had the wherewithal to throw whole Iran ‘out of gear’ has been halted. Iran has caught a huge co-ordinated network which was allegedly involved into planting ammunition devices close to Iran’s nuclear sites, cyber devices for electronic warfare, cripple Iran’s power grids, oil refineries, military communications, jam security systems, install GPS trackers so that drones flown from inside Iran, for such attacks, were to be channelized.

Israel had been attacking inside Iran through drones fitted with SIM cards and routers, which had forced Iran to stop the entire internet inside the country. However, Israeli agents, it is reported, were able to scale firewalls and had provided real-time intelligence to Israel on Iran’s military movement, storage sites, zones etc due to the advanced US military equipment recovered from its agents. These sleeper cells were to execute further killing of Iran’s top military commanders/scientists etc. All this quite understandably was lead to a massive uprising against Khamenie’s regime. If this gameplan was to succeed, which has been thwarted, obviously there was to be a bombardment from Israel and US together on Iran.  Iran has started to force Afghans out, as more than 60% of them, are engaged into this espionage for Israel. They had fake IDs spoke Persian language and evoked very little suspicion. These 50 caught are the kingpins under whom a whole network was underway. A huge number of drones have also been caught.

The big question is why Iran is now into weaning out this network? After a multitude of its high profile personalities have been killed! The reason is that Iran’s popular opinion is unanimously united that it was never see Khamenie killed, and perhaps, across the whole spectrum, inside Iran, this sentiment has led to this unity. Israel was not to stop there as its President Mahmoud Pezishkian is also on the list, in order to install as Raza Pehalvi, son of the last Iranian king, as the new puppet government in Iran. But, as yet, perhaps, Iran has been able to thwart one of the biggest attacks on it.

In fact, so huge is the Mossad network in Iran that Iran had given all the agents a deadline to confess and seek pardon until this operation was started. But, there is no doubt that despite the neutralization of this network, it may be only the tip of an iceberg, as this stench had got too deep. What are the things to unfold? The Israel-Iran full scale war is all the too soon. US has just provided $510 million sale of bomb guidance kits to Israel. Iran, too has warned that this time it would be the final war against Israel.

Who will survive this latest onslaught is what is yet to unfold. Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu is slated to meet US President Donald Trump all very soon. There is a stoic silence from all the Arab states and Turkey as well. All are aligned with Israel and Iran. Had bid their adieu to Palestine long back.

The writer is a former UP State Information Commissioner and writes on international issues.

3 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – As part of an explicit and deliberate policy that relies on the systematic commission of various crimes, Israel continues to carry out the forced displacement of Gaza Strip residents.

Israel’s methods of forced displacement include widespread bombing, bulldozing, deliberate starvation, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and expulsion through firepower and evacuation orders. These practices have driven residents into an area comprising less than 15 per cent of the enclave, in apparent preparation for mass displacement beyond it.

Most of the Gaza Strip has been rendered devastated and uninhabitable, both now and in the future, which constitutes a continuation of the genocide carried out over the past 21 months.

Between 28 and 30 June, Israeli forces issued three new military orders demanding the evacuation of residents from large areas in the east and south of Gaza City, as well as parts of the northern Gaza Strip. These orders covered a large area of several square kilometres, forcibly displacing tens of thousands of civilians who were left trapped between continuous displacement, starvation, and relentless bombardment, with no safe refuge anywhere.

The latest orders bring the total number of evacuation orders or renewals issued by the Israeli army since 18 March, the date Israel backed out of the temporary ceasefire, to 51. These orders, coupled with expanding military incursions, are unlawful and have placed over 85 per cent of the Gaza Strip under direct military control or forced evacuation. This reflects a systematic erasure of the Palestinian presence and a clear intent to impose permanent demographic change in the area.

Each of these orders has been issued without any military necessity or even the usual pretexts, such as rocket fire from the area. This indicates that Israel no longer seeks to justify its actions to the international community, and that displacement itself has become an open objective—one that is part of a deliberate policy of systematic uprooting and that constitutes a fully-fledged act of genocide.

Evacuation orders issued since last March have led to the renewed displacement of around one million people, most of whom have been forced to seek shelter in overcrowded or destroyed areas, or sleep in the streets and open spaces, amid widespread disease, severe shortages of water and food, and the collapse of basic services.

The Israeli army is conducting large-scale destruction in neighbourhoods it has invaded or ordered evacuated. These operations include airstrikes, bombing with explosive-laden robots, and widespread demolition and bulldozing of buildings and infrastructure, constituting one of the largest systematic erasures of cities and residential areas in the modern era.

In a testimony to Euro-Med Monitor, Mohammed Hillis, a resident of the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City, said: “We fled Shuja’iyya while under bombardment. We walked for hours, not knowing where to go. Every place said to be safe is being bombed. There is nowhere to hide except under the open sky.”

In another testimony, Maram Abdel Aal, a resident of the Tuffah neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City, said: “We left the Tuffah neighbourhood under shelling and headed to western Gaza, only to find bombardment surrounding us. I moved to Al-Mawasi in Khan Yunis, but the shelling continued there as well. Entire families were killed in their tents. Not a single neighbouring family survived.”

Israeli forces continue to bomb areas where civilians are forced to flee, including schools, temporary shelters, and tents, carrying out mass killings that target displaced residents already suffering from bombardment and starvation. This constitutes a flagrant and deliberate violation of the most basic rules of international law. It confirms that forced displacement in Gaza is occurring not only under threat but within a deadly and inhumane environment designed to kill and cause suffering, indicating that displacement is being used as a tool in the ongoing genocide.

Five civilians, including a woman and two children, were killed and several others injured on Tuesday, 1 July, in Israeli airstrikes targeting the tents of displaced people in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Yunis. This area has been designated safe by the Israeli army, underscoring a recurring pattern of deliberate and systematic targeting of civilians within displacement areas.

Israeli forces also killed 12 civilians, including women and children, most of them from the al-Hallaq family, by bombing a house in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza. This attack reflects the ongoing pattern of mass killings targeting Palestinian families.

Forced displacement is a war crime under the Rome Statute and a grave violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the forcible transfer of civilians in occupied territories. It also constitutes a crime against humanity when carried out as part of a widespread or systematic attack targeting the civilian population.

The ongoing pattern of displacement in the Gaza Strip meets these criteria, as it is not limited to forced evacuations but is carried out under deadly and devastating conditions. When combined with the intent to partially destroy the Palestinian people by imposing life-threatening conditions, it also amounts to an act of genocide.

The pattern of forced evacuation orders, widespread killings, destruction, and the deliberate use of starvation are all integral parts of an Israeli plan clearly advancing toward its final objective: the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land, particularly beyond the Gaza Strip.

This follows more than 20 months of genocidal crimes, including the killing and wounding of over 200,000 civilians, the destruction of entire towns, the near-total collapse of Gaza’s infrastructure, the eradication of basic living conditions, and systematic internal displacement. All of this has taken place within a broader effort to eliminate the Palestinian community as an entity and existence.

The forced displacement of Palestinians is a direct extension of Israel’s decades-long settler-colonial project, rooted in the erasure of Palestinian existence and the seizure of their land. What sets this phase apart is its unprecedented scale and severity, demonstrated by the comprehensive targeting of all 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023 through genocide and the denial of people’s most basic human rights. The conditions of extreme coercion and deprivation forced upon the Palestinian people represent a deliberate effort to push them out of their homeland, not by choice but as a condition for their very survival. This stands as one of the most blatant cases of planned mass displacement in modern history.

All states, both individually and collectively, must fulfil their legal responsibilities by taking urgent action to stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip, through implementing effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians; ensuring Israel’s compliance with international law and the decisions of the International Court of Justice; preventing the implementation of the US-Israeli forced displacement plan; and holding Israel and its more powerful allies accountable for all crimes against the Palestinians in the Strip. The International Criminal Court must implement the arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defence at the earliest opportunity, in accordance with the principle that there is no immunity for international crimes.

The international community must also impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel for its systematic and grave violations of international law. These sanctions should include an arms embargo; an end to all political, financial, and military support; freezing the assets of officials involved in crimes against Palestinians; imposing travel ban on these officials; suspending the operations of Israeli military and security industries companies in international markets; banning involved companies’ access to banking services; and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that provide Israel with economic benefits that enable its continued crimes.

Countries with universal jurisdiction courts must issue arrest warrants for Israeli political and military leaders involved in the ongoing genocide and initiate legal proceedings, even with the accused in absentia, to fulfil their international legal obligation to prosecute serious crimes and combat impunity.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

3 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- An Israeli airstrike has killed Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan, director of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza. His wife and five family members were also killed in the strike on their home west of Gaza City.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza confirmed the deaths in a statement. “With deep sorrow, we mourn the martyr of humanitarian and medical duty, Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan,” the ministry said. “He was killed along with members of his family after Israel targeted his home in Gaza.”

The ministry condemned the attack as part of a deliberate Israeli policy to eliminate medical and humanitarian personnel. “Every crime committed against medical teams confirms Israel’s systematic and intentional targeting,” it added.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1940543145332429045]

In a separate attack, five Palestinians were killed by an Israeli drone strike in central Deir al-Balah. The victims included two doctors from the Baraka Medical Center, two young girls, and a woman. Several others were seriously wounded.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed 1,580 medical workers in Gaza, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Government Media Office.

The Indonesian Hospital had already gone out of service in May after Israeli forces bombed it. The attack destroyed its power generators and damaged several departments. Medical teams were forced to evacuate patients under fire.

Gaza’s health system is on the brink of collapse. Israel’s genocide has devastated hospitals, clinics, and ambulance crews.

Since the genocide began nearly 22 months ago, Israel, backed fully by the United States, over 191,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded, most of them women and children. More than 11,000 are missing, with countless bodies buried under the rubble. Hundreds of thousands remain displaced.

Rights groups have repeatedly warned that attacks on medical personnel and infrastructure are violations of international law. But the killings continue, unchecked, and unpunished.

3 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

The latest United Nations report names hundreds of corporations, banks, technology firms, universities, pension funds and charities that profit from the Israeli occupation and genocide.

War is a business. So is genocide. The latest report submitted by Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, lists 48 corporations and institutions, including Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc., Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institue of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as Blackrock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.

The report, which includes a database of over 1,000 corporate entities that collaborate with Israel, demands these firms and institutions sever ties with Israel or be held accountable for complicity in war crimes. It describes “Israel’s “forever-occuption” as “the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech – providing significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability – while investors and private and public institutions profit freely.”

The post-Holocaust industrialists’ trials and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission laid the legal framework for recognizing the criminal responsibility of institutions and businesses that participate in international crimes. This new report makes clear that decisions made by the International Court of Justice place an obligation on entities “to not engage and/or to withdraw totally and unconditionally from any associated dealings, and to ensure that any engagement with Palestinians enables their self-determination.”

“The genocide in Gaza has not stopped because it’s lucrative, it’s profitable for far too many,” Albanese told me. “It’s a business. There are corporate entities, including from Palestine-friendly states, who have for decades made businesses and made profits out of the economy of the occupation. Israel has always exploited Palestinian land, resources and Palestinian life. The profits have continued and even increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide.”

In addition, she said, Palestinians have provided “boundless training fields to test the technologies, test weapons, to test surveillance techniques that now are being used against people everywhere from the Global South to the Global North.”

You can see my interview with Albanese here.

The report lambasts corporations for “providing Israel with the weapons and machinery required to destroy homes, schools, hospitals, places of leisure and worship, livelihoods and productive assets, such as olive groves and orchards.”

The Palestinian territory, the report notes, is a “captive market” because of Israeli-imposed restrictions on trade and investment, tree planting, fishing and water for colonies. Corporations have profiteered from this “captive market” by “exploiting Palestinian labour and resources, degrading and diverting natural resources, building and powering colonies and selling and marketing derived goods and services in Israel, the occupied Palestinian territory and globally.”

“Israel gains from this exploitation, while it costs the Palestinian economy at least 35 per cent of its GDP,” the report notes.

Banks, asset management firms, pension funds and insurers have “channeled finance into the illegal occupation,” the report charges. In addition, “universities — centres of intellectual growth and power — have sustained the political ideology underpinning the colonization of Palestinian land, developed weaponry and overlooked or even endorsed systemic violence, while global research collaborations have obscured Palestinian erasure behind a veil of academic neutrality.”

Surveillance and incarceration technologies have “evolved into tools for indiscriminate targeting of the Palestinian population,” the report notes. “Heavy machinery previously used for house demolitions, infrastructure destruction and resource seizure in the West Bank have been repurposed to obliterate the urban landscape of Gaza, preventing displaced populations from returning and reconstituting as a community.”

The military assault on the Palestinians has also “provided testing grounds for cutting-edge military capabilities: air defense platforms, drones, targeting tools powered by artificial intelligence and even the F-35 programme led by the United States of America. These technologies are then marketed as ‘battle proven.’”

Since 2020, Israel has been the eighth largest arms exporter in the world. Its two biggest weapons companies are Elbit Systems Ltd and the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd (IAI). It has a series of international partnerships with foreign weapons firms, including “for the F-35 fighter jet, led by United States-based Lockheed Martin.”

“Components and parts constructed globally contribute to the Israeli F-35 fleet, which Israel customizes and maintains in partnership with Lockheed Martin and domestic companies.” the report reads. Since October 2023, F-35s and F-16s jets have been “integral to equipping Israel with the unprecedented aerial power to drop an estimated 85,000 tons of bombs, much of it unguided, to kill and injure more than 179,411 Palestinians and obliterate Gaza.”

“Drones, hexacopters and quadcopters have also been omnipresent killing machines in the skies of Gaza,” the report reads. “Drones largely developed and supplied by Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries have long flown alongside fighter jets, surveilling Palestinians and delivering target intelligence. In the past two decades, with support from these companies and collaborations with institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, drones used by Israel acquired automated weapons systems and the ability to fly in swarm formation.”

Japan’s FANUC companies sell automation products and “provide robotic machinery for weapons production lines, including for IAI, Elbit Systems and Lockheed Martin.”

“Shipping companies such as the Danish A.P. Moller — Maersk A/S transport components, parts, weapons and raw materials, sustaining a steady flow of United States-supplied military equipment post-October 2023.”

There was a “65 per cent surge in Israeli military spending from 2023 to 2024 – amounting to $46.5 billion, one of the highest per capita worldwide.” This “generated a sharp surge in their annual profits,” while “Foreign arms companies, especially producers of munitions and ordnance, also profit.”

At the same time, tech companies have profited from the genocide by “providing dual-use infrastructure to integrate mass data collection and surveillance, while profiting from the unique testing ground for military technology offered by the occupied Palestinian territory.” They enhance “carceral and surveillance services, from closed-circuit television (CCTV) networks, biometric surveillance, advanced tech checkpoint networks, ‘smart walls’ and drone surveillance, to cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data analytics supporting on-the-ground military personnel.”

“Israeli tech firms often grow out of military infrastructure and strategy,” the report reads, “as the NSO Group, founded by ex-Unit 8200 members, did. Its Pegasus spyware, designed for covert smartphone surveillance, has been used against Palestinian activists and licensed globally to target leaders, journalists and human rights defenders. Exported under the Defense Export Control Law, NSO group surveillance technology enables ‘spyware diplomacy’ while reinforcing State impunity.”

IBM, whose technology facilitated Nazi Germany’s generation and tabulation of punched cards for national census data, military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management and concentration camp capacity, is once again a partner in this current genocide.

It has operated in Israel since 1972. It provides training for Israeli military and intelligence agencies, especially Unit 8200, which is responsible for clandestine operations, the collection of signal intelligence and code decryption, along with counterintelligence, cyberwarfare, military intelligence and surveillance.

“Since 2019, IBM Israel has operated and upgraded the central database of the Population and Immigration Authority, enabling collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, and supporting the discriminatory permit regime of Israel,” the report notes.

Microsoft, active in Israel since 1989, is “embedded in the prison service, police, universities and schools — including in colonies. Microsoft has been integrating its systems and civilian tech across the Israeli military since 2003, while acquiring Israeli cybersecurity and surveillance start-ups.”

“As Israeli apartheid, military and population-control systems generate increasing volumes of data, its reliance on cloud storage and computing has grown,” the report reads. “In 2021, Israel awarded Alphabet Inc. (Google) and Amazon.com, Inc. a $1.2 billion contract (Project Nimbus) — largely funded through Ministry of Defense expenditure — to provide core tech infrastructure.”

Microsoft, Alphabet Inc., and Amazon “grant Israel virtually government-wide access to their cloud and artificial intelligence technologies, enhancing data processing, decision-making and surveillance and analysis capacities.”

The Israeli military, the report points out, “has developed artificial intelligence systems such as‘Lavender,’ ‘Gospel’ and ‘Where’s Daddy?’ to process data and generate lists of targets, reshaping modern warfare and illustrating the dual-use nature of artificial intelligence.”

There are “reasonable grounds,” the report reads, to believe that Palantir Technology Inc., which has a long relationship with Israel, “has provided automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision-making.”

Palantir’s CEO in April 2025 responded to accusations that Palantir kills Palestinians in Gaza by saying, “mostly terrorists, that’s true.”

“Civilian technologies have long served as dual-use tools of settler-colonial occupation,” the report reads. “Israeli military operations rely heavily on equipment from leading global manufacturers to ‘unground’ Palestinians from their land, demolishing homes, public buildings, farmland, roads and other vital infrastructure. Since October 2023, this machinery has been integral to damaging and destroying 70 per cent of structures and 81 per cent of cropland in Gaza.”

Caterpillar Inc. has for decades provided the Israeli military with equipment used to demolish Palestinian homes, mosques, hospitals as well as “burying alive wounded Palestinians,” and killed activists, such as Rachel Corrie.

“Israel has evolved Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozer into automated, remote-commanded core weaponry of the Israeli military, deployed in almost every military activity since 2000, clearing incursion lines, ‘neutralizing’ the territory and killing Palestinians,” the report reads. This year, Caterpillar “secured a further multi-millionaire dollar contract with Israel.”

“The Korean HD Hyundai and its partially-owned subsidiary, Doosan, alongside the Swedish Volvo Group and other major heavy machinery manufacturers, have long been linked to destruction of Palestinian property, each supplying equipment through exclusively licensed Israeli dealers,” the report reads.

“As corporate actors have contributed to the destruction of Palestinian life in the occupied Palestinian territory, they have also helped construction of what replaces it: building colonies and their infrastructure, extracting and trading materials, energy and agricultural products, and bringing visitors to colonies as if to a regular holiday destination.”

“More than 371 colonies and illegal outposts have been built, powered and traded with by companies facilitating the replacement by Israel of the Indigenous population in the occupied Palestinian territory,” the report concludes.

These building projects have used Caterpillar, HD Hyundai and Volvo excavators and heavy equipment. Hanson Israel, a subsidiary of the German Heidelberg Materials AG, “has contributed to the pillage of millions of tons of dolomite rock from the Nahal Raba quarry on land seized from Palestinian villages in the West Bank.” The quarried dolomite is used to construct Jewish colonies in the West Bank.

Foreign firms have also “contributed to developing roads and public transport infrastructure critical to establishing and expanding the colonies, and connecting them to Israel while excluding and segregating Palestinians.”

Global real estate companies sell properties in colonial settlements to Israeli and international buyers. These real estate firms include Keller Williams Realty LLC, which has “had branches based in the colonies” through its Israeli franchisee KW Israel. Last year through another franchisee called Home in Israel, Keller Williams “ran a real estate roadshow in Canada and the United States, jointly sponsored with several companies developing and marketing thousands of apartments in colonies.”

Rental platforms, including Booking.com and Airbnb, list properties and hotel rooms in illegal Jewish colonies in the West Bank.

Chinese Bright Dairy & Food is a majority owner of Tnuva, Israel’s largest food conglomerate, which utilizes land seized from Palestinians in the West Bank.

In the energy sector, “Chevron Corporation, in consortium with Israeli NewMedEnergy (a subsidiary of the OHCHR database-listed Delek Group), extracts natural gas from the Leviathan and Tamar fields; it paid the Government of Israel $453 million in royalties and taxes in 2023. Chevron’s consortium supplies more than 70 per cent of Israeli energy consumption. Chevron also profits from its part-ownership of the East Mediterranean Gas pipeline, which passes through Palestinian maritime territory, and from gas export sales to Egypt and Jordan.”

BP and Chevron also serve as “the largest contributors to Israeli imports of crude oil, as major owners of the strategic Azeri Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and the Kazakh Caspian Pipeline Consortium, respectively, and of their associated oil fields. Each conglomerate effectively supplied 8 per cent of Israeli crude oil between October 2023 and July 2024, supplemented by crude oil shipments from Brazilian oil fields, in which Petrobras holds the largest stakes, and military jet fuel. Oil from these companies supplies two refineries in Israel.”

“By supplying Israel with coal, gas, oil and fuel, companies are contributing to civilian infrastructures that Israel uses to entrench permanent annexation and now weaponizes in the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza,” the report reads. “The same infrastructure that these companies supply resources into has serviced the Israeli military and its energy-intensive tech-driven obliteration of Gaza. ”

International banks and financial firms have also sustained the genocide through the purchase of Israeli treasury bonds.

“As the main source of finance for the Israeli State budget, treasury bonds have played a critical role in funding the ongoing assault on Gaza,” the report reads. “From 2022 to 2024, the Israeli military budget grew from 4.2 per cent to 8.3 per cent of GDP, driving the public budget into a 6.8 per cent deficit. Israel funded this ballooning budget by increasing its bond issuance, including $8 billion in March 2024 and $5 billion in February 2025, alongside issuances on its domestic new shekel market.”

The report notes that some of the world’s largest banks, including BNP Paribas and Barclays, “stepped in to boost market confidence by underwriting these international and domestic treasury bonds, allowing Israel to contain the interest rate premium, despite a credit downgrade. Asset management firms — including Blackrock ($68 million), Vanguard ($546 million) and Allianz’s asset management subsidiary PIMCO ($960 million) — were among at least 400 investors from 36 countries who purchased them.”

Faith-based charities have “also become key financial enablers of illegal projects, including in the occupied Palestinian territory, often receiving tax deductions abroad despite strict regulatory charitable frameworks,” the report reads.

“The Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) and its over 20 affiliates fund settler expansion and military-linked projects,” the report reads. “Since October 2023, platforms such as Israel Gives have enabled tax-deductible crowdfunding in 32 countries for Israeli military units and settlers. The United States-based Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, Dutch Christians for Israel and global affiliates, sent over $12.25 million in 2023 to various projects that support colonies, including some that train extremist settlers.”

The report criticizes universities that partner with Israeli universities and institutions. It notes that labs at MIT “conduct weapons and surveillance research funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense.” These projects include “drone swarm control — a distinct feature of the Israeli assault on Gaza since October 2023 — pursuit algorithms, and underwater surveillance.”

You can see my interview with the MIT students who exposed the collaboration between the university Israeli military here.

Genocide requires a vast network and billions of dollars to sustain it. Israel could not carry out its mass slaughter of the Palestinians without this ecosystem. These entities, which profit from industrial violence against the Palestinians and mass displacement, are as guilty of genocide as the Israeli militray units decimating the people in Gaza. They too are war criminals, They too must be held accountable.

Chris Hedges worked for nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, National Public Radio and other news organizations in Latin America, the Middle East and the Balkans.

2 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Walden Bello

The recent unilateral strikes by the United States on Iran’s nuclear development sites underline the fact that multilateralism is dead, and has been so for some time.

It is not only when it comes to the question of the deployment of military power that multilateralism is shown to be dead or dying. The key institutions of Western-led globalization are no longer functioning or are in sleep mode. This was underlined by the U.S. government’s decision to boycott both the Finance and Development Summit in Seville, Spain, this week, and the Bonn Climate Summit two weeks earlier.

The World Trade Organization has never recovered from the collapse of the Fifth Ministerial in Cancun in 2003, with the United States, in fact, taking the lead in emasculating it by preventing appointments to its decisive unit, the appellate court.

There has been stiff resistance at the IMF and World Bank to change the shares of voting power to give the China, the other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), and other countries in the Global South the weight they deserve in the changing global balance of economic power. For over four years now, since the end of the G-20 debt suspension initiative, even as many countries in the Global South lapse deeper into a debt crisis worse than that of the 1980s, no new effort at addressing the problem has come from the Global North. Instead, the Paris Club has played a blame game, accusing China of not joining a common front vis a vis the indebted countries.

As for climate finance—despite a conciliatory retreat by the Global South like the Bridgetown Initiative spearheaded by Barbados by folding development into climate finance—the $58 billion delivered after years of difficult negotiations is puny compared to the $1 trillion needed annually for the loss and damage inflicted on the Global South by the climate-destructive activities of the main climate polluters. And with a climate denialist administration now in the saddle in Washington, DC, the other leading climate criminals have been provided the excuse not to add to the commitments to the already weak, voluntary ones they have made. The UNFCCC will meet in Belem, Brazil, in November for its annual Climate Summit, but the reality is that negotiations are dead in the water.

Death of a Grand Strategy

The United States has been decisive in this retreat from multilateralism, and this process unfolded long before the advent of Donald Trump. It is Trump, however, who has cut the cant, shed the hypocrisy, and sounded the death knell on the grand strategy of liberal internationalism that served as the guiding U.S. strategy over the last 80 years, when it was committed to engaging threats to U.S. capital and U.S. state power where ever they were threatened globally. As Viktor Orban, the European figure most admired by Trump, has noted, his fellow strongman’s plan is to retrench to the Americas, focusing on reinvigorating the imperial heartland, North America, while strengthening the U.S. grip on Latin America in an aggressive reiteration of the Monroe Doctrine. And Orban adds, “there will be no more export of democracy.”

Trump may seem unpredictable, but there is a trend line cutting across the zigs and the zags. He is simply recognizing what his predecessors refused to see—that the empire is overextended and no longer has the resources to sustain its multiple engagements. Moreover, he is responding to the most significant and powerful section of his Make America Great Again base. This movement is a product of the four decades-long crisis of capitalism and imperialism. From a progressive standpoint, it has a number of contradictory features. It is, to use Althusser’s term, an “overdetermined contradiction” that combines the worst racist, ethnocentric, and anti-intellectual impulses with deep disdain for the neoliberal, pro-globalization initiatives and interventionist, warmongering policies of the liberal and neoconservative internationalists that have controlled policymaking over the last 80 years. It is fascism, but unlike in the 1930s, it is inward-looking, not expansionist fascism.

What is emerging is an imperialism that is on the defensive, that prioritizes tariff walls against foreign imports. It has adopted harsh measures to prevent the entry of non-white migrants and expel undocumented workers, uprooted the global supply chains set up by U.S. transnational capital, and reshored or brought back their productive facilities to the United States, and, last but not least, divorced the United States completely from collective efforts to address the climate crisis. The MAGA program espoused by ideologues like Peter Navarro, Vice President JD Vance, Tucker Carlson, and Steve Bannon is very popular, though to orthodox economists, it is madness.

The world is likely entering an era of geoeconomic competition whereby free trade and the free movement of capital are being replaced by close cooperation between national capital and the state to limit foreign penetration of the domestic market and prevent the acquisition of advanced technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI), by rival corporate-state actors. This is industrial policy with a reactionary vengeance. In the case of Trump, the preferred methods of dealing with the Global South are unilateral economic actions rather than multilateral initiatives via the Bretton Woods institutions, and unilateral military strikes rather than joint assaults under NATO, such as the recent attacks on Iran, and definitely no boots on the ground.

Nature, it is said, hates a vacuum. With the U.S.-dominated global multilateral system dead in the water, many in the Global South are scouting around for alternative sources of economic and political assistance. Among the candidates is the formation known as the BRICS, which is backed by something that the G77, for all its virtues as a site of alliance-building for the developing countries, lacks: economic clout.

Rise of the BRICS

The BRICS developed institutionally in a gradual fashion. The New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA), which were conceived as performing functions akin to the World Bank and IMF respectively, were formed in 2015, but they remained relatively low profile, perhaps so as to assure the West they were not meant to supplant these key institutions of the Western-dominated multilateral system as well as discourage developing countries to think of them as major alternative sources of development and emergency finance. As of the end of 2021, the cumulative lending of the NDB came to only $30 billion, a fraction of World Bank lending for the period 2015 to 2021.

As of January 1, 2025, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had joined the original five members.  The 10-country formation boasts a total population covering over 40 percent of the world. They also have a substantial 28 percent share of the global economy, equivalent to $26.5 trillion.

That so many countries, including Thailand and Malaysia, are queuing up to join the BRICS club indicates that the Global South realizes that the scale is steadily tipping against the West, which has grown increasingly defensive, grouchy, and insecure.

Several current and prospective members have significant surplus funds potentially available for development lending. Aside from China’s massive resources, the UAE has $2.23 trillion in its sovereign wealth fund. Saudi Arabia, which has delayed its membership but is expected eventually to join, has $1.3 trillion in its fund. These sums could potentially bolster the firepower of the current CRA and the NDB.

Are these hopes for the BRICS exhibited by many in the Global South realistic?

First of all, the BRICS, especially China, have played a major role in moving the balance of global economic power vis a vis the North to a tipping point. China, in particular, has, over the last quarter of a century, provided many countries in the Global South a source of alternative finance, thereby opening up more development space. As progressive economist Kevin Gallagher has pointed out, China is now the world’s biggest development bank. This has elicited much negative feeling in the West. Although there are certainly flaws in China’s lending activities, there are so many lies being floated by Western sources, like the claim that China is steering many countries into a debt trap. This is IMF-instigated crap. Chinese aid is not disinterested, but it does not have the crippling conditionalities that accompany IMF and World Bank assistance.

Grounds for Caution

Still there are grounds for caution. The BRICS institutional mechanisms for delivering assistance are relatively underdeveloped. It is not only the scaling up of assistance-delivery systems that is in demand. Among the expectations of many queuing up to join is that the decision-making processes in these instiutions would be more participatory and democratic than those of the Western-dominated agencies. So one big question is: Are the key actors in the BRICS going to be open to sharing decision-making power over their resources?

A related question is: The leading forces in the BRICS are a mix of authoritarian and formally democratic states; is it not realistic to expect that they will bring their regime preferences and styles of governance to a multilateral setting?

This year is the seventieth anniversary of the iconic Bandung Conference. The Global South has travelled a long way in terms of decolonization and, especially in the last seven decades, in coming close to the tipping point in the global balance of power vis a vis the Global North. But the Bandung Declaration was not just a document promoting political and economic decolonization. Indeed, the very first of the 10 points of the Declaration was “respect for fundamental human rights and for the purposes and principles of the charter of the United Nations.”

Two of the key movers in Bandung were India and China, who play central role in the BRICS. Nehru and Zhou En Lai were exemplary voices of the Global South in 1955, when decolonization was the burning issue. However, when it comes to the first Bandung principle, their governments today are not exactly paragons of human rights. India today is ruled by a Hindu nationalist government that considers Muslim second-class citizens. Beijing is accused of carrying out the forcible cultural assimilation of the Uygurs, though there might be exaggeration of this process by the West. As for the other key sponsors of the Bandung meeting, the military regimes in Myanmar and Egypt are notorious for massive human rights violations.

Indeed, most states of the Global South are dominated by elites that, whether via authoritarian or liberal democratic regimes, maintain problematic social and economic structures. The levels of poverty and inequality are shocking. The gini coefficient for Brazil is 0.53, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world. China’s 0.47 also reflects tremendous inequality, despite remarkable successes in poverty reduction. In South Africa, the gini coefficient is an astounding 0.63, and 55.5 percent of the population lives under the poverty line. In India, incomes have been polarizing over the past three decades with a significant increase in billionaires and other high-net-worth Individuals.

The reality is that for the vast masses of people throughout the Global South, including indigenous communities, workers, peasants, fisherfolk, nomadic communities and women are economically disenfranchised, and in liberal democracies, such as the Philippines, India, Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa, and Kenya, participation in democracy is often limited to casting votes in periodic, often meaningless, electoral exercises. South-South investment and cooperation models such as the Belt and Road Initiative and free trade agreements frequently entail the capture of land, forests, water, and marine areas and extraction of natural wealth for the purposes of national development. Local populations—many of whom are indigenous—are disposessed from their livelihoods, territories, and ancestral domains with scant legal recourse and access to justice, invoking the specter of home-grown colonialism and counterrevolutions.

Two points are important here. Although the Global North has played a role in the perpetuation of poverty and inequality in the Global South, much of our current condition is the creation of the Global South’s own elites. Second, democratic governance at the global level cannot be delinked from democratic governance at the local level.

Capitalism and Multilateralism

There is a third, not minor, consideration when it comes to assessing the future of the BRICS, and here it is useful to compare Bandung’s historical moment to today. At the time of the Bandung Conference, the political economy of the globe was more diverse. There was the communist bloc headed by the Soviet Union. There was China, with its push to move from national democracy to socialism. Neutralist states like India were seeking a third way between the communism and capitalism. With decades of neoliberal transformation in both the Global North and the Global South, that diversity has vanished. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to a new, equitable global order is the fact that all countries remain embedded in a system of global capitalism, where the pursuit of profits remains the engine of economic expansion, both creating great inequalities and posing a threat to the planet.

The dynamic centers of global capitalism may have moved, over the last 500 years, from the Mediterranean to Holland to Britain to the United States and now to the Asia Pacific, but capitalism continues to both penetrate the farthest reaches of the globe and deepen its entrenchment in areas it has subjugated. Capitalism continually melts all that is solid into thin air, to use an image from a famous manifesto, creating inequalities both within and among societies, and exacerbating the relationship between the planet and the human community. Whether market-driven, developmental, or state capitalist, the same dynamics of surplus extraction, with massive planetary externalities, cut across these variants of capitalism.

Is it possible to move towards a new, more participatory system of multilateralism without bringing forth a post-capitalist system of economic, social, and political relations?

The world is not doomed to repeat the experience of the West. It’s very positive that the hegemony of the North is breaking up and that the multilateral system it set up to dominate the Global South is breaking down. Rather than try to fix that system, it’s best to pursue the strategic objective of breaking it up, using a mix of negotiation, promoting a radical counter-agenda, and coercion as complementary weapons.

Derail Seville and Belem But…

With the United States pulling out of the Finance for Development process and boycotting the pre-COP 30 meeting in Bonn, the Europeans should be allowed to save multilateralism in Sevilla and Belem. Those assemblies should be used to further discredit multilateralism.

Replacing such a system will not be easy, however, and there will be setbacks and derailments in this process.

As the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci famously said, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” Getting to a safe harbor is not possible without taking great risks, and, as with Ulysses, the proverbial monsters of Scylla and Charybdis may still menace the voyage.

Walden Bello is currently the International Adjunct Professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton and Co-Chairperson of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.

2 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Occupied Palestinian Territory – Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor stated that Israel’s ban on fuel entry to hospitals in the Gaza Strip constitutes a tool of direct killing and a means of forcibly displacing civilians, as it paralyzes medical facilities and turns them into death zones.

In a press release today, Euro-Med Monitor explained that the shutdown of generators and vital medical equipment puts the lives of thousands of patients—including newborns, ICU patients, and those with kidney failure—at immediate risk of death. It also forces their families to flee in search of alternative healthcare or energy sources at a time when no fully functioning medical facility exists in the Strip. This, the organization said, reflects a systematic Israeli policy aimed at dismantling the population’s means of survival, forming an integral part of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

The monitor emphasized that death is taking Gaza’s residents one by one through Israel’s intertwined methods, all of which amount to components of the genocide. Chief among them is the unlawful and systematic blockade aimed at destroying the Palestinian population by deliberately depriving them of essentials for survival.

Beyond the daily toll of victims from direct military attacks, many more die each day as a result of indirect means of genocide—deaths often unregistered in official war casualty records despite nearly 21 months of ongoing aggression.

Euro-Med Monitor highlighted that the total shutdown of the dialysis department at Al-Shifa Hospital today means that “we only have a few days before we begin documenting patient deaths one after another,” warning that this is not merely a health catastrophe but a deliberate execution of a slow-kill policy by Israel targeting the population’s right to life through denial of life-saving care.

The organization warned of catastrophic consequences as kidney dialysis services halt due to fuel shortages, signaling a critical collapse of the healthcare system. This could imminently affect ICU services at Al-Shifa and other hospitals, threatening the lives of thousands of civilians.

Israel is deliberately denying fuel entry, particularly into northern Gaza and Gaza City, with the calculated aim of halting hospital operations and compelling civilian displacement southward in search of treatment—a clear manifestation of forced displacement, banned under international law.

Refusing to allow fuel into hospitals amounts to a death sentence for most patients, Euro-Med said. It reflects a deliberate Israeli strategy to destroy Gaza’s health system by barring essential supplies, in clear violation of international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, which obligates an occupying power to ensure the provision of medical care and prohibits starvation or health sabotage as methods of warfare.

Since March 2, Israel has fully closed Gaza’s crossings, banning fuel, humanitarian aid, and medical equipment. Thousands of aid trucks have been denied entry, causing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.

Gaza’s health system now faces an unprecedented collapse, with:
    •    Severe shortages of medicines and supplies;
    •    Over 50% of hospital labs and 60% of primary care labs destroyed;
    •    Thousands of vital medical devices out of service;
    •    Breakdown of blood transfusions and lab diagnostics.

Meanwhile, infectious diseases like meningitis, malaria, chickenpox, and skin infections are spreading rapidly due to sewage overflows and contaminated water, particularly in overcrowded displacement camps.

According to OCHA and the WHO, harsh conditions in camps and shelters form a “fertile ground for epidemics,” with thousands of confirmed infections and likely many more unreported.

The worsening crisis is compounded by a lack of clean water—in some camps, a single toilet is used by hundreds of people, increasing the risk of widespread disease.

Euro-Med concluded that Israel’s blockade and deprivation policy is a genocidal tool, accelerating the systematic killing of civilians and destroying their means of survival in gross violation of international law, including peremptory norms and the Genocide Convention.

The organization:
    •    Urged UN agencies and international humanitarian organizations to take immediate joint action—legally, diplomatically, and operationally—to halt Israel’s crimes;
    •    Called for the end of Israel’s inhumane aid distribution mechanism and the restoration of humanitarian access;
    •    Called for UN-supervised humanitarian corridors to guarantee food, medicine, and fuel reach all of Gaza;
    •    Demanded independent international monitors be deployed to verify compliance.

Euro-Med also called on states to:
    •    Fulfill their legal obligations to halt genocide in all its forms;
    •    Ensure Israeli compliance with international law and ICJ rulings;
    •    Hold Israel accountable, including through the ICC arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and former Defense Minister;
    •    Impose economic, military, and political sanctions, including:
    •    Arms embargoes;
    •    Freezing assets of responsible officials;
    •    Banning their travel;
    •    Suspending Israeli military and security firms from global markets;
    •    Halting preferential trade and financial agreements.

These urgent steps are necessary to stop the deepening catastrophe and ensure justice for the victims.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

2 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The aftermath of Operation Midnight Hammer, a strike by the US Air Force on three nuclear facilities in Iran authorised by President Donald Trump on June 22, was raucous and triumphant.  But that depended on what company you were keeping.  The mission involved the bombing of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, and the uranium-conversion facility in Isfahan.  The Israeli Air Force had already attacked the last two facilities, sparing Fordow for the singular weaponry available for the USAF. 

The Fordow site was of particular interest, located some eighty to a hundred metres underground and cocooned by protective concrete.  For its purported destruction, B-2 Spirit stealth bombers were used to drop GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator “bunker buster” bombs.  All in all, approximately 75 precision guided weapons were used in the operation, along with 125 aircraft and a guided missile submarine.

Trump was never going to be anything other than optimistic about the result.  “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images,” he blustered.  “Obliteration is an accurate term!”

At the Pentagon press conference following the attack, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bubbled with enthusiasm.  “The order we received from our commander in chief was focused, it was powerful, and it was clear.  We devastated the Iranian nuclear program.”  The US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine was confident that the facilities had been subjected to severe punishment.  “Initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”  Adding to Caine’s remarks, Hegseth stated that, “The battle damage assessment is ongoing, but our initial assessment, as the Chairman said, is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect.”

Resort to satellite imagery was always going to take place, and Maxar Technologies willingly supplied the material. “A layer of grey-blue ash caused by the airstrikes [on Fordow] is seen across a large swathe of the area,” the company noted in a statement.  “Additionally, several of the tunnel entrances that lead into the underground facility are blocked with dirt following the airstrikes.”

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, also added his voice to the merry chorus that the damage had been significant.  “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted airstrikes.”  The assessment included “new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

Israeli sources were also quick to stroke Trump’s already outsized ego.  The Israel Atomic Energy Commission opined that the strikes, combined with Israel’s own efforts, had “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”  IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir’s view was that the damage to the nuclear program was sufficient to have “set it back by years, I repeat, years.”

The chief of the increasingly discredited International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, flirted with some initial speculation, but was mindful of necessary caveats.  In a statement to an emergency meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors, he warned that, “At this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow.” Cue the speculation: “Given the explosive payload utilised and extreme(ly) vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred.”

This was a parade begging to be rained on.  CNN and The New York Times supplied it.  Referring to preliminary classified findings in a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment running for five pages, the paper reported that the bombing of the three sites had “set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months”.  The entrances to two of the facilities had been sealed off by the strikes but were not successful in precipitating a collapse of the underground buildings.  Sceptical expertise murmured through the report:  to destroy the facility at Fordow would require “waves of airstrikes, with days or even weeks of pounding the same spots.” 

Then came the issue of the nuclear material in question, which Iran still retained control over.  The fate of over 400 kg of uranium that had been enriched up to 60% of purity is unclear, as are the number of surviving or hidden centrifuges.  Iran had already informed the IAEA on June 13 that “special measures” would be taken to protect nuclear materials and equipment under IAEA safeguards, a feature provided under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Any transfer of nuclear material from a safeguarded facility to another location, however, would have to be declared to the agency, something bound to be increasingly unlikely given the proposed suspension of cooperation with the IAEA by Iran’s parliament. 

After mulling over the attacks over the course of a week, Grossi revisited the matter.  The attacks on the facilities had caused severe though “not total” damage.  “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.”  Tehran could “in a matter of months” have “a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium.”  Iran still had the “industrial and technological” means to recommence the process.

Efforts to question the effacing thoroughness of Operation Midnight Hammer did not sit well with the Trump administration.  White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt worked herself into a state on any cautionary reporting, treating it as a libellous blemish.  “The leaking of this alleged report is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” she fumed in a statement.  “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets.”

Hegseth similarly raged against the importance placed on the DIA report.  In a press conference on June 26, he bemoaned the tendency of the press corps to “cheer against Trump so hard, it’s like in your DNA and in your blood”.  The scribblers had to “cheer against the efficacy of these strikes” with “half-truths, spun information, leaked information”.  Trump, for his part, returned to familiar ground, attacking any questioning narrative as “Fake News”.  CNN, he seethed, had some of the dumbest anchors in the business.  With malicious glee, he claimed knowledge of rumours that reporters from both CNN and The New York Times were going to be sacked for making up those “FAKE stories on the Iran Nuclear sites because they got it so wrong.” 

A postmodern nonsense has descended on the damage assessments regarding Iran’s nuclear program, leaving the way clear for over remunerated soothsayers.  But there was nothing postmodern in the incalculable damage done to the law of nations, a body of acknowledged rules rendered brittle and breakable before the rapacious legislators of the jungle. 

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

1 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org