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By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- Israel has violated Trump’s Gaza ceasefire agreement 1,520 times since it entered into force on October 10, 2025, according to a new statement issued by the Government Media Office.

The violations span a period of 115 days, ending on Wednesday, and have resulted in 556 Palestinians killed and at least 1,500 injured.

The Government Media Office said the continued violations represent a systematic breach of the ceasefire and a clear violation of international humanitarian law. It added that Israeli actions have undermined both the spirit and the humanitarian provisions of the agreement.

According to official data, Israeli forces carried out 522 shooting incidents during the ceasefire period. They also conducted 73 military incursions into residential neighborhoods. In addition, authorities documented 704 bombardments and targeted attacks, alongside 221 demolitions of homes and civilian buildings.

The human toll remains overwhelmingly civilian. Of the 556 Palestinians killed, 288 were children, women, and elderly people. Another 268 were adult men. The Government Media Office said 99 percent of those killed were civilians.

Injuries reached 1,500 during the same period. More than 900 of the wounded were children, women, and elderly people. Civilian casualties accounted for 99.2 percent of all injuries. Officials stressed that all injured individuals were targeted inside residential areas and far from the so-called “yellow line” designated in the ceasefire agreement.

Israeli forces also kidnapped 50 Palestinians during the ceasefire period. Authorities said every abductiin took place inside residential neighborhoods and not near the designated buffer zones outlined in the agreement.

The statement also highlighted major restrictions on humanitarian aid and commercial supplies entering Gaza. Out of 69,000 aid, commercial, and fuel trucks that should have entered under the agreement, only 29,603 were allowed in. This represents a compliance rate of just 43 percent.

Aid trucks made up 17,153 of the total, or 58 percent. Commercial trucks accounted for 11,642, or 39 percent. Fuel deliveries remained especially limited. Only 808 fuel trucks entered Gaza, out of 5,750 required, reflecting a compliance rate of 14 percent. The daily average stood at 257 trucks, far below the agreed target.

Under the humanitarian protocol, 600 trucks should enter Gaza every day, including 50 fuel trucks carrying diesel, gasoline, and cooking gas. The Government Media Office said Israel failed to meet these requirements throughout the ceasefire period.

Officials also stated that Israel failed to withdraw to agreed lines, blocking materials needed to repair infrastructure, and preventing the entry of heavy equipment required to clear rubble and recover bodies. They said Israel restricted medical supplies, medicines, and health equipment, and failed to open the Rafah Crossing as agreed.

The statement further noted restrictions on tents, mobile homes, and shelter materials, as well as continued obstruction of Gaza’s power generation plant. It also stated that Israeli forces are expanding control beyond the agreed “yellow line” and seizing additional areas across the Strip.

The Government Media Office warned that these actions amount to an attempt to impose a humanitarian reality based on starvation, coercion, and political pressure. It held Israel fully responsible for the worsening humanitarian crisis and for the loss of life and property during a period meant to guarantee calm.

The office called on US President Donald Trump, mediators, guarantors, and the United Nations to enforce the ceasefire without exceptions. It urged immediate protection for civilians and the unrestricted flow of humanitarian aid, fuel, and shelter materials to Gaza.

The statement concluded by warning that the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza will deepen further unless all ceasefire obligations are implemented in full and without delay.

5 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Laala Bechetoula

The Epstein affair is often treated as an isolated scandal, a moral deviation within an otherwise functional system. This essay argues the opposite. It reads Epstein as a structural revelation—an entry point into understanding how Western moral authority operates through organized exception, selective outrage, and managed impunity. From Epstein to Trump, and culminating in Gaza, the text exposes a single moral architecture at work.

For a long time, the West spoke with the certainty of a judge.

It claimed the authority to define humanity, to distribute moral grades, to certify virtue and condemn deviation. Entire societies were summoned to account—classified as unstable, immature, or ethically deficient—while the West reserved for itself the role of instructor and arbiter.

The Epstein affair did not interrupt this posture.

It invalidated it.

Epstein was not a marginal figure hiding in the shadows. He operated in plain sight, moving comfortably through financial elites, political circles, elite universities, media environments, and philanthropic institutions that routinely lecture the world on ethics and human rights. He was not merely tolerated. He was integrated.

That integration is the key.

Because what defines the Epstein affair is not only the horror of the crimes, but their duration, their networked protection, and the discipline of silence that surrounded them. Warnings existed. Testimonies circulated. Judicial irregularities accumulated. Yet nothing decisive occurred—because decisive action would have endangered institutions, reputations, and hierarchies.

This was not a failure of the system.

It was the system functioning exactly as designed.

When Epstein finally fell, the response confirmed it. The priority was not truth or reckoning. It was containment: containing the narrative, containing the damage, containing the risk that the moral mirror might remain turned inward. The crime was isolated; the structure was preserved.

This reflex alone should have disqualified the West from any further moral instruction.

Yet the lectures continued.

They continued toward societies habitually described as “developing,” “unstable,” or “Third World”—labels that function less as descriptions than as permissions to lecture. These societies were told they lacked democratic maturity, institutional culture, moral discipline. They were instructed on how to protect children, how to respect life, how to behave ethically.

The Epstein affair exposed the fraud behind this posture.

What it revealed was a moral economy of exception, in which power dilutes guilt, wealth anesthetizes conscience, and institutional prestige shields crime. A system where wrongdoing is not eliminated but managed, where scandal is not rupture but operational cost, where morality is not principle but instrument.

This is why the figure of Donald Trump matters—not as an anomaly, but as a clarification.

Trump did not corrupt Western values. He stripped them of ceremonial language and applied them without pretense. Transaction replaced principle. Loyalty replaced law. Power replaced accountability. What disturbed many was not his excess, but his refusal to disguise it.

He did not betray the system.

He articulated it openly.

The discomfort he generated was not moral; it was aesthetic. He made explicit what others preferred to administer quietly. And the fact that such a figure could rise, normalize, and persist is not incidental. It is evidence that the crisis is not one of leadership, but of moral coherence.

The Epstein affair and the Trump era share the same grammar: entitlement without limit, immunity without responsibility, domination reframed as freedom. The belief that influence nullifies consequence, that law is flexible, that truth can be bent until it no longer threatens.

When abuse emerges within such a system, the first question is never who suffered.

It is what is at risk.

Language softens. Time stretches. Files disappear. Settlements replace justice. Memory is delegated to oblivion. Euphemisms proliferate: “allegations” instead of crimes, “complexity” instead of clarity, “procedure” instead of moral urgency. Legitimate concepts, emptied of purpose—used as protective fog.

At its core, this is not a crisis of sexuality.

It is a crisis of limits.

A civilization that dissolves all limits in the name of freedom loses the capacity to distinguish emancipation from predation. When desire becomes sovereign and restraint is pathologized, the vulnerable are no longer protected by principle—only by circumstance.

The obsession with youth, pleasure, transgression, and longevity reflects a deeper void. A world that abandoned transcendence sought meaning in sensation. A world that no longer recognizes the sacred transformed the body into object, then into commodity, then into terrain of domination.

In such a world, innocence is not inviolable by default.

It is inviolable only when the system decides so.

This is the lesson of Epstein.

And this is why Epstein is not an isolated scandal, but a template.

Because once a system learns how to organize moral exception internally, it applies the same logic externally.

This is where Gaza enters—not as a separate issue, but as the final proof.

What is unfolding in Gaza is not a humanitarian crisis.

It is a long-lasting genocide—cumulative, methodical, normalized—rendered sustainable by Western power structures that preach human rights while organizing their exception.

The same architecture that protected Epstein now operates at scale. The same management of outrage, the same softening of language, the same suspension of law, the same hierarchy of lives. Here too, the question is not whether civilians should be protected, but how the consequences can be politically managed.

Gaza does not contradict the Epstein affair.

It completes it.

Because a civilization that claims universal values while systematically suspending them has not merely failed its ethics—it has voided its authority.

The Sin World is not collapsing.

It has been revealed.

And history, unlike power, does not negotiate memory.

Laala Bechetoula is an independent Algerian writer and analyst.

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ghassan Shahrour

Some crimes are not dangerous because they are hidden, but because they unfold in plain sight—within systems designed to protect, yet collapsing silently when confronted with power. The case of Jeffrey Epstein is not merely the story of a predatory individual or a deviant network. It is the exposure of a double betrayal: a child-protection system that abandoned its moral and legal mandate, and elites who transformed wealth and influence into a shield for exploitation.

Epstein’s acts—trafficking minors, systematic sexual exploitation, coercive recruitment, and cross-border transportation of victims—constitute clear violations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, particularly Articles 34, 35, and 36, as well as the Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography. These are not legal grey zones. They are explicitly defined crimes that impose binding obligations on states to prevent, investigate, and prosecute, and to assist and protect children who have been abused.

For decades, the Convention on the Rights of the Child has been celebrated as one of humanity’s most significant moral achievements. Yet the Epstein case reveals not merely a failure of implementation, but a profound ethical regression. The system faltered when confronted with privilege. It hesitated when courage was required. The law was not simply violated—it was neutralized, reduced to a decorative façade that collapsed under the weight of power.

What makes this case even more damning is that the crimes did not occur in secrecy. They unfolded within a social, financial, and media ecosystem that knew—or should have known. Political, financial, and cultural elites were not passive bystanders. They formed part of a wider architecture of complicity: those who facilitated, those who remained silent, those who used influence to shield, and those who participated. These were not isolated lapses; they were a betrayal of the responsibility that accompanies power.

Behind this architecture stood girls whose safety—and sense of meaning—were stolen. Childhoods were interrupted. Trust in the world was shattered before it had fully formed. Lives were forced into survival rather than discovery. Their names are rarely spoken, their faces rarely seen, yet their absence is the most enduring evidence of the crime. This story is not about Epstein alone; it is about a world that failed those it was morally and legally bound to protect.

The failure extended further. Much of the media—and even segments of the activist sphere—reduced the case to celebrity intrigue rather than human suffering. Exploitation became spectacle; victims were pushed to the margins of their own story. The girls at the center were treated as footnotes to scandal, not as children whose lives were reshaped by trauma. This erasure reflects a deeper cultural failure: when abuse is sensationalized, responsibility dissolves.

While survivor-led groups and some advocates demanded accountability, the broader institutional response remained timid. Following the unsealing of Epstein-related files, UN human-rights experts warned that no person or institution should be beyond the reach of justice and called for full, transparent investigations into the wider network. Their message was clear: accountability requires independent inquiries into institutional complicity, stronger due-diligence obligations under child-rights law, and media standards that recognize child exploitation as a structural human-rights crisis—not entertainment.

Yet major human-rights organizations largely fell silent. There was no sustained pressure for independent investigations, no insistence on dismantling enabling networks, no accountability for institutions that ignored or normalized abuse. Once again, children’s rights proved easier to celebrate in principle than to defend in practice—especially when power demanded discomfort.

The victims were not only stripped of dignity; they were forced into silence in a world that should have listened first. What is often described as a “legal failure” is, in reality, a life burdened with the cost of a silence never chosen.

The Epstein case is not a closed chapter sealed by the perpetrator’s death. It is a mirror held up to a system that retreated before power and allowed the exploitation of children in full view. Silence, hesitation, and premature closure are not neutral acts—they are extensions of the crime the system protected. If human-rights institutions are serious about their mission, they must press for independent investigations, expose enabling networks, and demand reforms that place children’s safety above elites’ comfort. Until those networks are fully uncovered and held to account, the world remains complicit in an injustice it prefers to forget rather than confront.

Dr. Ghassan Shahrour, Coordinator of Arab Human Security Network, is a medical doctor, prolific writer, and human rights advocate specializing in health, disability, disarmament, and human security.

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Abdul Bari Atwan

The fact that the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appeared three times recently in open and public meetings—chatting with ordinary Iranians—has sent a shocking message to U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It demonstrates that Khamenei still has the first and final word in Iran and is not hiding in an underground bunker out of fear of assassination. Nor has he relinquished his leadership or spiritual authority, despite deliberate leaks and claims circulated by some Arab and Western media outlets as part of a psychological warfare campaign against Iran, coinciding with the U.S. military buildup in the region.

In contrast, top Israeli politicians and military officials are rushing to Washington, fearing that President Trump may back down from his aggressive threats and replace the military option with a peaceful, negotiated one—possibly reaching an accord that excludes Israeli demands and conditions. Israeli Chief of Staff General Eyal Zamir recently made a surprise visit to Washington, meeting senior U.S. military leaders and accompanied by top commanders, including the Israeli Air Force chief.

Frankly, Trump may have already lost this war—just as he lost face and credibility by failing to follow through on his threats or translate them into aggressive action on Iranian soil. Instead, he has resorted to sending mediators, the latest being his friend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to reopen negotiations with Iran. This comes after realizing that naval buildups and aircraft carrier deployments have failed to yield results or intimidate the Iranian leadership into surrender. Thus, he may be defeated either way: whether he goes to war or resorts to a political and diplomatic solution to the crisis.

The key to understanding this confusion—and perhaps the American retreat and postponement of military strikes—lies in the threatening message delivered by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during his meetings with large crowds of Iranians on the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Most notably, he asserted that “Iran does not initiate wars, but if it is subjected to aggression, it will confront it with all its might and inflict devastating blows on the enemy.” More importantly, he warned that any such war would be a broad regional conflict—neither swift nor decisive nor short-lived, nor “clean,” meaning free of casualties.

A “regional war” would mean the participation of all countries, movements, and military factions aligned with the so-called “axis of resistance,” beginning with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and Ansar Allah in Yemen. American bases across the region—particularly on the Arabian side of the Gulf—would become legitimate targets, as would the more than 70,000 American soldiers stationed there.

What terrifies Israel most is not only Trump’s failure to proceed with aggression against Iran, but also the possibility of an agreement that contradicts Israel’s three core objectives.

First, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by halting all high-level uranium enrichment and compelling Tehran to surrender its existing stockpile—estimated at 480 kilograms—to a neutral country.
Second, stopping the development and deployment of Iranian missiles and dismantling all long-range systems, including hypersonic and multiple-warhead missiles capable of reaching deep into Israeli territory, particularly Haifa and Tel Aviv, as demonstrated during the 12-day war last June.
Third, completely ending all financial and missile support for resistance movements, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraqi factions within the Popular Mobilization Forces such as Harakat al-Nujaba, and Ansar Allah in Yemen.

A Reminder

It is worth recalling that the return of 5,000 American soldiers in coffins to Washington—killed by Iraqi resistance forces after the 2003 invasion—forced then-President Barack Obama to acknowledge defeat and withdraw 160,000 U.S. troops from Iraq in November 2011 in order to minimize losses. It is therefore no exaggeration to suggest that any aggression against Iran today could result in four times that number of American casualties, if not more, in the initial days alone. This is due to Iran’s resolve, advanced missile and drone capabilities, and other secret weapons that could deliver the biggest surprises of any future war.

Perhaps the recent decline in oil prices, the collapse of gold and silver values, and the dollar’s sharp depreciation in global financial markets are among the clearest indicators confirming this reality: the diminishing likelihood of war, Trump’s reluctant tilt toward diplomacy and negotiations, and his tacit admission of the impossibility of achieving a military victory without catastrophic losses or a prolonged regional war, as warned by Iran’s Supreme Leader. Time will tell.

This article is written by Abdul Bari Atwan, chief editor of the Arabic Al Rai Al Youm website, on 2 February 2026, on the eve of the increasing US military presence surrounding Iran. It is reprinted in Crossfirearabia.com.

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Gerry Condon

“Peace at Home, Peace Abroad” is the vision that has inspired Veterans For Peace for many years. We have watched as the racist violence we witnessed in US wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq has been reproduced in U.S. cities by militarized police using gestapo tactics. We are currently seeing simultaneous US wars abroad and at home.

Even as the US has attacked Venezuela, kidnapped its president and threatened to overthrow the governments of Cuba and Iran, thousands of “Homeland Security” troops have invaded and terrorized a major U.S. city, Minneapolis, even murdering two nonviolent protesters. Thousands of people, including veterans, are resisting these racist, violent attacks.

“The silver lining is that the community defense has brought everybody together,” says Dave Logsdon of Minneapolis Veterans For Peace. “People who never protested before are in the streets organizing, with yellow vests, whistles, and first aid kits. People are finding the camaraderie contagious and the community resistance fulfilling.”

City of Heroes Celebrated in Song
The community resistance in Minneapolis is being celebrated in song by leading singer/songwriters, including Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Jim Page, Scared Ketchup (AI), Jesse Welles, Midnight Republic, Michael Shynes, and Billy Bragg.

In his song “City of Heroes,’ Billy Bragg sings:

When they came for the immigrants, I got in their face
When they came for the refugees, I got in their face
When they came for the five-year-olds, I got in their face
When they came to my neighborhood, I just got in their face
When they killed my sister, I got in their face!
When they killed my brother, I got in their face!

Minneapolis is definitely a City of Heroes, and that is exactly what they have been doing – getting in the face of heavily armed, masked, white supremacist storm troopers. Older folks and younger folks have stood together in the streets every day in the hundreds and in the thousands, in sub-zero weather!

Veterans Resisting Fascism
Veterans For Peace has also been in the streets of Minneapolis, standing with the most vulnerable communities. Younger Post-9/11 veterans have taken the lead. They have been patrolling in at-risk neighborhoods, monitoring for agitators, de-escalating situations at protests, and training people how to stop bleeding. At least four veterans have been arrested while peacefully protesting, but have been released without charges.

The heroic sustained resistance in Minneapolis has exposed the true nature of these ICE attacks before the entire world. They have put the Trump administration on the defensive. The calls to abolish ICE are now heard in many quarters. The War at Home will be a long one, however. Similar community resistance is taking place in many US cities that are also being subjected to racist ICE attacks, or who are preparing to defend their communities from the anticipated assaults of an increasingly fascist federal government.

To make matters that much worse, we are now bracing for the Trump Administration’s threatened war against Iran, one that could be a catastrophic for the region and possibly for the entire planet, causing global economic chaos and even risking nuclear war.

From Venezuela to Minneapolis: Standing Up to Stop US Terror
San Francisco Veterans For Peace has teamed up with the ANSWER Coalition for an indoor rally titled From Venezuela to Minneapolis: Standing Up to Stop US Terror. The rally will be on Saturday afternoon, Feb. 7, 3 pm at the Veterans Building, 401 Van Ness Ave. Room 210.

Refuse Illegal Orders
Veterans For Peace is currently putting up billboards with the message “Refuse Illegal Orders” near military bases around the U.S. We are reminding our brothers and sisters, sons and daughter and grandchildren who have joined the military that they have the right and the responsibility to refuse illegal orders, and that we will support them when they do.

Illegal Order would include:

Orders to unconstitutionally deploy to US cities in support of racist ICE attacks or to suppress peaceful protests;
Orders to participate in illegal regime-change wars, such as against Venezuela and Iran;
Orders to ship weapons to Israel while it is conducting a genocide.
Order to attack civilians or to torture and kill prisoners of war.
Trained counselors who can speak to concerned military members about their legal options can be reached by going to the Veterans For Peace website, www.veteransforpeace.org.

Veterans For Peace is welcoming new members – younger veterans, older veterans, active-duty members, family members and supporters. The Veterans For Peace eNews showcases the many ways that Veterans For Peace is organizing for Peace at Home and Peace Abroad.

Gerry Condon is Vietnam-era veteran and war resister who serves on the Veterans For Peace Board of Directors.

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Salim Nazzal

We in the East possess a religious mind, and even the most secular among us carries something of this mindset. Our everyday expressions Inshallah (God willing) and if God wills reflect this mentality. For this reason, many of our interpretations of events come from a religious perspective. What the criminal Zionist Jews are doing in Palestine, for example, we often explain as a test from God.

I believe this kind of interpretation also existed in medieval Europe .My grandmother used to say, whenever she heard news that contradicted traditions and what was considered normal:
“We are living in the end of times.”

My grandmother died in 1988. That means she did not live to see the age of the internet, or the globalization that came with it, and the limitless moral decline we now witness and hear about.

My grandmother passed away, and with her passed her simple world.

And I remember something a retired Danish doctor once told me. He was sitting next to me on the train to Copenhagen. As I spoke about freedom and scientific progress in the West, he said:
“All of this has come at a very high price.”

I asked him: What price?

He answered:
“Our value system is collapsing, and it has become difficult to stop this collapse.”

Then he gave me a sincere piece of advice:
“Remain Eastern, and do not imitate us.”

I explained to him that I do believe in progress, but through Eastern cultural references, not necessarily Western ones.

At the beginning of the Arab Renaissance in the late nineteenth century, the idea of progress became closely linked to adopting all Western values and models. This, in turn, contributed to the failure and abortion of the project of genuine progress in the Arab world, because modernization was detached from its own cultural and civilizational foundations.

I do not agree with this interpretation, because it is necessary to understand the causes of weakness and to confront and address them.

Absolute fatalistic belief, although I can understand the historical and social reasons behind its emergence, does not help in building inner strength or restoring the capacity for independent action.

Surrendering to the idea that everything is an unavoidable destiny may provide a certain psychological comfort, but at the same time it paralyzes the will, weakens responsibility, and postpones a true engagement with reality.

The real path toward renewal and progress lies in recognizing the sources of failure and working consciously to overcome them through knowledge, action, and confidence in one’s own strength.

I believe that one of the most important reasons behind the moral and civilizational collapse we are witnessing in the West today lies in the fact that Western Christianity was built upon the Christianity of the Roman Empire a form of Christianity that became almost completely separated from the original Palestinian Christianity.

That early Christianity was a simple, spiritual faith, born among peasants and ordinary people in Palestine, before it was transferred to the West and transformed into an imperial institution, far removed from its initial roots.

Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian Norwegian researcher, lecturer playwright and poet, wrote more than 17 books such as Perspectives on thought, culture and political sociology, in thought, culture and ideology, the road to Baghdad

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Arun Srivastava

The “New India” of the saffron ecosystem, particularly shaped by Narendra Modi, has virtually become the newest colony of imperialist USA in South Asia. Modi has exuberantly accepted the trade deal offered by his “best friend,” Donald Trump, the American President whose name prominently features in the infamous Epstein files. Undeniably, Trump—the modern face of global imperialism—has succeeded in his mission. Earlier, he reinforced the role of US imperialism by forcing Venezuela, home to the world’s richest known oil reserves, and Greenland, rich in rare earths, to fall in line. On February 2, he compelled Modi to compromise by accepting the Indo-US trade deal.

Trump’s design is reminiscent of the strategy of the East India Company, which transitioned from a trading body to a ruling power in India between 1757 and 1858. Initially entering India for commerce in 1600, the EIC gradually seized political control. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region—initially with the East Indies (including the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia.

That Modi’s “New India” is turning into a new American colony is ratified by the statement of US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, who announced that India had agreed to open its market to American farm products. Rollins wrote:

“Thank you @POTUS for ONCE AGAIN delivering for our American farmers. New US-India deal will export more American farm products to India’s massive market, lifting prices and pumping cash into rural America. In 2024, America’s agricultural trade deficit with India was $1.3 billion. India’s growing population is an important market for American agricultural products, and today’s deal will go a long way toward reducing this deficit. America First victory… #FarmersWin #USIndiaTrade #RuralAmerica.”

Historically, when an imperialist power conquered a country in Asia, Africa, or the Caribbean, it completely dominated that nation—altering its administrative, social, and economic structures for imperial benefit. Imperialism led to the acquisition of colonies and colonial rivalries that ultimately resulted in the First World War (1914–1918) and the Second World War (1939–1945).

Imperialist nations amassed enormous profits by exploiting the resources of their colonies. Their primary target was the agrarian economy: forcing colonies to grow commercial crops and destroying rural self-sufficiency. Colonial rule rests on the complete domination of one country over another, leading to systematic exploitation of resources and labour, and often the suppression of indigenous cultures. Under colonialism, people lose sovereignty over land, resources, and political destiny.

Trump has explicitly directed Modi to commit to buying more than $500 billion worth of American goods. Indian government officials confirmed that these purchases would span multiple sectors, including defence and energy. India has reportedly agreed to stop buying Russian oil and reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers to zero, while Trump continues to impose an 18 percent tariff on Indian goods. This asymmetry reveals the coercive nature of the deal.

Rollins further clarified the commercial motive:

“India’s massive market will reduce America’s agricultural trade deficit.”

Clearly, it is not India’s interests but India’s market that matters to Trump and the US.

Seventy-nine years after liberation from British imperialism, it is uncertain how long India will take to free itself from US-led colonisation imposed by Modi. His audacity is evident in his statement:

“Big thanks to President Trump on behalf of the 1.4 billion people of India…”

How Modi could thank Trump on behalf of the Indian people is beyond comprehension.

As if this were not enough, Modi described himself as “delighted” by reduced tariffs and praised Trump’s leadership, despite Trump later stating that the tariff reduction was granted “out of friendship” and “at Modi’s request.” This exposes the hollowness of Modi’s claims of diplomatic strength—he could not even persuade Trump to waive tariffs entirely.

With US agricultural products entering India at lower prices, how can Indian farmers compete—especially when their produce is burdened by an 18 percent tariff? Trump’s insistence that India purchase $500 billion worth of US goods—when India’s total import bill itself is around $700 billion—amounts to blatant arm-twisting aimed at preventing India from trading with other nations.

Trump also announced the halt to Operation Sindoor on May 10, 2025, and later announced India’s acceptance of the US trade deal—on both occasions Modi maintained silence. The deal will make rice and wheat production costlier, forcing farmers toward cash crops and worsening rural distress.

Agriculture in India is already largely unprofitable, particularly for small and marginal farmers, due to rising input costs, climate uncertainty, low market prices, lack of storage, and exploitative intermediaries. Had agriculture been profitable, farmers would not have been driven to suicide.

Around 70 percent of India’s rural population depends directly or indirectly on agriculture. It contributed about 15 percent to GDP in 2023. According to NSSO, 45.5 percent of India’s labour force was engaged in agriculture in 2022. NCRB data shows that between 1995 and 2014, 296,438 farmers died by suicide. During Modi’s tenure (2014–2022), the figure stands at 100,474. In 2022 alone, 11,290 people from the farming sector died by suicide.

Yet these deaths have failed to move Modi. Farmers staged a year-long protest at Delhi’s borders from November 2020 to December 2021 demanding repeal of the three farm laws and legal MSP. While Modi repealed the laws, MSP remains unimplemented. Budget allocations for agriculture have steadily declined.

In the Union Budget 2026-27, allocation for Agriculture and Allied Activities fell to 3.04 percent from 3.38 percent the previous year. Even the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana saw reduced funding. These priorities reflect the government’s distancing from farmers.

While Rollins claims Modi promised not to compromise farmers’ interests, America simultaneously announces a massive surge in agricultural exports to India. How can these claims coexist?

The discriminatory nature of the deal explains why Modi avoided placing it before Parliament. Had Parliament been consulted, the truth would have been exposed. In this context, Rahul Gandhi’s allegation that Modi “compromised” India’s interests—possibly under pressure related to the Adani case in the US—appears politically valid.

Agriculture has long been the most contentious issue in trade negotiations, especially US demands to open India’s market to genetically modified crops. Modi’s sudden capitulation is deeply suspicious. The so-called “Mother of all deals,” signed after two decades of negotiations, threatens to further devastate India’s rural economy, which remains starved of meaningful revival.

Arun Srivastava is a senior journalist

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The hugging, hobnobbing, and digital display of friendship on social media between Mr. Narendra Modi and Mr. Donald Trump appear to be designed mainly for public consumption, without any substantial achievement for Indians or the Indian economy. The much-talked-about, so-called non-existent free trade deal between the US and India reflects unfair and unequal trade relations between the two countries. Mr. Trump reportedly promised to reduce US tariffs on Indian exports to 18 percent in return for India’s promise to reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers on US goods and services to zero. Such a trade arrangement is likely to undermine India’s productive capacities in various sectors and drain Indian wealth and human resources in favor of the American economy. The US ruling elites and their corporations seem to view India merely as a market, without any genuine friendship or commitment to stand together during times of crisis or need.

History reveals that the American ruling elites and their imperialist system have never truly stood with anyone. When it comes to India’s national interests, US power elites have consistently acted against India and Indian interests, seeking to undermine those interests and exploit crises by accelerating instabilities and promoting military conflicts. They have attempted to checkmate India’s industrial and technological progress while simultaneously using the technologically advanced and skilled Indian workforce to establish, shape, and develop Silicon Valley and advance their own technological dominance.

During periods of economic and military crisis, the United States has sought to contain India’s growth and development and weaken Indian sovereignty. The US has never been a genuine friend of India; instead, it has repeatedly used its imperial power to restrain India’s rise. American power elites are no one’s friend. Therefore, India must remain clear-eyed and realistic while developing alliances with the US. It is a strategic illusion to expect significant gains from an Indo-US alliance.

The US is attempting to bully, pressure and trap India in various ways to join US-led alliances like QUAD (Asian NATO) as a junior partner, not only to contain China but also to limit India itself. American imperialism seeks to control Asia and its resources to maintain dominance in the global economy, often at the expense of Asian peoples and their sovereignty. By falling into this US trap, the Modi government is not only undermining India’s independent foreign policy but also creating conditions that could weaken the Indian economy and pave the way for American dominance over Asia. Racial capitalism driven by American economic power is fundamentally exploitative and hostile toward the peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and even parts of Europe.

The Indian government and the Indian people must remain vigilant against all American attempts in the form of trade deals and military alliances. The US has never stood with Indian or Asian peoples and their interests. One only needs to look at how American imperialism and its European allies have devastated Ukraine and then abandoned it in the midst of a military and humanitarian crisis, where Russians and Ukrainians are suffering directly and people across Europe are paying the price of the war on a daily basis. Similarly, American imperialism has destabiliSed Pakistan by using its military as a proxy to contain India, while also undermining the Pakistani people. The US is manufacturing conflicts and is currently involved in numerous wars and interventions around the world to sustain its imperialist system and maintain the dominance of American capitalism, which is increasingly weakening due to its own internal contradictions.

India and its current ruling regime must learn from history to understand the dangers of forming any kind of alliance with US imperialism and its capitalist system. This system is fundamentally designed to dominate, destroy, and create conditions of destitution for both people and the planet. There should be no illusions about this reality. India must revive and follow its time-tested non-aligned foreign policy strategies and its traditions to uphold its independence, while promoting internationalism based on solidarity with peoples and nations suffering under imperialist domination and exploitation.

The Modi government’s myopic attempt to engage with American imperialism is a strategic illusion. It will not protect and promote India’s economic, military, or global diplomatic interests. On the contrary, it is likely to prove disastrous for India and its people. American imperialism has often aligned itself with autocratic, reactionary, and undemocratic regimes while undermining liberal and secular democracies. The state-led, corporate-driven model of planned American capitalism and its market-centered democracy are not compatible with India’s aspirations for inclusive and democratic development. Therefore, it is essential to oppose unfair trade agreements and imperialist military alliances between India and the United States for the sake of India and Indians. India must not forget to celebrate—its historic struggles against imperialism, as well as its longstanding tradition of international solidarity with other anti-imperialist movements around the world.

Bhabani Shankar Nayak is a political commentator

4 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad

Pakistan’s military has always preferred its wars orderly: enemies legible, proxies pliable, violence narratively obedient. For decades, the western frontier complied. Militants were assets, Pashtuns were terrain, and Afghanistan was treated not as a polity but as strategic negative space — a hinterland to be shaped, managed, and periodically disciplined. What the generals never planned for — because they never do — is autonomy. Not from civilians, not from provinces, and certainly not from former clients expected to remain grateful, dependent, and silent.

What Rawalpindi now brands a security crisis is something far less dignified. It is the shock of lost control, disguised as resolve. A tantrum, armored and aerial.

The Taliban in Kabul were supposed to vindicate Pakistan’s long romance with proxy power: deferential, aligned, permanently conscious of who midwifed their rise. They were expected to outsource strategic imagination to Islamabad. Instead, they committed the unforgivable sin of client regimes everywhere. They behaved like a sovereign authority. Brutal, reactionary, and incompetent — yes — but independent. They refused instruction, rejected hierarchy, and declined the role scripted for them in Pakistan’s strategic theatre.

Nothing enrages a patron more than a proxy that stops asking permission.

Pakistan’s hostility toward Kabul is therefore not about terrorism in the abstract. Terrorism has always been negotiable. Militancy, when useful, has always been tolerable. What is intolerable is insubordination. The Afghan Taliban’s real offense is not harboring the Pakistani Taliban; it is refusing to accept that their political horizon should terminate in Rawalpindi. That refusal punctures the mythology of omnipotence on which Pakistan’s security state depends.

And so the gaze turns inward. Enter the Pashtuns — again.

Every authoritarian system eventually exhausts explanation and reaches for scapegoats. Pakistan’s establishment has chosen the population it has always known how to manage with force. Pashtuns, long racialized as suspect and governed as exception, are recast as the connective tissue between Kabul’s defiance and domestic instability. A strategic failure is collapsed into an ethnic security problem, and the remedy remains reassuringly familiar: bombard, displace, sanitize the language, repeat.

Military operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the former tribal districts are not counterterrorism in any meaningful sense. They are disciplinary performances. Villages are destroyed to restore hierarchy. Displacement is normalized as method. Civilian suffering is rendered administratively invisible through the antiseptic dialect of “kinetic actions” and “area clearance.” Violence is not merely inflicted; it is processed.

Pashtuns understand this grammar fluently. They have lived under it for generations.

What has changed is not their exposure to repression, but their tolerance for its alibis.

The Pakistani state prefers to pathologize Pashtun resistance as cultural reflex — atavistic militancy rather than political response. This fiction is convenient, because it absolves the center of responsibility. The reality is more corrosive. Pashtun regions have been subjected to a rolling experiment in securitized governance: collective punishment, economic abandonment, enforced disappearances, and episodic devastation marketed as stability. Loyalty is demanded as tribute, never cultivated as consent.

Yet political consciousness has evolved in ways the generals failed to anticipate. The appeal of Imran Khan in these regions is not sentimental; it is diagnostic. He opposed drone strikes when applauding them was elite consensus. He condemned military operations when silence was safer. He stated — without euphemism — that mass displacement is not counterterrorism, that bombing civilians manufactures militancy, and that dignity does not arrive by helicopter gunship.

This made him dangerous. Popularity among the governed is intolerable when it bypasses the governors.

The military’s resentment toward Pashtuns is therefore cumulative. It is anger at communities that refuse pacification through slogans. Anger at people who remember too much. Anger at a population that understands — perhaps more clearly than any other in Pakistan — that the language of security is often the vocabulary of domination. Pashtuns expose the limits of coercion. That exposure is intolerable.

The standoff with Afghanistan intensifies this fury. Cross-border strikes are framed as self-defense, but function politically as diversion. They convert internal legitimacy deficits into external threat narratives. Each missile becomes a press release; each funeral, a footnote.

Borders, however, are not abstractions in Pashtun life. They are colonial incisions cutting through kinship, commerce, and memory. The Durand Line has never been emotionally internalized by those who live across it, and successive Afghan regimes — monarchical, republican, Islamist — have treated it with studied ambiguity. The Taliban have not formally rejected the border, but they have refused to consecrate it. That ambiguity is deliberate, historical, and strategic.

Pakistan’s failure is not that Kabul questions the line. It is that Rawalpindi no longer has the leverage to enforce silence about it.

The Afghan Taliban no longer depend on Pakistani sanctuaries or sponsorship. They have alternatives: regional engagement, transactional diplomacy, calibrated flirtations with Pakistan’s rivals. This is not Taliban brilliance. It is Pakistani strategic exhaustion.

And exhaustion, when denied, curdles into aggression.

The Pakistani Taliban become the perfect instrument in this choreography. Their attacks justify operations; their persistence validates escalation. Cause and consequence collapse into ritual. Bomb, declare success, displace civilians, neglect reconstruction, wait for militants to return, repeat. This is not counterinsurgency. It is institutional inertia armed with airpower.

The human cost is vast and deliberately obscured. Families freezing in displacement camps are not policy failures; they are inconveniences. Children killed by errant fire are not moral ruptures; they are statistical residue. Accountability is deferred indefinitely because acknowledging it would require admitting that the strategy itself is the pathology.

What makes this moment volatile is that Pashtun grievance now intersects with national recognition. The repression unleashed after Imran Khan’s removal did not remain provincial. Punjab — long insulated from the full architecture of coercive governance — has begun to recognize familiar patterns: censorship, judicial farce, economic predation, intimidation dressed as order. What was once frontier experience is becoming national knowledge.

This convergence terrifies the establishment.

A Pashtun protest can be dismissed as peripheral. A national awakening cannot. The danger is not rebellion; it is translation. That Pashtun experience becomes legible to others. That the frontier is no longer treated as exception, but as forecast.

Hence the escalation. More operations. Harder rhetoric. Louder threats.

But each escalation reveals not strength, but panic. Each miscalculated strike exposes strategic hollowness. Each displaced family becomes evidence — not of necessity, but of collapse.

Strategic depth was meant to secure Pakistan’s future. Instead, it has produced strategic humiliation. The western frontier has become a mirror, reflecting decades of manipulation back at its authors.

And when a state begins to wage war on its own reflection, it is no longer defending sovereignty or order. It is staging a confession — armed, unrepentant, and increasingly desperate — that it has mistaken domination for durability, and force for foresight, and now lacks the imagination to do anything else.

Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan.

31 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ranjan Solomon

The renewed push for an EU–India Free Trade Agreement is being presented as a partnership between equals — a coming together of the world’s largest democracy and one of the most powerful economic blocs. The language is reassuring and familiar: sustainability, shared values, rules-based trade, ethical supply chains, green transitions. Yet behind this polished diplomatic vocabulary lies a far older structure of power. Strip away the technocratic veneer and what emerges is a trade framework tilted decisively in favour of Europe, carrying the unmistakable imprint of a colonial economic mindset — not through territorial control, but through regulatory domination.

This is not an argument against trade. It is an argument against unequal trade dressed up as cooperation.

Europe no longer rules colonies with gunboats or administrators. Its power today lies in exporting rules. The modern European Union exercises influence not through direct political control but through standards — environmental norms, labour regulations, intellectual property regimes, data protection frameworks and carbon accounting mechanisms. These are presented as neutral, universal and progressive. In practice, they operate as non-tariff barriers that favour economies already industrialised, capital-rich and technologically dominant. What scholars describe as regulatory imperialism is, in effect, colonialism without colonies — discipline without occupation.

India, still grappling with agrarian distress, informal labour, fragile manufacturing and deep inequality, is being asked to comply with standards designed for post-industrial Europe, without corresponding access to finance, technology or transition support. The historical imbalance is simply erased from the negotiating table.

The asymmetry at the heart of the EU–India FTA is impossible to ignore. Europe negotiates as a consolidated bloc of twenty-seven states, representing advanced capital, multinational corporations and entrenched control over global value chains. India negotiates as a single country with vast internal disparities, where millions survive at the margins of the formal economy. Free trade agreements are never neutral instruments; they reward those who already dominate capital flows, intellectual property, finance, logistics and technology. In this equation, India is not viewed as an equal partner but as a vast market to be accessed, regulated and disciplined.

Nowhere is this imbalance clearer than in agriculture. The European Union continues to protect its farmers through the Common Agricultural Policy, insulating them from market volatility with heavy subsidies. At the same time, Europe presses India to open its agricultural markets in the name of free trade. For India, agriculture is not merely an economic sector; it is a livelihood system sustaining hundreds of millions. Any dilution of protection exposes Indian farmers to subsidised European competition, price volatility and corporate capture of supply chains. The result is not efficiency but dispossession, not reform but rural distress. India’s caution here is not protectionism; it is an assertion of survival and food sovereignty.

Equally troubling are the demands around intellectual property. The EU insists on stronger patent protections, longer data exclusivity and stricter enforcement mechanisms, particularly in pharmaceuticals. India’s generic drug industry, however, is not just a national asset — it is a global public good. It supplies affordable medicines to much of the Global South and plays a critical role in combating diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and cancer. Strengthening intellectual property regimes to suit European pharmaceutical giants would raise drug prices, weaken public health autonomy and undermine India’s ability to act in the public interest. This is not innovation; it is the enclosure of knowledge for profit — a familiar colonial logic of extraction rearticulated through legal instruments.

Labour mobility exposes another layer of contradiction. India’s comparative advantage lies in services — information technology, healthcare, education and engineering — and in the mobility of skilled labour. Yet the European Union remains resistant to meaningful concessions on movement of people, even as it demands liberalisation of Indian markets. Capital is allowed to move freely, goods are encouraged to circulate, but workers from the Global South are securitised and restricted. An agreement that liberalises markets without facilitating mobility entrenches hierarchy and reveals the real priorities of so-called free trade.

The EU also claims the moral high ground on sustainability and climate responsibility. Environmental clauses, labour standards and carbon accounting are framed as ethical imperatives. Yet this posture is marked by historical amnesia. Europe industrialised through centuries of colonial extraction, fossil fuel dependence and ecological destruction, externalising environmental costs onto colonised territories. India is now asked to decarbonise rapidly, without having benefited from that historical carbon space and without receiving adequate financial or technological support. Mechanisms such as the Carbon Border Adjustment threaten to penalise Indian exports while ignoring Europe’s historic emissions debt. Climate responsibility is thus transformed into climate discipline.

In the digital sphere, the pattern repeats itself. Europe seeks access to India’s growing digital markets while pushing regulatory frameworks that favour established European firms. India’s efforts — however imperfect — to assert data sovereignty and regulate Big Tech are treated as obstacles rather than legitimate expressions of policy autonomy. Locking India into restrictive digital trade regimes risks reproducing technological dependency rather than fostering innovation.

At its core, the EU–India FTA is not about tariff reduction. It is about shaping India’s development trajectory. Europe seeks integration without empowerment, access without parity. India is invited into the global economy, but only on terms that preserve European advantage. This is the essence of neo-colonialism: participation without sovereignty, inclusion without equality.

If India is to engage meaningfully, it must draw clear red lines. Public health safeguards cannot be diluted. Agriculture and food sovereignty must remain protected. Labour mobility must be treated as integral to trade, not peripheral. Technology transfer and climate finance must be real, not rhetorical. Above all, India must preserve policy space to support its farmers, workers and small enterprises. Without these safeguards, the agreement risks reducing India to a consumer market and a low-cost production base.

Trade can be mutually beneficial, but only when power asymmetries are acknowledged rather than concealed. The EU–India Free Trade Agreement, as currently envisioned, does the opposite. It reproduces historical hierarchies through the language of rules, ethics and sustainability. The colonial mindset has not disappeared; it has merely adapted to the age of contracts and compliance.

India’s choice is not between isolation and integration. It is between sovereign engagement and neo-colonial incorporation. History suggests that the cost of choosing wrongly is borne not by negotiators, but by people.

Dr. Ranjan Solomon has worked in social justice movements since he was 19 years of age. After an accumulated period of 58 years working with oppressed and marginalized groups locally, nationally, and internationally, he has now turned a researcher-freelance writer focussed on questions of global and local/national justice.

30 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org