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By Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The combined tariff of fifty percent on Indian exports to the United States imposed by President Donald Trump should not come as a surprise, despite India’s undefined and directionless strategic partnership with the U.S. Indian liberals and their right-wing counterparts had celebrated this so-called strategic partnership with the United States. However, from technological embargoes to trade barriers, this steep tariff reflects a historical continuity of anti-India foreign policy pursued by the U.S. America was never, is not, and likely will never be a true friend to a developed and sovereign India. It has consistently pursued various forms of strategic foreign policy aimed at undermining India’s strength and independence. American racial capitalism and its ruling elites are fundamentally opposed to the idea of an independent and developed India.

Even the much-touted food aid under U.S. Public Law 480 (PL-480)—ironically referred to as “American 420 food supply” by some—while it helped alleviate food shortages in India during the 1950s, was also strategically designed to undermine India’s food sovereignty. By initially dumping surplus American agricultural products, it aimed to create a dependency and eventually open up India as a market for U.S. food exports. India’s response, however, came through the establishment of a universal and integrated Public Distribution System (PDS). This system not only laid the foundation for the Green Revolution but also strengthened the country’s food sovereignty, particularly with the rise of Food Corporation of India (FCI) storehouses. It played a major role for the production, storage and consistent supply for food to poor and ensuring food security for all.  The PDS ensured a minimum support price for producers, incentivised foodgrain production, and guaranteed a steady food supply to consumers, thereby promoting long-term food security. This state-led intervention ultimately countered the U.S. strategy that sought to make India dependent on American agriculture and food corporations.

The 1991 New Economic Reform programs initiated by the Congress Party were further deepened by the BJP, weakening both agriculture and food security in India by revamping and targeting the Public Distribution System (PDS). The rural agrarian crisis that India is experiencing today is a direct outcome of these reform measures implemented by both the Congress and the BJP. The fifty percent tariff on Indian exports is a bullying tactic by the American ruling class, intended to pressure India into further liberalising its agricultural sector. This would open up the internal food market to American food corporations, thereby strengthening U.S. agriculture at the expense of India’s agrarian economy and the livelihoods of its farmers and agricultural workers. So, the opposition to this American strategy is therefore essential to safeguarding the interests of the Indian working people.

America ruling classes have consistently supported illiberal and reactionary forces in Asia to undermine anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist movements, ultimately weakening the foundations of democracy in the region. It has formed alliances with authoritarian and undemocratic regimes to protect and advance its own strategic interests. The current strategy of weakening India is not new; the United States has pursued similar policies since Indian independence. American foreign policy has long aimed to destabilise Asia by promoting conflicts between nations—India and Pakistan, India and China, and even India and Bangladesh. From manufacturing terrorism and destabilising Afghanistan to backing the Pakistani military—which has repeatedly dismantled democracy within Pakistan and fuelled terrorism and hostilities with India—these actions are rooted in American imperialism. The recent imposition of tariffs reflects America’s broader intent to contain the rise of India, China, and a peaceful, cooperative, and harmonious Asia.

The American alibi of justifying the imposition of higher tariff and criticising India’s friendship with Russia—particularly its purchase of Russian oil and military equipment—is a strategic move aimed at weakening India. This is despite the fact that the U.S. itself imported goods worth approximately US$3.27 billion from Russia in 2024. While preaching that India and other nations should stop purchasing Russian goods in the name of not funding the war in Ukraine, the U.S. continues to engage in trade with Russia when it suits its own interests.

In reality, India has opposed the conflict in uncertain terms and has consistently called for a diplomatic and peaceful resolution between Russia and Ukraine. However, the Yankee imperialists in Europe, led by the United States, seem intent on prolonging the war—not to defend Ukraine, but to weaken Russia and suppress civil liberties across Europe by invoking a perpetual “extraordinary situation” caused by the conflict. Ironically, President Donald Trump, who once promised to end the war during his election campaign, is now fuelling it further to revive America’s defence industry. The American ruling elite is dragging India into this project by pressuring it to purchase U.S. defence equipments. The imposition of higher tariffs on Indian exports is part of this arm-twisting strategy, aimed at disrupting the historic and time-tested Indo-Russian partnership, which Washington views as a threat to its global dominance.

Similarly, the United States is attempting to escalate the limited border conflict between India and China by promoting the idea of an “Asian NATO” under the guise of advancing the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD). While presented as a strategy to contain China, this framework ultimately aims to control and constrain India as well. It is crucial to expose such American imperialist strategies, in which U.S. interests remain paramount in all strategic engagements and partnerships, often at the expense of regional peace, autonomy and sovereignty. India must recognize these tactics and consider bold steps—including reducing dependency on American trade and mobilising its own internal resources and diversifying its international trade—to safeguard its economic and military sovereignty, which is increasingly under threat from American geopolitical manoeuvring.

The fall of Soviet Union and weakening of Non Allied Movement (NAM) are two defining events that allows American imperialism to continue its unchecked hegemony which has destroyed stable countries, secular societies and viable economic systems in Middle East, Africa, Asia, Americas and Europe to protect US interests. The worldwide failure of capitalism and weakening of American imperialism makes American ruling elites to fall on their time tested strategy of fuelling global crisis by promoting regional conflicts, terrorism and economic warfare to reestablish itself as unchallenged global police. African, Asian, and Latin American countries are increasingly challenging American hegemony. In response, the United States is resorting to aggressive trade policies and tariff barriers to contain their economic rise. India must recognise and expose these regional strategies pursued by the U.S. while working to build anti-imperialist global alliances. Such alliances are essential not only to protect India’s own people and national interests but also to support freedom-loving, peace-seeking democratic populations across the world.

From agriculture, industry to technology, India has the capacity to mobilise its own internal resources, strengthen regional partnerships, and diversify its international business, trade and economic relations to recover from the strategic missteps and costs of aligning too closely with Yankee imperialism under the guise of a “strategic partnership.” Any compromise or surrender to American pressure will not only undermine India’s sovereignty and development but also weaken the broader global movement toward democratisation and multipolarity of world politics and economy. Therefore, India must stand firm and uphold its historic anti-imperialist legacy to protect and promote universal peace, justice, and harmony.

Bhabani Shankar Nayak is a political commentator

7 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jack Gilroy

Editor’s note: Gilroy and other activists spent weeks consulting with attorneys, finding plaintiffs for the suit and organizing demonstrations at the county jail before the flag came down.

The flag of Israel represents the greatest human rights disaster in modern history, yet has flown proudly at the Broome County Correctional Facility by order of Sheriff Akshar. His dedication to Trump’s unconstitutional actions has also made Broome County one of the leading penal camps for immigrants in New York State. 

For over 600 days the Israeli flag flew over our county jail. It was a flagrant display of a Sheriff knowingly engaging in a divisive, illegal act in violation of New York State Public Building Law.  

New York State Law forbids a foreign flag from flying over public property. The actual wording of the law states, “It shall not be lawful to display the flag or emblem of any foreign country upon any state, county or municipal building; provided, however, that whenever any foreigner shall become the guest of the United States, the state or any city, upon public proclamation by the governor or mayor of such city, the flag of the country of which such public guest shall be a citizen may be displayed upon such public buildings.”

Veterans For Peace notified Sheriff Akshar on July 29 that it would file a lawsuit if the Israeli flag was not taken down within 10 days. After 6 days he relented.

Now that the flag is down, Sheriff Akshar and county officials need to apologize to the general public. The leader of the institution that is supposed to uphold the law and claim their jail is a “correctional facility” has demonstrated the opposite by making a mockery of the law and  betraying the public trust. Sheriff Akshar, with the permission of the Broome County Legislature, has turned citizens’ property into a shameful display of acceptance of an Israeli-United States genocide in Gaza. 

The Sheriff, with Broome County officials standing by, has also made the Broome County jail a gulag, a black hole for immigrant workers wanting to be part of the “American Dream”.

Sheriff Akshar, the leading law enforcer in the county, has lost credibility by knowingly engaging in divisive, illegal conduct.  Given his partnership with ICE, an agency that willfully violates US Constitutional rights, Akshar has demonstrated his personal politics are more important than public service. He should be ashamed of his conduct and admonished for his actions. 

The first words of Sheriff Akshar in his media release following the removal of the Israeli flag showed the depth of his ignorance. 

The Sheriff said the attack of October 7, 2023 was “unprovoked”. He seems unaware that the people of Palestine have been murdered by the Israelis by the thousands for 77 years prior to October 7th, 2023. Palestinian homes have been bulldozed, their olive trees cut down, their land given to Israeli immigrant settlers, their children sent to prison for years for throwing rocks at Israeli tanks. Israe’s system of apartheid has tormented the people of Palestine for decades.  The “unprovoked” lie has been repeated over and over in the Western media. The Sheriff has been taught to believe as true the blatant lie of Israeli Zionists–and spread by “Christian” Zionists.

Sheriff Fred Akshar needs to apologize to the people of Broome for 600 plus days of flying the flag of unspeakable human rights violations, the slaughter of tens of thousands of people–all celebrated with the flag of Israel. 

Might does not make right.  Right makes might–the people of Broome County are right.

Jack Gilroy is a member of the Veterans For Peace Stu Naismith Chapter 90 and a Field Representative of VFP

6 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- A Palestinian child was tragically killed on Thursday when an airdropped aid box fell directly on him in southern Gaza. Several aid organizations have warned that airdrops in Gaza are inefficient and can kill starving civilians.

Saed Abu Younis was killed while trying to retrieve airdropped aid in Khan Younis, medical sources at the Nasser Hospital confirmed.

Days ago, a nurse was also killed after an aid box fell on him directly.

Aid groups criticise the strategy as inefficient and incapable of providing the level of food and other resources needed by Palestinians in Gaza.

The falling crates also present a risk of death or injury for Palestinians who cannot move out of their way in time.

In October 2024, Sami Mahmoud Ayyad, aged three, was killed when a parachute on an aid crate malfunctioned and fell on his tent in al-Mawasi in southern Gaza.

The World Food Programme chief Cindy McCain on Wednesday said the world cannot just continue to carry out food airdrops into Gaza given the scale of hunger because of Israel’s siege.

“We can’t airdrop our way out of an unfolding famine. Not in Gaza,” she wrote on X.

“500,000 people are starving TODAY. The only way to get food to them, at scale, is by land,” she added.

“We’re grateful for the support, but we can’t afford to wait—Gaza is out of food and out of time”.

7 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By John LaForge

This August 6 and 9 are the 80^th anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 140,000 civilians at Hiroshima[1] was the effect of jolting the city with a 60-million-degree (Celsius) explosion (ten thousand degrees hotter than the surface of the sun)[2]. Richard Rhodes, in The Making of the Atomic Bomb, explained, “People exposed within half a mile of the Little Boy fireball were seared to bundles of smoking black char in a fraction of a second as their internal organs boiled away….”[3]

The use of the atomic bombs against population centers without warning was rationalized after-the-fact using expert propaganda in the February 1947 Harper’s magazine, which transformed the burning of vast numbers of children[4] into a positive good that “ended the war” and “saved lives, and which has since become gospel truth to generations. This in spite of the front-page New York Times story about Secretary of State James Byrnes August 29, 1945, with the headline: “Japan Beaten Before Atom Bomb, Byrnes Says, Citing Peace Bids.”[5]

The pretext of “saving lives” is now known to have been fabricated. Gen. (and later President) Dwight Eisenhower, who had been Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, told Secretary of War Henry Stimson before the July 17, 1945 Potsdam Conference he opposed using the bomb because it “was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives,” according to his memoir Mandate for Change.[6] The general told Stimson, “…Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary….”

Broad declassification of wartime documents and personal diaries has made it possible to learn the facts. In one key example, Gar Alperovitz reports in The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb that the April 30, 1946 report by the Intelligence Group of the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division (“Use of Atomic Bomb on Japan”), first discovered in 1989, found “almost certainly that the Japanese would have capitulated upon the entry of Russia into the war…”[7] which occurred on August 8. Japan surrendered a week later.

Likewise, the authoritative U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluded in its official 1946 report “Japan’s Struggle to End the War”: “Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts…it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”[8]

Because the formerly secret documents show that the United States knew by the summer of 1945 that Japan was already defeated, the historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission J. Samuel Walker could report in the winter 1990 edition of the journal Diplomatic History, “The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time.”[9]

Many of the leaders who conducted the war have said the atomic bombings were needless. Winston Churchill wrote in his history of WWII, “It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell.”[10]

Adm. William Leahy, the wartime Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, wrote in I Was There, “The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”[11]

Gen. George Kenny, a commander in the Pacific theater, said in 1969, “I think we had the Japs licked anyhow. I think they would have quit probably within a week or so of when they did quit.”

Gen. “Hap” Arnold, commander of the Army Air Force, wrote in Global Mission (1949), “It always appeared to us that atomic bomb or no atomic bomb the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”

Adm. Noel Gayler, a commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific, speaking in 1987 about the atomic bombings said, “The Japanese were essentially defeated.”[12]

Likewise, Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers wrote in Reader’s Digest, “Obviously …  the atomic bomb neither induced the emperor’s decision to surrender nor had any effect on the ultimate outcome of the war.”[13] And the renown Gen. Douglas MacArthur, said, “he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb.”[14]

Even more emphatic was Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay who, as head of the 21st Bomber Command, directed the devastating incendiary destruction of Japan’s 67 largest cities prior to August 1945.[15] LeMay said at a Sept. 20, 1945 press conference, “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb.” Asked, “Had they not surrendered because of the atomic bomb?” Gen. LeMay answered, “The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”[16]

Religious, political, and cultural leaders also spoke out contemporaneously against the massacres. On March 5, 1946, the Federal Council of Churches issued a statement signed by 22 prominent Protestant religious leaders titled “Atomic Warfare and the Christian Faith,” which said in part, “We are agreed that … the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible. They repeated in a ghastly form the indiscriminate slaughter of noncombatants that has become familiar during World War II. … Both bombings, moreover, must be judged to have been unnecessary for winning the war. ”[17]

James Martin Gillis, editor of the journal Catholic World also condemned the attacks, writing: “I here and now declare that I think the use of the atomic bomb, in the circumstances, was atrocious and abominable, and that civilized peoples should reprobate and anathematize the horrible deed.”[18]

Nuclear weapons are still protected by lies like “limited nuclear war,” “deterrence,” and “low-yield warhead.” This month’s anniversaries remind us to rebel against the lies, to demand that the United States apologize to Japanese and Korean survivors and their descendants for the war crimes; to push the U.S. to abandon its nuclear attack plans and preparations; and to finally stands-down and eliminate the crown jewels and poisoned foundation of all government waste, fraud, and abuse ⸺ nuclear weapons.

John LaForge, is Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and is co-editor with Arianne Peterson of Nuclear Heartland, Revised: A Guide to the 450 Land-Based Missiles of the United States.

6 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kevin Reed

As murderous military assaults as well as death from starvation intensify, details of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan for the total conquest and annexation of Gaza are coming to light.

On Tuesday, one day after Netanyahu’s official announcement, a high-level strategy meeting was convened in Tel Aviv to finalize Israel’s military operations. According to a detailed report in the Washington Post, the meeting brought together Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. General Eyal Zamir, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Major General Itzik Cohen, head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Operations Directorate.

The central topic discussed was the practical implementation of the directive to occupy the remaining parts of Gaza not currently under Israeli control. Several military options were laid on the table, including the full encirclement of major refugee camps, followed by enhanced air strikes, drone operations and special forces raids to “liquidate remaining Hamas elements.”

Unnamed Washington Post sources present in the meeting emphasized that the Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, still home to hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians, would now be considered combat zones.

The report said Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Zamir expressed strong reservations. He warned of the risk of mass civilian casualties, further unrest in the occupied West Bank, regional spillover and the immediate endangerment of the more than 50 Israeli hostages still believed to be held in Gaza.

The sources said Zamir told Netanyahu, “We are paving the road to chaos, not security,” a statement that was reportedly met with indifference. Netanyahu, determined to press forward, told attendees, “Political leadership makes the call. The military executes the call.” Katz backed him, saying, “There will be no more hesitation. The time to neutralize Gaza entirely has come.”

While elements within the Israeli government and military remain deeply divided on this course of action, the fascist Netanyahu government has made clear it will force compliance from the IDF leadership or remove those who resist.

As one senior official told Israel’s Channel 12: “The army must fall into line. This is a matter of survival for the State of Israel.” After 22 months of Israeli genocide in Gaza, the Zionist regime is now stating openly what it has refused to admit publicly all along.

The objective is a total restructuring of the Strip under Israeli rule. It is an open-ended occupation with no exit strategy, no plan for Palestinian self-rule and a prerequisite for ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

Such a blatantly criminal undertaking would be impossible without the support of the US. Speaking on Army Radio, Israeli national security analyst Ehud Etzion made it plain: “The United States has given Netanyahu carte blanche to occupy Gaza. This is not simply diplomatic cover, this is active endorsement.”

On Tuesday, while declining to directly endorse Israel’s occupation plan, President Trump told reporters, “So Israel is going to have to make a decision… It’s going to be pretty much up to Israel.”

Also on Tuesday, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, addressed Israeli hostage families in Tel Aviv. He declared, “There won’t be a ceasefire just for a few returns. President Trump believes there needs to be an all-or-nothing agreement.”

Witkoff declared, “President Trump now believes that everybody ought to come home at once—no piecemeal deals. That doesn’t work.” He confirmed that the Trump administration had been working with Netanyahu on a new plan centered on “military resolution and political reordering.”

The Washington Post described this policy as “a maximalist stance to achieve finality,” effectively discarding the last semblances of diplomacy and civilian protection.

After Netanyahu’s declaration, the UN released a statement calling Israel’s plan to completely occupy and annex Gaza “deeply alarming.” UN human rights experts warned of “an escalated policy of population transfer, mass displacement, and permanent occupation,” clear violations of international treaties including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

“The devastation, death, hunger, and displacement of the Palestinian population—especially children—is exceptional in the face of modern law,” the statement read. The UN called for immediate cessation of offensive operations and unrestricted humanitarian access.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “Gaza is facing a humanitarian collapse with over 2 million deprived of basic food, water, shelter, fuel and medicine. An occupation will not restore peace—it will sustain violence.” However, these declarations and others are being ignored by both Tel Aviv and Washington.

Meanwhile, scenes from within Gaza continue to show a horror beyond description. In the last 24 hours alone, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed at least 80 Palestinians, per reports from Al Jazeera and the Palestinian Red Crescent. Local doctors reported mass casualties from fresh air strikes near Deir al-Balah and Rafah, including the deaths of at least a dozen aid workers and over 20 children.

Civilian populations are being intentionally targeted under the banner of rooting out “terrorist infrastructure,” with refugee camps around Khan Younis and Jabaliya shelled repeatedly in a span of just six hours.

Gaza’s Health Ministry now reports 189 deaths directly linked to malnutrition, including at least 93 children under the age of 10. These figures are believed to underrepresent the real toll, as many deaths in isolated or leveled communities go unregistered.

The core of Gaza’s hunger crisis is the Israeli government’s near-total control over the distribution of aid. Since March, all entry of humanitarian convoys has been routed through Israeli-secured corridors and processed by Israeli contractors, many of them subsidiaries of companies working under US security contracts.

The UN reports that over 1.2 million Gazans are now at immediate risk of famine. UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri told the Guardian:

Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine. So, while it’s always shocking to see people being starved, no one should act surprised. All the information has been out in the open since early 2024.

Israel is starving Gaza. It’s genocide. It’s a crime against humanity. It’s a war crime. I have been repeating it and repeating it and repeating it, I feel like Cassandra.

Visual evidence of the catastrophe in Gaza continues to be circulated globally. Over the weekend, the Guardian published an extensive collection of images taken from drones and satellites operated by Human Rights Watch and local NGOs. They show Gaza transformed into arid wasteland.

Entire neighborhoods have been flattened into pale dust, interrupted only by blackened skeletal outlines of what were once apartment blocks, hospitals, mosques, or schools. Central Gaza City resembles Aleppo at the height of the Syrian war, though in just 22 months as opposed to years.

Images show children climbing over collapsed stairwells searching f or relatives, streets submerged in rubble and United Nations shelters leveled to the foundations. According to UNRWA, 79 percent of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed, rendering more than 1.5 million Palestinians functionally homeless.

International law forbids collective punishment, starvation and forced displacement, but what Netanyahu defines as a “complete military victory” is, in practice, the coordinated destruction of an entire society through war, deprivation and occupation. With US backing, the Israeli government is not only permitted to commit these acts, but being encouraged.

Washington has vetoed multiple Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire. European powers have confined themselves to statements of “deep concern” while arms continue to be exported to Israel. Arab governments have shifted policy quietly since early 2025, choosing to privately engage with Israel on border control and refugee management.

Protests have reemerged in Tel Aviv, led this week by the families of hostages still held by Hamas. Images of emaciated hostages released over the weekend by Hamas have ignited a wave of public anger. Thousands took to the streets demanding action by Netanyahu to end the assault on Gaza.

6 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- According to the United Nations, Israel kills about 28 Palestinian children daily in Gaza, the equivalent of an entire classroom, amid intensive bombardment and a blockade on aid.

“Death by bombardments. Death by malnutrition and starvation. Death by lack of aid and vital services,” the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a post on X on Tuesday.

“In Gaza, an average of 28 children a day – the size of a classroom – have been killed.”

The agency stressed that children in Gaza are in urgent need of food, clean water, medicine and protection, adding: “More than anything, they need a ceasefire, NOW.”

[https://twitter.com/UNICEF/status/1952399722586538085]

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry on Monday, Israel has killed more than 18,430 children, one child every hour, since the start of the genocide in Gaza. At least 60,933 Palestinians have been killed and 150,027 others wounded since October 7, 2023.

“Gaza is a graveyard for children today and for their dreams,” Ahmad Alhendawi, regional director of the NGO Save the Children, said. “This is an inescapable living nightmare for every child in Gaza … This is a generation that is growing up thinking that the world has abandoned them, that the world has turned its back on them.”

According to the Ministry, at least 188 people have died from malnutrition and starvation in Gaza, including 94 children and infants, as Israel continues to block aid from entering the enclave, including food and medicine.

6 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor 

Palestinian Territory – Any escalation in Israeli military attacks, especially ground operations in the Gaza Strip, would cause unprecedented civilian slaughter and collapse the already failing humanitarian response.

The planned escalation, if carried out, would mark an unprecedented chapter in Israel’s ongoing genocide, committed openly before an international community that continues to provide political, financial, and military cover to the perpetrators. These forthcoming crimes would be premeditated, arising not from sudden developments on the ground but from a deliberate and public policy. The international community bears full responsibility through its silence and inaction, alongside the direct complicity of numerous states.

Strong indications suggest that the Israeli government intends to escalate its genocidal campaign, culminating in the full military occupation of the Gaza Strip. Over the past week, political and military actions led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have intensified, including discussions in closed-door meetings explicitly raising the option of a full-scale invasion and occupation. The cabinet has also begun deliberating executive measures to prepare for the operation.

Available data indicate that Prime Minister Netanyahu has approved the general framework of a plan aimed at seizing control of the entire Gaza Strip by force.

The planned military escalation violates international law, including international humanitarian law and the Genocide Convention. It follows months of forcibly confining over two million Palestinians to less than 15 per cent of the Gaza Strip, the systematic destruction of housing, the elimination of approximately 84 per cent of hospitals and health facilities, the collapse of over 95 per cent of water and sanitation systems, and the closure of all schools. This reflects a deliberate strategy of imposing coercive living conditions intended to destroy the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, a protected national group, within a pattern of acts that constitute the crime of genocide.

Euro-Med Monitor’s field assessment indicates that the Gaza Strip is currently undergoing the worst phase of humanitarian collapse since the onset of the genocide in October 2023. Over 90 per cent of the population has been forcibly displaced across devastated areas in repeated waves driven by relentless bombing and destruction.

Famine has escalated to the point of claiming hundreds of lives, with the entire population now facing severe food insecurity. Meanwhile, the health system has nearly collapsed due to overwhelming pressure and the depletion of medicines and essential supplies.

Israel’s plan to further escalate military operations reflects a dangerous level of brutality and underscores the impunity it continues to enjoy. Over the past 22 months, Israeli forces have committed some of the gravest crimes against Palestinian civilians, systematically stripping them of their humanity. The Gaza Strip now faces unprecedented destruction, sustained by unconditional US political and military support and widespread international complicity that has enabled these crimes to continue without accountability.

The Gaza Strip is now the most densely populated area on Earth, with nearly 2.3 million people forced into no more than 55 square kilometres, lacking infrastructure or any form of protection.

Any ground assault would inevitably result in unprecedented human casualties, particularly among women and children, who often make up over 70 per cent of the victims of Israeli attacks. This would amount to mass killing in a confined space from which civilians have no means of escape.

Since 26 July, Israel has pursued a deceptive scheme, falsely claiming improvements in the humanitarian situation in Gaza while in reality maintaining the blockade and starving the population.

Incoming aid meets less than 15 per cent of basic needs. This superficial increase is intended to appease global public opinion and reduce pressure over the unfolding famine. The greater danger lies in using this as a cover to escalate the genocide and consolidate military control over the Strip. This includes forcing civilians into detention and deportation camps in preparation for their displacement, while reshaping Gaza’s geography and demography to serve the Israeli colonial-settler project in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The involvement of several states in pro forma measures, such as increasing aid airdrops without addressing the root causes of starvation and blockade, risks providing false political or humanitarian cover for policies aimed at the destruction of the Gaza Strip and its population. An immediate review of these states’ responsibilities is essential, along with concrete measures to ensure their contributions are not used to legitimise or conceal genocidal policies. They must take urgent action to halt ongoing crimes and uphold their obligations under international law.

States must urgently push for the restoration of humanitarian access and the lifting of the illegal blockade, as this is the only way to stop the accelerating humanitarian deterioration and ensure the entry of aid, given the imminent threat of famine.

The establishment of safe humanitarian corridors under UN supervision is vital to ensure the delivery of food, medicine, and fuel to all areas of the Gaza Strip, with the deployment of independent international monitors to verify compliance and ensure the rapid rehabilitation of the agricultural and livestock sectors as part of both emergency relief efforts and long-term recovery.

All states, individually and collectively, must urgently fulfil their legal obligations to halt the genocide in the Gaza Strip in all its forms. This includes taking concrete measures to protect Palestinian civilians in the enclave, ensure Israel’s compliance with international law and the International Court of Justice rulings, and guarantee full accountability for crimes committed against Palestinians. Euro-Med Monitor also calls for the enforcement of the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued for the Israeli Prime Minister and former Defence Minister, and for their swift surrender to international justice without regard to immunity.

The international community is urged to impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel and its more powerful allies, particularly the United States, for their grave and systematic breaches of international law; these sanctions should include comprehensive arms embargoes and the suspension of all forms of political, financial, military, and intelligence cooperation. In addition, Euro-Med Monitor calls for freezing the assets of responsible Israeli, US, and any complicit EU officials, banning their travel, halting their military and security companies’ access to international markets, and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that facilitate Israel’s ongoing Western-backed crimes against the Palestinian people.

Countries with universal jurisdiction courts must issue arrest warrants for Israeli political and military leaders involved in the ongoing genocide and initiate legal proceedings to fulfil their international legal obligation to prosecute serious crimes and combat impunity. They must also hold accountable their citizens found to have committed violations against Palestinians, in line with their national and international legal obligations and within their territorial or personal jurisdiction.

Furthermore, the International Criminal Court (ICC) must expedite its investigation into crimes committed in the Gaza Strip, broaden its scope to include genocide and forced displacement, and issue additional arrest warrants for Israeli officials involved in these crimes. States Parties to the Rome Statute must fulfil their legal obligations by executing ICC arrest warrants without delay, thereby upholding international justice and ensuring accountability for grave crimes against victims.

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

6 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- At least 96 Palestinian children and infants have died from malnutrition and starvation in Gaza, as Israel continues to block aid, including food, medicine, and fuel, from entering the enclave for five months. The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed on Wednesday that the total number of hunger-related deaths is approaching 200.

In a statement, the Ministry said at least 193 have died from malnutrition and hunger since the start of the Israeli genocide in October 2023. Among them are 96 children and infants.

What We Know

Last week, UNICEF warned that Gaza faces a grave risk of famine, with one in three people going days without food.

Over 100 humanitarian organizations, including Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and Oxfam, warned that “mass starvation” is spreading across Gaza, with their colleagues in the enclave wasting away from hunger.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Gaza City has been the area “worst-hit” by malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, with nearly one in five children under five there now acutely malnourished.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are “on the verge of catastrophic hunger,” with one in three people in the enclave going days without food.

Health officials in Gaza issued a stark warning lately: Hundreds of severely emaciated Palestinians are on the verge of death, their bodies too weak to resist any longer.

The Director of Al-Shifa Hospital said hospitals are dealing with hundreds suffering from severe hunger and malnutrition. “We don’t have enough beds or medicine,” he said. “We’re seeing symptoms like memory loss, exhaustion, and collapse from extreme hunger.” He added: “We have 17,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition. This is a generation being starved to death.”

According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, over 650,000 children under the age of five face an imminent and severe risk of acute malnutrition in the coming weeks, out of a total of 1.1 million children in the Gaza Strip.

Currently, around 1.25 million people in Gaza are living under catastrophic hunger conditions, while 96% of the population is suffering from severe levels of food insecurity, including more than one million children, according to the Office.

UNRWA warned, “The Israeli Authorities are starving civilians in Gaza. Among them are 1 million children.”

Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said Palestinians in Gaza face “an acute risk of famine”.

“No one should have to risk their life to get basic humanitarian assistance,” he said.

According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) last week, two out of three famine thresholds for food consumption have been breached across most of Gaza, with acute malnutrition levels in Gaza City confirming aid agencies’ repeated warnings.

“Mounting evidence shows that widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths,” the IPC assessment maintained.

“The worst-case scenario of Famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip.”

“It’s clearly a disaster unfolding in front of our eyes, in front of our television screens,” said Ross Smith, UN World Food Programme (WFP) Director of Emergencies.

“This is not a warning, this is a call to action. This is unlike anything we have seen in this century,” he told journalists in Geneva.

The last IPC analysis on Gaza, issued on May 12, forecast that the entire population would likely experience high levels of acute food insecurity by the end of September, with 469,500 people projected to likely hit “catastrophic” levels.

Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said: “Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine. So while it’s always shocking to see people being starved, no one should act surprised. All the information has been out in the open since early 2024.”

“Israel is starving Gaza. It’s genocide. It’s a crime against humanity. It’s a war crime. I have been repeating it and repeating it and repeating it.”

Is Humanitarian Aid Reaching Gaza?

On March 2, Israel announced the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, medical and humanitarian supplies, worsening a humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians, with human rights organizations accusing it of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians.

After more than 80 days of total blockade, starvation, and growing international outrage, limited aid has allegedly been distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a scandal-plagued organization backed by the US and Israel, created to bypass the UN’s established aid delivery infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

Most humanitarian organisations, including the UN, have distanced themselves from GHF, arguing that the group violates humanitarian principles by restricting aid to south and central Gaza, requiring Palestinians to walk long distances to collect aid, and only providing limited aid, among other critiques. They have also said the model would increase forced displacement in Gaza.

Moreover, mass killings of aid seekers near and at GHF aid sites have become a grim daily reality amid chaotic scenes, as desperate Palestinians are given only a narrow window to rush for food and are targeted by Israeli forces and American mercenaries. Testimonies and evidence from US mercenaries working with GHF, as well as from Gaza civilians, reveal that aid seekers are being directly and deliberately targeted, despite posing no threat.

Palestinians in Gaza and the UN described these sites as “mass death traps” and “slaughterhouses”.

According to the UN human rights office, at least 859 people have been killed while seeking food near or at the GHF sites since the GHF began operating in late May. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said: “Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military.”

More than 514 were also killed by Israeli forces along the routes of food convoys, OHCHR added.

Human Rights Watch stated last week that Israel’s killing of aid seekers at GHF sites amounts to war crimes.

With starvation across the Strip spreading, international outcry over images of emaciated children and increasing reports of hunger-related deaths pressured Israel to let more aid into the Gaza, the Israeli military announced a “tactical pause” in military activity in some areas of Gaza which it claimed would make it easier to send in UN convoys. However, attacks and killings have been reported across most of the Strip.

A UN worker said the “last minute” aid windows may not be enough to treat malnourished children.

The UN confirmed that Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians with only a few trucks of aid having reached Gaza.

Last week, the WFP said it is not getting the necessary volumes of humanitarian assistance into Gaza despite Israel claiming it issued new measures to enable more supplies to enter the enclave.

“We have not gotten the authorisation, the permission to move in the volumes that we’ve requested,” Smith said.

Smith said the disaster unfolding in Gaza is “unlike anything we have seen in this century”, adding that it was reminiscent of famines seen in Ethiopia and Biafra, Nigeria, in the 20th century.

On Monday, the Gaza Government Media Office and aid groups confirmed that only 674 aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip since Israel announced on July 27 that it would allow the entry of aid, an average of just 84 trucks per day. This represents just 14% of the estimated 4,800 trucks required to meet minimum humanitarian needs.

It added that Gaza requires at least 600 aid and fuel trucks daily to provide for the essential needs of its health, public service, and food sectors.

The Office noted: “We confirm that there are more than 22,000 humanitarian aid trucks currently parked at the Gaza Strip crossing gates, most of which belong to UN and international organizations and various entities.”

“Engineering Starvation” in Gaza

Israel has deliberately engineered famine and chaos in Gaza, the Gaza Government Media Office said, as most of the aid trucks that entered Gaza were looted in a “systematic disorder fostered by the Israeli occupation”.

“What is happening in Gaza is a clear and deliberate model of how the Israeli occupation is consciously fostering chaos and engineering starvation,” the Media Office said, adding that aid is being intentionally prevented from reaching warehouses or intended recipients.

Gaza’s Ministry of Interior and National Security has also accused Israel of pursuing a policy of targeting its staff “carrying out their duty of securing aid trucks distributed by international organisations, preventing them from reaching those in need safely”.

It also accused Israeli forces of sponsoring “networks of thieves and thugs to seize control of aid trucks, depriving more than two million citizens of safe access and perpetuating famine in the Strip”.

“This is a blatant attempt by the occupation to absolve itself of legal responsibility for using starvation as a weapon in times of war,” the Ministry said in a statement.

This strategy forces Palestinians to travel long distances for aid, putting themselves at great risk, the statement read, adding that this has led to the “destruction of some of the aid supplies due to stampede and overcrowding”.

“Meanwhile, the occupation directly targets them and commits massacres, killing dozens daily near the routes leading to the entry of aid.”

6 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Peter Koenig 

[This article by Peter Koenig was first published by Global Research. You may read it here.]

“The US trade deal will fuel EU’s ‘deindustrialization.’” —Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov

“The European Union is no longer an economic giant, but a political dwarf.” —Russian President Putin

Europe, EU members and those who want to become EU members, a very sick aspiration, have lost all sovereignty, President Putin added.

Answering questions from reporters, President Putin said, “The European Union is no longer deciding its own politics, and a loss of economic sovereignty will follow”.

“Sovereignty plays a key role, including for economic development. It was already clear that the European Union did not have that much sovereignty. Today, it has become clear they have none. And with today’s crisis situation, it is economic losses that will follow,” Putin continued.

See this.

Full proof for Putin’s statement in more ways than just economics, is this recent dictate from Sweden to Ukraine, an EU aspirant:

“Ukraine should extend full legal protections to gay people, including same-sex marriage, as part of its bid for EU membership, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has said.”

Such is EU member interference in other members, or those who want to become members, internal matters – see this.

What about Madame Von der Leyen’s trade and import duties deal with the Deal-Maker-in-Chief, President Trump himself?

The unelected President of the European Commission (EC), Ursula Von der Leyen, agreed that almost all European imports into the United States will be charged 15% import duties, whereas no retributory taxes will be levied by the EU on US imports.

In addition, the EU has committed herself to purchase from Washington US$ 750 billion-worth of US energy which will be sold by the USA at close to triple the price offered by Russia for their natural gas. Washington and its secret services – no doubt helped by Mossad and MI6 – has also made sure, with the consensus of Germany, that no Russian natural gas will flow into Germany, by blowing up three of the four Nord Stream pipelines on 26 September 2022.

This inexpensive Russian gas was basically the lifeblood for the German, and by extension, the European economy. The EU, Germany in the first place, by accepting these “sanctions” against Russia and consenting to blowing up of the pipeline, has sealed their suicide pact with the US administration, and, of course, with the European population.

The EU-US framework trade deal, spanning three years, also includes the condition that the EU must invest US$ 600 billion in the US which will result largely in purchasing US weaponry (i) to send to Ukraine, so they can continue fighting a lost cause and losing more millions of their next generation male, and (ii) to arm herself [the EU] to fight Russia, with a total of a trillion Euro military budget, according to Ms. warmonger, Von der Leyen.

What a terrific suicide deal!

As a little consolation, these “framework deals” have little or no legal standing because they are no contracts. Nevertheless, knowing the current heads of the EU and their self-destructing minds, the EU leadership will probably do whatever it takes to stick to the deal; unless, of course, these heads of EU will be “changed” – rather sooner than later.

To be exact, though, these Trump deals, whether with Europe, Japan, China – you name it – have little meaning, other than making for sensation. But your mainstream outlets won’t tell you this.

The China-EU trade summit held in and hosted by Beijing on 24 July 2025, could have been a celebration of 50 years diplomatic relations between China and the EU bloc; an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen cooperation between the EU and China.

Instead, the EU “leadership” delegation arrived in Beijing with a US-made agenda – bickering about and accusing China of her unfair trade practices. These EU non-leaders even had the guts to call on China to “rein in” Russia. Predictably, such nonsense fell on deaf ears, and further worsened EU-China relations. The ideology behind this disastrous approach to further diplomatic and trade relations, are made in Washington.

To exacerbate the “unfriendliness”, Brussels restricted Chinese investments and levied high tariffs on Chinese manufactured electric cars, as well as barred Chinese firms from public tenders of more than five million euros.

In addition, preceding the Beijing summit, Brussels further degraded her approach to China by including two Chinese banks in her latest sanction package against Russia, and using the recent G7 summit (16 to 17 June 2025 in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada), warning about the China shock – accusing China of weaponizing trade.

For more details, see this.

After this disastrous encounter in Beijing, Europe has nowhere to go. She has locked herself into full submission, not to call it enslavement, to the United States and her Wanna-be King.

It is also clear: Europe cannot make peace – only enemies.

***

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst, regular author for Global Research, and a former Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world.

6 August 2025

Source: michelchossudovsky.substack.com

By PATRICK MAZZA

There are times when it is difficult to bring myself to my writer’s desk, when I know there is something that desperately needs to be acknowledged, but I barely have the words for it. And if I could find them, I ask myself what effect could one small voice possibly have. Is this even a meaningful process? Daily seeing pictures of children with bones sticking out of their emaciated flesh, let alone children missing limbs, while most of the western world continues support for Israel, pierces me with a sense of despair at our seeming helplessness to stop this horror.

But finally, I have to make that effort. There could be no more fitting day than this one, August 6, the 80th anniversary of the day the United States seared the Japanese city of Hiroshima with the first atomic weapon used in war, three days before the second was dropped at Nagasaki. Historians generally agree this was entirely unnecessary, that the entry of the Soviet Union into the war tipped the balance to Japanese surrender. After all, the one-day death toll in the firebombing of Tokyo had been even greater.

Now we witness events that, though it staggers belief, are even more destructive. The cumulative power of the bombs Israel has dropped on Gaza amount to six or more times that of the Hiroshima bomb, something like 90,000-100,000 tons of high explosive. The destruction is said to be the greatest of any urban area in modern history, including the Japanese cities. Now an even more pervasive weapon of starvation has been unleashed on the remaining civilian population. Famine has reached the “worst-case,” a U.N. affiliated group says. Overall deaths are often quoted in the range of 60,000, but could well run into the hundreds of thousands. Most of those who survive will experience ill effects through life, physical and psychological.

It is clearly a genocide, and though they are late in the game, Israeli human rights group B’tsalem on July 28 issued a report under the all-caps bold heading, “OUR GENOCIDE.” It concluded, “An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

The same day, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel issued its own statement. It is worth quoting at length.

“Today, PHRI is releasing a position paper that documents this assault for what it is: a deliberate, cumulative dismantling of Gaza’s health system, and with it, its people’s ability to survive. This amounts to genocide. Israel’s bombing of hospitals, destruction of medical equipment, and depletion of medications have made medical care – both immediate and long-term – virtually impossible. The system has collapsed under the weight of relentless attacks and blockade.

“Each day, dozens die of malnutrition. Ninety-two percent of infants aged six months to two years don’t get enough to eat. At least 85 children have already starved to death. Israel has displaced 9 in 10 Gazans, destroyed or damaged 92% of homes, and left over half a million children without schools or stability. It has wiped out essential health services – including dialysis, maternal care, cancer treatment, and diabetes management.

“This is not a temporary crisis. It is a strategy to eliminate the conditions needed for life. Even if Israel stops the offensive today, the destruction it has inflicted guarantees that preventable deaths – from starvation, infection, and chronic illness – will continue for years. This is not collateral damage. This is not a side effect of war. It is the systematic creation of unlivable conditions. It is the denial of survivability. It is a genocide.”

In charging Israel with destroying Gazan society by making conditions unliveable, both groups are using definitions set by the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention, one of which is, “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

This is accompanied by a general sense the worm is turning on Israel. France, Britain and Canada have announced plans to recognize a Palestinian state, though the latter two with conditions. Major figures are making statements calling for an end to the starvation campaign, including Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Keir Starmer, though the continuing shipment of arms to Israel which Trump could accomplish is not forthcoming. So his words seem to be just empty virtue-signaling.

Why did it take so long?

The general view toward these these statements is – What took you so long? Those with eyes to see have been calling it a genocide since the early days of the war in 2023 when Israel closed the Gaza borders and began mass bombing. That was obvious to Craig Mokhiber, New York office director of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, who on October 28, 2023 announced his resignation. In his letter he wrote, “ . . . the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate . . . This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine.”

Israel finally made its genocide too blatant, though words of Israeli leaders at the beginning of the war made clear their intent, a reason why the International Court of Justice in January 2024 ruled in response to a South African charging genocide that it was plausible. Finally, it is no longer possible to plausibly deny it.

Why has it taken so long? Why does it go on? I have to conclude it is because in what Israel is doing in Gaza, and under less scrutiny in the West Bank, the West is seeing the reflection of its own brutal colonial past. The mass slaughter in Gaza is no different than exterminations European conquerors inflicted in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Do we find it unbelievable that Israelis actually say kill children because they will grow up to be terrorists? Do we remember that U.S. Army Col. John Chivingtonordered all to be killed in an assault on a peaceful native camp at Sand Hill, Colorado, including children. ““Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians!…Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.” Many were such massacres, from 1600s New England to 1800s California. Coast-to-coast genocide.

And if we view using starvation as a weapon with horror, let us remember how killing the buffalo herds was central to U.S. Army strategy to defeat the Sioux and Comanche who ruled over much of the west, when it was having trouble defeating them militarily. Gen. Philip Sheridan said it was necessary “to settle the Indian question.” The same Sheridan who reputedly said, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Whether or not he really did say it, it was a widespread sentiment in the 19th century U.S. So we should not be surprised to hear similar statements from the later settler colony of Israel.

What we see today is only a high-tech version of our own history. Instead of Gatling guns mowing down natives at Wounded Knee, it is F-16s dropping 2000-pound bombs on Rafah. We are shocked to see it, because Israel is acting out in the 21st century what western nations did from the 1400s on. Israel is in many ways a throwback. The Zionist idea of a Jewish state emerged in the late 1800s at the height of western colonialism. The idea that European whites were a superior race with a right to rule over others provided an intellectual legitimacy to seizing other people’s lands and committing genocide. We hear that echoed in claims of Jewish supremacy and right to the land of Palestine. It is often based, as were western claims to hegemony, on some kind of religious claim. In the end, it is theft.

If what Israel is doing in Gaza is increasingly compared to what Hitler and the Nazis did, it is partly because Hitler was a kind of throwback himself. It is said that his great crime was to treat white Europeans the same way they treated non-white populations in the Global South. Hitler had a dream Germans would settle the steppes of Eastern Europe that way the U.S. settled the west. He was an avid fan of Karl May, a German writer of western frontier adventures, and named his train The America. Trouble was, in Hitler’s case, the indigenous had tanks and were not so easily genocided.

Colonialism is woven into our lives

If colonialism was simply a historic fact and not present in the modern world, perhaps the tide would have turned against Israel sooner. But it is a fundamental reality, so woven into our lives we are barely aware of it. I started out asking if writing about the genocide is a meaningful act in the face of monumental horror. Of course, I answer that we must all lift our voices, that our many small droplets turn into a tsunami that makes any further support for Israel unacceptable. But to add to that, I think it is this issue of the colonialism that runs through our lives that connects to what I write about here, building the future in the places where we live.

For while political colonialism largely ended in the decades after World War II, it has been replaced by a more insidious economic and cultural colonialism that continues to hold the Global South in thrall. In debt peonage that continues to hinder nations from developing their own economies, which as John Perkins wrote in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is quite purposive. In covert political manipulation that arranges coups and overthrows whenever a national leadership goes out of line. And perhaps most profoundly, in who does the work.

Jason Hickel, one of the world’s leading proponents of degrowth, the idea of reducing material and energy throughput to address the ecological crisis, is not by coincidence one of the world’s leading authorities on economic inequality. In 2024 Hickel published an article in Nature, “Unequal Exchange in the Global Economy.” The results are staggering:

“We find that, in 2021, the final year of data, 9.6 trillion hours of labour went into producing for the global economy. Of that, 90% was contributed by the global South The South contributed the majority of labour across all skill levels: 76% of all high-skilled labour, 91% of medium-skilled labour and 96% of low-skilled labour. In the same year, 2.1 trillion hours of labour went into the production of internationally traded goods (our use of ‘traded goods’ in this paper refers to both goods and services). The relative North–South contribution to the production of traded goods is similar to that of total production, with the South contributing 91% of all labour (73% of all high-skilled labour, 93% of medium-skilled labour, and 96% of low-skilled labour).”

In a 2022 article in which Hickel was the lead author, researchers found a huge portion of the economy of northern countries is extracted from the south, even in the so-called post-colonial era. The system is rigged by keeping resource prices low and finished goods prices high.

“This research confirms that the ‘advanced economies’ of the global North rely on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through induced price differentials in international trade. By combining insights from the classical literature on unequal exchange with contemporary insights about global commodity chains and new methods for quantifying the physical scale of embodied resource transfers, we are able to develop a novel approach to estimating the scale and value of resource drain from the global South. Our results show that, when measured in Northern prices, the drain amounted to $10.8 trillion in 2015, and $242 trillion over the period from 1990 to 2015 – a significant windfall for the North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. Meanwhile, the South’s losses through unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30.”

Israel’s genocide of Gaza is the immediate atrocity in our face. In the background are other proxy wars tied to western resource extraction in Sudan and Congo. Of course, we can look at the run of wars in West Asia and North Africa – Iraq, Libya, Syria, and perhaps one pending with Iran – as struggles over the control of energy and the western drive to preserve its colonial hegemony. It is all of a piece.

So what can we most meaningfully do in the face of all this, as people living in western countries, particularly the final guarantor of western colonialism, the U.S.? As I said, we can and must raise our voices against the current genocide, however small or powerless we feel we are. It is a necessity simply to be whole human beings. Then, at a broader level, we must examine deeply the role of continuing colonialism in our lives, dependent as we are on a flow of labor, resources and income from the Global South. Since much of this is tied to fossil energy, from which most global climate disruption flows, this is also vital to deal with the climate crisis. We need to get an honest living, because ours is not. It is built on centuries of colonial extraction.

The paradigm about which I write here, building the future in place, is all about building community-based economies grounded in the realities of nature, beginning in the communities and bioregions where we live. It is about local control of finance to invest in networks of community-based institutions – worker coops, local food providers, energy coops, circular economies, social housing, community broadband, etc. – that set us free from the global system of exploitation and extraction. That move us from these five centuries of colonialism to a just world for all.

With everything in us, let us push for the agony of the people of Gaza to end and for the colonial experiment of Zionism to be declared the manifest failure it is. It has not only brutalized the Palestinians; It has morally and psychologically twisted a large segment of the Jewish people, a tragic irony considering Jewish history. And at the same time, let us look at why the western world has largely gone along and supported what is clearly a genocide, understanding it as a late expression of what the western world has been pulling for a half-millennium. Then dig into the economic roots of this and our multiple, onrushing global crisis, and undertake the work of change in our own communities. It is hard to see the value in events that has caused so much suffering, but if Gaza spurs us to reflect on our own colonial past and move beyond it, and present, the many who have died will not have died in vain.

This first appeared on Patrick Mazza’s Substack page, The Raven.

8 August 2025

Source: counterpunch.org