Just International

Gaza: Red Crescent Says Recovered 15 Bodies After Israel Targeted Ambulances in Rafah

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Sunday it had recovered the bodies of 15 rescuers killed a week ago when Israeli forces targeted ambulances in the Gaza Strip.

Bodies of eight medics from the Red Crescent, six members of Gaza’s civil defence agency and one employee of a UN agency were retrieved, the Red Crescent said in a statement.

It said one medic, Asaad Nasasra, from the Red Crescent remained missing.

The group said those killed “were targeted by the Israeli occupation forces while performing their humanitarian duties as they were heading to the Hashashin area of Rafah to provide first aid to a number of people injured by Israeli shelling in the area”.

“The occupation’s targeting of Red Crescent medics … can only be considered a war crime punishable under international humanitarian law, which the occupation continues to violate before the eyes of the entire world.”

In an earlier statement the Red Crescent said the bodies “were recovered with difficulty as they were buried in the sand, with some showing signs of decomposition”.

PRCS President Younis al-Khatib condemned Israel for targeting its paramedics as they “fulfil their humanitarian mission”.

“Those souls are not mere numbers. If this incident [happened] anywhere else, the whole world would have moved heaven and earth to expose this war crime,” al-Khatib said on Sunday.

Last week, the Israeli military said that it had fired on ambulances and fire trucks – calling them “suspicious vehicles” – that arrived at a scene where it was carrying out attacks.

Hamas political bureau member Basem Naim slammed the attack on the ambulance and said the “targeted killing of rescue workers – who are protected under international humanitarian law – constitutes a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime”.

The PRCS shared images of its teams saying goodbye to their slain colleagues.

[https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1906407923489636744]

The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed in a statement that the bodies of eight paramedics were recovered today after contact with them had been lost over the previous days.

It added: “Some of these bodies were bound and shot in the chest. They were buried in a deep hole to prevent their identification.”

The ministry called on “UN organisations and relevant international bodies to conduct an urgent investigation into these crimes and hold the occupation accountable for committing them.”

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said the attack is the single deadliest attack on Red Cross/Red Crescent workers anywhere in the world since 2017.

“These dedicated ambulance workers were responding to wounded people. They were humanitarians. They wore emblems that should have protected them; their ambulances were clearly marked. They should have returned to their families; they did not,” IFRC Secretary_General Jagan Chapagain said in a statement.

“Even in the most complex conflict zones, there are rules. These rules of International Humanitarian Law could not be clearer – civilians must be protected; humanitarians must be protected. Health services must be protected,” Chapagain said.

OCHA chief Tom Fletcher said since Israel broke the ceasefire in Gaza on March 18 and resumed its war on the enclave, Israeli air attacks have hit “densely populated areas”, with “patients killed in their hospital beds, ambulances shot at, first responders killed”.

Since Israel resumed its attacks on Gaza, more than 900 Palestinian civilians have been killed in the territory, adding to the more than 50,000 killed since October 7, 2023, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Red Cross Federation ‘Outraged’ at Israel’s Murder of Red Crescent Medics in Gaza

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has condemned Israel’s killing of 14 medics in Gaza. The victims, including nine from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and five from Gaza’s civil defense, were executed and buried in a deep pit to hide their bodies. Their hands were bound, and they were shot in the chest.

Their bodies were recovered a week after Israeli forces attacked their ambulances in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood. The medics had been responding to injured civilians when they came under fire.

“I am heartbroken,” said IFRC Secretary-General Jagan Chapagain. “These ambulance workers were humanitarians. Their vehicles were clearly marked. They should have returned to their families—but they did not.”

Israel admitted to firing on the ambulances, calling them “suspicious vehicles.” It claimed Hamas fighters were inside. No evidence was provided to support the claim. Humnitarian groups insist the victims were medics performing their duties.

The IFRC demanded accountability and stressed that international law protects medical workers. “When will this stop?” Chapagain asked. “All parties must stop the killing.”

Since the war began in October 2023, at least 30 PRCS medics have been killed.

31 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Israel’s Ritual of Massacres: The Philosophy Behind Killing Palestinians on Eid

By Quds News Network

On the first day of Eid al-Fitr, Israel turned Gaza into a slaughterhouse. Warplanes bombed homes, refugee camps, and even rescue workers. At least 76 Palestinians were murdered, including entire families, women, and children.

This was not just another day of war. It was part of a pattern. Killing on Eid has become an Israeli ritual, one designed to shatter the spirit of an occupied people.

A Calculated Massacre

Among the victims, a family was wiped out in a refugee camp west of Khan Younis. In Hamad City, north of Khan Younis, Israeli bombs killed nine people, including children and women. In Juhor al-Dik, six more perished in another airstrike. Homes, already surrounded by destruction, were erased in seconds.

Even the dead kept multiplying. In al-Shuja’iya, eastern Gaza City, another strike killed more children. Two more Palestinians died in Abasan al-Kabira. Bodies were pulled from the rubble all day, but no one was left to grieve them properly—because grief itself had become too constant, too exhausting.

Slaughtering the Rescuers

Not even those trying to save lives were spared. In Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood, rescue workers had disappeared more than a week ago. On Eid morning, their bodies were found.

Israeli forces had executed 14 Palestinian Red Crescent and Civil Defense workers. Their hands were bound, their chests riddled with bullets, their bodies dumped in a deep pit to hide the evidence. The health ministry called it an “escalation in war crimes.” But was it? Or was it just the next step in a genocide where every limit is meant to be broken?

The Science of Psychological Warfare

Israeli journalist Muna Al-Omari described the philosophy behind these killings: “Israel doesn’t just kill—it kills methodically, with a deep understanding of how to break people.”

Her words capture the strategy behind Eid massacres. Killing on a holy day is not random. It is designed to make Palestinians feel that no moment is sacred, no occasion is safe. The goal is psychological: to destroy the idea that there can ever be a life beyond war, beyond occupation.

Al-Omari explained it simply: “When you kill children on Eid—children who suffered hunger, who smiled over a new pair of shoes or a bracelet—you don’t just take their lives. You take away the meaning of joy itself.”

From Gaza to Al-Aqsa: No Space for Celebration

The massacre in Gaza was not the only message. In the occupied Palestinian capital city of Jerusalem, Israeli forces stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque on Eid morning. Heavily armed officers pushed through worshippers, standing among them as a silent warning: “You will not celebrate in peace.”

Al-Omari predicted what comes next: Next year, they will fire tear gas at worshippers. The year after, fewer people will come. Then, in the future, access will be restricted, just like the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.

It is not just about violence. It is about erasing Palestinian presence, piece by piece, until nothing remains but occupation.

Hamas condemned the attacks, stressing that Israel uses the holiday to escalate its massacres, knowing that the world will look away. “What enables Netanyahu—the war criminal—to keep defying international law is the silence of the world and the absence of accountability,” the resistance movement stated.

Al-Omari described it even more bluntly: “Israel no longer waits for condemnation because it knows no one will condemn. It no longer cares about appearances because it no longer needs to.”

And so, the massacres continue. Every year, every war, every Eid.

The message is clear: For Palestinians, there will be no safe days, no sacred moments, no space to exist in peace. Unless the world stops looking away.

31 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Israeli Supreme Court decision legitimises starvation, genocide in the Gaza Strip

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – The Israeli Supreme Court’s ruling to deny a request to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip is a crucial component of a well-functioning colonial system designed to perpetrate the crime of genocide against the Strip’s people.

The ruling made yesterday (Thursday 27 March)is further evidence that the Israeli judiciary—which has never served as a tool of justice for Palestinians—functions as a part of a system in which all state institutions participate, whetherIsrael’s government, army and other security forces, military prosecution, courts, or media. All of these institutions blatantly violate international legal and humanitarian norms by committingcrimes against Palestinians, aiding in thecommission of such crimes by coordinating their activities, and/or providing a false legal cover.

The Israeli Supreme Court has explicitly and directly legitimised Israel’s illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip. This blockade has denied food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity to over two million people—half of whom are children—for nearly 18months. Meanwhile, human rights organisations have warned that Israel’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid and basic supplies into the enclave for more than three consecutive weeks has accelerated famine in the Strip and led to the deaths of infants from starvation. One of the most obvious examples of the complicity of all Israeli state institutions in the crime of genocide is the use of starvation as a declared weapon against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which has nowbeen made an official policy through a “political”decision validated by a court ruling.

To support its ruling, the Israeli court used the argument that the State of Israel is exempt from the obligations of belligerent occupation under international law in all cases pertaining to the Gaza Strip. This blatantly violates established international legal norms that are acknowledged to apply to the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It also goes against the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion and gravely breaches the ICJ rulings in South Africa’sgenocide case against Israel.

The Fourth Geneva Convention, which applies to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the Gaza Strip, is gravely violated by the Israeli court’s recent decision. The occupying power is required by the Convention to provide food and medical supplies to the occupied population. It isalso required to permit relief efforts for the benefit of these populations in the event that local resources are insufficient, and to allow for the supply of facilities, including those conducted by states or humanitarian organisations, especially those involving food aid, clothing, and medical supplies.

Euro-Med Monitor emphasises that the decision is a flagrant disregard of the rulings of the International Court of Justice in the South Africa v. Israel genocide case. In January and March of 2024, the Court mandated that Israel take prompt and decisive action to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid and essential basic services to alleviate the terrible circumstances faced byPalestinians in the Gaza Strip. In coordination with the United Nations, these measures includedproviding food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, humanitarian aid, clothing, hygiene, and sanitation needs, as well as medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians across the Strip, including by expanding the number and capacity of land crossing points and keeping them open for as long as possible.

The International Court of Justice affirmed that Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip constituted a real and immediate threat of genocide to the Palestinian people there, as well as the possibility of irreversible harm and violations of Palestinians’rights to be protected from genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The Israeli court’s rationale is therefore in direct opposition to the advisory opinion issued on 19 July 2024 by the International Court of Justice, the highest court in the world. The ICJ unequivocally affirmed that Israel’s legal obligations were not terminated by its military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, as Israel still maintains effective control over key areas of the Strip, such as the buffer zone, the land, sea, and air borders, restrictions on the movement of people and goods, and tax control. Since 7 October 2023, this control has become much more intense. As a result, Israel continues to be the occupying force in accordance with international law and is responsible for providing humanitarian aid and other necessities to the civilian population in the Strip.

The rejection of these fundamental legal preceptsby the Israeli court is not just a misreading; rather, it is a deliberate judicial intervention aimed atdenying the existence of the Israeli occupation and undermining the laws that safeguard the rights of the people who are subject to it. Viewed within the larger framework of institutional complicity that helps to enable and carry out Israel’s crime of genocide against the Palestinian people, this intervention turns the international legal system from a tool of protection into a cover for impunity.

Israel has a legal duty to the people it governs, and this duty extends beyond its legal relationship with the territory. Instead, it necessitates asteadfast obligation to uphold and defend human rights and the principles of preemptive international law under all conditions. Israel’s responsibilities under fundamental human rights conventions, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and other international instruments, extend beyond the regulations of occupation law and include duties pertaining to preventing population starvation and allowing the entry of humanitarian aid. Regardless of a state’s legal standing under international law, its effective control over a territory serves as the foundation for its legal accountability for actions that impact this territory’s residents.

The presence of a state of occupation alone does not negate the duties of an occupying power toprevent the occupied population from living in substandard conditions or from suffering from severe physical or mental injury.

Instead, these duties are enforced by preemptive standards of customary international law, such as the outright ban on crimes against humanity, such as apartheid and genocide. Whether in times of peace or conflict, these standards require all states to uphold these rights and guarantee their protection at all times.

All Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are experiencing a dire humanitarian situation, especially since Israel’s genocidal campaign of direct killings in the Strip resumed on 18 March. This occurs at a time when Israel has been using other tools of genocide against the Strip’s people for a year and a half now. These tools include starvation, blockade, deprivation of virtually all means of survival, severe physical and psychological suffering, and the imposition of living conditions that are destructive, all of which are intended to destroy the Palestinian people there.

Not only does the ongoing situation in the Gaza Strip violate Israel’s legal obligations, but it also directly calls into question all other states’adherence to their own obligations, whether these states are directly involved in the genocide or have not acted decisively to stop Israel if in a position to do so. The Fourth Geneva Convention, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and customary international law all bind these states. These regulations require states to actively work to prevent genocide and to abstain from any actions that facilitate, encourage, or open the door for its occurrence.

The international community must stop enslaving the Palestinian people to a state that is using all of its official institutions to destroy their lives, drive them off their land, and threaten their shared national identity. Given its decades-long failure to uphold international law and apply it equitably to, and without discrimination against, Palestinians, the international community is directly responsible for the disastrous reality that Palestinians face today, wherever they may be. This failure revealsthe biased foundations upon which the international system was established, as this system has deprived Palestinians of their most fundamental rights, most notably their right toexist.

All states must take up their individual and collective legal obligations and act quickly to put an end to the genocide in the Gaza Strip. They must do everything they can to protect Palestinian civilians there, i.e. enforce all necessary measures to force Israel to immediately and fully lift the blockade; permit unhindered freedom of movement of people and goods; open all crossings without arbitrary conditions; and take decisive action to protect Palestinians from forced displacement and swift or slow-motion killing. This entails launching an immediate response to address the population’s pressing and pertinent needs, such as offering suitable temporary housing for displaced people.

The international community must impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel due to its systematic and serious violations of international law. These sanctions, which willincrease pressure on Israel to stop its crimes against Palestinians, should include barring arms exports to Israel; stopping military cooperation with Israel; freezing the financial assets of officials involved in crimes against Palestinians; and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that give Israel economic benefits.

In addition to acting to stop Israeli policies that violate the most fundamental humanitarian principles and endanger the lives of millions of civilians, the States Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention should fulfil their duty under Common Article 1 to uphold and guarantee adherence to the Convention under all circumstances.

The International Criminal Court must issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials involved in international crimes in the Gaza Strip, and expedite its ongoing investigations. Additionally, the Court ought to acknowledge and specifically address Israel’s crimes as genocide. The Rome Statute’s States Parties should fulfil their legal duties to assist the Court in every way possible;make sure that arrest warrants against Israeli officials are carried out; bring these officials to international justice; and make sure to end the policy of impunity that has been granted to these officials thus far.

Along with fulfilling its legal obligations, the international community must take immediate action to end the root causes of the suffering and persecution endured by the Palestinian people forthe past 76 years: Israeli occupation and settler-colonialism in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The international community must compel Israelto guarantee the Palestinians’ right to live in freedom, dignity, and self-determination in accordance with international law; to dismantle the system of apartheid and isolation imposed on the Palestinians; to lift the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip; to hold Israeli perpetrators and allies accountable and prosecute them; and to ensure Palestinian victims’ rights to compensation and redress.

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

29 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Making America White Again-The Deafening Silence of Trump’s Black Supporters

By Clarence Lusane,

During the 2024 election campaign, candidate Donald Trump’s most controversial rally occurred at New York’s Madison Square Garden. A comedian on the program referred to the island of Puerto Rico — and by implication Puerto Ricans — as garbage. He and the Trump campaign were rightfully pilloried and called out for his disgusting bigotry.

Little notice was given, however, to another noxious racist moment at the same event. On Trump’s playlist for the rally was the Confederate and White nationalist anthem “Dixie.” Notably, that song was played as Trump loyalist and harsh defender Representative Byron Donalds (R-FL) was coming on stage. Donalds is African American and perhaps Trump’s most visible Black sycophant. While Black social media and journalists crucified Trump and Donalds over the incident, for Black MAGA supporters, the episode was simply put in the memory hole.

They were muted as well when Trump and vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance spread racist falsehoods about Haitians supposedly eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. They seemed to be the only people in the country who didn’t hear what everyone else had heard — a fabrication of stunning proportions.

Trump and MAGA’s White Nationalist Rampage

The silence of Black MAGA supporters in the face of Trump’s and Vance’s bigotry during the campaign has carried over to the second Trump era. Now that he’s president again, their voices are being quelled as his White-power, autocratic government takes shape.

The president has spent almost every day of his second term in office so far raging against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), issuing executive orders of a White nationalist flavor, attacking a federal workforce that’s disproportionately people of color, and making it clear that rolling back civil rights and Black social and education advances is one of his top priorities. Nearly every move of his has involved nods to racist themes and aims. That includes his effort to defy the Constitution and try to eliminate birthright citizenship, his mass firings and funding freezes while he vanishes DEI programs across the federal government, his plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants (of color), and even his take on the wildfires in Los Angeles and the Washington area airplane-helicopter disaster.

Trump thinks of his racialized and racist perspective on such events as “common sense.” Consider that a shield for his bias against and antipathy to science and evidence, as well as his visceral inability to see Black people and other people of color in any position of authority and expertise outside of sports and entertainment.

His vitriol against the world’s most marginalized and poor has led him to try to completely shut the door on illegal (and even legal) immigration — with a single exception. Recently, he spread his arms and opened America’s visa gates to Afrikaners, the Whites whom he (along with Elon Musk) has determined are an oppressed minority in South Africa. Falsely claiming that their lands have been seized by the South African government and that they face genocide, in an executive order he called them “victims of unjust racial discrimination.” He also wrote on social media, “Any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship.” Perhaps it’s a coincidence that Elon Musk, Trump’s co-president, who traffics in racist themes about race and intelligence online, is South African Apartheid-era born.

It must be strongly emphasized that Trump’s executive order and his multiple social posts on the subject are not only blatant lies but align with the work of South African and American White supremacists who have falsely charged that a “genocide” is indeed occurring there. And speaking of White supremacists, add to that list his decision to release the White supremacists and neo-Nazis who were among the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 (with, of course, Trump’s blessing and encouragement). With the stroke of a pen, he absolved violent and White nationalist criminals who had carried signs supporting the Holocaust and yelled racist epithets at Black Capitol police officers.

His war against Black agency has been happily joined by his MAGA allies in Congress. Representative Andrew Clyde (R-GA), for example, threatened to cut off millions of dollars in aid to the District of Columbia unless Mayor Muriel Bowser removed street art that read “Black Lives Matter” and renamed the area adjacent to it (previously known as Black Lives Matter Plaza) Liberty Plaza. Clyde claimed that the art was a “divisive slogan.” It went unmentioned that, if he genuinely wanted to get rid of divisive racial symbols, he could start at home. According to the Equal Justice Institute, Clyde’s state of Georgia is host to “more than 160 monuments honoring the Confederacy.”

Silence Is Not Golden

All of this is part of Trump’s lawless and corrupt war on democracy and the strategic divisiveness that is both his brand and his currency. The convicted-felon-in-chief’s usurpation of power has been as shameless as it is brazen, as he attempts to impose a government that could be characterized as racially authoritarian. In fact, racism should really be considered the central characteristic of Trump 2.0.

And what has been the response of Black Republican members of Congress to such behavior? Where is the pushback from his (once upon a time) only Black cabinet member, former HUD Secretary Ben Carson? Has there been any reaction from Snoop Dogg, Nelly, or other pro-Trump rappers who claim affinity with the Black grassroots? The answer, of course, is not a peep. Most have run for cover, pretending that Trump is not who he has always been: a serial racist attempting to reshape the nation into a far-right, anti-democratic, White, Christian nationalist stronghold.

Some of his prominent Black acolytes have, in fact, gone on the record opposing “equity” and DEI in general. Byron Donalds, for example, says he has issues with “equity” because it puts a person’s demographic ahead of his “actual qualifications.” It should be noted that, during the 2024 campaign, Donalds, whom Trump was then supposedly considering as a vice-presidential candidate, stated that the Jim Crow segregation era hadn’t actually been so bad because “the Black family was together” and “Black people voted conservatively.”

But qualifications or even competency are not really the issue. As New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote, “Donald Trump does not care about merit.” It couldn’t be plainer or simpler than that. In late February, with the encouragement and full support of Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump fired Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., from his position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There is little doubt that Trump got rid of him because he was Black and had been outspoken on issues of race and inclusion. Hegseth accused him of having a “woke agenda.” Brown, a four-star general, is to be replaced by Dan Caine, who, you undoubtedly won’t be shocked to learn, is White and a three-star general.

On the rare occasions when Black MAGA denizens have actually addressed the president’s pathological drive to resegregate the country, it has been to protect him and his policies from criticism. The Black Conservative Federation (BCF), for example, issued a statement, riven with White House talking points, defending Trump’s (probably illegal) federal funding freeze, even as it was being condemned broadly by so many, including some of his Republican allies. Echoing Trump, it stated without evidence that the freeze would do no harm to programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Medicare, and Social Security while ignoring the massive negative impact it was going to have on Head Start, Medicaid, and other programs. To the BCF’s embarrassment, the president was forced to rescind the order 48 hours after it was issued.

Their one-sided loyalty to Trump knows no bounds. Last year, BCF created and presented him with the “Champion of Black America” award at their gala. And that was no joke. He gleefully accepted the award while making awkward racial remarks to the mostly White crowd. The BCF also held an inauguration event for him with tickets ranging in price from $5,000 to $100,000 dollars, which, according to the group, was soon sold out.

The BCF declared on its Facebook page that it is proud to celebrate Black History Month (BHM) and encourages everyone to “celebrate the rich tapestry of contributions made by African Americans throughout history.” Yet there was not one word addressing the cancellation of BHM events at numerous departments across the federal government following the orders of the nation’s White-supremacist-in-chief to quash DEI and any programs that seemed related to it. The Defense Department issued a memo declaring “identity months dead,” while the Transportation Department gleefully announced that it “will no longer participate in celebrations based on immutable traits or any other identity-based observances.”

Far-right political scientist and Trump booster Carol Swain, best known for the Islamophobic rant that forced her to leave her tenured position at Vanderbilt University, wrote a mumble-jumble article hailing his attack on DEI. Although like some other Black conservatives she benefited from affirmative action, she now wants to pretend that DEI is an evil distortion of civil rights. She advocates for the neutral language of “nondiscrimination,” “equal opportunity,” and “integration,” suggesting that they are acceptable conservative values unlike “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion.” She seems pathetically unaware that Trump has no love for civil rights, voting rights, or affirmative action.

Out of Touch with the Black Majority

It must be noted that Black MAGA is overwhelmingly out of sync with the Black community in general. In large numbers, African Americans support DEI, affirmative action, and other hard-won programs that provide opportunities historically denied thanks to racial prejudice and discrimination. Black opposition to Trump is not just due to the racist slander and bile he now aims at people of color, but also to a well-documented history of bigotry. His long record of housing discrimination and advocacy for voting suppression flies in the face of the Fair Housing Act and the Voting Rights Act of the 1960s, signature victories for the civil rights and Black power movements that Trump and his Black supporters now disparage.

Trump garnered only single-digit support from Blacks in his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. Despite an effort to scam Black voters with Trump-created Black groups and false claims of surging Black support, he won only six percent of the Black vote in 2016 and eight percent in 2020.

In the 2024 election, Trump won between 13% and 16% of the Black vote. This was a rise from, but not a great leap above, that eight percent (documented by the Pew Research Center) in his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.

More recent data shows Trump rapidly losing whatever Black support he had. A YouGov and the Economist poll in February found that only 24% of Black Americans approved of Trump’s job performance so far, while about 69% disapproved. In that poll, White approval was 57% and Hispanic approval 40%.

Denied a Role in Trump’s New Administration

In the new Trump administration, Black Republicans have essentially no perch from which to speak out (even if they wanted to). Trump has one African American in his cabinet, HUD Secretary Scott Turner, as was true with Ben Carson in his first term. Both were ghettoized at HUD. And Turner has recently bent the knee and essentially surrendered HUD to Elon Musk’s rampaging “Department” of Government Efficiency. Turner, in fact, even formed a DOGE Task Force that will certainly lead to staff cuts at HUD (but no guarantee whatsoever of any savings). In the meantime, HUD canceled $4 million in DEI contracts.

Trump also nominated former football star and disastrous Senate candidate Herschel Walker to be ambassador to the Bahamas. Walker, who had to be chaperoned to interviews during his 2020 Senate campaign by Senator Lindsey Graham and others due to his striking inability to make it through an interview without numerous gaffes, has no qualifications whatsoever to be an ambassador.

While some of Trump’s Black supporters have grumbled privately about being ostracized and marginalized, they dare not speak out publicly or demonstrate anything less than 100% fealty. And they are hardly the only Blacks suffering job losses because of Trump.

His goal to get rid of tens of thousands of federal workers will have an immediate impact on the economic and social health of the Black community. After all, African Americans constitute a disproportionate number of federal workers, a key area of employment that helped build the Black middle class. While African Americans constitute about 12.5% of the population, they are about 19% of the federal workforce. And being central to DEI, they are essentially guaranteed to be first on the chopping black.

Yet Black MAGA gathered for a Trump-led Black History Month celebration at the White House, clearly unphased by the irony of such a grim Saturday Night Live-style moment. Like his previous BHM events, it was, of course, mostly about Trump. Some of his favorite old and new Black sycophants were there, including far-right Christian activist and niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., Alveda King; golfer Tiger Woods (rumored to be dating Trump’s ex-daughter-in-law); HUD Secretary Scott Turner; Senator Tim Scott; and Trump youth organizer C.J. Pearson.

In an interview, Pearson stated that “President Trump’s anti-DEI policies aren’t promoting racism but what they are doing is manifesting the dream of the great Martin Luther King, Jr.: a nation where one isn’t judged by the color of their skin but instead by the content of their character.” Pearson was making this claim while, across the federal government, departments and agencies were canceling Black History Month celebrations and “identity” events.

As the crowd drank wine and ate snacks, neither Trump nor any of the attendees mentioned the elephant in the room: the president’s savage anti-DEI campaign.

Unless there is organized and mobilized political resistance, President Trump will continue to throw racist tantrums and engage in dangerous, even potentially disastrous, racist policies for the next three years and 10 months while Republicans, including Black MAGA types, stand by in a distinctly cowardly fashion. And count on one thing, as is likely to be true of so many other aspects of Donald Trump’s policies: their capitulation will not age well.

Clarence Lusane, a TomDispatch regular, is a political science professor and director of the International Affairs program and majors at Howard University, and Independent Expert to the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance.

28 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

CODEPINK Statement Regarding The Recent Defamation of Peace Activists and Unconstitutional Attacks on Students

By CODEPINK

Trump Administration allies, along with their bipartisan co-conspirators in Congress, are actively undermining and rendering useless the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This week alone, they have repeatedly defamed our women’s peace organization, claiming we are funded by or take orders from foreign governments or groups like Hamas. The false accusations, given under oath, that claim CODEPINK and other organizations are funded by a foreign government are laying the groundwork for shutting down civil society organizations – and not just ours. CODEPINK is in Congress every single day, calling for peace, elevating the popular demands of the American people, and educating the public on war and militarism. Because we are loud and effective, they are attacking and trying to silence us with smears and intimidation. We do not believe they will stop at us.

These attacks come as the Trump administration target students who’ve spoken out against the genocide in Gaza. Secretary Rubio and President Trump are extrajudicially revoking student visas and attempting to deport any student they wish, without any due process. Their crime? Disagreeing with the U.S. government’s support for genocide. Students are being kidnapped by masked officers in broad daylight – that should sound the alarm for every American who might openly disagree with President Trump.

These gestapo-like tactics and McCarthyist smears of peace organizations are leading the country down a dark path of unchecked fascism and dictatorship. Between the intimidation of peace groups and blatant attacks on students,every person in the U.S. should stand against this repression – or prepare to face it themselves down the line. Individuals may not like CODEPINK or our messaging around Palestine or China, but that doesn’t exclude them from repression if they let the Trump Administration set this precedent. If they disagree with him on anything at all, they may face the same smears and repression we have. After the groundwork is laid, it’s only a matter of time.

To be clear: CODEPINK is not funded by any foreign government. Protesting war and genocide is not supporting terrorism. Not only are they lying, they are defying the U.S. Constitution to muzzle the burgeoning student movement.

The slanderous statements made by elected officials can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those being lied about, as well as their friends and family. It appears that the United States government is not only committed to waging war abroad, but it is also intent on waging war domestically against U.S. citizens and non-citizens, both of which are also protected by the Constitution.

It is not a coincidence that both Senator Cotton and Secretary Rubio referred to peace activists and students as “lunatics” – they have clearly received their talking points. However, what is actual lunacy is how those elected to serve the American people are ignoring the fact that a majority of Americans do now want wars or war crimes being carried out in our name.

28 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Trump’s Game Plan for Occupied Palestine: Forced Dispossession and Annexation

By Richard Falk

[Prefatory Note: The post below was published in a modified form as an opinion piece by the Andalou Agency in Turkey on February 27 with the title Trump’s Riviera Proposal for Gaza’s ‘Day AfterTrump’s brazen imperial outreach, articulated with neither qualifications, embarrassment, nor some claim of benevolence. In similar evasions of  the sovereign rights of Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Mexico Trump early in his second term as the US President has shaken the stability of the Westphalian world order, at least as it emerged from World War II..

This rebirth of overt Western imperial expansionism seems part of a geopolitical shakeup that looks also to bypass the long Atlanticist partnership with  Europe, denigrates alliance diplomacy, implements anti-immigrant exclusionary policies, as well as pursues a regressive form of economic nationalism that wields tariffs as a weapon and tacitly aspires to be a market-driven economic superpower that either challenges or eclipses a state-guided Chinese economic superpower, while these rivals each engage openly in anti-democratic patterns of domestic governance.

Against this background, the removal of the rubble and the people of Gaza and in their place  create a new fantasy playground for affluent (and insensitive) tourists is a metaphor for the crassest imaginable human sensibility that avows banishing a people decimated by genocide from their homeland, a shock display of human cruelty when empathy is absent and greed takes over. However enacted, Trump’s plan inflicts a permanent punishment on the survivors of the Gaza death camp in collaboration with the main perpetrator of a transparent genocide.

The wider Trump plan for Palestine can be summed up in a single word: erasure. it was recently signified by the mandatory US adoption of the biblical name for the West Bank long in use in Hebrew discourse within Israel–Judea and Samaria. This together with other signals from Washington suggesting that Israel’s annexation of part or even all of the West Bank would be endorsed by the US Government in defiance of the international and UN understanding of the legal and political status of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).]

 

The US President, Donald Trump, surprised the world with his proposal for the reconstruction and development of Gaza after the Israeli genocide subsides. The main features of the plan were forced transfer of the surviving Palestinian population to foreign countries and the takeover of the Gaza Strip by the United States to manage the formidable reconstruction effort, with financing mainly extracted from the Arab governments in the region, especially the rich Gulf countries, as the price of sustaining the geopolitical protection services provided for decades for regimes isolated from their own citizenry. As the Saudi ruler, Mohamed bin Salman put it succinctly some months ago, “I don’t care about the Palestinians, but my people do.”

Since its issuance on February 4, 2025 at a White House press conference at which Trump was standing next to the visiting Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the global response to the plan was largely one of shock unaccompanied by awe. Even the Israelis seemed initially puzzled by how to respond, Netanyahu displaying a soft form of support, likely pragmatically driven, for the general contours of the proposal, but with an explicit endorsement only of its most objectionable feature–the clear commitment to the ethnic cleansing of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza, which currently numbers over two million severely traumatized Palestinians. How could it be otherwise? To date, Israel has officially refrained from responding to the real estate and imperial aspects of the plan, that is, this bizarre vision of a Middle Eastern Riviera and an imperial US grab of land over which they had neither a prior claim nor a present connection.

From the perspective of human rights and international law population transfer was the characteristic of the plan that unsurprisingly generated the most opposition, first of all from the Palestinians, but also from persons and governments of minimal conscience all over the world. A weak form of justification was offered by Trump and his most loyal supporters, mainly in the US, in the form of insisting that no approach to Israel’s Gaza problem has previously had worked, so it was time to try something different. Yet an outlandish, one-sided proposal that serves Israel’s interests by depopulating the Occupied Palestinian territory in a manner that would exceed the largest and most dramatic previous forced removal of Palestinians since the nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 when upwards of 750,000 Palestinians were coerced and terrorized to leave their homes, many soon to discover that their villages were being demolished, and learn that their right of return bestowed by international law and human decency was to be forever denied.

These days Palestinians disagree about whether this phase of massive ethnic cleansing should be treated as a second nakba or the nakba be viewed as a continuous process of the denial of the most basic rights of the Palestinian people and is continuing. It commenced in 1948 (or earlier) and continues into the present, denominated by Ilan Pappe as ‘incremental genocide.’ Both perspectives have merit. A focus on the most traumatic events is illuminates the high points of oppression and abuse while giving attention to the continuity of abusive denial of rights in apartheid structures and genocidal policies and practices of the Israel occupation also captures the essence of the Palestinian narrative of ethnic repression, exploitation, and resistance in their own homeland.

No abuse is more continuous in this tragic history of the Palestinian people than is the denial of their most basic right of all, the right of self-determination, a legal entitlement of all peoples, enshrined as common Article 1 in both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights that both entered into force in 1966, and were preceded by expressions of international consensus that stressed the affirmation of a right of resistance against colonial rule that included armed struggle.

It is also significant that the UN, often the target of Israel’s defamation due to its record of symbolic support of Palestinian rights over the years, was itself responsible for a crucial denial of Palestinian human rights by its proposed solution of the emergent struggle for the future of Palestinian in 1947 by way of decreeing partition of mandate Palestine, which amounted to a continuation of British colonizing tactics of ‘divide and conquer.’ The Zionist movement accepted the partition proposal, as set forth in General Assembly Resolution 181, while the Arab governments and the representatives of the Palestinian people rejected it leading to the 1948 War. Such a division was to be expected as all along the Zionist Project was opportunistic in taking what it could get in various political climates but never abandoning its ambition to have all of Palestine. The Palestinian refused to go along with a sequel to the quasi-colonial administration of Palestine after World War I that was couple with the British pledge in the Balfour Declaration to support the Zionist Project at least to the extent of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It is important to recognize that this encroachment on Palestinian basic rights preceded by more than a decade the rise of Hitler in Germany.

This tactical ploy by the leadership of the International Zionist Movement of pretending to be satisfied by an improvement of their position in relation to their goals was a master stroke of international public relations. In this sense ‘partition’ was an improvement on the UK colonialist Balfour Declaration that pledged support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine but not a state, while partition offered the Jewish people a state of their own. From a Palestinian perspective the UN was furthering the colonialist goals of Britain, which sought to neutralize Palestinian nationalism by the counterweight of Jewish immigration, and its competing nationalist vision, which indeed backfired by producing a Zionist phase of anti-colonial struggle seeking the removal of British hegemonic presence in Palestine under the guise of being the mandatory power with a supposed ‘sacred trust’ from the League of Nations to promote the wellbeing of the people under its protective control.

Trump’s proposal is an extremist version of this practice of denying Palestinians any agency over their own future as a people or a nation. The initiative issuing from the White House presumes an imperial prerogative and a reminder that Orientalism persists in the 21st Century here taking the form of self-proclaimed superior Western civilizational management and entrepreneurial skill when if comes to global problem-solving. As if to be unashamed of such an approach Trump makes not the slightest claim that he has consulted with respected Palestinian leaders or even sought genuine Arab or Turkish advice, much less their overt endorsement, although he did claim with evidence or concrete references enthusiasm for the plan among those had previously discussed these intentions.

The only possible saving grace is to suggest that this is an application of Trump’s preoccupation with deal-making in international relations. Seen in this transactional light, he purpose of the Riviera proposals is to agitate other political actors to put forward alternative plans of their own. It was not so implausible as it might at first seemed. The Gulf governments held a meeting prior to an Arab Summit in Cairo with Gaza on the top of the agenda, both in relation to assuming some economic responsibility for restoring viability to the social existence in the Gaza Strip and offering to allow substantial number of Gazans to be transferred to their respective countries. Even if this dynamic produces a more plausible plan for Gaza its evolution seems to exclude Palestinian participation or consent, and if anything, will likely stir a new cycle of militant resistance. The Palestinian people, more generally, have suffered too severely and too long to swallow an arrangement devised by others that does away with its long deferred legal and moral entitlement to self-determination, although it is wrong to be too sure, given the deep trauma, the extension of genocidal tactics to the West Bank and several of Israel’s neighbors, and an undoubted Palestinian ‘realism’ in adjusting to the obstacles standing in the way of liberation.

Subtly embedded in the Trump proposal are valuable ‘get out of jail’ cards for Israel. It is notable that Israel is not even held accountable for reparations or bearing any of the economic or ecological burdens of the multiple challenges of social reconstruction in Gaza, much less are Israeli leaders made accountable for the commission of genocide and related crimes. Instead, the core perverse idea prevails in the West that the victims should pay for the crimes of the perpetrators, yet again prolonging the underlying injustice inflicted for more than a century on the Palestinian people, and certainly not acting in accord with the moral imperatives of law. human dignity, and justice, or even the prudential virtues of regional stability. If anything resembling the Trump Riviera Plan becomes the sequel to the Gaza Genocide, it will most likely produce a range of Palestinian resistance strategies, including forms of armed struggle. Despite the dark shadows hovering over the current situation of the Palestinian people, either long confined to refugee camps or now traumatized by genocidal agendas of forced dispossession, including in the West Bank, the future of Israel is not assured, nor is the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination foreclosed.

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years.

28 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Houthi missiles, Trump and the Israeli depth

By Dr Marwan Asmar

The Houthis are firing at the heart of the Israeli depth. The military escalation is increasing despite US President Donald Trump’s warning that the Yemeni group, also called Ansar Allah, are set to be destroyed. But there is no proof of that as yet!

Ever since Israel restarted its military campaign on Gaza on 19 March, exactly two months after it ceased its military operations on the enclave, the Houthis reinitiated its trajectories, drones and hypersonic missiles on Israel. It adopted an eye-for-eye point of view — that as long as Israel stops humanitarian aid to Gaza, Houthi missiles would continue on the Zionist state.

The latest Houthi ballistic missiles were fired Wednesday during the day, a first-time shocker for these trajectories are delivered in the middle of the night. It was reported by the Hebrew media that millions hurried to underground shelters where sirens went off in 250 cities, towns, and settlements to the chagrin of many Israelis whose lives were turned upside down in the war on Gaza.

Wednesday will be remembered as a hard day for many as the ballistic missiles, which according to the Israeli army were intercepted and shot down from the air by counter trajectories. Such a series of Israeli military actions sent an intense amount of debris hurling down across a wide area of central and southern Israel including in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Analysts are saying it’s back to the old days of attempting to readdress the strategic equilibrium of Houthis and Hezbollah missiles targeting the Israeli depth. While Hezbollah is on the border with Lebanon, the Houthi missiles, and their success in reaching their targets, were fired all the way from Yemen, 2000 kilometers away into Israel.

This time, and like before during the course of 2024 where hundreds of trajectories were fired on the Zionist entity, the hypersonic missile was meant for the Ben-Gurion Airport, a busy hub for international travelers. Because of the timing of the trajectories it was reported that a significant number of the incoming planes had to be diverted and re-routed to Larnaca in Cyprus as a stopover and wait for the calm to set in.

Again this is a first-time development because the disruption usually lasted for no more than 30 minutes whilst this time around it paralyzed the airport and its aviation systems and meant to send a Houthi signal to the Israelis and their American allies especially, that this would be the status quo from now on unless the onslaught on Gaza is stopped and humanitarian aid allowed in the enclave.

Today, the incoming missiles on the different parts of Israel have been almost daily, at least for the last one week. This is seen as a signal that a new and forceful strategic approach is being adopted by the Houthis who are daring the Americans despite their daily military strikes on Yemen that Israel would continue to be a legitimate target.

The American navy through its USS Harry Truman destroyer in the Red Sea is striking Yemen with such force and vehemence whilst assuring the Israelis that they will do the job and end the Houthi presence.

But this is not having the military affect the Americans would like it to have for Yemen is a big country with its harsh setting and difficult geographical terrain that makes such strikes seem like ‘bee stings” rather than painful blows. On Tuesday, the US struck different locations in Yemen 17 times and before that the strikes were carried out with the same level of intensity.

But the Houthis are not being brought to their knees, a proving fact that has cost the preceding Biden administration an estimated $2 billion to attempt to rein in the Houthis but with no apparent success despite the level of destruction inside the country for Yemenis, across-the-board, and not just the Houthis, have proven to be a formidable force over the years.

It’s still too early to see for how long Trump will follow in the footsteps made by former US president Joe Biden. This is bearing in mind that the new man in the White House doesn’t like to spend US money and therefore will likely lose steam as the days pass bye and especially because the Houthis started to target the US destroyer and any other ships going to Israel with the group determined to continue to upset the international trading system unless there is a reprieve on Gaza.

Dr Marwan Asmar  is a writer based in Jordan and the above analysis appeared in crossfirearabia.com

28 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

82% of Aid Movements in Gaza Denied by Israel Amid Suffocating Blockade, Says OCHA

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has said that 82 percent of humanitarian aid movements in Gaza were denied by the Israeli occupation between March 18 and March 24.

OCHA said on Wednesday that 40 out of 49 attempts by humanitarian organizations to coordinate their movements with Israeli occupation between 18 and 24 March faced access denied, adding “tasks as critical as picking up essential supplies or refueling bakeries are effectively blocked.”

Five out of seven such attempts were denied on Monday and six out of nine were rejected on Tuesday, OCHA explained.

It has now been three and a half weeks since Israel imposed a total blockade on all aid to Gaza, including food, fuel, and medicine, pushing the entire population to the brink of famine amid widespread condemnations and accusations of using starvation as a weapon of war.

The Israeli decision to ban the entry of humanitarian aid and any other supplies via all land crossings into Gaza is the longest such closure since October 2023, OCHA added, warning that gains made during the ceasefire to support survivors “have been reversed”.

Medical teams in Gaza are also exhausted “and urgently need protection and reinforcement” from ongoing Isareli strikes across the Strip, OCHA said on Wednesday.

It cited new reports of attacks against health workers, ambulances and hospitals and warned of “hundreds of casualties, a severe drop in medical stocks and a lack of equipment, blood units and personnel” since the ceasefire ended.

“No one is safe. The world must have zero tolerance for atrocities,” the UN agency insisted.

Nearly 800 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in recent days following the resumption of Israeli bombardment on 18 March, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

In just the last week, eight aid workers have been killed in Israeli attacks in the enclave, bringing the total killed in Gaza to 399. That number includes at least 289 UN personnel, OCHA said, with staffers from the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) killed last Wednesday in an apparent Israeli tank strike on a UN compound in Deir al-Balah that also seriously wounded six others.

WCK Volunteer Killed in Israeli Attack in Gaza

World Central Kitchen confirmed that one of its volunteers in Gaza was killed after an Israeli airstrike hit the area near one of its kitchens during meal distribution on Thursday.

“Our hearts are heavy today,” the organisation said, mourning the loss.

The attack also left six others wounded as Israel’s relentless bombardment continues to devastate humanitarian operations in the besieged territory.
“Jalal was tragically killed and six other people were injured,” WCK said.

“We will continue to support community kitchens throughout the region and operate our field kitchens where possible, based on daily assessments,” added the group, founded by celebrity chef José Andrés. “We hope for peace for all and a lasting ceasefire.”

Andrés reposted the message, adding, “The people of Gaza must have a future free of Israeli attacks against civilians, humanitarians, children……just as the people of Israel deserve to live without fear of terror and attacks by Hamas…. Enough…Let’s build peace….lets free the hostages ,let’s restart a ceasefire and let free flow of the humanitarian aid again… and start hoping of a better tomorrow.”

This week’s strike came less than a year after an Israeli strike killed seven of WCK’s volunteers on April 1, 2024.

About a week ago, the UN confirmed that one of their international aid workers was killed by an “explosive ordnance” at the UN guesthouse in central Gaza, and five others were injured. The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza blamed the attack on the Israeli military, which the military denied, claiming it had not conducted an airstrike in the vicinity of the guesthouse. However, a CNN investigation revealed Israel’s involvement in the attack, confirming that weapon fragments found at the scene match the M339, an Israeli tank projectile.

The situation for humanitarian workers in Gaza continues to deteriorate. Farhan Haq, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, confirmed that at least 280 UN employees have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s genocide started on October 7, 2023.

Since March 18, Israel has intensified airstrikes across Gaza, killing and injuring hundreds. Despite a ceasefire agreement brokered in January, Israeli forces have resumed attacks, further deepening the suffering of civilians.

28 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Can We Exit from a World of Debt?

By Vijay Prashad

In the past two decades, the external debt of developing countries has quadrupled to $11.4 trillion (2023). It is important to understand that this money owed to foreign creditors is equivalent to 99% of the export earnings of the developing countries. This means that almost every dollar earned by the export of goods and services is a dollar owed to a foreign bank or bond holder. Countries of the Global South, therefore, are merely selling their goods and services to pay off debts incurred for development projects, collapsed commodity prices, public deficits, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the inflation due to the Ukraine war. Half the world’s population (3.3 billion) lives in countries that allocate more of their budget to pay off the interest on debt than to pay for either education or health services. On the African continent, of the fifty-four countries, thirty-four spend more on debt servicing than on public healthcare. Debt looms over the Global South like a vulture, ready to pick at the carcass of our societies.

Why are countries in debt? Most countries are in debt for a few reasons:

  • When they gained independence about a century ago, they were left impoverished by their former colonial rulers.
  • They borrowed money for development projects from their former colonial rulers at high rates, making repayment impossible since the funds were used for public projects like bridges, schools, and hospitals.
  • Unequal terms of trade (export of low-priced raw materials for import of high-priced finished products) further exacerbated their weak financial situation.
  • Ruthless policies by multilateral organisations (such as the International Monetary Fund – IMF) forced these countries to cut domestic public spending for both consumption and investment and instead repay foreign debt. This set in motion a cycle of low growth rates, impoverishment, and indebtedness.

Caught in the web of debt-austerity-low growth-external borrowing-debt, countries of the Global South almost entirely abandoned long-term development for short-term survival. The agenda available to them to deal with this debt trap was entirely motivated by the expediency of repayment and not of development. Typically, the following methods were promoted in place of a development theory:

  1. Debt relief and debt restructuring. Seeking a reduction in the debt burden and a more sustainable management of long-term debt payments.
  2. An appeal for foreign direct investment (FDI) and an attempt to boost exports. Increasing the ability of countries to earn income to pay off this debt, but without any real change to the productive capacity within the country.
  3. Cuts to public spending, largely an attrition of social expenditure. Shifting the fiscal landscape so that a country can use more of its social wealth to pay off its foreign bold holders and earn ‘confidence’ in the international market, but at the expense of the lives and well-being of its citizens.
  4. Tax reforms that benefited the wealthy and labour market reforms that hurt workers. Tax cuts to encourage the wealthy to invest in their society – which very rarely happens – and a change in trade union laws to allow greater exploitation of labour to increase capital for investment.
  5. Institutional reform to ensure less corruption by greater international control of financial systems. To open the budgetary process of a country to international management (through the IMF) and allow foreign economists to control the fiscal decision-making.

Each of these approaches separately and all of them together provided no assessment of the underlying problems that produced debt, nor did they offer a pathway out of debt dependency.

Effectively, if this is the best approach available, then developing countries need a new development theory.

A New Development Theory

It is by now understood that the entry of FDI and the export of low-priced commodities do not by themselves increase the gross domestic product (GDP) of a developing country. Indeed, FDI – in an age of financial liberalisation and without capital control – can create enormous problems for a poor country since the money can operate to destabilise the economy. The latter requires long-term investments rather than hot-money transactions.

Research by Global South Insights (GSI) and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research shows that it is not FDI that increases GDP over long periods, but that there is a high correlation between an increase in net fixed capital investment and GDP growth (net fixed capital investment is the increased spending on capital stock above depreciation). In other words, if a country invests money to increase its capital stock, it will see a secular rise in its growth rate. That is the reason why countries such as China, Vietnam, India, and Indonesia have sustained high growth rates in a period when most countries (illustratively in the Global North) have had low to negative growth rates (particularly when considering rising inflation). Even the World Bank agrees that the exit from the ‘middle-income trap’ is to increase investment, infuse technologies from abroad, and innovate technologies internally (they call it the ‘3i method’). At the heart of the project must be an increase in net fixed capital investment.

Our research shows that as GDP grows, life expectancy rises as well. There are many elements here that require investigation: for instance, if the quality of GDP growth improves (more industry, better social spending), what does this do for social outcomes? To talk about the quality of GDP is to raise issues of allocation of social wealth into specific sectors, which brings up the importance of both robust economic planning and proper fiscal policy that is not motivated by paying off foreign bondholders but by building the net fixed capital in a country over the long-term.

But how does one get the finance to both service debts and build capital stock? That is not an impossibility since most developing countries are rich in resources and solely need to build the power to marshal those resources. The answers might be found less in the laws of economics than in the unequal relations of power in the world. With the churning of the global order, there might now be an opportunity to create new financial strategies for development.

The basis of a conversation about development theory should not be how to sustain an economy in a permanent debt spiral that leads to deindustrialisation and despair. It should instead be about how to break that cycle and enter a period of industrialisation, agrarian reform, growth, and social progress. It is this insight that motivates us to begin a fresh conversation, not about the need for this or that economic policy to salvage a bad situation, but for a new development theory altogether.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

27 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Senate Intelligence Committee Hearing on Global Threats Turns into a McCarthy Hearing of Lies about CODEPINK: Women for Peace

By Ann Wright

Yesterday, in the US Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats with the five heads of intelligence agencies of the US government, Senator Tom Cotton, accused on national TV a group I have worked with for over 20 years, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of China.

During the hearing CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry stood up following the presentation of the Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s lengthy statement about global threats to US national security and yelled ‘Stop Funding Israel,’ since neither Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton and Vice Chair Mark Warner had mentioned Israel in their opening statement nor  had Gabbard mentioned the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in her statement either.

As Capitol police were taking Barry out of the hearing room, in the horrific style of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, Cotton maliciously said that Barry was a “CODEPINK lunatic that was funded by the Communist party of China.”  Cotton then said if anyone had something to say to do so.

Refusing to buckle or be intimidated by Cotton’s lies about the funding of CODEPINK, I stood up and yelled, “I’m a retired Army Colonel and former diplomat. I work with CODEPINK and it is not funded by Communist China.”  I too was hauled out of the hearing room by Capitol police and arrested.

After I was taken out of the hearing room, Cotton libelously continued his McCarty lie, “The fact that Communist China funds CODEPINK which interrupts a hearing about Israel illustrates Director Gabbard’s point that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are working together in greater concert than they ever had before.”

Senator Cotton does not appreciate the responsibility he has in his one-month-old elevation to the chair of the Senate’s intelligence committee.

Senator Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a US Congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends and family.  In today’s polarized political environment we know that the words of senior leaders can rile supporters into frenzies as we saw on January 6, 2021 with President Trump’s loyal supporters injuring many Capitol police and destroying parts of the nation’s capitol building in their attempt to stop the Presidential election proceedings.

CODEPINK members have been challenging in the US Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Senator Cotton was elected as a US Senator in 2014.  We have been in the US Senate offices and halls twice as long as he has. We have nonviolently protested the war policies of Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden and now Trump again.

After getting out of the Capitol Hill police station, a CODEPINK delegation went to Senator Cotton’s office in the Russell Senate Office building and made a complaint to this office staff.

We are also submitting a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee for the untrue and libelous statements Senator Cotton made in the hearing.

The abduction and deportation of international students who joined protests of U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the scathing treatment of visitors who have wanted to enter our country and now the McCarthy intimidating tactics used by Senator Cotton in a Senate intelligence committee hearing of telling lies about individuals and organizations that challenge U.S. government politics, particularly its complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza must be called out and pushed back against.

And we must push back against US Senators who actually receive funding from front groups for other countries.  Senator Cotton has received $1,197,989 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to advocate for the genocidal policies of the State of Israel.

Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel.

27 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org