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By Maung Zarni

Beyond population destruction, the architects of Israel’s genocide in Gaza have evidently made even the environment their target of physical destruction in order to render it “unlivable.”

21 Oct 2025 – On 29 August 2024, I stood at a huge, but empty parking lot at Gaza’s southernmost parking lot at Kerem Shalom Crossing, against the intermittent loud booms of explosions in the nearby Rafah City, literally one kilometre away inside the genocidally besieged Gaza. I was with a 30-strong interfaith delegation of Christian, Jewish, and Hindu leaders, mostly from the United States,

In my less than 2 minutes Buddhist prayers, I invoked Nazi’s Final Solution – specifically mentioning the industrial mass killings at Auschwitz, the Nazis’ largest death camp complex immortalized Stephen Speilberg’s Oscar winner, Schindler’s List.

Alas, like the rest of the Holocaust Industry, including the administration of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum of Poland, the renowned American Jewish movie director has chosen to keep his mouth shut when Israel is, without a doubt, perpetrating its own holocaust, livestreamed non-stop for 2 years. But that’s a story for another day.

Even back then, it was clear to me that Gaza is Israel’s Auschwitz, minus the gas chambers, where the SS exterminated, between 1942 and January 1945, 1.4 million Jewish and other identity-based victim populations, including Poles, anti-Nazi partisan resisters, Soviet Prisoners of Wars (POWs), Romani and Sinti people, pacifist Jehovah Witness faith adherents, disabled people and babies, toddlers and children from multiple groups.

During my whirlwind stop for prayers, next to Gaza’s southernmost crossing’s checkpoint in August 2024, even without Israel’s evident policy of explicitly adding Stalinist strategy of “death by hunger” the Soviet leadership deployed in Ukraine in 1932-33, I was persuaded by the emerging mountains of evidence that Israel wasn’t simply fighting the war against the Palestinian resistance, the Hamas.

But rather, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), the Zionists’ SS equivalent, was executing the full-blown textbook genocide, that is, Hitlerite physical destruction of a targeted population of 2.3 million Palestinian people, in whole or in large part.

Israel’s “war” in Gaza is “Mein Kampf in reverse”, as former IDF chief and ex-Defence Minister of Israel retired general Moshe Yaalon put it, in a video-recorded meeting of the Commanders for Israel’s Security this summer. According to Wizard Bisan, one of the courageous Palestinian citizen video-journalists, reporting deep from inside Gaza, Israel began implementing its policy of mass starvation in the first week of March this year, corroborating Yaalon’s characterization of Israel’s Final Solution to the Question of Palestinians in Gaza, who are still left standing.

In their 1-August-2025 dated letter to US President Donald Trump, Commanders for Israel’s Security – 600 ex-generals, Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs, and senior diplomats – confirmed that Hamas’s military and governing apparatus had already been destroyed.

In his important study The Origins of the Final Solution, The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942 ( 2004, published by Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem) the historian Christopher R. Browning noted that the mass extermination of the Jews in the Nazi-occupied Europe was the obsession of Adolf Hitler and the senior leadership of the Nazi regime.

In the audio-taped recordings made in his exile in Argentina post-World War II, the SS Colonel Adolf Eichman who was singularly responsible for organizing and transporting 400,000 Hungarian Jews by rail to Auschwitz, was emphatic that the Fuhrer, Hitler, ordered the “physical destruction” of the Jews as an unwanted population, “eternal mushroom” on German oak tree, in Hitler’s words.

It is worth noting that the SS executioner was receiving assistance in rounding up Hungary’s Jews from the Jewish Agency in Europe, headed by Israel’s founding Prime Minister David Ben Gurian, the socialist Zionist leader, then based in the British-administered Palestine. As the well-known American Jewish commentator and talk-show host Katie Halper pointed out, the first priority of the Zionists who founded Israel by committing the first Holocaust or Al Nakba (the catastrophe) against the nearly 1 million Arab Palestinian natives in 1947-48, was the acquisition of the Arab lands for their ethno-nationalist “Jewish homeland”, not saving the Jews of Europe from the Nazi death and slave labour camps.

That Israel continues with its daily and nightly slaughter of Gaza’s Palestinian population, perfectly fits the Nazi genocide as spelled out in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The Nazis systematically pursued this genocidal objective in accord with the Final Solution, the accelerated industrial killing, under the cover of the escalating World War II.

However, there is something more chillingly sinister and anti-Environment about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and its multiple crimes of aggression, to use the legal discourse of the Nuremberg Tribunals, in its neighbourhoods of sovereign states including Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen.

While I continue to use the Nazi Germany (1941-1945) and Israel (October 2023-present) comparison to inform the opinion of public worldwide who are not students of genocide I am increasingly of the view that Israel’s version of its Holocaust, on-going in Gaza, has a far wider scope and more chilling design than the Nazis’ Final Solution (to the Jewish Question) aimed at the mass extermination of European Jewry.

The destruction of the natural or physical Environment in Gaza as part of Israel’s “war of annihilation” compels any student of genocide to explore new language or concepts, to really understand what Israelis are doing in Gaza beyond mass extermination.

My colleague at the Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, a network of engaged scholars, Gill H. Boehringer, who is formerly dean at Macquarie University Law School, Sydney, Australia, had begun thinking beyond the legal definition of genocide. It is instructive to quote Boehringer (29 November 2023) at length:

The evidence and commentary I have seen from afar on both Al Jazeera (largely from a Palestinian perspective) and the Western media en banc (from the IDF and Israeli officials past and present, and pundits) much of the physical evidence of devastation is the same or similar, showing very substantial areas of the Gaza strip, small and crowded as it is, has been flattened. The physical demolition of residences, churches, mosques, schools, clinics and much else; the killing of perhaps 20,000, the injuring of perhaps 30,000 Palestinians-many thousands young children and babies-is clearly Genocidal.

What is the connection with Ecocide? While much of the evidence will only be discovered in the future when the impact of the toxic bombs, shells from artillery and smaller weapons upon the waters – above ground and under – the dusty Gazan soil, and the flora and fauna-possibly even the fish along the coast- can be measured through scientific research, there can be no doubt that the natural environment has been very seriously affected negatively, probably for a very long time. Of course, some of the destruction of the natural environment is already clear to the naked eye.

Even a cursory glance at the emerging statistics on the severe destruction of the natural environment in Gaza and all other sovereign regions in Israel’s neighbourhoods is persuasive enough to the view that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is aimed not only at the extermination of 2.3 million Palestinians, in whole or any substantial part, but also at the destruction of the natural environment as the essential foundations of life for any sentient beings.

In passing, the world needs to be warned that the impact of Israel’s genocide in Gaza goes well-beyond the physical destruction or annihilation of totally besieged Palestinian population inside a narrow strip of Gaza. Its scope of destruction is evidently beyond Gaza, far more devastating than even the Nazis’ Final Solution.

The noted genocide scholar of UK, Emeritus Professor Martin Shaw of the University of Sussex, recently called attention to the fact that Israel’s genocide is “world changing” in that Israel is forging “a new genocidal mentality”.

But, equally worth pointing out is that the Environment itself becomes a target of physical destruction by the architects of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, who have so far used the explosive power of the equivalent of the two nuclear bombs in the 28 mile-narrow strip of Gaza on the bank of the Mediterranean Sea.

While the Nazis’ Final Solution was aimed at exterminating the Jews of the Nazi-occupied Europe and expanding the living space for Nazi Germany’s chosen “pure blooded” Aryan Germans, Israeli political and military leaders have taken Lemkinian genocide to a whole new level. Yoav Gallant, On 18 October 2023, the 72-years-old ex-general Giora Eiland, a former National Security Advisor of Israel, issued his Gaza War Economy Brief Number 1, with the central theme of making Gaza “a place where no human being can exist.

• In Gaza (and West Bank), UN damage assessments and UNOSAT/UN agencies quantified -the rubble at 53,466,870 tonnes by 4 April 2025 (an increase from ~22.9 million tonnes earlier). Much of this rubble is mixed with hazardous materials (asbestos, munitions) and human remains.
• Upwards of ~92% (over nine in ten water supply systems) of Gaza’s water was judged unfit for human consumption after infrastructure damage and fuel shortages crippled treatment and desalination operations. That massively increases reliance on unsafe sources and heightens disease risk.
• The Gaza Strip had one of the highest densities of rooftop solar panels in the world, with the U.S.-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies estimating in 2023 some 12,400 rooftop solar systems. But Israel has since destroyed a large proportion of Gaza’s burgeoning solar infrastructure, and broken panels can leak lead and heavy metal contaminants into the soil. Reuters’ news Gaza conflict has caused major environmental damage, UN says report quotes Eoghan Darbyshire, a senior researcher at the UK-based nonprofit Conflict and Environment Observatory, as saying, “… large areas of Gaza will not be recovered to a safe state within a generation, even with limitless finance and will.”
• Scientific analyses and subsequent peer-reviewed studies indicate military operations release elevated levels of NO₂, SO₂, CO and particulate aerosols, while massive fires and dust from destroyed buildings and rubble produce hazardous PM2.5/PM10 loads — with both acute respiratory impacts and longer-term contamination of surfaces/soils.
• According to the latest geospatial assessment carried out by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT), further deteriorating food production capacity and exacerbating the risk of famine in the area. The assessment indicates that as of April 2025, more than 80 percent of the Gaza Strip’s total cropland area has been damaged (12,537 hectares out of 15,053) and 77.8 percent is not accessible to farmers, leaving just 688 hectares (4.6 percent) available for cultivation. The situation is particularly critical in Rafah and in the northern governorates, where nearly all cropland is not accessible.
• In their expert commentary, War and environmental health in Gaza (Volume 31, 2025), the two Turkish scientists from Turkey’s Hacettepe University Cavit Isık Yavuz and Sevilcan Basak Unal wrote, “(l)oss of natural resources and vital ecosystem services, hazardous wastes and contamination, and marine environment disruptions associated with the conflict are adding new dimensions to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. More than 25% of Wadi Gaza, one of the most vital coastal wetlands of the Eastern Mediterranean Basin, is destroyed, with environmental damages worth US$ 411 million (14). The destruction of ecosystems and critical environmental infrastructure is intensifying in Gaza. The problems that existed before the conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have deepened and these problems will persist for decades post-war. Long-term political stability and resources will be needed to make the area liveable again.”

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A Buddhist humanist from Burma (Myanmar), Maung Zarni, nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, is a member of the TRANSCEND Media Service Editorial Committee, of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, former Visiting Lecturer with Harvard Medical School, specializing in racism and violence in Burma and Sri Lanka, and Non-resident Scholar in Genocide Studies with Documentation Center – Cambodia.

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Richard Falk

21 Oct 2025 – By rewarding impunity for genocide, Trump’s ceasefire proves why a civil society-led tribunal is needed to uphold accountability and document Palestine’s fight for justice.

The Gaza Tribunal, a people’s tribunal, was formed a year ago in response to the failure of the established world order of sovereign states and international institutions to stop what experts and ordinary people increasingly recognized as genocide in Gaza.

It will hold its final session from 23-26 October 2025 at Istanbul University.

Our initiative was inspired by an earlier civil society effort during the Vietnam War, when leading public intellectuals Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre established the Russell Tribunal, which held hearings in 1966 and 1967.

Its mission was to report on the international crimes of the United States and to legitimize growing anti-war sentiment in the West.

The underlying premise was that when the state system fails to uphold international law or to ensure accountability for grave crimes that affect global peace and security, people possess a residual authority and responsibility to act.

In the half-century since, many similar tribunals have emerged around the world. Their shared purpose is to speak truth to power and legitimize solidarity initiatives that seek to mount pressure on governments and institutions to take action.

Such people’s tribunals are also intended to encourage civil society activism, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement launched by Palestinian NGOs in 2005.

Unlike national or international courts, people’s tribunals do not claim legal authority.

They are overtly partisan, driven by moral conscience rather than formal procedure. They provide a platform for survivor testimony and expert analysis, with the aim of mobilising global activism in pursuit of justice.

Their focus extends beyond legal culpability to encompass broader moral and political responsibility. The tribunal embodies these principles through its Jury of Conscience – individuals of diverse backgrounds and nationalities who share a commitment to moral integrity and to exposing the Palestinian ordeal in Gaza.

Seeking truth

In certain respects, the tribunal’s work resembles that of United Nations truth-seeking mechanisms, such as the reports of the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. These have persuasively documented evidence of genocidal intent by Israel and its complicit allies.

Yet unlike the tribunal, UN rapporteurs operate as neutral experts, professionally bound to follow evidence wherever it leads.

In an unprecedented act of retaliation, the current UN special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, was personally sanctioned by the US government, denied entry to the country despite her credentials and had her American assets frozen.

The punitive response to UN truth-telling underscores the need for independent civil society efforts to expose the reality of human suffering caused by Israel’s unlawful and immoral policies.

From its inception, the tribunal has pledged complete independence from government interference, with no active politicians or officials involved in its work.

It is against this background that some may argue that recent developments, particularly US President Donald Trump‘s much-publicised diplomacy and the resulting fragile ceasefire in Gaza, render the tribunal redundant.

They may see the tribunal as an unhelpful distraction from the supposed work of peacebuilding, or from the UN’s paralysis in the face of two years of genocide in an occupied territory where it bears a special institutional responsibility.

The reality, however, is that such developments make the tribunal more essential than ever. When governments and international institutions abandon justice, it falls to ordinary people to uphold it.

Illusions of peace

The attention devoted in recent days to the so-called Trump ultimatum to Hamas, whose acceptance led to the return of all Israeli hostages within 72 hours, reflected the coercive nature of the process.

Hamas was told to comply or face a US-backed Israeli resumption of the genocide that Trump, in his fiery language, forecast as the “opening of the gates of hell”.

Hamas dutifully delivered all of the living hostages and as many of the remains of the dead as it managed to recover. In response, Israel released nearly 2,000 Palestinians imprisoned without charge since 7 October 2023 – effectively hostages themselves.

This prisoner exchange produced a ceasefire in Gaza, accompanied by celebrations in Israel limited to the return of the hostages, and in Gaza, expressing joy about the ceasefire, the release of detained Palestinians, and the partial withdrawal of Israeli forces.

At the same time, there were many flaws in the arrangements when viewed from a Palestinian perspective.

The proposed transition to a peaceful future, outlined in the 20-point plan and boasted about by Trump in grandiose terms, seems at best premature and, more likely, never to be realised.

Recent statements and behaviour by Israel’s leaders and public appear as determined as ever to pursue a dehumanising and punitive approach towards the still unwelcome Palestinian presence in Gaza and the West Bank.

Israeli ceasefire violations in the first few days resulted in at least 10 Palestinian deaths and the blocking of half of the agreed humanitarian deliveries to a population that is starving, disease-ridden, lacking potable water, and deprived of health services and medicines.

The Palestinian population, stunned and devastated by two years of genocide that deliberately destroyed health and sanitation facilities as well as more than 90 percent of residential structures, continues to suffer under catastrophic conditions.

To live without bombs, even temporarily, is surely a blessing. Yet to exist in primitive tent communities without toilets or kitchens, amid rubble containing the missing bodies of friends, neighbours and relatives, should be regarded as a slowdown of the genocidal assault but hardly its end – or even its replacement by a post-genocide phase resembling the pre-7 October 2023 apartheid-style occupation.

A broken process

In this atmosphere, it remains imperative to expose Israel’s harsh policies and practices that continue to impose emergency, dehumanising conditions and vulnerabilities upon the entrapped population of Gaza.

Israel is reported to have given material support to anti-Hamas clans and gangs to aggravate the grave conditions that persist.

While the ceasefire and the prospect of a peaceful future may be welcomed, it is notable that the positive results were achieved through reliance on an unlawful ultimatum threatening intensified violence.

Beyond this, the entire process was guided by and weighted in favour of Israel and the United States – the two states most closely identified with the perpetration of two years of unremitting genocide.

In effect, the political actors guilty of genocide were rewarded by being entrusted with controlling the peace process for their own benefit.

This is a perversion of justice. Imagine the outrage if surviving Nazi leaders had been authorised to preside over the post-World War Two peace process.

The ‘legitimacy war’

The tribunal does not claim historic importance, but its relevance remains undiminished. It exists to validate the charge of genocide and to reaffirm the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and statehood.

Both dimensions of the present Gaza reality are airbrushed out of existence by the self-congratulatory bombast of Trump’s diplomacy.

Those who perpetrated genocide have so far not only evaded any kind of formal accountability for their crimes but have also benefited, except to the extent that Israel is now experiencing eroded legitimacy as a sovereign state and is widely viewed as a pariah.

This dynamic of delegitimation has occurred despite the international community’s complete failure to apply standards of accountability in the form of reparations or a reconciliation process that exchanges acknowledgement of past crimes for amnesty.

That others, rather than the perpetrators and their enablers, are expected to bear the costs of Gaza’s reconstruction is an assault on the very notion of moral and legal responsibility.

What the tribunal seeks to achieve is the sharpening of a populist tool that constructs an accurate archive and narrative of past and present.

Its assessments contribute to the relevance of voices of conscience in civil society – a form of symbolic politics that influences questions of legitimacy.

In this respect, the side that won the “legitimacy war” for control of moral and legal discourse generally determined the political outcome of the anti-colonial struggles of the last half-century, despite being militarily inferior.

These are lessons the US should have learned in Vietnam, and Israel in its long encounter with the Palestinian people.

There is little doubt that the Palestinians have won the legitimacy war.

Although the future is highly uncertain, there is little doubt that, as of now, the Palestinians have won the legitimacy war – an outcome that will be certified by the proceedings of the Gaza Tribunal.

In their struggle against Zionist settler colonialism, Palestinians have achieved a notable symbolic victory since 7 October 2023, and Israel a corresponding defeat.

To record and document this outcome in Gaza is, by itself, enough to justify holding the Gaza Tribunal’s final session in the days ahead.

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Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, of the TRANSCEND Media Service Editorial Committee, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute.

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Gaza Tribunal

27 Oct 2025 – Inside the quiet stone walls of Istanbul University, a heavy silence settled. The members of the Gaza Tribunal gathered behind closed doors for one final deliberation. Led by Professor Richard Falk, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, the session wasn’t just a meeting — it was history unfolding in real time.

After months of hearings across cities like London and Sarajevo, the Tribunal has now delivered its final judgment — a declaration that cuts through diplomatic noise and lands squarely in the conscience of the world.

“Starvation as a Weapon”

According to the Gaza Tribunal’s Final Report,  Israel’s systematic deprivation of food, medicine, and humanitarian access constitutes the weaponization of starvation — a tool of mass punishment used against an entire civilian population. The report concludes that these actions, combined with the denial of medical care and forced displacement, amount to mechanisms of collective punishment and genocide.

The Ideological Roots of Genocide

The Tribunal’s findings trace the ongoing atrocities in Gaza to the supremacist ideology of Zionism, describing it as the foundation of a broader system of apartheid that dehumanizes and subjugates the Palestinian people. In the words of the panel, the genocide in Gaza is “not an isolated act, but part of an entrenched colonial project.”

The evidence presented — documented through Eyewitness Testimonies and the Digital Evidence Archive — paints a chilling picture of systematic annihilation.

Western Complicity: The Silent Partnership

One of the most striking conclusions is the direct complicity of Western governments, particularly the United States. The Tribunal asserts that Washington, through diplomatic protection, military aid, weapons transfers, and economic cooperation, has enabled and, in some cases, directly collaborated in Israel’s campaign.

As noted in the Accountability Watchlist, these states are not neutral observers. Their support fuels the machinery of destruction and shields it from international justice.

“Accountability Knows No Borders”

The Tribunal calls for legal accountability for every actor — political, military, economic, or ideological — involved in the crimes committed. This includes individuals and institutions that supply weapons, intelligence, or political cover.

A comprehensive process under the framework of International Justice is urged, ensuring that perpetrators face consequences through every lawful means available. The statement also recommends expanding global networks of Legal Accountability Cases to dismantle systems of impunity.

Gaza Tribunal – The Collapse of the International System

The Tribunal openly criticizes the United Nations Security Council, paralyzed by repeated U.S. vetoes, rendering it incapable of enforcing justice. It calls on the UN General Assembly to invoke the Uniting for Peace resolution — a rarely used but powerful mechanism that allows member states to take collective action when the Security Council fails.

As the Tribunal’s International Humanitarian Law Review states, the time has come to protect the Palestinian people through independent international mechanisms, free from political obstruction.

Mapping the Machinery of Oppression

Beyond condemnation, the statement urges a global, rights-based strategy to identify, map, and dismantle the financial, cultural, and technological networks sustaining Zionist power structures. This isn’t just about political reform — it’s a call to reimagine the moral architecture of the world.

The report’s section on Civilian Impact Reports highlights the devastating human toll: families starved, hospitals bombed, children buried under rubble. Each story is a data point, yes — but more importantly, a cry for human accountability.

The Weight of Testimony

The Tribunal’s hearings — from Sarajevo’s Public Session to Istanbul — have been defined by courage. Survivors’ voices, captured in Stories of Survival,  transformed grief into evidence, pain into record.

One witness spoke of losing 90 family members. Another described performing surgery without anesthesia, under drone fire. These are not statistics. They are the living pulse of Gaza’s memory, recorded forever in the Tribunal’s archives.

A Statement Beyond Paper

Gaza Tribunal’s final judgment isn’t just a legal document — it’s a mirror held up to the world. It forces us to look, to listen, and to ask what kind of humanity we are preserving when justice becomes optional.

This isn’t closure. This is where the reckoning starts — rising from Gaza’s ruins and echoing through the offices of every government that turned away. No one can claim ignorance anymore. The truth is out there, and it’s not letting go.

And history will remember who chose to look away.

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Muhammed Abdul Khalid

The recently signed Malaysia-US Reciprocal Trade Agreement is being celebrated by some as a diplomatic triumph.

In reality, it represents a stunning retreat from our principles of non-alignment and economic self-interest, surrendering our national policy autonomy in exchange for meagre concessions.

Unelected Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz dares to claim this to be the “best deal for Malaysia.”

The numbers expose this as fiction. The agreement secures zero tariffs, at most, for 12 percent of our exports – valued at approximately US$5 billion (about RM21 billion). More credible independent analyses suggest that the actual figure could be as low as US$1 billion, a paltry 2.4 percent of our total exports, with the vast majority of our products facing a 19 percent tariff.

The arithmetic alone renders the claim of a “good deal” untenable. For context, our neighbour Singapore faces only a 10 percent tariff.

The actual cost of this agreement is not measured solely by tariffs, but by the sweeping surrender of our policy autonomy. Malaysia has signed 16 free trade agreements (FTAs); none have contained such invasive and humiliating provisions.

Veto on future trade ties

Critically, the agreement grants the United States a de facto veto over our future trade relations, allowing them to terminate the pact and reimpose tariffs if we sign an FTA with a nation deemed to “jeopardise essential US interests”.

This subordination is clearly stated in Article 5.3, which states that, “If Malaysia enters into a new bilateral free trade agreement or preferential economic agreement with a country that jeopardises essential US interests, the United States may, if consultations with Malaysia fail to resolve its concerns, terminate this Agreement and reimpose the applicable reciprocal tariff rate set forth in Executive Order 14257 of April 2, 2025”.

This also extends to digital trade agreements (Article 3.3: Digital Trade Agreements: Malaysia shall consult with the United States before entering into a new digital trade agreement with another country that jeopardises essential US interests).

These two clauses clearly subordinate our national economic strategy to the geopolitical interests of a foreign power. This is a chilling throwback to the era of British adviser and the Malay sultans, where advice was, in effect, a command.

If this is not a submission to a foreign country, then what is this?

Even more alarming is Article 5.1, which obligates Malaysia to “mirror” any unilateral US economic or national security sanctions against third countries.

“If the United States imposes a customs duty, quota, prohibition, fee, charge, or other import restriction on a good or service of a third country and considers that such measure is relevant to protecting the economic or national security of the United States, the United States intends to notify such measure to Malaysia for economic and national security alignment.

“Upon receiving such notification from the United States, Malaysia shall adopt or maintain a measure with equivalent restrictive effect as the measure adopted by the United States or agree to a timeline for implementation that is acceptable to both Parties, to address a shared economic or national security concern, guided by principles of goodwill and a shared commitment to enhancing bilateral relations between the United States and Malaysia.”

If the US decides to wage an economic war on China, Vietnam, or any other nation, we are compelled to follow, abandoning our own assessment of our national interest. This clause alone shreds our non-aligned foreign policy, making us an enforcer of America’s trade war.

And if, at all, another country poses a threat to Malaysia’s economy or national security, why can’t Malaysia decide on its own what is best to secure its economic or national security interests?

Abnormal times

Furthermore, the commitment to channel nearly RM1 trillion in investment – roughly 12 times our annual development budget – into an economy seven times richer than ours, including mandating Petronas to purchase RM10 billion of US liquefied natural gas (LNG) annually, is not free trade nor commercial sovereignty.

The unelected minister proudly claims that Petronas’ purchasing LNG from the US is “nothing new,” but he misses the point. Petronas has always had the commercial freedom to buy LNG from anywhere globally, including from the US.

What is absolutely not normal and unprecedented in our nation’s history is for the government of Malaysia to sign an agreement that mandates Petronas to purchase LNG from the US.

No previous government in any of our free trade agreements with other countries ever accepted such a term. His defence is not just wrong – it is a blatant attempt to hide a terrible concession.

At the same time, this agreement also discriminates against our own domestic interest [Article 6.2: Malaysia shall ensure that its State-Owned or -Controlled Enterprises (SOEs) operating in its market, when engaging in commercial activities – (a) act in accordance with commercial considerations in their purchase or sale of goods or services; and (b) refrain from discriminating against US goods or services. Malaysia shall refrain from providing non-commercial assistance or otherwise subsidising its goods-producing SOEs, except for the achievement of their public service obligations. Malaysia shall ensure a level playing field for US companies in Malaysia’s market with respect to SOEs of third countries]” – dismantling support for our government-linked companies and potentially even grants for micro, small and medium enterprises, effectively tying one hand behind our back and handicapping our own enterprises in the home market.

Although we can all agree that some of these GLCs need significant reform, why is the government agreeing to punish Tabung Haji, Permodalan Nasional Berhad, Employees Provident Fund, and other entities owned by the rakyat, rather than helping US entities?

Rolling back the years

The agreement further mandates that we open our markets wide to US products, including vehicles and agricultural goods, a concession not granted to our long-term partners in Asean or elsewhere.

This is explicitly laid out in Article 2.3: Agriculture, which states that “Malaysia shall provide non-discriminatory or preferential market access for US agricultural goods as set forth in this Agreement,” a dictate reinforced by clauses in Annex III, Section 2 on Non-Tariff Barriers.

This is the age-old Washington Consensus model, which has been so discredited over the last 35 years. The prime minister and the trade minister seem happy to roll back the years.

Simultaneously, we have agreed to dilute the authority of the Islamic Development Department (Jakim), allowing any US-certified halal logo to be used on products entering Malaysia, which could potentially undermine our global leadership in the halal economy and constitute a discriminatory concession not offered to other trading partners (Annex III: Article 2.5: Halal Certification for Industrial Goods 1. Malaysia does not require industrial goods, including cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, to be certified halal and shall not impose any such requirement. 2. Malaysia shall allow the usage of a halal logo issued by any US Halal certifier designated by the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia).

While many will agree that Jakim needs to be overhauled and the halal system significantly improved, why have we agreed to dilute our authority on these matters, allowing any US-certified halal logo to be used on products entering Malaysia, potentially undermining our global leadership in the halal economy?

Would we offer this same concession to China or India, both with larger Muslim populations? This is a blatantly discriminatory policy, favouring only the US.

The government has also agreed not to impose a digital tax on any US firms, despite the digital tax having been in effect since 2020 (Article 3.1: Digital Services Tax: Malaysia shall not impose digital services taxes, or similar taxes, that discriminate against US companies in law or in fact).

This is a fiscal loss; the government collected RM1.6 billion from 464 foreign entities from 29 countries last year alone. Would we now exempt all of them, too?

Fiscal surrender

They are also not required to contribute six percent of their revenue to the USP Fund, managed by MCMC (Article 3.1: Regulation of Social Media Platforms and Cloud Providers, Section – Malaysia shall remove the requirement for US social media platforms and cloud providers to contribute six percent of their revenue generated in Malaysia to a domestic fund in order to operate in Malaysia).

The fund, set up in 2002, aims to bridge the digital divide in Malaysia and is funded by more than 30 firms, including Maxis, Telekom, and others. Why are American firms exempted, and not our own local entities? Have we solved our digital divide? The answer is obvious.

This fiscal surrender extends to taxes. According to Annex III: Article 1.2: Sales and Service Tax (SST), “Malaysia shall exclude US exports of agricultural and seafood products from Malaysia’s consumption tax”.

This clearly undermines the SST’s original intent on taxing foreign products, including fruits, to protect local agriculture and fisheries industries. This move not only contradicts official policy but also sets a troubling precedent – must we now extend these privileges to all countries?

This agreement’s damage extends far beyond economics; it is a strategic instrument that forcibly aligns us with US foreign policy to contain China. Annex III: Article 5.2: Equipment and Platform Security commits “Malaysia (to) only using communication technology suppliers that do not compromise the security, safeguards, and intellectual property of ICT infrastructure, including 5G, 6G, communication satellites, and undersea cables,” adding that “The United States and Malaysia will consult on whether suppliers are unable to meet these standards.”

This is a blank cheque to exclude Chinese tech leaders like Huawei. Can the government explain this logic, given that Chinese technology is world-class and a leader in global innovation?

The agreement also has an impact on our local drama, as it forces Malaysia to remove the 80 percent local content quota for terrestrial broadcasters and allow unrestricted foreign programming during prime time (Annex III: Article 2.20: Broadcasting Malaysia shall remove the requirement in broadcast licensing agreements that broadcast stations devote 80 percent of terrestrial airtime to local Malaysian programming, and Malaysia shall allow broadcasting of foreign programming during prime time).

This sounds the death knell for the protection and growth of our local film and television industry. In addition, at a time when most of the world is rejecting the cultural junk exported, particularly from the US, we seem to be doing the reverse.

Bartering sovereignty for a pittance

Malaysia is no stranger to FTAs, having successfully implemented 16 of them since the first Asean FTA in 1993. Not one of these previous agreements – whether with Japan, Australia, India or with our regional partners – compromised our right to self-determination.

No past Malaysian prime ministers or trade ministers, from any party, have ever begged for policy permissions from a foreign country, and surrendered our right to self-rule, or willingly turned our economy into a resource colony.

They had bartered away our sovereignty in a deal so grotesquely one-sided, so reminiscent of a bygone era of vassal states, that it sets a gold standard for how not to represent a nation’s interests.

Let’s be clear: this is not a trade agreement; it is a surrender to a hegemon. The government has bartered away Malaysia’s sovereignty for a pittance. – Mkini

Muhammed Abdul Khalid is a fellow at the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

30 October 2025

Source: malaysiansmustknowthetruth.blogspot.com

By Michel Chossudovsky

Ethnic Cleansing Planned in the Middle East?

History and Criminality Analysed by Felcity Arbuthnot

[This article by Felicity Arbuthnot was first published by Global Research in 2014. You can read it here.]

The concept of a “Greater Israel” according to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, is a Jewish State stretching “’From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.’”

Rabbi Fischmann of the Jewish Agency for Palestine stated to the UN Special Committee on 9th July 1947 that:

“The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon’”, wrote Michel Chossudovsky.(1)

Thus “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” Herzl’s detailed thesis was written in 1904.

Quoted in the same article is Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya on The Yinon Plan (1982) “… a continuation of Britain’s colonial design in the Middle East”:

“(The Yinon plan) is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.

“Israeli strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the Yinon Plan discusses.”

At the time Yinon wrote, the eight-year, Western-driven Iran-Iraq war was into its second year – with another six grinding years of loss, tragedy and heartbreak, valleys of widows, orphans, maimed, on both sides of their common border. The toll on life and health was compared to World War 1. Iraq of course, in an historic error, had virtually been fighting a proxy war for an American regime, even then obsessed with Islam, which, in Iran they had decided was the wrong sort of Islam. What the faith of a nation thousands of miles away had to do with Capitol Hill, remains a mystery.

The day after that devastating war ended, the US replaced Iraq over the then USSR as the country which was the biggest threat to America. A devastated, war torn nation of, at the time, just under seventeen million people.(2)

Then came the dispute with Kuwait over alleged oil theft and Dinar destabilizing with the then US Ambassador April Glaspie personally giving Saddam Hussein the green light to invade should he choose. The subsequent nation paralyzing UN embargo followed, then the 2003 decimation and occupation – another orchestrated downward spiral – and tragedy and now open talk of what has been planned for decades, the break up of Iraq.

“Mission accomplished” for both the US with its long planned redrawing of the Middle East and North Africa – and Israel, through whose friendship with the Iraqi Kurdish autocracy, was set to become pretty well a partner in an autonomous, independent Iraqi Kurdistan. Dream come true, from “the Nile to the Euphrates”, the final fruition of near seventy years of manipulation and aggression for domination of the entire region.

The all is also the vision of the super hawk, dreamer of destruction of nations, Lt Colonel Ralph Peters since the early 1990s. Here is his 2006 version(3.) Peters is a man whose vision of eternal war is seemingly an eternal wet dream. Here, again, for anyone unaware of the Colonel, is a repeat of that dream (US Army War College Quarterly, Summer 1997):

“There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts … around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. (US armed forces will keep) the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.

“We have entered an age of constant conflict.”

Peters would make some of history’s most megalomaniacal expansionists look like gift offering peaceniks. His cartographic monument to arrogance: “The New Map of the Middle East Project”, of geographical restructure in far away places of which he gave less than a damn, was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006.

It was surely no coincidence that on 1st May 2006 Joe Biden, long time member of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations – now US Vice President of course – and Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the Committee, joint authored a New York Times piece(4) urging the break up of Iraq, dividing the country on ethnic lines: “ … giving each ethno-religious group – Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab …” their own ethnic and political ghettos. Ignorance on wide inter-marriage, inter-relations, until 2003, inter-communities at every level for millennia, mixed neighbourhoods, shared celebrations, religious festivals, joys and heartaches, boggle the imagination. The deluded article is entitled: “Unity through autonomy in Iraq.” Think non-sequeta, think mixed marriages, does the husband live in a “Sunni” ghetto and the wife a “Shia” one, for example?

“The Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions would each be responsible for their own domestic laws, administration and internal security.” A “five-point plan” of ghettoisation, destruction, delusion and wickedness, the US-Israeli game plan for Iraq, with the UK as ever, tagging along dreaming of days of empire when, with France, Iraq and the region’s borders were imperially tinkered with just short of a hundred years ago.(5)

Aside from the shaming arrogance and illegality of the plan, ignorance is total. Clearly there is no knowledge in the great annals of the US State Department, Department of Foreign Affairs or the CIA of Iraq’s religious and ethnic minorities, also co-existing for centuries: Christians, Mandaeans, Yazidis, Turkmen, Jews, Zoroastrians, Bahai, Kakai’s, Shabaks – and indeed those who regard themselves as non-religious.

By October 2007 Joe Biden had: “attempted to create a reality when an overwhelming majority of the US Senate voted for his non-binding Resolution to divide Iraq in to three parts … (with) the Washington Post reporting that the 75-23 Senate vote was a ‘significant milestone’” in the severing of Iraq in to three, wrote Tom Engelhardt.(6)

Engelhardt is seemingly the only eagle eye to have picked up that:

“The (tripartite) structure is spelled out in Iraq’s Constitution, but Biden would initiate local and regional diplomatic efforts to hasten its evolution.”

The Constitution, written under US imposed “Viceroy” Paul Bremer, is of course, entirely invalid, since it is illegal to re-write a Constitution under an occupation.

“Only the Kurds, eager for an independent State, welcomed the plan.”

What, ponders Engelhardt, with forensic reality, would be the reaction if Iraq, or Iran for example “passed a non-binding Resolution to divide the United States in to semi-autonomous bio-regions?”

He concludes that:

“such acts would, of course, be considered not just outrageous and insulting, but quite mad.” In Iraq however: “at best it would put an American stamp of approval on the continuing ethnic cleansing of Iraq.”

However, the US Administration’s commitment is clear, Joe Biden, a self-confessed Zionist, stated at the annual J Street Conference in September 2013:

“If there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one to make sure our interests were preserved.”(7)

Think oil, gas, strategic aims.

Biden assured his audience that:

“America’s support for Israel is unshakable, period. Period, period.” (sic)

He stressed a number of times the commitment that President Obama had to Israel. His own long and deep connections, he related, stretched back to a meeting with then Prime Minister Golda Meir when he was a freshman Senator and latterly his hours spent with Prime Minister Netanyahu. The latest meeting was in January this year when he travelled to Israel to pay his respects to the late Ariel Sharon and subsequently spent two hours alone in discussion with Netanyahu.

It is surely coincidence that subsequently the rhetoric for the division of Iraq accelerated. Israel has had “military, intelligence and business ties with the Kurds since the 1960s” viewing them as “a shared buffer between Arab adversaries.”

In June, Netanyahu told Tel Aviv University’s INSS think tank:

“We should … support the Kurdish aspiration for independence”, after “outlining what he described as the collapse of Iraq and other Middle East regions …”(8)

Iraq’s internal affairs being none of Israel’s business obviously does not occur (apart from their outrageous historic aspirations for the region in spite of being the newly arriving regional guest.) The howls of Israeli fury when even basic human rights for Palestinians in their eroded and stolen lands are suggested for the last 66 years, however, metaphorically deafen the world.

Of course Kurdistan has now laid claim to Kirkuk, with its vast oil deposits. The plan for the Northern Iraq-Haifa pipeline, an Israeli aspiration from the time of that country’s establishment can surely also not have been far from Netanyahu’s mind. An independent Kurdistan, which indeed it has enjoyed almost entirely within Iraq, since 1992 – and immediately betrayed the Iraqi State by inviting in Israel and the CIA – would herald the planned dismemberment of Iraq.

It is darkly ironic, that whether relating to the break up of their lands or ghettoisation of those of Iraqis and Palestinians, this mirrors the plan of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of ethnic cleansing, who, after the outbreak of Word War II “arranged for Jews to be concentrated into ghettos in major cities …” he also devised plans for Jewish “reservations.”

Additionally he was an architect of forcible expulsion, one of the charges brought against him after he was captured by Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet in Argentina in 1960. He was tried in Israel, found guilty of war crimes and hanged in 1962. Ironically his pre-Nazi employment had been as an oil salesman.(9)

Can Israel and the “international community” really be planning to mirror Eichmann by repatriating and ethnic cleansing? Will nations never look in to history’s mirror?

---

Notes

1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east/5324815
2. http://www.populstat.info/Asia/iraqc.htm
3. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-redrawing-of-the-map-of-the-middle-east-begins-with-destruction-of-iraq/5387928
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/opinion/01biden.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes–Picot_Agreement

http://www.alternet.org/story/64433/congress_wants_to_split_iraq_in_three_pieces,_but_who_asked_them

7. http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/joe-biden-israel-97586.html
8. http://jordantimes.com/israels-netanyahu-calls-for-supporting-kurdish-independence
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.

10 October 2025

Source: michelchossudovsky.substack.com

By Dr Ram Puniyani

Taj Mahal, regarded as one of the seven wonders of the World, is one of the major markers for India on the World map. It is a poem on marble; Guru Rabindranath Tagore described it as ‘drop of tear on the cheek of time’. Its beauty and fascination as a symbol of love is remarkable. It is a UNESCO heritage site and is maintained by the Archeological Survey of India. It is a marvel on marble and its replicas were given as the gift to the visiting heads of state.

Since it was constructed by Mughal ruler Shahjahan in memory of his wife Mumtaj Mahal, it has been an eyesore to the Hindu right wing. Though its history has been settled by the Archeological Survey of India and even the Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma said that it was not Shiv Temple, in 2017, during the Modi regime. The controversies are deliberately raised to boost the communal divides by the right-wing leaders and ideologues, time and over again. Even ASI has time and again clarified it being a mausoleum and not a temple.

The first major controversy around it was created with Yogi Adityanath becoming the Chief Minister of UP. His tourism department published a booklet about sites of tourist attraction in UP. This booklet did not mention Taj as one of the sites of tourist attraction, despite nearly 12000 visitors being attracted to this marvel on a daily basis. It attracts 23% of tourists to India. When questioned he retaliated that Taj does not reflect Indian Culture.

Now another film by Paresh Raval is coming. Its trailer shows that as its dome is lifted Lord Shiva appears. The forthcoming film ‘The Taj Story’ as it appears from its trailers is an attempt to propagate the Taj as Tejo Mahalay, which was converted into a tomb by Shahjahan.

The argument of the forthcoming film is that Taj was a Hindu temple, Shiv Temple, Tejo Mahalay, built in 4th Century (Later revised to say 11th Century) and converted into a Mausoleum by Mughal ruler Shahjahan. It being 4th century temple was put forward by a lawyer P.N. Oak. Historian Ruchika Sharma rubbishes Oak on the basis of Historical evidence, “But Oak, who did not know Farsi perhaps missed this vital detail that rubbishes his theory of the Taj being a reused 4th century palace. Historians such as Giles Tillotson also challenged Oak’s theory by asserting that the “technical know-how to create a building with the structural form of the Taj simply did not exist in pre-Mughal India”. The mystery of 21 empty rooms at bottom was also clarified by ASI. Architecturally it was to give stability to the structure and they are empty rooms, and used for maintenance purposes. This was clarified during the Modi regime itself.

Once the 4th century theory did not work P.N.Oak revised it to say that it was a 12th century temple. Sharma continues “Yet, Oak armed himself with make-believe and propaganda and petitioned the Supreme Court of India in July 2000, that the Taj was constructed by Raja Paramar Dev’s chief minister Salakshan in the 12th century and was therefore a Hindu structure “Tejo Mahalaya” and not made by Mughals.

Oak went up to the Supreme Court to make his point, the highest court rebuffed his fantasy bereft of historical evidence. His major argument was related to architectural aspects of the tomb. The dome at top, the inverted lotus at the top and the 21 empty rooms at the bottom. Similarly, later one Amarnath Mishra approached the Allahabad High Court to petition that this was built by Chandela King Parmadi, this was also dismissed by the court in 2005)

There are detailed accounts available about the construction of Taj which are from immaculate historical sources. Peter Mundy and Tavernier, two travelers, mention that during their visit to India they came to know of Shahjahan’s grief and his determination to build a grand structure in memory of his wife, Mumtaj Mahal. Shahjahan made grand plans by involving the architects, the chief one being a Muslims (Ustad Ahmad Lahori) and his major associate being a Hindu architect. Badshah Nama the biography of Shahjahan gives a detailed account of the whole process. The group of people put together to plan and execute it.

The land chosen for Taj had belonged to Raja Jaisingh. There are two versions of the process of acquiring this. One says that it was procured by giving due compensation, the other mentioning that Raja Jaisingh gifted it to the emperor as they were on friendly terms. The architecture of Taj is a great reflection of the syncretic traditions which prevailed here. The double dome structures were introduced by Mughal architects, Lal Kila (Red fort) and Humayun’s tomb being another example of this. These Hindu Temples had the triangular superstructures. Later domes were also introduced in temples. Architecture is not an exclusive process and the mixture of architectural styles is part of the process of civilizations.

The twenty thousand artisans were hired. As the Mughal administration used to have a construction division, the marvelous structures of North India are not a flash in the pan. Somehow the rumor is making rounds that the hands of these workers were cut. There is no source to substantiate this in any way. The account books and documents of Shahjahan’s time amply tell us the detailed accounts of expenditure done to build the Taj. The account books mention the amounts spent to buy marble from Makrana and wages paid to the workers. Some prevalent Hindu motifs were made part of the structure as Hindu architects and workers were part of the process of construction.

In a lighter vein one should mention P.N. Oaks fertile and banal imagination which puts the whole World civilization having roots in Hindu culture. For him Christianity is Krishna Niti; Vatican comes from Vatika and Rome from Ram! Despite his things based on such superficialities devoid of any historical evidence, he kept publishing books and small booklets which were circulated in RSS shakhas to propagate his theories to become part of social understanding.

Most of the points raised by film (as shown in the trailers) on Taj Mahal were clarified a decade ago, still the idea of reviving all this is a political one as it helps the Hindu nationalist agenda of spreading hate against Mughal rulers and thereby reflected on today’s Muslims.

This film is yet another propaganda film in the series of Kashmir Files, Bengal Files, Kerala Story and so many like these whose aim is to intensify right-wing propaganda. This film adds on to that and will be yet another tool for the divisiveness and hate ruling roost in contemporary India.

Dr Ram Puniyani was a professor in biomedical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and took voluntary retirement in December 2004 to work full time for communal harmony in India.

30 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ranjan Solomon

The BRICS consortium—once dismissed as a loose association of emerging economies—has begun to evolve into one of the most consequential forces of the 21st century. With the Cross-Border Interbank Payments System (CIPS) now spread across 185 countries, allowing global trade in Chinese yuan without touching the U.S. dollar, the signs are unmistakable: the monopoly of Western-led finance is beginning to crack (New Development Bank data, 2025).

For years, the dollar served as both the lubricant and leash of global power. It gave the United States the capacity to sanction, to punish, and to dictate terms to the Global South under the guise of stability. Today, that monopoly is eroding. The **BRICS alliance—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and now joined by others including Egypt, Iran, and the UAE—**is reshaping not only the architecture of trade but also the moral geography of global power (Reuters, Oct 2024).

A shift away from the dollar

CIPS, created by China in 2015, is rapidly becoming the nervous system of an emerging non-Western economy. It allows countries to settle trade in local currencies, bypassing the dollar and, by extension, U.S. surveillance and sanctions. The system now links financial institutions across 185 countries—an astonishing expansion that signals a new confidence in the yuan and in the idea of a multi-currency world (Carnegie Endowment, 2025).

This “de-dollarisation” movement is not an act of rebellion; it is self-defence. After decades of dollar dominance, developing countries have learned that the global financial order can be weaponised at will—whether through sanctions, exclusion from SWIFT, or the manipulation of credit ratings. BRICS offers an escape hatch from that coercion (The Guardian, Aug 2023).

The New Development Bank (NDB), headquartered in Shanghai, has further institutionalised this autonomy. By financing infrastructure and development projects without the political strings typical of Western lenders, it gives nations the freedom to borrow and build without being lectured on governance or ideology (NDB Annual Report, 2024).

A multipolar future

BRICS is not just a trading bloc. Rather, it represents a renewed worldview. Its guiding principle is multipolarity: the belief that no single nation should dominate the world’s political and economic life. In this respect, BRICS challenges not only the West’s power but its very idea of what “order” means.

The bloc’s expansion into West Asia and Africa symbolises a profound geopolitical shift. The admission of oil powers like Saudi Arabia and Iran indicates that even the traditional pillars of U.S. influence are recalibrating their loyalties (The National, 2023). Africa, long treated as a pawn in the global chessboard, now finds in BRICS a forum that listens rather than dictates.

For the West, this is unsettling. It means the G7 is no longer the only table that matters. For the Global South, it is liberating—a chance to redefine what development, democracy, and sovereignty might mean on our own terms.

Scenarios for the decade ahead

1. The Best-Case Scenario: The Rise of Equitable Multipolarity

In the most optimistic vision, BRICS succeeds in institutionalising financial cooperation through an expanded CIPS, a BRICS currency for settlements, and a strengthened NDB. Global trade becomes less dollar-dependent, reducing vulnerability to Western sanctions. Regional powers—India, Brazil, South Africa—gain voice in shaping global climate and development policy (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2024).

2. The Middle Path: Parallel Systems, Uneasy Coexistence

In a more probable outcome, BRICS evolves into a robust but fragmented alternative. It builds an impressive financial ecosystem, but internal rivalries—China’s dominance, India’s cautious approach, Russia’s isolation—limit coherence. The global economy becomes bifurcated: one network led by the U.S. and Europe, another by BRICS.

3. The Worst-Case Scenario: Fragmentation and Financial Warfare

The dark possibility is that de-dollarisation turns into confrontation. Western powers retaliate through secondary sanctions, protectionist trade laws, and military posturing. CIPS and SWIFT become symbols of two rival camps, echoing a digital-age Cold War (Financial Times, 2024).

If that happens, countries like India could find themselves trapped between systems, forced to choose sides. Smaller economies could suffer from volatility and reduced access to global finance. The global commons—climate, peace, and poverty reduction—would suffer as great powers lock horns over financial supremacy.

The India factor

India stands at the crossroads of these futures. Its economy is large enough to be indispensable, yet still vulnerable to external shocks. As part of BRICS, India gains access to alternative finance and markets across Africa, Latin America, and Eurasia. But it must tread carefully.

China’s leadership within BRICS remains a double-edged sword. While Beijing’s economic heft fuels the bloc’s rise, it also risks turning the coalition into a Chinese sphere of influence. India’s task is to ensure BRICS remains a truly multilateral platform—one that amplifies rather than subordinates the voices of the Global South.

New Delhi’s diplomatic tightrope will be to deepen cooperation within BRICS without alienating its partners in the West. That balance is not impossible. In fact, it may define the future of India’s global stature—its ability to bridge worlds rather than be trapped between them.

A new moral geography

Beyond economics and diplomacy, BRICS represents a moral reordering. It challenges the assumption that development must follow the Western path or that democracy has a single model. It calls out the hypocrisy of nations that preach equality while perpetuating economic hierarchies.

But power can corrupt any side. The moral legitimacy of BRICS will depend on whether it upholds fairness, transparency, and justice within its own ranks. If it merely reproduces old patterns under new flags, it will be a disappointment.

The hard truth

The world is undergoing a quiet revolution. Power is dispersing. The monopoly of the West—built on centuries of financial control—is being contested by a new coalition that seeks dignity, not dominance. Whether this becomes a more just order or merely another empire in disguise will depend on how nations use this moment.

BRICS is no magic solution. It is, at best, a new architecture under construction—one that might finally give the Global South a say in the design of its own future.

For now, what we are witnessing is not just economic diversification. It is the return of history itself—the struggle of nations to reclaim agency from the few who long monopolised it.

Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator on democracy, decolonisation, and global justice.

29 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Sean Reynolds

In light of tomorrow’s “No Kings” protests, which will undoubtedly fail to sanction President Trump’s moves toward war in Iran and Venezuela, I wrote up these notes for a peace group I work with on a recent interview I conducted for Iran’s PressTV. I was interviewed by journalist Ramin Mazaheri, all three of whose brilliant and vexing books I’d actually read before my first hint of personally encountering him. I didn’t have much space to bring in the left-right divide so obsessing the West, but it got in regardless.

In finally produced segment I was glad to hear back my wry comment that forever wars are anathema to Trump’s base “and hopefully the Democratic base as well!” since at tomorrow’s “No Kings” rallies, if my previous experience is any guide, I expect to encounter not the slightest antiwar (or antigenocide!) message outside a scattering of signs brought out by a few attendees, unasked.

My banner, tomorrow in Chicago, will read “Our War Money Kills Ukraine, Not One Penny More.” I’ll be standing outside of the rally. Were it a Republican shindig I’d focus on Gaza, since it’s the growing antizionist trend among young conservatives, not liberals, which seems capable of turning the Defund Israel demand from an urbane fashion gesture into a movement likely to really spare Palestinian lives, beyond sparing our entire world the dangers of a U.S.-Iran war. But for a Dem rally it’s the comparably apocalyptic horror which my parents’ generation rightly deemed unthinkable – the liberal-embraced adventure of a NATO-Russia hot war – on which I’ll want to focus precisely in hopes of mitigating the Iran and Venezuela conflicts.

I was glad the piece included my copious mockery of the lesser-evil Presidential option for whom, last November, so many anti-war voters concerned over Ukraine grimly voted. Humanitarians are few and far between even in ordinary life, and it’s long since serious empathy has survived any Democrat’s or Republican’s rise to the highest public office. Trump is, at least, a cynical con man and not a true-believing neocon: a self-devoted opportunist and not a future-focused fanatic intent on stamping our remarkably conservative planet with corporate-technocratic Western-sourced templates.

I didn’t lie observing that Trump prefers to attempt the assassination of rival leaders, often under cover of peace talks (as with Iran last June) seeking to avoid the protracted wars he knows he would find so burdensome to manage. After which it’s TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out and a rushed declaration of peace to get Trump next year’s prize; as if in the leadership of a nuclear-armed global pariah, timidity wasn’t a thing to be welcomed. Trump seems sincerely to fear dying in a nuclear war: for those of us whose obsessing moral commitment is to avoid killing in one, it’s hard to see the Cheeto’s lack of courage as a downside.

Trump seems correspondingly inclined to retreat into our hemisphere from potentially nuclear conflicts in the other, savaging neighbors like Venezuela and even deploying forces within the U.S. so as to seem tough without completing the apocalypse scripted for him in Eurasia. His voting base, without a doubt, fears both tyranny and civil war, and will tolerate talk of domestic troop deployments mostly in what seems to them, as the Jan 6th protests seemed, a defense of democracy rather than an attack upon it.

Tomorrow’s Chicago rally will focus on the few hundred National Guardsmen Trump has sent onto Chicago streets in support of a set of nationally popular federal laws that Trump’s base considers it wrong for the wealthier states to nullify. Liberals are right to lament the terrible suffering now facing decent and hard-working neighbors illegally here, and many full citizens caught up in the chaos besides. Conservatives consider the citizenship bond to be an indispensible contract that is much like a labor contract in there tragically needing to be stern penalties for the otherwise justly pitied (because so often desperate) willing to work outside of it.

At tomorrow’s rally many will be satisfied with self-pronouncements that tighter borders, by restricting the laissez-faire global flow of cheap labor, constitute fascism itself; whereas others will fear the brutality, and the future fascist danger, of using troops untrained in policing to enforce laws which America’s metropolitan wealth centers are making a bid, against the “fascist” preferences of the electorate, to block from being enforced.

I’ll be focused on antiwar, and praying that the Orange Narcissist, although pressured by bipartisan neocon fanatics to remake the world in America’s and Europe’s image, will for his own typically dingy reasons and to humor antiwar cries sometimes sounding loudest from his own base, sate bloodthirsty Washington with bluster, trolling, a mix of real and staged idiocy, and the bare minimum of actual gore allowed to the president of such a violently narcissist imperial nation.

I pray that, instead of Obama’s “kill list” updated weekly over years, Trump will stop at the grisly trophy of several score poor fishermen brutally murdered off the Venezuelan coast, and several score ethnically Venezuelan U.S. citizens sent – I can only pray, briefly – to the new Guantanamo prison bays we are renting in El Salvador.

I will hope that my Ukraine banner, in countering insane calls for a desperate, speciescidal grab for dominance in Eastern Europe, will be giving the Monster space to make a smaller murder-pageant of his Iran and Venezuela wars-in-preparation. I will remember the liberals’ Honduras coup and the unanswerable fact that martyred labor leader Berta Caceres didn’t want to come here and sample our ‘antiracist’ largesse. I’ll carry it against the longed-for day when, with the Petrodollar a distant memory, the entire Global South is at last wealthy enough, relative to a reduced and profitably chastened West, to turn us away from its well-appointed (and sufficiently well-armed) gates, without getting called “fascist” for its trouble.

I can’t have a conscience cleansed of the blood of empire until there can be a left-and-right movement against war, against actual fascism like that of present-day Kyiv and Tel Aviv, and against the Lovecraft-blasphemous American nuclear arsenal, our obscene ambitious gamble with Every Genocide Committed at Once. I can’t be throwing the word “fascist” around at global or domestic majorities, may liberals and conservatives both forgive me – and forgive me long enough to unite behind a world where countries like Venezuela can retain elected leaders not cynically ousted as ‘Kings’ by Western elites; where a very conservative species is spared from how fascism’s birthplace, the inventive, liberal, world-consuming West, has so long been tempted to rule.

Sean Reynolds travelled to Iran in 2019 as a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

18 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

As the ceasefire between Israel and the resistance enters its second week, a new dispute has erupted; this time over Israeli bodies buried by Israel beneath Gaza’s ruins.

Israel has threatened that it may resume the genocide if Hamas fails to find all Israeli bodies still missing in Gaza. The threat came even as US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday night that Hamas is “certainly searching” for the remains and that some are likely buried under the rubble of destroyed homes. Trump said he was “optimistic” the matter would be resolved, though Israeli officials continue to escalate.

But in Gaza, many Palestinians view this dispute with disbelief. While global headlines fixate on the fate of a few dead Israeli prisoners of war, over 9,000 Palestinian civilians remain missing under the rubble, their bodies unrecovered for months, with many of them buried alive, because Israel’s siege and bombardment destroyed the very tools and roads needed for rescue.

Israel’s carpet bombing of the Strip has not only killed tens of thousands of civilians but also buried its own captives beyond reach. What began as a campaign to “free Israeli prisoners” has left a landscape of mass graves, shattered hospitals, and impassable debris fields.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 170,000 injured since Israel’s genocide began on October 7, 2023. Thousands of others remain trapped under collapsed buildings, while civil defense and rescue teams lack heavy machinery, fuel, and safety equipment to dig through the destruction.

Rescue crews say even basic operations are impossible. Many areas are either under Israeli control or sealed off by bomb craters, and those who try to reach the ruins often work with bare hands.

Why Hamas Could Not Find All Israeli Bodies

Four main challenges stand in the way of retrieving the remaining Israeli bodies:

1. Massive destruction: Some of the bodies are believed to be buried under enormous piles of rubble created by Israel’s bombardment, requiring heavy machinery and advanced scanning technology.
2. Restricted access: Over half of Gaza remains under Israeli military control, leaving Palestinian teams unable to move freely or operate safely.
3. Lost information: Many resistance fighters who guarded or documented the captives’ locations were assassinated in Israeli strikes, taking vital information with them.
4. Fragmented control: Some captives were held by smaller Palestinian factions rather than Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, creating further uncertainty.
5. Israel’s blockade: Israel continues to block the entry of heavy machinery and bulldozers into the Gaza Strip, delaying efforts to recover the bodies of its own prisoners, who were killed by its intense bombardment of the enclave.

In addition, Gaza has no DNA testing capacity to identify decomposed remains. Laboratories equipped with PCR (polymerase chain reaction) technology are required to extract genetic material from decayed tissues, a process impossible under Israel’s blockade conditions.

Ceasefire Under Strain

Since the October 11 ceasefire began, the Ministry of Health has recorded 23 new Palestinian deaths and 122 injuries from Israeli violations. Civil defense crews have recovered 381 new bodies from beneath the rubble, while Israel has handed back 120 unidentified Palestinian bodies it had kidnapped.

Hamas has so far returned 10 of 28 Israeli bodies listed in the ceasefire agreement. The rest, the group says, are “buried too deep for current teams to reach.”

US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steven Witkoff told The New York Post he remains confident that all Israeli remains “will eventually be returned,” echoing Trump’s optimism despite Israel’s growing incitement.

Observers say the Netanyahu government bears full responsibility for the delay. They note that Israel’s airstrikes obliterated both Palestinian neighborhoods and the underground sites where captives were held, making recovery physically impossible.

“The occupier created this reality,” Hamas said in a statement. “It destroyed the tunnels and homes where captives were located, and now blames others for the consequences of its own bombing.”

18 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- An Israeli tank fired directly at a civilian vehicle carrying the Shaaban family in Gaza’s Zaytoun neighborhood on Friday afternoon, killing all family members in yet another Israeli violation of the ongoing ceasefire agreement.

Gaza’s Civil Defense said the family was trying to return home when the tank shell hit their vehicle. The attack killed all 11 passengers, including seven children and three women.

The victims were identified as:

Children:

• Mohammad Abu Shaaban, 5
• Ibrahim Ihab Abu Shaaban, 6
• Anas Sufian Shaaban, 8
• Karam Sufian Shaaban, 10
• Jumana Ihab Shaaban, 10
• Nasma Sufian Shaaban, 12
• Nasser Ihab Abu Shaaban, 13

Parents and relatives:

• Ihab Abu Shaaban, 38
• Randa Abu Shaaban, 36
• Samar Shaaban
• Sufian Shaaban

Civil Defense officials said the family’s vehicle had moved east of Gaza City and crossed the yellow line before being struck. “It was possible to warn them or stop them without killing,” a Civil Defense spokesperson said. “But the occupation remains thirsty for blood and determined to kill innocent civilians.”

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the strike, calling it “a deliberate and complete war crime” and a “blatant violation of the ceasefire.”

“The Israeli army fired a tank shell directly at the Shaaban family’s vehicle as they tried to inspect their home in Zaytoun,” the statement read. “Eleven family members, including seven children and three women, were killed instantly.”

Hamas said the attack reflects Israel’s intent to continue its aggression despite the US-supervised ceasefire deal brokered by Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey earlier this month.

“This horrific crime exposes Israel’s disregard for human life and international law,” the statement said. Hamas urged President Donald Trump and the mediators to hold Israel accountable and pressure it to stop targeting civilians.

The Government Media Office also condemned the strike, describing it as another massacre against defenseless families. It called for an urgent international investigation into Israel’s repeated violations of the ceasefire.

Since October 2023, Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed about 70,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 170,000, mostly women and children.

18 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org