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By Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sybil Fares 

Real peace demands Palestinian statehood, Ukrainian neutrality and the courage to defy the war lobby.

23 Oct 2025 – United States President Donald Trump styles himself as a peacemaker. In his rhetoric, he claims credit for his efforts to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Yet beneath the grandstanding lies an absence of substance, at least to date.

The problem is not Trump’s lack of effort, but his lack of proper concepts. Trump confuses “peace” with “ceasefires,” which sooner or later revert to war (typically sooner). In fact, American presidents from Lyndon Johnson onward have been subservient to the military-industrial complex, which profits from endless war. Trump is merely following in that line by avoiding a genuine resolution to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

Peace is not a ceasefire. Lasting peace is achieved by resolving the underlying political disputes that led to the war. This requires grappling with history, international law and political interests that fuel conflicts. Without addressing the root causes of war, ceasefires are a mere intermission between rounds of slaughter.

Trump has proposed what he calls a “peace plan” for Gaza. However, what he outlines amounts to nothing more than a ceasefire. His plan fails to address the core political issue of Palestinian statehood. A true peace plan would tie together four outcomes: the end of Israel’s genocide, Hamas’s disarmament, Palestine’s membership in the United Nations, and the normalisation of diplomatic ties with Israel and Palestine throughout the world. These foundational principles are absent from Trump’s plan, which is why no country has signed off on it despite White House insinuations to the contrary. At most, some countries have backed the “Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity,” a temporising gesture.

Trump’s peace plan was presented to Arab and Muslim countries to deflect attention from the global momentum for Palestinian statehood. The US plan is designed to undercut that momentum, allowing Israel to continue its de facto annexation of the West Bank and its ongoing bombardment of Gaza and restrictions of emergency relief under the ruse of security. Israel’s ambitions are to eradicate the possibility of a Palestinian state, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made explicit at the UN in September. So far, Trump and his associates have simply been advancing Netanyahu’s agenda.

Trump’s “plan” is already unravelling, much like the Oslo Accords, the Camp David Summit, and every other “peace process” that treated Palestinian statehood as a distant aspiration rather than the solution to the conflict. If Trump really wants to end the war – a somewhat doubtful proposition – he’d have to break with Big Tech and the rest of the military-industrial complex (recipients of vast arms contracts funded by the US). Since October 2023, the US has spent $21.7bn on military aid to Israel, much of it returning to Silicon Valley.

Trump would also have to break with his donor-in-chief, Miriam Adelson, and the Zionist lobby. In doing so, he would at least represent the American people (who support a state of Palestine) and uphold American strategic interests. The US would join the overwhelming global consensus, which endorses the implementation of the two-state solution, rooted in UN Security Council resolutions and ICJ opinions.

The same failure of Trump’s peacemaking holds in Ukraine. Trump repeatedly claimed during the campaign that he could end the war “in 24 hours”. Yet what he has been proposing is a ceasefire, not a political solution. The war continues.

The cause of the Ukraine war is no mystery – if one looks beyond the pablum of the mainstream media. The casus belli was the push by the US military-industrial complex for NATO’s endless expansion, including to Ukraine and Georgia, and the US-backed coup in Kyiv in February 2014 to bring to power a pro-NATO regime, which ignited the war. The key to peace in Ukraine, then and now, was for Ukraine to maintain its neutrality as a bridge between Russia and NATO.

In March-April 2022, when Turkiye mediated a peace agreement in the Istanbul Process, based on Ukraine’s return to neutrality, the Americans and the British pushed the Ukrainians to walk out of the talks. Until the US clearly renounces NATO’s expansion to Ukraine, there can be no sustainable peace. The only way forward is a negotiated settlement based on Ukraine’s neutrality in the context of mutual security of Russia, Ukraine, and the NATO countries.

Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously characterised war as the continuation of politics with other means. He was right. Yet it is more accurate to say that war is the failure of politics that leads to conflict. When political problems are deferred or denied, and governments fail to negotiate over essential political issues, war too often ensues. Real peace requires the courage and capacity to engage in politics, and to face down the war profiteers.

No president since John F Kennedy has really tried to make peace. Many close observers of Washington believe that it was Kennedy’s assassination that irrevocably put the military-industrial complex in the seat of power. In addition, the US arrogance of power already noted by J William Fulbright in the 1960s (in reference to the misguided Vietnam War) is another culprit. Trump, like his predecessors, believes that US bullying, misdirection, financial pressures, coercive sanctions and propaganda will be enough to force Putin to submit to NATO, and the Muslim world to submit to Israel’s permanent rule over Palestine.

Trump and the rest of the Washington political establishment, beholden to the military-industrial complex, will not on their own account move beyond these ongoing delusions. Despite decades of Israeli occupation of Palestine and more than a decade of war in Ukraine (which started with the 2014 coup), the wars continue despite the ongoing attempts by the US to assert its will. In the meantime, the money pours into the coffers of the war machine.

Nonetheless, there is still a glimmer of hope, since reality is a stubborn thing.

When Trump soon arrives in Budapest to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his deeply knowledgeable and realistic host, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, can help Trump to grasp a fundamental truth: NATO enlargement must end to bring peace to Ukraine. Similarly, Trump’s trusted counterparts in the Islamic world – Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto – can explain to Trump the utter necessity of Palestine as a UN member state now, as the very precondition of Hamas’s disarmament and peace, not as a vague promise for the end of history.

Trump can bring peace if he reverts to diplomacy. Yes, he would have to face down the military-industrial complex, the Zionist lobby and the warmongers, but he would have the world and the American people on his side.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Javed Akbar

16 Oct 2025 – US President Donald Trump is being lavishly credited with ending Israel’s two-year massacre of Gaza’s population. We are told he persuaded both Netanyahu and Hamas into accepting his “deal.” In truth, Hamas had consented to nearly identical terms more than a year ago. It was Israel that torpedoed the effort—assassinating Hamas negotiator Ismail Haniyya and, under full American cover, resuming its onslaught.

Trump’s much-touted 20-point plan resurrects a century-old pattern of Western-engineered “solutions” that dictate Arab destinies. It is not a peace initiative but a reincarnation of Sykes-Picot¹—drafted in Washington, couched in the idiom of compassion, yet anchored in domination. What has changed is not conscience but calculus. Israel’s unrestrained aggression—its strike on ceasefire talks in Qatar, that killed six members of the negotiating team, while the chief negotiator survived – exposes its ruthless provocations, its crumbling legitimacy—has become a liability for Trump. Even his MAGA faithful, long intoxicated by blind allegiance, now question both the moral and strategic price of this alliance.

Across the West, public outrage has reached a scale unseen in decades. Millions march against Israeli impunity. Governments, cornered by domestic pressure, now tiptoe away from unconditional endorsement. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, solidarity with Palestine has hardened into near-universal condemnation. Israel’s isolation has a price—and Washington is paying it.

Yet while the guns may fall silent, the occupation remains. The apartheid remains. The suffocating siege, the theft of land, the architecture of control—all endure. What is now celebrated as “peace” is merely an intermission in an unending colonial project.

No American president has ever delivered justice or statehood to Palestinians; Trump’s plan is the emptiest performance yet—a legal vacuum dressed in diplomatic ritual. Its vague formulations ensure Israel’s continued supremacy, while real decisions about Arab futures remain chained to Washington’s will. Regional autocrats play their roles obediently in this familiar choreography of dependence.

The proposal for a so-called Gaza International Transitional Authority—a euphemism for external rule—reveals the old deceit in a new costume. Britain, whose imperial pen once partitioned the region, returns as “mediator” under American command. The descendants of those who once conspired with colonial powers now normalize relations with Israel under U.S. patronage. The circle of betrayal is complete.

This Gaza plan is not a peace accord; it is Sykes-Picot reborn—a political arrangement disguised as humanitarian necessity. It redraws not borders but hierarchies, reaffirming who commands and who complies.

We may never know Gaza’s full toll—already counted in the hundreds of thousands—but the world’s complicity is beyond dispute. Every capital that shipped the bombs, every newsroom that whitewashed the blood, every politician who turned away shares in the stain.

If this ceasefire holds, it may halt the bombing but not the injustice. It may spare lives but sanctify impunity. The architects of Gaza’s ruin will walk unpunished, their crimes cleansed by the rhetoric of diplomacy. This is not peace—it is postponement. The world calls it reconciliation, but the graves whisper otherwise.

Note:

¹ Sykes-Picot was a secret treaty. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, and the Allied powers were vying for control of the Middle East. Britain, France, and Russia negotiated the Sykes-Picot Agreement to divide the Ottoman territories into spheres of influence.

Javed Akbar is a Canadian writer with a passion for humanitarian work. A member of the Governor’s Council of the International Development and Relief Foundation (IDRF)—a leading Canadian charity.

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Caitlin Johnstone

The empire we live under is everything we’re trained to fear. Our own rulers are the murderers. Our own rulers are the terrorists. Our own rulers are the tyrants. Our own rulers are the problem.

25 Oct 2025 – The other day I published an essay titled “Zionists Push Islamophobia Because It’s Easier Than Getting People To Like Israel,” based on the conspicuous overlap between virulent Israel supporters and people who promote hatred of Muslims.

What I didn’t know at the time until readers alerted me was that Drop Site News had put out an article last month about a leaked polling report commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs which actually found that promoting Islamophobia is the most effective way of combatting the way worldwide public opinion has been turning against Israel.

“Israel’s best tactic to combat this, according to the study, is to foment fear of ‘Radical Islam’ and ‘Jihadism,’ which remain high,” Drop Site’s Ryan Grim writes. “By highlighting Israeli support for women’s rights and gay rights while elevating concerns that Hamas wants to ‘destroy all Jews and spread Jihadism,’ Israeli support rebounded by an average of over 20 points in each country.”

So this is an actual, planned tactic. The shrieking vitriol we’ve been seeing about Islam and Muslims lately is being deliberately and systematically fomented as a calculated strategy.

[https://twitter.com/GenXGirl1994/status/1972419987618038168]

One of the moronic things about this latest wave of Islamophobic hysteria is that the US and Israel and their allies are vastly more murderous and tyrannical than the entire Muslim world combined.

The Trump administration is currently sending the world’s largest aircraft carrier and a bunch of warships to the waters off Latin America, where they’ve been waging a bogus new war on terror with increasingly frequent attacks on boats carrying alleged “narco-terrorists”. They’re not even disguising the fact that this is actually about preparing for regime change interventionism in Venezuela, a government that Washington has long sought to topple because of its massive oil reserves and noncompliance with the capitalist world order.

The US power alliance is constantly doing things like this. Waging wars, bombing countries, imposing starvation sanctions, staging coups, backing proxy conflicts, meddling in foreign elections — all with the goal of total planetary domination. It’s accepted as the baseline norm and the western press often barely even reports on its abuses (did you know Trump has bombed Somalia more than 80 times this year?), but that doesn’t make it any less murderous and tyrannical.

And we’re being told day in and day out that we all need to be afraid of Muslims, who even with a worldwide population of two billion still manage to be far, far less violent and destructive than the US-centralized power alliance.

[https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek/status/1981806987764547940]

Hell, the most abusive Muslim states are US partners in crime like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whose genocidal butchery in Yemen was backed by the US and its allies from 2015–2022. The UAE is funding genocidal atrocities in Sudan right this very moment. The US-centralized empire is the most destructive power structure on earth, and the most destructive Muslim states are backed by that same western power structure.

The empire we live under is everything we’re trained to fear. Our own rulers are the murderers. Our own rulers are the terrorists. Our own rulers are the tyrants. Our own rulers are the problem.

Our rulers want us shaking our fists at Muslims, immigrants, disobedient governments, and members of the other mainstream political party so that we don’t start shaking our fists at them.

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper. Contact: admin@caitlinjohnstone.com

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Prof. Jan Oberg

24 Oct 2025 – In October 2025, I attended two major academic conferences in Shanghai—both by invitation, and, curiously, as the only scholar from Scandinavia. That absence felt unjust to the more experienced Nordic experts in China studies who deserve a seat at such global forums.

What unfolded was a journey through two distinct but interwoven events—each offering a lens into China’s intellectual landscape and its evolving role in the world.

The 2nd World Conference on China Studies

The first event, the 2nd World Conference on China Studies, brought together over 500 scholars from 50 countries under the theme “Historical and Contemporary China: A Global Perspective.” I participated in the sub-forum titled “China in Global Context: Continuity and Innovation of Civilisation.”

It was a masterfully orchestrated gathering. The Chinese hosts demonstrated remarkable professionalism—from travel logistics and hotel arrangements to meals, sub-forum coordination, and sightseeing. The venue, Shanghai International Convention Centre in Pudong, stood beside the monumental new Museum of Contemporary Art and the iconic tower that defines the skyline when viewed from Nanjing Road across the river.

This high-level event was jointly hosted by the State Council Information Office of China and the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government, and organised by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Support came from a constellation of institutions: the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Renmin University, Fudan University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, and Beijing Language and Culture University.

The Opening Ceremony was chaired by Mo Gaoyi, deputy head of the CPC Central Committee’s Publicity Department and Minister of the State Council Information Office. A keynote was delivered by Romano Prodi, former Italian Prime Minister and President of the EU Commission—still deeply respected in China and a vocal advocate for global cooperation. (One wonders how he views today’s EU leadership.)

Other distinguished speakers included Gao Xiang, President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and long-time China scholars like Sally K. Church of the Needham Research Institute and Martin Jacques, known for his decades of engagement with China and his widely viewed TED and other video talks.

My Sub-Forum and Lecture

I gave a lecture in the sub-forum led by Professor Zhang Weiwei, head of the China Institute at Fudan University, who also hosted the second conference marking the institute’s 10th anniversary. A few of us participated in both events, creating a sense of continuity and deepening dialogue.

Such huge top-level or “high-end” conferences also attract the media, all the local Shanghai media and all the national media, no exception. They want to hear what you think about China and its development, a bit as if they feel they need some Westerners to confirm their own historically unique and very positive human-centered achievements over the last 40 or so years. They certainly don’t – but the admiration of the West and the elements of “imports” from the West still have a role to play.

I can’t remember anybody in Western media showing any interest in asking Chinese social science experts what they thought about the development of the West.

Most of these media people are young, say 25-35. They rush up to you and sometimes even before presenting themselves or what they want to ask you about, put up their microphone and begin asking questions. At a robotics research centre, where we walked among humanoid robots, several of them wanted to know my views on these new creatures. I took the opportunity to say that an expert is only an expert in specific fields.

I then made the general point that all societies need to thoroughly discuss the good and bad sides of all new technologies and make democratic decisions about their implementation, or risk that technology runs away with society and human joys and creates more new problems than contributing to solving older ones.

That was actually spontaneously appreciated by several of the 10-15 interviewers I was approached by on that single day.

The third type of question was what such an international conference could contribute to.

My general response was that while such conferences often do not permit deep dialogues because most forums are time-tight and scheduled to have only presentations of a few minutes and little or no answers from the audience, that part may have limited effect in and of itself – but that, of course, human beings meet also outside over meals and coffees, make new contacts, exchange informal views, point each other to interesting analyses and views, etc – they can be very useful.

In addition, science, like art, I emphasised, can be a great bridge-builder among civilisations: “This is how you think about it and this is how we, or I, think about – now let’s see what is compatible and what needs to be worked on!”

Actually, this type of social cosmology, or deeper ways of thinking, was the theme of my own 8-minute mini-lecture. And it was quite well received in spite of the more geopolitical focus that many other participants adhered to.

It is based on my chapter of the TFF anthology, “If You Want To Understand China.”

In my sub-forum, I was particularly happy with what I heard Vuk Jeremic from Serbia, Carlos Martinez, Martin Jaques and Richard Sakwa from the UK, Valentin Golovachev from Russia, Fan Yongpeng, Huang Renwei and Zhang Weiwei from China had to say – whereas Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times, was a fine representative of the outdated pro-armament mainstream geo-political paradigm in which Russia appears as a never-ending threat to Europe that NATO must re-arm to defend itself.

The Thinkers Forum 2025: Discourse and Destiny

The second conference, the Thinkers Forum 2025 on Chinese Discourse and the Reshaping of World Order, unfolded on the breathtaking campus of Fudan University—one of China’s most prestigious institutions, ranked among the top in Asia and globally.

At the heart of this gathering was Professor Zhang Weiwei, who has led Fudan’s China Institute with remarkable vision over its first decade. More than a scholar, Zhang is a connector—surrounded by young thinkers, deeply engaged with media, and constantly on the move to build bridges across continents. He often travels with a film crew from the media platform China Academy, capturing dialogues that transcend borders.

I first met him in 2024 in Skopje, at a forward-looking conference on globalisation and world order hosted by Professor Biljana Vankovska, TFF board member. It was there that he invited me to record a video conversation—one that marked the beginning of a stimulating intellectual exchange.

Zhang has pioneered what he calls “futurist historiography”—a method of projecting the likely evolution of unfolding events. In a recent retrospective titled “Our Strategic Predictions Are Quite Accurate,” he did something rare in academic circles: he revisited past forecasts the Institute had made and showed how many had come to pass.

I found this both refreshing and necessary. After all, if your predictions prove accurate, why not say so? As with medicine, sound diagnosis and prognosis lead to better treatment. The same holds true for political analysis.

Rethinking Security: A Call for Peace Literacy

In my own remarks, I reflected on a troubling global pattern: despite vast cultural differences, most nations still approach security through the same narrow lens—weaponised ‘security’ before peace, deterrence before dialogue. The prevailing doctrine of offensive defence remains dominant, despite its outdated assumptions and conspicuous destabilising consequences.

This mindset accepts violence—even mass killing—as a necessary fallback if deterrence fails. It sidelines Article 1 of the UN Charter, which mandates that peace be pursued by peaceful means. It neglects alternative strategies like civil defence, vulnerability reduction, and resilience-building. And it reveals a profound absence of education in conflict resolution, mediation, reconciliation, and forgiveness—displaying what I call “conflict and peace illiteracy.”

I didn’t need to spell out that nuclear weapons and the ideology I call nuclearism have no place in a truly peaceful world. My references to Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and China’s own Sun Tzu—whose wisdom dates back over 2,300 years—were intended to make that clear.

In my brief eight-minute slot, I devoted one minute to alternative security paradigms, and another to urging Chinese academia to embrace peace and conflict studies, as well as future studies, as formal disciplines. While individual scholars here and there may show a personal interest in peace thinking —and students do—I sensed little reaction and no institutional momentum.

With the exception of Nanjing University – and Nanjing is China’s city of peace – I’m unaware of any comprehensive, permanent programs in these fields across China. I am grateful to be corrected if I am wrong.

This silence only deepens my resolve to pursue this further.

A Conversation with China Academy

Between the two conferences, I recorded a 90-minute conversation with Mimi, the brilliant studio host at China Academy (WeChat ID: mimizhuxiyuan). The footage will be edited into thematic segments and shared across platforms like Bilibili, YouTube, TikTok, and the China Academy homepage.

Working with these young, media-savvy professionals is always a joy. Their curiosity, technical skill, and editorial intuition are a testament to the creative energy pulsing through China’s intellectual and cultural landscape.

Prof. Jan Oberg, Ph.D. is director of the independent Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research-TFF in Sweden and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. CV: https://transnational.live/jan-oberg
https://transnational.live.

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

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.”

___________________________________________

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.

__________________________________________

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?

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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