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By Human Wrongs Watch

29 Oct 2025 – Horrific stories of mass-atrocities committed by the RSF militia continue to emerge, along with the tens of thousands of civilians who have fled the North Darfur city of El Fasher in Sudan.

The World Health Organization says it’s appalled and deeply shocked by reports that 460 patients and their companions have been killed at Saudi Maternity Hospital in the city.

Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that prior to this latest attack, WHO has verified 285 attacks on healthcare in Sudan with at least 1,204 deaths and over 400 injuries of health workers and patients, since the start of the conflict.

The once allied RSF and forces of the military government began fighting in and around the capital Khartoum in April 2023 – a conflict which has since engulfed the entire country.

“All attacks on healthcare must stop immediately and unconditionally,” said Tedros demanding protection for all health workers and civilians under international law.

Many civilians fleeing the RSF takeover have sought safety in Tawila some 60 kilometres from the regional capital of El Fasher, which until a few days ago was the last remaining government-controlled city which had been holding out against the RSF for over 500 days.

Many have arrived in Tawila “dehydrated, injured and traumatized,” said the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, on social media. “The UN and aid organizations are providing life-saving support, but the violence must stop.”

‘No child is safe’
“No child is safe,” said UNICEF chief Catherine Russell.

“While the full scale of the impact remains unclear due to widespread communications blackouts, the estimated 130,000 children in El Fasher are at a high risk of grave rights violations, with reports of abduction, killing and maiming, and sexual violence.”

There are also reports of humanitarian workers being detained or killed.

UNICEF is calling for an immediate ceasefire to stop the violence, safe, unimpeded humanitarian access, the protection of civilians – especially children – and guaranteed safe passage for families seeking refuge, in line with international humanitarian law.

She said all those responsible for violations must be held accountable.

Red Cross workers killed
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Wednesday expressed deep sorrow over the killing of five local staff working as volunteers in Bara, North Kordofan state.

“We received this news with profound shock and outrage and we condemn in the strongest possible terms this horrific and senseless act,” a statement read.

ICRC pledged to support the ongoing humanitarian work across Sudan “striving to uphold the safety, dignity and protection of all people and communities” impacted by the violence.

UN’s head of humanitarian operations in Sudan, Denise Brown, told UN News after recently visiting the Darfur region before the fall of the city this week, that it’s proving hard to verify information from the stricken city, but all atrocities needed to be accounted for so that “justice can be served”.

3 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Raïs Neza Boneza

For decades, the United States has punished nations that dared to act independently. From Venezuela to the Sahel, a new generation is rejecting the old empire’s script.

27 Oct 2025 – The mask has fallen. In a moment of verbal violence reminiscent of an old western, U.S. president Donald Trump openly called for the “removal” of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, accusing Venezuela of “threatening American interests, or supporting drug cartels.”
Let us be clear: this is not mere rhetoric. It is an explicit call for the murder of a sovereign head of state—a flagrant violation of international law.

Trump does not speak for the American people. He speaks for the multinationals, the military-industrial complex, and the corporate lobbies that thrive on chaos. Every time these powers wave their sanctions and threats, more nations awaken to the true face of empire.

Behind this new outburst of aggression lies an old and familiar strategy: destroy any government that dares to act independently of Washington. Since Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has chosen the path of sovereignty—controlling its own oil, defining its own economic priorities, and pursuing a foreign policy free of U.S. domination.
For the American establishment, that is an unforgivable crime.

From Iran in 1953 to Guatemala in 1954, from Chile in 1973 to Iraq in 2003, the script has barely changed. Governments that nationalize their resources, seek independent alliances, or challenge U.S. hegemony are branded as “dictatorships” or “terrorist regimes.” Their leaders are isolated, sanctioned, or removed.
The methods differ — covert coups during the Cold War, sanctions and hybrid warfare today — but the logic remains the same: to preserve global dominance through controlled instability.

Venezuela’s “crime” under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro has been the pursuit of sovereignty — reclaiming control over its oil, asserting an independent foreign policy, and building alliances beyond Washington’s reach. For the U.S. establishment, that is an intolerable act of defiance.
Caracas has endured attempted coups, crippling sanctions, and now open calls for violence. Yet despite the pressure, the Venezuelan people continue to resist, organize, and rebuild.

The latest sanctions imposed by Trump on Colombian president Gustavo Petro — and even his family — illustrate how far this imperial reflex extends. Petro, a lifelong advocate of peace and anti-corruption reform, is being punished simply for questioning U.S. policies. The message is clear: those who refuse alignment are treated as adversaries.

This strategy is not confined to Latin America. The same script has played out in Libya, where NATO’s intervention left a nation in ruins; in Iraq, where regime change unleashed decades of instability; and in Afghanistan, where twenty years of occupation ended in chaos. In Africa’s Sahel region, popular movements in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso now reject foreign domination, seeking new paths of sovereignty and solidarity.

Each time Washington resorts to sanctions or intervention, it weakens its own moral authority. Every act of coercion deepens global mistrust and strengthens the call for a multipolar world — one in which nations of the Global South reclaim their right to self-determination.

The struggle unfolding in Venezuela, Colombia, and across Africa is not just regional; it is civilizational. It speaks to a broader awakening — a collective realization that the age of empire is fading, and that dignity, unity, and independence remain the most powerful tools of resistance.

The world no longer trembles before the empire’s shadow.
From Latin America to Africa and Asia, nations stand tall — sovereign, unbowed, and awake.

Raïs Neza Boneza is the author of fiction as well as non-fiction, poetry books and articles.

3 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Antonio C. S. Rosa

Parental Guidance Advised: Pornographic Violence

GAZA, WEST BANK 3 Nov 2025

PHOTOS: Searching for a ‘trace of home’ in the ruins of northern Gaza: Entire neighborhoods that teemed with life just weeks ago are now rubble and ash. Absent any sense of safety, residents struggle to imagine a future – 30 Oct 2025

CLICK TO SEE PHOTOS AND TEXT:

[https://www.972mag.com/photos-ruins-northern-gaza/?utm_source=972+Magazine+Newsletter&utm_campaign=9766c123a9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_12_2022_11_20_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1fe821d25-9766c123a9-318811565]

“Governments are vassals of Bankism and Military Capitalism, the Mafia that controls human affairs through violence and cyber-information manipulation in the 21^st century.”
— Antonio C. S. Rosa, M.A. -Editor TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS

*************

JOIN THE BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS CAMPAIGN TO PROTEST THE ISRAELI BARBARIC GENOCIDE OF PALESTINIANS IN GAZA.

DON’T BUY PRODUCTS WHOSE BARCODE STARTS WITH 729, WHICH INDICATES THAT THEY ARE PRODUCED IN ISRAEL. DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR HUMAN JUSTICE!

3 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Richard Falk

29 Oct 2025 – The historic outcome of Gaza People’s Tribunal Final Session in Istanbul, May 23-26. The Jury was composed of persons from diverse backgrounds but joined by lives vividly committed to engaged citizenship and progressive political consciousness, with actions guided by the deep roots of conscience. The GPT was designed to honor these same features with a particular emphasis on serving as an instrument of truth-telling with respect to the Palestinian ordeal resulting from the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. To expose the truth that emerges from respecting reality and evidence is necessary because of state propaganda and a filtered, biased media that either hides or slants the truth, even to the extent of punitive and lethal action against independent journalists and dismissing as irrelevant the rulings of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

Its formation inspired by the Russell Tribunal of 1966-67, which reacted to US crimes in the Vietnam War that were not resisted, or even exposed by the organized international community as embodied in the UN. When institutions fail to implement international law in extreme situation people of conscience must act. Israel has become a rogue or pariah state because the peoples of the world have reacted, but it is not enough. Palestinian rights must be realized, and future of peace must be shaped by the victims of criminality, not by the perpetrators.

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Final Statement of the Gaza Tribunal Jury of Conscience

Istanbul, 26 October 2025

We, the undersigned members of the Jury of Conscience, hereby deliver this Statement of Findings and Moral Judgment at the final session of the Gaza Tribunal. The Jury, guided by conscience and informed by international law, does not speak with the authority of states, but when law is silenced by power, conscience must become the final tribunal.

The Tribunal is not a court of law so does not purport to determine guilt or liability of any person, organization or state. It is a civil society response to the continuing lack of accountability for the commission by Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip. We believe that genocide must be named and documented and that impunity feeds continuing violence throughout the globe.

Genocide in Gaza is the concern of all humanity. When states are silent civil society can and must speak out.

The Gaza Tribunal has brought together a wealth of material in a valuable archive, the existence of which provides lasting evidence of the truth of the genocide against the Palestinian people. The Jury expresses solidarity with the rallies, the marches, the encampments, the flotillas, the strikes and other actions that protest the genocide and states’ unwillingness to hold Israel to account. And it offers a counter-narrative to the security narrative Israel and its allies persistently broadcast and to the labelling of Palestinian suffering as a humanitarian disaster. It is not. It is the deliberate commission of the gravest of crimes, imposed with dire humanitarian consequences.

We have heard extensive evidence of the crimes committed by Israel, of the causes of the genocide, of the collusion by and complicity of other actors, of courageous resistance and resilience by Palestinians and by global civil society. We have heard moving personal testimonies of the physical and mental harms wrought by these crimes and the suffering of the Palestinian people.

This concluding statement presents our findings based upon this evidence and the legal standards of the Genocide Convention, the human rights treaties, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the moral imperatives of natural justice. Yet above all, this decision is grounded in the unyielding belief that every human life has equal worth, and that no state or ideology has the right to destroy an entire people.

Our decision builds upon the testimonies, oral and written, the expert evidence and the research and analytical papers carried out by many people over the past months. It reiterates and endorses the Sarajevo Declaration adopted in May 2025.

Israel’s Crimes

The Jury condemns the ongoing genocide and crimes listed below. We believe these crimes and their impact on the Palestinian people should be separately named to understand the holistic nature of the genocide, its dehumanisation of the people, its sadistic character and its temporality. These crimes did not commence in October 2023 and they will not end with the ceasefire; deaths and severe physical harm will continue. The physical and psychological trauma of the surviving population will be transmitted through the generations.

The Jury condemns the commission of the following additional crimes:

Starvation and famine through the deliberate denial of food, water and systematic destruction of the entire food system.

Domicide is more than the intentional mass destruction of residential properties and their infrastructure – electricity, water and sanitation. A home is about love, life, a repository of memories, hopes and aspiration. Its destruction causes displacement, trauma, the disintegration of communities and profound cultural loss.

Ecocide describes a particular kind of warfare based on ruination of land fertility, air quality, sources of food and water: catastrophic environmental damage that destroys the capacity to survive after the bombing ceases.

Deliberate destruction and targeting of the healthcare infrastructure, equipment and personnel have been systematic for decades and has become almost total. The most important issue for physical and mental health is the Israeli occupation and the dehumanisation of the population.

Reprocide is the intentional and systematic targeting of Palestinian reproductive care through prevention of births, eliminating future lives and the ability to reproduce safely.

Scholasticide is the genocide of knowledge, the destruction of Palestine’s intellectual future through the killing, silencing and displacing a generation of students and teachers, obliteration of schools and universities, destroying dreams and aspirations.

Attacks on journalists. ‘Genocide documentation’ is carried out by Palestinian journalists and they and their families are targeted. Silencing these journalists is instrumental to the concealment of the genocide and more journalists have been killed than in any other conflict.

Torture, sexual violence, disappearances, gender-based violence in detention, at checkpoints, in house searches, in displacement and elsewhere.

Politicide is the targeted assassination and kidnapping of political and cultural leaders, representatives, activists, and destruction of civic institutions.

The Jury finds a coherent and consistent pattern of exterminatory violence in the intentional and targeted destruction of homes, water supplies, schools, hospitals, clinics, universities, cultural and religious institutions, agricultural land, and natural ecosystems.

The weaponization of hunger, denial of medical care, and forced displacement are not collateral damages of war—they are instruments of collective punishment of the entire population and of genocide. They are not justified by any claim of military objectives.

Complicity and Collusion

The Jury finds Western governments, particularly the United States, and others complicit in, in some cases colluding with, Israel’s commission of genocide through provision of diplomatic cover, weapons, weapon parts, intelligence, military assistance and training, and continuing economic relations. Such actions constitute moral failure and breach of their legal duty to prevent genocide and to cooperate to end a violation of a peremptory norm of international law – genocide and the Palestinian right to self-determination. Silence and inaction in the face of genocide are not an option and are other forms of complicity.

The Jury finds a range of non-state actors to be complicit in genocide. Biased media reporting in the west on Palestine and under-reporting of Israeli crimes conform to the economic and political interest of the ruling elites and their allied interests.

Academic institutions through their investments support Israel; staff and student endorsements of Palestine are silenced or disciplined.

Israel survives through militarisation; global supply chains sustain the genocide through weapons, banks, technology, transportation, and other multinational corporations. The hi-technology sector sustains the machinery of genocide by manipulating contents through algorithms, and allowing Israel to watch and plan every airstrike and assassination. Companies that sell cloud capacity to Israel provide the computer power for genocide. The Jury considers that the political economy of genocide is the highest form of hyper imperialism of the 21st century.

The Jury finds the current global order, structured by power hierarchies and economic dependencies, to have revealed its incapacity to prevent or punish atrocity crimes when committed by the powerful or their allies. The United Nations, paralyzed by the veto and political selectivity, has abdicated its foundational responsibility “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

The Jury, however, commends the UNHRC special procedures, including the Commission of Inquiry and especially the steadfastness of the special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, for their affirmation of genocide.

Conclusions

The Jury affirms that Israel is perpetrating an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, within—and enabled by—a broader settler-colonial apartheid regime rooted in the supremacist ideology of Zionism. This campaign is inseparable from over a century-long project targeting Palestinians across all of Palestine and in exile. The root causes of genocide lie in a racist, supremacist ideology—Zionism—that underpins a system aiming to dispossess, dominate, and erase Palestinians, supported by an oppressive neo-colonial power structure led by the United States and its allies, and shielded by international complicity, including from many Arab and Muslim governments.

The Jury considers the genocide in Gaza to have several exceptional characteristics. It is perpetuated on a captive population in a tiny, closed territory where Israel controls all entries and exits. It is systematic and carried out with the most advanced technology. Despite Israel’s attempts to prevent reporting, it is highly visible in real time. There has been resort to international judicial bodies, the International Court of Justice by South Africa and the request for an Advisory Opinion by the UN General Assembly with respect to UNRWA and the arrest warrants issued by the ICC, yet these have been ignored with impunity by Israel and other states have made little real protest and minimal sanctions have been imposed. Indeed, it is the ICC personnel and NGOs assisting the Court that have been sanctioned by the United States.

Recommendations

Ending Impunity and Ensuring Accountability

To hold all those responsible, politically, militarily, economically, and ideologically, perpetrators, supporters, enablers, and complicit parties fully accountable by every lawful means and to the fullest extent of the law.

To suspend Israel from international organizations and institutions, particularly the United Nations and its affiliates.

To activate UN General Assembly Resolution 377 A(V) (Uniting for Peace) so the UNGA can adopt collective measures to mandate a protective force for the Palestinian territories and stop the genocide in Gaza, given the UNSC’s failure to act due to successive U.S. vetoes.

Resisting and Dismantling Oppressive Structures

The Jury reaffirms the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to choose their modes of resistance to achieve liberation, freedom, and independence.

The Jury endorses a global, rights-based strategy to dismantle Zionist structures: identify and map the Zionist regime’s sources of power and enabling pillars.

The Jury calls for building a worldwide movement that weakens, isolates, and dismantles each source through coordinated political, legal, economic, academic, cultural, technological, and social action.

To achieve this objective, two main tasks are paramount:

1. 1.  Steadfastness and non-displacement.

Palestinians—in Gaza, the West Bank including Jerusalem, Palestinian communities inside the 1948 lines, must remain rooted in their land. There must be no further forced displacement of Palestinians in exile, particularly refugees across the region. Preventing displacement and sustaining steadfastness are essential to maintain the struggle.

1. 2.  Comprehensive global confrontation.

Confront the Zionist movement and regime globally in every sphere—political and diplomatic; legal and human rights; economic and commercial; media, cultural, intellectual, academic, and educational; industrial, technological, and scientific; arts, tourism, and sports. This mobilization centers peoples, movements, parties, unions, civil-society organizations, and individuals so that solidarity becomes power, normalization is resisted, and the Zionist project is besieged on all fronts.

The Jury affirms that the struggle is with Zionism as a racist, supremacist, settler-colonial enterprise—not with Jews or Judaism. The strategic horizon is a single rights-based political order grounded in equality, decolonization, restitution, and the unfettered right of return. Only this course can end the ongoing genocide and open a path to a just and durable peace for all who live in Palestine and beyond.

We issue this statement in the name of justice, dignity, and peace, and in remembrance of all those who have perished in Gaza and throughout Palestine.

Silence is not neutral; silence is complicity; neutrality is surrender to evil.

In solidarity with the people of Gaza and in memory of all victims of genocide,

The Jury of Conscience (alphabetically):

Prof. Sami Al-Arian
Prof. Christine Chinkin
Dr. Ghada Karmi
Author Kenize Mourad
Prof. Chandra Muzaffar
Prof. Biljana Vankovska

__________________________________________

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. 

3 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Middle East Eye

“The children of Gaza, with their eyes wide open and full of innocence, have been subjected to horrors that no child should ever face. I have seen them murdered, starved and denied the most basic of human rights.”

Giving her testimony at the Gaza Tribunal in Sarajevo, US emergency medicine physician Dr Mimi Syed recounts her experience volunteering in Gaza hospitals describing the “deplorable conditions manufactured deliberately by the Israeli government” causing “completely preventable” deaths. One of these cases included a mother with a breast tumor “so vascularized” she bled out and died in front of her three small children. Dr Syed says that despite the tumor being curable “with timely chemotherapy and surgery”, the Israeli military denied her medical evacuation four times.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFj6kbLeZAw]

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Juan Cole

23 Oct 2025 – The International Court of Justice, established by the UN to adjudicate issues among nations, issued an advisory opinion yesterday branding the Israeli blockade on food and medical aid into the occupied Gaza Strip illegal.

I mean, surely this conclusion is simple common sense. You can’t starve people. That’s not only illegal, that is the height of immorality and cruelty. The war criminals who head up the Israeli government hold that they can do whatever they want to people on the grounds that they are Palestinians, or that millions are terrorists, or that there are no innocents among certain populations. No one with a heart and a mind agrees with them. Unfortunately, there are lots of heartless mindless people in the world, some of them extremely powerful.

In a world where International Humanitarian Law is increasingly brazenly flouted, as a way of undermining it and ensuring that its violators retain impunity, the Court upheld the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on occupied populations, as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights of 16 December 1966 (hereinafter the “ICESCR”), a UN instrument that Israel signed.

The Court reminds us, “As an occupying Power, Israel is obliged to ensure the basic needs of the local population, including the supplies essential for their survival. Obligations to this effect are set out in Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” The obligation is also implied by the UN Charter, to which Israel is a signatory.

The Court adds, “Israel is not only required to perform the positive obligation to ensure essential supplies to the local population “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”, but it is also under a negative obligation not to impede the provision of these supplies or the performance of services related to public health.”

Instead of fulfilling these obligations, the Israeli government created a famine in Gaza by blocking the entry of UN food trucks: “According to the IPC, by 12 May 2025, half of the population of the Gaza Strip faced emergency levels of food insecurity . . . and nearly half a million people faced catastrophic levels of food insecurity.”

Israel also has an obligation to avoid killing aid workers. Even where an aid worker might engage in resistance activities, Israel can only kill this person while they are actively engaged in warfare, not while they are in scrubs operating on a patient. The ICJ notes, “that, according to the United Nations, between 7 October 2023 and 20 August 2025, at least 531 humanitarian workers, including 366 United Nations personnel, were killed in the Gaza Strip . . .”

That is, Israeli has a positive obligation to ensure that the population it occupies is well-fed and gets health care. But it also has a negative obligation, where it fails in the positive one, to avoid interfering with the provision of such aid by the UN, UNRWA and other aid agencies, to ensure Palestinians are not malnourished or deprived of medical care.

The Court notes that the Geneva Convention prohibits the forcible expulsion of civilian populations from occupied territories, as does the UN Charter.

But, “According to some participants, including the United Nations, the Israeli military has issued numerous displacement orders, ‘forcing hundreds of thousands of people into overcrowded areas and restricting the United Nations’ ability to deliver urgently needed essential supplies.”

The Court upheld the UN-mandated role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in providing aid to Palestinian refugees. It quotes a UN document that

Israeli officials alleged that UNRWA was extensively penetrated by Hamas. The Court did not find these allegations credible, writing, “the Court finds that Israel has not substantiated its allegations that a significant part of UNRWA employees ‘are members of Hamas . . . or other terrorist factions.’” UNRWA had 17,000 employees in Gaza and the Court could not rule out that a handful were dirty, but it finds that the UN and UNRWA investigated all credible charges and that the organization’s neutrality is not in doubt.

The Likud-led government of Israel throws the accusation of “terrorist” around without any evidence at all almost as indiscriminately as it does the accusation of “antisemitism.” In fact, virtually anyone who gets in the way of Likud schemes is smeared with both adjectives. The problem for this extremist Israeli propaganda is that it cannot stand up in the eyes of seasoned jurists, who make their judgments not out of fear or tribalism or emotion but out of a gimlet-eyed review of the evidence.

From my own point of view — the ICJ did not come out and say this, though it perhaps implies it — the Likud officials wanted to starve the Palestinians of Gaza. UNRWA got in the way of this genocidal project. They therefore slandered and banned UNRWA.

The Court pointed out that no other organization has UNRWA’s capacity to deliver aid to the Palestinians in Gaza. It admits that it would be permissible for Israel, as the occupying power, to ensure the health and well-being of the Palestinians it occupies using other organizations. The ICJ points out, however, that Israel has not in actuality provided any such mechanism, and that the now-disbanded “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” was fairly useless and certainly did not replace UNRWA. The Israelis cared so little about actual food aid that this past summer the UN concluded that they had fostered a famine in Gaza.

In the end the Court concurred with UN Secretary-General António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres that ” “there is currently no realistic alternative to UNRWA that could adequately provide the services and assistance required by Palestine refugees.”

Israel may also not keep out other aid organizations (as it has done): “Article 59 of the Fourth Geneva Convention refers to aid provided by ‘States or by impartial humanitarian organizations’. Thus, as long as the population remains inadequately supplied and Israel is not itself operating a system of humanitarian support that is in accordance with its obligations under international humanitarian law, Israel is obliged under Article 59 to agree to and facilitate relief schemes provided by third States or impartial humanitarian organizations such as the ICRC.”

In the end, the Court found that it has jurisdiction over Gaza; that it has the prerogative of issuing this advisory opinion; and that it is doing so.

It unanimously finds that Israel has the duty:

“to ensure that the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory has the essential supplies of daily life, including food, water, clothing, bedding, shelter, fuel, medical supplies and services;”

It also finds that Israel has an obligation to let UNRWA do its job in Gaza.

Of 11 justices, only the Ugandan Christian Zionist Julia Sebutinde dissented on this one.

Also, Israel has to stop destroying hospitals and killing or abducting doctors (this one was also unanimous.)

The Israelis have to stop mass expulsions of Palestinians (unanimous).

Basically, the ICJ found that the entire conduct of the war on Gaza by Israel has been carried out in an illegal manner.

Shamefully, the US State Department under Marco Rubio denounced the ICJ advisory opinion. The US after WW II showed itself a leader in erecting the structure of International Humanitarian Law, in hopes of forestalling another global conflict. Some 64 million people were killed in WW II, almost the entire population of today’s UK or France. Now America is tearing down the edifice of law that it helped build. And that will come back to bite us on the posterior.

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment.

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

16 Oct 2025 – A single, candid statement by US President Donald Trump during a Fox News interview on October 9 may illuminate the true calculus behind Israel’s decision for a ceasefire in Gaza, following a relentless, two-year genocidal campaign that has tragically killed and wounded nearly a quarter of a million Palestinians.

“Israel cannot fight the world, Bibi,” Trump declared during the interview, a direct warning he said to have previously delivered to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The stark reality is that very few people around the globe currently support Netanyahu. Crucially, a significant segment of his own populace has already held him in contempt, a resentment that predates the war on Gaza — a war which he treated as a desperate, personal quest for renewed domestic popularity.

Yet, his delusion persists. Even as millions globally protest his systematic extermination of innocent Palestinians, Netanyahu has seemingly convinced himself that world opinion is miraculously shifting in his favor — a shift that would require the world to have liked him in the first place.

But what precisely did Trump mean by, “You cannot fight the world”?

The term ‘fight’ here clearly transcends physical combat. Gaza, besieged, starved, and devastated, was the entity enduring the physical confrontation. Trump’s reference is unambiguously to the combative surge of anti-Israel sentiment worldwide: the official sanctions imposed by nations like Spain, the critical legal proceedings initiated at the world’s highest courts, the widespread demands for boycott, the organizing of freedom flotillas, and more.

It is profoundly significant that, in the minds of both Washington and Tel Aviv, these global events have registered as a serious strategic concern. Future historians will likely designate this moment as the definitive turning point in global attitudes toward the Israeli occupation of Palestine. If deliberately and strategically fostered by Palestinians, this burgeoning solidarity movement holds the potential to fully isolate Israel, compelling it to finally relent and free the Palestinian people from its enduring system of colonialism and apartheid.

However, ‘Bibi’ is not merely losing the world; he is fundamentally losing America itself. For decades, the United States has operated as Israel’s indispensable benefactor, underwriting every war, financing every illegal settlement, justifying every act of violence, and consistently blocking any international attempt to hold Israel accountable.

The reasons for America’s decades-long, unwavering commitment to sustaining Israel are profoundly complex. While the overwhelming influence of the powerful pro-Israel lobby in D.C. and Israel’s disproportionate sway over major media are correctly cited as factors, the dynamic is far deeper. The prevailing, mutually reinforced narrative in both nations has consistently framed Israel not merely as an ally, but as a crucial, essential extension of America’s political identity and core values.

Yet, cracks in this political edifice began to appear with unmistakable clarity. What were once marginalized dissenting voices, often labeled as ‘radicals’ within the American left, gradually solidified into mainstream dissent, particularly within the Democratic Party. Poll after poll demonstrated a mass shift, with the majority of Democrats turning against Israeli policy and lending their support, instead, to the Palestinian people and their rightful struggle for freedom. One of the most telling polls was conducted by Gallup in March 2025. It found that 59 percent of Democratic voters say they sympathize more with Palestinians, while only 21 percent say they sympathize more with Israelis.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza catalyzed more than just dissent within one of America’s two major political parties. Outright opposition to Israel has rapidly become mainstream, transcending traditional political lines — a rupture that has profoundly alarmed those determined to maintain the illusion that Israel can act with impunity, free from American objection.

The pro-Israel media apparatus in the US fought a shameful war to obscure the extent of the Israeli genocide. It consistently sought to blame Palestinians for Israel’s actions and brazenly promoted the insidious notion that the war against Gaza’s innocents was a necessary component of the ever-elusive ‘war on terror.’

But it was ordinary people, powerfully amplified by countless social media platforms, who collectively fought back. They successfully defeated a mainstream propaganda machine that had, for decades, served as the primary defense line for Israel.

A particularly troubling fact for Israel was the erosion of its newly established base of support: the Evangelicals and the broader Republican party. Polling indicated a significant exodus, especially among young Republican voters. A survey conducted by the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll in August 2025 found that only 24 percent of Republican voters aged 18–34 said they sympathize more with Israelis than with Palestinians.

According to Politico, Israel even attempted to manipulate social media by paying influencers significant sums of money to circulate Israeli fabrications and deception. That campaign employed roughly 600 fake profiles posting over 2,000 coordinated comments per week, targeting more than 120 US lawmakers.

But can Israel possibly swing the narrative back in its favor? While vast sums of money will, undoubtedly, be committed to launching sophisticated campaigns aimed at polishing Israel’s severely tarnished image, the efforts will prove futile. The once-marginalized Palestinian narrative has surged, becoming a powerful, compelling moral authority worldwide. The strong, unyielding, and dignified resilience of the Palestinian people has garnered global sympathy and galvanized support in ways unprecedented in history.

This new reality may very well represent hasbara’s final stand, as truly no amount of money, newspaper coverage, or Netflix specials can ever successfully polish the image of a state that has so openly committed a genocide, one of the most thoroughly documented in recorded history.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Ben Norton

20 Oct 2025 – The United States is waging war on Venezuela. This is not a hypothetical; it is happening.

The Donald Trump administration is using extreme violence to try to overthrow Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.

The US military has killed dozens of Venezuelans in strikes on boats in international waters without charge or trial. UN experts have publicly condemned these attacks as “extrajudicial executions” that violate international law.

It is not only Venezuelans who have been executed by the US military. Among the victims of these illegal US attacks have been fishermen who were citizens of Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago.

Family members of the victims, from a Trinidadian fishing village, were interviewed by The Guardian, and they condemned Trump for “killing poor people”, arguing that he simply wants to take their “gas and their oil”.

In other words, the Trump administration is killing innocent people from multiple countries as part of its war on Venezuela.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAkNZCjstVI]

US military threatens Venezuela with B-52 bombers

Week by week, Trump is ratcheting up the US war on Venezuela.

The US military has approximately 10,000 troops in the Caribbean, along with eight warships and a submarine, all preparing to escalate.

The Trump administration has ordered three B-52 bombers to fly off the coast of Venezuela, threatening to bomb the country.

ABC News published a report on 16 October, writing (all emphasis added):

In less than a week, President Donald Trump has threatened to attack inside Venezuela, confirmed ongoing covert operations inside the country, and ordered bombers capable of dropping nuclear weapons to fly in circles off its coast in what appears to be an unprecedented show of force intended to pressure the Venezuelan president to step down.

Trump orders the CIA to carry out “lethal operations” to provoke regime change in Venezuela

Meanwhile, Trump has admitted that he has authorized the CIA to carry out destabilization operations inside Venezuela.

The public narrative of the US government is that it is supposedly targeting “drug traffickers”. This is not true. The real goal is regime change.

The New York Times interviewed members of the Trump administration, and reported, “American officials have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power”.

Trump has ordered the CIA “to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela”, the Times noted.

“The Trump administration’s strategy on Venezuela, developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with help from John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, aims to oust Mr. Maduro from power”, the Times added.

Rubio is a lifelong neoconservative war hawk. He has spent his entire political career pushing for regime change not only in Venezuela, but also in Cuba and Nicaragua.

During Trump’s first term, when the US launched another coup attempt, Rubio was not in the administration, but he lobbied Trump to invade Venezuela.

Trump discussed his attacks on Venezuela in a press conference at the White House on 15 October.

“Why did you authorize the CIA to go into Venezuela?” a journalist asked the US president.

Trump gave two excuses, falsely claiming that it is because Venezuela is supposedly sending criminals to the US and that he wants to stop “drug trafficking”. Both allegations are not true. They are demonstrable lies that the Trump administration is using to try to justify a war of aggression.

The journalist then asked Trump, “Does the CIA have authority to take out Maduro?”

The US president replied, “Oh, I don’t want to answer a question like that. That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given. Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer? But I think Venezuela is feeling heat”.

The CIA’s history of terrorism and coups in Latin America

The CIA has carried out myriad crimes against humanity in Latin America. The US spy agency has armed and trained death squads who have burnt down schools and hospitals and tortured and massacred civilians, like the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

The CIA has also committed war crimes directly. The CIA put mines in Nicaragua’s ports in the 1980s, in a flagrant violation of international law.

Nicaragua took the United States to the International Court of Justice, the UN’s top judicial authority, in 1984, and it won the case in 1986. The Hague ruled in support of the people of Nicaragua, determining that the US government, and specifically the CIA, had violated international law in its attacks on Nicaraguan civilian targets.

However, Washington ignored the ICJ ruling and vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that demanded it be respected.

To this day, the US rogue regime refuses to pay the reparations that it legally owes to Nicaragua.

The CIA has also sponsored dozens of coups d’etat against democratically elected left-wing leaders in Latin America.

In 1954, the CIA overthrew Guatemala’s democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz on behalf of US corporation the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita).

Then, on 11 September 1973, the CIA toppled Chile’s democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende, and put in power the fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet, who killed thousands of people and maintained an iron grip on power for nearly two decades.

Trump is now clearly giving the CIA a green light to try to do the same in Venezuela, to overthrow the leftist Chavista government of President Maduro and install a right-wing puppet regime that will privatize the country’s massive oil and gold reserves and other natural resources and sell them off to US corporations.

Trump lies about “drug trafficking” to push regime change

The false narrative that the Trump administration is using is that it is attacking Venezuela supposedly in order to stop the “flow of drugs” into the US. This is a lie that has been debunked by multiple sources.

The Financial Times published a lengthy report, citing US officials and Venezuelan opposition figures who have been working closely with the Trump administration, and they admitted that the real goal is regime change.

The US government’s priority “is to force the departure of top Venezuelan government figures, preferably via resignation or an arranged handover — but with the clear threat that if Maduro and his inner circle cling to power, the Americans may use targeted military force to capture or kill them”, the FT wrote.

The Trump administration’s unsubstantiated accusations that Venezuela is a major center of drug production are clearly contradicted by the data compiled by UN experts.

Venezuela is not a major source of drugs, nor is it a key transit country.

According to 2022 data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 65% of the cocaine in the world is produced in Colombia, which has historically been the closest US ally in Latin America and has been dominated by right-wing, pro-US politicians linked to cartels.

Peru is the second-largest source of cocaine, providing 27% of the global total, followed by Bolivia at 8%. Venezuela’s role is so minor it is insignificant.

US government-funded coup leader María Corina Machado pledged to privatize Venezuela’s oil

The Financial Times noted, “At stake in Venezuela are the world’s largest proven oil reserves and valuable deposits of gold, diamonds and coltan”.

The FT cited an anonymous “American businessman with interests in the country” who revealed, “What Trump wants in Venezuela is oil, minerals and gold… He wants US companies down there investing”.

Far-right Venezuelan coup leader María Corina Machado has openly called for privatizing her country’s natural resources and handing them over to US corporations.

Machado, who has been funded by the US government for more than 20 years, was awarded a so-called “Nobel Peace Prize” due to her violent, US-sponsored regime-change efforts.

In an interview with Donald Trump Jr. in February, Machado declared (emphasis added):

Forget about Saudi Arabia; forget about the Saudis. I mean, we have more oil, I mean, infinite potential.

And we’re going to open markets. We’re going to kick [out] the government from the oil sector. We’re going to privatize all our industry.

Venezuela has huge resources: oil, gas, minerals, land, technology. And, as you said before, we have a strategic location, you know, hours from the United States.

So we’re going to do this right. We know what we have to do.

And American companies are in, you know, a super strategic position to invest.

This country, Venezuela, is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies, of good people that are going to make a lot of money.

Even CNN and ex Biden officials are skeptical of Trump’s “drug trafficking” lies about Venezuela

Immediately after the US government-funded extremist María Corina Machado won the so-called “Nobel Peace Prize”, she was interviewed by CNN.

Machado proudly stated that she supports Trump and the murderous war he is waging against her country. In fact, she called for further military escalation.

“We totally support it”, Machado said, in reference to the US military attacks in the Caribbean.

“Actually, we’re asking other countries in the Caribbean, in Latin America and Europe, to join that international coalition” for war on Venezuela, added the so-called “Nobel Peace Prize” laureate.

CNN is normally a loyal mouthpiece for the US State Department. The corporate network has supported every major US war of aggression, against Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Yugoslavia, and beyond.

However, because CNN is an anti-Trump media outlet, it has been willing to challenge some of the administration’s blatant lies about Venezuela.

In fact, CNN drew parallels between Trump’s false claims about Venezuela and the fraudulent allegations that the George W. Bush administration fabricated in order to justify its illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 (which CNN had supported at the time).

The Bush administration’s CIA created false intelligence claiming that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction”, or WMDs. This was not true.

Today, the Trump administration is falsely claiming that the Venezuelan government is run by drug cartels. This is totally preposterous and is not supported by any evidence.

In her interview with US government-funded Venezuelan coup plotter María Corina Machado, CNN host Christiane Amanpour pushed back against these false claims.

Amanpour cited a previous interview she did with Juan Sebastián González, who helped oversee US policy toward Latin America in the Joe Biden administration, as the senior director of the National Security Council for the Western Hemisphere.

González admitted that Venezuela is not a major producer of drugs.

This is what this top Biden administration official told CNN:

The reason that drugs have never originated from Venezuela — in the way that they originate from Colombia, over 95% of the cocaine that comes to United States comes from Colombia — is because Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world; they have the largest gold reserves in Latin America.

So there has never been a need for them to develop a native drug-producing industry.

In her CNN interview with Machado, Amanpour noted that, “when people look at what’s going on, they say, OK, they [the Trump administration] have used the drug issue to justify getting rid of Maduro, like they used the non-existent WMD issue to get rid of Saddam Hussein in Iraq”.

“So are you, I guess what I’m asking you is, are you concerned about that?” Amanpour asked.

Machado, the US government-funded coup plotter and staunch supporter of Trump, shot back, “I totally disagree”. She cited baseless claims that the FBI made during Trump’s first administration that, supposedly, “24% of the world trade of cocaine goes through Venezuela”.

This politically motivated accusation by Trump’s FBI has been blatantly contradicted by the data published by independent international experts at the United Nations.

Trump’s lies about Venezuela are so transparent that even CNN and former Biden administration officials are willing to call them out. But their obvious fraudulence is not stopping the US government from escalating its war of aggression in the Caribbean.

Benjamin Norton is an investigative journalist, analyst, writer and filmmaker.

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Mix Vale

Emerging nations are uniting to question the dollar’s reign. The BRICS bloc, along with new members, is intensifying discussions on a unified currency. This proposal gains traction amid geopolitical tensions and economic sanctions exposing vulnerabilities in the current system.

24 Oct 2025 – Emerging nations are uniting to question the dollar’s reign. The BRICS bloc, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, along with new members like Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, is intensifying discussions on a unified currency. This proposal gains traction amid geopolitical tensions and economic sanctions exposing vulnerabilities in the current system.

Leaders express concern over excessive dependence on a single foreign currency. Trade transactions accounting for over a quarter of global GDP still rely on the dollar, increasing costs and risks for developing economies. The debate, fueled by recent official statements, focuses on practical solutions for bilateral exchanges.

• The common currency would be backed by a basket of national currencies, ensuring balance among members.
• Tests with symbolic notes occurred at recent summits, signaling political commitment.
• Digital payment platforms like BRICS Pay would facilitate transactions without Western intermediaries.
• Currency swap agreements between central banks, such as Brazil and China, already bypass dollar conversions.

Experts note that the Chinese yuan already dominates half of intra-bloc trade, marking an initial step in this direction.

ORIGIN OF THE PROPOSAL IN THE EMERGING BLOC

The idea of a common currency dates back to previous BRICS summits. In 2023, during a meeting in Johannesburg, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva publicly advocated for alternatives to dollar-mediated trade. This stance echoed in subsequent forums, where the group reaffirmed its commitment to financial diversification.

Russian authorities credit Brazil with pioneering this debate. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently highlighted that Brazil’s 2025 presidency would prioritize alternative payment systems. This emphasis follows sanctions on Russia, which froze reserves and restricted access to networks like SWIFT.

The bloc has expanded rapidly in recent years. New members, including oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Iran, add weight to the discussions. Together, these countries account for 33.9% of global GDP in projections for 2027, surpassing the traditional G7.

Operational challenges persist, however. Economic disparities among members complicate immediate adoption. China, with massive dollar reserves, remains cautious to avoid global instabilities.

TECHNICAL FEATURES OF THE PROPOSED CURRENCY

Financial engineers outline key features for the new monetary unit. It would function as a weighted basket of national currencies, similar to existing international reserve mechanisms. This structure would prevent domination by a single economy, promoting balance.

Modern technologies would enable the project. Blockchain and central bank digital currencies would form the backbone, allowing instant settlements. The mBridge system, led by the Bank for International Settlements, already tests connections between China, UAE, and Thailand.

• Initial backing in gold and commodities, like oil, for stability.
• Integration with platforms like Brazil’s Pix and Russian national payment systems.
• Liquidity ensured by bilateral agreements, covering 50% of intra-bloc trade initially.
• Transparency via independent audits, aligned with global standards.

Gradual implementation would minimize shocks. Pilots in trade of essential goods, like grains and vehicles, demonstrate real-world feasibility.

India, initially hesitant, now participates actively. Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar stated in March 2025 that there is no plan to replace the dollar globally but supports local options for regional stability.

INTERNATIONAL REACTIONS TO THE INITIATIVE

Western governments monitor the progress closely. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump issued repeated warnings against any attempt to challenge the dollar. In social media posts in January and July 2025, he promised 100% tariffs on products from nations adopting alternatives, calling the bloc “apparently hostile.”

These statements spark debates about the political use of the U.S. currency. Recent sanctions on Russia accelerated the push for financial independence within BRICS. Economists note that the dollar still dominates 80% of global transactions, but its “weaponization” erodes long-term confidence.

In Europe, the EU observes pragmatically. Despite 50.3% of its trade still in dollars, the bloc explores the euro as an alternative reserve. Leaders in Brussels acknowledge that a BRICS currency could fragment global reserves, raising transaction costs initially.

BRICS members respond with diplomacy. President Lula reiterated in August 2025 that the proposal does not aim to confront but to offer choices. “It’s not about replacing national currencies but reflecting a multipolar order,” he stated in an official speech.

ALTERNATIVE PAYMENT MECHANISMS IN TESTING

BRICS Pay emerges as a practical tool to bypass the dollar. Launched experimentally, the platform connects national systems, enabling payments in local currencies. Agreements like the Brazil-China swap, signed in May 2025, already process billions in trades without external conversion.

This infrastructure reduces exposure to exchange rate fluctuations. Central banks test blockchain settlements, cutting intermediaries and costs by up to 30%. In 2025, the Chinese renminbi featured in 50% of intra-bloc trades, per banking communication network data.

• Cost reduction in transactions worth US$15 billion annually with distributed ledger technology.
• Integration with the New Development Bank, funding projects in local currencies.
• Expansion to new members, including Indonesia, covering Asian trade routes.
• Tests with petroyuan for oil payments, involving Saudi Arabia and Russia.
• Risk monitoring via joint committees, avoiding speculative bubbles.

These advances strengthen group cohesion. Brazil’s presidency coordinates technical workshops, gathering experts from all members to refine protocols.

BLOC EXPANSION AND TRADE IMPACTS

The inclusion of new countries accelerates momentum. With 11 members in 2025, BRICS spans half the global population and vast natural resources. This scale amplifies the potential of a common currency, especially in sectors like energy and agriculture.

Intra-bloc trade grew 20% in the last two years, driven by bilateral agreements. Russia, hit by sanctions, leads trades in rubles and yuan, while India explores rupees in partnerships with Brazil. These flows show diversification is already operational.

Projections indicate that by 2027, the group will surpass the G7 in global GDP contribution. This IMF forecast underscores the urgency of autonomous financial mechanisms.

Challenges include capital controls on some currencies. China, with trade surpluses, resists radical changes, prioritizing dollar reserves. However, initiatives like petroyuan for oil signal flexibility.

Lula emphasized at a recent summit that a unified currency would align Global South interests. “We represent a third of global GDP and need to negotiate as equals,” he stated, highlighting barrier-free trade.

ECONOMIC CHALLENGES IN IMPLEMENTATION

Political differences among members test unity. India withdrew partial support in July 2025, citing stability concerns. This hesitation reflects fears that the yuan could dominate, expanding Chinese influence.

Economists warn of liquidity barriers. Currencies like the ruble face international restrictions, while Brazil’s real gains traction via Pix. Solutions involve mutual guarantees and stabilization funds.

The New Development Bank funds studies to mitigate risks. In 2025, it approved US$10 billion in projects, prioritizing local currency payments. This injection boosts infrastructure tests.

• Geopolitical divergences, like U.S.-India relations, require delicate negotiations.
• Need for fiscal convergence, with aligned inflation targets among members.
• Risks of secondary sanctions, monitored by compliance committees.
• Training for banks, covering 80% of participating institutions by year-end.

Despite obstacles, progress is notable. Annual summits, like Kazan in 2024, pave the way for concrete decisions in 2026.

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Digital innovations accelerate the transition. The mBridge project connects central banks, processing real-time payments. Participants like Hong Kong and Thailand validate efficacy, with test volumes exceeding US$1 billion.

Blockchain ensures immutability and security. Unlike SWIFT, the system avoids centralized points vulnerable to political pressures. Russia integrates its national platform, while China tests the digital yuan at scale.

These tools reduce reliance on Western infrastructure. In 2025, 40% of commodity trades used alternative channels, saving on conversion fees.

South Africa leads efforts in crypto-asset mining, exploring gold-backed digital assets. This approach attracts investments, with the rand gaining relevance in continental partnerships.

Brazil, with Pix, exports expertise. Authorities negotiate integrations with Indian and Egyptian systems, expanding the network to 15 partner countries.

KEY LEADERS’ STANCES

Prominent figures shape the debate. Putin, in a virtual address at the Johannesburg summit, called dedollarization “irreversible.” He highlighted sanctions as a catalyst for financial autonomy.

Lula reiterates the right to plural options. In August 2025, he denied backing down, emphasizing that BRICS unifies the Global South. “We don’t depend on a single foreign currency,” he declared.

Xi Jinping promotes the yuan discreetly. Swap agreements with 40 partners raised its global use to 2% in May 2025. This gradual expansion avoids direct confrontations.

Modi balances positions. Despite pro-dollar statements, India tests rupees in trades with Russia, focusing on regional stability.

These speeches converge on common goals. The rotating presidency ensures continuity, with Brazil coordinating actions until the end of 2025.

PRACTICAL TESTS IN BILATERAL TRADE

Real-world experiments validate concepts. Brazil and China process soybeans and manufactured goods in real and yuan, bypassing the dollar since May. Volume reached US$5 billion, with a 15% cost reduction. Russia and India trade oil for equipment, using rubles and rupees. These barter deals circumvent sanctions, maintaining essential flows.

• Intra-bloc trade volume: US$33 trillion in 2024, 30% in local currencies.
• Projected savings: US$15 billion annually with DLT in half of transactions.
• Energy partnerships: Petroyuan covers 20% of the group’s oil exports.
• Service expansion: Digital payments in tourism and technology.

These cases build confidence. Internal reports show growing adoption, with 70% of member banks adapted.

Saudi Arabia integrates the system to diversify beyond the petrodollar. Negotiations with Iran aim for unity in gas exports.

OUTLOOK FOR GLOBAL TRADE

BRICS influences global flows. With expansion, the bloc attracts observers from Asia and Africa. Membership proposals, like Algeria’s, signal a broader network.

Alternative systems fragment reserves. Central banks diversify holdings, reducing the dollar from 60% to 50% in decadal projections.

Innovations like BRICS Bridge connect payment gateways. This multilateral bridge tests CBDC settlements, covering routes from Eurasia to the South Atlantic.

Opportunities arise in investments. The New Development Bank approves funds in local currencies, financing sustainable infrastructure.

Members prioritize cohesion. Technical meetings resolve impasses, ensuring measurable progress.

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Imran Hossain

In the game of geopolitics, perhaps the most important rule is ‘self-interest first’. In Rakhine, Myanmar’s every internal actor, including the military junta, the civilian govt. (NLD) and the United League of Arakan (ULA) or the Arakan Army (AA) sought their own interest, making a complex situation for the Rohingya. But ‘expelling Rohingyas from Rakhine’ was the biggest strategic miscalculations by the junta and the then Suu Kyi-led NLD civilian govt.

24 Oct 2025 – Before the 2017 Rohingya ethnic cleansing, Rakhine had a population where around 55% people were Buddhist, 43% were Muslim, 1.2% Christian, 0.3% Hindu, and 0.1% followed Animism. Clearly, there were only two vital groups, i.e., Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims. With 1.2 million Rohingyas expelled from Rakhine to neighboring Bangladesh, Rakhine Buddhists now enjoy a majority of around 80%.

The Rakhine people’s desire for an independent Arakan/Rakhine nation or perhaps an autonomous Rakhine state has grown as a result of this circumstance. As the United League of Arakan (ULA) or the Arakan Army (AA) gets full support from Rakhine Buddhists, the AA now dreams of an autonomous or even independent Arakan/Rakhine country. The expulsion of the Rohingyas, thus, clearly benefited the ULA/AA and the Rakhine Buddhists.

The ULA/AA now holds the position of de facto governmental authority in the state of Rakhine, which is dominated by Buddhists. The military junta only controls three of Rakhine’s seventeen townships—Sittwe, Kyaukphyu, and Manaung—while AA currently controls fourteen of them. Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathedaung Townships, once known as the home of Rohingyas, are all now under the control of the AA.

If the Rohingya were in the Rakhine province, the ratio of Rakhine to Rohingya today would have been around 55:43. As a result, the Rakhine Buddhists, being around half the population, could not stake claims for an independent country based on their ethnic identity. This clearly justifies why Rakhine Buddhists were also involved in expelling the Rohingyas from the Rakhine state.

The historic conflicts between these two arose during the Second World War. During World War II, Rohingya Muslims, who were allied with the British, fought against local Rakhine Buddhists, who had allied with the Japanese. Following independence in 1948, the newly formed union government of the predominantly Buddhist country subjected the Rohingyas to extensive systematic discrimination in the country.

The Myanmar military, regrettably, has consistently opposed the Rohingya in the confrontations between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims. The Junta consistently ignored the reality that the Rohingya have never demanded separation or an independent Rakhine State; all they asked was citizenship and rights to live in their motherland like other ethnic groups. So, there was never any threat to Myanmar’s sovereignty or territorial integrity from the Rohingya people.

Unfortunately, despite ample evidence of the Rohingya’s ethnic presence in Myanmar for generations, the majority of internal actors still view them as British colonial and postcolonial migrants from nearby Bangladesh.

“A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in the Burma Empire” by Francis Buchanan (1799), which was found and republished by Michael Charney in the “SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research” in 2003, states, among the native groups of Arakan, there are the “Mohammedans, who have long settled in Arakan, and who call themselves Rooinga, or natives of Arakan.” The Classical Journal of 1811 identified “Rooinga” as one of the languages spoken in the “Burmah Empire.” In 1815, Johann Severin Vater listed “Ruinga” as an ethnic group with a distinct language in a compendium of languages published in German.

Blatantly ignoring this history, Myanmar still regards the Rohingya as illegal immigrants and non-citizens. Thus, the persecution of the Rohingya went beyond all bounds. Violent, large-scale crackdowns targeted toward the Rohingya — like Operation King Dragon in 1978, and Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation in 1991 — forced hundreds of thousands to flee Burma into Bangladesh.

The Myanmar military’s ruthless assault on the Rohingya villages in August 2017 marked the start of the most recent and arguably most severe phase of Rohingya persecution. Later, the chief of the United Nations agency for human rights described the military’s actions as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” “acts of horrific barbarity,” and possibly “acts of genocide.” The persecution forced over a million Rohingya to flee to their neighboring country, Bangladesh, while thousands fled to India, Thailand, Malaysia, and other parts of South and Southeast Asia.

However, in today’s reality, to save Rakhine’s and Myanmar’s territorial integrity, there is only one path for the Myanmar government/junta, and that is to repatriate Rohingyas to Rakhine, return their citizenship and create a balance there.

Regional and global actors cannot afford to just sit and watch Rakhine’s fall to any non-state actors. Because, this will encourage many insurgent/separatist groups in South Asia and South-East Asian regions, threating security and stability.

Imran Hossain, Lecturer, Department of Business Administration, Bangladesh Army International University of Science and Technology (BAIUST), (MBA), (BBA), University of Rajshahi.

27 October 2025

Source: transcend.org