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By Chris Hedges

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=godS-0hPQdU]

The vicious and sustained campaign mounted against Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, by Israel and the U.S. now includes the German, Italian, French, Austrian and Czech foreign ministers demanding her resignation. This campaign is part of an effort by industrial nations to at once sustain the genocide in Gaza — nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the sham ceasefire took effect — and silence all those who demand the international community abide by the rule of law.

The latest assault on Francesca, part of a concerted effort to discredit international bodies such as the U.N., is based on a deliberately truncated video of a talk Francesca gave in Doha on February 7 that distorts and misconstrues her words. But truth, of course, is irrelevant. The goal is to silence her and all who stand up for Palestinian rights.

Francesca was placed by the Trump administration on the Office of Foreign Assets Control list of the U.S. Treasury Department — normally used to sanction those accused of money laundering or being involved with terrorist organizations — six days after the release of her report, “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide,” which documented the global corporations that make billions of dollars from the genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestinians.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control list — weaponized by the Trump administration to persecute Francesca and in violation of the diplomatic immunity granted to U.N. officials — bans her from entering the U.S. It prohibits any financial institution from having her as a client. A bank that engages in financial transactions with Francesca is banned from operating in dollars, faces multimillion-dollar fines and is blocked from international payment systems. This has cut her off from global banking, leaving her unable to use credit cards or book a hotel in her name. Her assets in the U.S. are frozen. It has seen her medical insurance refuse to reimburse her for medical expenses. It has resulted in institutions, including U.S. universities, human rights groups and NGOs that once collaborated with her severing ties, fearing onerous U.S. penalties. The sanctions followed those imposed in February and June of last year on The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Khan along with two judges for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

By making Francesca, who receives frequent death threats, the lightening rod, these governments seek to deflect attention from the ongoing slaughter and humanitarian disaster in Gaza. They seek to mask Israel’s system of apartheid and unlawful occupation of historic Palestine. They seek to hide, most of all, their complicity with their continuing weapons shipments that fuel Israel’s genocide.

The pace of the genocide has slowed, but it has not stopped. Israel has seized 60 percent of Gaza and blocks most humanitarian aid, including fuel, food and medicine. At the same time, Israel is accelerating its seizure of the occupied West Bank, where more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes since October 2023.

The campaign against Francesca presages a terrifying world where Western industrial nations exploit and prey upon the weak, where the law is whatever powerful nations say it is, where those who dare to speak the truth and stand up for the rule of law are relentlessly persecuted, where genocide is another tool in the arsenal to crush the aspirations and rights of the vulnerable. This is a fight we must win. If we lose, if we let voices like Francesca’s be silenced, we will usher in an age of blood and terror.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, worked for nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, National Public Radio and other news organizations in Latin America, the Middle East and the Balkans.

17 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ranjan Solomon

The upcoming second round of high-stakes talks between Iran and the USA in Geneva (mid-February 2026) aims to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for significant sanctions relief, potentially averting further regional military conflict. Oman acting as a key mediator will require to balance the obstinate positions off both sides.

Discussions may yield a, step-by-step, deal including economic incentives, such as, oil and mining investments. The talks follow a, non-breakthrough, first round, with both sides, attempting to avoid a full-scale, conflict.

Iran has signalled a willingness to limit uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions. A possible three-step scenario will see Iran halt high-level enrichment and restores IAEA inspections.

The talks are also focusing on mutual, economic benefits, including potential U.S. investments in Iranian oil, gas, and mining, as well as aircraft sales, to make the agreement durable.

De-escalation Measures will form part of the key negotiations with intent to prevent further military escalation in the Middle East. Proposals may include steps for Iran to curb actions by regional alliances including the Hamas, Houthis, Hezbollah. The USA refuses to countenance them and wants Iran to disown them.

Iran remains deeply committed to this so-called “Axis of Resistance” who constitute its network of allied militant groups including Hezbollah, the Houthis, and various Iraqi factions. It is highly unlikely to abandon this strategy despite intense pressure. While the coalition has faced significant degradation in capability following sustained Israeli and US actions in 2024 and 2025, Tehran views this alliance as a fundamental pillar of its “forward defense” against Israel and the United States.

Iran’s leadership, particularly within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), views the Allied partners as crucial for projecting power, maintaining regional influence, and securing its borders. The alliance enables Iran to challenge adversaries without direct, full-scale, nation-to-nation warfare.

Following the severe weakening of Hezbollah and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria by early 2025, Tehran has shifted toward a strategy of rebuilding, reorganizing, and “strategic dormancy” for its allied partners, rather than disowning them.

Although the Allies chose to be quiet during direct Israel-Iran confrontations in June 2025, this was a calculated, temporary decision by Tehran to avoid broader escalation while under intense pressure, not a sign of the alliance breaking.

Despite internal economic turmoil and pressure from the US (particularly under a potential return of Trump-era policies), the Iranian leadership has indicated it will not surrender its regional leverage and will continue to support its allies to counter foreign influence.

Still, Iran will negotiate round an agenda that has limited scope. While Iran desires to focus on the nuclear file, the U.S. has pushed for a wider framework covering ballistic missiles and regional activities.

The U.S. is concurrently maintaining high pressure, including the deployment of a second aircraft carrier in the region in-mid-February, to ensure negotiations are taken seriously. The US deployment of a second aircraft carrier and threats of military action against Iran, while pushing for a swift, comprehensive deal, have severely heightened regional tensions, creating a “maximum pressure” environment. While this escalation risks a direct conflict, it is designed to force Tehran into concessions within a one-month deadline. Both sides still appear willing to engage, with consultations for further talks continuing, indicating the strategy is being used as leverage to compel a deal that addresses nuclear and, potentially, regime-change goals.

The military build-up, combined with sanctions, is intended to force Iran to accept a new deal, with President Trump, setting a short, one-month deadline to avoid a “traumatic” outcome. These negotiations come with high stakes. Iran has indicated a willingness to compromise if the US addresses sanctions, but warns that further attacks would be costly. The situation is delicate, with potential for a miscalculation to lead to a broader regional conflict. The US has signalled readiness for action, if a deal is not reached. The alternative is to risk escalation.

Israel maintains a highly active, often covert, role in Iran, frequently operating behind the scenes while influencing or leveraging United States policy. This “shadow war” involves intelligence operations, cyber warfare, and targeted strikes designed to degrade Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities. Israel’s Mossad has conducted extensive operations inside Iran, including the assassination of nuclear scientists and military leaders. Following a major escalation in June 2025, reports indicated that Israeli agents were responsible for sabotaging drone bases and nuclear sites.

Israel significantly impacts Washington’s perspective on potential actions against Iran. While the U.S. sometimes acts as a constraint, it often provides a security umbrella under which Israel operates.

The Internal crises in Iran have not calmed as of early 2026; rather, they remain intense following nationwide upheavals that began in late 2025, driven by economic collapse, severe sanctions, and water shortages The country is grappling with massive inflation, high unemployment, and currency depreciation, further strained by new UN sanctions in September 2025.

As of early 2026, the Iranian government is implementing several measures to attempt to stabilize its crashing economy and address, with mixed results, the widespread protests that followed the severe devaluation of the Rial (reaching 1.4–1.6 million to the US dollar). Steps being taken or announced by the Iranian authorities to calm the economic crisis.

Iran has replaced its Central Bank governor. Parliament has approved a plan to cut four zeros from the national currency, with the new rial (to be subdivided into “qerans”) designed to simplify transactions, though this is seen as a primarily cosmetic measure.

To bypass banking sanctions, the Agriculture Ministry is expanding a barter scheme, allowing importers of essential goods to directly receive and sell Iranian oil cargoes to finance their imports. The government has also announced changes to the subsidy system to help manage rising inflation and food prices, which have seen massive increases. There is a new 5 million-rial “Iran-cheque” to facilitate transactions amidst high inflation, which is currently running at over 40-50%.

While sanctions have had a devastating effect on the economy, Iran is now likely to add potential compromises on its uranium stockpile in exchange for lifting some sanctions. The crisis is compounded by the “maximum pressure” campaign from the U.S. and Israel, which is targeting Iranian oil exports to China.

The diplomatic landscape in Geneva is dominated by high-stakes, indirect negotiations regarding the Iranh’s nuclear program, set to resume on February 17, 2026. The prognosis for these talks is cautious, characterized by intense pressure from the Trump administration for a “zero enrichment” deal, while Iran shows signs of willingness to compromise despite deep distrust following a major escalation in June 2025.

The talks aim to prevent further military confrontation and address the nuclear dispute, with US negotiators pressing for broad concessions. While Iran is signalling a potential willingness to compromise, Israel is pushing for complete dismantling of enrichment capabilities, adding further pressure to the negotiation table. Parallel, technical talks are occurring with the UN nuclear watchdog (IAEA).

The way forward in Geneva rests on whether the current US-Iran indirect negotiations can overcome deep-rooted distrust and substantial disagreements over the scope of Iran’s nuclear and regional activities.

Dr. Ranjan Solomon has worked in social justice movements since he was 19 years of age. After an accumulated period of 58 years working with oppressed and marginalized groups locally, nationally, and internationally, he has now turned a researcher-freelance writer focussed on questions of global and local/national justice.

17 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad

When a regime starts rationing a prisoner’s light, it is no longer governing — it is unraveling.

If credible reports are accurate that Imran Khan’s eyesight has catastrophically deteriorated in custody, this is not bureaucratic failure, nor medical misfortune. It is escalation. It is the continuation — by more brutal means — of a four-year campaign of relentless state persecution against the most popular, electrifying, and historically singular political figure Pakistan has produced in its 78-year existence. The dimming of his vision is not incidental. It is terror by design.

Custody is sovereign monopoly distilled. The state controls light, air, medicine, sleep, contact — the total architecture of human survival. Under such conditions, physical deterioration is not “neglect.” It is the exercise of power. When a regime commands every variable of a prisoner’s existence and that prisoner’s body breaks down, the state owns the outcome.

Field Marshal Asim Munir and the high command over which he presides do not operate as reluctant custodians. They operate as proprietors. Elections are pre-engineered, judges are corralled, media is disciplined, civilian governments are rearranged with barracks precision. “Stability” is invoked as a doctrine of supervision — a euphemism for perpetual military arbitration of politics. The generals present themselves as indispensable guardians of order.

Yet this supposedly omnipotent machinery has chosen to brutalize the body of its most formidable rival.

This is not incompetence. It is calculated persecution.

If the top brass can choreograph parliamentary arithmetic and manipulate electoral outcomes with surgical accuracy, they can ensure medical integrity. The targeting of Khan’s physical and mental health must therefore be understood as an extension of the same war that has filled prisons with tens of thousands of his supporters. The message is unmistakable: no sanctuary, no mercy, no limit.

And here lies the regime’s profound miscalculation. Imran Khan is no longer merely a political competitor. He has become a historical force. For tens of millions, he embodies rupture in a system long monopolized by dynastic patronage and praetorian oversight. His defiance has transformed him from politician into symbol; his incarceration has elevated him from symbol into legend. Each arrest, each humiliation, each confinement has fused biography into myth.

Pakistan’s rulers have manufactured the singular icon they sought to extinguish.

Domestically, the regime’s legitimacy is not eroding — it is completely hollowed out. The barricading of Islamabad with thousands of shipping containers is not governance; it is fortress psychology. A capital sealed against its own citizens reveals estrangement, not authority. The repeated deployment of force against largely unarmed protestors reflects insecurity in uniform. Support for Khan has not dissipated under repression; it has hardened. What the generals intended as attrition has matured into consolidation.

More destabilizing still is what the high command can no longer fully conceal: fissures within the security apparatus itself. Reports of reluctance among mid-level officers and rank-and-file soldiers to enthusiastically wage a domestic political war are not trivial whispers. Whether through quiet refusal, procedural slow-walking, or visible discomfort at brutalizing their own communities, the signs point to an institution whose lower and middle tiers do not uniformly share the zeal of its apex. That fractures the regime’s monopoly on violence — the one asset it long assumed inexhaustible. A command structure that must constantly reassure itself of obedience and increasingly lean on underpaid police as expendable instruments is not projecting strength. It is signaling brittle dependence.

The dynastic auxiliaries — the Houses of Sharif and Bhutto-Zardari — remain fully complicit. These hereditary enterprises, sustained by patronage and allergic to genuine competition, have tethered their survival to military arbitration. Their silence in the face of escalating custodial brutality is not neutrality; it is collaboration. They do not defend constitutional order; they subcontract it.

Yet the pressure is no longer merely domestic. Internationally, the façade is cracking.

Field Marshal Munir has invested heavily in persuading Washington and other capitals that stability prevails — that unrest is containable, that repression is measured, that the army remains the indispensable anchor of order. The message is disciplined and repetitive: turbulence exists, but the institution is firm.

Increasingly, that narrative collides with observable reality.

With the notable exception of overtly transactional figures such as Donald Trump and Marco Rubio — whose calculus privileges pliant strongmen over democratic optics — a widening segment of the international political establishment is growing uneasy. Diplomats and financial institutions observe a barricaded capital, intensifying crackdowns, and escalating custodial brutality. They see a regime that must deepen repression to simulate equilibrium.

Stability, in such conditions, becomes rhetorical rather than empirical.

Financial hesitation and diplomatic recalibration reflect risk assessment. A state that appears unable to govern without escalating coercion is not a predictable partner; it is a volatility vector. Each new act of repression erodes the credibility the Field Marshal seeks to preserve abroad.

And in such brittle circumstances, the specter of further escalation looms. Regimes that feel their control thinning often resort to manufactured crises, sweeping crackdowns, or orchestrated spectacles of “law and order” to justify expanded authority. The danger is not abstract: a state already willing to brutalize its most prominent prisoner may well be tempted to engineer broader repression under the banner of necessity.

This is not episodic. It is structural. Domestically, legitimacy has thinned while Khan’s stature has expanded into historic singularity. Within the security apparatus, cracks are visible. Internationally, confidence is fraying.

In attempting to break one man, Pakistan’s rulers have exposed themselves.

They command prisons and decrees.

He commands allegiance — and increasingly, history’s attention.

Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan.

18 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Richard Falk

As human beings we share deep emotional impulses to foretell the future, whether to foresee action on the basis of dread as to what the future will bring or to offer oneself and others reassurance that the future will deliver us from an ominous catastrophe or bring us the gifts of life that we most covet. From pre-modern times humans have sought this reassurance, resorting to magicians or religious seers and texts as necessary.

Diverse civilizations throughout history have thirsted after knowledge of their future as individuals or in relation to diverse collective identities as members of tribes, nations, states, religions, ethnicities, and gender identities, and more recently as a species. Fortune telling, astrology, and divining rods have all tried to foretell the future, without waiting for it to unfold. This kind of epistemological denialism has been somewhat disguised in modern sensibilities by recourse to experts, futurists, and forecasters who translate data into policy preferences and predictions that earns respect as if ‘knowledge.’ It is also us bound up with gambling and extreme sports, as if we can defy the fog clouding the future and subjugate the future to our appetites/

This passion to know the future has even penetrated sophisticated scientific circles. A prominent example is the Doomsday Clock administered for the since 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists who select a group of scientists, weapons specialists, nuclear experts, and public figures to assess how close the world is to the midnight omega point of nuclear war. This year it was a major news item when the clock was moved four seconds closer to midnight, from 89 seconds to 85, a pseudo-precise way of anticipating the risks of an apocalyptic future for humanity. As with pre-scientific ways of relieving persons and communities of the anxieties and impatience associated with the core uncertainties of life as bearing upon prospects feared or desired. In modernity this demand for something as definite as possible about the future tends to be more comfortable relying on statistics, graphs, and data, still functioning as ways to cover up the unknowability of the future, and ultimately performs a disservice to humanity by encouraging fatalism, passivity, or sedation on one side and cynicism and complacency on the other.

Why act or struggle for the future if we know what lies ahead? Thereby arises ‘false consciousness’? This is what the philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, famously warned us about calling it ‘the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.’ He considered this widespread fallacy induced false consciousness about the real. My purpose is more modest. It is to criticize the impact of negativity to the extent that it flourishes even among solutions-oriented peace activists in the tradition of Johan Galtung, and to energize progressive activism without the palliative of false consciousness. Unknowability about the future, starting with the precariousness of our own mortality, is never comfortable, yet it is real. It should not diminish efforts to reduce dangers or risks, but motivate us to adjust behavior on the basis of present knowledge. The Titanic would not have struck an iceberg if it had not ventured so close to Arctic waters. I would feel safer and more secure if denuclearizing initiatives were embraced by the nuclear weapons states such as by entering into a nuclear disarmament treaty process with a resolve to make it work. Even so, I would be overreaching by claiming 100% certainty that my line of advocacy was assured of being best course for humanity to take? Claiming to know the future is a mixture of dogmatism and hubris, leading in worst case scenarios to extremism of a destructive kind.

These dangers disfigure behavior in potentially destructive ways. Zionist ideology roots its justifications for apartheid, genocide, and ecocide in the biblical promise of ‘the promised land,’ taking no account of the wellbeing and attachments of the majority population in modern day Palestine. Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, a confirmed secularist, opportunistically invoked this sacrosanct method of foretelling of the future by saying ‘let the Bible be our weapon,’ and further evaluating any choice by the simple question, ‘is it good for the Jews?’ Not only is the future assured and hence knowable, but its inevitability tends to relieve those so falsely enlightened of all moral constraints. This kind of manipulative futurism corrupts as exemplified by Christian Zionists who read the Book of Revelations that comes at the end of the New Testament as validating unconditional support of Israel joined with a mission to induce Jews to emigrate to Israel as the necessary prelude to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. And then, when the initial forecast is fulfilled, Jews are to be given the choice of conversion or eternal damnation.

The most notable substitution of hope for knowledge when it comes to the future derives its strongest affirmation from the great late 18th century German philosopher of rationality, Immanuel Kant (1724-1805), who put articulated in solemn inspirational language that has cheered the best of activists for more than two centuries: “The moral arc of the universe is long but bends toward justice.” Martin Luther King, Jr, famously invoked this sentiment, although he tied it to struggle more than treated it as a foolproof prediction of the future. A reading of the present can be interpreted as vindicating Kant’s confidence in the future of humanity, as in his essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795) or an expression of premature optimism or even as a selective blindness toward the human condition as it is currently being exhibited. The evidence is equivocal and premature, at best, and if I had to pronounce upon it, I would prefer to regard such a predisposition as an ultra-humanistic version of false consciousness about the human future.

From these perspectives, I want to encourage peace activism of all kinds, to accept the challenges associated with a refusal to indulge delusions about ‘knowable futures’ in favor of rooting their beliefs in the unknowability of the future, and to ground their activism in an ethos of humanistic struggle based on visions of desirable futures without depending on false claims about the certainties of doom or of a guarantee that their dedicated responses to such assaults on humanity as arise from warfare, climate change, poverty, racism, and imperialism will with certainty overcome such shortcomings in the human condition.

As a species we must abandon a worldview based on parts rather than the whole. As long as we speak only or primarily from the present particularities of nationality, gender, ethnicity, civilizational, and religious identity we should awaken in the present that this is not a path to a peaceful, just, and resilient path to the future. With urgency we must learn to think and act as engaged citizens of the planetary ecosystemic whole, and more expansively of the cosmos as our unavoidable shared foundation of life and spirituality.

Overall, this involves an acceptance of unknowability when it comes to the future and to struggle on behalf of our beliefs in the present, with a posture of prudence toward perceived dangers and wrongdoing. Such a reorientation of outlook and engagement entails profound changes in education, citizenship, and notions of the public good. I try to remain engaged with the help of my former mentor/teacher, Paul Tillich, and especially his book Courage to Be (1952), whose message counsels rootedness in the deep soil of present reality.

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

18 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Binu Mathew

I still remember the unease that first crept into me as a young man when I encountered The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade. It was not merely shock—it was a deep, unsettling recognition of something profoundly disturbing in the human condition. Yet, like many readers, I comforted myself with a convenient thought: this is only fantasy, an exaggerated descent into depravity that could never find real expression in the world outside the page.

De Sade’s unfinished novel, written in 1785 while he was imprisoned in the Bastille, is structured with chilling precision. Four wealthy libertines—a duke, a bishop, a judge, and a financier—retreat into an isolated chateau, accompanied by a group of abducted boys and girls. Over 120 days, they subject their captives to escalating cycles of sexual violence, humiliation, and torture, catalogued with bureaucratic detachment. The narrative is less a story than a system—an inventory of cruelty.

The historical context matters. De Sade wrote on the eve of the French Revolution, in a society where aristocratic privilege had reached grotesque extremes. His work is often read as both a product and a critique of that world—a savage allegory of power unrestrained by morality. The libertines are not aberrations; they are the logical outcome of a system that places absolute authority in the hands of the elite. Unsurprisingly, the novel was suppressed for decades, circulated clandestinely, and later condemned as obscene, immoral, and dangerous. Even today, it remains one of the most controversial works in literary history.

Years later, in 1996, at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) held in Kozhikode, I watched Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. If the novel had disturbed me, the film was almost unbearable. I remember the atmosphere in the theatre—tense, uneasy. As the scenes unfolded, many around me could not endure it. People stood up and walked out, unable to confront the relentless degradation on screen.

Pasolini’s adaptation transposes de Sade’s narrative to the final days of Mussolini’s fascist regime in the Italian Social Republic of Salò. The libertines become fascist officials, and the château becomes a sealed space of totalitarian power. The film strips away any illusion of distance. It is stark, clinical, and merciless in its depiction of abuse. Pasolini’s political intent is unmistakable: fascism is not merely a political system but a structure that commodifies and destroys human bodies. Power, in its absolute form, becomes indistinguishable from sadism.

The reception of Salò mirrored the outrage that greeted de Sade’s work. It was banned in several countries, condemned by critics, and remains one of the most controversial films ever made. Yet, like the novel, it endures because it forces us to confront an uncomfortable question: what happens when power operates without accountability?

For a long time, I held on to a fragile belief—that such horrors belonged to fiction, to allegory, to the darkest corners of imagination or history. I wanted to believe that the world had moved beyond such barbarity.

Then came the Epstein story.

What shattered me was not just the scale of the abuse but the banality of its setting. Jeffrey Epstein did not operate in a remote château hidden from the world. He moved in the highest circles of global power—among billionaires, politicians, royalty, and celebrities. His crimes were not the product of isolation but of access. Young girls were trafficked, abused, and silenced within a network that intersected with the very structures meant to uphold justice.

Names began to surface—figures linked, questioned, or scrutinized in connection with Epstein’s world: Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Donald Trump, among others. Whether through association, allegation, or documented interaction, the proximity of power to abuse became impossible to ignore. This was not a fictional circle of libertines; this was the real elite.

In many ways, the Epstein case is more horrifying than de Sade’s novel. De Sade imagined a closed system where cruelty could flourish unchecked. Epstein’s reality reveals something far more disturbing: such cruelty can exist within open society, shielded by wealth, influence, and institutional complicity. The libertines of Sodom needed isolation to carry out their crimes. Epstein did not.

De Sade’s work was a warning—a grotesque exaggeration meant to expose the moral decay of a privileged class. Pasolini amplified that warning, linking it to the machinery of fascism. But Epstein shows us that the warning was not heeded. The same dynamics—power without accountability, bodies reduced to objects, systems that protect perpetrators—persist, not in fiction, but in our lived reality.

If anything, Epstein mirrors the moral corruption of modern elites with a clarity that de Sade could only imagine. The structures have changed, the language has softened, the settings have become more discreet—but the underlying logic remains the same. Power shields itself. Wealth silences victims. Justice bends.

I can no longer take comfort in the idea that such horrors are confined to novels or films. The distance between fiction and reality has collapsed.

And that is why the Epstein files matter.

Every name, every letter, every video, every fragment of evidence must be pursued with uncompromising rigor. This is not about spectacle or scandal; it is about accountability. It is about dismantling the networks that enable such crimes and ensuring that no individual—no matter how powerful—is beyond the reach of the law.

Justice, in this case, cannot be partial or selective. It must be complete.

For the victims, whose suffering has too often been dismissed or ignored, anything less would be another form of betrayal.

Binu Mathew is the Editor of Countercurrents.org. He can be reached at editor@countercurrents.org

18 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rima Najjar

The upcoming Masar Badil conference in São Paulo (March 28–31, 2026) stands as a deliberate and audacious escalation in the Palestinian diaspora’s political struggle. In the words of founding member Khaled Barakat, it represents a “qualitative leap” into open political confrontation. By choosing Brazil — a country marked by deep Zionist economic, military-security, and evangelical penetration alongside vibrant leftist and anti-imperialist traditions — the organizers transform potential vulnerabilities into strategic advantages.

This choice capitalizes on the heightened global solidarity momentum following October 7, the powerful symbolism of Land Day (commemorated around March 30), and Latin America’s enduring history of resistance to settler-colonialism, foreign intervention, and imperialism.

In a podcast interview on Alkarama-Palestina’s YouTube channel, Samidoun coordinator Ruwaa al-Saghir (São Paulo) — joined by Khaled Barakat (Beirut) and Jaldia Abubakra (Madrid) — explained how the continent is currently witnessing a sharp rise in far-right forces, looming presidential elections, and the entrenched presence of Israeli-linked defense and surveillance firms, facial-recognition systems, and evangelical networks that extend into poor neighborhoods. Rather than shying away from these realities, the conference deliberately enters this terrain to expose Zionist infiltration, name the shared enemy, and assert that Zionism and imperialism are inseparable.

What makes the event truly bold is its refusal to treat Latin America as a mere backdrop for distant solidarity. As al-Saghir describes it, the conference offers a chance to restore the voice of the Global South — to forge a living bridge between the Palestinian struggle and the ongoing fights of Brazilian, Argentine, Chilean, and Venezuelan peoples, drawing on five centuries of shared colonial dispossession, indigenous resistance, and anti-imperialist memory. In a region still scarred by the memory of military coups and facing renewed U.S. threats against Venezuela, convening such an event is itself an act of political defiance, turning the diaspora from a passive support base into an active frontline.

Masar Badil actively conducts multilingual outreach to expand its reach, especially among younger diaspora generations who may not speak Arabic fluently. The movement draws strength from its proven networks — Samidoun for prisoner solidarity, Alkarama for women’s organizing, and various youth structures — which have mobilized hundreds of events, protests, and webinars since 2021.

Ideological Clarity and Its Strategic Tensions

Ideologically, Masar Badil offers uncompromising clarity. It rejects the Oslo framework, the Palestinian Authority’s security coordination with the occupier, and the mainstream two-state paradigm, instead positioning Palestine as the vanguard of a global anti-imperialist struggle. This stance draws in activists disillusioned with moderate or institutionalized approaches, offering a radical alternative.

As Khaled Barakat reminded listeners, the October 7 operation and the genocidal response that followed have imposed new priorities on every Palestinian current: the urgent, practical work of stopping the slaughter, flooding the streets, universities, and unions, and raising slogans once considered marginal — “Long live October 7,” “Long live the armed resistance,” “From the river to the sea.” The São Paulo conference carries this shift forward by calling openly for popular rebellion against a Palestinian Authority that coordinates security with the occupier, marginalizes the resistance, and imposes recognition of Israel as a condition for political belonging.

This embrace of October 7, however, creates a strategic tension: how to defend the principled right to armed struggle — a right affirmed in international law and repeatedly recognized by UN General Assembly resolutions, yet systematically criminalized by Israel and the United States as “terrorism” — while building the broadest possible internationalist coalitions needed to confront genocide and imperialism. For many potential allies on the global left, or among those horrified by the destruction in Gaza, unequivocal celebration of the attack can appear deeply challenging, not because armed resistance is inherently illegitimate, but because decades of Israeli and U.S. propaganda have successfully framed any endorsement of Palestinian military action as moral transgression.

Masar Badil appears to resolve this tension by refusing to dilute its political clarity, insisting that genuine awakening requires confronting uncomfortable realities rather than conforming to externally imposed red lines. Whether this unapologetic stance ultimately expands or limits the front of solidarity will be tested in spaces like the São Paulo conference, where the movement seeks to mobilize diverse actors under its banner.

Jaldia Abubakra underscored another dimension of this courage: the insistence that women and youth — especially those born in the diaspora — must occupy central, non-decorative roles, changing stereotypes and mobilizing entire communities in languages and spaces that official politics often ignore.

Repression, Internal Dynamics, and the Vanguard Question

Central to the movement’s self-understanding is its transformation of repression into validation. Organizers view every sanction, arrest, travel restriction, funding block, and lobbying effort to cancel events not as setbacks, but as evidence of real impact. As they have stated repeatedly, “every repressive step only ignites greater determination.” The intensity of the response — from U.S. and Canadian designations to German bans and personal sanctions on leaders — demonstrates that Masar Badil is disrupting financial flows, narrative control, and diaspora passivity in ways that genuinely threaten the Zionist project and its backers.

Even the challenge of remaining a minority voice within the broader pro-Palestine spectrum is reframed as a strength. By refusing co-optation and openly competing with official Palestinian diplomacy and more moderate solidarity groups, the movement claims authenticity as the genuine revolutionary path — untamed and therefore worthy of suppression.

Masar Badil’s portrayal of repression as validation, while powerful from the movement’s perspective, invites closer scrutiny of its strategic trade-offs. Vanguardism may forge a highly committed revolutionary core, but it often comes at the expense of broad-based appeal. By treating virtually all compromise or institutional engagement as co-optation, Masar Badil risks political sectarianism — potentially narrowing alliances with more moderate pro-Palestine forces and obstructing the diverse, majoritarian coalitions historically essential to successful decolonization struggles. Is isolation truly evidence of vanguard efficacy, or might it limit the movement’s capacity to scale mass mobilization at a time of genocide and deepening global polarization?

The organizers would likely counter that genuine mass awakening demands uncompromised clarity rather than strategic dilution, and that the post-October 7 transformation of global discourse — where slogans once deemed marginal have gained widespread traction — already demonstrates the effectiveness of their approach. The continued — and even expanded — planning of the conference in early 2026, despite layered sanctions, high-profile arrests (such as that of executive committee member Mohammed Khatib in Greece), and persistent Zionist lobbying efforts to disrupt venues, stands as the clearest validation in the organizers’ narrative. The São Paulo conference will serve as a real-time test of this tension: whether bold, confrontational organizing in contested terrain can expand solidarity, or whether it ultimately reinforces the movement’s position on the frontline margins.

Theory of Change: Means, Ends, and the Path Forward

Masar Badil’s vivid emphasis on defiance, advance, and the transformative power of conferences and networks radiates inspiring energy, yet it leaves a deeper question hanging: what is the concrete theory of change? If the explicit goal remains full liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea — rejecting two-state diplomacy, Oslo compromises, and the Palestinian Authority’s framework — how precisely do diaspora-led initiatives translate into tangible shifts on the ground? How do they strengthen steadfastness in Gaza and the West Bank, empower Palestinians within the 1948 borders, or erode the occupation’s material foundations?

The organizers would likely respond that consciousness-raising, the forging of unified resistance fronts, and sustained international pressure constitute indispensable preconditions for any breakthrough, especially after decades of failed diplomacy. They might point to the October 7 rupture as already demonstrating how armed initiative, when backed by popular and global support, can fundamentally alter the equation. Without a clearly articulated pathway linking diaspora vanguardism to the daily realities of those under siege, however, the globalized project risks remaining more aspirational than operational — more a powerful moral and ideological rallying point than a fully elaborated strategy for decisive victory.

The São Paulo gathering, through its workshops and joint declarations, will provide one concrete measure of whether this approach can forge genuine connections between the diaspora’s activism and the homeland’s endurance — or whether the gap between rhetoric and on-the-ground impact endures.

In the end, the São Paulo conference embodies the movement’s deepest conviction: when empires tighten their grip, the revolutionary response is not retreat, but a bolder, more internationalist advance — turning the adversary’s chosen ground into the next arena of struggle.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.

18 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ghassan Shahrour

Rev. Jesse Jackson, who passed away on February 17, 2026, leaves behind a legacy that extends far beyond the civil-rights milestones that first defined his public life. As founder of Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) — later People United to Serve Humanity — Jackson built an institution grounded in economic justice, educational opportunity, and the empowerment of marginalized communities. PUSH was not merely an organization; it was a moral vision that placed human dignity at the center of public life.

Equally defining, though less widely acknowledged, was Jackson’s unwavering commitment to peace and disarmament. From the 1980s onward, he emerged as one of the most consistent American voices urging an end to the nuclear arms race. He warned that humanity could not survive a world governed by fear, militarization, and the unchecked spread of weapons. His message feels even more urgent today, as global tensions rise, military budgets swell, and new technologies accelerate conflict. In an era drifting toward escalation, Jackson’s voice reminds us that human security begins with justice, not armament.

This urgency is sharpened by the expiration of the New START Treaty in February 2026, which removed the last remaining legal limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals. For the first time in more than half a century, no binding framework restrains U.S.–Russian nuclear forces. Jackson spent his life urging nations to step back from the brink; the disappearance of these guardrails underscores how vital — and how fragile — the work of peace truly is.

For those engaged in humanitarian disarmament and human-security advocacy, Jackson’s passing resonates deeply. We know — from years of documenting suffering, negotiating with policymakers, and mobilizing communities — that change is slow, fragile, and often resisted. Advocacy demands patience, resilience, and the belief that moral clarity can outlast political cycles. Jackson embodied that endurance.

His international humanitarian work reflected the same convictions. He negotiated the release of hostages in Syria and Cuba, supported peace efforts in Central America, stood firmly against apartheid, and consistently defended Palestinian rights, insisting that no people should live without freedom, dignity, or hope.

As we reflect on his passing, one truth stands out: the most faithful tribute to his legacy is to resist the normalization of war and the quiet expansion of armament, and to defend justice wherever it is threatened. Accepting conflict as inevitable is a moral failure. Peace is not a distant aspiration — it is a shared and urgent responsibility.

Dr. Ghassan Shahrour, Coordinator of Arab Human Security Network, is a medical doctor, prolific writer, and human rights advocate specializing in health, disability, disarmament, and human security.

18 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

The US military killed 11 people Monday in strikes on three boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea in the deadliest single day so far this year of the Trump administration’s killing spree off the Latin American coast.

US Southern Command announced that four men were killed on one boat in the eastern Pacific, four on another in the eastern Pacific, and three on a boat in the Caribbean. It was the first time the military bombed targets on both sides of the Panama Canal in the same day. The military posted a 39-second video showing the three boats being destroyed—one on the move, two sitting motionless in the water. No evidence was provided that the vessels were carrying drugs or that those killed had any connection to drug trafficking.

The strikes are murders under international law. The men on these boats posed no imminent threat to anyone. They were not armed combatants. They were not engaged in hostilities. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Charter, and the Pentagon’s own Law of War Manual, killing them is a crime. UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) Article 98 establishes a duty to rescue persons in distress at sea.

The US media treated the strikes as entirely routine. ABC News ran a write-up of approximately 130 words. The Washington Post filed its report under “national security,” not the front page. The killings did not receive even token condemnation from the Democratic Party. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said nothing in response to the strikes.

The strikes bring the total death toll to at least 145 people killed in 42 known strikes since early September 2025. Another 11 survivors of earlier strikes are presumed dead after the military left them to drown. Families of two Trinidadian fishermen killed in an October 14 strike have sued the US government, calling the campaign “lawless killings in cold blood; killings for sport and killings for theatre.”

In October, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called the strikes “unacceptable,” stating that “none of the individuals on the targeted boats appeared to pose an imminent threat to the lives of others.” In November, former ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo concluded that the strikes “likely constitute crimes against humanity.”

Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, who viewed the classified video in December, described the scene: the men were “basically two shirtless people clinging to the bow of a capsized and inoperable boat, drifting in the water—until the missiles come and kill them.” Killing survivors is a direct violation of the Hague Regulations’ prohibition on denying quarter—one of the oldest rules of warfare.

An investigation by the Intercept published Monday revealed that when eight men jumped overboard during a December 30 triple strike, the Coast Guard took 45 hours to dispatch a rescue plane—into nine-foot seas and 40-knot winds where survival was measured in minutes. No survivors were found. “SOUTHCOM doesn’t want these people alive,” a government official told the Intercept.

The strikes take place in the context of a vast US military campaign across the Western Hemisphere. In January, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, took part in the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro amid a massive bombardment of the Venezuelan capital of Caracas.

The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy declares a “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” asserting that the United States will “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” and “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”

At the Munich Security Conference over the week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered an open defense of imperialist criminality: “We cannot continue to allow those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens and endanger our global stability to shield themselves behind abstractions of international law.”

He boasted that the old international order “was unable to address the threat to our security from a narcoterrorist dictator in Venezuela.” The positions of the Trump administration that international law is an “abstraction” that the United States is not bound to observe.

The Ford carrier strike group has now been redeployed from the Caribbean to the Middle East, where it will join the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group. Approximately 50,000 US troops are deployed to the region. Reuters reported Friday that the Pentagon is planning “sustained, weeks-long operations” against Iran. Trump told troops at Fort Bragg that regime change in Iran would be “the best thing that could happen.”

The same carrier used to kidnap the president of Venezuela is being redeployed to wage war against a country of 88 million people.

Some Democrats made verbal criticisms of earlier strikes. In November, Tim Kaine said the double-tap “rises to the level of a war crime,” and in December, Himes called it “a violation of the laws of war.” But these criticisms have been completely dropped. War powers resolutions introduced by Kaine were defeated on party-line votes.

Ocasio-Cortez spoke at the Munich Security Conference last weekend and said nothing about the killing campaign or about the preparations for war against Iran. Instead, she accused Trump of insufficient aggression against Russia, called for reviving Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership to confront China and refused to rule out sending American troops to fight China over Taiwan.

Despite the total criminality of the Trump administration’s killing spree in the Caribbean, the Democrats have consistently voted to fund Trump’s war machine. The $901 billion National Defense Authorization Act passed the House 312-112 in December, with 115 Democrats voting yes. In the Senate, it passed 77-20, with the vast majority of Senate Democrats voting in favor.

Trump has called for a $1.5 trillion military budget for fiscal year 2027—the largest in American history. The Democrats have said nothing to oppose it. They supplied the votes to pass the spending bill that funds the ongoing killing spree in the Caribbean and every warship now sailing toward Iran.

18 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Occupied Palestine (QNN)- More than 100 prominent figures from the entertainment industry have signed an open letter backing the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, who is facing calls from European states to step down over her opposition to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

At last week’s Al Jazeera Forum, Albanese said “we as humanity have a common enemy”.

However, a fake video that was later debunked had her accusing Israel of being the “common enemy”.

She later explained in a social media post that she was referencing “the system that has enabled the genocide in Palestine” as the “common enemy”. She denounced this as a “manipulation” and “completely false”.

[https://twitter.com/FranceskAlbs/status/2020983308818186721]

Albanese is one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s more-than-two-year genocide in Gaza which has killed more than 72,000 people.

She has called it the “the shame of our time” and says she always asks prime ministers, presidents and foreign ministers the same question: “How do you sleep? When will you act?”

The Italian-born legal expert, who began her unpaid role in 2022, was targeted with sanctions by the Trump administration in July last year over he anti-genocide position.

France and Germany called for Albanese to step down over her faked remarks last weekend.

A group of French MPs sent a letter to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Tuesday denouncing Albanese’s remarks as “antisemitic”.

Barrot called for her to step down a day later, saying that France “unreservedly condemns the outrageous and reprehensible remarks”.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul on Thursday said her position was “untenable”.

In a letter organized by the Artists for Palestine group, over a 100 cultural figures backed her, including actors Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem, Nobel-winning author Annie Ernaux and British musician Annie Lennox.

The signatories “offer our full support to Francesca Albanese, a defender of human rights and therefore also of the Palestinian people’s right to exist,” the letter says.

“There are infinitely more of us, in every corner of the Earth, who want force no longer to be the law. Who know what the word ‘law’ truly means,” it concludes.

Published in French on the website of Artists for Palestine, it also reproduces the full remarks by Albanese who was speaking via videoconference at a forum last Saturday organized by the Al Jazeera TV network.

Other celebrities to offer support for her include actresses Rosa Salazar and Asia Argento, Oscar-nominated film directors Yorgos Lanthimos and Kaouther Ben Hania, Latin music star Residente, and photographer Nan Goldin.

Marta Hurtado, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at a news briefing on Friday that her colleagues are “very worried” about the backlash against Albanese.

“We are concerned that UN officials, independent experts and judicial officials are increasingly subjected to personal attacks, threats and misinformation that distracts from the serious human rights issues,” Hurtado said.

[https://twitter.com/DropSiteNews/status/2022366456747315668]

16 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Occupied West Bank (QNN)- Israel has approved, for the first time since 1967, the registration of land in the occupied West Bank as “state property”, a move that will facilitate the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians, violate international law, and “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”

The proposal was submitted by the Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, the Justice Minister, Yariv Levin, and Israel Katz, the Defence Minister, and was approved on Sunday.

The measure is expected to formalize Israeli control over extensive areas of Palestinian land, much of which has remained unregistered since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.

It would allow Israel to legalize the confiscation of unregistered, or so-called abandoned, land by reclassifying it as “state land”.

In 1968, Israeli occupation authorities suspended a Jordanian-led land registration process, effectively preventing Palestinians from formally recording ownership of their property. 

In a joint statement, Katz, Smotrich and Levin described the decision as “an appropriate response to illegal settlement measures being pushed by the Palestinian Authority in Area C in violation of the law and agreements”.

They said the measure “will allow for a transparent and in-depth examination of rights, end legal disputes, and enable the development of infrastructure and the organised marketing of land”.

Katz called the decision an “essential security and governance measure designed to ensure control, enforcement and full freedom of action for the state of Israel in the area”.

“We are continuing the settlement revolution to control all our lands,” Smotrich said

The decision follows the approval last week of a series of measures advanced by Smotrich and Katz aimed at facilitating Israeli ownership of Palestinian land in the West Bank. The sweeping changes expand Israel’s civil control in Areas A and B – where all major Palestinian cities and towns are located – which since the Oslo Accords have officially been under Palestinian Authority (PA) jurisdiction. 

Smotrich said in a statement that the measures “fundamentally change the legal and civic reality” in the West Bank and “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.

While Israel has increased the confiscation of Palestinian land through military orders, with the activity reaching record levels in 2025, the new move gives Israel a legal avenue that “systemati[ses] the dispossession of Palestinian land to further Israeli settlement expansion and cement the apartheid regime”, Bimkom, an Israeli human rights organisation that focuses on land and housing rights, said in a statement.

16 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org