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By Caitlin Johnstone

The US can make threats, impose sanctions and amass war machinery, but you don’t truly know they’re serious about attacking a country until they start churning out Pentagon propaganda in the mainstream press.

29 Oct 2025 – It’s just news story after news story about the US and its allies terrorizing the world today.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been filming themselves committing horrific massacres in Sudan over the last couple of days, reportedly murdering some two thousand civilians. You can see the bloodstains on the ground in satellite images. As we discussed the other day, the RSF and its atrocities are backed by the UAE, a close partner of the United States.

Meanwhile Israel has committed another wave of massacres of its own throughout the Gaza Strip, reportedly killing 104 people in a single day, including 46 children. This is as many Palestinians as would typically be killed on any given day in Gaza prior to the so-called “ceasefire”.

CBS News’ 60 Minutes has released a cartoonishly blatant war propaganda piece on “Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s dictator” about how poor and unhappy the people of Venezuela are under their current government. The piece featured an interview with Republican Senator Rick Scott, who said that “If I was Maduro I’d head to Russia or China right now; his days are numbered.”

The US can make threats, impose sanctions and amass war machinery, but you don’t truly know they’re serious about attacking a country until they start churning out Pentagon propaganda in the mainstream press.

[https://twitter.com/TheGreeneBJ/status/1983185928278667419]

In the same interview, Scott also said that if Maduro is successfully ousted, “it’ll be the end of Cuba.”

“America is gonna take care of the southern hemisphere and make sure there’s freedom and democracy,” he added.

The senator’s statements suggest that the US is preparing a push in Latin America similar to what it has been executing with Israel in the middle east, eliminating any powers which refuse to bend the knee. South of the US border the top two disobedient governments are the socialist states of Venezuela and Cuba. In the middle east the US and Israel have spent the last two years bombing Iran and Yemen, securing a regime change in Syria, and doing everything they can to eliminate Hamas and Hezbollah in order to rule the region uncontested.

And of course we’ve still got the horrifying US proxy war in Ukraine, where men continue to be dragged off against their will to fight in a nightmarish conflict that most Ukrainians now oppose, but which Zelensky is saying he intends to keep fighting for years against the will of the public. This whole miserable ordeal could have been avoided with a little diplomacy and a few low-cost concessions, but the western power alliance avoided off-ramp after off-ramp in order to ensure that Russia would get sucked into another costly military quagmire.

All over the world the US and its allies are murdering and abusing people in order to dominate the planet and ensure the survival of the capitalist system with which its power is intertwined. It is a giant murder machine feeding on human blood and the life force of our biosphere while providing nothing but obstacles to a healthy world.

The US-centralized empire is a disease that affects our entire species. We had better find a cure, and fast.

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

3 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

Trump’s Plan to Turn the Page on the Gaza Genocide and Rehabilitate Israel

27 Oct 2025 – On 4 Oct 2025, in an interview with Axios, President Trump stressed that one of the main goals behind his Gaza plan was to restore Israel’s international standing. “Bibi took it very far and Israel lost a lot of support in the world,” Trump said. “Now I am gonna get all that support back.”

Under Trump’s plan, a supposed ceasefire took effect on October 10th. But Israel only withdrew from less than half of the Gaza strip, and killed at least 93 people in the next two weeks, after killing at least that many per day for the previous two years. Israel has only allowed 15% of the humanitarian aid called for in the plan to enter Gaza, and has kept the critical Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza closed. The daily life-and-death struggle to find food, water and shelter carries on unabated for two million people in Gaza.

While the reduction in the daily scale of Israel’s mass murder is obviously welcome, this is not a real ceasefire. Like previous Israeli ceasefires in Gaza, as in Lebanon, this is a one-sided ceasefire that Israel violates at will, on a daily basis, with no accountability.

This is only the first part of Trump’s plan for Gaza, and there is still no agreement on the other parts, such as the disarmament of Hamas, who provide the only government and police force in Gaza. They now have the added job of protecting their people from Israel-backed criminal gangs and death squads, some with links to ISIS, who prey on them from the Israeli-occupied areas, stealing aid supplies, assassinating local leaders and terrorizing the population.

Hamas is obviously not going to disarm under these conditions, and previously said it would only surrender its weapons once Palestine has an internationally recognized government with its own armed forces. On the other side, Israel has not agreed to other parts of Trump’s plan, such as its withdrawal from the rest of Gaza, nor to any plan for the future of Palestine.

In the United States, where corrupt politicians and corporate media take U.S. and Israeli lies at face value or even repeat them as statements of fact, some may believe that Trump’s plan has resolved the crisis in Palestine. The rest of the world is not so naive or easy to manipulate, but many other governments are also beholden to oligarchies that profit from trade, investment and arms deals with Israel, even as the public in those same countries reels in shock at Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians and U.S.-backed impunity for its crimes.

Trump’s Gaza plan, like much of his foreign policy, cynically exploits the greed and fear of political leaders and their oligarch patrons. Admitting that Israel has “lost a lot of support in the world,” he offers a shortcut back to “business as usual” for governments eager to protect—and even expand—profitable ties despite Israel’s ongoing atrocities and open contempt for international law.

In his first term, Trump brokered the “Abraham Accords,” normalization deals between Israel and Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan that included mutual recognition and expanded trade. He now has his eye on the big prize: Saudi Arabia.

But Arab-Israeli relations have long been contested. In the 1949 UN General Assembly vote on Israel’s admission, all Arab and Muslim countries except Turkiye (which abstained) voted against recognizing the state of Israel. Thirty-two mostly Arab and Muslim countries, including some of its closest neighbors, still either don’t recognize Israel or have no diplomatic relations with it.

Despite decades of hostility, Trump persuaded Israel and some of these countries to support his Gaza plan with the promise of future benefits from normalization and trade. But there is still a gaping chasm between Israel and these Arab and Muslim countries over Palestine. They say they will not recognize Israel unless Israel recognizes Palestine, with full sovereignty over East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

But the foundational basis of Netanyahu’s Likud Party is its plan for a Greater Israel, to be formed by annexing all of occupied Palestine “between the sea and the Jordan.” And on October 22, during Vice President Vance’s visit to Israel, the Knesset voted in favor of annexing the West Bank.

Trump unveiled his Gaza plan at the very end of the UN General Assembly’s annual high-level meeting in New York, where many world leaders spoke out for much stronger international action against Israel. The New York Declaration, which 142 countries voted for, was the result of a conference in July led by France and Saudi Arabia that promised “concrete, timebound, coordinated action” to enforce a ruling by the international Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024 that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal and must be ended “as quickly as possible.”

Trump’s initiative temporarily upstaged and marginalized calls for further action at the UN. But on October 22nd, the ICJ issued a new ruling strongly condemning Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, and ruling that, as an occupying power, Israel must ensure that the “basic needs” of the population are met, including food, water, fuel, shelter and medicine. The court also ruled that Israel must permit UN staff working for UNRWA to do their work in Gaza, after Israel provided no evidence to the court for its claim that UN staff were members of Hamas or took part in its October 2023 incursion into Israel.

In the wake of the ICJ decision, Norway said it would introduce a resolution in the UN General Assembly to enforce the Court’s directives, including ensuring the full amount of aid reaches Gaza. Humanitarian advocates hope that this resolution will be introduced in an Emergency Special Session under the “Uniting For Peace” option, enabling the UN to deliver the “concrete, timebound, coordinated action” it promised in July—potentially including sanctions such as an arms embargo and targeted trade and investment measures that should take effect within days if Israel continues to block aid.

Trump plainly intended his plan to close the book on Israel’s crimes—and on U.S. complicity—and to inaugurate a new phase: normalization of the occupation and Israel’s diplomatic rehabilitation. Yet even before the ICJ condemned Israel’s starvation policy, people worldwide were already mobilizing, urging their governments not to let Israel off the hook.

In Europe, momentum for accountability continues to build. As the British parliament debates a new pensions law, an amendment has been submitted to divest local government pension funds from companies that are complicit in the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. Many local councils in the U.K. have already passed individual ordinances to do this, but the amendment to the pensions law would force all of them to divest the $16 billion that their pension funds still have invested in those firms.

In September, the European Union (EU) announced plans to suspend its 25-year-old free trade agreement with Israel and impose sanctions on extremist Israeli cabinet members and settler leaders. On October 20th, it “paused” these steps in response to Trump’s plan, but EU leaders immediately faced strong push-back on that decision.

Over 400 former senior diplomats and officials signed a statement that the EU must take robust action “against spoilers and extremists” who would jeopardize “the establishment of a future Palestinian state,” noting that Trump’s plan only vaguely addressed that goal. International lawyers advised EU leaders that EU policy must comply with the 2024 ICJ ruling that the Israeli occupation is illegal and must be ended as quickly as possible.

Individual European countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain, already ban imports from illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine, and Ireland is currently debating a similar trade ban in its Occupied Territories Bill, which should get a final vote by January. The original bill would only affect trade in goods, but activists want trade in services included in the ban, while powerful business interests, including U.S. tech firms with European headquarters in Ireland, are lobbying to kill the bill altogether. It should help that Ireland’s newly elected president, Catherine Connolly, is a strong supporter of Palestine.

In stark contrast to much of the world, which is still grappling with the contradictions of Trump’s Gaza plan and Israel’s ongoing unlawful occupation, U.S. officials are already trying to turn the page—moving to fortify and expand Washington’s military alliance with Israel.

This alliance is renewed and updated every ten years in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two governments, which would normally be negotiated in 2026, before the previous MOU expires in 2028.

There’s already a bipartisan bill in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (S.554) to initiate this process, titled “United States-Israel Defense Partnership Act of 2025,” authorizing joint projects with Israel under categories like “countering unmanned systems… anti-tunnel cooperation…(and) war reserves stockpile authority.”

Conspicuously absent from this policy review is any debate over U.S. complicity in Gaza’s destruction—a debate that should come first and set the terms for any serious re-examination of the U.S.–Israel alliance.

On October 20th, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, released a new report titled “Gaza Genocide: a Collective Crime.” Here is the summary of her report:

“The ongoing genocide in Gaza is a collective crime, sustained by the complicity of influential Third States that have enabled longstanding systemic violations of international law by Israel. Framed by colonial narratives that dehumanize the Palestinians, this live-streamed atrocity has been facilitated through Third States’ direct support, material aid, diplomatic protection and, in some cases, active participation. It has exposed an unprecedented chasm between peoples and their governments, betraying the trust on which global peace and security rest. The world now stands on a knife-edge between the collapse of the international rule of law and hope for renewal. Renewal is only possible if complicity is confronted, responsibilities are met and justice is upheld.”

We urge all members of the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees to read the UN report and to invite UN experts to testify at hearings on U.S. complicity and participation in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Palestine.

To move ahead with consideration of a new MOU or any arms transfers with Israel without first conducting such a serious and objective policy review would only serve to perpetuate the endless wars that all our leaders, including President Trump, keep telling us they want to end.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022.

3 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

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