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  • The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

    Children play on the beach during a security deployment in Anzoátegui, Venezuela, 19 September 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Since early September, the United States has given every indication that it could be preparing for a military assault on Venezuela. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research partnered with ALBA Movimientos, the International Peoples’ Assembly, No Cold War, and the Simón Bolívar Institute to produce red alert no. 20, ‘The Empire’s Dogs Are Barking at Venezuela’, on the potential scenarios and implications of US intervention.

    In February 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez travelled to Havana to receive the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s José Martí Prize from Fidel Castro. In his speech, he likened Washington’s threats against Venezuela to dogs barking, saying, ‘Let the dogs bark, because it is a sign that we are on the move. ’ Chávez added, ‘Let the dogs of the empire bark. That is their role: to bark. Our role is to fight to achieve in this century – now, at last – the true liberation of our people.’ Almost two decades later, the empire’s dogs continue to bark. But will they bite? That is the question that this red alert seeks to answer.

    The Sound of Barking

    In February 2025, the US State Department designated a criminal network called Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train) as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’. Then, in July, the US Treasury Department added the so-called Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) to the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s sanctions list as a ‘transnational terrorist group’. No previous US government report, either from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or the State Department, had identified these organisations as a threat, and no publicly verifiable evidence has been offered to substantiate the claimed scale or coordination of either group. There is no evidence that Tren de Aragua is a coherent international operation. As for the Cartel de los Soles, the first time the name appeared was in 1993 in Venezuelan reporting on investigations of two National Guard generals – a reference to the ‘sun’ insignia on their uniforms – years before Hugo Chávez’s 1998 presidential victory. The Trump administration has alleged that these groups, working with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government, are the primary traffickers of drugs into the US – while providing zero evidence for the connection. Moreover, reports from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the DEA itself have consistently found Venezuelan groups to be marginal in global drug trafficking. Even so, the US State Department has offered a $50 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest – the largest in the programme’s history.

    Members of the first cohort of the Tactical Method of Revolutionary Resistance (Método Táctico de Resistencia Revolucionaria, MTRR) course smile after completing training at the Commando Actions Group in Caracas, Venezuela, October 2025—credit: Miguel Ángel García Ojeda.

    The US has revived the blunt instrument of the ‘War on Drugs’ to pressure countries that are not yielding to its threats or that stubbornly refuse to elect right-wing governments. Recently, Trump has targeted Mexico and Colombia and has invoked their difficulties with the narcotics trade to attack their presidents. Though Venezuela does not have a significant domestic drug problem, that has not stopped Trump from attacking Maduro’s government with much more venom. In October 2025, the Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado of the Vente Venezuela (Come Venezuela) movement won the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado was ineligible to run for president in 2024 largely because she had made a series of treasonous statements, accepted a diplomatic post from another country in order to plead for intervention in Venezuela (in violation of Article 149 of the Constitution), and supported guarimbas (violent street actions in which people were beaten, burned alive, and beheaded). She has also championed unilateral US sanctions that have devastated the economy. The Nobel Prize was secured through the work of the Inspire America Foundation (based in Miami, Florida, and led by Cuban American lawyer Marcell Felipe) and by the intervention of four US politicians, three of whom are Cuban Americans (Marco Rubio, María Elvira Salazar, and Mario Díaz-Balart). The Cuban American connection is key, showing how this political network that is focused on the overthrow by any means of the Cuban Revolution now sees a US military intervention in Venezuela as a way to advance regime change in Cuba. This is, therefore, not just an intervention against Venezuela, but one against all those governments that the US would like to overthrow.

    A woman holds a rifle during a security deployment in the Petare neighbourhood of Caracas, Venezuela, 15 October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    The Bite

    In August 2025, the US military began to amass naval forces in the southern Caribbean, including Aegis-class destroyers and nuclear-powered attack submarines. In September, it began a campaign of extrajudicial strikes on small motorboats in Caribbean waters, bombing at least thirteen vessels and killing at least fifty-seven people – without offering evidence of any drug trafficking links. By mid-October, the US had deployed more than four thousand troops off Venezuela’s coast and five thousand on standby in Puerto Rico (including F-35 fighter jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones), authorised covert operations inside the country, and flown B-52 ‘demonstration missions’ over Caracas. In late October, the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group was deployed to the region. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s government has mobilised the population to defend the country.

    A woman from the Peasant Militia (Milicia Campesina) holds a machete during her graduation as a combatant from the MTRR course, October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Five Scenarios for US Intervention

    Scenario no. 1: the Brother Sam option. In 1964, the US deployed several warships off the coast of Brazil. Their presence emboldened General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, chief of the Army General Staff, and his allies to stage a coup that ushered in a twenty-one-year dictatorship. But Venezuela is a different terrain. In his first term, Chávez strengthened political education in the military academies and anchored officer training in defence of the 1999 Constitution. A Castelo Branco figure is therefore unlikely to save the day for Washington.

    Scenario no. 2: the Panama option. In 1989, the US bombed Panama City and sent in special operations troops to capture Manuel Noriega, Panama’s military leader, and bring him to a US prison while US-backed politicians took over the country. Such an operation would be harder to replicate in Venezuela: its military is far stronger, trained for protracted, asymmetric conflicts, and the country boasts sophisticated air defence systems (notably the Russian S-300VM and Buk-M2E surface-to-air systems). Any US air campaign would face sustained defence, making the prospect of downed aircraft – a major loss of face – one Washington is unlikely to risk.

    Scenario no. 3: the Iraq option. A ‘Shock and Awe’ bombing campaign against Caracas and other cities to rattle the population and demoralise the state and military, followed by attempts to assassinate senior Venezuelan leadership and seize key infrastructure. After such an assault, Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado would likely declare herself ready to take charge and align Venezuela closely with the US. The inadequacy of this manoeuvre is that the Bolivarian leadership runs deep: the roots of the defence of the Bolivarian project run through working-class barrios, and the military would not be immediately demoralised – unlike in Iraq. As the interior minister of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, recently noted, ‘Anyone who wants to can remember Vietnam… when a small but united people with an iron will were able to teach US imperialism a lesson’.

    The commander general of the Bolivarian National Police, Brigadier General Rubén Santiago, holds a rifle with a sticker of Chávez’s eyes during a security deployment in Petare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Scenario no. 4: the Gulf of Tonkin option. In 1964, the US escalated its military engagement in the Vietnam War after an incident framed as an unprovoked attack on US destroyers off the country’s coast. Later disclosures revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) fabricated intelligence to manufacture a pretext for escalation. The US claims it is now conducting naval and air ‘training exercises’ near Venezuelan territorial waters and airspace. On 26 October, the Venezuelan government said it had received information about a covert CIA plan to stage a false-flag attack on US vessels near Trinidad and Tobago to elicit a US response. Venezuelan authorities warned of US manoeuvres and said they will not give in to provocations or intimidation.

    Scenario no. 5: the Qasem Soleimani option. In January 2020, a US drone strike ordered by Trump killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force. Soleimani was one of Iran’s most senior officials and was responsible for its regional defence strategy across Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. In an interview on 60 Minutes, former US chargé d’affaires for Venezuela James Story said, ‘The assets are there to do everything up to and including decapitation of [the] government’ – a plain statement of intent to assassinate the president. After the death of President Hugo Chávez in 2013, US officials predicted that the project would collapse. Twelve years have now passed, and Venezuela continues along the path set forth under Chávez, advancing its communal model whose resilience rests not only on the revolution’s collective leadership but also on strong popular organisation. The Bolivarian project has never been a one-person show.

    China and Russia are unlikely to permit a strike on Venezuela without pressing for immediate UN Security Council resolutions, and both routinely operate in the Caribbean, including joint exercises with Cuba and global missions such as China’s Mission Harmony 2025.

    A member of the Juventud Socialista de Venezuela (Socialist Youth of Venezuela) shows a coin given to graduates of the MTRR course during a security deployment in La Guaira, Venezuela, October 2025. Based on the methods of Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the MTRR course is designed to train people with no prior military experience for possible guerrilla warfare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    We hope that none of these scenarios come to pass and that the United States takes its military options off the table. But hope alone is not enough – we must work to expand the camp of peace.

    Originally published on  Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

    The post The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

    Children play on the beach during a security deployment in Anzoátegui, Venezuela, 19 September 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Since early September, the United States has given every indication that it could be preparing for a military assault on Venezuela. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research partnered with ALBA Movimientos, the International Peoples’ Assembly, No Cold War, and the Simón Bolívar Institute to produce red alert no. 20, ‘The Empire’s Dogs Are Barking at Venezuela’, on the potential scenarios and implications of US intervention.

    In February 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez travelled to Havana to receive the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s José Martí Prize from Fidel Castro. In his speech, he likened Washington’s threats against Venezuela to dogs barking, saying, ‘Let the dogs bark, because it is a sign that we are on the move. ’ Chávez added, ‘Let the dogs of the empire bark. That is their role: to bark. Our role is to fight to achieve in this century – now, at last – the true liberation of our people.’ Almost two decades later, the empire’s dogs continue to bark. But will they bite? That is the question that this red alert seeks to answer.

    The Sound of Barking

    In February 2025, the US State Department designated a criminal network called Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train) as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’. Then, in July, the US Treasury Department added the so-called Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) to the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s sanctions list as a ‘transnational terrorist group’. No previous US government report, either from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or the State Department, had identified these organisations as a threat, and no publicly verifiable evidence has been offered to substantiate the claimed scale or coordination of either group. There is no evidence that Tren de Aragua is a coherent international operation. As for the Cartel de los Soles, the first time the name appeared was in 1993 in Venezuelan reporting on investigations of two National Guard generals – a reference to the ‘sun’ insignia on their uniforms – years before Hugo Chávez’s 1998 presidential victory. The Trump administration has alleged that these groups, working with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government, are the primary traffickers of drugs into the US – while providing zero evidence for the connection. Moreover, reports from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the DEA itself have consistently found Venezuelan groups to be marginal in global drug trafficking. Even so, the US State Department has offered a $50 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest – the largest in the programme’s history.

    Members of the first cohort of the Tactical Method of Revolutionary Resistance (Método Táctico de Resistencia Revolucionaria, MTRR) course smile after completing training at the Commando Actions Group in Caracas, Venezuela, October 2025—credit: Miguel Ángel García Ojeda.

    The US has revived the blunt instrument of the ‘War on Drugs’ to pressure countries that are not yielding to its threats or that stubbornly refuse to elect right-wing governments. Recently, Trump has targeted Mexico and Colombia and has invoked their difficulties with the narcotics trade to attack their presidents. Though Venezuela does not have a significant domestic drug problem, that has not stopped Trump from attacking Maduro’s government with much more venom. In October 2025, the Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado of the Vente Venezuela (Come Venezuela) movement won the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado was ineligible to run for president in 2024 largely because she had made a series of treasonous statements, accepted a diplomatic post from another country in order to plead for intervention in Venezuela (in violation of Article 149 of the Constitution), and supported guarimbas (violent street actions in which people were beaten, burned alive, and beheaded). She has also championed unilateral US sanctions that have devastated the economy. The Nobel Prize was secured through the work of the Inspire America Foundation (based in Miami, Florida, and led by Cuban American lawyer Marcell Felipe) and by the intervention of four US politicians, three of whom are Cuban Americans (Marco Rubio, María Elvira Salazar, and Mario Díaz-Balart). The Cuban American connection is key, showing how this political network that is focused on the overthrow by any means of the Cuban Revolution now sees a US military intervention in Venezuela as a way to advance regime change in Cuba. This is, therefore, not just an intervention against Venezuela, but one against all those governments that the US would like to overthrow.

    A woman holds a rifle during a security deployment in the Petare neighbourhood of Caracas, Venezuela, 15 October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    The Bite

    In August 2025, the US military began to amass naval forces in the southern Caribbean, including Aegis-class destroyers and nuclear-powered attack submarines. In September, it began a campaign of extrajudicial strikes on small motorboats in Caribbean waters, bombing at least thirteen vessels and killing at least fifty-seven people – without offering evidence of any drug trafficking links. By mid-October, the US had deployed more than four thousand troops off Venezuela’s coast and five thousand on standby in Puerto Rico (including F-35 fighter jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones), authorised covert operations inside the country, and flown B-52 ‘demonstration missions’ over Caracas. In late October, the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group was deployed to the region. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s government has mobilised the population to defend the country.

    A woman from the Peasant Militia (Milicia Campesina) holds a machete during her graduation as a combatant from the MTRR course, October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Five Scenarios for US Intervention

    Scenario no. 1: the Brother Sam option. In 1964, the US deployed several warships off the coast of Brazil. Their presence emboldened General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, chief of the Army General Staff, and his allies to stage a coup that ushered in a twenty-one-year dictatorship. But Venezuela is a different terrain. In his first term, Chávez strengthened political education in the military academies and anchored officer training in defence of the 1999 Constitution. A Castelo Branco figure is therefore unlikely to save the day for Washington.

    Scenario no. 2: the Panama option. In 1989, the US bombed Panama City and sent in special operations troops to capture Manuel Noriega, Panama’s military leader, and bring him to a US prison while US-backed politicians took over the country. Such an operation would be harder to replicate in Venezuela: its military is far stronger, trained for protracted, asymmetric conflicts, and the country boasts sophisticated air defence systems (notably the Russian S-300VM and Buk-M2E surface-to-air systems). Any US air campaign would face sustained defence, making the prospect of downed aircraft – a major loss of face – one Washington is unlikely to risk.

    Scenario no. 3: the Iraq option. A ‘Shock and Awe’ bombing campaign against Caracas and other cities to rattle the population and demoralise the state and military, followed by attempts to assassinate senior Venezuelan leadership and seize key infrastructure. After such an assault, Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado would likely declare herself ready to take charge and align Venezuela closely with the US. The inadequacy of this manoeuvre is that the Bolivarian leadership runs deep: the roots of the defence of the Bolivarian project run through working-class barrios, and the military would not be immediately demoralised – unlike in Iraq. As the interior minister of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, recently noted, ‘Anyone who wants to can remember Vietnam… when a small but united people with an iron will were able to teach US imperialism a lesson’.

    The commander general of the Bolivarian National Police, Brigadier General Rubén Santiago, holds a rifle with a sticker of Chávez’s eyes during a security deployment in Petare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Scenario no. 4: the Gulf of Tonkin option. In 1964, the US escalated its military engagement in the Vietnam War after an incident framed as an unprovoked attack on US destroyers off the country’s coast. Later disclosures revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) fabricated intelligence to manufacture a pretext for escalation. The US claims it is now conducting naval and air ‘training exercises’ near Venezuelan territorial waters and airspace. On 26 October, the Venezuelan government said it had received information about a covert CIA plan to stage a false-flag attack on US vessels near Trinidad and Tobago to elicit a US response. Venezuelan authorities warned of US manoeuvres and said they will not give in to provocations or intimidation.

    Scenario no. 5: the Qasem Soleimani option. In January 2020, a US drone strike ordered by Trump killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force. Soleimani was one of Iran’s most senior officials and was responsible for its regional defence strategy across Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. In an interview on 60 Minutes, former US chargé d’affaires for Venezuela James Story said, ‘The assets are there to do everything up to and including decapitation of [the] government’ – a plain statement of intent to assassinate the president. After the death of President Hugo Chávez in 2013, US officials predicted that the project would collapse. Twelve years have now passed, and Venezuela continues along the path set forth under Chávez, advancing its communal model whose resilience rests not only on the revolution’s collective leadership but also on strong popular organisation. The Bolivarian project has never been a one-person show.

    China and Russia are unlikely to permit a strike on Venezuela without pressing for immediate UN Security Council resolutions, and both routinely operate in the Caribbean, including joint exercises with Cuba and global missions such as China’s Mission Harmony 2025.

    A member of the Juventud Socialista de Venezuela (Socialist Youth of Venezuela) shows a coin given to graduates of the MTRR course during a security deployment in La Guaira, Venezuela, October 2025. Based on the methods of Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the MTRR course is designed to train people with no prior military experience for possible guerrilla warfare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    We hope that none of these scenarios come to pass and that the United States takes its military options off the table. But hope alone is not enough – we must work to expand the camp of peace.

    Originally published on  Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

    The post The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Transnational repression by China reaches New York

    On 6 November 2025 Human Rights Watch issued a press release on how Chinese Police Harass Filmmakers, Families to Undermine Free Expression Abroad

    9da2a6d2-e1fd-4b3d-a322-ba3c24f25b37
    A still from Jiangnan Xu’s film “Friends from Jiangnan.” © Zhu Rikun

    Chinese authorities harassed several dozen Chinese film directors and producers, as well as their families in China, causing them to pull films from the inaugural IndieChina Film Festival in New York City. On November 6, 2025, the festival’s organizer, Zhu Riku, announced that the film festival, scheduled for November 8-15, had been “suspended.”

    “The Chinese government reached around the globe to shut down a film festival in New York City,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This latest act of transnational repression demonstrates the Chinese government’s aim to control what the world sees and learns about China.”

    Chiang Seeta, a Chinese artist and activist, reported that nearly all participating directors in China faced intimidation. Even directors abroad, including those who are not Chinese nationals, reported that their relatives and friends in China were receiving threatening calls from police, said Chiang.

    On November 1, the organizers issued an announcement on social media saying they had received messages from some film directors and producers and their families about Chinese government harassment: “We are deeply concerned about the situation. … [I]f you are under pressure not to attend the festival … we fully understand and respect it.” By November 4, more than two-thirds of participating films had cancelled their screenings.

    After the festival was suspended, Zhu issued a statement that the decision was not out of fear, but rather to “stop harassment of … directors, guests, former staff, and volunteers associated with the festival, including my friends and family.”

    Independent film festivals in China have faced intensifying crackdowns over the past decade, Human Rights Watch said. The Chinese authorities have shut down all three major independent film festivals in China: Yunfest, founded in 2003; the China Independent Film Festival, founded in 2003; and Beijing Independent Film Festival, founded in 2006.

    When the authorities shut down the last screening of the Beijing Independent Film Festival in 2014, they cut off electricity from the venue, confiscated documents from the organizer’s office, and forced the organizers to sign a paper promising not to hold the festival. Many festival organizers have tried without success to adapt, for instance by changing their format to screenings at multiple venues.

    The 14th China Independent Film Festival was shuttered in 2018, the last time such a festival took place in China.

    A court in January 2025 sentenced Chen Pinlin, known as Plato, to three-and-a-half years in prison for allegedly “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after he made a documentary about the “white paper protests” during Covid-19 lockdowns. Transnational repression can be defined as government efforts to silence or deter dissent by committing human rights abuses against their own nationals living abroad, their families at home, or members of the country’s diaspora. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2025/10/17/un-report-highlights-chinas-targeting-of-human-rights-defenders-abroad/]

    The Chinese government’s transnational repression of the arts has not been limited to film. Chinese officials interfered with an exhibition in Bangkok and censored artwork by Uyghur, Tibetan, and Hongkonger artists in August.

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/11/07/china-authorities-shut-down-film-festival-in-new-york

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Transnational repression by China reaches New York

    On 6 November 2025 Human Rights Watch issued a press release on how Chinese Police Harass Filmmakers, Families to Undermine Free Expression Abroad

    9da2a6d2-e1fd-4b3d-a322-ba3c24f25b37
    A still from Jiangnan Xu’s film “Friends from Jiangnan.” © Zhu Rikun

    Chinese authorities harassed several dozen Chinese film directors and producers, as well as their families in China, causing them to pull films from the inaugural IndieChina Film Festival in New York City. On November 6, 2025, the festival’s organizer, Zhu Riku, announced that the film festival, scheduled for November 8-15, had been “suspended.”

    “The Chinese government reached around the globe to shut down a film festival in New York City,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This latest act of transnational repression demonstrates the Chinese government’s aim to control what the world sees and learns about China.”

    Chiang Seeta, a Chinese artist and activist, reported that nearly all participating directors in China faced intimidation. Even directors abroad, including those who are not Chinese nationals, reported that their relatives and friends in China were receiving threatening calls from police, said Chiang.

    On November 1, the organizers issued an announcement on social media saying they had received messages from some film directors and producers and their families about Chinese government harassment: “We are deeply concerned about the situation. … [I]f you are under pressure not to attend the festival … we fully understand and respect it.” By November 4, more than two-thirds of participating films had cancelled their screenings.

    After the festival was suspended, Zhu issued a statement that the decision was not out of fear, but rather to “stop harassment of … directors, guests, former staff, and volunteers associated with the festival, including my friends and family.”

    Independent film festivals in China have faced intensifying crackdowns over the past decade, Human Rights Watch said. The Chinese authorities have shut down all three major independent film festivals in China: Yunfest, founded in 2003; the China Independent Film Festival, founded in 2003; and Beijing Independent Film Festival, founded in 2006.

    When the authorities shut down the last screening of the Beijing Independent Film Festival in 2014, they cut off electricity from the venue, confiscated documents from the organizer’s office, and forced the organizers to sign a paper promising not to hold the festival. Many festival organizers have tried without success to adapt, for instance by changing their format to screenings at multiple venues.

    The 14th China Independent Film Festival was shuttered in 2018, the last time such a festival took place in China.

    A court in January 2025 sentenced Chen Pinlin, known as Plato, to three-and-a-half years in prison for allegedly “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after he made a documentary about the “white paper protests” during Covid-19 lockdowns. Transnational repression can be defined as government efforts to silence or deter dissent by committing human rights abuses against their own nationals living abroad, their families at home, or members of the country’s diaspora. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2025/10/17/un-report-highlights-chinas-targeting-of-human-rights-defenders-abroad/]

    The Chinese government’s transnational repression of the arts has not been limited to film. Chinese officials interfered with an exhibition in Bangkok and censored artwork by Uyghur, Tibetan, and Hongkonger artists in August.

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/11/07/china-authorities-shut-down-film-festival-in-new-york

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • A Question of Needlessness: Selling Iron Dome to Australia

    The world of defence policy is truly another planet. There, budgets are given to astronomical burgeoning and bizarre readings. Threats can be invented or exaggerated. Insecurity can be inflated. Decisions for the next project supposedly more lethal and more effective than ever can be made with cavalier disregard to realities. And the next cockeyed, buffoonish idea can be given a run for other people’s money. Those other people are, as always, the good tax paying citizenry of a country.

    Australia has been doing superbly of late in this regard. It has given over territory and money to the United States, its appointed arch defender, so that the security of Washington’s imperium can be assured. It has done so in a manner suggesting advanced dementia, its politicians and strategists drivelling about the need to combat the barbarian yellow-red hordes to the north in a “changing security environment”.

    First came the AUKUS trilateral security pact with the US and the United Kingdom, which enshrines the costly fantasy of nuclear-powered submarines Australia may never get and certainly does not need. Nor is there an obligation on the part of the US to part with any, a prospect ever more unlikely given the failure of its own submarine base to keep pace with annual production. Let’s not even start on the prospects of an AUKUS-designed submarine, which will be lucky to make it to the construction stage without sinking.

    To itemise any number of foolish ventures and items being pursued by the Australian defence department would be injurious to one’s well being. This is largely because they keep coming in their risible daftness. Of late, the idea that Australia needs an anti-missile defence shield along the lines of Israel’s Iron Dome system is becoming more than a flirtation. And it’s being given a sense of frisson by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the Israeli company responsible for implementing and maintaining it.

    The chance for Rafael to shine came at the Indo Pacific International Maritime Exposition, an event running from November 4 to 6. Its presence, along with the Australian subsidiary of Israel’s primary unmanned vehicle manufacturer Elbit Systems, had piqued activists from the Palestine Action Group (PAG), who gathered just before the opening of the exposition to protest that fact.

    A predictably muscular reaction from the New South Wales police followed. According to PAG organiser Josh Lees, they “immediately attacked” the peaceful gathering with pepper spray and horses. The NSW Premier Chris Minns, for his part, was enthralled by the economic prospects of the gathering: defence exports were there to be grown, deals to be made.  That these were with merchants of death was no big matter. “They’re not selling nuclear weapons … we want to see the industry grow.”

    For its part, Rafael had pulled out the bells and whistles. The company, according to its display, offered “an integrated, combat-proven portfolio that delivers end-to-end protection and impactful projection for Australia’s naval forces, ensuring freedom of action in Australia’s northern approaches and across vital sea lines of communication.”

    In an interview at the exposition, the company’s vice president of international business development, Gideon Weiss, hawked Iron Dome’s technology with salesmanship enthusiasm. “The perception that Australia is far and distant and isolated is completely untrue,” he remarked with stern certitude. “There’s absolutely no reason in the world why any Australian would think… that in a conflict, Australia would not be attacked.” The unasked question here is why Australia would make itself an appealing target to begin with. But Weiss did not break his stride: “Your enemies have a great arsenal of ballistic missiles, hypersonic ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and long-range UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. Why wouldn’t they use them against you if they wanted to?”

    Asked whether the company’s message had bitten in Canberra, Weiss was assured. The “capability and the maturity of the technology” had been noted by Australia’s defence wonks and Rafael was always keen to focus on “sovereignty, about the Australian industrial context.” There was “infrastructure which to Australianise, if you will, these technologies.”

    The company has shown ample familiarity with the soil they wish to till. The Australian Defence Strategic Review of 2023 declared the need to “deliver a layered integrated air and missile system (IAMD) operation capability urgently. This must comprise a suite of appropriate command and control systems, sensors, air defence aircraft and surface (land and maritime) based missile systems.” The current program to develop a “common IAMD capability” was “not structured to deliver a minimum viable capability in the shortest period of time but is pursuing a long-term near perfect solution at an unaffordable cost.”

    Defence analysts called upon to comment on the matter are slavering. Jennifer Parker, a regular talking head on the subject, rues the fact that Australia can never, given its geographical size, be protected in its entirety. “Unlike Israel, where they can defend the entire country against missiles broadly … that’s not feasible for Australia because of our size.” Focus, she suggests, on the “critical infrastructure elements that we need to protect, like HMAS Stirling, Pine Gap and bases around Darwin, and design integrated air and missile defence around that concept”.

    The United States Studies Centre, an Australian outpost soddenly friendly to the military-industrial complex and the needs of the imperium, is also unrelenting about the need for a more expansive missile defence system. Peter Dean, senior advisor on defence strategy, cites “the lack of effective ground-based air defence and an Integrated Air and Missile Defence system” as “the most critical gap in the achievement of Australia’s strategic goals.”

    Another outfit most friendly to US interests, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, is also much in love with missile interception. “If we want to get serious about integrated missile defence,” ASPI senior analyst Malcolm Davis posits, “we need to have long-range, ground-based interceptor missiles that can handle threats like intermediate range ballistic missiles launched by China.”

    The next wasteful program of military expenditure looms happily on the horizon, leaving the question of need unanswered.  Weiss has good reasons to be optimistic that a train has been set in motion. “I wouldn’t want to name names,” he says with confidence, “but everyone knows us very well.”

    The post A Question of Needlessness: Selling Iron Dome to Australia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • UK academics call out Chinese state repression over Uyghur research

    A UK scholar says she has received death threats over her research into Chinese oppression of Uyghur communities. Sheffield Hallam University China expert professor Katie Murphy told how she and others were put under considerable pressure over their research interests. Murphy initially spoke to the BBC about how Sheffield Hallam:

    negotiated directly with a foreign intelligence service to trade my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market.

    Murphy has now spoken out further, saying:

    I think that there are a lot of people who experience some version of this, typically more subtle, usually not so black and white. But it’s too risky to speak out against their university. They’re worried they might suffer consequences.

    She had been researching supply chains and China’s use of Uyghur people as forced labour.

    Now, an academic at Nottingham University has also spoken out about feeling pressured. Political scientist Dr. Andreas Fulda told the Guardian ‘spoof’ emails were sent to colleagues announcing his resignation:

    What I’ve come to learn is that once you reach a certain perception threshold in the eyes of the Chinese security agencies, you are punished to dissuade you from airing your views.

    A difficult tightrope

    China have already sanctioned an academic from Newcastle University for their work on Uyghurs. Jo Smith Finley, who was reprimanded in 2021, said:

    Ever since then, Newcastle University has been walking a very difficult tightrope in its treatment of me, because I’ve become a liability in a context where universities are all dependent on Chinese student tuition fees.

    It’s extremely heavy, the pressure that the Chinese authorities bring to bear, both on university representatives working in the PRC [People’s Republic of China] on recruitment and also on university managers in the UK.

    There are numerous report of Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group in China, being brutally repressed by the Chinese state. This includes imprisonment, forced labour and erasure of their culture – and even their villages. China denies this. The Chinese embassy in London has inferred Murphy is an anti-Chinese intelligence asset.

    The allegations are now being investigated by police under counter-terrorism laws aimed at stopping foreign state interference. Sheffield Hallam initially put a stop to Murphy’s research. That ban was lifted in October after accusations that the university had done so to protect the lucrative income stream from Chinese students.

    The university denied this, claiming the ban was due to:

    a complex set of circumstances at the time, including being unable to secure the necessary professional indemnity insurance.

    However, now that more academics are speaking out, China’s influence in repression of British research on Uyghur minorities is more than troubling.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • China Surprised The US: Round One Goes To Beijing

    In this episode, KJ Noh joins India & Global Left to break down the real meaning of the recent Xi–Trump talks — beyond the headlines. We explore why China surprised the United States, why “Round One goes to Beijing,” and what leverage each side truly holds in this evolving geopolitical contest.

    We also look at the deeper strategic competition shaping U.S.–China relations, the power shifts happening underneath the diplomacy, and what this moment means for the future of the Global South as more countries seek autonomy, multipolarity, and alternatives to the Western-led order.

    The post China Surprised The US: Round One Goes To Beijing appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • China’s Ten Noes: Sun Tzu Has Swallowed the Frog and Is Keeping His Smile to Himself

    In a conversation lasting one hour and forty minutes according to the Chinese stopwatch– “a long meeting” on President Donald Trump’s clock    —  President Xi Jinping first knocked the stuffing out of Trump’s warmaking threats, then forced him to beat a retreat behind a 12-month ceasefire with the man the Pentagon has designated its principal enemy but whom Trump praised effusively as “a great leader, great leader of a very powerful, very strong country…a tremendous leader of a very powerful country and I give great respect to him.”

    “Uh,” Trump told reporters on board his aircraft as it rocked in crosswinds flying eastward, “a lot of things we discussed in great detail. A lot of things we brought to finalization. A lot of finalization.” This was false.

    Worse for the Trump warfighting strategy, the Chinese have retained escalation dominance by making Trump’s concessions their pre-condition for China’s temporary suspension of their sanctions on rare earths exports and imports of US computer chips. For this, Xi offered to buy US soybeans slowly for $34.2 billion over four years – roughly half in tonnage, half in price over twice the interval that China had agreed to in the past.

    In General Sun Tzu’s ancient manual for warfighting, “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. The old man also confessed his limitation: “there is an intelligent way to eat a live frog – I just don’t know what it is.” Xi just demonstrated the way to do it. Trump went down smiling.

    Xi has not yet telephoned President Vladimir Putin to brief him on what happened. After Putin’s meeting with Trump in Alaska on August 6, Putin telephoned Xi on August 8. “So far,” said Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, ”there is no such conversation in the schedule, but it can be quickly agreed upon if necessary,”

    The Russian state media have interpreted the outcome of the talks to be a “temporary ceasefire” achieved by not discussing the key economic and territorial war issues at all. “There have been no joint statements yet,” Tass noted, “and some of the most important issues of bilateral relations, such as Nvidia chips and advanced products, have remained unresolved.” Nothing was achieved, the official Moscow commentators think, in the US attempt to split Xi from Putin, and secure Chinese pressure on Russia to end the Ukraine war on US and NATO terms. “Ukraine came up, uh, very strongly,” Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington. “We talked about it for a long time and we’re both gonna work together to see if we can get something done. Uh, we agreed the, the sides there, you know, locked in, fighting, and sometimes you have to let him fight, I guess. Crazy. But he’s gonna help us and we’re gonna work together on Ukraine.”

    The Russian state media have yet to notice that Trump is abandoning his attempt, through the Rosneft and LUKOIL oil trade sanctions of October 25, to stop China buying Russian oil. “There’s not a lot more we can do,” Trump replied to a reporter who asked if he and Xi had discussed his threat to sanction Chinese companies for buying Russian crude oil and petroleum products. “Uh, you know, he’s been buying oil from Russia for a long time. It takes care of a, a big part of China. And, you know, I, I can say India’s been very good, good on that, uh, front. Uh, but, uh, we, we didn’t really discuss the oil. We discussed working together to see if we could get that war finished. You know, it doesn’t affect China.”

    The post China’s Ten Noes: Sun Tzu Has Swallowed the Frog and Is Keeping His Smile to Himself first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • China’s Ten Noes: Sun Tzu Has Swallowed the Frog and Is Keeping His Smile to Himself

    In a conversation lasting one hour and forty minutes according to the Chinese stopwatch– “a long meeting” on President Donald Trump’s clock    —  President Xi Jinping first knocked the stuffing out of Trump’s warmaking threats, then forced him to beat a retreat behind a 12-month ceasefire with the man the Pentagon has designated its principal enemy but whom Trump praised effusively as “a great leader, great leader of a very powerful, very strong country…a tremendous leader of a very powerful country and I give great respect to him.”

    “Uh,” Trump told reporters on board his aircraft as it rocked in crosswinds flying eastward, “a lot of things we discussed in great detail. A lot of things we brought to finalization. A lot of finalization.” This was false.

    Worse for the Trump warfighting strategy, the Chinese have retained escalation dominance by making Trump’s concessions their pre-condition for China’s temporary suspension of their sanctions on rare earths exports and imports of US computer chips. For this, Xi offered to buy US soybeans slowly for $34.2 billion over four years – roughly half in tonnage, half in price over twice the interval that China had agreed to in the past.

    In General Sun Tzu’s ancient manual for warfighting, “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. The old man also confessed his limitation: “there is an intelligent way to eat a live frog – I just don’t know what it is.” Xi just demonstrated the way to do it. Trump went down smiling.

    Xi has not yet telephoned President Vladimir Putin to brief him on what happened. After Putin’s meeting with Trump in Alaska on August 6, Putin telephoned Xi on August 8. “So far,” said Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, ”there is no such conversation in the schedule, but it can be quickly agreed upon if necessary,”

    The Russian state media have interpreted the outcome of the talks to be a “temporary ceasefire” achieved by not discussing the key economic and territorial war issues at all. “There have been no joint statements yet,” Tass noted, “and some of the most important issues of bilateral relations, such as Nvidia chips and advanced products, have remained unresolved.” Nothing was achieved, the official Moscow commentators think, in the US attempt to split Xi from Putin, and secure Chinese pressure on Russia to end the Ukraine war on US and NATO terms. “Ukraine came up, uh, very strongly,” Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington. “We talked about it for a long time and we’re both gonna work together to see if we can get something done. Uh, we agreed the, the sides there, you know, locked in, fighting, and sometimes you have to let him fight, I guess. Crazy. But he’s gonna help us and we’re gonna work together on Ukraine.”

    The Russian state media have yet to notice that Trump is abandoning his attempt, through the Rosneft and LUKOIL oil trade sanctions of October 25, to stop China buying Russian oil. “There’s not a lot more we can do,” Trump replied to a reporter who asked if he and Xi had discussed his threat to sanction Chinese companies for buying Russian crude oil and petroleum products. “Uh, you know, he’s been buying oil from Russia for a long time. It takes care of a, a big part of China. And, you know, I, I can say India’s been very good, good on that, uh, front. Uh, but, uh, we, we didn’t really discuss the oil. We discussed working together to see if we could get that war finished. You know, it doesn’t affect China.”

    The post China’s Ten Noes: Sun Tzu Has Swallowed the Frog and Is Keeping His Smile to Himself first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Angel Yeast Opens Giant Fermented Protein Factory to Boost China’s Biomanufacturing Prowess

    angel yeast protein
    4 Mins Read

    China’s Angel Yeast has begun operating an 11,000-tonne production line for its yeast protein, bolstering the country’s sustainable food leadership.

    Already accounting for 15% of global yeast production and nearly 60% of the market in China, Angel Yeast is expanding its dominance as it kicks off industrial-scale manufacturing of its fermented protein.

    The firm has started operations at its yeast protein facility at the Baiyang Biotechnology Park in Yichang, Hubei. It can currently produce 11,000 tonnes of high-purity protein annually, with built-in expansion capacity to meet future market growth.

    “As global priorities continue to shift toward health, nutrition and sustainability, we see unprecedented market potential for yeast protein,” said Li Ku, general manager of Angel Yeast’s Protein Nutrition and Flavoring Technology Center.

    “We will continue to accelerate production expansion to deliver more innovative, high-quality and dependable yeast protein solutions to customers and consumers worldwide and help drive a more sustainable future for the global food industry.”

    Angel Yeast eyes sports nutrition and weight management markets

    yeast protein
    Courtesy: Angel Yeast

    Angel Yeast uses fermentation to turn brewer’s yeast into AngeoPro, an ingredient with over 80% protein. It has all nine essential amino acids and a PDCAAS score of 1.0 (on par with animal proteins like whey and eggs), and boasts B vitamins, minerals, and 5g of fibre per 100g.

    It supports muscle protein synthesis and recovery after exercise, and a recent study proved its efficacy to boost calcium absorption, improve bone health, and enhance gut health. It’s why AngeoPro is geared towards the weight management and sports nutrition markets.

    Plus, it has “industry-leading purity” and a neutral flavour profile, which allows for direct consumption or blending whey, soy or other ingredients to create nutrition supplements, meat and dairy alternatives, protein bars and beverages, baked goods, snacks, and more.

    Angel Yeast’s production process for the yeast protein significantly lowers land use, water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in comparison to animal proteins.

    “We are using high-density fermentation to reduce the use of water resources. We have also adopted a circular economy method in post-extraction to reduce water emissions, which can increase manufacturing efficiency and save energy consumption,” Yan Zhang, dean of Angel Yeast’s research institute, explained in a video on its website.

    The new facility enables the automation of the entire process, from fermentation and autolysis to separation and drying. At the same time, it establishes an end-to-end production system encompassing raw materials, packaging and warehousing.

    The entire manufacturing process occurs within controlled fermentation tanks, making it independent of weather or location and enabling year-round production. Angel Yeast stated that the development significantly enhances its global manufacturing footprint and extends its leadership in the sustainable protein market.

    China builds its biotech dominance

    angel yeast
    Courtesy: Angel Yeast

    The demand for yeast protein is expanding rapidly, thanks to its health and environmental advantages. This market is already worth $1.5B today, and is set to grow by 8.5% annually to reach $2.3B in 2030.

    Several companies are innovating with brewer’s yeast proteins globally. In Switzerland, Yeastup raised $10M last year to repurpose a former dairy factory for its spent brewer’s yeast ingredients, while Germany’s ProteinDistillery broke ground on a large-scale plant for its yeast-derived Prew:tein ingredient. And Indian startup SuperYou, co-owned by Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh, launched a protein powder made from biofermented brewer’s yeast in August.

    But Angel Yeast is one of the world’s leading yeast manufacturers, and its new facility signals China’s readiness to lead the future food ecosystem. Its 30-60 climate policy is aimed at hitting peak emissions by 2030 and becoming carbon-neutral by 2060, which will only happen if 60% of the country’s protein supply comes from alternative sources by the latter year.

    The government has been pumping in resources to propel its biomanufacturing sector. Its bioeconomy development strategy aims to advance novel foods, and President Xi Jinping has called for a Grand Food Vision that includes plant-based and microbial protein sources.

    This year, China saw its first alternative protein innovation centre open in Beijing, fuelled by an $11M investment from public and private investors to develop novel foods like fermentation-derived proteins. And in the Guangdong province, officials are planning to build a biomanufacturing hub for plant-based, microbial and cultivated proteins.

    And at the annual Two Sessions summit, top government officials called for a deeper integration of strategic emerging industries like biomanufacturing, while a document signalling China’s top goals for the year underscored the importance of protein diversification, including efforts “to explore novel food resources”.

    The country’s biotech capabilities have been recognised globally. Last year, the US national intelligence director’s annual threat assessment labelled China’s strategic advancements in “synthetic biology and agricultural biotechnology” as an attempt to “lead the broader biotechnological landscape”, prompting Congress members to call for strategic measures that solidify the US’s “resilience in this critical sector”.

    The post Angel Yeast Opens Giant Fermented Protein Factory to Boost China’s Biomanufacturing Prowess appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • British university accused of bowing to China over Uyghur research

    Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) demanded a professor stop researching the Chinese state’s treatment of Uyghur people. Individuals claiming to be from the Chinese security agencies are said to have pressured the university and harassed staff. And now, its become a counter-terrorism case.

    The Uyghurs are a marginalised Muslim group in China whose treatment by the Chinese state had been widely condemned. Professor Laura Murphy had been researching Uyghur forced labour. After she was told to stop research, Murphy demanded to know what documents the university held on the matter.

    Business over rigour

    Murphy told the BBC the document showed SHU:

    had negotiated directly with a foreign intelligence service to trade my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market.

    Murphy explained just how craven she believed SHU were being:

    I’d never seen anything quite so patently explicit about the extent to which a university would go to ensure that they have Chinese student income.

    SHU have since apologised:

    the university’s decision to not continue with Professor Laura Murphy’s research was taken based on our understanding of a complex set of circumstances at the time, including being unable to secure the necessary professional indemnity insurance.

    They said SHU wished to “make clear our commitment to supporting her research and to securing and promoting freedom of speech and academic freedom within the law”.

    But now the police are involved in the case.

    Terrorism issue

    South Yorkshire police say the “allegations fall under Section 3 of the National Security Act”.

    The act can be read here. Section 3 refers to:

    conduct to materially assist a foreign intelligence service in carrying out UK-related activities.

    The Chinese state blocked the Sheffield Hallam website and the country’s embassy released various statements attacking Murphy and her research.

    They said the centre’s work was factually flawed and anti-China, and referred to funding from “certain US agencies”.

    Murphy told the BBC she had

    received funding over the course of her career from the US National Endowment for Humanities for work on slave narratives, the US Department of Justice for work on human trafficking in New Orleans, and more recently from USAID, the US State Department and the UK Foreign Office for her work on China.

    Uyghur suppression and forced labour

    There have been various strongly-argued reports on the Chinese state’s treatment of Uyghurs. One, by the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) describes:

    …arbitrary arrests and forced labor, sterilizations to torture, more than one million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other minorities are estimated to have been locked up in so-called “re-education” camps and prisons in the region over the last decade.

    The UN has warned of serious human rights violations. Amnesty has called China’s conduct crimes against humanity and Human Rights Watch (HRW) has reported authoritarian restrictions and the erasure of Uyghur villages.

    China has always denied the allegations. But, Murphy’s allegations of repression at SHU via a foreign power are extremely troubling, to say the least. And, we’ll be keeping a close eye on the case as it’s reviewed by the police.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Al Jazeera English

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Counter-terror police investigate claim UK university halted research after Chinese pressure

    Sheffield Hallam University ordered professor to cease human rights study into Uyghurs forced labour in China

    An investigation into allegations that a British university was subjected to pressure from Beijing authorities to halt research about human rights abuses in China has been referred to counter-terrorism police.

    The Guardian reported on Monday morning that Sheffield Hallam University, home to the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice (HKC) research institution, had ordered professor Laura Murphy to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in the country in February.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Trump’s Push to Resume Nuclear Weapons Testing Rests on Falsehoods

    This past week, President Donald Trump called on the Department of Defense (DOD) to restart nuclear weapons testing “immediately,” citing false claims about other countries’ nuclear arsenals and testing. In a Truth Social post on Wednesday and an interview that aired on Sunday, Trump was vague regarding the extent of the future nuclear weapons testing, including whether he would push for…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Report on how governments work behind the scenes to defund the UN’s human rights work

    In a first-of-its-kind investigation into the closed-door negotiations of the UN’s budget in New York, ISHR uncovers how a small group of States – led by China and Russia – have coordinated efforts to block and slash funding for the UN’s human rights work through political manoeuvring and influence. At a moment of sweeping UN reform and financial crisis, these efforts – compounded by the US failure to pay their UN membership fees and outstanding debts – pose an existential threat to the UN’s human rights system.

    …The UN’s historically underfunded human rights work now faces an existential threat due to budget cuts under the UN80 Initiative and the UN’s liquidity crisis, fuelled by the failure of the United States, China and other countries to pay their contributions in full and on time.  Drawing from dozens of interviews and combing through official documents and internal budget negotiation documents from 2019 to 2024, ISHR’s report ‘Budget Battles at the UN: How States Try to Defund Human Rights’ finds that China and Russia have led a sustained effort to build influence, disrupt proceedings, and politicise technical discussions at the UN General Assembly’s Fifth Committee (5C), where States negotiate the UN’s budget, and its little-known yet influential advisory body, the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ). Over the past decade, Chinese influence within these bodies has expanded sharply, the report shows. Beijing has invested heavily in building its representation at the 5C, the ACABQ and other related bodies to push heavy budget cuts to human rights. Russia has frequently played the role of outspoken spoiler in negotiations, enabling China to deploy its influence more quietly but effectively behind closed doors.

    Russian and Chinese diplomats have weaponised UN budget negotiations to serve their own interests and shield allies from scrutiny, at the expense of human rights. Budget negotiations should be solely guided by the goal of adequately funding the UN’s work, not serving as a political tool to weaken accountability and rights protection.‘ – Madeleine Sinclair, Director of ISHR’s New York office..

    A deepening cash crisis The report finds that years of underfunding and attacks on the UN’s human rights budget are now being compounded by a severe liquidity crisis triggered by US and Chinese late or non-payment of dues, while the United Nations undergo urgent reform.  Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump Administration has launched repeated assaults on UN bodies, often on grounds of an alleged ‘anti-Israel bias’, abruptly blocking the payment of overdue contributions from 2024 dues and all of the US contributions for 2025, while cutting nearly all voluntary funding to the UN. As the US, the largest contributor, withholds this vast portion of the UN budget, Beijing’s increasingly late payments risk depriving the UN of over 40% of its operational cash flow for 2025.  Meanwhile, China’s paying in full but extremely late has a similar result to not paying contributions in full, as a little-known State-imposed UN rule perversely returns unspent cash – that could not be used as it came so late – to Member States in the form of credits to future dues. In 2024, China paid its contributions on 27 December, four days before the year’s end. The broader US withdrawal from multilateralism also enables China and Russia to further grow their influence in shaping a more State-centric UN, at the expense of civil society and the universality of human rights.

    ….

    UN80 reform risks deepening the damage US cuts also forced the UN into an unprecedented race for reform through the UN80 Initiative, an internal reform drive to make the organisation more efficient and effective, yet so far focused primarily on austerity and cost-cutting.  Initial cuts proposed by the Secretary-General in September slash the human rights budget by 15%, a higher percentage than cuts proposed for the UN’s development and peace and security work. Further cuts are expected once the ACABQ reviews the Secretary-General’s proposals, and States table additional reform proposals under UN80 in the coming months.

    ‘China and Russia have long exploited UN processes in order to spin a web of influence against human rights progress, and now the Trump administration is moving in that same direction. But this is not irreversible. The UN80 Initiative must be more than a hunt for ‘efficiency’: it should be a collective effort towards meaningful, human rights-driven reform. For this, States, and particularly Global South countries who have a clear stake in having strong, responsive UN human rights bodies, can still take back the space and ensure funding for a UN that advances human rights protection on the ground for all.’ – ISHR Executive Director Phil Lynch

    Funding for the UN’s human rights work is on the brink of collapse at a time when it is most needed to address global crises…

    https://crm.ishr.ch/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=1740&cid=8618&cs=0ef59bb8d55e2f3f2c4be6093061514d_1761075328_168

    Download the report

    What do the UN80 reforms mean for the human rights pillar, and what role should the Human Rights Council play in building a UN that is ‘better equipped to serve the people whose lives depend on it’?

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Report on how governments work behind the scenes to defund the UN’s human rights work

    In a first-of-its-kind investigation into the closed-door negotiations of the UN’s budget in New York, ISHR uncovers how a small group of States – led by China and Russia – have coordinated efforts to block and slash funding for the UN’s human rights work through political manoeuvring and influence. At a moment of sweeping UN reform and financial crisis, these efforts – compounded by the US failure to pay their UN membership fees and outstanding debts – pose an existential threat to the UN’s human rights system.

    …The UN’s historically underfunded human rights work now faces an existential threat due to budget cuts under the UN80 Initiative and the UN’s liquidity crisis, fuelled by the failure of the United States, China and other countries to pay their contributions in full and on time.  Drawing from dozens of interviews and combing through official documents and internal budget negotiation documents from 2019 to 2024, ISHR’s report ‘Budget Battles at the UN: How States Try to Defund Human Rights’ finds that China and Russia have led a sustained effort to build influence, disrupt proceedings, and politicise technical discussions at the UN General Assembly’s Fifth Committee (5C), where States negotiate the UN’s budget, and its little-known yet influential advisory body, the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ). Over the past decade, Chinese influence within these bodies has expanded sharply, the report shows. Beijing has invested heavily in building its representation at the 5C, the ACABQ and other related bodies to push heavy budget cuts to human rights. Russia has frequently played the role of outspoken spoiler in negotiations, enabling China to deploy its influence more quietly but effectively behind closed doors.

    Russian and Chinese diplomats have weaponised UN budget negotiations to serve their own interests and shield allies from scrutiny, at the expense of human rights. Budget negotiations should be solely guided by the goal of adequately funding the UN’s work, not serving as a political tool to weaken accountability and rights protection.‘ – Madeleine Sinclair, Director of ISHR’s New York office..

    A deepening cash crisis The report finds that years of underfunding and attacks on the UN’s human rights budget are now being compounded by a severe liquidity crisis triggered by US and Chinese late or non-payment of dues, while the United Nations undergo urgent reform.  Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump Administration has launched repeated assaults on UN bodies, often on grounds of an alleged ‘anti-Israel bias’, abruptly blocking the payment of overdue contributions from 2024 dues and all of the US contributions for 2025, while cutting nearly all voluntary funding to the UN. As the US, the largest contributor, withholds this vast portion of the UN budget, Beijing’s increasingly late payments risk depriving the UN of over 40% of its operational cash flow for 2025.  Meanwhile, China’s paying in full but extremely late has a similar result to not paying contributions in full, as a little-known State-imposed UN rule perversely returns unspent cash – that could not be used as it came so late – to Member States in the form of credits to future dues. In 2024, China paid its contributions on 27 December, four days before the year’s end. The broader US withdrawal from multilateralism also enables China and Russia to further grow their influence in shaping a more State-centric UN, at the expense of civil society and the universality of human rights.

    ….

    UN80 reform risks deepening the damage US cuts also forced the UN into an unprecedented race for reform through the UN80 Initiative, an internal reform drive to make the organisation more efficient and effective, yet so far focused primarily on austerity and cost-cutting.  Initial cuts proposed by the Secretary-General in September slash the human rights budget by 15%, a higher percentage than cuts proposed for the UN’s development and peace and security work. Further cuts are expected once the ACABQ reviews the Secretary-General’s proposals, and States table additional reform proposals under UN80 in the coming months.

    ‘China and Russia have long exploited UN processes in order to spin a web of influence against human rights progress, and now the Trump administration is moving in that same direction. But this is not irreversible. The UN80 Initiative must be more than a hunt for ‘efficiency’: it should be a collective effort towards meaningful, human rights-driven reform. For this, States, and particularly Global South countries who have a clear stake in having strong, responsive UN human rights bodies, can still take back the space and ensure funding for a UN that advances human rights protection on the ground for all.’ – ISHR Executive Director Phil Lynch

    Funding for the UN’s human rights work is on the brink of collapse at a time when it is most needed to address global crises…

    https://crm.ishr.ch/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=1740&cid=8618&cs=0ef59bb8d55e2f3f2c4be6093061514d_1761075328_168

    Download the report

    What do the UN80 reforms mean for the human rights pillar, and what role should the Human Rights Council play in building a UN that is ‘better equipped to serve the people whose lives depend on it’?

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • UK university halted human rights research after pressure from China

    Exclusive: Leading professor at Sheffield Hallam was told to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in China after demands from authorities

    A British university complied with a demand from Beijing to halt research about human rights abuses in China, leading to a major project being dropped, the Guardian can reveal.

    In February, Sheffield Hallam University, home to the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice (HKC), a leading research institution focused on human rights, ordered one of its best-known professors, Laura Murphy, to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in China.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UK university halted human rights research after pressure from China

    Exclusive: Leading professor at Sheffield Hallam was told to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in China after demands from authorities

    A British university complied with a demand from Beijing to halt research about human rights abuses in China, leading to a major project being dropped, the Guardian can reveal.

    In February, Sheffield Hallam University, home to the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice (HKC), a leading research institution focused on human rights, ordered one of its best-known professors, Laura Murphy, to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in China.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The World Economy’s Centre Of Gravity Shifts To Asia

    On the last day of October 2025, leaders from the 21 nations of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum will meet in the city of Gyeongju in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) for the organisation’s 33rd summit. Since its founding in 1989 in Canberra, Australia, APEC has promoted building a zone of ‘free and open trade’ – a concept outlined by the Bogor Goals, which came out of the summit in Indonesia in 1994.

    APEC is a creature of its times. First, it emerged as an instrument of Japan’s Pacific Economic Cooperation Council with the goal of building regional supply chains after the Plaza Accord (1985) appreciated the yen against the dollar.

    The post The World Economy’s Centre Of Gravity Shifts To Asia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “The Middle East Has Oil; China Has Rare Earths.” — Deng Xiaoping

    “Control over rare earth elements … is a central determinant of geopolitical power and industrial sovereignty in the 21st century.” — —Dr. Kalim Siddiqui[1]

    As part of US-China trade talks, we are hearing a great deal about China’s near-total domination over rare earth elements, or REES. Beijing controls extraction, refining, and the global supply chains — over 70% of production, 85-90 % of refining, and 92% of the global output in processing.

    These 17 elements on the periodic table are virtually ubiquitous in everything from Tomahawk missiles, high-end smartphones, and lasers to submarines, electric motors, and satellites. Just one example: A single F-35 fighter jet contains 417 kilograms — 920 pounds of rare earth materials.

    The US relies on China for about 70% of its rare-earth imports. Here, it’s important to note that although these minerals account for only 0.004 percent of total US imports, no other country can replace China as a source. Invest.com reports that China’s rare-earth exports to the US fell 37% in April 2025.

    Ensuring access to REES is viewed as a critical matter of national security, but China has achieved an “extraordinary lever in its contest with the United States.”[2] As Prabhat Patnik recently observed, when it comes to rare earths, the historical methods of neo-colonial domination, coups, and brute force plunder are not available for US capitalist imperialism.[3] Attempting to negotiate with Beijing is the only option at this point, and this puts China in a highly advantageous position.

    China’s new five-year plan, covering 2026-2030, says the country will adopt “extraordinary measures” that include enhancing “the exploration, development, and creation of reserves of strategic mineral resources.” In addition, the new licensing requirement seeks “full chain” regulation to cover mining, refining, and smelting. Following a meeting on Thursday, China said it would suspend for a year the export controls it had announced on October 9, but will “study and refine” the regulations. More importantly, China did not say it would back away from earlier export controls on seven types of rare earth materials, except for exports requiring licenses issued by the Ministry of Commerce. (NYT, October 30, 2025)

    All this suggests that China will use its rare-earth mineral monopoly to slow down or impede the US military and high-tech sectors. Those who support “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” and don’t buy into Prof. John Mearsheimer’s realist theory of international politics will welcome this check on the imperialist world system.

    [1] Dr. Kalim Siddiqui, “Rare Earth, Critical Minerals: Geopolitics, China and Emerging Tensions,” The World Financial Review, September 23, 2025.

    [2] Charles-Henry Monchau, “China’s Rare Earth: The Winning Card in the Trade War With the US,” Investing.com. 06/28/202

    [3] Prabhat Patnik, “Once more on minerals and imperialism,” MRonline, July 28. 2025.

    The post “The Middle East Has Oil; China Has Rare Earths.” — Deng Xiaoping first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Mirage of Development: Gwadar’s Water Wars

    A view of the Gwadar port of Pakistan Photo: VCG

    While the rest of Pakistan’s major cities were drenched in monsoon rains, a group of children stood hand in hand and chorused this in unison in Gwadar’s New Tobagh Ward near Koh-a-Bun Ward:

    “Pani Dho, bijli dho, warna Kursi Chor Dho.” ( Give us water, give us electricity, or vacate the chair).

    As Gwadar and its surrounding villages and towns are confronting an escalated water crisis, protests — and this slogan to ask for water — have become common across the city. Just a day later, another group of women and children from the Assa Ward and Lal Baksh Ward blocked the iconic Marine Drive demanding for water. A similar protest was held at shaheed Lala Hameed chowk, a symbolic site for past mass demonstrations and mobilisations under Maulana Hidayatur Rehman.

    The irony of Gwadar’s situation especially pertaining to its water crisis cannot be overstated. The port city is often showcased as the linchpin of the China’s Belt and Road Initiative. A future city akin to Dubai where boulevards would be wide, sprawling ferries and yachts would dot the Padi Zir (East Bay) and towering cranes would cast the silhouette of a rising metropolis but beneath all this facade unfolds a harsh truth: the children of this city still carry Jerry cans in search for water.

    With a population of 0.2 million, Gwadar city currently needs over 5 million gallons of water daily, however, the municipal pipeline network supplies only a meagre 2 million gallons per day, according to the Public Health Engineering (PHE) Department. Assuming that if a single person needs 30 to 50 gallons per day for domestic need, the demand for residential water is still unmet — excluding factors like industrial, commercial, CPEC-oriented infrastructure and future growth which could push the demand over 10-20 MGD.

    “The Ankara Kaur Dam — built in 1995 to provide 1.62 MGD has silted up significantly and is completely dead now,” says Javed MB, journalist and founder of Gwadar-a-Tawar, a local news outlet.

    Given that Ankar Kaur Dam is completely non-functional, the city is solely reliant on the tankers from the Mirani Dam from the nearby Kech district. The cost? Over 20 million per month, much of which lacks transparency in public audits. Two recently connected dams; Sawar and Shadi Kaur dams are vulnerable to seasonal rainfall, with their long distances causing delays in peak demand and transmission loses.

    City dwellers need to stand on public standpipes or buy water from private tankers, priced Rs. 3000 to 5000 per 100 gallon load. For low income families whose income is less than 20,000 monthly, it is untenable.

    “On normal days, a tanker costs 21 to 25 thousands, however, with most of the dams dried up, the tankers are selling water in black at a rate of thirty thousands,” says Javed. “The official rate, as set by the district administration and Deputy commissioner of Gwadar recently, is 20 thousands per tanker, but it is rarely enforced.”

    The network of pipelines laid by the government are grossly adequate while many of the laid pipes are poorly maintained. Some are clogged and others contain contaminated water. In 2025, the completion of an overarching network of 158 km of pipelines linking the Ankara, Sawar and Shadi Kaur Dam and four underground reservoirs have helped some communities receive water, such as Faqeer colony and Dhoor, according to GDA, chief Engineer, Syed Mohammad Baloch. Howbeit, official data shows that almost 50 per cent of homes in the district receive pipelined water — with 44 per cent through direct connections and 56 per cent via stand posts or public tanks — while the rest rely on tanker mafia, wells and pond water which is often unhealthy and contaminated.

    Desalination plants and the impacts

    The much touted desalination plants have not also receded the crisis. The district has three plants which either never worked or were inconsistent at best due to bureaucratic hurdles, mass corruption and chronic power outages.

    “These desalination plants are like museum exhibits,” Javed laments. “They are there. You can look at it. But they don’t feed the thirsty.”

    The biggest one located in Karwat, which remains non-functional even it has been officially inaugurated thrice — by the Nawaz Sharif, PTI and PPP governments. The other two are located in Sur Bandar and on Koh-a-Batil respectively. In response to the growing water crisis in the city, another seawater desalination plant was inaugurated in 2023 with the help of the Chinese government under the funding of CPEC. The new plant was aimed to produce 1.2 million gallons per day — producing a small fraction of the city’s estimated demand of 16 to 22 MGD.

    For many people living in and around Gwadar, water is not just a problem — it defines their daily life. Girls drop out of schools to stand in community posts or fetch water many kilometres away every day. There has been a rise in diseases like diarrhoea, cholera, dehydration, back pain and constant depression on women owing to the constant stress of water shortage.

    The economic impact of water shortage has also affected the fishermen of Gwadar. Fishing, which is the sole income of the coastal towns, needs water in ice making, preserving catch and washing their nets. Therefore, they spend their money in buying water than they earn from selling fish. “What they earn from catching fish in one trip, the money is spent on purchasing water and fuel. This becomes impossible for these hand to mouth fishermen,” says Javed.

    Thirst in the Hinterlands

    In the vast coastal belt of Balochistan, just behind the shimmering billboards and free-trade zones of Gwadar city, the far-flung villages of Jiwani, Pasni, Kulanch, Sur bandar, Ormara and Pishukaan are parched. Unlike the port city of Gwadar , these villages seldom make headlines — yet the shortage of water has also steadily worsened there over the years.

    “We don’t have any water to drink, let alone for bathing,” Dur Muhammad laments as he leans to scoop water out from a shallow and brackish well that he needs to re-dig everyday. “We come here with motorcycles. Some come with their donkeys and a few even walk the distance on foot. All we ask for is water. But nothing changes and no one listens.”

    Dur Muhammad, 30, lives in Dasht Kurmi, a village located in Suntsar, Tehsil Jiwani, just four kilometers before the BP-250 checkpoint — or commonly known as the Gabd Rimdan-250 border. This village lies between two great ports — approximately 120km east of Iran’s Chabahar port and 70km west of the Gwadar port, yet the people feel a world apart.

    Having a population of around 400 and inaccessible by road, requiring travel by sea on boats due to the lack of road infrastructure, Dasht Kurmi is divided into four local settlements: Faqeer Muhammad Bazaar, Hammal Bazaar, Kalar Bazaar and Kahuda Sadiq Bazaar. In these dusty settlements, water has also become a defining clock of life.

    “The acutest water shortage in the Gwadar district is being experienced in Jiwani Tehsil,” Javed adds. “The locals in this area have turned to natural ways of water conservation.”

    When it rains, which is very rare, the villagers dig wide and narrow trench-shaped earthen ponds to collect water during or before the rainy seasons to collect the runoff of the nearby streams. These makeshift catchment basins temporarily become lifelines which the people of Dasht Kurmi depend on for weeks.

    Once they dry, the locals resort to digging small hand-dug wells –locally known as Khaneegs — to collect the little water that remains three meters beneath the cracked soil. This technique, like in Dasht Kurmi has passed through generations throughout the peripheral areas of water-scarce Gwadar where government-funded pipelines, including those under the CPEC umbrella, rarely reach.

    For the people of Jiwani, a tehsil just 70 kilometers from the Gwadar city, water also came via a network of pipelines from the — now dead — Ankra Kaur Dam. But the locals have also been left at the mercy of the tanker mafia.

    Protests in Jiwani have been very deadly since the inception. Three people including a child named Yasmeen, were reportedly killed on 21 February in 1987 by the firing of the security forces when the protesters were rallying for water. Despite an allocation of Rs 937 million rupees in 2021 for building dams and pipelines, little progress has been seen in Jiwani as of 2025.

    According to an estimate from the provincial government, the Gwadar city and its adjoining Town of Jiwani which accounted for nearly 200,000 people as of 2012, needed 3.5 million gallons of water daily, however, the normal daily delivery was 2 million gallons, leaving an enormous shortfall of 1.5 million gallons every day.

    Towns of Empty cans

    “The people living close to the Pasni city spend more time looking for water than at the sea,” says Waqar Ghafoor, a resident of Reek-a-Pusht, Pasni. “ Every morning, the locals here take their containers and wait by the side of the roads, hoping that a private tanker may pass by. The water from the tankers is often brackish and unfit to drink and some time there is no tankers at all. They wait under the sun for hours. This is not living, we are only surviving.”

    Pasni, a fishing town of 100,000 residents, is supplied by the Shadi Kaur Dam, built in 2004 — also supplying to the nearby town of Ormara. By now, the dam has gradually silted and damaged, providing only little water. The daily requirement of Pasni in 2011, with a population of 50,000 back then, stood at 1.5 million gallons per day while the actual supply was less than 1.0 million gallons per day — fulfilling barely 6 per cent of the total need.

    “We receive water from the Shadi Kaur Dam via pipelines which are poured into big tanks built in the city and from these tanks is a network of other pipes distributing water to the households,” explains Waqar Ghafoor. “Though the residents of Reek a Pusht, where I live, receive some amount of water but the people living in the city confront a dire water shortage. The pipelines are broken or stolen there and pumping stations are shut down or remain without fuel for days due to administrative issues.”

    Following the collapse of the Shadi Kaur Dam which killed as many as 70 people and devastated homes, lives and agricultural land in the town in 2005, the dam was rebuilt in 2010 by the help of the Federal Public Sector Development Programme. Being built at a cost of Rs 7.9 billion rupees and with a storage capacity of 37,000 acre‑feet (45,600,000 cubic metres), the dam was expected to supply 70 cusecs (cubic feet per second). But it now supplies just 12 cusecs to the towns of Pasni and Ormara — 8 cusecs to the agriculture sector and 4 to the tanker trucks.

    While there is hardly any rain observed in the area, the dam’s storage capacity has dropped down to less than 30 per cent, according to local officials.

    Kulaanch, another town, some few kilometers from the Gwadar port is also dependent on the Sawar Dam, the same dam that also supplies to the Gwadar city.

    “Some villages of Kulaanch are connected to the pipeline network while others aren’t,” says Ishaque Ibrahim, a resident of Beelaar, Kulanch, whose family has now relocated to the nearby Kech district due to water shortage.

    Ishaque tells that though Sawar Dam technically serves the area, but the distribution of water isn’t equal. “You can get water from the reservoir only if you have recommendations. Therefore, only the affluent and the well-connected to the district’s Irrigation Department get the supply while the poor are left at the mercy of the private tanker mafia, which charge 21 to 25 thousands — a sum only a few can afford.”

    The water crisis in the district is both manmade and natural. The geography of the Makran Coast compounds this issue — hot and dry terrain with a thin freshwater lens means that freshwater is not merely limited in the division but also risks sea water intrusion. Rising sea levels keep destroying homes built on the brink of the sea by one wave and the other especially in Pishukan and Ganz and salt water intrusion into inland aquifers have rendered many community wells useless. For many villages, hand pumps churn out saline water which damages the skin.

    Dams and Desalination: The peripheral Paradox

    Establishing desalination plants in the peripheral areas dates back to 2008. Four desalination plants were decided to be deployed in the district in 2017. One for the Gwadar city at a cost of Rs 1 billion and three others in Jiwani, Pasni and Singhar — each with a cost of Rs 20 million. By 2017, only the one in Gwadar was functional and the others remained non-operational owing to bureaucratic delays and lack of staff. The Gwadar Seawater Desalination plant that opened in 2023 supplies to the city only, while the areas in the periphery remain out its direct service.

    In April 2023, two reverse osmosis (RO) plants were inaugurated for Sur bandar and Chabarkani —  hometown of MPA Mulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman — but they don’t reach the remote towns of Pasni, Pishukaan, Ormara or Jiwani.

    Fixing the flow

    The Solution to the Water crisis is neither prohibitively expensive nor complex.

    Abdullah Rahim, who runs a page — Makran Weather Forecast — says that building small and medium sized dams around the district to trap seasonal or monsoon rains could drastically reduce the dependency on the faraway sources like Mirani Dam and reviving and desiltation of Ankra Kaur and Shadi Kaur Dam could bring back millions of gallons of water into circulation.

    “ Local hydrologists believe that building small dams on the hilly catchment areas of Nigwar and Kulaanch can help reduce the dependency,” says Abdullah Rahim. He also adds that this neglect was absorbed in February 2024, when an unseasonal shower struck Gwadar district, dropping 183 millimetres of rain in just 30 hours — more than it’s normal average rainfall.

    “All the streets were under water and people were stranded. And when the rain receded, there was not a single reservoir or water body to show for it,” regrets Abdullah. “There were no check dams. No retention ponds. This precious rainwater simply ran into the Arabian Sea.” Officials believe that if 30 per cent of that water was stored, Gwadar’s water demand could have been fulfilled for months.

    Javed MB, on the other hand believes that Gwadar or the Makran division doesn’t come under the jurisdiction of the traditional path of Pakistan’s Monsoon belt. Therefore, though dams can also help when its rains, but what about years when it doesn’t? Ostensibly, Pakistan Meteorological Department has also warned earlier that the Makran Coast is becoming drier and hotter over the years, with longer dry spells and shorter monsoon periods.

    “We need to operationalize the existing desalination plants in Gwadar and the nearby towns. While solar-powered small filtration units could serve off-grid villages,” Javed says.

    Water in Gwadar has no longer a resource, it is a commodity of inclusion or exclusion and a test of loyalty to the land or just a departure, provoking one to question: Is Gwadar being built for its current poor residents or for an envisioned future of investors or gated economic zones?

    And yet, in every evening as the cranes of the port continue their slow rotation, with ships being unloaded and their horns echoing in the dusk, somewhere in the hills or a river, a girl returns to her home with a jerry-can, half full. Her back aches, with the water tasting metallic. But she and the others don’t have another choice, since for the world, Gwadar may be a port of luxury and opportunity but for the locals, it is a port of thirst.

    The post The Mirage of Development: Gwadar’s Water Wars first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Understanding The Changes Unseen In A Century

    General Secretary Xi Jinping has observed several times that “the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century”. What are these changes, and what are their implications for the current global situation?

    Before addressing the changes the world is experiencing today, it is worthwhile reflecting on the major changes that occurred a century ago, since the dramatic shifts of that time laid the foundations for the transformations we are witnessing now.

    The October Revolution of 1917 was a watershed moment marking the beginning of humanity’s transition from capitalism to socialism.

    The post Understanding The Changes Unseen In A Century appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Germany Is Sabotaging Its Relations With China

    The visit of German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to Beijing 50 years ago was a visit that lifted German-Chinese relations to a completely new level. On 31 October 1975, Schmidt met the Chinese head of state Mao Zedong. In preparation he had read Mao’s poems. It was the first visit of a German chancellor to China.

    Schmidt remained someone who, throughout his life, wanted to break with the colonial past of the West in China, and advocated relations on equal footing and with mutual respect. For example, in his discussion of the book The Governance of China by Chinese President Xi Jinping, he called on the West to replace arrogance with fair competition in its relationship with China.

    The post Germany Is Sabotaging Its Relations With China appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • MPs vote down Farage’s proposal for UK to leave ECHR – as it happened

    This blog is now closed, you can read more of our UK political coverage here

    Mark Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary and former national security adviser, goes next. He is now a peer, and a member of the committee.

    He says the deputy national security adviser, Matthew Collins, thought there was enough evidence for the case to go ahead. But the CPS did not agree. Who was right?

    In 2017, the Law Commission flagged that the term enemy [in the legislation] was deeply problematic and it would give rise to difficulties in future prosecutions.

    And I think what has played out, during this prosecution exemplifies and highlights the difficulties with that.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The Battery Belt: When the Sun Touches the Silk

    Nako Dost Muhammad (image on left) had never heard the hum of a fan. Living in a village named Kolahu in Tump, a tehsil in district Kech tucked between dusty hills and near the edge of the Iranian border, Nako’s life has been cloaked in darkness.

    Since 2016, the electricity connections in their village had been completely cut off, making them rely on the dim, choking flame of a kerosene lamp. He remembers a night when his grandson was bitten by a scorpion. There was no proper light to see where the creepy creature had gone, no decent transport to take the boy to a dispensary or a fan to stop them from sleeping on the floor. From the school in the village to the dispensary nearby, none had power.

    Until last month, Nako recalls, when a solar-panel-laden Zamyad vehicle from Turbat arrived. A local contractor and three other people came with unfamiliar tools: a metal pole, a solar panel, a fan, wires and, intriguingly, a battery that had neither sulphuric acid nor distilled water in it, he says. He was told by the contractor that he was among the 40 recipients from the village to receive “a home solar solution” under a new provincial scheme from the Energy Department of Balochistan.

    Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province in terms of area, remains the most energy deprived region. Almost 36 per cent of Balochistan is connected to the national grid and the connected ones receive erratic supply, according to a report presented in the National Assembly of Pakistan. Therefore, in this void, solar technology has been a boon. The Energy Department of Balochistan in collaboration with the People’s Republic of China is now providing home solar systems through a 15,000 solar home system grant aid by the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) and the South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund (SSCACF). These include 250 Watts panels, wiring kits, charge controllers and critically lithium-ion batteries to store power to be utilised during night.

    Lithium Solar Charge Controller

    Nako didn’t know what a “lithium-ion battery” was, nor had he heard of  Guangdong, a Chinese province, stamped on the battery casing. What he knew about was a solar panel that caught sunlight, a battery that stored something invisible and that by the evening, his home — one mud house — would have two working lights and a fan to sleep just like in the city.

    These lithium-ion batteries that are used to power electric scooters in Karachi or power up laptops and mobile phones in Lahore, are now providing electricity to the far away hamlets of Balochistan, often forgotten by the National power grid. From the fertile lands of Pishin district in the North to the draught-hit district of Gwadar in the South, these Chinese-made lithium-ion batteries, compact yet powerful, are converting sunlight into steady electricity in the night.

    A Tale of two chemistries

    “Lead acid batteries are the grandfather of energy storage invented in 1859,” Says Abdul Saboor, a chemistry professor in Atta Shad Degree college, Turbat. “They are cheap, recyclable and are locally manufactured by firms like Exide, Osaka and AGS. But they are heavy, require maintenance and give away 50 per cent of the charge stored in them. Unluckily, depending upon usage, their life span varies from 2 to five years.”

    By contrast, he explains, lithium-ion batteries especially the Lithium-iron Phosphate variants are now the heart of solar systems, electric scooters, and backup power. They last longer, are lighter and discharge up to 90 to 95 per cent.

    So what is the fine print?

    “The cost”, says a consumer from Tump. “A 100Ah battery in the market costs Rs. 28,000 while a lithium-ion battery in that range would cost you Rs. 80,000.”

    This expensive cost puts the lithium-ion batteries out of the reach of the middle class people. Another resident from Turbat confided in me that he purchased a lithium-ion battery in Gwadar — similar to the ones distributed under the provincial scheme — for Rs. 60,000, giving birth to a black market driven by high demand of the lithium-ion batteries and their quality.

    Made in China: A Double-Edged Sword

    Almost all, 90%, of the lithium-ion batteries in Pakistani markets are imported from China, with the remaining 10 per cent from United States and Bahrain. Brands like Dynavolt, CATL and BYD arrive through CPEC-linked logistics chains or local distributors from Karachi’s Saddar or Lahore’s Hall Road.

    Between August 2023 to July 2024, Pakistan’s lithium-ion battery import from China stood at a staggering 710 shipments, according to Volza Pakistan’s Import data. Reports from the Pakistan’s Customs and Pakistan Bureau of Statistics show that from the fiscal years of 2019 to 2024, the import money for lithium-ion batteries increased from $12 million to a jaw-dropping $49 million.

    Another report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), shows the lithium-ion batteries import in 2024 in the country was totalled around 1.25 GWh and additionally 400 megawatt-hour( MWh) in the months of January and February of 2025 alone. This report also reiterates that if this current trend to solarize the country with solar-plus-battery installation continues, luckily, Pakistan’s 26 per cent of peak electricity demand would be met by 2030. For now, importing batteries from China is a blessing, but there is a cost to this convenience.

    Pakistan currently lacks local manufacturing capacity for lithium-ion batteries. We have no lithium mining, no cell production capabilities and no infrastructure to recycle e-waste. Given that the world lithium supply chain is tense due to geopolitical rivalries, Pakistan’s entire dependency on a single supplier could cause trade shocks.

    “Probably, there would be a continued import of lithium-ion batteries from China or passive assembly units in the days to come.” Expresses, Asumi Heibitan, an Electric Engineer graduate from Bahaudin Zakriya University, Multan. “ If there is a shift in export policy by Beijing, a shipping issue or a geopolitical service cut-off, Pakistan won’t have any alternative supplier.”

    There would also be an issue of equity just beyond trade risks, Asumi warns. A 5kWh lithium-ion battery with solar panel and inverter would cost more than two lakh__ an unaffordable price for most of the low-income families. Though schemes like the Energy Department of Balochistan would make a dent, but many marginalised communities remain excluded to-date.

    On a different aspect, The Electric Vehicles Policy 2020-2025 of Pakistan has also envisaged to turn 30 per cent of all the vehicles into EVs by 2030. BYD alone envisions to assemble EVs in Pakistan by mid-2026, but with a single lithium -ion battery ally and sky-rocketing prices of such batteries in the global market, Pakistan’s nascent dream of Electric Vehicles could collapse overnight.

    Environmental Hazards

    Pakistan also doesn’t have any formal lithium-ion recycling capacity, which means the end-of-life batteries — typically containing poisonous metals like cobalt, manganese, nickel and lithium salts — would end up in waste sites, weakening soil health and water contamination. Resultantly, Pakistan is going to be a dumping ground for e-waste, without policies on lithium waste management.

    “We are sleepwalking to an e-waste crisis.” says Bahram Baloch, a student from BUITEMS, Quetta. “ It is like buying thousands of ships with no ship-breaking yards in sight.”

    Unfortunately, none of the technical universities of the country, be it UET Lahore, BUITEMS in Quetta or NED University offer specialized courses on battery assembly, recycling and management. This educational gap would definitely force reliance on foreign Chinese or German consultants for large-scale energy projects.

    Though geological surveys by the Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation (PMDC) also suggest the possible availability of lithium in the Chagai district in Balochistan and the Gilgit-Baltistan region, this would, definitely change Pakistan from a consumer to contributor but Chinese extraction models, local rights and environmental safety factors also remain fragile.

    The way ahead and the continued import

    While the world advances to a more sophisticated green energy future, the continued import of Chinese-made lithium-ion batteries not merely becomes a trade practice but raises broader national policy questions: Should the country rely on this traditional imported green tech or start developing its own local manufacturing capacity? What if the these tens of thousands of installed lithium-ion batteries pile up on garbage heaps with no future disposal plans? Is it wise to build a green energy future with products that Pakistan doesn’t control?

    Our neighbours and others have answers to offer. India, one of the importers of lithium-ion batteries is now heavily investing on its production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) battery storage. It has also enacted the Battery Waste Management Rule of 2022 to manufacture and recycle lithium-ion batteries locally and to manage e-waste. Bangladesh is working with private companies to make lithium-iron phosphate batteries and even small African countries, for example, Rwanda is investing on such pilot projects while we are left behind a import-only paradigm, in spite of investing on incentives to localise, assemble and innovate.

    A way for a safe and greener future requires coordinated developments on multiple fronts. First, the government ought to encourage local battery assembly units by offering tax incentives, cheap loans and technical trainings. This will not only create jobs for the locals but also reduce the dependency on imports. Simultaneously, bilateral agreement with China should go beyond trade, like joint technology developments on battery maintenance and assembly units in SEZs (Special Economic Zones) in Gwadar under CPEC. On the other hand, the Pakistan Council of Renewable Energy Technologies in collaboration with NADRA and provincial Energy Departments should start mapping lithium-ion battery installations nationwide so that they could forecast future replacement and predict as well as manage waste volumes.

    While Public education on battery safety standards, life span and quality should be prioritize. We also need to diversify our import sources from South Korea, UAE and Japan to avoid any jerk from global lithium-ion battery supply.

    Back in Tump, the days are getting hotter. Nako Dost Muhammad tells the visitors proudly that he doesn’t fear the nights. His grandson can now study at the ungodly hours of the night without a kerosene lamp and that his wife doesn’t need to cook before dusk.

    But his fear about the battery started after a teacher in the village told him that these batteries catch fire in temperatures above 60 centigrade. He wonders how long that box with Chinese letters would last, since he has received no receipt, no warranty cards and no ways to replace it.

    For now, the lithium in his battery has travelled a long way — perhaps from a mining site in Chile to a factory in Guangdong in China, to the Karachi port, and then to a village with bumpy roads long forgotten by the National grid.

    Lithium-ion batteries are a good fit for a country which aspires for a green energy future and with unreliable electricity but the way Pakistan is using them now — only importing with no local assembly units is a real risk. We need to decide whether we only want to be consumers of foreign technology or a country that localises, manages and innovates their own green energy solutions. Only the future will tell.

    The post The Battery Belt: When the Sun Touches the Silk first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The ‘Donroe Doctrine’: Trump’s Neocolonial Plan For Latin America

    The US government has always meddled in Latin America’s internal affairs. This is far from new.

    The United States overthrew at least 41 governments in Latin America from 1898 to 1994, according to research by Columbia University historian John Coatsworth.

    In the past three decades, Washington has backed dozens more coups, coup attempts, regime-change operations, and “color revolutions” in the region.

    The US military has intervened in every single country in Latin America, according to data from the Congressional Research Service. (The only exception is French Guiana, which is a colony of France.)

    US imperialism has always been bipartisan in Washington, and has continued under both Republican and Democratic presidents.

    The post The ‘Donroe Doctrine’: Trump’s Neocolonial Plan For Latin America appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Shanghai’s JSBio Expands Into Cultivated Meat to Tap China’s Future Food Opportunity

    jsbio
    5 Mins Read

    Jianshun Biosciences, a Shanghai-based culture media supplier, has expanded from biopharma to the cellular agriculture field to join China’s booming alternative protein industry.

    With more patents than any other region in the world, and an ecosystem boosted by government investment, it’d be a mistake not to look at China’s alternative protein industry as anything but world-beating.

    And homegrown companies are recognising the opportunity. Based in Shanghai, Jianshun Biosciences (JSBio) is one of them. The firm is a leading cell culture media manufacturer for the biopharma sector, with operations in the US and South Korea too. But now, it is building on that expertise to cater to the cultivated meat industry.

    “JSBio has expanded into cultivated meat to leverage its biopharma expertise and large-scale cell culture capabilities,” founder Shun Luo tells Green Queen. “This move aligns with our mission to promote sustainable food innovation and the health of both people and the planet.”

    The company will deliver serum-free formulations, food-grade components, and process development support to help cultivated meat producers scale up efficiently, with Luo describing the cellular agriculture focus as a “natural next step” from advancing human health to supporting long-term wellbeing.

    Asia’s largest dry powder culture media network

    jsbiosciences
    Courtesy: JSBio

    Founded in 2011, JSBio has developed over 200 serum-free culture media products tailored to various cell types. Additionally, it provides process optimisation support to help businesses improve yields, maintain cell health, and scale efficiently.

    In recent years, the firm has collaborated closely with trailblazing cultivated meat companies, leading to the development of its CellKey Series of culture media. This supports the unique demands of cultured meat production while incorporating food-grade components at an industrial scale.

    “JSBio works with top cultivated meat companies globally, including several that have already achieved important regulatory milestones,” explains COO Louis Cheung, without disclosing the names of the companies.

    “JSBio produces cell culture media from high-quality, food-grade materials,” he adds. “Dry-powder media are made with an automated pin-milling system, while liquid media use single-use preparation and terminal filtration. Each batch undergoes strict quality checks before aseptic filling and traceable delivery.”

    In fact, the firm operates Asia’s largest dry powder culture media network, with an annual capacity exceeding 6,000 tonnes across several sites. This, Cheung says, positions JSBio to deliver both scale and affordability to partner companies.

    JSBio’s culture media costs under $1 per litre

    lab grown meat china
    Courtesy: JSBio

    “JSBio integrates its services into cultivated meat production by providing end-to-end support, including food-grade raw materials, culture media at various scales, and formula optimisation to meet companies’ operational needs,” says Cheung. “Regulatory support is a core focus, with strict quality controls helping streamline approvals and accelerate market entry.”

    Culture media are essential to the production of cultivated meat, entailing a mix of nutrients to facilitate the growth of animal cells. These components account for the majority of the costs involved in the entire process, and reducing this is key to reaching price parity with conventional meat.

    Typically, culture medium costs hundreds of dollars per litre, thanks to expensive animal inputs like bovine serum albumin and fetal bovine serum, as well as growth factors and basal media (such as amino acids, vitamins, and glucose).

    Globally, more and more cultivated meat companies are shifting to serum-free media formulations to drive down production costs, with US startup Clever Carnivore bringing this to just $0.07 per litre at pilot scale.

    “Media remains a major cost driver in cultivated meat production. We work to understand what cells truly need, streamline formulations, secure cost-efficient raw materials, and enable processes like high-temperature-short-time (HTST) sterilisation – and that’s just a glimpse of how we help partners scale cultivated meat more cost-effectively,” says Cheung.

    “For existing cultivated meat clients, JSBio offers culture media at less than $1 per litre,” he adds. “As we expand our supply chain and adopt new technologies to boost productivity, we anticipate further reductions in cost.”

    China embraces cultivated meat

    jianshun biosciences
    Courtesy: JSBio

    With its expansion into cellular agriculture, JSBio has joined the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture to build strategic partnerships and drive regional innovation.

    “JSBio is among the most capable players in Asia for culture media innovation and scalable bioprocess support,” said program director Peter Yu. “With their regional leadership and solid expertise, JSBio will help global players scale efficiently in Asia and advance commercialisation.”

    The company’s shift towards cultivated meat comes amid growing public acceptance and government backing for these proteins. A recent survey found that 77% of citizens in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen are open to trying cultured meat, and 45% are likely to replace conventional meat and seafood with these.

    Meanwhile, the current five-year agriculture plan encourages research in cultivated meat, while the bioeconomy development strategy aims to advance novel foods. China is already home to eight of the top 20 patent applicants for these novel proteins.

    This year, the country saw its first alternative protein innovation centre open in Beijing, fuelled by an $11M investment from public and private investors to develop novel foods like cultivated meat. And in the Guangdong province, officials are planning to build a biomanufacturing hub for plant-based, microbial and cultivated proteins.

    At the annual Two Sessions summit, top government officials called for a deeper integration of strategic emerging industries like biomanufacturing, and the agriculture ministry outlined the safety and nutritional efficacy of alternative proteins as a key priority. And a document signalling China’s top goals for the year underscored the importance of protein diversification, including efforts “to explore novel food resources”.

    The post Shanghai’s JSBio Expands Into Cultivated Meat to Tap China’s Future Food Opportunity appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • In the Shadows of History: Death and Destruction in South Sudan

    Much of the world is rightly transfixed by the genocide in Gaza, the unimaginable horrors experienced by its Palestinian inhabitants, the callous antics of those who would ‘develop’ its ruins (Trump, Blair, Kushner, etc.), and the strong likelihood of more of the same to come for the West Bank.

    But what is it that explains why one humanitarian tragedy commands global attention while others that have entailed as much or more suffering for as long or longer seem less deserving of the world’s interest and go relatively unnoticed and unremarked upon?

    The case of South Sudan

    If international humanitarian interest in a country was simply a function of the extent of death, destruction, and human misery there, then the scorecard for South Sudan would place it among the most deserving of cases.

    More than 20 years ago, in 2002, I was employed via an NGO to carry out a short consultancy for the South Sudan rebel government in waiting, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, which was the political wing of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. My field work was carried out in the heart of rebel-held territory in the town of Rumbek. Tellingly, I was accommodated in a US special forces tented camp alongside Rumbek’s murram air strip. The presence of the US military in the middle of nowhere was a mark of the post-9/11 frenzied hunt for Al Qaeda, in a country that had once provided shelter to Osama bin Laden and was – and, according to some, still is – a stronghold of radical Islam. No prizes for guessing where the NGO’s funding probably came from.

    In my final report, among others, I noted as follows:

    For almost half a century [1955-2005], the people of Southern Sudan have been engaged in a bitter liberation struggle with the Government of Sudan based in Khartoum. It is a war that has resulted in the deaths of at least two million Southern Sudanese and the displacement from their homes of many millions more. There have been horrifying human rights violations on a grand scale. With the exception of large parts of western Equatoria, where war damage is relatively limited and has resulted mainly from sporadic bombings, there has been widespread destruction of, or serious damage to, physical infrastructure. The institutional infrastructure of government has been completely destroyed.

    … it is also a war that has not impinged greatly on the economic or strategic self-interests of the major world powers and has therefore failed to attract their serious attention or that of the international media. Accordingly, it is a war that for the most part has been conducted in the shadows of history – a war that has resulted in more death, destruction and suffering than many conflicts whose causes and casualties for other reasons have been widely publicised by the world’s media (Blunt, 2002).

    An indicator of the magnitude and severity of the effects of the protracted liberation struggle was that there were estimated to be twice as many women as men in the adult population of South Sudan (UNICEF, 2000 in Blunt, 2002). By comparison, after WWII, the country that had suffered the most casualties, Soviet Russia, had a female to male ratio of 1.3 to 1.0.

    The atrocities that were committed during the 50-year civil war and since then bear an eerie resemblance to some of the main features of the Israeli genocide in Gaza – as if they were drawn from the same playbook.

    Ironically, confirmation of this can be found in the account given by The US Holocaust Memorial Museum:

    In both the south and west, the Sudanese government established a pattern of assaults against civilians. They killed, tortured, raped, and displaced millions. Assault tactics included:

    • Mass starvation and forcible displacement;

    • Blocking humanitarian aid;

    • Harassment of internally displaced persons;

    • Bombing of hospitals, clinics, schools, and other civilian sites;

    • Use of rape as a weapon against targeted groups;

    • Employing a divide-to-destroy strategy to pit ethnic groups against each other, causing enormous loss of civilian life;

    • Training and support for ethnic militias who commit atrocities;

    • Destruction of indigenous cultures;

    • Enslavement of women and children by government-supported militias; and

    • Impeding and failing to fully implement peace agreements.

    Since gaining independence in 2011, civil wars have raged more or less continuously in South Sudan, killing tens of thousands more civilians. Much of the conflict and abuse has been funded by oil companies and European banks.

    In 2024, the humanitarian crisis there was depicted by Human Rights Watch as one of the worst in the world (which it probably had been for at least the previous half century):

    … driven by the cumulative and compounding effects of years of conflict, intercommunal violence, food insecurity, the climate crisis, and displacement following the April [2023] outbreak of conflict in Sudan. An estimated 9.4 million people [out of a total population of about 13 million] in South Sudan, including 4.9 million children and over 300,000 refugees, mostly driven south from the Sudan conflict, needed humanitarian assistance.

    According to Oxfam (2025): “Reduced attention and [already grossly inadequate] funding to the country is further deepening the humanitarian crisis and putting millions of lives at immediate risk.”

    A ‘sleeper’ in the New Great Game
    Setting aside for the moment the fact that the death and destruction in South Sudan is and has been happening in the heart of darkest Africa to some of its blackest inhabitants — people who therefore would be classified among the most unworthy of victims — consider the following (typical) ingredients of the ‘civilised’ world’s calculations in such matters.

    Though landlocked and largely inaccessible, South Sudan is a large and attractive piece of real estate (about twice the size of Germany) that has an estimated 5 billion barrels of oil reserves (the third largest in Africa); significant deposits of gold and other minerals such as iron ore, dolomite, and aluminium, which are largely untapped; approximately 33 million acres of mostly (94%) uncultivated arable land; and a wealth of renewable natural resources, primarily fish (in the massive wetlands known as the Sud), forests, and wildlife (World Bank, 2025).

    However, it is South Sudan’s neighbour to the north – Sudan – that has a geostrategically vital 500-mile border on the Red Sea and controls access to world markets via Port Sudan for its landlocked neighbour, making it a critical piece in the New Great Game.

    For now, while undoubtedly registered as a target of high potential, the considerable plunder and profit to be had in South Sudan is probably too difficult to extract, and the US is too heavily embroiled elsewhere, for it warrant the serious immediate attention of the current godfather of savage capitalism in the US.

    The difficulties of extraction are made so by the incessant civil conflicts in South Sudan since independence in 2011, which are stoked by bitter ethnic rivalries that now threaten to cause another outbreak of violence; the absence or parlous state of South Sudan’s physical and institutional infrastructure and the inaccessibility of its natural resources; its extreme flood proneness and vulnerability to climate change (the highest in the world); and the choke hold on its exports, and trade generally, exercised by Sudan’s control of Port Sudan.

    Regarding the latter, crucially, there are only two crude oil pipelines from the oil fields of South Sudan to Port Sudan. Their vulnerability is a function of their length – each of about 1,000 miles through inhospitable and lawless terrain – and their reliance on power plants in Port Sudan that supply electricity to the pipelines’ pumping stations, which have been subject to recent drone strikes.

    For the US et al., all this could change very quickly of course if the already substantial Chinese interests in oil and infrastructure development in South Sudan continue to grow and US-supported strikes against those interests escalate. China is already South Sudan’s biggest export market and one of its main trading partners and donors, giving China a foothold in the country and region that the US would no doubt not want to become too firm.

    Whatever the case, Black lives don’t matter

    We can infer from this snapshot of the ‘property development’ potential and strategic significance of South Sudan an answer to the question posed at the beginning of this essay. An answer that many readers of this journal will be unsurprised by, but is worth repeating, nonetheless. Namely, that – per se – humanitarian crises and death and destruction on a massive scale lasting for decades clearly count for nothing in the mercenary and cynically self-interested calculus of the so-called ‘civilised world’. This is particularly so of course when the victims are among the darker races, as I have argued elsewhere and the likes of Chris Hedges and Caitlin Johnstone assert so emphatically.

    Indeed, when the balance tips in favour of more intense US-led Western intervention in South Sudan, as eventually it is bound to (and South Sudan becomes newsworthy), these failed state conditions will be ‘refined’ or augmented (with ‘development assistance’ and more direct and brutal means of persuasion) to produce the type of ‘investment climate’ that results from the ‘shock therapy’ referred to by Naomi Klein (2008). That is, a catatonic condition and tabula rasa in the subject nation that clears the way for ‘free market fundamentalism’ and natural resource predation, as was the case in Iraq and other places.

    As now, when that time comes, the humanitarian crises in South Sudan will be the subject of attention only in so far as they serve to embellish or decorate whatever narrative the corporate media have been told to run in support of greater Western intervention or only in so far as they provide an exotic curiosity for the entertainment of their indoctrinated Western audiences.

    The post In the Shadows of History: Death and Destruction in South Sudan first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • ‘They told me not to speak out’: the woman who took on China – and won her husband’s freedom

    After fleeing Chinese repression, Uyghurs Idris and Zeynure Hasan thought their family would be safe. But Beijing’s growing influence led to Idris’s arrest and a long battle to be reunited

    Zeynure Hasan was at home in Istanbul in July 2021 when her husband finally called. It had been four days since she last heard from him as he got ready to board a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been torturous.

    But the news Idris now shared with her was even worse. He had been arrested and imprisoned on arrival in Morocco and told he was going to be deported to China. “You should call anyone who can help me, anyone who can rescue me,” he told her, before the phone went dead.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Communist Party Of China Opens Deliberations On 15th Five-Year Plan

    The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) began this Monday, October 20, in Beijing, with the agenda focused on drafting proposals for the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) for the country’s economic and social development.

    The discussion of the five-year plan at the Fourth Session represents a change in the usual calendar, as this discussion normally takes place at the Fifth Plenary Session. The change may have occurred due to the delay of the Third Plenary Session, which did not take place until August 2024. Following the usual calendar, it was expected to take place in 2023.

    The post Communist Party Of China Opens Deliberations On 15th Five-Year Plan appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Madagascar Erupts, Indian Ocean Power Dynamics In Flux

    After weeks of protests and a mutiny, former Madagascar president Andry Rajoelina boarded a French military plane and fled the country. With a public angry at a corrupt, western-aligned government, Madagascar has the potential to shape its future and the whole Indian Ocean.

    This development comes as global powers scramble for strategic access in a region that holds five of the world’s nine maritime chokepoints. India, China, and the US are expanding their naval and commercial footprint, while France – once the uncontested gatekeeper of these waters – finds itself besieged and in retreat.

    The post Madagascar Erupts, Indian Ocean Power Dynamics In Flux appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.