If all the scheduled executions are carried out, that would make 2025 the year with the most executions since 2010, when 46 inmates were put to death. That year, Texas led the way with 17 executions, while Florida carried out only one.
But this year, the Sunshine State is leading the charge. Florida has executed 15 prisoners in 2025 – the most ever in a single year since 1976, when a brief national moratorium on the death penalty was lifted. Two of the five remaining executions scheduled for 2025 are set to happen in Florida. Texas and Alabama are tied for a distant second, with five executions each.
As someone who has studied the death penalty for decades, what is happening in Florida right now seems to me to be especially important. While in some ways the state is distinctive, in many others it is a microcosm of America’s death penalty system.
Almost 100 years later, in 1923, Florida replaced hanging with the electric chair as its method of execution. After a brief pause in the use of capital punishment in the 1970s, it was one of the first states to get back in the death penalty business.
Over the years, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken the state to task for various constitutional defects in its death penalty laws and practices. In its 1982 decision in Enmund v. Florida, the court ruled that Florida could not use the death penalty to punish people who were minor participants in a crime that led to a murder. And in 2014, the Supreme Court found that Florida was unconstitutionally denying the kind of intellectual disability claims by people with low IQ scores that made them ineligible to be given death sentences.
But these rulings have not stopped the state from continuing to go its own way in death penalty cases. In 2020, the Florida Supreme Court ended the practice of having a court review capital sentences. This review was meant to ensure that those sentences met the U.S. Constitution’s requirements that they be meted out only in cases that truly warrant them and that they be proportional. To determine proportionality, the court undertaking such a review would compare the case in front of them with similar cases in the same jurisdiction in which the death penalty had been imposed.
Then in 2023, Florida enacted legislation ending the requirement of jury unanimity in death cases. Now, it takes only eight out of 12 jurors to send someone to death row. Only three other death penalty states do not require jury unanimity. In Missouri and Indiana, a judge may decide if the jury’s decision isn’t unanimous, and in Alabama, a 10-2 decision is sufficient.
This is actually lower than the approximately 40% of inmates on death row who are Black nationwide, despite the fact that Black people make up just 14% of the U.S. population.
Across the nation, 13 of the 41 inmates executed so far in 2025 have been Black or Latino men.
As Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis is responsible for issuing death warrants. In 2025, he has signed a record-setting 15 so far. That’s the most death warrants in the state in a single year since 2014, when Gov. Rick Scott signed off on putting eight people to death.
Though he is Catholic, DeSantis does not subscribe to the church’s staunch opposition to the death penalty. The Florida Catholic Conference of Bishops has been outspoken in taking him to task for his position on capital punishment and for presiding over an execution spree. But that has not stopped him.
Indeed, on Nov. 3, 2025, the governor said that capital punishment is “an appropriate punishment for the worst offenders.” He added that it could be a “strong deterrent” if the state carried out executions more quickly.
DeSantis has served as governor since 2019, and prior to 2025, he had signed nine death warrants. He says that he was focused on other priorities early in his term and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The governor, who is term limited, is in his second and last term. DeSantis’ critics allege that the recent uptick in executions is an attempt to garner attention and prove his tough-on-crime bona fides to a national audience.
Florida: Setting the trend, or bucking it?
The total number of executions in the U.S. went from a high of 98 executions in 1999 to a low of 11 in 2021. But that number has increased every year since.
While only one state, Indiana, has resumed executions after a long hiatus, no other state has increased its use of the death penalty as quickly as Florida has. Elsewhere, the common pattern of allowing people to languish on death row for decades, and in some states seemingly permanently, has held.
And although the problems that have long plagued Florida’s death penalty system remain unaddressed, it now stands alone in dramatically escalating its own pace of executions and is leading America to its own 2025 execution revival.
Edwin Sanchez had the seniority he needed to bid for a higher-paying position in the control room at the oil refinery in Texas City, Texas, where he’d worked for more than 15 years.
But Sanchez, lighthearted and sociable, seemed to prefer the company of his close-knit, 30-person unit responsible for a range of duties inside and outside the sprawling facility.
Sanchez, a member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 13-1, showed up for his shifts like clockwork. And then, one day, he didn’t show up at all.
Concerned coworkers ultimately learned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement decided to deport Sanchez, whom local police detained after a traffic stop, even though he had an up-to-date work permit.
His deportation to Honduras—a country he hadn’t seen since leaving as a child nearly four decades earlier—occurred in March. The loss angered fellow union members, who fought to hold open Sanchez’s job during his months-long detention, and it underscored the heavy toll that Donald Trump’s dragnet exacts not only on deportees and their families but also on the workplaces and industries they leave behind.
“It just leaves a hole,” observed Brandi Sanders-Lausch, president of Local 13-1, recalling how months of uncertainty about Sanchez’s fate affected about 1,000 union workers at the refinery.
“They were definitely distracted and probably a little uncomfortable,” she said of Sanchez’s coworkers, especially members of his unit who worked most closely with him. “They had questions. They didn’t understand. Everyone still talks about him.”
In all, the nation has so far lost more than a million foreign-born workers like Sanchez amid Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
For example, Sanchez held a trusted role at the refinery, a veritable small city, where workers refine up to 631,000 gallons of crude oil a day for gasoline, petrochemicals, fuel oil, propane, and other products needed by various kinds of businesses across the country.
Sanchez graduated from a local high school and completed a process technology degree at a community college to prepare for his work as an operator, which involved scaling ladders, monitoring gauges, performing maintenance, and checking for leaks, among other responsibilities, Sanders said.
He continued his education on the job. Both the USW and the company invested in Sanchez on an ongoing basis, providing the safety and other training that empowered his work.
In return, Sanchez invested himself in his work and in his colleagues. He was a dependable, conscientious team player, with an upbeat personality that helped to lighten 12-hour shifts and the overtime that often followed, Sanders said, calling him a favorite among his coworkers.
“They all became really good friends,” she said, noting that Sanchez earned respect for his dedication to picket-line duty during the USW’s 2015 unfair labor practice strike against big oil and his commitment to watching others’ backs in a high-risk work environment.
“You can’t replace a person like that,” Sanders said. “You feel that loss. It’s almost like someone passing away.”
In his mid-30s, unmarried, with no children, Sanchez ended up relying on friends to sell his assets so he’d have some means of supporting himself in Honduras. He also accessed his retirement account, providing additional funds.
But coworkers never saw him again.
Instead of helping to meet America’s energy needs, he’s now figuring out his next steps in an unfamiliar country that has no oil industry, let alone a need for skilled refinery workers.
“He doesn’t speak Spanish,” Sanders said. “He still calls and checks in with everybody from time to time. His friends are here.”
Just like Sanchez, José Galo parlayed hard work and a union contract into a good middle-class life.
But it’s all in pieces now. Galo—who made his way to the U.S. on his own at 14, sometimes sleeping on a couch and skipping meals for lack of money—says he has little choice but to return to Honduras following the deportation of his wife, Karla.
Galo, a U.S. citizen and member of USW Local 1693 in Lexington, Kentucky, accompanied his wife, also a native of Honduras, to a routine check-in with immigration officials in June. Thirty minutes later, a woman returned to the waiting room and told Galo, “She’s no longer here.”
“They took her out the back,” recalled Galo, a manufacturing worker. He made a brief trip to Honduras shortly thereafter, taking the couple’s six-year-old son, a U.S. citizen, so he could live with his mother.
Galo said he’s done his best to contribute to America, joining the ranks of the manufacturing workers who built the country and standing in solidarity with fellow USW members.
He availed himself of the advantages that the USW and other unions have provided all of their members, including members of various immigrant groups, for decades: good wages, affordable benefits, safe working conditions, and a brighter future.
Galo bought a house and a car, willingly paid taxes, and started a lawn care business to explore his entrepreneurial side. He liked nothing more than greeting his son when he walked through the door at the end of a long shift.
Now, his hardships cast a pall over the factory floor, where Galo says his coworkers, a second family, try to cheer him up even though they share his grief. He knows he won’t be seeing them much longer, even though he’s daunted by the prospect of starting over in a country as disadvantaged as when he left decades ago.
Edwin Sanchez had the seniority he needed to bid for a higher-paying position in the control room at the oil refinery in Texas City, Texas, where he’d worked for more than 15 years.
But Sanchez, lighthearted and sociable, seemed to prefer the company of his close-knit, 30-person unit responsible for a range of duties inside and outside the sprawling facility.
Sanchez, a member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 13-1, showed up for his shifts like clockwork. And then, one day, he didn’t show up at all.
Concerned coworkers ultimately learned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement decided to deport Sanchez, whom local police detained after a traffic stop, even though he had an up-to-date work permit.
His deportation to Honduras—a country he hadn’t seen since leaving as a child nearly four decades earlier—occurred in March. The loss angered fellow union members, who fought to hold open Sanchez’s job during his months-long detention, and it underscored the heavy toll that Donald Trump’s dragnet exacts not only on deportees and their families but also on the workplaces and industries they leave behind.
“It just leaves a hole,” observed Brandi Sanders-Lausch, president of Local 13-1, recalling how months of uncertainty about Sanchez’s fate affected about 1,000 union workers at the refinery.
“They were definitely distracted and probably a little uncomfortable,” she said of Sanchez’s coworkers, especially members of his unit who worked most closely with him. “They had questions. They didn’t understand. Everyone still talks about him.”
In all, the nation has so far lost more than a million foreign-born workers like Sanchez amid Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
For example, Sanchez held a trusted role at the refinery, a veritable small city, where workers refine up to 631,000 gallons of crude oil a day for gasoline, petrochemicals, fuel oil, propane, and other products needed by various kinds of businesses across the country.
Sanchez graduated from a local high school and completed a process technology degree at a community college to prepare for his work as an operator, which involved scaling ladders, monitoring gauges, performing maintenance, and checking for leaks, among other responsibilities, Sanders said.
He continued his education on the job. Both the USW and the company invested in Sanchez on an ongoing basis, providing the safety and other training that empowered his work.
In return, Sanchez invested himself in his work and in his colleagues. He was a dependable, conscientious team player, with an upbeat personality that helped to lighten 12-hour shifts and the overtime that often followed, Sanders said, calling him a favorite among his coworkers.
“They all became really good friends,” she said, noting that Sanchez earned respect for his dedication to picket-line duty during the USW’s 2015 unfair labor practice strike against big oil and his commitment to watching others’ backs in a high-risk work environment.
“You can’t replace a person like that,” Sanders said. “You feel that loss. It’s almost like someone passing away.”
In his mid-30s, unmarried, with no children, Sanchez ended up relying on friends to sell his assets so he’d have some means of supporting himself in Honduras. He also accessed his retirement account, providing additional funds.
But coworkers never saw him again.
Instead of helping to meet America’s energy needs, he’s now figuring out his next steps in an unfamiliar country that has no oil industry, let alone a need for skilled refinery workers.
“He doesn’t speak Spanish,” Sanders said. “He still calls and checks in with everybody from time to time. His friends are here.”
Just like Sanchez, José Galo parlayed hard work and a union contract into a good middle-class life.
But it’s all in pieces now. Galo—who made his way to the U.S. on his own at 14, sometimes sleeping on a couch and skipping meals for lack of money—says he has little choice but to return to Honduras following the deportation of his wife, Karla.
Galo, a U.S. citizen and member of USW Local 1693 in Lexington, Kentucky, accompanied his wife, also a native of Honduras, to a routine check-in with immigration officials in June. Thirty minutes later, a woman returned to the waiting room and told Galo, “She’s no longer here.”
“They took her out the back,” recalled Galo, a manufacturing worker. He made a brief trip to Honduras shortly thereafter, taking the couple’s six-year-old son, a U.S. citizen, so he could live with his mother.
Galo said he’s done his best to contribute to America, joining the ranks of the manufacturing workers who built the country and standing in solidarity with fellow USW members.
He availed himself of the advantages that the USW and other unions have provided all of their members, including members of various immigrant groups, for decades: good wages, affordable benefits, safe working conditions, and a brighter future.
Galo bought a house and a car, willingly paid taxes, and started a lawn care business to explore his entrepreneurial side. He liked nothing more than greeting his son when he walked through the door at the end of a long shift.
Now, his hardships cast a pall over the factory floor, where Galo says his coworkers, a second family, try to cheer him up even though they share his grief. He knows he won’t be seeing them much longer, even though he’s daunted by the prospect of starting over in a country as disadvantaged as when he left decades ago.
In the high silence of the Andes, where the air thins to a whisper and the earth itself seems to remember older empires, there lies a nation haunted by the sound of waves it can no longer hear. It once possessed a coastline — a sliver of blue infinity stitched to its western hem like a divine indulgence. Then came the diplomats and the drillers, the wars wrapped in ledgers, and the cartographers tidy knives. Before anyone realized, the sea was gone — not with the violence of a storm but with the bureaucratic calm of a bank transfer.
And yet, even now, the highland people remember the ocean as one remembers a lost love — through rumors, relics, and dreams. In the plazas of La Paz, an old mariner appears from time to time, a spectral veteran who smells faintly of brine and carries a telescope and a broken compass that spins endlessly, loyal to confusion. They call him el Coronel del Desierto — the Colonel of the Desert. He claims to have once sailed ships across the Pacific, though no one can agree whether he is a ghost, a liar, or the last honest man left in the Republic. Children listen wide-eyed to his tales of sea monsters and salt breezes, and their mothers hush them, fearing that belief might reopen old wounds.
It is said that on certain nights, when the moon is full and the mountains gleam like ancient bones, el Coronel walks to the edge of the Altiplano and raises his telescope to the west, searching for the ocean that politics misplaced.
And maybe that’s how it began — the contagion carried on that ghostly shimmer. The dream of the sea drifted north, crossing borders as easily as capital, whispering its promise of stolen freedom and easy blame. By the time it reached the frostbitten prairies — the continent’s cracked reflection — it had changed shape, but not its essence.
Now, far from the Andes, another dreamer lifts his eyes to an imagined horizon. Alberta, that inland dominion of pumpjacks and performative grievances, gazes toward its own imagined shore — not of saltwater but of sovereignty. Its prophets speak of independence as if it were a port city, of separation as a voyage toward freedom, though the map offers no such coast. Perhaps, in some strip club in Fort McMurray, a new Coronel del Desierto is rehearsing the same old fable: that a nation betrayed by geography might yet find salvation in its own reflection — if only it stares long enough into the mirage.
No one remembers when the madness began — only that one morning the prairies started murmuring about the sea. Alberta’s independence fever has haunted Confederation as long as Alberta itself, but this latest outbreak must have begun as a bad joke in a Red Deer bar, then spread through talk radio, Telegram channels, and the reptile cortex of social media. Alberta, landlocked queen of crude, began to dream of independence — the kind of dream that smells of diesel and nostalgia, so large and lonely it could only come from a place that’s never seen a tide.
They say it started with a petition — ordinary names scrawled in digital ink, demanding a referendum to ask whether Alberta should leave the country that made it rich and then made it bored. A bureaucratic hallucination dressed up as democracy. The signatures stacked like wheat bales: tens of thousands, though no one could quite agree what they were signing for — revenge, leverage, bathrooms, or just the exquisite thrill of rebellion before supper.
In Calgary and Edmonton, the think-tank prophets began to speak of sovereignty as though it were a new oilfield — untapped, infinite, waiting just beyond their dreamed of borders. Polls whispered that a third of Albertans were tempted. Not believers, exactly, but flirts — politically bicurious, swiping right on secession and then ghosting on Grindr. The rest watched, muttering that the whole thing was theatre, a hostage note to Ottawa written in Sharpie and narcissism.
The tone was half tragedy, half stand-up routine. “We gave the country its fuel, its riches” the old-timers grumbled, “and they gave us lectures about emissions.” You could taste the resentment in the air — thick as bitumen. Yet beneath the noise, a deeper ache thrummed: a feeling that history had stolen something. Not a sea this time, but dignity.
And somewhere in this vast inland ocean of wheat and oil, the ghosts of old Bolivian sailors must be laughing. They, too, once believed salvation lay in a vanished coastline. Alberta’s new captains — draped in oil money and bravado — squint toward an invisible horizon, certain that sovereignty will shimmer there like a mirage, waiting to be struck rich.
But the maps, as ever, refuse to change. The prairies remain landlocked, the pipelines still run have to run west — or south if swallowed up by the voracious Trump regime, and the sea keeps its distance. Only the dream sails on — half tantrum, half bedtime story — a reminder that in certain corners of the world, weaponized nostalgia is the most dangerous natural resource of all.
They say the prairie wind carries the scent of freedom and rebellion — but what it really delivers is the tang of crude and the hum of machinery used as hymnals. In that hum, you’ll hear the politics of a rich province that decided it was owed a sea it never had and a license it never earned. The machinery squeals its gospel: Ottawa is stealing from us.
And yet, the province remains chained — not to Parliament, but to an industry. The oil patch is the puppeteer behind the curtain. The playbill says “separation,” but the director is the fossil-fuel complex. Behind the slogans hums a simple arithmetic: every dollar rise in oil means hundreds of millions for the us; every dip means austerity, resentment, blame for you. It’s an addiction so vast it’s become theology.
The stagehands behind the prairie passion play are hardly shy. Premier Danielle Smith, self-styled Joan of Arc of deregulation, waves her Sovereignty Act like a censer, filling the air with fumes of righteous defiance. Her courtiers — the Free Alberta Strategy architects and their cousins at the Modern Miracle Network — whisper about liberty while cashing royalty cheques. The Pathways Alliance, a nefarious cartel of oil sands titans, preaches carbon capture as salvation and sends lobbyists to Ottawa with the fervor of missionaries, their hymnals stamped Cenovus and Suncor. Even the Fraser Institute, that old libertarian oracle of trickle-down revelation, hums its usual chorus: privatize, decentralize, sanctify the market. And the faithful nod along, convinced that “freedom” is just another extraction to be refined, bottled, and sold.
The faithful howl about Ottawa while kneeling before the 2.0 versions of King Nebuchadnezzar’s Baba Gurgur. They preach freedom while the rig lights flicker like votive candles on the altar of dependency. Norway built a fortune from its oil and banked it for its grandchildren; Alberta built a mythology and handed the profits to the few. And now, as the world turns away from fossil fire, the old priests of petroleum are passing the collection plate again — this time in the name of independence.
The pundits call it sovereignty, but it’s self-hypnosis — a fever fed by oil money, American think tanks, and the ghosts of every boomtown preacher who ever promised salvation by the barrel. Their followers, dazed and loyal, mistake the roar of the pipeline for the sound of surf.
So here they stand, a province sitting atop one of the richest reserves on Earth, insisting it’s the victim of some distant, bilingual tyranny. The wells pump, the politicians posture, and the dream burns bright as a flare stack against the northern Albertan sky. But you cannot build a nation on exhaust fumes, and you cannot sail a sea made of oil. The tide they long for will never return — only the slow, shimmering flood of their own reflection.
They say el Coronel del Desierto finally left the Andes when his stories stopped paying the rent. He hitched a ride north on the fumes of globalization, crossed a few bad borders, and ended up in the badlands of Alberta, where the wind smells of gasoline and broken promises. He arrived with nothing but a telescope and a cough, muttering about the sea. The locals thought he was a prophet or a lunatic — which, these days, in this place, is a distinction without a difference.
Now he wanders the strip-mall cathedrals of the prairie, preaching to men in trucker caps and resentment, to oilfield roughnecks who mistake exhaust for incense. They nod along, eyes shining, as he tells them about the ocean that was stolen — by bureaucrats, by liberals, by some cabal of city devils who never got mud on their boots. They love that part. They know that tale by heart.
At night he drinks rye in motels with flickering neon and tells anyone who’ll listen that he once commanded a navy. The bartender doesn’t believe him but keeps pouring; it’s good business. Outside, the rigs kneel and rise in mechanical prayer, and the prairie hums with the same grievance like a church organ that only plays one note.
This is the gospel of our age: rage without compass, rebellion without memory. It moves across borders like an oil slick — thick, glistening, poisoning every reflection it touches.
And somewhere in that glare, el Coronel del Desierto stands again. He has traded the Andes for the plains, the Pacific for the illusion of another sea. He raises his telescope to the west, searching for the shimmer of salvation beyond the pumpjacks, beyond the pipelines, beyond the lie.
But the only tide that comes is the wind — cold, relentless, and empty of mercy.
He lowers the telescope. The crowd has quieted. Somewhere, a flare stack burns like a false star. The Colonel sighs — a sound old as empire — and for a moment, even the rigs seem to bow their heads.
Because they all know, in their bones, what he knows deep down: the ocean was never stolen.
In the high silence of the Andes, where the air thins to a whisper and the earth itself seems to remember older empires, there lies a nation haunted by the sound of waves it can no longer hear. It once possessed a coastline — a sliver of blue infinity stitched to its western hem like a divine indulgence. Then came the diplomats and the drillers, the wars wrapped in ledgers, and the cartographers tidy knives. Before anyone realized, the sea was gone — not with the violence of a storm but with the bureaucratic calm of a bank transfer.
And yet, even now, the highland people remember the ocean as one remembers a lost love — through rumors, relics, and dreams. In the plazas of La Paz, an old mariner appears from time to time, a spectral veteran who smells faintly of brine and carries a telescope and a broken compass that spins endlessly, loyal to confusion. They call him el Coronel del Desierto — the Colonel of the Desert. He claims to have once sailed ships across the Pacific, though no one can agree whether he is a ghost, a liar, or the last honest man left in the Republic. Children listen wide-eyed to his tales of sea monsters and salt breezes, and their mothers hush them, fearing that belief might reopen old wounds.
It is said that on certain nights, when the moon is full and the mountains gleam like ancient bones, el Coronel walks to the edge of the Altiplano and raises his telescope to the west, searching for the ocean that politics misplaced.
And maybe that’s how it began — the contagion carried on that ghostly shimmer. The dream of the sea drifted north, crossing borders as easily as capital, whispering its promise of stolen freedom and easy blame. By the time it reached the frostbitten prairies — the continent’s cracked reflection — it had changed shape, but not its essence.
Now, far from the Andes, another dreamer lifts his eyes to an imagined horizon. Alberta, that inland dominion of pumpjacks and performative grievances, gazes toward its own imagined shore — not of saltwater but of sovereignty. Its prophets speak of independence as if it were a port city, of separation as a voyage toward freedom, though the map offers no such coast. Perhaps, in some strip club in Fort McMurray, a new Coronel del Desierto is rehearsing the same old fable: that a nation betrayed by geography might yet find salvation in its own reflection — if only it stares long enough into the mirage.
No one remembers when the madness began — only that one morning the prairies started murmuring about the sea. Alberta’s independence fever has haunted Confederation as long as Alberta itself, but this latest outbreak must have begun as a bad joke in a Red Deer bar, then spread through talk radio, Telegram channels, and the reptile cortex of social media. Alberta, landlocked queen of crude, began to dream of independence — the kind of dream that smells of diesel and nostalgia, so large and lonely it could only come from a place that’s never seen a tide.
They say it started with a petition — ordinary names scrawled in digital ink, demanding a referendum to ask whether Alberta should leave the country that made it rich and then made it bored. A bureaucratic hallucination dressed up as democracy. The signatures stacked like wheat bales: tens of thousands, though no one could quite agree what they were signing for — revenge, leverage, bathrooms, or just the exquisite thrill of rebellion before supper.
In Calgary and Edmonton, the think-tank prophets began to speak of sovereignty as though it were a new oilfield — untapped, infinite, waiting just beyond their dreamed of borders. Polls whispered that a third of Albertans were tempted. Not believers, exactly, but flirts — politically bicurious, swiping right on secession and then ghosting on Grindr. The rest watched, muttering that the whole thing was theatre, a hostage note to Ottawa written in Sharpie and narcissism.
The tone was half tragedy, half stand-up routine. “We gave the country its fuel, its riches” the old-timers grumbled, “and they gave us lectures about emissions.” You could taste the resentment in the air — thick as bitumen. Yet beneath the noise, a deeper ache thrummed: a feeling that history had stolen something. Not a sea this time, but dignity.
And somewhere in this vast inland ocean of wheat and oil, the ghosts of old Bolivian sailors must be laughing. They, too, once believed salvation lay in a vanished coastline. Alberta’s new captains — draped in oil money and bravado — squint toward an invisible horizon, certain that sovereignty will shimmer there like a mirage, waiting to be struck rich.
But the maps, as ever, refuse to change. The prairies remain landlocked, the pipelines still run have to run west — or south if swallowed up by the voracious Trump regime, and the sea keeps its distance. Only the dream sails on — half tantrum, half bedtime story — a reminder that in certain corners of the world, weaponized nostalgia is the most dangerous natural resource of all.
They say the prairie wind carries the scent of freedom and rebellion — but what it really delivers is the tang of crude and the hum of machinery used as hymnals. In that hum, you’ll hear the politics of a rich province that decided it was owed a sea it never had and a license it never earned. The machinery squeals its gospel: Ottawa is stealing from us.
And yet, the province remains chained — not to Parliament, but to an industry. The oil patch is the puppeteer behind the curtain. The playbill says “separation,” but the director is the fossil-fuel complex. Behind the slogans hums a simple arithmetic: every dollar rise in oil means hundreds of millions for the us; every dip means austerity, resentment, blame for you. It’s an addiction so vast it’s become theology.
The stagehands behind the prairie passion play are hardly shy. Premier Danielle Smith, self-styled Joan of Arc of deregulation, waves her Sovereignty Act like a censer, filling the air with fumes of righteous defiance. Her courtiers — the Free Alberta Strategy architects and their cousins at the Modern Miracle Network — whisper about liberty while cashing royalty cheques. The Pathways Alliance, a nefarious cartel of oil sands titans, preaches carbon capture as salvation and sends lobbyists to Ottawa with the fervor of missionaries, their hymnals stamped Cenovus and Suncor. Even the Fraser Institute, that old libertarian oracle of trickle-down revelation, hums its usual chorus: privatize, decentralize, sanctify the market. And the faithful nod along, convinced that “freedom” is just another extraction to be refined, bottled, and sold.
The faithful howl about Ottawa while kneeling before the 2.0 versions of King Nebuchadnezzar’s Baba Gurgur. They preach freedom while the rig lights flicker like votive candles on the altar of dependency. Norway built a fortune from its oil and banked it for its grandchildren; Alberta built a mythology and handed the profits to the few. And now, as the world turns away from fossil fire, the old priests of petroleum are passing the collection plate again — this time in the name of independence.
The pundits call it sovereignty, but it’s self-hypnosis — a fever fed by oil money, American think tanks, and the ghosts of every boomtown preacher who ever promised salvation by the barrel. Their followers, dazed and loyal, mistake the roar of the pipeline for the sound of surf.
So here they stand, a province sitting atop one of the richest reserves on Earth, insisting it’s the victim of some distant, bilingual tyranny. The wells pump, the politicians posture, and the dream burns bright as a flare stack against the northern Albertan sky. But you cannot build a nation on exhaust fumes, and you cannot sail a sea made of oil. The tide they long for will never return — only the slow, shimmering flood of their own reflection.
They say el Coronel del Desierto finally left the Andes when his stories stopped paying the rent. He hitched a ride north on the fumes of globalization, crossed a few bad borders, and ended up in the badlands of Alberta, where the wind smells of gasoline and broken promises. He arrived with nothing but a telescope and a cough, muttering about the sea. The locals thought he was a prophet or a lunatic — which, these days, in this place, is a distinction without a difference.
Now he wanders the strip-mall cathedrals of the prairie, preaching to men in trucker caps and resentment, to oilfield roughnecks who mistake exhaust for incense. They nod along, eyes shining, as he tells them about the ocean that was stolen — by bureaucrats, by liberals, by some cabal of city devils who never got mud on their boots. They love that part. They know that tale by heart.
At night he drinks rye in motels with flickering neon and tells anyone who’ll listen that he once commanded a navy. The bartender doesn’t believe him but keeps pouring; it’s good business. Outside, the rigs kneel and rise in mechanical prayer, and the prairie hums with the same grievance like a church organ that only plays one note.
This is the gospel of our age: rage without compass, rebellion without memory. It moves across borders like an oil slick — thick, glistening, poisoning every reflection it touches.
And somewhere in that glare, el Coronel del Desierto stands again. He has traded the Andes for the plains, the Pacific for the illusion of another sea. He raises his telescope to the west, searching for the shimmer of salvation beyond the pumpjacks, beyond the pipelines, beyond the lie.
But the only tide that comes is the wind — cold, relentless, and empty of mercy.
He lowers the telescope. The crowd has quieted. Somewhere, a flare stack burns like a false star. The Colonel sighs — a sound old as empire — and for a moment, even the rigs seem to bow their heads.
Because they all know, in their bones, what he knows deep down: the ocean was never stolen.
Investiture of a knight (miniature from the statutes of the Order of the Knot, founded in 1352 by Louis I of Naples) – Public Domain
Ever since the Internet was born, along with Big Tech, in the 1990s, the world has had a sense that we have entered a new era in global political economy. Many have tried to place a finger on what this transformation is all about. Perhaps the most famous among these critical thinkers is Shoshana Zuboff, who wrote that we are living in an era of “surveillance capitalism,” wherein our harvesting information from cyberspace also provides Google, Microsoft, and other tech titans the opportunity to rake in data about us that they process to create our digital profiles. These profiles are then used by them or their client corporations to manipulate us into purchasing products or are sold to the state, which has an interest in keeping tabs on us.
Another important effort to define what was new came from Mckenzie Wark, who wrote in her influential Hacker’s Manifesto that the central contradiction of the new age was no longer that between capital and labor but between “hackers,” or the sources of innovation and creativity who wanted to keep information free, and the “vectoral ruling class” that sought to expropriate knowledge and turn it into a commodity.
Acknowledging his debt to both Zuboff and Wark, Yanis Varoufakis says that while they have important insights, they have not followed these to their logical conclusion: that capitalism as a distinct mode of production has been superseded. The synthesis that Varoufakis offers is what he calls “technofeudalism.” He does not say that capitalists no longer matter. They do, and they still engage in extracting surplus value or profit from workers in the process of production. But they themselves are subordinate to a new elite, the “cloud capitalists” or “cloudalists,” who have privatized the commons that was cyberspace and now control access to it. The cloudalists, among the most powerful of which are Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and the chipmaker Nvidia, control the globe-spanning information highways that are sustained materially by massive data centers located in different parts of the world. Accessing these intermeshed networks in cyberspace known as the “cloud” is now vital for the traditional or “terrestrial” capitalists to get access to you to sell their products, and these corporate gatekeepers make their money by charging these capitalists rent. Without access to the net, capitalists cannot make profits, and, very much like the feudal lords of yore who controlled land, the cloudalists’ monopolistic control of the cloud allows them to directly or indirectly collect, from the “vassal capitalists” and anyone who uses the net, “rent,” or income that is not subject to the market competition on which profit depends.
Cloud Proles and Cloud Serfs
As in capitalism, it is not the cloudalists or the terrestrial capitalists that produce value. The real sources of value are what Varoufakis calls the “cloud proles” and the “cloud serfs.” The cloud proles are the service workers at Amazon and other Big Tech facilities who are nonunionized, paid meager wages, and in constant threat of being displaced by robots and Artificial Intelligence. But these proles’ labor provides only a fraction of the value extracted by the cloudalists. It is the cloud serfs that create most of that value. Following Zuboff, Varoufakis says the cloud serfs are most of us: we provide raw material for the cloud whenever we do a Google search, post a photo on Facebook, or order a book on Amazon, material that is then processed into information that the cloudalists and terrestrial capitalists can use to develop ever more sophisticated marketing strategies to get us to part with our dollars. The distinguishing characteristic of cloud serfs is they are doing unpaid work for the cloudalists even if they don’t realize it. As he remarks, “The fact that we do so voluntarily, happily even, does not detract from the fact that we are unpaid manufacturers—cloud serfs whose daily self-directed toil enriches a tiny band of multibillionaires.”
We are, in other words, the unsuspecting marks of the ultimate scam.
The Rise of Cloud Capital
Varoufakis traces the rise of the cloudalists to the central banks’ creation of money with zero or below zero interest in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008 and, later, during the COVID 19 pandemic, to stimulate production and consumer spending. But, with the big fall in demand, most corporations did not invest the loans the private banks channeled to them, instead using them to buy back their own corporate stocks at low prices or invest it in real estate. But cloudalists like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg used the central bank money rerouted to them by the big banks to massively invest in expanding and monopolizing the cloud. The cloudalists
mopped up many of the billions sloshing around within the financial system. With them, they paid for server farms, fibre optic cables, artificial intelligence laboratories, gargantuan warehouses, software developers, top-notch engineers, laboratories, promising start-ups and all the rest. In an environment where profit had become optional, the cloudalists seized upon the central bank money to build a new empire.
Resistance in the Era of Technofeudalism
The central contradiction in the technofeudal era has passed from the conflict between labor and capital to that between the cloudalists and their cloud serfs and cloud proles. Varoufakis is my colleague in the international council of Progressive International (PI), and he has helped inspire PI’s partnership with the Switzerland-based UNI Global Union to organize annual one-day strikes by Amazon workers in many countries. According to him, if these actions could be coordinated with Amazon users, so that a critical mass of them are convinced not to visit the Amazon website for even one day, the impact would not be minimal: “Even if were only mildly successful, causing say a 10 percent drop in Amazon’s usual revenues, while Amazon’s warehouse strike disrupted deliveries for 24 hours, such action might prove enough to push Amazon’s share price down in ways that no traditional labor action could achieve.”
But building a strong resistance movement to the cloudalists will have to go beyond such momentary alliances. “To stand any chance of overthrowing technofeudalism and putting the demos back into democracy,” he writes, “we need to gather together not just the traditional proletariat and the crowd proles but also the cloud serfs and, indeed, some of the vassal capitalists.”
Varoufakis might have added to this “grand coalition” the communities whose lives have been disrupted by Big Data. As a recent New York Times article reports,
As data centers rise, the sites — which need vast amounts of power for computing and water to cool the computers — have contributed to or exacerbated disruptions not only in Mexico, but in more than a dozen other countries…In Ireland, data centers consume more than 20 percent of the country’s electricity. In Chile, precious aquifers are in danger of depletion. In South Africa, where blackouts have long been routine, data centers are further taxing the national grid. Similar concerns have surfaced in Brazil, Britain, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore and Spain.
Communities forced to host data centers, in fact, are now the cutting edge of resistance to Big Tech. In country after country, notes the report, “activists, residents and environmental organizations have banded together to oppose data centers. Some have tried blocking the projects, while others have pushed for more oversight and transparency.”
Clarification Needed
I have a few comments on some of the key elements of Varoufakis’ paradigm, and these are advanced in a critical but friendly spirit:
First, his conceptualization of the proles appears to include only the low-paid service workers. What about the information engineers and other knowledge specialists and their office staffs? He talks about the role of the “technostructure” in late capitalism in the early part of the book, but it seems he includes the different layers of this stratum in management during the technofeudal era rather than in labor, though as Mckenzie Wark stressed, technical innovators or “hackers” contribute to the value that is expropriated by the Big Tech elite.
Second, there is some ambiguity in the book when it comes to who exactly has the ultimate power in the technofeudal power structure. In most of the book, the billionaire leaders of the Big Tech firms like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Tim Cook, are portrayed as the power elite. But he also writes about the “financial uber-lords [who] rival the cloudalists—three U.S. companies with powers exceeding those of private equity and all terrestrial capitalists put together: BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. These three firms, the Big Three as they are known in financial circles, effectively own American capitalism.” This is due to the controlling shares they own in the most strategic corporations. So, do we have a split power elite with blocs that have different sources of power? Are we really in a post-capitalist era or merely in another (higher? hyper?) stage of capitalism?
This relates to my third point, which is that Varoufakis must do more explaining of how the dynamics of technofeudalism are really distinct from those of monopoly capitalism.
Economists, both progressive and orthodox, have long contended that in a situation of monopoly or oligopoly, as in the car industry or pharmaceuticals, the key players derive profit but they also extract rent, which is profit in excess of what would be available if there were significant market competition. As in the car and drug industries, there is in the Big Tech sector both oligopoly and fierce competition, much of it “non-price competition,” the dynamics of which results in both profit and rent. Are not the dynamics of cloudalist competition really the same? How does monopoly capitalist rent differ from technofeudal rent? How do the earnings of Google, for instance, differ from those of non-Big Tech oligopolists like JP Morgan, Johnson and Johnson, and Toyota, except perhaps in terms of volume?
My last point has to do with the changing relationship between the state and the cloudalists. In the book, the state mainly appears as an enabler of the rise of the cloudalists via the central banks’ provision of free money in the aftermath of the Great Recession and during the pandemic. Recent developments, however, have seen the state disciplining Big Tech and curbing its freedom of maneuver. Under both the first Trump administration and Biden’s presidency, Washington imposed fairly restrictive measures that cut into the profits of the cloudalists, like the sharing of advanced information technology with Chinese corporations. For instance, export controls on advanced AI chips imposed by Biden in 2022 have drastically reduced Nvidia’s share of the Chinese AI chip market from 95 percent to 50 percent, resulting in the loss of billions of dollars. Under the second Trump administration, Washington has moved even more drastically, using the imposition of tariffs to force cloudalists like Apple to move key parts of their global supply chains to the United States, though this would involve major costs and disruptions. But acknowledging the state’s commanding role, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated recently, “The president wants more [production] in the US…Apple also wants more in the US.”
On Accurately Naming the Beast
Varoufakis does note the more prominent role of the state represented by these latest developments. However, he does not fully draw out their implications for what he has portrayed as the immense power of the cloudalists and what lies ahead for them. From the enabler of the cloudalists portrayed in Technofeudalism, the relationship between the state and Big Tech in the United States is becoming more like that between the Chinese Communist Party regime and China’s data titans like Alibaba and Baidu, as the geopolitical rivalry heats up and national security concerns, not profitability, take center stage. China’s political economy has been called state capitalism or political capitalism (with only the Communist Party of China clinging on to Deng Xiaoping’s definition of it as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”). Varoufakis contends that the choice of a name is critical to understanding the essence of a political economy. I agree. But to underline what is likely to be become an even bigger directive role for the state in the political economy of the United States and the increasing subordination of profitability to national security, I think we need a better word than “technofeudalism.” (This would have the added benefit of avoiding the subliminal association of the title to Friedrich Hayek’s classic anti-socialist neoliberal tract, The Road to Serfdom.)
Technofeudalism is a provocative piece of analysis, well-argued and well-written. And it is very accessible to those with little background in political economy or economics. There may be areas where I may not completely agree or points that I feel should be more carefully elaborated, but these should not detract from my judgment that this book by one of today’s leading progressive thinkers is a major contribution to understanding the times we live in.
Investiture of a knight (miniature from the statutes of the Order of the Knot, founded in 1352 by Louis I of Naples) – Public Domain
Ever since the Internet was born, along with Big Tech, in the 1990s, the world has had a sense that we have entered a new era in global political economy. Many have tried to place a finger on what this transformation is all about. Perhaps the most famous among these critical thinkers is Shoshana Zuboff, who wrote that we are living in an era of “surveillance capitalism,” wherein our harvesting information from cyberspace also provides Google, Microsoft, and other tech titans the opportunity to rake in data about us that they process to create our digital profiles. These profiles are then used by them or their client corporations to manipulate us into purchasing products or are sold to the state, which has an interest in keeping tabs on us.
Another important effort to define what was new came from Mckenzie Wark, who wrote in her influential Hacker’s Manifesto that the central contradiction of the new age was no longer that between capital and labor but between “hackers,” or the sources of innovation and creativity who wanted to keep information free, and the “vectoral ruling class” that sought to expropriate knowledge and turn it into a commodity.
Acknowledging his debt to both Zuboff and Wark, Yanis Varoufakis says that while they have important insights, they have not followed these to their logical conclusion: that capitalism as a distinct mode of production has been superseded. The synthesis that Varoufakis offers is what he calls “technofeudalism.” He does not say that capitalists no longer matter. They do, and they still engage in extracting surplus value or profit from workers in the process of production. But they themselves are subordinate to a new elite, the “cloud capitalists” or “cloudalists,” who have privatized the commons that was cyberspace and now control access to it. The cloudalists, among the most powerful of which are Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and the chipmaker Nvidia, control the globe-spanning information highways that are sustained materially by massive data centers located in different parts of the world. Accessing these intermeshed networks in cyberspace known as the “cloud” is now vital for the traditional or “terrestrial” capitalists to get access to you to sell their products, and these corporate gatekeepers make their money by charging these capitalists rent. Without access to the net, capitalists cannot make profits, and, very much like the feudal lords of yore who controlled land, the cloudalists’ monopolistic control of the cloud allows them to directly or indirectly collect, from the “vassal capitalists” and anyone who uses the net, “rent,” or income that is not subject to the market competition on which profit depends.
Cloud Proles and Cloud Serfs
As in capitalism, it is not the cloudalists or the terrestrial capitalists that produce value. The real sources of value are what Varoufakis calls the “cloud proles” and the “cloud serfs.” The cloud proles are the service workers at Amazon and other Big Tech facilities who are nonunionized, paid meager wages, and in constant threat of being displaced by robots and Artificial Intelligence. But these proles’ labor provides only a fraction of the value extracted by the cloudalists. It is the cloud serfs that create most of that value. Following Zuboff, Varoufakis says the cloud serfs are most of us: we provide raw material for the cloud whenever we do a Google search, post a photo on Facebook, or order a book on Amazon, material that is then processed into information that the cloudalists and terrestrial capitalists can use to develop ever more sophisticated marketing strategies to get us to part with our dollars. The distinguishing characteristic of cloud serfs is they are doing unpaid work for the cloudalists even if they don’t realize it. As he remarks, “The fact that we do so voluntarily, happily even, does not detract from the fact that we are unpaid manufacturers—cloud serfs whose daily self-directed toil enriches a tiny band of multibillionaires.”
We are, in other words, the unsuspecting marks of the ultimate scam.
The Rise of Cloud Capital
Varoufakis traces the rise of the cloudalists to the central banks’ creation of money with zero or below zero interest in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008 and, later, during the COVID 19 pandemic, to stimulate production and consumer spending. But, with the big fall in demand, most corporations did not invest the loans the private banks channeled to them, instead using them to buy back their own corporate stocks at low prices or invest it in real estate. But cloudalists like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg used the central bank money rerouted to them by the big banks to massively invest in expanding and monopolizing the cloud. The cloudalists
mopped up many of the billions sloshing around within the financial system. With them, they paid for server farms, fibre optic cables, artificial intelligence laboratories, gargantuan warehouses, software developers, top-notch engineers, laboratories, promising start-ups and all the rest. In an environment where profit had become optional, the cloudalists seized upon the central bank money to build a new empire.
Resistance in the Era of Technofeudalism
The central contradiction in the technofeudal era has passed from the conflict between labor and capital to that between the cloudalists and their cloud serfs and cloud proles. Varoufakis is my colleague in the international council of Progressive International (PI), and he has helped inspire PI’s partnership with the Switzerland-based UNI Global Union to organize annual one-day strikes by Amazon workers in many countries. According to him, if these actions could be coordinated with Amazon users, so that a critical mass of them are convinced not to visit the Amazon website for even one day, the impact would not be minimal: “Even if were only mildly successful, causing say a 10 percent drop in Amazon’s usual revenues, while Amazon’s warehouse strike disrupted deliveries for 24 hours, such action might prove enough to push Amazon’s share price down in ways that no traditional labor action could achieve.”
But building a strong resistance movement to the cloudalists will have to go beyond such momentary alliances. “To stand any chance of overthrowing technofeudalism and putting the demos back into democracy,” he writes, “we need to gather together not just the traditional proletariat and the crowd proles but also the cloud serfs and, indeed, some of the vassal capitalists.”
Varoufakis might have added to this “grand coalition” the communities whose lives have been disrupted by Big Data. As a recent New York Times article reports,
As data centers rise, the sites — which need vast amounts of power for computing and water to cool the computers — have contributed to or exacerbated disruptions not only in Mexico, but in more than a dozen other countries…In Ireland, data centers consume more than 20 percent of the country’s electricity. In Chile, precious aquifers are in danger of depletion. In South Africa, where blackouts have long been routine, data centers are further taxing the national grid. Similar concerns have surfaced in Brazil, Britain, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore and Spain.
Communities forced to host data centers, in fact, are now the cutting edge of resistance to Big Tech. In country after country, notes the report, “activists, residents and environmental organizations have banded together to oppose data centers. Some have tried blocking the projects, while others have pushed for more oversight and transparency.”
Clarification Needed
I have a few comments on some of the key elements of Varoufakis’ paradigm, and these are advanced in a critical but friendly spirit:
First, his conceptualization of the proles appears to include only the low-paid service workers. What about the information engineers and other knowledge specialists and their office staffs? He talks about the role of the “technostructure” in late capitalism in the early part of the book, but it seems he includes the different layers of this stratum in management during the technofeudal era rather than in labor, though as Mckenzie Wark stressed, technical innovators or “hackers” contribute to the value that is expropriated by the Big Tech elite.
Second, there is some ambiguity in the book when it comes to who exactly has the ultimate power in the technofeudal power structure. In most of the book, the billionaire leaders of the Big Tech firms like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Tim Cook, are portrayed as the power elite. But he also writes about the “financial uber-lords [who] rival the cloudalists—three U.S. companies with powers exceeding those of private equity and all terrestrial capitalists put together: BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. These three firms, the Big Three as they are known in financial circles, effectively own American capitalism.” This is due to the controlling shares they own in the most strategic corporations. So, do we have a split power elite with blocs that have different sources of power? Are we really in a post-capitalist era or merely in another (higher? hyper?) stage of capitalism?
This relates to my third point, which is that Varoufakis must do more explaining of how the dynamics of technofeudalism are really distinct from those of monopoly capitalism.
Economists, both progressive and orthodox, have long contended that in a situation of monopoly or oligopoly, as in the car industry or pharmaceuticals, the key players derive profit but they also extract rent, which is profit in excess of what would be available if there were significant market competition. As in the car and drug industries, there is in the Big Tech sector both oligopoly and fierce competition, much of it “non-price competition,” the dynamics of which results in both profit and rent. Are not the dynamics of cloudalist competition really the same? How does monopoly capitalist rent differ from technofeudal rent? How do the earnings of Google, for instance, differ from those of non-Big Tech oligopolists like JP Morgan, Johnson and Johnson, and Toyota, except perhaps in terms of volume?
My last point has to do with the changing relationship between the state and the cloudalists. In the book, the state mainly appears as an enabler of the rise of the cloudalists via the central banks’ provision of free money in the aftermath of the Great Recession and during the pandemic. Recent developments, however, have seen the state disciplining Big Tech and curbing its freedom of maneuver. Under both the first Trump administration and Biden’s presidency, Washington imposed fairly restrictive measures that cut into the profits of the cloudalists, like the sharing of advanced information technology with Chinese corporations. For instance, export controls on advanced AI chips imposed by Biden in 2022 have drastically reduced Nvidia’s share of the Chinese AI chip market from 95 percent to 50 percent, resulting in the loss of billions of dollars. Under the second Trump administration, Washington has moved even more drastically, using the imposition of tariffs to force cloudalists like Apple to move key parts of their global supply chains to the United States, though this would involve major costs and disruptions. But acknowledging the state’s commanding role, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated recently, “The president wants more [production] in the US…Apple also wants more in the US.”
On Accurately Naming the Beast
Varoufakis does note the more prominent role of the state represented by these latest developments. However, he does not fully draw out their implications for what he has portrayed as the immense power of the cloudalists and what lies ahead for them. From the enabler of the cloudalists portrayed in Technofeudalism, the relationship between the state and Big Tech in the United States is becoming more like that between the Chinese Communist Party regime and China’s data titans like Alibaba and Baidu, as the geopolitical rivalry heats up and national security concerns, not profitability, take center stage. China’s political economy has been called state capitalism or political capitalism (with only the Communist Party of China clinging on to Deng Xiaoping’s definition of it as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”). Varoufakis contends that the choice of a name is critical to understanding the essence of a political economy. I agree. But to underline what is likely to be become an even bigger directive role for the state in the political economy of the United States and the increasing subordination of profitability to national security, I think we need a better word than “technofeudalism.” (This would have the added benefit of avoiding the subliminal association of the title to Friedrich Hayek’s classic anti-socialist neoliberal tract, The Road to Serfdom.)
Technofeudalism is a provocative piece of analysis, well-argued and well-written. And it is very accessible to those with little background in political economy or economics. There may be areas where I may not completely agree or points that I feel should be more carefully elaborated, but these should not detract from my judgment that this book by one of today’s leading progressive thinkers is a major contribution to understanding the times we live in.
For decades, Washington has sold the world a deadly lie: that “regime change” brings freedom, that U.S. bombs and blockades can somehow deliver democracy. But every country that has lived through this euphemism knows the truth—it instead brings death, dismemberment, and despair. Now that the same playbook is being dusted off for Venezuela, the parallels with Iraq and other U.S. interventions are an ominous warning of what could follow.
As a U.S. armada gathers off Venezuela, a U.S. special operations aviation unit aboard one of the warships has been flying helicopter patrols along the coast. This is the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) — the “Nightstalkers” — the same unit that, in U.S.-occupied Iraq, worked with the Wolf Brigade, the most feared Interior Ministry death squad.
Western media portray the 160th SOAR as an elite helicopter force for covert missions. But in 2005 an officer in the regiment blogged about joint operations with the Wolf Brigade as they swept Baghdad detaining civilians. On November 10, 2005, he described a “battalion-sized joint operation” in southern Baghdad and boasted, “As we passed vehicle after vehicle full of blindfolded detainees, my face stretched into a long wolfish smile.”
Many people seized by the Wolf Brigade and other U.S.-trained Special Police Commandos were never seen again; others turned up in mass graves or morgues, often far from where they’d been taken. Bodies of people detained in Baghdad were found in mass graves near Badra, 70 miles away — but that was well within the combat range of the Nightstalkers’ MH-47 Chinook helicopters.
This was how the Bush–Cheney administration responded to Iraqi resistance to an illegal invasion: catastrophic assaults on Fallujah and Najaf, followed by the training and unleashing of death squads to terrorize civilians and ethnically cleanse Baghdad. The UN reported over 34,000 civilians killed in 2006 alone, and epidemiological studies estimate roughly a million Iraqis died overall.
Iraq has never fully recovered—and the U.S. never reaped the spoils it sought. The exiles Washington installed to rule Iraq stole at least $150 billion from its oil revenues, but the Iraqi parliament rejected U.S.-backed efforts to grant shares of the oil industry to Western companies. Today, Iraq’s largest trading partners are China, India, the UAE, and Turkey—not the United States.
The neocon dream of “regime change” has a long, bloody history, its methods ranging from coups to full-scale invasions. But “regime change” is a euphemism: the word “change” implies improvement. A more honest term would be “government removal”—or simply the destruction of a country or society.
A coup usually involves less immediate violence than a full-scale invasion, but they pose the same question: who or what replaces the ousted government? Time after time, U.S.-backed coups and invasions have installed rulers who enrich themselves through embezzlement, corruption, or drug trafficking—while making life worse for ordinary people.
These so-called “military solutions” rarely resolve problems, real or imaginary, as their proponents promise. They more often leave countries plagued by decades of division, instability, and suffering.
Kosovo was carved out of Serbia by an illegal US-led war in 1999, but it is still not recognized by many nations and remains one of the poorest countries in Europe. The main U.S. ally in the war, Hashim Thaçi, now sits in a cell at the Hague, charged with horrific crimes committed under cover of NATO’s bombing.
In Afghanistan, after 20 years of bloody war and occupation, the United States was eventually defeated by the Taliban—the very force it had invaded the country to remove.
In Haiti, the CIA and U.S. Marines toppled the popular democratic government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, plunging the country into an ongoing crisis of corruption, gang rule, and despair that continues to this day.
In 2006, the U.S. militarily supported an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to install a new government—an intervention that gave rise to Al Shabab, an Islamic resistance group that still controls large swaths of the country. U.S. AFRICOM has conducted 89 airstrikes in Al Shabab-held territory in 2025 alone.
In Honduras, the military removed its president, Mel Zelaya, in a coup in 2009, and the U.S. supported an election to replace him. The U.S.-backed president Juan Orlando Hernandez turned Honduras into a narco-state, fueling mass emigration—until Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife, was elected to lead a new progressive government in 2021.
Libya, a country with vast oil wealth, has never recovered from the U.S. and allied invasion in 2011, which led to years of militia rule, the return of slave markets, the destabilizing of neighboring countries and a 45% reduction in oil exports.
Also in 2011, the U.S. and its allies escalated a protest movement in Syria into an armed rebellion and civil war. That spawned ISIS, which in turn led to the U.S.-led massacres that destroyed Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria in 2017. Turkish-backed, Al Qaeda-linked rebels finally seized the capital in 2024 and formed a transitional government, but Israel, Turkey, and the U.S. still militarily occupy other parts of the country.
The U.S.-backed overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government in 2014 brought in a pro-Western leadership that only half the population recognized as a legitimate government. That drove Crimea and Donbas to secede and put Ukraine on a collision course with Russia, setting the stage for the Russian invasion in 2022 and the wider, still-escalating conflict between NATO and Russia.
In 2015, when the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement assumed power in Yemen after the resignation of a U.S.-backed transitional government, the U.S. joined a Saudi-led air war and blockade that caused a humanitarian crisis and killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis—yet did not defeat the Houthis.
That brings us to Venezuela. Ever since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998, the U.S. has been trying to overthrow the government. There was the failed 2002 coup; crippling unilateral economic sanctions; the farcical recognition of Juan Guaido as a wannabe president; and the 2020 “Bay of Piglets” mercenary fiasco.
But even if “regime change” in Venezuela were achievable, it would still be illegal under the UN Charter. U.S. presidents are not emperors, and leaders of other sovereign nations do not serve “at the emperor’s pleasure” as if Latin America were still a continent of colonial outposts.
In Venezuela today, Trump’s opening shots—attacks on small civilian boats in the Caribbean—have been condemned as flagrantly illegal, even by U.S. senators who routinely support America’s illegal wars.
Yet Trump still claims to be “ending the era of endless wars.” His most loyal supporters insist he means it—and that he was sabotaged in his first term by the “deep state.” This time, he has surrounded himself with loyalists and sacked National Security Council staffers he identified as neocons or warhawks, but he has still not ended America’s wars.
Alongside Trump’s piracy in the Caribbean, he is a full partner in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the bombing of Iran. He has maintained the global empire of U.S. military bases and deployments, and supercharged the U.S. war machine with a trillion dollar war chest—draining desperately needed resources out of a looted domestic economy.
Trump’s appointment of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor was an incendiary choice for Latin America, given Rubio’s open hostility to Cuba and Venezuela.
Brazilian President Lula made that clear when he met Trump in Malaysia at the ASEAN conference, saying: “There will be no advances in negotiations with the United States if Marco Rubio is part of the team. He opposes our allies in Venezuela, Cuba, and Argentina.” At Lula’s insistence, Rubio was excluded from talks over U.S. investments in Brazil’s rare earth metals industry, the world’s second largest after China’s.
Cuba-bashing may have served Rubio well in domestic politics, but as Secretary of State it renders him incapable of responsibly managing U.S. relations with the rest of the world. Trump will have to decide whether to pursue constructive engagement with Latin America or let Rubio corner him into new conflicts with our neighbors. Rubio’s threats of sanctions against countries that welcome Cuban doctors are already alienating governments across the globe.
Trump’s manufactured crisis with Venezuela exposes the deep contradictions at the heart of his foreign policy: his disastrous choice of advisers; his conflicting ambitions to be both a war leader and a peacemaker; his worship of the military; and his surrender to the same war machine that ensnares every American president.
If there is one lesson from the long history of U.S. interventions, it’s that “regime change” doesn’t bring democracy or stability. As the United States threatens Venezuela with the same arrogance that has wrecked so many other countries, this is the moment to end this cycle of imperial U.S. violence once and for all.
Multilateralism is in tatters. Instead of rules-based, consensus agreements, global economic relations have largely devolved into one-on-one arm-twisting and name-calling — alternating with fawning sycophancy and lavish personal gifts to curry favor with President Trump, from private jets to gold-covered golf balls, crowns, and desserts.
In a world already divided by extreme inequalities, the collapse of multilateralism makes it even more likely that the most powerful players — the largest economies and the wealthiest corporations and individuals — will score the best deals. Small countries and ordinary people, from Iowa soybean farmers and Mexican factory workers to digital service consumers in Cambodia, are even more likely to get the shaft.
The G20 is a space that was intended to catalyze multilateral action. In fact, it touts itself as the “the premier forum for international economic cooperation,” and it is the one place where leaders of the world’s largest economies sit down together at least once a year for face-to-face dialogue.
South Africa will host this year’s G20 summit from November 22 to 23, and the United States will host the next one in December 2026. Do we have any reason to think this forum holds potential for not only restoring multilateralism but also advancing a more equitable global economy?
This is a question I’ve grappled with over the past several months as part of a team of analysts from the UK, Brazil, South Africa, and other countries. In our new joint report, The G20 at a Crossroads, we document a few examples of decisive actions this body has taken during its nearly two decades of existence.
In the midst of the financial crisis that erupted in 2008, for instance, labor unions and others successfully lobbied G20 leaders to adopt coordinated stimulus measures that helped avoid a depression-level global collapse.
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the G20 approved of at least some debt relief for low-income countries and authorized $650 billion in financial aid in the form of “special drawing rights,” the largest-ever allocation of this IMF-created international reserve asset.
These actions were far from perfect. Governments prematurely aborted the stimulus programs they adopted after the 2008 crash in favor of austerity budgets that deepened and prolonged economic crises.
Pandemic support programs were woefully insufficient for the poorest countries and failed to prevent many of them from sinking even further into debt. Between 2019 and 2023, Sub-Saharan Africa’s total external debts increased from $747 billion to $864 billion while the number of global billionaires grew from 2,153 to 2,640. Overall, 3.4 billion of the world’s people live in countries that spent more money in the years 2021-2023 servicing their foreign debts than on public education or health.
What can we learn from these examples? G20 leaders obviously have the power to mobilize vast resources, but the few times they’ve used this power, the focus has largely been on containing market crises to protect the interests of the wealthiest creditors and investors rather than improving the lives of the most vulnerable.
And so while we need to push for renewed multilateralism, we cannot be satisfied with a return to old models. We need new approaches that go beyond crisis management to build a more resilient, sustainable, and just global economy for the long term.
To achieve this, the G20 must tackle what we describe in our report as the “lived crises of our time” — the daily realities of extreme droughts, food insecurity, unaffordable housing, precarious work, debt traps, and forced displacement.
Decades of neglecting these threats to global stability has undercut the welfare of people in both the Global North and South. High levels of poverty and unemployment in the developing world, for example, weaken the bargaining power of U.S. workers who are competing in a global labor pool.
Climate change, obviously, knows no boundaries. And skyrocketing inequality is fueling political polarization, authoritarianism, and xenophobia around the world, as elites deflect blame onto migrants and other convenient scapegoats instead of confronting structural failures.
Last year, the Brazilian presidency took important steps towards broadening the G20 agenda. Through diplomacy, sustained civil society engagement, and collaboration with innovative academics, they elevated critical proposals for clean energy financing, taxing extreme wealth, and valuing care work. And while they did not secure G20-wide cooperation on these fronts, their efforts gave a boost to campaigns in numerous countries for increasing taxes on billionaires and ensuring decent pay for caregivers and affordable care for those who need it.
“Wherever we live, we all want the same things — a secure place to live, a healthy environment, the ability to care for our loved ones, and the chance to plan for our future,” notes our lead report author, Fernanda Balata, of the New Economics Foundation.
With political will and a commitment to cooperation, G20 leaders have the power to deliver these basic elements of a dignified life to billions of people.
Photograph Source: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety – CC BY-SA 3.0
I learned basic arithmetic skills in third grade. I wasn’t exceptional; everyone in my public school third-grade class learned them. Of course, we all can now use computers to have calculations done for us in a fraction of a second. But still, somehow we have major national debates that show zero understanding of even the most basic arithmetic.
The latest example is the $2,000 tariff dividend check that Trump is promising us. The arithmetic here is about as simple as it gets. We have roughly 340 million people in the country. Let’s say 10 percent don’t get the check because they meet Trump’s category of “high-income.”
That leaves over 300 million people getting Trump’s $2,000 checks. That comes to more than $600 billion. Trump’s tariffs are raising around $270 billion. That means we will be paying out $330 billion more in Trump tariff dividend checks than he is raising in tariff revenue. That would add $270 billion to the deficit — this coming from the same guy who is making an obsession of paying down our national debt.
And just to be clear, we were already looking at a budget deficit for 2026 of $1.8 trillion. If we add $330 billion, the deficit for the fiscal year will be $2.1 trillion. To put this in simple language that even a reporter for a major national news outlet can understand, Trump is proposing to add $2.1 trillion to the debt in 2026; he is not paying it down.
I acknowledge not being a deficit hawk and am not terrified by a deficit of this size, which is roughly 7 percent of GDP. But I suspect most of the politicians in Washington are, and certainly anyone who thinks we need to be paying down the debt should be screaming bloody murder.
But watching the reaction in major media outlets, there seems almost no appreciation of the fact that Trump was floating what would ordinarily be considered a very large increase in the deficit. In fact, if Trump were to give this tariff dividend check every year over the next decade, it would add close to $4 trillion to the debt (counting interest payments), almost as much as the big tax cut Congress approved earlier this year.
It’s also worth comparing Trump’s tariff dividends to other items in the news. The government shutdown was in large part over the $35 billion in annual payments for enhanced subsidies for people buying insurance in Obamacare exchanges. Trump and Republicans in Congress claimed that we didn’t have the money to pay for these subsidies. Trump’s tariff dividend checks would cost more than 17 times as much as the enhanced insurance subsidies.
To make another comparison, Trump saved us around $6 billion a year by shutting down PEPFAR, the program that has saved tens of millions of lives by treating people in Africa for AIDS. This means that Trump’s tariff dividend checks will cost us 100 times as much as the AIDS program that he said we couldn’t afford.
And just to throw in one more comparison, the annual appropriation for public broadcasting was $550 million. Trump’s tariff dividend checks would cost more than 1,000 times as much as the government’s payments for public broadcasting.
People can differ in their views on how important it is to save lives in Africa or provide people here with healthcare. They may also differ in their assessments of how important deficits are. But it really would be good if media outlets could make knowledge of third grade arithmetic a job requirement for reporters who deal with budget issues. It should be their job to provide meaningful information to the public on the topic. Letting someone talk about $2,000 dividend checks, and also about paying down the debt, is a sick joke.
This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.
When veterans and their families gather at commemorative events on Nov. 11, many who use the benefits and services of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will be wondering whether they can still rely on that federal agency.
Among those worried about the agency’s future — and their own — are the 100,000 former service members who comprise one-third of the workforce in the largest public health care system in the country.
These veterans work at nearly 1,400 VA-run hospitals and clinics nationwide. Every day, they help the nine million men and women who have service-related medical conditions or qualify for VA coverage because of financial need or recent deployment in combat zones.
The fact that so many VA caregivers have first-hand experience with the military–and resulting wounds of war–creates a culture of solidarity and empathy between patients and providers that is unique in U.S. health care.
But the Trump administration doesn’t seem to appreciate the importance of veterans getting specialized, high-quality services from a skilled, committed and union-represented workforce.
Since January, political appointees in Washington have canceled the contracts of VA researchers developing new treatments that can save veterans’ lives (and benefit millions of non-VA patients). VA Secretary Doug Collins has reduced the agency’s in-house clinical care budget and pledged to cut 30,000 positions this year. More patients are now being referred to private sector treatment — which is often costlier, of lower quality and not as accessible, particularly in rural states. And, in a move still being challenged in court, Collins has deprived 300,000 workers of their collective bargaining rights.
In 2022, VA doctors, nurses, therapists and thousands of support staff members used their collective voice to block VA facility closings sought by the Biden administration. VA nurses have campaigned for better nurse-patient staffing ratios to improve patient safety and for the use of lift equipmentthat protects both patients and their bedside helpers.
Union members at the VA have also blown the whistle on waste, fraud and abuse involving unnecessary outsourcing of VA services, which costs U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars each year. Recently, 170 current and retired VA clinicians recently signed an open letter warning that, if this privatization trend continues, it will “undermine direct care delivery, overwhelm (the) VA’s budget and negatively affect the lives of all veterans.”
The letter reminded Congress, the White House and VA Secretary Doug Collins that the VA has a long history of “continuous improvement and innovation,” which has made it a “respected model for integrated, patient-centered medicine” as well as “the system that the vast majority of veterans trust and prefer for their care.”
VA patients and their families have been showing up at local and national protests against privatization. They are joined by veterans’ groups that range from progressive to conservative and differ on many issues but all agree on one thing: saving the VA.
Women veterans — now the fastest-growing part of the U.S. veteran population — are very active in this fight, according to Kyleanne Hunter, the former Cobra attack helicopter pilot who now heads Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
“Women veterans need a strong and highly functioning VA because we have unique needs, not only when compared to those of male veterans but also to women who are civilian patients,” Hunter told us in an interview. “Anyone who takes care of women vets needs to understand the jobs women had in the military and the injuries and exposures we may have sustained and how that impacts our health.”
A healthy nation depends on a healthy VA; this Veterans Day, let’s recommit to keeping it that way.
There is an old children’s tale about Rip Van Winkle. He fell asleep for 20 years and wakes up after the America Revolution and finds the world has changed in big ways. Donald Trump seems to be doing his own Rip Van Winkle routine. This weekend, Trump suggested that as an alternative to Obamacare — which he said feeds the “money sucking” insurance industry — we just give money directly to people and let them buy their own healthcare.
This is a Rip Van Winkle story because Trump seems to think he has come up with a new idea. He apparently has missed the debate around healthcare reform that led up to Obamacare. He also apparently missed the debate on developing an alternative during his first term.
While we don’t know exactly what Trump has in mind (the plan will be ready in two weeks:), I hear) there are fundamental problems with this sort of just-give-people-cash idea. These problems push serious people, who have been awake, towards something like Obamacare or universal Medicare.
The basic problem of providing healthcare coverage is that some people have health conditions that are very expensive to treat, but most people are relatively healthy. If we just left things to the market, insurers would only cover healthy people. These people are very profitable for the industry, since they are basically just sending their insurer a check every month.
Trump Checks: Who Gets Them, and How Much?
The problem is with the tens of millions of people who have health issues like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, or other conditions. These people are big money losers for the industry. They will avoid insuring them if they can, or alternatively charge them tens of thousands a year for coverage. They may also contest making payments by claiming people had failed to disclose their health conditions when they applied for insurance. I briefly went through the problems of the pre-ACA insurance market a few weeks back.
If Trump just gives people cash, it will do nothing to get around these problems. First, it is not clear which people he wants to give cash, and which cash. If he just means the enhanced subsides, he has around $35 billion a year to play with. Currently, around 22 million people get the enhanced subsidies, so that would imply checks of around $1.600 a year.
But there are another 28 million people currently without insurance, and another 2 million getting insurance in the exchanges without subsidies. Surely these people should be eligible for the Trump checks also. That would come to 52 million people sharing $35 billion, giving them each a check of less than $700.
Making the story even more complicated, people gain and lose coverage all the time, as they or a family member gets hired or leave a job with insurance. They may also gain or lose coverage for a government program like Medicaid. This means Trump has to figure out whether he will be sending out his checks once a year, giving many people a huge bonus and screwing those who lose their job after the cutoff date. Alternatively, this would have to be some sort of recurring payment, monthly or quarterly.
Perhaps Trump intends to take all the money going to Obamacare, not just the enhanced subsidies — which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities puts at $125 billion — and roll it into his Trump checks. That would make them around $1,900 a year.
The next question is what Trump expects people to do with their money. A young healthy person may be able to cover their healthcare costs with $1,900 a year, but even these people would likely want insurance against the risk they may incur a serious illness or be in some sort of accident. Good luck finding insurance for $170 a month.
And the problem is far worse for older people and people with major health issues. In an unregulated insurance market, these people would be paying thousands of dollars a month for their insurance. Their Trump check will not go very far towards covering a premium of several thousand dollars a month.
Perhaps Trump plans to keep the Obamacare restrictions that require insurers to cover everyone, regardless of health condition, and prohibits discriminating based on health condition. That would limit the payments for people with health problems, but it would still mean premiums that dwarf the size of the Trump checks, especially for those in the oldest pre-Medicare age bracket 55-64.
That would also put us basically where we are now except the checks would be smaller and untargeted, since all people without insurance — not just those enrolling in the exchanges — would be getting checks. Also, the current payments are adjusted by income. We don’t know whether Trump plans his checks to be income-based.
And in this story, the money would still be going to money sucking insurance companies, except presumably with less regulation so that the money sucking insurance companies could suck up more money. Under Obamacare, insurers have to pay out at least 80 percent of what they collect in premiums to providers, otherwise their customers get a rebate. Since Trump wants to get the government out of the picture, the insurers could presumably pocket even more money.
Medicare Advantage and “Money Sucking”
If Trump really wants to go after the money sucking insurance companies, getting them out of Medicare would be a great start. They mostly add costs to the program. He can improve the traditional program, adding dental, eyecare, and hearing coverage, and also imposing an out-of-pocket cap, and stop paying money sucking insurers in the Medicare Advantage program. Due to their higher administrative costs and profits, Medicare Advantage costs the government at least $100 billion a year compared to the traditional Medicare program.
If we’re really serious about cracking down on the money sucking insurance companies, why not go all the way and just provide universal Medicare. This would not only save the money directly paid to insurers, it would also eliminate much of the cost that hospitals, doctors’ offices and other providers have to incur dealing with complex forms from multiple insurers. This could save as much as $1 trillion($8,000 per household) a year compared to what we pay now for administrative costs and insurance industry profits.
A universal Medicare system would also mean that everyone has access to healthcare regardless of where they work, what government program they qualify for, or if they remembered to pay their insurance premium last month. Not many would have expected Donald Trump to be the person to get us to Medicare for All, but if he really wants to crack down on money sucking insurance companies, that would be the way to go. Welcome aboard, comrade!
This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.
As deadly storms rip through the Caribbean, a new United Nations report delivers a sobering warning: the world is failing to prepare for the climate it has already created.
UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report 2025, aptly titled Running on Empty, finds that developing nations will need between US$310 and 365 billion annually by 2035 to cope with intensifying climate impacts. Yet, international public finance for adaptation fell to just US$26 billion in 2023, down from US$28 billion the previous year. The result: only one-twelfth of what’s needed is being delivered.
This gap is not an abstract number. It’s visible in the wreckage of homes, farms, and economies across our region. Last week, Hurricane Melissa, the strongest-ever storm to hit Jamaica, tore through the Caribbean, leaving destruction equivalent to nearly 30% of the island’s GDP. With at least 75 lives lost and damages exceeding US$50 billion, Melissa is not just another storm; it is a case study in the cost of global inaction.
A rapid attribution study found that climate change made Melissa four times more likely and increased its wind speeds by 7%, raising damages by around 12%. For Haiti, Jamaica, and other small island developing states (SIDS), such storms bring unbearable losses eroding livelihoods, tourism revenues, and vital infrastructure. These countries contribute the least to global emissions yet bear the highest costs.
The pattern repeats globally. This year’s monsoon floods in Pakistan displaced seven million people and destroyed thousands of homes. Whether in South Asia or the Caribbean, the message is clear: the failure to invest in adaptation is costing lives.
Adaptation is not a distant goal; it is an urgent necessity. It means building stronger flood defenses, adopting climate-smart agriculture, and developing social protection systems that safeguard the most vulnerable. Research by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) shows that every US$1 invested early in resilience saves more than US$5 in avoided losses. Yet, the world continues to spend far more on disaster relief than on prevention.
This failure is not just wasteful—it is self-defeating. Every dollar delayed multiplies the human and economic toll. In Haiti, where communities are already grappling with political instability, weak infrastructure, and high poverty, each storm magnifies vulnerabilities. The Caribbean, with its densely populated coastal areas and economies heavily dependent on tourism and agriculture, cannot afford to treat adaptation as optional.
At COP29 in Baku, governments pledged through the Baku to Belém Roadmap to mobilize US$1.3 trillion by 2035, including at least US$300 billion annually for developing nations. On paper, this looks ambitious. In reality, it falls far short of what is needed. Adjusted for inflation, adaptation costs could reach US$440–520 billion per year by 2035, and the US$300 billion target covers both mitigation and adaptation, with no separate adaptation goal yet defined.
Adaptation finance was meant to help nations prepare for rising seas, harsher droughts, and lethal floods. Yet, when those funds don’t arrive, countries are forced to borrow. In 2023, 59 least developed countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) paid US$37 billion to service their debts and received only US$32 billion in climate finance. These aren’t productive investments but emergency debts taken just to rebuild what has already been lost.
This is the new face of global inequality: countries that contributed least to the crisis are being made to pay twice—first through climate impacts, and then through debt. And while the rhetoric of “resilience” fills summit halls, the financial architecture remains rigged against the Global South. Only 15% of adaptation finance in recent years has been delivered as grants; the rest comes as loans. For every dollar of “climate support,” developing nations are paying back many more in interest.
The moral and economic absurdity is staggering. The IIED estimates that every US$1 invested in early adaptation saves at least US$5 in avoided losses. Yet the international community continues to treat resilience as an afterthought, not a necessity. Meanwhile, the Loss and Damage Fund—announced with much fanfare at COP28—remains largely empty, starved by the same rich countries that have pumped trillions into fossil fuel subsidies and corporate bailouts.
There are three urgent steps the global community must take to avert this collapse.
First, adaptation finance must be non-debt-creating. Grants, not loans, should form the backbone of resilience funding. Climate disasters are not development failures—they are external shocks imposed on vulnerable economies by centuries of industrial pollution. To charge interest on survival is an act of climate injustice.
Second, global lending must be reformed. Multilateral development banks and the IMF should integrate climate vulnerability into debt assessments and offer automatic debt suspension clauses in the wake of major disasters. The current model—where countries borrow at high rates to rebuild while creditors profit—is morally bankrupt.
Third, regional adaptation cooperation must be strengthened. From MENA’s shared drought resilience to South Asia’s early warning systems, collective investment in adaptation can deliver massive social and economic dividends. Regional funds, backed by concessional finance and local expertise, can bypass the bottlenecks of global bureaucracy.
Adaptation is not charity. It is reparative justice and economic common sense. Without it, the world’s poorest will be forced to rebuild the same roads, schools, and homes after every storm, each time at a higher cost. The Global South cannot be asked to “resilience its way” out of a crisis created by others while sinking deeper into debt.
If climate justice means anything, it must start by freeing the Global South from paying twice, once for emissions it didn’t cause, and again to survive them.
As deadly storms rip through the Caribbean, a new United Nations report delivers a sobering warning: the world is failing to prepare for the climate it has already created.
UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report 2025, aptly titled Running on Empty, finds that developing nations will need between US$310 and 365 billion annually by 2035 to cope with intensifying climate impacts. Yet, international public finance for adaptation fell to just US$26 billion in 2023, down from US$28 billion the previous year. The result: only one-twelfth of what’s needed is being delivered.
This gap is not an abstract number. It’s visible in the wreckage of homes, farms, and economies across our region. Last week, Hurricane Melissa, the strongest-ever storm to hit Jamaica, tore through the Caribbean, leaving destruction equivalent to nearly 30% of the island’s GDP. With at least 75 lives lost and damages exceeding US$50 billion, Melissa is not just another storm; it is a case study in the cost of global inaction.
A rapid attribution study found that climate change made Melissa four times more likely and increased its wind speeds by 7%, raising damages by around 12%. For Haiti, Jamaica, and other small island developing states (SIDS), such storms bring unbearable losses eroding livelihoods, tourism revenues, and vital infrastructure. These countries contribute the least to global emissions yet bear the highest costs.
The pattern repeats globally. This year’s monsoon floods in Pakistan displaced seven million people and destroyed thousands of homes. Whether in South Asia or the Caribbean, the message is clear: the failure to invest in adaptation is costing lives.
Adaptation is not a distant goal; it is an urgent necessity. It means building stronger flood defenses, adopting climate-smart agriculture, and developing social protection systems that safeguard the most vulnerable. Research by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) shows that every US$1 invested early in resilience saves more than US$5 in avoided losses. Yet, the world continues to spend far more on disaster relief than on prevention.
This failure is not just wasteful—it is self-defeating. Every dollar delayed multiplies the human and economic toll. In Haiti, where communities are already grappling with political instability, weak infrastructure, and high poverty, each storm magnifies vulnerabilities. The Caribbean, with its densely populated coastal areas and economies heavily dependent on tourism and agriculture, cannot afford to treat adaptation as optional.
At COP29 in Baku, governments pledged through the Baku to Belém Roadmap to mobilize US$1.3 trillion by 2035, including at least US$300 billion annually for developing nations. On paper, this looks ambitious. In reality, it falls far short of what is needed. Adjusted for inflation, adaptation costs could reach US$440–520 billion per year by 2035, and the US$300 billion target covers both mitigation and adaptation, with no separate adaptation goal yet defined.
Adaptation finance was meant to help nations prepare for rising seas, harsher droughts, and lethal floods. Yet, when those funds don’t arrive, countries are forced to borrow. In 2023, 59 least developed countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) paid US$37 billion to service their debts and received only US$32 billion in climate finance. These aren’t productive investments but emergency debts taken just to rebuild what has already been lost.
This is the new face of global inequality: countries that contributed least to the crisis are being made to pay twice—first through climate impacts, and then through debt. And while the rhetoric of “resilience” fills summit halls, the financial architecture remains rigged against the Global South. Only 15% of adaptation finance in recent years has been delivered as grants; the rest comes as loans. For every dollar of “climate support,” developing nations are paying back many more in interest.
The moral and economic absurdity is staggering. The IIED estimates that every US$1 invested in early adaptation saves at least US$5 in avoided losses. Yet the international community continues to treat resilience as an afterthought, not a necessity. Meanwhile, the Loss and Damage Fund—announced with much fanfare at COP28—remains largely empty, starved by the same rich countries that have pumped trillions into fossil fuel subsidies and corporate bailouts.
There are three urgent steps the global community must take to avert this collapse.
First, adaptation finance must be non-debt-creating. Grants, not loans, should form the backbone of resilience funding. Climate disasters are not development failures—they are external shocks imposed on vulnerable economies by centuries of industrial pollution. To charge interest on survival is an act of climate injustice.
Second, global lending must be reformed. Multilateral development banks and the IMF should integrate climate vulnerability into debt assessments and offer automatic debt suspension clauses in the wake of major disasters. The current model—where countries borrow at high rates to rebuild while creditors profit—is morally bankrupt.
Third, regional adaptation cooperation must be strengthened. From MENA’s shared drought resilience to South Asia’s early warning systems, collective investment in adaptation can deliver massive social and economic dividends. Regional funds, backed by concessional finance and local expertise, can bypass the bottlenecks of global bureaucracy.
Adaptation is not charity. It is reparative justice and economic common sense. Without it, the world’s poorest will be forced to rebuild the same roads, schools, and homes after every storm, each time at a higher cost. The Global South cannot be asked to “resilience its way” out of a crisis created by others while sinking deeper into debt.
If climate justice means anything, it must start by freeing the Global South from paying twice, once for emissions it didn’t cause, and again to survive them.
The U.S.-UK technology deal announced in September 2025 promises to accelerate Britain’s AI sector, but critics warn it will happen at the expense of national tech sovereignty. It reflects the steady trend of U.S. government and private interests extending a technologically driven form of hegemony, employing communications, data, and AI systems to deepen dependence on American networks and weaponize against rivals.
China has built a parallel structure of influence through its own technology exports, manufacturing base, and integrated supply chains, challenging the American model without the costly global military footprint. And unlike earlier empires, Washington’s and Beijing’s systems increasingly overlap: Spain, long considered a reliable partner for American tech firms and data security, has faced U.S. pressure after contracting with Chinese company Huawei in July to store judicial wiretap data.
Yet both tech-driven networks face a growing diffusion of capability. Advances in manufacturing, resource mapping, and digital development are making it easier for smaller states to build industries that have until now been dominated by major powers—“Small countries like Taiwan and the Netherlands have curated specialized offerings in niche parts of the global AI supply chain,” stated an article in the digital law and policy journal Just Security. A more balanced and competitive order could emerge, though the U.S. and China still retain major leverage.
The U.S. has maintained a strong foreign presence for more than a century. When Elihu Root became Secretary of War in 1899, he had already spent decades cultivating the nation’s elites as a lawyer and once in office, he modernized the army for sustained overseas operations. Subsequent American expansion in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines was framed as paternal administration—to spread the “civilizing mission” to those less fortunate in need of a long period of paternal tuition—rather than colonial conquest. Yet military power remained central to advancing government and private American interests.
After World War II, the collapse of European empires left the U.S. and the Soviet Union with competing spheres of influence. Unlike Moscow’s more militarized approach, “Washington’s forms of control were more in accordance with the will of the local populations,” creating what scholars called an “empire by invitation,” according to Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad. Military and subversive power were often used to promote U.S. interests, but many states partnered voluntarily to receive financial and technical assistance.
With the Soviet collapse in 1991, the U.S. entered a new phase of expansion. Technologies like GPS, which reached full global coverage in 1993, expanded American power as a “silent utility” providing an increasingly essential service. The rapid spread of the internet under U.S. oversight further extended American standards and control across global communications, while the rise of tech giants like Microsoft, Intel, and Google embedded U.S. software and hardware at the center of globalized technology systems.
Yet within years, the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq exposed the limits of invasions and occupation, which no longer guaranteed control over resources or populations. As of March 2025, America had 1.3 million personnel stationed abroad, reflecting an outdated emphasis on physical presence. With nearly 90 percent of corporate assets in advanced economies now intangible, such as software, patents, and intellectual property, the same logic applies to power projection. Digital networks and remote capabilities have replaced much of what permanent garrisons once represented.
Trump’s October 2025 suggestion to reclaim Afghanistan’s Bagram airbase to counter China, if genuine, reflects the durability of that older strategic thinking. Analysts noted that most of the surveillance and strike capabilities he referenced are already met through long-endurance drones, sensor arrays, and satellites. The vulnerability of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea to drones and missile strikes during the war with Ukraine further shows the new limits of fixed bases in contested regions.
Under the Obama administration, the U.S. had already adjusted military strategy toward targeted strikes, digital surveillance, cyber operations, and space-based surveillance, collectively known as “triple canopy.” These measures expanded under the Trump and Biden administrations, with the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) unveiling major advances in biometric drones that are capable of more effectively identifying and targeting individuals.
Space has regained its centrality to reducing the sprawling American military burden. In September 2025, the Space Development Agency launched the first phase of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a mesh of low-orbit satellites for global surveillance and communication.
Other programs like the Golden Dome, building on Reagan’s “Star Wars” and Obama’s triple canopy concepts, seek to fuse space, land, and cyber networks into an automated U.S. defense grid integrated with the private sector. AI and autonomous ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems have steadily outsourced more decision-making to code.
Much of this technological architecture extends beyond the military. Dual-use systems like Starlink and integrated AI tools have become indispensable to governments and populations alike. Many countries host their public data on American cloud servers, while their citizens communicate through WhatsApp and pay for services through Google Pay—daily dependencies maintained without a single U.S. soldier in sight.
China’s Challenge
China is also building counterspace weapons and satellite systems to resist U.S. orbital dominance, and its military capabilities are similarly matched by strategic and commercial components. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, and its digital extension, the Digital Silk Road, have grown to rival U.S. initiatives. For the first time, Washington faces a competitor able to offer countries comparable material benefits on a scale that not even the Soviet Union’s foreign infrastructure projects ever achieved.
Despite Western alarm over the security risks associated with Chinese technology, many developing and emerging countries continue to adoptChinese digital infrastructure. High-quality equipment, low costs, and state-backed financing have made Chinese systems indispensable even for governments aware of the surveillance and dependency potential, which is also true of U.S. technology.
China’s digital infrastructure is deliberately designed for interoperability with subsequent Chinese technologies, ensuring that upgrades and maintenance depend on continued Chinese support.
As economist Dev Nathan noted, one of the major ways 21st-century imperialism operates is through global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks. China’s specialization in production means its GVCs extract value without directly exporting capital. By flooding markets with essential technologies to undercut competitors in smartphones, power grids, payment apps, and communication technologies, it is creating layered dependencies across industries.
The manufacturing and logistics dimension of China’s overseas influence is evident across Europe, once the center of global industrial and imperial power. Belgium’s port of Zeebrugge is now 85.5 percent owned by China’s Cosco, which also holds stakes in nearby Antwerp, Rotterdam, and other European ports. Automated Chinese cranes unload Chinese cargo guided by Chinese logistics software and tracking platforms, giving Beijing a presence at every level of the supply chain.
U.S. influence remains entrenched, however, and Washington has pressured European allies to block Huawei infrastructure projects and restrict Chinese access to advanced technology sectors. American-based platforms, from social media to cloud infrastructure to software systems, continue to dominate Europe’s digital ecosystems, and under U.S. pressure, Denmark recently seized a China-owned chipmaker operating in the country, Nexperia, citing “serious governance shortcomings.”
While China has met strong resistance to expanding its technological footprint in Europe, it has emerged as the development partner of choice for much of the Global South. Companies such as Huawei and ZTE now dominate the global 5G market, supplying infrastructure and equipment to dozens of countries. “China is now a major force in the digital development of Global South countries, with important implications for their digital economies, societies, policies, etc.,” stated an article in the journal Information Society.
Chinese exports of electronics and electric vehicles have also surged, with more than half now going to non-OECD countries. In the first eight months of 2025, exports to Latin America and the Caribbean rose 11 percent compared to 2024, while shipments increased by 72 percent in the Middle East, 75 percent to ASEAN countries, and 287 percent to Africa compared to last year. In renewable energy, China leads in solar panel and wind turbine production, driving down global costs and accelerating green transitions.
These are emerging technologies where China is gaining an early lead, creating dependencies that could last foryears.
Breaking the U.S.-China tech infrastructure duopoly is a formidable challenge, and Russia’s war in Ukraine illustrates how dependent Moscow remains on the old paradigm of territorial control, spurred partly by its limited ability to compete through modern, networked influence.
Even so, Russia has experimented with tech services-based model of empire, achieving some success in providing tech surveillance in Belarus and Central Asia, and with its GLONASS global navigation service. In 2024, Russia also signed agreements with Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger to supply satellites and telecommunications systems, while Russian aerospace firm Bureau 1440 is attempting to develop a global broadband network.
Despite these efforts, Russia lags behind, and its window to expand influence may be closing as a wider flattening of technological capabilities takes hold. Factories, technologies, and resources have become easier to localize, eroding the advantages once held by major powers.
“Lights out” automated factories, for example, reduce the appeal of foreign labor, while factory construction has become more streamlined. During the Biden administration’s reshoring and friendshoring manufacturing initiatives, for example, China quickly established industrial plants in Mexico. While this demonstrated China’s manufacturing dominance, it also highlighted how easily industrial capacity could be replicated abroad. India and Southeast Asian countries have similarly scaled up their manufacturing in recent years, diffusing China’s previous concentration of power.
The same decentralizing trend is visible in financial technology. Brazil’s Pix system, unveiled in 2020, shows that middle-power countries can now develop independent digital payment networks without relying on Chinese or American financial infrastructure.
Resource control is likewise losing its traditional strategic weight. Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, for example, was once seen as a critical prize for conquest, but now matters less as renewable energy and advanced minerals mapping technologies have expanded supply. After years of focuson South American lithium reserves, Germany recently announced one of the world’s largest deposits, and it is unlikely to be the last breakthrough discovery.
As scarcity potentially declines and technology and manufacturing become more widely distributed, the competition for resources and the monopolies that once defined empire may finally begin to ease. Yet the collapse of technological empires means military force could once again become the main instrument of power, as Russia has demonstrated.
Another issue lies in American and Chinese entities simply consolidating their technological dominance, stifling or hijacking innovation, and blocking new systems from emerging. Even as capabilities begin to flatten globally, both powers remain invested in preserving their rivalry rather than allowing a more open order to emerge.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
The U.S.-UK technology deal announced in September 2025 promises to accelerate Britain’s AI sector, but critics warn it will happen at the expense of national tech sovereignty. It reflects the steady trend of U.S. government and private interests extending a technologically driven form of hegemony, employing communications, data, and AI systems to deepen dependence on American networks and weaponize against rivals.
China has built a parallel structure of influence through its own technology exports, manufacturing base, and integrated supply chains, challenging the American model without the costly global military footprint. And unlike earlier empires, Washington’s and Beijing’s systems increasingly overlap: Spain, long considered a reliable partner for American tech firms and data security, has faced U.S. pressure after contracting with Chinese company Huawei in July to store judicial wiretap data.
Yet both tech-driven networks face a growing diffusion of capability. Advances in manufacturing, resource mapping, and digital development are making it easier for smaller states to build industries that have until now been dominated by major powers—“Small countries like Taiwan and the Netherlands have curated specialized offerings in niche parts of the global AI supply chain,” stated an article in the digital law and policy journal Just Security. A more balanced and competitive order could emerge, though the U.S. and China still retain major leverage.
The U.S. has maintained a strong foreign presence for more than a century. When Elihu Root became Secretary of War in 1899, he had already spent decades cultivating the nation’s elites as a lawyer and once in office, he modernized the army for sustained overseas operations. Subsequent American expansion in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines was framed as paternal administration—to spread the “civilizing mission” to those less fortunate in need of a long period of paternal tuition—rather than colonial conquest. Yet military power remained central to advancing government and private American interests.
After World War II, the collapse of European empires left the U.S. and the Soviet Union with competing spheres of influence. Unlike Moscow’s more militarized approach, “Washington’s forms of control were more in accordance with the will of the local populations,” creating what scholars called an “empire by invitation,” according to Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad. Military and subversive power were often used to promote U.S. interests, but many states partnered voluntarily to receive financial and technical assistance.
With the Soviet collapse in 1991, the U.S. entered a new phase of expansion. Technologies like GPS, which reached full global coverage in 1993, expanded American power as a “silent utility” providing an increasingly essential service. The rapid spread of the internet under U.S. oversight further extended American standards and control across global communications, while the rise of tech giants like Microsoft, Intel, and Google embedded U.S. software and hardware at the center of globalized technology systems.
Yet within years, the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq exposed the limits of invasions and occupation, which no longer guaranteed control over resources or populations. As of March 2025, America had 1.3 million personnel stationed abroad, reflecting an outdated emphasis on physical presence. With nearly 90 percent of corporate assets in advanced economies now intangible, such as software, patents, and intellectual property, the same logic applies to power projection. Digital networks and remote capabilities have replaced much of what permanent garrisons once represented.
Trump’s October 2025 suggestion to reclaim Afghanistan’s Bagram airbase to counter China, if genuine, reflects the durability of that older strategic thinking. Analysts noted that most of the surveillance and strike capabilities he referenced are already met through long-endurance drones, sensor arrays, and satellites. The vulnerability of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea to drones and missile strikes during the war with Ukraine further shows the new limits of fixed bases in contested regions.
Under the Obama administration, the U.S. had already adjusted military strategy toward targeted strikes, digital surveillance, cyber operations, and space-based surveillance, collectively known as “triple canopy.” These measures expanded under the Trump and Biden administrations, with the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) unveiling major advances in biometric drones that are capable of more effectively identifying and targeting individuals.
Space has regained its centrality to reducing the sprawling American military burden. In September 2025, the Space Development Agency launched the first phase of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a mesh of low-orbit satellites for global surveillance and communication.
Other programs like the Golden Dome, building on Reagan’s “Star Wars” and Obama’s triple canopy concepts, seek to fuse space, land, and cyber networks into an automated U.S. defense grid integrated with the private sector. AI and autonomous ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems have steadily outsourced more decision-making to code.
Much of this technological architecture extends beyond the military. Dual-use systems like Starlink and integrated AI tools have become indispensable to governments and populations alike. Many countries host their public data on American cloud servers, while their citizens communicate through WhatsApp and pay for services through Google Pay—daily dependencies maintained without a single U.S. soldier in sight.
China’s Challenge
China is also building counterspace weapons and satellite systems to resist U.S. orbital dominance, and its military capabilities are similarly matched by strategic and commercial components. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, and its digital extension, the Digital Silk Road, have grown to rival U.S. initiatives. For the first time, Washington faces a competitor able to offer countries comparable material benefits on a scale that not even the Soviet Union’s foreign infrastructure projects ever achieved.
Despite Western alarm over the security risks associated with Chinese technology, many developing and emerging countries continue to adoptChinese digital infrastructure. High-quality equipment, low costs, and state-backed financing have made Chinese systems indispensable even for governments aware of the surveillance and dependency potential, which is also true of U.S. technology.
China’s digital infrastructure is deliberately designed for interoperability with subsequent Chinese technologies, ensuring that upgrades and maintenance depend on continued Chinese support.
As economist Dev Nathan noted, one of the major ways 21st-century imperialism operates is through global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks. China’s specialization in production means its GVCs extract value without directly exporting capital. By flooding markets with essential technologies to undercut competitors in smartphones, power grids, payment apps, and communication technologies, it is creating layered dependencies across industries.
The manufacturing and logistics dimension of China’s overseas influence is evident across Europe, once the center of global industrial and imperial power. Belgium’s port of Zeebrugge is now 85.5 percent owned by China’s Cosco, which also holds stakes in nearby Antwerp, Rotterdam, and other European ports. Automated Chinese cranes unload Chinese cargo guided by Chinese logistics software and tracking platforms, giving Beijing a presence at every level of the supply chain.
U.S. influence remains entrenched, however, and Washington has pressured European allies to block Huawei infrastructure projects and restrict Chinese access to advanced technology sectors. American-based platforms, from social media to cloud infrastructure to software systems, continue to dominate Europe’s digital ecosystems, and under U.S. pressure, Denmark recently seized a China-owned chipmaker operating in the country, Nexperia, citing “serious governance shortcomings.”
While China has met strong resistance to expanding its technological footprint in Europe, it has emerged as the development partner of choice for much of the Global South. Companies such as Huawei and ZTE now dominate the global 5G market, supplying infrastructure and equipment to dozens of countries. “China is now a major force in the digital development of Global South countries, with important implications for their digital economies, societies, policies, etc.,” stated an article in the journal Information Society.
Chinese exports of electronics and electric vehicles have also surged, with more than half now going to non-OECD countries. In the first eight months of 2025, exports to Latin America and the Caribbean rose 11 percent compared to 2024, while shipments increased by 72 percent in the Middle East, 75 percent to ASEAN countries, and 287 percent to Africa compared to last year. In renewable energy, China leads in solar panel and wind turbine production, driving down global costs and accelerating green transitions.
These are emerging technologies where China is gaining an early lead, creating dependencies that could last foryears.
Breaking the U.S.-China tech infrastructure duopoly is a formidable challenge, and Russia’s war in Ukraine illustrates how dependent Moscow remains on the old paradigm of territorial control, spurred partly by its limited ability to compete through modern, networked influence.
Even so, Russia has experimented with tech services-based model of empire, achieving some success in providing tech surveillance in Belarus and Central Asia, and with its GLONASS global navigation service. In 2024, Russia also signed agreements with Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger to supply satellites and telecommunications systems, while Russian aerospace firm Bureau 1440 is attempting to develop a global broadband network.
Despite these efforts, Russia lags behind, and its window to expand influence may be closing as a wider flattening of technological capabilities takes hold. Factories, technologies, and resources have become easier to localize, eroding the advantages once held by major powers.
“Lights out” automated factories, for example, reduce the appeal of foreign labor, while factory construction has become more streamlined. During the Biden administration’s reshoring and friendshoring manufacturing initiatives, for example, China quickly established industrial plants in Mexico. While this demonstrated China’s manufacturing dominance, it also highlighted how easily industrial capacity could be replicated abroad. India and Southeast Asian countries have similarly scaled up their manufacturing in recent years, diffusing China’s previous concentration of power.
The same decentralizing trend is visible in financial technology. Brazil’s Pix system, unveiled in 2020, shows that middle-power countries can now develop independent digital payment networks without relying on Chinese or American financial infrastructure.
Resource control is likewise losing its traditional strategic weight. Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, for example, was once seen as a critical prize for conquest, but now matters less as renewable energy and advanced minerals mapping technologies have expanded supply. After years of focuson South American lithium reserves, Germany recently announced one of the world’s largest deposits, and it is unlikely to be the last breakthrough discovery.
As scarcity potentially declines and technology and manufacturing become more widely distributed, the competition for resources and the monopolies that once defined empire may finally begin to ease. Yet the collapse of technological empires means military force could once again become the main instrument of power, as Russia has demonstrated.
Another issue lies in American and Chinese entities simply consolidating their technological dominance, stifling or hijacking innovation, and blocking new systems from emerging. Even as capabilities begin to flatten globally, both powers remain invested in preserving their rivalry rather than allowing a more open order to emerge.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
It is difficult to interpret the Trump administration’s wholesale attacks on governmental programs as anything other than accelerationist efforts to destroy basic features of the American political and economic systems. From DOGE’s Artificial Intelligence-rampage through federal bureaus, the destruction of agencies like the Department of Education, or Trump’s expanding ICE as his well-funded private domestic army and occupying Democrat-governed cities; the destruction of old standards of normalcy are clear. While documents like Project 2025 reveal elements of Trump’s game plan, there are serious open questions concerning the administration’s long game and exactly how far the oligarchs influencing Trump want to take this antidemocratic movement.
While the destruction’s end-goal is less than clear, ever since Reagan it has been a safe default assumption that whatever foolish things were done by Republican or Democrat presidents supported neoliberal capitalism’s drive to privatize governmental services, transforming public services into private corporatized commodities. It remains possible that this will be the most significant outcome of Trump’s pillaging of governmental agencies, as businesses owned by crony capitalists fill the gaps lefts by the annihilated governmental services Trump attacks. But there are other, even more worrisome, possibilities.
If we take seriously the writings and statements of several of the powerful crackpot tech oligarchs whose ideas permeate Project 2025 and who played instrumental roles in placing JD Vance one-congestive-heart-failure-heartbeat from the presidency, there are reasons to wonder if more extreme desires fuel this destruction of government and attacks on portions of our economy.
A wealth of books and articles, by authors on the left and right, recently argue that as old forms of capitalism crumble, we are rushing towards some new type of feudalistic-adjacent economy. Some call this neo-feudalism, others, techno-feudalism. Books like Joel Kotkin’s 2020 The Coming of Neo-Feudalism or Curtis Yarvin’s (written under the pseudonym, Mencius Moldbug) Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century, present visions of new anti-democratic political formations where local sovereign polities run by wealthy lords replace the crumbling American system. Peter Thiel’s anti-democracy statements align with these visions. Even Yanis Varoufakis sees some sort of techno-feudalism on the horizon. Yarvin and Thiel’s visions are sometimes called, the NeoReaction (NRx) or Dark Enlightenment movement and they have features familiar to fans of dystopian fiction storylines, where local fiefdoms ruled by all powerful lords emerge after a Great Collapse. The familiar fictional tropes range from The Duke in Escape from New York, to various Road Warrior warlords, outposts in The Parable of the Sower, The Walking Dead, or The Road, with lots of variations—though few fictional visions seem to have benevolent lords. Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century’s thesis longs for a world where after, “the crappy governments we inherited from history are smashed, they should be replaced by a global spiderweb of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of sovereign and independent mini-countries, each governed by its own joint-stock corporation without regard to the residents’ opinions.” These joint-stock corporate mini-countries would function a lot like less-restrained versions of the human rights abusing “company-towns” of American logging or mining history, but without even the pretense of a human rights or a legal system.
The influence of Peter Thiel and other tech-bros in Trump’s second term brings renewed attention to the anti-democracy views of Silicon Valley billionaires and their followers. The recent tragicomedy film Mountainhead, playfully shows these dreams playing out in ways that should make us wonder if some elites are cheering for a great collapse—or in the language of Yarvin (who “jokes” about using the poor as biofuel), a “hard reset” or “rebooting,” to rid the world of progressive notions of equality and provide opportunities for those with surviving wealth to buy up chunks of the world at fire sale prices.
Tech bros’ politics have always been weird. A few decades ago it was easy enough to roll our eyes at the simplistic libertarian screeds some predictably spewed as early online culture developed, especially as their libertarianism used to be committed to induvial freedoms for things like sexual identities, drugs, abortion, demilitarization, and some elements of social issues generally embraced on the American Left (while abandoning the poor to the brutal ravages of market forces). But this desire for capitalism as we know it to collapse and give way to a system of networked feudal enclaves run by billionaire lords is something different. The roots of these dark enlightenment dreams of a resurrected aristocracy have an interesting not-quite-forgotten (because it wasn’t ever really known) prehistory within a larger genealogy of American anti-democracy that is worth considering.
I am referring to Rudolph Carlyle Evans’ strange book, The Resurrection of Aristocracy, published in 1988 by one of my favorite presses, Loompanics Unlimited—now defunct publishers of a wide range of wonderfully wild books, on topics like lockpicking, con artistry primers, living on abandoned islands, or treatises on hiding things in public places. In this lost work Evans envisions replacing our collapsing American capitalist republic with independent feudal regions managed by aristocrats. In doing so he lucidly expressed a crazed vision that now resonates with our present age’s dark enlightenment call for medieval solutions to our postmodern world’s problems.
Sometimes the clearest expressions of a group under increasing public scrutiny and wariness can be found in past writings from a less guarded time, when self-censorship was at a minimum, and the logic of a movement could be nakedly expressed without the trimmings and justifications needed when others are closely watching. Evans’ kooky treatise, The Resurrection of Aristocracy is an unheralded uninhibited, unhinged, classic work hawking the dreams of those who would demolish the American republic and replace it with independent aristocratic fiefdoms. If this sort of world is part of the shared vision of the robber barons of a new gilded age, no matter how insane a vision it is, we ignore it at our parrel.
Limited information about Rudolph Carlyle Evans survives on the web. He was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1952, moved to England as a child, later graduated with a degree in sociology and anthropology from Hull College in 1976, later moving to the United States. While Evan’s work seems to largely be forgotten, the WayBack Machine records at least one brief, 2015, acknowledgement by an astute reader that his work prefigures much of the insanity of Mencius/Yarvin’s Dark Enlightenment pitch.
The Resurrection of Aristocracy has an unusual introduction by Robert Hertz (not, the famed French sociologist, who had been dead for seven decades), who frames the book in blunt insulting terms rare for any volume’s introduction, while complimenting its exploration of its utopian (for an elite few) vision for a world to come. Hertz explains that,
In Evans view, the main function of the common people is to beat the lily pads at night to keep the frogs quiet. That, and go to war when their well-rested masters demand it. Evans wants to see a two-tiered social morality: for the leaders—pride and booty and a chance to humiliate their enemies; for their enemies; for the mass of followers—at best, security, and a chance to take orders from those they fear and respect.
What Evans wants is a new feudalism. If the world once moved from castles and serfs into bourgeois cities and capitalism, he sees no reason why it cannot be reversed. Evans has read enough Karl Marx to appreciate his systemic approach to society, but he rejects Marx’s determinism and is frankly horrified by his egalitarian philosophy.
Hertz differentiates Evans views from those of his contemporary conservatives like William F. Buckley, because Evans rejects free enterprise, noting that Evans is “anti-Christian,” his political orientation is “somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun—and affectionately, too, because Evans has the clarity and courage to organize and articulate what I and other ‘reactionaries’ have been hinting at for years.”
Evans calls for a rejection of governance by efforts to achieve equality under the law to return to governance by “Great Men.” He insists that society is trapped in the “doldrums” and human efforts to solve social problems has been a complete failure, and the cure is a “new model of reality,” a model in which “not only must our modern ideals and values be overthrown, but our blind devotion to scientific rationalism must also be carefully reassessed and amended.”
For Evans, the source of all social problems is rooted in modern society’s efforts to give “equal opportunity to all even though all are not equally suited to succeed at being model citizens of modern industrial society. For those who fail to live up to expectation, alcohol and narcotics are two readily available alternatives, depending on age and circumstances.” Evans’ solution is to hasten “a transition to a new age, one more forthright and less complex than our own, an age based on the essentials of human nature which are known to us from history, rather than an idealized version of a good society, something which has been with us for the last hundred years and has almost succeeded in stifling our natural feelings and emotions.”
Evans’ blindness to less essentialized interpretations of the modern world and the self-assuredness with which he knows he has found solutions to society’s problems feels like reading a treatise on the problems of the modern world written by Confederacy of Dunces’ Ignatius J. Reilly. Yet, his neo-feudal vision expresses aloud the details of a desired anti-egalitarian world to come that increasing elites, and followers, increasingly express alignment with. Prefiguring Trump’s attacks on intellectuals and universities by over three decades, Evans preaches that,
Our much-praised access to education has probably done as much as anything else to make us susceptible to what I can only describe as the enfeeblement of the modern mind. We have been led to believe that the universal availability of education would solve many of the problems of western society and, despite setbacks, people still believe this. They believe it because modern industrial society continues to exist and so to believe anything else would be to turn one’s back on the only lifestyle and value system of which the individual, his family and friends are part. And yet, there is a certain amount of unease that runs through the worship of education; it has been most clearly apparent in the past decade during which the application of expert knowledge and careful reasoning (the hallmarks of our educated society) has utterly failed to come to grips with the most pressing problems of western society.
Evans declares universal education propagates an unhealthily unhappy citizenry, and he explicitly prescribes ignorance as the cure for this “enfeeblement of the modern mind.” Anything promoting equality or critiquing bias must be attacked using claims of bias.
To perfect society, Evans insists the existing political economic system must be replaced with a new feudal aristocratic age. These new aristocrats will do away with the “motto of justice for all, elevating the weak at the expense of the strong,” because mistaken views of human equality are “destroying life, not enriching it.” He promises that in the coming age of aristocratic rule with have clear cut gender rules as those
physical and psychological differences which distinguish men from women will once more come into prominence, the penchant of this age for the rights of women and others will be seen as a misunderstanding of the human condition. These days we speak about happiness as if it were the birthright of every man who lives, when in fact it is the birthright of no man be he rich or poor, brilliant or illiterate. The birthright of man is not happiness, but struggle and conflict with nature and with other men. This truism has receded well into the background but will one day return with a vengeance. The superabundance and lax social structure that characterizes western industrial society is, after all, just a brief interlude; it could never be a permanent way of life.
Not only has the modern world abandoned what Evans imagines are essentialized biological differences between male and female, but promises of equality left those he views as lesser-thans with unrealistic expectations. His Great Men have slunk away into the shadows, while society suffers from them not contributing to their full potential. Three and a half decades early, he’s says Trump’s quite part out loud:
The weak, the underprivileged and the indigent who expect happiness to be handed to them on a plate are living in a world of make-believe which is destined to be shattered. Not surprisingly, the strong-willed, independent-minded spirits no longer venture out in public. The one-sided stress of contemporary society on its fatuous attention to the needs of those least able to help themselves has worked hand in hand with our scientific materialism to denude our age of all those qualities which make for greatness. Instead, the popular ideals of contemporary western society embrace the most despicable and ignoble traits of mankind.
Even when the most qualified and gifted individuals became political leaders, their ability to affect change under our system is severely limited, Evans insists, because they become “subject to the limitations of his age” as he [yes, he] would “find himself re-echoing popular sentiment, or struggling vainly to keep an already hopeless situation from going totally out of control.” This leads to the “degradation of the finest intellects.” This is the inevitable outcome of our political system, because as Evans see it, democracy is “the system by which the unscrupulous are elected to office by the most incompetent.”
Even in the era when Ronald Reagan was attacking the common good and beginning the trajectory leading to the destruction we now live under with Donald Trump, writing thirty-seven years ago Evans declared he lived “in the tail end of an age which has become devoid of feeling. In our inane desire to stamp out all prejudices, all views, which do not conform to the fatuous ideals of late twentieth century liberalism, we are well on the way to draining life of all conflict, all sharp emotion; in fact, we are in the process of destroying the very essence of western civilization.”
Evans sloppily commandeers highly selected bits and pieces of social science literature for his analysis. Though he discusses biological and cultural evolution, he dismisses notions of “progress” as an ethnocentric distortion. He rejects August Comte’s notions of societal evolution ending in the age of positivism, but he admires Herbert Spencer’s approach to cultural evolution, which is unsurprising given Spencer’s nasty social Darwinism, his biological essentialist notions that certain people are inherently better than others, and that the poor must not be supported by society.
He uses Max Weber to critique the overbearing power of bureaucracy. In a passage that might have been written by Elon Musk to justify hacking apart large sections of the federal government, he declares “a bloated bureaucracy is one of the most consistent indications that a society has reached the limits of its development.” His Weberian analysis predicts shifts aways from legal-rational authority as his new aristocratic age “will be dominated by Traditional and Charismatic authority,” noting that such a shift to charismatic authority “indicates a serious loss of confidence in the established institutions.” Because of the “enormous human energy” these Charismatic leaders unleash, they are able to accomplish many of their goals, but as Weber established, these charismatic leaders don’t tend to last very long. Either this leader’s changes are institutionalized, or there is a reversion to former ways. Evans is convinced that once his predicted charismatic leader arrives, there will be no going back, and aristocracy will return humankind to its destiny—a destiny of haves and have nots, following the logic of eugenics.
He namedrops Horkheimer and Adorno supporting observations of shallowness of our modern age, as if they or others from the Frankfurt School might align with his vision of elites ruling without restraints. Not surprisingly, Evans’ failure to address more anthropological bodies of knowledge highlights his crude biological essentialism and social Darwinist models throughout, which seems odd given his background in anthropology. At one point he briefly discusses the Nuer of the Sudan and other societies without firmly recognized permanent hierarchal leaders; but this is only used to illustrate something lacking in what he designates as a lesser-developed society.
Explicitly rejecting Marxist critiques of class exploitation, Evans finds his intellectual inspiration in the works of Cecil Rhodes, whose colonialist conquests represent an ideal Great Man of History. The fervor of Evans’ admiration of Rhodes is striking and raises questions about just how much Evans would enjoy being a slave or a peasant in this brave new world he awaits.
Whereas Plato’s Republic dreamed of a world where the aristocrats ruling the masses had the best interests (or at least their conceptions of best interests) of society as a whole at heart, Evan argues elites should be allowed to do as they please, and the rest of society must follow, and this will be a better world because whatever these elites do will be good by virtue of them doing it. Evans fails to explain how this coming aristocracy would differ from an oligarchy—which at least Plato understood to be among the most corrupt and undesirable forms of governance.
Evans’ endorsement of E. F. Schumacher’s small is beautiful thesis is a surprising twist, and this vision significantly diverges from contemporary would-be techno-aristocrats, who generally have high tech infrastructure, controlled by elites, as a bedrock feature of their fantasies. Evans supports Schumacher anti-growth thesis that many of the planet’s problems come from capitalism’s need for eternal market growth. Evans incorporates portions of Schumacher’s critique, while insisting that the solution to capitalism’s problems is to replace it with feudalism, observing that, “the age in which we live compels us to pollute our environment, develop previously unspoiled open spaces, destroy our mental peace and break up our families.”
Churches in Evans’ coming Aristocratic Age will be dedicated to reinforcing and keeping people in their proper social roles and quelling uprisings. Evans assures readers that revolts will be rare, and that the “ruling class” won’t “have much need to suppress subversive ideas, for there will be very few of these,” as humanity’s consciousness easily adapts to this new, more naturally hierarchical social order. He assures readers that,
With the arrival of man’s complete [adaptation] to his environment, there will be no longer any need to strive for new interpretations of reality which would challenge the status quo. Intellectually, the mind of western man will at last be at rest; abstract theorizing and scientific investigations will no longer be of interest to him. As for those who believe a society lacking deep interest in science and technology would be an inferior civilization, they do well to remember the dictum that an unsubdued thirst for knowledge can lead to barbarism just as can extreme hatred of knowledge. This is especially so in an age such as ours when unlike the ancients who were content with theoretical speculation, we have an unstoppable urge to apply our knowledge, regardless of possible consequences.
Finally, humanity can stop asking all these bothersome questions as the end of history and class conflict arrives. Between the elites’ exclusive legitimate use of violence on the masses and the church’s total support for the new order, the new aristocracy will maintain order, as “the hegemony of the bourgeois world view will be broken by the new conception of reality.”
Evans eagerly awaits a period of social and economic upheaval. During this coming collapse “those who are successful in establishing supremacy within their area of operation” will “automatically distinguish themselves” as fit to become the new leaders. But those who “decry the fact that western society is destined once again to see the return of aristocracy” will fall by the wayside as new leaders seize power. While the majority of society has up until now been “brainwashed into believing that the utilitarian-humanist ideal of contemporary western society is the zenith” of western civilization, they will be shown the folly of their ways.
In Evans’ fantasized coming aristocratic new age a spirit of mutual aid will spread, as “neighbors will work all day in the fields side by side, help repair one another’s homes after damage by bad weather or other causes. Each individual will contribute to the community according to his strength, talent and experience…” A world where everyone knows their proper place, low on the pecking order with no assumptions of things like equal rights or inalienable human rights, brings social cohesion and eliminates strife.
…and so on.
You get the picture. While Evans’ embracement of a low tech small-is-beautiful ethos rather than high tech fiefdoms, his envisioned “utopia” foresaw many of the features that Yarvin and others advocating for techno- or neo-feudal futures incorporate.
Countering Aristocratic Fantasies
Maybe it was ridiculous for me to spend hours reading, digesting, note taking, then summarizing this odd long-lost crackpot book. But I found this worthwhile for several reasons, the most pertinent is that in our current moment of forgetting, there is value in critically considering these nonsensical ideas, portions of which apparently are attractive to contemporaries who have amassed great wealth and power. We should not ignore such insanity at a moment when various parts of our society that once housed intellectual critiques are under attack or struggling (universities, the fifth estate, public airwaves, presses, libraries, independent bookstores, etc.) while most Americans appear to have stopped reading anything longer than 75 words, outsourcing reading and writing to Artificial Intelligence systems designed by those positioned to become our new aristocracy.
While my reasons for writing this are to alert thinking people to the existence of this text and arguments, I wonder if unearthing this forgotten text could be used to empower this text to awaken the demons within it, much like Ash in The Evil Dead reciting, “khandar estrada khandos. . .” unleashed a torrent of deadites. May it not be so. Instead, I think we need to seriously critique this sort of bat-shit crazy philosophy, because our current stage of capitalism is facing enough contradictions that some elements of this deranged philosophy may well be where our elites want to drag us once they’ve demolished the broken world we now inhabit.
If it weren’t for the influence of Yarvin and others promoting notions of a techno-aristocracy to Vance and others in powerful positions, it would be easy to laugh off the lunacy of Evan’s book, but it reveals deep currents of anti-democratic thought in American society. Because Evans, Yarvin, Musk, Trump, and others cannot accept that stratification is created by society, not an expression of some sort of essential quality, they attack scholars studying the social creation of inequality as liars spreading propaganda. Fields like anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, labor studies, and gender studies are now under attack because of their research findings directly challenge elite supremacist views that hierarchy as an expression of natural abilities. These elites will never accept, as anthropologist, Jon Marks once observed, “perhaps the most important discovery of early anthropology was that social inequality was inherited, but not in the same way that natural features were. You pass on your complexion to your children and you pass on your social status to your children, but you do so by very different modes.” This is the sort of understanding that the current attacks on liberal arts programs hope to annihilate.
It does not matter how many peer-reviewed studies anthropologists and other scholars publish establishing that social forces, rather than trivial genetic differences, account for meaningful differences, racists cling to their beliefs of “natural” superiority. We regularly hear this in Trump’s rambling, as he insults women and people of color as having low IQs, or his claims of coming from a strong genetic background. While The Resurrection of Aristocracy has little chance of birthing the world it envisions, its bigoted assumptions align perfectly with the embrace of privileged anti-egalitarianist resonating with Trump World and the technocrats backing Vice President Vance and those charting the future course of the Republican Party. My concern with these present aristocratic dreams is less about these oligarchs achieving independent neo-feudal states anytime soon, my concern is that people harboring such anti-egalitarian fantasies are rapidly gaining unchecked power. I worry that powerful people holding such views can dismantle existing institutions, at least striving to achieve liberty, equality, and community. It should concern all of us who dream of a world where Americans have universal health care, food security, and meaningful work, that our oligarchs dream of a world where they have unchecked power and we are chattel.
Artificial Intelligence appears poised to bring waves of massive unemployment, and we can expect the victims of this techno revolution to be blamed for their fate, while those who own this new means of production declared worthy superiors. Such shifting economic conditions will be fertile ground for the sort of dangerous aristocratic false consciousness that Evans and more contemporary techno-feudalists pitch. As university departments housing the academics who spent careers studying the social basis of inequality are under attack, we need to be vigilant in our confrontations with this sort of elitist nonsense. Though such humane human views may become more difficult to access in a world where distorted tools like Musk’s Grokipedia becomes our social memory and arbiters of “truth.”
As an ideology justifying the elite’s “natural” supremacy, aristocracy fits the logic of capitalism. It maintains a socially-suspended-illusion which functions like a self-fulfilling prophecy as it obscures the roles of nurture, unequal opportunity, and chance in creating “winners.” Much like fascism, the problem with aristocracy worship is that its “logic” aligns with the social facts of capitalism. It embraces the values of a highly competitive political economy with decreasing opportunities for winners, and endless growth opportunities for the dispossessed–those growing numbers of dispossessed whom Evans and his ilk promise purpose and peace of mind as they become the human grease for the wheels of aspiring techno- or not-so-techno- feudal lords.
Dick Cheney speaking at the AIPAC Policy Conference in 2006. Photo: White House.
The poor sometimes object to being governed badly. The rich always object to being governed at all.
– G.K. Chesterton
+ Dick Cheney told the deadliest lie in American history: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” He paid no price for orchestrating this still-unfolding catastrophe and upon his death was celebrated by political elites and the mainstream press as a “patriot” and “devoted public servant.”
+ Democratic Party leaders like the Clintons, who have scorned Mamdani, have heaped praise on Dick Cheney. And they wonder why they poll worse than Trump…
+ The bipartisan whitewashing of Dick Cheney is as much of a perversion of US history as Trump’s eliding any mention of the horrors of slavery, the internment of Japanese-Americans and the genocide against the indigenous population of the US from national parks and museums.
+ As Andrew Cockburn reports in his scathing obituary for Cheney, the Yale dropout and former electrical lineman from Wyoming once discounted ethical and legal concerns about torturing people by waterboarding them until they nearly drown as a mere “dunk in the water.”
+ Trump isn’t smart, but he possesses shrewd, if crude, political instincts. He knew that Cheney was the dead-eyed face of a war most Americans had long ago turned against. Unlike Kamala Harris, a political illiterate, who doomed her faltering and aimless campaign by refusing to condemn the genocide in Gaza and aligning herself with the most ruthless and unrepentant neocon of them all, Dick Cheney.
As a “devoted public servant,” Cheney helped steal an election, shot a man in the face and covered it up, lied the US into a war, set up a black ops unit inside the White House to run kidnappings and torture sessions, authorized mass surveillance of Americans, and steered long-term no-bid contracts to his former corporation, which is was still deeply invested in…
+ Biden has always considered himself an “institutionalist,” which is another way of saying a member of the elite political class that runs the permanent government. As such, Biden and Cheney circled in the same orbit for nearly 50 years, more often in synchronous alignment than not. When Cheney needed help, Biden was usually there to give it. In 2001 and 2002, when Cheney wanted the Authorization for Military Force (AUMF) and the PATRIOT Act sped through Congress, Biden was there for him. When Cheney wanted to go to war in Iraq, Biden helped to stifle Democratic resistance in the Senate and push it through. When Obama briefly considered pursuing charges against some Bush officials, Biden advised against it. This is what Biden means when he praises Cheney’s devotion to “public service,” though he was well-compensated for his “sacrifices.”Cheney’s compensation package from Halliburton: $12.5 million in salary, $18 million in stock options, retirement $20 million, deferred compensation $2.4 million, bonuses $1.45 million. Total $54.5 million.
+ Clinton’s affinity for Cheney can be explained by the fact that Clinton transformed the Democratic Party into an interventionist neoliberal operation much like the Republican machine that Cheney played such a key role in engineering and fine-tuning from his time in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush I White Houses. What Clinton calls Cheney’s “sense of duty” included having his Deputy Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, out a CIA officer (Valerie Plame) in retaliation for her husband (Joe Wilson) writing that the Niger yellowcake story promoted by Cheney to justify invading Iraq was a hoax.
+ This kind of bi-partisan garbage is a big reason why we ended up where we are: The Democrats ran three presidential candidates who voted for Cheney’s manufactured war on Iraq and then, when Obama, who opposed the war, had a chance to hold Cheney, brashly asserted the unitary power of the vice presidency, and his repellant crew accountable, he appointed Iraq war supporters to be his VP and run the State and “War” Departments and then shrugged it all off with: “I guess we tortured some folks.”
+ “Impact” = 4.5 million deaths in the Forever Wars Cheney instigated.
+ ABC’s Jonathan Karl provides a prime example of the courtier press at work, just as two decades earlier Tim Russert, who Alexander Cockburn described as being “always there with his watering can to fertilize myths useful to the system,” nodded his head as Cheney told America on Meet the Press that “US troops would be greeted [by Iraqis] as liberators.”
+ Back in 2000, Al Gore–the man who first invoked Willie Horton against Mike Dukakis–was so desperate to find something similar to fling at George W. Bush that he actually put Newt Gingrich in a campaign ad to attest that “Dick Cheney is even more conservative than I am.” (As Cockburn and I revealed in our biography of Gore, Gingrich and Gore had been pals in the 80s, when the two young southern guns considered themselves the leading “futurists” in Congress.)
+ One of the worst after-effects of Trump’s radioactive personality is that he is so reviled by many Americans that he has softened the reputation of one of the most evil and destructive figures in American history: Dick Cheney.
+ I often think about the fact that Cheney received a heart transplant that could have gone to someone who wasn’t a war criminal, a liar about matters of life and mass death and a traitor to the US Constitution…
+ Erin Ryan: “Now that Dick Cheney is dead, I can finally re-register as an organ donor.”
+++
+ Some quotes from Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech (the full-text can be read here), which began by quoting Eugene Debs, later referenced Nehru and showed no signs of retreat.
“Whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall—your struggle is ours, too.”
“New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant.”
“I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life, but let tonight be the final time I utter his name.”
“Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.”
“We can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves.”
“I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.”
+ Here, in sum, is the advice of the New York Times’s editorial board gave to the victorious Zohran Mamdani: Renounce everything you campaigned on and become Michael Bloomberg…
+ Mamdani won 33% of the Jewish vote in New York City, which is remarkable given the high-pitched histrionics for the last five months…
+ The allegation, which always seemed ludicrous to me, that Mamdani couldn’t appeal to Black voters proved specious…
+ The New York Post, which has slimed Mamdani for months, knows how to sell papers. And this one’s bound to sell out and end up on refrigerators from Harlem to Bedford-Stuy…
+ The GOP has been calling neoliberal Democrats, like Clinton, Obama and Harris, Marxists, for so long that when a real middle-of-the-road Marxist finally got elected, the charge that he’s a Marxist lost most of its political sting.
+ CNN: Hakeem Jeffries was asked this morning if you’re the future of the democratic party. He said no.
Mamdani: Good to know.
CNN: Do you have a response?
Mamdani: No. I’m focused on the next two days.
CNN: Do you think you’re the future of the Democratic Party?
Mamdani: I don’t dare predict the future. That’s why I’m out here canvassing…
+ After smearing Mamdani for “dishonest” campaign promises, April Spanberger, the Democrat just elected Governor of Virginia, told CNN that perhaps Mamdani “should join the Democratic Party.” He is, of course, already a member of the Democratic Party and had won his party’s primary. If this is the kind of “intelligence” Spanberger was providing during her years in the CIA, it’s no wonder the US kept wading deeper and deeper into the quagmire of its own making in the Middle East…
+ Leave it to Mayor PeteBot to bury the lede so deeply it isn’t even mentioned…
+ Asked about Republican attacks on Mamdani, Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell sniffed: “I’m going to focus on the election of Abigail Spanberger, who is clearly a moderate, as is Mikie Sherrill. Both women who had strong military and national intelligence backgrounds…” The Democrats are basically the party of drones and mass surveillance, the true inheritors of Dick Cheney’s legacy.
+ Jonathan Schwarz: “National Democrats must not look at Mamdani and make the mistake of nominating more young, energetic candidates who people like.”
+ Al Franken: “I voted for Mamdani. I like him. He was the first to jump on affordability and the rest of the country kind of followed him. This city needs to get more affordable for people.”
+ Trump struggling to explain Mamdani’s victory: “They have this new word called ‘affordability.’” If this keeps up, Trump’s vocabulary will top 1,000 words any day now.
+ For the right candidates, the class politics that can be asserted over this demographic alone should work everywhere: 1 in 4 New Yorkers live in poverty, while another 1 in 24 New Yorkers are millionaires. Do the math.
+ A Message from the Boys: NBC News exit polling of young men (18-29) in VA, NJ and NYC.
Surprise! Looks like they’re not all misogynistic, protein powder snorting, trad-wife seeking incels after all!
+ FOX on the New Jersey governor’s race, which the GOP believed they were going to win: “The reason for their vote, those who said that they wanted to oppose the sitting president, 71% of them. So this is really what led to the outcome tonight.”
+ Owen Winter, The Economist:
In our polling with YouGov, since the start of his second term, Donald Trump’s net approval has fallen 17 points among white Americans (+17 to -1), 28 points among Hispanic Americans (-9 to -37) and 38 points among black Americans (-36 to -74).
+ Trump’s Job Approval Among 18-29 Year Olds (% Change from Feb 4, 2025):
Disapprove: 75% (+38)
Approve: 20% (-22)
YouGov / Oct 27, 2025
+ Trump to 60 Minutes: “I think I’m a much better-looking person than Mamdani, right?” From the perspective of snapping turtles in heat?
+ Has this been scheduled yet? Time? Network? Better fire up the TiVo (See below.)
+++
+ On October 10, ICE launched an armed raid on the West Town neighborhood of Chicago and began abducting landscapers as they worked on lawns. Soon, car horns began sounding up and down the block, as residents warned people that ICE had invaded their neighborhood. Local residents began pouring into the street, shouting at the masked officers to “get the hell out.”
Finally, the ICE raiders were chased back into their cars. As one of the ICE vehicles sped away from the angry crowd and down the 1600 block of West Hubbard, it crashed into a car driven by Dayanne Figueroa, who was driving to get coffee before going to work.
Almost immediately after the collision, the ICE agents spilled out of their unmarked car with their guns drawn and pointed at Figueroa, who is a US citizen. ICE agents forced open her door, grabbed her by the legs and yanked her from the car. Then they dragged Figueroa to a red minivan, stuffed her inside and drove off, as someone in the crowd yelled: “You hit her! We have it on video!”
The agents never identified themselves or presented a warrant for her arrest. They left her car in the middle of the street, the keys still in the ignition. Figueroa was held in an ICE facility for several hours without being told why she had been abducted or being allowed to call a lawyer or her family. She was released several hours later without any charges being filed. DHS later blamed Figueroa for the entire incident.
+ Around 6:30 in the morning on October 30, as ICE agents were interrogating a driver they’d pulled over in Ontario, California, Carlos Jijminez, who lived just down the block in a mobile home park, pulled up near them in his car and warned them that they were near a school bus stop and that children would soon be gathering in the area. Instead of taking Jiminez’s advice, a masked ICE agent responded by first pointing his pepper spray at Jiminez and then opening fire on his car, hitting the 25-year-old father of three in the back. The bullet lodged in his right shoulder.
ICE eventually arrested Jimenez and charged him with assault on a federal officer. The ICE agent who shot Jimenez claimed that when Jimenez put his car in reverse to return home, the officer feared that he was going to run him over.
Jimenez’s lawyer, Cynthia Santiago, told the LA Times: “He was telling them, ‘Excuse me. Can you guys please, you know, please wrap this up.’ And immediately, the masked agent pulls out a gun and exchanges some words. He’s also shaking his pepper spray. He’s in fear, and Carlos’s trying to get out of the situation.”
This was the second shooting of civilians by ICE officers in California in the past 10 days. Last week, ICE agents fired at Carlitos Ricardo Arias in South Los Angeles, whose car had been boxed in. Aris was struck in the elbow and a deputy federal marshal was hit by a ricocheted stray bullet. Again, ICE agents claimed that Arias was trying to run them over, even though his car could barely move.
+ 60 Minutes: “Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?”
Trump: “No. I think they haven’t gone far enough.”
Not far enough? How about deporting a young woman and her child back into the arms of the man who brutally abused her?
+ Last summer, Carmen’s husband came home drunk, again. He began pounding and kicking on the door, threatening to kill her if she didn’t let him in. Her young son stood next to her, trembling in fear. She called the cops and soon got a restraining order against him. Both Carmen and her husband were undocumented. A few months later, he broke the terms of the restraining order, entered the house and savagely beat her.
Carmen (whose last name has been redacted for her safety) cooperated fully with the police and immigration officials to have her husband arrested and deported. She was advised to apply for a U-Visa, which allows crime victims to reside and work legally in the US. But this June, when Carmen went for her scheduled immigration check-in, she was detained by federal agents. After spending two months in detention, she and her 8-year-old son were put on a plane and deported to her home country, where he brutal husband was awaiting her arrival.
+ Last Monday, Berenice Garcia-Hernandez was at home in Gresham, Oregon, when she learned from a Facebook post that ICE agents had gathered at a nearby Chick-fil-A. The person who made the post said they were too frightened to take photos of the ICE vehicles, so Garcia-Hernandez got into her fiancé’s car, which carried government license plates, drove to Chick-fil-A, ordered a lemonade at the drive-thru window and began taking photos of the license plates of the immigration agents’ cars.
After seeing her take the photos, the ICE officers followed Garcia-Hernandez as she drove away. When she stopped at a traffic light, one agent got out of his vehicle and started recording her on a camera. He refused to identify himself. When the light turned green, the 25-year-old Garcia-Hernandez pulled away. After a couple of blocks, she hit another traffic light and came to a stop. That’s when the ICE agents hit their flashing police lights and surrounded her car. One agent broke open the window of the passenger door and dragged her out of the car. She was cuffed and taken to the ICE detention facility in South Portland. One of the agents told her she “was in so much trouble.”
Garcia-Hernandez is a US citizen. It is not illegal to photograph federal agents or their cars and license plates. She was held for seven hours without charges. ICE confiscated her cell phone and her engagement ring, which, a week later, they had yet to return.
+ Still, she remains undaunted. “I think that we should continue to use our voices and continue to warn others about what’s happening because it is not OK how our people, our community, is being treated,” she told The Oregonian. “And me as a U.S. Citizen, I ended up being treated this way just because I was taking pictures and videos of (them) to warn the community. They were mad because they were getting exposed.”
+ On October 25, ICE arrested Rev. James Eliud Ngahu Mwangi on his way home from work at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and sent him to the ICE detention prison in Conroe, Texas, where he has been held ever since. A native of Kenya, Mwangi is an Episcopal priest and has a permit to live and work in the US. DHS has refused to say why Mwangi was arrested and jailed. “The Episcopal Diocese of Texas stands firmly for justice, dignity and compassion for every person,” C. Andrew Doyle, the Bishop of Texas, said in a statement. “This priest has served both the church and the state of Texas faithfully. We are praying for his safety, for his family’s peace of mind, and for fair and humane treatment as this case moves forward.”
+ Charging that federal government officials lied during their sworn depositions and that the use of violence by immigration agents in Chicago “shocks the conscience,” Federal Judge Sara Ellis has issued a sweeping injunction against the use of force by ICE and Border Patrol during its “Operation Midway Blitz” raids in Chicago. Ellis said from the bench: “I find the government’s evidence to simply not be credible.” She emphasized that the accounts of numerous Border Patrol agents on what took place before they deployed tear gas on protesters to be undermined and contradicted by audio and visual recordings of the encounters. She zeroed in on the false testimony of self-aggrandizing Border Patrol commander Dan Bovino, who she tersely noted “admitted that he lied about whether a rock hit him before he deployed tear gas at Little Village.”
+ “Mommy, mommy, Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” This was the reaction of a two-year-old girl in Chicago after being doused with tear gas by immigration agents as she played in a public park.
+ Internal federal figures show that the number of individuals in ICE detention centers reached 66,000 this week, a new high. ICE’s detainee population has increased by nearly 70% since January. ICE now has enough detention beds to hold 70,000 detainees at once, up from its 41,500-bed capacity at the beginning of the year. The number of beds is expected to increase dramatically next year, when ICE receives $45 billion to expand detention levels.
Trump’s deportation Czar Thomas Homan: “Others are in the country illegally but may not have a criminal history, but guess what? They’re coming too. ICE is no longer turning a blind eye to illegal aliens in this country.”
In response to ICE’s refusal to allow detained Catholic migrants in the Chicago area to receive the Eucharist, Pope Leo from the Southside called on President Trump and Vice President Vance to respect the dignity and religious liberty of migrants in the United States: “The authorities must allow pastoral workers to assist with the needs of these people. Many times they have been separated from their families and no one knows what happens.”
+ More than 100 federal judges have now shot down the Trump administration’s policy to jail nearly everyone facing deportation, including 12 judges appointed by Trump. Just two judges have sided with ICE.
+ Last month, the FBI issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies across the country warning that criminals posing as US immigration officers have carried out robberies, kidnappings and sexual assaults in several states.
+ When Russell Hott, director of ICE’s Chicago Field Office, was asked in a deposition in a federal lawsuit challenging ICE’s use of force whether he believed it was unconstitutional to arrest people for expressing their opposition to ICE’s Midway Blitz, Hott answered, “No.” Meanwhile, Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino testified that he “has instructed his officers to arrest protesters who make hyperbolic statements in the heat of political demonstrations.”
+++
+ CNBC reporter on the October jobs numbers: “This one was a doozy. The most job cuts for any October in more than two decades, going back to 2003. Companies announced about 153,000 job cuts last month, which was almost triple the number during the same month last year.”
+ In 2015, the 10 richest people on Earth had a combined net worth of around $557 billion. Today, the ten richest people have more than $2.4 trillion.
+ In its report on inequality in America, Oxfam warns the gap is about to widen even further, given that in 2027 the top 0.1% will see their taxes fall by around $311,000, while the lowest earners, including those making less than $15,000, will see tax increases.
+ According to Oxfam, over 40% of the U.S. population—including 48.9% of its children—is considered poor or low income. An economy that’s the envy of the world!
+ Craig Fuller, CEO of Freightwaves, to CNBC:
We should be worried. Certain portions of the goods economy are collapsing right now. Year-over-year trucking volume is down 17%. When you look at the industrial sectors, we’re down 30% year-over-year, which is Great Financial Crisis levels of concern.
+ Bloomberg reported that US factory activity fell in October, marking an eighth straight month of decline, “driven by a pullback in production and tepid demand.”
+ Starwood Capital’s billionaire CEO Barry Sternlicht was brought on to CNBC to gripe about Mamdani:
We have a big office here ourselves … but the team in New York is for the first time saying maybe we should leave … The unions have to be more accommodative on their work laws and the wages and everything else.”
As always, the working-class must compromise to appease the super-rich.
+ With growing signs the AI bubble may be about to burst, taking the economy down with it, Open AI’s Sam Altman calls for a pre-bailout “ When something gets sufficiently huge … the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort, as we’ve seen in various financial crises … given the magnitude of what I expect AI’s economic impact to look like, I do think the government ends up as the insurer of last resort.” Marxism for billionaires who go bust!
Average gas price at the pump January 2025: $3.11 per gallon
Average gas price at the pump this week: $3.079 per gallon
(Source: AAA)
+ Thomas Piketty on the shriveling of public assets: In recent decades, the public share of total assets has declined. Net public assets (i.e., assets minus liabilities) in major European countries have fallen to just above zero (from 20-30% in 1978), while private assets have risen to >6 times GDP.
+ Trump on the cost of a Thanksgiving meal at Walmart: “I don’t know if they care about that in Saudi Arabia, but here it means a lot. We got the princess here from Saudi Arabia. She’s got a lot of cash.”
+ New Mexico is the first state to offer free child care to all residents. Under the new program, all families, regardless of income, can get their child care fees covered.
+ On Monday, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens ordered an immediate pause on residential evictions and water shutoffs as the federal lapse in SNAP funds takes effect.
+++
+ Obviously, not “our” people, so no cause for alarm…
+ Since 1997, there’s been a 2.7% decline in annual rainfall in the US, while extreme flooding events have dramatically increased, according to new research from AccuWeather.
+ According to a study by researchers at the World Inequality Lab, the wealthiest 1 percent of the global population accounts for 15% of all emissions attributed to consumers, but when their carbon footprint is measured by the assets they own, their share jumps up to about 40 percent.
+ A new paper published in Energy Research and Social Science found that the 2022 energy crisis drove record global profits for fossil fuel companies: “We estimate that globally, the net income in publicly-listed oil and gas companies alone reached $916 billion in 2022, with the US the biggest beneficiary, with claims on $301 billion, more than US investments of $267 billion investment in low-carbon energy economy that year.” Half of profits went to the top 1 percent, mainly through stock ownership.
+ CNBC: I could see a Democratic president declaring a climate emergency to tax countries with high CO2 emissions. Does that concern you at all what Democrats might do with this type of tariff power?
Scott Bessent: I would question whether there’s a climate emergency. It’s all been proven wrong.
+ Elon Musk, disputing Trump’s assertion that solar energy is “a scam to make your country fail”: “Just with solar alone, China can, in 18 months, produce enough solar panels to power all the electricity of the United States.”
+ Though fossil fuels still dominate, the percentage of the planet’s energy derived from fossil fuels edged down again in 2024 and is now at the lowest level since the 1960s.
+ Since April 13, 2025, Nepal has recorded 4,597 weather/climate-related disaster incidents nationwide. A total of 335 people have died, 41 are missing, and 1,264 have been injured, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority.
Lyndi Stone, a principal corporate counsel for Microsoft, on the problem with siting data centers:
Nobody really wants a data center in their backyard, I don’t want a data center in my backyard…. Data centers, once they’re operational, don’t bring a lot of jobs.
+++
+ In a sobering investigation by the the indispensable StatNews into the chaotic condition of the FDA under RKJ, Jr and Vinay Prashad, where the atmosphere is described as “rife with mistrust and paranoia,” an FDA staffer told reporter Lizzy Lawrence: “In the current FDA environment, it is impossible for dedicated career FDA staff to responsibly regulate new products, conduct groundbreaking research, and manage FDA’s resources on behalf of the American public. The situation is not salvageable.”
The story quotes an intimidating email sent by Prasad to George Tidmarsh, the head of the FDA’s CDER Division, who was recently placed on administrative leave for not being deferential enough to a Southern California health care executive. Prasad:
Let me be clear. If you continue to choose not to do what I tell you. I will spend all of my political capital get [sic] you fired. Do not take people from my team. When I ask you to ask the reviewers a question you will do so.
+ Americans waste nearly $400 million in food each year.
+ Mehmet Oz: “We thought it was 125 million pounds. Our estimate is Americans will lose 135 billion pounds by the midterms.” Yeah, that tends to happen when you put 46 million Americans on a starvation diet.
+ Pfizer’s antiviral drug Paxlovid costs $15 to make. It retails for $1500.
+++
+ As 46 million people are about to lose their access to food, Trump decided to hold a Great Gatsby-themed party celebrating their exuberant excesses (or what Ezra Klein calls “abundance”) in his private club at Mar-a-Lago.
+ Not sure Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker and the other flappers did it like this, which makes me wonder whether there will be pole dancing at the new White House ballroom…
+ One more scene from Trump’s Gatsby Party: This one’s for you, Franklin Graham!
+ Odds Trump has read The Great Gatsby: 1 in 10,000.
+ F. Scott Fitzgerald: “There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind…”
+ Meanwhile, back at the White House, Trump’s remodeling of the Lincoln Bathroom at the White House, proves once again that the wealthier you are, the worse aesthetic taste you’re likely to possess and inflict on others. In this case, the marble-encased bathroom looks like you’d be taking a crap in a tomb. Check out the gold trash can. No bathroom is complete without one…See Freud (on “filthy lucre” and “the shitter of ducats.”
We know that the gold which the devil gives his paramours turns into excrement after his departure, and the devil is certainly nothing else than the personification of the repressed unconscious instinctual life. We also know about the superstition which connects the finding of treasure with defecation, and everyone is familiar with the figure of the “shitter of ducats” (Dukatenscheisser). Indeed, even according to ancient Babylonian doctrine, gold is “the feces of Hell.” Thus in following the usage of language, neurosis, here as elsewhere, is taking words in their original, significant sense, and where it appears to be using a word figuratively, it is usually simply restoring its old meaning.
From “Brown Gold,” from “Character and Anal Erotism.”.
+++
+ An ebullient Lindsey Graham ranting at the Republican Jewish Coalition about Trump the Bomber: “I feel good about the Republican Party and where we’re going as a nation. We’re killing all the right people and we’re cutting your taxes. Trump is my favorite president. We’ve run out of bombs. We” didn’t run out of bombs during World War II.”
+ From AS Dillingham’s essay for the LRB, Murder at Sea:
Over the last month, the US government has launched at least eleven strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. The Trump administration has claimed, without providing evidence, that the boats were transporting illegal drugs. The strikes have killed at least 57 people. These are summary executions without trial. Amnesty International has called it a “murder spree”.
+ Trump: “Every time we hit a narco-trafficking vessel, we save 25,000 lives.”
There have been at least 16 strikes on alleged “drug boats” (none of them capable of reaching the US) in the Caribbean and Pacific, which would mean that Trump has “saved” 400,000 lives–a figure that is six times more than the total number of drug overdose deaths last year.
But Venezuela doesn’t produce the drug that Trump is talking about: fentanyl, most of which comes into the US from Mexico or Canada. Pentagon officials told Congress last week that they’ve “not recovered fentanyl in any of these cases. It’s all been cocaine.”
+ Latest update on Trump the Isolationist: Bomb Iran, lob cruise missiles at the Houthis, declare war on LA, Chicago, and Portland, sink fishing boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, threaten Nigeria and now prepare to invade Mexico? “US troops in Mexico would mainly use drone strikes to hit drug labs and cartel members… the administration plans to maintain secrecy around it and not publicize actions associated with it.”
+ Trump is threatening a “fast, vicious and sweet” attack on…Nigeria.
+ Trump: ”Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening there, and in numerous other Countries. We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian Population around the World!”
Onward Christian, drones,
Buzzing off to war,
With bombs from Boeing
to drop on Natives from afar.
Trump, the royal master
Points to the heart of darkness
Watch the MAGA banners soar!
But he’ll stay in his gilded ballroom
His bone spurs are sore.
Q: “Would you support U.S. Troops going into Nigeria?”
Sen. Tuberville: “You bet I would. It wouldn’t be like going into Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran. This would be helping innocent people.”
+ “Mistah, Kurtz. He dead.”
+ Nobel “Peace” Prize Laureate María Corina Machado insists that Maduro rigged the 2020 US elections against Donald Trump!
+ 60 Minutes: “What does that mean — ‘send more than the National Guard?”
Trump: “Well, if you had to send in the Army or the Marines, I’d do that in a heartbeat. We have a thing called the Insurrection Act. I could use that immediately and no judge can even challenge you on that. If I wanted to, I could.”
+ Trump also vowed this week to intervene in Israel’s prosecution of Netanyahu: Trump on Netanyahu:
I don’t think they treat him very well. He’s under trial for some things. We’ll be involved in that to help him out a little bit because I think it’s very unfair.
+ Interesting back-and-forth between Trump’s Solicitor General and Justice Gorsuch on whether Trump can seize the Constitutional power to impose tariffs from Congress…
Gorsuch: “The President has inherent authority over tariffs in wartime; does he have inherent authority over tariffs in peacetime?”
U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer: “No.”
Gorsuch: “What’s the reason to accept the notion that Congress can hand off the power to declare war to the president?”
Sauer: “Well, we don’t contend that.”
Gorsuch: “You do, you say it’s unreviewable…you’ve backed off that position?”
Sauer: “Maybe that’s fair to say.”
Gorsuch: “Could the president impose a 50% tariff on gas-powered cars and auto parts to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat from abroad of climate change?”
Sauer: “This administration would say it’s a hoax.”
Gorsuch: “I’m sure you would.”
+ It looks like Nancy Pelosi will stop at 85 and not attempt to go for the full Di-Fi…
Reporter: “Do you have a statement on Nancy Pelosi’s retirement?”
Trump: “I think she’s an evil woman. I’m glad she’s retiring. I think she, uh, did the country a great service by retiring. She was a tremendous liability for the country. And I thought she was an evil woman who did a poor job to cost the country a lot of damages and in reputation. I thought she was terrible.”
Misogynistic invective, aimed at someone who outfoxed him numerous times, aside, why couldn’t one high-ranking Democrat say something similar about Cheney, instead of mourning his death as if he were an American Chou En-Lai, instead of the malevolent miscreant he was?
+++
+ Here’s the full transcript of Trump’s 60 Minutes interview, in which Norah O’Donnell–allegedly Bari Weiss’s new favorite to anchor CBS News– throws him 90 minutes of softballs, which he awkwardly flails at, of which they aired 28 minutes…
+ 60 Minutes chose not to air this part of the interview with Trump. Wonder why?:
And, actually, 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not– you have a great– I think you have a great, new leader, frankly, who’s the young woman [Bari Weiss] that’s leading your whole enterprise is a great– from what I know. I don’t know her, but I hear she’s a great person. But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me– a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election.
+ 60 Minutes: Changpeng Zhao pled guilty in 2023 to violating anti–money laundering laws. Why did you pardon him?
Trump: Okay, are you ready? I don’t know who he is.
A day after this aired, a reporter as House Speaker Mike Johnson the obvious question: Last week, you were very critical of Biden’s use of the autopen & pardons. But Trump admitted on 60 Minutes to not knowing that he pardoned a crypto billionaire who pleaded guilty to money laundering. Does that also concern you?
Johnson: “I don’t know anything about that. I didn’t see the interview. I’m not sure.”
+++
+ Re-reading Gatsby for about the 20th time after Trump’s bacchanalia last week and jotted down this gem in my Moleskine: “I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.” Libraries are, of course, one of the last refuges for the houseless, the lonely, the abandoned in a grinding economic machine that has left them behind.
+ Day after day, the same stories, told over and over again, more and more incoherently, like some perverse remix of a senile Sheharazade…Trump:
The only thing I got from the UN was a blank teleprompter. Remember, I went up there, princess. I’m looking at the teleprompters and I have all my friends sitting out there. 158 leaders, some in beautiful silk white robes, others in bad shirts, bad ties, and some in beautiful shirts and ties, but they’re all the leaders. I’m looking at the teleprompter, stone cold blank. They did it on purpose. It wasn’t a great feeling. I’m trying to walk slowly because I see it’s not working. They did it on purpose, but it worked out okay. Not great.
+ Seth Harp, author of the compelling investigation into drug trafficking and impunity among special forces units, The Fort Bragg Cartel: “Typical psych profile of a tech oligarch: Born rich but with below average intelligence. Anxious, anhedonic, antisocial, disagreeable, humorless, disliked by others. Bland on the surface, but driven by an implacable mania and shrewd aptitude for making money. Entirely amoral.”
+ Trump: “Thank goodness for TiVo or something thereof. Right? TiVo. We love TiVo. We love TiVo. One of the greatest inventions in history.” (Does anyone still use TiVo? Unlikely, since TiVo is defunct: “TiVo is a discontinued line of digital video recorders developed and marketed by Xperi and introduced in 1999.”)
+ At one of their early live gigs together, Jackson Browne introduced Warren Zevon as “the Ernest Hemingway of the 12-string guitar.” Zevon replied: “No, Jackson — the Charles Bronson of the 12-string guitar.’”
+ Jennifer Lawrence on filming a nude scene for Die My Love, while pregnant: “I was pregnant. What was I gonna do? Like, not eat? I was working 15 hours a day. Like, I was just tired. Yeah, it felt really freeing. I remember like, them sending over a close-up of like, cellulite being like: “Do you want us to touch this up?” and I was like, “No! That’s an ass.”
“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a ‘biological’ need.”
Donald Trump is wagging the dog. To “wag the dog” means to make something secondary control something more important, as if the dog’s tail were controlling the dog. Politically, it means the deliberate creation of a distraction. The phrase originally described initiating a war to divert attention from a presidential scandal and was popularized in the 1997 movie Wag the Dog in which a spin doctor (Robert De Niro) fabricates a war to cover up a presidential sex scandal.
Donald Trump and his handlers have concocted a new version of this strategy. Trump’s Wag the Dog 2.0 controls the news cycle by continually shifting the presidential focus. There is no need for Trump to start a fake war to distract the public: a trip to Asia, a meeting with Xi Jinping, threats of nuclear tests, changes in tariffs, East Wing renovations, redoing the Lincoln bathroom, floating rumors about a third term, even a Halloween party – all serve to grab the headlines.
Trump is energetically wagging the dog, leaving major issues off the radar.
Among those issues lacking sustained media attention is the President’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The Epstein file remains the elephant in Trump’s Oval Office. While King Charles stripped his brother Andrew of all royal titles, journalists continue to fail to fully connect the dots between Trump and Epstein. As Carla Bleiker asked on the German broadcaster DW; “Epstein scandal: Consequences for Andrew ― what about Trump?” Trump has a $10 billion libel suit against The Wall Street Journal over an article claiming he sent a very unpresidential birthday note to his then-friend Epstein on his 50th birthday.
Contrast Trump’s evasive attitude to the Epstein issue with his boasting about being a global peacemaker, claiming to have solved at least eight major conflicts. His Nobel Prize campaign shows little success in the Middle East. The “Gaza Peace Plan”? A unified transition authority? Since the October 10, 2025, ceasefire and Trump’s “Peace Plan,” over 200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli strikes, according to media sources and the Gaza Health Ministry. On October 29 alone, Israeli airstrikes killed more than 100 people.
Aid deliveries and medical supplies remain well below what is needed. The World Food Programme reports that roughly 750 tons of aid are being delivered daily compared to the 2,000 tons required. Many crossing remain closed or difficult to access. Medical supplies have not yet reached large parts of the population. Infrastructure remains weak and damaged; hospitals that are still standing are functioning well below capacity.
Regarding the first phase of the 20-point governance Peace Plan, Hamas has not disarmed. Medium – and long-term authority over Gaza remains unclear. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected Gaza being governed either by Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, insisting that Israel retain security control. As for the “Board of Peace” which Trump proudly announced he would chair, where is it?
For all the noise about peace in the Middle East, a “New Middle East” has not materialized. Trump and the news cycles have drifted away from the region and the story.
Similarly, Trump’s bragging about ending the Russia/Ukraine war in 24 hours, as he promised during his campaign, has also not materialized, and the fighting is no longer front-page news. Instead of creating a fake war, (“Wag the Dog” 1.0), Trump has stepped back from serious involvement in the ongoing Russia/Ukraine conflict. His on-again, off-again relationship with Vladimir Putin reflects his inconsistent style and a lack of sustained interest. After receiving Putin with royal pomp in Alaska – including rolling out a red carpet and a ride in the presidential car – the lack of progress towards a ceasefire led to the cancellation of the much-touted Budapest summit.
Instead of creating a fake war to hide a scandal, Trump has withdrawn from a real war.
Even domestically, Trump avoids focusing on complicated issues. While hundreds of thousands of federal workers remain unpaid during the shutdown as well as the potential loss of food stamps for 42 million Americans, DJT decided to take a foreign tour instead of solving a serious domestic crisis. During the 1995 shutdown, President Clinton canceled his trip to Japan and Asia, including attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. During the 2013 shutdown, President Obama also canceled attending an APEC summit as well as visits to Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
Regarding Trump’s inactivity during the shutdown, the New York Times reported; “The White House declined to answer questions about whether Mr. Trump would get more involved in the negotiations in the days ahead.”
“Wag the dog” traditionally implies assertive action, initiating a war to distract from something else, such as a sex scandal involving Trump’s alleged relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Donald Trump’s Wag the Dog 2.0 is perpetual motion, distraction through hyperactivity. Trump flits from place to place, from issue to issue, without ever fully addressing the most demanding and complex problems.
Like a child endlessly surfing online games, the President of the United States shows little capacity for serious focus or the maturity to deal with complicated diplomatic issues. The original “wag the dog” strategy was deliberate, a calculated means to conceal a scandal. Trump’s Wag the Dog 2.0 is perhaps less a strategy than a reflection of his particular personality. Nevertheless, the political, social, and economic consequences are there; the results of a lack of presidential responsibility.
The November 5 elections reflected voter dissatisfaction with the sitting President. Donald Trump’s Wag the Dog 2.0. is unpopular, and highly irresponsible.
Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which will be celebrating the group’s fiftieth anniversary at its convention being held in Chicago this November 7 to 9, has for decades been known as the voice of reform in the Teamsters Union. But this year there will be those inside and outside the convention hall challenging TDU’s direction and arguing that it has abandoned its ideal. At the center of the controversy is TDU’s support for Teamster president Sean O’Brien who is allied with President Donald Trump.
Some Teamsters no longer see TDU as fighting for reform but rather as part of the establishment. They are appalled that O’Brien has aligned with President Donald Trump who has fired hundreds of thousands of federal workers, torn up their contracts, and effectively destroyed their unions, while at the same time he has reversed decades of Black workers’ achievements, and attacked immigrants. TDU’s alliance with O’Brien and thus with Trump has tarnished its reputation as a movement for union reform and social justice, while isolating the Teamsters from the majority of the labor movement.
For a number of TDU members and other Teamsters, TDU’s alliance with O’Brien and his support for Trump have become the central issue. Leonard Stoehr, a longtime Teamster now living in the Atlanta area, is an over-the-road driver for ABF company. Stoehr says, “I think a plurality of Teamsters voted for Trump, but without full information. They thought he was going to have a laser-like focus on the economy to help working people, but, once he took office, he went right back to representing the oligarchy, which is where he comes from. We will absolutely raise the Trump issue at the TDU convention, because support for Trump is a death-wish for organized labor.”
Dave Robbins, now retired, was a Teamster for fifty years and served as a steward or local officer in several local unions; he first joined TDU in 1977. He spent his life fighting for the union’s members. He will be going to the TDU convention with his wife Sol Rodriguez, also a TDU member. Dave doesn’t mince words. “Sean O’Brien is a terrible general president for so many reasons, but primarily for remaining silent about Trump’s racism, anti-immigrant attitudes. He’s a traitor, a class-traitor, and he should not be endorsed by TDU. Sean O’Brien is a pro-fascist, Trump-supporter.”
David Levin, TDU’s national organizer, the top staff person, disagrees. As he wrote to me, “Endorsing Sean O’Brien and the Teamsters United Slate does not mean endorsing Donald Trump or attacks on workers. TDU has been, and will continue to be vocal in our opposition to attacks on the working class, including OSHA, the NLRB, immigrant workers, and union-busting of federal worker unions.” He argues that since O’Brien real gains have been made. “Under new leadership, the IBT is standing up to employers and mobilizing members.”
Or as Peter Landon, a longtime TDU activist and former TDU staff person puts it, “I don’t support O’Brien. I do recognize the opportunities he has created for the membership to play far more of a role in the union.”
Some in TDU appear to have bought the argument that though Trump is an authoritarian, a union-buster, a racist and a sexist, who dispatches ICE, the National Guard, and active-duty troops to our cities, nevertheless they will continue to back O’Brien as long as it gives TDU more latitude for organizing in the Teamsters. This is the devil’s bargain that TDU has made. They are willing to endorse O’Brien, accepting his alliance with Trump as long as he tolerates the TDU’s organizing in and through the union.
At this convention, TDU will be holding a vote on whether or not to endorse O’Brien for union president for five more years. If TDU does endorse him, it will renew the devil’s bargain in both senses of that phrase, making a morally compromised decision that accepts a short-term gain for a larger, long-term loss. Such an endorsement would be made with eyes wide open and the knowledge that Sean O’Brien is comfortable with the Teamsters carrying the mantle of MAGA’s favorite union.
TDU in its Heyday
Teamsters for a Democratic Union began fifty years ago as a small group of rank-and-file activists committed to union democracy and militancy. I was one of them. After its founding, TDU opened a national office and hired a small staff paid modest wages made possible by the members’ dues and by grants from progressive foundations. (Today according to public documents TDU has revenues of over $300,000 and its educational and legal arm, Teamster Rank And File Education And Legal Defense Foundation raised $1.43 million in 2023. These are modest amounts compared to the Teamsters union’s treasury and to the wealthy corporations against which TDU for years fought for the members rights.)
TDU fought for things like elected rather than appointed union stewards and ran reformers for local union office as well as for top offices of the international union. When the U.S. Justice Department brought a RICO suit against the union and threatened to take it over, TDU argued that instead, as the feds removed the mafia. it should allow the membership to have free elections with the right to vote on the union’s top officers. The Justice Department and the courts agreed with TDU and rank-and-file Teamsters won a real victory for democracy.
For nearly all of its history, TDU was in the opposition and often persecuted by the Teamster leadership and company bosses. TDU members elected to the top offices of local unions found themselves blocked at every turn by the Teamsters’ national leadership. Only for five years, during the presidency of Ron Carey, whom TDU had helped to elect, was TDU not only tolerated but accepted by the union leadership. Carey and TDU, while they did not always see eye-to-eye, collaborated on local elections and contracts. It was TDU’s heyday. That was the TDU that I described in my book Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union published back in 1990.
TDU Makes a Deal with the Devil
Under Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., who served as Teamster general president from 1998 to 2018, that is for twenty-five long years, TDU was a persecuted opposition. Veteran TDU leaders like Ken Paff, and his successor David Levin yearned to come in out of the cold, to be able once again to operate with the support of the union leadership as they had when Ron Carey was president. The 2022 Teamster presidential election provided that opportunity.
Sean O’Brien, the head of Boston Local 25, was running for President of the Teamsters Union and remaking himself as a Teamster reformer. The head of Boston Local 25, he had a reputation as a thug. For example, he intervened in 2013 in the local election in Teamster 251 in Rhode Island, threatening the TDU activists there who were running a slate against his preferred candidate. “They need to be punished,” said O’Brien. The Teamsters Independent Review Board charged O’Brien and found him guilty of violating the Teamster Constitution and federal law when he threatened TDU members and he was suspended for two weeks.
Yet in 2022, in their campaign for the union’s top offices, O’Brien and his running mate Fred Zuckerman, known as the OZ slate, put themselves forward as reformers. Seeing an opportunity, Paff and Levin, negotiated with O’Brien to form an alliance, and eventually won over the TDU leadership and the TDU convention. O’Brien, with TDU’s support, won the election and became Teamster president.
The first item on O’Brien’s agenda was the UPS contract set to expire in August of 2023. He gave the impression he was prepared to lead a national strike to win the union’s demands. Back in 1997, President Ron Carey working with TDU had led UPS workers in a tremendous strike and won a real victory. The slogan for that strike had been “Part-Time America Won’t Work,” and the union forced the company to agree to create 10,000 new full-time jobs. It was one of the most important strikes by any union in that era and many Teamsters now wanted to repeat it. To prepare, TDU worked with O’Brien on planning the strategy and tactics needed to educate and organize the members.
But the strike never happened. O’Brien negotiated a contract with the company, which TDU proclaimed a historic victory, and there were some significant gains, but it was, in fact, weak in several areas. Most importantly it failed to end part-time status for workers who now made up 60% of the workforce. As Sam Gindin, former research director for the Canadian Auto Workers wrote, “The union made big gains — but in opting not to strike over demands beyond wages, the Teamsters may have passed up a transformative opportunity for the labor movement.”
Having won the Teamster presidency and having settled the UPS contract in August 2023 without a strike, O’Brien went off to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump’s ring, and then in July of 2024 O’Brien spoke at the Republican Party National Convention. While the Teamster leadership had declined to endorse either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, O’Brien’s speech was clearly a tacit endorsement of Donald Trump. To quell any doubts about where the union stood, the Teamsters made large financial contributions to Trump and other Republican candidates. So, TDU, now allied with O’Brien, has come full circle, from fighting the powers-that-be to joining them.
Teamster Reform in a New Era
The TDU convention this year will be different from others because there will be vocal opposition to the leadership both within and without the convention. In an attempt to diminish the opposition, TDU steering committee members and staff have called some dissident members and suggested, “Maybe it would be better if you don’t come this year.” Still there will be dissident members on the floor.
Some opposition will come from organized groups who oppose TDU’s current course. One such activist group within the union is Teamsters Mobilize (TM).
One member of TM is Jennifer Hancock of Local 322 , a part-time UPS employee in the warehouse, a sorter at the Coach Road hub and package car center in Richmond. “I’ve been doing it for 34 years,” she explains. “I’m also the political coordinator for Teamster local 322. We support candidates who support labor,” and most of those she says are Democrats
A few years ago, Hancock got involved in a TDU discussion group among UPS part-timers, mostly young people, a group that subsequently evolved into Teamsters Mobilize. “The general word about part-timers is that we’re lazy, we’re stoned, etc. But a few years ago, a bunch of us on a TDU part-timer chat decided to put together a group hoping to influence the next contract. At that time, we were still trying to work with TDU, so we went to the TDU convention. We wanted a part-timer caucus. There were Black caucuses, Latino caucuses, and women’s caucus. So why not a part-timer caucus? We finally got a watered-down resolution passed, but then it just disappeared. We’re told we couldn’t organize a caucus and would just have to rely on grievances. So, our hands were tied behind our backs.”
Teamster Mobilize went from being a part-time employee caucus to a more general reform group within the union. Their website says, “Teamsters Mobilize is a grassroots organization of Teamster activists organizing to build up real worker power in our union against our employers and their cronies, to expose corrupt Teamsters leadership, and to build brick-by-brick a genuine fighting labor movement.” A statement that sounds like TDU back in the 1970s and 80s when it was fighting Teamster presidents Frank Fitzsimmons, Roy Williams, and Jackie Presser.
This year it seems Hancock won’t be going to the convention. “I’m still a member of TDU, but I’m not allowed to come to the convention.” David Levine wrote her saying she couldn’t attend because she and Teamsters Mobilize members intended to “crash’ the convention. Levine wrote, “TDU is not going to allow non-registrants to crash our Convention or the Convention hotel and we are not going to allow TM to have a mixed group of registrants and crashers.”
But Hancock doesn’t believe that’s the real reason she is being excluded. “I believe there is going to be a floor vote on Sean O’Brien and they know that we would be against that. So, they’re putting their finger on the scale to get the result they want. I would not have voted for Sean O’Brien in any case. I don’t support Sean O’Brien because he is not supporting labor. Everything Sean O’Brien has done has been about supporting Sean O’Brien. His support for the Trump administration is also a big issue.”
She gives the example of Donald Trump’s firing of Gwynne A. Wilcox, removing her from the NLRB. When that happened, my principal officers and others went up to Washington, D.C. to protest—but the O’Brien and the International officers did nothing.”
Overall, says Hancock, “I am very disappointed in TDU. When I first joined TDU, this was before Sean O’Brien’s election, everyone told me what a great organization it was. We took TDU’s word and campaigned for Sean O’Brien. Then TDU snuggled up to the O’Brien administration and now there’s no light between them.”
John Palmer of the Hooker Slate
John Palmer, hails from San Antonio, Texas a member of Local 657 was a freight driver for ABF for years but is now international vice-president-at-large, elected on the O’Brien-Zuckerman slate. “I was played,” he says. I knew what O’Brien was, I had sat next to him for five years, but Fred Zuckerman convinced me that O’Brien had found religion and would be a reformer.”
Palmer soon learned that was not so. “It started when I objected to the UPS contract. I was the only one on the executive board who raised an objection. And I did it in public. I went to the press about it.” At a meeting to discuss the tentative contract, “I was attacked by all of the other executive board members. When they were done, I told them, ‘I appreciate the dogpile. Now I’m going to put together a slate,’ ” meaning an opposition slate to run against them. And he did. Today Palmer is running on the Hooker Fearless Slate for the same position he now holds.
When O’Brien organized a meeting with presidential candidate Donald Trump, Palmer explained, “I refused to meet with Trump. I know who Trump is. I wouldn’t sit in the same room with him for two reasons. First, he was a draft dodger. I’m a veteran and my dad and his brothers all served. Second, he’s a scab.”
Like some of the others with whom I talked, Palmer is also disappointed in TDU. “How can TDU be a democratic membership organization, when so many decisions are made by the national organizer,” for 45 years Ken Paff and now David Levin.
Palmer says, “I won’t be going to the TDU Convention, but I and many of our slate members will be at the hotel in Chicago. “I’m not coming to raise a ruckus. I’m 67 years old. I’m past that. But I’ll be talking with the members.”
Richard Hooker, Candidate for General President
Richard Hooker is the secretary-treasurer, the top officer of Philadelphia Teamster Local 623. Before becoming a full-time union officer, he was a UPS worker. “I’ve done every job you can think of at UPS.” The son of a preacher, he began working at UPS while attending Drexel University, and is now married and the father of four children.
“I’m not going to the convention, but I will be in the same hotel, collecting signatures from those who are there. The signatures are to become an accredited slate, though if we have to, we could still get on the ballot at the convention. But the TDU convention is a good opportunity to listen to and to talk with our members.”
While not a TDU member, Hooker says, he used to support TDU. But no more. “I’m shocked by TDU’s support for O’Brien. Even though I never was a member I always respected their fight, their being there. From the very beginning I never supported Sean O’Brien because of his intimidation, retribution, and retaliation. He has a history of doing that. He’s also known for failing to win strong contracts. He has a history of concessions, 13 of the last 18 years we have had concessions and he has a lot to do with that.”
Like others, Hooker criticizes O’Brien for “his fascination with Trump. He’s decided to go along with Trump and everything that he’s done. But not just Trump, also the ruling class, the employer class, the billionaire class, because that’s who Trump represents. He doesn’t represent the workers.”
Hooker is also critical of O’Brien’s actions within the Teamsters. “If you look at what O’Brien did when he first got elected. He eliminated a lot of people from the staff and 70 percent of them black and brown people.” As a result, Hooker explains, “The union, that is the union’s members, had to pay 2.9 million dollars as a result of a discrimination lawsuit. And then he fired three other officials for their support of the rival Steve Vairma slate. The union members had to pay 2 years back wages to each of those people. His policies don’t work for the Teamsters or for the broader working class.”
Hooker is disappointed with TDU today. “They have a go along to get along attitude. No matter what O’Brien does, they refuse to speak out against him. TDU was built to educate and empower and to call out wrong-doing.” But today, he says, TDU doesn’t speak out. “When you are silent, you have taken the side of the oppressor. That is what TDU has done because they refuse to speak out against the oppressor of the Teamsters. They have become what they fought against.”
Sean O’Brien, candidate for reelection, will be speaking at the TDU Convention, though he is not a member, and Richard Hooker, also not a member, will not be given such an opportunity. Levin wrote to Hooker, “TDU is not going to spend the members’ time or funds to host a campaign speech by you.” While TDU certainly has a right to determine who speaks and its conventions, it seems a shame not to allow the two candidates for Teamster president—the only two so far—to debate or at least speak. What an educational opportunity for the members! But Levin, clearly committed to O’Brien, has no interest in helping his opposition.
What Next for TDU?
With its fifty-year history, its substantial and expanding foundation fundraising capacity, its permanent staff, the continuity of its leadership, and its conviction that it’s the genuine voice of Teamster members, I think of TDU as something like a miniature version of the labor bureaucracy. Not financially privileged like most union officials, not corrupt like some officials have been, not tied to a political party, at least not until recently, but still a power center in the union which despite its theory and its genuine attempts to root itself among them remains separate from the union members.
Given all of this, TDU seems unlikely to change course, though there is the possibility that this convention could realign the organization, that it could return to its more militant roots. Denying O’Brien its endorsement would reestablish TDU as an independent organization speaking up for the Rank & File and holding leadership accountable, regardless of the risk. Not unlike the original founders of TDU some fifty years ago.
Defense Intelligence Agency assessment of current and future missile threats to the U.S. in 2025 – Public Domain
Over the past several months, the editorial board of the Washington Post has moved steadily to the right, endorsing greater defense budgets, the use of military force, and even making a case for the U.S. military to return to its largest air base in Afghanistan. In a recent editorial, “How to live in our nuclear ‘House of Dynamite’,” the Post has reversed a long-standing position in order to endorse the building of the Golden Dome national missile defense. The system could take more than a decade to build and require more than $1 trillion in funding.
The United States has already spent nearly $400 billion dollars for defensive systems over the past 50 years without any reason to believe a Star Wars system can be successful. The tests themselves have been conducted under careful conditions to ensure success and to avoid realistic scenarios that would not be assured of success.
The current defense budget already has carved out a modest down payment of $25 billion for a system that is not workable. The only certainty is that billions of dollars will be pumped into the pockets of defense industry. More gold for the oligarchs.
Several decades of testing on theatre and national missile defense systems show that it is not easy to hit one missile with another, and there is no system thus far that can distinguish between an actual ballistic missile and a decoy. One of the reasons why the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to an Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972 was their recognition that any national defense system would be ineffective, and would provoke another round of escalation in offensive strategic delivery systems. The ABM Treaty was considered a landmark achievement in arms control and disarmament, expected to permit greater reductions in offensive systems. The abrogation of the treaty opened the door to justifying new offensive systems.
In a world without national missile defense systems, the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia reduced their nuclear stockpiles by more than 80 percent, and nuclear testing (except for North Korea) had ceased. However, Donald Trump has now threatened to resume testing for the first time since 1992. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty bans nuclear testing, but the United States, Russia, and China—signers of the CTBT—have never ratified the document. The Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1969 has also been successful in limiting the number of nuclear weapons states, but resumed testing and a national missile defense in the United States would lead to more threatening scenarios.
One of the best reasons for negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine would be the possibility of the United States returning to the negotiating table with Russia regarding arms control and disarmament. The last extant arms control treaty between Russia and the United States—the New SALT Treaty—will expire in February 2026, and Russian President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have indicated that Moscow is prepared to extend the life of the treaty and discuss other arms control issues. Such a step would help to reduce the level of tension and suspicion that exists between the two largest nuclear powers, and could even induce China—the third largest—to enter an arms control dialogue. Meanwhile, China is on target to have an inventory of 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2020.
The Washington Post editorial glibly asserts that mutual assured destruction and the threat of overwhelming retaliation have prevented a nuclear attack. Nevertheless, it concludes that, as “missile defenses can fail, so too can deterrence.” It therefore concludes that a Golden Dome is needed. We certainly don’t need a system that doesn’t work, and that would likely lead to a greater buildup of offensive weapons and a costly arms race.
The United States and the global community would be better served by talks to reduce offensive weaponry, prevent any notion of national missile defense, prevent the weaponization of space, and take on the challenge of AI that could potentially lead to the accidental use of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the United States is prepared to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a system that has never been successfully tested in a way that combines interceptors, radars, and controlling computer networks. Any national defense system will only hinder the cooperation needed to reduce the dangers of accidental launches and compromise the cooperation needed for early warning systems.
Some folks who know my work presume that I am implacably opposed to all federal agencies. Not true. I have always appreciated federal agencies that exposed the waste, fraud, abuse, and brazen lies committed by politicians and bureaucrats.
The Trump administration has warred against such truth-tellers since its first week in office. On January 24, President Trump fired 17 inspector generals working for a wide array of federal agencies. Trump’s action jolted Washington because most of those officials could supposedly only be removed for cause — specific misconduct or other abuses. Trump also scorned the federal law requiring giving Congress 30-days notice before terminating such officials. Some of those inspectors had done excellent work.
A White House official justified the firings: “These rogue, partisan bureaucrats who have weaponized the justice system against their political enemies are no longer fit or deserve to serve in their appointed positions.” The official said the firings will “make room for qualified individuals who will uphold the rule of law and protect Democracy.”
But does the Trump version of “rule of law” go beyond hiding all government crimes?
Among the initial firings was John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Sopko was one of the most heroic truth tellers in modern Washington. He withstood fierce pressure from multiple presidents to debunk official propaganda on the Afghanistan war:
In 2014, Sopko revealed: “I was stunned when senior State Department officials on my first trip to Kabul suggested how we should write our reports. They even suggested changes to our report titles and proposed that we give them our press releases in advance so they could pre-approve them.”
In 2019, Sopko declared that “the American people have constantly been lied to” about the Afghan war.
In 2020, Sopko testified to Congress: “There’s an odor of mendacity throughout the Afghanistan issue . . . mendacity and hubris. We have created an incentive to almost require people to lie.”
A few weeks after Trump fired him, Sopko declared: “The problem was, we have built into the American system to lie to the American people.”
Trump later fired other inspector generals and acting inspector generals, bringing the toll to roughly two dozen. The New York Times, in a piece headlined, “Watchdogs Are Watching Their Backs,” noted: “The message to thousands of workers in inspectors general offices was clear: Be careful what you choose to investigate or you might be out of a job.”
Late last month, the Trump administration deleted funding for the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. That torpedoed dozens of websites with bevies of reports of federal abuses, including “a repository of decades of recommendations on how the government can save money,” the New York Times reported. It also knocked offline the “hotline and whistle-blower links for the public to provide allegations of fraud, waste, and abuse.” Armen Tooloee, an Office of Management and Budget spokesman, justified the demolition by claiming that inspector generals “have become corrupt, partisan, and in some cases, have lied to the public. The American people will no longer be funding this corruption.”
And since inspector generals have been fired, there is no risk of other corruption in Washington.
Trump is repeating the same anti-oversight jihad that the George W. Bush administration launched earlier this century. President Bush repeatedly revealed in signing statements that anti-corruption efforts violated his prerogative. After Congress created an inspector general in late 2003 to look into the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, Bush decreed: “The CPA IG shall refrain from initiating, carrying out, or completing an audit or investigation, or from issuing a subpoena, which requires access to sensitive operation plans, intelligence matters, counterintelligence matters, ongoing criminal investigations by other administrative units of the Department of Defense related to national security, or other matters the disclosure of which would constitute a serious threat to national security.”
In 2008, Bush declared in a signing statement that his administration would not cooperate with a “Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan” Congress created “to investigate allegations of waste, mismanagement, and excessive force by contractors.” Regardless of how many controversies had arisen over U.S. contractors wantonly shooting innocent Iraqis, or how many scandals had erupted over billions of U.S. tax dollars vanishing in Iraq, the president ruled that no one had a right to discover what happened under his command. Preserving the prerogatives of the president was far more important than protecting American taxpayers or Iraqi civilians. Taxpayers had no right to know how Bush spent their paychecks.
The only lesson that the Trump team took from those Bush cover-ups is to get bigger brooms to sweep away evidence and to make more threats against potential whistleblowers.
Trump is governing as if he is entitled to sovereign immunity from reality. Trump is also warring with the Government Accountability Office. Russell Vought, the chief of the Office of Management and Budget, said last month that GAO is “something that shouldn’t exist.” GAO is Congress’s audit and investigative arm. Torpedoing GAO would be consistent with the Trump dogma that no one has a right to know how the administration is using its power or spending tax dollars.
Until 2004, GAO was known as the Government Accounting Office – almost the personification of innocuousness. When I was getting rolling as an investigative journalist in Washington in the 1980s, GAO quickly became one of my favorite sources. A long, widely-hated article I did in 1983 on the failure of federal food assistance relied on GAO reports on the failure of school lunches and food stamps to improve nutrition or bolster good health. When I pummeled federal farm programs in the 1980s, GAO reports were often linchpins for my attacks. When GAO issued reports exposing agricultural program failures, congressional staff would summon them to Capitol Hill and berate them for hours without mercy. But the auditors usually stuck to their guns.
GAO is no Temple of Delphi entitled to automatic deference. The agency has sometimes taken a dive on controversial issues or bungled its analyses beyond repair. But American citizens have few alternatives for semi-credible information inside the government. Crippling GAO won’t make any boondoggles vanish.
Trump’s vendetta against auditors and inspectors will do nothing to make Washington less devious and deceitful. “Truth will out” is still the biggest fairy tale in Washington. And there is no reason to expect Trump or any of his appointees to sacrifice themselves in the name of full disclosure.
Even if federal inspectors and auditors often kowtow or strike out, their existence provides a riverboat gamble that citizens could someday learn of official outrages. Many federal agencies suffer the same ‘incentive to require people to lie’ that SIGAR John Sopko mentioned on for Afghan policy. And we can’t count on divine intervention to compel Washington policymakers to deal honestly with the American people.
An earlier version of this piece was published by the Libertarian Institute.
Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain
Last week may well go down as the week of humiliation for us in the Asia Pacific. At the beginning of the week, Trump landed in Kuala Lumpur to attend the ASEAN Leaders’ Summit, where he got a special ceremony to mark his allegedly successful brokering of the peace deal between Thailand and Cambodia, the heavy lifting of which was actually done by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia, who gracefully yielded center stage to the egomaniac. Trump did not even bother to wait for the summit to end but flew on to Japan, with Prime Minister Hun Manet’s sweet promise ringing his ears that Cambodia will nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In Japan, Trump got a royal welcome from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a disciple of the late Shinzo Abe, the reactionary ideologue who was also Trump’s golf buddy. Takaichi, Japan’s first female top leader, thought that a fitting gift for Trump was the club the assassinated Abe used to put the ball into the hole. Trump also notched another promise of a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from her.
Takaichi was, however, upstaged by Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, who presented Trump with a replica of a golden crown from the Silla dynasty that was discovered in a royal tomb in Gyeongju. I don’t know if this was fake news, but I find entirely consistent with Trump’s personality the report that upon being presented with the crown, he said to Lee, “Thanks, but I prefer the original.”
And what did these leaders get for their brazen displays of vassalage to King Donald? None of the ASEAN governments got any reduction from the punitive tariffs of 19 percent imposed on their exports to the United States imposed by Trump. Nor did Korea and Japan get any relief from the 15 percent levied on their exports. Indeed, in addition to meekly accepting the tariffs, they also had to make commitments to make hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in the United States.
What Trump is up to is the question that has kept the world at the edge of its seat since he began his second term ten months ago. Trump is the epitome of unpredictability, but if you impose the zigzag pattern of his moves on what statisticians call a scatterplot, you will see that there is a trend line that fits the hypothesis of the imposition of a new paradigm in the U.S. relationship to the world. There is a coherence to most of Trump’s ostensibly madcap moves.
Trump’s “Grand Strategy:” A Smoke and Mirrors Act
What are the main elements of Trump’s “grand strategy”?
Trump definitely represents a sharp break from the eight decades-long U.S. imperial strategy of liberal containment, where Washington met perceived challenges to U.S. hegemony wherever they appeared with a combination of military intervention, political alliances, and a multilateral regime that favored its interests. Trump represents that sector of the right that sees the United States as overextended economically, politically, and militarily, and believes that this is one of the key causes of its decline. This isolationism is the dominant one in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” base.
He encourages a perspective of victimhood that sees both enemies and allies as abusing American generosity and regards previous U.S. administrations as being suckers for tolerating this abuse, the consequences of which fell on the American people. Trump sees China as the worst offender when it comes to taking advantage of the United States, but it is not the only one. Punitive tariffs on practically all countries in the world are his way of rectifying what he sees as a fundamental injustice.
He doesn’t care about multilateralism and the institutions that the US erected to legitimize its hegemony, notably the World Trade Organization, World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He wants to deal with each country on a bilateral basis, though this is only bilateral in name since the reality is unilateral imposition of Trump’s wishes on the weaker partner in military and economic negotiations. From Trump’s point of view, there are no definitive agreements, only tentative ones that are subject to change in their terms if the other party displeases Trump, a lesson Canada learned the hard way when the government of the province of Ontario aired an ad featuring Ronald Reagan saying tariffs hurt every American. Trump did not like this and said he was adding a 10 percent increase to the 35 percent tariffs he had already imposed on Ottawa!
As for addressing planetary problems like climate change, forget it. The United States has pulled out of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and will boycott the climate summit in Belem, Brazil, this month, just as it pulled out of the fourth Financing for Development conference in Sevilla, Spain, in late June and early July this year.
Trump knows that globalization and neoliberalism promoted the deindustrialization and financialization of the US economy, and he is determined to make “America Great Again” via an ultra-protectionist strategy that radically limits imports to encourage U.S. reindustrialization and demands that US and foreign corporations dismantle their global supply chains, even at great cost, and relocate the most vital links in these chains in the United States. The corporations that led the migration from the United States in the 1990s and the 2000s in search of cheap labor in China and elsewhere have acknowledged that Trump is the boss, with Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, meekly stating, “The president has said he wants more in the United States…so we want more in the United States.”
Whether Trump can reverse the process of American economic decline and reindustrialize the United States via ultra-protectionism remains to be seen, but the chances of stopping China from becoming number one are not, in my opinion, great. Indeed, in terms of the measure of purchasing power parity, China is now the biggest economy in the world, and it has developed a self-sustaining research and development capability that, in many areas, like Artificial Intelligence, now rivals that of the United States.
Trump’s simplistic approach to reindustrialization might well be called magic capitalism, where simply by issuing threats to raise tariffs against countries and demanding investment from corporate hostages, without any planning or industrial policy, voila, you have a gleaming newly industrially reinvigorated American economy!
Trump’s ultra-protectionist trade and investment policy is consistent with his immigration policy, which is to round up and throw out undocumented migrant workers and radically reduce the numbers of migrants coming in legally except from white countries like Norway, whose people have no intention of migrating to the United States.
Trump’s rhetoric is aggressive, but let’s not be taken in by appearance. He is actually moving from a posture of confronting threats to U.S. hegemony everywhere to a “spheres of influence” approach, where the United States sees the Western hemisphere, including Latin America, as its sphere of influence, while Russia is informally acknowledged as being dominant in Eastern Europe, Western Europe is left to fend for itself, and the Asia-Pacific is seen as China’s sphere of influence.
Behind Trump’s demand that Europe, Japan, and Korea must spend 5 percent of their GDP on their militaries is the reality that maintaining over 700 U.S. bases globally is a serious drain on American resources. The ruling elites in Japan and South Korea are, in fact, worried that Trump will significantly reduce the U.S. military presence in their countries and worry that Trump might come to a deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom Trump regards as a personal friend, behind their backs. Their worries parallel those of the European elites, who suspect that Trump wants very badly to have a deal on Ukraine with Putin behind their backs. This suspicion was aired by no less than the president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, when he said a few weeks ago that Trump “objectively functions as an asset” of Russia.
There is a domestic reality behind Trump’s spheres of influence approach, and this is that the MAGA base is largely isolationist, as noted earlier. Vice President Vance, ideologues Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have been vocal about ending or radically reducing Washington’s global commitments to ensure there will be no more “forever wars.” They are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts but because they feel overseas engagements are a distraction from America First. At the same time, the recent strikes against Venezuelan boats on the pretext they are smuggling drugs to the United States are really signs of an aggressive reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine that Latin America is an integral part of the U.S. imperial sphere of influence. More displays of this kind are likely in the future.
Another important feature of Trump’s military policy is that aside from its refocusing of the U.S. military interventionist capabilities on the Western hemisphere is his use of the military as an instrument of domestic coercion, along with the police. Using the pretext of dealing with crime, he has deployed or plans to deploy troops in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Chicago, Memphis, and Portland, all of which are cities controlled by the Democratic Party. Indeed, in an unprecedented assembly of U.S. military commanders from all over the world in September, Trump said deployments to U.S. cities were meant to deal with “a war from within,” in other words, to contain what he regards as the threat of civil war, and train them for combat abroad.
This refocusing of the U.S. military to the domestic front and the Western hemisphere does not mean, of course, that Trump will not engage in global shows of force, like the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities a couple of months ago. It is likely, however, that these will not be sustained interventions but occasional unilateral strikes to keep what Trump perceives as Washington’s enemies off balance. And, of course, whether under the Democrats or under Trump, the U.S. commitment to arming Israel’s genocidal machine is likely to continue indefinitely.
To sum up, Trump’s grand strategy might best be described as a smoke-and-mirrors act. It is the fighting retreat of an imperial power in decline. It is a defensive imperialism that has replaced the old expansive imperialism of the old liberal containment paradigm. But it is no less dangerous, because it has so many elements of unpredictability, indeed of irrationality, the main one of course being Donald Trump. This volatility was on display this last week, when even as he paraded himself as a man of peace in pursuit of the Nobel Prize during his trip through Asia, Trump also announced he was giving the order for the United States to resume nuclear testing.
How to Respond to Trump?
How should the Asia Pacific and the Global South respond to Trump’s recasting of America’s role in the world?
This is, of course, a subject that demands a separate essay. But let me just say, with respect to trade, that while the punitive tariffs may mean hardship for our peoples in the short term, since owing to World Bank and IMF policies, our economies have become so dependent on exports to the United States, they may also be a blessing in disguise in the medium and long term since we will be forced to pay attention to cultivating our domestic markets as the main engine of demand and this can only be possible through the adoption of redistributive strategies to foster greater equality.
Also, with the collapse of the old neoliberal multilateral order that favored U.S. economic interests as Trump adopts unilateralism, the rest of the world may find this an opportune time to build alternative regional and global arrangements built on cooperation, equality, and the provision of development space for countries in the Global South. The BRICS may offer an alternative, but they need not be the only one.
We live in an era of multiple crises, but this can also be one of multiple opportunities. Let me just end with my favorite quote from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, one that is so apt for our times: “The old world is dying, and the new one is struggling to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”
A deadly force is brewing — and it’s not caused by the climate.
A deadly force, intensifying as it goes, claiming lives and destabilizing nations. Hurricane Melissa’s assault on the Caribbean was devastating. So is Donald Trump’s extrajudicial bombing campaign.
When Melissa hit Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, we saw heart-rending pictures of homes underwater, families wading through muck, and hospitals with their roofs blown off. The compassion we felt was real, the urgency high, and for a news cycle or two, the media made the world pay attention.
But not too far from Melissa’s flood zone, another kind of disaster has been unfolding in comparative media quiet. This one is caused not by climate, but by our autocratic president, who gave us two month’s warning.
On September 23, in a thuggish address to the United Nations Donald Trump explicitly threatened to blow “Venezuelan terrorist drug smugglers” “out of existence” in blatant disregard of international law or due process. Sure enough, as of the end of October, U.S. forces had conducted fifteen air strikes on multiple vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
The White House thumps on about stopping narcotics flow, but we’ve seen no interceptions, no arrests, no narcotics cargo — only executions.
Melissa took, by an early count, thirty-two lives. Trump’s warships and drones have officially killed at least sixty-one people. The survivors and victims include nationals from Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Trinidad, mostly fishermen and boat crews whose families — and governments — dispute all allegations of narco-trafficking. The Trump team doesn’t care. Nor does it care to consult Congress — as the War Powers Act requires — or offer proof.
Now, a massive military force is massed just to the south and east of Melissa’s path of destruction. The U.S.deployment reportedly includes tens of thousands of troops, eight major warships, three amphibious assault ships, a guided-missile cruiser, several fighter jets and a nuclear submarine. The U.S. military has also reopened formerly inactive facilities in Puerto Rico to support these operations.
It’s the largest military build-up in the Caribbean since the invasion of Panama in 1989, and yet it’s generating less media attention than a gale-force storm.
It’s not too late. Politicians, pundits and the press still have time to get the American people activated enough to stop this country’s next catastrophic war.
The resignation of the military commander overseeing the operation — Admiral Alvin Halsey — head of U.S. Southern Command, should sound an alarm. Meanwhile, “Demolition Don” is making no bones about his plans. After it was revealed that he’d secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, he bragged, “We are certainly looking at land now.”
What are we waiting for? The blatant build up to this country’s next imperialist war is at least as terrifying as a hurricane — or it should be.
Catch my conversation with U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Marine Captain Janessa Goldbeck on the president’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act, at LauraFlanders.org.
Has Donald Trump’s sharp rebuke of Israel in his October 23 Time Magazine interview fundamentally changed the calculus in the Middle East? His comments immediately sparked two opposing views: for some, his position represents the clear demarcation of a genuine shift in US foreign policy; for others, it is nothing more than a political ploy designed to claw back credibility lost by the US during two years of Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Regarding the end of the recent Gaza genocide, Trump claimed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “had to stop because the world was going to stop him,” adding, “you know, I could see what was happening … And Israel was becoming very unpopular.” With these words, Trump signaled his view that the systematic extermination of Palestinians in Gaza had pushed Israel to an inevitable point of isolation that even the US could no longer indefinitely hold back.
This is the crux of his message, repeated in his stark warning to Netanyahu: “Bibi, you can’t fight the world … The world’s against you. And Israel is a very small place compared to the world.” This may appear to be an obvious fact, yet considering the history of US — and, by extension, Western — blind support, Israel has always felt much larger than its own size. Indeed, Israel’s perceived power has historically been defined by the unconditional backing of the United States.
But, according to Trump’s claim, the US no longer perceives itself as the unconditional vanguard for Israel. He points to a new global power dynamic, noting, “There are a lot of powers out there, okay, powers outside of the region,” whose influence has made Washington’s traditional protective role unsustainable. This newfound realization is most evident when Trump addresses Israel’s desire to illegally annex the occupied Palestinian West Bank. He is now ready to take action, using unprecedented language: The annexation “won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. It will not happen. Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
Such a phrase is unprecedented in the history of US-Israeli relations. Yet, this defiance could easily be dismissed as Trumpian showmanship — bold statements that rarely translate into coherent policy. During his second term, Trump called for an end to the war but did little to stop it, expressing sympathy toward Gazans while still supplying Israel with weapons. His contradictions make it difficult to distinguish conviction from performance.
The significance of Trump’s unprecedented warning is amplified by the sheer timing. The Time interview was made available on the same day that the Israeli parliament (Knesset) approved two bills that would apply Israeli law to the occupied West Bank, paving the way for the full, illegal annexation of the occupied territory. This provocative vote occurred while US Vice-President JD Vance was still in Tel Aviv. On his way out of the country, Vance launched a virulent attack on the Israeli government, describing the vote as “weird” and “a very stupid political stunt,” one which he took as an “insult.”
Those cautious of any supposed US shift are justified in their cynicism. There is little evidence that Washington is changing course. The unconditional support throughout the genocide is irrefutable proof of its commitment to Israel. The long trajectory of US backing, from before Israel’s founding to today, strongly suggests that a sudden pivot is highly unlikely. So, if this is not a fundamental shift, what is actually happening here?
Though the “unbreakable bond” remains, the balance of power has shifted. Israel has alternated between being the privileged client state and, through its lobby, the driver of the regional agenda. The war exposed Israel’s weaknesses and restored the old dynamic — the US as savior, dictating priorities. Beyond the annual $3.8 billion in military aid, Washington approved an additional $26 billion to sustain Israel’s economy and wars. When Israel failed to meet its military goals in Gaza, the US intervened with the ‘Gaza deal’, producing a shaky ceasefire that let Israel pursue its objectives by other means.
The result is a reversal of roles: Trump became more popular in Israel than Netanyahu, resurrecting the image of the US as the decisive power. The apparent clash between the two countries is less about values than about control — who steers Israel’s ship, Tel Aviv or Washington. The strong American rhetoric suggests awareness of its renewed leverage, but leverage alone is not policy.
This remains far from a genuine change of course. The US insists on managing the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict through its own political priorities, fundamentally aligned with Israel’s. By ignoring international law — the only source of balance and objectivity — Washington ensures that the roadmap to the region’s future, despite occasional disagreements, remains entirely in US-Israeli hands..
Such policies will fail to bring peace or justice and will inevitably reignite the same cycle of Israeli violence. While bombing has temporarily slowed in Gaza, violence is already surging in the occupied West Bank.
A just and lasting peace cannot be wrought through the whims of US administrations, through endless wars, or through uncommitted statements about non-annexation. True peace requires genuine accountability, sustained international pressure, sanctions, and the rigorous enforcement of international law. Only when the world continues to fight Netanyahu — and the self-destructive policies he represents — will a new genocide be averted and a just peace finally be achieved.
Porcupine Caribou Herd in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: Fish and Wildlife Service.
On October 23, the Trump administration launched fresh attacks on three iconic wildlands in Alaska, places that Wilderness Watch, our members and supporters, and our conservation allies have fought to safeguard for decades.
These places, which teem with native wildlife, are the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Izembek Wilderness, and the areas near and through Gates of the Arctic National Preserve threatened by the Ambler Mining Road construction.
Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain
The 1.56 million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been a target for oil and gas development ever since the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) failed to provide much needed and deserved wilderness protection. The wild coastal plain is the birthing grounds of the fabled 200,000-member Porcupine caribou herd, relied upon for subsistence living by the Gwich’in native people, and provides critical habitat for polar bears, migratory birds, and other native wildlife.
In 2017, Trump signed a tax bill that required two lease sales in the coastal plain. The second sale did not attract one single bidder, and the Biden administration later suspended and cancelled leases from the first sale. On October 23, the Trump administration announced that it will hold an oil and gas lease sale in the coastal plain this winter, and would reinstate seven cancelled oil leases from the previous sale that had been acquired by the State of Alaska.
Izembek Wilderness
Izembic Wilderness. Photo: Kristine Sowl, US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Located near the tip of the Alaska Peninsula in southwest Alaska, the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, over 95 percent of which is designated as the 308,000-acre Izembek Wilderness, is a remote stretch of land where a quarter-million migratory birds—including virtually the world’s entire population of Pacific black brant—congregate each fall. Nearly 7,000 caribou make their annual trek into the Wilderness where they overwinter, and hundreds of sea otters swim with their young in the Izembek Lagoon, occasionally in the vicinity of migrating orcas, gray whales, minke whales, and Steller sea lions. Massive brown bears—as many as nine per mile—lumber through wilderness streams during peak summer salmon runs.
For years, the native village of King Cove has demanded to build a road through the heart of the Izembek Wilderness to access a year-round airstrip at Cold Bay. Initially the access was to transport seafood from the now-shuttered Peter Pan seafood plant in King Cove. In recent years that demand has morphed into access for emergency medical evacuations, despite a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers analysis that showed that non-road alternatives for transportation would be more reliable, less expensive, and would not harm Izembek and its wildlife.
Last month, the Trump administration announced that it had finalized a land exchange with King Cove to delete lands from the Izembek Wilderness so that the road could be constructed, and the land patents have already been exchanged. The Izembek Wilderness will lose 490 acres of land through which the road corridor would be built in exchange for 1,739 acres of King Cove Corporation lands outside of the Refuge.
Ambler Road
Gates of the Arctic National Park. Photo: Paxson Woelber.
The 211-mile Ambler Road has been proposed to reach the mining claims of a private Canadian mining company south of the Brooks Range. If built, the Ambler Road would stretch west from the Dalton Highway—the Haul Road leading to the Prudhoe Bay oil field on the North Slope—to the mining claims. Along the way, this “road to ruin” would cross Gates of the Arctic National Preserve and the Kobuk Wild and Scenic River, both ecologically significant public lands that make up part of the largest remaining wild, roadless area in the entire nation.
The Ambler Road also would cross nearly 3,000 streams, 11 major rivers, major caribou migration routes, and would bisect a wide swath of the southern Brooks Range, home to numerous Athabaskan and Iñupiat villages, as well as grizzly bears, wolves, and Dall sheep. If built, the Ambler Road would undoubtedly lead to more use and motorized intrusions into the National Preserve and nearby Wildernesses. Road noise, dust, and vehicle headlights would further degrade the area’s wild character.
The Biden administration ruled against building the Ambler Road after the first Trump administration approved it. On October 23, Trump’s Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, reissued right-of-way permits for the 211-mile road.
What Happens Next?
While these Trump actions are certainly potentially catastrophic for these three iconic Alaska wildlands and their wildlife, the story is not yet over. Litigation may well slow or stall these decisions, including several active, related cases we’re currently involved with that address oil and gas leases in the Arctic Refuge.
Wilderness Watch and our allies will continue to fight to protect the priceless areas, and we thank our terrific members and supporters who have sent in literally tens of thousands of comments over the past years in order to protect these incredible wild places and their critters. Stay tuned!
CounterPunch went online just in time for Clinton’s war on Serbia. Clinton’s war was premeditated; our transit to the World Wide Web was reluctant, at best. Alexander Cockburn’s relationship with computers was hostile. Mine was indifferent. I surfed the web, like anyone else, but had no idea how it would be useful for us. At the time, CounterPunch was a 6-page newsletter that we published fortnightly. We called it “fortnightly” because the word had a nice ring to it and no one was precisely sure how many days or even weeks a fortnight encompassed. But if we ran pieces online, who would pay to receive our newsletter? We remained stubbornly committed to print and our 5,000 or so subscribers. Where will the web be when the electromagnetic pulse wipes the slate clean?
The fact that we even had a domain name we owed entirely to the foresight of one of our tech-savvy donors, who told me that even though we were both too dumb to realize it now, we’d thank him for it one day. He reserved the CounterPunch domain in 1997. We didn’t start using it for another year when the cruise missiles started shattering the night in Belgrade. The war went on for 78 days and nights, roughly four fortnights. The web allowed us to cover Clinton’s war in real time. Cockburn said he was willing to try it as an “experiment,” fully expecting it to fail. He had just one condition: that he never had to learn how to post a piece. Thus management of the CounterPunch website fell into my hands by default. I used a primitive software program called Pagemill for the first few years and it looked primitive, like scribblings by Cy Twombley. There was no time to take any classes or seminars. “Just get it up as fast as you can, Jeffrey,” Cockburn said. “And no complaints.” I knew nothing then about HTML, hyperlinks, analytics or even how to load a photo. I still don’t know much. I’d loved my archaic Pagemill program. It was web design for simpletons. I threw a tantrum the day I was forced to give it up for the damnable Dreamweaver, which was far too complex for my sophomoric skill set.
Nevertheless, people came. Came by the thousands and then the 10s of thousands. They came from all over the world: Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand, Iceland, South Korea, and India. By the 2000 presidential elections, CounterPunch had gone global. Even so, we had no idea how to make the website pay for itself or to help support CounterPunch. For years, we didn’t have a shopping cart or any way to take credit card orders or sell subscriptions online. We simply asked people to mail in a check to the office in Petrolia. In a couple of years, our readership had grown from 5,000 print subscribers to 150,000 viewers a day on the website.
But the funding base had remained pretty much the same. We were supported by our subscribers and by the extra money we raised from hitting them up once a year through a direct mail letter usually sent in November. Alex enjoyed writing the letters.
Cockburn, St. Clair and the Great Bear of the Mattole.
Cockburn told me once, he thought he could have enjoyed a great career in advertising or public relations, a fantasy fed by our friend and counselor Ben Sonnenberg, the longtime editor of Grand Street, whose father nearly invented the seductive art of public relations. And they were successful. Or successful enough to keep us afloat, though the coffers had usually been drained to a shallow tidepool by the time October rolled around.
Alex told me once that he was good at raising money because he’d spent so much time avoiding debt collectors. He said he learned the finer points of this art from his father, Claud, who like most writers of radical journalism lived close to the margin most of his life. It was from Claud that Alex inherited some of his favorite phrases: “the wolf at the door,” “pony up,” “begging bowl.” (Of course, Alex loved all canids, wild and domestic, and would have gladly left out a shank from one of his pal Greg Smith’s lambs for any wolf on the prowl.) We used to joke about Alex’s six phone lines, one for each creditor. He also had a different accent for each creditor, once pretending to be his brother Patrick, who was reporting on the siege of Mosul at the time. Listening to these calls was hearing a master at work, like a character from one of his favorite novels, The Charmer by Patrick Hamilton.
In those days, the CounterPunch staff was so small we could all squeeze into Alex’s Valiant, when it would start. After Ken Silverstein left for greener pastures, it was largely down to Alex, Becky Grant and me. We worked 11 months out of the year, taking August off, and a weeklong holiday during Christmas usually highlighted by a New Year’s Eve party at Alex’s house along the Mattole River. Those years can seem idyllic in hindsight. We worked hard and drank harder, often hard cider brewed by Alex and CounterPunch’s board chair Joe Paff. Still, we were fairly productive by almost any standard. We wrote three books together in four years, two of them (Whiteout and our scathing biography of Al Gore) were substantial works requiring months of research. We both wrote a column a week separately and one together (Nature and Politics). We wrote most of the copy for CounterPunch, 10 to 12 stories a month. We both had weekly radio shows, Alex in South Africa and mine on KBOO in Portland. We both wrote for the Anderson Valley Advertiserand occasional pieces for New Left Review, The Progressive, the New Statesman, and City Pages. I wrote for the Village Voice and In These Times and Alex had a bi-monthly column in The Nation. But CounterPunch was home base. It’s the journal that we felt the closest to and saved our best writing for.
Cockburn “dialing for dollars” in my office/garage in 1998.
Sometimes the bank accounts would evaporate even earlier. On September 11, 2001, for example. I was jolted from bed by an early morning wake-up call from Cockburn. “Jeffrey, turn on your TV and describe what you see.” He hadn’t paid his cable bill and they’d shut off his service. I spent the next several hours narrating the fall of the Twin Towers, the crash at the Pentagon, the panicky peregrinations of George W. Bush and Cheney’s tightening grip on the throat of the Republic. Our lives as journalists changed profoundly that day as well. From September 11 onward, we published nearly every day of the week, week after week, month after month, year after year. At first, we ran only two or three stories a day. (And to fill in those blank hours on the clock, we insanely decided to start a book publishing venture!) Now we publish 12 to 14 each day and 40 to 45 every Friday for our Weekend Edition. We were online for good, like it or not. No vacations, no holidays, no sick days. The web, we soon found out, waits for no one.
We were online, but we still had no idea how to make our web-based journalism pay for itself. We tried running Google Ads for a few months, but got banned for what Google imperiously declared was “clicker fraud,” even though we hadn’t been the culprits. Apparently, some over-enthusiastic CounterPuncher had repeatedly clicked on Google text links, for which we received a return of a nickel a click. We think it was a CounterPuncher. Of course, it might have been Alex’s cockatiel, Percy, who in addition to whistling the Internationale, took a fancy to Cockburn’s keyboard, battering it with his beak four or five times a day. At the time, a close friend of ours was dating a top Google lawyer, who to prove his devotion to her swore that he would have the ban reversed. He failed. She dumped him. But the verdict of the corporate algorithm is absolute. It tolerates no appeals.
Alex, a Luddite to the core, believed that every new feature of the cyber world was an evil manifestation to be shunned, shamed and exorcized. Thus he continued to refer to CounterPunch as a “Twitter-free Zone” for nearly a year after Nathaniel had set up the CounterPunch Twitter account, which now has more than 65,000 followers. No one had the heart to tell him the news.
Early on we tried writing a few grant proposals, but never got one we actually applied for-our position on Israel proving fatal to our aspirations for funding. It’s just as well. We weren’t going to dance to any master’s tune or be constrained by anyone else’s ideological strings. We weren’t going to saddle ourselves with ads, either. Partly this was owing to my own incompetence. I had no idea how to use Flash or any of the other plug-ins that ad companies demanded we deploy. But we also both deplored the way online ads intruded on our own reading experiences and didn’t want to inflict that on our readers, if we could help it. And so far, so good.
In the end, we’ve largely depended on the kindness of our readers to survive. And, though there have been some close calls, this simple and direct approach of appealing to those who know us best hasn’t failed in 30 years. Not yet, anyway. After Alex died, a woman approached me at the funeral and said rather smugly, “Well, I guess this is the end of CounterPunch.” I was angered at her remark and Alex would have been, too. This woman was part of the Nation magazine’s delegation to the funeral. My irritation with her was only partly about how dismissive she was concerning my own contribution to CounterPunch, which had been substantial even before Ken’s departure.
It stemmed more from the flippant disregard for our writers and tens of thousands of readers. CounterPunch was no longer merely a platform for our voices. It was now the home base for hundreds of different writers from across the country and around the globe. I checked this morning. Since going online, we’ve published more than 6,000 different writers. CounterPunch belongs to them, as much as it does to us. Still, Mrs. MoneyBags was right about one thing. We were more broke than we’d ever been the week that Alex died. But we published the day Alex died, the day he was buried and every day since. The readers came through, again and again and again.
We’ve grown in the 11 years since Alex passed. The online readership is probably twice what it was in August 2012. We’re publishing more pieces each week and adding new writers every day. The website has been completely revamped by Andrew Nofsinger into a more efficient and flexible WordPress design that even a Luddite like me can’t screw up too badly. It even works on smartphones, where the analytics say nearly half of the site’s visitors read CounterPunch. To keep up, our staff (still tiny by most standards) has doubled in size, from three to seven: Becky, Deva and Nichole in the business office, me, Josh and Nathaniel on the editorial side, and Andrew helming the website.
The CounterPunch team (Chelsea, Deva, Josh, Andrew, Becky and Nichole) on the “Don’t Jump Bridge” over the Pacific Highway in Oregon City. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
That means our costs have more than doubled. What didn’t double, however, were the number of print magazine subscribers who used to be the primary funders of CounterPunch. Everywhere, print was in decline, even here at CounterPunch. Then COVID hit, the printers shut down, Louis DeJoy took over the Post Office so magazines sent by mail were arriving later than ever, if they arrived at all. So we made the cruel decision to kill the magazine and now we’re dependent solely on the community of online readers who utilize CounterPunch for free: no clickbait, no ads, no paywalls.
I remember a conversation Alex and I had on the night before the last fundraiser we did together in October 2011. He was sick then, sicker than any of us knew, but not showing it. He was impish, excited and anxious, as he always was this time of year.
“Are you ready for another shot in the dark, Jeffrey?” he asked.
“What if we fail this time?”
“Well, we can always do something else.”
“Do we know how to do anything else?”
“Of course, we do. We know how to make cider, go trout-fishing and listen to Chuck Berry. What more do we need?”
And now another Fall Fund Drive has rolled around and the old wolf, perhaps loping past the spirit of Cockburn in the pepperwood grove in the Mattole Valley, is back at our door. We humbly put forth our begging bowl, confident that CounterPunchers will once again pony up…
Kingston buzzed with feverish preparations and anxious alerts in the days before Melissa, a powerful Category 5 hurricane, made landfall earlier this week on the island of Jamaica. Supermarkets and hardware stores endured the crush of customers scrambling to stockpile water, food, and other supplies while residents boarded up windows and cut away vulnerable branches from hulking mango trees.
Even for a Caribbean capital city that is no stranger to the perennial threat of hurricanes, the alarming forecasts about Melissa’s steady approach and certain intensification put communities across the city on edge. Throughout the island, which has had its share of impacts from deadly tropical weather, including Hurricane Beryl just last year, there was a palpable feeling that Melissa might be a different kind of storm.
“All we can do is try to be prepared,” said Kevin, a local handyman who lives in Portmore, an urban center on Kingston’s outskirts. “We can only do so much to get ready for it. The rest is in God’s hands.”
Melissa made weather history as one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes to ever make landfall. As it moved into Jamaica’s southwestern coast, the storm’s 185-mph sustained winds and sub-900 barometric pressure left meteorologists in awe and Jamaicans under the dark howling shadow of a monster churning over their heads. Yet, as horrifying as Melissa’s fury was this week, its destructive strength follows a pattern that has become all too unsurprising on a planet subjected to entirely preventable climate chaos.
“This is actually a complete catastrophe, and it’s really quite terrifying,” Jamaican-British climate activist Mikaela Loach told Democracy Now! “And it also makes me quite angry that it doesn’t have to be this way. This has been caused by the climate crisis, by fossil fuel companies. I think it’s important that we’re not just devastated and sad about this, but also that we are angry and direct that anger towards the people who are responsible.”
While Hurricane Melissa may be called a natural disaster, the conditions that make super storms like Melissa possible are anything but natural. As Loach and just about every climate scientist on Earth point out, the unprecedented warmth of ocean waters act like fuel for tropical cyclones, supercharging them to the point that Melissa was able to double its wind speeds in under 24 hours. Such rapid hurricane intensification is almost unheard of and is the result of unnaturally warm seawater that extends deep below the surface – water temperatures that are themselves directly linked to the fossil fuel industry and an economic system built around its carbon emissions.
That system, rooted in the exploitation of natural resources and labor in the name of corporate profits, also requires grotesque levels of inequality, which could be seen both before and after Hurricane Melissa slammed into Jamaica.
It was, of course, the wealthiest of communities that enjoyed the means and resources to prepare and weather the storm. From the gated communities of New Kingston where residents quickly summoned workers to close their built-in storm shutters and fuel up generator tanks to the high-end hotels and office buildings outfitted with hurricane-proof glass, there stood one end of Jamaican society girding for Melissa’s wrath. On the other end, representing a much larger portion of the Jamaican people, were the poor and working-class communities with far fewer means to prepare for the tempest. From Kingston and beyond, this included thousands of Jamaicans living in ramshackle housing, with corrugated tin roofs that turned into propeller blades thrown into the air by 130-mph wind gusts. It included the fishing villages of Port Royal and other coastal areas, scrambling to shore up boats and flee inland away from the devastating storm surge. It included the shanty neighborhoods on the edge of waterways and canals, prone to severe flooding, as well as hillside hamlets perched along the steep slopes of Jamaica’s Blue Mountains that were swept away by dangerous landslides. Then there are the many rural areas that are likely to remain without power and communications for many weeks, along with the farming communities whose crops have been wiped out by the storm.
All of these people were placed in the path of a storm whose destructive power was exacerbated by the climate emergency of the corporate elite and wealthy nations whose profit-obsessed industries have turbocharged the Caribbean’s hurricane season.
Just a few days removed from Melissa’s torrent of deadly rainfall and winds, the extent of damage and fatalities are yet to be known. In the western parishes of the island where the eyewall of Melissa came ashore, entire communities have been cut off from civilization, unreachable by destroyed telecommunications networks and roads that have been washed away. Many of these communities, lying near the southern coast from 60 to 120 miles west of Kingston, are dealing with widespread structural failure, including flattened homes and roofs sheared off many buildings. In addition to relief operations being mobilized by the Jamaican government, efforts are under way among residents on the east side of the island to gather and transport donated supplies to communities that bore the brunt of Melissa. And the urgency is building for those communities as the shock and hunger have set in, along with reports of looting, i.e., acts of basic human survival. While staying alive in the coming days and weeks is the preoccupation for survivors in these hard-hit areas, the daunting months of clean-up and rebuilding ahead compounds the crippling hardship they are carrying right now.
Back in Kingston, the economic and infrastructural disparities seen in the lead-up to the storm persist in its aftermath. While more than 70 percent of the island remains without electricity, some of the wealthiest parts of Kingston – those that were armed with generators and thus suffered less than a few hours or minutes without lights in their homes – seem to be among the first communities with restored grid power. On the other hand, many neighborhoods within the poorer sections of Kingston continue to have no power and, in many cases, no running water.
Such is the nature of capitalism and its attendant regime of climate disasters, bringing the devastation of extreme weather patterns – induced by the excessive greenhouse gas emissions of rich nations – upon the people of smaller nations who are the least responsible for global climate changes. The disparate impacts are felt on a global scale and at the local level among classes within affected regions.
Disasters like Hurricane Melissa have historically been used by business interests to remake entire cities into free-market dystopias, displacing poorer communities to make way for investment opportunities. The market vultures of what author and activist Naomi Klein calls disaster capitalism may soon be circling Jamaica, poised to prey upon the storm’s victims and profit from the wreckage.
In fact, climate capitalists are already watching post-Melissa Jamaica as a test case for bond markets. The Jamaican government was recently issued a $150-million “catastrophe bond” which appears set for a full payout to partially cover rebuilding efforts. These bonds may offer a temporary solution for climate-vulnerable countries but, as property insurers have increasingly pulled out of high-risk areas in the path of extreme weather and natural disasters, it seems likely that U.S. and European investors will become more reluctant to buy in to catastrophe bonds for hurricane-prone areas like Jamaica as such disasters inevitably become more common. In any event, the damage from Melissa will total far more than $150 million and Jamaica will need to take on more debt from global financial institutions to rebuild roads and infrastructure. This includes the more standard World Bank loans which have traditionally kept countries like Jamaica under the neocolonial boot of wealthy nations, with loans conditioned on exploitative trade policies, privatization, and gutted public services within poorer, indebted countries.
So, while Jamaica and Hurricane Melissa fade from headlines over the next week or so, the destructive forces of capitalism and Mother Nature’s vengeance will continue to collide over the island.
In the wake of two years of the globally broadcast extermination of the people of Palestine, three distinct tracks of international response have emerged. One is grounded in justice, international law, human rights, and accountability. Two others are dedicated to impunity, the continued subjugation of the victims, and the normalization of the perpetrator regime.
In the diplomatic struggle that has ensued, the justice track is under sustained attack. Left to their own devices, most states — the directly complicit and the timid alike — will undoubtedly take the easy way out, opting for impunity and normalization. But a growing people’s movement from across the globe is mobilized to demand justice.
A Textbook Genocide
The roots of the genocide in Palestine run deep, through a century of racist colonization, the Nakba of 1947-1948, eight decades of apartheid, 58 years of brutal occupation, and generations of persecution.
Now, for the past two years, the world has watched in horror as the Israeli regime planned, announced, perpetrated, and celebrated the accelerated genocide of the Palestinian people. Adding to the horror of this historic atrocity has been the ruthless complicity of so many governments, media corporations, weapons and tech companies, and Israel proxy groups planted among the populations of the West.
The unprecedented nature of this genocide has been driven home by so many terrifying “firsts.”
The first live-streamed genocide, witnessed by millions around the world. The first hi-tech genocide, perpetrated with state-of-the-art weapons systems, killer drones, autonomous weapons, surveillance technologies, and artificial intelligence. And the first globalized genocide, perpetrated with the direct and enthusiastic participation of so many governments (foremost among them the U.S., U.K., and Germany), and the active complicity so many corporations and organizations across the globe. Zionist repression has extended far beyond the shores of Palestine, with complicit Western institutions using state power to oppress and silence all who dare to speak out against the genocide and their governments’ complicity in it.
At the same time, in just two years, the Israeli regime has shattered record after bloody record for the murder of several categories of protected persons, including medical personnel, journalists, aid workers, UN staff, and children, as well as one of the highest civilian casualty rates ever recorded.
And it has achieved the dubious distinction of creating the widest global consensus on the perpetration of the crime of genocide ever recorded, with declarations of genocide issued by the UN’s Commission of Inquiry, its independent human rights rapporteurs, leading international human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, leading Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, the leading association of genocide scholars, and international lawyers across the world.
This is quintessential genocide, its genocidal intent declared out loud by Israeli leaders from the start, followed by a horrific catalogue of genocidal acts carried out with a violence as ruthless as it is systematic. Neighborhood after neighborhood, town after town, hospital after hospital, school after school, shelter after shelter, church after church, mosque after mosque, field after field, food store after food store.
Two years of siege, blocking aid, food, water, medicine, fuel, and every essential of human life. A chain of massacres, mass abductions, torture camps, sexual violence, intentionally imposed disease and starvation. Palestinian toddlers shot by snipers for sport. Palestinian captives tortured to death. Gaza reduced to a moonscape.
The Justice Track
So blatant were its crimes that within months of the launch of its genocidal onslaught, the Israeli regime was on trial for genocide in the World Court (ICJ) and its leaders were indicted for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Indeed, experts had sounded the genocide alarm already in October of 2023. And since then, human rights monitors have collected volumes of evidence.
Even as complicit states worked to buttress the impunity of the Israeli regime, the global public demand for accountability grew ever louder. It would ultimately compel the government of South Africa to brings it historic ICJ case against the regime under the United Nations Genocide Convention in December of 2023. The Court found the allegations of genocide plausible in January of 2024 and issued what would be the first of a series of provisional measures binding on the Israeli regime. Months later, the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity.
In July of 2024, the ICJ would also issue a landmark advisory opinion concluding that Israel was committing apartheid and racial segregation, that all of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza are unlawfully occupied, that Israel must remove all settlements, settlers, soldiers, and occupation infrastructure, dismantle the apartheid wall in the West Bank, provide reparations to the Palestinians, and allow all those forced out to return home. The Court said that all states have a legal obligation not to recognize or assist the occupation and are obliged to help to bring an end to Israel’s occupation and other violations. And it found that all states must end all treaty relations with Israel that relate to the Palestinian territories, cease all economic, trade, and investment relations connected to the occupied territories.
Importantly, the Court rejected arguments by the U.S. and other Western governments that sought to claim that the Court should defer to post-Oslo negotiations between the occupier and the occupied, and to the politics of the Security Council, rather than the application of international law. The Court, in rejecting these claims, declared that such negotiations and agreements do not and cannot trump the rights of the Palestinians and the obligations of Israel under international human rights and humanitarian law. The Court found first that, in any event, the parties have to exercise any powers and responsibilities under those agreements with due regard for the norms and principles of international law.
Invoking article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Court then put the matter to rest for good, reminding states that, as a matter of law, “the protected population ‘shall not be deprived’ of the benefits of the Convention ‘by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the Occupying Power.’”
“For this reason,” the Court continued, “the Oslo Accords cannot be understood to detract from Israel’s obligations under the pertinent rules of international law applicable in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” With the bang of a gavel, the Court had ended decades of Israeli legal exceptionalism and launched a process for the dismantling of the Western constructed Israeli wall of impunity.
In the meantime, at the United Nations, international human rights investigators were issuing their own findings of Israeli regime apartheid and genocide. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in Palestine issued a series of powerful reportsdocumenting these crimes, followed by further reports from the UN’s thematic human rights rapporteurs, and, ultimately a UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry.
Outside the UN, international human rights organizations, as well as those in Palestine and Israel, joined the global consensus, as did prominent international lawyers and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, sealing the global consensus on genocide in Palestine.
Thereafter, the findings of the judicial and expert bodies of the international system finally broke through to the political bodies of the UN. On September 18, 2024, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a dramatic resolution effectively codifying the findings of the ICJ, declaring the occupation and apartheid unlawful, demanding an end to the entire occupation and the assault on Gaza, and setting a one-year deadline for Israeli compliance, after which the UNGA promised further measures.
For the first time in decades, the stage was set for real Israel regime accountability.
Global civil society activists, led by representatives of Palestinian civil society, seized on the unprecedented opportunity of the one-year deadline (violated entirely by the Israeli regime) to formulate an agenda for Israeli accountability and Palestinian protection. They developed a plan for adoption in the UNGA at the end of the deadline that would use the extraordinary power of the Assembly under the Uniting for Peace process to circumvent the U.S. veto in the Security Council and mandate concrete measures for accountability and protection.
This would include a UNGA call for sanctions, a military embargo, the rejection of the credentials of the Israeli regime, the establishment of a criminal tribunal, the reactivation of the UN’s anti-apartheid mechanisms, and the mandating of a UN protection force to protect civilians, ensure humanitarian aid, preserve evidence of Israeli crimes, and facilitate reconstruction. Importantly, the protection force would be mandated on the basis of Palestinian consent, with no Chapter 7 power to impose itself against the will of the indigenous people, thus obviating fears of a proxy occupation.
The initiative was subsequently embraced by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who, in his speech before the 80th Session of the UNGA, promised to introduce the proposal, as a draft resolution was prepared and diplomatic action proceeded to secure other co-sponsors.
The French-Saudi Track
But the unprecedented possibility for Israeli accountability presented by the UNGA resolution and deadline was not lost on Israel’s allies either, who worked feverishly to forestall any possibility of such accountability coming into force.
The tactics they adopted had become all too familiar during the decades of Oslo: divert attention away from accountability under international law and into a loose political process and the promise of a possible Palestinian state at some point in the future; compel Palestinians to negotiate for their rights with their oppressor; and work to normalize the Israeli regime as it consolidates its conquest of Palestine.
In sum, the true focus of these initiatives is not on saving Palestine, but rather on saving Israel and Zionism, even in the wake of a genocide.
French President Emannuel Macron made the intentions of his initiative clear in a letter to his Israeli regime counterpart in September of 2025. In it, he openly brags about his efforts in France to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism in order to punish dissent to his pro-Israel rule, and then tells Netanyahu that his actions at the UN (including recognizing an unarmed Palestinian Bantustan) are meant “to transform the military gains Israel has achieved on regional fronts into a lasting political victory, to the benefit of its security and prosperity…to [secure] Israel’s …full regional integration in the Middle East…its normalization…[and] the end of Hamas.”
In other words, the French-Saudi proposal is not about holding the regime accountable for its genocide and aggression in the region, but rather to shore up the Zionist project in Western Asia, to consolidate its unlawful gains, and to normalize it on the international stage.
The final product of the French-Saudi proposal was the New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, endorsed by the UNGA in September of 2025, just eight days before the expiration of the deadline for Israeli compliance set by Assembly. Notably, the declaration mentions neither the genocide nor the crime of apartheid and contains no accountability measures for the Israeli regime whatsoever. It was, in effect, a last-minute defensive maneuver to preserve the wall of Israeli impunity that the West had so carefully built up over eight decades.
In essence, the declaration reads like a blueprint for the further entrenching of the unjust status quo that existed before October of 2023, but with some extra rewards for Israel, and an amorphous promise of a limited Palestinian state somewhere down the road. Indeed, it promises to advance normalization and regional cooperation for Israel on trade, infrastructure, energy, and security. Ignoring justice and accountability altogether, the declaration instead dedicates itself to “peace, security, and stability,” reduces the genocide in Gaza to an armed conflict in which both sides are at fault, and declares yet another political process toward a “two-state solution” as the only way forward. Ignoring the U.S. role as a co-perpetrator in the genocide, it explicitly supports the role of the U.S. as a mediator (alongside Egypt and Qatar).
While it demands that Hamas free all Israeli captives, it only provides for the “exchange” of some Palestinian captives. And in flagrant disregard for the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, it purports to impose its own governance framework, with the Palestinian Authority (with “international support”) to be in charge of all Palestinian territory, and Hamas to be excluded from governance in Gaza. Eventual elections would be open only to those committed to respect the PLO (and therefore the PA) political platform.
Palestinian resistance groups defending their land and people against occupation, apartheid, and genocide are to be disarmed under the plan, while the Israeli perpetrator regime faces no such disarmament, and any eventual Palestinian state is itself envisaged by the plan to be a disarmed and defenseless entity. In other provisions, the plan would promote “deradicalization,” a dangerous concept born of the so-called “global war on terrorism,” in which populations are subjected to propaganda programmes (and often punitive measures) designed to discourage resistance to foreign domination and abusive regimes — despite the fact that such resistance is a right under international law.
The plan also proposes the deployment of troops to Palestine under a “stabilization mission” to be mandated by the UN Security Council. While the mandate of the mission would include civilian protection and security guarantees for Palestine, it would also be responsible for transferring “internal security responsibilities” to the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, disarming all other factions, providing “border security” (i.e., ensure no Palestinians escape from the Gaza cage), and for guaranteeing security for the (hyper-armed, nuclear capable, and thoroughly militarized) Israeli regime.
In other words, the mission would keep an eye on all Palestinian resistance and guarantee the impunity of the Israeli regime.
The Trump Track
Following up on his earlier King Leopold-esque promise to “own Gaza” and to build a colonized Riviera on the bones of its genocided population, Trump announced his 20-point plan at the end of September.
In the long-standing tradition of Western imperial arrogance in Palestine dating back to Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration, Trump’s 20 points were not negotiated with the Palestinians before he issued them. Indeed, Palestinians were not consulted or involved in their drafting. Rather, in a blatant act of 21st Century gunboat diplomacy, they were presented as a unilateral dictate from the U.S.-Israel axis, accompanied by violent threats of total destruction if they were not accepted.
The document was the product of an international rogue’s gallery of characters — which, in addition to genocide-complicit Trump and ICC-indicted fugitive Netanyahu, included notorious figures like Iraq war criminal Tony Blair and Trump’s billionaire son-in-law (and family friend of Netanyahu) Jared Kushner. The group did consult some of its complicit Arab and Muslim allies, but they subsequently complained that the document had been changed in fundamental ways by Trump and Netanyahu after their endorsement.
Netanyahu, who was allowed to make last-minute changes to the text before issuance, then stood with Trump to say he agreed to it — but within hours, was publicly renouncing elements of the plan and pledging that there would never be a Palestinian state, and that Israeli soldiers would not leave Gaza.
To be clear, this is not a peace plan or a plan for ending the Israel Palestine conflict. It provides no promise of Palestinian liberation, no restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people, and no guarantee of Palestinian statehood and self-determination. Instead, it provides a vague and hyper-qualified reference to “conditions” that “may emerge” sometime in the future, if Gaza re-development advances, and if the PA reforms to the satisfaction of the U.S. imperial overlords. Outrageously, the plan concludes with the U.S. arrogating to itself the role of mediator between Palestine and its Israeli occupier for any future political settlement, which would guarantee many more horrific decades of Palestinian persecution as they are forced to negotiate for their rights with their oppressor and that oppressor’s chief sponsor.
Tellingly, the 20 points contain not a word about the genocide, about apartheid, or about root causes. There is to be no accountability for the perpetrators. No redress for the victims. And the plan promises not the deradicalization of the regime perpetrating genocide, but rather of the Palestinian victims of that genocide. It is directed at ensuring that the exterminated people of Gaza “pose no threat” to its neighbors, with no guarantee that the Israeli regime, the perpetrator of the genocide, the occupier of three Arab nations, and the author of serial aggression against half a dozen neighboring countries and a spate of transnational assassinations will pose no threat. Palestinian security forces will be vetted by the U.S.-led stabilization force. There will be no such vetting of Israeli forces, the ranks of which are rife with perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
The roots of this plan in Trump’s earlier threat to “own Gaza” and to exploit a “Gaza Riveria,” are revealed in the text itself. Under Trump’s new plan, Gaza will be ruled by a colonial body headed by Donald Trump himself, with another prominent place on the body held by disgraced UK politician Tony Blair. The body, in typical Trumpian style, is dubbed “The Board of Peace.”
This body would set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza (through the “Trump Economic Development Plan”), positioning it to control all resources coming in from Gulf and European donors, with no oversight. The possibility of staggering levels of corruption would seem self-evident. The unchecked external control, extraction, and exploitation of Palestine’s economic resources would be inevitable. And note that there is no mention of Israel’s international legal obligations to provide compensation and reparations for the damage it has inflicted on Gaza.
While the plan usurps Palestinian agency by controlling Palestinian resources and designating Palestinian leaders, it also purports to exclude some Palestinians from the right to be involved in the governance of their own country. The role of Hamas, for example, should be a matter for Hamas and the Palestinian people to decide. Under this plan, Hamas is to be excluded not by decision of the Palestinian people, but rather by dictate from the U.S., which has decreed that Hamas (“and other factions”) will not have any role in the governance of Gaza, “directly, indirectly, or in any form.”
And in other provisions, the resistance is to be entirely disarmed, and its military infrastructure destroyed. Notably, the plan also provides for the destruction of Gaza’s tunnels, which have been essential not only for the defense of the territory, but also for the critical movement of persons and goods during the many unlawful Israeli sieges on the territory.
Reminiscent of the Eight Nation Invasion of China in 1900, the plan even proposes a multinational proxy occupation force led by the U.S. with the participation of “Arab and international partners” that will “stabilize” Gaza, impose “internal security,” secure the borders (i.e., ensure the continued caging of the Palestinians), and prevent the Palestinians from rearming, leaving them defenseless against Israeli aggression.
The plan provides no expectation of a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, only the possibility of a phased redeployment to the margins of Gaza and the maintenance of an Israeli “security perimeter” to remain indefinitely inside Gaza. And any partial withdrawal of Israeli regime forces that may occur is to be based on as yet undefined “standards, milestones, and time frames” that are linked to the disarming of Palestinians, and that will be determined by the U.S., by the stabilization force headed by the U.S., and by the Israeli forces that are armed, funded, and supported by the U.S. — yet another indicator of the proxy occupation nature of the plan.
While the plan provides for a significant increase in aid to the survivors of the genocide in Gaza, that aid is (unlawfully) conditioned on the acceptance by Hamas of Trump’s terms — and even then, aid quantities would be limited by the terms of the previous ceasefire of January 19, 2025. Similarly, opening of the Rafah crossing is to be subject to the same mechanism implemented under the January agreement, and thus will be still subject to continued restrictions. And it provides for the possible denial of humanitarian aid to certain areas of Gaza if Hamas is deemed to have delayed the process.
Where key details are scarce in the plan, there is also reason for worry, given that the document explicitly cites Trump’s 2020 peace plan (as well as the French-Saudi proposal described above) as part of the basis for subsequent stages in the process. Readers will recall that the 2020 plan included the further expansion of Israeli territory, the annexation of much of the West Bank, the renunciation of all Palestinian legal claims against Israel, the exclusion of Palestine from East Jerusalem, and the creation of an archipelago of Palestinian Bantustans surrounded by Israeli settlements, borders, and walls.
Even the more concrete elements of the plan are heavily weighted in favor of the Israeli perpetrator and against the besieged and persecuted Palestinian people.
For example, the release of all Israeli captives (of whom there are only a few dozen) is to take place within 72 hours. The release of Palestinian captives unlawfully held by Israel (of whom there are some 11,000) on the other hand, will only include a small proportion of those held at some unspecified time after all Israelis are returned. In all, less than 2,000 of the 11,000 Palestinian captives held by Israel are to be released.
Similarly, the remains of approximately 25 Israeli captives are thought to be held in Gaza, while the remains of some 2,000 deceased Palestinians are held by the Israeli regime. While the Trump plan stipulates the release of all Israeli remains, it only provides for the release of a portion of the Palestinian remains.
And some potentially positive provisions of the document are undercut by contradictory provisions elsewhere in the document.
For example, the document promises a ceasefire, amnesty, and safe passage for Hamas members; a commitment that no one will be forced to leave Gaza and that those who wish to leave will be free to do so and to return; that Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza; and that aid will flow through the UN and Red Crescent without interference.
However, while committing to the free flow of aid, it elsewhere implicitly imposes restrictions on aid. While promising no Israeli occupation, it also implies that Israeli regime forces will remain in Gaza indefinitely. And vague wording leaves unclear whether the essential role of UNRWA (which the U.S. and Israel have falsely claimed is associated with Hamas) will be allowed, and whether the genocide-complicit role of the perfidious GHF scheme (which the U.S. falsely claims is not associated with the Israeli regime) will be allowed to continue.
In parts, the Trump plan itself is unlawful. The conditioning of humanitarian aid, implicit threats of collective punishment if Hamas does not agree, the explicit denial of Palestinian self-determination, restrictions on political rights, the requirement that Palestinians negotiate for their inalienable human rights with their oppressors, and the failure to seek accountability for Israeli crimes including genocide, are all breaches of the international legal obligations of the United States.
For its part, Hamas seized on the practical and implementable elements of the first phase of the plan (ceasefire, exchange of captives, etc.) for negotiation while refusing to surrender the cause of Palestine or to submit to the remainder of the document. Hamas said that the rest of the issues in the document were to be “discussed within a comprehensive Palestinian national framework, in which Hamas will be included and will contribute with full responsibility.”
And the outright rejection of the plan by representatives of Palestinian civil society demonstrates the dignified steadfastness of Palestinian society in struggling for their freedom, even in the darkest of times.
The Struggle Continues
As this goes to press, moves are underway to effectively merge the French-Saudi plan with the Trump plan, and to have it blessed in the UN Security Council. But the colonial machinations of Trump, Macron, and others cannot obscure the fundamental reality confronting the world today: a single colonial regime planted in the heart of Western Asia is perpetrating apartheid, genocide, belligerent occupation, and serial aggression across the region and corrupting governments and institutions far beyond.
The unprecedented, Western-sponsored impunity of that regime is undercutting the very sustainability of international law, trampling on human rights, and jeopardizing peace and security across the region. Finally holding that regime accountable remains a vital, even existential imperative for the world.
In the meantime, for a people enduring genocide, any ceasefire is to be celebrated. But few are under the illusion that this ceasefire means a definitive end to the genocide, or the beginning of Palestinian freedom. No sustainable peace can be built on the weak foundation of Trump’s vanity and greed, Macron’s colonial nostalgia, or Netanyahu’s deceit and racist brutality.
Only justice can provide that foundation. And among the three tracks discussed in this article, only one travels toward justice.
Palestinian society has pointed the way, the UN human rights mechanisms, the ICJ, and the landmark UNGA resolution of September 2024 have joined the cause, and the world has risen up in solidarity. Now more than ever, that solidarity must be sustained, multiplied, and acted upon. The Israeli regime, its co-perpetrators in Washington, its proxies across the West, complicit governments, media companies that have supported the genocide, and corporations that have profited from it must all be held accountable if justice is to be done.
Normalization of the Israeli regime and its crimes must end. Genocide must be a red line. And Palestine must be free.
In the wake of two years of the globally broadcast extermination of the people of Palestine, three distinct tracks of international response have emerged. One is grounded in justice, international law, human rights, and accountability. Two others are dedicated to impunity, the continued subjugation of the victims, and the normalization of the perpetrator regime.
In the diplomatic struggle that has ensued, the justice track is under sustained attack. Left to their own devices, most states — the directly complicit and the timid alike — will undoubtedly take the easy way out, opting for impunity and normalization. But a growing people’s movement from across the globe is mobilized to demand justice.
A Textbook Genocide
The roots of the genocide in Palestine run deep, through a century of racist colonization, the Nakba of 1947-1948, eight decades of apartheid, 58 years of brutal occupation, and generations of persecution.
Now, for the past two years, the world has watched in horror as the Israeli regime planned, announced, perpetrated, and celebrated the accelerated genocide of the Palestinian people. Adding to the horror of this historic atrocity has been the ruthless complicity of so many governments, media corporations, weapons and tech companies, and Israel proxy groups planted among the populations of the West.
The unprecedented nature of this genocide has been driven home by so many terrifying “firsts.”
The first live-streamed genocide, witnessed by millions around the world. The first hi-tech genocide, perpetrated with state-of-the-art weapons systems, killer drones, autonomous weapons, surveillance technologies, and artificial intelligence. And the first globalized genocide, perpetrated with the direct and enthusiastic participation of so many governments (foremost among them the U.S., U.K., and Germany), and the active complicity so many corporations and organizations across the globe. Zionist repression has extended far beyond the shores of Palestine, with complicit Western institutions using state power to oppress and silence all who dare to speak out against the genocide and their governments’ complicity in it.
At the same time, in just two years, the Israeli regime has shattered record after bloody record for the murder of several categories of protected persons, including medical personnel, journalists, aid workers, UN staff, and children, as well as one of the highest civilian casualty rates ever recorded.
And it has achieved the dubious distinction of creating the widest global consensus on the perpetration of the crime of genocide ever recorded, with declarations of genocide issued by the UN’s Commission of Inquiry, its independent human rights rapporteurs, leading international human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, leading Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, the leading association of genocide scholars, and international lawyers across the world.
This is quintessential genocide, its genocidal intent declared out loud by Israeli leaders from the start, followed by a horrific catalogue of genocidal acts carried out with a violence as ruthless as it is systematic. Neighborhood after neighborhood, town after town, hospital after hospital, school after school, shelter after shelter, church after church, mosque after mosque, field after field, food store after food store.
Two years of siege, blocking aid, food, water, medicine, fuel, and every essential of human life. A chain of massacres, mass abductions, torture camps, sexual violence, intentionally imposed disease and starvation. Palestinian toddlers shot by snipers for sport. Palestinian captives tortured to death. Gaza reduced to a moonscape.
The Justice Track
So blatant were its crimes that within months of the launch of its genocidal onslaught, the Israeli regime was on trial for genocide in the World Court (ICJ) and its leaders were indicted for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Indeed, experts had sounded the genocide alarm already in October of 2023. And since then, human rights monitors have collected volumes of evidence.
Even as complicit states worked to buttress the impunity of the Israeli regime, the global public demand for accountability grew ever louder. It would ultimately compel the government of South Africa to brings it historic ICJ case against the regime under the United Nations Genocide Convention in December of 2023. The Court found the allegations of genocide plausible in January of 2024 and issued what would be the first of a series of provisional measures binding on the Israeli regime. Months later, the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity.
In July of 2024, the ICJ would also issue a landmark advisory opinion concluding that Israel was committing apartheid and racial segregation, that all of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza are unlawfully occupied, that Israel must remove all settlements, settlers, soldiers, and occupation infrastructure, dismantle the apartheid wall in the West Bank, provide reparations to the Palestinians, and allow all those forced out to return home. The Court said that all states have a legal obligation not to recognize or assist the occupation and are obliged to help to bring an end to Israel’s occupation and other violations. And it found that all states must end all treaty relations with Israel that relate to the Palestinian territories, cease all economic, trade, and investment relations connected to the occupied territories.
Importantly, the Court rejected arguments by the U.S. and other Western governments that sought to claim that the Court should defer to post-Oslo negotiations between the occupier and the occupied, and to the politics of the Security Council, rather than the application of international law. The Court, in rejecting these claims, declared that such negotiations and agreements do not and cannot trump the rights of the Palestinians and the obligations of Israel under international human rights and humanitarian law. The Court found first that, in any event, the parties have to exercise any powers and responsibilities under those agreements with due regard for the norms and principles of international law.
Invoking article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Court then put the matter to rest for good, reminding states that, as a matter of law, “the protected population ‘shall not be deprived’ of the benefits of the Convention ‘by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the Occupying Power.’”
“For this reason,” the Court continued, “the Oslo Accords cannot be understood to detract from Israel’s obligations under the pertinent rules of international law applicable in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” With the bang of a gavel, the Court had ended decades of Israeli legal exceptionalism and launched a process for the dismantling of the Western constructed Israeli wall of impunity.
In the meantime, at the United Nations, international human rights investigators were issuing their own findings of Israeli regime apartheid and genocide. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in Palestine issued a series of powerful reportsdocumenting these crimes, followed by further reports from the UN’s thematic human rights rapporteurs, and, ultimately a UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry.
Outside the UN, international human rights organizations, as well as those in Palestine and Israel, joined the global consensus, as did prominent international lawyers and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, sealing the global consensus on genocide in Palestine.
Thereafter, the findings of the judicial and expert bodies of the international system finally broke through to the political bodies of the UN. On September 18, 2024, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a dramatic resolution effectively codifying the findings of the ICJ, declaring the occupation and apartheid unlawful, demanding an end to the entire occupation and the assault on Gaza, and setting a one-year deadline for Israeli compliance, after which the UNGA promised further measures.
For the first time in decades, the stage was set for real Israel regime accountability.
Global civil society activists, led by representatives of Palestinian civil society, seized on the unprecedented opportunity of the one-year deadline (violated entirely by the Israeli regime) to formulate an agenda for Israeli accountability and Palestinian protection. They developed a plan for adoption in the UNGA at the end of the deadline that would use the extraordinary power of the Assembly under the Uniting for Peace process to circumvent the U.S. veto in the Security Council and mandate concrete measures for accountability and protection.
This would include a UNGA call for sanctions, a military embargo, the rejection of the credentials of the Israeli regime, the establishment of a criminal tribunal, the reactivation of the UN’s anti-apartheid mechanisms, and the mandating of a UN protection force to protect civilians, ensure humanitarian aid, preserve evidence of Israeli crimes, and facilitate reconstruction. Importantly, the protection force would be mandated on the basis of Palestinian consent, with no Chapter 7 power to impose itself against the will of the indigenous people, thus obviating fears of a proxy occupation.
The initiative was subsequently embraced by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who, in his speech before the 80th Session of the UNGA, promised to introduce the proposal, as a draft resolution was prepared and diplomatic action proceeded to secure other co-sponsors.
The French-Saudi Track
But the unprecedented possibility for Israeli accountability presented by the UNGA resolution and deadline was not lost on Israel’s allies either, who worked feverishly to forestall any possibility of such accountability coming into force.
The tactics they adopted had become all too familiar during the decades of Oslo: divert attention away from accountability under international law and into a loose political process and the promise of a possible Palestinian state at some point in the future; compel Palestinians to negotiate for their rights with their oppressor; and work to normalize the Israeli regime as it consolidates its conquest of Palestine.
In sum, the true focus of these initiatives is not on saving Palestine, but rather on saving Israel and Zionism, even in the wake of a genocide.
French President Emannuel Macron made the intentions of his initiative clear in a letter to his Israeli regime counterpart in September of 2025. In it, he openly brags about his efforts in France to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism in order to punish dissent to his pro-Israel rule, and then tells Netanyahu that his actions at the UN (including recognizing an unarmed Palestinian Bantustan) are meant “to transform the military gains Israel has achieved on regional fronts into a lasting political victory, to the benefit of its security and prosperity…to [secure] Israel’s …full regional integration in the Middle East…its normalization…[and] the end of Hamas.”
In other words, the French-Saudi proposal is not about holding the regime accountable for its genocide and aggression in the region, but rather to shore up the Zionist project in Western Asia, to consolidate its unlawful gains, and to normalize it on the international stage.
The final product of the French-Saudi proposal was the New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, endorsed by the UNGA in September of 2025, just eight days before the expiration of the deadline for Israeli compliance set by Assembly. Notably, the declaration mentions neither the genocide nor the crime of apartheid and contains no accountability measures for the Israeli regime whatsoever. It was, in effect, a last-minute defensive maneuver to preserve the wall of Israeli impunity that the West had so carefully built up over eight decades.
In essence, the declaration reads like a blueprint for the further entrenching of the unjust status quo that existed before October of 2023, but with some extra rewards for Israel, and an amorphous promise of a limited Palestinian state somewhere down the road. Indeed, it promises to advance normalization and regional cooperation for Israel on trade, infrastructure, energy, and security. Ignoring justice and accountability altogether, the declaration instead dedicates itself to “peace, security, and stability,” reduces the genocide in Gaza to an armed conflict in which both sides are at fault, and declares yet another political process toward a “two-state solution” as the only way forward. Ignoring the U.S. role as a co-perpetrator in the genocide, it explicitly supports the role of the U.S. as a mediator (alongside Egypt and Qatar).
While it demands that Hamas free all Israeli captives, it only provides for the “exchange” of some Palestinian captives. And in flagrant disregard for the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, it purports to impose its own governance framework, with the Palestinian Authority (with “international support”) to be in charge of all Palestinian territory, and Hamas to be excluded from governance in Gaza. Eventual elections would be open only to those committed to respect the PLO (and therefore the PA) political platform.
Palestinian resistance groups defending their land and people against occupation, apartheid, and genocide are to be disarmed under the plan, while the Israeli perpetrator regime faces no such disarmament, and any eventual Palestinian state is itself envisaged by the plan to be a disarmed and defenseless entity. In other provisions, the plan would promote “deradicalization,” a dangerous concept born of the so-called “global war on terrorism,” in which populations are subjected to propaganda programmes (and often punitive measures) designed to discourage resistance to foreign domination and abusive regimes — despite the fact that such resistance is a right under international law.
The plan also proposes the deployment of troops to Palestine under a “stabilization mission” to be mandated by the UN Security Council. While the mandate of the mission would include civilian protection and security guarantees for Palestine, it would also be responsible for transferring “internal security responsibilities” to the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, disarming all other factions, providing “border security” (i.e., ensure no Palestinians escape from the Gaza cage), and for guaranteeing security for the (hyper-armed, nuclear capable, and thoroughly militarized) Israeli regime.
In other words, the mission would keep an eye on all Palestinian resistance and guarantee the impunity of the Israeli regime.
The Trump Track
Following up on his earlier King Leopold-esque promise to “own Gaza” and to build a colonized Riviera on the bones of its genocided population, Trump announced his 20-point plan at the end of September.
In the long-standing tradition of Western imperial arrogance in Palestine dating back to Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration, Trump’s 20 points were not negotiated with the Palestinians before he issued them. Indeed, Palestinians were not consulted or involved in their drafting. Rather, in a blatant act of 21st Century gunboat diplomacy, they were presented as a unilateral dictate from the U.S.-Israel axis, accompanied by violent threats of total destruction if they were not accepted.
The document was the product of an international rogue’s gallery of characters — which, in addition to genocide-complicit Trump and ICC-indicted fugitive Netanyahu, included notorious figures like Iraq war criminal Tony Blair and Trump’s billionaire son-in-law (and family friend of Netanyahu) Jared Kushner. The group did consult some of its complicit Arab and Muslim allies, but they subsequently complained that the document had been changed in fundamental ways by Trump and Netanyahu after their endorsement.
Netanyahu, who was allowed to make last-minute changes to the text before issuance, then stood with Trump to say he agreed to it — but within hours, was publicly renouncing elements of the plan and pledging that there would never be a Palestinian state, and that Israeli soldiers would not leave Gaza.
To be clear, this is not a peace plan or a plan for ending the Israel Palestine conflict. It provides no promise of Palestinian liberation, no restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people, and no guarantee of Palestinian statehood and self-determination. Instead, it provides a vague and hyper-qualified reference to “conditions” that “may emerge” sometime in the future, if Gaza re-development advances, and if the PA reforms to the satisfaction of the U.S. imperial overlords. Outrageously, the plan concludes with the U.S. arrogating to itself the role of mediator between Palestine and its Israeli occupier for any future political settlement, which would guarantee many more horrific decades of Palestinian persecution as they are forced to negotiate for their rights with their oppressor and that oppressor’s chief sponsor.
Tellingly, the 20 points contain not a word about the genocide, about apartheid, or about root causes. There is to be no accountability for the perpetrators. No redress for the victims. And the plan promises not the deradicalization of the regime perpetrating genocide, but rather of the Palestinian victims of that genocide. It is directed at ensuring that the exterminated people of Gaza “pose no threat” to its neighbors, with no guarantee that the Israeli regime, the perpetrator of the genocide, the occupier of three Arab nations, and the author of serial aggression against half a dozen neighboring countries and a spate of transnational assassinations will pose no threat. Palestinian security forces will be vetted by the U.S.-led stabilization force. There will be no such vetting of Israeli forces, the ranks of which are rife with perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
The roots of this plan in Trump’s earlier threat to “own Gaza” and to exploit a “Gaza Riveria,” are revealed in the text itself. Under Trump’s new plan, Gaza will be ruled by a colonial body headed by Donald Trump himself, with another prominent place on the body held by disgraced UK politician Tony Blair. The body, in typical Trumpian style, is dubbed “The Board of Peace.”
This body would set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza (through the “Trump Economic Development Plan”), positioning it to control all resources coming in from Gulf and European donors, with no oversight. The possibility of staggering levels of corruption would seem self-evident. The unchecked external control, extraction, and exploitation of Palestine’s economic resources would be inevitable. And note that there is no mention of Israel’s international legal obligations to provide compensation and reparations for the damage it has inflicted on Gaza.
While the plan usurps Palestinian agency by controlling Palestinian resources and designating Palestinian leaders, it also purports to exclude some Palestinians from the right to be involved in the governance of their own country. The role of Hamas, for example, should be a matter for Hamas and the Palestinian people to decide. Under this plan, Hamas is to be excluded not by decision of the Palestinian people, but rather by dictate from the U.S., which has decreed that Hamas (“and other factions”) will not have any role in the governance of Gaza, “directly, indirectly, or in any form.”
And in other provisions, the resistance is to be entirely disarmed, and its military infrastructure destroyed. Notably, the plan also provides for the destruction of Gaza’s tunnels, which have been essential not only for the defense of the territory, but also for the critical movement of persons and goods during the many unlawful Israeli sieges on the territory.
Reminiscent of the Eight Nation Invasion of China in 1900, the plan even proposes a multinational proxy occupation force led by the U.S. with the participation of “Arab and international partners” that will “stabilize” Gaza, impose “internal security,” secure the borders (i.e., ensure the continued caging of the Palestinians), and prevent the Palestinians from rearming, leaving them defenseless against Israeli aggression.
The plan provides no expectation of a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, only the possibility of a phased redeployment to the margins of Gaza and the maintenance of an Israeli “security perimeter” to remain indefinitely inside Gaza. And any partial withdrawal of Israeli regime forces that may occur is to be based on as yet undefined “standards, milestones, and time frames” that are linked to the disarming of Palestinians, and that will be determined by the U.S., by the stabilization force headed by the U.S., and by the Israeli forces that are armed, funded, and supported by the U.S. — yet another indicator of the proxy occupation nature of the plan.
While the plan provides for a significant increase in aid to the survivors of the genocide in Gaza, that aid is (unlawfully) conditioned on the acceptance by Hamas of Trump’s terms — and even then, aid quantities would be limited by the terms of the previous ceasefire of January 19, 2025. Similarly, opening of the Rafah crossing is to be subject to the same mechanism implemented under the January agreement, and thus will be still subject to continued restrictions. And it provides for the possible denial of humanitarian aid to certain areas of Gaza if Hamas is deemed to have delayed the process.
Where key details are scarce in the plan, there is also reason for worry, given that the document explicitly cites Trump’s 2020 peace plan (as well as the French-Saudi proposal described above) as part of the basis for subsequent stages in the process. Readers will recall that the 2020 plan included the further expansion of Israeli territory, the annexation of much of the West Bank, the renunciation of all Palestinian legal claims against Israel, the exclusion of Palestine from East Jerusalem, and the creation of an archipelago of Palestinian Bantustans surrounded by Israeli settlements, borders, and walls.
Even the more concrete elements of the plan are heavily weighted in favor of the Israeli perpetrator and against the besieged and persecuted Palestinian people.
For example, the release of all Israeli captives (of whom there are only a few dozen) is to take place within 72 hours. The release of Palestinian captives unlawfully held by Israel (of whom there are some 11,000) on the other hand, will only include a small proportion of those held at some unspecified time after all Israelis are returned. In all, less than 2,000 of the 11,000 Palestinian captives held by Israel are to be released.
Similarly, the remains of approximately 25 Israeli captives are thought to be held in Gaza, while the remains of some 2,000 deceased Palestinians are held by the Israeli regime. While the Trump plan stipulates the release of all Israeli remains, it only provides for the release of a portion of the Palestinian remains.
And some potentially positive provisions of the document are undercut by contradictory provisions elsewhere in the document.
For example, the document promises a ceasefire, amnesty, and safe passage for Hamas members; a commitment that no one will be forced to leave Gaza and that those who wish to leave will be free to do so and to return; that Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza; and that aid will flow through the UN and Red Crescent without interference.
However, while committing to the free flow of aid, it elsewhere implicitly imposes restrictions on aid. While promising no Israeli occupation, it also implies that Israeli regime forces will remain in Gaza indefinitely. And vague wording leaves unclear whether the essential role of UNRWA (which the U.S. and Israel have falsely claimed is associated with Hamas) will be allowed, and whether the genocide-complicit role of the perfidious GHF scheme (which the U.S. falsely claims is not associated with the Israeli regime) will be allowed to continue.
In parts, the Trump plan itself is unlawful. The conditioning of humanitarian aid, implicit threats of collective punishment if Hamas does not agree, the explicit denial of Palestinian self-determination, restrictions on political rights, the requirement that Palestinians negotiate for their inalienable human rights with their oppressors, and the failure to seek accountability for Israeli crimes including genocide, are all breaches of the international legal obligations of the United States.
For its part, Hamas seized on the practical and implementable elements of the first phase of the plan (ceasefire, exchange of captives, etc.) for negotiation while refusing to surrender the cause of Palestine or to submit to the remainder of the document. Hamas said that the rest of the issues in the document were to be “discussed within a comprehensive Palestinian national framework, in which Hamas will be included and will contribute with full responsibility.”
And the outright rejection of the plan by representatives of Palestinian civil society demonstrates the dignified steadfastness of Palestinian society in struggling for their freedom, even in the darkest of times.
The Struggle Continues
As this goes to press, moves are underway to effectively merge the French-Saudi plan with the Trump plan, and to have it blessed in the UN Security Council. But the colonial machinations of Trump, Macron, and others cannot obscure the fundamental reality confronting the world today: a single colonial regime planted in the heart of Western Asia is perpetrating apartheid, genocide, belligerent occupation, and serial aggression across the region and corrupting governments and institutions far beyond.
The unprecedented, Western-sponsored impunity of that regime is undercutting the very sustainability of international law, trampling on human rights, and jeopardizing peace and security across the region. Finally holding that regime accountable remains a vital, even existential imperative for the world.
In the meantime, for a people enduring genocide, any ceasefire is to be celebrated. But few are under the illusion that this ceasefire means a definitive end to the genocide, or the beginning of Palestinian freedom. No sustainable peace can be built on the weak foundation of Trump’s vanity and greed, Macron’s colonial nostalgia, or Netanyahu’s deceit and racist brutality.
Only justice can provide that foundation. And among the three tracks discussed in this article, only one travels toward justice.
Palestinian society has pointed the way, the UN human rights mechanisms, the ICJ, and the landmark UNGA resolution of September 2024 have joined the cause, and the world has risen up in solidarity. Now more than ever, that solidarity must be sustained, multiplied, and acted upon. The Israeli regime, its co-perpetrators in Washington, its proxies across the West, complicit governments, media companies that have supported the genocide, and corporations that have profited from it must all be held accountable if justice is to be done.
Normalization of the Israeli regime and its crimes must end. Genocide must be a red line. And Palestine must be free.
