Category: United States

  • Miriam Makeba and Kwame Ture/Stokely Carmichael, 1968

    Back in the 1960s, Mariam Makeba aka Mama Africa played an important role in bringing apartheid in South Africa to the attention of the world. A singer with a voice seasoned by living under a brutal system of settler colonial racism known as “apartheid”, correctly pronounced exactly as it means, “apart-hate”, Mama Africa was exiled from her motherland by the fascist South African government and left to drift in the purgatory of exile with no where to set her roots down.

    The fact that she could sing so emotively, express the soulful blues that represented her people caught the attention of those in the west who were looking for something real, meaningful and what it came down to, beautiful.

    As the civil rights movement in the US began to take hold, and liberals and even those not so liberal began to face how the times they were a changin’ Mariam Makeba allowed such controversial, radical even, ideas to be come acceptable in “polite company”. Teaming up with a established star of the entertainment industry like Harry Belafonte and Hugh Masakela allowed her star to shine and she earned the name Mama Africa. Mariam was black and beautiful and Apartheid was white and evil and never the two should mix.

    Then Mariam Makeba met a handsome, fiery revolutionary still going by his “slave name” of Stokely Carmichael who was about to become an exile from the US himself, avoiding the death squads of the FBI for daring to speak out against apartheid in the USA as the Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party. Bro. Stokely was a survivor of the fascist assassination campaign directed by J. Edgar Hoover himself, Godfather of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that saw the murder of over 250 Black Panther Party cadre stretching from the mid 1960s to the early 1970s, until there really weren’t any black revolutionaries of any significance left in the US. Stokely left the US and found sanctuary in the African country of Guinea, jointly headed by Africa’s first two independence leaders after WW2, Sekou Toure and Kwame Nkrumah. There he and Mama Africa, Mariam Makeba found refuge, safety from the US empire and its colony in South Africa apartheid and its various other minions.

    Stokely was given the new name of Kwame Ture by his mentors, Sekou Toure and Kwame Nkrumah and he and Mama Africa, who was a decade older, made a powerful couple. Dynamic Black revolutionary and inspiring African songstress, together they could reach out to a much broader audience that just political or cultural.

    The problem for Mariam Makeba was that being in the Zionist, pro-Israel controlled entertainment industry Stokely/Kwame’s fiery denunciations of the racist, colonial settler Zionist regime in Israel was not to be tolerated by the “white zionists” in show biz and Mama Africa very quickly found out just who ruled the roost when it came to the music business.

    The Zionist ruled entertainment industry blacklisted Mama Africa, denying her any concert venues and even the ability to record her art, persecuting her until she had to choose between her continuing to bringing her art to the world and… her husband.

    Left with little choice Mariam Makeba chose her first love, her music, and divorced Kwame Ture. Eventually the Zionists dominating the entertainment industry forgave her and allowed her career to continue. Kwame went on to more brilliance in the world of revolutionary politics, denouncing Apartheid in Palestine and opposing oppression where ever it existed.

    These days of “AI”, artificial intelligence, has seen this story “disappeared” from the ethernet, or at least the search engines, actually proclaiming that Mama Africa never opposed Zionism, apartheid in Palestine. One can only hope this chapter of history survives, the persecution and blacklisting of Mama Africa, Mariam Makeba.

    For those seeking sources to this vanishing story, my friend and comrade Bro. Kwame Ture told me first hand about this during his speaking tours that I produced in my hometown of Honolulu, Hawaii in 1985 and 1994. He spent a week both times as a guest in my home where he spent many, many hours regaling me with his adventures and wisdom. His passing marked that of one of the very last black revolutionaries in the US, an African at heart and in action though born and raised in the diaspora.

    The post Zionism vs. Mama Africa: The Persecution and Blacklisting of Mariam Makeba first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Recently, a friend since high school, an individual, a self-identified, as of late, Christian-nationalist, curtailed — in the stark, cold manner that I have witnessed true believer Christians are prone — our friendship due to a recent article of mine in which I called out the fascistic elements of Christian-nationalism and genocide-apologist aspects of Christian Zionism. In his shunning of me, he made clear, at least in my mind, he was a (willing) victim of the affliction of the collective soul that scholars of the phenomenon term: Authoritarian Personality Type.

    Authoritarian Personality Theory, developed by Theodor Adorno and Frankfurt School colleagues as well as other thinkers, such as Erich Fromm and Hannah Arendt, posit that afflicted individuals are, by compulsion, drawn to “strong” (weak at heart and sick of soul) authority, crave rigid social structures and conventionalism resultant in intolerance towards non-conformity. Over a period of time, repressed aggression curdles into xenophobic angst that will become displaced as hostility towards outsider groups.

    To wit, my “saved”, devotee to the Prince Of Peace friend attempted to shame me, the offspring of a Holocaust survivor, for expressing fear regarding the dismal and deranged phenomenon of the rise of authoritarianism in the US and the Zionist ethnostate’s perpetration of genocide in Gaza.

    (Don’t you just feel the love of Christ when Trump and Pete Hegseth are dropping bombs on fishermen off the shores of Venezuela?)

    Sorry, if you are reading this piece, old friend, but defenders of Zionist and ICE thugacracies have careened into the realm of Third Reich adjacency. The shame is on the deluded/and or dissembling tongues of the US version of Volksgemeinschaft as the authoritarian MAGA jackboot is being lowered on the necks of the powerless.

    This individual, two years ago, in the days after the Gaza open air concentration camp uprising known as the October 7 attacks, offered to hide me and my family in his home, when, in reality, Jewish persons such as myself were in the sum total of nada danger from (phantom) anti-Semites who would be coming for Jews.

    I suspect he was convinced that he was following the example of Nazi Germany’s Righteous Gentiles* — yet he has not issued a word of rebuke — nor offered the human beings who, as these words are being composed, health and safety are being threatened by ICE thuggery — moral support nor sanctuary.

    (*A “Righteous Gentile” is a non-Jew who risked their life to save Jews, a term most famously used today to honor rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. The title is also based on a traditional Jewish concept of non-Jews who follow the Seven Laws of Noah.)

    Upon ceasing communication with me, he evinced a heartbreaking, soul-defying coldness regarding his demand that I cease calling out, in my articles, the proponents and enablers of US style authoritarianism or our friendship would be dispatched to the archives.

    How did I miss the coldness concealed in his character — of how he came to choose dead-as-dust dogma and fascist demagogic lies over friendship?

    Where does this type of Christianity — without any discernible measure of Christ — come from?

    In addressing the question, a digression:

    My maternal grandparents, due to their home and property being stolen by the Nazis, received (modest) payments of restitution from post-war German governments. Also, top Nazi officials were jailed and tried as war criminals.

    Justice will not prevail until the people of Gaza receive restitution (as opposed to more ethnic cleansing) and officials of the Zionist thugacracy are delivered to the dockets of war crimes tribunals. I know, it’s not going to happen. But will happen: Israel will continue its unabated crimes against humanity.

    What will come to pass, as the trend continues, because Israel is not going to be subject to sanctions nor suffer lasting consequences for the nation’s crimes against humanity — and, in certain deranged, yet powerful, circles — be heralded as heroic for their perpetration of genocide?

    The US, as is the case with the Zionist state, was founded in ethnic cleansing and through it settler-colonialist expansion westward committed genocide. In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan when US imperial troops left their fortified compound areas, the soldiers averred, they were entering “Indian country.”

    Telling, huh? The US is responsible for the deaths of millions of human beings during its war of aggression in Indochina… but did not suffer from consequences, insofar as making restitution, for its hideous actions. Since 1990 alone, the US has killed four million people of the Islamic faith.

    In short, the US is a death cult disguised as a nation.

    Now, armed governmental forces patrol the streets of the US and practice, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, extraordinary rendition upon those who are deemed as alien-others.

    Mass shooting sprees have been normalized. The right-wing gasbag grifter Charlie Kirk, at the moment he was felled by a gunman’s bullet, was waxing demagogic about “gun rights.” Moreover, he had posited that firearm related deaths were an excusable price to be paid to protect the Second Amendment. The damn fool justified his own murder.

    Nations, as noted above, that do not suffer consequences for their blood-drench crimes against humanity devolve into death cults.

    Appropriating the rightwing extremist, Christian-nationalist’s Kirk’s death, as an emblem, they conjure, from their rancid, collective souls, their own demise.

    Withal, the fate of the US and all in its path, if my Christian-nationalist friend and his life-detesting, Jesus-sans-the-Jesus part, death cult continue to control the mechanisms of state.

    What will restore my friend to sanity and bring remedy to the harm his belief system is inflicting upon the world? It is contained in the very pages of scripture of the book to which he claims absolute felicity but his and his true believers work bear soul-defying, mind-poisoning, heart-killing fruits.

    Great sorrow awaits you religious scholars and Pharisees—frauds and imposters! You are nothing more than tombs painted over with white paint—tombs that look shining and beautiful on the outside but filled with rotting corpses on the inside. Outwardly you masquerade as righteous people, but inside your hearts you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. — Matthew 23:27-28

    What could restore to sanity the troubled, noxious minds of authoritarianism-ruled, Christian-nationalists shunners of the Christ-image?

    A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh. —Ezekiel 36:26

    Yes, my old friend, as you wander the authoritarian desert of the heart — there is water in the rock — but, first and foremost, I suggest you redeem the stony heart inherent to the authoritarian mindset:

    He brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers. — Psalm 78:16

    The post The Rise Christian Nationalism and the Ending of a Friendship first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Before listening to Trump’s speech to the Knesset, I had no intention to write a summary of another soliloquy that praised Donald Trump. Two Knesset members made the only sensible statement during the oration, by showing their distaste for the utterances and being escorted out of the chamber of horrors. Haim V. Levy, The Times Of Israel, had it right, “In celebrating the release of hostages, Israel’s leaders turned gratitude into spectacle and democracy into theater.” After hearing the twisted, grinded, and mendacious words, I ran to the computer and started pounding the keyboard. The success of Donald Trump in accomplishing a peace negotiation that defied the efforts of others begged to be challenged and placed in proper context. His attacks on truth and departure from reality warranted capture for posterity.

    Donald Trump’s negotiation of a Middle East Peace agreement placed in context

    Israel’s continuation of the massacre of the Palestinians until their extermination would have been a victory for Israel. Halting the massacre is a victory for Donald Trump — a possible Nobel Peace prize, a place in history, respect from foreign leaders. A shrewd Trump stacked the deck and gave himself all the trump cards.

    By not joining government and institution leaders proclaiming either genocide or war crimes, Trump established the United States as Israel’s only hope for military support, economic support, moral support, political support, and escape from criminal indictments. In a few directives, Trump could have had his Department of Injustice, Department of Homeland Security, and intelligence services dismantle the corrupt network of intelligence gathering and mind twisting fellow travelers that Israel has assembled in all regions of the U.S. landmass and at tables of all intuitions. The Secretary of War could be told to deliver the arms, not by delicate transportation, but with explosive might in the center of Israel. Trump gave Netanyahu an offer he could not refuse and the Israeli war criminal wisely agreed.

    No world leader or agency could negotiate peace without Trump cooperating and the Trump persona made sure no other person had a chance at establishing peace. Wait, before having peace, we need war. Trump made sure there was plenty of that component by helping Israel wage a one-sided war against a helpless people. It was a Trump war and a Trump peace and not an end to a war; it was an end to resistance to oppression and the beginning of a Trump plan of partial physical displacement and cultural genocide, much less than Israel hoped to obtain.

    Departures from reality

    Trump’s light banter of demeaning and exalting Israeli opposing politicians ─ Benjamin Netanyahu and Yair Lapid ─ affected my equilibrium. He interfered in the political rivalry that neither Israeli leader enjoyed, sparring by joking on a day that required seriousness and respect for those who escaped death and those who faced death. Could not determine who scowled more, Netanyahu or Lapid.

    Is this correct? Did Trump say that Israel is more respected now than it was several years ago? Presently, Israel has little respect from the respectful. Means that several years ago, Israel had no respect. Could be true.

    When the Triumphant said, “Gazans can now have peace and prosperity,” why didn’t he look at the Knesset members and let them know that Israel denied peace and prosperity to Gazans and constantly destroyed their efforts to achieve both. He followed that remark with a bewildering, (Ed: Paraphrased) “We have ended the war so Israelis can live in peace.” Correction: “We have ended resistance to oppression so another oppression can emerge.” For seven decades, Israel has initiated wars against neighbors to preserve the peace their military interrupted. Except for some minor disturbances in daily life and a few casualties to their citizens, for twenty years, Israel has intermittently waged aggressive wars against defenseless Palestinians in Gaza, not allowing them a moment of peace. In the last two years, Israel escalated its war against the Palestinians, murdering tens of thousands and leaving homeless hundreds of thousands. Almost all Israelis have waged war and almost all have had peace. Few Gazans have waged war and none have had peace.

    The saintly real estate magnate slipped in his noble effort to give each religion its share of Jerusalem — “Christians have the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jews have the Western Wall, and Muslims have the Temple Mount.” Muslims have the Temple Mount? Isn’t the Temple Mount Jewish? Isn’t Haram-al-Sharif the proper designation? Was that a purposeful slip or did someone insert other words in the teleprompter?

    Ignoring the 87 years of persecution of the Palestinian people, Trump referred to the “1000 years of persecution of the Jewish people,” an accepted terminology that is now being questioned. Similar to disputing the characterization of warranted arguments against Jewish practices and Jewish attachment to genocidal Israel, as anti-Semitism, characterizing warranted arguments against Jewish practices as persecution of Jews throughout history are being viewed from a different perspective.

    Until the World War II atrocities, Jews suffered much less discrimination than other minorities, many of whom, such as the Cathars, Carthaginians, Hereros, Aborigines, and hundreds of tribes in the Americas, Africa and Asia have been almost completely wiped out and are not available to testify to the persecutions. Much of what is labelled persecution is discrimination against a minority (Jews in this case) driven by economic, cultural, and social rivalries, suspicions, or just being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. We hear of attacks on Jews and never learn what provoked the attacks — landlords of large estates, where peasants labored for subsistence wages, tax collectors for princes that aroused animosity, and control of gambling, prostitution, liquor, and money lending. The latter generated activities that pauperized peasants and enabled wealthy Jews to expand into vertical combinations, purchase of raw materials, which were used in manufacturing of finished goods, and shipped to markets for sales by other Jews. The cooperative actions between Jews lowered prices, disadvantaged local commerce and angered local shopkeepers. The numbers of Jews who are harmed are exaggerated and publicized. No reference is made to those harmed on the competing side.

    The relations between Jews and their neighbors throughout history, of which there is little authenticated history, might be similar to the relations Israel has with its neighbors ─ never compromising, gaining advantage by illicit activities, using the advantage to subdue opponents, and not considering the damaging effects on others. Hamas’ October 7 attack was brutal and deserves criticism but was provoked by decades of oppression that had passed a “boiling point.” Attacks on Jews throughout history might have followed a similar pattern ─ brutal and deserving criticism but provoked by decades of Jews regarding others as hindrances and taking unfair advantage until populations reached a “boiling point.”

    Trump insulted the American public with his usual display of ill manners and inability to distinguish between right and wrong. He cited audience member Miriam Adelson, whose multimillion contributions to his campaigns can be seen as a bribe to support Israel, praised the gambling casino entrepreneur for her dedication to Israel and made the embarrassing statement, “She may love Israel more than the United States.” Is that a praiseworthy American citizen, a person who loves a foreign nation more than her own nation, and acts as an unregistered lobbyist for that nation? Trump disclosed that Ms. Adelson would call him, he would answer, and she would come to the White House and ask him to recognize Israel’s incorporation of the Golan Heights into Greater Israel. Now we know how American foreign policy is formulated.

    Steve Witkoff, Trump’s totally inexperienced special envoy to the Middle East, who spent almost his entire life in real estate ventures, was another audience member receiving praise from Trump. Witkoff deserved praise for his efforts but behind his efforts is a murky and possible self-serving purpose. Steve Witkoff owes much to the Qatari government, a financial and moral supporter of the Palestinians.

    The New York Times, “Where Mideast Envoy Pitched Peace, His Son Pitched Investors,” By Debra Kamin and Bradley Hope, updated Oct. 5, 2025, details how the Qatari government sought favor with the first Trump administration by forming close relationships with Trump confidantes, including Witkoff. The Qatari Investment Authority was the third-largest shareholder in Apollo, a publicly traded real estate financing trust, that “partnered with the Witkoff Group in developing The Brook, a luxury Brooklyn rental building that opened its doors this summer.”

    In 2023, the Qatar Investment Authority agreed to buy the Park Lane for $623 million, permitting Witkoff and partners to repay loans they had on the Park Lane and could not repay. Witkoff escaped unscathed from a desperate financial moment.

    In spring, 2025, Alex Witkoff’s son, Alex, “approached Qatar and other major investors, asking them to put money into his planned multibillion-dollar fund. In meetings and in a fund-raising document reviewed by The Times, Alex Witkoff said the so-called Special Situations Real Estate Credit Fund would focus on investments in the Sun Belt and other regions with a shortage of affordable housing.”

    Upon introducing and praising Steve Witkoff, Trump displayed his usual sarcastic and deprecating attitude and mentioned that he had sent Witkoff, whom he stated he knew had no knowledge, credentials, or diplomatic experience in Russian affairs, to meet Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and discuss the perilous war in Ukraine. We know details of the 5-hour meeting but do not know if the discussion considered a new Trump hotel to be built in Moscow. Although he lacks formal training in diplomacy, Steve Witkoff has “conducted key meetings in ways that breached standard diplomatic protocol, raising concerns about the accuracy, trustworthiness, and effectiveness of such engagements.” Now we know how American foreign policy is formulated.

    The most reprehensible and insidious remark of the reprehensible and insidious speech characterized Hamas as having been responsible for the violence in the Middle East and its termination bringing an end to terrorism. Trump envisioned “a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.” By that, he must mean getting rid of Israel. Other than Israel, who has Hamas threatened or attacked in the Middle East? Who has Israel and the United States together not attacked? Didn’t animosity to Israel and the United States play key roles in the formation of al-Qaeda and the rise of ISIS?

    The Zionist controlled media portrays Hamas as an incompetent terrorist organization. In honest reporting, Hamas has engaged in resistance and retribution to the daily terrorist attacks by Israel upon the Palestinians. Despite the constant wars, blockades, and daily harassment by Israel military, Hamas created a satisfactory environment for the Gazan people it educated, complete with universities, schools, sport arenas, cultural centers, residential complexes, and means to relax and be entertained, all destroyed by the most terrifying nation in the world.

    Included in the speech to the Knesset were repeat from all Trump’s speeches — the United States is the strongest and richest country in the world, President Biden and President Obama were the worst presidents in U.S. history, and he is personally responsible for eliminating ISIS, making America great, and stopping all the unstoppable wars in the present century. When in doubt, make a fool of yourself.

    The Future

    Political pundits engage in sophistry, predicting the next phase of the war against Gaza that was not stopped until Gaza was totally destroyed and the Gazans had nowhere to be buried. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (TWI), a pro-Israel think tank, recommends.

    …beyond removing Hamas from power, postwar programming in Gaza should focus on disengagement rather than deradicalization—that is, creating a reality in which returning to violence is no longer in the interest of those who previously engaged in it. To succeed, such efforts must be led by local actors who bring a new and distinct agenda—a viable alternative to Hamas—and must include significant investment in socioeconomic recovery, institutional reform, and a clear political path that offers genuine hope for the future.

    Experiences from partial successes in disengagement—whether from Nazism or violent Islamism—underscore the need for a multilayered approach that goes beyond targeting individual extremists to address the broader social, political, and communal ecosystems in which radicalization takes root.

    I recommend that TWI stop being a shill for Israel and state reality. Trump will try to reshape Gaza in his image, giving Gazans the luxury hotels, golf courses, and Starbucks cafes the Gazans desperately need.

    Israel’s racist and genocidal government will do everything to stall Trump’s plans of keeping Gazans in Gaza. Zionist Jews do not reward anyone for what they did yesterday to help the Zionist cause. Their criterion for approval is, “What are you going to do for us today?” Lackey Trump has fulfilled his role and is no longer needed. Stall and stall until the next election and get another lackey for president who preaches Israel above all. Place the bet on Secretary of State Marc Rubio.

    A low-level genocide of the Palestinians will continue for a few years and then… the final blow.

    The post The Trumpet Sounds Again first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Decent, concerned people have been waiting impatiently for the UN General Assembly to use a ‘Uniting For Peace’ resolution to circumvent the US veto and intervene in Gaza with a protection force. Under this mechanism, when the Security Council is deadlocked, the authority to act passes to the General Assembly where the US has no veto.

    But UNGA have dragged their feet and allowed Trump and his Zionist business friends to seize the initiative with a fake peace plan that conceals their main motive, which is to perpetuate Israel’s dominance and profit hugely from designating Gaza and the West Bank as a fantastic development zone under their control.

    However, international law says the Palestinians must be allowed to govern their territories — including Gaza’s marine oil and gas field — with whatever help they choose, under UN supervision and not dictated by outsiders like Trump and his band of get-rich property developers. Their “eternal peace” plan is deliberately short on detail, ignores international law, shuts out the Palestinian Authority, bypasses the United Nations, lacks any kind of authorisation from the global community, and reeks of sleaze. None of it acknowledges the Palestinians’ inalienable rights. Trump’s 20-point ‘peace’ plan for Gaza is a cruel hoax.

    The US’s track record is one of chronic bias, not least because its QME doctrine guarantees Israel a ‘qualitative military edge’ to ensure the apartheid state always has the upper hand over it neighbours. Until that legislation is repealed no US president or government appointee can be considered an honest broker in Middle East affairs.

    Yet here we see Trump abusing his powers and pushing aside the UN in an attempt to take control of the countless lucrative business opportunities thrown up by the Gaza tragedy. How are Donald Trump and a handful of chancers, who include the disgraced Tony Blair, able to usurp UN powers and exploit an appalling situation resulting from the genocidal devastation he himself had a big hand in? This is not an occasion for ‘deals’. It’s time to exercise the Palestinians’ right to freedom strictly in accordance with international law and help them achieve independence.

    And what are we to make of demands for Hamas to disarm and take no part in future governance of their country? Under the plan Israel will only withdraw troops (eventually) to the perimeter inside Gaza’s border. So they’ll remain in occupation indefinitely. They already occupy Gaza’s airspace, airwaves and coastal waters, and control all entry points and exits. Their record in honouring ceasefires is abysmal and they are poised to resume their genocidal slaughter on any whim. If you were Hamas would you disarm?

    Besides, who governs Palestine is entirely a decision for the Palestinian people. As far as I’m aware, Hamas are still the legitimate, democratically elected government in Gaza. And they are perfectly entitled under international law (and various UN resolutions, for example 3246 and 37/43) to put up armed resistance against any illegal occupier using military force. So is this attempt by Israel and its Western allies to bring about regime change actually lawful? And for balance what about regime change in the genocidal terror state next door?

    We saw Trump and Netanyahu holding hands and smirking as they launched their 20-point plan. Trump said Netanyahu had agreed to it — even though Netanyahu has vowed repeatedly that Israel will never allow a Palestinian state to emerge — and Arab countries were onboard. Trump then issued a blood-curdling threat to Hamas that if they didn’t accept his plan within 3 days he would give Israel the green light to carry on with the genocide with himself, presumably, continuing to supply the ammunition. “All HELL, like no one has ever seen before” would be let loose, he said.

    So it’s not about freedom for Palestinians, a right they’ve been denied for over a century. Nor are the vile duo aiming to deliver justice for the Palestinians, whose land this is. The more you think about it the clearer it becomes that the ‘peace’ plan is simply a cruel hoax to perpetuate the subjugation of the Palestinians, protect Israel’s dominance and ensure the Zionists’ long-term ambition to create a Greater Israel is finally achieved.

    The Trump-Netanyahu partnership and their hand-picked friends are a private club bent on greed and self-aggrandisement. How legally valid is any of that? And is the international community really going to allow such a preposterous scheme to go ahead with the likes of Donald Trump and Tony Blair in charge?

    What does the UN say about the “Eternal Peace” plan?

    A team of 28 independent human rights experts, appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, have said they welcome parts of the peace plan such as a permanent ceasefire, rapid release of unlawfully detained persons, an influx of humanitarian aid under United Nations supervision, no forced displacement from Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the non-annexation of territory. But they add that these are broadly requirements of international law anyway and shouldn’t depend on a formal peace plan.

    The experts warn that other elements of the plan are inconsistent with fundamental rules of international law and the 2024 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which demands that Israel ends its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

    They list 15 serious objections to Trump’s plan including the following:

    Any peace plan must respect the ground rules of international law. The future of Palestine must be in the hands of the Palestinian people – not imposed by outsiders under extreme conditions of duress in yet another scheme to control their destiny.

    The United Nations – not Israel or its closest ally – has been identified by the ICJ as the legitimate authority to oversee the end of the occupation and the transition towards a political solution in which the Palestinians’ right of self-determination is fully realised. But there is no provision in the plan for a leading role for the UN, General Assembly or Security Council, or even for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is vital to assisting and protecting Palestinians.

    The plan does not guarantee the Palestinian right of self-determination as international law requires, and it is subject to vague pre-conditions concerning Gaza’s redevelopment, Palestinian Authority reform, and a “dialogue” between Israel and Palestine. Palestine’s future would thus be at the mercy of decisions by outsiders, not in the hands of Palestinians as international law commands.

    The plan also requires more negotiations with Israel, when the Israeli Prime Minister has already declared that Israel would “forcibly resist” statehood. This contradicts the International Court of Justice (ICJ) finding that fulfilling the right of self-determination cannot be conditional on negotiations.

    The “temporary his contradicts the International Court of Justice (ICJ) finding that fulfilling the right of self-determination cannot be conditional transitional government” is not representative of Palestinians and even excludes the Palestinian Authority, which further violates self-determination and lacks legitimacy.

    Oversight by a “Board of Peace” chaired by the US President is not under United Nations authority or transparent multilateral control, while the US is a deeply partisan supporter of Israel and not an “honest broker”. This proposal is reminiscent of colonial practices and must be rejected.

    An “International Stabilisation Force”, outside the control of the Palestinian people and the United Nations as a guarantor, would replace Israeli occupation with a US-led occupation, contrary to Palestinian self-determination.

    Partial Israeli occupation continues indefinitely through a “security perimeter” inside Gaza’s borders, which is absolutely unacceptable.

    Nothing is said regarding the demilitarisation of Israel, which has committed international crimes against the Palestinians and threatened peace and security in the region through aggression against other countries.

    De-radicalisation is imposed on Gaza only, while public incitement to genocide has been dominant rhetoric in Israel.

    The plan largely treats Gaza in isolation from the West Bank including East Jerusalem, when these areas must be regarded as a unified Palestinian territory and State. The plan does not address other fundamental issues such as ending illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), borders, compensation, and refugees.

    An “economic development plan” and “special economic zone” could result in illegal foreign exploitation of resources without Palestinian consent.

    The International Court of Justice has been crystal clear: conditions cannot be placed on the Palestinian right of self-determination. The Israeli occupation must end immediately, totally and unconditionally, with due reparation made to the Palestinians. But there is no duty on Israel and those who have sustained its illegal attacks in Gaza to compensate Palestinians for illegal war damage.

    Accountability and justice are integral to sustainable peace but there is nothing of this in the plan.

    All this should have warned nations participating in Trump’s plan to have nothing to do with it. It may deliver a short break in the carnage and an exchange of (some) prisoners but genuine peace is evidently not on Trump’s agenda.

    A resolution will soon come before the UN Security Council to authorise and spell out the mission of the proposed International Stabilisation Force and ensure it is properly founded on international law. But will the US agree with that? A refusal (veto) might be the very thing to trigger a ‘Uniting for Peace’ move mentioned above.

    Also, there is no mention of restoring Gaza’s airport and seaport which, one would have thought, is essential to the task of reconstruction.

    So what exactly did Trump and his special guests sign at the peace summit at Sharm el-Sheikh on 13 October?

    The Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity

    Presidential Memoranda

    October 13, 2025

    We, the undersigned, welcome the truly historic commitment and implementation by all parties to the Trump Peace Agreement, ending more than two years of profound suffering and loss — opening a new chapter for the region defined by hope, security, and a shared vision for peace and prosperity.

    We support and stand behind President Trump’s sincere efforts to end the war in Gaza and bring lasting peace to the Middle East. Together, we will implement this agreement in a manner that ensures peace, security, stability, and opportunity for all peoples of the region, including both Palestinians and Israelis.

    We understand that lasting peace will be one in which both Palestinians and Israelis can prosper with their fundamental human rights protected, their security guaranteed, and their dignity upheld.

    We affirm that meaningful progress emerges through cooperation and sustained dialogue, and that strengthening bonds among nations and peoples serves the enduring interests of regional and global peace and stability.

    We recognize the deep historical and spiritual significance of this region to the faith communities whose roots are intertwined with the land of the region — Christianity, Islam, and Judaism among them. Respect for these sacred connections and the protection of their heritage sites shall remain paramount in our commitment to peaceful coexistence.

    We are united in our determination to dismantle extremism and radicalization in all its forms. No society can flourish when violence and racism is normalized, or when radical ideologies threaten the fabric of civil life. We commit to addressing the conditions that enable extremism and to promoting education, opportunity, and mutual respect as foundations for lasting peace.

    We hereby commit to the resolution of future disputes through diplomatic engagement and negotiation rather than through force or protracted conflict. We acknowledge that the Middle East cannot endure a persistent cycle of prolonged warfare, stalled negotiations, or the fragmentary, incomplete, or selective application of successfully negotiated terms. The tragedies witnessed over the past two years must serve as an urgent reminder that future generations deserve better than the failures of the past.

    We seek tolerance, dignity, and equal opportunity for every person, ensuring this region is a place where all can pursue their aspirations in peace, security, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, faith, or ethnicity.

    We pursue a comprehensive vision of peace, security, and shared prosperity in the region, grounded in the principles of mutual respect and shared destiny.

    In this spirit, we welcome the progress achieved in establishing comprehensive and durable peace arrangements in the Gaza Strip, as well as the friendly and mutually beneficial relationship between Israel and its regional neighbors. We pledge to work collectively to implement and sustain this legacy, building institutional foundations upon which future generations may thrive together in peace.

    We commit ourselves to a future of enduring peace.

    Donald J. Trump

    President of the United States of America

     

    Abdel Fattah El-Sisi

    President of the Arab Republic of Egypt

     

    Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani

    Emir of the State of Qatar

     

    Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

    President of the Republic of Türkiye

    Only 3 of the 193 members states of the United Nations were invited to attend. Hamas and Israel were both absent. Sheer woffle and it was signed only by Trump, El-Sisi, Al-Thani and Erdogan. How representative was this charade? How legally valid?

    Where does this leave the near-universal pledge to recognise Palestinian statehood (and make it happen)?

    Trump and some of his allies seem totally ignorant of their solemn duty to recognise Palestinian statehood. Fortunately, UN Resolution 37/43 of December 1982 is there to help. It comprehensively re-affirms previous resolutions and treaties on the universal right to self-determination and the speedy granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples in order to provide an effective guarantee that human rights may be observed. Note the words “speedy granting”. Palestinians have been kept waiting for over 100 years for an effective guarantee of their human rights.

    And 37/43 considers that denying the Palestinian people their inalienable rights to self-determination, sovereignty, independence and return to Palestine, and the repeated acts of aggression by Israel against the peoples of the region, constitute a serious threat to international peace and security. It strongly condemns those Governments that do not recognise the right to self-determination and independence of all peoples still under colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation, notably the Palestinian people.

    The post Gaza Peace Plan is a Cruel Deception first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Since the start of September, the Trump administration has busied itself with striking boats in international waters stemming from Venezuelan and possibly Colombian waters. Their mortal offence: allegedly carrying narcotics cargo destined for consumers in the United States. A few days following the first strike on September 2, President Donald Trump stated in a War Powers Resolution notification to Congress that the action was one of “self-defense” motivated by “the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region to address the continuing threat to United States persons and interests emanating from their territories.”

    In early October, a presidential notice was issued deeming those killed in such strikes on suspicion of drug smuggling “unlawful combatants”. The notice to Congress advanced an anaemic excuse to justify murder instead of arrest, an echo of previous, elastic rationales used by administrations to justify an enlargement of executive war powers: “based on the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the president determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations.” The US had “reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations.”

    The document amounted to an arrogation of extraordinary wartime powers to combat drug cartels, treating the trafficking of illicit narcotics to an armed assault on US citizens. Geoffrey S. Corn, a former judge advocate general lawyer, thought it a most adventurous move, given that drug cartels were not engaged in “hostilities”. “This is not stretching the envelope,” he told the New York Times. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

    In the kingdom of alternative legal realities, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly articulated the position in an email: “the president acted in line with the law of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores, and he is delivering on his promise to take on the cartels and eliminate these national security threats from murdering more Americans.”

    The number of possible international law violations are far from negligible. Michael Schmitt lists a few in Just Security. Most obvious is the physical violation of a State’s sovereignty, which can take place through interfering with its “inherently governmental functions” comprising such matters as law enforcement. To also authorise kinetic operations in another State’s territory can amount to wrongful intervention in its international affairs. Last, though not least, is that using force in this context may be unlawful, violating Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and customary law.

    Nothing in this cooked up scheme adds up. If the intention is to curb overdoses on US soil from drug use, flow of fentanyl would be the object of the exercise. But fentanyl hails from Mexico, not South America. The broader agenda is a more traditional one: the assertion of the imperium’s control over countries in the Americas, eliminating regimes deemed unfriendly to Washington’s interests. Narcotics has become the throbbing pretext, with Trump accusing Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro of being the leader of the drug trafficking organisation Cartel of the Suns. He is also accused of using the dark offices of the Tren de Aragua prison gang to conduct “irregular warfare” against the United States, despite countering claims by the intelligence community that the gang is not under Maduro’s control. (The reaffirmation of the initial intelligence assessment by the National Intelligence Council led to the sacking of its acting director, Michael Collins.)

    In 2020, the first Trump administration offered a reward of up to US$15 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Maduro. Two more increases to the bounty followed, the latest on August 7 being US$50 million following the sanctioning of the Cartel of the Suns by the Department of Treasury as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. “As leader of Cartel of the Suns,” declares the State Department in its notice of reward, “Maduro is the first target in the history of the Narcotics Rewards Program with a reward offer exceeding $25 million.”

    Trump, in one of his moments of sharp frankness, concedes that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been authorised to conduct covert lethal operations on Venezuelan soil and more broadly through the Caribbean in a presidential finding. “We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea well under control,” he told reporters hours after the secret authorisation was revealed.

    In explaining his shoddy reasons, Trump cited Venezuela’s emptying of its “prisons into the United States of America” and the issue of drugs. “We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you get to see that, but we’re going to stop them by land also.”

    To the finding can be added a bulking military presence in the region: eight surface warships and a submarine in the Caribbean, 10,000 US troops, largely garrisoned at bases in Puerto Rico, with a contingent of Marines equipped with amphibious assault boats. In the meantime, the recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado, salivates at the prospect of regime change with muscular intervention from Washington. The pieces are being moved into place, and the self-proclaimed peace maker in the White House is readying for war.

    The post Trump Readies for Regime Change in Venezuela first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • While millions waited in hopes that the Global Sumud Flotilla would win this year’s Nobel peace prize for its epic solidarity with Palestine, the Norwegian committee charged with granting the award gave it to Maria Corina Machado instead, veteran CIA coup plotter in Venezuela. As the late Gore Vidal aptly advised, “Never underestimate the Scandinavian sense of humor.”

    A day later in Gaza, the Israeli army destroyed the children’s hospital Al Rantisi with dynamite charges exponentially more powerful than those conceived by their inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), creator of the prize that carries his name. With the victims’ bodies barely cold in the rubble where the hospital previously stood, Machado praised the Holy State as a “genuine ally of liberty” while sending compliments to the “long-suffering Venezuelan people” as well as President Trump: “I accept this award in your honor, because you really deserve it.”

    Congratulations poured in, among them, from Barack Obama, who won the peace prize in 2009 on his way to authorizing seven wars in Muslim countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria). Also from Guatemalan president Bernardo Arevalo, who called Machado a “world class Venezuelan,” an appraisal that would have shamed his father (Juan Jose Arevalo), the first democratically elected president of the Central American republic and author of The Shark and the Sardines, a strong anti-imperialist essay whose title alone captures the historic power dynamic between Washington and Latin America.

    Machado, a pseudo-Venezuelan “sardine” eager to sell-out her country to the “shark” in Washington, was received in the White House in 2005 by George W. Bush in recognition of the quality of her aspirations, and twenty years later she is still at it, imploring Trump to invade Venezuela in the name of liberty, democracy, and the struggle against narco-terrorism. Of course this has nothing to do with Venezuelan’s proven oil reserves of 303.8 billion barrels, the most of any country in the world. Perish the thought.

    Dr. Nobel, an arms manufacturer who got the idea for awarding a peace prize from his secretary Bertha Felicie Sophie, who was a pacifist and feminist, as well as the author of Lay Down Your Arms (1889). In his will, Nobel stated that the profits from his considerable fortune were to reward “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

    Since its creation (1901) the prize has been accompanied by pious Eurocentrism and conditioned by Great Power geopolitics that have more to do with tweaking the conditions of permanent war than they do with establishing peace. This was never more evident than in the case of Woodrow Wilson, who won the prize in 1919.

    Elected on a peace platform, Wilson immediately plunged the U.S. into the bloodiest war in world history (at the time) — World War I — transforming an expensive battlefield stalemate into a lopsided victory for the Allies, who promptly imposed a bitter and humiliating “peace” on starving Germany, which began to take growing note of the German-supremacist denunciations of an obscure Austrian corporal. Forgotten was Wilson’s Fourteen Points declaration he had boomed across the Atlantic on the pretext it contained the secret to human happiness and permanent world peace. Once his complete lack of strategic sense was revealed at Versailles, Europe’s veteran imperialists ignored his pious nostrum about establishing a “machinery of friendship” in favor of perpetuating European colonialism, leaving Wilson unable to convince even his own country to join his crowning glory — the League of Nations.

    Other “great” Americans who won a Nobel peace prize include Nordic-supremacist Teddy Roosevelt, for whom war was a greater thrill than life itself, and whose popular book series, The Winning of the West, was worthy of Himmler. He estimated that “nine out of every ten” Indians were better dead than alive, deemed “coloreds” degenerate by nature, and looked on Latin peoples (“damned dagoes”) as little more than children. He applauded U.S. civilian massacres in the Philippines, which killed hundreds of thousands.

    However, the most genocidal U.S. winner of the peace prize would have to be the late Henry Kissinger, who befriended apartheid South Africa, ushered General Pinochet into power in Chile, gave the green light to Indonesia’s mass extermination of East Timor’s mountain people, and killed millions of Indochinese with saturation bombings. His comment about the Cambodian phase of the latter attacks, which paved the way for Pol Pot’s rise to power, make an ideal epitaph for the career of the clueless foreign policy expert: “I may have a lack of imagination, but I fail to see a moral issue involved.”

    With the Scandinavian sense of humor continuing to enrich our political folklore, there’s no reason for Donald Trump to lose hope.

    The post The CIA Wins Another Nobel Peace Prize first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Zelensky arrived in Washington on Friday, attired in his newly tailored suit, but he found no red carpet or even a high-level Trump official to greet him. Anticipating a cache of Tomahawks, he was apparently unaware of the telephone call between Trump and Putin and the meeting in Budapest in two weeks, to which he’s been excluded. Zelensky did meet with officials from Raytheon, maker of the Tomahawk missiles.

    At a later press conference, Trump sidestepped questions about giving Tomahawks to Ukraine, except to say they were a “big deal, vicious and bad things can happen if they are used.” According to the Financial Times, the Pentagon’s supply is dangerously depleted, only 30-50 could be spared, and in any case, they would not change the outcome of the war.

    One can never be sure, but presumably, Trump has finally accepted that the US started this proxy war in 2014. But it was the mention of Tomahawks that prompted Putin to make it clear to Trump that he’s being lied to by Zelensky, Kellogg, his advisors, and the British about the war. To wit: The Russians are decidedly winning, and it’s a reality that Trump must accept.

    Alex Mercouris, another of my trusted sources, reports that because of their range and who would be operating them, Russia would consider the use of Tomahawks “a flagrant act of war.” As such, prospects for a negotiated end to the fighting and future trade with the United States would be dashed. Both these points were no doubt taken very seriously by Trump.

    Finally, I’ve long held the opinion that Trump wants out of the war but does not want, as Garland Nixon notes, an “out with an ‘L’.” Hence, after an intense to and fro among Putin’s inner circle, it was decided to offer one last, best off ramp for Trump. It will occur in Budapest in two weeks.

    The post Trump, Tomahawks and Telephone Calls first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Caroline Tracey’s debut book, a blend of environmental reportage and memoir titled Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History, is forthcoming in March 2026 from W.W. Norton.

    Originally from Colorado, Caroline holds a doctorate in geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a recipient of the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing, the Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights, a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant, and an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, among other honors. In 2025, she received the inaugural On the Brinck | Places Prize for writing about the Southwest. She has also taught writing as a visiting professor at Deep Springs College.

    As a journalist and critic, Caroline’s work focuses on the environment, migration, and the arts in the US Southwest, Mexico, and their borderlands. Her reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos. Her literary and art criticism appears in the Nation, the New Republic, and elsewhere, and has been commissioned by SFMOMA and the National Gallery of Art. Read more here.

    Caroline lives with her wife, Mexican architect Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.

    *****

    So, the show is upcoming, Dec. 10. She’s the kind of writer we need covering climate, envirogees, the nuances of the Borderlands, finding the unusual in the world, and normalizing what it means to be a protector of land, culture, ecology, and the web of life.

    These amazing salt lakes, which are basins for larger lakes draining and evaporating over thousands of years.

    LISTEN here to our talk, prerecorded for my Finding Fringe: Voices from the Edge radio program.

    Mono Lake: How to save an endangered wonder of nature

    The good old days, into NOW:

    These books are valuable, man, as they pile up in my office, and I hope to get Caroline’s new book; she’ll be at the Tucson Book Festival in March 2026, and alas, we hope to see her up here in the Pacific Northwest:

    The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction: Quammen, David: 8601416681139: Amazon.com: Books

    A gem: Learn about this amazing Madagascar as that real Island Biogeography!

    Island of Evolution: The One and Only Madagascar - Duke Lemur Center

    I’ve had folk on about the Sky Islands and US-Mexico borderlands.

    It will be well worth the journey to find her pieces outside or behind paywalls:

    The state of journalism was discussed. The state of immigration predicated on economic conditions and environmental pressure were discussed.

    Ironically, many of the environmental crusaders in the Southwest are parachutists, coming to the area from other areas of US and Canada. White people, in a land of cultures, indigenes, and here we are, the irony of so many good-intentioned people moving in and putting pressure on ecosystems in and around Tucson, and farther out, where that lovely lifestyle of the Sonoran Desert is their nirvana.

    I brought up, briefly, Andre Vltchek‘s

    Stop Millions of Western Immigrants!

    Tens of millions of European and North American immigrants, legal and illegal, have been flooding both the cities and countryside in Asia, Latin America, and even Africa.

    Tens of millions of European and North American immigrants, legal and illegal, have been flooding both the cities and countryside in Asia, Latin America, and even Africa.

    Western migrants are charging like bulls and the ground is shaking under their feet; they are fleeing Europe and North America in hordes. Deep down they cannot stand their own lifestyle, their own societies, but you would hardly hear them pronounce it. They are too proud and too arrogant! But, after recognizing innumerable areas of the world as suitable for their personal needs – as safe, attractive and cheap – they simply pack and go!

    We are told that some few hundred thousand African and Asian exiles are now causing a great “refugee crises” all over Europe! Governments and media are spreading panic, borders are being re-erected and armed forces are interrupting the free movement of people. But the number of foreigners illegally entering Europe is incomparably smaller than the number of Western migrants that are inundating, often illegally, virtually all corners of the world.

    No “secret paradise” can be hidden any longer and no country can maintain its reasonable price structure. Potential European, North American and Australian immigrants are determined to enrich themselves by any means, at the expense of local populations. They are constantly searching for bargains: monitoring prices everywhere, ready to move at the spur of the moment, as long as the place offers some great bargains, has lax immigration laws, and a weak legal framework.

    Everything pure and untapped gets corrupted. With lightning speed, Western immigrants are snatching reasonably priced real estate and land. Then, they impose their lifestyle on all those “newly conquered territories”. As a result, entire cultures are collapsing or changing beyond recognition.

    Overall, Western immigrants are arrogant and stubborn; they feel no pity for the countries they are inundating. What surrounds them is only some colorful background to their precious lives. They are unable and unwilling to “adopt” local customs, because they are used to the fact that theirs is the “leading culture” – the culture that controls the world.

    They come, they demand, and they take whatever they can – often by force. If unchecked, they take everything. After, when there is almost nothing left to loot, they simply move on. After them, “no grass can grow”; everything is burned, ruined and corrupted. Like Bali, Phuket, Southern Sri Lanka, great parts of the Caribbean, Mexico and East African coast, just to name a few places.

    Caroline is bright, quick-witted, and a real journalist’s journalist. Listen to the interview.

    This Is How Northern Mexico Became a Climate Migration Destination

    Great writers before Caroline’s emergence:

    Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters by Annie Dillard | Goodreads

    The legacy of "Silent Spring"

    [The Rio Grande flows in a rugged and scenic part of northern New Mexico in May 2011. BobWick]Rio Grande river

    Here, behind a paywall: “The Indefensible Job of Policing the Border . . .
    Against the Wall, a former border officer’s memoir, argues that when it comes to protecting the border, cruelty is the point.

    In the summer of 2021, I sat in on a presentation given by two members of the US Border Patrol’s Missing Migrants Program—a small initiative of the agency to devote resources to identifying the recovered remains of deceased migrants—to a group of college students on a trip to learn more about the US-Mexico border.

    The presentation took place at the South Texas Human Rights Center in Falfurrias, a town of 5,000 long considered the epicenter of migrant death in the state, despite being 75 miles north of the border. The reason for the deaths is that the town is the site of a major Border Patrol checkpoint that migrants must circumvent on foot; many lose their lives in the hot, immense shrubland of the local ranches.
    The post Annie Dillard a la Rachel Carson a la David Quammen — Meet Journalist Caroline Tracey first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Prefatory Note: The post below is based on modified responses to questions addressed to me by Rodrigo Craveiro, a Brazilian journalist. The focus is on what to expect in the weeks ahead to follow from the Trump diplomatic offensive to bring an Israeli-crafted peace to fruition in Gaza, and broader stability to the entire Middle East.

    1. There is a sense of joy but also of fury due to the fact that not all the bodies returned to Israel. How do you see this?

    Given the overall experience of the past two years, the attention accorded to the hostages by the Western media is misleadingly disproportionate, and as usual, Israel-biased. And now the pain of those Israelis who seek the agreed return of the bodies of non-surviving hostages is an extension of this distortion that shifts global concerns away from the terrible carnage and ccontinuing suffering in Gaza, and the totally ravaged homeland of the Palestinians that is being subject to day after arrangements made by its tormentors without Palestinian participation, much less authentic representation selected by the Palestinian people. Legitimate Palestinian leadership does not presently exist, even if there existed a commitment to identify and endow such individuals with appropriate roles. For sustainable progress toward a just future peace, the Palestinians must participate and be represented by their own choosing. Such a reality can only be decided by the Palestinians themselves, most obviously, in an internationally monitored competitive election among rival claimants to Palestinian leadership throughout Occupied Palestine.

    Hamas evidently agreed to return the bodies of dead hostages in their possession. Still, given the difficulty of locating the bodies and collecting the remains, unless there is a genuine repudiation by Hamas of this underlying duty associated with the ceasefire, their goodwill deserves the benefit of the doubt. The disappointment of the families in Israel that suffered from this human loss is understandable, but it should be interpreted in ways that are subordinate to more relevant issues, such as ceasefire violations. It was reported two days after the ceasefire went into effect that Israel killed by gunfire and missiles 7 Palestinians seeking to visit their destroyed home in Gaza City, a disturbing incident which seemed to receive scant, if any, coverage in international media or mainstream international commentary, and yet could be seen as evidence of the fragility of the ceasefire arrangements or an indication that Israel is ready to risk or is even seeking the collapse of the ceasefire by testing its limits. A carefree attitude toward the renewal of the violent encounter that rests on implied, or even secret, assurances of unwavering US support.

    • Trump addressed the Israeli Knesset, where he said his peace plan marks the “historic dawn of a new Middle East.” Do you believe this is something real, or is he exaggerating?

    My best guess is that historians looking back at those words will conclude that Trump had confused dawn with dusk. There is no prospect of a brightening of the dark skies casting a shadow on the countries of the Middle East until Palestinian rights are respected, and that includes honoring the international right of return of the seven million Palestinian refugees. There must be a campaign to obtain proper accountability for the Gaza Genocide. Until the costs of Gaza reconstruction are borne by the perpetrators of the devastation, accompanied by some process of reconciliation that does not whitewash the crimes of Israel and its enablers, it will be impossible to create a peaceful future for the region. At the very least, the vast devastation caused by the genocide must be physically overcome by a process of reconstruction funded by adequate reparations. The scope of reconstruction must include health, heritage, and religious sites; educational and cultural institutions; residential neighborhoods; UNRWA facilities; and much more. The most painful losses of loved ones and body parts can never be compensated for by material means and are an enduring negative legacy of the Gaza Genocide. Even recognizing pragmatic constraints on peacemaking given political conditions a ‘peace’ crafted to please the perpetrator of genocide and its most complicit supporter, is highly unlikely to proceed very far. The Trump 20 Point Plan is not a break with the past, but an effort to induce forgetfulness necessary to attain credibility in proposing post-conflict arrangements. To grasp the ironies of this Trump Plan, we should imagine our reactions if the Nazi survivors of World War II had been put in charge of designing the future of the international order, or even of just post-war Germany. It would not have seemed like a step toward a peaceful future, regardless of the language used to obscure the perverse underlying reality.

    3- Trump and the three mediating governments signed the peace plan for Gaza at the Sharm el-Sheik Summit. Given this development, what can we expect to happen in the future?

    It is almost universally believed that the ceasefire should remain operative even if violations of the underlying plan occur or its further implementation stalls. Beyond this, it is a matter of how much leverage the US exerts to advance the governance proposals in Part II of Trump’s Plan. Whether Hamas and Palestinian resistance forces are subject to being coerced by further threats of Israeli renewal of its genocidal assault is unclear. It is also uncertain if the US would go along with an Israeli unilateral departure from the Trump Plan. Israel is quite capable of fabricating claims that Hamas is violating the ceasefire and related obligations, leaving it no choice but to resume its military operations. It would appear at this time that Trump would allow Israel to exercise such an option. At the same time, Trump is so mercurial and narcissistic that it is possible he would regard Israel’s action as undermining his claims as peacemaker and repudiate the Israeli resumption of large-scale violence in Gaza. In an odd way, Israel and Trump may turn out to have different goals. Israel has not given up its quest for ‘Greater Israel,’ which means absorbing not only East Jerusalem, but Gaza and the West Bank within its sovereign territory. Trump may still strangely believe he can obtain the Nobel Peace Prize if his Plan is operationalized in Gaza and the two conflicting parties accept the arrangements.

    Overall, it is clear that peace and stability will not be the future of the Middle East until Israel respects Palestinian rights, drastically redefines or repudiates Zionism and apartheid in a manner consistent with international law, and agrees to the establishment of a Peace & Reconciliation Commission to acknowledge Israel’s past criminal violations of Palestinian rights and to announce a new dedication to the creation of an independent commission that assists the Palestinian/Israeli leadership to build future relations between Jews and Arabs on the basis of equality, dignity, and rights as the foundation for sustainable patterns of peaceful coexistence. For a truly new and stable Middle East, Israel must agree to the establishment of a nuclear-free zone, including itself and Iran.

    4- What are the Risks of Clashes between Hamas and Gaza Clans and Factions?

    These issues are murky, with contending interpretations and explanations of their recent prominence amid this most ambitious effort to develop the current ceasefire pause into a framework for long-term conflict resolution by implementing, perhaps with modifications, the advanced phases of the Trump 20 Point Plan. In this context, Israel seems to welcome these tensions within Gaza, by various means, including subsidies, to allow them an option to exit from this series of developments that might challenge their annexation plans in the West Bank as well as Gaza. It is possible that the Netanyahu government agreed to the ceasefire only to secure the return of the hostages, and never assented to any wider interference with its militarist approach, and may have had assurances of Trump’s support, no matter what.  If this plays out, Israel would actually welcome the collapse of the conflict-resolution part of the framework in a manner that would find tacit acceptance, if not outright approval, in Washington. Such a manipulation of reality requires pinning the blame on Hamas, which is currently taking the form of criticizing Hamas for seeking to destroy those armed groups in Gaza that collaborated with the Israeli military operations.

    Such a line of interpretation is reinforced by Israeli unreasonably shrill complaints about Hamas’ failure to return all of the bodies of the dead hostages. On its part, Hamas claims it has returned all the remains it could discover with its existing equipment, given that some dead hostages remain trapped far beneath the rubble. This seems a reasonable explanation, as Hamas has little incentive to retain the remains of dead Israeli hostages or to take steps that provide an excuse for Israel to resume bombardment and other forms of violence in Gaza.

    Such a line of interpretation is also consistent with Israel’s pattern of lethal violence killing Palestinians in several instances that have the clear appearance of being deliberate violations of the ceasefire agreement. Additionally, Israeli interference with the delivery of humanitarian aid by reducing the entry of relief goods by 50% is another expression of Israel’s unwillingness to allow even a conflict-resolving process weighted in its favor to go forward. These are serious provocations by Israel, causing sharp criticism from some governments that had previously endorsed the Trump approach, but not yet even a whimper of disapproval from the US.

    The gathering evidence suggests that Israel is accumulating grounds for repudiating the ‘peace’ process and resuming its military operations, accompanied by a renewed clampdown on the further delivery of humanitarian aid, despite widespread hunger, disease, and trauma among the civilian population of Gaza. The next week or so shall determine whether this pessimistic assessment dooms the ceasefire and the prospects for conflict-resolution through diplomacy rather than further recourse to genocide. Israel, since the return of the living hostages in Gaza, holds all the cards, and Hamas has none except for its incredible capacity for resilience.

    As yet, there are no signs pointing to a new dawn.

    The post Trump’s Diplomatic Initiative: A New Dawn or Just Another Dusk? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  •  

    The post “No Kings” — Another Chapter in the Quest for an Empire without an Emperor first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • In October 2024, a Lebanese writer named Lina Mounzer wrote, “ask any Arab what the most painful realization of the last year has been and it is this: that we have discovered the extent of our dehumanization to such a degree that it’s impossible to function in the world in the same way.”

    I’ve thought about that line a lot over the last year.

    I thought about it as Israel hammered Lebanon with at least 20 airstrikes during a supposed “ceasefire”.

    I thought about it during the Gaza ceasefire negotiations when the Western political/media class kept calling the Israelis held by Hamas “hostages” while calling the innocent Palestinians held captive by Israel “prisoners”.

    I think about it as the IDF continues to murder Palestinian civilians every day during the Gaza “ceasefire” when they are deemed to be traveling into forbidden areas, because Palestinians are so dehumanized that Israel sees bullets as a perfectly legitimate means of directing civilian foot traffic.

    I think about it as these daily ceasefire violations and acts of military slaughter barely make a blip in the western news media, while any time anything happens that makes western Jews feel anxious or upset, it dominates headlines for days.

    I thought about it while the western political/media class solemnly commemorated the second anniversary of the October 7 attack, even as the daily death toll from the Gaza holocaust ticked along with its victims unnamed and unacknowledged by those same institutions.

    I thought about it when all of Western politics and media stopped dead in its tracks and stood transfixed for days on the assassination of Charlie Kirk while ignoring the genocide he had spent the last two years of his life actively manufacturing consent for.

    Day after day after day, we see glaring, inexcusable discrepancies between the amount of attention that is given to the violent death of an Arab and the attention that is given to the violent death of an Israeli, a Western Jew, or any Westerner.

    These last two years have been a time of unprecedented unmasking in all sorts of ways, but I think that’s the one that’s going to stick with me the most. The way Western civilization came right out into the cold, harsh light to admit, day after day after day, that they don’t truly view Arabs as human beings.

    Ours is a profoundly sick society.

    One of the main arguments you’ll hear from rightists about why the West needs to support Israel is that Israel is helping to defend the West from the savage Muslim hordes — a sentiment that Israeli pundits and politicians have been all too happy to feed into of late. It’s revealing because it’s just coming right out and saying that slaughtering Muslims is a virtue in and of itself, so anyone who kills Muslims is an ally of the West.

    But whenever I come across this argument, all I can think is, why would anyone want to defend the West if this is what it has become?

    Even if we pretend that these delusions that Arabs and Islam pose some kind of threat to Western civilization are valid, why would it even matter? This civilization does not deserve to be saved. Not if we’re going to be living like this.

    If we’ve become so detached from our own humanity that we can’t even see innocent children as fully human just because they live somewhere else and have a different religion, then we are the monsters. We are the villains. We are everything the craziest Zionist pretends the Arabs are.

    These last two years have shown us that Western civilization doesn’t need protection; it needs redemption. It needs to save its soul.

    The post The West’s Dehumanization Of Arabs Is Completely Unforgivable first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • The post It was never a Gaza ‘war’. The ‘ceasefire’ is a lie cut from the same cloth first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • The post It was never a Gaza ‘war’. The ‘ceasefire’ is a lie cut from the same cloth first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • From hunting people down through the aisles of retail stores, to intentionally crashing into a vehicle on a residential street and then deploying tear gas against a gathered crowd of residents and protesters, agents with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been wreaking havoc in Chicago as part of their “Operation Midway Blitz”.

    According to the Department of Homeland Security, federal agents have made more than 1,500 arrests in the greater Chicago area since September 8 when the operation was announced – although data reveals some of these arrests to be outside of the state of Illinois.

    The post Chicago Residents ‘Refuse To Budge’ As ICE Terrorizes Communities appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Reporting on national security matters, irrespective of which country you are in, can be a hazardous affair. In police states, the consequences are self-evident to the brave who report on their misdeeds. The paid off toadies do not count. In liberal democracies, there are also consequences for giving the game away on the national security state. The toadies, in that case, pose themselves as insiders rather than sycophants of moulded consensus. They are the blessed recipients of approved wisdom, officially or otherwise. In this cosmos of regulation, even those who disagree with official policies can be given a gentle airing.

    This is particularly so in the United States. Go through the media stable of any US broadcasting network or major paper, and you find them, many former apparatchiks of the imperium’s various agencies, tugging their forelocks to empire. As Julian Assange found to his personal cost, to give the game away by publishing the national security material of Freedom’s Land is to invite prosecution and conviction under the Espionage Act of 1917, despite having never set foot in the country, let alone having US nationality.

    It was therefore a rare event to see press outlets get stroppy in unison to proposals by the US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that reporters agree to a new policy on reporting material from the department. In a document boasting the Pentagon’s new name of “Department of War”, journalists are informed that “DoW information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.” Those reporting outside approved channels could be designated “a security or safety risk” and have their credentials withdrawn.

    While policy acknowledges that journalists receiving and publishing unsolicited classified or sensitive information from government sources are “generally” protected by First Amendment freedoms, it takes issue with soliciting “the disclosure of such information” or encouraging Pentagon staff “to violate laws and policies concerning the disclosure of such information”.

    In a post on X, Hegseth called access to the Pentagon “a privilege, not a right.” It is certainly a privilege he has been trying to trim, having implemented rules earlier this year limiting the movements of reporters through the Pentagon without approved escorts. In September, he issued a tart reminder that press members were “no longer allowed to roam the halls of a secure facility. Wear a badge and follow the rules – or go home.”

    The Washington Post’s executive editor Matt Murray is of the view that the proposed policy undercuts the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment “by placing unnecessary constraints on gathering and publishing information.” Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, stated his magazine’s opposition to the restrictions. “The requirements violate our First Amendment rights, and the rights of Americans who seek to know how taxpayer funded military resources and personnel are being deployed.” In his statement, National Press Club President Mike Balsamo thought Hegseth’s latest measure “a direct assault on independent journalism at the very place where independent scrutiny matters most: the US military.”

    Each of the major broadcast networks issued a joint statement on October 14 saying they would refuse to subscribe to the policy. “Today, we join virtually every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon’s new requirements, which would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues.” This was a dictate “without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections.”

    While the policy speaks to President Donald Trump’s ongoing mania with limiting the access of Fourth Estate outlets he dislikes, the question not being asked is how useful the Pentagon press ever was to begin with. Does having a pass to the mandarins of military power really ensure accuracy, let alone accountability, in terms of reporting? Or are such passes of greater benefit to those who grant them in the first place? Press conferences and meetings speak to management, control of the narrative, and reining in tales of misadventure. Interrogating foolish policies, misspending and acts of imperial mischief are rarely the preserve of the mainstream stable. They publish on the herd-like assumption that nothing they write will warrant exclusion from the club. Doing so also preserves conscience and cowardice, both being, as Oscar Wilde thought, much the same thing. (Conscience, he goes on to say in The Picture of Dorian Gray, is merely “the trade-name of the firm.”)

    Lethal to the craft is the dual policy of keeping members of the Fourth Estate in the officers’ orbit when in Washington and embedding them with combat troops when overseas, an approach that has sterilised the prospects of steely, valuable reporting. The effectiveness of this move by the Pentagon is evident in the view of NPR’s Tom Bowman, who mourns the loss of a Pentagon pass he has held for 28 years. “For most of that time, when I wasn’t overseas in combat zones embedding with troops, I walked the halls, talking to and getting to know the officers from all over the globe, at times visiting them in their offices.”

    Bowman shows no awareness that proximity to power, much like holding it, corrupts. His Pentagon years were marked by “finding out what’s really going on behind the scenes and not accepting wholesale what any government or administration says.” There is never that inkling of doubt whether such behind-the-scenes discoveries were intended. He recalls running “into an officer” in the department who revealed that the fall of Baghdad to US-led forces in 2003 was not an evident sign of decisive success. This less than revelatory account is not a patch on any of the magisterial reports from coal face scribblers such as Patrick Cockburn, who made a point very early on of mastering Middle Eastern affairs by actually being there. He could tell long before any bloodhound in the Pentagon could that Washington’s foolish and destructive presence in Mesopotamia was doomed to failure and lasting consequences.

    Perhaps now, with their cherished passes surrendered or revoked, the moaning establishment hacks might finally get some decent reporting done on the national security state in all its wondrous, spanning ghastliness. Hegseth may well have done them an enormous favour while scuttling an important platform of influence.

    The post The Bogus Value of the Pentagon Press Pass first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Behind the fight against hate, a trend of repressing dissenting voices is emerging. Titled Criminalisation and Narrative Control: Solidarity with Palestine in the Crosshairs, the report documents how across all the countries studied, the dynamics observed since 7 October 2023 have intensified pre-existing structural trends: the continued shrinking of civic space, the weakening of democratic safeguards, the normalisation of Islamophobia, and the institutionalisation of racial profiling.

    Under the guise of maintaining public order, fighting antisemitism, or protecting national security, authorities have resorted to exceptional measures such as bans on demonstrations, arbitrary arrests, repression within academic institutions, media censorship, and legislative threats.

    The post FIDH Report: The Repression Of The Solidarity Movement With Palestine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “Burkina Faso is a place of dignity … not a place of expulsion,” said its Foreign Minister Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré, rejecting US President Donald Trump’s deportation deal.

    Deeming Trump’s proposal for Burkina Faso to accept foreign nationals he is deporting from the US as “indecent”, he said it was “totally contrary to the value of dignity, which is … the very essence of the vision of Captain Ibrahim Traoré.”

    Coming to power in 2022 after the ouster of Roch Kaboré’s unpopular regime, propped up by France, Traoré expelled French troops, consolidating his mass support in the country.

    His avowed anti-imperialism and pan-Africanism have won him admirers across Africa and Black and Afro-descendant communities in the West.

    The post Burkina Faso Is A Place Of Dignity, Not Expulsion appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “Burkina Faso is a place of dignity … not a place of expulsion,” said its Foreign Minister Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré, rejecting US President Donald Trump’s deportation deal.

    Deeming Trump’s proposal for Burkina Faso to accept foreign nationals he is deporting from the US as “indecent”, he said it was “totally contrary to the value of dignity, which is … the very essence of the vision of Captain Ibrahim Traoré.”

    Coming to power in 2022 after the ouster of Roch Kaboré’s unpopular regime, propped up by France, Traoré expelled French troops, consolidating his mass support in the country.

    His avowed anti-imperialism and pan-Africanism have won him admirers across Africa and Black and Afro-descendant communities in the West.

    The post Burkina Faso Is A Place Of Dignity, Not Expulsion appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution has been in the vanguard of the Global South. In contrast, President Javiar Milei’s government in Argentina represents the logical, though absurd, consequence of extreme neoliberalism, which he calls “anarcho-capitalism.”

    Western Hemispheric geopolitics reflect the weakening of US hegemony and an emerging multipolarity, especially with China’s entry as a major regional trading partner. US imperialism’s response, started well before Trump, has been to weaponize the dollar, impose illegal and crippling economic sanctions, and levy arbitrary tariffs. When these fail, the recourse is to military aggression.

    US War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced preparations for war with China. Washington has concluded that it must put a halt to multipolarity to maintain its global supremacy. Thus, the Trump administration is simultaneously rushing to rescue Milei’s government while hurrying to overturn Venezuela’s under their President Nicolás Maduro.

    Role of Venezuela under Chavismo

    Venezuela is a beacon of national sovereignty and social progress. It has consistently opposed imperialist aggression, not just in Latin America, but globally. Under the movement known as “Chavismo” it aimed for Latin American integration and the pooling of its huge natural resources, offering an independent pathway to development to withstand US imperialism.

    Consequently, it has been under attack, enduring US-financed far-right violence, destabilization, a US-led asphyxiating economic blockade, assassination attempts on the president and leading Bolivarian officials, mercenary attacks, coups and terrorism – the full arsenal of Washington’s aggressive toolkit.

    Role of Argentina under Milei

    In 2023, anti-establishment anger propelled libertarian populist Javier Milei to the Argentine presidency. His Trump-like “chainsaw plan” – radical spending cuts and a war on government institutions and services – fitted with the orthodoxy dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Milei closed 13 government ministries, including those for education, labor and social security. Foreign lenders welcomed Milei’s elevation of austerity to a moral imperative.

    Milei is still favored by the IMF. But while his unwillingness to devalue the peso helped cut inflation, it slowed economic growth and reduced the country’s capacity to sustain its huge debt. Argentina is now over $450 bn in the red. Employment fell steeply, while poverty soared to affect 53% of the population in 2024 (allegedly reducing since then). Budget cuts raised the cost of basic needs.

    Corruption scandals emerged. A close political associate of Milei admitted receiving “donations” from a narco-entrepreneur. A US$4.6 bn crypto scandal followed; the largest ever crypto-theft. Milei’s left opposition demanded his impeachment, and a judge launched a fraud probe. Later, Milei’s sister was accused of receiving hefty bribes. On top of this came the crushing defeat for Milei’s libertarian party in the Buenos Aires provincial elections in September.

    All that has triggered a run on the peso and a new economic crisis.

    Trump’s recent decision to bail out Milei’s predictably disastrous economic performance is consistent with the profligacy of IMF-US lending to right-wing Argentine governments. In April 2025, the Buenos Aires Times reported that the IMF praised Milei’s efforts and projected that the Argentine economy would grow faster than the global average. In fact, Milei tipped the country into recession and sent millions of people into poverty in the first months of his government.

    In short, Milei’s “narco-capitalist” government is not only corrupt but has savaged Argentina’s economy. Milei represents the logical culmination of Argentina’s ruling class servitude to US geopolitical objectives, even extending to his enthusiastic support for genocide in Gaza. Slavishly supporting anything Trump does or says, Argentina was one of only ten countries to vote with the US against the UN’s two-state solution for Israel-Palestine.

    IMF wages financial war against Venezuela

    The IMF is a key institution through which the US enforces its imperial dominance, part of an architecture shaped largely by Washington. Often functioning as a financial arm of US foreign policy, it rewards compliant right-wing regimes such as those of Argentine presidents Macri and Milei, while punishing independent governments like Venezuela’s that are striving for socialism.

    An example is the IMF response to the 2002 coup against Venezuela’s democratically elected President Hugo Chávez. The IMF publicly stated its readiness to collaborate with coup-monger Pedro Carmona, whose “government” abolished the constitution and key democratic institutions. Within hours after Chávez was kidnapped, the IMF’s Thomas Dawson said: “we stand ready to assist the new administration in whatever manner they find suitable.” Fortunately for democracy, the coup lasted only 47 hours. The people spontaneously rose up and returned their rightful president to his office.

    More recently, during the Covid-19 crisis, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva announced an emergency response which could disburse US$50 bn to developing countries and US$10 bn to low-income countries at a zero-interest rate. Venezuela had tried to exercise its “special drawing rights” for US$5 bn to combat the pandemic. This required IMF officials to engage in acrobatics to justify rejecting Venezuela’s request. The real reason was the US government’s farcical recognition of Juan Guaidó as “interim president.”

    US-IMF props up rightist Argentina

    In 1999-2002, when Argentina had a right-wing government, the IMF overestimated GDP growth. Then, conversely, in 2003-2015 when Argentina had left-wing governments under the Kirchners, the IMF underestimated the strength of the country’s economic recovery. IMF debt was paid off, Argentina’s notorious external debt fell sharply, no new IMF loans were granted.

    But for the past decade, its politics have revolved around chronic economic crises and persistent IMF influence. Across three presidencies, Argentina swung from market liberalization (Macri, who succeeded the Kirchners), to state intervention (Fernández), to radical austerity (Milei). Right-wing Mauricio Macri acquired a US$57 bn loan, the largest in the fund’s history. The IMF itself admitted the bailout “was not fit for purpose.” The country is now on its twenty-third IMF bailout, a global record. It is the fund’s biggest debtor, owing a “staggering” $41.8 bn.

    US aggression against Venezuela

    The US finds it intolerable that Venezuela – a “threat” of a good example – has successfully resisted US policy of “maximum pressure.” Its military build-up against Venezuela is an escalation from hybrid to open warfare aimed at suppressing an alternative model of sovereignty and social justice, with the possible bonus of reclaiming control over the country’s oil resources.

    Trump has deployed a fleet of warships, F-35 stealth fighter jets, and several thousand marines. Washington is positioning military forces in Puerto Rico, has a substantial military presence in Guyana, and asked Grenada to deploy US military forces in its territory. Trump has declared the US to be at war with drug cartels, potentially extending to those supposedly inside Venezuela itself. Commentators, including officials of the Bolivarian government, conclude that a US military strike seems imminent.

    Washington’s justification is a monumental lie: Venezuela is alleged to be a narco state, led by the non-existent Cartel de los Soles. Rubio and Trump falsely accuse the Bolivarian government of shipping hundreds of tons of drugs into the US. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has consistently reported that up to 92 percent of the cocaine produced in Colombia and Ecuador reaches the US through the Pacific (Venezuela’s entire coastline faces the Caribbean Sea).

    Trump and Milei

    In sharp contrast to the economic punishment being meted out to Venezuela, Trump’s “favorite president” is getting a bailout for the economy he that has destroyed. Milei is promised a direct purchase of pesos with dollars, together with a $20 bn central bank “swap line.” Milei swiftly thanked Trump for his “vision and powerful leadership.”

    Washington openly admits its ideological motives. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US should help conservatives win elections in Latin America. He tweeted: “The success of Argentina’s reform agenda is…in the strategic interest of the United States.” Praising Argentina’s “strong and stable” economy, he failed to address why it would collapse without US support.

    The bailout appears to have several undeclared aims. One, according to the New York Times, is to help rich investors whose bets could falter if Argentina’s economy sinks. The same source claims that US officials are also pushing Argentina to scale back its ties with China and want access to its uranium and lithium supplies. The rescue plan may even involve dollarizing Argentina’s economy.

    Nearly half of Argentinians (44%) see the deal as more likely to benefit the US than their own nation, while 36% have a negative view of Milei’s relationship with Washington. The irony of Trump’s economic lifeline for Milei is that it may kill off his chances of political survival.

    Neoliberal misery vs multipolar-oriented sovereign development

    Bolivarian Venezuela and Milei’s Argentina present two starkly different paths for Latin America—Venezuela’s sovereign defiance of US imperialism and Argentina’s deepening subservience and dependency. One suffers imperial “hybrid warfare” while the other gains imperial “welfare.”

    Washington uses coercive tools—sanctions, economic warfare, and military threats—to preserve hemispheric dominance. Venezuela embodies resistance and regional integration. Argentina, under Milei, epitomizes the collapse into “narco-capitalism,” social devastation, and foreign subjection.

    Ultimately, neoliberal austerity brings only poverty and dependency, while multipolar cooperation among Global South nations offers a viable path toward genuine independence, equitable development and resistance to imperial domination. US military actions against Venezuela violate international law and rest on unfounded claims. Latin America is a declared Zone of Peace. To respect that and allow the people their right to live without fear of war, the US must withdraw its forces.

    The post Imperial Double Standards: Warfare for Venezuela and Welfare for Argentina first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Many millions on the streets this Saturday all over the country loudly proclaiming: No Kings! Yes to Democracy!–followed on November 4th by victories for Mamdani in NYC, Sherrill in NJ, Spanberger in Virginia, redistricting in California, and more–could this be truly “world changing?”

    On one level, no. This is not a Presidential election year or a Congressional election year. It’s an off-year electorally.

    But it’s not an off-year politically. The battle is fully joined between the forces of democracy and the forces of authoritarianism, between the resistance and blind Trumpism. And because of this, what happens over the next three weeks could be a decisive turning point, victories for the significant majority of US Americans who are saddened and outraged by the lying, divisive, destructive and dangerous Trump federal government and its billionaire co-conspirators.

    Think about it: potentially the biggest mass demonstration ever in the USA, in every single state and literally thousands of localities, organized by a broadly-based progressive/liberal/independent coalition of hundreds of organizations that is not going away. That alone is a huge thing at this challenging time for the US and the world.

    A Zohran Mamdani victory in itself will be a huge deal, a non-sectarian, democratic socialist becoming the Mayor of the country’s largest city, the financial capitol, a melting pot of diverse peoples and nationalities and which often leads the country as far as political shifts.

    Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger winning the Governor races in their states will not be the same thing. Neither are consistently progressive, definitely not socialists, but there’s no question that many people to their left support them over the Trump-supporting Republican opponents. Combined with October 18 and a Mamdani victory and continued progressive organizing at the grassroots, that will make a difference in how they govern.

    If California comes through and neutralizes Texas’ brazen, Trump-pushed, Congressional redistricting plan to try to gain 5 more Republican House seats from Texas next November, that will be important both practically and politically.

    There’s something else, less visible and obvious but critical, that must be said about why we are at this point, why the popular resistance movement for democracy, justice and our threatened ecosystems is at this historic moment: we have learned how to unite.

    It’s not unity based on following one great individual, usually a man. It’s not unity concerned very little with the internal culture, the health, of the organizations that make it up–just the opposite, in general. A critical mass of us of all ages, nationalities, genders and classes have internalized positive values and ways of working together which are making a huge difference in how we have responded, and will keep responding, to the efforts to impose a form of 21st century fascism in the USA.

    The Trumpists are in trouble, and they know it. That’s why, one week before No Kings! Day, House leader Mike Johnson and others began publicly attacking it, lying about who we are and what we are about, trying to scare people away from coming out that day.

    It’s not going to happen! There ain’t no power like the power of the people, united and organized, and when we are, nothing and no one can defeat us. Si, se puede!

    The post October 18, November 4: World Changing? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition demands an end to US aggression against Venezuela, which is on the brink of outright war. Any escalation in the violence against Venezuela will cause more suffering and deaths in the South American country, destabilize the region, and endanger all countries seeking a path independent from US domination, especially Cuba and Nicaragua.

    US actions indicate a strike on Venezuela is imminent:          

    • After the Trump administration designated international drug-trafficking groups as “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs), without any evidence it accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of being their ringleader. By July, a “secret directive” authorized military operations against FTOs at sea and on foreign soil.
    • In August, the administration raised its illegal “bounty” on President Maduro to $50 million and launched a massive naval deployment off the coast of Venezuela, which includes nuclear capable submarines and jets and quickly grew to 10,000 troops.
    • On September 2, in international waters off of Venezuela, the US blew up the first of four or five boats that Trump claims carried drugs, committing extrajudicial executions.
    • By mid-September, the Pentagon notified Congress under the War Powers Resolution that US forces were engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.
    • On October 1, the Defense/War Department issued a “confidential memo” and told Congress that the US was engaged in armed conflict.
    • On October 6, Trump ended back-channel diplomatic contacts with Venezuela, which had been essential since the rupture of diplomatic relations in 2019. That same day, Venezuela informed the US of a thwarted plan by Venezuelan right-wing extremists to plant explosives at the US embassy in an attempted false-flag operation.
    • On October 10, Maria Corina Machado—a US-paid, violent, Zionist, extreme right-wing Venezuelan political opposition figure—received the Nobel Prize after being endorsed by Secretary Marco Rubio, in a clear a maneuver to manufacture consent for regime change in Venezuela.

    We must not be fooled by this perversion of the peace prize or the countless unfounded accusations against Venezuela and its democratically elected president. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and even the DEA, report that Venezuela is not a drug trafficking country, nor are Cuba or Nicaragua. Like its lies about migrants, the Trump administration has fabricated the “threat” posed by Venezuela. The real reason the administration is pushing for war against Venezuela is to regain control of its vast resources—including the world’s largest oil reserves.

    We demand an end to US impunity and the withdrawal of US troops and war materiel from the Caribbean before the situation escalates any further. We vehemently object to the deployment of nuclear capable vessels in a region which, in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, declared itself a nuclear-free zone in 1967, and which the US committed itself to respect in 1971. We demand respect for international law and the sovereignty of nations. The people of Venezuela and the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean must be allowed to live in peace with the form of government they have chosen.

    Hands Off Venezuela! Venezuela is Hope! Venezuela is not a threat!

    US Hands Off Latin America and the Caribbean!

    The post Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition Statement on US Aggression against Venezuela first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Scott Ritter: “… what everybody’s forgetting is that the basic terms of this deal are the same terms that Hamas has been laying out since October 7th. And now these terms are being met. And uh, this is a Hamas victory.”

    The post Scott Ritter: A Palestinian Victory! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Depending on which source you consult, the twenty-point peace plan of President Donald Trump for securing peace in Gaza shows much exultance and extravagant omission. The exultance was initially focused on the return of the hostages. It then shifted to the broader strategic goals of the various parties. Commentary on this point, even as the living Israeli hostages convalescence after their exchange for Palestinian detainees, sidesteps the Palestinian people, those fly in the ointment irritants who never seem to exit the political scene.

    The peace plan, in effect, is being executed to eliminate Hamas and any semblance of a Palestinian militant movement in favour of an Israel-Arab-US axis of preferment and normalisation. Doing so puts a firm lid on Palestinian sovereignty and statehood in favour of sounder relations between Israel and the Arab states.

    Consider, for instance, the views from the American Jewish Committee in their October 10 assessment. “President Trump’s unconventional approach created new diplomatic realities and forced Israel and key Arab states to align in new ways.” The peace plan was “the most credible framework to date for advancing Israeli-Arab peace, creating new opportunities for regional engagement, and countering Hamas’ ideology through a united alliance of Israel and Arab nations committed to peace, security, and prosperity.” Clearly, Palestinians are, if not footnotes, then invisible ink lines in such arrangements.

    This attitude is also echoed in remarks made by the US Vice President, J.D. Vance. Palestinian subservience is assumed in any new proposed arrangement which prioritises Israeli security and a collective of overseeing nation states that will guard against any mischief in the Strip. “The President convinced the entire Muslim world really, both the Gulf Arab states, but as far as South-East Asia as Indonesia, to really step up and provide ground troops so that Gaza could be secured in safety.”

    Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty gave some sense of what is expected. “We are going to support and commit troops within specific parameters,” he told CBS. A UN Security Council mandate would be required, along with clear specifications for what the mission of the troops on the ground would be, “which will be peacekeeping and providing training to Palestinian police.”

    Trump’s near cinematic appearance on October 13 in the compact, claustrophobic Knesset after the handover of the hostages set the scene for Israeli grandstanding, staged mawkishness and denial. Netanyahu was in typical form, accusing Israel’s friends of blood libel stupidity for recognising Palestine; in doing so, they had effectively committed acts of antisemitism, buying “into Hamas’s false propaganda.” Massacring and starving those in the Gaza Strip warranted no mention, but disarming Hamas and demilitarising the enclave did. With praise for both himself and Trump, Netanyahu spoke of jointly forging “a path to bring the remaining hostages home and end the war. End a war in a way that ensures the disarming of Hamas, the demilitarisation of Gaza, and that Gaza would never again pose a threat to Israel.”

    He also thanked Trump for “fully” backing the decision to make the last murderous assault into Gaza City. This “military pressure” provided momentum that eventually saw Hamas capitulate. The US President then “succeeded in doing something that no one believed was possible. You brought most of the Arab world, you did, you brought most of the world behind your proposal to free the hostages and end the war.”

    Opposition leader Yair Lapid, for his part, explicitly denied any genocide or “intentional starvation” of the Palestinians, then proceeded to overlook them in calling on “all the nations of the Islamic world” to engage Israel.

    Trump’s own speech was meandering, personal and free of complex turns. He spoke about his envoy Steve Witkoff as a Henry Kissinger who did not leak, an emissary of singular genius. An interruption by Hadash lawmakers Ayman Odeh and Ofer Cassif, both demanding that Palestine be recognised, did not faze him. And then came mention of the Ukraine War, and Russian President Vladimir Putin and more adulatory remarks for the US delegates who have paid homage to the US God King. They were all part of “central casting”.

    Not a sliver of reference to the Palestinian cause for sovereignty made an appearance, which continues to moan under the strategic expediency of it all, the residents of Gaza doomed to indefinite invigilation at the hands of Trump’s “Board of Peace”. More to the point, he was happy to admit providing weapons at the request of “Bibi” at a moment’s notice. The US made “the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.” But the slaughter could not continue, and the Israeli PM would be remembered “far more” for accepting the peace agreement. “The timing for this is brilliant. I said, ‘Bibi you’re going to be remembered for this far more than if you kept this thing going, going, going, kill, kill, kill.’”

    The Palestinians, granted brief respite from military violence, will be desperately wary. When Lapid mentioned that Trump had “saved far more than one life, and life is an entire world”, it can also be assumed that killing one life kills a world. Some 68,000 Palestinian worlds (a conservative estimate) were extinguished by the munitions and weapons of Israel and its backers. As humanitarian workers return to Gaza, they see the horrors of a lunarscape of devastation. If only Trump had considered paying a visit to that particular part of earth.

    The post Worlds Extinguished: Hostage Returns, Central Casting and the Gaza Ceasefire first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Scenes of Palestinian emergency workers, journalists, displaced refugees, and children in Gaza celebrating on the streets widely circulated following the announcement of a ceasefire deal. In the United States, Israel’s most powerful ally, people involved in the Palestine solidarity movement met the moment with a similar sense of both mourning and cautious optimism. 

    The Palestinian Youth Movement, a Palestinian diaspora organization that has played a key role in organizing mass demonstrations in the United States since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza, joins “our people in welcoming the prospect of a durable ceasefire agreement,” according to a statement released October 9.

    The post Pro-Palestine Movement Vows To Continue Struggle For Lasting Peace appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.


  • Newspaper: Democracy.

    The case of death is not at all the cause of the dead, it’s the cause of the living.

    — Ghassan Kanafani, from the novel Men Under the Sun

    My people are fearless and the gallows to each person among us is the instance that precedes the dawn of a new day for all of us … Prosecutor! Understand that when one of us enters the nation’s battle of destiny, he takes into consideration all possible results. But above all, he places his confidence in the determination of the people to win victory.

    — Ghassan Kanafani, from the story “A Heroine from My Country”

    They tell you this is a “conflict.” A “complex issue.” A tragedy happening “over there.”
    They are lying.

    What is happening in Gaza, in Palestine, is the logical, bloody conclusion of a global system of exploitation—a system sustained not by monsters, but by the convenient, daily complicity of those who benefit from it most: the citizen-consumers of the West.

    This complicity is masked by a grand, soothing lie: the lie of democratic citizenship.

    The state and its subjects have entered a symbiotic pact of bad faith. The theory goes like this: in a democracy, the citizen is sovereign. The government’s actions are an expression of the popular will. Therefore, the citizens are responsible. This is the idealistic shell. Let us crack it open and examine the actual, pathetic reality inside.

    The state, functioning as the capitalist class’s executive committee, depends on this lie as its foundational fiction. It is the democratic alibi that launders imperial violence into policy. The weapons shipped to fuel genocide are stamped with the seal of “democratic principles,” their bloody purpose blessed by the hollow ritual of the ballot. This is the dictatorship of the elite, a regime of class power wearing the convincing mask of popular consent—a specific apparatus designed to vaporize the accountability of the capitalist and imperialist classes, dispersing it as a fine mist of collective guilt over the populace.

    But why do the masses accept this lie?
    Because it is an anesthetic.

    Having already swallowed the primordial myth of capitalist democracy—that freedom is consumption and power is a ballot—this smaller lie of passive citizenship is the necessary sedative that numbs the pain of their own powerlessness and the horror conducted in their name.

    Here we must be Kanafanian in our clarity. To be a “citizen” of the metropole is, in practice, to be a consumer. And the consumer’s paradise is built on the graveyards of the Global South. Your stability, your cheap energy, your endless stream of goods, is subsidized by the control and immiseration of others. To truly confront this would shatter the consumer’s world. The cognitive dissonance would be unbearable.

    And so, the lie administers the necessary anesthetic. The recited alibis of impotence (“What power do I have?”) are the superstructure of a material bargain. This is the highest stage of false consciousness: the willed surrender of agency for the comforts of the labor aristocracy. It is a transaction: the consumer trades their revolutionary potential for moral oblivion, outsourcing conscience to the state and NGOs—the very managers of the crisis—who, in return, guarantee the sanctity of the shopping aisle.

    This is the “citizenshipness” we are sold: a hollowed-out identity, a safety valve for dissent. Protest, write your representative, cast your vote—then return to your consumption. The system allows you to perform concerns without ever threatening the foundations of your comfort. It is a brilliant, cynical management of dissent.

    Thus, the genocide and the ongoing Nakba in Palestine are not an aberration. It is the system working as intended. The bombs falling on Rafah, Occupied Palestine, are funded by the taxes of the Western citizenry. The diplomatic cover is provided in their name. Their silence—or more accurately, their fragmented, ineffective noise—is the permission slip.

    The connection is not metaphorical; it is material. The luxury lifestyle and the genocide are two outputs of the same machine. One is the direct, concentrated violence of imperialism. The other is the diffuse, structural violence of an exploitative global order. They require each other.

    To the real socialists among us, the conclusion is clear: Spontaneous protest is not enough. Moral outrage is not enough. The working classes of the imperial core have been bought off with crumbs from the colonial plunder. They will not achieve revolutionary consciousness on their own. The task falls to an organized political party—those who see through the lie—to break the hypnotic spell of consumer citizenship. To organize, not to plead. To expose the comfort, to make the machinery of complicity grind to a halt.

    And to the Palestinians, the path is one of steadfast, rooted resistance. The Palestinian struggle is not a plea for Western sympathy. It is an anti-colonial/imperial war. It is the absolute negation of the lie. Every act of resistance, from the stone to the slogan, is a truth-telling, exposing the brutal reality that the capitalist West so desperately masks with its talk of “complexity” and “citizenship.”

    The question is not whether the Western citizen is complicit. The question is whether they will continue to choose the convenience of the lie over the difficult truth of their own justice—a justice that is inextricably linked to the justice and liberation of Palestine. To end the genocide there, they must first kill the complacent consumer within themselves.
    There is no other way.

    The lie is convenient.
    The truth is justice.

    Choose.

    The post The Convenient Lie first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • A US federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on October 9, blocking the Trump administration’s deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops to Chicago. Hundreds were already stationed in the midwestern city at the time of this ruling. This comes days after a separate judge blocked the deployment of the National Guard to Portland, Oregon.

    Currently, there are around 500 National Guard troops in the greater Chicago area, 2,400 in Washington, DC, and 100 still in Los Angeles down from a peak of 4,700 in June.

    With the support of the Governor of Tennessee, the state’s National Guard troops are set to begin patrolling the city of Memphis.

    The post Anti-ICE Protests Continue As Judges Block National Guard Deployments appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Steve Ellner, one of my go-to sources on Venezuela, cautions that although the Maduro government has unquestionable shortcomings and is not above criticism, the left’s priority today shouldn’t be purity tests. It should be about the struggle against US imperialism, as it invokes the Monroe Doctrine and evidence-free, “narco-terrorist” narratives on behalf of regime change in Venezuela. There is a relentless effort to demonize Maduro, and some on the putative left fail to recognize the need for a strong state and how difficult it is to construct socialism when your country “has been singled out by Washington for special attack, a fact that has been thoroughly documented.”

    Ellner continues, “If Maduro is brought down, the far right — headed by Maria Corina Machado, who says she wants to see Maduro and his family behind bars — will undoubtedly dominate the new regime with Washington’s blessing. If this were to happen, the most likely scenario would be the kind of brutal repression that has historically followed the downfall of previous governments from Indonesia in 1967 to Chile in 1974.” Eric Zuesse adds that Machado is the “U.S. Deep State’s Venezuelan puppet, successor to Juan Guido and Leopoldo López.”

    Given the above, it was disheartening but not totally surprising that Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City, recently said he believes “Nicolas Maduro and Miguel Diaz-Canel are dictators.” This ill-timed and totally unnecessary statement parrots the CIA’s false narrative about Maduro and helps legitimize decades of U.S. aggression against Venezuela and Marco Rubio’s call for regime change in Caracas. I’m afraid Mamdani is sounding a bit like Bernie Sanders.

    Will the US Invade?

    At this point, it’s unclear whether the U.S. will actually invade Venezuela, attempt to destroy the Bolivarian Revolution, install a puppet government, and gain control of the country’s oil, gas, and precious metals. So far, there have been four strikes (September 2, 15, 16, and October 3) on vessels in international waters, but not a scintilla of evidence that the vessels were carrying drugs. Some 4,500 troops (insufficient for a land invasion) and eight warships are stationed off Venezuela’s coast. In addition, several fighter jets have been moved to Puerto Rico. The U.S. State Department has raised its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest from $5 million to $50 million.

    The Chilean Case

    Here we might recall that on September 4, 1970, the Chilean Left held an enormous rally of some 800,000 workers and peasants who marched before President Salvador Allende, who was standing on the balcony of the Moneda Presidential Palace in Santiago. They chanted, “Build People’s Power! Allende, Allende! The People Will Defend You!” And perhaps more importantly, they pleaded, “We Want Guns! We Want Guns!” For clearly debatable reasons, Allende refused to arm the workers and peasants, and on September 11, a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the socialist government. Allende was too late in finding out that there is no “peaceful road to socialism” when faced with the implacable force of U.S. imperialism that refuses to allow the “threat of a good example.” Maduro learned from the Chilean case and has distributed AK-47s to millions of citizens who are eager to defend the country’s sovereignty.

    We know there has been a strategic retreat by U.S. imperialism in the face of China’s rise and the U.S./NATO defeat in Ukraine. Trump’s fascism is directed at “the Homeland” and the Western Hemisphere. But Trump — who couldn’t even defeat Yemen —might pause at the prospect of coffins coming home from Venezuela.

    Finally, a note: John Pilger’s documentary “War on Democracy” (2007) opened my students’ eyes to U.S. imperialism in Latin America as no classroom lecture could have done. Among the film’s countless attributes were interviews with Hugo Chavez and how the Venezuelan people (and military) rallied to save him from being toppled by Washington. Even given the passage of time, Pilger’s film remains timely for understanding what’s happening today.

     

    The post Defending Venezuela from U.S. Imperialism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • The fuss about the Nobel Peace Prize has always been excessively outsized to its relevance. Like most prizes, the panel is bound to have its treasure trove of prejudices and eccentricities in reaching any decision. Thin resumes have swayed the Norwegian committee to acts of dottiness.  Surprising moments of dark humor have made an appearance in the awarding of the prize to warmongers and those antithetical to peace. And those on the Nobel Prize peace panel would barely cause a murmur of acknowledgment outside the spine-like length of that country of only 5.6 million inhabitants. (The current membership of five features, for instance, three politicians: Anne Enger, former leader of the country’s Center Party; former Conservative Party education minister Kristin Clement, and former state secretary of the Labor Party, Gry Larsen.)

    Rather feebly, Asle Toje, another member of the five, uses a gastronomic metaphor in describing the selection process: “We do it pretty much the same way you make a good sauce – you reduce and reduce and reduce.”  The reduction formula leads to surprising, rancid results.  In 1973, the ruthless, toadying poseur Henry Kissinger was overcome with joy in receiving the prize. The National Security Adviser and US Secretary of State had supposedly done much to advance the cause of peace in the Indochina conflict by “spearheading cease-fire negotiations” that led to an armistice in January 1973.  His co-awardee, the North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho, was far more sensible, refusing to accept a peace award where there was no peace to be had.

    The choice of Kissinger was almost mockingly ghoulish. This was the same man who left his marks all over secret and illegal bombing campaigns in Laos and Cambodia during the Nixon administration, oversaw the extinction of democratically elected governments in Latin America in favor of murderous, authoritarian regimes, and spent his early academic career arguing that the United States might feasibly pursue small-scale nuclear war as a psychological lever.

    The selection for 2025 was always going to be shadowed by the theatre known as the Donald Trump show. By claiming not to want it, the US President has done much to pad his credentials and make himself eligible. He has put on an incomplete, disputable show of halting conflicts while indulging in spells of violence (strikes on Venezuelan shipping, ostensibly carrying drugs to the US; the illegal bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities).

    What the committee has done is the next best (or worse) thing. In opting for María Corina Machado, seen as the main figure of the Venezuelan opposition to the current government of Nicolás Maduro, they have offered the prize to a Trump medium. “I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support in our cause,” she cooed on X.

    Almost hinting at something in the works – that is to say, the ongoing regime change agenda so enthusiastically sought by Washington – Machado was convinced of being “on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve freedom and democracy.” Given Latin America’s record on peaceful transitions from coups, this was fine humor indeed.

    The award to Machado was, according to the Nordic wiseacres, based on her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” They go on to be didactic, talking about democracy being in global retreat, with Machado being its illuminating defender. (On being barred from running, she installed the surrogate opposition leader Edmundo González, who allegedly won the July 2024 election.)

    This is the bromide of binary thought. Machado’s record, befitting most political records, is untidy. David Smilde, a student of Venezuelan politics, sees her as “a controversial pick, less a peace activist than a political operator willing to use some of the trade’s dark arts for the greater democratic good.” Even that might be generous.

    For one thing, she is clearly biding her time, shunning local and regional elections, treating the honoring of the 2024 presidential election results as absolute.  She has openly argued for the necessity of foreign intervention in removing Maduro and endorsed Trump’s military buildup in the Caribbean, calling the recent bombing of suspected drug boats a matter of “saving lives”.To remove Maduro was essential, she argues, because of his alleged credentials as “the head of a narco-terrorist structure of cooperation.”

    Disingenuously, she has swallowed the dubious theory that Maduro is the true figure running the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump accuses of directing operations against the United States. Her Vente Venezuela party has enthusiastically shared the threats by US officials against supposed Venezuelan drug traffickers on X. “If you’re in the Caribbean,” states one recent post, “if you’re north of Venezuela and you’re trying to traffic drugs to the US, you’re a legitimate target for the US.”

    Machado is undoubtedly readying herself to step into any presidential vacancy, forced or otherwise. She claims to have a plan for the first 100 hours and the first 100 days of a transition process, promising to generate wealth for the country valued at $1.7 trillion over 15 years. Her advisor on international affairs, Pedro Urruchurtu, has been open about communicating with the Trump administration over Maduro’s removal.

    Again, this says much about the eccentric reading of peace embraced by the insular Norwegian grandees. If Tom Lehrer was right to call political satire obsolete after Kissinger’s award, it would also be accurate to say that instances of rich farce have come in its wake.

    The post Outsized and Eccentric: The Farce Behind the Nobel Peace Prize first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • A rightist columnist just labeled me “repellent,” while a left establishment commentator publicly proclaimed, “fuck Yves Engler”. Canada’s ideological apparatus is whipped into a frenzy over my multilayered challenge of Canadian foreign policy and my NDP leadership campaign’s activist anti-capitalism.

    On Friday, the ever-reliable Israel-no-matter-what supporter Rosie Dimanno labeled me “the repellent Yves Engler”. The longtime Toronto Star columnist complained that in August, I wrote, “Over the past century, Canada’s ties to the US and British empires, its interest in geopolitical control of the region, Protestant Zionism, anti-Muslim sentiment, and settler-colonial solidarity have all shaped Canadian policy [towards Israel] to varying degrees. On top of this, there is a well-organized, wealthy, and highly motivated Jewish Canadian-Israel lobby, which has been increasingly powerful in recent decades. No other internationally focused Canadian ethnic/religious lobby is nearly as well-resourced or organized. And CIJA, B’nai Brith and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, etc. wield a uniquely powerful tool to silence critics: accusations of antisemitism.”

    While failing to include the initial sentence of my commentary in her genocidal apologia, Dimanno claimed I was “invoking just about every antisemitic trope there.”

    Justin Ling took a different line of attack in the Star. Last week, he opined, “Yves Engler, the choice of the party’s socialist caucus, is a conspiracy-minded author who is quite at home on Russian propaganda networks and who has written bizarre ahistorical blogs questioning the facts of the Rwandan genocide.”

    On Tuesday, both the Star and the National Post published articles suggesting that my leadership campaign, which has raised far more money than many anticipated, was engaged in questionable financial dealings.

    In the National Post on Thursday, Terry Newman noted, “Anti-capitalist, anti-Zionist NDP leadership hopeful Yves Engler made an appearance, handing out flyers to students.” The article was headlined “Inside Montreal’s dark and twisted celebration of dead Jews.”

    In a sign of the depths of status quo ideological rigidity, Paris Marx told Rachel Gilmore, “fuck Yves Engler,” to which the ‘leftist’ laughed heartily, replying, “I feel like he’s not a very serious candidate”. During a segment on the NDP leadership race on Gilmore’s program Thursday, Marx then added, “let’s be real, he’s just chasing clout”. Apparently, the others vying to lead the NDP aren’t “chasing clout”. Neither Marx nor Gilmore said a word about my campaign’s comprehensive new policy platform, drawn up by 45 activists and researchers, titled “Capitalism Can’t Be Fixed – Onward to a Socialist Future”.

    Since I launched my bid to lead the NDP, Gilmore, who spent a decade working for Global, IPolitics, and CTV in Ottawa, has repeatedly taken shots at me while ignoring the substance of my thirteen books and 1000+ articles.

    Anytime I publish an article on Rabble.ca or Canadian Dimension, long-time CBC producer David Gutnick smears me and attacks the publication. Two weeks ago, Gutnick wrote another unhinged comment when Rabble published my “Back to the future — NDP must debate capitalism again”. He noted, “Yves Engler is not anti-capitalist nor anti-war, he fully supports Russian capitalism and one consequence: Putin’s war on Ukrainian civilians.” To the best of my knowledge, I have never written about, let alone “supported”, Russian capitalism.

    Gutnick continued with what someone recently described as “Engler derangement syndrome”, claiming “Engler’s strange insistence that he always be referred to as Canada’s Chomsky and I.F. Stone rolled into one is but one indication in a long list that he is in no way the person to lead the NDP. One wonders why the editor of Rabble publishes such puffed-up nonsense.”

    I have never, let alone “always”, insisted I “be referred to as Canada’s Chomsky and I.F. Stone rolled into one.”

    The unhinged reactions highlight what I document in A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Exploitation and Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada. The rot runs deep in Canada’s ideological apparatus, especially regarding foreign policy.

    The smears are growing because there’s significant support for my campaign’s call for Canada to withdraw from NATO and move beyond capitalism. Genocide advocates fear an NDP candidate who has spent over two decades unapologetically challenging Canadian support for Israeli crimes.

    If they aren’t smearing you, then you probably aren’t seriously challenging our corrupt, genocidal, and wealth-concentrating system.

    To assist, donate, or learn more about my bid to lead the NDP, check out yvesforndpleader.ca

    The post Mainstream smears mean the system fears your ideas first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Spoiler alert – it already has. This is not a glib answer but a comment on the nature of the conflict. The US mission to wrench Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution out from its roots has a quarter-century pedigree. Stick around to the end of the article for an assessment of the likelihood of an overt military attack inside Venezuela. But first a little historical context.

    Regime change has failed…so far

     In 2002, a US-backed military coup temporarily ousted Hugo Chávez. A mere 47 hours later, the people of Venezuela spontaneously arose and returned their rightfully elected president.

     Washington has persistently interfered in the internal affairs of Venezuela, pouring millions of dollars to rig elections. Yet, the perpetually divided and unpopular US-fostered opposition is more isolated and discredited than ever.

    Undeterred by its 2002 failed coup, the US has repeatedly sponsored attempts to achieve by violence what they could not do by interfering in Venezuelan elections. In 2020, the so-called “Operation Gideon” was designed to kidnap President Maduro. Derisively dubbed the “Bay of Piglets,” this coup attempt along with numerous others failed. Local fisher folk apprehended the mercenaries.

    Among the many diplomatic efforts at regime change by Washington, the Lima Group was cobbled together in 2017. The cabal of 11 rightwing Latin American states and Canada aspired to facilitate “a peaceful exit” to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. By 2021, nearly half of the Lima Group countries had elected progressive governments and that diplomatic offensive fizzled.

    Meanwhile in 2019, the US anointed unknown 35-year-old Juan Guaidó as “interim president” of Venezuela. On December 21, 2022, his own opposition found the puppet so toxic and corrupt that they gave him the boot.

    Previously in 2015, Barack Obama certified that Venezuela was an “extraordinary threat” to US national security. He imposed unilateral coercive measures designed to destroy the Venezuelan economy. Euphemistically called “sanctions,” this form of collective punishment is illegal under international law. Regardless, each subsequent US president has continued and to varying degrees augmented the economic warfare.

    Combined with oil commodity prices cratering – the source of almost all of its foreign earnings – Venezuela experienced the largest peacetime economic contraction in recent world history. Inflation reached 2,000,000% and the days of the Bolivian Revolution appeared to be numbered. However by 2023, in a heroic effort under the resolute political leadership of President Maduro, Venezuela reversed the economic freefall and recorded a 5% GDP growth rate, which has continued in a positive direction.

     US trapped in its imperial imperative

    Without further detailing the multitude of illegal US regime-change machinations, it is sufficient to say that the very successes of the Venezuelans have forced Uncle Sam to escalate the conflict. Forced because, as an imperial power, the United States is structurally driven by its inherent pursuit of hegemony – rule over all potential challengers. This compulsion is codified in its official security doctrine of “full-spectrum dominance.”

    Venezuela has indeed been a challenge. Even before Hugo Chávez was elected in 1998, former President Carlos Andrés Pérez nationalized the country’s oil reserves – the largest in the world – in 1976. Chávez increased state control over the oil industry and expropriated international oil company assets.

    Chávez’s precedent of using the country’s natural resources – including Venezuela’s substantial reserves of natural gas, iron ore, bauxite, gold, coal, and diamonds – to fund social programs, rather than handing them over for private profit, is anathema to the US. Not only does the imperium lust over the oil for its own corporations, but control of such strategic resources are geopolitically critical for maintaining global dominance.

    Venezuela has also been a leader in promoting regional unity that is independent of the US, forging alliances such as CELCA and ALBA. It is a close ally with Nicaragua and Cuba, also on the US enemies list. Through OPEC, Friends in Defense of the UN Charter, and other initiatives, Venezuela has encouraged Latin American unity with Africa and Asia. Venezuela has “strategic partnerships” with China and Russia and is close to Iran. A champion of Palestine, it broke relations with Israel in 2009. Venezuela also supports an emerging multilateral international community.

    For all these “offenses,” the Bolivarian Revolution’s existence is insufferable to the Yankee hegemon…to be crushed.

    The guard rails are down

    Trump is operating with virtually zero institutional constraints. A mere five congressional Democrats recently awoke from their slumber to send a letter meekly suggesting that presidential “powers are not limitless.” But the Senate just voted against a war powers resolution to constrain attacks on Venezuela.

    Democrat representatives on the House Foreign Affairs Committee posted on X: “Trump and Rubio are pushing for regime change in Venezuela. The American people don’t want another war.” However, their colleagues in the Senate provided a unanimous mandate to the very same Republicans who ran on a “Maduro must go” platform. They rushed to do so, without debate, in the very first hours of the new administration.

    Within the bipartisan consensus for regime change in Venezuela, the differences are cosmetic. The Democrats would prefer to overthrow the sovereign state “legally.” Truthout reports that some senior Democrats warned “fellow members against opposing Trump’s war, saying that it would be tantamount to throwing their support behind Maduro.” If the Republicans precipitate an attack, the Democrats at best will agree with the ends but not the means.

    The follow-the-flag press prepares public opinion for a strike

    On September 26, NBC News reported “from the White House” that the US is planning strikes inside Venezuela. The one-minute video is actually of a guy standing in the street outside the White House, claiming that he had chatted with four unidentified “sources.” Subsequently, this unsubstantiated scoop went viral, picked up by almost every major corporate press outlet.

    The New York Times editorialized: “Mr. Trump has grown frustrated with Mr. Maduro’s failure to accede to American demands to give up power voluntarily and the continued insistence by Venezuelan officials that they have no part in drug trafficking.” What doesn’t occur to these Pentagon scribes, is that neither has Mr. Trump shown any enthusiasm for giving up power voluntarily or even admitting to the documented conclusion by the US in drug trafficking.

    In one of its typical propaganda pieces trying to pass as a news story, the Times tells us “what we know” about Washington’s offensive against Venezuela: “the endgame remains opaque.” Apparently, they don’t know jack, because the endgame is regime change. In remarks aimed at Venezuela, Mr. Trump threatened: “We will blow you out of existence.”

    All the elements are in place for a strike inside Venezuela

    • Diplomatic relations with Venezuela have been broken since 2019.
    • In 2020, the US indicted President Maduro for narco-terrorism, placing a $15 million bounty on him, subsequently raised to $25m and now $50m.
    • On January 20, Trump took office. Executive Order 14157 declared a “national emergency” and designated international drug-trafficking groups as “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs) and “specially designated global terrorists,” citing authority under the Alien Enemies Act.
    • By February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that FTOs posed an “existential threat” and laid the groundwork for treating cartels allegedly linked to President Maduro as enemy combatants.
    • In May, the administration opened the path to use military force against FTOs.
    • Then in July, a “secret directive” authorized military operations against FTOs at sea and on foreign soil.
    • By August, the US launched a massive naval deployment off the coast of Venezuela. By October, troop deployment reportedly reached 10,000.
    • On September 2, the US blew up the first of four or five alleged drug boats in international waters off of Venezuela, resulting in extrajudicial murders of the crews.
    • By mid-September, the Pentagon notified Congress under the War Powers Resolution that US forces were engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.
    • This was followed on October 1 by the Defense Department’s “confidential memo” and more congressional briefings that the US was engaged in armed conflict.
    • Trump then terminated the last back-channel diplomatic contacts with Venezuela.

    If the “international community” can’t halt the ongoing US/zionist genocide in Palestine, the Yankee juggernaut faces little effective resistance in the Caribbean. A US attack inside Venezuela is imminent!

    The post Will the US Attack Venezuela? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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