It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Demonstrators participate in the Moral March on Manchin and McConnell, a rally held by the Poor Peoples Campaign calling on them to eliminate the legislative filibuster and pass the "For The People" voting rights bill, outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 2021.Caroline Brehman / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
The Supreme Court appears poised to deal a severe blow to the fundamental right to vote in two cases this term. Louisiana v. Callais threatens the right to vote free from racial discrimination and Watson v. Republican National Committee will test the right to have your absentee ballots counted.
On August 1, 2025, when the Supreme Court asked the parties in Callais to brief the issue of whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) violates the 14th or 15th Amendment to the Constitution, alarm bells rang throughout the country.
By posing that question, the high court signaled its openness to striking down the remaining core of the VRA, which Congress enacted in 1965 to prevent racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 forbids the use of congressional maps that dilute the voting power of marginalized communities.
Section 2 was included in the VRA in order to enforce the 15th Amendment, which prohibits the government from denying or abridging the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
In Callais, a group of self-described “non-African American” voters claimed that the “intentional creation of a majority Black district” violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
During the oral argument on October 15, 2025, a majority of the Supreme Court appeared ready to side with the “non-African American” voters.
Moreover, at its March 23 argument in Watson, the court seemed inclined to overturn a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by, and received within five business days of, Election Day. Mail voting in Mississippi is limited to a few types of voters, including those with disabilities, the elderly, and people living away from home.
The Trump administration would like to prohibit mail-in ballots that aren’t received by Election Day. If the court holds that ballots must be received by Election Day, untold numbers of voters could be disenfranchised.
The “Crown Jewel of the Civil Rights Era” Is Gravely Imperiled
Section 2 of the VRA prohibits any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or procedure or practice that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.” That occurs when voters of color “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”
Since the Supreme Court struck down Section 5 of the VRA in 2013, Section 2 remains the only effective VRA remedy left to challenge racial discrimination in voting. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion in Shelby County v. Holder gutting Section 5, which had required federal preclearance before changes to election rules could go into effect in jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting practices.
But Roberts provided assurances in Shelby that Section 2 would still be available to protect voting rights. Now, the court is poised to obliterate Section 2 as well.
Congress amended Section 2 of the VRA in 1982 to provide that evidence of discriminatory intent is not necessary to prove racial discrimination; even policies that appear neutral can have a discriminatory effect (legally referred to as disparate impact) on a particular group.
The 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause forbids the government from treating people differently on account of race. In the 1990s, the Supreme Court held that the government cannot use race as a predominant factor when it draws election districts unless it satisfies strict scrutiny by proving it is necessary to achieve a compelling governmental interest.
In Callais, a coalition of civil rights groups and Black voters wanted to reinstate a map that the state legislature had adopted in 2024. The map established a second majority-Black congressional district and was drawn in response to a 2022 U.S. district court ruling that a map drawn in 2020 likely violated Section 2 of the VRA.
The 2020 map included only one majority-Black district out of the state’s six congressional districts. The coalition argued that the 2020 map diluted the votes of Black residents, who comprise about one-third of Louisiana’s population.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court ruling that the 2020 map likely violated Section 2, and the appellate court ordered Louisiana to adopt a new map by January 15, 2024. The Louisiana Legislature then drew a map with a second majority-Black district.
In response, the “non-African American” voters challenged the 2024 map, claiming it was unconstitutional because it separated voters based primarily on race.
The Supreme Court didn’t decide the case after hearing oral arguments last term. Instead, it ordered a second round of arguments, which took place on October 15, 2025. At that proceeding, a majority of the court exhibited a willingness to eviscerate Section 2.
They may well determine that Section 2 of the VRA and the Equal Protection Clause are “in tension,” as Clarence Thomas suggested in his dissent to the ruling that held the case over to this term.
If the court adopts Thomas’s position, it would amount to a finding that disparate-impact liability under the VRA’s Section 2 is unconstitutional. That could make it harder to prove liability for violations of federal housing and employment discrimination laws, Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky warned on SCOTUSblog: “Ending disparate-impact liability would be an enormous change in the law and a devastating blow to civil rights in the United States. That is why Louisiana v. Callais is potentially so important.”
Absentee Ballots Cast by Election Day Should Be Counted
The other major voting rights case on the Supreme Court’s docket presents a challenge to a Mississippi law governing the timing of mail-in ballots. In addition to Mississippi, at least 18 states and territories have laws that allow the counting of mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day but received later. Twenty-nine states allow overseas and military ballots to be tallied if received after Election Day.
In Watson, the Republican Party of Mississippi and the Republican National Committee are challenging the Mississippi law. They argue that the state law conflicts with an 1845 federal law that established the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as “Election Day.”
A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the challengers that all ballots must be received by Election Day. The full appellate court affirmed that decision and the state of Mississippi appealed to the Supreme Court.
In its brief asking the high court to review the case, Mississippi officials argued that the appeals court ruling, “if left to stand — will have destabilizing nationwide ramifications” and it “would require scrapping election laws in most states.”
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. At oral argument, the right-wing supermajority of the court appeared to agree with the challenge to the Mississippi law. If the law is struck down, it could impact the upcoming midterm elections.
Donald Trump has long opposed mail-in voting, falsely claiming that it results in fraud and contributed to the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” Trump declared during a recent appearance in Memphis, Tennessee. “I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all.” When asked about his vote by mail in a special election in Florida, he said: “I’m president” and “I had a lot of different things” to do. Meanwhile, Trump is trying to prevent Americans from casting absentee ballots.
The high court will issue rulings in Louisiana v. Callais and Watson v. RNC by the end of June or early July. As we await their decisions, the right to vote is on the line.
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Marjorie Cohn Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.
Thursday, April 02, 2026
A German Journalist’s ‘Civil Death’
Hüseyin Dogru is the first E.U. citizen to be sanctioned by the union and the first journalist to land on the list because of his work. What is Dogru’s crime? Don’t ask: He has not committed one.
The following note appeared in the thread of my “X” account at 7:47 Saturday morning. It was posted by Hüseyin Dogru, a German journalist who lives, such as he and his family can, under European Union sanctions:
Hüseyin Dogru is not given to histrionics or self-dramatizations, if this is what you’re thinking. He has been on the E.U.’s (increasingly long) sanctions list since May 20 of last year. While Dogru joins others dedicated to the truth of our time and the defense of their own integrity, he is the first E.U. citizen to be sanctioned and the first journalist to land on the list because of his work.
What is Dogru’s crime? Don’t ask: He has not committed one, has not been charged with one, and has not been permitted any opportunity to respond in court to those accusing him of … of practicing his profession and exercising his rights to free expression.
I will get to the particulars of the official documents in a sec. For now, this: Hüseyin Dogru, whose family is of Turkish origin, was born in Berlin and is a German citizen. As a journalist he has been critical of Israel, taken a strong position against the genocide in Gaza and written in support of the Palestinian cause. More later.
With the seizure of his spouse’s bank accounts last Friday, Dogru and his family now face what amounts to a starvation blockade of the kind the Trump regime (not to change the subject) currently imposes on Cuba and Israel imposes on Gaza.
This story reads like something out of Dostoyevsky or Kafka, I have to say. We are talking about a family of five going hungry in the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany as punishment for… what?… for seeing with his eyes open, for thinking about what he sees, then commenting on what he sees?
I would love to suggest various ways readers could support the Dogru family, but there are none. Were someone to donate so much as a loaf of bread to help sustain them the German authorities would count it a criminal offense punishable by a prison term of up to several years.
I discussed this question of assistance with a German friend over the weekend. The only way to come to the aid of Hüseyin Dogru, we determined, would be to hand him, in person, an envelope of euros or a bag of groceries. And this would be to take a risk, of course.
The above quoted social media post was addressed to some names readers will recognize: Yanis Varoufakis, Stella Assange, Alan MacLeod, Clare Daly, Mary Kostakidis, Chris Hedges and on down a long list. The best coverage of the Dogru case I have seen has appeared in Berliner Zeitung, which I have read courtesy of the translations sent me by Eva–Maria Föllmer Müller, a German friend and colleague.
European Media Silence
As to the rest of European media, including Germany’s, there has been a resolute silence these past 11 months. In a series of social media posts over the weekend, Dogru reported that many people have written — your columnist is among them — to offer him and his family some mode of support.
Here are two of his replies: “People ask me what we can do. Legally, I cannot comment, as it could link me to the act and put my family at risk. All I can say is that resisting injustice through civil disobedience is legitimate and morally justified.”
And then this: “Also a call to journalists who know about my case and had access to the files — you chose to stay silent. You are also responsible for the situation of my children.”
On March 15 Berliner Zeitung published an interview with Alexander Gorski, Dogru’s attorney. Here is a little of what Gorski said when asked how nearly a year’s sanctions has affected Dogru’s life:
“The impact on him and his family is devastating. From one day to the next, his accounts were frozen. He is not permitted to conduct any financial transactions and must have every use of his assets approved by the Bundesbank. Currently, only €506 per month are authorized, with which he must make ends meet…. Furthermore, his bank, Comdirect, repeatedly imposes additional restrictions on the use of these €506…. The risk of committing a criminal offense by having financial contact with my client is very high…. Leading a normal family life under these circumstances is virtually impossible. This situation is often described as “civil death” — and that is exactly what applies here….”
Nine days after this interview appeared, the District Court in Frankfurt am Main rejected an emergency appeal Gorski filed, requiring Dogru’s bank to unblock funds he needs to meet routine obligations — fees to service providers, insurance payments, and the like. The court ruled that Dogru has no “right to an injunction.”
It was four more days until, last Saturday, the Central Office of Sanctions Enforcement, a federal authority in Berlin, seized the accounts of Dogru’s spouse.
This is the same treatment accorded others on the E.U. sanctions list. “Civil death” is precisely the term.
Jacques Baud, the noted Swiss commentator, is prominent among these others. The paying-attention population of Europe was shocked when he was sanctioned, last December, a case I wrote of in The Floutist under the headline, “Free Speech and its Enemies.”
Here is Baud’s entry in the E.U. Sanctions Tracker, the list of those the E.U. has summarily blacklisted:
“Jacques Baud, a former Swiss army colonel and strategic analyst, is a regular guest on pro–Russian television and radio programmes. He acts as a mouthpiece for pro–Russian propaganda and makes conspiracy theories, for example accusing Ukraine of orchestrating its own invasion in order to join NATO.”
Hüseyin Dogru’s rap sheet is similarly preposterous. In sum, the E.U. runs miles with his previous association with a now-defunct digital channel called Redfish, which was partly funded by a subsidiary of the Novosti–RT group.
Here is an extract from Dogru’s entry in the E.U. Sanctions Tracker. His case is No. 20 in the document linked here. In it you find a salad of factual inaccuracies along with the beyond-flimsy case it purports to document against him:
“RED [Redfish] has used its media platforms — often publishing under ‘redstreamnet’ or ‘thered.stream’ — to systematically spread false information on politically controversial subjects with the intent of creating ethnic, political and religious discord amongst its predominantly German target audience, including by disseminating the narratives of radical Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas….
Through AFA Medya [a media company based in Istanbul, the purported sponsor of “RED”], Hüseyin Dogru thus supports actions by the Government of the Russian Federation which undermine or threaten stability and security in the Union and in one or several of its Member States, including by indirectly supporting and facilitating violent demonstrations and engaging in coordinated information manipulation….”
This is a hard bouncing ball to follow, as readers may note. Dogru wrote critically of Israel and the Gaza genocide (among various other topics, including German foreign policy) and this was in the service of spreading Russian disinformation in the cause of destabilizing E.U. member states.
Got it?
When Berliner Zeitung asked Alexander Gorki, Dogru’s attorney, why the E.U. singled out Dogru, he replied, “We don’t know that. What we observe, however, is that the German government, in particular, is cracking down on people who express dissenting opinions on the Russia–Ukraine war or the issue of Palestine.”
Just parenthetically, Dogru opposed the Russian intervention in Ukraine and quit Redfish in protest immediately after it began in February 2022.
“The Commission in Brussels banned him, a European Union citizen, from the European Union,” Yanis Varoufakis remarked in the course of an appearance on The Chris Hedges Report last week. “They turned him into a non-person, ‘an asset of Putin,’ just because they could.”
It is those last four words that rattle me most. They resonate across the Western post-democracies.
Eva–Maria Föllmer–Müller contributed invaluable research and translations.il
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century.
We are living through times where the architecture of global peace is not merely crumbling; it is being deliberately dismantled. The drums of global war beat louder than ever, drowning out the voices of reason. Across the globe, imperial power grinds forward, indifferent to human lives. In the face of such force, silence is complicity. We are compelled to speak, not because words alone will stop bombs, but because refusing to speak means surrendering our humanity.
Yet, things have only escalated. Our voices are barely audible beneath the barrage of projectiles. Nevertheless, I do not miss an opportunity to speak or write, hoping to reach the Macedonian public and the wider world: there is no more time to wait! But an old Macedonian saying goes: there is no point waking someone who pretends to be asleep. I confess a personal “sin”: I write because it helps me stay mentally and intellectually sane.
The problem is serious even among those aware of the Armageddon before us. A woman of Iranian origin on Substack wrote bitterly: “Are you really just going to keep talking? Where is the global collective action?.” It hit the mark. Today, we lack not analysis, but action. As Lenin asked: What is to be done? (I use his title fittingly, aware that historical circumstances differ). At the recent Tricontinental Institute’s assembly, Vijay Prashad said: “We must take a step forward!” We must conceptualize resistance against barbarism and what comes after. We seem to have lost the power to imagine a just society transcending frameworks of market economics and classical political science. We must define the ultimate goal. My peace colleagues would easily answer: positive peace! Found in Johan Galtung’s works, this encompasses human emancipation, social justice and dignity, de facto containing basic elements of the communist idea. Unfortunately, most peace activists fear ideology, standing on the safe shore of the liberal horizon.
This is my modest attempt to frame things radically, meaning “from the root.” Peace studies still speak of peace through peaceful means, invoking the UN Charter. It sounds moving and beautiful only if the UN were not complicit in silencing crimes. The UN is neither an abstraction nor autonomous; it is created by governments that are either perpetrators or vassals (or both). Few today are genuine democracies, just, and moral. The UN is what states made of it, primarily those self-appointed as guarantors of peace after WWII. They granted themselves rights above all others, like gods. Consequently, the military-industrial complex expanded like a giant octopus, metastasizing all spheres of human activity, alongside military blocs and bases. Humanitarian aid arrives only after blood is spilled. Many believe replacing kakistocrats or reforming the UN will guarantee peace. The new “Aryan race” has evolved into an “Epstein caste”, just as capitalism has been transformed into an overt form of neo-fascism and US hyperimperialism, perpetuating inequality defended by military power. Dissident voices diagnose problems but do not know what is to be done. Even though many were excited from the mass protests in the US and many other cities on 28 March, the cynical mind is correct: The performances seen, the celebrities heard—it all looked like a circus. They do know they don’t want a king (Trump), yet they do not challenge the system that allowed oligarchy to govern their lives. There is a growing consensus across the Global South that Western public opinion is functionally irrelevant to the fight against imperialism.
The official doctrine of the most powerful empire is “peace through strength.” Its executors do not mind the UN Charter, the Genocide Convention, or even the Geneva Conventions. Such force is not answered with suggestions, proposals for peaceful conflict resolution and performances on the street. Force is met with force. Resistance. Responses with poetry, appeals, and art are moving and beautiful at the same time, but insufficient. Currently, only people of Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Cuba, and fragmented anti-colonial movements really fight back against the Empire of Evil. They show what it means to stand when babies are tortured, and existence must be defended with bodies. The Vietnamese were in such a battle, but we seem to have forgotten them. “Peace through peaceful means” was the slogan then, too—but until they inflicted enormous losses on US citizens, they were not left in peace. They proved the power of resistance against the military Goliath. Honestly, if I were a Palestinian mother seeing my child/children killed, I would immediately take up arms. Better to die fighting than die a little every moment.
The answer to this madness is our own “madness”: peace through resistance! Recently, on 27 March, recalling Yugoslav history, it came to mind that the protests rose against the Pact with Nazi Germany. Slogans we still remember read: “Better the grave than a slave,” “Better war than the Pact!” That was the seed of the Partisan movement. My peace friends want a global anti-war movement (by often excluding “others”, like China for instance), but slogans and street protests soothe consciences without striking the Empire where it hurts. Some people more courageous than us defend dignity with blood and lives. That is the right to self-defense in international law! It is also in the UN Charter. Yet, those far from battlefields must develop methods of struggle against the war machinery, fleeing neither the mad Nero in Washington nor the silence.
From the academic sphere, I start with professors: they must “corrupt” youth like Socrates! Even in physics classes, they must speak about war. On militarization and numbness, everyone can teach. Dedicate one hour a week! Unions and farmers can strike; this war hits those who live by sweat everywhere in the world. Journalists must remember Robert Fisk and Julian Assange, showing solidarity with colleagues used as clay pigeons who lost their lives with unprecedented courage. Medical workers can follow Mads Gilbert’s example! Culture and civil society can screen anti-war films like Hair or Dr. Strangelove or any other anti-war film (including documentaries). But those ‘inside the belly of the beast’ can do the most: boycotts, sabotage, and conscientious objection. Many US military professionals do not support the war, greeting with the code “Epstein.” Now is the moment for objection. Before Joe Kent’s resignation, many others showed that character and conscience would not let them work at universities or the UN, obedient to the military superpower. Workers in military industries can exert pressure, as can local communities near military bases. I am not sure if global cohesion will emerge, but each of us must start by sweeping our own doorstep.
Resist authorities allied with the degenerate Epstein caste of child-killers! The time is NOW! We are on the brink and have no excuses left for dreaming with eyes wide shut about the universal organization and its documents that are spattered with the blood of innocents. Extending the agony of the current system works against us. Let’s help the new one to be born, even in pain—as it usually happens.
Biljana Vankovska is a professor of political science and international relations at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, a member of the Transnational Foundation of Peace and Future Research (TFF) in Lund, Sweden, and the most influential public intellectual in Macedonia.
Wednesday, April 01, 2026
The Track Record of the Collective West In Regards to Human Rights and International Law
A detached observer who wants to assess where countries stand on fundamental issues of human rights, international law, peace, development and multilateralism need only look at the voting record of States at the United Nations Security Council, General Assembly, Human Rights Council and other international agencies.
Voting is where it’s at. This is the bottom line – a reliable litmus test to discover what countries really stand for, how they perceive international law and morals, who promotes the uniform implementation of norms, who practices exceptionalism[1], who aspires to a multilateral world of cooperation, and who only gives lip service to humanistic values while aggressively weaponizing human rights for confrontational geopolitics. The patterns that emerge are clear: The collective West invokes exceptionalism and systematically undermines the principles and purposes of the United Nations, consistently voting against peace initiatives, demilitarization, economic and social development. I devote a chapter to this phenomenon in my book The Human Rights Industry.[2]
Back in 1984 the General Assembly adopted resolution 39/11, the UN Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace.[3] The vote was adopted by 92 in favour, zero against, 34 abstentions. The collective West and its vassals found themselves in the third category. In 2009 the Human Rights Council asked the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to convene a workshop on the right to peace, in which I participated as one of the experts[4]. We produced a strong report.[5]
In 2012 the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council adopted a comprehensive draft of a declaration on the right to peace, which incorporated enormous input from civil society, notably the 2010 Declaración de Santiago de Compostela[6], including the creation of a monitoring mechanism. The Human Rights Council then entrusted the final drafting to an open-ended inter-governmental working group, in which I participated in my function as UN Independent Expert on International Order[7]. I watched in disgust how the collective West, notably the United States, eviscerated the text, so that what the General Assembly finally adopted in 2016 was much less than what the world had in 1984[8]. The forces of militarism had grown too powerful in the Human Rights Council and the legal arguments were twisted and distorted beyond recognition. Orwellian newspeak was the rule, not the exception.
Every year the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council adopt resolutions condemning unilateral coercive measures[9] as contrary to the UN Charter, international law, freedom of navigation, the prohibition of interference in the internal affairs of States, etc. More than two thirds of the members vote in favour[10], the collective West votes against. It is instructive to read the explanation of vote by the European Union, a classic example of cognitive dissonance. Every year the General Assembly adopts a resolution condemning the illegal embargo of Cuba. On 29 October 2025, the 33rd such resolution was adopted. Who voted against? US, Israel, Argentina, Hungary, Paraguay, North Macedonia, and Ukraine[11]. Who abstained? Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Costa Rica, Czechia, Ecuador, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Moldova and Romania. In 2024 the vote had been 187 in favour and only two votes against, the US and Israel. In 2016, the last year of President Obama, the vote was 191 in favour and two abstentions, US and Israel. Instead of lifting the unilateral coercive measures, the United States imposed “maximul pressure” aiming at forcing undemocratic regime change.
On 8 October 2021 the Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 48/7, a landmark declaration on the sequels and legacies of colonialism[12]. “Recognizing with concern that the legacies of colonialism, in all their manifestations, such as economic exploitation, inequality within and among States, systemic racism, violations of indigenous peoples’ rights, contemporary form of slavery and damage to cultural heritage, have a negative impact on the effective enjoyment of all human rights, Recognizing that colonialism has led to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and that Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples were victims of colonialism and continue to be victims of its consequences, Expressing deep concern at the violations of human rights of indigenous peoples committed in colonial contexts, and stressing the need for States to take all measures necessary to protect rights and ensure the safety of indigenous peoples, especially indigenous women and children, to restore truth and justice and to hold perpetrators accountable, 1. Stresses the utmost importance of eradicating colonialism and addressing the negative impact of the legacies of colonialism on the enjoyment of human rights; 2. Calls for Member States, relevant United Nations bodies, agencies and other relevant stakeholders to take concrete steps to address the negative impact of the legacies of colonialism on the enjoyment of human rights.” As expected, the collective West abstained.
On 21 March 2026 the General Assembly adopted a resolution[13] proposed by the government of Ghana on the sequels of the slave trade and the implications for human rights and development today[14]. Who voted against? The United States, Israel and Argentina. The rest of the collective West and their friends abstained. “For more than 400 years, millions of people were stolen from Africa, put in shackles and shipped to the New World to toil in cotton fields and sugar and coffee plantations under scorching heat and the crack of the whip. Denied their basic humanity and even their own names, they were forced to endure generations of exploitation with repercussions that reverberate today, including persistent anti-Black racism and discrimination.” The resolution emphasised “the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity by reason of the definitive break in world history, scale, duration, systemic nature, brutality and enduring consequences that continue to structure the lives of all people through racialized regimes of labour, property and capital.”
Self-serving narratives
Notwithstanding the obvious, the mainstream narrative will have us believe that the “collective West” – the United States, Canada, Australia, and most European States – are the cradle of international law and democracy, that they possess moral superiority over the rest of the world. Is this perception justified and empirically verifiable?
As an American and Swiss citizen, I observe that relentless propaganda and public relations have constructed this self-serving fantasy that schoolbooks and university textbooks dutifully disseminate and reconfirm, not only in the US but also in many European countries. Western culture, folklore, television, movies, internet are all imbued with an almost religious faith that we are “the good guys”, which by implication means that the rest of the world is composed of the “bad guys”, and that we have a mission to bring democracy and human rights to them.
Of course, when we in the collective West use the world “democracy”, we do not mean the correlation between the will of the people and the rules that govern them. There is in fact a glaring disconnect between Western governments and the people. While governments engage in war propaganda and the demonisation of purported “enemies”, the population of the US and most European countries overwhelmingly pleads for peace and prosperity, prefer butter over guns.
Part of the disconnect is reflected semantically in the misuse of terminology. For the “elites” of the collective West, “democracy” actually means our economic system. In many texts the words democracy and predator capitalism are interchangeable. Another problem is one of perception. Average citizens have other priorities and prefer to believe in the honesty and good intentions of our governments, no matter how often they lie to us, no matter how often we have caught them lying. This can be summed up in Julius Caesar’s famous remark quae volumus, ea credimus libenter[15] – we believe what we want to believe. Worse still, we may recall another Latin phrase mundus vult decipi – the world wants to be deceived – ergo decipiatur – therefore let’s continue lying to them[16].
Notwithstanding the rational arguments brought forth by Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus, Ramsey Clark, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Mia Mottley, Francis Boyle, John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs to rebut phoney government narratives, the power of the mainstream media is such that the majority of Americans, Brits, Frenchmen and Germans are honestly convinced of the purported moral superiority of our “democratic” governments and their right to tell others how to run their affairs.
The false image that we in the collective West have of ourselves and our leaders rests on fake news that gradually matured into fake history, subsequently cemented by fake law. Politicians are wont to invent international law as they go along, and this fake law is shaped by government lawyers, who are essentially “pens for hire”, paid to write what the government wants, at least to make a plausible argument in the required legal jargon.
We in the collective West certainly suffer from an underdeveloped faculty of self-criticism. But I fear that this serious human flaw is also shared by many others, including the Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, and Russians. Conscientious objectors to groupthink and official narratives are seen as dangerous traitors, as heretics. This is not a modern phenomenon. Socrates, Seneca, Giordano Bruni[17], were eliminated by the very societies they tried to enlighten. Other heretics survived because they recanted at the last minute, e.g. Galileo Galilei[18].
Today’s “heretics” are our whistleblowers like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, John Kirikakou, Daniel Ellsberg and many others. I dedicated my book The Human Rights Industry[19] to forty whistleblowers who have tried to open our eyes to the crimes committed not only by our governments but also by the private sector, by corporations that have profited from war and thus promoted conflict throughout the world. We should honour whistleblowers as heroes of our time, as courageous persons who have risked their lives and careers to tell us truths that our governments have withheld from us.
Today’s “heretics” also include experts like the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, the Italian law professor Francesca Albanese, who has been sanctioned by the US, and the Swiss intelligence officer and academic researcher Jacques Baud[20], sanctioned by the European Council in gross violation of the right of freedom of expression[21], freedom of belief and conviction, freedom of academic research. These draconian punishments were imposed arbitrarily, without due process, and are contrary to national and international laws, incompatible with numerous articles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights[22], the European Convention on Human Rights[23] and the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the European Union[24].
A brief shining moment of hope and optimism: the UN Charter as the world constitution
There have been moments in world history, when rationality appears to have overcome propaganda, brief moments that were quickly ruined by the powerful, whose main concern has always been to consolidate control, increase their power, discredit and demonize potential competitors.
Such a moment occurred in 1945 with the defeat of Nazism and Japanese imperialism, with the adoption of the UN Charter as the new rules-based international order, as the new constitution for the planet, with the International Court of Justice as the world’s constitutional Court. It could have worked if the Security Council and General Assembly had respected the wishes of “We the peoples”, whose principal concern was to spare future generations from the scourge of war.
Political will by the leaders of countries in all five continents could have facilitated the establishment of effective enforcement mechanisms. Indeed, civilization is the ongoing process of establishing rules of the game and strengthening norms by creating effective information and implementation apparatuses. Countries of the North, South, East and West could have elucidated, nurtured and disseminated the spirituality of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The national, regional and international human rights courts should have been strengthened, their judgements enforced.
Alas, we are all human, plagued by arrogance, ambition, greed and so many contradictions. Soon the incipient system of peace through law was undermined by the world-wide emergence of what became known as the “military-industrial complex”, denounced by US President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address of 17 January 1961[25]. This monster of our own creation continued to expand and destroy any vestiges of democracy, any spiritual commitment to the Beatitudes (Matthew, chapters V-VII). While we gave lip service to the ideal of peace through social justice, we embraced the old and immoral Latin adage si vis pacem, para bellum[26] – if you want peace prepare for war, and rejected the motto of the International Labour Organisation: si vis pacem, cole justitiam[27] , if you want peace, cultivate justice.
While our leaders in the collective West continued giving lip service to “peace”, they rejected the goal of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)[28] that “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.”[29] This commitment required pro-active peace-making and education of peace and empathy. I stress this in several of my reports to the Human Rights Council and General Assembly.[30]
This duplicity served the ever-growing military-industrial-financial-media-digital-academic complex. All were making profits, while millions of human beings in the world were dying of famine and disease.
The End of the Cold War
Another brief, shining moment of hope for humanity was 1989, when Mikhail Gorbachev ended the cold war by offering to the United States and Europe East-West cooperation rather than confrontation, when the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989[31], when in 1991 the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. The Soviet Union ceased to exist and its republics became members of the United Nations. Here was a moment to build on, to channel the world’s energy and resources toward peace consolidation and genuine multilateralism. Yes, a different world was possible and achievable, as I explained in my 2014 report to the Human Rights Council[32]. It required good faith and international solidarity. The world could have implemented measures to convert military-first economies into human security economies; it could have adopted concrete steps for worldwide disarmament. The World Summit for Social Development[33] was held in Copenhagen in 1995, long before the Millennium Development Goals[34], and the Sustainable Development Goals[35]. There was much hope, inspiring rhetoric, many commitments were made, and very few kept.[36]
The role of academics in supporting war and war propaganda
What were the obstacles to peace and solidarity? There were many obstacles, reflected in the triumphalism of Francis Fukuyama’s infamous simplification The End of History and the Last Man[37]. There was no humanism in this book, but only gloating about defeating a “bad guy” – the Soviet Union, as if that had been the source of world poverty and instability. Fukuyama did not ask whether it was the capitalist philosophy of the collective West that was primarily responsible for causing the confrontation and placing the world in grave danger of nuclear annihilation. Was it not the hegemonic ambitions of the collective West that made peace through multilateralism impossible? But many in the US and elsewhere shared Fukuyama’s black-and-white views. The West had won the final victory against the caricature of the “evil empire”. The western mainstream media applauded this fundamentally flawed and uncharitable worldview.
Another university professor who contributed to the intellectual pollution of the 1990’s was Zbigniew Brzezinski with his arrogant book The Grand Chessboard[38]. But it was not only the triumphalist academics who misread the signs and bore responsibility for destroying the hope for a better world. There were countless politicians and journalists who got it wrong. And they did not listen to better minds that realized that a unique opportunity was being missed. Thus, the world failed to solidify peace and work toward international cooperation and pro-active solidarity. Add to that the megalomaniac Project for the New American Century[39] and the incredibly stupid and short-sighted eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a major breach of trust vis à vis Mikhail Gorbachev, since the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact were inseparably linked with and based on the promise by US President George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker that NATO would not expand one inch toward the East[40]. The Ukraine war resulted from the breach of these fundamental commitments made to Gorbachev.[41]
In the real-world cheating has consequences. Breaking one’s word destroys trust, and once it is broken, it takes a long time to rebuild confidence. Every breach of good faith, of the rules of the diplomatic game, undermines the prospects of peace. The preponderant guilt falls on one person: US President Bill Clinton, who happily promoted NATO’s eastern expansion[42]. History will remember him for having deliberately broken trust, of having taken advantage of Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, for having ruined the future of generations.
NATO: A criminal organization within the meaning of the Statute of the Nuremberg Tribunal
Meanwhile NATO had ceased being a defense alliance, because the enemy had “surrendered” and was prepared to be incorporated into the West, even join the EU and NATO. But no, even though NATO did not have any adversary, it decided to perpetuate itself, like most bureaucracies do. It was necessary to create an enemy – no longer the Soviet Union, but instead the new Russian Federation that wanted nothing more than peace and Perestroika[43].
NATO morphed into a war coalition. This American hubris was condemned by a great American diplomat, George F. Kennan, who warned that the decision to expand NATO was a “fateful error”[44] that sooner or later would lead to war.
And indeed, NATO morphed into a “criminal organization”[45] within the meaning of articles 9 and 10 of the Statute of the International Military Tribunal for Nuremberg[46]. If one were to apply the criteria used by the IMT to condemn Nazi organizations as “criminal organizations”, then NATO would also fall in this category, and not only NATO but also other organizations including the CIA, MI6 and Mossad, who are guilty of targeted assassinations[47], false flags and terrorist actions including Israel’s booby-trapping pagers[48].
NATO has also flexed its muscles in a number of illegal “humanitarian interventions”, e.g. in Yugoslavia, engaged in outright aggression against Serbia and Montenegro without any justification under the UN Charter, and absent any approval by the UN Security Council. US and NATO aggressions have continued in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, etc. with tens of thousands of deaths, and have the potential to bring the planet to nuclear Apocalypse.
Terrorism
In a famous 2023 interview, Professor Noam Chomsky stated “I’m in favour of the Iran negotiations, but they’re profoundly flawed. There are two states that rampage in the Middle East, carry out aggression, violence, terrorist acts, illegal acts constantly. They’re both huge nuclear weapon states, and their nuclear armaments are not being considered….The United States and Israel, the two major rogue states in the world. I mean, there’s a reason why in international polls run by U.S polling agencies, the main ones, the United States is regarded as the greatest threat to world peace by an overwhelming margin. No other country is even close.”[49]
In the same vein, Professor Jeffrey Sachs stated in March 2026: “Israel is a terrorist state”[50]. Already in June 2025, Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq condemned Israel’s attack on Iran, saying the Jewish state has become a “rogue state and a huge threat to world peace”. The bombing of Iran by Israel in which many civilians, including women and children, have been killed is condemnable: “perpetuating genocide on hapless Palestinians and getting away with it”, Israel is now putting the whole of Middle East in “peril”[51].
During the Vietnam War Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that the United States is “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”[52]. He added that “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on the military than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Many people do not dare think about what is staring them in the face, although the evidence is all over the internet and even in official declassified documents. It can be said that Israel was born in terrorism, as the United States was born in genocide. When the Jewish European colonizers came to Palestine they terrorized not only the Palestinians, evicted them from their homes, forced them to flee for their lives, they also terrorized the Brits, blew up the King David Hotel, killing some 100 Brits. When the UN sent an envoy in 1948, Count Folke Bernadotte, Zionist terrorists assassinated him[53].
If we are looking for countries that practice State terrorism and support terrorist groups, we will have to think of the US. Many people know, but do not want to draw conclusions from the fact that the United States has worked with terrorists in many regions of the world, notably in Syria. Joe Kent, former US counterterrorism chief, stated this quite clearly[54] in his letter of resignation.
The US doctrine of “Manifest destiny” was also a form of ethnic cleansing and genocide. In his famous book Why we can’t wait, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote: “Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its Indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a “noble” crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.” [55] It is estimated that ten million native Algonquins, Crees, Cherokees, Dakotas, Hopis, Iroquois, Lakotas, Mohawks, Pequots, Sioux, Squamish perished during the 17th-19thcenturies,[56] and not all of them died of European diseases like smallpox, as some second-rate historians would have us believe.
The Zionist project
The Zionist project was an anachronism when first conceived in the nineteenth century. It was a philosophy based on antiquated concepts of racial and/or religious identity, buttressed by an aggressive animus to exclude others. It was not an enlightened, progressive or humanistic project, quite the contrary, it was misanthropic in essence.
The project gained support from the European colonial governments that had an interest in establishing a European colony in the Middle East, a base from which European and American power in the region could be projected. As a purely imperialistic construct, the creation of a “Jewish state” (call it a branch office of European Judaism – with very little genuine links to the Arab or Muslim world), the project was contrary to the philosophy of the League of Nations and incompatible with the UN Charter. However, relentless propaganda and public relations campaigns made it appear just and even somehow historically legitimate. Deep down the Zionist experiment was a European project, ontologically incompatible with human dignity, since it postulated the racial superiority of Jews over the local populations that inhabited the territory of Palestine.
The Zionist project has led to 80 years of violence and war in the Middle East. The US and most European countries are complicit in the imperialist, colonialist violence imposed on the native populations of Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, etc. Personally, I wonder how much time will elapse until the international community looks at the facts, rejects the pro-Israeli propaganda and finally understands that the colonialist plan to impose a European state on the Arabs and Muslims — (90% of the Israelis are Europeans — neither Semitic nor genuinely Middle-Eastern) was a fatal error and that the experiment has failed. It has led not only to perpetual wars — but even to genocide.
The world awaits the final judgment of the International Court of Justice in the urgent case South Africa v. Israel[57]– pending since 2023 – concerning the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. It is shocking that the judges at the ICJ have been dragging their feet and not given the necessary urgency to this case, bearing in mind that more than a hundred thousand Palestinians have been and continue being killed. Undoubtedly, this is genocide.
Remembering the fate of Socrates, Seneca, Bruni and others, today’s heretics against the Zionist orthodoxy are being defamed as “anti-Semitic”. Among the critics are Professors Jeffrey Sachs[58], Richard Falk[59], Norman Finkelstein[60], Ilan Pappe[61] – all highly respected Jewish academics. None of them are in any way shape or form “anti-Semitic”, they are all proud of their Jewish heritage, and they all condemn the war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by the current government of Israel. They call it genocide and publicly protest: “not in our name”.
The responsibility of the United Nations for the creation of the State of Israel and the commitment to a “two state solution”
It is time to go back to the General Assembly Partition Resolution 181[62] and to the decision to admit Israel into UN Membership, which was not gratuitous but conditioned on Israel’s acceptance of the Green Line as its borders and the Israeli commitment to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinians and their right to have their own state. The “two-state” solution is the only way forward.
The current Israeli government, however, reneges on this obligation and continues to occupy Palestine in contravention of Security Council Resolution 242[63] and three Advisory Opinions by the International Court of Justice[64]. The alternative to the “two-state solution” is the One-State Solution as delineated by Professor Virginia Tilley in her famous book by the same name[65]. However, such a state could not be called Israel and it could not be an Apartheid state[66]. It would have to be a unitary state or a confederation in which both Israelis and Palestinians would have the same rights and obligations. An Apartheid state would be contrary to the UN Charter, to the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the crime of Apartheid[67] and to numerous General Assembly and Security Council Resolutions.
Of course, as long as the Unites States continues to support Israel in its genocidal projects, it has become impossible for the international community to put an end to the general criminality. It is for the international community to take concrete action to counter the daily violations of international law and human rights law by Israel, which has degenerated into an outlaw entity that aggresses all of its neighbours. In a very real sense, the United States and Israel have morphed into hostis humani generis: Enemies of mankind and civilization.
In order to make us accept the atrocities being committed by the United States and Israel, we have been fed with fake news and fake history. The Palestinians, the Iranians, Hamas, Hezbollah have all been dehumanized and demonized in the old Roman tradition articulated by the Latin historian Tacitus in his book Agricola:Proprium humani ingenii est, odisse quem laeseris. It is proper to human nature to hate those whom we have injured or whom we intend to injure.
Personally, I do not like either Hamas or Hezbollah. I do not endorse but strongly criticize the current Iranian government. But I understand that the Palestinians, Lebanese and Iranians have been repeatedly aggressed, that they have suffered casualties in the hundreds of thousands, that they have a right to exist – no more nor less than the Israelis have a right to exist — and that they have an inalienable right to self-determination. The collective West has no right to tell them what kind of government they should have, nor should the collective West engage in regime change conspiracies or attempts to decapitate the governments of sovereign states. The villains here are Israel and the United States[68], with the complicity of many countries in the collective West.
Business as Usual
The reaction to the atrocities by the collective West has been either silence or empty rhetoric. No erga omnes defense of the right to life, of the right to self-determination, of the principle of state sovereignty. This raises the issue of complicity — or at the very least moral responsibility — by virtue of culpable inaction. Qui tacet consentire videtur. It is impossible to remain indifferent to genocide and crimes against humanity.
The reaction of international organizations has been disappointing. The International Criminal Court should have started a thorough investigation of the crimes under articles 5, 6, 7 and 8 of the Statute of Rome. The ICC is failing not only the Palestinian, Iranian and Lebanese peoples, it is failing the international community.
Meanwhile Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General, has called for solidarity with the United States and Israel[69]. This confirms what was said above, that NATO has morphed into a criminal organization. How can any UN member state endorse aggression, perfidy, a gross violation of the right to life of a hundred thousand Palestinians and thousands of Iranian civilians? Rutte himself should be the subject of an ICC investigation for complicity in genocide (article 6 of the Statute of Rome, article IIIe of the Genocide Convention).
States have failed to adopt appropriate countermeasures under articles 49 and 50 of the International Law Commission’s Draft Code on State Responsibility[70]. Most States have chosen to do nothing and adopt a “business as usual” approach. This corrodes the authority and credibility of international law.
As one who has devoted more than fifty years of his life to international law and human rights, I am appalled at the inaction of States. One is tempted to think that international law no longer exists, that barbarism and the law of the jungle has taken over. But no, we must all persevere and reaffirm human values and the importance of international law and international institutions. We cannot allow the destruction of the international rule of law by politicians who practice “might makes right” and who claim to be legibus solutus , unbound by any law, as the Roman emperors once claimed. The fact that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu act as if they were above international law does not mean that they are. What we are witnessing is a revolt against civilization and it is our responsibility to push back. The exceptionalist principle quod licet Jovi non licet bovi – what Jupiter is allowed to do is not permitted to the rest of us, the bovines – is irrational, contra bonos mores. No, we must reaffirm the continued validity of international law and demand accountability from all who breach its rules.
Thus, it is imperative that the United Nations General Assembly adopt a “Uniting for Peace” Resolution and assume its responsibilities for international peace and security, because the UN Security Council is currently blocked by the misuse of the veto power through the United States.
The UN General Assembly should impose a total arms embargo on Israel and the United States and urge UN member States to BDS both Israel and the US, to boycott, disinvest, sanction. Concretely said, countries should no longer purchase anything from the United States or Israel. No more purchases of F-16, F-35, Boeing, Lockheed/Martin, Raytheon, Carlyle, Caterpillar, General Motors. No more purchases of US Treasury Bonds. Complete divestment of US Treasury bonds and other US and Israeli stocks. Total cessation of sale of “rare earths” to the US and Israel. Indeed, as long as the international community continues to economically support the countries that are at war with international law and civilization, the crimes and atrocities will continue.
There are many precedents of complicity in “business as usual” crimes. Only weeks after the 2003 aggression by the US and the “coalition of the willing” against the people of Iraq, the G-8 rolled out the red carpet for the arch-criminals Tony Blair and George W. Bush in June 2003. Now in June 2026 Evian-les-Bains will be hosting Donald Trump at its new G-7 summit. Have we learned no lessons?
“Business as usual” is nothing but the mantra of criminals and their accomplices.
Conclusion
The track record of the collective West in the fields of compliance with international law and human rights is dismal and getting worse by the day. The artificial image of the United States and Israel as countries respectful of the rule of law is no longer sustainable. Peoples have understood that the collective West is on the wrong side of history.
The cultural colonization of the world by the United States and Europe is a phenomenon of the past. With the enormous advances in technology and the internet, other cultures have freed themselves from the American and European stranglehold and from their purported “values”, from the excessive commercialization and materialism. The American and European pretentions to be leaders in the fields of international law and human rights have collapsed.
In the light of the many wars that the US and Israel have unleashed on the world, it is time to call a spade a spade, a genocide a genocide and to demand accountability. The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court have formidable tasks ahead of them. As the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote calamitas virtutis occasio (De Providentia 4, 6) – a calamity offers all of us an opportunity to exercise courage and virtue. Let’s tackle the challenge. The Global Majority will soon replace the Western imperialist model. As Arundhati Roy wrote: “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
Alfred de Zayas is a law professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and served as a UN Independent Expert on International Order 2012-18. He is the author of twelve books including “Building a Just World Order” (2021) “Countering Mainstream Narratives” 2022, and “The Human Rights Industry” (Clarity Press, 2021).
