​'Civilized People Do Not Starve Children to Death': Sanders Rips US-Backed Israel's 68-Day Gaza Aid Blockade

"What we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities," the senator said, calling for an end to U.S. complicity in the humanitarian disaster.



Displaced Palestinians, including children, wait with empty pots to receive food distributed by humanitarian organizations at the Jabalia Refugee Camp in the northern Gaza Strip on May 7, 2025.
(Photo: Mahmoud Issa/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
May 08, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

"Today marks 68 days and counting since ANY humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza. For more than nine weeks, Israel has blocked all supplies: no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel."

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) not only highlighted those conditions in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday but also called out the fact that the worsening humanitarian crisis "gets very little discussion here in the nation's capital or in the halls of Congress," even though Israel has spent the past 19 months destroying Gaza with armed and diplomatic support from the United States.

"Hundreds of truckloads of lifesaving supplies are waiting to enter Gaza, sitting just across the border, but are denied entry by Israeli authorities," Sanders pointed out, echoing the U.S. nonprofit World Central Kitchen, which said Wednesday that it "no longer has the supplies to cook meals or bake bread," but "our trucks—loaded with food and supplies—are waiting in Egypt, Jordan, and Israel, ready to enter Gaza."

The senator took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Palestinian territory, and key members of his administration.

"There is no ambiguity here: Netanyahu's extremist government talks openly about using humanitarian aid as a weapon," Sanders declared. "Defense Minister Israel Katz said, 'Israel's policy is clear: No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers.'"

"The time is long overdue for us to end our support for Netanyahu's destruction of the Palestinian people."

Noting that Israel's actions run afoul of U.S. and international law, Sanders said: "Starving children to death as a weapon of war is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, the Foreign Assistance Act, and basic human decency. Civilized people do not starve children to death. What is going on in Gaza is a war crime, committed openly and in broad daylight, and continuing every single day."

Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the Israeli assault on Gaza has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians. According to local officials, at least 57 Palestinians have died from malnutrition and a lack of adequate medical care. Many more are struggling to find food and water, particularly since Israel ramped up its blockade on March 2.

"With Israel having cut off all aid, what we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities. This is methodical, it is intentional, it is the stated policy of the Netanyahu government," said Sanders. "Without fuel, there is no ability to pump fresh water, leaving people increasingly desperate, unable to find clean water to drink, or wash with, or cook properly. Disease is once again spreading in Gaza."

Families in Gaza "are now surviving on scarce canned goods," and "the starvation hits children hardest," the senator continued. "With no infant formula, and with malnourished mothers unable to breastfeed, many infants are also at severe risk of death."

"What is going on in Gaza today is a manmade nightmare," one that "will be a permanent stain on the world's collective conscience," he said. "History will never forget that we allowed this to happen and, for us here in the United States, that we, in fact, enabled this ongoing atrocity."



Sanders has moved to block some U.S. weapons sales under both the Biden and second Trump administrations, but his efforts have not garnered enough support in Congress to succeed. Still, people across the United States and around the world have condemned the Israeli assault on Gaza as genocide—and Israel faces a case on the subject at the International Court of Justice.

The senator spotlighted Israel's latest plan for Gaza, Operation Gideon's Chariots, which involves "conquering" and indefinitely occupying the territory, and ethnically cleansing the region of its Palestinian inhabitants, who would be force into the south.

"This would be a terrible tragedy, no matter where in the world it was happening or why it was happening—whatever the causes of it might be. But what makes this tragedy so much worse for us in America is that it is our government, the United States government, that is absolutely complicit in creating and sustaining this humanitarian disaster," he said.

"It didn't just happen," Sanders emphasized. "Last year alone, the United States provided $18 billion in military aid to Israel. This year, the Trump administration has approved $12 billion more in bombs and weapons."

For months, U.S. President Donald Trump "has offered blanket support for Netanyahu," the senator said. "More than that, he has repeatedly said that the United States will actually take over Gaza after the war, that the Palestinian people will be driven—forcibly expelled—from their homeland, and the United States will redevelop it into what Trump calls 'the Riviera of the Middle East,' a playground for billionaires."

Citing unnamed sources, Reutersreported Wednesday that "the United States and Israel have discussed the possibility of Washington leading a temporary post-war administration of Gaza," sparking global criticism and comparisons to the U.S. misadventures in Iraq in the early 2000s.



"This war has killed or injured more than 170,000 people in Gaza. It has cost American taxpayers well over $20 billion in the last year. And right now, as we speak, thousands of children are starving to death," Sanders detailed. "And the U.S. president is actively encouraging the ethnic cleansing of over 2 million people."

"Given that reality, one might think that there would be a vigorous discussion right here in the Senate: Do we really want to spend billions of taxpayer dollars starving children in Gaza?" the senator bellowed. "You tell me why spending billions of dollars to support Netanyahu's war and starving children in Gaza is a good idea. I'd love to hear it."

Sanders then made the case that the U.S. Senate isn't having that debate "because we have a corrupt campaign finance system" that allows organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to set the agenda in Washington, D.C. He pointed to AIPAC and its super political action committee spending over $100 million in the latest election cycle.

"And the fact is that, if you are a member of Congress and you vote against Netanyahu's war in Gaza, AIPAC is there to punish you with millions of dollars in advertisements to see that you're defeated," he said. "Sadly, I must confess, that this political corruption works. Many of my colleagues will privately express their horror at Netanyahu's war crimes, but will do or say very little publicly about it."

"The time is long overdue for us to end our support for Netanyahu's destruction of the Palestinian people. We must not put another nickel into Netanyahu's war machine," he concluded. "We must demand an immediate cease-fire, a surge in humanitarian aid, the release of the hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza—not for billionaires to enjoy their Riviera there, but rebuilding Gaza for the Palestinian people."

Let Them Die Alone, and Hungry

Osama Al-Raqab, 6, is one of tens of thousands of Gazan children slowly starving.
Screenshot from NBC

OPINION
Abby Zimet
May 06, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


"Drunk on impunity," Israel has grandiosely labeled its latest genocidal move "Operation Gideon's Chariots" wherein, moving from siege to seizure, it plans the bloody conquest, ethnic cleansing, and permanent recolonization of Gaza, using the rhetoric of holy war to justify unholy mass destruction - this, even as many of the Palestinian children who've somehow survived their savage 18 months of carnage now slowly starve to death. "We are complicit," says one angry, grieving doctor. "It is an abomination."

Having gotten away with so many atrocities while the international community looks away, Israel just unveiled the latest escalation of its illegal collective punishment of Gazans by finally declaring out loud, "We are occupying Gaza to stay." Unanimously approved by Netanyahu's far-right Security Cabinet, the new "conquering of Gaza" formalizes Israel's plan for the indefinite occupation, forced expulsion and incorporation into "sanitized" Israeli zones of an already long-besieged civilian population "for its own protection." The expansion of an onslaught that has left more than 185,000 Gazans dead, wounded, or missing and millions homeless, hungry, maimed and traumatized is being ludicrously framed as a final mission to dismantle Hamas and retrieve hostages, even though Israel repeatedly failed at each before breaking a ceasefire that would have accomplished both.

"Gideon’s Chariots will begin with great force and will not end until all its objectives are achieved," Israel thundered, again virtually ignoring the fact that permanent occupation, forced displacement and ethnic cleansing violate international law. "No more going in and out - this is a war for victory," said apartheid Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who urged Israelis embrace, not fear the word "occupation...A people that wants to live must occupy its land." But the name Gideon's Chariots, Merkavot Gideon, invoking the righteous Biblical warrior who led a chosen few to annihilate an ancient Arab people, "layers this symbolism with menace," blending the concepts of divine vengeance with state-sanctioned ethnic violence, the "mythic instruments of war (with) the Israeli Merkava tanks that have long razed homes and lives in Gaza and the West Bank."

Sicker, darker undercurrents reportedly surfaced during a Cabinet meeting rife with genocidal banter. After a minister leered that Gazans should "die with the Philistines," Gaza's ancient inhabitants, Netanyahu refuted the idea with, "No. We don’t want to die with them. We want them to die alone." Ominously, the proposal also calls for (now-banned) international aid groups to be replaced with private U.S. military contractors, aka mercenaries, distributing aid at Israeli-designated relief "hubs," which critics call "not an aid plan but an aid denial plan" that flagrantly violates international principles that prohibit an occupier from exploiting humanitarian needs to achieve military or political objectives. Gazan officials angrily rejected the idea as "perpetuation of a malicious policy of siege and starvation...The Occupation cannot be a humanitarian mediator (when) it is the source and instrument of the tragedy."

Any illusion of Israel abruptly becoming a merciful presence in Palestinian lives was shattered Tuesday when far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich proclaimed at a West Bank conference, “Gaza will be entirely destroyed." He added Gazan civilians "will start to leave in great numbers (to) third countries," with hopes the territory would be formally annexed "during the current government’s term." He did not mention such annexation or any acquisition of land by military force is forbidden as a founding principle of international law, including the UN charter. Citing a 2024 report by Amnesty International titled You Feel You Are Subhuman, Dalal Yassine writes that Gaza most bitterly represents the end of humanitarian law: "The past 19 months of genocide have not only demonstrated the double standard imposed on Palestinians in Gaza, but also that there is no standard at all."

And as it's been all along, the U.S. remains complicit. Israel will not act until after an upcoming trip by Trump, who's voiced no objections - his gold-plated hotel beckons - and as usual gets it all wrong, blaming Hamas for treating Gazans "badly." "People are starving, and we’re going to help them get food," he yammered. "Hamas is making it impossible (by) taking everything that’s brought in." This week, our complicity came into harsher, shocking focus when nine former Biden officials admitted its months-long claims of "working tirelessly" for a ceasefire - a phrase used by Biden, Harris, even AOC, and derided by skeptics as "not a thing" - were all a lie. No demands were made - a moral and political crime re-enforced by a 2024 memo finding "insufficient evidence" linking U.S. arms to rights violations or Israel to blocked aid. One critic: "The lack of concern about Palestinian lives is palpable."

Still, the killing goes on, with about half the dead women and children. Implausibly, Israeli forces grow ever more savage: Drones often fire on civil defense teams trying to retrieve the wounded under debris, soldiers just executed 15 Palestine Red Crescent workers, their hands and feet bound, before burying them and their ambulances in the sand; hundreds of doctors, aid workers and journalists have been killed. Last month, they included Ahmad Mansour, burned alive in a media tent, and Fatima Hassouna, a "self-made fighter" colleagues called "the Eye of Gaza," for whom the camera was a weapon to "preserve a voice, tell a story." She died with six siblings, just before her wedding, a day after it was announced a film featuring her, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, will screen at the Cannes Film Festival. "If I die, I want a resounding death," she wrote last year. "Fatima planned for joy," said a friend. "Despite the war, she insisted on dreaming."

With Israeli power left untethered, Arab nations largely silent and international rules of law ignored, what's left to protect Gazan lives are mere small gestures. Hundreds of Israelis attend silent vigils to hold images of dead Palestinian children; Artists Against Apartheid and other groups protested in D.C. bearing the names of the dead and installing 17,000 pairs of children's shoes as a searing memorial; Swedish Television announced an initiative to convert the late Pope Francis’s car into a mobile clinic for Gazan children, fulfilling his final wish; World Central Kitchen barely manages to keep open its mobile bakery, the last bakery in Gaza: "We are now near (the) limits of what is possible." Still, desperate hunger mounts. Most Gazans face "acute levels of food insecurity," with more and more children dying from "starvation-related complications," a now-common term that should not exist.

Aid officials say close to 300,000 children are on the brink of starvation; about a third of those under two suffer from "acute malnutrition," with the rate swiftly climbing; more than 3,500 under five face imminent death from starvation; at least 27 have died from malnutrition, and at least several more die each day, often newborns of mothers who cannot produce milk. To date, the Israeli onslaught has directly killed over 15,000 children; for every direct death, says The Lancet medical journal, there are up to four indirect deaths from hunger, disease, the collapse of small bodies' immunity and a country's once-flourishing healthcare system. If they can, sunken-cheeked children who've lost half their body weight scavenge in mountains of trash for anything to fill their stomachs alongside their frantic parents: "I don’t want my child to die hungry." One mother: "As people, we are almost dead."

The stories and images horrify: Stick-thin, Auschwitz-like limbs protrude, ribs jut from concave chests, eyes grow wide and glazed. Once vibrant, they lie in bed, skin on bone, too weak to walk, stand, turn, lift their head, eventually breathe. An emaciated six-year-old weighing half what he should writhes on a bed, pleading, "I want to leave." A four-month-old, six-pound girl died of malnutrition, blood acidity, liver and kidney failure after her hair and nails fell out. Of newborn twin girls, one died eight days later. A father's father's infant son Abdelaziz died hours after his severely malnourished mother gave birth to him; hospital staff hooked Abdelaziz, premature and gasping, to a ventilator; it stopped a few hours later when the hospital ran out of fuel, and he died "immediately." "I am losing my son before my eyes," says one mother. "In these beds, we are waiting for them to die one by one."

Each day, says Tareq Hailat of the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, up to ten sick children in Gaza need urgent medical evacuation, but, "It's just not happening." Each one, he stresses, has a story: "They aren't just a number." Among the handful his group managed to get out was 6-year-old Fadi al-Zant from Gaza City, who had cystic fibrosis; he was also starving. When his mother couldn't find food or medication, Fadi's weight dropped from 66 to 26 pounds and he became too weak to walk, he was miraculously evacuated to first Egypt, then New York. Once the media began following his story, Fadi became "the face of starvation in Gaza." But he was a rare, blessed exception. "We are breaking the bodies and minds of the children of Gaza," says Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO. "We are starving the children of Gaza. We are complicit. As a physician, I am angry. It is an abomination."

There are so many. Drop Site Newsposted video of the distraught mother of four-month-old Yousef al-Najjar as he lay curled on a hospital bed, small fists flailing, suffering from malnutrition and dehydration. He weighed just 3.3 pounds, one fourth of what he should have weighed. His young mother lamented: He has had spasms trying to breathe, his entire ribcage sticks out, she has never experienced this before, she doesn't know each morning if he's survived: "The woman you see before you is begging for money to feed her children." She held him in her arms, then repeatedly lofted him into the unlistening air, arms straight before her, up and down, up and down, almost weightless. "Why is this happening to us?" she cried. "I swear to God, it's wrong what is happening to us." On Monday, Yousef died from malnutrition, and Israel. May his memory be for a blessing.

Update: More horrors: "Absolute savagery."

Kurdish PKK group says 'historic' decisions made at congress but is silent on disbanding

Copyright AP Photo/Metin Yoksu, File

By Oman Al Yahyai with AP
Published on 09/05/2025 

The congress followed a February appeal by imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan for the group to dissolve and end its four-decade insurgency with Turkey.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has declared that "historic" decisions were made during its long-anticipated congress held earlier this week in northern Iraq, though the group has not confirmed whether it intends to disband or disarm as part of a new peace initiative with Turkey.

According to a statement carried by Firat News Agency, which is closely affiliated with the outlawed group, the congress was held across two locations in northern Iraq, Suleymaniyah and Duhok, between Monday and Wednesday.

The group said further details of the resolutions would be shared with the public shortly.

In February, PKK founder and imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan had called for the group to convene a congress to dissolve and lay down arms to bring an end to the decades-long conflict with Turkey.

Since the 1980s, the insurgency has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.

The PKK, designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States, the European Union and other Western nations, declared a ceasefire shortly after Öcalan’s appeal.

However, it stipulated that certain conditions must be met before any disarmament, including establishing a legal framework for peace negotiations.

Öcalan’s messages highlighting his "perspectives and proposals" were read during the congress, Firat News reported.

The Turkish broadcaster Habertürk also confirmed the congress locations, both known strongholds of the PKK's senior leadership.

Turkey's pro-Kurdish DEM Party, which is involved in the current peace initiative, said on Friday that a formal declaration from the PKK could be imminent.

Related

PKK militant group declares ceasefire after 40-year insurgency against Turkish state

PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan calls on banned Kurdish group to lay down arms and dissolve

"We, too, are awaiting this historic step, this historic decision," said party spokesperson Aysegül Doğan.

The latest peace overture was launched in October by Turkish far-right politician Devlet Bahçeli, who proposed that Öcalan could be considered for parole if the PKK renounced armed struggle and formally dissolved.

Earlier efforts at reconciliation, including a major initiative in 2015, have ultimately collapsed.

The conflict between Turkey and the PKK has led to tens of thousands of deaths since it began in 1984.

Its initial aim was to create a separate Kurdish state, but later changed to demands for greater autonomy.

 

Iraq losing $1mn daily due to dust storms

Iraq's economy is losing $1mn daily due to dust storms with each year getting worse. / CC: Social media

By bnm Gulf bureau May 6, 2025

Iraq is losing approximately $1mn per day due to dust and sandstorms that strike the country, according to a report by the Iraq Green Observatory, an environmental affairs monitoring body on May 6.

Annual sand and dust storms are wreaking havoc on regional countries as climate change continues to cause some of the highest temperatures worldwide in Iraq, Kuwait and Iran. Regional countries have held several events to try and slowdown the emergence of suffocating storms but have so far failed to turn the tide. 

"The storms hitting Iraq cause financial losses estimated at $1mn daily, due to damages inflicted on various sectors," the observatory stated in its report.

The health sector is the most affected, according to the report, due to expenses incurred by the ministry for treating respiratory patients, in addition to patients who prefer staying at home and purchasing breathing apparatus rather than going to health centres and hospitals.

Other damages caused by these storms include increased car accidents on external roads due to a lack of visibility, as well as significant damage to crops.

The report also highlighted additional harm to animals and other living organisms, along with the consumption of large amounts of water for cleaning homes, government offices, and vehicles, which may result in partial blockages of sewage networks due to accumulated waste and mud.

The observatory called on authorities to "expedite the solution to this problem through focusing on afforestation and establishing the planned green belt in several provinces, especially border provinces."

This year is expected to top record temperatures in the Persian Gulf region, according to several regional weather experts, as the effects of climate change continue to put strain on the regional weather patterns.

The Iraqi report comes out as neighbouring Iran has announced that schools, government offices and universities will be shut in several nearby regions, local Sharq newspaper reported on May 6.

The province of Kermanshah has seen the most extensive shutdown, with its governor-general announcing the closure of all offices, banks, schools, and universities for the day due to the critical air conditions in the provincial capital and its border cities.

Khuzestan and Bushehr provinces have also opted for remote operation of schools and universities due to unfavourable atmospheric conditions reported in the morning and afternoon in Khuzestan. Offices and banks in both provinces are continuing their activities as usual.

Earlier in August 2024, regional weather stations reported record temperatures, with Dayrestan in Iran reporting a heat index record of 82.2°C (180°F) and a dew point of 36.1°C (97°F), indicating an international record.

The heat has caused a series of electricity failures across the region as people prepare to make the most significant movement for the annual Arba'een pilgrimage in Iraq.

Iraq’s Arba’een festival, which brings about one of the largest religious gatherings in the world – and is sometimes dubbed the biggest movement of men, women and children on the planet – is stated to begin after Hajj this year and in the extreme heat zone.

 

China Looks To Tighten Its Grip On This Key Middle Eastern Oil Hub

By Simon Watkins - May 06, 2025

• China’s Zhenhua Oil signed a long-term LNG deal with UAE’s ADNOC.
• 
  
• The UAE’s location and infrastructure make it a key energy and logistics hub, vital to both Chinese and U.S. strategic interests.
• 
  
• Despite past cooperation, recent UAE-China military and energy ties have complicated Washington’s relationship with Abu Dhabi.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) holds much greater geopolitical significance to both China and the U.S. than might be inferred from either its size or its current crude oil production of just under 3 million barrels per day (bpd). This is why any major new deals signed with it by either side are so thoroughly scrutinised by the other, and why both continue to leverage whatever economic means they can to attempt to increase their influence across the collection of emirates. The very recent five-year sales and purchase agreement signed between China’s state-owned oil and gas company Zhenhua Oil and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) for around 800,000 metric tonnes a year of liquefied natural gas (LNG) starting in 2026 is the latest deal to catch the U.S.’s attention, a senior Washington-based legal source who works closely with the Office of Foreign Assets Control told OilPrice.com last week. “Chinese LNG deals in the Middle East are always of interest to us, and so is whatever Zhenhua Oil is up to in the region,” he said.

It is the UAE’s geographical position next to Saudi Arabia and Oman with coastlines in both the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman that is one reason for its oversized geopolitical importance. This makes it an ideal energy hub between the West and the East, supported further by its plethora of ports and storage facilities spread across the seven constituent emirates of Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm Al Quwain. Fujairah is particularly well-positioned to offer alternative oil transit options that might come from supply disruptions from Iran and its regional proxies, especially the Houthis. This is due to its location both outside the Persian Gulf and a healthy 160 kilometres from the politically ultra-sensitive Strait of Hormuz, through which around 30% of the world’s oil has historically transited. This is a key reason why China made the UAE a focus of the Middle Eastern section of its multi-generational power-grab project, the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI), back when it was launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping. Through its ‘Iran-China 25-Year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement’, first revealed anywhere in the world in my 3 September 2019 article on the subject and as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order, Beijing exercises enormous influence over what happens in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz and wants to keep it that way. Through other similar deals in the region, China also has a hold over the Bab al-Mandab Strait, through which crude oil is shipped upwards through the Red Sea towards the Suez Canal before moving into the Mediterranean and then westwards.

In energy terms, UAE also offers rare LNG capabilities in the region, with its Das Island liquefaction and export terminal and the ongoing expansion of its LNG capacity through the Ruwais LNG project. In the U.S.’s eyes, China’s recent history in the LNG sector is most notably linked to its almost supernaturally prescient flurry of deal-making in the 12 months that preceded Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. In that case, Beijing’s attention was focused on Qatar, as analysed in full in my latest book. After that, LNG became the de facto emergency energy supply of the world, as it does not require the costly and time-consuming infrastructure build-out needed to move gas or oil through pipelines and can simply be bought fast in the spot market and shipped quickly to wherever it is needed. Following a long period of frank discussions between the team of then-U.S. President Joe Biden and Qatar’s leadership, China found the easy relationship that it had enjoyed with Doha in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine became more difficult. Nonetheless, Washington knows that in the event of another similar scenario – a larger country looking to ‘repatriate’ a smaller breakaway state, such as Taiwan – LNG will again be the go-to form of emergency energy.

The presence of Zhenhua Oil in the deal -- its first long-term LNG supply contract -- also does not sit well with the U.S. Established in 2003, it is the oil exploration and production subsidiary of Chinese state-owned defence contractor Norinco and is active across several geopolitically ultra-sensitive countries including Myanmar, Egypt, and Iraq. It is apposite to note in this regard that oil and gas developments in a foreign country legally allow the companies undertaking those investments to safeguard them by whatever means they deem necessary, including by the stationing of tens, hundreds, or thousands of heavily-armed security personnel around the sites. Indeed, it was Zhenhua that on 2 January 2021 made a multi-billion-dollar deal with Iraq’s Federal Government in Baghdad to prepay for four million barrels every month for five years to be delivered to China by Iraq’s State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO). This was exactly the same strategy that Russia used to take over Iraq’s oil industry in its northern semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in 2017, as also detailed in my latest book. So extraordinarily obviously dangerous to U.S. interests in the Middle East and elsewhere was this deal seen by Washington at the time that it eventually succeeded in forcing the Iraqis to suspend the arrangement.

Underlying all of this is that Washington’s recent history with the UAE has been chequered to say the least. In Donald Trump’s first term as U.S. president, it had played an instrumental part in his vision for a new relationship architecture between the U.S. and the Middle East. This was to have been centred on a series of relationship normalisation deals signed between the Arab countries and Israel, with the U.S. as the key broker, and the UAE became the first major Arab state to sign such an agreement on 13 August 2020. The emirate was also to have played a key role in securing India as the regional counterpoint to China’s increasing dominance in the Asia Pacific region. Washington believed that a then-recent clash between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley might mark a new push back strategy from India against China’s policy of seeking to increase its economic and military alliances through the BRI. The U.S. believed that this military assertiveness might also be echoed in India’s economic desire to finally make substantive progress on its ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy as an alternative to the BRI programme. Additionally propitious for Washington in this regard was that India’s rapid economic development was expected to drive a huge expansion in its demand for oil and gas. Indeed, at the time, the International Energy Agency predicted that India would make up the biggest share of energy demand growth at 25% over the next two decades. Peculiarly to many perhaps, the UA.E. had a uniquely close relationship with India in the field of energy, as also detailed in my latest book.

That said, this positive-looking relationship between the U.S. and the UAE began to unravel after Trump left office. In the Christmas period of 2021, U.S. intelligence sources identified that China had been building a secret military facility in and around the big UAE port of Khalifa. Based on classified satellite imagery and human intelligence data, U.S. officials stated that China had been working for several months “to establish a military foothold in the UAE.” Just after Russia invaded Ukraine, the UAE’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan declined repeated requests from Washington to take a telephone call from then-President Joe Biden who wanted to ask the UAE for help in bringing energy prices down to help ease spiralling inflation in the West. And early February 2024 saw the UAE inform the U.S. that it would no longer allow its warplanes and drones based at the Al Dhafra air base to carry out strikes in Yemen and Iraq without notifying Emirati officials ahead of time. This prompted Washington to move its key fighting air assets to nearby Qatar.

However, as it stands, it is extremely difficult to imagine that Sheikh al Nahyan would decline a telephone call from Donald Trump. Moreover, the U.S. still has a presence on the ground in the UAE that it can leverage, most recently in the form of a strategic partnership agreed between ExxonMobil and ADNOC to establish world’s largest low-carbon hydrogen facility. Additionally, Washington believes that further deals could be available to it in the UAE’s US$13 billion expansion programme of its gas operations over the next five years. “This is linked to a big push to boost its LNG capacity, and they’ve asked India to invest in a big new plant [in Ruwais] connected to this, so we might be able to work something there as well,” the Washington source concluded.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

 

Lakenheath Blockade Breaks the Silence on US Nukes Returning to Britain

Leave a Commenton Lakenheath Blockade Breaks the Silence on US Nukes Returning to Britain

“Lakenheath, in the heart of the Suffolk countryside, has the biggest presence of US military forces in Britain – exposing its less than honest claim to be an RAF base.”

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) Vice Chair Carol Turner reports on a successful blockade of Lakenheath last Saturday.

Despite government silence, news that US nuclear weapons are returning to Britain is at last beginning to get through. CND members from across the country gathered at the main gate of Lakenheath airbase to join a blockade which marked the end of a successful two-week peace camp, organised by the Lakenheath Alliance for Peace (LAP) coalition.

Lakenheath, in the heart of the Suffolk countryside, has the biggest presence of US military forces in Britain – exposing its less than honest claim to be an RAF base. Lakenheath hosts the US Airforce 48th Fighter Wing, tasked with providing ‘worldwide responsive combat airpower and support’ which is ‘capable of dominating any adversary’.

Palestinians are among the so-called adversaries the US forces based there are currently helping to ‘dominate’. F35 bombers fly from Lakenheath, in support of Israel’s attacks on the Occupied territories.

LAP activities during the April peace camp included a War Crimes and Genocide Day highlighting the complicity of the US, UK, and NATO in Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza. Past attacks from Lakenheath include Libya in 1986 and combat missions against Afghanistan from 2001 and Iraq in 2023. Other peace camp activity days included an international conference attended by guests from across Europe and beyond, and a Greenham Women day.

Around 250 people took part in the blockade on Saturday 26 April, including two CND coaches from London. An impressive list of banners. I recall seeing them from Wales, York, Plymouth, Quakers, London Peace Pagoda – including nearby Norwich and Cambridge.

Fine weather and a carnival atmosphere notwithstanding, there were seven arrests from among those who chose not to heed the police call to disperse at the end of the afternoon.

CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said nuclear weapons don’t make us safer, they make us a target. She expressed solidarity with those arrested after the successful three-hour shut down of the main entrance to the base. “Rather than arresting people for peacefully protesting the return of US nuclear weapons to Britain,” Sophie said, “the clear violations of international law facilitated by the British government should be investigated.“

Visit CND for more information on US nuclear weapons coming to Britain and what you can do.

Lakenheath Alliance for Peace is a coalition of local, national, and international groups dedicated to preventing the return of US nuclear weapons to Lakenheath. LAP holds monthly vigils at the base.

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Widespread hearing problems among newly arrived in Sweden

University of Gothenburg

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Nina Pauli, Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg.

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Credit: Photo: University of Gothenburg

Among newly arrived immigrants studying Swedish, 17 percent reported problems hearing conversations. More than half had some form of established hearing problem, according to a study at the University of Gothenburg.

Language acquisition is one of the many challenges in the process of settling in a new country, and hearing is a key factor in language acquisition. The aim of the study was to investigate the prevalence of hearing problems among newly arrived immigrants in comparison to the general population.

The study encompassed 506 adults attending Swedish language classes. The majority were from Asia. The three most common countries of origin were Syria, Somalia, and Iraq. The average age was 38 years and three out of four were female.

Extensive problems – few technical aids

Problems hearing conversations were reported by 17 percent of participants. Among those aged 45–64, this rose to 26 percent. As a whole, more than half of the group had some form of hearing loss, as determined by audiometric screening, a method for seeing which sound frequencies a person can and cannot hear.

These hearing problems could also be linked to generally poorer health, including asthma, allergies, and high blood pressure. Among those with normal hearing, 80 percent reported good or very good general health, as opposed to 46 percent in the group with hearing problems.

Perceived hearing problems were 60 percent more common among immigrants – and twice as common among immigrants aged 45 and over – when compared to the general population in Sweden. Some 2 percent of the immigrant study group said that they used hearing aids.

Crucial for language and integration

The researchers note that the prevalence of hearing loss varies widely around the world and is up to four times more common in low- and middle-income countries compared to high-income countries.

The lead author of the study, Nina Pauli, is an associate professor at the University of Gothenburg and a senior physician at Sahlgrenska University Hospital specialized in ear, nose, and throat medicine.

"Even with normal hearing, learning a new language is a major challenge. Speech perception may be reduced, with greater sensitivity to background noise when listening to the new language. As a result, immigrants should be offered audiometric screening to detect hearing problems and better facilitate language acquisition and social integration," she says.

The study is published in the journal Laryngoscope Investigative Otolaryngology.

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Journal

Laryngoscope Investigative Otolaryngology

DOI

10.1002/lio2.70141 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Hearing Problems Common in Immigrants: Association With Self-Rated Health

Affirming the Spirit of Bandung Today

The world might seem to be on the cusp of a new era, but the Global South still has to awaken from the nightmare of the last 500 years.

By Walden Bello, Shalmali Guttal

May 7, 2025

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus

The Bandung Conference in April 1955 has achieved the status of a mythical moment in the history of the Global South. There have been many accounts that have highlighted its downsides—among them, the underrepresentation of leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa and the absence of anyone from Latin America, the way Cold War geopolitical rivalries found their way into the meeting, its legitimization of the nation-state as the principal unit of interaction among the peoples of the post-colonial world to the detriment of other avenues of expressing and harnessing solidarity, and the disappointing aftermath exemplified by the India-China frontier war in the Himalayas in 1962.

Despite these undoubtedly important though arguably revisionist assertions, the “Bandung Moment” has achieved mythical status since, while its expression in the conference proceedings may have been less than perfect, the spirit of post-colonial unity among the rising peoples of the Global South pervaded the conference. Moreover, this spirit of Bandung has been a constant spur to many political actors to reproduce it in its imagined pristine form, leading to dissatisfaction with successive manifestations of Third World solidarity. To celebrate the spirit of Bandung is not simply to mark 70 years since the Asia-Africa Conference, but to affirm what being faithful to its principles and ideals means today.

The Bandung document was primarily an anti-colonial document, and it is heartening to note that so many governments and peoples in the Global South have rallied behind the people of Palestine as they fight genocide and settler-colonialism in Gaza and the West Bank. The role of South Africa in lodging and pursuing the charge of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice, with the formal support of 31 other governments, is exemplary in this regard.

Bandung and Vietnam

April 2025 , the seventieth anniversary of Bandung, is also the fiftieth anniversary of the reunification of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The celebrations over the last few days in Ho Chi Minh City brought back images of that decisive defeat of the American empire—the iconic photos of a tank of the People’s Army smashing through the gate of the presidential palace in Saigon and the frenzied evacuation by helicopter of collaborators from the rooftop of the U.S. embassy. In retrospect, the defeat in Vietnam was the decisive blow dealt to American arms in the last century, one from which it never really recovered. True, the empire appeared to have a second wind in 2001 and 2003, with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively, but that illusion was shattered with the panicked, shameful exit of the United States and its Afghan subordinates from Kabul in 2021, the images of which evoked the memories of the debacle in Saigon decades earlier.

The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were the dramatic bookends of the military debacle of the empire, which had massive repercussions both globally and in the imperial heartland. Bandung underlined as key principles “Respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations” and “Non-intervention or non-interference into the internal affairs of another country.” It took determined resistance from the peoples of Vietnam, the Middle East, and other parts of the world to force the United States and its allies to learn the consequences of violating these principles, but it was at the cost of millions of lives in the Global South. And it is by no means certain that the era of aggressive western interventionism has come to an end.

Ascent and Counterrevolution

The economic dimension of the struggle between the Global South and the Global North since Bandung might have been less dramatic, but it was no less consequential. And it was equally tortuous. Bandung was followed by the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade in 1961, the formation of the Group of 77, and the establishment of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). This upward arc in the struggle of the Global South for structural change in the global economy climaxed with the call for the New International Economic Order (NIEO) in 1974.

Then the counterrevolution began. Taking advantage of the Third World debt crisis in the early 1980s, structural adjustment was foisted on the Global South via the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, United Nations agencies like the UN Center for Transnational Corporations were either abolished or defanged, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) supplanted the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and sidelined UNCTAD. The “jewel in the crown of multilateralism,” the WTO was meant to discipline the Global South not only with trade rules benefiting the Global North but also with anti-development regimes in intellectual property rights, investment, competition, and government procurement.

Instead of the promised “development decades” heralded by the rhetoric of the United Nations, Africa and Latin America experienced lost decades in the 1980s and 1990s, and in 1997, a massive regional financial crisis instigated by Western speculative capital and austerity programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund ended the “Asian Economic Miracle.”

Although most governments submitted to IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs, some, like Argentina, Venezuela, and Thailand resisted successfully, backed by their citizens. But the main area of economic war between North and South was the WTO. A partnership between southern governments and international civil society frustrated the adoption of the so-called Seattle Round during the Third Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Seattle. Then during the Fifth Ministerial Conference in Cancun in 2003, developing country governments staged a dramatic walk out from which the WTO never recovered; indeed, it lost its usefulness as the North’s principal agency of global trade and economic liberalization.

Rise of China and the BRICS

It was the sense of common interest and working together to oppose northern initiatives at the WTO that formed the basis for the formation of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), which gradually emerged as an alternative pole to the U.S.-dominated multilateral system in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

The anchor of the BRICS was China. A country that had beaten imperialism over five decades of struggle in the first half of the twentieth century, the People’s Republic confidently entered into a devil’s bargain with the West: in return for offering cheap labor, it sought massive foreign investment and, most important, advanced technology. Western capital, seeking super profits by exploiting Chinese labor, agreed to the deal, but it was China that got the better end of the bargain, embarking on a crash industrialization process that made it the number one economy in the globe as of today (depending of course on which metric one uses). The Chinese ascent had major implications for the Global South. China not only provided massive resources for development, becoming, as one analyst put it, the “world’s largest development bank.” By reducing dependence on the Western-dominated financial agencies and Western creditors, it also provided policy space for Southern actors to make strategic choices.

The obverse of China’s super industrialization was deindustrialization in the United States and Europe, and coupled with the global financial crisis of 2008, this led to a deep crisis of U.S. hegemony, sparking the recent momentous developments, like Trump’s trade war against friends and foes alike, his attacks on traditional U.S. allies that he accused of taking advantage of the United States, his abandonment of the WTO and, indeed, of the whole U.S.-dominated multilateral system, and his ongoing retrenchment and refocusing of U.S. economic and military assets in the Western hemisphere.

All these developments have contributed to the current fluid moment, where the balance in the struggle between the North and South is tipping towards the latter.

Rhetoric and Reality in the Global South Today

But living up to and promoting the spirit of Bandung involves more than tipping the geopolitical and geoeconomic balance towards the Global South. The very first principle of the Bandung Declaration urged “Respect for fundamental human rights and for the purposes and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” Nehru, Nasser, and Zhou En Lai played stellar roles in Bandung, but can it be said that the governments they represented have remained faithful to this principle? India today is ruled by a Hindu nationalist government that considers Muslims to be second-class citizens, the military regime in Egypt has engaged in egregious violations of human rights, and Beijing is carrying out the forcible cultural assimilation of the Uygurs. It is difficult to see how such acts by these governments and others that initiated the historic conference, like Burma where a military junta is engaged in genocide, and Sri Lanka with decades of a violent civil war, can be seen as consistent with this principle.

Indeed, most states of the Global South are dominated by elites that, whether via authoritarian or liberal democratic regimes, keep their people down. The levels of poverty and inequality are shocking. The gini coefficient for Brazil is 0.53, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world. The rate for China, 0.47, also reflects tremendous inequality, despite remarkable successes in poverty reduction. In South Africa, the gini coefficient is an astounding 0.63, and 55.5 percent of the people live under the poverty line. In India, incomes have been polarizing over the past three decades with a significant increase in bilionaires and other “high net worth” Individuals.

The vast masses of people throughout the Global South, including indigenous communities, workers, peasants, fisherfolk, nomadic communities, and women are economically disenfranchised, and in liberal democracies, such as the Philippines, India, Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa, and Kenya, their participation in democracy is often limited to casting votes in periodic, often meaningless, electoral exercises. South-South investment and cooperation models such as the Belt and Road Initiative and free trade agreements frequently entail the capture of land, forests, water and marine areas, and extraction of natural wealth for the purposes of national development. Local populations—many of whom are indigenous—are disposessed of their livelihoods, territories, and ancestral domains with scant legal recourse and access to justice, invoking the specter of home grown colonialism and counterrevolutions.

Bandung, as noted earlier, institutionalized the nation-state as the principal vehicle for cross-border relationships among countries. Had global movements like the Pan-African movement, the women’s movement, the labor movement, and the peasant movement been represented at the 1955 conference, the cross-border solidarities institutionalized in the post-Bandung world could perhaps have counteracted and mitigated, via lateral pressure, elite control of national governments. Those advocating for the self-determination of peoples, and for the redistribution of resources, opportunities and wealth within national boundaries, would perhaps not have been demonized and persecuted as subversives and threats to national interests.

During this current moment of global transition, as the old Western-dominated multilateral system falls into irreversible decay, the new multipolar word will need new multilateral institutions. The challenge, especially for the big powers of the Global South, is not to create a replica of the old Western-dominated system, where the dominant powers merely used the UN, WTO, and Bretton Woods institutions to indirectly impose their will and preferences on the vast majority of countries. Will the BRICS or any other alternative multilateral system be able to avoid replicating the old order of power and hierarchy? To be honest, the current political-economic regimes in the most powerful countries in the Global South do not inspire confidence.

Bandung and the Continuing Specter of Capitalism

At the time of the Bandung Conference, the political economy of the globe was more diverse. There was the communist bloc headed by the Soviet Union. There was China, with its push to move from national democracy to socialism. There were the neutralist states like India that were seeking a third way between communism and capitalism. With decades of neoliberal transformation of both the Global North and the Global South, that diversity has vanished. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to a new, equitable global order is the fact that all countries remain embedded in a system of global capitalism, where the pursuit of profits remains the engine of economic expansion, both creating great inequalities and posing a threat to the planet. The dynamic centers of global capitalism may have moved, over the last 500 years, from the Mediterranean to Holland to Britain to the United States and now to the Asia Pacific, but capitalism continues to both penetrate the farthest reaches of the globe and deepen its entrenchment in areas it has subjugated. Capitalism continually melts all that is solid into thin air, to use an image from a famous manifesto, creating inequalities both within and among societies, and exacerbating, indeed threatening to render terminal, the relationship between the planet and the human community.

Can we fulfill the aspirations of Bandung without bringing forth a post-capitalist system of economic, social, and political relations? A system where people in all their diversity and strengths can participate and benefit equally, free from the violence of bigotry, racism, patriarchy, and authoritarianism, and from the slavery to endless growth that is destroying the planet? That is the question, or rather that is the challenge, and the “unfinished business” of Bandung. The 10 principles that form the basis of the Bandung spirit are reflected in international human rights law but have been cynically manipulated to serve particular geopolitical, geoeconomic, racialized, and gendered interests. Being faithful to the spirit of Bandung in our era therefore, requires us to go beyond the limits of Bandung. The Bandung Spirit continues to signify ideals of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, peace, justice, self-determination, and solidarity—ideals that were shaped by the peoples of Asia and Africa at the forefront of struggles for liberation from colonialism and resistance to imperialism, who gave their lives for liberty. Despite the achievement of independence from colonial occupation—with significant exceptions like Palestine, West Papua, and Kanaky—struggles of rural and urban working classes for freedom from capitalist exploitation and extractivism, and from fascist alliances between capital and authoritarian states continue.

“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” declares a character in a famous novel. The world might seem to be on the cusp of a new era, with its promise of a new global order, but the Global South still has to awaken from the nightmare of the last 500 years. It is not coincidental that the birth of capitalism also saw the beginning of the colonial subjugation of the Global South. Only with the coming of a post-capitalist global order will the nightmare truly end.



Walden Bello
Walden Bello is currently the International Adjunct Professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton and Co-Chairperson of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South. He is the author or co-author of 25 books, including Counterrevolution: The Global Rise of the Far Right (Nova Scotia: Fernwood, 2019), Paper Dragons: China and the Next Crash (London: Bloomsbury/Zed, 2019), Food Wars (London: Verso, 2009) and Capitalism’s Last Stand? (London: Zed, 2013).