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)
(UCA News) — Stand at the edge of a paddy field in Odisha in March, and you will understand what climate change feels like from the ground.
The sun is already merciless by eight in the morning, pressing down on cracked earth that should still carry some winter moisture. The farmer who has worked this land his entire life squints at a sky that offers nothing.
The heat has arrived earlier than it used to and is sharper than it was, and it will not leave for months. A few hundred kilometers away, in a crowded Mumbai residential building, an elderly man fans himself throughout a night that refuses to cool, his heart straining against the heat the city has never recorded before.
These are not isolated stories. They are India’s new normal, and they carry a public health toll that is only beginning to be fully understood.
India is among the countries most exposed to climate-related health risks, and the reasons are structural as much as geographic.
A vast population — large numbers of whom work outdoors, live in informal settlements, or depend directly on land and water for survival — means that environmental stress translates quickly into human suffering.
When the temperature rises, it is the construction worker on an open site, the agricultural laborer bent over in a field, and the rickshaw puller navigating a concrete city who bear the first and heaviest blow.
Heat exhaustion and heatstroke are no longer occasional emergencies; they are seasonal realities in states like Rajasthan, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra, where summer temperatures now regularly breach 45 degrees Celsius.
The health consequences extend well beyond heat. Shifting rainfall patterns and warmer standing water have expanded the range and intensity of vector-borne diseases.
Dengue, once concentrated in specific urban pockets, now appears in districts that had little familiarity with it. Malaria persists stubbornly in regions where public health systems assumed it was retreating.
As flood cycles grow more unpredictable, waterborne diseases follow — cholera, typhoid, and leptospirosis spread through communities whose drainage and sanitation infrastructure were never designed for the volumes of water now arriving.
The 2023 floods in Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim were not simply weather events; they were public health crises that overwhelmed local hospitals and contaminated water sources for weeks.
Food security, which underpins everything else, is under quiet but serious pressure. India still carries one of the world’s highest burdens of child malnutrition, and climate disruption makes that burden harder to reduce. Erratic monsoons undermine staple crop yields. Coastal fishing communities along the shores of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Odisha are watching catches shrink as ocean temperatures rise and fish populations migrate or decline.
When nutrition falters, immunity weakens, and communities already living on the margins become more vulnerable to every other health threat the warming climate produces.
It is the tribal communities, the original inhabitants, and the rural poor who face the sharpest edge of all this. They contribute least to the emissions driving climate change, yet they live closest to the ecosystems being disrupted — forests, rivers, wetlands, and coasts whose stability their health and livelihoods depend on entirely.
When forests are cleared for mining or large infrastructure, when rivers are dammed without adequate consideration of downstream communities, the consequences land not in boardrooms but in bodies. Children go undernourished. Women walk further for water. Men seek work in cities that are themselves overheating.
Pope Francis captured this moral dimension precisely in Laudato Si’ when he wrote that the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor rise as one.
In India, that is not a metaphor. It is visible in the displacement of Indigenous families from forest land, in the saltwater seeping into the wells of Sundarbans villages as sea levels inch upward, and in the farmers of Vidarbha caught between debt and drought.
The encyclical’s concept of integral ecology — the insistence that environmental health and human health cannot be treated as separate concerns — resonates with particular force in a country where so many lives are woven directly into the fabric of the natural world.
Mental health, still insufficiently acknowledged in India’s public health conversation, adds another layer. Farmers who have lost multiple harvests carry a grief and anxiety that does not lift with the next season.
Communities repeatedly displaced by cyclones or floods lose not just property but the psychological ground of home and continuity. Young people in cities and villages alike speak of an unease about their futures that goes beyond ordinary worry.
Eco-anxiety is real, and in India, it is entangled with economic precarity in ways that make it especially difficult to absorb.
None of this is without possibility. India has shown, in solar energy expansion, in community watershed programs, and in mangrove restoration along vulnerable coastlines, that it can act with both ambition and local intelligence.
The question is whether climate action is understood and pursued as a health imperative, not merely an environmental or economic one.
Policies that reduce air pollution protect lungs. Investments in drought-resistant crops reduce malnutrition. Urban greening cools cities and improves mental well-being. These are not separate agendas. They are the same agenda.
India’s climate story is global in its causes and intensely local in its consequences. It is felt in the body of a child coughing through a haze-thickened night and in the hands of a farmer reading a sky that no longer speaks the same language.
The people least responsible for this crisis are absorbing its worst effects with the fewest resources to recover. Responding to that reality with the urgency it demands is not only a matter of smart policy. It is a matter of justice, and on that count, the world still has a great deal to answer for.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
Dr. Fr. John Singarayar
Dr. Fr. John Singarayar, SVD, is a member of the Society of the Divine Word, India Mumbai Province, and holds a doctorate in Anthropology. He is the author of seven books and a regular contributor to academic conferences and scholarly publications in the fields of sociology, anthropology, tribal studies, spirituality, and mission studies. He currently serves at the Community and Human Resources Development Centre in Tala, Maharashtra.
Monday, April 13, 2026
Superconductivity dies and then comes back to life
A strange new kind of superconductivity has been discovered in uranium ditelluride (UTe2). Here, electricity flows with zero resistance (albeit only under extremely strong magnetic fields that should normally destroy it). Uranium ditelluride is an unconventional spin-triplet superconductor with remarkable resilience to magnetic fields and potential applications in quantum computing.
Superconductors are materials that exhibit zero electrical resistance and expel magnetic fields when cooled below a certain critical temperature, allowing for highly efficient electrical conduction. Superconductors are crucial for quantum computing because they enable the creation of qubits, which are the fundamental units of quantum information.
Strangely, with the new finding, the superconductivity disappears at first and then dramatically reappears at even higher fields, earning it the nickname the “Lazarus phase.”
Lazarus of Bethany is a mythical figure of the Biblical New Testament, a figure whose life is restored by Jesus four days after his death, as told in the Gospel of John.
Superconductors are crucial due to their ability to conduct electricity without resistance, leading to significant advancements in energy efficiency, medical technology, and high-speed transportation.Medicine: Superconductors are used in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines, where they create strong magnetic fields necessary for high-resolution imaging of internal organs.
Energy Transmission: Superconducting cables can transmit electricity over long distances with minimal energy loss, significantly enhancing the efficiency of power grids.
Transportation: Maglev trains, which use superconducting magnets, can float above tracks, reducing friction and allowing for faster travel.
Quantum Computing: Superconductors are integral to the development of qubits, the basic units of quantum computers, enabling unprecedented computational power.
Particle Accelerators: Superconducting materials are used in particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider, allowing for the acceleration of particles to near-light speeds.
Coventionally, magnetic fields disrupt superconductors. Even relatively modest fields tend to weaken superconductivity, while stronger ones usually eliminate it entirely once a critical limit is reached.
UTe2 breaks this rule. In 2019, scientists discovered that it can remain superconducting in magnetic fields hundreds of times stronger than what typical materials can withstand. A Superconducting “Resurrection” at Extreme Fields
This strange behaviour quickly drew attention across the physics community. In UTe2, superconductivity disappears below 10 Tesla, which is already an extremely strong field, but unexpectedly returns at field strengths above 40 Tesla.
A Tesla (T) is the SI unit of magnetic flux density, representing the strength of a magnetic field, defined as one weber per square meter (a weber is a smaller unit of magnetic flux).
It transpires this phase depends strongly on the angle between the magnetic field and the material’s crystal structure. The measurements by the scientists showed that the superconducting region forms a toroidal, or doughnutlike, shape that surrounds a particular axis within the crystal.
The measurements revealed a three-dimensional superconducting halo that wraps around the hard b-axis of the crystal.
Experiments confirmed that superconductivity changes with the direction of the magnetic field. An experimental model showed how orientation plays a crucial role in whether superconductivity survives or returns in UTe2.
In terms of what is happening, the researchers propose that some phenomenon is causing electrons to pair into Cooper pairs.
Cooper pairs are pairs of electrons that are bound together at low temperatures, playing a crucial role in the phenomenon of superconductivity.
The next stage of the research revealed that Cooper pairs in this material behave as if they carry angular momentum, similar to a spinning object. When a magnetic field is applied, it interacts with this motion, creating a directional effect that produces the observed halo pattern. This insight helps explain how magnetism and superconductivity can coexist in materials with strong directional properties like UTe2 – a ‘metamagnetic transition’.
Subsequently scientists are now debating what causes this metamagnetic transition and how it influences superconductivity.
The research appears in the journal Science, titled “High-field superconducting halo in UTe 2.”
Saturday, April 11, 2026
Global forum highlights new strategies to balance soil health and carbon sequestration
Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University
A recent session of the Carbon and Soil Research International Forum brought together leading scientists to address a critical challenge in sustainable agriculture: how to improve soil health while maximizing carbon sequestration. The 22nd installment of the forum was held online on March 11, 2026, and is now available for public viewing via a recorded presentation on YouTube.
The session, titled “Reconciling soil health benefits with carbon sequestration value of organic carbonaceous amendments,” featured a keynote presentation by Nanthi Bolan, Professor of Soil Science at The University of Western Australia. The event was chaired by Professor Hailong Wang of Foshan University.
Organic carbon materials such as crop residues, compost, manure, and biosolids are increasingly used to enhance soil fertility and boost crop productivity. These materials also play a role in capturing carbon in soils, which is vital for mitigating climate change. However, as Professor Bolan explained, the relationship between soil health improvement and long-term carbon storage remains complex and not fully understood.
One key issue is that organic carbon inputs can decompose relatively quickly, releasing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. This process may offset their potential benefits as carbon sinks. The presentation explored how carbon distribution within these materials influences both plant growth and the stabilization of carbon in soils.
The forum highlighted emerging strategies to better align agricultural practices with climate goals. These include optimizing the composition and application of organic amendments to enhance both soil function and carbon retention.
By providing a quantitative perspective on these challenges, the session offers valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners seeking sustainable solutions in agriculture.
Biochar (e-ISSN: 2524-7867) is the first journal dedicated exclusively to biochar research, spanning agronomy, environmental science, and materials science. It publishes original studies on biochar production, processing, and applications—such as bioenergy, environmental remediation, soil enhancement, climate mitigation, water treatment, and sustainability analysis. The journal serves as an innovative and professional platform for global researchers to share advances in this rapidly expanding field.
A close-up of a laser-directed energy deposition (LDED) system fabricating the novel AI-designed ultra-high strength steel, which achieves a rare balance of strength and ductility, excellent corrosion resistance, and requires only 6 hours of single-step heat treatment at low cost.
Credit: By Yating Luo, Tao Zhu, Cunliang Pan, Xu Ben, Xudong An, Xiaoming Wang and Hongmei Zhu*
A machine-learning strategy has generated a new class of ultra-high strength and ductility steel for 3D printing that costs less, resists rust, and requires only a fraction of the usual processing time.
In International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, a new study demonstrates that integrating artificial intelligence with the fundamental physical and chemical properties of elements can rapidly identify optimal alloy recipes. The resulting metal achieves a rare balance of extreme strength and ductility, solving a persistent bottleneck in heavy manufacturing and aerospace engineering.
Currently, producing ultra-high strength and ductility steels through 3D printing requires heavy doses of expensive elements like cobalt, molybdenum, or high levels of nickel. Even with these premium ingredients, the printed parts must undergo complex, multi-step heat treatments in industrial furnaces to reach their final strength, and they often remain highly vulnerable to corrosion in harsh environments.
To bypass this trial-and-error chemistry, a research team from the University of South China and Purdue University turned to an "interpretable machine learning" model. Instead of treating the AI as a black box that simply guesses combinations, the team fed the algorithm 81 fundamental physicochemical features of various elements, such as their atomic radius, electron behavior, and how fast sound travels through them.
Predicting properties
The algorithm calculated that a specific blend of iron and chromium, mixed with precise, small amounts of cheaper elements like silicon, copper, and aluminum, would form the ideal internal structure. After 3D printing the metal Fe-15Cr-3.2Ni-0.8Mn-0.6Cu-0.56Si-0.4Al-0.16C (wt.%) using a laser-directed energy deposition technique, the researchers baked it in a single-step tempering process at 480°C for just six hours.
The physical testing matched the algorithm's predictions. The resulting steel withstood stresses of 1,713 MPa and stretched by 15.5% before breaking. This represents an approximately 30% increase in strength over the metal's raw, printed state, accompanied by a doubling of its ductility.
The team investigated the metal's internal architecture to understand the mechanics behind this performance. They found that the short heat treatment forced the metal to grow a dense network of nanoscale particles, including copper and nickel-aluminum.
When physical stress is applied to the metal, these tiny particles act as roadblocks that pin down structural defects and stop them from spreading, drastically increasing the force required to break the part. Simultaneously, microscopic pockets of a softer phase, known as austenite, act as shock absorbers by changing their crystalline shape to soak up energy, a phenomenon that prevents the steel from snapping under tension.
Rust resistance
The AI-designed recipe also solved the rust problem inherent to many high-strength alloys. In typical steels, the formation of carbides drains chromium from the surrounding metal, creating vulnerable, chromium-depleted zones where corrosion takes hold. The researchers found that the nanoscale copper particles in their new steel effectively expelled chromium during their formation, forcing it to remain evenly distributed throughout the surrounding matrix. In salt-water tests, the new alloy degraded at a rate of just 0.105 millimeters per year, significantly outperforming standard commercial stainless steels like AISI 420.
While the interpretable machine learning approach successfully cut costs and processing times, the researchers note that the methodology relies on datasets that are highly specific to certain manufacturing techniques. Because different 3D printing methods heat and cool metals at drastically different rates, data from one fabrication process is often incompatible with another.
In future work, researchers will need to re-screen these fundamental physical features when applying the AI to entirely new material classes. However, the study provides a clear blueprint for moving away from slow and empirical testing, offering a rapid pathway to design custom, high-performance components.
International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing (IJEM, IF: 21.3) is dedicated to publishing the best advanced manufacturing research with extreme dimensions to address both the fundamental scientific challenges and significant engineering needs.
Maintained #1 in Engineering, Manufacturing for consecutive years
Average time to First Decision after Peer Review: 34 days
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).
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