Pope Leo rejects Trump invitation to join Gaza ‘Board of Peace’
The Vatican flatly rejected a U.S. invitation to join the Trump-led “Board of Peace” for Gaza. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem previously described the project as “a colonialist operation” focused on “others deciding for the Palestinians.”
Mondoweiss, By Jeff Wright February 20, 2026
Pope Leo XIV, the U.S.-born Pontiff, has formally declined U.S. President Trump’s invitation for the Vatican to join his so-called Peace Board for Gaza.
According to Trump, the board—which he will head—will oversee Gaza’s governance and reconstruction. Trump has said that the board may later address other global conflicts under his leadership.
But in delivering the Pope’s firm “no,” Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, insisted that “at the international level it should above all be the U.N. that manages these crisis situations,” not a U.S.-led board.
Responding to the Pope’s decision, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the decision “deeply unfortunate.” In spite of the fact that not a single Palestinian has been invited to serve on the board, Leavitt said, “I don’t think that peace should be partisan or political or controversial.”
Earlier this month, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa was asked what he thought of Trump’s board. He said, “I think it is a colonialist operation: others deciding for the Palestinians.” Noting that Trump has said that permanent membership on the board carries a $1 billion price tag, Pizzaballa said, “I’ve never had a billion, but above all this is not the Church’s task: It is the sacraments, the dignity of the person.”
Asked by Mondoweiss to comment, Rifat Kassis, General Coordinator of Kairos Palestine—the broadest ecumenical movement of Palestinian Christians—echoed Pizzaballa’s charge. Kassis said, “The Pope’s rejection of the proposed council signals a clear principle: neither global powers nor global foreign institutions can claim to build peace while silencing the Palestinians whose land and future are at stake.”………………………………………………………………………………………….
As Trump prepared to host the Peace Board’s inaugural meeting in D.C. this week, Priests Against Genocide USA—an international network that includes 2,200 priests from 58 countries, along with 22 bishops and archbishops and two cardinals—penned an open letter to Paul Coakley, Catholic Archbishop of Oklahoma City, who is serving as the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Citing the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, the network’s Steering Committee writes, “We humbly appeal to the Catholic leadership in the United State to speak with moral clarity and to bear courageous witness to peace and justice.”
The letter continues, “[T]he convening of President Trump’s so-called ‘Board of Peace’… underscores the urgent need for our Church’s prophetic witness.” They ask Archbishop Coakley “to help form the conscience of our nation regarding this so-called Board of Peace and to inspire all people of goodwill to become instruments of authentic peace. The Gospels teach that peace is the fruit of truth and justice. Yet any claim to peace becomes hollow when Palestinian voices are excluded from decision-making, when systemic injustice is normalized, and when fundamental rights of the oppressed are subordinated to profit-driven interests.” https://mondoweiss.net/2026/02/pope-leo-rejects-trump-invitation-to-join-gaza-board-of-peace/
Selective context: Why Isaac Herzog’s visit deepens Australia’s moral failure
It would be hard to imagine a more divisive guest in this country. The Jewish Council of Australia has expressed ‘outrage that the Albanese Government would fuel the flames of division by inviting Herzog to visit Australia, warning that his trip is completely inappropriate and offensive and will rightly spark mass protest’. Herzog, the Council said, ‘has played an active role in the ongoing destruction of Gaza, including the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the displacement of millions’.
By Sue Wareham | 9 February 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/selective-context-why-isaac-herzogs-visit-deepens-australias-moral-failure,20660
Calls to ‘consider the context’ of President Herzog’s visit obscure Israel’s ban on dozens of NGOs in Gaza and the West Bank, writes Dr Sue Wareham.
AHEAD OF TODAY’S VISIT to Australia by Israeli President Isaac Herzog and the anticipated large protests against it, Foreign Minister Penny Wong asked us to ‘consider the context’ of the visit.
Part of that context is the horrific massacre of 15 Jewish Australians at Bondi in December and the deep sense of grief felt throughout Jewish communities and beyond.
However, the context also includes the destruction by Israel of practically every aspect of civilian society in Gaza, with over ten per cent of the population directly killed or injured since October 2023 and barely a soul alive who has not been traumatised in multiple ways, including bereavement, displacement, and deprivation of food, clean water, sanitation, shelter and other essentials.
Herzog is not an innocent bystander, as Israel’s breaches of international law in Gaza and the West Bank have become so commonplace as to be almost normalised. In September 2025, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory accused him of inciting genocide, citing his statement that “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible”, made soon after Hamas’ brutal attacks of 7 October 2023. The entire Palestinian population has been punished ever since.
That collective punishment has deeply affected very many Palestinian Australians, as they grieve the loss of loved ones in Gaza, and have watched helplessly as remaining loved ones have faced deprivation, multiple displacements and a dire humanitarian situation.
Despite the “ceasefire” that began in early October 2025 (a ceasefire which appears to mean fewer bombs rather than no bombs), the collective punishment continues.
Israeli authorities have now de-registered and are effectively banning 37 international humanitarian organisations (INGOs) from operating in Gaza and the West Bank. Unless the organisations comply with Israeli demands to provide personal data on all their staff – in a context where over 500 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023 – they will have to withdraw from all the Occupied Palestinian Territory by the start of March.
This poses an impossible choice for INGOs — to either compromise staff safety or to abandon people who are in desperate need. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), as one of the affected agencies, has made the extremely painful decision that it will not comply with Israeli demands for staff information. MSF’s statement of 30 January said that ‘despite repeated efforts, it became evident in recent days that we were unable to build engagement with Israeli authorities on the concrete assurances [regarding staff safety] required’.
MSF states that if the agency is expelled from Gaza and the West Bank, ‘it would have a devastating impact, as Palestinians face a brutal winter amidst destroyed homes and urgent humanitarian needs’ with basic services including food, water, shelter, healthcare, fuel and livelihoods largely destroyed, and a health system that is ‘nearly non-functional’.
Oxfam’s assessment of 3 January is similar, stating that ‘Despite the ceasefire, humanitarian needs remain extreme’. The removal of these services would ‘close health facilities, halt food distributions, collapse shelter pipelines and cut off life-saving care’.
Oxfam noted that INGOs already operate according to strict compliance and due diligence standards.
Setting aside any moral imperative to provide aid for fellow humans who are suffering, Israel’s actions in banning INGO access violate the nation’s legal obligations, as the occupying force, to ensure the health and welfare of the civilian population.
They also violate the January 2024 International Court of Justice ruling that Israel ‘must take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip’.
Far from complying with the law, Israel continues to actively block the delivery of essential aid to a population in urgent need, and is now enforcing INGO registration conditions that exceed routine oversight and undermine humanitarian neutrality and independence.
For the many Palestinian Australians and their loved ones in Gaza, Israel’s actions have devastating consequences. And yet their grief and distress are not part of Minister Wong’s selective “context” for the visit of President Herzog.
It would be hard to imagine a more divisive guest in this country. The Jewish Council of Australia has expressed ‘outrage that the Albanese Government would fuel the flames of division by inviting Herzog to visit Australia, warning that his trip is completely inappropriate and offensive and will rightly spark mass protest’. Herzog, the Council said, ‘has played an active role in the ongoing destruction of Gaza, including the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the displacement of millions’.
Australia’s stance could have been very different. Apart from choosing our guests more sensitively and avoiding those accused of the most grievous crimes, Australia should long since have applied meaningful sanctions against Israeli individuals and the State of Israel itself.
Foreign Minister Wong has the power to determine that Israel’s ongoing deliberate obstruction of aid and its collective punishment of the Palestinian people meet the threshold of “serious violation or abuse” under Australia’s sanctions regime. She has chosen instead to insulate Israel from accountability, thus undermining the universality of international law and eroding Australia’s credibility as an independent nation.
The people of Palestine and their loved ones here pay a heavy price for Australia’s failure to act.
Sanctions against Israel are not likely to be announced in the coming days, but the need for them is only growing.
The Plutocrats Who Rule Our World Aren’t Even Enjoying Themselves
Caitlin Johnstone, Feb 07, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-plutocrats-who-rule-our-world?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=187153072&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I saw a tweet by Elon Musk the other day, “Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about.”
He put a sadface emoji at the end.
I personally do not feel the slightest bit sorry for Elon Musk and his feelings. But the fact that these billionaires aren’t even enjoying themselves as they poison our planet and rob us all says so much about the madness of the civilization we are living in.
I mean, think about it.
It’s not even making them happy. All that exploitation and extraction, all the parasiting and hoarding and manipulating politics and inserting themselves into governments, and it’s not even making them happy.
It would be terrible if these obscenely wealthy oligarchs were robbing everyone else of happiness in order to make themselves exponentially happier than all of us. But they’re not even making themselves happy. They’re fucking miserable. Everyone involved in this abusive dynamic is suffering from it — even the abusers.
And really, how could they not be?
Can you think of anyone less likely to be happy than someone who can’t be content simply retiring with a house and maybe twenty million dollars in the bank, ensuring that all their material needs will be cared for for the rest of their lives? Someone who must instead press on until they have obtained more money than they could reasonably spend in a thousand lifetimes?
Can you think of anything less conducive to happiness than becoming so much wealthier than everyone else that you have to isolate yourself from normal society, eventually surrounded only by people who are in your life because of your wealth? Never knowing how they truly feel about you or what they’d be doing with their lives if not for your vast fortune?
Can you think of a more surefire path to a lifetime of dissatisfaction than spending your years storing away wealth like some kind of fantasy dragon creature hoarding gold in a mountain, while people panicking over paying their bills look upon you with disdain?
Can you imagine a more miserable way to spend your days on this planet than becoming an oligarch and manipulating state power to ensure that your unfathomable wealth will never be redistributed to the needful and the struggling, and that ordinary people will forever remain trapped as powerless gear-turners whose labor exists solely to turn billionaires into trillionaires?
I know I can’t.
The plutocrats who control our society are not sincerely dedicated to the pursuit of happiness; if they were, they wouldn’t be plutocrats, and they wouldn’t be controlling our society. Happiness comes from contentment with one’s present experience, and those who keep compulsively amassing wealth for its own sake can never experience that contentment.
As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in his poem “Joe Heller”:
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!
The Elon Musks of our world can never have the experience of having enough. They exist in a permanent state of lack. They’ve got a giant hole inside themselves that can never be filled, no matter how much money they throw into it, no matter how many private jets and private islands and media outlets and bought politicians they try to fill it with.
We are ruled by deeply wounded and dysfunctional emotional infants. The people who control our society are whipped about by primitive forces within themselves that they don’t understand. Their actions are motivated not by the pursuit of the common good, nor even their own good, but by psychological disorder and unconscious compulsion.
And yet we are assured this is the best possible way to run a society.
I kind of doubt that. I really don’t think that’s true.
Hedonism’s Dance: How the Governing Classes Fell for Jeffrey Epstein
2 February 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark , https://theaimn.net/hedonisms-dance-how-the-governing-classes-fell-for-jeffrey-epstein/
How did he generate so much paperwork, traffic and comment? New York financier, mountebank, all purposes conman and dedicated rake that he was, Jeffrey Epstein continues to nag living figures from beyond the grave and place them in a tight spot of bother. His correspondence with these individuals runs into the millions, a figure suggesting his only work in life was being a pimp for pleasure and valet to the rotten.
The press vultures have been feeding most excitedly on the latest carrion released by the US Department of Justice on January 30 in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, comprising some 3.5 million pages with more than 180,000 images and 2,000 videos. “Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance,” stated Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Leaving aside Blanche’s perky claim to thoroughbred compliance, those found corresponding or engaging with Epstein have had to qualify any engagement with the late financier as utterly innocent and certainly unconnected to the sexual trafficking arm he operated with the incarcerated Ghislaine Maxwell, herself the daughter of that mighty confidence trickster, serial litigant and press mogul, Robert Maxwell. What did not seem to bother Epstein’s vast network of correspondents, foolish confidants and dissolute playmates was a conviction for soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl in 2008. The sinner always knows best.
The list of the dishonourable is long and impossible to enumerate without expectorating. A handful of rummy specimens will suffice. We have the morally stunted tech brat billionaire Elon Musk discussing travel to Epstein’s properties for reasons of entertainment. “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?”, he asks in one yearning inquiry. Musk continued to press the financier for information of any planned parties, claiming that he needed to “let loose”. “I’ve been working to the edge of sanity this year and so, once my kids head home after Christmas, I really want to hit the party scene in St Barts or elsewhere and let loose.”
In 2009, despite Epstein serving a prison sentence at the time, the emails reveal the financial provision of a loan to Lord Peter Mandelson’s husband Reinaldo Avila da Silva regarding an osteopathy course. Mandelson, the Mr Fixit of Britain’s New Labour, had his tenure as UK ambassador to Washington terminated once the cloacal gatherings of his association with Epstein proved too hard to ignore.
We find Britain’s founder of Virgin Group, Richard Branson, expressing his pleasure at meeting Epstein before adding “Any time you’re in the area would love to see you. As long as you bring your harem!” (The company hurriedly tried to dispel any needless assumptions of prurience: “harem” in this case was a reference to three adult members of the Epstein team.)
As is already known, royalty is not exempt from the turd lined trough. Recently deprived of his status as prince for scouring Epstein’s fleshpots with rutting glee, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, known as “The Duke” in the correspondence, is most accommodating to Epstein in emails sent in September 2010. “We could have dinner at Buckingham Palace and lots of privacy,” suggests Epstein. The reply: “Delighted for you to come here to BP [Buckingham Palace]. Come with whomever and I’ll be here free from 1600ish.”
The matter gets even more squalid with Mountbatten-Windsor’s former wife, Sarah Ferguson, calling Epstein the “brother” she “had always wished for.” (The provision of £15,000 to pay off her debts probably helped.) Showing how liberal his house arrest conditions were, Ferguson implies that the pair had lunch. An August 2009 exchange points to a meeting between Epstein and her daughters, Prince Beatrice and Princess Eugenie. “I have never been more touched by a friends [sic] kindness than your compliment to me in front of my girls.”
Showing that the royals of other countries also slid into the honeypot, Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit had extensive contact with Epstein between 2011 and 2014. From what can be gleaned from the correspondence, the financier had made quite an impression, being “soft hearted” and “such a sweetheart.” In one message dated November 1, 2012, the crown princess responds to a message of sheer gibberish discussing the protective facilities of nature and the problems of unnatural products. “You always make me smile,” she reflects. “Because you tickle my brain.”
The timing was most unfortunate for Mette-Marit, as her son, Marius Borg Høiby, is facing 38 criminal charges, including allegations of rape of four women including assault and drug offences. “I showed poor judgment and I deeply regret having had any contact with Epstein,” she said in a statement, conjuring up contrition. “It is simply embarrassing.”
Figures from the world of sports are not exempt. “We had a brief association where we exchanged emails about adult women, and in addition we discussed movies, philanthropy and investments,” claimed New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, mentioned over 400 times in the files. “I did not take him up on any of his invitations and never went to his island. As we all know, he was a terrible person and someone I deeply regret associating with.”
To keep Tisch in sporting company is chairman of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, Casey Wasserman. In his case, it was an enduring infatuation with Epstein’s collaborator in vice, Ghislaine. “I think of you all the time,” he says in a charged exchange in 2003. “So what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?” A statement from Wasserman on the matter expressed “regret” for correspondence “which took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light.”
A generous assessment of these files would suggest the sense of sheer beguilement shown by Epstein’s correspondents, who seemed to be playing fools during much of their acquaintanceships. But the cosmic expansiveness of it all at the highest social and political level points to the ethically desiccated nature of the governing classes and their willingness to be depraved and blinded. Operating in the realm of power and influence, these figures have shown themselves to be dunces and cavorters before hedonism’s dance, utterly indifferent to the prospect that they would, eventually, be found out.
Australia: HRF, Jewish Council and ANIC Demand Arrest or Entry Ban of Israeli President
January 30th 2026, https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/posts/australia-hrf-jewish-council-and-anic-demand-arrest-or-entry-ban-of-israeli-president
In a historic joint action, the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), the Jewish Council of Australia, and the Australian National Imams Council (ANIC), have lodged a formal legal complaint to have Israeli President Isaac Herzog arrested or barred from entering Australia. The groups, represented by renowned barrister Robert Richter KC, allege that Herzog has incited genocide and aided and abetted war crimes, rendering him unfit to enter the country under Australian law.
The 30-page submission, sent yesterday to Attorney-General Michelle Rowland, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and the Australian Federal Police (AFP), warns that the President’s visit is “highly inflammatory”.
The groups are calling on the AFP to initiate a criminal investigation of Herzog under the Commonwealth Criminal Code.
The urgent request details a “sustained pattern of incitement and hate speech” by the President, specifically citing:
- The “Entire Nation” Declaration: Herzog’s October 2023 statement that there are no “uninvolved” civilians in Gaza, which the groups argue stripped 2.3 million people of their protected status under international humanitarian law and urged the IDF to treat the entire population as a military target.
- Famine Denial: Herzog’s August 2025 claims that images of starving Gazan children were “staged”—a statement made while famine was setting in and which the brief describes as a “conscious effort to obscure war crimes”.
- Endorsement of Military Operations Involving War Crimes: A December 2023 visit to the Nahal Oz military base where Herzog reportedly “encouraged” troops 48 hours before the “wanton destruction” and “flattening” of the Palestinian town of Khuza’a.
The submission rejects any claim that Herzog has diplomatic immunity, citing the Nuremberg Principles and international law to argue that heads of state have no shield against charges of genocide or war crimes. The groups warn that if the government fails to act, it would signal “acquiescence to genocidal rhetoric”.
“If the Prime Minister of Israel is not permitted to visit Australia, the President should not be allowed to act as his surrogate,” the complaint states, referencing the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Dyab Abou Jahjah, Hind Rajab Foundation:
“When a head of state publicly denies civilian protection, dismisses famine, and encourages military operations marked by widespread civilian harm and destruction, those acts carry legal consequences everywhere. No country — including Australia — should become a safe haven for individuals credibly accused of inciting genocide or aiding and abetting war crimes. Australia has a duty to uphold the rule of law and protect its communities from such threats.”
Ohad Kozminsky, Executive Member, Jewish Council of Australia:
“President Herzog represents a state found to be committing genocide in Gaza. His presence in Australia would identify this state with Australian Jews, which risks exacerbating social division and endangering Australian Jewish communities. We stand firmly against all forms of racism, and President Herzog’s statements attributing collective guilt to an entire people are a textbook manifestation of anti-Palestinian racism and Israel’s ongoing campaign of dehumanisation.”
Bilal Rauf, Senior Advisor, Australian National Imams Council (ANIC):
“In recent times, Australia’s social cohesion has been under threat. Now more than ever, it is incumbent upon all of us, particularly our political leaders, to seek to protect our social cohesion as a country and society and ensure that individuals who may inflame the situation by their very presence, are not permitted into our country. The proposed visit by the Israeli President Isaac Herzog, a highly controversial foreign head of state accused of serious international crimes, risks inflaming social tensions, undermining Australia’s hate-speech protections, and placing Australian communities at risk. ANIC calls on the Government, which has hurriedly passed laws in the name of social cohesion, to refuse or cancel any visa held by President Herzog. In pursuing this, among other outcomes, ANIC joins with the Jewish Council of Australia and the Hind Rajab Foundation, in pursuing the complaint.”
HerStory: Feminism is the Route to Peace
feminism is about equality, dignity, and shared power–not just for women, but for everyone.
By H. Patricia Hynes for Informed Comment, February 2, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/02/02/herstory-feminism-is-the-route-to-peace/
Jane Goodall, the renowned primatologist and impassioned advocate for nature, founded in her later years an institute through which she launched Roots and Shoots. Young people in more than 60 countries were taught about preserving nature and how to work for environmental good in their communities. Because of her passionate mission to protect from the twin threats of the loss of biodiversity and climate change and her goal to “inspire hope and spark action in others,” especially young people, she was honored as a United Nations Messenger for Peace. Like Goodall, many young women’s groups across the United States have emerged as beacons of hope and are sparking action in others.
In Amherst, Massachusetts, a teen feminist group called Generation Ratify was launched to help endorse the Equal Rights Amendment and advance gender equality. They organized many rallies, three school walkouts, banner drops, film and art shops and lobbied at the state house. In July 2025, they joined with Young Climate Action Now to host Little Leader Convention for 10-to-13 -year-olds with the goal of empowering a new generation of ecofeminists. Recently they partnered with a national youth-led organization Feminist Front to form Feminist Generation. Their generation has lost the secure right to bodily autonomy; they inherit an Earth in climate failure and a country enroute to fascism. In 2026 the Amherst chapter of Feminist Generation will launch an initiative to promote youth voter engagement in the 2026 elections, research gender-based wage gaps in local government, and work with Planned Parenthood to implement a comprehensive sex education curriculum at Amherst Regional High School.
Behind the 2025 progressive wins in the states of Virginia and Pennsylvania were hundreds of young feminist organizers, mobilized and trained by Vote for Equality, the political arm of Feminist Majority. They organized on campuses in both states. Abigail Spanberger, a strong advocate for reproductive freedom, won as Virginia’s first woman governor, with 65% women voting for her and an unprecedented shift in the House of Delegates to a large majority of Democrats. In Pennsylvania, 3 progressive Supreme Court Justices who were instrumental in “safeguarding reproductive rights for Medicaid recipients through Pennsylvania’s Equal Rights Amendment” retained their seats. These young feminists are ready to build on their 2025 victories in 2026.
One of the newest young feminist groups is HerStory at Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Katie Kim a junior at the academy, re-named her women’s empowerment group of which she is president HerStory because she “can’t really think of a story in history where there’s no her in it.” All of the HerStory group concur that “a lot of social media influence the branding of feminism” as merely groups of women meeting to express “hatred of men” when that’s “totally not what we do,” they said. It’s more about supporting each other in our community and trying to have local impact. HerStory members see the true history of humankind, as one of partnership, gender partnership.
Bright Yang, a sophomore from China, explained his reasons for joining HerStory, namely that he “recognized how powerful women are.” He gave a “shout out to his mom” who has “played a great, great role” in developing his personality, guiding him through the isolation one can feel in boarding school, giving him ideas and “just happiness in general.” Drawn to Middle Eastern Studies and religion, he noted a similarity in Islam as practiced in Afghanistan and Christianity as practiced by Catholicism, the 2,000 year-old religion “that has so much difficulty merely recognizing women as equals” to make them priests, bishops, and ultimately Pope, though he stated, Afghanistan is much worse.
I asked Herstory members to explain their convictions about the statement, “Feminism is the route to peace” with which they ended my last meeting with them. They responded that at its core, feminism is about equality, dignity, and shared power–not just for women, but for everyone. The link to peace comes from a few main ideas. Equality reduces violence. Societies built on strict hierarchies (men over women, some groups over others) often normalize domination and force. Without embracing feminism, “our rights and voices remain disparaged, creating challenges and disputes,” responded Peggy Huang. Feminism promotes cooperation instead of control, dialogue instead of coercion, and respect instead of fear. These values are strongly associated with lower levels of violence—at home, in communities, and between nations.
Research consistently shows that countries with higher gender inequality tend to have more internal conflict, more authoritarian leadership, and higher rates of violence overall, explained Katie Kim. Inclusive leadership leads to more peaceful outcomes. When women and marginalized groups are included in decision-making, peace agreements last longer, policies focus more on social well-being (health, education, stability), and conflict resolution emphasizes compromise rather than escalation. This isn’t because women are “naturally peaceful,” she added, but because diverse perspectives improve problem-solving.
Currently, Katie is organizing a poetry anthology project with local women empowerment organizations in Amherst. Through poetry–a simple, accessible literary form–she hopes to bring the current youth activists together fighting for the same cause and to foster tighter bonds with one another.
HerStory members are true Messengers for Peace.
H. Patricia Hynes is a retired professor of environmental health, directs the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice in western Massachusetts. She has written and edited 7 books, among them The Recurring Silent Spring (nominated for the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award) and Justice. Her most recent book is Hope but Demand Justice. She writes and speaks on issues of war and militarism with an emphasis on women, environment, and public health.
The US’s Multi‑Front War: A House of Cards
Trump’s Ponzi War Machine: The US Empire Eats Itself
From Caracas to Tehran, the self‑devouring logic of perpetual conflict; and why the blowback will be biblical
30 Jan 2026, https://urbanwronski.com/2026/01/30/the-uss-multi-front-war-a-house-of-cards/
In my previous piece, I depicted a US on the precipice of a war with Iran, a war corporate media will not cover. Time to pull back on the camera and see the Trump Regime as a nation at war with itself while it makes the fatal error of fighting, not just a war on two fronts, but on reality, itself.
It can only end badly.
Picture an elderly grifter at a roulette table, betting the house on red after red. Each clattering spin is meant to recover the losses of the last. But it’s not that simple. The croupier is his own Pentagon. Or Department of War. The chips are borrowed from China. The wheel is rigged by a man who changes the rules mid‑spin.
That’s Donald Trump’s foreign policy. It’s a lunatic Ponzi scheme of perpetual war, where every failure funds the next fiasco, and the only thing compounding faster than the body count is the interest bill.
From the shambles of Venezuela to the barbed‑wire barbarity of ICE, MAGA’s own goon-militia, a terror-squad with quotas and bonuses; from the clown‑car, Pentagon, newly clean-shaven, to the minefield of Iran, Washington is not expanding its power. It’s cannibalising it. Drunk on it, at the same time.
The empire has become a pyramid scheme running on debt, bluff, gratuitous violence and cruelty. Running on empty, morally, spiritually and in every other way known to humanity.
No Healthy Person Wants To Rule The World Or Become A Billionaire
Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 26, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/no-healthy-person-wants-to-rule-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=185791943&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
No mentally healthy person wants to rule the world.
Nobody with a functioning conscience and a working empathy center in their brain is interested in becoming a billionaire.
We are ruled by the most dysfunctional members of our species. The most wounded, neurotic and sociopathic among us. The least wise, caring and insightful.
What drives a person to claw their way to the top of a wildly sick society and become a lord of the dystopia?
What compels someone to amass obscene amounts of wealth in a world where so many have far too little?
What causes someone to ascend to political leadership of a power structure that’s built for the purpose of robbing and oppressing the most underprivileged populations on earth?
Nothing wholesome, to be sure. That impulse is never coming from anywhere good.
The worst among us are striving to prevail in this dystopia by riding the tides of its ugliest inclinations, while the best among us are striving to dismantle the dystopia and replace it with something kind and equitable. This causes the worst of us to be elevated to the top and the best of us to be smacked down to the bottom.
Under our current system the easiest way to set yourself on a trajectory from millionaire to billionaire to trillionaire is to exploit workers, crush your competition, plunder the available resources of the global south, externalize the costs of industry onto society and the ecosystem, bribe the government to advance your corporate interests via lobbying and campaign donations, contract with the most murderous military and intelligence agencies in the world, and psychologically manipulate the public into consuming products and services they don’t need.
Who is going to be most successful in this endeavor? The very worst people alive. People whose hearts and minds are so stunted and dysfunctional that they see other human beings as tools for their own personal enrichment, to be used up and discarded like juice boxes or condoms.
These are the people who are touching the most lives on this planet. These are the people whose decisions affect the most of us.
Michael Parenti has passed away after a luminous life advancing powerful ideas and insights about the abusive dynamics of human civilization and how best to address them. He did not die a wealthy man. The mainstream papers did not report on his departure from our world. Only a relatively small percentage of the population is aware he ever lived.
But everyone knows who Elon Musk is. Everyone knows who Jeff Bezos is. Who Bill Gates is.
The best of us live and die in relative obscurity, generally being subjected to scorn and derision from the ruling establishment the entire time. The worst of us become plutocratic demigods.
It’s an uphill battle. You spend your life swimming against the current of dystopia, and you are not handsomely rewarded for your efforts. You’ll get deplatformed, censored and smeared. You might even get shot by government agents for standing up for the disempowered. And you’ll definitely never be a billionaire.
But it’s absolutely worth it, and you should do it. Fighting for truth and justice in a civilization made of injustice and deceit is the only way to live. It’s the only way to feel satisfied with your efforts during this life. The only way to be sure that when you are on your deathbed you can look back and know you spent your time here in a right and admirable way.
It costs a lot to fight for a healthy world. But it costs a lot more not to.
The Magic System Of Zionism
Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 24, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-magic-system-of-zionism?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=185598042&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
If I spoke critically of something abusive that India was doing in Kashmir, would you expect me to be accused of an anti-Hindu hate crime?
If you criticized an Indian military operation, would you have to preface it with “I don’t hate Hindus or their religion and am not the slightest bit Hinduphobic”?
If there was worldwide opposition to something that Indian military forces were doing, would you expect western governments to start frantically churning out laws to ban that opposition because it was making members of the Hindu community feel unsafe?
Would it ever in your wildest imaginings occur to you that a criticism of the violent actions of the government of India could in any way be interpreted as an attack on the Hindu faith and the membership of that religion?
You can probably see where I’m going with this.
You don’t expect to see criticisms of the state of India framed as an attack on its majority religion because people in your society haven’t been conditioned to have that expectation. But we have been conditioned to have that expectation about Israel.
The association between antisemitism and criticism of the state of Israel isn’t natural. It’s not something that would organically occur to an untrained mind.
If a man who’d never heard of Israel or Palestine were shown footage of the genocide in Gaza, he would reflexively recoil in horror and say what he was looking at was a bad thing. If somebody then ran up and explained to him that what he just said was actually a hateful act of religious persecution, he would be very surprised and confused. Because he hadn’t been indoctrinated into making that association, in the same way you haven’t been indoctrinated into associating criticism of the Indian government with an attack on the religion of Hinduism.
It’s a completely counterintuitive association. There’s nothing about it that that you could find your way into through your own observation and reasoning. It’s something you’d need to be taught by others. You need it to be explained to you.
That’s the literal translation of the Hebrew word “hasbara”. It means “explaining”. Israel and its supporters have spent decades “explaining” to the world that criticism of the state of Israel is actually a terrible hate crime against Jews and their religion, because otherwise it would never occur to a normal person that that is the case.
It’s actually astonishingly impressive. The political ideology of support for this tiny apartheid state has been so effective at explaining to the world what thoughts they should think about it that those efforts touch all our lives. It’s so effective that you could be at a social gathering all the way across the sea in the United States and, unless you are very familiar with the people around you, if the subject of Israel comes up you’ll immediately understand that you could be in for a very uncomfortable evening.
It’s stunning how much influence this ideology has had throughout our society’s culture and institutions. It’s almost magical.
There was a segment in last year’s Louis Theroux documentary The Settlers that stuck with me where Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss refers to Zionism as a “magic system”.
“Jewish settlements in Gaza is a very difficult step that demands a lot of work,” Weiss told Theroux. “You have to influence the leftists, the government, the nations of the world, using the magic system: Zionism.”
It isn’t surprising to learn that Weiss views her operations as a kind of magic. On paper she and her ilk shouldn’t be able to do what they do. Forcefully dropping a foreign ethnostate on top of a pre-existing civilization and violently hammering it into place against every organic impulse of the region is freakish enough, but then convincing the rest of the world to support this? To the point that it actually affects our interpersonal relationships and interactions on the other side of the planet? It shouldn’t work. But it does.
I don’t really know what magic is, but it makes sense that some Zionists would see it that way. Because from the outside looking in all that mass-scale psychosocial manipulation kind of does look like an inexplicable sort of wizardry.
Luckily, the magic seems to be wearing off. The old tricks just aren’t working anymore. Calling someone who criticizes Israel an “antisemite” is widely recognized for the fraudulent manipulation that it is. Pro-Palestine politicians are winning elections despite highly coordinated smear campaigns saying their candidacy makes Jews feel unsafe. Everyone knows Israel lies about everything all the time. Trust in the media is at an all-time low, while awareness of the pro-Israel bias of the mainstream press is at an all-time high.
People are still showing up for protests and pro-Palestine events. The public is turning against Israel in unprecedented numbers. Nobody’s buying the old song and dance anymore.
Maybe the people are finding a little magic of their own.
Zionism: The Etymological and Ideological Unpacking of a “Political Pathogen”
22 January 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, P https://theaimn.net/zionism-the-etymological-and-ideological-unpacking-of-a-political-pathogen/
The term “Zionism,” the modern political ideology advocating for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, is often analysed through the lenses of history, politics, and conflict. However, to understand its full potency and impact – to see it as a “political pathogen” – we must first dissect the linguistic and cultural DNA from which it was synthesised. This paper posits that Zionism is a European ideological construct, born of a specific historical moment, which instrumentalised ancient religious and cultural symbols to forge a modern nationalist movement. Its power and subsequent global impact stem from this fusion of the ancient and the modern, a fusion that has proven both resilient and, in the view of its critics, deeply destructive.
I. The Etymological Core: From Sacred Hill to Nationalist Ideology
The linguistic root of “Zionism” is the Hebrew word “Zion” (Ṣîyyôn), originally referring to a specific hill in Jerusalem. Over millennia, particularly following the Babylonian Exile, “Zion” transformed from a geographic location into a potent synecdoche and poetic symbol for the entire Land of Israel and the Jewish people’s spiritual yearning for return. This meaning was deeply embedded in Jewish messianic belief, envisioning a future redemption.
The transformation into a modern political “-ism” occurred in late 19th-century Europe. The term “Zionism” (Zionismus) is first credibly attributed to the Austrian Jewish intellectual Nathan Birnbaum in an 1890 article. It was coined in reference to the activities of the Hovevei Zion (“Lovers of Zion”), proto-Zionist groups that promoted Jewish agricultural settlement in Ottoman Palestine. The movement was catapulted onto the world stage by Theodor Herzl, whose 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) and the subsequent founding of the Zionist Organization in 1897 popularised the term and defined its political objectives. The choice of “Zion” was deliberate: it grafted the new secular nationalist project onto the deep-rooted, sacred longings of Jewish tradition, providing an immediate and powerful historical legitimacy.
II. The European Crucible: Birth of an Ideology
Zionism did not emerge in a vacuum. It was a direct product of, and reaction to, the specific conditions of European society in the 19th century.
The “Jewish Question” in Europe: Zionism arose as one answer to the pervasive “Jewish Question” – the problem of how Jews, perceived as an unassimilable minority, could exist within European nation-states defined by ethnic homogeneity. Faced with persistent antisemitism, from violent pogroms in Eastern Europe to institutional discrimination in the West, thinkers like Herzl concluded that assimilation was impossible and that Jews constituted a distinct nation requiring sovereignty in their own land.
The Influence of European Nationalism: Zionism was fundamentally shaped by the Romantic nationalist movements sweeping Europe, which argued that every “people” or “nation” (Volk) required a state for its full expression. Zionists applied this model to Jews, asserting their right to national self-determination. The movement also internalised contemporary colonial and racial thinking, with early leaders at times explicitly framing a Jewish state in Palestine as a European outpost or “colonial” endeavour that would bring progress to the region.
Internal Jewish Debates: It is critical to note that Zionism was a contested ideology from its inception. Significant Jewish movements, most notably the socialist Bund in Eastern Europe, vehemently opposed it. These anti-Zionists argued that fleeing antisemitism validated the persecutors’ logic, that the diaspora was a legitimate and rich Jewish homeland, and that the future lay in fighting for socialist revolution and equality within Europe.
III. The Ideological Structure: Core Tenets and Internal Divergence
While unified by the core goal of a Jewish homeland, Zionism was never monolithic. Its internal structure comprised several competing strands:
Political Zionism (Herzl): Focused on achieving a Jewish state through high-level diplomacy and international legal charters.
Practical Zionism: Emphasized the “conquest of land” through immediate agricultural settlement in Palestine.
Labor Zionism: Merged socialist principles with nation-building, promoting collective enterprises like the kibbutz and forming the ideological backbone of Israel’s early leadership.
Revisionist Zionism (Jabotinsky): Advocated for a more militant, maximalist approach to establishing a Jewish state on both banks of the Jordan River, emphasizing military strength and capitalist development.
Cultural Zionism (Ahad Ha’am): Prioritised the creation of a new Jewish spiritual and cultural center in Palestine over immediate political sovereignty.
Religious Zionism: Fused Jewish religious messianism with nationalist politics, viewing the Zionist project as the beginning of divine redemption.
Despite these differences, a critical consensus emerged across most Zionist thought: the necessity of establishing a Jewish demographic majority in Palestine. This demographic imperative, confronting the reality of a majority Arab population, led to the conceptualisation of “transfer” – a euphemism for the removal or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians – as a logical, if debated, solution within mainstream Zionist discourse from the movement’s early decades.
IV. The “Pathogen” Metaphor: Mechanisms of Global Impact
Viewing Zionism through the lens of a “political pathogen” requires examining its replication and impact beyond Palestine/Israel. Its global influence operates through several key mechanisms:
The Logic of Domination: Scholar Vincent Lloyd reframes Zionism’s outcome as a transition from a movement seeking liberation from European domination to one that institutes a new structure of domination over Palestinians. This system is maintained through military occupation, legal discrimination, and the systemic denial of Palestinian dignity and political rights.
Christian Zionist Symbiosis: A critical vector for the ideology’s spread is Christian Zionism, particularly within Protestant evangelicalism. This theology supports Jewish return to Israel not out of solidarity with Jews, but as a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Christ, after which non-converted Jews are often envisioned to be destroyed. This creates a powerful, theologically motivated political lobby (especially in the United States) that reinforces Israeli state policy.
Global Export of “Security” Models: Israel has leveraged its experience controlling Palestinian populations to become a leading global exporter of surveillance technology, weapons, and counter-insurgency tactics. This “laboratory” of repression markets its products to other states and regimes, embedding Zionist-derived models of population control into global security infrastructures.
Conflating Critique with Antisemitism: A potent defensive mechanism has been the strategic effort to equate criticism of Zionism or Israeli state policy with antisemitism, as seen in debates over definitions like the IHRA working definition. This conflation seeks to immunise the ideology from political critique by framing opposition as a form of racial or religious hatred.
Conclusion: A Tale That Found a Home
Zionism is indeed “a tale that found a home.” It is a modern European nationalist tale, constructed from the ancient lexicon of Jewish prophecy and the contemporary grammar of 19th-century racial and colonial thought. It found a home through a deliberate and violent process of settlement and state-building, necessitating the displacement and continued subjugation of another people.
Its “pathogenic” quality lies in its resilience and adaptability – its ability to graft itself onto different host ideologies, from socialist pioneering to evangelical Christian millennialism, and to replicate its core logic of ethnic dominance in new contexts. The language that shaped it provided a bridge between deep history and political modernity, creating an ideology of immense persuasive power and tragic consequence. To understand the ongoing conflict and its global resonances, one must first understand this foundational synthesis of word, idea, and power.
References…………………………..
The Flotillas to Gaza Are the World’s Conscience
January 16, 2026 By Chris Hedges , ScheerPost
OME, Italy — There will be a new flotilla in April 2026 that will attempt to break the 18-year-old Israeli blockade of Gaza. The mission is expected to be the largest maritime action for Palestine to date, involving more than 3,000 activists from 100 countries on 100 boats, including a medical fleet of 1,000 health care workers to deliver 500 tons of life-saving aid, equipment and medical supplies that Israel has blocked from entering Gaza.
Once again, activists from all over the world will sail toward Gaza in an attempt to end one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet. Once again, their journey will be minutely tracked on social media. Once again, Israeli drones will be sent out in international waters to intercept and attack the boats. Once again, the boats will be boarded by masked, heavily armed Israeli soldiers. Once again, activists will be arrested. Once again, they will be sent to high-security prisons. Once again, they will be physically abused, placed in solitary confinement, insulted, berated, forced to watch Israeli propaganda videos about Oct. 7, or raped by Israeli prison guards. Once again, Palestinians, many of whom wait on the beach in the hope that the latest flotilla will get through, will see they are not alone. And once again, the world will look away, ignoring its legal mandate to intervene to end the genocide, as per Article I of the Genocide Convention.
And yet, despite the almost certain outcome, the flotillas are imperceptibly chipping away at the Israeli stranglehold on Gaza. They are reminding the world of its moral and legal duty to intervene. They are shaming not only Israel, but the Western governments whose complicity sustains the genocide. They are illustrating that we are not powerless. We can act.
“How did you feel when you watched the flotilla?” I asked the Palestine ambassador to Italy, Mona Abuamara, when I joined the Italian dock workers strike in Genoa and national demonstration for Palestine in Rome at the end of November 2025.
“Like a child,” she answered. “You know how when you know the end of a movie but you still want it to be different. I kept thinking, ‘Let it pass. Let it pass.’ As if it could. We knew it wouldn’t. That’s part of the beauty of those people on those boats. They knew they’re not going to be allowed to pass, but they refused to accept the status quo.”
I met Thiago Ávila, a Brazilian activist, and Swedish activist Greta Thunberg early in the morning at the MAAM Museum in Rome, its labyrinth of halls, corridors and rooms filled with street art, including a sign that reads, “Spoiler YOU WILL DIE.” Some 200 migrants from various countries live as squatters in the abandoned slaughterhouse and museum. Artworks, including huge, elaborate murals by some of Italy’s best artists, cover the cement walls of the former meat factory. At the entrance, satirizing the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, in huge letters, is the word “FART.”
“For all the years I’ve been an activist, I have, every day, lost more and more hope — if I even had any — in the institutions and our so-called leaders, corporations, elected officials, banks, whatever it is, to come to our rescue,” Thunberg said. “They are the ones who have put us in this situation. The system is not flawed. It is designed to be destructive. It is designed, in my view, to have unequal power structures. It is designed to keep some people oppressed. It is designed to keep nature as a distant, separate entity that is not a part of us in order to exploit it. In order to oppress people, we have to dehumanize them. The only way out is to reclaim power, which is one of the main reasons why I’m here supporting the striking workers in Italy. This is such a clear, textbook example of what it looks like when people take back power and show where the real power is.”
Ávila organized the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and the newly formed Global Sumud Flotilla. He was part of the crew of the Madleen, a boat that departed in June 2025 with, among others, Thunberg and Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian Member of the European Parliament who was beaten in custody by Israeli prison guards.
The Madleen was intercepted by the Israeli navy in international waters and towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod. Ávila was held in solitary confinement in Ayalon Prison, where he took part in a dry hunger strike until he was deported.
“I’ve been on so many failed attempts I can’t count,” Ávila told me. “I’ve been in boats that were unfortunately bombed. I’ve been in boats that were sabotaged. Boats that were defeated bureaucratically by countries pressured by Israel. We’ve been trying for years to break that horrific siege. Eighteen years. The last two attempts I was with Greta. I made it close to Gaza twice.
While in prison, he said, Israeli guards kicked him and slammed his head onto the asphalt. They interrogated him for hours in an attempt to extract details about the flotillas while a guard pointed a shotgun at him. They sent snarling guard dogs into his cell. They constantly moved him from one cell to another. They woke him up repeatedly during the night.
“How many countries have you managed to mobilize?” Israeli interrogators asked Ávila.
“Who are the representatives in the countries?” they demanded to know.
“I’m not going to give you any information that would put anybody into a dangerous position,” Ávila answered. “But anything that is public, you can check on our website. We are very transparent.”
“Look, what you make your people go through,” the interrogators sneered. “Look at all the money that you spent, that you wasted. Think of what you could have done with this money?”
“Why are you doing this?” the army interrogators, intelligence agents and Israeli judges invariably asked.
“Because for eight decades you have been committing genocide and ethnic cleansing,” Ávila always answered. “You have structured an apartheid and colonial state. You are ruling this land, not by a religion, but by a racist and supremacist ideology, which is Zionism.”
“What’s their reaction?” I asked Ávila.
“They hate it,” he said.
“Most of the Israeli government wanted us out of there as soon as they could the last time we were held,” Ávila said. “It was a horrible PR situation. But Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Minister of National Security — who manages the Israeli prison system — didn’t want to let us out. He wanted to punish us. He wanted to make a political statement. There was this internal struggle. Eventually they tried to get rid of people.”
“International solidarity has the responsibility to be more useful to the Palestinian cause,” Ávila said. “We need to have a bigger impact. This time, we managed. When we went with the Madleen, we had been trying for the previous five months. We tried three other missions that failed. And to be honest, the world barely knew about them.”
On one of the failed missions, shortly after midnight on May 1, 2025, 20 miles off the coast of Malta, one of the flotilla’s boats — the Conscience, registered under the flag of Palau — was struck by missiles launched from two drones. The missiles appeared to target the ship’s generators. The strikes caused a fire and a breach in the hull. Communication with the ship was lost. It was loaded with humanitarian supplies.
“The European Union didn’t condemn the attack,” Ávila said of the strike. “It was a hard defeat for us. But we knew we had to keep trying. We didn’t have any more big boats. All we had was a small boat for 12 people. It could only carry a symbolic shipment of aid. But that is when the world paid attention. There was a huge mobilization to support us.”
There is always the possibility the Israeli assaults will turn deadly.
In May 2010, the Mavi Marmara, carrying activists and humanitarian aid, was raided by Israeli naval commandos in international waters as it sailed toward Gaza. Nine people — eight Turkish citizens and one with dual Turkish American citizenship — were killed by the Israelis who claimed they were attacked by activists armed with clubs and knives. Another 24 were seriously injured by live ammunition fired by Israeli forces…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
“The most heartbreaking thing was to be so close to Palestinians and at the same time not able to stop, for a second, the violence,” Lio said.
No nation, with the exception of Yemen, has made any effort to physically halt the genocide. The United States and European nations have supplied Israel with billions in weapons – the U.S. alone has provided $ 21.7 billion to Israel since Oct. 7 – to sustain the mass slaughter. These nations have criminalized those, such as members of Palestine Action, several of whom are in perilous physical conditions from a prolonged hunger strike in prison, who protest the genocide. They have shut down free speech in the media and on college campuses. They will support Israel until the final phase of the genocide – the mass deportation of the Palestinians from Gaza – is complete. It is up to us to act. If we fail, there will be no rule of law. Genocide will become another tool in the arsenal of industrial nations and the Palestinians, once again, will be betrayed.
The flotillas not only keep alive resistance, they keep alive hope. https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/16/chris-hedges-the-flotillas-to-gaza-are-the-worlds-conscience/
Pope Leo again condemns “zeal for war,” deepening rift with Trump
Axios Jason Lalljee, 10 Jan 26
Pope Leo XIV is continuing to issue indirect critiques about President Trump‘s policies as the U.S. ramps up its intervention in Venezuela.
The big picture: Since becoming pope last May, Leo has made a number of critiques — both subtle and explicit — regarding Trump’s treatment of immigrants as well as his……………………..(Subscribers only) https://www.axios.com/2026/01/09/trump-venezuela-pope-leo
Ushering In the Age of 1A Impunity: Venezuela, Palestine, and the End of International Law.
The UN’s human rights rapporteurs are under a sustained campaign of slander and sanction. And even the UN Security Council has surrendered to the U.S. empire, as evidenced by its resolution 2803 in November of 2025, endorsing the wholly unlawful and baldly colonial plans of the Trump administration for Gaza.
the hand of the Israeli regime in supporting right-wing forces and destabilizing progressive governments in the region is by now well known. Israeli weapons, surveillance technology, intelligence, training, and influence via Israel proxies in the region have been a constant feature of Latin America for decades.
The recent sound of explosions over Venezuela, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Nigeria are not merely the spasms by a declining U.S. empire. They are something much more terrifying — the dawning of the age of impunity.
Mondoweiss, By Craig Mokhiber January 7, 2026
On January 3, 2026, without provocation, cause, or legal justification, the U.S. bombed Venezuela, invaded its capital, killed dozens of people, and violently abducted the President and First Lady of the country, binding, blindfolding, and spiriting them off to the United States.
Surely, such a blatant violation of a whole raft of international laws, indeed, challenging the very centerpiece of the post-World War II legal framework that prohibits acts of aggression, would be met with universal condemnation.
Instead, it has been followed by equivocal whimpers by several Western leaders, a hyper-cautious response from the UN Secretary-General, rhetorical condemnation by members of the Security Council, but no action whatsoever, and enthusiastic cheerleading by U.S. and Western corporate media.
How could this be?
Simply put, we are witnessing the dawning of the age of impunity.
Slouching towards Bethlehem
The recent sound of explosions over Venezuela, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Nigeria, and over the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Caribbean Sea, is not merely the sound of a momentary imperial spasm by a declining U.S. empire.
It heralds something much more terrifying.
A new world is being birthed (or perhaps, reborn, reminiscent as it is of the horrors of the first half of the 20th Century).
A world wholly unconstrained by international law, or even by the most basic and universal moral principles.
A birth that could have been foretold by anyone paying attention to the machinations of the empire and its allies and vassals in recent decades.
From the mass incarceration and police excesses of the “war on drugs,” to the renditions, executions, and torture of the “war on terrorism,” to the systematic immiseration of the many in order to consolidate the wealth and power of the few, the U.S. empire has been on a decades-long warpath culminating with the extermination of the Palestinian people and this week’s assault on Venezuela.
These ever-expanding ripples of oppression, unchecked, threaten us all.
Because, in a world where even genocide is not a red line, there are no red lines.
A child of impunity
This new world is the child of impunity.
For over two years, the world has watched passively as the U.S.-Israel Axis stampeded across Western Asia, Africa, and Latin America in a blood-soaked rampage of conquest and destruction.
The UN Charter, the Rome Statute, the laws of war, human rights law, the law of the sea, laws on the use of force, all have been trampled underfoot and left in ruin by the actions and pronouncements of the Axis, the complicity of its allies and vassals, and the complacency of other states.
For their part, the international institutions put in place in the wake of the Second World War to prevent and respond to such horrors have been systematically corrupted, cowed, or crushed by the Axis. The International Criminal Court is largely frozen in the face of illegal U.S. sanctions. The International Court of Justice faces unprecedented harassment and political pressure.
The UN’s human rights rapporteurs are under a sustained campaign of slander and sanction. And even the UN Security Council has surrendered to the U.S. empire, as evidenced by its resolution 2803 in November of 2025, endorsing the wholly unlawful and baldly colonial plans of the Trump administration for Gaza.
States of the Western world, which have long postured as the defenders of human rights and international law, rather than standing up to the excesses of the Axis, have tripped over each other to obsequiously kiss the ring of the emperor and to bow to the blood-soaked stewards of its colonial project in Palestine.
And any presumed checks within the institutions of the empire itself have shown themselves to be wholly complicit, including the courts, which are both politically driven and generally disdainful of international law, the Congress, itself entirely corrupted by the lobbies, corporations, and billionaires driving U.S. and Israeli crimes in the first place, and the corporate media, which have thoroughly dedicated themselves to running cover for the imperial, extractive, corporate, and Zionist causes at the root of the violence engulfing the world today.
Yes, the people themselves have risen up, and in record numbers, to oppose the crimes of the Axis. But they have been met with systematic and brutal repression inside the empire and across the West, and even within the captured front line states of Western Asia.
As a result, the Axis has enjoyed absolute impunity, encouraging successively more atrocious acts, in a building crescendo of violence that has included aggression against countries across Western Asia and Africa, a chain of assassinations, the targeting of humanitarian boats in the Mediterranean, transnational terror attacks with booby trapped pagers, unlawful occupation of several nations, and a continuing genocide in Palestine.
In this context, no one should be surprised by the blatant criminality of the U.S. in imposing brutal unilateral coercive measures designed to starve the population of Venezuela into submission, several coup attempts, a series of extrajudicial executions of boaters in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, the pirating of the country’s oil tankers and the seizing of their cargo, the bombing and invasion of the country, and the violent abduction of the President and First Lady.
This is how impunity functions. The more you feed it, the hungrier it becomes. And the world has fed this impunity for decades.
The beastly child born of this impunity brings with it the worst genetic traits of its 20th-century progenitors: racism, imperialism, colonialism, fascism, Zionism, aggression, and genocide. But it is now armed with the terrible 21st-century technologies of surveillance, silencing, and murder. The impacts of this deadly combination are now being felt across three continents in the global South, while the rest of the world teeters on the brink.
Imperial crimes in Venezuela………………………………………………………………
The Israeli connection
In her first public address since the U.S. attacks, Venezuelan Vice-President (and now Interim President) Delcy Rodriguez declared that the attack on the country had “Zionist undertones.” While she did not elaborate, the hand of the Israeli regime in supporting right-wing forces and destabilizing progressive governments in the region is by now well known. Israeli weapons, surveillance technology, intelligence, training, and influence via Israel proxies in the region have been a constant feature of Latin America for decades.
For their part, Israeli regime leaders have been giddy in their celebration of the attacks and of the abduction of the Venezuelan President (and have expressed their hope that the next attacks will be in Iran).
And this is no surprise. Since the election of Hugo Chávez and the launch of the Bolivarian Revolution more than a quarter century ago, Venezuela has asserted its independence, resisted U.S. hegemony, directed its oil and mineral wealth toward improving living conditions within the country, and stood in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for human rights.
Like Iran, Iraq, and Libya before them, that combination of factors has secured Venezuela’s place in the gunsights of the U.S.-Israel axis.
What’s more, the Israeli regime has a long history of attacking progressive forces, supporting right-wing regimes, death squads, and dictators, and seeding conflict across Latin America. Over the decades, its blood-stained fingerprints have been revealed in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela.
This, together with the anti-colonial instincts of the region, explains the disgust with which Latin American governments of the left view the Israeli regime. And it also explains why far-right movements and leaders in the region routinely declare their fanatical support for the regime and for the Zionist project, even in the midst of the genocide in Palestine.
While the progressive governments of the region have condemned the genocide, joined the ICJ genocide case against Israel, and cut off diplomatic relations with the regime, right-wing governments, as well as leaders of Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, have praised the Israeli regime and subserviently pledged even closer cooperation. The regime is, as it has always been, deeply invested in tearing down left-wing governments in Latin America and propping up the right.
At the same time, Venezuela’s opposition to the Israeli regime, while also holding the world’s largest oil reserves, is seen by the U.S.-Israel Axis as a potential obstacle to their nefarious plans for war on Iran. Iran’s own oil capacities, and especially its effective control over the Straits of Hormuz (and therefore world energy markets), make control of Venezuelan oil especially attractive to the Axis as it prepares to renew its attacks on Iran.
Thus, the principal drivers of U.S. aggression against countries of the global South are the possession of mineral wealth coveted by U.S. corporations, a refusal to submit to U.S. hegemony, and opposition to the crimes of the Israeli regime. Venezuela has been guilty of all three. And these are the real “crimes” for which it is being prosecuted.
Life after law
The nascent project of international law has always been both weak and inchoate. But the guardrails established since 1945 offered some hope of a world governed, at least in part, by the rule of law, rather than by force alone.
. And a global consensus had been established whereby the worst crimes- aggression and genocide- were agreed to be beyond the pale. The U.S.-Israel Axis, so often indicted for violating international law, has lost patience with the entire project, and, with genocide in Palestine, the raining down of Axis bombs in countries across the globe, and now aggression in Venezuela, it has declared to the world that a new order is born. One in which all must bow to the empire or perish.
It is not too late for the world to stand up to stop the emergence of this beastly new order. Movements of people within and beyond the empire can challenge it with the urgency and unity of purpose it requires. The global majority, led by the free nations of the South, could unite as it did in the 1960s and 70s to challenge the empire and draw a line of principle, centered on collective action for peace, security, self-determination, and the human rights of peoples everywhere. Sadly, to date, there is little evidence to suggest that this is happening.
In the meantime, the unmistakable, unequivocal message that the U.S. imperial regime, its Israeli attack dog, and its legions of subservient Western vassals are sending to the world, to the nation states in its gunsights, and to all peoples resisting foreign occupation, colonial domination, and racist regimes is this: Diplomacy will not save you. International law will not save you. The United Nations will not save you. And we are coming for you. https://mondoweiss.net/2026/01/ushering-in-the-age-of-impunity-venezuela-palestine-and-the-end-of-international-law/
Israel And Its Supporters Deliberately Foment Hate And Division In Our Society
Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 03, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-and-its-supporters-deliberately?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=183299564&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I’ve noticed a lot of angry comments underneath my posts these past few days which bizarrely mention the words “Islam” and “Muslims” completely out of the blue.
“Why don’t you turn your attention sometimes to the genocidal intent of the radical Muslims, or does that suit your racist narrative?” reads one tweet.
“What can you say about Islamic Jihadists Muslims murdering thousands of Christians in Sudan and other parts of Africa?” reads another.
“The muslims must be irradicated,” reads another.
There are too many examples to quote here, but here’s what’s so funny about all this: I haven’t been saying anything about Islam or Muslims on Twitter — I’ve been tweeting about Israel. Hasbarists just babble about Islam when they can’t defend Israel’s actions.
It is not a coincidence that they’ve been doing this. In September of last year Drop Site News published a leaked polling report that had been commissioned by the Israeli government which found that while Israel’s reputation is crumbling throughout the western world, one way to salvage it would be to foment panic about Muslims.
Drop Site reports the following:
“Israel’s best tactic to combat this, according to the study, is to foment fear of ‘Radical Islam’ and ‘Jihadism,’ which remain high, the research finds. By highlighting Israeli support for women’s rights and gay rights while elevating concerns that Hamas wants to ‘destroy all Jews and spread Jihadism,’ Israeli support rebounded by an average of over 20 points in each country. ‘Especially once the situation in Gaza is resolved, the room for growth in all countries is very significant,’ the report concludes.”
So if you speak critically about Israel online and suddenly find your replies inundated with Zionists shrieking about Islam and Muslims, that’s why. Their research has concluded that convincing westerners to hate Muslims is easier than convincing them to love Israel.
In addition to committing genocide and starting wars and working to stomp out free speech throughout the western world, Israel is also doing everything it can to make our society more racist and hateful. A foreign state is actively fomenting division and discord in western countries, in exactly the way western empire apologists claimed Putin was doing at the height of Russia hysteria. But because it’s a western “ally”, nothing is being done to stop it.
In addition to being evil and disgusting, this tactic is also just sloppy argumentation. Deflection is the lowest form of argument. Even if Islam really was as dangerous as they pretend it is and even if Muslims really did present a threat to our society, pointing this out would not address a single criticism of Israel. Yelling “Muslims bad!” does not magically erase Israel’s abuses or address the grievances of its critics; it just diverts attention to another target and says “Stop looking at Israel’s actions and hate THOSE people instead!”
Mention Israel and you’ll get hasbarists babbling about Islam, but Islam and Israel are not opposites, and the mention of one has no bearing on the other. One is a worldwide religion with nearly two billion adherents, while the other is a genocidal apartheid state. Framing the issue as a conflict between two diametrically opposed parties is a false dichotomy created by propagandists and manipulators.
And that’s exactly the false dichotomy Netanyahu is trying to feed into when he tells Americans that Israel is in an alliance with Christianity against “radical Shiite Islam” and “radical Sunni Islam,” calling it “our common Judeo-Christian civilization’s battle.” He’s working to foment fear of Islam among Americans to boost support for Israel.
All this to manufacture consent for human butchery and apartheid. Israel could improve its support among westerners by simply ending its genocidal atrocities in Gaza and ceasing to try to start a war between the US and Iran, but instead it’s working around the clock to foment racism and division while demanding increased censorship and authoritarianism to stomp out pro-Palestine sentiment throughout western society.
Israel is doing this because it cannot exist in its present iteration as a state without nonstop violence and abuse. Under the political ideology known as Zionism, peace, justice, truth and freedom are simply not an option.
Chris Hedges: Decline and Fall
We live in an eerily similar historical moment. Britain, within 12 years of Kipling’s lament, was plunged into the collective suicide of World War I, a conflict that took the lives of over a million British and Commonwealth troops and doomed the British Empire.
Donald Trump boasts that he will be the “fertilization president.” American couples — meaning white couples — will be given incentives by his administration to have more children to counter declining birth rates.
December 29, 2025 , By Chris Hedges , ScheerPost, https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/29/chris-hedges-decline-and-fall/
At the start of the 20th century, the British Empire was, like our own, in terminal decline. Sixty percent of Englishmen were physically unfit for military service, as are 77 percent of American youth. The Liberal Party, like the Democratic Party, while it acknowledged the need for reform, did little to address the economic and social inequalities that saw the working class condemned to live in substandard housing, breathe polluted air, be denied basic sanitation and health care and forced to work in punishing and poorly paid jobs.
The Tory government, in response, formed an Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration to examine the “deterioration of certain classes of the population,” meaning, of course, the urban poor. It became known as the report on “the degeneracy of our race.” Analogies were swiftly drawn, with much accuracy, with the decadence and degeneracy of the late Roman Empire.
Rudyard Kipling, who romanticized and mythologized the British Empire and its military, in his 1902 poem “The Islanders,” warned the British that they had grown complacent and flaccid from hubris, indolence and privilege. They were unprepared to sustain the Empire. He despaired of the loss of martial spirit by the “sons of the sheltered city — unmade, unhandled, unmeet,” and called for mandatory conscription. He excoriated the British military for its increasing reliance on mercenaries and colonial troops, “the men who could shoot and ride,” just as mercenaries and militias increasingly augment American forces overseas.
Kipling damned the British public for its preoccupation with “trinkets” and spectator sports, including “the flannel fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals,” athletes whom he believed should have been fighting in the war in South Africa. He foresaw in the succession of British military disasters during the South African Boer War, which had recently ended, the impending loss of British global dominance, much as the two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East have eroded U.S. hegemony.
The preoccupation with physical decline, also interpreted as moral decline, is what led Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to decry “fat generals,” and order women in the military to meet the “highest male standards” for physical fitness. It is what is behind his “Warrior Ethos Tasking,” plans to enhance physical fitness, grooming standards and military readiness.
We live in an eerily similar historical moment. Britain, within 12 years of Kipling’s lament, was plunged into the collective suicide of World War I, a conflict that took the lives of over a million British and Commonwealth troops and doomed the British Empire.
H.G. Wells, who anticipated trench warfare, tanks and machine guns, was one of the very few to see where Britain was headed. In 1908, he wrote “The War in the Air.” He warned that future wars would not be limited to antagonistic nation-states but would become global. These wars, as was true in the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the Spanish Civil War and World War II, would carry out the indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilians. He also foresaw in “The World Set Free,” the dropping of atomic bombs.
Nearly one third of the population in Edwardian England endured abject poverty. The cause, as Seebohm Rowntree noted in his study of the slums, was not, as conservatives claimed, alcoholism, laziness, a lack of initiative or responsibility by the poor, but because “the wages paid for unskilled labour in York are insufficient to provide food, shelter, and clothing adequate to maintain a family of moderate size in a state of bare physical efficiency.”
The U.S. has one of the highest rates of poverty among Western industrialized nations, estimated by many economists at far above the official figure of 10.6 percent. In real terms, some 41 percent of Americans are poor or low-income, with 67 percent living paycheck to paycheck.
British eugenicists from the Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics — which was funded by Sir Francis Galton, who coined the term “eugenics” — advocated “positive eugenics,” the “improvement” of the race by encouraging those deemed superior — always white members of the middle and upper classes — to have large families. “Negative eugenics” was advocated to limit the number of children born to those deemed “unfit.” This would be achieved through sterilization and the separation of genders.
Winston Churchill, who was home secretary in the liberal government of H.H. Asquith in 1910-11, backed the forced sterilization of the “feeble minded,” calling them a “national and race danger” and “the source from which the stream of madness is fed.”
The Trump White House, led by Stephen Miller, is intent on carrying out a similar culling of American society. Those endowed with “negative” hereditary traits — based usually on race — are condemned as human contaminants that an army of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are terrorizing, incarcerating and purging from society.
Miller, in emails leaked in 2019, lauds the 1973 novel “The Camp of the Saints,” written by Jean Raspail. It chronicles a flotilla of South Asian people who invade France and destroy Western civilization. The immigrants, who the Trump administration are now hunting down, are described as “kinky-haired, swarthy-skinned, long-despised phantoms” and “teeming ants toiling for the white man’s comfort.” The South Asian mobs are “grotesque little beggars from the streets of Calcutta,” led by a feces-eating “gigantic Hindu” known as “the turd eater.”
This, in its most scurrilous form, is the thesis of the “Great Replacement” theory, the belief that the white races in Europe and North America are being “replaced” by “lesser breeds of the earth.”
Donald Trump boasts that he will be the “fertilization president.” American couples — meaning white couples — will be given incentives by his administration to have more children to counter declining birth rates. In the vernacular of the right wing, those who promote this updated version of “positive eugenics” are known as “pronatalists.” The Trump administration will also reduce refugees admitted to the United States next year to the token level of 7,500, with most of these spots filled by white South Africans.
Trump’s allies in Big Tech are busy creating the fertility infrastructure to conceive children with “positive” hereditary traits. Sam Altman, who has been awarded a one-year military contract worth $200 million from the Trump administration, has invested in technology to allow parents to gene edit their children before conception to produce “designer babies.”
Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Palantir, which is facilitating the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, has backed an embryo screening company called Orchid Health. Orchid promises to help parents design “healthy” children through embryo testing and selection technology. Elon Musk, a fervent pronatalist and believer in the Great Replacement theory, is reportedly a client of the startup. The goal is to empower parents to screen embryos for IQ and select “their children’s intelligence before birth,” as the Wall Street Journal notes.
We are making the same self-defeating mistakes made by the British political class that oversaw the decline of the British Empire and orchestrated the suicidal folly of World War I. We blame the poor for their own impoverishment. We believe in the superiority of the white race over other races, crushing the plethora of voices, cultures and experiences that create a dynamic society. We seek to counter injustices, along with economic and social inequality, with hypermasculinity, militarism and force, which accelerates the internal decay and propels us toward a disastrous global war, perhaps, in our case, with China.
Wells scoffed at the idiocy of an entitled ruling class that was unable to analyze or address the social problems it had created. He excoriated the British political elite for its ignorance and ineptitude. They had vulgarized democracy, he wrote, with their racism, hypernationalism and simplistic cliché-ridden public discourse, stoked by a sensationalist tabloid press.
When a crisis came, Wells warned, these mandarins, like our own, would set the funeral pyre of empire alight.
1 This Month
5 March -Online – Reversing nuclearization:
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