Those who testified at the state capital against New Jersey’s adoption of the IHRA, arguing that it would criminalize free speech, had our microphones muted and were shouted down, proving our point.
The Final, Final Solution – by Mr. Fish
By Chris Hedges / The Chris Hedges Report / ScheerPost / July 29, 2025
I testified at the New Jersey state capital in Trenton last week against Bill A3558, which would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
Chis Hedges testimony is included in the video below. Links are also included in the text.
“This is a dangerous assault on free speech by seeking to criminalize legitimate criticism of Israeli policies,” I said. “The Trump administration’s campaign to ostensibly root out antisemitism on college campuses is clearly a trope to shut down free speech and deport non-citizens, even if they are here legally. This bill falsely conflates ethnicity with a political state. And let’s be clear, the brunt of repression on college campuses is directed against students and faculty who oppose the genocide in Gaza, 3,000 of whom were arrested and hundreds of whom were censored, suspended or expelled. Many of these students are Jewish. What about their rights? What about their constitutional protections?”
“I have had numerous relationships with Israeli journalists and political leaders,” I went on. “I knew, for example, former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin who negotiated the Oslo peace agreement. Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli ultranationalist who opposed the peace accord. Rabin stated bluntly on numerous occasions that the occupation was harmful to Israel. Israeli colleagues frequently criticize Israeli policies in the Israeli press in language that would be defined as antisemitic by this bill.”
“For example,” I continued, “the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who served in the Israeli army and writes for the newspaper Haaretz, has called for sanctions to be imposed on Israel to stop the slaughter in Gaza, saying ‘Do to Israel what you did to South Africa.’”
“Omer Bartov, who served as an Israeli company commander in the 1973 war, is Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University,” I said. “He stated in an article on July 15 in The New York Times that his ‘inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.’”
“These kinds of statements, and many more I can quote from Israeli colleagues and friends, would see them under this bill criminalized as antisemites,” I added.
Committee chairman Robert Karabinchak, a Democrat, muted my microphone, banged his hammer for me to stop and allowed gaggles of Zionists, who openly harassed and insulted Muslims in the room, to jeer and shout me down.
There I was arguing that this bill would curtail my free speech, at the same time I was being denied free speech.
This cognitive dissonance defines the United States and Israel.
The committee chairman also muted Raz Segal, the Israeli historian and genocide scholar and, in an especially callous move, chastised Mehdi Rabee, whose 14-year-old brother Amer was killed by Israeli soldiers in April 2025.
“My 14-year-old brother who was from Saddlebrook, New Jersey, was murdered by the IDF,” Mehdi, his voice shaking with emotion, told the committee. “All he was doing was picking olives from an olive tree with his friends, which we have been doing as Palestinians for thousands of years. My brother, whom I will never see again, my brother who my parents will never watch graduate from high school or college. Assemblywoman Swain, my father and the Palestinian-American Community Center tried reaching out to you over and over. And all that we were met with was nothing but silence. Given your silence, you should not have the right to even consider voting for this bill until you meet with my family, who are under your district.”
“I am going to ask you to stick to the bill,” Karabinchak interrupted.
“This bill puts at risk my First Amendment right to criticize Israel for what they have done to my brother,” he went on. “I have a right to call Israel whatever I want to call it. When their policies mirror that of the Nazis, I have a right to call it as it is. I call on you to vote no in remembrance of my brother.”
Karabinchak, angered that supporters gave Rabee a standing ovation, reduced all testimonies critical of the bill from three minutes to one minute.
“Time is down to one minute,” he told the crowd of about 400 in the committee and four overflow rooms. “I’m going to ask everybody now to speak, who wants to speak, is going to say ‘I oppose the bill’ or ‘I support the bill.’”
He paused.
“Let’s have some more claps,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Let’s be happy now, right? I didn’t throw you out like I said I was going to. So now you just stifled the other people who have a right to speak. That’s what you just did! Understand what you did! Okay? One minute. One minute. That’s it. And I’m not going to be nice and say let’s rap it up. I’m going to shut the mic off. ”
Our sin was that we dared to mention the unmentionable – the genocide in Gaza.
The Zionists in the room were verbally and physically abusive to the Muslims who had come to oppose the bill. One Zionist repeatedly shoved himself into the bodies of those outside the state capital holding a rally against the bill.
Amy Gallatin, who is on the commission of the West Orange Human Relations Commission, “established by municipal ordinance in 1992 in order to create and foster values of diversity, equity and inclusion among groups in the community,” pulled up pictures on her iPad in one of the overflow rooms and said to those seated around her “Look, its Mohammed!”
When Rabbi Yitzchok Deutsch made an emotional plea to save the people of Gaza Lisa Swain of District 38 and Assemblyman Avi Schnall of District 30, both Democrats, snickered and laughed as he spoke.
You can see their reactions to Rabbi Deutsch here.
Zionists, who painted lurid pictures of Jews living under harassment and in fear for their lives, and of Nazism supposedly running amok on the streets of New Jersey, were not muted, although their statements were hyperbolic to the extreme and often a product of over-active imaginations. They openly salivated at the adoption of the bill, which they said would give law enforcement the tools to criminalize those who engage in hate speech, which, if you read the “contemporary examples of antisemitism,” that accompany the IHRA, include speech that criticizes Israeli policies.
The IHRA has been adopted by 35 states, the District of Columbia and universities such as Harvard and Columbia.
“The IHRA working definition of antisemitism includes protected criticism of Israel and its policies,” writes the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “For example, the definition declares that ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,’ ‘drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,’ and ‘applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation’ are all examples of antisemitism.”
“If the Department of Education were to adopt this definition, and investigate universities for Title VI complaints based on it, college and university administrators would likely silence a range of protected speech including criticism of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, analogies likening Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany, or sharing differing beliefs about the right to a Jewish state,” the ACLU continues. “People may disagree about whether such speech is antisemitic, but that debate is irrelevant to the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from censoring or penalizing core political speech.”
U.S. attorney Kenneth S. Stern — a self-professed Zionist and the lead drafter of what became the IHRA definition of antisemitism — laments that the IHRA has been “grossly abused” to “restrict academic freedom and punish political speech,” including “pro-Palestinian speech.”
The five committee members, who had clearly made up their minds before they entered the packed hearing room, unanimously passed the measure, which will go to the floor of the State Assembly for a vote. They will, like all politicians who bow before the dictates of the Israel lobby, no doubt, be compensated for their perfidy.
America, like Israel, exists in a parallel reality. It denies the stark and incontrovertible reality of the live-streamed genocide. It slanders anyone, including Israeli holocaust scholars such as Professor Segal, as antisemites.
I know, sadly, where this goes. I witnessed it in the many dictatorships I covered as a foreign correspondent for two decades in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Those of us who fight for an open society are silenced, attacked as traitors and criminals. We are blacklisted, censored and at times, locked up. If we can escape in time, we are forced into exile. As we are silenced, the sycophants, grifters, Christian fascists, billionaires, Zionists and thugs, elevated to the highest positions in the federal government by the Trump White House, are rewarded with absolute power, luxury and debauchery.
Our corporate-indentured ruling class has no genuine political ideology. Political parties are a farce, a species of entertainment to beguile the population in our pretend democracy. Liberalism, and the values it claims to represent, is a spent and bankrupt force.
The burlesque in the committee room in Trenton was another depressing reminder that there is little now that will halt our path towards an authoritarian state, not the press, not the universities, not the courts, which cannot enforce the few rulings made by courageous judges, not the political class, including the Democratic Party, and not the electoral process.
We must resist, if only to assert our integrity and dignity, if only to stand in solidarity with the oppressed, if only to slow the consolidation of tyranny, if only to revel in the small pyrrhic victories that resistance alone makes possible.
Vanuatu Climate Minister on World Court Ruling Countries Must Address Climate
In a landmark decision, the International Court of Justice found that polluting countries are now legally obligated to address global warming. In a unanimous ruling by a panel of 15 judges, the court said high-emitting countries do have legal obligations under international law to address the “urgent and existential threat” of climate change. The case was brought forward by the island nation Vanuatu, which has faced the brunt of the climate crisis with extreme weather events and rising sea levels.
Sébastien Duyck senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law.
“Countries in the Pacific, communities in the Pacific, are suffering from something which they did not cause,” says Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister for climate change. “It’s been caused by private actors that are being regulated by states in the West.” Sébastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, which supported Vanuatu in its case, agrees. He says, “What we really need is to end an era of impunity and just actually rely on existing legal principles to hold polluters accountable, whether they are corporate or governmental.”
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“We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions
to participate in the process of change.
Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people,
can transform the world.”
This interview with Chris Hedges was recorded before Harvard University rejected the conditions that the Trump administration tried to impose on them if they were to receive federal funding. The second video is Stanley’s response regarding Harvard’s decision and a discussion of universities threatened with federal funding cuts. He also discusses his personal decision to move to the University of Toronto in Canada. Also included is a video on the Tactics of Fascism.
Despite a strong desire from the public to get to the bottom of the Jeffrey Epstein case, which saw the trafficking and sexual exploitation of thousands of young girls, the cabal associated with Epstein continues its conspiracy to suppress the ugly truth of the ruling class.
By Chris Hedges: Epstein, Donald Trump and Sexual Blackmail Networks (w/ Nick Bryant) / The Chris Hedges Report / July 16, 2025
Journalist and author Nick Bryant spent seven years investigating a child sex trafficking network that was covered up by state and federal authorities, culminating in the book The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse, and Betrayal.
Journalist and author Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times. He previously worked overseas for several major news media. Hedges has written several books and hosts The Chris Hedges Report.
Amy Goodman interviews Jeffrey Epstein Survivor / July 18, 2025
Guests
Teresa HelmA survivor of sexual abuse perpetrated by Jeffrey Epstein and facilitated by Ghislaine Maxwell.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We speak to a survivor of sexual abuse perpetrated by Jeffrey Epstein and enabled by his partner Ghislaine Maxwell. Teresa Helm was sexually assaulted by Epstein at what she was told was a job interview in the early 2000s. She now works as the survivor services coordinator for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and joins many voices calling for the release of federal documents pertaining to Epstein’s criminal case, though Helm emphasizes that the goal of their release must be to promote accountability and justice for victims, not as a form of political score-settling. “I really urge everyone to focus their commitment, their intention, all this time, effort and energy onto … these survivors and their healing,” says Helm. “We’re talking about people’s lives, and it should not be weaponized either way, in any administration.”
Missing in much of the MAGA frenzy over the Jeffrey Epstein files are the voices of survivors of the sexual abuse he perpetrated against them. Many, like our next guest, have joined the call for transparency and for the Trump administration to release the files as promised.
This comes as Virginia Giuffre, an outspoken survivor of sex trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein, died, apparently by suicide, at age 41 in April. She was the first survivor to come out publicly against Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who remains in prison. She also sued Prince Andrew for sexually assaulting her when she was 17. The disgraced prince was forced to step away from his royal duties and settle with Giuffre in 2022. Her family said in a statement, quote, “Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors,” unquote.
Just last week, when the FBI and Department of Justice announced there was, quote, “no incriminating client list,” it also said Epstein harmed over 1,000 victims over two decades, far more than previously known.
For more, we’re joined by Teresa Helm, who is a survivor of sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, facilitated by Ghislaine Maxwell. She was assaulted by Epstein in the early 2000s. She now works as the survivor services coordinator for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Her 2024 piece for Newsweek is headlined “I’m a Jeffrey Epstein Survivor. The Documents Are an Opportunity.”
Thank you so much for joining us. You, Teresa Helm, have talked about the dangers of grooming. As you see all of this taking place, the uprising within the MAGA movement, lost are what sexual violence survivors go through. Talk about how you first met Jeffrey Epstein, how you were brought to him, how you were groomed.
TERESAHELM: Well, hello. Good morning. I can certainly talk to that.
So, I was attending college out in California at the time and was a full-time student and a full-time employee there. And so, that began the process of recruitment to grooming, passed along the line from various people as far as “This is an opportunity that I’d like for you to see if you’re interested in, and go talk to this person.” So, after speaking with a couple young women about an opportunity that I thought I was being blessed with at the time, I eventually met with Ghislaine Maxwell, who really — what she did was pretty astounding, in the fact that within a day I was convinced that I was in a safe, healthy, wonderful environment, blessed with an opportunity to pursue a career that I could — had only dreamed of having. In fact, that was my dream, to do what she had stated I would do alongside her, working for her. She was very polite and kind. She built trust in a very — you know, within hours, I thought that I had really landed the opportunity of a lifetime. My family was very pleased that I was there interviewing with her, which is what — the intention. That’s what the — that’s what I thought I was there for, was an interview. And things went so amazingly well. And then, she was so successful in all of that very, I would call it, you know, master manipulation. She was very calculated in her craft and did it very well.
I was very young. I mean, I was an adult, 22 years old. However, I had such big dreams and aspirations and determination and really wanted to make the most of this opportunity that I thought that I was getting, to the point where at the end of my time with Ghislaine Maxwell, although I hadn’t known that there was a partner, as she referred to him, that I would be meeting at the end of my time with her — I hadn’t heard Jeffrey or any other person’s name the entire time, from beginning, sitting behind the desk at work in California at the college, to meeting Sarah Kellen at the beach to — who then introduced me to Ghislaine. I had no idea that there was a final person that I was going to go meet.
And once I learned of him, by the name of Jeffrey, I did not — I paused and thought about some things, waived any kind of red flag in my mind, because, again, she was so — Ghislaine was so, so good at what she had done and built that trust in me. And so, then I walked — I walked myself to Jeffrey’s home later that day to what I thought was to interview with him, without really a lot of question, actually being quite excited, because I thought, “Well, if I was so successful here with Ghislaine, which she has really made me believe that I have been, now I get the opportunity to go complete this, like a second round of the interview.” And that was — really, I walked myself into tragedy. I had no idea. I could — I actually should and I will reframe that. I didn’t walk myself into tragedy. I was lured there. I was coaxed there, coerced there, under false and fraudulent, you know, conditions and expectations.
AMYGOODMAN: And it was there —
TERESAHELM: And that’s how I —
AMYGOODMAN: It was then that Jeffrey Epstein assaulted you?
TERESAHELM: That’s right, there in his very big, beautiful home there in Manhattan, you know, the home that Ghislaine was raving about after I had been complimenting her on her home and speaking about the different various buildings and the architecture and how much I enjoyed it and comparing different cities to New York. And then she raved about his: If I thought hers was great, wait ’til I see his. Yeah, so, it was there.
AMYGOODMAN: So, you have joined the call for the Epstein files to be released. Can you explain why you feel this is so important?
TERESAHELM: Where I stand with all of this is in, you know, utter solidarity with survivors of this entire nightmare that’s just been ongoing for decades with these people that have gotten away with so much for so long, you know, whether it was a failure of the system back in the ’90s, whether failure of the system again in the early 2000s. There are so many women and, at the time, even, you know, children that have been harmed by these people.
I really urge everyone to focus the — you know, the commitment, the intention, all this time, effort and energy onto bringing to light what needs to bring to light for these survivors and their healing, and less about political weaponization of anything, because at the end of the day, that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about people’s lives, and it should not be weaponized either way in any administration, no matter who’s in control at the time, who did what, when, who’s doing what now. Transparency is key, because we cannot move forward as a society and as a culture without these fundamental changes of — these fundamental changes of doing the right thing and holding people accountable, because we can’t continue to have systems of power that just get away, or people — whether it’s a system or a person, we cannot continue to have these people or systems continue to get away with anything that they can get away with, because they’re not — they’re skating through. They’re dodging accountability. There’s too much money involved, so, you know, people silenced through money.
We have got to change the — it’s degrading our society to continue to allow these predators and perpetrators to get away with harming so many people. You know, those that harm and exploit, they have to be silenced, not the survivors continuing to be silenced, because when you don’t have accountability, you don’t have justice. We are so far out of balance with justice. It’s almost like, you know, Lady Liberty, she can take us a small step to the ground, because we’re so uneven, where survivors are holding on, clinging on to hope, which tends to be, you know, one thing that you can’t take away from a survivor. It’s how we get here. We survive through it because we have so much hope. But hope tends to get shattered often. And it’s like the onus is on us to pick up the pieces and try to get louder and louder. You know, our silence is not — it’s very loud within us. We have to then — you know, we’re tasked with rising back up, fighting bigger, fighting louder, you know, screaming from the mountaintops.
Like, who is going to do something? Because we are setting horrible, horrible influences to our children and to our youth of what you can and can’t get away with, depending on who you are, what position you are in. And as I said, I just feel like, you know, oftentimes we have these huge-profile cases where people are harming others, and there’s just such a big — you know, “Did this really happen to you? Well, if it did, what about this?” We have to get to the point where we are survivor-focused in the justice system, because we’re such a huge part of it that we have to stop politicizing everything and listen to the survivors, listen to the ones that have the lived experience. You cannot take this experience — people can say there’s nothing there. You cannot take the lived experience away from us, not that we wanted it in the first place, but here it is. It lives with us. It remains with us. We’re fighting for justice. You cannot take away our lived experience.
AMYGOODMAN: Well, Teresa Helm, I want to thank you so much for being with us. We’re going to link to your piece, “I’m a Jeffrey Epstein Survivor. The Documents Are an Opportunity.”
When we come back, we’re going to go to Ro Khanna in the Capitol, who is introducing a bill to deal with the Epstein files, to have them released. Stay with us.
[break]
AMYGOODMAN: “Garner Poem” by Mourning [A] BLKstar in our Democracy Now! studio. Thursday marked the 11th anniversary of the police killing of Eric Garner, who died after a New York police officer held him in a chokehold. Eric Garner’s pleas of “I can’t breathe,” captured on video by a witness, became a global rallying cry against police brutality. The now ex-NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo remains a free man after a jury and the Justice Department declined to charge him for the killing of Eric Garner.
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“Israel is trying to concentrate the population of Gaza in the southernmost parts of the strip, to enclose them and to enforce, eventually, either that they would just die out there or that they would be removed from the Gaza Strip altogether.”
We speak with leading Israeli American historian Omer Bartov about his latest essay for The New York Times, headlined “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.” Bartov cites the United Nations definition of “genocide,” which includes an intent to destroy a group of people that makes it impossible for the group to reconstitute itself. “This is precisely what Israel is trying to do,” he says. “Israel is trying to concentrate the population of Gaza in the southernmost parts of the strip, to enclose them and to enforce, eventually, either that they would just die out there or that they would be removed from the Gaza Strip altogether.”
Palestinians gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis, as the Israel-Gaza conflict continues, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, December 4, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed
Transcript This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEENSHAIKH: Israel’s military is continuing to attack civilians across the Gaza Strip, with at least 93 Palestinians killed over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths in Gaza to 58,000, most of them women and children. This number is believed to be a vast undercount. At least 10,000 are believed to be buried under the rubble. The U.N. estimates approximately 92% of all residential buildings in Gaza, around 436,000 homes, have been damaged or destroyed.
As the situation continues to deteriorate, an emergency meeting of the Hague Group convened in Bogotá, Colombia, to discuss the conflict. It concluded with the announcement of a series of measures aimed at halting Israel’s attacks on Palestine and ending the, quote, “era of impunity.” The Hague Group came together in January as a bloc of Global South countries committed to coordinating legal and diplomatic measures in defense of international law and solidarity with the Palestinian people. There are now 30 member states. The action steps announced at the conclusion of the summit include banning arms sales to Israel and reviewing ties with companies who profit from the occupation of Palestine. So far, only 12 states have agreed to implement the steps. The summit was co-chaired by South Africa and Colombia. This is Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro.
PRESIDENTGUSTAVOPETRO: [translated] We need to leave NATO. We need to form an army of light with all the peoples of the world who want to. And we need to tell Europe that if it wants to be with Latin America or Africa, it must stop helping the Nazis. And we need to tell the American people of all colors, because they are now of all colors, to stop helping the Nazis.
NERMEENSHAIKH: The Hague Group’s joint statement affirms the commitment to, quote, “Comply with our obligations to ensure accountability for the most serious crimes under international law through robust, impartial and independent investigations and prosecutions at national or international levels, in compliance with our obligation to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes,” end-quote.
AMYGOODMAN: Well, there’s perhaps no greater crime than genocide. Our next guest, Omer Bartov, is professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. He is an Israeli American scholar who’s been described [by] the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as one of the world’s leading specialists on the subject of genocide. And he’s just written an op-ed for The New York Times headlined “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.” Professor Bartov joins us from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Well, why don’t you, Professor Bartov — and thanks for joining us again — lay out your case?
OMERBARTOV: Well, thanks for having me again.
The case that I made in the article and that I’ve been making for a while is that at the beginning, immediately after October 7th, the Hamas attack on October 7th, Israeli political and military leaders made a series of pronouncements which could be interpreted as calling for genocide. But there was still no — at that point, there was no evidence that this was being implemented.
Over time, and I would say by May of 2024, it became apparent that these statements were not only made in the heat of the moment following the massacre by Hamas, but were actually being implemented in a manner that would make it impossible for people to live in Gaza, make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable and make life there impossible, as well as destroy all the institutions that would be there for that group to reconstitute itself as a social, cultural, political group once the violence was over. Of course, it’s not over yet. I started thinking that in May. In August that year, I wrote an article that explained that.
But the violence has only continued, and the attempt, as you just reported, to destroy Gaza entirely has continued since. And it is now clear that Israel is trying to concentrate the population of Gaza in the southernmost parts of the strip, to enclose them and to enforce, eventually, either that they would just die out there or that they would be removed from the Gaza Strip altogether.
NERMEENSHAIKH: And, I mean, obviously, the points that you’ve made, Professor Omer Bartov, makes it completely indisputable, the argument that you make in the piece, indeed, that there is a genocide ongoing and that that is the long-term plan of Israel. You point out in the piece, though, that genocide scholars are often hesitant about applying the term “genocide” to contemporary events, in part because, as you write, quote, “it often serves more to express outrage than to identify a particular crime.” Of course, there are people who believe that that’s the case even today with respect to Gaza. If you could respond to that?
OMERBARTOV: Correct. So, this is one reason that I did not come out right after October 7th and say, “Well, Israel is about to commit genocide,” because, despite those statements, one had to observe and see what was actually happening on the ground. And yes, it is true that the term “genocide” has been used more as an expression of outrage when seeing massacres, mass killings, but that does not necessarily mean that what you’re watching is genocide. “Genocide” is well defined in a U.N. convention from 1948. And under international law, only events that can — that conform to the definition can be seen as genocide. And that means that you have to show both that there is an intent to destroy a particular group, in whole or in part, as such, and that that intent is being implemented. And that, obviously and unfortunately, takes time to adjudicate.
I think that the term, while problematic, is very important, because it does identify a very particular crime. It talks about the attempt to destroy not simply people in large numbers, but to destroy them as members of a group. The intent is to destroy the group itself. And it doesn’t mean that you have to kill everyone. It means that the group will be destroyed and that it will not be able to reconstitute itself as a group. And to my mind, this is precisely what Israel is trying to do. And many of its spokespersons, to this day, keep reiterating that, to the extent that it’s somewhat bizarre that so much of the rest of the world is not taking them seriously.
NERMEENSHAIKH: Professor Bartov, could you also talk about — I mean, you are an Israeli American scholar and are in touch with people in Israel. How do you see perceptions of Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza changing within Israel? And where are people getting their information there? There’s been talk of basically self-censorship of the mainstream media, but, of course, so many of these images and information are circulating not in the mainstream press, but on social media.
OMERBARTOV: So, look, I should say first I am — I was born and raised in Israel. I spent the first half of my life in Israel. I served in the Israeli military. And for me, to see what is happening is personally, not only just as a mere human being, but also as an Israeli, heartbreaking.
What I see in the Israeli public is an extraordinary indifference by large parts of the public to what Israel is doing and what it’s done in the name of Israeli citizens in Gaza. In part, it has to do with the fact that the Israeli media has decided not to report on the horrors that the IDF is perpetrating in Gaza. You simply will not see it on Israeli television. If some pictures happen to come in, they are presented only as material that might be used by foreign propaganda against Israel. Now, Israeli citizens can, of course, use other media resources. We can all do that. But most of them prefer not to. And I would say that while about 30% of the population in Israel is completely in favor of what is happening, and, in fact, is egging the government and the army on, I think the vast majority of the population simply does not want to know about it. And that goes back both to the inability to see anything on their own TVs and, in response to October 7th, a sense that after that — and that’s a widespread sense in Israel — after that, there is no way of finding any solution with the Palestinians, and the only way to deal with that issue is to eradicate it.
AMYGOODMAN: Professor Bartov, can you talk about the genocide scholars across the world who have come to the same conclusion?
OMERBARTOV: Yes. So, as I wrote in the op-ed, over time, many genocide scholars who are — and legal experts, experts in international law, who, like me, have been very cautious about applying this term, have gradually come to the conclusion that what we’re watching is genocide. And that’s important, in the sense that there is now, I think, a growing consensus over that view.
As I wrote in the piece, unfortunately, scholars and institutions dedicated to researching and commemorating the Holocaust have generally, with few very courageous exceptions, have generally refused to say anything, to express themselves in any way, about what is happening in Gaza. And to my mind, by doing that, they, first of all, betrayed the very idea of “never again,” because “never again” was never about “never again the Holocaust,” it was “never again genocide and such other crimes against humanity.” So, there’s now a rift between genocide scholars, who have generally come to agree on Gaza being an Israeli genocidal operation, and Holocaust scholars and institutions that have remained mum.
AMYGOODMAN: Can you talk about how the term “genocide” came into use? Can you talk about the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin?
OMERBARTOV: Yeah, so, Raphael Lemkin was a Polish Jewish lawyer who, already in the 1930s, was trying to find some kind of terminology that would describe and legally define that particular crime of trying to destroy a group. And the example that he had at the time was the genocide of the Armenians during World War I by the Ottoman Empire. During World War II, he had to escape Poland as a Jew. Most of his family was murdered. He ended up in the United States. And in 1944, he published a book in which he defined what he understood as the crime of genocide, a term that he coined, which is a combination of Greek and Latin, meaning killing a group or an ethnic group. And he struggled for a few more years to have the U.N., the United Nations, just established in 1945, to recognize that crime, and he succeeded in doing so in 1948.
NERMEENSHAIKH: Professor Bartov, I want to ask you about a question, indeed, that you ask in your piece, which is, quote, “How will Israel’s future be affected by the inevitable demolition of its incontestable morality, derived from its birth in the ashes of the Holocaust?” What’s the answer to that question?
OMERBARTOV: Look, I mean, this is beside the horrific killing of human beings in Gaza. And I should just say, because you mentioned the distribution points of food, that between late May, when this so-called humanitarian group started distributing food, and today, more Palestinian civilians have been killed at these distribution groups than Israeli civilians were killed in the Hamas attack.
Now, what is the — what does all this mean for Israel? As I suggested in the piece, first of all, I think Israel will no longer be able to draw on the credit, if you like, of having been the state that was created after the Holocaust as an answer to the Holocaust. It will no longer be able to say, “We can do whatever we like, because we were a nation subjected to genocide.” You cannot continue to use this argument following the mass killing of another group.
I hope — and I write that, too — I hope that future generations of Israelis, who will not be clean of that stain — that stain will remain — but will at least be liberated from this shadow of the Holocaust and will start to look at reality as it is, and start to think of how can they reconstitute their own nation, not as a response to the genocide against the Jews, as a response to the Holocaust, but rather as a nation that knows how to share this land, where 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians live side by side between the Jordan and the sea, to share it with them with equality and dignity, and not with the use of bombs and violence.
AMYGOODMAN: Can you talk about this plan to make, build a so-called humanitarian city — the defense minister, Israel Katz, has proposed this idea — on the rubble of Rafah, and the opposition of two former prime ministers? You have Ehud Olmert, you have Yair Lapid. They’re saying if there is no exit, this is a concentration camp. The significance of these men saying this?
OMERBARTOV: Well, I think it’s very important that Lapid, who’s been sort of on all parts of this debate, said something and that Olmert spoke out, although Olmert no longer has any political power in Israel.
The plan itself, again, using the typical euphemisms that are used by organizations and states that carry out such crimes, calling that a humanitarian city, which would be a vast concentration camp, a sort of combination of ghetto and concentration camp, that would be built, as you said, on the ruins of Rafah — Rafah has been completely destroyed, there’s nothing there — build a tent city on top of it, bring in initially 600,000 people, who would be brought back from the Mawasi area, from the beach area, to which they were displaced when the IDF went in to destroy Rafah, enclose them there. The plan does not say that Israel would supply them with any humanitarian assistance in the camp, but some other international organizations yet to be determined. But they would not be able to leave unless they leave the Gaza Strip altogether. So, this is — and in continuation to that, the rest of the population is supposed to then join this camp, with a goal of removing them. So, this is extraordinary. The state of Israel publicly is speaking about the creation of a vast concentration camp whose goal is removal of the population to countries that have unanimously said they are not going to take them in.
NERMEENSHAIKH: Well, Professor Bartov, I want to ask about the U.S.’s position on this, of course, their continuing support for Israel, which has enabled the assault to continue. I want to go back to the former president, Biden, his administration, the State Department spokesperson at the time, Matt Miller, who admitted earlier this year, in May, that he believes Israel committed war crimes in Gaza. This reversal came after more than a year, as the face of the Biden administration’s foreign policy, repeatedly defending Israel against allegations of war crimes and genocide. This was Miller speaking earlier this year — last year.
MATTHEWMILLER: We have been very clear that we want to see Israel do everything it can to minimize civilian casualties. We have made clear that they need to do every — that they need to operate at all times in full compliance with international humanitarian law. At the same time, we are committed to Israel’s right to self-defense.
NERMEENSHAIKH: But during an interview with Sky News last month, in June, Matt Miller says he believes Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza and that Israeli soldiers are not being held accountable.
MATTHEWMILLER: I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think the — I think it is, without a doubt, true that Israel has committed war crimes.
MARKSTONE: You wouldn’t have said that at the podium.
MATTHEWMILLER: Yeah, look, because I — I mean, when you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion. You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government.
NERMEENSHAIKH: So, Professor Bartov, your response to that, and also your perception of how the Trump administration has both broken with and continued Biden’s policies on Gaza?
OMERBARTOV: Well, you know, in November 2023, I published an op-ed in The New York Times in which I said that war crimes and crimes against humanity were clearly happening in Gaza, and that if this continued, it would become a genocidal operation. I was hoping at the time that someone in the administration would actually pay attention, because the United States, in November or December 2023, could have stopped all of this. It was not very difficult to do. Israel cannot act as it has without constant supply of arms from the United States and Germany — these are the two major suppliers; the U.S. supplies between 70 and 80% of all munitions to Israel — and without diplomatic cover — Israel has a diplomatic Iron Dome created by the U.S. veto in the Security Council. That did not happen. And, of course, the evidence was there. And so, first of all, one has to say that the Biden administration is complicit in what happened in Gaza.
Secondly, when Trump came in, curiously, the first thing that happened, the day before he came into office, was that he forced a ceasefire on Israel. And that ceasefire, in January this year, made it possible to exchange Palestinian prisoners for a large number of hostages, but not all of them. The plan was to complete that exchange and to stop the fighting. But in March, Israel unilaterally broke that ceasefire without any interference from the United States, and, since then, has continued. And what is particularly galling is the fact that when Trump floated his plan, if you recall that, that the population of Gaza would be removed, and then Gaza would be made into a beautiful resort area, he later on didn’t really repeat that. But in Israel, that was seen as license to do exactly what is being done now — that is, using hundreds of bulldozers, engineers, explosives to systematically destroy every building in Gaza so that nobody would be able to live in, in that area, and then, well, maybe turn it into a resort area, more likely be an area for Jewish settlers.
AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to name names here, that you do in your piece. “In November, a little more than a year into the war, the Israeli genocide scholar Shmuel Lederman joined the growing chorus of opinion that Israel was engaged in genocidal actions. The Canadian international lawyer William Schabas came to the same conclusion … and has recently described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as ‘absolutely’ a genocide.
“Other genocide experts, [like] Melanie O’Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the British specialist Martin Shaw (who has also said … the Hamas attack was genocidal), have reached the same [conclusion], while the Australian scholar A. Dirk Moses [of] the City University of New York described these events in the Dutch publication NRC as a ‘mix of genocidal and military logic.’ In the same article, Uğur Ümit Üngör, a professor at the Amsterdam-based NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, said there are probably scholars who still do not think it’s genocide, but ‘I don’t know them.’”
Professor Bartov, as we begin to wrap up, can you talk about this consensus and whether Holocaust museums, which often address a number of holocausts, will be taking on what Israel has done in Gaza?
OMERBARTOV: Well, so, as I said before, I think there is a growing consensus among genocide scholars and legal experts. William Schabas is a very good example, because he’s a highly respected expert. He’s very conservative. He took a long time to reach that conclusion. And he has. I just spoke with him recently in Europe, and he very strongly believes that what Israel is doing now is genocide.
But the other side of it, as you indicate, is the tragedy that most Holocaust scholars and all of the institutions that I know that are dedicated to commemorating and researching the Holocaust have refused to say anything. And some, again, a minority of Holocaust scholars, have come out and claimed that genocide scholars speaking about genocide in Gaza are antisemitic, that this is an antisemitic argument. And that use of the term “antisemitism,” which, as you know, of course, and we spoke about, was also a tool to silence any protest last spring on American campuses, this abuse of the term is now creating a rift between Holocaust scholars and genocide scholars.
And what I fear — and that’s what I write at the end of this piece — what I fear is that this will mean that the Holocaust, which had come, over decades, to be recognized as an event of universal importance, as an event that we have to learn from, because of the silence, because of the betrayal of the notion of “never again” by these institutions and these scholars, will go back to become a sort of ethnic enclave, only something that the Jews talk about among themselves.
AMYGOODMAN: Omer Bartov, we want to thank you for being with us, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University and an Israeli American scholar, described by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as one of the world’s leading specialists in the subject of genocide. His forthcoming book, Israel: What Went Wrong? His previous books, Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine. We’ll link to your piece in The New York Times, “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”
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By Glenn Greenwald / System Update / June 10, 2025
This is a clip from the show SYSTEM UPDATE, now airing every weeknight at 7pm ET on Rumble. You can watch the full episode for FREE here: https://rumble.com/v6ujj1n-system-upd…
Democracy Now! “Purge Palantir”: Day of Action Protests Firm’s Role in Gov’t Surveillance, ICE & Genocide in Gaza
Protesters across the United States targeted Palantir Monday [7/14/25] in a day of action focused on the technology company’s work with ICE, facilitating President Trump’s expanding immigration crackdown, and work with the Israeli military. New York police arrested at least four people Monday after demonstrators blocked the entrance to the company’s Manhattan offices. Democracy Now! spoke to protesters, including some who work in the technology sector, about the “Purge Palantir” campaign and how Palantir’s data mining, surveillance and automation tools are being weaponized against vulnerable communities. We speak with Wired senior writer Makena Kelly, who has been covering Palantir and says many Silicon Valley firms are “trying to find opportunity in this chaos” as the Trump administration slashes government services and pursues mass deportations.
Guests Makena Kelly Wired Senior Writer focused on the intersection of politics, power and technology.
Please check back to Democracy now later for full transcript.
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The Individual War Abolisher of 2025 award by World Beyond War goes toFrancesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, for her fearless, incisive, and eloquent reporting on the genocide in Gaza.
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Glenn Greenwald interviews Francesca Albanese.
Information about Francesa and the 2025 War Abolisher Awards from World Beyond War.
Please join World Beyond War for the presentation of the 2025 War Abolisher Awards to Ralph Nader, Roger Waters, and Francesca Albanese.
The event is free and open to the public.
The event begins on July 24, 2025, at 18:30 UTC, which is 6:30 a.m. in Auckland, 8:30 a.m. in Honolulu, 11:30 a.m. in Los Angeles, 12:30 p.m. in Mexico City, 2:30 p.m. in New York, 7:30 p.m. in Yaoundé, 8:30 p.m. in Berlin, and 10 p.m. in Tehran.
World BEYOND War’s Fifth Annual War Abolisher Awards will recognize the work of individuals who directly support one or more of the three segments of World BEYOND War’s strategy for reducing and eliminating war as outlined in the bookA Global Security System, An Alternative to War. They are: Demilitarizing Security, Managing Conflict Without Violence, and Building a Culture of Peace.
The awardees for 2025 are Ralph Nader, Roger Waters, and Francesca Albanese.
The Artistic War Abolisher of 2025 award goes to Roger Waters for his incredibly powerful combination of song-writing, singing, speaking, and performing against the horrors of war. During the event, we will play a new 8-minute song pre-recorded by Roger Waters called Sumud.
The David Hartsough Lifetime Individual War Abolisher of 2025 award — named for the late co-founder of World BEYOND War — goes to Ralph Nader for his brilliant and relentless advocacy, educating, organizing, analyzing, and criticizing war and related crimes and abuses.
The Individual War Abolisher of 2025 award goes to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, for her fearless, incisive, and eloquent reporting on the genocide in Gaza.
It is past time to unmask the violent agents targeting people like Narciso, and halt Trump’s racist, xenophobic mass detentions and deportations.
Time to Unmask Trump’s Detention and Deportation Squads
By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan/ Democracy Now / Column / June 26, 2025
With each passing day, the violence wielded by ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, grows more intense and widespread. One grotesquely emblematic example of this was the recent violent arrest of 48-year-old Narciso Barranco in Santa Ana, California. Narciso, a hardworking immigrant laborer who came from Mexico over thirty years ago, is the father of three US Marines. While landscaping outside an IHOP restaurant on June 21st, he was assaulted by at least seven armed, masked men, who tackled him and repeatedly punched him in the head. They handcuffed him and shoved him into an unmarked SUV. The plainclothes agents wore face masks, bullet-proof vests and military-grade helmets. Some of the vests read, “Police–US Border Patrol” on the back, but to anyone confronted by these gangs, no identifying marks, names, or badges were visible.
Image Credit: Instagram/@santaanaproblems
One of Narciso’s sons, Alejandro Barranco, a US Marine Corps veteran, was able to visit his father in jail. Narciso was still wearing the same work clothes that were bloodied in the assault.
“He looked beat up, he looked rough, he looked defeated, he was sad,” Alejandro said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “Anybody would be scared if they see these guys come up to them, masked, not in uniform, guns out.”
City of Santa Ana councilmember Jonathan Hernandez, also on Democracy Now!, added, “We are watching violence unfold, racial profiling increase in cities like Santa Ana, where 41% of our residents are migrants, 70% are of Latino descent…agents come into our community, and they’re refusing to identify themselves, they don’t have judicial warrants and these ICE raids are an example of the government’s overreach.”
In mid-June, President Trump briefly paused immigration raids on farms, hotels and restaurants, ostensibly to ensure these key industries that have supported him in the past continue to do so. “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote.
Soon after, he reversed himself. The short pause revealed a fundamental truth about undocumented immigrants: the US economy doesn’t function without them. Nevertheless, urged on by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, ICE, Homeland Security and Border agents are snatching and deporting the very workers on whom our economy depends.
There are some sectors of the economy that are thriving amidst the mass deportations. GEO Group, the private prison corporation, has seen its stock rise by over 50% since Trump’s election. Palantir, the tech and AI firm co-founded by Trump backer, billionaire Peter Thiel, has seen its stock rise over 500% in the past year. It was recently reported that Palantir is building tools to allow near real-time tracking of immigrants in the US. The Program on Government Oversight, POGO, reported that Stephen Miller’s financial disclosure reveals he owns up to $250,000 in Palantir stock.
Meanwhile, the Republican majority on the US Supreme Court has handed Trump a deportation-related victory. Several immigrants sued the government to stop or reverse deportations to Guatemala, South Sudan and Libya. A federal judge in Massachusetts issued an injunction against these so-called “third party nation removals.” This week, the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices overturned that injunction, without comment. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, writing that the Trump administration’s “flagrantly unlawful conduct,” backed by the Supreme Court, is “exposing thousands to the risk of torture or death.”
Resistance is active, growing and making a difference. Grassroots pressure and legal battles have won the release of international students targeted for their solidarity with Palestinians, among them Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and the first such student arrested and threatened with deportation, Mahmoud Khalil.
Likewise, grassroots, legal and Congressional pressure forced the Trump administration to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States. The Maryland father received asylum during Trump’s first term, in 2019, based on credible threats from an El Salvador gang. Then, this past March 12th, he was snatched from a parking lot and sent, against a court order, to El Salvador.
Under enormous legal and grassroots pressure, the federal government finally returned Abrego Garcia to the US. Despite that victory, upon his return the federal government promptly rearrested him, charging him with human trafficking for allegedly driving undocumented immigrants several years ago. He remains in federal custody in Tennessee, and, if released, ICE will likely attempt to deport him.
Meanwhile, Narciso Barranco sits in ICE detention, with his two sons still on active duty in the US Marines not far away, at Fort Pendleton. It is past time to unmask the violent agents targeting people like Narciso, and halt Trump’s racist, xenophobic mass detentions and deportations.
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You are all an inspiration to me. Please join me on Wings of Change. It’s only the beginning as we still have so much work to do as many activists and organizations make plans for the upcoming years.Wings of Change is pleased and excited to be a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration.
If Roosevelt had lived what was his vision for the country and for the world?
The Unraveling of the New Deal, FDR’s Vision, Part 4
By Sue Ann Martinson / Wings of Change / June 30, 2025
FDR: The Four Freedoms
FDR, besides the New Deal, left this legacy of a New Bill of Rights as well. He had been elected for a fourth term and these were his promises. What America would be like now if he had been able to carry them out we can only speculate. But certainly as a nation we would not have been in the autocratic state we in now and people would have been more secure economically and with the comfort of being who the are without outside definitions created by others that are derogatory.
Having corporate overmasters is unconstitutional and yet another way to deconstruct a democracy that is “of the people, for the people and by the people.” Idealistic? Yes. But FDR more than any other president attempted to make a people’s government.
National and International Intentions After the War
On January 6, 1941 ─ after the invasion of Poland in 1939 when England declared war on Germany ─ FDR was focusing on the state of the world. He gave a State of the Union address in which he named the Four Freedoms for the world. In this speech he addressed the need to achieve world peace and peace for America.
This speech is 80 years to the day when on January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., was attacked by a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump in an attempted self-coup, two months after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
The Four Freedoms:
Equality of opportunity for youth and for others:
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it
The ending of special privilege for the few
The preservation of civil liberties for all.
Many subjects connected with our social economy call for immediate improvement. As examples:
We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.
We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care.
We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it.
FDR also outlined U.S. foreign policy at that time:
Just as our national policy in internal affairs has been based upon a decent respect for the rights and the dignity of all our fellow men within our gates, so our national policy in foreign affairs has been based on a decent respect for the rights and dignity of all nations, large and small. And the justice of morality must and will win in the end.
Our national policy is this:
First, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to all-inclusive national defense.
Second, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship,we are committed to full support of all those resolute peoples, everywhere, who are resisting aggression and are thereby keeping war away from our Hemisphere. By this support, we express our determination that the democratic cause shall prevail; and we strengthen the defense and the security of our own nation.
Third, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to the proposition that principles of morality and considerations for our own security will never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers. We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people’s freedom.
In the recent national election there was no substantial difference between the two great parties in respect to that national policy. No issue was fought out on this line before the American electorate. Today it is abundantly evident that American citizens everywhere are demanding and supporting speedy and complete action in recognition of obvious danger.
No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion ─ or even good business.
Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. “Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.
In a later State of the Union speech on January 11, 1944, FDR explained his vision of a New Bill of Rights:
FDR’s New Deal and his “Four Freedoms” speech outlined a broader “New Bill of Rights” that included economic security, a concept distinct from the traditional Bill of Rights which focused on individual liberties. The “New Bill of Rights” encompassed the right to a job, adequate living standards, healthcare, education, and protection from economic hardship, as outlined in FDR’s “Second Bill of Rights.”
The Four Freedoms are the foundation for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. After the death of FDR Eleanor carried the torch forward as chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights that created the document.
Although the war was not yet over, in his State of the Union address on January 11, 1944 FDR, planning ahead for the war-end, reiterated a commitment to a New Bill of Rights for the American people.
On June 11, 1944 FDR repeated the full text of the speech in one of his Fireside Chats for the nation to hear.
Perhaps FDR had been reading Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience that calls for an even more perfect Union in the United States than existed in the Constitution. Thoreau said:
The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to — for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well — is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.
The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual…. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government?
Thoreau goes on to say:
Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose, if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men.
First Thoreau is taking about himself as a good neighbor. We tend to think of neighborhoods as small units. But what if it were another country? What if all countries considered themselves a good neighbor to the countries next to them? He goes from the microcosm to the macrocosm. That interpretation seems to fit with FDR’s idea of the Four Freedoms as he expresses it in relation to Russia and Great Britain, remembering that settler colonialism was still prevalent and Western European countries held empires, including the British Empire, which was dominant.
Here is how Thoreau concludes:
A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
State of the Union, January 11, 1944
“Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
FDR, in the January 11, 1944, State of the Union Speech addressed his vision for a second Bill of Rights and explains that these rights are true security and that “The best interests of each Nation, large and small, demand that all freedom-loving Nations shall join together in a just and durable system of peace.”
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure..
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.
One of the great American industrialists of our day, a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis-recently emphasized the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop—if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called “normalcy” of the 1920’s—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.
I ask the Congress to explore the means for implementing this economic bill of rights ─ for it is definitely the responsibility of the Congress so to do.
Flash Forward
Los Angeles (LA) June 2025
From the Brennan Foundation: A panel discussion re the sending in the military to LA. Is it legal? What are the ramifications for the future?
The deployment of Marines and federalized National Guard members to police protests in Los Angeles poses a serious threat to American democracy. The president’s memorandum appears to preemptively allow the deployment of federal forces anywhere there are protests against immigration raids nationwide, regardless of whether or not they are peaceful. This broad authorization suggests that the troop deployments go beyond protecting federal property or law enforcement — they are about suppressing disagreement against the government.
— Elizabeth Goitein in a Just Security expert panel discussion.
Note FDR words above:
…the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation.
…we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.
Yet now Congress has fallen under thrall to that “rightist reaction” under the influence of those forces of fascism daily are that being forced upon us that is the opposite of “a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.” Instead social welfare programs that support that vision are being slashed with support for money for corporate needs growing and for the military while the rest of the citizenry is ignored, funds for social programs decimated. Thousands have lost their jobs, their retirement savings, even their homes while the New Bill of Rights is decimated. Education, a core of democracy, is being defunded.
Yet FDR is very clear: these are the rights worldwide that bring true security, not the building up of the military:
In the plain down-to-earth talks that I had with the Generalissimo Chiang Kai Chek and Marshal Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill, it was abundantly clear that they are all most deeply interested in the resumption of peaceful progress by their own peoples—progress toward a better life. All our allies want freedom to develop their lands and resources, to build up industry, to increase education and individual opportunity, and to raise standards of living.
All our allies have learned by bitter experience that real development will not be possible if they are to be diverted from their purpose by repeated wars—or even threats of war.
Those leaders of primary world powers are now dead and the lessons learned from WWI and WWII have faded from consciousness. Endless War prevails. The monies taken from the social programs is instead to be used to increase the military might of America with Trump’s proposed Golden Dome, similar to the Iron Dome in Israel only four times larger to somehow protect the whole of the United States. But did the Iron Dome protect Israel from attack by Hamas?
Instead we now have a government that has embraced the “rightest reaction” and taken much of the nation with it through propaganda and lies. Our so-called president (not my president) becomes more autocratic every day. He blatantly declares his racism by word and deed. He is as he has always been basically a misogynist. The women he has appointed to positions are women who just do what they are told, yes-women. He openly flaunts the Constitution and tries to silence anyone who attempts to defy him. He calls himself a king. He allows his “flock” of fundamentalists to worship him as if he were divine. The “divine right of kings.” That went out in the Middle Ages.
“The law stands high above the king.” Magna Carta, 1215
The lords of England issued a writ that they would no longer be subservient to the king. The “divine right of kings” absolute authority was challenged. It included the right to a speedy trial, now known as habeas corpus.
A wise person once observed that it takes the support of the middle class for a revolution to succeed. Although it was the nobility of England who rebelled, they were in the middle, as the king with his divine right was above them and the peasants below them..
The Magna Carta still forms an important symbol of liberty today, often cited by politicians and campaigners, and is held in great respect by the British and American legal communities, Lord Denning describing it in 1956 as “the greatest constitutional document of all times—the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.”
Back to the Law
U.S. judges, have often, if not consistently, challenged Trump’s edicts, that is, executive orders, as being unconstitutional or breaking established laws. Trump has attempted to go after them of course, but different judges keep cropping up to challenge his often anti-Constitutional and law-breaking declarations. So far the idea of law above the king is functioning, resembling some semblance of law and order, not with guns, but with THE LAW as judges nationwide intervene against many of Trump’s edicts as unconstitutional or otherwise illegal. Most recent as I write this is a judge ruling the release of Mahmoud Khalil, the student from Columbia arrested for his pro-Palestinian activities although he has a green card and is married to a U.S. citizen.
Flash Forward, June 27, 2025
To stop the lower courts from challenging his unconstitutional executive orders Trump and his pro-fascist cohorts has had their allies in the U.S. Supreme Court state that the lower courts can no longer challenge Trump’s executive orders that undermine the Constitution although it will not go into effect immediately. As reported in Reuters, “The ruling also did not address the legality of the policy, part of Trump’s hardline approach toward immigration.”
Relevant Diversion
The U.S. system of law, while it was heavily influenced by French philosophers of the Enlightenment, is still based on English common law. The most predominant French influencers were Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. But in turn Locke and Montesquieu were heavily influenced by English law in their contributions to the structure of the Constitution and the shaping of the U.S. government as it still stands today.
Rousseau’s primary contribution was the idea of laws created directly by the vote of the people. He also introduced the idea of “neighborhoods,” an idea that Thoreau elaborated on in his essay on civil disobedience. The idea of neighborhoods still exists in many cities, including Minneapolis which is divided into neighborhoods that have governing bodies that create and manage programs that deal with neighborhood-specific issues.
Locke believed in what he called a social contract and influenced Thomas Jefferson’s writing of the Declaration of Independence. Locke favored a representative government. Montesquieu advocated for the separation of powers.
The Senate is debating the “Big Beautiful Bill” that further destroys the Pillars of Democracy and Violates FDR’s Four Freedoms.
If I remember my civics class correctly (that was ninth grade ─ do they teach it anymore?) the executive, legislative, and judicial sections of government were meant to balance each other. The legislative branch today is often impotent on many issues, controlled by Trump’s and the GOP’s yes-men and women. As noted, by one vote on May 22, 2025, the House passed the “Big Ugly Budget” that steals money from the people of the United States.
These cuts, if they are allowed, will cause significantly more struggling to survive for millions of Americans. In some cases they will cause preventable deaths because of the cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. In the case of Social Security, cuts that are a lifeline for many Americans could be seriously cut down.
But not for corporate America: They are being pampered with money for investments and new laws are allowing them to develop fossil fuel that will further pollute the planet and hasten the global crisis. (There is no Planet B!)
Will the Senate show any backbone in accepting this Big Ugly Budget or not? That is not hopeful as they are controlled by the GOP. Sad, but true. That is the real fraud against the American people. We cannot go back (MAGA), even if we wanted to, and millions of us do not want to, as evidenced by the Hands Off and No Kings demonstrations. Many of us joined in the demonstrations not because we are Democrats (or Republicans either), but because we are antiwar and anti-genocide in Gaza because of its obvious inhumanity. We are also opposed to the illegal DOGE actions by Elon Musk and approved by Trump after creating DOGE as a government department by a presidential executive order not approved by Congress.
Elon Musk has left of DOGE and has actually criticized Trump’s platform and fascistic plans. In part this may be because the sales of his Tesla have greatly decreased, although it is only one way he makes money. He has been pilloried for the cuts he is responsible for, including USAid which affects millions worldwide.
Most members of Congress are supporters of Israel. Because so many of us support Palestine and are adamantly opposed the the genocide being perpetrated by Israel on Palestine, we are accused of being supporters of Hamas. We are what we say we are: antiwar and pro-Palestine. Having been involved in support of Palestine in educational programs and demonstrations, I can honestly say that we do not support Hamas per se. It has not come up in 20 years of pro-Palestine activities, not even since October 7, 2023. No chants I know of glorify or support Hamas.
Those who have worked on Middle East issues for 20 years or more such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and the WAMM Middle East Committee see Hamas as part of the very complicated geopolitics in the Middle East. What is not complicated is that genocide is a crime against humanity and no amount of Israel’s denial, even with the support of the U.S., can change the moral outrage at the wholesale death of a people. That was also true of the Holocaust, of course, but what Israel has become in its zealous Zionism backed by the U.S. is NOW, not then.
What About Now?
Shame hangs over the U.S. like a shroud.
As I write this the Senate is still deliberating about the Big ‘Beautiful’ Budget Bill and has not yet voted. Once they do settle on a version it has to go back to the House where members may wish to make changes. A final version of the bill may still take some time to be decided.
Trump, Congress, and the Supreme Court and 2025 supporters attack the Pillars of Democracy
Trump’s ravaging of the Constitution and American values in the Constitution and as they have developed in Constitutional additions over the years is a denial and attempt to crush democracy. These additions have become laws, such as the right of people of color to vote, of women to vote, laws against child labor, and union rights like collective bargaining. Many became law over the years of our existence since 1787 when the U.S. Constitution went into effect after being approved by the individual states. Some of these laws were created under the influence of socialism, such as the eight-hour work day, social security, the minimum wage, better working conditions, rights and healthcare for veterans, even Obama’s more recent healthcare law, and more. It’s how a democracy works.
These amendments to the Constitution and these laws have also improved our democracy over the years.
These additions and changes did not happen automatically but were fought for with much sacrifice by many Americans of all races, colors, and religions. Not the least are the laws against discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, age, gender, disabilities, etc., in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and related legislation.
MAGA is an unachievable myth, at least the way Trump and project 2025 define it. The U.S. Empire is losing hold, as all empires in the history of the world do. We can dance out gracefully and still be who our best selves are.
We can choose to be what and who we would like to be in our most positive forms, created by the original Constitution and by the laws and Constitutional amendments added over the years of our country’s existence that were chosen by the people, not by corporate rule or some ruling elite that consider themselves superior; but they are not. Many Americans who came from poor circumstances have distinguished themselves in their areas of expertise while many of the “elite” have been lackluster or incompetent, as evidenced by many current public officials. On the other side are those who still have moral fiber and refuse to go along with the destruction of democracy that the Trump administration is engaged in. They include but are not limited to the current Supreme Court judges who wrote the dissenting opinions regarding Trump’s most recent efforts as he and his cohorts continue to attack democracy.
We can become an utter failure as a people and as a nation, or we can protest and actively fight for our rights against legislation like the Big Beautiful Budget that is really a Big Ugly Budget that does the opposite of what we strive for in equality, that is, it robs from the poor and gives to the rich. We can protest the obscene build-up of the military and the constant endless wars that support the oil industry and the war industry machine. We can continue to protest and fight the corporate entities that defile our planet with pollution and cause death in other parts of the world and in ours unusually severe weather patterns of storms, tornados, hurricanes. Our planet as a living organism strives to survive our mistreatment and desperately continues to need our help, which we can continue to offer in as many ways possible.
In spite of the shameful actions of our collective governments, that is, both Republicans and Democrats, we can especially protest in regard to what is clearly a genocide in Gaza/Palestine and a weaponization of anti-Semitism that is an insult to the ancient religion of Judaism and to those who died and those who survived the Holocaust. We can protest and actively defy the recent executive orders and autocracy of our current president and those he represents in cruel and anti-democratic actions that lean into fascism. Instead we can support those values that reflect our better selves in the Constitution. the amendments to the Constitution, and the laws created around equal rights and civil liberties that support those American democratic values.
In these most perilous times support independent media. Wings of Change gets no funding except from our readers.
Oh, sacred world
now wounded,
we pledge to make you free,
of hate, of war,
and selfish cruelty,
and here in our small corner
we plant a tiny seed,
and it will grow to beauty
to shame the face of greed.
What does Washington want to get out of its never-ending political and economic war on Iran?
War on Iran Is Part of US Plan for Global Domination: Economist Michael Hudson ExplainsBy Michael Hudson and Ben Norton / Geopolitical Economy Report / ScheerPost / June 28, 2025
War on Iran is part of the US empire’s larger attempt to re-impose its unipolar dominance on the global political and financial system, argues economist Michael Hudson.
Washington wants to preserve dollar hegemony and the petrodollar, while disrupting BRICS and Eurasian integration with China and Russia.
Hudson explained this in the following interview with Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton.
BEN NORTON: Why is the United States so concerned about Iran?
US President Donald Trump admitted that what Washington wants is regime change in Tehran, to overthrow the Iranian government.
Trump backed a war on Iran in June, in which both the US and Israel directly bombed Iranian territory.
Trump claimed that he brokered a ceasefire after what he calls the 12-Day War that the US and Israel waged against Iran. But it’s very difficult to believe that this ceasefire will hold.
Especially considering that Trump said the same in January. He claimed to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, but then in March, two months later, Israel started the war again, after Trump had given Israel the green light to violate the ceasefire that he helped to broker.
So it’s very difficult for Iranian officials to believe that the ceasefire will truly hold. And even if it does hold in the short term, the reality is that the US government has been waging a kind of political war and an economic war against Iran for many decades, going back to 1953, when the US carried out a coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed a pro-US dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
So why is this? What does Washington want to get out of its never-ending political and economic war on Iran?
To try to answer this question, I interviewed the renowned economist Michael Hudson, who has written many books and is an expert on global political economy.
Michael Hudson published an article in which he outlines the economic and political reasons for this war on Iran, and he posits that this is part of the attempt by the US empire to impose a unipolar order on the world, like we saw in the 1990s, when the US was the only superpower and it could impose its political and economic will on almost all countries on Earth.
Iran was one of the very few countries that was actually resisting US unipolar hegemony. And today we see, as the world is more and more multipolar, Iran plays an important role as a BRICS member, and as a supporter of resistance groups.
Iran is pushing for a more multipolar world, in opposition to the US empire’s unipolarity, as the economist Michael Hudson describes in this essay.
Hudson wrote:
What is at stake is the US attempt to control the Middle East and its oil as a buttress of US economic power, and to prevent other countries from moving to create their own autonomy from the US-centered neoliberal order administered by the IMF, World Bank, and other institutions to reinforce US unipolar power.
In our discussion today, Michael connects all of the different factors involved in this conflict, including the oil and gas and other resources in West Asia (in the so-called Middle East); including the role of the US dollar and the petrodollar system; and how Iran, as a member of BRICS, and many other Global South countries, are de-dollarizing and seeking alternatives to the dollar.
We also talk about the geopolitics of the region, the trade routes and interconnectivity among China, Iran, and Russia, as part of a project of Eurasian integration; we talk about the geopolitical goals of the US and Israel; and much, much more.
Here is an excerpt of our conversation, and then we’ll go straight to the interview:
MICHAEL HUDSON: What we have seen in the last month — or I should say the last two years actually — is the culmination of the long strategy that America has had ever since World War II, to take complete control of the Near Eastern oil lands and make them proxies of the United States, under client rulers, such as Saudi Arabia and the king of Jordan.
Iran represents a military threat to Russia’s southern border, because if the United States could put a client regime in Iran, or break up Iran into ethnic groups who would be able to interfere with Russia’s corridor of trade southwards, into access to the Indian Ocean, well, then you have boxed in Russia, you have boxed in China, and you have managed to isolate them.
That is the current American foreign policy. If you can isolate countries that do not want to be part of the American international financial and trade system, then the belief is that they cannot exist by themselves; they are too small.
America is still living back in the epoch of the 1955 Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned nations in Indonesia. When other countries wanted to go alone, they were too economically small.
But today, for the first time in modern history, you have the option of Eurasia, of Russia, China, Iran, and all of the neighboring countries in between. For the first time, they are large enough that they do not need trade and investment with the United States.
In fact, while the United States and its NATO allies in Europe are shrinking — they are de-industrialized, neoliberal, post-industrial economies — most of the growth in world production, manufacturing, and trade has occurred in China, along with the control of the raw materials refining, such as rare earths, but also cobalt, even aluminum, and many other materials in China.
So America’s strategic attempt to isolate Russia, China, and any of their allies in BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization ends up isolating itself. It is forcing other countries to make a choice.
That is the only thing that America has to offer other countries in today’s world. It can’t offer them exports. It can’t offer them monetary stability.
Hence this free lunch, where other countries can earn dollars, but they have to re-lend them to the United States. And the United States, as their banker, has to hold it all, and the banker may just decide whom to pay and whom not to pay.
It’s a gangster. It has been called a gangster state, for just such reasons. And other countries are afraid of what the United States can do, not only under Donald Trump, but what it has been doing for the last 50 years. It is simply confiscating, and destabilizing, and overthrowing.
America has basically declared war against any attempt to create an international trade and investment system that the United States does not control, in its own self-interest, wanting all of the earnings from it, all of the revenue from it, not just part of it. It’s a greedy empire.
Interview
BEN NORTON: Michael, thanks for joining me. It’s always a real pleasure having you.
Let’s talk about this article you wrote, in which you argue that the war on Iran is part of an attempt by the United States to impose its unipolar hegemony on the world.
We see that we’re living in more and more of a multipolar world, and Iran has played an important part of the multipolar project as a member of BRICS, as a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as a partner of China and Russia. Iran has also been pushing for de-dollarization of the global financial system.
Talk about how you see the war on Iran — which didn’t start under Donald Trump, this goes back many years — and how you see it in particular as an economist.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the war on Iran started in 1953, when the United States and MI6 overthrew the elected Prime Minister [Mohammad Mosaddegh], and the reason he was overthrown was because he wanted to nationalize the oil reserves of Iran. The United States has always viewed Iran as part of the Near Eastern oil Gulf.
American foreign policy, in terms of weaponizing its foreign trade, has always been based on two commodities: food grains — the ability to stop exporting food to countries that oppose US policy, as the United States stopped exporting grain to China under Mao — and oil.
For a century, the United States has focused on control of the oil as the basis of its international trade balance — it’s the largest contributor to the trade balance — and of its ability to sanction the rest of the world, by turning off the oil supply, and thereby turning off the electricity, turning off the gas, turning off the home heating, of countries that break away from US policy.
When I worked for the Hudson Institute in the early 1970s, Herman Kahn brought me to a meeting with some generals, and they were discussing what to do with Iran in case, under the shah, Iran should ever once again try to assert its autonomy and go its own way.
Iran has always been the strongest power in the entire Near East, and the capstone to controlling the Near East. You cannot fully control the Near Eastern oil — Syria, Iraq, the rest of the countries there — without controlling Iran too, because of the size of its population and the strength of its economy.
It was a very interesting meeting. Herman Kahn, the model for Dr. Strangelove, discussed how to break up Iran into its various ethnicities, five or six ethnicities, in the case that it should, take a policy independent from the United States.
The United States’ concern already in the 1970s, 50 years ago, was, “What do we do if other countries do not follow the kind of international world order that we are, organizing?”
Herman said that he thought the crisis point that was going to break up in international news was going to be Balochistan, at Iran’s border with Pakistan. The Balochis are a distinct population, just as the Azerbaijanis, Azeris, the Kurds.
Iran is a composite of many ethnic groups, including a very large Jewish group there. It is a multi-ethnic society, and the United States’ strategy, in case there was a war against Iran, was to play on these ethnicities — just as similar plans were drawn up for Russia, how to break it into separate ethnic parts; and China, how to break China into ethnic parts, at such point as America wants to take them on.
And the reason this ethnic division was developed was, as a democracy, especially in the 1970s, it became very apparent that the United States never again could field an army for invasion, as it was doing in Vietnam.
At the time I sat in on this meeting, late 1974 I think, or early ’75, there were demonstrations. It was obvious that there could never be a military draft again.
How was the United States to exert its international power without military power? It had military bases all over the world; it spent more on military than any other country.
The entire US balance of payments deficit was military spending abroad, and yet it couldn’t go to war. It had to use proxies.
This was the time when, in addition to the discussions that I sat in on how to use ethnicities in countries that we declared war on, as opponents; America decided to create the largest military base in the Near East, and that was Israel.
Henry Jackson, the pro-war, Military-Industrial Complex’s senator, met with Herman Kahn — I actually was in Herman’s office, listening to the phone call, when it came through — and the agreement was that the Military-Industrial Complex and Jackson would back Israel, if Israel agreed to act as America’s landed aircraft carrier in the Near East, as it was put at the time.
Herman very gladly made that arrangement, because the Hudson Institute at that time was a Zionist organization, and it was a training ground for Mossad.
One of my colleagues was Uzi Arad. We made a number of trips together to Asia. And Uzi became Netanyahu’s advisor and head of Mossad in subsequent years.
So I sort of sat in at the time when the American strategy was being outlined.
Israel was going to be America’s face, and indeed has been coordinating America’s backing of Al-Qaeda and the Wahhabi butchers who have taken over Syria, and are now busy killing the Christians, killing the Shiites, killing the Alawites.
And you will never see any criticism of Israel by Al-Qaeda, or the group [Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)] in Syria, whatever you want to call it there now. And vice versa, there has always been a working relationship.
So this gives some background as to how long the United States has anticipated the day when it would try to finally capstone its invasion of Iraq, its attack on Syria, its destruction of Libya, its backing of the destruction of Lebanon, and other countries, in North Africa, etc.
What we have seen in the last month — or I should say the last two years actually — is the culmination of the long strategy that America has had ever since World War II, to take complete control of the Near Eastern oil lands and make them proxies of the United States, under client rulers, such as Saudi Arabia and the king of Jordan.
Geopolitics and global trade
BEN NORTON: You raised so many interesting points, Michael. I want focus on two main issues here: one is the geopolitics of Iran’s integration with Eurasia, and the other is oil and the petrodollar system.
I will start with the geopolitics. Of course, when we talk about the petrodollar, we should keep in mind that Iran has been selling its oil and gas in other currencies, and pushing for de-dollarization.
But before we get to that, I want to talk about the role that Iran has played not only in supporting resistance groups in West Asia, but also in deepening its political and economic partnership with China and Russia, as part of a larger Eurasian partnership.
There are numerous physical projects integrating these regions.
Iran is at the heart of China’s New Silk Road. This was originally launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, and then it expanded into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Iran is an important part in that, connecting East Asia, through Central Asia, through Iran, into West Asia. And the US has really tried to disrupt that.
Iran also plays an important role in a Russian-led economic corridor that connects from St. Petersburg, through Moscow, down through the Caspian Sea, through Iran, and to India.
This is known as the International North-South Transport Corridor, the INSTC.
So we have seen that Iran has played a very important role challenging the US dollar, challenging US hegemony, and also seeking economic and political integration with other countries in Eurasia.
Can you speak more about this and why these imperial planners in Washington see this as so much of a threat?
Now, the Belt and Road corridor means they’re avoiding going by sea.
American and British military policy has been based for a hundred years on control of the seas, and control of the oil trade was part of that strategy.
Because if Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the other oil-producing countries can’t load up tankers with oil, how are they going to be able to export? And how can importers such as China, or India, obtain oil from the Near East?
Well, with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its intention was to go all the way through, via Iran, and then proceed on all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, to Europe.
This Belt and Road was to span the entire Eurasian continent, the entire eastern hemisphere.
And if the United States could conquer Iran and take it over, that would interfere with China’s long-distance railroad development, and it would block it — just as the United States is hoping to goad India and Pakistan into some kind of fight that would interrupt China’s Belt and Road Initiative that goes through through Pakistan [the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)].
So, on the one hand, Iran is the key to China’s overland trantransportation to Europe.
And as you just pointed out, with Russia: Iran represents a military threat to Russia’s southern border, because if the United States could put a client regime in Iran, or break up Iran into ethnic groups who would be able to interfere with Russia’s corridor of trade southwards, into access to the Indian Ocean, well, then you have boxed in Russia, you have boxed in China, and you have managed to isolate them.
That is the current American foreign policy. If you can isolate countries that do not want to be part of the American international financial and trade system, then the belief is that they cannot exist by themselves; they are too small.
America is still living back in the epoch of the 1955 Bandung Conference, of Non-Aligned nations, in Indonesia. When other countries wanted to go alone, they were too economically small.
But today, for the first time in modern history, you have the option of Eurasia, of Russia, China, Iran, and all of the neighboring countries in between. For the first time, they are large enough that they do not need trade and investment with the United States.
In fact, while the United States and its NATO allies in Europe are shrinking — they are de-industrialized, neoliberal, post-industrial economies — most of the growth in world production, manufacturing, and trade has occurred in China, along with the control of the raw materials refining, such as rare earths, but also cobalt, even aluminum, and many other materials in China.
So America’s strategic attempt to isolate Russia, China, and any of their allies in BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization ends up isolating itself. It is forcing other countries to make a choice.
This was made very clear immediately upon Trump taking the presidency and announcing his tariff policy, saying, “In three months, I’m going to impose such devastatingly high tariffs that you, the Global South countries, the Global Majority countries, your economies will be in chaos without having access to the American market”.
But, [Trump said], “We have three months to negotiate, and, if you give us a give-back, I will roll back these tariffs to 10%, so that it won’t devastate your economies. And one of the agreements that you have to make is you’ll agree to America’s sanctions not to trade with China, not to invest in China, not to use alternatives to the US dollar”.
China is trying to avoid using dollars, just as Russia no longer is able to use dollars, because the United States has simply confiscated $300 billion of Russia’s foreign exchange holdings in the West, that it held in Brussels, in order to manage its foreign exchange, to stabilize its exchange rate, which is what central banks do throughout the world.
Well, it’s very interesting. The Financial Times had a front page article [reporting] that now European countries, especially Germany and Italy, which have the second- and third-largest gold holdings, have asked, “Could you please [give us our gold back]? We have, since World War II, we have left all of our gold supplies at the Federal Reserve in New York”.
America’s gold is in Fort Knox, but other countries keep their gold reserves in the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank, right across from Chase Manhattan bank in the downtown area.
And other countries now realize that, under Trump, if he says, “Well, Europe has been really taking advantage of us; they have been exporting more to us than we’ve sold to them” — you know, Italy and Germany are worried that somehow America will say, “Well, we’re just gonna grab all of this gold that you’ve built up by taking advantage of us”.
So you’re having the rest of the world pull back from the dollar. This reflects the effect of everything that the United States is trying to do to isolate the other parts of the world from contact with the United States, if they try to have an alternative economic system to neoliberal finance capitalism, if they try to have industrial socialism — which is really industrial capitalism on the way to being industrial socialism, with active government investment in basic infrastructure, instead of privatizing the infrastructure Margaret Thatcher style.
The effect will be to leave the United States isolated, and all the rest of the world going its own way, unable to trade with the United States because of the high tariffs that Trump has imposed, and afraid to trade in dollars because of the predatory weaponization of the dollar standard, which had been America’s free lunch under the whole epoch of US Treasury bill standard, since America went off gold in 1971.
Oil and the petrodollar
BEN NORTON: Again, Michael, you raised so many good points there.
I want to stick with this issue of oil and the US dollar, and the petrodollar system.
Now, you have mentioned a few times that the US really relies on exports of oil and control of the oil trade, partially to try to reduce its enormous current account deficit — which, I mean, it still is not very successful. The US runs massive current account deficits — that is, trade deficits with the rest of the world.
But what is something that is different in the 2020s is that the US is now the world’s largest exporter of oil. It’s the largest producer of oil on Earth, and the largest producer of gas.
So that’s a significant difference. That’s largely a development in the past decade due to the explosion in fracking in the US, and also the shale oil revolution.
So, it’s not necessarily that the US needs to physically get access to all of the oil in the region.
Although, of course, US fossil fuel corporations would love to privatize all of the oil in West Asia, that is state-owned.
So for instance, we talked about Mohammad Mosaddegh, the prime minister of Iran who was overthrown in the 1953 CIA-backed coup, after he nationalized the oil in Iran and kicked out US and British oil companies.
Well, the current Iranian government, following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, also nationalized the oil, and the Iranian state does actually have a lot of influence in the economy, including through state-owned enterprises.
So, of course the US would love to privatize that. But this is not really necessarily about getting access to all that oil.
This is about maintaining the current financial order, which is really backed by oil, especially after Richard Nixon in 1971 took the dollar off of gold.
Then, in 1974, Nixon sent his treasury secretary, William Simon — Bill Simon, from Salomon Brothers — who was a bond expert. He ran the Treasuries desk, trading US government debt at Salomon Brothers, this major Wall Street investment bank.
This came one year after the OPEC oil embargo, in which the countries in the Global South showed that they could use their control of oil as a geopolitical tool to punish the US and the West for their support of Israel.
So I mean, all this history is still so relevant today.
Now, Iran is directly challenging that petrodollar system. Iran is selling its oil to China in Chinese yuan, the renminbi.
Iran is also trading with India, selling its oil, and it is using its currency, the rial. India is also using its currency, the rupee, and India is essentially trading its agricultural goods for Iranian oil.
So can you talk about this petrodollar system, and why Iran is seen as such a major challenge to this system? And really what that means is a direct challenge to the global dominance of the US dollar itself.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I mentioned that the original drive of the United States was to control Near Eastern oil.
I was the balance of payments economist for Chase Manhattan Bank, and I did a whole study on behalf of the US oil industry to calculate the balance of payments returns, and the average dollar spent by the Seven Sisters, the big oil companies.
The average dollar invested in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, other Arab countries, was recovered in only 18 months.
Oil was the most profitable investment in the entire US economy, and it was tax free.
Now, the original plan, as I mentioned, of the US in the Near East, it viewed as having oil. Then came the oil war — and it was more than an oil war — in 1974, after Israel waged the 1973 war, and after the United States quadrupled its grain prices.
Well, you mentioned [Nixon’s Treasury Secretary] Bill Simon. Herman Kahn and I went to meet with Bill Simon in 1974, to discuss what should America’s strategy be with the oil companies.
Simon said, “We’ve explained to them that, they can charge whatever they want for oil. They can quadruple the prices”.
In fact, that made Standard Oil of New Jersey, Socony [later Mobil], and the other American oil companies very happy, because, as you point out, America was itself a huge oil producer.
When the OPEC countries quadrupled the price of oil, that made the American oil companies immensely profitable on their and Canada’s oil production.
So, Bill Simon told me that he had explained to them that they could charge whatever they wanted for the oil; quadrupling was okay.
But the agreement was they had to keep all of their savings from what they made off this oil — I won’t call it profit, because it’s really natural resource rent — they had to keep their rents in the United States economy.
The deal was that Saudi Arabia and other countries would export their oil for dollars; they would not remove these dollars from the United States.
They would leave the dollars that they were paid by European countries, by other countries buying their oil; they would invest it primarily in US Treasury securities, and they could also buy US stocks and bonds.
But they could not do what America did with its foreign exchange of European currency, for instance. The OPEC countries could not buy control of any major American company.
They could buy stocks and bonds, but they had to spread the investment in the stock market over the market as a whole. So I think the king of Saudi Arabia bought a billion dollars of every stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, to spread it all out.
But most of their money was kept safely in US Treasury securities.
So, essentially, the OPEC revenue — I won’t say earnings because, again, it wasn’t really earned; it’s unearned income — OPEC revenue from the oil sales all ended up in the United States, most of it lent to the United States government.
Well, that inflow of dollars is what enabled the United States to do two things.
One, as a balance of payments inflow, it enabled the United States to continue spending its military overseas spending abroad, in order to have the military fist behind its economic empire.
But it also funded the domestic budget deficit. Foreign central banks were largely funding America’s own domestic budget deficit, by their holding of American Treasury bills.
So the OPEC countries essentially became captive parts of the American financial system that I had described in my book Super Imperialism.
So I met with the Treasury Treasury people, basically explaining what I had written about in Super Imperialism, about how ending other countries’ practice of holding their international monetary reserves in gold, but holding them in loans to the US Treasury in the form of buying Treasury bonds as the vehicle for their savings, essentially made the savings of the entire world, the monetary savings, all centralized in Washington and New York.
That control of what began as control of the oil trade, to weaponize the trade in oil, became control of the international financial system with the dollar’s surpluses being thrown off by the oil trade.
So you had that symbiosis between the trade system and the financial system as the basis for American military policy, and what I called super imperialism.
Super imperialism
BEN NORTON: Yeah, and what you described over 50 years ago, so brilliantly, as the system of super imperialism, what we’re seeing today is that Iran and other BRICS countries are challenging that system.
They are challenging the exorbitant privilege of the US dollar and trying to seek alternatives.
So maybe you can speak more about this global de-dollarization movement and how Iran plays a central role in this.
And that is one of the reasons, of course, why it’s a target of the US.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, Iran really wasn’t central to it, because the United States has been able to isolate Iran.
As soon as the shah was overthrown, the United States played a dirty trick on Iran — Chase Manhattan Bank did.
Iran had a foreign debt — like every country has, by issuing foreign bonds — and it sent the dollars to the Chase Manhattan Bank, to pay the bond holders their dividends.
The Treasury went to David Rockefeller and told him, “Don’t send this Iranian money along. Just hold it there”. And so Iran was considered to be in default, and the entire foreign debt came due, and America seized, confiscated, Iranian economic and financial resources in the United States.
They later negotiated to give it back, because all of this was illegal under international law, but that has never stopped the United States, as we’re seeing right now.
After the shah was overthrown, the United States said, “We’ve got to destabilize the the new Iranian government, and if we grab its foreign reserves, that will cripple it and cause chaos, and that’s how we run the world, by causing chaos”.
That is the only thing that America has to offer other countries in today’s world. It can’t offer them exports. It can’t offer them monetary stability.
Hence this free lunch, where other countries can earn dollars, but they have to re-lend them to the United States. And the United States, as their banker, has to hold it all, and the banker may just decide whom to pay and whom not to pay.
It’s a gangster. It has been called a gangster state, for just such reasons. And other countries are afraid of what the United States can do, not only under Donald Trump, but what it has been doing for the last 50 years. It is simply confiscating, and destabilizing, and overthrowing.
America has basically declared war against any attempt to create an international trade and investment system that the United States does not control, in its own self-interest, wanting all of the earnings from it, all of the revenue from it, not just part of it. It’s a greedy empire.
Sanctions and economic warfare
BEN NORTON: Yeah, and what you’re getting at, Michael, is such an important point, because essentially what this shows is that these tactics that the US has abused more and more frequently in the past few decades are not entirely new.
But of course, Iran was one of the first countries to be sanctioned, after its revolution in 1979.
And we know that in 2022, the US and the EU seized $300 billion dollars and euros worth of Russian assets, and that was a huge wake-up call to the world.
But, actually, Iran was the kind of first test case. It was the US that seized Iran’s assets first, and then they later seized Venezuela’s assets, and then Afghanistan’s assets, and now Russia.
So Iran was always the first country to be targeted by these aggressive tactics, and now they have become so commonplace that we have seen a kind of global rebellion against this system, even by longtime US allies.
Like for instance Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which historically have been US client states, but they see what has happened to Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, and they’re worried that they could be next.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, this is exactly what is shaping Saudi Arabian and Arab policy in the region.
Obviously, the Arabs don’t like what Israel is doing in Gaza.They don’t like the ethnic cleansing, and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, and the whole attack on the Palestinians and other Arab populations.
But they’re afraid of acting on behalf of Iran.They may be very sympathetic with it. The populations of these countries are very much against the violence that Israel is waging against the Arab states, but the leaders of these countries have a problem: All of the savings that Saudi Arabia has accumulated for the last 50 years are held as hostage in the US Treasury and in the US banks.
And the US banks, essentially, are arms of the Treasury. Most of all, Chase Manhattan was a designated bank that would act on behalf of the Treasury. Citibank was more independent, of that.
So you have not heard a peep out of Saudi Arabia and its neighboring oil-producing countries, because they’re afraid. They realize that they’re in a very delicate position.
All of this money that their sovereign wealth fund that they have built up to finance their own future development — if you can call what they’re doing, it’s a twisted development — but their plans for the future are held hostage, and they’ve been politically neutralized, because of this exposure to the US dollar.
Well, you can imagine that other countries realize what is happening, and Asian countries, the Global South countries, and even European countries like Germany and Italy, say, “We don’t want to be stuck in the same trap that the Arab countries are stuck in, where not only our savings, and Treasury securities, and US stocks and bonds, and our investments in the United States are held hostage; our gold supply is being held there!”
And the whole world is now moving toward gold.They’re afraid to hold dollars. Dollar holdings by foreign central banks have been at just stable, while the gold holdings have been going up.
And many foreign official gold holdings are held off the books. The government will hold stock in a company that holds gold. You can conceal what they’re doing, so they won’t very conspicuously being shown to be dumping the dollar.
There’s a kind of Kabuki dance going on in financial statistics, as well as in dropping bombs on countries.
The Military-Industrial Complex
BEN NORTON: Michael, I want to talk about the military-industrial complex, because another point that you made in this article which is very important and is often left out is how US military contractors profit from these wars — like we saw in what they’re now calling the 12-Day War, between the US/Israel and Iran.
You pointed out that Iran was mostly using its older missiles. It was emptying its stockpile of old missiles to hit Israel, and trying to overwhelm Israel’s air defense system.
Now, we know that US military contractors have boasted about the advanced military equipment the US has given to Israel, like the Iron Dome, the David’s Sling system, and the Arrow system.
US corporations have benefited from helping to design these systems, and from providing the missiles and interceptors.
So Israel has spent many millions of dollars trying to shoot down these old Iranian missiles that Iran wanted to get rid of anyway.
If the war had continued, it would obviously have bled more and more resources of Israel and the US.
But as you point out, this is actually something that the military-industrial complex in the US benefits from, because what the US calls the “aid” that it gives to many countries is actually not really aid; it’s actually contracts given to US private contractors, and then they give that military equipment to Israel, or to Egypt, or to Japan, South Korea, and other countries.
So can you talk more about the role of the military-industrial complex, and how it has profited from all of this?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, this is the key to the debate in Congress that is now occurring over the Republican tax law. The enormous amount of money that is spent on the military-industrial complex that basically, the weapons it makes do not work.
We’ve seen in Ukraine the inability of the NATO countries to defend against the Russian missiles.
We’ve seen in Israel that the Iron Dome is very easily penetrated by Iran.
And Iran, already several months ago, demonstrated this when it sent two sets of rockets. It warned Israel, “We don’t want to go to war. We don’t want to hurt anybody, but we just want to show you that we can bomb you whenever you want, and so we’re gonna drop a bomb on this particular location; get everybody out of there; we’re just gonna show you that it works. Try to shoot us down”. And they dropped it.
They did the same with the United States, in Iraq, saying:
“You know, we don’t want to really have to go to war with you in Iraq. We lost a million Iranians fighting the Iraqis, when you were setting Saddam Hussein against us before [in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s], but you should know that we can wipe out your American bases whenever we want. Let’s give you a demonstration. Here’s a base that’s not very populated. We’re going to bomb it, so get everybody out; we don’t want anyone to get hurt. We’re gonna bomb you on such and such a date. Do everything you can to shoot us down”.
Whoosh! They bombed it. America could not shoot them down.
Well, the Iron Dome obviously doesn’t work, nor does the American military defense work.
Well, President Trump has just come out and said, “We’re going to vastly increase the US budget deficit by creating an Iron Dome in the United States for $1 trillion”.
Well, imagine spending a trillion dollars replicating the system that Iran and Russia show that they can penetrate right away.
BEN NORTON: Michael, this is called the Golden Dome. And Elon Musk’s companies like SpaceX are poised to get massive US government contracts. It is estimated that hundreds of billions of dollars in total will be spent to make this Golden Dome that won’t even work.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Of course, for Trump, everything is gold, not iron — I should have noticed that — just like the doorknobs in his Trump Towers, of course.
So we’re seeing this fantasy.
What the military-industrial complex makes aren’t arms to actually be used in war. They’re arms to be traded or sold.
And, as as you pointed out, in addition to the enormous amount of direct Congressional spending on buying arms for the US Army, Navy, and Marines, on the military, the United States gives foreign aid to South Korea, Japan, and other countries, and this foreign aid is spent by their own purchases of US military arms.
This is not included in the American military budget, but in effect, it’s financing the military-industrial complex through the back door, by giving money to America’s allies to buy America’s arms, that also don’t work.
Well, you must wonder what these allies are thinking now, especially in Europe, it’s almost embarrassing to see NATO refusing to acknowledge the fact that the American arms that it wants to buy, and the European arms that it has made, simply are not able to defend themselves against Russian and Iranian arms.
American technology is backwards, because the military-industrial complex companies have taken all this enormous money that they’ve paid, their profits that they’ve made, by paying out dividends and buying their own stocks.
They haven’t spent it on research and development. 92% of every dollar they’ve got is recycled into supporting their stock prices, not in actually making arms.
So, by financializing its military system, along with the industrial economy as a whole, the United States has essentially de-industrialized itself, and you could almost say disarmed itself, against the rest of the world, that actually spends their military money on arms that work, arms that are intended to work, not simply to make profits, to increase the stock prices of military-industrial companies.
BEN NORTON: Yeah, I think that’s actually a great note to end on. We could go on for another hour, but we should save that for another time.
Michael, is there anything you would like to recommend for people who want to find more of your work?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I have my website, Michael-Hudson.com, and all of my articles are on the website, including the one that Ben has just mentioned. So you can see my ongoing commentary on all of this.
And my book Super Imperialism explained the whole unfolding dynamic of all of this.
BEN NORTON: As always, Michael, it’s a real pleasure. Thanks for joining us today, and we’ll talk again soon.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, it was a timely discussion.Thanks for having me..
Michael Hudson is president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street financial analyst, and distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the author of many books, including “Super Imperialism,” “…And Forgive Them Their Debts,” and “Killing the Host.” You can follow his work at Michael-Hudson.com.
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