Dissident Voice

1. BBC isn’t Failing. Its Job is to Obscure the UK’s Partnership in Israel’s Genocide

After months of a confected furore over a BBC documentary supposedly demonstrating pro-Hamas bias, followed by the shelving of a second film on Gaza, an independent review found last week that the broadcaster had not breached impartiality guidelines.

A long list of complaints against Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone – all pushed for months by the Israel lobby, and amplified by the British establishment media – were dismissed one after the other by Peter Johnston, director of the editorial complaints and review body that reports to the BBC director general.

Not that you would know any of this from the eagerness of BBC executives to continue apologising profusely for the failings the corporation had just been cleared of. It almost sounded as if they wanted to be found guilty.

The row is now set to drag on for many months more after Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, announced it too would investigate the programme.

All of this is exactly what the Israel lobby and the billionaire-owned media had hoped for.

The aim of manufacturing this protracted storm in a teacup was twofold.

First, the furore was designed to distract from what the documentary actually showed: the horrors facing children in Gaza as they have had to navigate a tiny strip of land in which Israel has trapped them, bombed their homes, levelled their schools, exposed them to relentless carnage for 21 months, destroyed the hospitals they will need in time of trouble, and is starving them and their loved ones.

Second, it was intended to browbeat the BBC into adopting an even more craven posture towards Israel than it had already. If it was reluctant before to give Palestinians a voice, now it will avoid doing so at all costs.

True to form, executives hurriedly removed How to Survive a Warzone from its iPlayer catch-up service the moment the lobby went into action.

Dangerous consequences

The BBC's ever greater spinelessness has real-world, and dangerous, consequences.

Israel will feel even freer to intensify what the International Court of Justice already suspected back in January 2024 was a genocide and what leading genocide and Holocaust scholars have subsequently concluded is a genocide.

There will be even less pressure on the British government to stop partnering Israel in its genocide by supplying weapons, intelligence and diplomatic cover.

The enduring row will also hand a bigger stick to Rupert Murdoch and other media moguls with which to beat the BBC, making it cower even further.

Signs of the BBC's defensiveness were already all too evident. While it was waiting for the Johnston report, the corporation ditched a separate documentary, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, on Israel's systematic destruction of Gaza's hospitals and murder of some 1,600 health workers.

It has since been shown by Channel 4.

The BBC argued that – even though this second programme had repeatedly passed its editorial checks – airing it risked contributing to a "perception of partiality".

What that bit of BBC gobbledygook actually meant was that the problem was not "partiality". It was the perception of it by vested interests – Israel, its apologists, the Starmer government and the British corporate media – who demand skewed BBC coverage of Gaza so that Israel can carry on with a genocide the British establishment is utterly complicit in.

In other words, truth and accuracy be damned. This is about Israel – and the Starmer government – dictating to the BBC the terms of what can be said about Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Caving in to pressure

Which brings us back to the Johnston report. The only significant finding against the BBC was on a single issue in its documentary on Gaza's children, How to Survive a Warzone.

The film had not disclosed that its 13-year narrator was the son of an official in Gaza's Hamas-run government.

Even in the current febrile atmosphere, Johnston found no grounds to uphold the manifold accusations of a breach by the BBC of impartiality rules. Nothing in the film, he concluded, was unfair to Israel.

Instead, he stated that it was a breach of "full transparency" not to have divulged the child-narrator's tenuous connection to Hamas through his father's governmental work.

Paradoxically, the BBC's coverage of Johnston's findings has been far more inaccurate about the child-narrator than the original documentary. But there has been no uproar because this particular inaccuracy from the BBC squarely benefits Israel.

On the News at Ten last week, reporting on the Johnston report, presenter Reeta Chakrabati claimed that the film's narrator was "the son of an official in the militant group Hamas."

He is nothing of the sort. He is the son of a scientist who directed agricultural policy in Gaza's government, which is run by Hamas.

There is zero evidence that Ayman Alyazouri was ever a member of the militant wing of Hamas. He doesn't even appear to have been a member of its political wing.

In fact, since 2018 Israel had set up a system to vet most officials in Gaza like Alyazouri to ensure they were not linked to Hamas before they were able to receive salaries funded by Qatar.

Johnston himself concedes as much, noting that the programme makers failed to inform the BBC of 13-year-old Abdullah's background because their checks showed Alyazouri was a civilian technocrat in the government, not involved in its military or political arms.

The team's only failing was an astounding ignorance of how the Israel lobby operates and how ready the BBC is to cave in to its pressure tactics.

In reality, Johnston's finding against the BBC was over little more than an editorial technicality, one intentionally blown up into a major scandal.

Johnston himself gave the game away when he noted in his executive summary the need for "full transparency" when the BBC makes programmes "in such a contested setting".

In other words, special, much stricter editorial rules apply when the corporation intends to make programmes likely to upset Israel.

From now on, that will mean that, in practice, such programmes are not made at all.

Glaring double standard

The double standard is glaring. The BBC aired a documentary last year, Surviving October 7: We Will Dance Again, offering eyewitness testimony from Israeli survivors of 7 October 2023 at the Nova music festival, where hundreds of Israelis were killed during Hamas' one-day break-out from Gaza.

Did the BBC insist that the backgrounds of the Israelis interviewed were checked and disclosed to the audience as part of the broadcast? Were viewers told whether festivalgoers had served in the Israeli military, which for decades has been enforcing an illegal occupation and a system of apartheid over Palestinians, according to a ruling last year by the world's highest court?

And what would it have indicated to audiences had the BBC included such contextual information about its Israeli eyewitnesses? That their testimonies had less validity? That they could not be trusted?

If it was not necessary to include such background details for Israeli eyewitnesses, why is it more important to do so for a 13-year-old Palestinian?

And even more to the point, if the BBC needs to give details of 13-year-old Abdullah Alyazouri's background before he can be allowed to read a script written by the programme makers, why is the BBC not also required to give important background about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he appears in reports: such as that he is wanted for arrest by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

Exactly how trustworthy a narrator of events in the devastated enclave does the BBC consider Netanyahu to be that it does not think this context needs including?

Both-sidesing genocide

The gain from this manufactured row for the Israel lobby – and for a Starmer government desperate to silence criticism of its complicity in genocide – were set out in stark detail last week by the makers of the second documentary, about Israel's destruction of Gaza's health sector.

In an article in the Observer newspaper, they recounted a series of startling admissions and demands from BBC executives made in script meetings.

The corporation insisted that Doctors Under Attack could not be aired so long as the award-winning investigative reporter leading the programme, Ramita Navai, was given top billing. They demanded that she be downgraded to a mere "contributor" – her role effectively disappeared – because she had supposedly made "one-sided" social media posts criticising Israel for breaking international law.

She was considered unacceptable, according to the BBC, because she had not been "supportive enough of the other side": that is, of Israel and its military carrying out systematic war crimes by destroying Gaza's hospitals, as documented in great detail in her film.

In a statement to Middle East Eye on its decision to shelve the documentary, the BBC spokesperson stated that, after Navai appeared on its Today radio programme and "called Israel a 'rogue state that's committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing and mass murdering Palestinians', it was impossible for the BBC to broadcast the material without risking our impartiality.

"The BBC holds itself to the highest standards of impartiality and it would never be acceptable for any BBC journalist to express a personal opinion in this way. We believe this is one of the reasons we're the world's most trusted news provider. We were left with no choice but to walk away."

Seen another way, offering apologias for genocide, as the BBC has been doing for the past 21 months, is apparently a requirement before the corporation is willing to give journalists a platform to criticise Israel.

Also revealing is who the state broadcaster looks to when deciding how to apply its editorial standards.

BBC executives told the film-makers they should not reference the United Nations or Amnesty International because they were supposedly not "trusted independent organisations".

Meanwhile, the corporation openly and obsessively worried to the film-makers about what fanatically pro-Israel lobbyists – such as social media activist David Collier and Camera, a pro-Israel media monitoring organisation – would say about their film on Gaza.

The team were told BBC News executives were "very jumpy and paranoid" about coverage of Gaza.

This follows a long and dishonorable tradition at the state broadcaster. In their 2011 book More Bad News from Israel, media scholars Greg Philo and Mike Berry reported a BBC producer telling them: "We all fear the phone call from the Israeli embassy."

If you had been wondering why the BBC has been reflexively both-sidesing a genocide, here is a large part of the answer.

Skewed coverage

A damning report by the Centre for Media Monitoring last month analysed in detail the BBC's Gaza coverage in the year following Hamas' one-day attack on 7 October 2023.

It found a "pattern of bias, double standards and silencing of Palestinian voices".

These included the BBC running over 30 times more victim profiles of Israelis than Palestinians; interviewing more than twice as many Israelis as Palestinians; asking 38 interviewees to condemn Hamas but asking no one to condemn Israel's mass killing of civilians, or its attacks on hospitals and schools; and shutting down more than 100 interviewers who tried to refer to events in Gaza as a genocide.

Only 0.5% of BBC articles provided any context for what was happening before 7 October 2023: that Israel had been illegally occupying the Palestinian territories for decades and besieging the enclave for 17 years.

Similarly, the BBC has barely reported the endless stream of genocidal statements from Israeli political and military leaders – a crucial ingredient in legally determining whether military actions constitute genocide.

Nor has it mentioned other vital context: such as Israel's invocation of the Hannibal directive on 7 October 2023, licensing it to kill its own citizens to prevent them being taken captive; or its military's long-established Dahiya doctrine, in which the mass destruction of civilian infrastructure – and with it, the likelihood of slaughtering civilians – is viewed as an effective way to deter resistance to its aggressions.

In the specified time period, the BBC covered Ukraine with twice as many articles as Gaza, even though the Gaza story was newer and Israeli crimes even graver than Russian ones. The corporation was twice as likely to use sympathetic language for Ukrainian victims than it was for Palestinian victims.

Palestinians were usually described as having "died" or been "killed" in air strikes, without mention of who launched those strikes. Israeli victims, on the other hand, were "massacred", "slaughtered" and "butchered".

None of these were editorial slip-ups. They were part of a systematic, long-term skewing of editorial coverage in Israel's favour – a clear breach of the BBC's impartiality guidelines and one that has created a permissive environment for genocide.

Journalists in revolt

Journalists at the BBC are known to be in revolt. More than 100 signed a letter – anonymously for fear of reprisals – condemning the decision to censor the documentary Doctors under Attack. They said it reflected a mix of "fear" and "anti-Palestinian racism" at the corporation.

The BBC told MEE: "Robust discussions amongst our editorial teams about our journalism are an essential part of the editorial process. We have ongoing discussions about coverage and listen to feedback from staff, and we think these conversations are best had internally."

The journalists, it seems, would prefer that these discussions are had out in the open. They wrote: "As an organisation we have not offered any significant analysis of the UK government's involvement in the war on Palestinians. We have failed to report on weapons sales or their legal implications. These stories have instead been broken by the BBC's competitors."

And they added: "All too often it has felt that the BBC has been performing PR for the Israeli government and military."

They could have added, even more pertinently, that in the process the BBC has been doing PR for the British establishment too.

A former BBC press officer, Ben Murray, last week gave broader context to the meaning of the corporation's famed editorial "impartiality". His role, he wrote, had been a rearguard one to placate the Times, Telegraph, Sun, and most of all, the Daily Mail.

Those establishment outlets are owned by corporations and billionaires heavily invested in the very oil, "defence" and tech industries Israel is central to lubricating.

BBC executives, Murray noted, "were rightfully fearful of these publications' influence, and often reacted in ways to appease them. Their task was to protect the BBC's funding model, and by extension, their prestigious jobs and generous salaries."

None of this went against the grain. As Murray pointed out, most senior BBC staff enjoyed private educations, have Oxbridge degrees, and have been "fast-tracked up the corporate ladder". They see their job as being "to reinforce and maintain establishment viewpoints".

Editorial smokescreen

If this weren't enough, senior BBC staff also have to look over their shoulders to the British government, which sets the corporation's funding through the TV licence fee.

The government, no less than the BBC, needs to keep its main constituencies happy.

No, not voters. Ministers, keen for favourable coverage, similarly dare not antagonise Israel-aligned media moguls. And equally they cannot afford to alienate powerful US administrations that pledge an undying, unshakeable bond to Israel as it projects western power into the oil-rich Middle East.

Which is precisely why Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, was only too keen to jump on the Daily Mail bandwagon in calling for heads to roll at the BBC over the supposed "failings" in its Gaza coverage.

"It makes me angry on behalf of the BBC staff and the whole creative industries in this country," she said, apparently oblivious to the fact that many BBC journalists' fury is not over the confected scandals generated by the Israel lobby and billionaire-owned media.

They are appalled at the corporation's refusal to hold Israel or Nandy's own government accountable for the genocide in Gaza.

In such circumstances, the BBC's professed commitment to "impartiality" serves as nothing more than a smokescreen.

In reality, the corporation acts as an echo chamber, amplifying and legitimising the interests of media tycoons, the British government and the Washington consensus, however much they flout the foundational principles of international law, human rights and basic decency.

Anybody who stands outside that circle of influence – such as the Palestinians and their supporters, anti-genocide activists, human rights advocates, and increasingly the UN and its legal organs, such as the International Criminal Court – is assumed by the BBC to be suspect.

Such voices are likely to be marginalised, silenced or vilified.

The BBC has not failed. It has done exactly what it is there to do: help the British government conceal the fact that there is a genocide going on in Gaza, and one that the UK has been knee-deep in assisting.

The post BBC isn't Failing. Its Job is to Obscure the UK's Partnership in Israel's Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

2. “Hunted Like Animals” Say Farmworkers Targeted by Trump’s Gestapo-Like ICE Raids

In the 1970s, during the height of the farmworker movement, United Farm Workers leader César Chávez often rallied supporters with the phrase "Sí se puede" ("Yes we can")—a slogan coined by UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta in 1972 during Chávez's 25-day fast in Phoenix, Arizona. Today, as undocumented farmworkers face aggressive immigration enforcement in California's fields, a darker refrain might be more fitting: "Cuidado con ICE"—watch out for ICE.

Farmworkers say they feel like they are being "hunted like animals," as they desperately try to avoid getting swept up by Donald Trump's "crackdown on immigration," the Guardian's Michael Sainato recently reported.

During interviews with farm workers and farmworker organizers, Sainato pointed out that "Raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have caused workers to lose hours and income, and forced them into hiding at home."

Trump has been all over the map in defining his policy toward undocumented farm workers. In April, according to Fruit Growers News, "Trump suggested that farmers could help retain key workers by submitting letters of recommendation to delay deportations and support legal re-entry.

"'A farmer will come in with a letter concerning certain people saying, they're great, they're working hard, we're going to slow it down a little bit for them and then we're going to ultimately bring them back. They'll go out, they're going to come back as legal workers,' Trump said during the Cabinet meeting."

In late-June, CNBC reported that Trump told Fox News that "We're working on [a plan] right now. We're going to work it so that some kind of a temporary pass where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control, as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away."

Trump added: "What we're going to do is we're going to do something for farmers, where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge. The farmer knows. He's not going to hire a murderer. When you go into a farm and he's had somebody working with him for nine years doing this kind of work, which is hard work to do, and a lot of people aren't going to do it, and you end up destroying a farmer because you took all the people away. It's a problem."

That plan, which would put farmers in charge of immigration enforcement, "alarmed workers' rights advocates, who suggested they were being asked to surrender 'their freedom to their employer' just to stay in the country," the Guardian noted.

"You can't go out peacefully to do things, or go to work with any peace of mind anymore. We're stressed out and our kids are stressed out. No one is the same since these raids started," one farm worker told the Guardian. "We are stressed and worrying if it continues like this, what are we going to do because the rent here is very expensive and it has affected us a lot. How are we going to make ends meet if this continues?"

Of the more than 2.6 million farm workers in the US, most are Hispanic, non-citizen immigrants. According to the Department of Agriculture, around 40% of crop workers — roughly 500,000 individuals – are undocumented.

In a recent Iowa rally, Trump "claimed the administration is looking into legislation to defer immigration enforcement on farms to farmers. 'Farmers, look, they know better. They work with them for years.'"

"They have really demonized us with the word 'criminals'," Lázaro Álvarez, a member of the Workers' Center of Central New York and Alianza Agrícola, said. "Despite the fact we are undocumented, we pay taxes. We are invisible to the government until we pay taxes, and we don't receive any benefits."

Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers, said: "Everything that he's doing to detain these workers is unconstitutional. They don't have a document signed by a judge. They don't have a court order. They want to just eliminate protections of farm workers who are currently here and have been working in the field for 20 to 30 years.

"These workers who have not committed any crime are being taken by people who are masked, are not wearing a uniform and don't have a marked vehicle, so they are essentially being kidnapped."

One undocumented farm worker told Sainato:  "We worked through Covid. We worked through the wildfires in Los Angeles. We get up at 4am every day. No one else is willing to work the eight-, 10-hour days the way we do. We're not criminals. We're hardworking people trying to give our kids a better life. And we contribute a lot to this country."

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3. I Don’t Care

The post I Don't Care first appeared on Dissident Voice.

4. God Told Me to Tell You This

God told me he has a message for you. It is this.

The peoples of the Earth, led by the United States, are concentrating wealth in the hands of a small percentage of the people. You may ignore this more than you deny it, but even if you deny it, as time passes, you go on having less and less of the wealth — and suffering as a result. You do not deny or ignore that result. Consequently, you'll likely want to find something or someone to blame other than those hoarding all the money.

The temperature of the Earth is rising ever more quickly, resulting in more storms, floods, droughts, and heatwaves. You may enthusiastically deny this, or — having abandoned that as hopeless — deny all the obvious human (and agricultural) causes for it. But it goes on happening, and it's very unpleasant, and it's horrifically frightening for the future of your loved ones. So a vague notion is likely creeping around in the back of your skull, the notion that somebody needs to be blamed for some unknown evil.

The risk of nuclear apocalypse keeps climbing. You almost certainly ignore this far too heartily to be obliged to bother denying it. But that does not mean you're necessarily completely unaware of it. Nor are you completely unaware of all the wars/genocides being visited upon the world by a highly profitable weapons industry and its servants in government. This is an evil whose existence fundamentally depends on misassigning blame for it; were war not entirely the fault of designated enemies, were it a collective error for which your side was partly at fault, war couldn't continue to exist much longer.

Now, you may have heard that I — God — want you to focus on blaming foreigners, immigrants, refugees, ethnicities, races, women, gay people, trans people, educated people, people not of the proper religion, and so forth. You may have been told that the problem is not the mountains of gold being stashed away on Wall Street but the crumbs being picked up in an alley on the poor side of town. You may have studied carefully and discovered it to be my will that the word of sadistic, misogynistic, closeted homophobes with arrest records longer than their limousines be believed without basis. And they may have decreed that destruction of the Earth — whether by methods slow or rapid — is good and just.

Or you may have taken on the task of trying to correct the misguided, spending your days rejecting racism and sexism and every form of bigotry — except perhaps xenophobia, because you don't oppose wars or fighter jets or hamburgers "for God's sake" (as you tend to say).

I'm here (or, you know, somewhere) to tell you to focus. I command you to look to the heart of the matter. Your opinion on your divide-and-conquer issues may be very noble and good, but it cannot change the fact of your having been divided and conquered by those laughing all the way to the bank. My advice to you is this: follow the money, believe your own eyes, and never ever listen to anyone who claims to be conveying the statements of imaginary beings.

• First published at Davidswanson.org.

The post God Told Me to Tell You This first appeared on Dissident Voice.

5. Oh, Some are Saying Taxation Taxation for Rich & Jubilee for us Peons!

"Those people … " Donald said, trailing off. "The shape they're in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die." — Donald TRUMP

6. What It Feels Like When You Die from Hunger: Gaza’s Starvation Crisis in Slow Motion

Quds News Network

In Gaza's emergency rooms, doctors now face a wave of patients suffering not from injury, but from hunger. The Ministry of Health confirmed that unprecedented numbers of people, from infants to the elderly, are arriving at hospitals in extreme exhaustion due to starvation.

The cause is not a drought or a natural disaster. It is the direct result of Israel's full blockade, now in its 139th consecutive day. And the death toll is rising.

So far, 69 children have died from malnutrition. Another 620 patients have died due to the lack of food and medicine. Behind every number is a slow, painful process that strips the human body of life one stage at a time.

The Body's Breakdown: A Four-Stage Collapse

Stage One: The Hunger Takes Over
In the first 48 hours without food, your body uses up its stored sugar (glycogen) from the liver and muscles. Hunger pangs hit hard. You feel anxious, irritable, and dizzy. Your stomach cramps. You may struggle to focus. Energy vanishes quickly, and even walking becomes a task. Children scream in discomfort or go silent from exhaustion.

Stage Two: Muscle Melts, Immunity Crumbles
After a few days, your body switches to survival mode. It starts breaking down fat into ketones for fuel. But when fat runs low, your muscles become the next target. You begin to lose strength. Your immune system weakens. Small infections grow dangerous. You feel cold, even when it's hot. Simple tasks like standing or thinking become harder.

Stage Three: Your Organs Struggle to Keep Up
Now weeks in, your body is wasting away. You look skeletal. Your skin turns dry and brittle. Some parts of your body, like your belly or feet, may swell due to protein loss. Your heart rate drops. Your liver and kidneys slow down. Your mind becomes foggy. You may forget where you are. Some start hallucinating. You no longer recognize your own voice or the people around you.

Stage Four: The Final Shutdown
Eventually, your body gives up. You no longer feel hunger. Swallowing becomes impossible. You might fall unconscious or slip into a coma. Your organs (heart, lungs, liver) begin to fail. Death often comes quietly, not from hunger itself, but from a final, irreversible shutdown.

The Gaza Numbers That Should Alarm the World

In addition to the rising death toll, the Government Media Office in Gaza released staggering figures today:

• 650,000 children are now at risk of dying from hunger and malnutrition.

• 76,450 aid and fuel trucks have been blocked from entering Gaza in the past 139 days.

• 42 charity kitchens and 57 aid centers have been directly targeted by Israeli forces.

• 877 people have been killed near American-Israeli "aid centers."

• 12,500 cancer patients and 60,000 pregnant women are also facing starvation without access to treatment or food.

A Man-Made Famine, a Global Failure

Starvation is not just physical. It destroys dignity, memory, and hope. In Gaza, it comes with the added trauma of displacement, bombardment, and abandonment by the international community.

"This is not just a humanitarian crisis," the Government Media Office stated. "It is a deliberate policy. And the governments who support Israel or remain silent are complicit."

The office called for immediate global action: opening the crossings, lifting the siege, and allowing unrestricted humanitarian aid into Gaza before more lives are lost.

But as of today, the siege remains. And every passing hour brings Gaza closer to a famine that the world could stop, but hasn't.

7. Revolutionary Third World Leaders Praise China’s World Role

China is a modern superpower, as is the US, but a qualitatively different superpower. The US uses military aggression, coups, and sanctions to impose US corporate interests worldwide. China is a peaceful power that respects national sovereignty, mutual development, and non-interference.

 Despite opposing imperialism, a tendency in the Western left is to recycle Western anti-China narratives that liken Chinese trade relations to Western imperial conduct, as in Sri Lanka and the Congo. Others have written of Chinese investments in the Occupied West Bank, and even criticize China for lack of aid to Cuba – clearly not issues the Western powers have problems with. 

 The US empire has at least 750 military bases in 80 countries. China has just one, in Djibouti – part of a UN mission against piracy. The US has continued wars against other countries on a non-stop basis, while China has invaded no country nor started any wars in close to half a century. The US instigated over 25 coups and coup attempts in Latin America just between 2000 and 2020. China has sponsored no coup attempts on any government. The US imposes blockades and "sanctions" warfare on at least 39 nations. China imposes no sanctions on anyone. The US regularly launches drone attacks on the people of other countries. China has launched no drone attacks on anyone. China is no imperial superpower, but a peaceful one. 

China is the outstanding example of a Third World country developing into a superpower despite the West's centuries-long efforts to torpedo its progress. China engages in "win-win" economic relations with other nations. Its loans and investment are carried out based on equality, consensus and joint benefit, unlike the predatory behavior of the IMF and Western lending institutions. China is helping other countries of the Global South break out of the underdevelopment that colonialism and imperialism have imposed on their countries for 500 years.

Third World Leaders Praise China's World Role

 At present, over 150 countries have chosen to participate in China's economic program called the Belt and Road Initiative. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega explained why:

The People's Republic of China has brought progress, benefits, development to peoples who were colonized, and later became independent, but who were then subjugated under the boot of the interests of the powers that had colonized them, leaving those peoples in poverty, with people in misery, people going hungry, people in illiteracy, with infant mortality, in Africa, in Asia. And the People's Republic of China has been developing a policy bringing benefits to developing countries, without setting any conditions… The powers that have been colonialists and neocolonialists, like the US, like Europe… have not stopped being colonialists. They still are neocolonialists. They have not stopped being criminals. They still are criminals. They still are killers. 

China's role in helping other countries to develop has been noted by several anti-imperialist leaders. Fidel Castro rejected the notion that China was an imperial power. "China has objectively become the most promising hope and the best example for all Third World countries. I do not hesitate to say that it is already the main engine of the world economy… The role that China has been playing in the United Nations, including the Security Council, is an important element of balance, progress and safeguard of world peace and stability." Of the Chinese leader he said, "Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life."

Present Cuban President Diaz-Canel also had high praise for Xi Jinping.

Former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez likewise said, "one of the greatest events of the 20th century was the Chinese Revolution." Chavez considered that an alliance with China constituted a bulwark against imperialism — a "Great Wall against American hegemonism… China is large but it's not an empire. China doesn't trample on anyone, it hasn't invaded anyone, it doesn't go around dropping bombs on anyone." 

 Bolivian President Arce said: "We have built bridges of trust between the two countries and maintain a very positive bilateral relationship." Evo Morales, the former president, said Bolivia and China "maintain a relationship characterized by wide-ranging and diverse cooperation and reciprocity." China "works in a joined-up way with other countries and benefits the peoples of the world; the opposite to what was imposed on us for decades by the US, where predatory, individualistic and competitive capitalism looted our people's resources for the benefit of transnational corporations." "China develops, and helps, invests, without any conditions, just to support our development. China is always ready to cooperate unconditionally."

 Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro declared, "Between China and Venezuela there is a model relationship, a model of what should be the relationship between a superpower like China, the great superpower of the 21st century, and an emerging, heroic, revolutionary and socialist country like Venezuela… China has inaugurated a new era of the emergence of non-colonialist, non-imperialist, non-hegemonic superpowers."

 Former Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa spoke highly of Chinese aid to the Citizens Revolution. China's assistance is "an example for Latin America and for the rest of the world."

 Burkina Faso revolutionary President Ibrahim Traoré said Chinese aid was a "testament to a mutually beneficial partnership."

 Even President Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia recently said at the ASEAN summit, "China has consistently defended the interests of developing countries. They consistently oppose oppression, oppose imperialism, oppose colonialism, oppose apartheid, The People's Republic of China defends liberation struggles in countries that are still oppressed by imperialism and colonialism." 

 Recent Western Left anti-China Stories

Yet, despite the testimonies of these anti-imperialist Third World leaders, some progressives still highlight West's anti-China narratives, such as in Sri Lanka and in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Sri Lanka

The China debt-trap myth arose from Sri Lanka's port Hambantota, that China lent money to the country to build the port, knowing Sri Lanka could not make it viable. This led Sri Lanka to default on the loans, and Beijing demanded the port as collateral. Chatham House and The Atlantic, both organs of the ruling elite, debunked this. First, the Hambantota Port project was not proposed by China, but by Sri Lanka. Second, Sri Lanka's debt crisis resulted not from Chinese lending, but from Western loans. Third, there was no debt-for-asset swap. Rather, China leased the port for $1.1 billion, money Sri Lanka then used to pay down debts to the West. Chatham House concludes, "Sri Lanka's debt trap was thus primarily created as a result of domestic policy decisions and was facilitated by Western lending and monetary policy, and not by the policies of the Chinese government."

 China in Africa

Liberia's former minister of public works, W Gyude Moore noted that under European colonialism "there has never been a continental-scale infrastructure building program for Africa's railways, roads, ports, water filtration plants and power stations…China has built more infrastructure in Africa in two decades than the West has in centuries."

 At the most recent Forum on China–Africa Cooperation in 2024, 53 of the 54 African countries chose to attend. China pledged $50 billion over the next three years on top of the $40 billion already invested.

 Dee Knight took up the issue of China's exploitation in the Democratic Republic of Congo propagandized in the book Cobalt Red. He drew on Isabelle Minnon's report, "Industrial Turn-Around in Congo?" She wrote, "China has responded to the DRC's need to have partners who invest in industrialization." The West had bled Congo dry through debts that prevented its development. China brought large-scale investment on a new basis, combining financing for industrial mining and public infrastructure – roads, railroads, dams, health and education facilities.

 Minion stated the result: "After decades of almost non-existent industrial production, the country became and remains the world's leading producer of cobalt and, by 2023, became the world's third largest producer of copper." This "puts an end to the monopoly of certain Western countries and their large companies," which just plundered the Congo. Furthermore, China cancelled $28 million in interest-free loans, and gave $17 million in support to the DRC.

 During the Covid pandemic, China announced that it also forgave 23 interest-free loans for 17 African nations.  This is in addition to China's cancellation of more than $3.4 billion in debt and restructured $15 billion of debt in Africa between 2000 and 2019.

 Chinese investments in Israel

Chinese trades with Israel, as with all other countries, to establish mutually beneficial economic relations, to counter the US goal of turning countries against China. China's trade with Israel is qualitatively different from that of the US, Britain, France, Germany and others since China does not export weaponry to Israel used to slaughter Palestinians and peoples in surrounding countries. 

Some have written of Chinese business involvement in the occupied West Bank. The report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese (which brought US sanctions on her) substantiates one such instance. China's role contradicts its vote in favor of the 2024 UN General Assembly resolution calling for no trade or investments with Israeli operations in the occupied territories. 

 Yet China worked hard to unite the divided Palestinian resistance with the recent Beijing Declaration. China has continually denounced the US and Israel in Gaza, upholds the Palestinian right to resist occupation, and has never condemned the October 7, 2023 Hamas breakout attack. China is also a participant in the present The Hague Group calling for "concrete measures" against Israel.

 China and Cuba

Some Western leftists have criticized China for lack of support for Cuba, suffering under a now worsening US blockade. However, China is working to build 55 solar installation complexes there this year, covering Cuba's daytime shortfall, and another 37 by 2028, for a total of 2,000 megawatts. This aid would meet nearly two-thirds of Cuba's present-day demand. China has long been a partner of Cuba in terms of trade and investment, participating in the Mariel Special Development Zone, and in projects in the production of medicines, biotechnology and agriculture.

 China, A Superpower that Supports Third World Development

It is a contradiction that many on the Western left are not supportive of China, given that the US rulers have long called China the primacy threat to imperialist domination. 

Recognizing the US's continued economic and military power, if not superiority, China seeks to avoid a major destructive direct confrontation. China counters the US and Western isolation strategy by fostering a world based on cooperation with all countries, even with the US and its close allies. It focuses on obtaining essential resources for its industry and for economic self-sufficiency to fortify itself in self-defense against the US strategy to isolate it economically and politically, and on meeting countries' desire for its cheaper goods and investments. As the Third World leaders above say, most of China's foreign loans are not capitalist investments, but government funds that have been used to free countries from the grip of imperialism.

 That has made it impossible for the West to isolate China. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, Chinese investments in schools, roads, railroads, and other needed infrastructure are generally seen as a welcome change from the neglect and underdevelopment imposed by the imperial First World.  

 Consequently, every year China becomes more and more a world power in relation to the imperialist countries.

 China's significance for the world lies in being a singular example of a Third World country developing despite the West's goal to thwart its rise. This is a model for other Third World countries that seek to assert their independence of the West and make their own path.

 In this process, China, which just 75 years ago, had an illiteracy rate of 80%, has just ended poverty for 800 million people, which no capitalist group of countries ever accomplished. China has achieved the fastest growth in living standards of any country in the world. It achieved this without invading, massacring, colonizing and looting other countries, but peacefully, without threatening any other people, and in cooperation with them.

 As Daniel Ortega said:

The self-same ideologues of imperialism state that what worries them is that they see the People's Republic of China bringing benefits to these Peoples and they feel that there they are losing the power to keep these peoples enslaved…They are upset, outraged, because the People's Republic of China is making available billions in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America. These are investments for the development of our peoples. They see that as bad for themselves, but why can't they do the same? Why have they never brought investment with the same conditions that the People's Republic of China is making available?

The West, with the US at its head, seeks to maintain so-called "Western civilization," the rule of the white colonizer over the rest of the world. It regards China and Russia as the two major threats to its continued domination and seeks to disable both. China and Russia are drawn into a struggle, where their continued growth, if not existence, is at stake. The more they can neutralize the West's goal, the more this is a victory for all the oppressed people of the world.

The post Revolutionary Third World Leaders Praise China's World Role first appeared on Dissident Voice.

8. Another Scandal, another War…

The post Another Scandal, another War… first appeared on Dissident Voice.

9. Zohran Mubarak: The Battle Begins

Saint Sun — a myth

One day, a young prince died in the city of Unch in the Indian subcontinent. The boy had had great respect and love for a Shia Ismaili Pir Shams. (Pir means saint and Shams means Sun – Saint Sun.) The king was devastated; he ordered his magistrates and jurists to get a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad because only he could revive the prince. Failure to do so would result in severe punishment for them and their families. They went to Pir Shams and begged him to come because otherwise they would be victims of the king's wrath.

Pir Shams came to the palace and, without invoking Allah, held the prince by arm who then came back to life. The prince recognized Pir Shams and they both left the palace. The nonbelievers were stunned. They shamed Pir Shams and charged him with acting like God. Pir Shams and the boy left the town. When it dawned upon Pir Shams, while he was meditating, that he had played the role of God, he removed his skin from head to toe as penalty. He, with the boy, returned to the city and gave his skin to the people.

Pir Shams and the boy were hungry but no one wanted to give or sell them food. Eventually, Pir Shams was able to get raw mutton, but was unable to get fire to cook it, so he prompted the Sun to descend and thus was able to cook the mutton.

The people were terrified by the heat and started burning, and they thought the Day of Judgement had arrived.

Once the mutton was cooked, the Sun went back to its celestial abode.

(This Ismaili saint Pir Shams — died 1356 CE — should not be confused with Mawlana Rumi's spiritual mentor Shams Tabrizi — 1185–1248 CE).

The People's Sun — today's reality

• 350,000 people are homeless in NYC as of April 2025.
• 53% of New Yorkers' debt has gone up due to high food costs. The number is 62% for New Yorkers, with children, who are under more debt.
• $4200 is the rent New Yorkers pay for 1 bedroom apartment — the highest in the country.
• 123 billionaires with total net worth of $759 billion belong to NYC, the most of any city in the world.
• …

Prior to losing the Democratic primary for NYC mayor in June 2025, Andrew Cuomo had been governor of New York state from 2011 to 2021. He was accused of cheating and screwing immigrant workers who cleaned the subways during the COVID 19 pandemic.

The people of New York City, when Cuomo was governor, suffered many cuts in Medicaid, public schools weren't provided enough money because of austerity measures, and it was the same with the New York City's subway system.

Corruption, inequality, injustice, police brutality, unemployment, underpaid, overworked, frustrated New Yorkers screamed enough is enough. They brought Zohran (means Sun) on the NYC mayoral platform making so many people happy. Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Democratic Party was also supported by the Working Families Party. He won the primary.

Zohran Mubarak

Zohran Mubarak to the US ruling class.

The word "mubarak" is of Arabic origin but is also used in many non-Arab countries and means "auspicious, blessed, lucky propitious, happy." It is used in greetings such as Eid Mubarak," "Diwali Mubarak," Christmas Mubarak," Wedding Mubarak," "Ramzan Mubarak," etc.

Gheraoe-d (Encircled or Besieged)

"We were gheraoed by every Age,
No one ever came to our rescue!
Then, one day, we gheraoed them,
And every tyrant shouted his rage.
No reason to worry:
We shall rise soon despite the pain.
And every city which is now dark
Will see the light once again."

Revolutionary Pakistani poet Habib Jalib- Tariq Ali's translation.

Jalib wrote the poem in solidarity with Indian workers.

The rise of a people's Sun burned the tyrants badly. The tyrants — the elites, racists, and moneyed class of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party; the Israeli Lobby; Israeli assets; Israeli agents; the billionaires; the media moguls; corporate bosses; Modi's Hindutva supporters; and so many others shouted their rage.

Mamdani's parents Mira Nair, a filmmaker, and Mehmood Mamdani, an academic, are Indians. So why are Modi's supporters opposing Mamdani? Well, answering a question, Mamdani uttered the truth: like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a "war criminal" too.

Mamdani besieged

"A 100% Communist Lunatic" is what President Donald Trump called Mamdani.

Trump is 50% wrong, Mamdani is not a communist otherwise he would have said: "Let's nationalize all industries; tech companies; universities; pharmaceutical companies; all financial institutes, including banks; Trump Towers, and so on and make common people's life easy and give each family a house, free education, free healthcare, 10 hour work week, etc."

Trump is 50% correct on the lunatic thing. Mamdani is a lunatic because:

• Only a lunatic would think about providing free bus service for the common people.
• Only a lunatic would criticize the 24/7/365 Israeli genocide of Palestinians, and risk losing easy-election-campaign money and support from the Israel Lobby to win the New York Mayor's election with free trips to Israel.
• Only a lunatic like Mamdani would refuse to be an Israeli asset. He could have become one of the Israeli assets like Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo, Kamala Harris, Hakeem Jeffries, and uncountable others in the Congress, US government, state governments, news media, universities, corporations, armed forces, and so many other organizations. Don't be surprised, Israel is over the entire US body — like an end-of-life stage of cancer. Only people like Mamdani can save this sick state of affairs and people like Kshama Sawant and her Workers Strike Back can make it alive again.

In the first week of November 2026, Trump will most probably see 100% lunatic in the US House with the name of Kshama Sawant. The US desperately needs her, and many more like her.

"Zohran the Destroyer" is the title given by Fox TV' reporter. Zohran is the destroyer, indeed. New York City is stinking with the Farts Of Xenophobes which he is going to eliminate and make it a nice smelling city.

"Civilised people in America don't eat like this," says US House representative Brandon Gill (Republican from Texas). He was criticizing Mamdani for eating with hands rather than fork, knife, and spoon. A photo of Gill's father-in-law Dinesh D'Souza, of Indian origin had been posted eating with his hands.

The "civilized people" use hands to accumulate all the money for themselves, to send arms and ammunition to Israel and other countries to kill people, to sign bills cutting Medicaid, etc., and so on.

Many more such criticisms have been hurled, suffice it to say much hatred has been spewed against Mamdani.

Interrogation by US-based Israeli agents

"Do you recognize Israel as a state? Does it have a right to exist?" and six other questions asked by Politico's Jason Beeferman and Jeff Coltin were all related to Israel and antisemitism.

"Does the State of Israel have the right to exist?" was the question Steven Colbert asked on his show.

"The first foreign visit by a mayor of New York is always considered significant. Where would you go first?" was one of the questions asked by one of the moderators David Ushery during the June 4, 2025, NBC Democratic mayoral primary debate.

Mamdani's reply: "I would stay in New York City. My plans are to address New Yorkers across the five Burroughs and focus on that."

"Mr. Mamdani, can I just jump in? Would you visit Israel as mayor?" was the question by the Israeli agent Melissa Russo, pretending to be another moderator, who just couldn't accept Mamdani's concern for New Yorkers.

Mamdani's reply: "I've said in a UJA [United Jewish Appeal? – Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, Inc.] questionnaire that I believe that you need not travel to Israel to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers. And that is what I will be doing as the mayor. I'll be standing up for Jewish New Yorkers and I'll be meeting them wherever they are across the five Burroughs, whether that's in their synagogues and temples or at their homes or at the subway platform because ultimately we need to focus on delivering on their concerns."

Agent Russo was mad: "Answer just yes or no. Do you believe in a Jewish state of Israel?"

Mamdani: "I believe Israel has the right to exist …"

Agent Russo jumped in: "As a Jewish state?"

Mamdani:: "As a state with equal rights."

Now Mamdani was attacked by Cuomo, an Israeli asset running for NYC mayor. Watch the entire video of this exchange after 1:56 here.

Israel has occupied Palestine and has been existing, expanding, and executing Palestinians regularly. So the question wasn't: As a mayor, will you stop the genocide and end Palestinians' misery?

The battle begins

All the forces arrayed against Mamdani are going to use full power with all means, right or wrong, available at their disposal to defeat Mamdani in the election. They'll go to any extreme because, this time it's a people's candidate and not a billionaires' candidate — which is never acceptable in the US.

Mamdani should counter his opponents as he did during the June 12 second and final debate. When Cuomo, whose PACs received $25 million from billionaires, went after Mamdani's inexperience, Mamdani shot back:

"To Mr. Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace, I've never cut medicaid, I've never stolen 100s of millions of dollars from the MTA, I've never hounded the 13 women who have credibly accused me of sexual harassment, I've never sued for their gynecological records, and I have not done those things because I am not you Mr. Cuomo. And further more the name is Mamdani, m-a-m-d-a-n-i, learn to get it right."

Mamdani has a once in the US lifetime chance to change things, if not in the country, then at least in the most populated city.

The country's major newspaper, the New York Times, during the 2024 presidential election, refused to publish hacked information on Donald Trump and his VP candidate JD Vance, but in case of Mamdani, it didn't hold off on publishing hacked information, supplied by one "who opposes affirmative action and writes often about I.Q. and race." The info was about Mamdani's 2009 college admission form. The paper had stopped endorsing any candidates except presidential but it criticized Mamdani in an editorial which "effectively served as an anti-endorsement," Gabe Whisnant noted in Newsweek.

Mamdani should always remember his middle name Kwame, named after independent Ghana's first Prime Minister and then President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, "Pan-Africanist visionary" who was voted as "Africa's Man of the Millennium." By the grace of Uncle Sam, in the form of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Nkrumah was overthrown, like many others before and after him, while he was on a state visit to China and Vietnam in February 1966.

Nkrumah wrote in his book Dark Days in Ghana what methods the US uses in ousting foreign leaders:

"It has been one of the tasks of the CIA and other similar organizations to discover … potential quislings and traitors in our midst, and to encourage them, by bribery and the promise of political power, to destroy the constitutional government of their countries."

Former Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman of New York lost in 2024 when the AIPAC (American Israel Political Action Committee) poured in $20 million to help their opponents. Bush and Bowman had called for ceasefire in Gaza.

This happens regularly to many candidates. Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard were the victims too. More than two decades back, Alexander Cockburn pointed out,

"Don't you think that if Arab-American groups or African-American groups targeted an incumbent white liberal, maybe Jewish, congressperson, and shipped in money by the truckload to oust the incumbent, the rafters would shake with bellows of outrage."

Mamdani should also stay away from the "Black Misleadership Class," as Black Agenda Report constantly reminds us.

Professor Hamid Dabashi has a warning too:

"All the powers of predatory capitalism, militarised fascism and genocidal Zionism have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre."

Don't be Obama or Sanders

As President, Barack Obama had a great opportunity to change the course of ruthless capitalism that it has been on for many decades. He and his advisors instead strengthened those very forces who were responsible for the 2007-2008 financial crisis by bailing them out.

But the Obama team did not rescue the victims of those monster-sized companies: more than 16% of the homeowners lost their houses via foreclosure or some other method, that is, approximately ten million families were forced to vacate their houses.

Almost all the criminal bankers went scot-free.

Multimillionaire Obama is a system's man who is making millions and is ever ready to protect it when he senses even slight danger as he did it in 2020 when it seemed Bernie Sanders might overtake Joe Biden.

Bernie Sanders, an independent (but works with the Democratic Party), had twice, in 2016 and 2020, a chance to form a third party when he lost the presidential candidacy to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, respectively. His supporters were crazy for him and he could have changed the course of history. But no, he betrayed his cause and his supporters, and supported Hillary and Biden, instead.

So Zohran, don't be like Obama or Sanders. If the anti-people-forces succeed in derailing your pursuit, join hands with Kshama Sawant and Jill Stein to form a third party. If Elon Musk with his hundreds of billions could make a third party, America Party, you could do too with your millions of voters, as the following video of yours acknowledges the voting power of people. Even if you're elected, the Israel Lobby, the New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and all others will try to make your victory as miserable as they can as Cuomo had done with former mayor Bill de Blasio during his 2014 – 2021 rule.

Let the battle begin. May the good for the people triumph this time.

The post Zohran Mubarak: The Battle Begins first appeared on Dissident Voice.

10. A Catastrophic New Normal Has Arrived

A new study published in Earth's Future by researchers from Uppsala University with Belgian, French, and German universities have shown that climate change is morphing into a full blown ogre of destruction as several regions of the world are no longer affected by isolated events, instead, several different events occur concurrently or in quick succession. These multi-series events are a new phenomenon that typically overwhelms society with unparalleled suddenness, speed, and ferocity, increasingly striking urban areas as well as the hinterlands.

It's happening more frequently with more ferocity than ever before, for example, massive LA Fires (Jan. 2025); village of Blatten, Switzerland buried by collapsing glacier (May 2025); flash floods slam Vermont third year in a row (July 2025); Texas river rises 30 feet in one hour (July 2025), China real-life apocalypse 11-level winds, 4-story high flood, 150°F heat (July 2025); fatal storms flood south France (May 2025); glacial lake outburst washes away five villages, Afghanistan (June 2025); Queensland, one of worst floods of all time (2025); Kentucky flood kills eleven (Feb. 2025); glacial lake outburst kills 28, Nepal (July 2025); deadly flash floods kill 32 Pakistan (June 2025); northeastern India States devastated by massive flooding, landslides, buildings collapse, 34 dead (June 2025); Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, 49 dead flash flood (May 2025); villages washed away in seconds, Nigeria flash flood, killing 151 (May 2025); East Africa massive flood kills hundreds (March 2025) Balkans pounded by thunderous storms as wildfires break out in Türkiye, Greece, Spain, and France (July 2025); Massive flood, northeastern Spain (July 2025); severe drought, northern and western Europe, river transport and agriculture threatened under emergency drought alert (June 2025).

"We have long known, for example, that there will be more heat waves, forest fires and severe droughts in many regions—that in itself is no surprise. What surprised us is that the increase is so large that we see a clear paradigm shift with multiple coinciding extreme events becoming the new normal," according to Professor Gabriele Messori, the study's lead author." ("Heat Waves, Droughts, and Fires May Soon Hit Together as 'New Normal' Study Finds," Topics, Uppsala University, June 5, 2025).

As of July 15, 2025: Dangerous flooding has hit several locations in the United States. Water gushed into subways, New York City, roads flooded, New Jersey in a series of pounding thunderstorms. Flash floods hit a mountainous region, New Mexico. Massive downpour clobbered roads and homes, North Carolina. In every case, the flooding was caused by sudden extremely heavy pounding rainstorms. Global warming has turned into a monster of mass destruction on a biblical scale. It has hatched 'Weather Whiplash', a vicious cycle of sudden sizeable wet periods bringing on rapid vegetation growth followed by extreme dry hotness followed by ferocious wildfires as weather cocktails of catastrophic scale hit in quick succession.

The Messori study clearly identified this new phenomenon:

By analyzing postprocessed data from the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project, we provide a global mapping of future changes in the compound occurrence of six categories of hazards or impacts related to climate extremes. These are: river floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, tropical cyclone-induced winds and crop failures…  A striking change is projected for the future recurrence of compound hazards or impacts, with many locations experiencing specific compound occurrences at least once a year for several years, or even decades, in a row. In the absence of effective global climate mitigation actions, we may thus witness a qualitative regime shift from a world dominated by individual climate-related hazards and impacts to one where compound occurrences become the norm. (Source: Earth's Future)

Climate change has broadened its reach via temperatures climbing globally, which feeds into a series of increasingly powerful events. Insurance companies worldwide have been caught flat-footed, unable to turn left or right politically, as neither offers serious solutions. According to Gallagher Re, a major reinsurance company: "World on Fire 2025: Impacts of an Expanding Wildfire Season": "As events during the past 12 months have demonstrated, every season is now wildfire season, and fires in urban areas are an increasingly growing concern."

Out of control wildfires as well as flooding from sudden 'atmospheric rivers' are hitting cities, towns, and villages worldwide on a scale never seen before. This is climate change strutting its stuff on TV, nightly somewhere in the world. This new TV stardom brings to light, in every living room, the brutal truth of an obscenely crazed human-induced climate system flailing wildly on its own power that humans ignited. Now, nobody can turn it off.

Consequently, governments of the world are massively beefing up relief agencies to help their citizens. "Trump is Gutting Weather Science and Reducing Disaster Relief," New York Times, July 12, 2025, as he gooses up the wallets of billionaires via obscene tax cuts that will blow up America's deficit like a hot air balloon. Watch for it to burst. This is presidential?

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