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Interior delivers on oil industry wish list
The Interior department is delivering on an oil industry wish list submitted to the agency earlier this year. A lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute sent the list to three high-level Trump administration officials in April, noting that her organization drafted it after meeting with President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
Public Domain’s Hana Beach and Jimmy Tobias obtained the wish list through a Freedom of Information Act request, and found that of the 40 specific policy changes that API asked for, the Trump administration has already moved to fulfill about half of them.
The changes include removing protections for migratory birds killed by the oil industry; opening pristine wildlife habitat in Alaska to drilling; and rescinding a Biden-era rule that aimed to balance conservation and extraction on public lands.
On Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management announced four final rules to implement oil and gas provisions in the reconciliation bill passed by Congress, with almost no opportunity for the public to weigh in on how the agency implements the law. For two of the rules, BLM is skipping a public comment period entirely; the other two rules will be final after just a 30 day public comment period.
Quick hits Does Trump’s Interior secretary know what a battery is? BLM retirees urge Burgum to change course on renewable energy Utah scores initial victory in legal battle over what counts as a road Yosemite embodies the long war over national park privatization Tracker shows Interior staff exodus as DOGE operative quitsE&E News (Staff) | Partnership for Public Service | E&E News (DOGE)
This cowgirl is tackling the wild horse problem. Activists want her dead Bears Ears gathering calls nations to defend land, future A rancher’s 50-year fight to save one of the West’s iconic landscapes Quote of the dayAs heat and drought intensify, ranchers in the Southwest are the ones with skin in the game. They have serious motivations to safeguard the health of the lands that sustain their families, and most of them are also lifelong students of the ranching trade, eager to adapt and innovate.”
—Utah rancher Heidi Redd, The Nature Conservancy Magazine
Picture This“If a trail is to be blazed, it is ‘send a ranger.’ If an animal is floundering in the snow, a ranger is sent to pull him out; if a bear is in the hotel, if a fire threatens a forest, if someone is to be saved, it is ‘send a ranger…” – Stephen T. Mather, first Director of the National Park Service
#WorldRangerDay honors rangers around the world who work to preserve and protect important natural and cultural places. It’s also a day to remember and commemorate those who have lost their lives serving on the front line protecting the environment around them. Rangers work in varying positions with some being faced with difficult and dangerous tasks. They are key protectors of parks and conservation. This is done through law enforcement, environmental education, community relations, fighting fires, conducting search and rescues, research, interpretation, and in many other ways.
If you’re in a park today, say hi to a ranger!
Featured image: Oil and gas drilling on BLM-owned land, BLM CaliforniaThe post Interior delivers on oil industry wish list appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.
DeBriefed 1 August 2025: Trump targets ‘endangerment finding’; Floods and heatwaves; ‘Thirst’ exhibition
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
EPA OVERTURNING: The Trump administration announced its plan to overturn the 2009 finding that has been the “central basis” for US action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, the Associated Press reported. A new Environmental Protection Agency proposal would rescind the “endangerment finding”, which determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, according to the newswire. If the finding is repealed, it would “erase current limits” on greenhouse gas pollution from cars, factories and power plants, AP said.
‘MISLEADING’ REPORT: The proposal is supported by a new Department of Energy report that uses “misleading and inaccurate” statements to argue that climate science has “overstated” the risks of a warming planet, Politico reported. The report, which also argues that climate science is “underestimating” the societal benefits of burning fossil fuels, was written by five scientists who “are known” for “denying accepted climate science”, the outlet added.
‘WINDMILL DISGRACE’: Wind development on federal lands and waters may be halted by the Trump administration, Bloomberg reported. Interior secretary Doug Burgum ordered a comprehensive review of the agency’s approval process, it said. According to Renewable Energy News, the department said more than 3.5m acres offshore were designated as “wind energy areas” by the last administration and that “terminating” these areas is “safeguarding” local environments and economies from “unchecked development”. This followed from Trump’s recent comment that “windmills are a disgrace”, the publication added.
Floods and heatwavesSEVERE FLOODING: Torrential rains triggered a devastating flood in northern Nigeria, leaving at least 23 people dead, Deutsche Welle reported. The flooding has displaced 5,560 people and left dozens injured, according to the National Emergency Management Agency. More than 200 people have been killed in floods in Nigeria since the start of the rainy season in May this year, according to DW. The outlet reported that scientists have said climate change is fuelling many of these extreme weather occurrences.
BEIJING RAINS: China faced “another deadly rainy season” after 60 people were killed following days of torrential rain in Northern Beijing, reported Reuters. The outlet said climate change has made extreme weather “more frequent and intense”. Elsewhere, floodwaters from the Indus and Chenab rivers have “inundated” more than a dozen villages across Pakistan’s Punjab province, said India’s Tribune.
RECORD TEMPERATURE: Japan recorded its hottest day on record as temperatures reached 41.2C in southwest Tokyo, Al Jazeera reported. There were 16 heat-related deaths and more than 10,800 people were hospitalised with heatstroke last week, the outlet said. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government issued an official holiday in seven of its provinces as temperatures topped 50C, said Gulf News.
‘MILLIONS’ INSIDE: Temperatures soaring in the US have led to “millions” of Americans being warned to stay inside as some areas reach 48.8C, noted Newsweek. Heat warnings and advisories have been issued by the National Weather Service, according to the outlet.
Around the world- ENERGY PLEDGE: The European Union has pledged to buy $750bn of energy from the US in exchange for a lower tariff rate under its trade deal with Trump. “Significant purchases” of US oil, liquified natural gas and nuclear fuel to replace Russian fossil fuels are included in the deal, CNBC reported. The Financial Times quoted energy experts saying the deal is a “pie in the sky” given that “US fossil fuel supplies [in 2024] to the bloc accounted for just $75bn”.
- COP30 COSTS: The UN held an “urgent meeting” over “sky-high” accommodation costs ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, the last US climate negotiators have been fired by the Trump administration, leaving the nation with “no official presence” at the summit, said CNN.
- ‘MELTING RAPIDLY’: Glaciers in Turkey’s southeast are melting rapidly due to rising global temperatures “amid human-caused climate change”, Al Jazeera reported.
- ‘SEWAGE CRISIS’: The US and Mexico have signed a deal to end the Tijuana “sewage crisis”, committing to update outdated wastewater infrastructure to handle higher flows triggered by worse flooding, said Inside Climate News.
- RENEWABLE ENERGY: Australia’s government has pledged to “substantially increase” its renewable energy underwriting scheme following concerns the nation will struggle to meet its 2030 power target, noted the Guardian. Meanwhile, New Zealand’s government has voted to resume gas and oil drilling despite an “outcry” from the opposition and environmental groups, reported the New Zealand Herald.
- ‘UNHELPFUL TUSSEL’: UN climate chief Simon Stiell paid a visit to Australia and urged the nation and Turkey to resolve their “long-running tussle” over who will host the COP31 summit, calling the delay “unhelpful and unnecessary”, Reuters reported.
The hectares of intact tropical forest that overlaps with oil blocks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Earth Insight.
Latest climate research- Climate change could make ‘droughts’ for wind power 15% longer | Carbon Brief
- A study of urban construction workers in Taiwan found that heat stress imposes “substantial economic burden” and results in productivity losses in the range of 29-41% | Nature Cities
- Drought will increasingly contribute to the collapse of many bird species that live in highly arid regions of the US | Biological Conservation
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
CapturedNew analysis by Carbon Brief this week revealed that 2025 is on track to be the second or third hottest year on record. The chart above draws on data from five different research groups that report global surface temperature records to illustrate how 2025 saw the second-hottest first half of the year on record.
Spotlight ‘Thirst’ exhibition maps the water crisisThis week, Carbon Brief visits a London exhibition exploring the world’s worsening water crisis.
Intricate ink drawings on cotton paper explore interconnected issues in Nepal.
Global warming has melted glaciers in the region, causing flooding and infectious diseases, displacing human and non-human life.
Yet, through his drawings, Nepalese artist Karan Shrestha has created a mosaic of the Himalayan region that shows water as a signifier of extreme weather and a life-giving source to be shared.
Shrestha’s installation calls into question “views on water as a resource for human gain” and, for artist M’hammed Kilito, oases offer an ecological defence against desertification. Credit: Svetlana OnyeHis piece, “Water-giver, memory-keeper and the shifting forces”, is displayed at the Wellcome Collection for its “Thirst: In Search of Freshwater” exhibition.
Brought together by Wellcome curator and lecturer Janice Li, it features 125 objects that showcase the impact of climate change on water and its role in shaping health and ecosystems.
Li’s research into the etymology of “thirst” unravelled a global interpretation of water, reflecting the exhibition’s geographical breadth. She told Carbon Brief:
“Humans have faced really brutal and critical environmental crises and have, through a really deep innate knowledge of their own specific land, been able to devise monumental infrastructure to combat the crises they face.”
Just before Shrestha’s art in the exhibition are photographs taken by M’hammed Kilito.
In one picture, Kilito’s guide, Mustapha, looks into a dried-up well in a Moroccan oasis.
Climate change and human activities have resulted in the loss of two-thirds of oases in the country, according to information displayed at the exhibition.
Speaking about the photograph, Kilito told the Guardian that it looked like Mustapha was “praying for the return of something essential: water”.
Water adopts multiple faces in the exhibition: a vital yet scarce resource in certain pieces, a spiritual entity in others – and a destructive force.
Nothing makes the latter as clear as “Deluge” by photojournalist Gideon Mendel. Five screens display footage of the aftermath of severe floods around the world, captured by Mendel over 17 years.
Mendel’s installation captures flood victims’ “dignity and resilience” as they stand in the liquid landscape. Credit: Svetlana OnyeLi told Carbon Brief:
“[Gideon] told me that, in the last two years, there’s always been a flood of that magnitude happening somewhere. He didn’t imagine that one day it would get to a point where he would have to choose which one to go to.”
Next to “Deluge” is a dome-like space where visitors can sit on bean bags and listen to glaciers melting in the Himalayas.
Though the exhibition confronts global water challenges, Li hopes it also reminds visitors of the resource’s beauty:
“Quite a few people told me they sit in the listening room for half an hour, really enjoying themselves and then guilt hits them because they’ve forgotten they’re listening to melting ice. But, this is the beauty of art, and a lot of beauty has come out of decay, destruction and deterioration because it also, sometimes, signals rebirth.”
Watch, read, listenYAK HERDERS STRUGGLE: The Associated Press featured the stories of yak herders in India’s Himalayan mountains as climate change threatens their way of life.
PILOT ANXIETY: A Guardian documentary followed two airline pilots grappling with the climate impacts of their jobs.
‘IS DECARBONISATION DEAD?’: New York Times columnist Ezra Klein invited climate experts onto his podcast to discuss the future of renewable energy in the US.
- 5-14 August: Second part of the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to Develop an International Legally Binding Instrument on Plastic Pollution, Geneva, Switzerland
- 9 August: UN international day of the world’s Indigenous peoples
- 11-15 August:UN Environment Programme’s International Methane Earth Observatory at AmeriGeo Week 2015: Earth Observations for the Americas, Bogotá, Colombia
- Climate Justice Standard Lab, research associate in forest carbon and climate justice | Salary: $25-35 an hour. Location: Remote
- The Church of England, net-zero carbon programme decarbonising churches lead | £59,248. Location: Remote
- UN Office for Project Services, country engagement specialist and regional coordinator for eastern europe, Santiago network | Salary: Unknown. Location: Geneva, Switzerland
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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New study connects the dots between eating less meat and safer drinking water
Reducing meat consumption is one of the most powerful levers to bring down greenhouse gas emissions: this is now widely acknowledged. But something that gets less attention is how eating less meat could also improve water quality.
A new study presents the case, showing that replacing just 10% of meat with alternative proteins in the United States could have a large potential impact on groundwater—a major source of drinking water in the country—reducing the risk of water pollution there by up to 20%.
Although agricultural groundwater pollution is a global problem, the U.S. was a good starting point for the research, as the global leader in annual meat consumption. Livestock require large amounts of feed, which itself requires significant inputs of nitrogen fertilizers to grow—one third of which is lost to the environment each year in the U.S. The result is that half of groundwater from the main aquifers sampled in the country contain nitrate concentrations above natural levels.
Increasing meat consumption therefore doesn’t bode well for the long-term health of these reservoirs and the people who rely on them. The question is whether meat alternatives would be much better, considering that they all require agricultural inputs, too.
To investigate, the researchers considered beef, poultry, and pork, and compared these to three protein alternatives: plant-based protein, insect-based protein, and cultured meat. Looking at the period between 1985 and 2020, they assessed the impact of conventional meat production methods on groundwater quality, and then used a model to simulate the potential changes that would result from a switch to the protein alternatives in each case.
Firstly, their study showed that the growth of agriculture, and livestock in particular, has consistently increased groundwater nitrate exceedance—the point at which nitrates pass the designated safe limit for environmental and human health—over the last 60 years in the U.S.
The next clearest trend the researchers picked up on through their modeling analysis, is that beef is the most resource intensive across the board—consuming more fertilizer, water, land, and producing more greenhouse gases than any other variety of meat or meat-alternative. It was followed by poultry and pork.
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However, the meat alternatives aren’t footprint-free. Many plant-based meat alternatives are made from soybeans, which of course require fertilizers to grow. Insect protein farms, too, are often supplied with a diet of crops to sustain them. Even cultured meat that’s produced in a lab depends on corn and soybean feedstocks: on average, a kilo of cultured meat requires 5.6 kg of corn and 0.03 kg of soybean to sustain it, the study says.
And yet, despite the associated fertilizer use, meat alternatives still had a significantly lower groundwater impact. Per unit of protein generated, plant-based alternatives in particular stood out: “By directly consuming plant protein rather than raising animals for feedstock conversion, plant-based meat consumes fewer soybeans, which requires minimal fertilizer”—26.4 grams of fertilizer per kilo, compared to beef’s 519.5 g, the researchers explain in their work.
This translated to significantly lower groundwater impacts in the simulation. Calculating across the three alternatives, switching just 10% of meat consumption in the U.S. to plant protein, insect protein, or cultured meat, would reduce fertilizer use by 3.4%. That’s enough to cut the risk of nitrate excess in groundwater by 20%. That would reduce the number of groundwater sites currently registering unhealthily high levels of nitrates by up to 16%.
This depolluting effect could be much greater if the U.S. ate even less meat and more alterative protein. For instance, substituting 50% of meat with alternatives holds the greatest potential for reducing nitrate pollution, the researchers found. But at these higher rates, there were trade-offs that revealed some nuances of the American agricultural landscape.
For instance, in regions of the country where corn and soybeans are intensively farmed, a dramatic national increase in the consumption of alternative proteins could trigger to an expansion of crop production that leads to more fertilizer being dumped into the soil and infiltrating groundwater. So the solution may not be as simple as blanket-switching to alternative proteins.
The researchers also note that the groundwater benefits of eating less meat also depend to some degree on precipitation levels, and how much water regularly infiltrates the deeper layers of the soil. In drier regions, for example, their proposed dietary switch would have measurably more success at keeping nitrogen out of groundwater.
With these nuances in mind, the researchers settled on 10% substitution as a starting point—an amount small enough to be feasible, which could still deliver significant benefits to water quality, human, and ecological health.
Zheng et. al. “Changes in meat consumption can improve groundwater quality.” Nature Food. 2025.
Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine / Ai-generated
Help Bring Lorenzo and JoNina Ervin to California for Speaking Tour!
Announcement for crowd-funding campaign to help support west coast speaking tour for Lorenzo and JoNina Ervin. Donate and view here.
“Where there is repression, there is resistance…period.” – Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin
“You still have to get out in the streets and do it.” – JoNina Abron-Ervin
It’s no secret our communities and the movements to defend them are under attack. Fascists relentlessly heighten political repression, using despair to overwhelm and immobilize us. Movement veterans who survived great sacrifices in their struggles against racist state oppression remind us that we have been here before—and that we can withstand it again. Now, more than ever, we must learn from them how to organize under dire circumstances.
We are raising $6,000 to transport, room, board, and support movement veterans Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin and JoNina Abron-Ervin for a speaking tour in California:
- Saturday, October 4: Black Lantern Books (6533 West Blvd, Inglewood)
- Tuesday, October 7: West Oakland Library (1801 Adeline St, Oakland)
- Thursday, October 9: Black Panther Party Museum (1427 Broadway, Oakland)
- Saturday, October 11: Sacramento Anarchist Book Fair (1819 E St, Sacramento)
Lorenzo Kom’Boa Ervin was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and then shortly after, the Chattanooga branch of the Black Panther Party (BPP). While incarcerated for his contributions to the revolutionary struggle, Lorenzo connected Black liberation struggles to anarchist theory through writing, foremost of which is the contemporary classic Anarchism and the Black Revolution.
JoNina Abron-Ervin transferred from the BPP’s Detroit branch to the Oakland headquarters in the early 1970s, where she became the editor of the Party’s newspaper. JoNina was a key organizer in the BPP’s survival programs, participating in the free breakfast, prison visit transportation, and education programs. Accounts of these experiences can be read in her forthcoming book from AK Press, Driven by the Movement: Reports from the Black Power Era.
Since these formative experiences, Lorenzo and JoNina have continued to explore the connections between contemporary organizing, social movements, Black Liberation, and anarchism. Bringing them to California will strengthen cross-regional and intergenerational ties to powerfully meet this critical moment.
Only our movements’ collective efforts can make this possible. Thank you for donating what you can; we look forward to forging connections with you in October!
Brought to you by Black Lantern Books (@blacklanterncoop), Black Rose / Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation – Bay Area (@blackrosebayarea) | @blackrose_rosanegra), NorCal Resist (@norcal_resist), and the Sacramento Anarchist Book Fair (@sacramentoanarchistbookfair).
Mutual ruin? Or working-class revolution?
This essay is both a review of Ishchenko’s book and a discussion of the implication of the statement Marx and Engels wrote at the start of the Communist Manifesto:
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the mutual ruin of the contending classes.
Ishchenko’s title Towards the Abyss implies “mutual ruin” in the context of the Russian attacks on Ukraine. But the time span of this book covers two different “mutual ruin” time frames. The first is the collapse of the former Soviet empire, including the Former Soviet Union (FSU) itself. The second is the current crisis of global capitalism and its states, with the war in Ukraine being just one instance of that.
Towards the Abyss is a collection of articles written at various times, from January 2014, when the Maidan protests in Ukraine were at a relatively early stage, through December, 2022, when the full-scale invasion by Russia was less than a year old. It also includes an undated preface, titled “A Wrong Ukrainian,” which was presumably written sometime in 2023 or early 2024. The book thus reflects the author’s changing views through a tumultuous period of history and his increasing distancing from much of the Ukrainian left. As indicated by the book’s title, the author views Ukrainian history since the dissolution of the USSR as having been a journey to the abyss of ruin. He offers no solutions to the current bloodbath, which is disappointing though hardly unique to him. Although I am unwavering in my support for Ukrainian struggles for self-determination (unlike Ishchenko), I also see no path that points to a satisfactory end to the mess other than a massive social movement to transform Russia—and I certainly offer no political route to this desired end.
I will point to one or two high points and to a few places where I think he is abysmally wrong. (I will then turn to the second part of the paper, some ruminations on the “mutual ruin.”)
The Maidan and anti-Maidan movements in 2013 – 2014Ishchenko usefully points to the internal political conflict that took place in various parts of Ukraine during the Maidan uprising of 2013-2014 and after. There is some tendency on the part of supporters of Ukraine against Russian invasion to downplay this uprising, but it is important. Ishchenko correctly argues that the Maidan uprisings of 2013-2014 were confusing to many people in Ukraine. Various aspects of people’s lives and communities affected their reactions to it. Ischenko discusses at some length the fact that many people in the eastern and southern parts of the country were afraid that the uprising might lead to discrimination against people of relatively recent Russian origin or people who were primarily Russian-speaking. This fear was based on hostility in parts of western Ukraine to the Russian language and a history of (oligarchs’) political parties making an issue of language. These fears, and fears that the Maidan movement was “led by Nazis,” were reinforced by Russian newscasts.
As Ischenko points out, this fear led to a willingness on the part of some people in the Donbas to support efforts to seize local power by anti-Maidan elements, some of whom were local. (Others were Russian nationals with various official and unofficial ties to the Russian government or parties.) His argument accords with what I remember from the time and with my experience during my trip to Odesa in early February, 2014. A good friend who grew up there was herself lukewarm to the Maidan movement and said that many people she knew were not impressed by it. (After Russia seized Crimea, however, she became a strong Ukrainian patriot.) Kudelia’s detailed study of anti-Maidan and pro-Maidan political conflicts in this period in the Donbas, Kharkiv, and Odesa supports Ishkenko’s claim that the anti-Maidan efforts in these areas had a degree of support although not simply working class support; it included some local political and economic elites and received various degrees of leadership and physical support from political groups based in Russia.
It is useful to put this situation in the context of other revolutionary movements—something Ishchenko does not do enough of. Revolutions are complicated processes, and often people in and outside of the country where they take place oppose or support them because of different estimates of where they are headed. This varying support can sometimes lead to violent resistance by groups you might expect to support a revolution in outlying areas, as happened during the French Revolution after 1791 in the Vendée.
The rulers of Ukraine and RussiaIshchenko usefully discusses the nature of the ruling class in Ukraine and in Russia, and, based on this analysis, the reasons Russia invaded Ukraine. When the Former Soviet Empire, and then the Former Soviet Union itself, fell apart approximately 35 years ago, Russia and Ukraine went through a process that created a sharp economic, health, and social crises. Former members of the ruling bureaucracy, together with leading members of criminal gangs, took possession of factories, mines, and other forms of productive assets and formed a class of kleptocratic capitalists whose first decade of rule saw gigantic rises in poverty and disease. (See Dzurasov, 2014; Friedman & Reid, 2002; Yurchenko, 2018). Ischenko argues that in such kleptocratic oligarchies where the state is dominated by shifting or at least potentially shifting alliances of oligarchs, much of the surplus value comes from the allocation of political favors and contracts by the government; in this economic logic, the owners transfer much of their profits to foreign banks or foreign investments to keep them safe from political expropriation when political alliances change. Ischenko further argues that this economic system leads to slow growth, an impoverished working class (even by the standards of neoliberal capitalism), and an incentive for the rulers of powerful states (Russia) to grab new territories by imperial conquest in order to expand their profits.
On the other hand, this economic explanation is only part of Ishchenko’s analysis of the Russian motivation to attack Ukraine. He correctly sees (although based on a class analysis I critique below) that the rule of these kleptocratic oligarchs is unstable, and relying on the great mass of the people to be passive, apolitical, and disorganized. The Maidan revolution in Ukraine showed this vulnerability (once again) to the people of Russia, and Putin and the rest of the Russian rulers were deeply threatened by it. As I argued at the time, the Russian seizure of Crimea and fomenting of strife in the Donbas in 2014 were designed to ensure that the Maidan revolt did not turn left (which seemed like a real possibility at the time). It also led the movement to become “patriotic” and thus not to focus on removing the kleptocratic ruling class. This process also made it easier for Russia’s rulers to repress dissent in Russia itself. Then, in the early 2020s, mass popular movements took place in Belarus and Kazakhstan, and more-contained mass unrest took place in Russia–once again raising the spectre of revolution spreading to Russia. After helping the oligarchs of Belarus and Kazakhstan to maintain their power, Russia invaded Ukraine to undercut popular unrest in Russia itself. In addition, although Ishchenko does not make this point, much of the Russian ruling class had become increasingly invested in Great-Russian imperial ideologies.
Misplaced nostalgiaOlder Ukrainians and Russians lived through the last years of the USSR, and younger ones grew up with their elders’ stories and analyses of the Soviet years. Most Ukrainians I have known have strong negative feelings and beliefs towards the Communist era. Ishchenko, however, is much more positive and describes himself as a “Soviet Ukrainian,” adding, “Soviet Ukrainians were the product of a social revolution; its degradation destroyed them as a political community” (p. xxviii). He definitely looks back on the Soviet period as one of technological triumphs. (His parents were deeply involved in this development.) When he discusses the history of the USSR during the 1930s (p. xvii), he does so in functionalist terms that describes what happened as a strategic necessity that led to a strong nation state. He makes no effort to look at internal contradictions or class or bureaucratic interest. He makes no mention of mass starvation or of the Holodomor as part of this history, although he had briefly made note of the Holodomor on p. xix and of the Stalinist Great Terror as part of his family history later in this same paragraph. Politically, this position is crippling: He expresses no sympathy or empathy for those who reject “socialism” due to its equation with the Soviet past, even though any successful socialist movement in Ukraine needs to find ways to adjust to this memory and develop a clearly non-Stalinist concept of workers’ power.
Workers and other classesIshchenko analyzes the anti-Maidan movement of 2014 as supported by the workers of Eastern Ukraine. Yet, he seems to have no understanding of, or contact with, workers. Further, when he discusses revolutionary possibilities in Ukraine or Russia, although he seems to yearn for a new Bolshevik Revolution, he never frames this possibility as the product of a revolutionary working class. Workers are also absent from his discussion of how the political capitalist class came into being. His analysis of the crystallization of oligarchic economic power frames this process as “primitive accumulation” by interpreting it as the initial “hoarding of gold” (p. 98). Again, workers are absent, and he does not seem to understand that Marx explicitly argued that amassing wealth was not what he meant by “primitive accumulation.” Marx viewed primitive accumulation as the creation of “free” workers who were free of ties to the soil or other sources of material survival and who were thus available for employers to hire and exploit. In Ukraine, this took place to some extent in Tsarist years, but to a much greater extent during the Holodomor and after, supplemented perhaps by the Second World War devastation. This “freed” many millions to become exploited as workers.
He does have a concept of class conflict in Ukraine and Russia, but again it ignores the working class. He sees the main (non-war) conflict in Ukraine as between oligarchic capital and middle class/intellectual/NGO/transnational capital:
The central class conflict in the post-Soviet world: that between, on the one hand, the professional middle classes allied with transnational capital and, on the other, local political capitalists (colloquially known as ‘oligarchs’) who could only rely on the passive consent of a segment of the working class, mainly in heavy industry and the public sector (p. 3).
He then uses this idea to frame the Maidan movement as based on these middle class elements and thus as incapable of transforming society. His analysis of the instability of rule in Russia and Ukraine rests on describing the governments as Bonapartist and as balancing between these middle class elements and political capitalists.
This analysis fails to notice the overt working-class presence in the Maidan struggles in Krivih Rih and the diffuse participation of millions of workers in other Maidans. It also means that he fails to formulate political strategies based on the working class.
Mutual ruinsThe fall of Rome was a major topic of historical interest in Europe throughout Marx’s life and was clearly one of the examples of mutual ruin that he and Engels had in mind. They may also have been thinking of events in some areas of Europe in which serfs and lords got into conflict in the ideological framework of religious “heresies,” only to have outside forces take over their localities in the name of the True Church with considerable bloodshed and worsening of conditions for the agricultural producers. Here, I will discuss the fall of Rome with particular attention to how Kevin Anderson analyzed what Marx wrote near the end of his life. Marx analyzed the impasse facing the western part of the Roman Empire. Slave rebellions broke out in many areas, often with some initial success. Plebians, who were the descendants of former peasants whose livelihoods had been destroyed by the transition of agriculture into slave operations over a wide part of Italy and other locations, were a potential powerful ally of the slaves. They lived to a large extent on “bread and circuses” provided by the ruling classes in an early form of welfare, undoubtedly supplemented to some extent by petty trading, some rudimentary crafts, and involvement in criminal activities. The plebian class was also an important source of soldiers for the army, which held out the possibility of economic advancement and “retirement” as a peasant-holder of conquered lands. When the Empire could no longer conquer and hold new territory, this cut off the supply of new slaves (whose living conditions did not allow for widespread reproductive maintenance of the slave labor force) and also threatened the ability to hold the loyalty of plebians via military service. This failure led first to the split of the Empire into western and eastern portions, with the East able to avoid the “mutual ruin” by basing itself far more on peasant agriculture. In the West, on the other hand, the ruling classes were unable to establish a viable social order but were able to divide the plebians from the slaves (via racism-like advantages and ideological distinctions) and thus prevent the lower classes from reconstituting the society via successful revolution. The form this mutual ruin took was an inability to prevent outsiders from conquering them, destroying the Senatorial ruling class and its slave-based economy and, along with it, the public works and culture that the Europeans of Marx’s time admired.
As discussed above, the Former Soviet Union and its empire found itself in the 1980s at a similar impasse. Its ruling nomenklatura, which has been disparately analyzed as a state capitalist ruling class, a bureaucratic collectivist class, or as a privileged bureaucratic stratum by various forces on the Left, was unable to meet corporate capitalist economic and military competition. Its working class had been unable to replace it and reconstitute society, as most clearly shown by the defeat of the mass, ideologically diverse but dynamic Solidarity movement in Poland in the early 1980s. This incapacity led to the fall of the previous social relationships and their replacement from above by new social relations. As in the case of the Roman Empire, this fall led to different outcomes in different parts of the empire, with corporate neoliberal capital dominant in East Europe and kleptocratic political capital dominant in Ukraine, Russia, and some other countries. Beyond that, China, with its similar forms of social relations in the 1970s, and facing a succession of economic and political crises (most visibly, the Tiananmen Square crisis in 1989), was able to set up what became a thriving form of state- and party-led capitalism and thus a reconstitution of social relations without undergoing a period of mutual ruin.
The entire world, unfortunately, faces the prospect of a far deeper “mutual ruin.” Put in other terms, we face a crisis that can optimistically be framed as “socialism or barbarism” or pessimistically (realistically?) as “socialism or extermination.” Capitalism has become universal over the surface of the Earth, and it faces several deep crises. On the one hand, there is an economic crisis that has been evident since 2008 if not before. So far, neither capital nor the working class has been able to resolve this crisis, and its political impacts make solving the other crises more difficult. Secondly, there is a deep crisis of the imperial order posed by the rise of China and other countries as rivals to the hitherto-dominant North American world order and to its sub-imperial countries in Europe, Japan, and Australia. The last such crisis in imperialism brought about the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War, and the threat of nuclear war. Finally, capitalism has created a deep and multi-faceted environmental crisis, with climate change its most immediate apparent threat (and pandemics as a possible additional immediate system-threatening catastrophe). This crisis, too, makes the other crises harder to resolve, since it is causing ever-increasing efforts by tens of millions of people per year to move to other countries—and the racialist far right wing has (so far) been able to use this to strengthen the domination of right-wing capitalists over politics.
Globally, capitalist leaders have failed to resolve any of these crises, and the rising power of fascist and semi-fascist politicians is making it less likely that they will do so before ecological collapse or nuclear war creates barbarism or extermination of humanity. Unfortunately, working class movements and movements of the oppressed have been unable to mount adequate responses to these challenges either. Symptoms of these failures include genocidal or potentially-genocidal wars in Palestine, Sudan, and Ukraine, a potentially out-of-control conflict between nuclear armed India and Pakistan, the misery and incarceration in what can only be thoughts of as concentration camps of vast numbers of displaced and refugee populations, and worsening economic conditions (including attacks on medical care, public health, education, income support and much else) for working classes throughout the world.
Ishchenko’s book offers a glimpse of how this mutual ruin is playing out in Ukraine. It offers no solutions either to what is happening in Ukraine or to the global crisis. Nor will I attempt to do so here. The pages of left and environmental publications are filled with a wide mix of efforts to describe solutions. However, although Ishchenko does not seem to realize this, the first step in the revolutionary solution to the crises will have to start with seemingly-spontaneous uprisings that destabilize and replace political regimes in ways that set off a spreading series of similar upsets, followed by social revolutions conducted “from below” by workers and members of oppressed groups. The Left can contribute ideas and to some extent organizational support for this process, but particularly in the opening acts, these movements are multi-class and politically diverse as were the Maidan political revolution, the upsurge that unseated multiple presidents in Argentina in a few weeks early in this century, or Polish Solidarity in the early 1980s.
Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”Featured Image credit: Edgar Degas; modified by Tempest.
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Trump’s strategy to reassert U.S. dominance
Amid all his regime’s chaos, Donald Trump is implementing the unilateralist strategy laid out bluntly in The Prioritization Imperative of focusing on Washington’s great power rivalry with China. First, the administration declared it will no longer be the global policeman, backing up allies against external and internal opposition.
Trump has attempted to extricate the United States from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, if unsuccessfully. Despite his failures, he seems determined to shift attention from these crises and convince U.S. allies to shoulder the burden of managing them.
In the case of Europe, Vice President J. D. Vance warned allies even before his election that “the United States has to focus more on east Asia. That is going to be the future of U.S. foreign policy for the next 40 years, and Europe has to wake up to that fact.”
In keeping with that, Trump has secured an agreement with NATO members to increase their defense spending to 5 percent of their GDP to deter Russian imperialism, triggering an arms race in Europe. Germany went so far as to suspend its constitutional restrictions on deficit spending to plow money into rearmament, while slashing social welfare spending, and to assert itself as an imperialist power in its own right.
Putting China firstBy trying to clear Washington’s portfolio, Trump attempted to prioritize Washington’s conflict with China. He imposed new tariffs on Beijing, escalated the chip war with new bans on semiconductors and software sales, suspended the sale of tech and software essential to China’s manufacture of jet engines, and threatened to subject all Chinese foreign students’ visa applications to heightened scrutiny and deny visas to members of the Communist Party.
Trump has backed this economic assault with geopolitical pressure on Beijing. He dispatched Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth throughout Asia to shore up alliances against China. At Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue, Hegseth told allies that China’s threat “is real, and it could be imminent” to all of them, particularly Taiwan.
He promised to support them on the condition that they raise their defense expenditures. That pressure, combined with conflicts between various Asian states and China, is fueling a new arms race unlike anything in the region since World War II. Secretary of State Marc Rubio reinforced that message in his own follow-up trip to Asia.
Finally, the administration is jacking up its own military budget. Trump has increased the Pentagon’s budget to $1 trillion, with its top priority being, in the words of Hegseth, “deterring aggression by Communist China.”
The U.S. is backing up this rhetoric with increasingly aggressive demonstrations of military power in the Asia-Pacific, most recently with the U.S.-led 19-nation biennial exercise named Talisman Saber, the largest one yet, specifically designed to rehearse war with China.
In addition, the administration has promised to spend upwards of half a trillion dollars on its Golden Dome defense system to intercept advanced missiles developed by China. Such a system, if it gets built and if it actually works, would enable the United States to strike without facing retaliation, undermining the deterrent of mutually assured destruction, predisposing both Washington and Beijing to strike first and ask questions later, thereby jeopardizing all life on earth.
Obstacles to prioritizationThe Trump administration faces both objective and subjective obstacles to implementing its prioritization strategy. Most obviously, as world history’s largest informal empire, with vested economic interests, geopolitical alliances, and 800 military bases in every corner of the earth, it will find it objectively difficult to extricate itself from its role as global cop to focus on Beijing.
On top of that, the administration’s subjective problems—its internal conflicts, incoherence, and MAGA-driven idiocy—compromise its prioritization strategy. These will further weaken U.S. capitalism and undercut its imperial dominance.
Trump is being pulled in different directions. Protectionists like trade advisor Peter Navarro and MAGA leader Steve Bannon advocate total decoupling with China. Treasury Secretary Steve Bessent and the chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Mirran, oppose that and simply want a better deal—a Mar-a-Lago Accord—to rebalance trade within the current neoliberal capitalist order. And the tech capitalists like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Elon Musk support free trade, including with China.
The ever transactional and mercurial Trump balances between these factions. Their conflict exploded over economic policy, with Navarro pushing the most extreme reciprocal tariffs, Musk opposing them and denouncing Navarro as “a moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks,” Bessent dialing them all back in the hopes of reaching bilateral pacts with dozens of countries, and Trump boasting that all of this chaos was an example of his “art of the deal.”
These conflicts have created contradictions in the regime’s offensive against China, most obviously in its new tariff policies. After indulging the China hawks and playing hardball with record tariffs, he then backed off in a concession to pro–free traders like Nvidia’s Huang, allowing the sale of the company’s chips to Beijing.
Huang has argued for a different strategy for the United States to maintain dominance in high tech and specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI). He contends that Washington should keep China dependent on Nvidia’s less powerful chips to prevent it from developing its own. That way Washington can both protect its monopoly on the most advanced chips and prevent Beijing from creating its own competing AI infrastructure that could supplant that of the United States. But that strategy is unlikely to succeed, given that China is determined to build exactly such an infrastructure.
The administration’s China hawks have also warned that Beijing having access to even the less advanced chips will enable it to copy them and accelerate its own program. The outcome of this strategic debate remains unclear, but neither is likely to succeed in stopping China’s rapid development of its own chips, high-tech companies, and AI programs.
TACO Don’s confusing messagesSimilar contradictions have emerged in Trump’s treatment of Washington’s allies and vassals. Trump is jacking up levies to discipline all states in the world to bow to U.S. interests and against China. For instance, his new accord with Vietnam blocks its use by China as a base for transhipping goods to the United States to avoid tariffs.
But such bullying alienates the very states Trump needs to form a bloc against China. It made little sense to start a tariff war with Washington’s semi-colony, Mexico and its junior imperialist partner, Canada, which are both utterly integrated with the U.S. economy.
It made even less sense to impose blanket tariffs on foes, allies, and economically insignificant islands inhabited only by penguins and seals. All that did was drive allies to put their interests before those of the United States, disrupting the formation of a bloc of imperialist states to confront and contain China.
Trump added more confusion in his tariff policy by giving multinationals like Apple carve-outs, and then drawing down all of the reciprocal tariffs to 10 percent—still a level without precedent in recent years—and promising further reductions in bilateral negotiations with countries all around the world. That earned the president the insulting moniker, TACO, short for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
His brief spiraling tariff war with China was equally ham-fisted and counterproductive. When the United States imposed 145 percent levies on Chinese exports, China countered with 125 percent ones, disrupting supply chains, slowing both economies, and leading to shortages at factories and retail shelves in the United States. Yet again, TACO Don backed down, cutting a “gentleman’s agreement” in Geneva to lower tariffs on China to 30 percent, while Beijing dropped theirs to 20 percent.
Trump’s erratic tariff war with China has alienated U.S. capitalists who depend on China’s supply chain and sell in its market. The Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce, big multinationals like Apple, and scores of small businesses all lobbied Trump for carve-outs and decreased levies.
On top of that, the stock and bond markets registered their opposition. Stocks dropped while investors sold off bonds, driving up yields and with them long-term interest rates. That left Trump no choice but to relent, making “Tariff Man’s” bark look far worse than his bite.
His new round of tariff increases is shot through with the same contradiction. On the one hand, he has written stern letters to countries, again both friend and foe, threatening new levies, but on the other, he has extended the deadline for trade deals to August 1.
Making Stagflation Great AgainTrump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill will compound U.S. capitalism’s problems, undermining his attempt to reassert its dominance. Despite brutal austerity measures against the working class, it will drive up spending overall with big increases in border enforcement and defense, while cutting taxes on the rich and corporations. This will drive up the deficit and debt.
Musk denounced the bill as “a disgusting abomination,” staged a social media war with TACO Don, and then launched a third party to unseat Republicans who voted for it. Moody’s agreed with Musk, downgrading Washington’s credit rating, increasing the likelihood of increased interest rates for loans for everyone from capitalists to small business owners, professionals, and workers.
Trump’s assault on migrants will further exacerbate the U.S. economy’s problems. His bill includes a $170 billion increase in immigration enforcement to bring ICE’s annual spending to almost $40 billion—a sum that would make it the 16th largest military budget in the world. He has already shut down the border and started raids throughout the country, triggering resistance in Los Angeles and across the country.
Trump responded to this opposition by deploying 4,000 National Guard troops, along with 700 Marines, to join the Los Angeles Police Department in protecting ICE’s reign of terror against migrants. But the workers he’s targeting for deportation are essential to the U.S. economy in everything from meatpacking to construction and agriculture.
Any decrease in participation of these vital sections of the workforce will drive up wages, causing shortages, increasing prices, and hiking up inflation. In a sign of desperation, Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins floated a sadistic, boondoggle proposal to use new workfare requirements to force Medicaid recipients to replace millions of deported workers.
Faced with the threat of losing its workforce, agribusiness, hotel barons, construction companies, and other capitalists lobbied Trump to back down, which he did, promising to dial back workplace raids and focus on “criminals.” But then, under pressure from his far-right major domo, Stephen Miller, he promised to continue the raids, despite a majority of people now opposing them and 79 percent viewing immigration as a “good thing.”
Economists are worried that Trump’s policies will weaken U.S. growth, if not trigger a recession. Instead of fueling new manufacturing in the United States, Trump’s erratic tariff policy and ugly bill have led to a contraction in investment and freeze in hiring…Economists are worried that Trump’s policies will weaken U.S. growth, if not trigger a recession. Instead of fueling new manufacturing in the United States, Trump’s erratic tariff policy and ugly bill have led to a contraction in investment and freeze in hiring, slowing an already stagnant economy amid persistent and, because of his disruption of Chinese supply chains, potentially higher inflation. That has renewed fears of another cycle of the 1970s nightmare of stagflation, weakening U.S. capitalism.
MAGA idiocyTrump’s ideologically driven war on the state bureaucracy, social institutions, and agencies of imperial soft power will further compromise U.S. dominance. He’s eliminating, cutting, and purging key ministries from the FBI to the CIA, military brass, and State Department to get rid of any guardrails that block his authoritarian rule.
In the process, he is incapacitating key parts of the state that enforce and win consent for U.S. dominance. For example, he gutted the Voice of America, a key media outlet the United States has historically used to spread propaganda against its opponents and seduce their domestic opposition to mistakenly see Washington as an ally in their struggles.
China and Russia have celebrated. The former editor of China’s Global Times declared it “really gratifying,” while the editor of Russia’s RT called it an “awesome decision.” Beijing and Moscow are pumping more money to fill the vacuum and win greater global influence.
Trump’s all-out assault on higher education, especially elite institutions like Harvard, will also undermine U.S. supremacy. He and especially Vance, who infamously gave a speech entitled “Universities Are the Enemy,” despise these institutions for reproducing the liberal capitalist establishment, which they view as their mortal enemy.
Trump has justified the assault based on false charges of these institutions’ antisemitism and supposed hesitancy in crushing the Palestine solidarity movement. With that cover story, he has cut their funding, demanded they rewrite their curriculum, and called for them to abolish their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
This assault on higher education will weaken U.S. imperialism. It will disrupt the reproduction of the ruling class, its ideologists, and professionals. And it will prevent the training of the skilled working class, essential for the United States to dominate its high-tech competitors.
These institutions are central to the military industrial complex, especially in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Cutting their funding will undercut U.S. efforts to win “the chip war” with China. The repercussions will not only be borne by the elite schools and their wealthy students in blue states, but also by public universities and working-class students in red states.
Even worse for U.S. imperialism, Trump’s witch hunt against foreign students, Chinese ones in particular, as well as international researchers, will drive them out of the country, depriving universities and corporations of a key source of international talent, especially in STEM fields. Already, Washington’s competitors from Europe to China are recruiting Chinese students with offers of funding and lucrative jobs, leading the ruling class to panic about a brain drain.
Trump’s onslaught on science will similarly compromise U.S. supremacy. He is not only defunding scientific research in higher education, but also at the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service, and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Such cuts will cripple research essential not only to corporations, but also to public safety and health, destabilizing U.S. society in the process. With FEMA and other agencies incapacitated, tragedies caused by climate change, like the drowning of over a hundred people in the recent flash flood in Central Texas, which could have been avoided with proper regulations, precautions, and alerts, will multiply throughout the country.
Trump’s destruction of USAID, as well as withdrawal from most multilateral institutions and agreements—including the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Accords, and almost every United Nations agency—fundamentally compromises Washington’s soft power and ability to win allies and subjects to its imperial project against China. Instead, it will isolate and discredit the United States and make even more states view the United States with suspicion.
Trump’s “America First” policies have already led powers to chart their own course, putting their economic, political, and military interests first. That, in turn, will lead to greater conflict between states throughout the world. It will also make it harder for the United States to pressure its nominal allies, like Europe and Japan, to limit their trade with China. As a result, all the Trump regime will be left with is hard power, economic and military bullying.
Rather than restoring U.S. dominance, the regime’s incoherent implementation of the prioritization strategy will likely accelerate its relative decline.Rather than restoring U.S. dominance, the regime’s incoherent implementation of the prioritization strategy will likely accelerate its relative decline. Fiona Hill, who served in the first Trump administration, went so far as to compare her former boss to Boris Yeltsin, who oversaw the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, declaring, “Trump is deconstructing the United States, just as Yeltsin deconstructed the Soviet Union.”
China goes toe-to-toe with TrumpSensing its position of strength against the United States, China stood up to Trump’s belligerence and exploited his administration’s contradictions. It called his bluff on tariffs, matching each of his increases with ones of its own, including those designed to target Republican states.
It played the ace up its sleeve—its near monopoly on processing rare earth minerals and magnets that are essential components to everything from cars to U.S. fighter bombers like the F-35. It halted their export, paralyzing both civilian and military manufacturing.
China drove Trump to strike the “gentleman’s agreement” for a 90-day pause to allow talks to secure a trade deal. While he blinked, so did Xi Jinping. With the economy already struggling to maintain growth, Xi Jinping could ill afford the near-total cessation of trade with the United States. Despite increased exports to Europe and Southeast Asia and modest growth overall, the loss of markets in the United States disrupted businesses in China.
But their agreement fell apart with China limiting the release of rare earth metals and the United States retaliating with bans on the export of chips, essential software, and parts for Chinese airline construction. With their economies imperiled, they both again blinked, promising to reinstate their agreement and continue bilateral trade talks for a final deal. Nevertheless, China demonstrated Trump’s weakness.
Xi has exploited the new administration’s abandonment of superintending the neoliberal order of free trade globalization by posturing as its defender. He pledged to be, unlike Washington, a reliable trade partner to the rest of the world.
Of course, this was hardly disinterested, since China has been one of the main beneficiaries of that order and desperately needs access to international markets to export its capital and products. Indeed, China made up for the loss of markets in the United States by diverting exports throughout the world, achieving a record trade surplus of $586 billion.
Xi has also taken advantage of Trump’s foolish decision to launch his trade war on all countries at once by extending diplomatic and trade offers to states in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Europe. But the response of states throughout the world has been contradictory. They have both welcomed China’s offers and expressed concern that it will use them to export its surplus into their markets, undercutting their corporations.
Brazil recently embraced China in a common defense of free trade, but just last year investigated Beijing for dumping, while its steel companies demanded increased tariffs to protect their industry and market share.
Finally, Xi has responded to Trump’s increased militarism with aggressive assertions of China’s own hard power. China increased exercises around Taiwan, sent ships to Australia in an unprecedented naval exercise, escalated its conflicts with the Philippines and other states in the South China Sea over contested islands, and even deployed two aircraft carriers in Japan’s economic waters.
Escalating global rivalryThe rivalry between the United States and China is engulfing the entire world, from Greenland to Panama, the Arctic, Antarctica, and even outer space. They are locked in competition in key conflicts and theaters in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.
In Europe, Trump had hoped to cut a deal with Vladimir Putin for the partition of Ukraine, perhaps with the aim of peeling Russia away from its alliance with China. But his proposal has been rejected by Moscow, which seems intent on annexing as much territory as possible, no matter its cost to Russian and Ukrainian lives.
China remains committed to its “friendship without limits” with Russia, sustaining its economy against the sanction regime. For its part, Kyiv has opposed the partition of its country, refused to accept any settlement without security guarantees, continues to defend its sovereignty in the face of unrelenting Russian aggression, and has succeeded in launching a drone strike against Moscow’s fighter bomber fleet.
But Trump has made some gains, most importantly pressuring his NATO allies to increase their defense spending to 5 percent of their GDP and rearm at a frightening pace. As a result, Ukraine will continue to be a source of inter-imperial conflict over a national liberation struggle that could metastasize into a war involving several great powers.
In the Middle East, the United States had been the unrivalled hegemon, but China is a rising power. Because Beijing depends on the region’s oil and natural gas for energy and its petrochemical industry, it has established political and economic relations with everyone from Iran to the Gulf States and Israel.
Biden and now Trump have used Israel’s genocidal war to reassert U.S. power in the region and weaken the so-called Axis of Resistance, decimating Hezbollah, weakening Iran, and cutting deals with the rebels that toppled Syria’s dictatorship. Trump had hoped to consolidate U.S. dominance with a “final solution” in Gaza, economic agreements with Arab states, expansion of the Abraham Accords to normalize their relations with Israel, and a new nuclear pact with Iran, so that it can prioritize China.
However, Palestinian resistance remains unbowed, and the region’s Arab masses oppose normalization and are hostile to their rulers for living in luxury amid their growing poverty. When the nuclear talks with Iran stalled, Israel took the opportunity to launch its blitzkrieg, not only against Tehran’s nuclear facilities, but also its leadership, military, and scientists.
Trump pivoted to support the attack and then dropped several of the U.S. military’s largest conventional bombs, the Massive Ordinance Penetrator, to decimate Iran’s nuclear facilities including the one at Fordow, which lies buried deep under a mountain. Trump, however, restricted action to a one-off attack, instead of an attempt at regime change, something that would have trapped Trump in an enormous war and undercut support from his isolationist MAGA base.
Trump has now pledged to restart talks with Iran, in the hope of reaching an agreement over its nuclear program. It remains to be seen whether the Iranian regime, which is torn between those who want to make a bomb and those who would prefer a deal, will agree to stop their program on U.S. terms.
While the United States seems to have scored major victories, the region remains a site of interstate conflicts, as well as resistance from below. China, which stood by while its Iranian ally was pummeled, will use any setbacks to U.S. interests to advance its own in the region, guaranteeing that its state conflicts and rebellions will be an occasion for imperial jockeying for advantage.
Latin America is another area of growing contestation. While the United States has been the regional hegemon, China has used its Belt and Road Initiative to become a major investor in the region and South America’s leading trade partner. That has enabled it to pull middling powers like Brazil into its orbit through the BRICS alliance.
The United States has responded by reasserting its power against Beijing’s influence. Trump has used the charge that China secretly controls the Panama Canal to threaten to annex it, and ramped up tariffs on countries that depend on exports to the U.S. market to impose Washington’s dictates.
The two powers are also engaged in nothing less than a new scramble for Africa. China has become the largest investor in the continent, with a focus on mining, particularly of rare earth minerals. Trump has responded by using investment, tariffs, and geopolitical pressure to bully nations to tilt toward the United States.
For instance, during peace negotiations between Rwanda and Congo, he pressured Congo to allow U.S. extraction of rare earth minerals, instead of China. This is but one of many proxy conflicts between Washington and Beijing in Africa. These will escalate as China seeks to expand its extractivist monopoly in rare earths and the United States seeks to break it.
Flashpoints in the struggle for hegemony in AsiaBy far, the region most prone to conflict between the United States and China, though, is Asia. There are several pivotal flashpoints that could trigger a war despite their declared intention to avoid one.
Already, the United States and China engaged in a quasi–proxy war over Kashmir with Beijing backing Pakistan and Washington supporting India. Both great powers carefully analyzed the performance of their planes, missiles, and defense systems against the others.
Even more ominous is South and North Korea. The United States, which maintains massive bases in South Korea, has tried to block any peace deal with the North, pressure Seoul to spend more on its military and forge a military pact with Japan against China. That will only antagonize Pyongyang and Beijing, heating up a conflict involving three nuclear powers.
China’s standoff with the Philippines over contested islands in the South China Sea is just as ominous. Trump has established friendly relations with the Philippines’ new government of Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos, the son of the notorious dictator, and dispatched Hegseth there on his first foreign mission in Asia.
Hesgeth promised to uphold Washington’s “ironclad alliance” with the Philippines “in the face of communist China’s aggression in the region.” He declared U.S. intentions to increase military aid, stage more joint operations, and pre-position U.S. military hardware for operations in the Asia Pacific.
The greatest and most explosive conflict is over Taiwan. As noted above, the stakes are not just geopolitical, but economic, because of Taipei’s advanced microchip industry. Xi has ordered his military to be prepared to annex the country by 2027, while the United States has made defense of the island its top priority.
As a result, imperial and regional conflict is heating up throughout the Asia Pacific with states arming themselves to the teeth.
Against imperialist nationalismIn this ominous conjuncture, the Left must do everything in our power to stop inter-imperial rivalry from triggering another world war. In the United States, our first and foremost task is to oppose our own imperialist state, which remains the most dangerous power in the world.
The key site to build opposition is the broad resistance to the Trump regime. The emerging movement includes a wide range of forces, from explicitly pro–Democratic Party NGOs like Indivisible, to the Palestine solidarity movement, and trade unions grouped around May Day Strong. The Left must argue for an independent working-class movement that stands against all of Trump’s divide-and-rule attacks on the oppressed and opposes U.S. imperialism in all its forms—economic, geopolitical, and military.
We have to make several pivotal arguments. The resistance needs to oppose Trump’s siren song of nationalism, protectionism, and xenophobic attacks on Chinese international students and researchers in the United States and Chinese workers in the mainland as a threat. Both Teamsters’ Sean O’Brien and the United Autoworkers’ Shawn Fain fell prey to that temptation, expressing support for tariffs as a way to save jobs.
Trump, a corrupt real estate boss who starred in a reality TV show with a tag line “you’re fired,” doesn’t care about workers. Moreover, contrary to union officials’ claims, the vast bulk of job losses have not been caused by globalization but by corporations’ imposition of lean production and plant relocation within the United States from the unionized north to the non-union south.
Blaming globalization lets bosses off the hook. It also sows racist, anti-immigrant divisions within the multiracial, multinational U.S. working class and between U.S. workers and workers in other countries, especially China. Such bigotry will disrupt the solidarity necessary to organize against capitalism’s international system of production, transport, and sale.
Economic nationalism had deadly consequences in the 1980s, when two laid-off auto workers, who blamed their unemployment on Japan, killed a Chinese American, Vincent Chin, whom they mistook for Japanese. It can have equally deadly consequences today, with Trump targeting Chinese international students and researchers and whipping up anti-Chinese racism and anti-Asian racism in general.
Even worse, nationalist bigotry weds the working class to U.S. imperialism. Trump and the Democrats will exploit such allegiance to con us into accepting austerity to pay for increased ICE and military budgets, as well as to kill and die to preserve U.S. dominance over China and other rivals, not to improve workers’ lives.
At the same time, we should oppose the Democrats’ defense of the existing neoliberal order of free trade globalization. That was a vehicle for U.S. imperial hegemony over global capitalism at the expense of the workers who were forced to compete in a global race to the bottom for our rulers’ benefit.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friendWe also need to argue against those on the Left who support Washington’s rivals like China or Russia as some kind of alternative. They are not. They are capitalist and imperialist states. Beijing proved its predatory and brutal nature in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, while Moscow has done the same in Ukraine.
The multipolar order that Washington rivals aim for is also no alternative. Of course, unipolarity—the unrivalled hegemony of U.S. imperialism—was horrific, as Iraq proved, but a multipolar order of competing imperial powers will be no better and potentially far more deadly. Remember that the last multipolar order ended in two world wars.
When sections of the Left support the Chinese or Russian state, they inevitably betray international solidarity with the liberation struggle of the nations and peoples those states oppress and the workers they exploit. In their view, such struggles threaten Beijing and Moscow and their ability to stand up to the United States. They trade working-class internationalism for great power nationalism in reverse.
Even worse, holding up those states as some kind of alternative will only discredit the Left in the eyes of most working people. No one wants to live in police states like those in China and Russia, just like no one wants to live under Trump’s increasingly authoritarian rule here in the United States.
For internationalist anti-imperialismThe alternative to the dead end of great power nationalism is internationalism. It comes in two forms. One common one, which seems on the surface appealing and realistic, is internationalism from above. Often put forward by pacifists and reformists, it argues for international cooperation between imperialist rivals as a path to cooperation and peace.
In the early 20th century, Karl Kautsky held out the promise of such a “golden international” only to see such hopes dashed by World War I. Today, leftists oriented on the Democratic Party hope to convince or elect its leadership to pursue a policy of great power collaboration.
That strategy is no more likely today to lead to success than it was in Kautsky’s time. Why? Because it fails to grasp that inter-imperial rivalries are not a mere product of governmental policy but of the capitalist competition that drives great powers into conflict over the division of the world market.
Inter-imperial rivalries are not a mere product of governmental policy but of the capitalist competition that drives great powers into conflict over the division of the world market.Moreover, the chosen vehicle to accomplish the fantasy of cooperation, the Democratic Party, has shown itself impervious to left-wing influence. Remember, despite the Left’s attempt to use the Democrats for anti-imperialist aims, they started most of the wars in the 20th century, from World War I to Vietnam and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And, while Democrats may have grumbled about wars like Iraq started by Republicans, they went along with them anyway, voting for military budgets to carry them out.
Instead, we need anti-imperialist internationalism from below. That entails opposing our own imperialist state, the United States, first and foremost, and in all its forms, from its economic policies (whether protectionist or free trade) to its geopolitical bullying and wars.
Washington’s heretofore imperial partners like the European Union, Britain, Canada, Japan, and Australia do not offer any kind of progressive option, as their histories of colonialism, conquest, and economic exploitation prove. Today, amid the decomposition of U.S. hegemony, they are only out for their own capitalist advantage.
At the same time, we should have no illusions about U.S. imperial rivals, most importantly China. We must oppose Beijing and defend the right of self-determination of nations like Taiwan and national minorities like the Uyghurs they oppress. And, just as importantly, we have to oppose Washington’s cynical weaponization of these national and popular struggles for its own imperial purposes.
Workers against rivalry and warOur main project must be to build international solidarity between the working classes in all the imperial and regional powers as well as oppressed nations. This is now more possible than ever. Globalization has interlocked the destinies of workers throughout the world.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, where the regionalization of production and migration of people has bound the fate of the North American working class together. Either we stand together as one, or we will be divided and conquered separately.
The same is true of U.S., Chinese, and Taiwanese workers who are bound together by global production, supply, and retail chains. For example, Apple designs products in California, subcontracts their manufacture to Taiwan’s Foxconn, and in turn employs Chinese migrant workers to make iPhones and other devices in China, which are flown by FedEx’s workers to the United States to be sold either directly to customers or by retail shop workers.
Thus, even in the case of Taiwan, the world’s most dangerous flashpoint in the rivalry between the United States and China, the international working class shares common interests against the three ruling classes collaborating in exploiting us.
Given our power to shut down their system, we have the potential to unite and oppose their rivalry and slide toward war. The most important way the labor movement can do that today is by opposing Trump’s witch hunt against Chinese international students, graduate students, and scientists. This is essential in order to build fighting unity within the U.S. working class, in which Chinese graduate students in particular play a significant role in organizing unions in higher education.
If the labor movement can unite against Sinophobia here in the United States, it would send a strong signal to Chinese workers that workers here are their natural allies. And, Chinese international students, graduate students, and scientists can help establish connections across borders, making international solidarity concrete.
We have the chance to forge such unity amid the struggles provoked by capitalism’s global slump, our rulers’ increasing authoritarianism, and the austerity measures they are imposing on us all. Over the last fifteen years, we have witnessed an unprecedented wave of mass struggle all around the world, including in the United States with Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the Red State Teachers Revolt, and the Palestine solidarity movement.
Similar struggles have erupted in China. Migrant workers have gone on strike, Hong Kongers staged a mass democratic uprising, and Chinese people rose up in mass protests and strikes against the regime’s brutal Covid lockdowns.
Washington and Beijing’s rivalry will provoke yet more working-class struggle. Trump’s brutal class war at home to transfer wealth from workers to the billionaires and the Pentagon war machine has already triggered a national resistance.
Likewise, Xi will make the Chinese working class pay to challenge the United States, forcing them, in the words of one official during Trump’s last term, to get through the trade war “by eating grass for a year.” Such austerity will stoke rising levels of struggle in China.
Amid the resistance in both countries, our task is to find every way possible to link our common struggles. We can and must put forward Marx and Engels’ slogan “Workers of all countries, unite…. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.” Today, that is not a utopian slogan but a realistic possibility and indeed a necessity.
Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”The post Trump’s strategy to reassert U.S. dominance appeared first on Tempest.
Marking 10 years since the Narvarte murders: Justice, struggle, and memory
On July 31, 2015, Alejandra Negrete, Mile Martín, Nadia Vera, Rubén Espinosa and Yesenia Quiroz were murdered in an apartment in the Narvarte neighborhood of Mexico City. In the ten years since, their family members, friends, and comrades have been demanding justice and struggling to keep their memories alive. While three people have been detained for the killings, evidence ignored by the Mexico City prosecutor’s office implicates former officials of that office in the killings. It has also refused to investigate the role of the administration of Javier Duarte, former governor of Veracruz, from where Nadia, a radical activist, and Rubén, a journalist, fled fearing for their safety after receiving threats. To mark ten years, those accompanying the families in their search for truth and justice have created a digital common archive: Memorial Narvarte. Below is a text announcing the archive along with a piece by Mirtha Luz Pérez Robledo, the mother of Nadia Vera. Both were translated by Scott Campbell.
Memorial Narvarte: An Archive for the Future
Ten years after Alejandra Negrete, Mile Martín, Nadia Vera, Rubén Espinosa and Yesenia Quiroz were taken from us, we continue putting faith in collective memory.
After the multi-femicide and homicide that occurred on July 31, 2015, in an apartment at 1909 Luz Saviñón Street in the Narvarte neighborhood of Mexico City, authorities tried to create a “historical truth,” to shelve the case without considering that Nadia and Rubén fled from threats in Veracruz, and without following the different lines of investigation linked to Nadia’s activism and Rubén’s journalism. What followed would be a demand for justice in the face of criminalization, revictimization, xenophobia, and discrimination against the 5; as well as a collective demonstration of resistance and living memory.
Over the course of this decade, together with their families and allied organizations, we made space amid State neglect and abandonment. We want to continue building a dissident common sense to the hegemonic narratives regarding the recent history of our country and the acts that mark us. That is why we are building a common archive, a space of digital memory to remember them: memorialnarvarte.org.
This collective archive compiles statements, photographs, videos, texts, audios, artistic pieces, along with other elements that mark a decade of struggle, memory, and resistance for the 5, as well as collective expressions in homage to the victims. It is a self-managed initiative born of the accompaniment group Memorial Narvarte, which also organizes the Festival Arte Para No Olvidarte (Art to Not Forget You Festival).
What do we honor when we create a space of memory? How do we care for those who were taken from us? What communities are created out of grief? How do we confront the paralyzing horror? How do we nurture and sustain a memorial, in person or virtually, over time? These are questions that accompany us and that we have woven collectively with others.
Creating a memorial is not just a symbolic act: it is a form of inhabiting the present with dignity. It is to reclaim our history and our future. It is to say that in this country, where justice is feigned, there are those who do not surrender. There are those who, with each act of memory, continue making visible what they wanted to erase.
We thank all those people who, with their words, presence, images, and accompaniment, form part of this archive. If you want to collaborate, you can email your contributions to festival.narvarte@gmail.com and find us on social networks as @memorial.narvarte.
We will continue to name Nadia, Rubén, Mile, Yesenia and Alejandra. We will continue to demand justice. Because there are dead who will never be silenced. Because memory is also an act of the future. Because as Mirtha, Nadia’s mother, says, the word heals and repairs, it is the only thing they cannot take from us, the power of our words.
https://memorialnarvarte.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Caso-Narvarte_-Una-decada-de-impunidad.mp4“What I cannot say: A decade of impunity”
by Mirtha Luz Pérez Robledo, mother of Nadia Vera
The worst form of injustice is pretended justice. – Plato
For 10 years we have had a feeling of impunity, complicity, and cover-up because the ineptitude of the Mexico City prosecutor’s office has nothing to do, as we originally thought at the beginning, with distraction and the lack of willingness, but with a manner of operating that is systematic: regardless of what political party they belong to, elected or not, they behave like dominoes, they are moved by inertia, and they do not go or see beyond their interests.
The echo of my scream arrives muffled, distorted, and dies in the penumbra where bureaucrats write the rules of the game that we will never be able to change.
A decade after the Narvarte murders, which occurred on July 31, 2015, where the life of my daughter, Nadia Dominique Vera Pérez, the journalist Rubén Espinosa, and three other people were taken, we still do not know where the weapon is, nor what the motive was, and what we know from independent investigations has taken years for the prosecutor to accept: that there were more than three murderers.
We cannot name names as they hold us responsible and lower us to the level of a criminal, while defending the rights of criminals and even more so if they are employees of that institution.
Here the word returns, to be spoken alongside Bachmann, to say dark things.
Wanting to say does not make us say, wanting to say does not allow us to say what we want to say.
That is why I write, to be able to get out of this experience of grief; the word, these words, give me freedom and I am not strong like the world asks of me but, thus, I dignify my fragility.
I try to speak because to remain silent before an institution that lies would be an anti-life position.
Resorting to language to try to name the unnamable, to make myself heard, to unravel the lie, to condemn inaction.
To speak to demand the truth.
“Because the true opens cracks in the wall, the true separates the headstone from your tomb”
The demand for truth is perhaps the only effective means to undermine that wall of silence that the real powers have tried to impose on us.
So here, I say what I cannot say and not only because language is arbitrary. I cannot speak because they won’t let me tell the truth, because there is not one truth, there are many truths that hide the true truth.
I say that I cannot speak because the language of the justice system excludes me and makes me a vassal of imposed language, which if I dare to break could set free not one, but three murderers.
I say that I cannot speak because the lawyers’ strategy does not allow me to speak: subtleties in the interest of achieving minimum justice.
I say that I cannot speak because the operating system of the justice system will not allow me to speak, that which coopts the operators of the same system who carry out poor investigations and cover up for criminals. This system puts the victims in a cell that, in its infinity, reflects the constant state of uneasiness, the incessant search for meaning that is not found, just as the imparting of justice is not found and the truth is not found. The system has a deaf muttering that interweaves unfulfilled promises and failed hopes.
Those who say they impart justice, those who investigate, are those who lie and pretend to do something but do nothing and allow time to pass. They promise meetings and when there are, they arrive late and leave quickly and lose files and confuse the telephone numbers of predators but expose the victims and revictimize them. It is a constant, permanent institutional violence that is backed by another institution, which says that it protects human rights, but they are a conclave, a sect, and a society that covers up and only protects their interests. And if you dare to speak, to say what you know, then they gather the media and give free rein to their lies and the entire media, with honorable exceptions, repeats what they have been given to repeat.
I say that I cannot speak. Whoever has eyes let them see, and whoever has ears let them hear, and whoever wants to understand let them understand.
Mirtha Luz Pérez Robledo
The mother, the woman, the citizen.
They can kill us, but they can never destroy us.
July 2025
NNU condemns detention of U.S. labor leader Chris Smalls and renews union nurses’ call for an end to the war on Gaza
Increasing Bombardment in Kyiv Threatens Lives and Medical Care
Early this morning, residents and staff from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Kyiv, Ukraine, awoke to the sound of explosions. The city came under heavy attack by drones and missiles. Reports indicate strikes on homes, hospitals, schools, and universities in residential areas where families with children live. At least eight people were reportedly killed during the night, including a six-year-old, and more than 100 people have been injured, including children.
In recent months, attacks on Kyiv have become more frequent. Since the full-scale invasion by Russian forces in 2022, many people have come to this city seeking safety — now, even here, they are at risk.
Shattered glass and a broken window form part of the damage at a maternity hospital following shelling and strikes on Kyiv, Ukraine, July 2025. (Photo: MSF)
“MSF in Ukraine is witnessing the devastating, continuous impact of intensified airstrikes on cities and residential areas across the country,” says Ainur Absemetova, MSF’s Head of Mission. “These attacks not only destroy homes and essential infrastructure like schools, hospitals, power and water systems — they also undermine people’s sense of safety and dignity, leaving them in a constant state of fear and uncertainty.”
Kyiv is also home to major hospitals that provide specialised care. Patients with serious or complex medical needs are often transferred here from other parts of the country. Attacks on the city put both this care and the people who depend on it in danger.
“This ongoing terror intensifies existing trauma, deepens insecurity and anxiety, and increases the urgent need for emergency medical and psychological support,” says Absemetova.
New Zealand Government Overturns Ban on New Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration
Today, New Zealand’s government passed legislation amending the Crown Minerals Act to reopen new offshore oil and gas exploration, a move that climate and energy experts at Oil Change International are calling an unjustifiable step backwards.
Today’s vote follows the New Zealand government’s June exit from the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, an international coalition working together for a managed phaseout of oil and gas production
David Tong, Global Industry Campaign Manager at Oil Change International said:
“Just days ago, the highest court in the world affirmed that every country has a legal duty to act in line with the 1.5ºC survival limit - a threshold that demands, at minimum, an immediate end to new oil, gas, and coal expansion. Yet today, the New Zealand government has raced in the opposite direction, recklessly overturning the ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration, after conducting an underhanded process that blocked public participation.
“The current retrograde government has once again exposed its loyalty to fossil fuel companies, but the reality is that no matter how deep Minister Shane Jones tries to dig, the oil and gas industry has no future in New Zealand.
“Next year’s election must deliver a government that not only restores the ban, but goes further to end all new fossil fuel extraction, onshore and offshore, once and for all.”
We Need Drug Pricing Legislation, Not Flimsy Letters to Trump’s Big Pharma Buddies
Today, the White House announced that President Trump sent letters to 17 pharmaceutical companies, demanding they offer “most favored nation” pricing to Medicaid and will not offer other developed nations better prices for new drugs than prices offered in the United States.
The announcement also indicated the White House intends to work with manufacturers to sell drugs directly to patients and use trade pressures to force other countries to pay higher drug prices, repeating the drug corporation fairy tale that higher prices abroad would lower prices here.
Steve Knievel, Public Citizen Access to Medicines advocate, issued the following statement in response to the announcement:
“Actions speak louder than words, and despite President Trump’s crocodile tears about high drug prices, so far he has signed one multi-billion dollar giveaway to drug corporations and called on Congress to give them $10 billion more out of the pockets of seniors and people with disabilities by undermining Medicare drug price negotiations.
“Instead of letters we need legislation. If President Trump was serious about lowering drug prices for Americans, instead of promising to help drug corporations profiteer in other countries, he would work with Congress to pass legislation to lower prices here so Big Pharma can no longer charge U.S. patients and taxpayers the highest prices in the world.”
Turning Tide: 27 Senators Vote to Limit Israeli Arms Sales
On Wednesday evening, 27 senators voted to adopt a resolution (S.J.Res.41), introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), to block the sale of certain offensive weapons to the Israeli military. Though the resolutions were not adopted, the 27 senators voting in favor marks the most votes ever cast by senators by far in favor of limiting arms sales to Israel. Demand Progress has repeatedly called for the limiting of arms sales to Israel and led a campaign asking Americans to tell their senators to support the resolutions.
The following is a statement from Demand Progress Senior Policy Advisor Cavan Kharrazian:
“Not long ago, just a few senators voting to limit arms to Israel felt like a moral victory. Today, 27 votes against sending more weapons, more than half of the Senate Democratic caucus, marks a political turning point. The days when politicians could turn a blind eye to the horror in Gaza and continue to hand the Israeli government a blank check is coming to an end. American weapons have enabled Israel’s brutal assault on the starving and besieged civilians in Gaza. The American people have long understood this. Now, the Senate is finally beginning to catch up. This fight is far from over, but the tide is clearly turning. History will remember who used their power to confront injustice, and who enabled it. We will not stop holding them accountable.”
Funding Cuts Amidst Conflict Leave Sudanese Starving, Women and Children Particularly Affected
Conflict continues to ravage Sudan, driving over 25.6 million people, 54% of the population, into hunger. Of these, 3.7 million are children aged below the age of five, many of whom are acutely malnourished and suffering irreversible harm. In some areas of Darfur, one in three children suffers from acute malnutrition, surpassing famine thresholds. The humanitarian response to address this hunger and malnutrition, as well as the overall dire needs, is unable to keep pace as funding cuts continue to cripple operations. The CARE Sudan team is seeing an increase in children arriving at displacement camps in East Darfur
“Hunger and malnutrition are taking hold of innocent people caught up in vicious conflict. Unaccompanied children are arriving alone in East Darfur, starving, and deeply traumatized,” said Abdirahman Ali, CARE Sudan’s Country Director. “Conflict, access challenges, and now severe funding cuts are worsening the catastrophe. Response services are collapsing, and the Nutrition sector, responsible for coordinating lifesaving efforts across Sudan, remains chronically underfunded. This means that the children who need help the most are receiving almost nothing. If the world continues to look away, more and more lives will slip away.”
Currently, the nutrition sector response is only 12% funded. Over 637,000 people are experiencing catastrophic, life-threatening hunger, which is the worst level possible on the global scale for measuring hunger crises.
The sharp drop in international funding has only worsened the crisis. Major cuts have forced agencies and local organizations to reduce or suspend operations in many areas. This has meant less food, fewer therapeutic nutrition programs for the severely malnourished, and no safety net for the increasing number of displaced children arriving daily. In East Darfur, the number of severely malnourished children has soared. These children, already weak from hunger and mental turmoil, struggle to fight off deadly diseases like cholera, which is spreading across the country.
Fatima*, a 45-year-old mother of five, fled the conflict in Nyala, South Darfur, and sought refuge in Alnaeem IDP camp in East Darfur. “After the long, painful journey, the community kitchen gave us comfort, as now my children were finally able to get a meal,” she said. But when the kitchen shut down due to funding cuts, everything changed. Families began skipping meals, eating late, and watching their children grow weak and sick. We started suffering again,” she added.
CARE Sudan, alongside local partner Emergency Response Rooms, is responding through three community kitchens run by community volunteers in Alnaeem camp, which shelters displaced people and families. These kitchens are a vital lifeline, serving hot meals to 18,000 people, mostly women and children. At the same time, families receive a food basket that contains sugar, lentils, oil, flour, and salt, which should be enough for one month. But without adequate and consistent funding, even these services are at risk of ceasing, just like many others that already have.
“We are calling on donors and governments to honor pledges and increase much-needed funding to the Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan,” Ali said. “These children are our collective responsibility. Every day that passes without food, clean water, and much-needed nutritional supplements brings them closer to death. We need immediate and sustained investment in nutrition and food to protect and save these lives today and in the difficult weeks ahead.”
CARE Sudan urges immediate restoration and increased support for the nutrition response. The children displaced by conflict in Sudan did not choose war, hunger, or fear.
CNA/NNOC Welcomes New Executive Director Puneet Maharaj
We joined together to move Beyond Aviation, Tourism and Capitalism
Over the course of four days, more than 150 people came together across three different continents and online to form new bonds, empower each other and build strategies for resistance in the face of escalating climate and social crises. These were more than just meetings, they were the seeds of a global movement that will continue to grow from Barcelona, Mexico City, and Bangalore.
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In the midst of unprecedented times, while climate breakdown is accelerated by a system hooked on fossil fuels and the super-rich lean on an increasingly powerful far right to defend their power and profits, we gathered to build the resistance.
Anchored in the struggle to counter aviation, we met groups standing up for climate justice and housing rights, battling touristification and all forms of oppression, as well as academics and scientists, among others. Across all struggles, the root cause was clear: capitalism. And the path forward was equally clear: we can only win if we work together to confront and dismantle this system.
Voices from three continentsOur opening session highlighted precisely this diversity and celebrated the diversity and strength of our network. In Barcelona, we heard from Zeroport, the Anti-Oppression Circle, Las Kellys, the European Housing Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City and our host Coopolís/Bloc4. And we went across seas to receive the inputs from groups in Mexico City and Bangalore, about the realities of their struggles, connecting our local fights to a global front.
Local hubs: Mexico City & BangaloreIn San Gregorio de Atlapulco, Mexico City, a youth-driven and inter-generational meeting connected struggles against touristification, aviation impacts and urban gentrification. Coordinated with great care by our regional network Permanecer en la Tierra and linked to the National Indigenous Congress, the event fostered strong ties with anti-COP processes and movements resisting the commodification of cities and territories. For many participants, the conference also reaffirmed the importance of an explicitly anti-capitalist stance within the Stay Grounded network, laying the foundation for stronger collaboration and resistance in Mexico.
Meanwhile, in Bangalore, the conference brought together a diverse mix of participants, from urban planners and land defenders to organisations supporting communities resisting airport expansion and facing displacement. In a country where the political ecology around aviation is largely silent, the gathering created a rare and vital space to raise awareness, build national networks and start charting a collective roadmap for future action.
Diverse panelsDiscussions spanned from setting concrete demands for reducing air traffic, to the harms of a tourism model dependent on aviation. Anti-oppression was at the centre, as a necessary anchor that needs to be included into every part of our work. These exchanges sharpened our collective analysis and strengthened our plans to challenge the system fueling climate and social crises.
Workshops & skill-sharingHands-on workshops invited participants to explore strategy, narratives, communications, care, crafts and even a collective board game exposing the aviation industry. These spaces bridged creativity and strategy, welcoming everyone, from experienced organisers to newcomers exploring aviation and climate justice for the first time.
Thematic working groups: where vision meets actionFour thematic working groups tackled both systemic analysis and practical movement-building:
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- Aviation, Tourism & Housing – We connected the dots between climate injustice, touristification and the housing crises, recognising their common roots in extractive, neoliberal capitalism. Resistance must centre oppressed communities and rely on joint mobilisations.
- Red Lines for Airports – Sixteen local airport struggles advanced toward a coordinated Europe-wide campaign, with shared tools, narratives and potential 2026 action waves.
- Grounded Imaginaries – We envisioned futures beyond aviation and tourism, collecting real-life alternatives to fuel our narratives and movement-building.
- Movement Skills for the Crisis – We strengthened the human infrastructure of resistance, practicing somatics, consent work and conflict mapping to build resilient, caring networks in the face of climate urgency.
Together, these groups laid the foundation for a movement that is strategic, coordinated, visionary and deeply rooted in climate justice.
Culture, care & communityMoments of music, shared meals and creative expression reminded us that resistance is also about joy, connection and the cultures we defend against extractivism and exploitation. Care and community were woven into every part of the conference and explored deeply in dedicated workshops, ensuring our movements grow not only strong—but sustainable.
From reflection to actionOur time together culminated in collective action. From Barcelona to Roissy and Mexico City, we drew a red line against airport expansion with our bodies and voices, calling out the urgent need to halt aviation growth everywhere.
The final plenary, echoed these strong bonds of solidarity across borders, with a powerful statement from the conference in Mexico City rallying all of us to the struggle ahead: to dismantle capitalism and defend life. We closed the conference renewed in our commitment to move beyond aviation, tourism, and capitalism. Together, we are grounded in care, lifted by solidarity and ready to take flight in resistance.
Trump vs. Comedy . . . Colbert and South Park, w/ Prof. Sophia McClennen
New Jersey’s Break the Bonds campaign adds pressure on states to divest from Israel
This article New Jersey’s Break the Bonds campaign adds pressure on states to divest from Israel was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
On July 13, roughly 100 people convened in Military Park in Newark, New Jersey for the launch of Break the Bonds, a new statewide campaign in solidarity with Palestine. Inspired by the BDS Movement — a call from Palestinian civil society organizations to boycott and divest from Israel’s economy — the activists in New Jersey vowed to get their state to divest from Israel Bonds. These bonds, as organizers explained, are direct loans that individuals and institutions make to the Israeli treasury, enabling its ongoing genocide in Gaza and broader oppression of Palestinians.
The initiative in New Jersey is the latest local expression of a national campaign that launched on May 23, 2024. Since that national launch, coalitions have formed across the country to pressure various state and local institutions to divest from Israel Bonds. Jewish Voice for Peace, or JVP, one of the national organizations behind the Break the Bonds campaign, has published dispatches from iterations of the campaign in Philadelphia, Cleveland and Providence. There have also been efforts in North Carolina, New York, Florida, and Illinois. All are targeting public institutions that buy Israel Bonds, including state treasuries and pension funds.
Speaking at the campaign launch rally, Wassim Kanaan, the chair of New Jersey’s chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, or AMP-NJ, denounced the complicity of U.S. institutions in the unfolding genocide. “Whether it be the healthcare industry, the academia industry, the very important economic industry … these sectors are not free of blame when we talk about Zionist atrocities and crimes.”
The coalition of organizations at the launch included local chapters of national organizations: AMP-NJ, the Council on American-Islamic Relations NJ, and JVP of Northern New Jersey and Central New Jersey. Several state-specific organizations were also present, including Ceasefire Now NJ, New Jersey Peace Action and Palestinian American Community Center.
JVP member Eric Romann described the coalition as united by each organization’s ongoing efforts to challenge U.S. support for Israel. That work also includes challenging support coming from New Jersey’s public institutions and officials “in the context of this ongoing genocide and long history of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”
#newsletter-block_0690b5482ff4eb9342cd40f343eff1a9 { background: #ececec; color: #000000; } #newsletter-block_0690b5482ff4eb9342cd40f343eff1a9 #mc_embed_signup_front input#mce-EMAIL { border-color:#000000 !important; color: #000000 !important; } Sign Up for our NewsletterA recent Open Public Records Request filed by JVP shows that the New Jersey Division of Investment holds over $30 million in Israel Bonds. Correspondingly, the organizers are demanding that the state commit to not renewing or expanding those investments. At the same time, the coalition has several long-term goals for its campaign.
“We broadly would like to see, in the long term, the state of New Jersey adopt an investment policy that is consistent with principles of human rights, economic and racial justice, and environmental sustainability,” Romann said. “We would love to partner with other social movements and organizations in the state of New Jersey that would like to see an investment policy that reflects those principles.”
Understanding Israel BondsBecause Israel Bonds are not well known among the general public, much of the initial work of the campaign has consisted of organizers explaining the purpose of these bonds and how they prop up Israel’s economy.
Its story began in 1951, when Israel’s then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion created the Development Corporation for Israel — the economic institution behind Israel Bonds. Since its inception, the Development Corporation has raised more than $40 billion for Israel’s economy. According to a Bloomberg report, U.S. investment in Israel Bonds has yielded $5 billion since the Oct. 7 attacks alone. This number is notably double the typical amount Israel was raising through Israel Bonds prior to the war. In a quote from the Bloomberg report, Israel Bonds President and Chief Executive Officer Dani Naveh claims that the largest share of U.S. investments in the bonds comes from state, city and local governments.
While the specific amounts of investment vary from state to state, organizers of the Break the Bonds campaign see the emphasis on Israel Bonds as a way to expose the complicity of U.S. institutions in Israel’s anti-Palestinian violence.
The campaign also raises the question of how taxpayer money gets spent compared to what might better benefit localities and states. Speaking at the launch rally in Newark, longtime community activist Larry Hamm said, “Instead of spending that money on war, they need to spend it at home on healthcare, on education, on jobs, on the needs of the people. That’s what we’ve got to build.”
Growing a grassroots campaignWhile the campaign has not secured any divestments so far, activists have made important advances in exposing the role of Israel Bonds — and how much different cities and states contribute to these investments. As a result, several cities across the country have introduced divestment resolutions.
Last year, shortly after the launch of the national campaign — and following months of protests in the streets, at universities and outside of banks — the Cuyahoga County Council introduced a resolution to halt investment in Israel Bonds. Two days later, in Rhode Island, the Providence City Council introduced a similar resolution. More recently, in Illinois, union members filed an ethics complaint against the Illinois state treasurer over the state’s $100 million investment in Israel Bonds. This coincided with an Illinois state senator introducing legislation to halt investment in Israel Bonds.
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DonateOther states have used various tactics to challenge investment. Activists in Philadelphia got the word out about their Break the Bonds campaign with protests, including one in which rabbis and allies blocked traffic to call for divestment. In Palm Beach, residents sued the county in May 2024 over its $700 million investment in Israel Bonds.
Back at the launch of New Jersey’s campaign, speakers acknowledged that their effort will likely be a long fight. At the same time, however, they also believe educating the broader community — and building a large and diverse coalition — is the best way to challenge these investments.
“The counterbalance to industries in cahoots are people in a movement who are in solidarity,” Kanaan said.
This article New Jersey’s Break the Bonds campaign adds pressure on states to divest from Israel was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
IEA: Renewables will be world’s top power source ‘by 2026’
Renewable energy will overtake coal to become the world’s top source of electricity “by 2026 at the latest”, according to new forecasts from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The rise of renewables is being driven by extremely rapid growth in wind and solar output, which topped 4,000 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2024 and will pass 6,000TWh by 2026.
Wind and solar are increasingly under attack from populist politicians on the right, such as US president Donald Trump and Reform in the UK.
Nevertheless, they will together meet more than 90% of the increase in global electricity demand out to 2026, the IEA says, while modest growth for hydro power will add to renewables’ rise.
With nuclear and gas also reaching record highs by 2026, coal-fired generation is set to decline – driven by falls in China and the EU – meaning that power-sector emissions will decline, too.
The chart below illustrates these profound shifts in the global electricity mix – in particular, the meteoric rise of renewables, driven by wind and solar.
Global electricity generation by source, terawatt hours, 1990-2026. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are projections. Renewables include wind, solar, hydro, bioenergy and geothermal. Source: IEA electricity mid-year update 2025.The IEA says that renewables could overtake coal as early as this year, depending on weather-related impacts on the output of wind and hydro capacity.
It adds that the switch will happen by 2026 “at the latest”, when renewables are expected to make up 36% of global power supplies, against just 32% from coal – the fuel’s lowest share in a century.
The share of global electricity generation coming from wind and solar combined will rise from 1% in 2005 and 4% in 2015 to 15% in 2024, 17% in 2025 and nearly 20% in 2026.
The global reduction in coal-fired electricity generation will result from declines in China and the EU, which will only be partially offset by increases in the US, India and other Asian nations.
The IEA attributes the coming decline of coal to “continued renewables growth and higher coal-to-gas switching in multiple regions”. It says gas power will rise by 1.3% this year and next.
For nuclear, the IEA says that the new record output will result from plant restarts in Japan, “robust” output in France and the US, as well as new reactors in China, India and South Korea.
The shift to wind and solar is happening despite global electricity demand being forecast to grow much faster over the next two years – at 3.3% and 3.7%, respectively – than the 2.6% average for 2015-2023.
The IEA says new demand is coming from industry, domestic appliances, growing use of air conditioning, ongoing electrification of heat and transport, as well as the expansion of data centres.
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| jQuery(document).ready(function() { jQuery('.block-related-articles-slider-block_6443c26f9df958f046ddbdd0de005194 .mh').matchHeight({ byRow: false }); });The post IEA: Renewables will be world’s top power source ‘by 2026’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Trump’s “Shakedown” Must be Resisted: Media Coverage of Centre for Future Work Report
The Centre for Future Work’s new report on trade talks between Canada and the U.S. has received extensive coverage in Canadian media, as the August 1 deadline to reach a ‘deal’ with the U.S. looms. The report, “A Bad Deal With Trump is Worse Than No Deal At All,” lists several reasons why locking in one-sided U.S. tariffs in a non-binding memorandum with the erratic U.S. President would hurt Canada much worse than other U.S. trading partners, and reduce chances of rolling back Mr. Trump’s aggressive trade war through either international dispute settlement or in U.S. courts.
Report author and Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford was interviewed on CBC News Channel by Marianne Dimain. He explained that the current ‘deals’ Trump is reaching with several countries are not trade agreements in the conventional sense (which are legally binding and subject to parliamentary ratification by participating countries). Rather, they are non-binding frameworks that describe in broad terms future commitments by the two sides. They also maintain unilateral U.S. tariffs at significant levels (from 10% in the U.K. deal, to 47% for China), rather than the traditional approach of mutual reduction of trade barriers.
He pointed out that even though the final average tariff rate under a Trump ‘deal’ might seem lower than some of those other countries, Canada’s economy will be among the handful of hardest hit countries because of the unique role of U.S.-bound exports in overall GDP. Unfortunately, the willingness of some other countries which are less exposed to U.S. trade actions (including Japan and most recently the EU) to accept these one-sided ‘deals’ only enhances pressure on other countries (including Canada and Mexico) to buckle. “
The report’s arguments are summarized in this commentary in the Toronto Star. Stanford also discussed the report with Global TV, BNN, and several radio stations.
The post Trump’s “Shakedown” Must be Resisted: Media Coverage of Centre for Future Work Report appeared first on Centre for Future Work.
West Newton fracturing heading for approval
Plans to carry out a lower-volume hydraulic fracture at the West Newton-A oil and gas site in East Yorkshire look likely to get the go-ahead.
West Newton-A wellsite, April 2025. Photo: DrillOrDropThe Environment Agency has said it is minded to approve proposals by Rathlin Energy to inject oil-based fluid and proppant into the target reservoir at pressures high enough to fracture rocks.
The process is designed to improve the flow of oil and gas from the A2 well at Fosham Road, Marton.
A final public consultation on a variation to the environmental permit is now underway and runs until 9 September 2025.
Kathryn Richardson, area environment manager for the Environment Agency in Yorkshire, said:
“We have carefully considered all the documents, as well as the consultation comments, and currently can’t find any reason to refuse the variation application.
“I’d encourage interested parties to view the decision document and send us their comments.
“We will make our final decision once we have reviewed the responses to this consultation.”
People can respond to the consultation online or by email to pscpublicresponse@environment-agency.gov.uk or by contacting the EA on 03708 506 506
Stimulation, proppant squeeze or fracture?The application and EA documents describe Rathlin’s proposed operation as well stimulation. At other existing and planned sites, such as Wressle in North Lincolnshire and Burniston in North Yorkshire, the same process has been called proppant squeeze.
The draft revised permit for West Newton has 25 references to stimulation and none to proppant squeeze.
But the EA’s decision document said stimulation was also known as low volume hydraulic fracturing, proppant squeeze or mini frack.
It confirmed that the fluid injection would be above fracture pressure. It also said the difference between fracking and reservoir stimulation was the smaller quantity of fluid used.
If approved, the fracturing operation at West Newton would be carried out once, pumping 60-70m3 of fluid and 12.4 tonnes of sand into the Kirkham Abbey Formation at a depth of about 1.7km, the EA said. The maximum daily permitted volume of fluid would be 85m3. This would include the volume of fluid for a diagnostic fracture injection test.
The process is expected to create fractures up to 30m high, the EA added. It also said that between 50% and 70% of the fracturing fluid was estimated to remain underground.
A section of the EA decision document on hydraulic fracturing (page 9) used identical words to a report commissioned by Rathlin Energy from the geological consultancy, Outer Limits (page 31).
Extract from EA decision document Extract from Outer Limits reportRathlin’s proposal is not covered by the current moratorium on associated hydraulic fracturing in England. This has a presumption against hydraulic fracturing that uses more than 1,000m3 of fluid per stage or 10,000m3 in total. A campaign is underway to widen the scope of the moratorium to lower-volume hydraulic fracturing.
The EA also confirmed that the West Newton-A operation would need an approved Hydraulic Fracturing Plan before work could start (see EA responses below).
ConcernsAn earlier consultation raised a wide range of concerns about the West Newton-A plans. These included:
- Induced seismicity leading to earthquakes and/or fault movements
- Seismic predictions based on modelling
- Lack of a hydraulic fracturing plan or acid stimulation plan
- Groundwater contamination
- Site liner not fit for purpose
- Production of naturally-occurring radioactive material (NORM)
- Lack of information on MO-1V Breaker fluid
- Use of oil-based gelling fluids
- Increased traffic and noise
- Application was not accessible, lacked clear and concise information or had missing or contradictory information
- Process is not compatible with the UK’s net zero ambitions or climate change action
- EA capacity to regulate the site
- Onsite chemical storage and mixing
The EA responded in its decision document to many of the concerns. The responses included:
Earth tremors: The EA said the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) was responsible for regulating seismicity. But the EA said: “We are satisfied that the changes in this variation do not increase the potential for tremors”. It added:
“Low level hydraulic well stimulation can generate micro seismicity however, the proposed activities pose a very low risk with respect to seismic risk.
“The proposed activities are at the lowest end of the pressure spectrum associated with conventional hydraulic fracturing and are therefore unlikely to induce any seismic movements in the area.”
The EA added:
“Low level reservoir stimulation has no past record of causing seismicity which has only been associated with large scale, high volume hydraulic fracturing of shale gas formations.”
But it did not acknowledge that fracturing by Cuadrilla at Preston New Road in Lancashire induced earthquakes after injecting volumes of fluid as low as 142m3.
The report for Rathlin Energy said there was a 99% probability that seismicity caused by the operation would not exceed a maximum magnitude of M0.8. This would not be felt by people nearby, the report said. It also said the installation of local seismicity monitoring arrays was not warranted.
Hydraulic fracture plan: The EA said this plan must be submitted for approval at least two months before the start of the lower-volume fracture. It must include a summary of the planned operation, maps showing local faults, information on historic seismicity, a risk assessment of induced seismicity, processes to identify vertical and horizontal extents of fractures, steps to assess and mitigate fractures beyond the permit boundary or outside the target formation, measures to monitor seismicity and proposed reporting during and after fracturing.
Acid stimulation: The EA said an acid stimulation plan was not needed because Rathlin Energy did not propose to use acid stimulation.
Groundwater: The EA said: “We are satisfied that measures can be taken to ensure that the fracturing fluids do not migrate from the target formation”. It said the proposed fracture did “not present a significant risk to groundwater”. It said the upward movement of fracturing fluid from the Kirkham Abbey Formation would be limited by the overlying Fordon Formation of anhydrite and halite.
Liner: The EA included an improvement programme which it said was intended to ensure the liner’s integrity was maintained and necessary improvements made (see Conditions below)
MO-1V Breaker fluid: The manufacturer of this chemical had claimed confidentiality to restrict publication of the composition. But the fluid had since been removed from the application, the EA said.
Oil-based fluids: The EA said Rathlin Energy had argued that oil-based fluids would be used because water-based alternatives had previously damaged the Kirkham Abbey Formation. It said the formation had readily accepted these fluids but returned them slowly, which appeared to restrict the flow of gas.
Pollution and human health: The EA said: “We are satisfied that this facility will not cause significant pollution or harm and that it will provide a high level of protection for the environment as a whole”.
Management plans: The EA said it was satisfied with the application’s hydrological risk assessment, waste management plan, odour management plan, noise and vibration management plans and ecological impact assessment.
Traffic and noise: The EA said it was not responsible for regulating traffic. But it said it was “extremely unlikely” that the proposal at West Newton-A would increase traffic movements.
Regulation: The EA said it would regulate the site with continual assessment of plant operations and environmental performance. Regulation would include site inspections, onsite audits, assessment of how Rathlin Energy monitored emissions, requirements that breaches of emissions limits were reported and the investigation of complaints.
Climate change: The EA said it could not consider energy policy when determining a permit variation application.
NORM: The EA said the management of radioactive materials was regulated under a radioactive substances permit.
ConditionsThe draft permit requires the approval of a hydraulic fracturing plan before work can start.
It also included conditions that set limits on the maximum daily discharge of fracturing fluid, the discharge rate and the surface injection pressure. Conditions limit emissions from a gas flare during well testing and production and from gas engines. They require monitoring of substances in groundwater and emissions from stock tanks.
The EA also required an improvement programme for West Newton-A. This included approval of a secondary and tertiary containment plan and work to ensure the integrity of the site’s impermeable liner.
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