Plastic “garbage soup” is a serious hazard to marine life: fish and shellfish ingest tiny particles called microplastics and nanoplastics. And many marine animals, including whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, and sea turtles get tangled up in plastic fishing gear and other marine debris leading to injuries, starvation or drowning.  We humans eat contaminated fish and shellfish and plastics are passed on to infants in the womb who are born pre-polluted.  

As countries are moving toward electrification to replace their need for fossil fuels (the US being king among the exceptions), Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest producer of single-use plastics, is planning to increase petrochemical production, mainly for plastics, by 80% by 2050.  By 2060 the entire plastics industry projects to triple its current production of one-half billion tons per year (up from 2 million ton in 1950).

There are alternatives to using plastic, some easily affordable others more expensive and out of reach for people struggling in this regressive revival of the late 19^th century Gilded Age.  The National Resources Defense Council has provided a list of 10 ways to reduce plastic pollution from which I have selected 4 to start with.

1. Wean ourselves off of single-use plastic: plastic grocery bags, disposable cutlery and plates, plastic straws, coffee lids, and clear plastic wrap, which transfers toxics from the plastic wrap to the food it touches. Use reusable cotton produce bags in the store and at farmers markets for vegetables and fruit.  Bring your own garment bag to the dry cleaners, your own utensils for take-out food, and your own coffee mug anytime you buy coffee.
2. Stop buying bottled water.  Carry a reusable bottle and fill it with your own tap water.  In early 2024, scientists discovered an average of 240,000 pieces of tiny plastic in each liter of bottled water.
3. Third: Use wooden cutting boards; they’re durable while plastic cutting boards may be a significant source of microplastics in our food.
4. Here is a motivational fact about plastic bags, to help strengthen our resolve. Five trillion plastic bags are used globally each year only to be replaced by these toxic bags each year, using oil and gas anew.  Americans use an average of 365 plastic bags per year the largest consumer of single-use plastic bags in the world while the people of Denmark use four per year.  Support or introduce a tax or, better yet, a ban on single-use plastic bags that hundreds of cities, counties, and twelve states have implemented. 

Other recommendations

*Choose natural fiber clothing made from cotton or hemp because synthetic clothing made from polyester and nylon can leave microplastics remnants in air, on skin and in water supplies.  A load of synthetic clothing may discharge up to 1.5 million synthetic microfibers into waterways.  Some researchers think that synthetic textiles contribute up to 35% of microplastic pollution.

*Use paper with no plastic coating, as was used to package food in by gone days and request where possible that your fresh cut cheese and meats be wrapped in paper.  When used, the paper can be recycled or composted.

*Store food in metal or glass storage containers, now available at mainstream food stores and online.

*Use a powder for dishwashing and laundry and a bar of soap for handwashing instead of plastic containers of liquid dishwashing and laundry detergents and handwashing liquid .

All of these suggestions for finding available substitutions for plastic are “not a moment too soon for our plastic-choked planet.”

Unique among recent models of reducing exposure to plastic is a move toward natural playgrounds for children.  Forty-two daycare centers in Finland have replaced plastic flooring, rubber mats, asphalt and gravel with natural materials including soil, sand, moss, plants, and sections of forest floor.  Children were encouraged to interact directly with nature’s materials such as digging and playing in soil.  Their immune systems were subsequently studied and researchers reported “stronger overall immune responses than in children in standard asphalt and plastic [playgrounds].”  Many commented that what was once the norm – outdoor play with plants, grass, moss and soil should become the norm again.

Photo by Antoine GIRET on Unsplash

A model to be replicated throughout the world.

Resources

*NRDC   https://www.nrdc.org/stories/10-ways-reduce-plastic-pollution

*Free the Ocean    https://www.freetheocean.com

*Plastic Pollution Coalition https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/about

*Peter Kindfield. Explorations in Ecology: Playful Science-Rich Outdoor Activity for Children and Their Adults (Chelsea Green Publishing) 2026.

( Middle East Monitor ) – For months the world has remained fixated on a single number: 450 kilograms.

That figure — referring to Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium — has become the center of international negotiations, military threats, and diplomatic deadlock between Tehran, Washington, and Israel. American officials continue to insist that Iran must surrender or remove the material. Iran continues to refuse. The result is a dangerous equilibrium where neither side appears willing to retreat and where every ceasefire feels temporary.

But the deeper crisis exposed by the recent war is not simply nuclear. It is structural.

The war revealed something many governments were unwilling to publicly acknowledge for years: Iran can no longer be treated merely as a containable regional actor operating outside the architecture of global power.

Whether one agrees with Tehran or not, the conflict demonstrated that Iran has become too strategically consequential to remain permanently excluded from the mechanisms that shape international order.

This is precisely why the current ceasefire remains fragile.

Inside Iran the debate is no longer centered only on ideology or even sanctions. Increasingly the argument revolves around deterrence survival and legitimacy. Israeli and American strikes targeted senior commanders infrastructure nuclear facilities and military assets. Yet Iran neither collapsed nor capitulated. Instead it demonstrated an ability to sustain confrontation absorb pressure retaliate across the region and impose costs on the global economy through instability around the Strait of Hormuz. Even temporary disruptions around Hormuz proved enough to trigger worldwide anxiety over shipping routes energy prices supply chains and insurance costs.

This matters because it reveals a deeper contradiction within the current international system.

The post-1945 global order was designed around the distribution of power that existed after World War II. The permanent members of the UN Security Council were not chosen because they represented humanity equally or because they embodied universal legitimacy. They were chosen because they emerged from the war as decisive military powers capable of shaping global stability.

Nearly eighty years later however the structure remains largely frozen while the actual balance of geopolitical influence has dramatically evolved.

Germany and Japan became economic giants without permanent representation. India emerged as one of the world’s largest powers without a permanent seat. Brazil became indispensable to Latin America while remaining outside the core architecture of decision-making. Africa — a continent of more than a billion people — still lacks permanent representation entirely.

The Iran war may now be exposing a similar contradiction in the Middle East.

For decades the dominant assumption in Washington and parts of Europe was that Iran could eventually be weakened into strategic submission through sanctions diplomatic isolation covert operations or limited military pressure. But the war produced a far more uncomfortable outcome. Iran emerged economically damaged and militarily strained yet simultaneously more central to the global conversation about security order and deterrence.

The problem is no longer simply Iran’s nuclear program. The problem is that the existing international framework offers no meaningful mechanism for integrating a power that has already demonstrated irreversible regional influence.

This is why the uranium issue inside Iran is increasingly viewed through the lens of deterrence rather than purely nuclear ambition.

Contrary to many assumptions outside the country large parts of the Iranian political establishment do not necessarily view enriched uranium primarily as a pathway toward building a nuclear weapon. Rather many increasingly see it as part of a broader deterrence architecture in a world where they believe external military threats remain permanent.

From this perspective surrendering uranium without receiving structural security guarantees appears irrational. Iranian leaders look not only at sanctions but also at assassinations cyberattacks military strikes and repeated discussions of regime change in Western and Israeli political circles. Under such conditions deterrence becomes existential.

This explains why current negotiations appear trapped.

Washington continues to treat the uranium issue primarily as a technical proliferation problem. Tehran increasingly sees it as inseparable from sovereignty survival and long-term security guarantees.

Neither side is truly negotiating over centrifuges anymore. They are negotiating over the future balance of power in the Middle East.

And this is where the question of representation becomes unavoidable.

Throughout modern history political systems that failed to integrate rising powers eventually confronted instability crisis or war. The political philosophy underlying the modern West itself was built around this principle.

John Locke argued that peace could only emerge through a mutually recognized political contract rather than permanent confrontation. The American founding generation including Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Franklin and George Washington attempted to create a constitutional structure precisely because they believed unchecked conflict eventually destroys political order itself.

After World War II the victorious powers built a new international architecture for the same reason: to prevent endless cycles of great-power war through institutional integration and balance.

But today that structure increasingly appears unable to accommodate the actual distribution of twenty-first century power.

The crisis surrounding Iran may therefore reflect something much larger than the Islamic Republic itself. It may reflect the growing inability of the postwar order to absorb influential non-Western powers without resorting to permanent containment sanctions military pressure and recurring confrontation.

Ironically the more excluded Iran becomes from recognized structures of global influence the more valuable unconventional leverage becomes strategically.

In Iran’s case that leverage increasingly revolves around the Strait of Hormuz asymmetric military capability regional escalation potential and strategic disruption of global energy flows.

This is why the current situation has become so dangerous. As long as Iran remains outside the structure of globally recognized power its deterrence mechanisms will continue developing outside that structure as well.

This is also why recent regional developments matter.

The Saudi-backed proposal for a regional non-aggression framework — regardless of whether it ultimately succeeds — signals that parts of the Muslim world may already be moving toward a different strategic logic.

For years many Gulf states focused primarily on isolating Iran. Today however discussions increasingly revolve around coexistence de-escalation and regional balancing.

This shift matters because it suggests that even some of Iran’s traditional rivals may now recognize that permanent confrontation is becoming unsustainable.

At the same time China and Russia would likely view any structural increase in Iran’s international legitimacy favorably. The current Security Council configuration effectively leaves the Western bloc with three permanent powers — the United States Britain and France — while China and Russia remain comparatively isolated within the structure itself.

The broader issue therefore is no longer merely whether Iran should or should not possess enriched uranium. The real issue is whether the international system can continue managing emerging regional powers through exclusion alone while expecting long-term stability.

Recent events have already exposed the limits of that approach.

The United States launched military strikes against Iran without a clear Security Council mandate. Meanwhile the same international system that once endorsed the nuclear agreement later watched one of its principal signatories unilaterally withdraw from it. Such contradictions have increasingly weakened perceptions of institutional legitimacy across large parts of the Global South.

Whether Western governments wish to admit it or not the world is already entering a new geopolitical era.

From the growing alignment between China and Russia to the emergence of alternative regional structures and the increasing assertiveness of powers like Iran the international system is gradually moving away from the unipolar assumptions that defined the post-Cold War era.

Photo of Iran by Mohsen L on Unsplash

The question now is whether that transition can occur politically — through adaptation reform and integration — or whether it will continue unfolding through recurring crises military escalation and economic disruption.

This does not mean Iran will suddenly receive a permanent seat on the UN Security Council tomorrow. Such a transformation would require historic restructuring unlikely to happen quickly.

But the conversation itself now matters.

Because for the first time in years the Iran war is forcing policymakers to confront a question once considered unthinkable: Can the post-1945 order continue functioning while refusing to adapt to the actual distribution of power in the twenty-first century?

The answer increasingly appears uncertain.

And unless the international system finds ways to politically integrate rising powers rather than merely contain them the world may discover that perpetual brinkmanship has become the new normal.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Via Middle East Monitor

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

(The Conversation) – Mediators in both the Iran and Ukraine wars have struggled to achieve meaningful ceasefires. Although the US and Iran reached an initial two-week truce on April 7, brokered by Pakistan, the agreement has been fragile from the beginning.

By May 11, Donald Trump had declared that the ceasefire was “on massive life support” and has threatened to resume military action on numerous occasions.

Meanwhile, the latest temporary ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine from May 9 to 11 seemed over before it had begun – a now familiar pattern in the four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Ukraine accused Russia of violating the US-mediated pause throughout the three-day period, which ended with drone attacks on Ukrainian civilian and energy infrastructure.

So why do temporary truces in Iran, Ukraine and elsewhere so often fail to last? Ceasefires are diverse in terms of what they aim to achieve, how long they are intended to last and how they try to constrain the use of force. For instance, not all ceasefires are supposed to last forever.

Agreeing to halt conflict for a period of time can keep channels of communication open and build trust and momentum for more substantive conversations. This was the aim of the April 7 ceasefire in Iran. That agreement enabled the US and Iranian delegations to come together for talks in Pakistan over a peace proposal covering Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

That those talks failed to reach a more substantive agreement was not unexpected. The two parties only held one 21-hour negotiation session, and the inexperience of the US negotiating team has been widely reported. There is also a severely low level of trust between the US and Iranian administrations. But the existence of a ceasefire, although limited, has enabled further exchanges of peace proposals between the two parties.

However, temporary ceasefires are likely to remain so unless parties can eventually agree to something that requires greater commitment. Research drawing on the University of Edinburgh’s PA-X Peace Agreements Database of written ceasefire agreements shows that ceasefires containing longer-term commitments aimed at reducing the capacity for violence are associated with violence being suspended for longer.

These commitments could include demobilisation – the disbanding or standing down of an armed group from combat-ready status. They may also include the establishment of demilitarised zones, or the acceptance of external guarantees, international monitoring and dispute resolution mechanisms. These mostly require the involvement of mandated third parties.

Full texts of the ceasefires in Ukraine and Iran have not been published. But public statements from people involved suggest that neither agreement included strong compliance or demobilisation mechanisms, and did not involve extensive consideration of longer-term security guarantees.

When announcing the initial April 7 ceasefire, for example, Trump said the US had agreed to a limited two-week suspension of force in exchange for the Iranian reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. But he made no reference to how compliance would be monitored or enforced by a third party, or what military actions would be mutually considered a violation.

Many analysts have noted Trump’s preference for reaching quick, transactional “deals” over sustainable agreements. Others have argued that his eagerness to announce conflicts as being solved is reducing ceasefires from being a tangible step on the exit route out of conflict to “performative diplomacy”.

It is also hard to see how the international system can enforce compliance with ceasefires in the Iran and Ukraine wars. The US and Russia’s membership of the UN Security Council means either country can veto attempts by the UN to constrain their conduct by, for example, deploying an international peacekeeping force.

Indeed, the refusal of key US allies in the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia to facilitate a recent American operation to escort oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz, seems to be what has sustained the April ceasefire rather than agreed ceasefire terms or official compliance mechanisms. Iran had warned that it would respond to the operation with escalation and attacks.

Complex modern conflicts

The number and type of armed groups involved in many modern conflicts also makes sustaining ceasefires complicated. The temporary April ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, for instance, did not formally include Hezbollah – one of the key protagonists in the conflict.

Hezbollah is a non-state armed group that prevents the Lebanese state from having a monopoly on force, and has repeatedly rejected calls from Israel and the US for it to disarm. Israel claimed that airstrikes following a May 15 agreement with Lebanon to extend the ceasefire did not violate its terms. The Israelis argued that Hezbollah was not a party to the ceasefire, allowing them to target the group’s facilities.

Adding another layer of complexity is the fact that the Israel-Lebanon conflict is intimately connected to events in Iran. The Iranian regime has explicitly made reaching a peace agreement with the US conditional on there being a “lasting ceasefire in Lebanon”.

File Photo. USS Carter Hall transits the Persian Gulf. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Michael Starkey). Public Domain. Via Picryl

The combination of these political factors – limited agreement terms, weak third-party enforcement and complex conflict networks – suggests that the current pattern of short-term ceasefires with fragile extensions is likely to continue until the costs of conflict become too much for parties to withstand. For affected civilians, such a tipping point cannot come too soon.

Laura Wise, Senior Research Fellow and Programme Coordinator with the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In fact, the suffering of the activists pales in comparison with what is being done to the Palestinians. A recent exposé in the New York Times reveals systematic sexual abuse, including the use of specially trained dogs to rape prisoners. This sadistic method surpasses the “achievements” of the otherwise sophisticated Nazi torturers in humiliating their victims.

Minister Ben-Gvir performed in Hebrew and posted his video for all to see. The targeted audience was regular Israelis. The country is gearing up for an election, and the episode was broadcast to gain him votes. The hundreds of clips that Israeli military personnel posted of themselves gloating and chanting as they blow up houses, hospitals, and schools in Gaza clearly suggest that they expected admiration rather than opprobrium from their society.

As usual, Israel and its vassals treated this as a public relations problem. The Israeli ambassador in Washington called it a sledgehammer blow to Israel’s diplomatic efforts to burnish its deteriorating reputation. Prime Minister Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Saar also criticized Ben-Gvir’s performance. Even the U.S. ambassador, Reverend Huckabee — who is often more pro-Israeli than Israel — chimed in. These damage-control measures focus on the episode itself and, predictably, ignore its context and purpose.

A few years ago, Ben-Gvir ran for election under the slogan “Nobody is to the Right of Me,” and he came out triumphant. He is often portrayed in mainstream Western media as a regrettable outlier. But he is anything but. The minister of national security knows his society and embodies its dominant trends. This is why he shows how tough he is not only with the Palestinians but also with their supporters from abroad. Cruelty and vindictiveness are winning cards in Israel.

He never misses an opportunity to display these qualities. Ben-Gvir was one of the sponsors of the recent law authorizing the death sentence by hanging for Palestinians. The law was approved by the Israeli parliament, which, thanks to the proportional voting system, fairly reflects the country’s public opinion. Ben-Gvir celebrated this democratic achievement with champagne brought into the hallowed parliamentary chambers, and — needless to say — the entire scene of jubilation was in full view of the public.

But that was not the end. Soon thereafter, the honorable member of the legislature was celebrating his 50th birthday. His wife offered him a birthday cake decorated with a noose, and this too was broadcast for all to see. There is no record of Frau Himmler offering her husband, the head of the SS, a birthday cake in the shape of a crematorium. In fact, the Nazis tried to hide the genocide they were committing. They were afraid the German citizenry might not approve. Israeli leaders have no such fear.

Al Jazeera English: “Several nations summon Israeli envoys as Ben-Gvir taunts flotilla activists”

[This post contains video, click to play]

Finally, a few words about Western reactions. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States — all complicit in the genocide in Gaza — deplored the Israeli mistreatment of the activists in stronger terms than they ever reacted to Israel’s torture and slaughter of Palestinians. This showed once again the racist hypocrisy of their commitment to human rights. Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians, and other “less white” peoples do not deserve the same human rights as Europeans and their descendants settled elsewhere, usually by means of perpetrating their own genocide against the local inhabitants.

One can only admire the perspicacity of the Martinique poet Aimé Césaire, who wrote in 1955 in his Discourse on Colonialism: “What he [the white man] does not forgive Hitler is not the crime itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man in himself, it is the crime against the white man, it is the humiliation of the white man, and for having applied to Europe colonialist procedures hitherto only applied to the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the negroes of Africa.”

Photo of Gaza by khalid kwaik on Unsplash

Anticolonial sentiment briefly prevailed during the few decades of the Cold War. The Soviet Union had long supported anti-colonial struggle, and the West did not want to “lose Africa to the Russians.” The times have changed. Significantly, it was during the twilight of the USSR that the U.N. General Assembly revoked its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism. Later on, a French president called on his compatriots to be proud of the achievements that France brought to its former colonies. And at the recent security conference in Munich, the U.S. Secretary of State Rubio praised the European colonization of America as “a sacred inheritance.” He also called on Europeans to be “unapologetic in our heritage and proud of this common inheritance.”

No wonder that Israel’s settler colonial project continues to enjoy impunity from most Western governments. These democratic regimes continue to sell arms to Israel and allow overflight of American transport planes carrying bombs to kill Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians. After all, this state terrorizing everyone around is “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Democracy has never been an obstacle to racist terror.

(The Conversation) – The US-Israel war with Iran was predicted to cause the worst energy crisis in history, according to the International Energy Agency.

Around 20% of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) and 25% of its seaborne oil supplies were affected. The impact should have eclipsed the oil shocks of the 1970s.

But despite early panic, the crisis hasn’t been as widespread as anticipated. Oil prices have dropped, even though the Strait of Hormuz hasn’t fully reopened.

Why? Four reasons. First, oil markets are behaving as if the conflict will be over soon. Second, other oil producers have seized the opportunity. Third, demand for oil has fallen. And fourth, nations have been burning through their oil reserves.

Is the crisis over? No. Oil reserves in many countries are now running low. The United States, the world’s top user of oil, is about to enter peak driving season from this weekend. If the Iran war drags on, as seems likely, a true global crisis will be hard to avoid.

1: Oil markets have been subdued

This year’s rise in global LNG prices look like a blip compared with the meteoric rises seen after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

The effect on oil has been more pronounced. Prices of Brent crude futures – the global oil benchmark – have risen 72% since January, from US$61 to around US$105 a barrel (A$85 to A$153) as of May 21.

That’s a sharp rise. But it’s nowhere near the US$200 (A$281) forecast by some analysts in the war’s early days. Other analysts expected oil prices to approach the record levels of around US$147 a barrel (A$206) reached in 2008, a few months before the global financial crisis began.

In reality, prices have yet to pass the high point of US$120 a barrel (A$168) seen in 2022.

Oil traders look to be acting in the hope the conflict will be over soon and normal oil shipments will resume.

Before the war, the world had a major oil surplus. Fracking has turned the US from major oil importer into the world’s biggest producer and turned Argentina into an oil exporter.

Over the first ten months of 2025, global oil stocks rose an average of 1.2 million barrels a day. China was almost entirely responsible, adding around 1.1 million barrels a day to its stockpiles.

Before the war began in February, both Iran and Russia were looking for buyers of their sanctioned oil.

2: Different oil producers have boosted exports

Oil producers in the Middle East extract about 30% of the world’s oil. The war has removed some of this supply.

In response, other oil-producing nations have ramped up exports.

US sanctions on Russian oil have been temporarily lifted, boosting global oil supply. But Russia’s oil facilities have been repeatedly hit by Ukrainian drone strikes this year.

In the Americas, the US, Argentina, Brazil and Guyana have all upped output to partially fill the supply gap.

3: Demand for oil has dropped

Many nations are working to reduce demand for oil. Global demand for oil is expected to fall more than 2% this quarter. The drop is mainly in developing countries in Asia, the region most dependent on Middle Eastern oil.

Alongside the natural drop in demand from high prices, 76 countries have introduced emergency measures to cut oil demand further.

Australia has used energy diplomacy, securing more fuel supplies with deals to sell its gas and coal. These efforts have bolstered stockpiles of diesel, petrol and jet fuel.

To date, the only drop in Australian demand is jet fuel. In March, demand fell 18% below the previous month. Diesel use actually rose 4% that month.

4: Stockpiles are being used up

In March, the IEA brokered the largest releases of global oil stockpiles on record.

This move has probably done most to filling the supply gap.

China, the world’s largest oil importer, has dipped into its enormous 1.4 billion barrel stockpile and cut oil buying.

Even so, global demand for oil is still outstripping supply. Global stockpiles are being used up at record rates and are now close to their lowest level in eight years.

At the start of the war 12 weeks ago, China had around 82 days’ worth of supply. Given China uses around 17 million barrels of oil each day, its reserves would shrink to almost nothing within 11 weeks if not replenished.

As the northern hemisphere moves into summer, demand will rise in key nations. In the US, the Memorial Day long weekend traditionally marks the start of the peak driving season. While the US now produces much of its own oil, a spike in domestic consumption could make less available for export.

Photo by Sara Gault on Unsplash

Slow-moving crisis?

Until now, this year’s energy crisis has been felt most acutely in developing nations, where long queues for petrol and diesel have become common.

Richer countries have been able to insulate themselves better. But these measures have limits. The crisis is by no means over.

Oil supplies in rich countries could tighten further by early June, according to forecasts by JP Morgan Chase analysts. By September, reserves could fall to levels low enough to put real strain on economies. History suggests nations would slash demand for oil products before it got that bad.

If the conflict drags on and Middle Eastern oil remains off the market, rich countries will no longer be able to ride it out.

Kevin Morrison, Industry Fellow, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Having taught courses on “conflict resolution” concerning the Sudan, DRC Congo, Cameroon and Nigeria, it was clear to me that almost all African nations share a similar history of having been colonized by Europeans with the primary intention of resource extraction. The Congo was the most notorious in this respect, led by Belgium’s King Leopold between 1885 to 1909, a man who made a pretense of being humanitarian while extracting wealth in the form of rubber during the “rubber boom”.  Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” explored some of the themes of European imperialism and racism prevailing at that time, while Irish born Roger Casement, a British Consul, revealed in published articles, the pillaging by Leopold’s agents and his private mercenary army’s systemic brutality 

In a similar vein Sudan suffered from an 1898 invasion of Khartoum by a joint British-Egyptian force under General Kitchener. The British colonizers favored South Sudan by encouraging Christian missionary endeavors while allowing the north Sudanese to be governed by an Arab-Muslim elite.

Britain’s method of control of Sudan followed their colonial policy of encouraging division among indigenous groups in order to maintain control, thus exacerbating civil unrest between north and south Sudan. When they departed in 1956 the British left a deeply divided country with South Sudan eventually separating from north Sudan.  We now see the consequences of these divisions with the two Sudans devastated by a series of armed conflicts, recently described as the “world’s largest displacement of indigenous people with an inevitable hunger crisis.” 

In terms of the Sahel region, other causes of conflict include control of gold mines, the extraction of fossil fuels, and newly developed lithium deposits, as well as climate change throughout the Sahel, a  savannah stretching from Senegal to Sudan. This has turned marginal areas into sparse grazing for nomadic livestock herders, while outsiders, such as the UAE Emirates and Russia have been supplying military equipment to favored factions, thus increasing the violence in conflict areas.  

More beneficial assistance has come from China, which has provided much-needed infrastructure, offering loans and humanitarian assistance in exchange for access to mining and resource extraction. In the AES Alliance in West Africa, they have begun investing heavily in Lithium mining.  

The Sahel nations of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso (AES) share some of same the extreme conditions experienced by Sudan and the Congo in terms of European colonization. In 1960 they declared Independence from France and in 2022-2024 the military juntas of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) rejected U.S. and France’s military aid in favor of military aid from Russia, China, Turkey and the UAE. But terrorism and poorly planned trade agreements have brought serious difficulties.  Having survived  the Mali War and Boko Haram insurgency, the  AES states have expelled not only the French military presence but also U.S. drone facilities. It has also pledged to suspend military rule and return to civilian rule, 

The  U.S. has several thousand personnel in East Africa under U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and up to 30 bases in Africa carrying out “security, surveillance and counterinsurgency missions”. Up until recently, one of the most beneficial organizations for aid in Africa has been  USAID, which provided economic and security support, so its loss, following the U.S. “Shutdown” of health and humanitarian aid programs, has resulted in the rise of insurgencies and the increase of regional violence.

What the Sahel Alliance (AES) is facing beyond internal problems and insurgencies is desertification. Prolonged droughts are endemic in the Sahel savanna, a 600 mile-wide swath of northern Africa. The Sahel reaches to Northwest Cameroon and includes Lake Chad which has been a main provider of water to indigenous people for generations, but now has lost 90% of its capacity due to climate change and over-grazing. 

There are serious attempts at re-invigorating the Sahel with the “UNCCD Great Green Wall Initiative” which spans 22 African countries. This international project uses traditional as well as newly applied forestry & farming practices and has raised $14 billion to “support a target of completion by 2030. There are numerous localized success stories as it continues to expand to a projected 8,000 km x 15 km wide strip extending across Africa. Already 30 million hectares of land have been rehabilitated and 350,000 “green jobs” created.

Africa is a vast continent with 54 nations and a population of 1.5 billion inhabitants in an area that could fit Canada, the U.S., China, India and Europe, with room to spare. It is all too easy for American media to misunderstand the larger context and to focus only on civil wars and other forms of conflict while distorting  the nature of a resource- rich continent where many highly-motivated people have survived centuries of brutal colonization.

In Nigeria alone fossil fuel extraction provides a major part of its economy. It also has the largest seminary in the world, with many of its graduates serving in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. Nigeria has been humorously described as having an “edifice complex” with very large churches and mosques built for its 100 million Christians in the South and 100 million Muslims in the north.

Photo of Sudan by MIGUEL BAIXAULI on Unsplash

There are over thirty nations investing in Africa who are benefiting from its rich resources. Some, under pressure from humanitarian organizations, provide educational opportunities as well as healthcare benefits. Canadian mining corporations, for instance, have invested $40 billion in Africa, but have had to face civil lawsuits before being compelled to be more accountable and to provide help to families of miners.

Africa can find its way to conflict resolution if only those who foment violence would stop providing weapons to extremists and to the “grievance culture” that divides small countries such as Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso into militant factions. It would be more helpful if Western media focused on the more positive side of indigenous cultures and the high levels of optimism and aspirations that motivate the youth of Africa.

What much of the reporting ignores, however, is how necessary the aid flotilla still is, since the Israelis have gone back to blockading key foodstuffs, medicine and fuel, and continue to shell and bomb people in Gaza. In other words, the genocide continues under the cover of the Hormuz crisis.

IMEMC reports that on Wednesday the Israeli military launched numerous assaults on the Gaza Strip, despite the supposed ceasefire enacted last October.

In the north of the Strip as well as in the center shelling was heard, “with explosions heard near Gaza City and in the areas surrounding the Al‑Bureij and Al‑Maghazi refugee camps, in central Gaza.”

The Gaza Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks had killed one Palestinian whose body was taken to a hospital, and had wounded sixteen others.

Families that came under fire in the north had to flee to central Gaza but had no place to take refuge, huddling in the debris of former schools or apartment buildings. These internally displaced families lack sewage or reliable potable water, putting them at risk of disease.

Rescue teams could not reach several of these areas because the Israelis had destroyed the roads and the rubble proved an obstacle to ambulances. Since the rescue workers could not reach the bombed sites, they could not ensure that people trapped under the destroyed buildings would be extracted.

IMEMC writes, “Humanitarian agencies reported that several neighborhoods in Gaza City and Khan Younis have gone more than ten days without running water. With pumping stations unable to operate due to fuel shortages and damaged infrastructure, sewage overflow has been recorded in multiple districts.”

Surgeons had to put off performing operations. They appear not even to have had alcohol or other antiseptics, so they could not establish a sterile field around patients. They also lacked other essential medicines.

IMEMC continues, regarding health care, “Hospitals across the Strip continued to report severe shortages. Medical teams at the Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza and the European Gaza Hospital said they were running critically low on anesthesia, antibiotics, blood products, and basic surgical supplies.”

Many areas in the strip get only 4 hours a day of electricity, since the Israeli military has damaged power lines and prevents enough fuel from getting into the besieged Strip to run generators. That goes for hospitals, too.

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash

Insecurity Insight reports that in the wake of the ceasefire concluded with Iran on April 8, 2026, the Israeli military has increased its assaults in such a way as to harm health facilities and to decrease the ability of patients to get treatment throughout Gaza. I.I. gathered credible information on seven such incidents from April 8 to April 24, whereas in the previous two weeks, when Israeli was bombing Iran, there were four such reported Israeli attacks in Gaza on or near health care facilities.

Israeli troops have been shelling targets near hospitals and at one point directed live fire at a United Nations-administered health center. I.I. writes, on 11 April, a hospital was forced to shut down one of its main generators due to fuel shortages, leaving vital departments dependent on lower-capacity backup generators operating only for limited hours.

Gaza has also seen a steep fall in bread production as the Israeli government has interfered with flour imports since early April.

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Re: IMEMC quotes above: unless otherwise specified, all IMEMC content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attr-NonCom 4.0 International License.

The Middle East Studies Association’s (MESA) Task Force on Civil and Human Rights expresses our deep concern regarding the Trump administration’s targeting of visa and green card holders from Iran, including Iranian academics and students, based on their familial ties and political views. While immigration-based targeting of Iranians, including professors and students, began in 2025, these efforts have accelerated since the start of 2026 and especially since the Israel/ U.S. war against Iran began in late February.

Among the most prominent cases, in early April, the State Department terminated the permanent residency of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, an assistant professor at Emory University’s medical school, because her then-deceased father, Ali Larijani, had been a high-ranking Iranian official. The State Department also detained and revoked the green card of Eissa Hashemi, an adjunct professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, because his mother, Masoumeh Ebtekar, had been involved in the student takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Later in April, the administration detained Yousuf Azizi, a PhD candidate at the Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs, and sought to deport him from the country. While the administration raised various visa-related pretexts for detaining Azizi, it is widely believed he was targeted because of his outspoken and widely-publicized opposition to the war on Iran.

This repressive campaign against Iranian academics and students is part and parcel of the Trump administration’s long-standing draconian immigration policies, which have involved targeting students and academics for their First Amendment-protected views as well as their familial associations. In a recent case brought by MESA, a federal judge made clear that the First Amendment applies to citizens and non-citizens alike. Targeting Iranian visa and green card holders solely for their protected speech and familial ties flies in the face of this basic principle: that noncitizens present in the United States have the same speech and associational rights as citizens.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, MESA publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,600 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.

As long as the Trump administration continues to target academics and students who work on or are from the Middle East for their views and associational relationships, MESA will continue to support and defend those individuals against the government’s repressive and unconstitutional policies.

As is true of so much with this administration, every accusation is also a confession.

U.S. troops have been shooting Somalis since the early 1990s, after lame duck President George H. W. Bush launched an ostensibly humanitarian intervention there that would be embraced by his successor, Bill Clinton. By June 1993, U.S. and U.N. troops had begun attacking various targets in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, linked to warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who had helped overthrow dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

The next month, in a major escalation, U.S. helicopter gunships attacked a house in that city where a group of Somali clan leaders was meeting. The International Committee of the Red Cross said 54 people were killed and 161 wounded. Aidid claimed that 73 Somalis had died, including women and children, and more than 200 had been wounded. U.S. forces suffered no casualties whatsoever.

And it wasn’t long before — in the early 2000s, under Bush’s son, George W., as part of what became known as the Global War on Terror — American troops began slaughtering Somalis again. In addition to major conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush, the younger, launched early drone wars from Pakistan to Yemen, including in Somalia. His successor, President Barack Obama, upped the Forever War ante, becoming an assassin-in-chief in Somalia and beyond. Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, continued the drone war there, too, when he entered the White House.

However, for all those years of slaughter in Somalia, no American president has ever attacked Somalis with the persistence and at the rate of President Donald J. Trump, especially in his second term in office.

The second Bush administration conducted 11 airstrikes in Somalia, killing as many as 144 people — including possibly 55 civilians, according to the think tank New America. Obama presided over 48 strikes during his eight years in office that killed as many as 553 people. Trump’s first term saw a massive escalation in such drone strikes. Over his first four years, Trump carried out 219 attacks, a 271% increase over the 16 years of the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies. But even that spike has paled in comparison to the relentless rate of attacks during Trump’s second term in office. While Biden exceeded Obama’s total in half the time — 51 strikes in four years — Trump is already set to eclipse his own infamous first-term record in less than a year and a half. He has presided over at least 190, if not more, air strikes in Somalia.

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Trump’s killing spree in Somalia is just a small part of his wider war on the world. It’s no exaggeration to say that he has the U.S. military “run[ning] around shooting” people on an epic scale. During his two terms in office, Trump has overseen armed interventions and military operations — including air strikes, commando raids, proxy conflicts, so-called 127e programs, and full-scale wars — in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, Venezuela, Yemen, and an unspecified country in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as attacks on civilians in boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean. His second term has, in fact been a furious blitz of global war-making, only half-noticed by the American news media. In March, for example, the United States made war on three continents during just three days, conducting attacks in Africa, Asia, and South America. During that span, the U.S. also struck a civilian boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Less than a year and a half into Trump’s second term, the U.S. has already killed more than 2,000 civilians from Latin America to the Middle East and Africa. “This is unprecedented in terms of the sheer number of theaters where harm to civilians has been reported within such a short space of time,” said Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen, a policy specialist with Airwars, a British-based organization that tracks civilian harm globally. She also pointed to attacks in the Caribbean Sea, the eastern Pacific Ocean, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.

A War on Children

Since the U.S. began conducting air strikes in Somalia back in 2007, as many as 170 civilians have been killed, according to Airwars. The U.S. military has, however, only admitted to six of those deaths and 11 other injuries — and has never publicly apologized to any families of the victims or those who survived its attacks.

In one April 2018 attack in Somalia during Trump’s first term, a U.S. drone strike killed at least three (and possibly five) civilians. A woman and child were among the dead, according to formerly secret U.S. military investigation documents, but the same report concluded that their identities might never be known. A 2023 investigation I undertook for The Intercept, however, exposed the details of that disastrous attack. The woman and child — 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter, Mariam Shilow Muse — survived the initial strike but were killed by a double-tap attack as they fled for their lives. Abdi Dahir Mohamed, one of Luul’s brothers, said of the Americans who killed his sister and niece: “They know innocent people were killed, but they’ve never told us a reason or apologized. No one has been held accountable.”

More recently, President Trump has been responsible for the slaughter of scores, if not hundreds, of children in his war of choice in Iran. “U.S.-Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 2,362 civilians, including 383 children, and injured over 32,314 civilians, according to official figures,” Raha Bahreini, a regional researcher with Amnesty International’s Iran Team, told this reporter and other journalists during a recent press briefing. The deaths include more than 150 children killed in a Tomahawk missile strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in southern Iran. The preliminary findings of a U.S. military investigation into that attack acknowledged that the United States was indeed responsible, contradicting assertions by President Trump that Iran struck the school. Publicly, however, the Pentagon continues to evade responsibility. “This incident is currently under investigation,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently told lawmakers, refusing to answer questions about the attack during testimony on Capitol Hill.

The administration has also been responsible for a steady drumbeat of attacks on civilians in the waters surrounding Latin America. Under Operation Southern Spear, the Trump administration has conducted around 60 attacks on so-called drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean, killing close to 200 civilians since last September. Trump officials have insisted that the victims are members of one of at least 24 or more cartels and criminal gangs with whom it claims to be at war but refuses to name. Experts in the laws of war and members of Congress from both parties insist that the strikes are illegal extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians — even suspected criminals — who do not pose an imminent threat of violence.

Trump has also killed and wounded many people in Yemen, including dozens of Ethiopian civilians killed in an attack on an immigrant detention center there last year. “The Trump administration’s Yemen campaign, and this attack in particular, should have set off alarm bells for anyone invested in how the U.S. military operates, and the amount of care or disdain it shows for civilian life,” Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said recently. “One year on, not only has there been no discernible progress towards justice and reparation, but we’re still lacking basic information about what happened in the Yemen attack, why it happened and what steps if any the U.S. military has taken to address it.”

In the spring of 2025, Airwars tracked reports of at least 224 civilians in Yemen killed by U.S. airstrikes during the Trump administration’s campaign of air and naval strikes (codenamed Operation Rough Rider) against that country’s Houthi government. The Yemen Data Project put the death toll at a minimum of 238 civilians, with another 467 civilians injured.

Such deaths are just part of a long butcher’s bill in Yemen stretching back to the very beginning of Trump’s first term. A report by the Yemen-based group Mwatana for Human Rights examined 12 U.S. attacks in Yemen between January 2017 and January 2019, 10 of them “counterterrorism airstrikes.” The authors found that at least 38 Yemeni civilians — 19 men, six women, and 13 children — were killed and seven others injured in the attacks. Among them was a raid by Navy SEALs on a Yemeni village just days after Trump took office for the first time in which women and children died. A year later, the U.S. fired a missile into a sports utility vehicle near the village of Al Uqla. Three of the men inside were killed instantly. Another died days later in a local hospital. The only survivor, Adel Al Manthari, was gravely wounded and forced to turn to a GoFundMe campaign in 2022 to save his life.

“The Attack Was Horrible and Their Response Was Horrible. I Lost a Wife and a Child”

“It’s a horrible place,” Trump said of Somalia during that same racist rant. “Everything is horrible over there.”

Horrible is a word I also recall from my trip to Somalia to meet the family of Luul Dahir Mohamed and Mariam Shilow Muse in 2023.

The U.S. attack that killed the mother and daughter was the product of faulty intelligence as well as rushed, imprecise targeting by a Special Operations strike cell whose members, according to the military investigation conducted later, considered themselves inexperienced. That inquiry led to an admission that civilians were killed and a strong suggestion of confirmation bias (a psychological phenomenon that leads people to cherry-pick information confirming their preexisting beliefs). Despite that, the investigation exonerated the team involved.

“The strike complied with the applicable rules of engagement,” according to that investigation. “[N]othing in the strike procedures caused this inaccurate [redacted] call.” Luul’s husband and Mariam’s father, Shilow Muse Ali, was stunned as he tried to process those words. “The attack was horrible and their response was horrible. I lost a wife and a child,” he told me. “But I cannot understand the explanation in the investigation. How can you admit that you killed two civilians and also say the rules were followed?”

Trump had, in fact, secretly issued loosened rules for counterterrorism “direct action” operations, including for drone strikes in places like Somalia, according to a partially redacted copy of the document. By the end of March 2017, the number of U.S. airstrikes in Somalia had skyrocketed. “The burden of proof as to who could be targeted and for what reason changed dramatically,” retired Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, who led Special Operations Command Africa at the time, recalled. During the Obama administration, by contrast, strikes required high-level approval, according to a drone pilot and strike cell analyst, who served in Somalia the year Luul and Mariam were killed. “Giving strike authority down to a ground commander was a massive difference,” he explained. “It had a big effect.” Attacks in Somalia tripled after Trump once again relaxed targeting principles and (all too predictably) U.S. military and independent estimates of civilian casualties across multiple U.S. war zones spiked.

“They have nothing but crime,” President Trump — himself a convicted felon 34 times over — said of Somalia, as he raged on about that country.

To date, no one has ever been held accountable for the deaths of Luul or Mariam – or any other civilians killed in Trump’s war in Somalia. Nor has anyone been held responsible for those killed in the strike in Yemen that gravely wounded Adel Al Manthari. Or those slain in the raid on a Yemeni village by Navy SEALs. Or the innocents who died in the attack on an immigrant detention center in that country. Or in the strikes on drug boats in the Caribbean Sea. Or for the attack on Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Iran.

Some of those attacks could well have been categorized as crimes of war. Others are certainly extrajudicial killings — or, simply put, outright murders. Those deaths and so many others can be traced back to Donald Trump and his contempt for the lives of people across this planet.

“It’s filthy dirty, disgusting dirty,” Trump said of Somalia, but in truth, that’s a more apt description for the soul of the country that exports slaughter, year after year, and is led by a man who revels in it. “It’s a horrible place,” he continued about Somalia.

And once again, every accusation of his should be considered a confession, too.

Copyright 2026 Nick Turse

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