by Franklin Frederick

Defying Empire: Cuba’s Contributions to the Fight Against Racism              and White Supremacy

The white capitalist cannibal has always fed on the world’s black peoples. White capitalist imperialist society is profoundly and unmistakably racist.

Walter Rodney

White supremacy and racism cannot be dissociated from capitalism. It was racism and white supremacy that provided the cultural justifications for slavery and the concomitant slave trade, for European colonial expansion and imperialism, without which capitalism would not have developed. Racism and white supremacy also permeate the various hierarchies imposed by the capitalist system and which are fundamental to its maintenance. This intrinsic link between capitalism and racism becomes more explicit in colonialism. Walter Rodney, the important Caribbean historian and political activist, wrote in his book ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’:

‘It was economics that determined that Europe should invest in Africa and control the continent’s raw materials and labor. It was racism which confirmed the decision that the form of control should be direct colonial rule.’

What organizes and instrumentalizes racism as a political power project is white supremacy. The only country in the world that, from its origins, has been conceived as a white supremacist power project is the United States of America.

The African-American historian Gerald Horne argues in his book ‘The Counter- Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the origins of the United States of America’ that the movement for US independence was born, on the one hand, from the fear of the colony’s wealthy classes of a growing abolitionist movement in the metropolis, England, that threatened to end the basis of their wealth – slave labor. On the other hand, England also prevented the colonists from advancing westward, which was to remain indigenous peoples’ territory. For Horne, the war for US independence was in part a ‘counter-revolution’ led by the so-called ‘founding fathers’ with the aim of preserving their right to enslave other peoples, especially Africans, as well as to continue expanding the young nation westward by stealing more land from indigenous peoples where to deploy more slave labor.

In another book, ‘The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean’, Horne summarized this process thus:

‘Then finally, in 1776, they pulled off the ultimate coup and exhibited their novel display of patriotism by ousting London altogether from the mainland colonies south of Canada, while convincing the deluded and otherwise naive (to this very day) that this naked grab for land, slaves and profit was somehow a great leap forward for humanity.’

It was within this context that the armed forces of the USA were born and developed. The U.S. military originated in the war for independence against the British, that is, in defense of white supremacy and its project of slavery and land conquest. Thus, soon after independence, the newly created U.S. army engaged in its new task: genocidal warfare against indigenous peoples to ensure the territorial expansion of the new republic.

In ‘The First Way of War: American War Making on the frontier, 1607-1814’ another historian, John Grenier, argues that the US military was forged in genocidal wars against the Native American peoples, where virtually every means of destruction was allowed, all brutality was possible and there were no distinctions between civilian populations and combatants. One of the methods used by the U.S. military against the indigenous peoples was the destruction of their crops and food reserves, leading to defeat by starvation, a method widely used and perfected decades later in the Vietnam War.  An unbroken historical line links the wars against indigenous peoples to the Vietnam war and the more recent economic embargoes against Cuba and Venezuela, among others. Economic embargoes are only a variation of this method, the objectives are still the same: to provoke famine, to punish civilian populations in order to subjugate or eliminate them. The extermination of the indigenous people, justified and driven by white supremacy, was so central to the politics of the time that participating in the military campaigns against the indigenous people was practically a prerequisite for becoming a candidate for the presidency of the new country. Being a slave owner seems to have been another prerequisite for the function of leader of the nation, since eight of the first Presidents were slave owners.

To secure a single front between white settlers against indigenous peoples on the one hand, and to ensure the practice of slavery on the other, the English forged an illusory ‘alliance’ across social classes among ‘whites’ that legitimized and allowed the exploitation, theft or extermination of all who were not ‘white’. According to Gerald Horne, this ‘militarized identity politics’ – white supremacy – was at the basis of the colonial occupations as early as 1676, leading to the creation of a ‘white man’s’ country, a first apartheid state, an example to be followed by South Africa. Violence against indigenous peoples and the violence inherent in the slave economy became common, ‘normal’ elements in the white mentality in the US to this day.

White supremacist entrepreneurship was not limited to the exploitation of slave labor on US plantations. The naval blockade and England’s pressures against the slave trade caused the price of slaves on the market to rise, making it an irresistible attraction for profit-hungry white U.S. capitalists. African-American historian and activist W. E. B. Du Bois wrote the following about the slave trade in the first half of the 19th century:

‘As a result, the American slave -trade finally came to be carried on principally by United States capital, in United States ships, officered by United States citizens, and under the United States flag.’ (1)

The Cuban Way

To a question from Ignacio Ramonet about when the Cuban revolution actually began, Fidel Castro replied:

‘(…)the Cuban revolution began with the first war of independence, which started in eastern Cuba on October 10, 1868.’

And then Fidel mentions the following episode from the life of Simón Bolívar, the Liberator:

‘After carrying out an expedition to Haiti, (Bolivar) returned to Venezuela and there, on July 6, 1816, he issued the ‘Manifesto of Ocumare,’ from which I quote:

“Our brothers who have groaned under the miseries of slavery are now free. Nature, justice and politics demand the emancipation of the slaves; henceforth there will be only one class of men in Venezuela, the citizens.”

From Isla Margarita, the Liberator then went down the Orinoco River, landing at Angostura, where Ciudad Bolívar is today, and it was there that he drafted the ideas of the 1819 Constitution and decreed the abolition of slavery. It was then that José Antonio Páez, a patriot and new leader of the llaneros, decided to join Bolívar. From that moment on, victory was assured. I have taken the liberty of recalling this episode to show that in Latin American history, the abolition of slavery and independence are intimately linked.'(2)

While US independence is consolidated with the aim of extending and strengthening white supremacy inherited from Europe, in Cuba and Latin America the struggles for independence take place against European white supremacy.

This distinction was perceived by a profound and influential observer of the time: Alexander von Humboldt.

Between 1799 and 1804, Alexander von Humboldt, accompanied by the French botanist Aimé Bonpland, traveled through the Spanish American colonies of the time, exploring regions that today belong to Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and Cuba. Back in Europe, Humboldt began publishing several books revealing to a curious and fascinated European public the natural and cultural riches of South America. While writing about the wonders of America’s tropical nature and the cultural richness of its native peoples, Humboldt denounced, like no other before him, the horrors of slavery, the oppression of the indigenous peoples, and the injustice of the colonial system.

Humboldt presented a view of South American indigenous peoples and slaves of African origin completely different from the dominant conceptions of his time, rejecting the dominant endemic racism and the supposed ‘superiority’ of the ‘white race’, the foundation of white supremacy. Humboldt declared that the culture of the indigenous peoples was as creative and diverse as the European one, vehemently attacking one of the main proponents of the European ‘scientific racism’ of that time, the Count de Buffon, exposing the ridiculousness of his ideas.

On his return from his trip through Spanish America in 1804, Humboldt spent a short time in the USA where he met Thomas Jefferson, then celebrated President of that country. Jefferson shared the same interests as Humboldt in the natural sciences and both conversed at length when Humboldt was a guest at the White House. But there was one fundamental irreconcilable issue between the two: slavery. Thomas Jefferson, one of the ‘founding fathers’ of the new republic that advertised itself as the homeland of liberty and equality, was not only a slave owner but recognized the importance of slavery to the economic development of the United States. Humboldt denounced this hypocrisy and the underlying horror of such an idea of ‘economic development’. Jefferson also agreed with Buffon’s ideas about the ‘inferiority’ of the ‘black race’, which Humboldt considered foolishness.

Shortly after his return to Europe, in Paris, Humboldt was introduced to a young nobleman newly arrived from the Spanish colonies of America: Símon Bolívar, the future Liberator. Bolivar later recounted how his meeting with Humboldt opened his eyes to the wonders and potential of his own country, the future Venezuela. It was Humboldt who, in fact, made America known to Bolivar himself, as the latter mentions in his famous ‘Letter from Jamaica’. The two met again months later in Rome – and this time Bolivar was already talking about the need for independence for Spanish America. At this time Humboldt’s advice and wisdom were fundamental to the political maturity of the young Bolivar. Still in Rome, Bolívar would take the oath to free America, and then return to his country.

Years later, Humboldt wrote the following about the new republics of Latin America, the fruit of Simón Bolivar’s struggles:

‘One cannot praise enough the intelligent legislation of Spanish America’s new republics, which, since their inception, have been seriously concerned with slavery’s total cessation. In that respect, this vast part of the earth has an immense advantage over the South of United States.’

‘In North America white men have created for themselves a white republic with the most shameful laws of slavery.’ (3)

Although Cuba also had slaves and racism, the demarcation between whites and blacks did not follow the same logic as the dominant white supremacy in the US. Spain used battalions of armed blacks in Cuba, for example, which in the eyes of white supremacists was the equivalent of a war crime. Spanish laws also allowed slaves remedies that would have been unthinkable under current legislation in the southern United States. A testimony to the difference in the treatment of blacks in Cuba and the U.S. was the massive flight of African Americans from Florida to Cuba beginning in 1819 when it was acquired from Spain by the Republic. The African Americans living in Florida knew full well what was in store for them under the new government and migration to Cuba was the best option. These African Americans brought with them an anti-Washington sentiment that would influence the entire island.

It was Cuba’s independence and its subsequent fall under the dominion of the United States that definitively marked its attitude against white supremacy, generating a revolt that was not only against foreign domination, but against a deeply racist domination that tried to impose the same ‘Jim Crow’ system on Cuba, trying to transform a society with racism into a racist society according to the model of white supremacy. Anti-American, anti-Jim Crow sentiment and against the white supremacist domination project were already present on the island well before the revolution. As Gerald Horne wrote:

‘U.S. Negroes had begun looking to an independent Cuba as a haven, redolent with opportunity and relief from racism’.

And Horne further quotes the following testimony from an American of the time:

‘(…) colored Cubans look upon Cuba as their country in a much fuller sense than American negroes look upon the United States as their country.’ (4)

The Cuban Revolution as a Challenge to White Supremacy

The Cuban revolution liberated Cuba from the dictatorship of Batista and the domination of the United States that was exercised through this dictatorship. In the eyes of the Empire the revolution was a challenge to the white supremacist project of domination. And this challenge deepened when some of the first measures of the revolutionary government were to fight racism, correcting the injustices inherited from the slavery period of the island in a fundamental area: health.

Don Fitz, in his excellent book ‘Cuban Health Care’ wrote:

‘In pre-revolutionary Cuba, racism affected every aspect of medicine: there were fewer hospitals in rural areas and eastern Cuba where black people predominate; mutualist clinics had many fewer black enrollments and it was almost impossible for black people to enter medical school.’

‘It is hard to overstate the importance of the 1959 revolution, which ushered in the most significant changes in the lives of black Cubans since the abolition of slavery. Calls to serve in rural areas and eastern provinces were equivalent to fight structural racism.’

Faced with these attitudes of the revolutionary government in Cuba in comparison with the attitude prevailing in the United States in the same period, Don Fitz makes the following comment:

‘The outpouring of medical teams to poor urban communities, rural areas, and the eastern part of the island with coordination by the revolutionary government occurred at the same time that U. S. civil rights demonstrators were being beaten by police and attacked by dogs for demanding the right to sit at ‘whites-only’ lunch counters. This contrast was not lost on Cubans or many in the United States.’

The revolutionary government of Cuba also engaged in literacy campaigns for adults and children throughout the country, to correct another distortion inherited from the times of slavery, as illiteracy affected mainly and disproportionately the poor population of African descent.

With these campaigns for health and education, the Cuban revolution made a huge effort to recover the dignity of the poor population, especially the African descendants. Such measures were intolerable to white supremacists in the US, for as Gerald Horne asked:

‘Could Africans in the United States be exploited so shamelessly if Africans in Cuba were empowered?’ (5)

In light of this, it is not surprising that there has been intense U.S. hostility toward the Cuban revolution since its inception. And this hostility only increased when Cuba began to internationalize its struggle against white supremacy. This internationalization happened mainly in two ways, through medicine and, inevitably, through armed conflict.

The Internationalization of Cuban Medicine

Shortly after the revolution, facing enormous difficulties, Cuba was able to send medical aid to Chile, which had suffered an earthquake in 1960. Cuban medical brigades were also sent to Nicaragua in 1972 and to Honduras in 1974, when these countries were also hit by earthquakes. But it is mainly in Africa that Cuban medical aid was most committed. With the support of the then USSR, Cuba coordinated the first mass vaccination campaign against polio in Africa, in Congo, vaccinating over 61,000 children. Again, according to Don Fitz:

‘By the end of the 1980s Cuban aid had reached more than a dozen African countries. These included Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Vert, Ghana, Guinea, Libya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, São Tomé y Principe, Seychelles, Tanzania, Uganda, West Sahara, Zambia and Zimbabwe.’

In this way, Cuba sought to repair the distortions and injustices caused in Africa after centuries of colonial exploitation by white supremacists.

Cuba’s other fundamental contribution to health care is through its Latin American School of Health, ELAM, where poor students from all over the world, mainly from Latin America and Africa, especially blacks, can study medicine, thus further expanding Cuba’s contribution to the world. According to Don Fitz, by 2020 ELAM had trained about 30,000 doctors from more than 100 countries.

At War with White Supremacy – Operation Carlota

In Cuba we baptized the internationalist operation with the name of ‘Carlota’, in homage to an exceptional African woman who led two uprisings against colonial oppression on Cuban soil as a slave, and who – as they intended to do with Angola in 1975 – was dismembered by the executioners who managed to capture her in her second rebellious attempt.

Raúl Castro

Operation Carlota is perhaps the most decisive struggle against white supremacy and its violence in the history of the 20th century.

I quote here part of the introduction to a book about this conflict, the testimony of one of its most important participants, the Cuban Brigadier General Harry Villegas ‘Pombo’:

‘Between 1975 and 1991, some 425,000 Cuban volunteers, organized by Cuba’s revolutionary leadership, carried out missions in Angola. They went there in response to a request for help from the Angolan government. In 1975, the people of that African country had just won their freedom from Portugal after almost five centuries of brutal exploitation and colonial rule. Now it was under attack by the white supremacist regime in South Africa and its African and international allies. ‘

‘The purpose of the Cuban mission, which spanned 16 years, was to help Angola defend itself and decisively repel this Washington-backed military aggression. The mission ended only after a resounding defeat was inflicted on the armed forces of the apartheid regime in March 1988, at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola, at the same time that a formidable grouping of Cuban, Angolan and Namibian fighters moved south towards the bases of the South African regime in its colony, Namibia.’ (6)

Stalingrad was the decisive battle that initiated the fall of Nazi Germany in World War II, inflicting a spectacular defeat on its army and the Nazis’ white supremacist claims of exterminating the Slavs, ‘subhuman’ peoples – ‘Untermensch’ in Nazi terminology. Cuito Cuanavale was the Stalingrad of white supremacy in Africa. As Nelson Mandela declared on his visit to Cuba in 1991, soon after leaving prison in South Africa:

‘Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to independence, freedom and justice in Africa that has no parallel, because of the principles and selflessness that characterize it.  Since its early days, the Cuban Revolution has been a source of inspiration for all freedom-loving peoples…’

‘Where is the country that has asked for Cuba’s help and has been denied? How many countries threatened by imperialism or fighting for their national liberation have been able to count on Cuba’s support?’

‘We in Africa are accustomed to being victims of countries that want to tear our territory apart or subvert our sovereignty. In the history of Africa there is no other case of a people that has risen up in defense of one of us.’ (7)

Cuba’s victory over South African forces was instrumental in the fall of the apartheid regime in that country, as well as giving independence to Namibia, which was a South African colony.

In 1988 Fidel Castro gave the following statement about Cuba’s participation in the Angolan war:

‘It is well known that the United States practically lost sleep over the audacity of a small country like Cuba being capable of carrying out an internationalist mission of this nature (in Angola). The fact that a small Caribbean country has been able to support the brotherly African people is something that goes beyond their conceptions.’

‘We know how the African peoples think, and this is another problem that weighs on U.S. policy. The peoples of Africa have seen in the United States an ally of apartheid, responsible for the survival of apartheid.’

‘Cuba has no economic interest in Angola or in Africa. Cuba is in Angola because it is fulfilling its duty to help the peoples.’

‘As we have said on other occasions, to be an internationalist is to settle our own debt with humanity. Whoever is not capable of fighting for others will never be capable of fighting for himself. (8)

Neoliberalism, Neocolonialism and White Supremacy in Latin   America

Neoliberalism was conceived as a project of restoration of capitalism and resumption of power by white supremacy, a response to the alternative posed by the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the huge crisis of credibility of capitalism after the First World War.

In the recent neoliberal advance in Latin America, it was white supremacy that mobilized and instrumentalized the most retrograde racism still present in this continent to attack the progressive governments of countries like Brazil, Bolivia and Venezuela, among others. It is not by chance that in all the countries where the neoliberal offensive has triumphed, one of the first measures was the expulsion of the Cuban doctors, as was the case in Honduras when there was the coup d’état against President Zelaya, in Brazil after the coup against President Dilma Rousseff, or in Bolivia in the coup led against President Evo Morales. The short-lived government of Jeanine Áñez in Bolivia displayed all its racism by unleashing an unprecedented and murderous violence against the indigenous population, even attacking one of the most important symbols of the indigenous peoples of the Andes, the wiphala flag.

In Brazil, too, white supremacist support was instrumental in the rise to power of President Jair Bolsonaro. Racism, feminicide, homophobia, as well as attacks on indigenous peoples and the environment have increased exponentially under President Bolsonaro, as was to be expected given Bolsonaro’s explicit alignment with and subservience to white supremacists in Washington.

Neoliberalism in Latin America is above all a neocolonial project. Neoliberalism and neocolonialism are the two expressions of the same Washington-based white supremacist power project. The brutal neoliberal attack on labor laws, public education and health care, and the environment has the explicit aim of reducing sovereign nations to the status of colonies. Neoliberalism intends to establish neocolonial administrations in Latin American countries. Jeanine Áñez in Bolivia, Mauricio Macri in Argentina, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Guillermo Lasso in Ecuador, among others, are all examples of neocolonial administrations whose task is to oversee the transfer of natural resources and public goods from these countries to the metropolis, preventing by all possible means, including violence and terror, any opposition to this project. Exactly what white supremacy has always done wherever it has been able to impose itself.

Cuba remains under intense attack by the Empire precisely because no other country in the world has contributed so much and in so many ways to the struggle against white supremacy and what it represents. Facing the growing threat of white supremacy reorganizing itself under the neoliberal order and its neocolonial project, Cuba sets the example to follow.

Franklin Frederick

• (1) E.B. Du Bois – The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade
• (2) Ignacio Ramonet – Fidel Castro,  Biografia a Dos Voces
• (3) Andrea Wulf – The Invention of Nature
• (4) Gerald Horne – Race to Revolution
• (5 )Gerald Horne – Race to Revolution
• (6) Harry Villegas ‘Pombo’ – Cuba y Angola La Guerra por la libertad
• (7) Cuba y Angola La Guerra por la Libertad
• (8) Cuba y Angola La Guerra por la Libertad

by Alejandra García Elizalde

Photo caption.  A Cuba Special Search and Rescue Brigade prepares to leave for Venezuela.

Venezuela was just beginning to recover from the wounds left by the January 3 attack when a new tragedy struck the country once again. On that day, U.S. bombs rocked Caracas and La Guaira, leaving more than a hundred dead. Among them were 32 Cuban fighters who lost their lives defending Venezuelan soil. Months later, while the nation was still seeking solace in its grief, the earthquakes of June 24 opened a new chapter of loss and uncertainty.

This time, it wasn’t the explosions of an imperialist attack. It was nature. But the devastation felt all too familiar. Last Wednesday, Venezuela was rocked by a sequence of two major earthquakes, measuring 7.2 and 7.5 on the Richter scale, separated by just 39 seconds: the most powerful natural phenomenon recorded in the country in over a century.

More than thirty Cuban citizens remain missing or have been confirmed among the fatalities buried under the rubble. They are workers, young people, mothers, children—people who had made Venezuela their second home and who now form part of the shared grief between two peoples accustomed to resilience.

However, even as tons of concrete and dust were still being cleared away, Cuba made a decision that required no speeches: not to abandon Venezuela. On Sunday afternoon, the first contingent of Cuba’s Special Search and Rescue Brigade landed. Along with the 13 specialists came Tito, Eva, and Choco—three dogs trained to find life where silence seemed to have won the battle.

They arrived with their backpacks, their equipment, and the weariness of a country that is also going through one of the most difficult periods in its history. In Cuba, power outages, material shortages, and constant uncertainty in the face of new military threats from the United States continue. “Cuba is next,” President Trump has said bluntly, more than once. Even so, they crossed the sea to come and save lives.

They were welcomed by the Cuban ambassador, Jorge Luis Mayo, with a long embrace. That gesture seemed to encapsulate the relief, concern, and pride of Cubans living in Venezuela who feel this tragedy as if it had also occurred in their own neighborhoods.

But there was no time to rest. As soon as they arrived, the Cuban rescue teams joined the search efforts, while the Cuban Medical Brigade here remained where it had never left: in hospitals and health centers responding to an unprecedented emergency. There, alongside Venezuelan doctors and professionals from around the world, they are sustaining a healthcare system that today bears the weight of thousands of injured people.

Amid so much pain, small moments began to emerge that restored hope. In recent hours, videos of members of the Cuban brigade participating in rescues amid the rubble have gone viral. One of them was captured forever on film.

In that clip a young man was found alive in La Guaira nearly 120 hours after the twin earthquakes hit. As rescuers made their way through the shattered concrete, a paramedic ran alongside the stretcher.

“Make way! We’re here with you!” she shouted as they moved toward the ambulance.

It wasn’t just an order to clear the path. It was a certainty.

Just as he was about to get into the vehicle, while she gently adjusted the young man’s shirt to preserve his dignity, she spoke to him again in a soft voice that stood in stark contrast to the chaos surrounding her:

“You’re not alone. We’re not going to leave you alone.”

Amid sirens, dust, and people running, those words seemed directed at an entire country as well. In the wake of the tragedy, there are still people willing to stay; there are still hands sifting through the rubble, dogs sniffing out hope, doctors who refuse to abandon their posts, and a people willing to stand by another people in their darkest hour; not giving up hope that more will be found alive.

Solidarity makes no noise. It doesn’t always make the headlines. It doesn’t change the course of an earthquake. But it changes the way people navigate the darkness. And while Venezuela continues to hope for more miracles amid the ruins, Cuba once again steps up, just as it has so many times before.

by La Línea

Sunday, June 7, 2026, 9:00 pm: A cry of joy shook the headquarters of the Juntos por el Perú party in downtown Lima. The results of quick counts by pollsters Ipsos and Datum unanimously confirmed the victory of Roberto Sánchez by a narrow margin of 0.6%. For thousands of citizens, Keiko Fujimori’s electoral defeat—her fourth—signaled the end of a cycle of high political tension and repression, intensified since the coup against former president Pedro Castillo.

These general elections in Peru were not held under conditions of a healthy democracy. On the contrary, the electoral landscape had been rigged beforehand by the coup-making and mafia coalition that, since December 7, 2022, captured the branches of state power. Months before the election, candidates outside the political establishment were disqualified—among them former presidents Martín Vizcarra and Pedro Castillo.

Furthermore, taking advantage of the political system’s parliamentary drift, parties with dominance in Congress—such as the right-wing Fuerza Popular and Alianza Para el Progreso—moved to capture electoral institutions, always with the blessing of unelected puppet presidents such as Dina Boluarte, José Jerí, and José María Balcazar.

As part of this strategy to seize institutional control, the coup coalition consolidated its influence over the National Justice Board (JNJ), the body responsible for appointing members of the National Elections Jury (JNE). In a swift resolution, the JNJ named José Burneo as JNE president—a designation severely questioned due to his alleged ties to the right-wing parliamentary majority.

Institutional tensions escalated in April 2026, during the counting of the ballots in the first round, when the head of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), Piero Corvetto, resigned following repeated fraud accusations made by far-right candidate Rafael López Aliaga.

Despite this tainted landscape, the forces of the progressive movements managed to coalesce around the candidacy of Roberto Sánchez. With the entire establishment against him, Sánchez had real chances of winning. When the quick count figures were announced, the campaign team erupted in embraces, congratulations, and victory chants. In an atmosphere of relief, everyone went to sleep without knowing that the results would be reversed in the coming hours.

Saturating public opinion: media machinery and troll armies
Undoubtedly, a key factor in reducing the margin of Sánchez’s victory was the influencing of public opinion by mainstream, corporate media. During the electoral process and especially during the runoff, the informational bias against Roberto Sánchez was blatant.

The central message from television and press business groups was to present the candidate supported by Pedro Castillo as a communist threat who would destabilize the country, linking Sánchez’s party to the terrorism of armed groups from the 1990s—Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA —or to the radicalism of Antauro Humala. In contrast, Keiko Fujimori was presented as the candidate of order, who would follow the path of economic growth and take a firm hand against problems such as crime.

The informational bombardment was such that the European Union Electoral Observation Mission (EU-EOM) concluded that the majority of private national media showed a marked bias and unequal coverage—favorable toward Keiko Fujimori and systematically negative toward Roberto Sánchez. Its monitoring determined that this behavior affected the right to an informed vote. Specifically, it identified a coverage imbalance in which 70% of content broadcast on private media had a negative tone toward Roberto Sánchez, while coverage of Keiko Fujimori was 96% neutral or positive.

Another front for informational influence was social media—particularly the international troll army deployed by Fujimori’s campaign. According to the portal El Foco, during the runoff, a web of anonymous accounts operated from the United States, Ecuador, Mexico, and Venezuela, campaigning in favor of Keiko Fujimori and attacking Roberto Sánchez.

At least five international companies were involved in promoting Keiko Fujimori and sabotaging Roberto Sánchez, investing at least US $200,000 in social media and decisively helping the Fuerza Popular candidate win the presidential election.

The pollsters played their own role in the disinformation battle. On Sunday, June 7, Ipsos and Datum released their quick count results showing Roberto Sánchez as the winner. In the case of Ipsos, its quick count was conducted jointly with the NGO Transparency International and the National Democratic Institute, linked to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and has not been wrong since 2001.

Strangely, early on June 8, Ipsos director Alfredo Torres himself violated the contractual confidentiality norm with his funders and appeared on television claiming that his count had been mistaken and that, under new statistical results that better evaluated the overseas Peruvian vote, Keiko had a higher probability of winning.

Just two days after the election, the media and social media networks began to construct the narrative that Fujimori would win thanks to votes from abroad. And so the plan continued.

Fraud in the overseas Peruvian vote
The irregularities in the Peruvian election that constitute fraud relate primarily to the votes of Peruvians living abroad.

The overseas Peruvian vote is managed by the Foreign Ministry, not the electoral bodies, making the role of the foreign minister and consuls critical. In this regard, it is notable that on April 24, 2026, acting president José Balcazar—pressured by Fujimorismo and right-wing forces—appointed Carlos Pareja as foreign minister. This diplomat, known for his ideological affinity with Fuerza Popular and the Latin American far right, would become the key figure in the manipulation of the overseas vote.

Just one week before the runoff, at the new foreign minister’s request, ONPE issued a directive changing the rules for voting outside the country. Among the most controversial changes, the new regulation ordered that the voting tallies not be digitized and sent immediately to the electoral body in Lima but, instead, be physically transported and processed within Peru.

On election day, multiple complaints were reported at overseas voting centers: the merging of voting tables, electioneering in favor of Keiko Fujimori, consular partiality, and vote substitution. In countries with large electoral populations, such as Argentina, the foreign ministry scandalously delayed the transfer of tallies so that they arrived at or beyond the legal deadline for observation or challenge.

Voting centers in many countries turned out to be territory controlled by the Fujimori machine. If Roberto Sánchez won within Peru, it was also thanks to accredited party representatives who participated in defending the vote. In contrast, overseas, Juntos por el Perú lacked a comparable presence.

These coordinated moves between the branches of state and Fuerza Popular have managed to reverse the result and silence the initial victory cries of Juntos por el Perú. From that point on, the final result ceased to be a product of citizens’ votes and became a legal battle—and on this terrain, JP is fighting at a disadvantage.

On one hand, the electoral, judicial, and constitutional powers have been appointed or co-opted by Fujimori and her supporters. On the other, challenging results costs money, and JP lacks sufficient resources of its own.

To raise funds, Roberto Sánchez issued a call for national solidarity and managed to gather part of the sum needed to challenge voting tables in Lima and the United States where irregularities were reported. However, after collecting the US $210,000 required to challenge these tables, the JNE dismissed Juntos por el Perú’s request in record time.

To date, the electoral authority has announced that final results will be ready by mid-July, just days before the new president is to be sworn in—which by constitutional mandate must take place on July 28.

Juntos por el Perú has called for demonstrations to defend the vote and has made recognition of the result conditional on clarification of the complaints regarding the transparency of overseas votes. To date, neither the Foreign Ministry nor the electoral authority has provided a conclusive response that could dispel the doubts and ensure the legitimacy of Peru’s next president.

by Jenin M

Photo caption.  Press conference outside of Al-Ahli Hospital on October 18th, 2023.

“We have nothing to do with that.” An American Medical Association staff member said this to me with a look of disdain on her face. I was at the AMA’s annual conference in Chicago, urging the doctors in attendance to speak up for their imprisoned Palestinian colleague, pediatrician and neonatologist Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. My group posted up outside conference rooms and handed out informational flyers uplifting his story. Dr. Abu Safiya has been held in brutal Israeli detention for over 500 days without charge; you would think these details would trigger some sympathy or at least curiosity in his American counterparts, but the opposite happened. We were flocked by security guards, verbally harassed, and treated as if we were doing something much more nefarious than handing out harmless pieces of paper.

A male security guard was threatening to get physical with me when the AMA staffer walked past — but instead of intervening, she joined in with him, egging him on. I asked her, “Do you know why we’re here, though? You guys need to speak up for your colleagues in a genocide.” She shook her head snidely, showcasing an apathy that was almost laughable considering the irony of the situation: A staff member for the country’s leading medical institution — one that prides itself on its ethics — couldn’t even pretend to care about a Palestinian doctor being tortured by Israel.

It’s quite maddening when you think of how much support the AMA gave Ukraine when the Russian invasion began. They quickly put out statements of condemnation that the healthcare sector was being impacted, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid were given almost instantly. It has been three years since Gaza’s healthcare sector was completely reduced to rubble, and the AMA has yet to say a single word about it. A year and a half has passed since Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted from the hospital that Israel besieged.

Coincidentally, the same week the AMA was meeting in Chicago, new photos of Dr. Abu Safiya emerged, the first in many months. He’s shown handcuffed and alone in a sterile white room, apparently on a video call with the Israeli courts.

The new image of Dr. Abu Safiya breaks my heart. He’s lost so much weight, and there’s scarring and scabbing on his arms that weren’t there before, obvious signs of torture. Israeli prisons are vile and dangerous; they are places where military personnel can go rogue with no fear of punishment and enact their most atrocious desires. After all, these prisons are run by the likes of Ben Gvir, a racist, sadist, and war criminal. I just don’t understand how physicians in the AMA can consciously look at this photo of Dr. Abu Safiya and have nothing to say.

When Israelis are permitted to commit war crime after war crime, including holding medical professionals hostage, it sets a precedent. They’re not only killing and kidnapping healthcare workers in Gaza, but in Lebanon and Iran, too. Is it just because these are brown Muslim people that the AMA refuses to speak out? For an organization that claims a commitment to human rights and dignity, its racism is loud, and its participation in the white supremacist attitudes of Western imperialism is staggering.

This conference was a place for the AMA to discuss policy, especially around advocacy. CODEPINK staff, volunteers, and coalition partners were outside and inside the conference every single day. Our presence sparked awareness and conversation among the members, and we learned that there were debates inside on an issue the organization could no longer ignore: Palestinian healthcare workers.

Although they didn’t mention Dr. Abu Safiya by name, it’s clear that the AMA heard our collective message and that the friends of the movement inside the AMA were emboldened by our consistent energy. During the conference’s scheduled time to amend, remove, and propose new policies, a handful of resolutions were introduced about Palestine and the blatant attacks on its healthcare workers and infrastructure. There was one resolution in particular that was proof that our work was changing hearts and minds. It reads as follows:

RESOLVED, that our AMA supports efforts to protect, release, and provide restitution to detained noncombatant healthcare workers in all areas of conflict, including Gaza.

Ultimately, this specific resolution was not passed. But the mere inclusion and debate of the topic means that our persistence illuminated the issue of Palestine to every single person at the conference. And, because of that, the AMA delegates managed to pass 2 resolutions about the general “protection of healthcare workers and facilities in conflict areas.”

The AMA staff member and security guards knew what we were talking about; they knew the story of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. Whether they feel a moral obligation to do anything about it is beyond me, but we got confirmation that they knew exactly what we are organizing for. And even if the people in positions of power at the AMA don’t feel inclined to do anything about genocide, it is very clear that the general body does care.

The AMA was founded, in part, to lay out a strict code of ethics for medical professionals in the United States. These principles explicitly highlight the responsibility of physicians to advocate for human dignity, human rights, public health, and medical access for all. What has happened in Gaza over the past three years has been nothing short of an abomination of human dignity and rights. Israel and the U.S. have bombed Gaza’s public health system to the ground, and now the one million Palestinians in Gaza have been left without access to proper medical care for three years. If the AMA were run by individuals who actually practiced their own code, they would have been the first to advocate against medicide in Gaza. Unfortunately, the organization seems to favor quiet comfort over the actual embodiment of its values.

I am reminded of the photo that came out of Gaza just a few weeks after the genocide began. At a press conference outside an exhausted hospital, dead bodies of children in bags surrounded the podium, traumatized men stared at the camera, and some of the most courageous healthcare workers I have ever seen spoke out, pleading for the world to do something.

I see the photo above, and the photo of Dr. Abu Safiya — these are just a handful of Palestinian healthcare workers making tremendous sacrifices to protect human life and dignity. They physically put themselves in the line of fire; meanwhile, the AMA doctors can’t even put out a statement. It is well past time that they break their silence. If the AMA chooses to advocate for the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, they very well might save his life.

by Thomas Ultican

Are the Falling NAEP Scores a Crisis?

By Thomas Ultican 5/19/2026

Recently both the New York Times and the billionaire propaganda rag ‘The 74’ ran articles about the National Assessment of Education Progress’s (NAEP) declining scores. For more than a decade reading and math scores have been declining and the authors of both articles postulated that the cause is either social media or the demise of test and punish federal education policy or both. This view was originally put forward this May in a report from the Education Recovery Scorecard titled “From Education Recession to Education Recovery.” Neither proffered answer is likely a bullseye and the falling scores are less meaningful than they appear.

Calling it an “education recession” is a red hearing. Professor Paul Thomas called it “yet another oversell.” This verbiage is an attack on public education and indicates this is not a serious study.

NAEP is often called the national education report card, but it suffers from the common affliction of standardized testing. For years, anyone paying close attention has known that education testing operates in such a noisy arena that it cannot reliably identify good schools or teachers. The only student variable correlated with higher test results is family wealth. When statistical studies of standardized testing data are made, there is only one factor that has an r-value greater the 0.3 (weakly correlated) and that is family wealth which has an r-value of 0.9 (highly correlated).

The people and organizations the report cites for various kinds of help taint this work. They include Brown University economist Emily Oster who gained notoriety for her call to put the kids back in school at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020. She was followed by Josh Bleiberg of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education and Nate Mulkus from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The Carnegie Foundation of New York, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Joyce Foundation and the Gates Foundation were all thanked for funding.

These supporters and contributors have a history of promoting NCLB style testing oversight and punishment. In 2014, The Washington Post wrote that under CEO Arthur Brooks, AEI had emerged as “the dominant conservative think tank,” becoming more influential than the Heritage Foundation. Over at Media Bias – Fact Check, they rate AEI as having a right bias and medium credibility. Tim Knowles at Carnegie Corporation has been working to replace public schools with students at computer terminals earning proof of skills badges. Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Joyce Foundation and the Gates Foundation all supported NCLB and school privatization.

NCLB and The Test Score Decline

Whan NCLB first arrived, there were no consequences but by 2005 schools were being threatened with shutdown and having all of the staff fired. As the threats became real and schools were shuttered (all in poverty areas because poor students had poor test results) school administrators and teachers started desperately trying to save their jobs and schools. By 2010, curriculum had been narrowed significantly and there was test prep going on throughout the school year and within a few weeks of the testing window, all students started taking practice tests.

A dive into how test results were being evaluated, revealed students who had just barely failed on previous exams were the best target for score improvements. These students were often pulled out of regular classes to participate in special test preparation classes. It had nothing to do with helping them but was solely to save the school and jobs.

Schools held assemblies to pump the kids up to do well on the tests. The high school kids knew that the testing meant nothing to them and were much harder to motivate.

One major issue with NCLB testing was escalating passing scores became impossible to achieve. In fact, by 2014, the law required 100% of all students to be proficient which was a statistical impossibility. This ludicrous requirement brought the whole thing down when wealthy neighborhoods started having their schools threatened.

The test preparation did bring higher scores but undermined authentic education.

The Obama administration was force to give schools across the country waivers and on December 10, 2015, NCLB was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act. Removing the draconian NCLB rules meant schools could concentrate more on education than testing.

As a result, test preparation reduced significantly and authentic education was enhanced. I believe this is the major driver of today’s falling test scores and is clearly a good thing.

Social Media Not Likely the Villain

Smartphones are ubiquitous from middle school on. However, as a teacher, I did not experience a big problem with them in class. Because my classroom was also a science lab with many electrical outlets, sometimes I would have a dozen phones charging during class. From time-to-time students would look at their phones but a simple reminder from me was all it took for the phone to be put away. Of all class disruptions, I found smartphones a minor problem.

The National Bureau of Economic Research studied the of effect of smartphones on students. They concluded, “For academic achievement, average effects on test scores are consistently close to zero.”

The big problem I saw undermining student learning was the internet. I taught math and science. By 2013, almost every physics and chemistry problem was on the internet as were step by step solutions to all math problems. To learn math, physics or chemistry students need to struggle with solving problems. With the answers and solution steps on line, striving to learn was severely undermined. I was receiving the most beautifully written homework assignments I had ever seen followed by declining test scores.

My school district bought every student an I-pad and then replaced those with Google laptops. Most veteran teachers were having students store these devices under their desks or in backpacks during class. They were giant distractions that in total were a waste of money but teachers found a work around.

Propaganda Not Reporting

The New York Times article was sort of balanced but they reported the Education Recovery Scorecard report with no push-back. One of their first quotes came from AEI’s Matt Mulkus who stridently claimed, “I cannot be more emphatic: This is an enormous problem that’s not getting enough attention.” And the Times does not provide any counter to this statement or question the report’s use of “education recession” in its loaded title. However, compared to ‘The 74’ their article is very reasonable.

In its lead sentence, ‘The 74’s’ states, “The United States entered a “learning recession” in 2013 that it has struggled mightily — and thus far ineffectively — to escape, according to a report unveiled Wednesday by a group of respected social scientists.” Nothing in this statement is supported or fair, but that is the way billionaire funded propaganda functions.

Harvard economics professor, Thomas Kane, one of the creators of Scorecard, is paraphrased, “student achievement illustrates not merely the enormity of the loss, but also the impressive progress that preceded it.” If there is any real loss it is certainly not enormous.

Another quoted expert is Doug Lemov, former charter school teacher and administrator, who wrote the TFA training guide Teach Like a Champion. ‘The 74’ claims Lemov’s book is a “reference text for educators around the world.” Outside of the privatized charter industry, I am not aware of any schools using Lemov’s book.

Most trained professional educators find his teaching theories regressive. Jennifer Berkshire published a post by Layla Treuhaft-Ali under the title “Teach Like its 1885.” Layla wrote, “Placed in their proper racial context, the Teach Like A Champion techniques can read like a modern-day version of the Hampton Idea, where children of color are taught not to challenge authority under the supervision of a wealthy, white elite.”

So here it is. A phony study financed by billionaires is reported to the public by the New York Time and the billionaire propaganda rag ‘The 74’. The reality is decreasing test scores do not indicate much and certainly not an “education recession.” This is simply another billionaire financed attack on public education.

by Kim Scipes

Strong support for Palestine and Palestinian workers was obvious at the recently concluded Labor Notes conference in Chicago.  This bi-annual conference of labor activists took place on June 12-14 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare Hotel.  Over 4,700 activists from across the US but also from Canada and other countries, including Brazil, Italy, Portugal, and South Korea, registered to report, share, and discuss developments effecting the labor movements in these and other countries.

Labor Notes itself is a monthly news magazine for these activists, who form an informal network around the journal, and who meet bi-annually.  The slogan for the journal is “Putting the movement back into the Labor Movement.”  It was established in 1979 and has continued expanding to date.  The size of the conference was probably the largest to date, although cancellations because storm conditions hampered flying from the East Coast, cutting some registrants’ participation.

Much of the program was dedicated to organizing workplaces, garnering better contracts for the workers, and encouraging leadership development, including challenging reactionary leaders for elective office. Yet these efforts were not alone; cultural aspects, such as singing, writing, and acting were also emphasized.

However, there is a growing awareness among the activists of needing to link up with workers in other countries.  While Labor Notes has long brought a few foreign workers to previous conferences, building global labor solidarity has not been seen by this writer as a substantial issue for the journal.

And this writer is still not convinced this has changed.  In the middle of the war with Iran—a war initiated by the United States and Israel—there were no formal discussions of the war at the conference.  Nor were there any formal discussions of the AFL-CIO’s “labor imperialist” foreign policy, which a few of us have been challenging for the last 40 years.

However, what was unmistakable was the growth of a global understanding by this new crop of activists; for a significant number, their visions went far beyond US borders.  There were many informal discussions around these and other issues.

One of the key issues discussed was that of injured GM (General Motors) workers in Bogota, Colombia; they had been injured on the job, and GM had refused to compensate them.  Some of these workers have been living in tents outside of the US Embassy in Bogota, seeking respect and compensation, for the past 15 years!  Under continued pressure from a few of its members, the UAW (United Auto Workers) leadership has taken on this issue, and will be meeting with GM executives in early July in Bogota to finally address this issue.  Hopefully, this will lead to a serious settlement.  Auto worker activists from Brazil, Italy, Portugal, and South Korea each expressed solidarity with these injured Colombian workers, suggesting the expansion of this fight should GM demur.

But there was no international issue discussed more than Palestine.  There were two formal panels that this writer attended, with the larger having over 100 participants, and people were also sitting two-deep on the floor.  The other was slightly smaller.  It is clear that the Israeli/US treatment of Palestinians is not only deemed unacceptable, but that these activists are working hard in their unions to educate fellow workers and who are taking formal action to change US Labor’s support for Israel and its US benefactors.  Not surprisingly, much of this support was specifically for Palestinian workers.

Speakers reported what was happening in their unions.  We were told about educational campaigns that had developed formal support for Palestine; we were told about emerging campaigns; and we were told of campaigns blocked by reactionary leaders who opposed them.  And we were told of successful efforts to go around and by-pass some of these opposing efforts.  Some of these involved becoming much more familiar with their union’s constitutions and other enabling acts.  Others were more inventive:  a couple of cases reported establishing direct links with Palestinian unions.  But it was clear that there is an emerging cadre of both leaders and aspiring leaders who not only have Palestine on their map but are consciously fighting within the labor movement to support Palestinian workers.

One of the most inspiring reports was from Canada.  In May, activists in Labor for Palestine-Canada won an important vote at the recent Canadian Labour Congress—the largest Canadian labor center, comparable organizationally to the AFL-CIO—to break all ties with Israel’s Histadrut, their national labor center.  But the Histadrut is not just a regular labor center, uniting labor unions; it was a key organization in the Zionist effort to create the State of Israel; it is formally part of the Israeli state.  The first Prime Minister of the State of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, had been a leader of the Histadrut, but in that role, according to author Jeff Schuhrke’s recent book, No Neutrals There:  US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine (Haymarket Books, 2025), “He was also largely in control of the Haganah, the labor Zionist militia that fell under the Histadrut’s purview.”  Another Prime Minister, Golda Meir, also had been a Histadrut leader.  And, needless to say, the Histadrut treats its Jewish members—Zionists and non-Zionists—qualitatively better than its Palestinian members.

Along with these developments, there was a social gathering sponsored by Labor for Palestine-US, outside of the conference, that showed the depth of support among the activists.  Apparently not approved by Labor Notes staff—or at least not willing to trust them—activists decided to meet away from the hotel site of the conference; they found a place in a public park, approximately one-quarter of a mile away from the hotel, where they had their luncheon gathering.  While some people arrived early, others kept streaming in.  Elaborate displays had been put up, including Schuhrke’s book and pictures, on some tables, but they had to be removed so people could have places to sit and eat.  Others gathered in a number of groups under trees.  The large amount of food soon proved inadequate, so some of the later arrivals did not get full plates of food.  Approximately 200 activists attended this luncheon, where they discussed a myriad of issues around Palestine and discussed ways to advance their efforts.  It was a very spirited meeting and new connections among activists were made and expanded.  (For more information, go to https://laborforpalestine.net.)

The importance of this was that these were mostly rank-and-file activists, present in many unions and from across the country; this was not a rogue group.

However, the question not addressed was the role of the AFL-CIO top-level leadership in this process; it is not encouraging if we go back to 2004-05 developments.  There had been over 30 years of work by California-based activist and plumber, Fred Hirsch, who had exposed the AFL-CIO’s regional organization at that time, AIFLD (American Institute for Free Labor Development), and its role in training and then in helping to prepare reactionary workers to participate in the military coup in Chile during 1973.  Hirsch’s work was extremely well-respected, and along with others, had built up significant support for condemning the AFL-CIO’s “labor imperialist” foreign policy.

In 2004, over 400 elected representatives of California’s 2.5 million union members—one-sixth of the entire AFL-CIO at the time—voted unanimously to condemn the AFL-CIO’s foreign policy.  Accordingly, this resolution was transmitted to the AFL-CIO’s national office to be considered at the 2005 National Convention in Chicago.  It was then transmitted to the Resolutions Committee of the convention, headed by AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, a strong supporter of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who transformed it into a resolution praising the AFL-CIO’s foreign policy.  McEntee would not let any supporters of the California resolution speak in support of the way-laid resolution on the floor of the convention, and it was passed as modified:  labor democracy be damned!

At the same 2005 convention, USLAW (US Labor Against the War) got a resolution passed that demanded that the US pull its’ troops out of Iraq at the first opportunity.  This had been the first formal resolution passed by union members that challenged US foreign policy during a war that the US was engaged in.  Despite being passed by constitutional actions, AFL-CIO leaders simply ignored it.

So, 20 years down the road, and Palestine is a major issue facing the US labor movement.  Union members are organizing to oppose the genocide.  Will they be able to break the hold of the top-level reactionary “leadership”?  Only time will tell.  But the AFL-CIO is much weaker than it was 20 years ago, and the range and intensity of support for Palestinian workers is much broader than “just” California back then; continued organizing, both in efforts and in depth of educating members, give hope this time around.  And, if successful, the work done at the 2026 Labor Notes conference will be a significant milestone.

by Kim Scipes

Adam Johnson’s new book, How to Sell a Genocide, is going to piss off a lot of liberals, and especially Democrats.  In a full-blown attack on the liberal end of the mass media for contributing to the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the destruction of Gaza—foregoing an attack on low-hanging fruit from the right wing, like Fox “News,”—he establishes unequivocally the obscene biases of liberal press outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC (now, MSNOW) toward Israel.  Not only does he examine organizational practices, but he examines the practices of individual journalists, naming names and providing evidence to back his claims.

Johnson is a careful researcher, fastidiously documenting his claims.  He studied one year of mainstream media coverage, from October 2023 to October 2024, detailing both print and television coverage, and interviewing people inside the newsroom to provide additional explanation and understanding.  He writes about his methodology:  “By pulling from over 12,000 articles and 5,000 TV clips in nine major outlets, and showing all the work in open source format, by interviewing sources who were in the room, and by using comparative analysis of other contemporary conflicts, I will attempt to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that the genocide in Gaza was enabled, facilitated, and cheered by establishment US media providing cover for months of a nihilistic campaign of starvation, bombing, arbitrary detention, shooting and sexual violence.”  “My goal,” he writes, “with this book was to write a sober, approachable, data-driven account of how the media provided cover for Israel’s destruction of Gaza….”

He is relentless in his analysis:  “The primary role of the Center-Left media, I will argue, was not to accurately convey reality but, for lack of a better description, to make their readers and viewers feel better….  To make them feel better about their country, their president, their party, their institutions, and themselves.  It was to rationalize, negotiate, obscure, and, ultimately, deny the most inconvenient of truths:  a genocide carried out, defended, and authorized by elite liberals and liberal institutions.”

He spends most of his book laying out his case.

Johnson uses nine chapters to convey his argument.  He begins by reporting on the quickly refuted claim, right after October 7^th, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, of Hamas supposedly beheading 40 Israeli babies.  He points out that the liberal media jumped on this:

“In the days just prior and after, the claim was repeated, without evidence or skepticism, by CNN’s Nic Robertson, CNN’s Abby Phillip, Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz, New York Post’s Olivia Land, CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell, New Lines’ Lisa Goldman, The Hill’s Laura Kelly and Sharon Udasin, CBS News’ Holly Williams and Erin Lyall, an un-bylined piece at Reuters, Sky News’ Yashee Sharma, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, NBC News’ Peter Alexander, Summer Concepcion, and Meg Lebowitz.  And live on-air, CNN’s Sara Sider and Hadas Gold somberly repeated the claim on October 11, without an ounce of skepticism….”  [Note:  Johnson, as he does throughout his book, specifically references each of these claims by providing the story from which they were taken.]

That there was not even skepticism is amazing in that it was confirmed “by the [Israeli ] Prime Ministers’ office”: might not one almost automatically assume that this office might—somehow—have an interest in promoting a story such as this, intended not just to attack Hamas, but that putting it forth might play into efforts to dehumanize Hamas and all Palestinians as being sub-human and therefore, worthy of extermination?

Additionally, the story had already been questioned by the Electronic Intifada, Business Insider, the Intercept, Mondoweiss, and Aljazeera.

It turns out “The whole story was a whole cloth fabrication.  Traced to Israeli military personnel and ZAKA, a Far Right ‘disaster response’ organization with a long history of fabulism, the gruesome tale didn’t need to be true—it just needed to serve the function of ISIS-ifying Hams in the minds of the American public.”

And it worked:  “The shocking viral story culminated with President Joe Biden telling reporters that not only had Hamas decapitated children, but he had seen photos of the horrors himself.”

This story, largely equating Hamas with ISIS—they were, in fact, ideological enemies and had fought one another—“was a talking point repeated with little pushback in American media.  A review of the first month of coverage in both print and online media post-October 7 shows that Hamas was equated with ISIS in USA Today, CNN.com, Politico, the New York Times, Axios, Associated Press, and the Washington Post 149 times, largely reprinting uncritical quotes from Israeli and US officials.  The ISIS-ification of Hamas was much worse in cable news, with on-air CNN voices equating Hamas with ISIS 350 times and MSNBC commentators doing so 369 times in the first month of the war.  CNN mentioned ‘beheadings,’ including nonexistent beheadings of babies and infants, 77 times, and MSNBC did so 82 times.”

There is much more in this chapter but I’m trying to present Johnson’s work and convey the level of detail in which he approached this entire study.  This book is not a hit piece:  it is an excellent, very carefully done piece of work.  And it continues throughout the book.

The issue of mass rape is another focus where Johnson establishes extensive differences in coverage.  “Even if one was to believe the most maximalist claims that Hamas used rape as a weapon if war on October 7, there remains a staggering double standard in both coverage and selective outrage.  There are numerous credible reports that the Israeli military employs widespread sexual abuse on Palestinian captives.  In fact, the body of evidence is far greater in that’s it’s been confirmed by Israeli courts and on video.  Yet there were only two total mentions of Israel committing acts of rape against Palestinians on CNN and MSNBC….  This is in stark contrast with the 502 on-air mentions of Palestinians engaging in mass rapes against Israelis.  Print media outlets the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, and Axios mentioned Israelis sexually abusing Palestinians a total of nine times (four in the New York Times, five in the Washington Post, zero in Axios and Politico).  By contrast, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico and Axios made mention of Palestinian rapes of Israelis 128 times (70 in the New York Times, 22 in the Washington Post, 24 in Politico, and six in Axios.)

Why is Johnson “picking” on the Democrats and their generally-supported media?  “I am concerned with media primarily consumed by Democrats that has influence on both Democratic voters and the broader Democratic Party ideological universe.”  The reason?  “… there was a Democratic president in office when the genocide began in earnest, and support from Democrats in Congress and in the think-tank and media world dispositive in continuing said genocide during the given time of my study.”

He comments:  “Obviously President Trump has since overseen and co-authored the genocide in Palestine and his responsibility of the broader, openly pro-genocide Republican Party—should not be ignored or downplayed.  But this responsibility is beyond the scope of this book, which focuses on the nominal left-wing party backing the arming and funding of the destruction of Gaza.”

Johnson continues his compilation of data throughout the book in chapters titled “Who is Allowed to be Human” (Ch. 2), “How US Media Helped the Biden Administration Distance Itself from the Horrors of Gaza” (Ch. 3), “Covering War Crimes like Earthquakes” (Ch. 4), “How the New York Times Helped Israel Militarize Civilians, Humanitarian Workers in Gaza” (Ch. 5), “Sunday Morning News Shows, Editorial Boards, Morning Joe, and How ‘Agenda Setting’ News Limited the Debate to ‘How Many Palestinians Should Die” (Ch. 6), “Selective Empathy and Liberalism’s Crisis of Legitimacy” (Ch. 7),  “‘Antisemitism’ Show Trials and the Smearing of Campus Protests” (Ch. 8), and “The Atlantic ‘Day After’ Wish-casting, and Soft Pedaling Mass Killings for the Tote Bag Set” (Ch. 9).

He concludes with thoughts and feelings about writing (and publishing) a book on genocide while it is still happening:  simply, it’s weird.  He writes, “But I felt it was an important contribution and urge others to expand on this and previous media criticisms from others, to detect, flag, and respond to the regime of dehumanization that is very much still ongoing.  Operations of mass killing on this scale don’t happen without PR cover; they don’t happen without a propagandized, misled, and lied to public [emphasis added].  And because our survey period took place while a Democratic White House was arming, funding, and providing diplomatic cover for the genocide in Gaza, news outlets popular with Democrats were essential to this dual process of dehumanization and feigned humanitarianism, of elimination and alleged ceasefire negotiations of weapons shipments and crocodile tears.  Their complicity in the genocide was rarely as openly racist as Fox News or that of the Free Press, but they were simultaneously more impactful and more subtle and thus more decisive in priming the public for a campaign of mass killing and population removal.”

This is—and you have to read the book to get the full impact—a damning indictment of the US liberal news media which has provided ideological justification to the Israeli/US war on Gaza.  Johnson simply leaves no stone unturned; and he doesn’t pull any punches.  Now, obviously, it’s not an indictment of all who work in the media, and I hope those journalists not implicated will approach those named villains, both individuals and corporate executives, and ask them for an in-depth response to Johnson’s charges; we cannot trust them to examine themselves, and their answers must be subjected to critical examination and follow-up questions.  It cannot be left alone.

The rot Adam Johnson exposes is extensive, similar to the rot exposed in the media towards the end of the US war on Vietnam.

And it’s not over:  I cannot count how many times since Trump and Netanyahu unilaterally bombed Iran beginning on February 28, 2026 that I’ve screamed at my computer how this attack was historically comparable to the Nazis invading Poland in September 1939 or the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor in December 1941—and why wasn’t the media identifying Trump and Netanyahu as war criminals, deserving of being taken to The Hague to the International Criminal Court and, when found guilty, sentenced to death?

Or why the overwhelming large number of mainstream media stories take us back to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, where the Mullahs and political students overthrew the Shah, claiming that is the origin of all the animosity between Iran and the US, but somehow, they never discussed the President Eisenhower-approved 1953 coup with the US CIA and British MI6 overthrew the democratically-elected Mohammed Mossadegh and placed the brutal and corrupt Shah into power?

So, how to evaluate this book?  I think to evaluate it we have to examine it in light of Johnson’s own desires.  “My goal,” he writes, “with this book was to write a sober, approachable, data-driven account of how the media provided cover for Israel’s destruction of Gaza….” I think he has definitely achieved his goal, and I congratulate him for that.  I hope this review and others will be widely shared with the US public and especially among those activists trying to end the Israeli genocide:  recognizing how the ideological universe was prepared is important, and certainly important to aid in stopping this genocide and preventing others in the future.

by Craig Collins

For most of the modern era, capitalism justified itself through growth. Industrial societies converted vast amounts of fossil energy into production, wealth, and rising living standards. Roads, bridges, power grids, schools, and public institutions expanded alongside the economy. Inequality and exploitation remained deeply embedded in the system, but they were partly obscured by a broader story of material progress.

That story is beginning to unravel.

Across much of the developed world, economic life increasingly feels less like construction than demolition. Infrastructure deteriorates. Public institutions struggle to perform basic functions. Ecosystems degrade. Democratic norms weaken. Yet wealth continues to concentrate at remarkable speed. Political systems seem unable to solve mounting crises while proving highly adept at monetizing them. Climate disasters create investment opportunities. Housing shortages become profitable asset classes. Social isolation fuels lucrative digital platforms. War drives markets. Collapse itself becomes a business model. If growth fails, capitalism will extort wealth for as long as possible by devising new ways to profit from disaster, conflict, chaos, scarcity, and collapse.

A useful way to understand this shift is through the concept of catabolic capitalism. In biology, catabolism refers to the process by which an organism breaks down its own tissues to survive when external resources become scarce.[1] Applied to political economy, the concept describes a late stage of industrial capitalism in which profits increasingly come not from expanding production, but from consuming the social, institutional, ecological, and infrastructural foundations built during an earlier era of abundance.

The idea draws on historian John Michael Greer’s concept of catabolic collapse. Greer argued that when past civilizations faced declining energy reserves and resource constraints, they often maintained short-term stability by consuming assets accumulated during more prosperous periods. Industrial capitalism intensifies this dynamic because it is driven by a relentless demand for profit. During the long age of cheap energy and expanding resources, that imperative encouraged innovation, investment, and growth. As growth slows and constraints multiply, however, profits are increasingly extracted from deterioration rather than creation.

For much of the past two centuries, profits flowed from building things: factories, transportation networks, electric grids, cities, suburbs, and global communications infrastructure. Capital transformed abundant fossil energy into ever-greater economic velocity and complexity. Today, that process is becoming difficult to sustain. The easiest resources have already been exploited. Infrastructure is aging. Ecological damage is accumulating. Debt is growing faster than productive capacity. Political legitimacy is eroding. Competition over energy, resources, and strategic supply chains is intensifying.

Yet capitalism’s prime directive has not changed. The pursuit of profit adapts to new conditions. Faced with stagnation and decline, it increasingly finds ways to profit from deterioration itself.

From Production to Predation

One of the clearest signs of this catabolic transition is the growing dominance of financial extraction over productive investment.

Rather than building new productive capacity, large pools of capital increasingly generate returns by stripping value from existing institutions. Private equity firms, for example, often acquire functioning companies, load them with debt, extract fees and assets, cut labor costs, and leave weakened organizations behind. Hospitals, nursing homes, local newspapers, retail chains, and housing markets have all been subjected to this logic.

Infrastructure tells a similar story. Preventive maintenance rarely attracts political attention, especially in an era of fiscal strain and anti-tax politics. As a result, systems are allowed to deteriorate until failure becomes unavoidable. Emergency repairs and reconstruction then generate large profits for contractors, insurers, and investors. In many cases, responding to disasters becomes more lucrative than preventing them.

The same pattern appears in everyday life. For decades, stagnant wages have been offset by rising levels of debt. Student loans, medical debt, credit cards, payday lending, and subscription-based financing allow consumption to continue by borrowing against the future.[2] Instead of distributing the gains of rising prosperity, the system increasingly extracts value from chronic insolvency.[3]

Housing offers one of the clearest examples. During the postwar boom, housing policy — though blatantly discriminatory — was largely oriented toward expanding homeownership and promoting social stability. Today, housing increasingly functions as a financial asset. Investment firms purchase homes at scale, rents rise faster than incomes, and homelessness grows alongside soaring property values. Shelter becomes less a social necessity than a vehicle for extracting income from a shrinking middle class.

These developments are often dismissed as corruption, greed, or policy failure. Those factors matter, but they do not fully explain what is happening. The problem is deeper — systemic. As opportunities for broad-based material expansion diminish, profit increasingly depends on extracting value from structures that already exist.

The Politics of Breakdown

Political systems respond to catabolic conditions as well.

When governments can no longer reliably deliver rising living standards and expanding public services, they shift from promoting development to managing crisis. Public institutions weaken while security institutions grow. Temporary emergencies become permanent features of political life.

The expansion of the national security apparatus after 9/11 offered an early glimpse of this trend. Surveillance systems, predictive policing technologies, private intelligence contractors, militarized borders, and sprawling security bureaucracies flourished in an atmosphere of perpetual threat. Instability and fear became increasingly profitable.

The rise of authoritarian and illiberal movements across much of the world reflects similar pressures. As inequality widens, ecological stresses deepen, and economic insecurity spreads, political leaders gradually abandon promises of collective improvement. Instead, they offer narratives centered on repression, exclusion, punishment, and restoration through force.

The “wrecking ball” politics associated with the second Trump administration and the broader Project 2025 agenda fit comfortably within this pattern.

The MAGA agenda accelerates capitalism’s catabolic dynamic. Notorious MAGA ideologue Steve Bannon openly calls for the deconstruction of the administrative state and the delegitimization of institutions and experts. In 2016, Bannon declared that his goal was to “destroy the state and bring everything crashing down.”[4] To achieve this, he pursues a strategy of “flooding the zone” with conflicting information and inflammatory narratives. His goal is political catabolism: overwhelm the public information ecosystem, deepen societal conflict and fragmentation, and undermine the political status quo. Under Trump, regulatory agencies are gutted or politicized. Public institutions are eviscerated. Environmental protections are dismantled. Civil service systems are attacked. Scientific and administrative expertise is subordinated to personal loyalty and ideological alignment.

This is not simply a matter of shrinking government. Catabolic politics does not necessarily reduce state power. Instead, it redirects state capacity away from broadly shared public functions and toward policing, border enforcement, patronage networks, resource extraction, and the protection of concentrated wealth.

Under catabolic conditions, governance itself becomes increasingly extractive. Public institutions cease to function primarily as tools for building collective capacity and instead become mechanisms for managing instability while preserving existing hierarchies amid decline. This helps explain one of the defining paradoxes of contemporary politics: many governments appear simultaneously weak and authoritarian — incapable of addressing major structural problems, yet increasingly aggressive in surveillance, policing, and symbolic displays of force.

AI — Automating Decline

Artificial intelligence is often presented as the next great engine of prosperity. Yet under catabolic conditions, AI may function more as a system for managing and profiting from contraction than as a tool for social advancement.

In an expanding capitalist economy, automation displaces labor and lowers wages, but it can also satisfy rising demand and create new sectors of employment. In a stagnant or declining economy, however, intelligent machines concentrate wealth and displace labor far faster than new viable opportunities emerge.

AI serves four core catabolic functions.

First, it intensifies extraction. AI’s hunger for energy and water is enormous. A standard AI search query or text generation task can require far more electricity than a traditional Google search, forcing utility companies to scramble to revive retired fossil fuel plants and nuclear reactors to meet rising demand. Large data centers can consume as much water and electricity in a day as a medium-sized city.[5]

In addition, human knowledge, creativity, and attention have become mined resources. The foundation of AI is collective human intelligence: books, songs, artwork, journalism, scientific research, films, and ideas — the vast accumulated knowledge of human cultures. As Sam Altman admits, AI models are trained on the “collective experience, knowledge and learnings of humanity.”[6]

Who should this resource belong to? Big tech oligarchs, venture capitalists, and Wall Street financiers extract it without permission, acknowledgment, or compensation. Will they use it primarily for the benefit of humanity or to fabricate the next great wealth extraction machine? Most AI algorithms are designed to optimize advertising, logistics, pricing, surveillance, and labor discipline. Social media platforms profit by amplifying outrage, fear, and polarization because emotional destabilization increases engagement. This is cultural catabolism.

Second, AI reduces the cost of enforcing inequality. Automated welfare systems, predictive policing, algorithmic hiring filters, digital reputation scoring, and workplace surveillance allow institutions to manage increasingly precarious populations with fewer human administrators and less democratic accountability.[7]

Third, AI supports the expansion of the security state. Facial recognition, mass data analysis, autonomous drones, biometric tracking, and predictive analytics create unprecedented capacities for monitoring and controlling populations during periods of instability.[8]

Finally, when material prosperity stagnates, AI promotes artificial forms of virtual consumption. Endless digital entertainment, AI-generated content, surrogate companionship, and immersive online environments increasingly substitute for declining access to nature, human relationships, stable housing, community, healthcare, or economic security.

Instead of heralding a new golden age for industrial civilization, AI may represent a technologically sophisticated method for overseeing and profiting from the conflicts, crises, and calamities of decline.

Climate Change and the Disaster Business

Nowhere are the dynamics of catabolic capitalism more visible than in the ecological crisis.

Industrial civilization was built on an extraordinary inheritance of cheap, abundant fossil fuels. That energy surplus made it possible to construct vast networks of infrastructure, transportation, manufacturing, and global trade. But maintaining that complexity becomes increasingly expensive as high-quality resources are depleted, extraction costs rise, and environmental damage accumulates.

Rather than fundamentally changing course, the system is increasingly finding ways to profit from breakdown itself.

Climate disasters create booming markets for reconstruction. Insurance speculation expands. Private firefighting services emerge to protect affluent communities. Water scarcity becomes a tradable asset. Entire industries develop around adapting to environmental calamity rather than preventing it.

At the same time, increasingly destructive forms of resource exploitation — fracking, tar sands extraction, deep-water drilling, seabed mining, and mountaintop removal — are deployed to maintain industrial output despite declining energy returns and escalating ecological damage.

The result is a self-reinforcing cycle. Ecological crises create profitable opportunities. Those opportunities encourage further extraction. Further extraction deepens the underlying crises. Under catabolic capitalism, environmental destruction is no longer merely a byproduct of economic growth. It becomes woven directly into the logic of profit itself.

Militarization and Global Resource Conflict

As ecological pressures mount and resource constraints tighten, geopolitical competition increasingly centers on access to strategic assets: energy supplies, water systems, critical minerals, migration routes, supply chains, semiconductor production, and key transportation corridors.

The outlines of this struggle are already visible in growing tensions over food security, freshwater access, climate-driven migration, Arctic shipping routes and energy reserves, lithium and cobalt deposits, and the semiconductor chokepoints that underpin the global economy.[9]

Military strategy is evolving accordingly. Advanced states increasingly rely on drones, cyberwarfare, autonomous systems, satellite surveillance, and AI-assisted targeting rather than large-scale troop mobilizations. These technologies allow governments to project power with fewer political costs and less dependence on broad public support.

At the same time, the line between military and domestic security functions is increasingly blurred. Urban surveillance networks, predictive policing systems, biometric tracking, militarized borders, and sophisticated crowd-control technologies bring techniques once associated with warfare into everyday governance.

Under catabolic conditions, security increasingly means protecting unequal access to scarce resources. The result can resemble a form of technological neo-feudalism: heavily fortified zones of wealth and infrastructure surrounded by expanding regions of precarity, instability, and environmental decline.

The Central Contradiction

One of the defining features of catabolic capitalism is the widening gap between financial indicators and material reality.

Stock markets can climb while production flatlines and infrastructure decays. Corporate profits can soar while life expectancy stalls. Artificial intelligence can advance at breathtaking speed while loneliness, anxiety, and social fragmentation deepen. Technological sophistication can coexist with declining public trust, ecological instability, and growing authoritarianism.

This disconnect challenges one of the core assumptions of the modern era: that technological development naturally generates social progress. For much of industrial history, the two often moved together. Under catabolic conditions, however, technological innovation increasingly serves extraction, surveillance, and control rather than shared prosperity.

The result is a society that can appear both hypermodern and surprisingly fragile.

Supercomputers coexist with crumbling bridges. Advanced medicine coexists with declining public health. Constant digital connectivity coexists with loneliness and social isolation. Billionaires pursue private space programs while aging electrical grids fail and housing becomes unaffordable for millions.

The system continues to generate immense wealth. Increasingly, however, it does so by consuming the social and material foundations that made that wealth possible in the first place.

Beyond the Illusion of Endless Growth

Viewed through this lens, rising authoritarianism, political dysfunction, corruption, and extreme polarization are not isolated problems. They are symptoms of a deeper impasse. Industrial civilization is colliding with the limits of a profit-driven economy designed for perpetual growth and sustained for generations by abundant, inexpensive fossil energy.

Humanity now faces a convergence of crises: climate disruption, biodiversity collapse, resource depletion, extreme inequality, food and water insecurity, mass displacement, and the growing risk of global pandemics. Each problem amplifies the others. Together, they place increasing strain on the systems that support modern life. The danger is that a system increasingly committed to profiting from extraction, conflict, chaos, and crisis management begins promoting instability itself.

Unfortunately, our collective capacity to confront these mounting crises is crippled by a fragmented political system of antagonistic nations ruled by corrupt elites who care more about power and wealth than people and the planet. As pressures intensify, the temptation to channel public frustration into nationalism, scapegoating, and geopolitical conflict intensifies.

How people respond to these pressures will shape humanity’s future. The challenges are monumental. They require us to question our identities, our values, and our loyalties like no other experience in our history. Who are we? Are we, first and foremost, human beings struggling to raise our families, strengthen our communities, and coexist with the other inhabitants of Earth? Or do our primary loyalties belong to our nation, our culture, our race, our ideology, or our religion? Can we put the survival of our species and our planet first, or will we allow ourselves to become hopelessly divided along national, cultural, racial, religious, or party lines?

The eventual outcome of this great implosion is still up for grabs. The future could be defined by deeper fragmentation, rising authoritarianism, and escalating conflict. But other possibilities remain open if we can overcome denial and despair; break our addiction to hydrocarbons; and pull together to loosen the grip of corporate power over our lives. Will we foster genuine democracy, harness renewable energy, reweave our communities, relearn forgotten skills, and heal the wounds we’ve inflicted on the Earth? Or will fear and prejudice drive us into hostile camps, fighting over the dwindling resources of a degraded planet? The stakes could not be higher.

Footnotes

1) Anabolism vs. Catabolism: In biology, anabolism refers to building tissues, while catabolism is the breaking down of tissues to release energy.

2) Subscription-based consumption shifts society from ownership toward ongoing rent-like dependency. Instead of paying once for durable goods, consumers maintain access through continuous payments across transportation, entertainment, software, housing services, food delivery, and physical products. Access replaces ownership, making consumers less able to accumulate assets while tying everyday life to recurring financial obligations. These models can sustain consumption despite stagnant wages, inequality, and high asset prices, but they also increase household fragility by raising fixed monthly costs, reducing savings, and deepening vulnerability to layoffs or interest-rate shocks.

3) In 2023, world debt (all outstanding loans waiting to be repaid plus interest) was a record $300 trillion. This is an astounding 349 percent over world GDP, and rising rapidly. This translates to $37,500 of average debt for each person in the world versus per capita GDP of just $12,000. Chan, Terry & Alexandra Dimitrijevic. “Global Debt Leverage: Is A Great Reset Coming?” S&P Global (Jan. 13, 2023.

4) Ronald Radosh, “Steve Bannon, Trump’s Top Guy, Told Me He Was ‘a Leninist’,” The Daily Beast, Aug. 22, 2016, available at 

5) “AI Data Centers — Statistics & Facts,

6) Interview with Tucker Carlson: “Sam Altman on God, Elon Musk and the Mysterious Death of His Former Employee,”

7) A digital reputation score is a numerical metric that quantifies the public perception, credibility, and trustworthiness of an individual, brand, or organization online.

8) Predictive analytics transforms population monitoring and control by shifting governance from a reactive system to an anticipatory one. By combining massive, real-time datasets with machine learning, authorities can forecast human behavior, preempt crises, and influence societal outcomes before they occur. These capacities raise major societal and ethical concerns, particularly regarding algorithmic bias, the erosion of privacy, and the potential for digital determinism, where historical data unfairly dictates an individual’s future opportunities and freedoms.

9) A semiconductor chokepoint is a highly concentrated node in the global chip supply chain where a single company, country (like Taiwan), or specific technology monopolizes a critical step of production. Because microchip manufacturing is one of the most complex engineering feats in human history, certain steps cannot be bypassed or replicated easily. This gives the entities controlling them outsized geopolitical and economic leverage.

Featured Image: Chad Davis, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

by Pradeep Krishnatray

There is a fundamental difference between the way United Nations talks about AI data centres and what the Indian government hopes to achieve through them.

This difference can best be captured between what the Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently said at London Climate Action Week about such data centres, and the vision that the Indian government’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) laid out in a draft policy document in 2020.

The Secretary General asked the tech firms (located mostly in US and China) to ‘come clean about the hidden environmental footprint’ of such centres. He specifically spelt out a framework for the tech firms called ‘AI Environmental Transparency Initiative’, and asked them to publicly measure and disclose their full environment impact, especially those related to carbon emissions, land and water usage.

In addition, he even called upon these firms to go completely Green by 2030. Guterres’ focus was obviously on using renewable energy and reducing the impact on environment.

As is clear, United Nations focus is not on the data centre per se, but the environmental risk and damage that they will cause.

That danger is real.

The 2026 report of the Canada-based United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UN-IWEN), the academic arm of UN, spells it more vividly. Titled “Environmental Cost of AI’s Energy Use: Carbon, Water, and Land Footprints”, the report estimates that in 2030 AI’s water use will match the needs of 1.3 billion people, while its power use will be triple that of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria combined — countries with a total population of 650 million. If the data centres all over the world were treated as a nation, they would be the 11th largest one to consume electricity in 2025.

The same report, in fact, pointed out to the relationship between, what it calls, ‘carbon blindspot’ and water consumption. It said that should AI data centres transition to using Green Energy, their carbon emissions may come down by as much as 70 percent, but in so doing, their local water consumption will increase 30-fold.

What is perhaps not so well known is the requirement of critical minerals that AI demands. If the present trend continues, the demand for these minerals will grow up to four times of what we consume today. For instance, the demand for cobalt and lithium, both critical minerals, will shoot up by 500 percent by the year 2050.

It is the less developed countries that have surfeit of these minerals (countries such as Chile and Democratic Republic of Congo) and their extraction will lead to pollution, water contamination, exploitative practices, and health hazards. However, users of these critical minerals will be located in the more advanced world and would be immune to such devastations. Some experts have called this form of exploitation as a new form of imperialism.

India’s view of AI data centres

The Indian government’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has a very different view of AI data centres than UN’s. For it, the AI data centres sit at the centre of economic sovereignty and self-reliance. Located in the larger Atmanribhar Bharat policy framework, it views the data centres as protecting the ‘digital sovereignty of the country.’

While the UN highlights the unequal global concentration of hardware and advanced computing power among a few tech firms and nations, especially US and China, MeitY wishes to manufacture its varied infrastructure locally to ensure that the data remains within India’s border.

Moreover, the United Nations is concerned about resource depletion with little or no benefit trickling down to vast numbers of the local population. MeitY, on the other hand, does not refer to any of this. Instead, it factors high energy demand into national power planning, transitioning to renewable energy (50% non-fossil capacity) and nuclear energy. It plans to provide heavily subsidised IndiaAI Compute Portal access to 10,000 and more high-powered Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for startups and researchers.

In simple terms, the Indian government has worked out a detailed four-pronged strategy where it will act as a central aggregator and subsidiser thereby helping startups and researchers from not buying expensive hardware.

Finally, MeitY actively promotes data centre capacity through subsidies and financial incentives (as enunciated in the revised policy of 2024 and 2025). The UN, on the other hand, does not refer to subsidy or accessibility but focus on regulation of AI data centres.

Yes, there is a world of difference between the UN clarion call to rein in the runaway growth of data centres and Indian government’s rush toward joining a race it doesn’t wish to lose.

by Utkarsh Mishra

The energy transition runs on a short list of minerals that most people will never see: lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and a cluster of rare earth elements with names like neodymium and dysprosium. Electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels and grid batteries cannot be built without them. Global demand for lithium is projected to rise 353 per cent between 2024 and 2040, according to UNCTAD, while the International Energy Agency projects lithium demand growing fivefold by 2040 under current policy trajectories, with cobalt and rare earth demand rising 50 to 60 per cent over the same period.

This is the mineral economy of decarbonisation, and like the oil economy it is replacing, it has a geography of extraction and a geography of consumption that rarely overlap. The communities paying the environmental and human costs of mining these minerals are, almost without exception, not the communities driving electric cars or installing solar panels.

Who Controls the Supply

The concentration of supply is severe and getting worse in some cases. The Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for 74 per cent of global cobalt mine production in 2025, Indonesia for 67 per cent of nickel, and China for 69 per cent of rare earth mining, with China additionally dominating the refining stage for all three minerals, where most of the economic value is actually created.

This concentration is precisely what is driving the geopolitical scramble. Lithium-importing countries — the United States, the European Union, Japan, India — are racing to lock in supply through trade agreements, critical minerals partnerships, and direct investment in mines from Brazil to Chile to Zimbabwe. None of these arrangements, so far, is built primarily around protecting the people who live where the minerals are.

Congo: Cobalt and the Children in the Tunnels

Roughly 30 per cent of the DRC’s cobalt production comes from artisanal and small-scale mining — informal operations using hand tools rather than industrial machinery — and it is in this segment that the most documented human rights abuses occur. Amnesty International’s landmark 2016 investigation, conducted with the Congolese organisation Afrewatch, found children as young as seven working in cobalt mines, and traced supply chains from these mines into the products of major global electronics and battery manufacturers. Nearly a decade later, the pattern has not been resolved. A 2025 review of the literature found that children near mining areas show elevated cobalt levels in blood and DNA damage, alongside significantly reduced years of schooling compared to children elsewhere in the country.

The human cost extends beyond child labour. Communities have been displaced for copper and cobalt projects, while competition over cobalt-rich territory has fuelled conflict in eastern Congo. The M23 offensive in Goma in 2025, which killed an estimated 900 to 2,000 people, unfolded in a region central to cobalt extraction. None of this is new. It has been documented for years, yet little has changed.

Indonesia: The Nickel Boom’s Forests and Coastlines

Indonesia produces close to 60 per cent of the world’s nickel, and the expansion has been extraordinarily fast and extraordinarily damaging to the landscape it depends on. A 2025 investigation by Climate Rights International, based on interviews with 93 people living near mining and processing operations across Sulawesi and North Maluku, documented severe air and water pollution, the destruction of fishing and farming livelihoods, land grabbing, and forced relocations.

The environmental cost is impossible to ignore. Nickel mining has destroyed nearly 194,000 hectares of forest since 2000, while deforestation around smelters has more than doubled over the past decade. As forests disappear, so do natural protections against floods and landslides. Researchers have linked the spread of nickel mining to rising flooding and mudslides in affected districts, while the processing of battery-grade nickel generates toxic waste that remains poorly contained. The industry’s heavy dependence on captive coal power is also projected to cause 3,800 premature deaths and $2.63 billion in health costs by 2025.

Latin America: Lithium and the Drying of the Atacama

In the high desert plateau spanning Chile, Argentina and Bolivia — the so-called Lithium Triangle, holding an estimated three-quarters of the world’s known lithium reserves — extraction proceeds through evaporation ponds that draw enormous volumes of scarce groundwater. Lithium mining in Chile’s Salar de Atacama consumes up to 65 per cent of the region’s available water, and a 2025 analysis found that mining has driven a 30 per cent reduction in water levels in the salt flat, with documented declines in vegetation and local flamingo populations.

The Indigenous Lickanantay and Colla peoples, who have inhabited this region for over 11,000 years, depend on the same scarce water for agriculture and pastoral life that the mining operations are depleting. In January 2025, representatives of more than 200 Indigenous authorities from communities across Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru gathered in Jujuy province for an Andean summit specifically addressing lithium’s impact on their lands. A coalition tracking automaker accountability, Lead the Charge, found that the average score of leading electric vehicle manufacturers on respecting Indigenous rights stood at just 6 per cent.

Whose Transition Is This?

None of this is an argument against decarbonisation. Climate change itself imposes catastrophic costs, disproportionately on the same communities — the global south, Indigenous populations, the rural poor — who are now being asked to absorb the extraction costs of the technology meant to address it. The pattern is not new; it mirrors, with some precision, the history of oil and gas extraction, where producing regions bore the environmental damage while consuming nations captured most of the economic and political benefit.

What is missing from today’s critical minerals rush is any serious international effort to ensure that the people living on mineral-rich land share in its benefits and are protected from its costs. Agreements being negotiated by the US, EU, Japan and India focus largely on securing supplies and reducing dependence on Chinese processing. Safeguards for workers, local communities and Indigenous groups remain weak, and the Lead the Charge findings suggest that voluntary commitments have done little to change conditions on the ground. A truly just transition would place labour rights, land rights and water protection at the heart of these agreements, rather than treating them as an afterthought.

The green transition has a supply chain, and that supply chain leaves real people bearing the costs. Whether the coming decade repeats the extractive history it promises to replace will depend not on technology, but on the choices governments and companies make today.