This is How We Should Have Responded to COVID-19
By Dr Alan Mordue and Dr Greta Mushet | The Daily Sceptic | January 24, 2026
Since March 2020 there has been an almost continuous refrain that the UK was not prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic – across the mainstream media, at the UK Covid Inquiry and most recently by Dominic Cummings in a Spectator interview. So much so that it seems to have become an accepted ‘truth’ regardless of the actual facts. Nevertheless there are facts, even in the postmodern dystopian world we now live in.
Firstly, we did have a detailed UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy published in 2011 and it was explicit in saying that it could be adapted to respond to other respiratory virus pandemics, and gave as an example the first Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus (SARS). Secondly, there was further national guidance in 2013 and 2017 to update the strategy. Thirdly, this national guidance helped all four nations and each local health board or authority to develop their own pandemic plans which were regularly reviewed and updated. Fourthly, we had many systematic reviews of the evidence for non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to minimise transmission, one published only a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic started. And finally, the UK scored second in a global assessment of countries’ pandemic preparedness in 2019.
So, the ‘unprepared’ mantra was not the whole truth and arguably we were comparatively well prepared. However, in the event all this preparation did prove to be useless – but only because we decided to abandon it all in March 2020. We binned our pandemic plans and ignored the careful reviews of the evidence and the experience gained responding to previous pandemics. No doubt the UK strategy will be updated, but whatever is produced could be just as easily discarded next time. So what can be done?
Perhaps what we need is something more accessible, something that reflects the ethical and democratic foundations of our country, and, given how important this is for the whole of society, something that is shared widely – well beyond public health departments, the office of the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and the NHS. Core principles on how we should respond to a pandemic that are shared, understood and agreed with the public, perhaps through their representatives in Parliament, might give us some scientific, ethical and governance guardrails. They might help to improve and protect accountability and also stand a better chance of surviving beyond a few weeks when the next pandemic hits.
If so, what might such principles contain? Here we offer some suggestions with commentary on how they were applied, or not, during the Covid-19 pandemic, grouped under four headings – epidemiological, medical, ethical, and democratic. Many of these principles don’t appear in the UK Strategy, or those of the four nations or local pandemic plans … and for very understandable reasons. Prior to 2020 they were taken for granted, they were so obvious that they did not need stating, they were the principles and codes that the public health specialty and the medical profession had followed for decades if not centuries, they were the way we conducted ourselves in our liberal democratic society. The Covid-19 pandemic response changed all that – we now clearly need to restate our commitment to core, indeed fundamental, principles.
Epidemiological principles
The first task in epidemiology is to assess the scale and severity of a new disease or health problem, examine how it varies by time, place and person (age, sex, occupation etc.), and compare it with other diseases. This helps to ensure that any response is proportionate and identifies those at greater and lower risk, as well generating hypotheses about potential causes.
In the context of a respiratory viral pandemic, data on case and infection fatality ratios are paramount. These were available early in the COVID-19 pandemic and before the first UK lockdown. Instead of these data being reported accurately, compared to previous pandemic data and carefully explained to the population (for example here), public messaging was alarmist and seemed designed to instil fear not reassure, and made little reference to those at lower risk (see Laura Dodsworth’s 2021 book A State of Fear). In a future pandemic the public should expect such data, the media should demand them, the CMO should have a responsibility to identify and collate them, and government responses should be calibrated based upon them.
Then to ensure accurate monitoring of the developing pandemic within the country and valid comparison to earlier pandemics the standard definitions for confirmed cases, hospitalisations and deaths should be employed. This did not happen in the COVID-19 pandemic with new definitions adopted, definitions that for all three exaggerated the statistics. This was compounded by inappropriate widespread testing using a PCR test insufficiently specific and using inappropriate cycle thresholds.
There was a further concern that arose during the pandemic response on the epidemiological front: the use and impact of modelling studies. Whilst such studies can be helpful they cannot be interpreted without understanding their underlying inputs, assumptions and methods. They are ‘what if’ studies – for example, what if we assume that the number of cases will grow exponentially without any seasonal effect, what if we assume no existing immunity in the population from other coronaviruses, etc. The Imperial College modelling study published in March 2020 seems to have had a significant impact on the push for the first lockdown, but it had not been peer-reviewed and seems to have been insufficiently debated and challenged; of course, it is now widely considered to have been flawed. Modelling studies are not reality, they are not facts, they are not evidence, they are better viewed as ‘what if’ scenarios and their assumptions and results should be rigorously challenged. Their presentation to politicians without critical analysis and careful interpretation amounts to professional negligence.
Medical principles
Science and medicine only develop through open debate and a willingness to consider alternative views, even if they are contrary to the current orthodoxy. This did not happen during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the oft repeated term ‘The Science’ demonstrates. There is no such thing: there is rarely a consensus and science is never settled, we only ever have the current disputed theories which remain until better ones come along. Any pandemic response should be open to challenge and wide debate so that we are not limited to the knowledge and experience of only a few prominent scientific and medical government advisors. The thoughtful and detailed letters addressed to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) from often in excess of 100 doctors and scientists on the merits or otherwise of Covid vaccination of children were a case in point, and were ignored or summarily dismissed. Public health messages to the population certainly need to be clear and if possible consistent to maximise understanding, but this does not preclude an open and vigorous debate within the medical and scientific community, something that is essential if we are to develop an optimal response.
In 1979 Archie Cochrane, widely regarded as the father of evidence-based medicine, made his famous comment that: “It is surely a great criticism of our profession that we have not organised a critical summary, by speciality or subspeciality, adapted periodically, of all relevant randomised controlled trials.” The international Cochrane Collaboration, named after him and designed to address this criticism, produced a series of systematic reviews on the effectiveness of physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses such as school and business closures, social distancing measures and restrictions on large gatherings. Despite the limited evidence for effectiveness and the relatively poor quality of the evidence from these reviews and similar conclusions from a WHO review published in September 2019, almost all these measures were applied to the whole population from March 2020, including a ‘lockdown’ of healthy people.
We copied the response of a totalitarian state despite a lack of evidence and despite the fact that these same systematic reviews drew attention to the widespread harms that would be caused by implementing these measures across the whole population. These harms are beginning to be appreciated across multiple areas – in terms of mortality and physical health particularly of older people, the social development of young children, the mental health and education of young people, businesses across the country as well as jobs, the economy and the benefits system.
An evidence-based approach also required a thorough review of the evidence on the benefits and harms for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 in individuals. The limited data on the effectiveness of the novel gene technology ‘vaccines’ (and see Clare Craig’s 2025 book Spiked – A Shot in the Dark) and on their side-effects, with no data at all on long term harms, pointed clearly towards their use only in those at higher risk with full disclosure on what was known and what was not. In the event, of course, they were recommended and pushed on most of the population including those at insignificant risk. Furthermore, ‘safe and effective’ was far from a full disclosure of the evidence on benefits and risks.
By contrast, the use of re-purposed drugs such as ivermectin with known anti-viral and anti-inflammatory effects, extensive evidence on effectiveness and a well-documented safety profile, was actively discouraged.
In all these areas, doctors should be acting as advocates for their patients, informing them as best they can and helping them to make decisions on their treatment and care, as required by the General Medical Council’s guidance ‘Good Medical Practice.’ However, as already discussed, the informing was cursory and partial, and the contact often non-existent or via leaflet or video-call.
If they are to regain public trust the medical profession and public health authorities must do better next time, and patients and the public must demand better information and better discussion and engagement with medical staff to help them make decisions.
Ethical principles – informed consent for individuals
The Greek philosopher and physician Hippocrates developed his Oath around 400 BC. It urged doctors to act with beneficence – that is, to help their patients and prevent harm – and non-maleficence – that is to do no harm themselves or primum non nocere. The term appropriateness brings these two concepts together – an appropriate treatment is one that has been chosen because its benefits outweigh its harms in the particular patient.
As outlined above, evidence-based medicine involves the careful assessment of the evidence, ideally from randomised controlled trials, to quantify these benefits and harms. Whilst the patient advocacy role of doctors involves them in informing and supporting their patients to make informed decisions on their treatment and care.
Although this process sounds simple and straightforward, it is not. It seems to be taken more seriously in surgical practice, after notable legal cases, but less so in medical practice with the prescribing of drugs and vaccines. Certainly in the pandemic consenting practices for vaccination were cursory, to the point of being non-existent – public information heralding the ‘safe and effective’ vaccines was at best partial, and coercion was widespread via national advertising that deliberately sought to shame and manipulate, via vaccine mandates, and via bans from venues without proof of vaccination (or negative Covid antigen tests).
Large relative risk reductions of 70% for the Astra Zeneca ‘vaccine’ and 95% for the Pfizer ‘vaccine’ were trumpeted, but not the smaller, less convincing absolute risk reductions of around 1-2%. And there was no attempt to directly compare benefits and risks and harms, the key information a patient needs to give fully informed consent.
The wholesale abandonment of standard codes of practice for informed consent during the pandemic was truly shocking. To regain public trust the medical profession needs to take this key responsibility more seriously and particularly improve practice in relation to long term medications and vaccinations.
Democratic principles
The UK Strategy of 2011 did emphasise the importance of accurate and timely information to the public, and stressed that uncertainty and any alarmist reporting in the media could create additional pressures on health services. Despite this, the early epidemiological data on the scale and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, a comparison with previous pandemics and clear identification of those at higher and lower risk were not shared with the public and carefully explained. The data that were given were far vaguer and the messages seemed designed to raise anxiety rather than contain it and modulate it to appropriate levels. Government advisors seem to have entirely lost sight of these crucial epidemiological data that are so essential to enable the government to calibrate its response and ensure it was proportionate. Data reflecting reality seem to have been overshadowed by modelling data reflecting potential future scenarios – fiction rather than fact influenced key decisions.
Whatever national response is being contemplated to a pandemic, there needs to be a clear separation of the medical and scientific evidence on the benefits and risks of specific interventions on the one hand, and the political value judgements and decisions on the other. Governmental advisors must present options and their benefits, risks, harms and likely costs to ministers, and in a democracy it is for ministers to decide as they are accountable to the electorate. This relationship is akin to the doctor-patient relationship – the doctor informs the patient and supports him or her to make his or her own decision but does not lead or coerce. This line may have been blurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, government advisors seemed reluctant to identify, and where possible quantify, the risks, harms and costs that might flow from the options they put to ministers despite some, like lockdowns, being unprecedented in their severity and scope.
In turn ministers and politicians more generally have a responsibility to ensure that their advisors present them with the epidemiological data and the data on the benefits, risks and costs of recommended options. Ministers also have a responsibility to ensure that differences of opinion on how best to respond within the medical and scientific community are fully aired and discussed. This is crucial to arrive at an optimal response and to avoid groupthink. Only if ministers do these things can they take decisions on behalf of their population and give fully informed consent.
Crucially ministers have a particular responsibility to protect the basic freedoms we enjoy in a democratic society – freedom of speech, association and movement and individual bodily autonomy when it comes to medical treatments. Any infringement of such basic freedoms demands a clear, unambiguous and overwhelming justification, must be subject to challenge in Cabinet and Parliament, and must be the least restrictive as is possible to achieve the aim – in extent, impact and time. This is such a fundamental issue that we perhaps need to develop a framework to guide and constrain actions: defining the types of evidence and high thresholds that are required; limiting powers in terms of their impact, duration and the number of people affected; and outlining checks and balances, with perhaps an automatic independent review afterwards. We have such a clear and rigorous framework for compulsory detention under the Mental Health Acts when one individual is affected: we need at least as rigorous a framework when the freedom of millions is at stake.
There has also been considerable criticism of how the usual democratic governance systems were subverted and avoided during the pandemic, including the use of emergency legislation by the executive without appropriate challenge within Parliament. These governance systems are essential to enable questioning and challenge by MPs and select committees with the aim of improving decision making, and to ensure a clear justification for measures taken and transparency to facilitate accountability. This did not happen during the COVID-19 pandemic as clearly outlined in The Accountability Deficit by Kingsley, Skinner and Kingsley (2023).
In all of these four areas – epidemiological, medical, ethical and democratic – principles were violated during the COVID-19 pandemic with dire consequences for health, basic freedoms, quality of life, education, business and the economy, and for democracy and society itself. Before 2020 it would have seemed unnecessary to state such core principles. Now, having set a precedent when we abandoned them, it seems absolutely essential not only to restate them but to discuss them widely and if possible to reaffirm our commitment to uphold them before another pandemic hits.
Dr Alan Mordue is a retired consultant in public health medicine and Dr Greta Mushet is a retired consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist.
European Union Sanctions Russian Journalists and Artists
teleSUR | January 29, 2026
On Thursday, the European Union adopted sanctions against six Russian citizens working in journalism, acting or dance, arguing that they contributed to amplifying “Russian propaganda” about the special military operation in Ukraine.
The new restrictive measures for what the EU described as Russia’s “destabilizing activities” were approved at a meeting of EU foreign ministers.
Those sanctioned include Ekaterina Andreeva, a news anchor for Russian state television, and Dmitry Guberniev, a television host and adviser to the director of the Rossiya television channel and to the Russian Federation’s sports minister.
Also sanctioned were Maria Sittel, another Russian state television presenter, and Pavel Zarubin, who has what the EU described as “exclusive access” to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s agenda.
Finally, the list includes Roman Chumakov, a Russian actor and singer, and Sergey Polunin, a Russian ballet star born in Ukraine and former rector of the Sevastopol Academy of Choreography.
Individuals and entities targeted by the restrictive measures are subject to an asset freeze and will be barred from entering or transiting through European Union territory.
Separately, EU foreign ministers on Thursday continued preparations for a 20th package of sanctions against Moscow since the start of the Ukrainian war, with the aim of having it ready in February, when the war will enter its fourth year.
The 20th package — for which the European Commission still must present a proposal — will include additional measures aimed at hitting the Russian economy, including provisions targeting the so-called “Shadow Fleet” that helps Moscow circumvent restrictions on its oil exports, as well as other economic actors.
The debate over the shadow fleet is not limited to which additional vessels should be added to the blacklist, but also to how to address the phenomenon in a much broader way.
In particular, officials are examining how to use national rules and regulations on boarding ships and contacts with the countries under whose flags the vessels are registered.
Fānpán – Is China Turning the Tables on the ‘Democratic’ West?
By Mats Nilsson | 21st Century Wire | January 29, 2026
As a European born analyst with a realist mindset, I was, if not surprised, at least slightly intrigued when I read that China feels freer than Germany in the Era of Xi Jinping’s reforms.
In a world where narratives about freedom and authoritarianism are often painted in stark black and white, the words of Ai Weiwei, one of China’s, in the West most prominent dissident artists, have sent shockwaves through the European cultural scene, hurting our self-image. Ai, known for his bold critiques of the Chinese government, his iconic installations like the “Sunflower Seeds” at Tate Modern, and his 81-day detention in 2011, has long been a symbol of resistance against perceived oppression in his homeland. Yet, after a decade in exile, living primarily in Germany, Ai’s recent return visit to China has led him to a startling conclusion: Beijing now feels “more humane” than Berlin, and Germany, once renown for its liberalism, comes across as “insecure and unfree.” This perspective, shared in a candid interview with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung following his trip, challenges entrenched stereotypes and invites a deeper examination of how societal freedoms are experienced in daily life, in Europe of today.
Ai’s statements are not mere embellishment; they stem from personal encounters that highlight bureaucratic inefficiencies, social isolation, and institutional irrationality in the West, contrasted with the efficiency and warmth he rediscovered in China. But what underpins this shift? A closer look reveals that Ai’s observations align closely with the sweeping reforms outlined by Chinese President Xi Jinping in his seminal works, particularly the multi-volume series Xi Jinping: The Governance of China. These books, which compile Xi’s speeches, writings, and policy directives, emphasize streamlining governance, enhancing people’s livelihoods, and fostering a “people-centered” development model. Under Xi’s leadership since 2012, China has undergone transformations that prioritize efficiency, anti-corruption, and social harmony; elements that Ai implicitly praises through his anecdotes.
When I read about Ai’s new insights, and tying them to Xi’s reforms, I can suddenly argue that in practical terms, China may indeed offer a form of freedom that eludes many in the West today.
Weiwei’s story is one of displacement. Born in 1957, he grew up amid the tumult of the Cultural Revolution, with his father, the poet Ai Qing, exiled to a labor camp. Ai himself rose to global fame through art that critiqued power structures, such as his investigation into the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which exposed local government negligence in school collapses. His activism led to clashes with Chinese authorities, culminating in his 2011 arrest on charges of tax evasion, a move in the West widely seen as politically motivated.
Released but stripped of his passport until 2015, Ai fled to Germany, where he was granted asylum and continued his work from Berlin and later Portugal. For ten years, Ai immersed himself in European life, producing art that often lambasted both Chinese and Western hypocrisies. Yet, his return visit to China in late 2025 marked a pivotal moment.
In the Berliner Zeitung interview, Ai describes Beijing not as the oppressive dystopia of Western media portrayals but as “a broken jade being perfectly reassembled.” He reports feeling no fear upon arrival, a stark contrast to his past experiences. Instead, he encountered a society that felt vibrant and accessible. “Perfectly ordinary people from at least five different professions lined up, hoping to meet me,” Ai recounts, highlighting a social openness that he found lacking in Germany.
This warmth, Ai suggests, extends to everyday interactions. In Germany, he laments, “almost no one has ever invited me to their home. Neighbors from above or below exchange at most a brief nod.” Such isolation, he argues, contributes to a sense of precariousness in Western societies. In China, by contrast, the immediate eagerness of strangers to connect reflects a cultural and social fabric that prioritizes community over individualism; a theme echoed in Xi’s reforms.
This also touches on the issue of bureaucracy and freedom. At the heart of Ai’s critique is the suffocating bureaucracy he encountered in Europe, which he claims makes daily life “at least ten times” more difficult than in China. A poignant example is his experience with banking. Upon returning to China, Ai reactivated a dormant bank account in mere minutes, discovering it still held “a considerable sum of money.” This seamless process stands in sharp relief to his ordeals in the West: “In Germany, my bank accounts were closed twice. And not just mine, but my girlfriend’s as well. In Switzerland, I was refused an account at the country’s largest bank, and another bank later closed my account there as well.”
Ai describes these incidents as “extraordinarily complicated and often irrational,” hinting at possible political motivations or overzealous compliance with anti-money laundering regulations that disproportionately affect outspoken figures like himself, and just recently struck US analyst and author Scott Ritter.
This disparity underscores a broader point about freedom: while Western democracies trumpet abstract rights like free speech, the practical exercise of freedom is often hampered by bureaucratic hindrances. In Germany, a country renowned for its efficiency in engineering, the administrative state can feel labyrinthine. Opening a bank account, registering a residence, or navigating healthcare requires layers of documentation, appointments, and verifications that can take weeks or months. Ai’s account stems from “de-risking” practices, where banks sever ties with high-profile clients to avoid regulatory government scrutiny; practices that have over the last four years intensified in Europe amid geopolitical tensions.
In contrast, China’s banking system under Xi has embraced digital innovation to enhance accessibility. Xi’s The Governance of China (Volume I, 2014) outlines reforms to modernize financial services, emphasizing “inclusive finance” to ensure even remote or dormant accounts remain functional. Through initiatives like the widespread adoption of mobile payment platforms such as WeChat Pay China has reduced bureaucratic hurdles, allowing transactions and account management to occur instantaneously via smartphones. Ai’s quick reactivation exemplifies this: no endless forms, no interrogations; just efficiency. This aligns with Xi’s push for “streamlining administration and delegating power,” a key reform pillar aimed at cutting red tape and boosting economic vitality.
Xi’s books repeatedly stress that true freedom emerges from governance that serves the people. In The Governance of China (Volume II, 2017), he discusses anti-corruption campaigns that have purged inefficiencies and graft from institutions, including banks. Since 2012, over 1.5 million officials have been disciplined, fostering a cleaner, more responsive system. This has translated into practical freedoms: the ability to access services without fear of arbitrary denial. Ai’s experience suggests that in China, freedom is not just rhetorical but operational, free from the “cold, rational, and deeply bureaucratic” constraints he felt in Germany.
Xi’s people-centered approach finds confirmation in Ai’s assertion that Beijing’s political climate feels “more natural and humane” than Germany’s. This in my humble view, points toward a deeper cultural and policy shift. Ai portrays Germany as a place where individuals feel “confined and precarious,” struggling under the weight of historical guilt and future uncertainties. This resonates with critiques of Western societies, where economic inequality, rising populism, and social fragmentation have eroded communal bonds. In Europe, the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with energy crises and migration debates, has heightened a sense of insecurity. Ai’s social isolation in Germany, minimal neighborly interactions, mirrors surveys showing increasing loneliness in Western nations.
China, under Xi, has pursued a different path. Xi’s reforms, as detailed in The Governance of China (Volume III, 2020), prioritize “building a community with a shared future for mankind,” emphasizing social harmony and collective well-being. This includes massive poverty alleviation efforts, lifting nearly 100 million people out of extreme poverty by 2021: a feat Xi describes as ensuring “no one is left behind.”
Such policies foster a society where, as Ai observed in his interview, ordinary people eagerly engage with others, creating a humane environment. Moreover, Xi’s focus on cultural confidence has revitalized community ties. In Volume IV (2023), he advocates for “socialist core values” like civility and harmony, which manifest in everyday life through neighborhood committees, volunteer networks, and cultural events. Ai’s warm reception upon return; people from various professions seeking him out, reflects this. It’s a far cry from the European atomized individualism, where privacy norms can border on alienation.
Critics might argue that China’s harmony comes at the cost of dissent, pointing to tightened controls on expression under Xi. Yet, Ai’s lack of fear during his visit suggests a nuance: while political criticism remains sensitive, daily freedoms, economic mobility, social interaction, access to services, have expanded. Xi’s reforms include “rule of law” initiatives, with over 300 laws revised since 2012 to protect individual rights in non-political spheres. This “selective freedom” may feel more liberating in practice than the West’s more abstract liberties of today.
One must also consider China’s economic transformations in this aspect. Xi’s books outline the “Chinese Dream” of national rejuvenation through innovation-driven growth. Reforms like the Belt and Road Initiative and dual circulation strategy have bolstered domestic resilience, reducing reliance on Western systems that Ai found unreliable. Xi critiques European protectionism in his writings, advocating for open economies. Ironically, Ai, once a Western darling, now embodies the pitfalls of this approach, his accounts closed perhaps due to his Chinese ties, highlighting how geopolitical insecurities undermine personal freedoms. In China, Xi’s anti-corruption drive has stabilized institutions, ensuring accounts like Ai’s remain intact despite dormancy. This stability contributes to the “unfree” feeling Ai ascribes to Germany, which he says, “plays the role of an insecure and unfree country, struggling to find its position between history and future.”
Xi’s reforms, by contrast, position China as forward-looking, with policies like the 14th Five-Year Plan emphasizing high-quality development and environmental sustainability, creating a sense of progress and security.
So, in conclusion, Weiwei’s reflections serve as a mirror—forcing the West to confront its own contradictions. Germany, with its history of division and reunification, symbolizes the democratic triumph, and yet, Ai’s experiences reveal cracks: overregulation, social coldness, and institutional paranoia.
This isn’t unique to Germany or the EU; similar issues plague the U.S. and U.K., where bureaucratic hurdles in immigration, healthcare, and finance frustrate citizens. Xi’s governance model offers an alternative: efficiency through centralization, humaneness through collectivism. While not without flaws, critics note surveillance and censorship, and so Ai’s endorsement suggests that for many, China’s system delivers tangible freedoms. His words directly challenge the binary of “free West vs. authoritarian East,” urging a reevaluation based on lived realities. Ai Weiwei’s declaration that China feels more humane and freer than Germany isn’t a reversal of his principles, but an evolution based on experience. It underscores the success of Xi Jinping’s reforms in creating a society where bureaucracy recedes, community thrives, and daily life flows unencumbered. As the world grapples with uncertainty, perhaps the West can learn from China’s jade-like reassembly, piecing together a more practical freedom for all?
Author Mats Nilsson LL.M is political analyst and legal historian based in Sweden. See more of his work at The Dissident Club on Substack.
Former Biden Advisor, Amos Hochstein, Admits The Biden Administration Is Responsible For the Gaza Genocide
The Dissident | January 28, 2026
In response to claims from Israel that the Biden administration was not supportive enough of its genocide in Gaza, Amos Hochstein, one of Joe Biden’s top advisors, admitted that the Biden administration fully backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and that Israel could not have carried out the genocide without its support, a de facto admission of war crimes.
Israeli journalist Guy Elster wrote , “In a rare press conference, Israeli PM Netanyahu claims that soldiers were killed during the war in Gaza from a lack of ammunition due to a partial embargo that was imposed by Biden administration”.
In response to this claim, Axios journalist Barak Ravid wrote , “President Biden’s adviser Amos Hochstein told me in response: ‘Netanyahu is both not telling the truth and ungrateful to a president that literally saved Israel at its most vulnerable moment’”.
Adding to his war crimes confession, Amos Hochstein added, “Let me be clear to ‘journalists’ commenting. After more than $20 Billion military support, largest in Israel history, 2 aircraft carriers rushed to the region, deterring a massive regional war, defeating Iran missile/drone attack x2, defending israel at most vulnerable moments, after SAVING countless lives of Israelis – only acceptable response to POTUS Biden and American people is THANK YOU.”
As journalist Max Blumenthal noted in response to Hochstien, “Netanyahu got you to confirm Biden’s guilt and your own in the Holocaust of our time, which you helped commit on behalf of Israel, your apartheid state of origin”.
Indeed, Amos Hochstein is admitting that through “more than $20 Billion military support,” the Biden administration “saved Israel at its most vulnerable moment”, i.e. allowed it to commit genocide against the civilian population of Gaza.
By Amos Hochstien’s own admission, without support from the Biden administration, Israel would not have been able to slaughter hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, at least 83 percent of whom were civilians.
Without support from the Biden administration, Israel would not have been able to carry out its system attack on Gaza’s hospitals, which, as the UN documented , consisted of:
(a) airstrikes or shelling on the hospitals and/or in the hospital’s vicinity, often resulting in serious damage to the hospitals’ premises and equipment;
(b) besieging the hospitals with ground troops, preventing Palestinians from accessing the hospital and blocking medical supplies;
(c) raiding the hospital with the assistance of heavy machinery, including tanks and bulldozers;
(d) detaining medical staff, patients and their companions, as well as the IDPs sheltering inside the hospital;
(e) forcing remaining patients, IDPs and others to leave the hospital; and finally;
(f) withdrawing troops from the hospital, leaving in their wake severe damage to the structures, buildings and equipment inside, effectively rendering the hospital non-functional.
Without the Biden administration, Israel would not have been able to target and kill hundreds of Palestinian journalists and their family members as retribution for their reporting on the Genocide in Gaza.
The Biden administration enabled Israel to cause “damage to more than 70 percent of the school buildings in Gaza and create conditions where education for children has been made impossible,” as the UN documented .
The Biden administration enabled Israel to routinely shoot children in the head and chest, as Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and other doctors working on the ground in Gaza revealed.
The Biden administration allowed Israel to repeatedly bomb refugee camps , setting them on fire and burning the displaced Palestinian residents alive.
The Biden administration backed Israel in carrying out a systemic policy of mass torture and rape against Palestinian detainees in Israeli torture dungeons such as Sde Teiman.
All of these genocidal war crimes, by Amos Hochstein’s admission, were only committed because the Biden administration “literally saved Israel at its most vulnerable moment”.
This makes the Biden administration equally as culpable as Israel for the slaughter in Gaza and Amos Hochstein’s admission – meant to placate the Israel lobby- in reality is an admission of culpability for Genocide.
Not a Trump anomaly: The Board of Peace and America’s crisis-driven power plays
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | January 28, 2026
The history of American power is, in many ways, the history of reinventing rules—or designing new ones—to fit US strategic interests.
This may sound harsh, but it is a necessary realization, particularly in light of US President Donald Trump’s latest political invention: the so-called Board of Peace.
Some have hastily concluded that Trump’s newest political gambit—recently unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos—is a uniquely Trumpian endeavor, detached from earlier US foreign policy doctrines. They are mistaken, misled largely by Trump’s self-centered political style and his constant, though unfounded, claims that he has ended wars, resolved global conflicts, and made the world a safer place.
At the Davos launch, Trump reinforced this carefully crafted illusion, boasting of America’s supposed historic leadership in bringing peace, praising alleged unprecedented diplomatic breakthroughs, and presenting the Board of Peace as a neutral, benevolent mechanism capable of stabilising the world’s most volatile regions.
Yet a less prejudiced reading of history allows us to see Trump’s political design—whether in Gaza or beyond—not as an aberration, but as part of a familiar pattern. US foreign policymakers repeatedly seek to reclaim ownership over global affairs, sideline international consensus, and impose political frameworks that they alone define, manage, and ultimately control.
The Board of Peace—a by-invitation-only political club controlled entirely by Trump himself—is increasingly taking shape as a new geopolitical reality in which the United States imposes itself as the self-appointed caretaker of global affairs, beginning with genocide-devastated Gaza, and explicitly positioning itself as an alternative to the United Nations. While Trump has not stated this outright, his open contempt for international law and his relentless drive to redesign the post-World War II world order are clear indicators of his true intentions.
The irony is staggering. A body ostensibly meant to guide Gaza through reconstruction after Israel’s devastating genocide does not include Palestinians—let alone Gazans themselves. Even more damning is the fact that the genocide it claims to address was politically backed, militarily financed, and diplomatically shielded by successive US administrations, first under Joe Biden and later under Trump.
It requires no particular insight to conclude that Trump’s Board of Peace is not concerned with peace, nor genuinely with Gaza. So what, then, is this initiative really about?
This initiative is not about reconstruction or justice, but about exploiting Gaza’s suffering to impose a new US-led world order, first in the Middle East and eventually beyond.
Gaza—a besieged territory of just 365 square kilometers—does not require a new political structure populated by dozens of world leaders, each reportedly paying a billion-dollar membership fee. Gaza needs reconstruction, its people must be granted their basic rights, and Israel’s crimes must be met with accountability. The mechanisms to achieve this already exist: the United Nations, international law, longstanding humanitarian institutions, and above all the Palestinians themselves, whose agency, resilience, and determination to survive Israel’s onslaught have become legendary.
The Board of Peace discards all of this in favor of a hollow, improvised structure tailored to satisfy Trump’s volatile ego and advance US-Israeli political and geopolitical interests. In effect, it drags Palestine back a century, to an era when Western powers unilaterally determined its fate—guided by racist assumptions about Palestinians and the Middle East, assumptions that laid the groundwork for the region’s enduring catastrophes.
Yet the central question remains: is this truly a uniquely Trumpian initiative?
No, it is not. While it is ingeniously tailored to feed Trump’s inflated sense of grandeur, it remains a familiar American tactic, particularly during moments of profound crisis. This strategy is persuasively outlined in Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, which argues that political and economic elites exploit collective trauma—wars, natural disasters, and social breakdown—to impose radical policies that would otherwise face public resistance.
Trump’s Board of Peace fits squarely within this framework, using the devastation of Gaza not as a call for justice or accountability, but as an opportunity to reshape political realities in ways that entrench US dominance and sideline international norms.
This is hardly unprecedented. The pattern can be traced back to the US-envisioned United Nations, established in 1945 as a replacement for the League of Nations. Its principal architect, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was determined that the new institution would secure the structural dominance of the United States, most notably through the Security Council and the veto system, ensuring Washington’s decisive influence over global affairs.
When the UN later failed to fully acquiesce to US interests—most notably when it refused to grant the George W. Bush administration legal authorisation to invade Iraq—the organisation was labeled “irrelevant”. Bush, then, led his own so-called “coalition of the willing,” a war of aggression that devastated Iraq and destabilised the entire region, consequences that persist to this day.
A similar maneuver unfolded in Palestine with the invention of the so-called Quartet on the Middle East in 2002, a US-dominated framework. From its inception, the Quartet systematically sidelined Palestinian agency, insulated Israel from accountability, and relegated international law to a secondary—and often expendable—consideration.
The method remains consistent: when existing international mechanisms fail to serve US political objectives, new structures are invented, old ones are bypassed, and power is reasserted under the guise of peace, reform, or stability.
Judging by this historical record, it is reasonable to conclude that the Board of Peace will eventually become yet another defunct body. Before reaching that predictable end, however, it risks further derailing the already fragile prospects for a just peace in Palestine and obstructing any meaningful effort to hold Israeli war criminals accountable.
What is truly extraordinary is that even in its phase of decline, the United States continues to be permitted to experiment with the futures of entire peoples and regions. Yet it is never too late for those committed to restoring the centrality of international law—not only in Palestine, but globally—to challenge such reckless and self-serving political engineering.
Palestine, the Middle East, and the world deserve better.
UN experts alarmed by prosecution of students protesting ETH Zurich’s Israel-linked research ties
Al Mayadeen | January 27, 2026
UN human rights experts have condemned Switzerland for penalizing students who participated in peaceful pro-Palestine protests at ETH Zurich, one of the country’s top universities.
The experts said the convictions threaten students’ rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, particularly in the context of ever-growing global concern over the Israeli war on Gaza.
In a statement issued Tuesday, UN experts confirmed they had sent a formal communication to the Swiss government expressing concern after several ETH Zurich students were convicted of trespassing for holding a sit-in demonstration in May 2024.
The students were protesting ETH Zurich’s reported academic partnerships with Israeli institutions during the height of the war on Gaza. The peaceful protest was dispersed by police shortly after it began.
“Peaceful student activism, on and off campus, is part of students’ rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and must not be criminalised,” the UN experts said.
Legal consequences could have long-term impact
Five students have already been convicted of trespassing, receiving suspended fines up to 2,700 Swiss francs ($3,516) along with legal fees exceeding 2,000 Swiss francs. The convictions will remain on their criminal records, potentially discouraging future employers, the UN experts added.
Ten additional students who appealed their sentences are awaiting judgment, while two students were acquitted.
A spokesperson for the Swiss Foreign Ministry confirmed it had received the UN’s message and would respond in due course. ETH Zurich has yet to issue a statement on the matter.
The incident comes amid a wave of student activism related to the Israeli war on Gaza, with similar protests taking place on campuses across Europe and the United States. UN officials warned that penalizing students for non-violent activism undermines the democratic values of academic institutions.
Exposed – How the UAE Became Central to Gaza’s Concentration Camp Plot
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | January 27, 2026
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a key player in the current Gaza Ceasefire and, as Israel’s primary Gulf partner, is proposing major investments in the besieged coastal territory. While the Emiratis portray their role as purely humanitarian, it being the top aid donor since the beginning of the genocide, a much more insidious plot is in fact afoot.
Emirati influence in the Gaza Strip did not begin following October 7, 2023, and has not been limited to humanitarian aid missions. As the leading Arab member nation of the US’s “Abraham Accords”, the UAE exercises considerable power on the political, intelligence, economic, and military levels.
Often, the UAE-Gaza relationship is portrayed as purely humanitarian; the evidence used to suggest this is the $1.8 billion in aid spent on the territory in just over two years. While all the donated humanitarian supplies have certainly been crucial to the population’s survival, a famine was still declared, and the most vulnerable segments of society began to both fall ill and die as a result of the lack of assistance. This was due to Israel’s total blockade for three months, during which flights—both commercial and reportedly military—continued between the UAE and Israel.
While the lack of aid cannot be blamed directly on the UAE, it is largely underreported that, by proxy, Abu Dhabi does share guilt in the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza and seeks to further involve itself in plots designed to torment the Palestinian people.
In May of 2024, after the Israeli military invaded Rafah, closing off the crossing between Egypt and Gaza, the occupying military began forming a group of ISIS-linked gangsters and hardline Salafists, working with them to loot aid entering the Gaza Strip. The first of the groups, led by the now deceased Yasser Abu Shabab, was for months used by Israel to steal humanitarian aid and drip-feed it onto the black market, making it so that the population began to starve.
Later that same year, the Yasser Abu Shabab aid-looting gangs, who worked under Israeli protection and the watch of the occupying military, underwent a facelift and were disingenuously portrayed in the Western corporate media as a grassroots anti-Hamas force. Following the ceasefire that began in January of 2025 and was later violated by Israel in March, these ISIS-linked aid-looting militants returned to the scene in Israeli-supplied tactical gear and began calling themselves the “Popular Forces”.
Then came what was called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) privatized aid scheme, which is where the UAE comes into the picture. The GHF transformed into a catastrophe, as Private Military Contractors (PMCs) lured starving Palestinians to aid sites to be gunned down en masse. Well over 2,000 civilians were killed by what they would label a “death trap”.
What many are unaware of is that part of the GHF conspiracy was to use this aid mechanism as a means of mass displacing at least 600,000 Palestinians into a gated concentration camp facility built on the ruins of Rafah. Not only would the GHF’s trigger-happy PMCs be used to support this project, but the ISIS-linked “Popular Forces” death squad, now transformed into an Israeli proxy against Hamas, would police this concentration camp.
Before the GHF’s emergence on the scene, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had reportedly instructed his military to begin the construction of the proposed concentration camp, designed to transfer around 600,000 civilians then living in the Mawasi area.
The United Arab Emirates, under the guise of its “Operation Gallant Knight 3” (al-Faris al-Shahm), which is sold as a purely humanitarian mission, just so happened to coincidentally have been building water desalination facilities in Egypt’s al-Arish, right along the Gaza border.
Emirati state-owned media reported as early as January 2024 that the UAE had built six such water facilities on the Egyptian border, capable of supplying around 600,000 people in Gaza. A real coincidence, considering that the Emiratis just so happened to have prepared the infrastructure for such a concentration camp well before Israel had even publicly proposed it.
When Israel began openly proposing the new concentration camp in Rafah in 2025, before the ceasefire, the UAE openly pledged to help provide water to the new planned “community” in southern Gaza.
This project quickly began to collapse; then came the ceasefire and the dissolution of the infamous GHF. However, the Israelis didn’t give up on their ISIS-linked proxies and instead began creating even more groups, now reaching a total of five separate anti-Hamas militias. It wasn’t long before information started leaking regarding a UAE role in aiding these ISIS-linked groups, which now exist behind Gaza’s so-called “Yellow Line” in the territory that the Israeli military currently controls.
On January 21 of this year, Drop Site News revealed that leaked documents it had seen detailed a plot to construct a new “Planned Community” in Rafah, presented as what the article labeled an “Israeli Panopticon”. On January 23, The Guardian then released a new bombshell piece of information on this “planned community”—set to be built in Israeli-occupied territory as part of the alleged “reconstruction” component of the Gaza ceasefire—the United Arab Emirates is planning to bankroll it.
The likelihood of such a concentration camp facility successfully being constructed on the ruins of Rafah, capable of housing 600,000 people, is still in question—especially given the fact that the attempt to construct a similar model failed before the latest ceasefire. Yet, the mere fact that the Israelis and Emiratis can demonstrably be shown to have been preparing to supply such a community with water, only months into the genocide, is striking.
In addition to its role in backing ISIS-linked death squads in Gaza and supporting the construction of a concentration camp “community” in Rafah, the UAE also provided an economic and logistical lifeline to Israel during its genocide.
Abu Dhabi’s trade ties with Tel Aviv during the genocide escalated, despite occasional Emirati statements of condemnation against Israeli war crimes. A 21% surge in trade occurred in 2025, for example, an increase on the record $3.2 billion in bilateral trade of 2024, during which the Israelis inflicted a man-made famine in Gaza.
Amid mass international airline cancellations and carriers refusing to fly to Israel, the Emiratis continued flights regardless and played a key role as a transit route for Israelis. Dubai even became the top holiday destination for Israelis last year, including for countless Israeli soldiers who were deployed in Gaza.
The key regional diplomatic lifeline for Israel throughout the genocide has been the UAE. In addition to this, the trade corridor created by the Emiratis to aid the Israelis enabled them to survive and partially circumvent the damage caused by the siege imposed on the Red Sea by Yemen’s Ansarallah.
Abu Dhabi also collaborates with the Israelis on their broader foreign policy objectives, including in the construction of an airbase in Somaliland, in Yemen’s Socotra Island, and beyond. The UAE-Israeli alliance is present in the Horn of Africa, across West Asia and North Africa, interfering in the internal affairs of countless nations. They also collaborate on projects to isolate and attack the Muslim Brotherhood, in addition to funding joint anti-Islam propaganda projects.
Then there is the UAE’s role in using the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s former Preventive Security Force head, Mohammed Dahlan, to not only command various initiatives across multiple continents but to push specific agendas in the Gaza Strip, and even the West Bank to a lesser degree.
The High Representative for Gaza in Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” (BoP) is none other than Nickolay Mladenov, who resides in the UAE and in 2021 became the director-general of the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi. Mladenov is also a Segal Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP)—often described as the think tank arm of the Israel Lobby in the US.
Hiding behind the cover of being Gaza’s “top humanitarian aid donor,” the UAE has managed to work hand in hand with Israel in its projects to destroy the Palestinian people and their cause for statehood.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
“Leaked document” exposes US blueprint for total control over Gaza
Al Mayadeen | January 27, 2026
A leaked resolution obtained by Drop Site News on Monday exposes the operational blueprint behind US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace,” revealing plans for a US-led administration that would assume sweeping control over Gaza through political domination and security mechanisms designed to engineer a compliant Palestinian population.
The unsigned resolution, dated January 22, 2026, grants the Board “all transitional legislative and executive authority, emergency powers, and the administration of justice” over Gaza. The document formalizes a hierarchical structure with Trump as Chairman holding ultimate authority, an Executive Board with power to rewrite Gaza’s laws, and Palestinians relegated to “technocratic” implementation roles with no decision-making power.
The resolution is part of Trump’s phased ceasefire plan, with the document providing the legal framework for what the administration calls reconstruction, but effectively amounts to permanent subjugation of Gaza under US and Israeli control.
A hierarchy of US power
The “Board of Peace” resolution establishes a three-tier governance structure with Trump as Chairman holding ultimate authority over all decisions affecting Gaza. At the apex, Trump alone can sign resolutions into force, approve military commanders for the so-called International Stabilization Force, and designate individuals to key positions throughout the apparatus.
Beneath Trump sits an Executive Board with “the same authority, powers, and ability to make all delegations necessary and appropriate to carry out the Comprehensive Plan as the Board of Peace.” This Executive Board can “enact new law, or modify or repeal prior” civil and criminal laws in Gaza, effectively rewriting the legal framework governing Palestinian life.
The resolution names nine Executive Board members: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, businessman Mark Rowan, World Bank President Ajay Banga, Deputy National Security Advisor Robert Gabriel, Trump’s chief of staff Susan Wiles, and Martin Edelman, a real estate attorney who serves as special advisor to the UAE government. The inclusion of Wiles and Edelman had not been previously announced.
At the bottom of this pyramid sits the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), essentially a vetted, technocratic, and apolitical committee of Palestinians operating under the supervision of a High Representative. The resolution names former Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov as High Representative, with former Palestinian Authority official Ali Shaath leading the NCAG.
“It’s sadly the case that neither the Board of Peace nor its subordinate structures are representative or accountable,” former UN Under-Secretary-General Martin Griffiths told Drop Site News. Palestinians are “deprived and excluded” from decision-making, appearing only “at the very bottom of this pyramid of power.”
The control mechanisms
The resolution’s language reveals multiple mechanisms through which the Board would exercise total control over Gaza. Section 8.2 establishes that “only those persons who support and act consistently” with creating a “deradicalized terror-free Gaza that poses no threat to its neighbors” will be eligible to “participate in governance, reconstruction, economic development, or humanitarian assistance activities.”
The document bars from participation any individuals or organizations deemed to “have supported or have a demonstrated history of collaboration, infiltration or influence with or by Hamas or other terror groups.” Both the Executive Board and the High Representative will create “eligibility standards for participation in the development of New Gaza” and apply those on a case-by-case basis, subject to Trump’s approval.
Financial, legal control
The resolution grants the Board control over Gaza’s financial infrastructure, including “opening bank accounts and establishing appropriate financial controls” and “engaging donors, approving budgets, and administering financial mechanisms.” All resolutions must also be “issued in English and posted on the Board’s website.”
The Board can “enter into such other agreements, arrangements, or contracts as may be required to implement the Comprehensive Plan,” effectively conducting foreign policy on behalf of Gaza, while Palestinians have no voice. The Executive Board and High Representative possess the authority to “enact new law, or modify or repeal” Gaza’s civil and criminal legal framework as deemed necessary.
Additionally, every resolution requires Trump’s signature to enter force, creating a system where the American president serves as colonial viceroy with absolute veto power over Gaza’s governance.
Stripping Palestinian resistance identity
This vetting mechanism effectively gives the Board power to exclude any Palestinian civil society organization, political faction, or individual deemed insufficiently compliant with US and Israeli objectives. The term “deradicalization,” repeated throughout the document, becomes an all-encompassing tool for political exclusion that goes far beyond security concerns.
In the Palestinian context, “deradicalization” functions as a euphemism for dismantling resistance ideology itself, a fundamental component of Palestinian identity under occupation. Resistance can be understood not merely as armed struggle but as the collective refusal to normalize occupation, the preservation of political consciousness, and the assertion of the right to self-determination. Under occupation, a person’s dignity and worth can only be measured by their steadfastness, their refusal to submit to the erasure of their political rights and national identity.
By making eligibility for housing, employment, reconstruction funds, and basic services conditional on demonstrating “deradicalization,” the Board’s framework seeks to engineer a population willing to accept permanent subjugation in exchange for survival.
Palestinians who maintain resistance consciousness, whether through political organizing, advocacy for refugees’ right of return, or simply refusing to accept normalization with their occupiers, would be systematically excluded from participating in Gaza’s reconstruction.
Questions of legitimacy
The “Board of Peace” resolution obtained by Drop Site News remains unsigned. The Board’s legitimacy rests on UN Security Council Resolution 2803, passed in November 2025, which endorsed Trump’s Comprehensive Plan. However, the structure appears designed to circumvent meaningful UN oversight.
Moreover, it remains unclear whether the resolution obtained has been officially adopted or whether the version received reflects a final text. The resolution explicitly states that its provisions would be “enacted immediately upon signature,” implementing a governance structure over Gaza without the consent of its population.
The architecture described in the document envisions a Gaza divided into controlled zones where Palestinians vetted for political acceptability can access housing, services, and economic opportunities, all while under biometric monitoring, financial surveillance, and educational programming designed to normalize relations with “Israel.”
Those who fail to meet eligibility standards or refuse to participate in the system would presumably remain in the “red zones,” areas that continue to face military strikes and humanitarian deprivation.
The Board For Peace – Whitewashing Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide
DOC MALIK | January 26, 2026
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US pressure contributing to Israeli influence in Latin America: Experts
Press TV – January 26, 2026
US political pressure is contributing to the Israeli regime’s influence across Latin America, even as long-standing regional support for the Palestinian cause continues through diplomatic, legal, and grassroots channels, experts say.
For decades, several left-wing governments in the region shaped their foreign policy around anti-imperialism and de-colonial identity, aligning openly with Palestinian rights, but analysts warn the legacy is now at the disposal of a mix of US interference, far-right political shifts, and economic leverage, the Middle East Eye news and analysis website reported on Monday.
Following the launch of the Israeli regime’s war of genocide on Gaza in October 2023, Brazil’s president verified the nature of the onslaught as being “genocidal,” Colombia suspended diplomatic ties with the regime, and Chile sought accountability for Israeli atrocities at international courts. Yet experts cited by the outlet said Washington has worked to counter that momentum through lobbying, political threats, and direct pressure on outspoken governments.
“Latin American states lack instruments of hard power and are therefore constrained in how they can respond to US pressure,” said Ali Farhat, a Latin American affairs specialist. “That limitation creates openings for Israel to consolidate influence, particularly where governments seek to avoid confrontation with Washington.”
US officials have increasingly framed cooperation with Washington as a test of “security” and “democratic alignment,” while linking regional diplomacy to broader American foreign policy goals that dovetail with closer ties with Tel Aviv.
Argentina has emerged as the clearest example of this shift. Far-right President Javier Milei has announced plans to move the country’s embassy to the holy occupied city of al-Quds and expand security and economic cooperation with the regime, while openly backing its war on Gaza as “legitimate self-defense.”
Last year, Argentina received a $20-billion bailout from Washington, which US President Donald Trump defended as support for a “good financial philosophy,” despite skepticism over its impact on the country.
Farhat said US meddling has reshaped the regional landscape, pointing to Washington’s targeting of Venezuela’s leadership as part of a broader effort to weaken vocal supporters of Palestine.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, long seen as one of the most uncompromising defenders of Palestinian rights in Latin America, was kidnapped by US forces earlier this year and is now standing trial in New York on “drugs, weapons, and narco-terrorism” charges.
“He (Maduro) was among the most uncompromising defenders of Palestine on the continent,” Farhat said. “His marginalization [and now ouster] represents the loss of a fierce advocate for the cause.”
The pundit said Maduro framed the Palestinian struggle as inseparable from anti-imperialism and viewed the US as a colonial power and the regime as an occupying entity backed by it.
Since Trump’s return to office last year, Farhat said, left-leaning leaders have shifted tactics rather than abandoning Palestine, opting for recalibration over confrontation, but far-right governments have accelerated alignment with both Washington and Tel Aviv.
As of 25 January, Argentina is the only Latin American country to have agreed to join Trump’s controversial “Board of Peace” initiative in Gaza, which describes itself as an international organization seeking to promote stability and secure “peace.”
Nilto Tatto, a congressman from Brazil’s Workers’ Party, urged Latin American governments to reject the board and any initiatives undermining Palestinian rights.
“Any framework managed by Washington would not serve peace so much as reproduce hegemony under an international guise,” Tatto said.
“Brazil, evidently, cannot take part in a process whose outcome is already predetermined, namely one that focuses on the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip only to then keep the territory under US control.”
Julia Perie, a former Argentine lawmaker, said Argentina’s shift reflected ideological realignment.
“Argentina’s position is part of a geopolitical vision that prioritizes alignment with the United States,” said Perie.
She added that Latin American solidarity with Palestine has always been cyclical. “This is another phase in a longer historical transformation, not the end of solidarity.”
‘Recalibration not abandonment’
Amid the situation, observers noted, support for Palestine in countries facing mounting political pressure was increasingly being channeled through legal action, multilateral institutions, and popular movements rather than overt diplomatic confrontation.
Ramon Medero, president of Venezuela’s La Danta TV, said the current moment represented adaptation, not retreat.
“It is difficult to argue that the Palestinian cause has suffered a decisive blow,” Medero said.
“What we are seeing is a repackaging of escalation through legal and multilateral avenues to reduce the costs of sanctions and backlash.”
Medero added that the Palestinian cause was now embedded in a broader Global South struggle.
“The Palestinian cause has become a structural symbol of liberation, sovereignty, and self-determination,” he said. “What is shifting is agency – away from governments and toward popular consciousness.”
He added that far-right advances could intensify grassroots mobilization.
Vicious
Lies are Unbekoming | January 25, 2026
The waiting room is clean. The receptionist is polite. The forms ask reasonable questions. Nothing in the physical environment suggests danger. The magazines are current. The hand sanitizer dispenser works. Someone has chosen calming colors for the walls.
A pregnant woman sits in a chair designed for her comfort. She has been told to be here. Not ordered—no one orders. Recommended. Strongly recommended. Everyone does this. Her mother did this. Her friends did this. The women in her prenatal group compare notes about their appointments the way they compare notes about nursery furniture. Which provider did you choose? What tests have you had? The questions assume the answers. The answers assume the questions.
She will be offered things today. Offered is the word used. The offers will come with information sheets that list risks and benefits in tabular form. She will sign consent documents. Everything will be voluntary in the legal sense. No one will hold her down. No one will threaten her. She will choose, and her choices will feel like choices, and she will leave feeling she has done the responsible thing.
What she will not feel is the weight of what has been arranged before she arrived. The scheduling software that ensures the appointment is short enough to be profitable. The protocol that determines which tests are “standard” regardless of her individual circumstances. The liability calculations that make defensive intervention safer for the provider than watchful waiting. The training her provider received, which did not include the word “cascade” and did not question the premises. The pharmaceutical representative who visited last month. The professional guidelines written by committees with financial ties to the interventions they recommend. The insurance code that reimburses procedures but not conversations. The architecture of the building itself, which presumes birth is a medical event requiring medical facilities.
None of this is secret. All of it is documented, published, occasionally debated in journals that no one outside the profession reads. The machinery operates in plain sight. It has operated for so long that its operation feels like nature—the way medicine works, the way pregnancy is managed, the way responsible people behave.
She cannot see it because she is inside it. The water she swims in. The air she breathes. The climate of her experience.
For years I used the word “predatory” to describe this system. Predatory captured something true—the targeting, the extraction, the conversion of healthy people into revenue streams. The pharmaceutical company identifying a market. The screening program generating patients. The intervention that creates the need for the next intervention. Predation implies a hunter and prey, a calculation, a strategy.
But predatory is not quite right. A predator needs its prey. A predator pays attention to what it hunts. A predator, in some sense, respects the thing it consumes—respects it enough to study it, track it, understand its patterns. The lion watches the gazelle. The con artist studies the mark.
This system does not watch. It does not study. It processes.
The word that came to me after documenting 123 medical interventions across the arc of pregnancy and birth is different. Starker. Less strategic and more indifferent.
Vicious.
Viciousness is not cruelty, though cruelty may be one of its expressions. Cruelty requires attention. The cruel person watches suffering and derives something from it—pleasure, power, confirmation. Cruelty is a relationship, however deformed.
Viciousness requires no such relationship. A vicious mechanism can operate without anyone watching the effects. A vicious system can grind through populations while everyone involved believes they are helping. The viciousness is in the structure, not the intention. It emerges from the interaction of parts, none of which are vicious in isolation.
The doctor who follows the protocol is not vicious. The protocol is not vicious. The committee that wrote the protocol is not vicious. The pharmaceutical company that funded the research the committee relied on is not vicious—or rather, its viciousness is diffused through so many quarterly earnings reports and shareholder meetings and marketing budgets that no single person experiences themselves as causing harm. The regulator who approved the product is not vicious. The politician who mandated its use is not vicious. The parent who complies is not vicious. The neighbor who judges the parent who doesn’t comply is not vicious.
And yet.
A 13-year-old girl in London, who declined a vaccine, is being pressured about a screening test she is not eligible for. The vaccine was Gardasil, marketed as preventing cervical cancer. The screening is the smear test—cervical screening that begins at age 25 in the UK, designed to detect what the vaccine supposedly prevents. The two programs are presented as separate, but they function as a single apparatus: refuse our prevention and you must submit to our surveillance. I have documented elsewhere, in my essay The HPV Lie: Pap Smears, Gardasil, and a Cancer Caused by Something Else, why the foundational claim—that HPV causes cervical cancer—does not survive scrutiny. But for the purposes of this essay, the truth of the claim matters less than the machinery built on it.
The pressure comes from somewhere. It reaches her through channels—through school, through health messaging, through the questions of peers whose parents made different choices. No single person decided to punish her. No committee met to discuss her case. The system does not know her name.
The pressure is automatic. It is the system maintaining itself, closing gaps, ensuring that even those who refuse one element remain captured by another. The vaccine and the screening are presented as separate programs, but they function as a single apparatus. Refuse the prevention and you will be reminded, persistently, of your need for surveillance.
She is 13. The screening she is being pressured about begins at 25. There is no medical reason for anyone to be discussing it with her. The pressure is not medicine. It is correction. It is the system registering a deviation and applying force to resolve it.
No one in her life who transmits this pressure experiences themselves as being vicious. The teacher who mentions it is concerned. The nurse who brings it up is following guidelines. The friends who ask why she didn’t get the shot are simply curious, or perhaps uncomfortable with difference. Everyone is doing what people do. Everyone is being normal.
The viciousness is in the normal. The viciousness is that “normal” has been constructed, over decades, through thousands of small decisions, each one defensible, none of them examined, until the accumulated weight presses down on a 13-year-old whose only crime was asking questions.
The system is vicious. Say it plainly.
The government that approves the products, mandates their use, shields manufacturers from liability, and funds the campaigns that manufacture consent—the government is vicious.
The society that has been engineered to enforce compliance through social pressure, to treat refusal as deviance, to make the unvaccinated child a problem and the questioning mother a danger—this society is vicious.
But here is where the analysis must be careful. “The system” is an abstraction. “Government” is an abstraction. “Society” is an abstraction. These words make it easy to express outrage while leaving everyone blameless. If the system is vicious, I am not. If government is the problem, I am just a citizen. If society has been engineered, I am merely a victim of the engineering.
This is too easy. It is also untrue.
The system is made of people. Every protocol was written by a person. Every guideline was approved by persons sitting in a room. Every prescription is written by a hand attached to a body that contains a mind capable of doubt. The government is not a machine. It is people who could choose differently and do not. Society is not weather. It is the accumulated choices of everyone who participates in it—which means everyone.
The viciousness is emergent. No one designed the full harm. But the viciousness is also composed. Each component is a human decision. The emergence does not erase the composition. The fact that no one intended the complete picture does not mean no one is responsible for their corner of it.
This is the moral difficulty the essay cannot resolve, because reality does not resolve it. The harm is everyone’s and no one’s. The choices are individual and the outcome is collective. A woman loses her uterus to a surgery she did not need, and the surgeon who performed it was following the standard of care, and the standard of care was set by a committee, and the committee relied on studies, and the studies were funded by companies that profit from the surgery, and the companies are owned by shareholders who never think about uteruses, and the shareholders include pension funds, and the pension funds include the retirement savings of nurses who work in the hospitals where the surgeries are performed.
Where does blame land? Everywhere and nowhere. This is not an evasion. This is a description of how the viciousness actually works. It is distributed so thoroughly that it becomes atmospheric. It becomes the milieu. It becomes the climate that everyone moves through and no one feels responsible for, because the mechanisms of responsibility have been dissolved in the general weather.
Ivan Illich saw this decades ago. He described how institutions reshape the milieu—the environment people move through—until alternatives become unthinkable. A radical monopoly, he called it. Not a monopoly that corners a market, but a monopoly that disables people from doing things on their own. When hospitals “draft all those who are in critical condition,” he wrote, “they impose on society a new form of dying.” The institution does not merely provide a service. It reshapes reality so that the service becomes necessary.
This is what has happened with birth. With childhood. With the female body across its entire reproductive arc. The medical system has not merely offered services. It has reshaped the milieu so that moving through pregnancy without those services becomes an act of deviance. The services are not chosen from a range of options. They are the water in which choice occurs.
A woman who declines the standard interventions is not making a different choice within a shared framework. She is refusing the framework itself. This is why she is treated not as someone with different preferences but as someone who is failing—failing to be responsible, failing to care for her baby, failing to be the kind of mother the system has defined as acceptable.
The viciousness is in that definition. The system defines acceptable, and acceptable means compliant, and compliant means captured.
I documented 123 interventions across six phases of the reproductive timeline. Pre-conception capture. Pregnancy surveillance. Labor interventions. Immediate newborn procedures. Infant pathologizing. Ongoing medical capture. Each intervention has its own literature, its own justification, its own defenders. Each one, examined in isolation, can be made to seem reasonable—or at least not obviously harmful.
The viciousness becomes visible only when you see the whole arc.
A woman begins birth control at 16. The pill alters her hormonal environment for a decade or more. She stops the pill to conceive. She has difficulty conceiving—perhaps because years of synthetic hormones have disrupted her natural cycles, perhaps for other reasons. She seeks fertility treatment. The treatment works. She is pregnant.
Now she is in the system.
She receives prenatal testing that identifies risks, some real, most statistical. The risk identification generates anxiety. The anxiety generates more testing. The testing generates findings. The findings generate interventions. She is induced before her body was ready because a measurement crossed a threshold. The induction is long and painful because her body was not ready. She receives an epidural because the pain is unbearable. The epidural slows labor. She receives Pitocin to accelerate it. The baby shows distress. She receives a cesarean.
The cesarean is recorded as necessary. It was necessary—given everything that preceded it. Each step created the conditions for the next. The cascade operated exactly as designed.
Her baby is taken to the warmer for evaluation. Eye drops are administered. Vitamin K is injected. Hepatitis B vaccine is given—for a disease transmitted through sex and IV drug use, to a newborn who will do neither. The baby is observed in the nursery. Feeding is scheduled rather than on-demand. Supplementation is suggested because the baby lost weight—as all babies lose weight in the first days, a fact that would resolve with continued nursing but which becomes a problem requiring intervention.
She goes home with a baby she is not sure she knows how to feed, a body she is not sure she recognizes, a mind clouded with hormonal disruption and sleep deprivation and the particular loneliness of having been processed rather than supported.
She returns for postpartum visits. She is screened for depression. She may receive medication. The medication helps, or seems to. She continues it. She is now a psychiatric patient as well as a surgical patient. Her records follow her. Her risk profile follows her. The next pregnancy, if there is one, will be managed with reference to this one.
At no point was she mistreated in any way she could name. Everyone was professional. Everyone followed protocols. Everyone was trying to help.
The viciousness was in the protocols. The viciousness was in the accumulation. The viciousness was in the fact that no one—not one person across dozens of encounters—ever said: you could do none of this. You could wait. You could trust your body. You could go home.
No one said it because no one could say it. The milieu does not permit those words. A provider who speaks them risks liability, peer censure, loss of hospital privileges. The words are not forbidden. They are simply outside the weather. They are not rain or sun or wind. They do not exist in the climate the system has made.
Anyone who asks questions is doing something dangerous. They are noticing the weather. Asking why the sky is this particular color, why the wind blows this particular direction, why everyone walks leaning at this particular angle.
Most people never ask. The weather is just the weather. You dress for it. You complain about it. You do not inquire into its origins. You do not ask who made it, because weather is not made. Weather simply is.
But this weather was made. Every element of it was chosen. The clinical guidelines were written by people who could have written different ones. The regulatory approvals were granted by people who could have demanded different evidence. The liability structures were established by legislatures that could have established different ones. The insurance codes were set by committees that could have set different ones. The training curricula were designed by faculties that could have designed different ones.
Each choice was made by humans. Each human could have chosen otherwise. That none of them did—that the choices accumulated into a system that now operates with the indifference of weather—does not change the fact that the choices were made.
Anyone who asks questions threatens to make the choices visible. This is why they are pressured. Not because anyone decides to pressure them, but because the system cannot tolerate the visibility of its own construction. The weather must remain weather. The moment it becomes choices, it becomes contestable. The moment it becomes contestable, it can be refused.
If you have read this far, you are no longer fully inside the weather.
This is not a comfortable position. It is easier not to see. It is easier to move through the waiting room, sign the forms, accept the offers, go home feeling responsible. The system is designed for this ease. It has made compliance comfortable and refusal exhausting. The path of least resistance leads directly into the machinery.
Seeing the machinery does not stop it. One person’s recognition changes nothing about the protocols, the guidelines, the insurance codes, the training curricula. The 123 interventions will continue to be applied to the women who come after, regardless of what any individual understands.
But recognition changes what is possible.
A woman who sees the cascade can make different choices within it—can refuse this test, delay that intervention, ask questions that disrupt the automatic sequencing. She cannot escape the milieu, but she can move through it differently. She can refuse to be weather.
More importantly, she can speak. She can tell other women what she saw. She can name the viciousness, which is the first step toward refusing to participate in it. The system maintains itself partly through silence—through the assumption that everyone experiences the same thing and no one objects. Each voice that breaks the silence makes the next voice easier.
This is modest. It is not a revolution. It will not dismantle the system or defund the institutions or rewrite the guidelines. But the system depends on billions of small compliances, and each small refusal is a friction. Enough friction, accumulated over enough time, and the machinery begins to slow. Begins to be noticed. Begins to require justification rather than assuming it.
The girl in London who asked questions did something her grandmother could not do for her. She refused to accept the weather as weather. She noticed that she was being pressured and asked why. The pressure will continue—systems do not stop because one person notices them. But she has seen something that cannot be unseen.
This is what recognition makes possible: not escape, but awareness. Not freedom from the milieu, but movement within it that is no longer automatic. The end of innocence is not the same as the end of the system. But it is the end of participation without knowledge. It is the beginning of refusal.
The system is vicious. The viciousness is made of choices. The choices can be seen. Once seen, they can be refused.
One refusal at a time. One woman at a time. One conversation at a time.
The weather was made. It can be unmade. Not quickly. Not easily. Not by any individual alone. But the alternative is to keep swimming without noticing the water, keep breathing without noticing the air, keep walking at the angle the wind requires and calling it freedom.
The 13-year-old noticed. That is where it begins.
Book: Medicalized Motherhood: From First Pill to Permanent Patient
Available as a free download. 123 interventions documented across six phases—from pre-conception capture through postpartum surveillance. Includes practical tools: birth plan template, provider interview questions, quick reference card, and a new chapter on interrupting the cascade. Download it, share it with someone facing their first prenatal appointment, their induction date, their cesarean recommendation. The cascade works because women don’t see it coming. This book makes it visible.
French court jails pro-Palestine activist and mother over Gaza genocide speech
Press TV – January 25, 2026
A criminal court in Nice has sentenced pro-Palestine activist and mother Amira Zaiter to 15 months in prison for social media posts denouncing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, as part of a broader effort to suppress anti-genocide speech and silence voices supporting Palestine.
The ruling, delivered on Friday by the Nice criminal court, stands among the harshest penalties imposed in France in recent years for online political expression.
Human rights advocates warn that the sentence reflects a dangerous shift toward criminalizing dissent when it challenges Israeli policies.
Zaiter appeared before the court on January 23 after spending nearly two months in pretrial detention, a period during which authorities separated her from her young daughter and severely limited her contact with the outside world.
Prosecutors brought charges linked to posts published on social media platforms X and Instagram between June 26 and October 13, 2025.
The case centered on her republication of anti-Zionist material, her description of Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocidal, and her expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas amid Israel’s ongoing aggression.
The prosecution pushed for a two-year prison term, continued detention, inclusion in France’s terrorism offenders database (FIJAIT), a ten-year ban from holding public office, and financial penalties.
Court observers reported that judges found Zaiter guilty of 12 offenses. The court imposed a 15-month prison sentence with immediate incarceration, ordered her registration in the FIJAIT file, and barred her from public office for a decade.
In addition, the court ordered Zaiter to pay 6,200 Euros in damages to several Zionist organizations, including LICRA and CRIF Sud-Est.
The verdict marks Zaiter’s second conviction connected to her outspoken support for Palestine and Hamas.
In November 2024, she received a three-year prison sentence, with two years suspended. That ruling was later reduced by the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal to 18 months, including 12 months suspended and probation.
Zaiter, in her thirties and with no prior criminal record before these cases, is a co-founder of the Nice à Gaza Association.
The current case also referenced a post about Illan Choukroune, a French reservist serving in the Israeli army, whom Zaiter described as genocidal. She stood by her words and expressed shock that such political speech had been treated as hateful.
Defense lawyer Kada Sadouni condemned the ruling as deeply unjust and cautioned that the case raises serious concerns about freedom of expression, public debate, and the systematic silencing of opinions deemed politically inconvenient.
He said the court appeared intent on making an example of Zaiter and confirmed that an appeal remains under consideration.
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Book Review
In 2007, Michael Parenti Called Out The Greater Israel Project
The Dissident | January 28, 2026
In my last article, I covered the left-wing scholar Michael Parenti- who passed away at the age of 92 this week- and his prophetic writings on the Ukraine proxy war in 2014.
Parenti’s writings on the Israel lobby and the greater Israel project were equally prophetic.
In his 2007 book “Contrary Notions” Parenti called out “Israel First” Neo-cons and Israel’s role in the Iraq war, and predicted to a tee the future Israeli/American wars in the Middle East in service of Greater Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
In a section of the book aptly titled “Israel First”, Parenti wrote… continue
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