“Terrorist” just means “anyone who inconveniences the empire in any way.” It really is that simple.
Trump and Ahmed al-Sharaa aka Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, ex-terrorist turned Syria’s president. Image via White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (Public Domain)
8 Jul 2025 – The US has removed Syria’s Al Qaeda franchise from its list of designated terrorist organizations just days after the UK added nonviolent activist group Palestine Action to its own list of banned terrorist groups.
The western empire will surely find ways to be even more hypocritical and ridiculous about its “terrorism” designations in the future, but at this point it’s hard to imagine how it will manage to do so.
(UN News)* —Craters filled with muddy water pocket the landscape of the Kono district in Sierra Leone – the result of a blood diamond mining industry which contributed to a decade-long civil war.
CIAT/Georgina Smith | Girls plant seeds in Lushoto, Tanzania.
But now, parts of the land have been restored. Crops are beginning to flourish and bees are buzzing around once again.
The people responsible for this change are a hodgepodge group – former taxi drivers and miners, people who barely finished secondary school and some with higher education degrees.
The unifying factor? Most have youth on their side.
PORTLAND, USA, Jul 16 2025 (IPS)* –To be, or not to be, an undocumented migrant, that is the question for millions of men, women and children in many less developed countries.
The chance of dying during the first year of life in the least developed countries is ten times higher than in the more developed countries. Credit: Franz Chávez/IPS
“Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them” for a better life as an undocumented migrant in a foreign land.
GENEVA –Following major cuts to humanitarian budgets, up to 11.6 million refugees and others forced to flee risk losing access this year to direct humanitarian assistance from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, according to a report published on 18 July 2025.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 15 2025 (IPS)* – Trump’s billionaire cronies want more monopoly profits, not competition. With more policies crafted for them, wealth concentration is set to become greater than ever.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Neoliberalism? There is no clear consensus on what neoliberal economics stands for now. Many who claim to be liberal economists have different, even contradictory views.
Some demand market competition and oppose monopolies and oligopolies. For others, property rights are crucial, typically strengthening monopoly rights.
Many avowed neoliberals deemphasise competition and hesitate to insist on antitrust action or opposition to abuses of market power.
Property rights confer monopoly or exclusive ownership rights to an asset, typically denying access to others except for payment. Many such rights are recent.
“These figures represent a continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing,” said the project’s director.
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8 Jul 2025 – Less than a week after U.S. President Donald Trump signed a budget package that pushes annual military spending past $1 trillion, researchers today published a report detailing how much major Pentagon contractors have raked in since 2020.
In January this year, a nuclear trafficking case made the international news headlines. The United States Department of Justice announced that Takeshi Ebisawa, an alleged Japanese gangster, had pleaded guilty to charges of major narcotics trafficking as well as conspiring to traffic nuclear materials.
World’s nuclear arsenals being enlarged and upgraded
(Stockholm) The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on 16 June 2025 launched its annual assessment of the state of armaments, disarmament and international security.
SIPRI Yearbook 2025. Photo: SIPRI.
Key findings of SIPRI Yearbook 2025 are that a dangerous new nuclear arms race is emerging at a time when arms control regimes are severely weakened.
Nearly all of the nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel—continued intensive nuclear modernization programmes in 2024, upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions.
BRUSSELS, Belgium / MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jul 14 2025 (IPS)* –Donald Trump’s bullying tactics ahead of NATO’s annual summit, held in The Hague in June, worked spectacularly.
Credit: Piroschka Van De Wouw/Reuters via Gallo Images
By threatening to redefine NATO’s article 5– the collective defence provision that has anchored western security since 1949 – Trump won commitments from NATO allies to almost triple their defence spending to five per cent of GDP by 2035.
European defence budgets will balloon from around US$500 billion to over US$1 trillion annually, essentially matching US spending levels.
10 July 2025 — In 2017, extreme violence erupted in northern Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, and spread to other areas. The conflict, along with two major cyclones in two years, has driven hundreds of thousands of people away from their homes.
“I came from Chiure with my husband and three children in March 2024 because of the conflict. I don’t plan to stay here forever, but I can’t go back home either,” says Virivir, 64. Photo: Karl Schembri/NRC
Trump and Ahmed al-Sharaa aka Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, ex-terrorist turned Syria’s president. Image via White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (Public Domain)
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 
In January this year, a nuclear trafficking case made the international news headlines. The United States Department of Justice announced that Takeshi Ebisawa, an alleged Japanese gangster, had pleaded guilty to charges of major narcotics trafficking as well as conspiring to traffic nuclear materials.