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.
.
.
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.
(UN News)* — In Gaza, illness, poverty, mass displacement and depleted services are leading to soaring stress levels and causing an increase in domestic violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, according to the UN sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA).
In the past three months, a third of Gaza’s population (714,000 people) have been forced to move once again, separating families and dismantling local support systems.
Women and girls are bearing a heavy burden, fearing for their lives on the streets – at delivery points, and in overcrowded, makeshift shelters that lack privacy and security – as many sleep in the open.
(UN News)* — Conditions in Gaza have reached an unspeakable level of devastation with children paying the highest price, top UN officials told the Security Council on Wednesday [], warning of soaring child deaths, starvation and a shattered health system amid continuing bombardment and displacement.
(UN News)* — The ongoing 21-month-long war in Gaza has seen more than 58,000 killed and 100,000 wounded as Israeli attacks continue amid rising numbers of child deaths from malnutrition.
In recent weeks, UN agencies have recorded nearly 900 deaths of desperate and hungry Gazans as they try to collect food – with most linked to private aid hubs run by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
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.
Amsterdam – Responding to a rapid study by scientists at Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine that found that the number of heat-related deaths across 12 European cities tripled due to the climate crisis in the 10 day period between 23 June and 2 July, as well as to preliminary data published by the Copernicus Climate Change Service that June 2025 was the hottest ever June for Western Europe and the third-warmest June globally.[1][2]
By Ashfaq Khalfan, Climate Justice Director, Oxfam America*
Mega rich oil, gas and coal companies, described as the ‘Godfathers of climate chaos’, are driving humanity to the edge of destruction and earning billions in doing so. For decades, they’ve spread lies and disinformation about the climate crisis and lobbied to create fossil-fuel driven economies.
They’ve received billions in government subsidies and as energy prices soared, instead of investing in renewable energy, enriched their shareholders to the tune of $403 billion in 2024 alone.
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.