Global Pulse

分类： politics

  • Trump says US has entered deal with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels of oil reserves

    Trump says US has entered deal with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels of oil reserves

    Nearly nine months after ordering a U.S. military operation to capture Venezuelan sitting president Nicolás Maduro on federal narcoterrorism and drug trafficking charges, former President Donald Trump made a bombshell announcement Friday: the United States has struck a deal with Venezuela’s US-aligned interim government to take control of 65 billion barrels of the South American nation’s proven crude reserves.

    In a social media post, Trump framed the arrangement as the single largest oil agreement in global history, noting it was negotiated by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez. The Maduro-aligned Venezuelan government did not immediately issue a response to requests for comment, and the White House also declined to elaborate on key details including which private sector partners would be involved in the deal, or how operational control of the reserves would be transferred.

    The announcement comes at a moment of intense political pressure for the Trump administration, as the U.S.-Israel war on Iran passes the six-month mark with no end to conflict in sight. The ongoing hostilities have severely disrupted global oil supplies, cutting off a large share of Gulf crude that once moved through the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint that carried roughly 20% of the world’s petroleum supplies before the conflict broke out.

    Domestically, the supply crunch has pushed U.S. gasoline prices sharply higher: AAA data puts the national average for a gallon of regular gas at $4.09 as of Friday, a steep jump from $3.21 per gallon during the same period last year. To offset market volatility, the Trump administration has drawn heavily from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which dropped below 300 million barrels in early August. That marks a decline of more than 100 million barrels since the start of 2026, leaving the reserve at its lowest level in decades.

    Trump only alluded to the deal’s structure as a private partnership in his post, but industry experts warn that persuading major U.S. oil firms to ramp up operations in Venezuela will face significant obstacles. Decades of underinvestment and political upheaval have left the country’s oil extraction and transport infrastructure severely dilapidated, and many major operators still carry bad memories of past nationalization efforts.

    Shortly after Maduro was ousted from power, Trump hosted top oil industry executives at the White House to urge a rapid return to Venezuelan operations. While many firms expressed preliminary interest in the massive reserve potential, leadership remained cautious. Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil — the United States’ largest domestic oil company — publicly characterized Venezuela as “un-investable” in the immediate aftermath of the regime change.

    Despite these headwinds, the Trump administration has pushed forward with the agreement, arguing that past Venezuelan governments seized U.S. corporate assets decades ago when former President Hugo Chavez completed the nationalization of hundreds of foreign-owned oil holdings, including assets belonging to major American energy firms. The administration claims it has restored sufficient stability to Venezuela to open the sector for foreign investment, a claim echoed by Rodriguez’s interim government. One of Rodriguez’s first policy moves after taking power was signing legislation that reverses the core socialist principle of state control over oil that defined Venezuelan policy for more than two decades, fully opening the sector to private foreign investment.

    Appearing on the social platform X, Rubio framed the agreement as a mutually beneficial breakthrough, saying it would bring $100 billion in private investment into Venezuela while driving down domestic gasoline prices for U.S. consumers. “This deal is a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people,” Rubio wrote.

    Venezuela already holds one of the largest proven crude reserve bases in the world. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration puts the country’s total in-ground reserves at 303 billion barrels, equal to roughly 17% of global proven supplies. Unlike most other major oil-producing regions, nearly all of Venezuela’s untapped reserves are already mapped and confirmed, eliminating the high costs of exploratory drilling. Yet due to decades of crumbling infrastructure and mismanagement, the nation currently produces only around 1% of the world’s total annual crude output, leaving massive room for expansion if new investment is successfully deployed.

  • Watch: Marchers reflect on voting rights 63 years after ‘I have a dream’ speech

    Watch: Marchers reflect on voting rights 63 years after ‘I have a dream’ speech

    Six decades have passed since Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his transformative ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, a moment that redefined the American civil rights movement. Today, thousands of activists, community organizers, and ordinary citizens gathered once again in the U.S. capital for the annual March on Washington commemoration, but this year’s gathering carried a renewed sense of urgency around a core promise of King’s work: equal access to the ballot box.

    Attendees marched through the streets of Washington D.C., carrying signs and sharing personal stories about persistent barriers to voting that remain entrenched across the country, from restrictive voter ID laws to gerrymandering, and cuts to early voting access. For many participants, the 63rd anniversary was not just a moment to reflect on how far the nation has come in advancing racial equality and democratic rights, but also a stark reminder of how much work remains unfinished. Speakers and marchers alike emphasized that the fight for voting rights is the direct continuation of the struggle King led in 1963, arguing that any celebration of his legacy must include concrete action to protect and expand access to voting for all marginalized communities.

    Unlike the historic 1963 march that drew national attention to segregation and unequal rights, this year’s gathering comes amid a series of recent legal and political setbacks for voting rights advocates. Federal voting rights legislation has stalled in Congress in recent years, and multiple states have enacted new restrictions on voting since 2020. Marchers called on federal and state policymakers to reverse these changes, pass sweeping national voting rights protections, and uphold the core democratic principle that every eligible voter deserves a voice, regardless of their race, zip code, or political affiliation.

  • Smotrich announces plan to judaise Negev and Galilee

    Smotrich announces plan to judaise Negev and Galilee

    Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism party, has announced a sweeping new policy plan to advance the judaisation of Israel’s northern Galilee and southern Negev (called Naqab in Arabic), announcing he will replicate the aggressive settlement expansion policies he has implemented in the occupied West Bank across these two regions.

    Smotrich first unveiled the plan in a post on the social platform X on Thursday, framing the initiative as a continuation of what he calls a “revolution” in West Bank settlement policy. Over the past four years, Smotrich has overwritten planning protocols, seized large swathes of Palestinian territory in the occupied West Bank, and authorized dozens of new illegal settlements and outposts – actions that have been widely condemned by the international community as de facto annexation of Palestinian land.

    Under the new framework, Smotrich says he will scale this same model up dramatically across the Negev and Galilee, two regions that are already home to the vast majority of Israel’s Palestinian citizen population. The plan’s core targets are clear: to bring 1 million additional Jewish residents to the two regions, build 40 entirely new communities, establish dozens of new agricultural farms, expand existing Jewish localities, and create hundreds of thousands of new housing units designated exclusively for Jewish settlers.

    The far-right minister also explicitly pledged to scrap existing planning provisions for Arab communities, claiming these schemes have “seized land reserves” and pose a threat to Jewish settlement in the regions. “After the revolution in Judea and Samaria,” Smotrich stated, referring to the West Bank by its religious Jewish name, “it’s now the turn of the Negev and Galilee. Yes, we are judaising.”

    Looking ahead to Israel’s upcoming national elections, Smotrich announced that his party will demand full control over two of Israel’s most powerful national land planning agencies if it joins the next governing coalition. He made clear that bureaucratic procedures and opposing voices will be pushed aside to speed up the establishment of new agricultural settlements: “We are going to trample over procedures and people in order to allow the farms to be established.” The plan also calls for purging what Smotrich labels “anti-Zionist and post-Zionist elements” from the country’s land institutions, and cancelling existing policies that he claims “are strangling the Jewish communities” in the regions.

    Smotrich’s plan is structured around three core pillars: land, population, and security. It explicitly argues that “a land that we do not hold, Arabs will hold,” framing the policy as a zero-sum effort that advances Jewish settlement at the direct expense of existing Palestinian communities. On security, the plan calls for a harsh crackdown on criminal networks in Palestinian communities, with the stated goal of “dismantling the armed Arab autonomy.”

    This push for judaisation comes against a backdrop of surging violent crime in Palestinian communities inside Israel that has followed current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government taking power in 2022. As of this year, 161 Palestinian residents of Israel have already been killed in crime-related violence, marking a dramatic escalation that Palestinian leaders attribute to systemic government neglect of Arab community safety. Most recently, a young Palestinian man was shot and killed in a crime-linked incident in Jaffa on the same night Smotrich announced his new plan.

    While Smotrich’s plan marks a dramatic escalation of settlement efforts, the push to judaise the Negev and Galilee is not a new development in Israeli policy. Successive Israeli governments have pursued the same goal for decades, most notably in 1976, when the Yitzhak Rabin administration’s Galilee judaisation plan sparked mass protests among Palestinian communities in northern Israel. The Israeli military’s violent crackdown on those protests left six Palestinian demonstrators dead on March 30 1976, a date that has been commemorated annually by Palestinians around the world as Land Day ever since.

    Judaisation of these regions has already been a central policy priority for Netanyahu’s current far-right government, with Smotrich’s party colleague Orit Strook – who serves as Israel’s Settlement Minister – leading ongoing efforts in this area. Earlier this month, Strook claimed that one of her greatest policy achievements had been “halting the Islamic conquest of the Galilee,” and under her leadership, the Settlement Ministry has allocated millions of shekels in public funding to incentivize Jewish relocation to the Negev and Galilee.

    According to 2023 official Israeli data, roughly 740,000 Palestinian residents live in the Galilee, where they make up around half of the total population. In the Negev, official counts put the Palestinian population at around 200,000, but independent estimates put the actual figure closer to 300,000, as the Israeli government refuses to recognize dozens of unregistered Bedouin villages in the region, meaning their residents are excluded from official population counts. Overall, Palestinians make up roughly 30 percent of the Negev’s total population.

    Palestinian political leaders inside Israel have harshly condemned the plan, framing it as a explicitly racist effort to enforce apartheid-style demographic engineering. Yousef Jabareen, head of the left-wing Hadash party and leader of the newly formed Palestinian Joint List, called the initiative “racist minister Smotrich’s plan to judaise the Negev and Galilee is essentially an apartheid plan.” He added, “Arab citizens will not accept the status of second-class or third-class citizens,” and vowed that Palestinian political factions would work to defeat the plan through electoral and political action in the upcoming elections.

  • Cairo accused of ‘punishment by proxy’ after British-Egyptian woman arrested over sister’s activism

    Cairo accused of ‘punishment by proxy’ after British-Egyptian woman arrested over sister’s activism

    A growing international outcry has emerged over the detention of a British-Egyptian mother in Egypt, with her legal team confirming the arrest is a politically motivated tactic to silence her dissident sister living abroad. Forty-five-year-old Eman el-Shazly, a resident of Birmingham with four children, was taken into custody by Egyptian security forces on August 16 during a routine visit to the country.

    According to her legal representation, the arrest was not carried out over any alleged wrongdoing by Eman herself. Instead, authorities targeted her to pressure her sibling, Mona el-Shazly, a UK-based government critic who has spent years speaking out against corruption under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s administration. Mona operates a popular YouTube channel with more than 130,000 subscribers and maintains an active presence on X, where much of her commentary focuses on systemic corruption within Egypt’s security apparatus and public utility sectors—two areas where the country’s powerful, opaque military holds extensive commercial stakes.

    This pattern of targeting relatives of dissidents is not an isolated incident for the el-Shazly family. Eman’s two brothers, Hassan and Eid, were already held in pretrial detention for nearly three years on charges commonly leveled against opponents of the Sisi regime: spreading false information that threatens state security and promoting ideologies linked to terrorist groups on social media. The pair were rearrested by Egyptian authorities just this past May, and Eman has now been formally added to the same legal case that holds her brothers.

    At the time of her arrest, Eman had been in Egypt for roughly two months, staying to care for her elderly, ailing mother. Two days after her detainment, Egypt’s Supreme State Security Prosecution ruled to extend her pretrial detention for 15 days as investigations proceed. She now faces the threat of long-term confinement in Egypt’s widely criticized prison system, where international human rights organizations have documented consistent abuses including systemic torture, deliberate medical neglect, and degrading inhumane treatment.

    The Sisi government has a well-documented history of targeting family members of exiled and overseas-based critics, using detained relatives as leverage to silence dissent beyond Egypt’s borders. Despite pressure from her family to step back from her activism and remove her critical videos, Mona el-Shazly has refused to back down. Speaking to The Guardian, she emphasized that she has broken no laws and committed no transgressions, noting that the situation has already left 11 children in the family without parental care. “It is a horrible situation, but the Egyptian government will not stop if I appear weak. The government is close to collapsing,” she stated.

    Back in the UK, Eman’s husband Zeesharn Moustapha has launched a public fundraising campaign to cover the family’s rapidly rising legal fees as they fight to secure her release. Moustapha said the entire family remains “deeply concerned about her safety and wellbeing” amid the lack of regular access to Eman.

    Earlier this year, the British government publicly acknowledged that the Sisi regime regularly engages in what it calls “punishment by proxy,” targeting the relatives of overseas-based critics to silence opposition. Human Rights Watch has also confirmed that the regime has increasingly ramped up this tactic of intimidating dissidents through their family members. British diplomatic officials have formally requested consular access to Eman, a standard right under international diplomatic conventions, but Egyptian authorities have not yet granted the request.

  • Israel to expel Palestinians in Gaza over kites flown by children

    Israel to expel Palestinians in Gaza over kites flown by children

    In a sharp escalation of tensions along the Gaza-Israel border, the Israeli government has formally ordered its military to forcibly remove Palestinian residents from Gaza Strip neighborhoods where children fly kites and release balloons, Israeli broadcaster Channel 13 revealed in a Thursday report.

    Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz made the announcement during a closed-door meeting with top military leadership, including Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir. Katz stated that the public deadline Israel had set following recent kite and balloon incursions into southern Israel’s Negev region had passed, warning that any future airborne launches from Gaza would face harsh retaliation.

    Notably, Katz framed every single launch as an intentional act of terrorism — a classification that contradicts the Israeli military’s own assessment just one week prior, which concluded the kites posed no meaningful threat to Israeli civilian life. Per Katz’s order, the Israeli military will target all parties connected to the launches, from organizers to participants, and he confirmed the new directive comes directly from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    “From now on, every launch will be met with a forceful response against those responsible, the organisers and the perpetrators,” Katz said. “The Israeli military will act with all necessary means, including evacuating the population from an area or neighbourhood from which launches are carried out, in order to deal with the centres of terrorism.” Katz added that Israel would not permit Hamas or any other Palestinian group to threaten Israeli communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip, stressing that “whoever does so will pay a heavy price.”

    Border tensions over kite flying have built gradually in recent months, with Israeli media documenting a steady rise in the number of Palestinian kites drifting across the heavily fortified boundary. Israeli national newspaper Israel Hayom reported Thursday that Israel’s security apparatus holds Hamas responsible for the increase, claiming the group’s actions stem from frustration over ongoing deadly Israeli military operations in the blockaded enclave.

    Last week, Israeli outlet Haaretz reported that four kites had been recovered in border communities, prompting local residents to push the Israeli military for aggressive action. “This is how it started before 7 October,” one local Israeli community council stated last week, adding that residents “will not accept a policy of containment when it comes to our security.” Ori Epstein, head of the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council, echoed that sentiment Sunday, arguing that even a single kite crossing the border demands a military response. “When there’s no response, the message that gets conveyed to the other side is that it’s allowed to continue,” Epstein said.

    Following sustained public pressure from border residents, the Israeli military has already ramped up operations: Channel 13 confirmed that Zamir ordered an increase in targeted assassination strikes across the Gaza earlier this week. Prime Minister Netanyahu reaffirmed the hardline stance during a Monday meeting with Zamir, stating that “Israel will not allow Hamas or any other party in the Gaza Strip to return to threatening our communities and undermining our citizens’ sense of security.” Netanyahu warned Hamas that if kite launches do not cease, the Israeli military will target those responsible and forcibly evacuate all residents from launch zones.

    As Israeli threats intensified, local Gaza non-governmental organizations, working in coordination with Hamas, have publicly urged Palestinian parents to prevent their children from flying kites in border areas. “We are working tirelessly on the ground and doing everything possible to stop this practice,” the organizations said in a public statement, noting that the urgent appeal is intended to protect the lives of innocent Palestinian children.

    The new Israeli policy has drawn sharp condemnation from Palestinian leaders. This week alone, Israeli strikes across Gaza have already killed multiple Palestinian civilians, including non-combatants. Senior Hamas official Basem Naim criticized the Israeli position as an absurd contradiction, pointing out that “in a surreal paradox, a nuclear state that practises terrorism daily, charged with committing genocide in Gaza, mobilises and issues orders to deal forcefully with paper kites coming out of Gaza.” Naim emphasized that the kites are being flown by children, not armed combatants.

  • Greenland says findings on genocide allegation not final

    Greenland says findings on genocide allegation not final

    Nearly five decades after a coercive birth control programme targeting Inuit women in Greenland concluded, newly released conflicting expert reports have reopened one of the darkest chapters of Danish colonial rule, leaving the Greenlandic government unable to formally confirm whether the policy amounted to genocide. Between 1966 and 1970, a Danish-administered initiative inserted intrauterine devices (IUDs) into more than 4,500 Greenlandic women and girls — some as young as 13 — to curb rapid population growth driven by post-war improvements in healthcare and living standards. In recent years, hundreds of survivors have come forward to reveal they received the contraceptive device without their informed consent, with many suffering long-term health complications that left them permanently infertile.

    The release of the two reports on 29 August 2026 comes exactly one year after Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen issued a formal public apology for the “systematic discrimination” inflicted on Inuit women and their families under the scheme. Denmark has already approved a compensation package that will award 300,000 Danish kroner (approximately $46,800) to every confirmed surviving victim of the policy. Greenland, which was a formal Danish colony until 1953 and gained full home rule only in 1979, retained Danish oversight of its healthcare system until 1990, leaving the legacy of colonial policy embedded in public health practices for decades after formal decolonization.

    To resolve longstanding calls for accountability, the Greenlandic government appointed a four-person independent expert panel to determine whether human rights violations committed under the programme qualified as genocide under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which explicitly lists “imposing measures intended to prevent births” within an ethnic or national group as an act of genocide. The panel fractured sharply before the report’s release, with two members resigning to publish an independent minority report, resulting in two conflicting conclusions released simultaneously on Friday.

    The majority report, authored by Alaska-based Inuit rights lawyer Dalee Sambo Dorough and University of Copenhagen law professor Miriam Cullen, confirmed that the forced non-consensual insertion of IUDs represented clear violations of the fundamental human rights of the affected Inuit women. However, the pair stopped short of confirming genocide, concluding that “on the basis of contraceptive practices alone” they could not meet the legal threshold for the crime. They noted that genocidal intent on the part of Danish authorities could still be proven by a court through additional evidence outside the panel’s scope, including the historical record of forced removal of Inuit children to foster homes in Denmark, a separate colonial policy that also targeted Inuit cultural and demographic survival.

    The dissenting minority report, written by former Danish Institute for Human Rights head Jonas Christoffersen and Greenland-based psychologist Jensine Nedergaard, went further, finding no evidence that any Danish authority or participating medical professional ever held an explicit intention to destroy the Inuit population as a group. The report acknowledged that individual women were wronged but said the panel could not confirm the full scope of abuse.

    Addressing reporters following the release of the reports, Greenlandic Justice Minister Marianne Paviasen said the sharp division between the two analyses meant the government could not issue an official conclusion on whether genocide occurred. “We cannot say, on behalf of the government, whether there was genocide,” Paviasen stated. “This is a conversation that we will continue to have as we work toward reconciliation.”

    Survivors of the programme have already criticized the entire expert process, pointing to the lack of Inuit representation on the panel as a fatal flaw that skewed conclusions from the start. Henriette Berthelsen, a survivor who spoke to AFP ahead of the reports’ release, said the process replicated the same colonial power dynamic that created the policy in the first place. “For me, this is not just about history or politics. It’s my body, my life and my right to self-determination,” she said. “And once again, I see that it is others who will investigate and define what was done to me and to other Inuit women.”

    Inger Platou, a 70-year-old survivor who spoke to Reuters, recalled waking up from what she was told was a minor procedure only to learn an IUD had been inserted without her consent. Complications from the device left her permanently unable to conceive, leading her to adopt two children from Colombia. “It turns out we were treated like animals,” Platou said. “Without consent, they just wanted to stop women from giving birth or having children. It was a very inhumane act. We are very deferential to authority because we are colonial children.”

    In response to the reports, both governments have laid out next steps for reconciliation. Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen announced plans to establish a formal national reconciliation commission to continue addressing the legacy of the programme, while Danish PM Mette Frederiksen reaffirmed that Denmark would work alongside Greenlandic authorities to navigate the next phase of accountability. “We will handle the political process together with the government of Greenland,” Frederiksen said. “The most important thing for me is that we find the right path together.”

    Historical data shows the coercive campaign achieved its stated goal of curbing population growth: between the programme’s 1966 launch and 1974, when the practice was scaled back, Greenland’s average fertility rate plummeted from seven children per woman to just 2.3, severely stalling decades of demographic growth for the Inuit community. Former Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute B Egede first labeled the practice genocide in 2024, sparking the renewed push for official investigations and accountability that led to Friday’s release of the expert reports.

  • US plans to cut off military aid to key Middle East ally, BBC told

    US plans to cut off military aid to key Middle East ally, BBC told

    As the United States prepares to complete its full troop withdrawal from Iraq by the end of September, a bombshell development has emerged: the Trump administration is poised to halt longstanding security assistance to Iraq’s Peshmerga, the Kurdish security force that stood as a core U.S. partner in defeating the Islamic State (IS) militant group. Four independent sources with direct knowledge of closed-door discussions have confirmed the plan, which has sparked widespread alarm among regional leaders and policy analysts.

    In recent high-level meetings with leaders of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Department of Defense officials explicitly stated that the administration does not intend to renew the existing memorandum of understanding (MoU) that underpins U.S. security support for the 180,000-strong Peshmerga. The agreement is scheduled to expire on September 30 – the exact same date that the U.S. and its coalition partners will withdraw their final remaining troops from Iraq, formally closing the books on the decades-long international counter-IS campaign. The last active U.S. military base in Iraq, located in the Kurdistan regional capital Irbil, will also shutter next month following the troop pullout.

    This planned aid cutoff comes at a moment of escalating aggression from Iran against the KRG. By late May of 2026, Iran and Iranian-aligned militias had already carried out 158 separate drone and missile strikes across Iraqi Kurdistan, according to the latest data compiled by the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Just days ago, an Iranian drone attack targeted Irbil itself, amplifying already urgent fears among Kurdish officials about the coming security gap.

    For fiscal year 2026, the Peshmerga received $61 million through the Pentagon’s counter-IS program, funding that covered weapons procurement, military training, and troop stipends. In the administration’s 2027 budget request, the Pentagon proposed eliminating all of this security assistance, arguing that with the declared defeat of IS, the funds can be redirected to other priorities. That budget proposal remains stalled amid a broader partisan budget battle in Congress, but even so, Kurdish officials who held out hope for a short-term extension of the existing aid agreement have now been told no extension is planned. Multiple sources note that a final formal decision is still under review, and administration officials are reportedly exploring limited alternative forms of security support after the troop withdrawal, but no concrete plan for continued full funding has emerged.

    The timing of this move aligns with President Trump’s long-stated second-term goal of reducing U.S. military entanglements across the Middle East. It also comes six months into the ongoing open conflict between the U.S. and Iran, a confrontation that shows no sign of de-escalation. What makes the development particularly striking is that it comes less than a year after the U.S. opened its largest diplomatic consulate in the world in Irbil, an $800 million facility that senior State Department officials hailed just last December as a lasting symbol of the close strategic partnership between Washington and the KRG.

    Both the KRG and the U.S. State Department have declined to publicly comment on the confidential talks. A Pentagon spokesperson directed inquiries to a July statement from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following his meeting with newly elected Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, which noted that “the United States, Iraq, and Coalition partners have achieved tremendous success in defeating ISIS and now the Iraqi Security Forces, including the Peshmerga and other Iraqi Kurdistan Region security forces, will lead the fight against terrorists in Iraq.”

    Regional policy experts and former U.S. officials have widely condemned the planned aid cutoff, warning it carries severe strategic consequences for U.S. credibility in the Middle East. Analysts argue that ending support for the Peshmerga will not only create a dangerous power vacuum in northern Iraq but also send a clear message that the U.S. cannot be counted on to stand by its long-term regional allies.

    Yerevan Saeed, director of the Global Kurdish Initiative for Peace at American University, emphasized the deep cost of abandoning a partner that sacrificed heavily for U.S. goals in the region. “The US would be cutting off the Kurds, who shed so much blood to help the Americans achieve their goals in Iraq and the wider Middle East,” Saeed said. “This is going to be a big win for Iran, China, and Russia if the Kurds are left so exposed.”

    James Jeffrey, who led the global counter-IS coalition during Trump’s first term and served as a U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Turkey under the Obama administration, warned that cutting aid would repeat a catastrophic mistake of the past. “It’s money well spent, as we found out when the Islamic State rolled into northern Iraq,” Jeffrey said, referring to the 2011 U.S. full troop withdrawal that left a power vacuum and allowed IS to seize large swathes of northern Iraq.

    Jason Campbell, a former U.S. defense official and Middle East expert at the Middle East Institute, noted that the withdrawal of U.S. troops will already reduce Iran’s ability to target American personnel in the region – but it will leave the Peshmerga far more exposed to Iranian aggression. “The Peshmerga have been the frontline in the US and international war with ISIS,” Campbell said. “If the US moves forward with this, it’ll make the Kurds perhaps the most vulnerable potential targets of Iran.”

    The discussions on Peshmerga aid are part of broader negotiations between Washington, Baghdad, and the KRG tied to the upcoming troop withdrawal, which was agreed to in a 2024 bilateral security deal between the U.S. and Iraq. American combat troops initially withdrew from Iraq in 2011, but returned in 2014 after the vacuum created by the first withdrawal allowed IS to rise to power and seize large portions of northern Iraq and Syria. Today, experts estimate fewer than 1,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, down from a peak of 170,000 during the height of the Iraq War.

    Leading the U.S. side in the recent security talks is Tom Barrack, a close Trump ally who serves as U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Iraq and Syria. The administration has publicly stated it is open to a new bilateral security agreement with Baghdad, and the topic was discussed during al-Zaidi’s July visit to Washington, where the Iraqi prime minister met with President Trump, Defense Secretary Hegseth, and congressional leaders. During his visit, al-Zaidi framed the upcoming withdrawal as a historic milestone for Iraqi sovereignty: “October 1 will mark a new day in the trajectory of the Iraqi state, as Iraq will be free of any foreign military presence,” his office said in a statement.

  • Right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos detained by ICE

    Right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos detained by ICE

    Controversial right-wing political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, a British national long based in the United States, has been listed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention records, according to recent data checks of the agency’s inmate registry.

    The 41-year-old commentator, who previously served as an editor for conservative outlet Breitbart News and briefly worked with American rapper Kanye West, is currently believed to be held in a Louisiana detention facility, based on publicly searchable ICE detainee data. A self-described provocateur who has styled himself as the “most fabulous supervillain on the internet,” Yiannopoulos has long faced fierce condemnation from critics who label him a spreader of harmful hate speech targeting marginalized groups.

    As of press time, neither ICE representatives nor Yiannopoulos himself have responded to requests for comment from the BBC. A nationwide search of the agency’s detainee database confirms that a detainee matching Yiannopoulos’ name and British nationality is currently in ICE custody, though the exact reasons and specific circumstances surrounding his detention remain unconfirmed and undisclosed to the public.

    Raised in Kent, in southern England, Yiannopoulos has resided in the U.S. for many years and became a polarizing public figure during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when he emerged as an early high-profile backer of Donald Trump. He even headlined a “Gays for Trump” rally during that year’s Republican National Convention and repeatedly supported Trump’s calls for stricter U.S. immigration policies. Despite his early alliance with the Trump movement, the pair had a very public falling out. While Yiannopoulos still claims to back parts of Trump’s policy agenda, he posted a critical statement on social media platform X back in March of this year claiming that Trump “has lost his way, bought off by foreign interests.”

    Yiannopoulos has drawn widespread backlash for years over incendiary remarks targeting transgender people, Muslim communities, the Black Lives Matter movement, feminists, and even LGBTQ+ groups — a notable controversy given that he previously identified as gay, and now describes himself as “ex-gay.” Some of his most infamous provocative columns include pieces titled “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy” and “Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”

    One of the most serious scandals of his career came in 2017, when he was disinvited from speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — a major annual gathering of U.S. conservatives that has repeatedly hosted Trump — after video surfaced of comments that appeared to condone pedophilia. Shortly after the incident, Yiannopoulos issued an apology and resigned from his position at Breitbart. He has repeatedly pushed back against the accusations, arguing his remarks were describing his own personal experiences of abuse as a child, rather than endorsing the act.

    For years, Yiannopoulos has been publicly associated with the alt-right, a loose ideological movement defined by its opposition to mainstream political correctness and feminism that includes outspoken factions of neo-Nazis and white supremacists. While he has stated he does not consider himself an official member of the alt-right, he has previously described the movement as “energising and exciting.”

  • Brazil’s TV and radio campaign blitz begins, with Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro set for a nasty fight

    Brazil’s TV and radio campaign blitz begins, with Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro set for a nasty fight

    Brazil’s high-stakes presidential contest enters a new phase this Friday, as the two front-runners — incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and opposition leader Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro — launch their official free campaign advertising blitz across national television and radio networks. Long-time political observers note that even amid the global explosion of social media campaigning, these traditional broadcast platforms remain one of the most influential tools for winning voter support across Brazil’s vast, continental territory.

    Polls currently show the race is a dead heat: Lula, who is running for an unprecedented fourth non-consecutive term, holds a negligible lead over Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. This tight margin has political analysts forecasting that the ad campaigns will be among the most combative in recent Brazilian history. Independent political consultant and former Brazilian government minister Thomas Traumann warns that the tone of this election will be even more toxic than the 2022 presidential race, which stands as one of the most divisive in the country’s post-democracy history. That 2022 contest saw Lula defeat Jair Bolsonaro by the narrowest margin since Brazil returned to democratic rule in 1985, and the former president is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for his role in orchestrating the 2023 coup attempt following his election loss.

    For millions of Brazilian voters, the arrival of daily campaign ads on TV and radio serves as an unmistakable marker that election season is underway, much like iconic Brazil national flags and street art signal the coming of the World Cup. Unlike the United States, where political candidates must spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy broadcast ad time, Brazil’s system allocates free airtime to political parties based on the size of their electoral coalitions and their existing representation in the country’s lower house of Congress.

    Communications scholar Bruno Pompeu, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo, explains that this free ad framework is intentionally designed to uphold core democratic principles. “The gratuity of ads defends the democratic principle of equal treatment and means the amount of time each party gets is not going to be determined by the economic power of each party,” Pompeu noted.

    This structure has already created an uneven playing field for the two front-runners in the first round of voting, scheduled for October 4. Lula and his allied coalition have secured 5 minutes and 31 seconds of daily dedicated ad time, while Flávio Bolsonaro’s bloc will only receive 4 minutes and 20 seconds. The remaining allocated airtime will be split between the two smaller party candidates still in the race. Traumann argues that this smaller allocation of time for Bolsonaro highlights a key weakness in his candidacy: unlike his father, who successfully united a broad right-wing coalition on his way to winning the 2018 presidency, Flávio Bolsonaro has struggled to win the backing of major established parties. If a run-off vote is required — scheduled for October 25 — the two remaining candidates will receive equal airtime under Brazilian electoral law.

    For many long-time voters, these broadcast ads remain a core part of how they engage with elections. Maria Izabel Pecanha, an 84-year-old retired history teacher living in Rio de Janeiro, says she has relied on TV and radio campaign coverage since the 1950s, and ignores most social media political content. “I like to watch them to feel excited, to feel angry, to think of how Brazil’s political actors show themselves. It is always very instructive,” Pecanha said. “I have watched today’s and I will keep doing that until the end of the campaign, it is like watching a bit of history unfold.”

    Even as digital campaigning grows in prominence, political analysts say traditional broadcast ads retain unmatched reach, penetrating remote rural regions of Brazil where social media access is often limited or inconsistent, and shaping national public conversation around the election. Still, the medium is evolving to match shifting media habits: João Ricardo Matta, a business professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, one of Brazil’s leading academic and research institutions, says social media’s more casual, conversational tone is already shaping the style of this cycle’s TV and radio spots. “They will be less artificial, more natural, with the appearance of something homemade,” Matta said, adding that many campaigns are shifting a larger share of their overall budgets from traditional broadcast ad production to digital social media content.

    Overall, broadcasters are required to set aside 14 minutes of daily airtime for nearly 1,000 30-second campaign ads across all races, plus an additional 12 and a half minutes reserved exclusively for presidential candidates, in the lead-up to the October 4 first round.

  • ‘A very frightening time’: US terror tag endangers UK Palestine Action activists, critics say

    ‘A very frightening time’: US terror tag endangers UK Palestine Action activists, critics say

    A recent decision by the United States government to label UK-based pro-Palestine advocacy group Palestine Action as a transnational terrorist organization has triggered widespread alarm among campaigners, who warn the move will expose UK-linked activists to elevated risks of intrusive surveillance and potential exclusion from the global financial system.

    The announcement came via an official statement published on the US Treasury Department’s website, which rolled out a new package of sanctions targeting what it calls “Violent Far-Left Terrorist Networks”. Alongside Palestine Action, the sanctions also target Masar Badil, a Palestinian movement pushing for a revolutionary alternative path to secure Palestinian rights and self-determination, as well as Italian tech collective Autistici/Inventati. The US claims the collective provides specialized digital infrastructure, tools and services to Antifa cells and other violent far-left extremist groups, including a designated foreign terrorist organization.

    US officials emphasized that the designation complements the UK government’s 2024 decision to ban Palestine Action under domestic terrorism law, a ruling that is currently scheduled to face a legal challenge at the UK Supreme Court this November.

    For activists directly connected to the group, the new sanctions have already created profound uncertainty and fear. Max Geller, a former Palestine Action member and US citizen who resides in the UK, told independent outlet Middle East Eye that he now faces deep anxiety over his financial security and ability to travel. “I have American bank accounts, I don’t know if I’m going to suddenly be de-banked or if every single one of my Paypal transactions with my friends are going to be scrutinised,” Geller said. With elderly parents based in the US, Geller added that the ban could even block family visits, noting “Suddenly going back home has become a very stressful and scary prospect. No one knows what this means yet. They don’t use these laws on American citizens, so no one really knows what it means for people like me.”

    Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, described the US economic sanctions as an additional layer of repression stacked on top of the UK’s domestic proscription, one that will make daily life far harder for hundreds of linked activists. “There is so much reliance in the Western world on these institutions that you don’t think about how intertwined they are with the US financial system until you’re at the opposite end of their repression,” Ammori told Middle East Eye. Beyond financial exclusion, Ammori warned the designation amplifies the risk of expanded surveillance through intelligence sharing arrangements between the US and UK governments. “It puts people at more of a risk. The US are known for trying to quash who they perceive as enemies of the American empire, and we are now firmly in their sights,” she said.

    Legal and civil liberties campaigners say the far-reaching nature of the US sanctions puts thousands of UK-based supporters at risk of severe consequences. Tim Crosland, a former government lawyer and co-founder of London-based advocacy group Defend our Juries, pointed out that more than 2,700 people have already been arrested in the UK under the 2000 Terrorism Act for supporting Palestine Action. He questioned what the new US designation means for this group: “Are they now in danger of having their bank accounts closed and not being able to operate within the financial system?” Crosland noted that the sanctions already cut off financial access for high-profile critics, pointing to the case of UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese, who was sanctioned by the US during the Trump administration last year and has since been locked out of routine financial transactions after calling for the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israeli officials and US company executives accused of complicity in human rights abuses in Palestinian territories.

    “Does that apply to people who’ve held up signs saying ‘I support Palestine Action’? Will the British government give the US the personal data of the people who’ve done that? Because they haven’t got the data unless somebody gives it to them,” Crosland added.

    The US announcement came just days after new details emerged of a pending terrorism-connected case against seven Palestine Action activists accused of vandalizing former US president Donald Trump’s golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland. In March 2025, the activists are alleged to have broken into the property, dug up sections of the golf course and spray-painted “Gaza is not 4 sale” on the clubhouse. All seven face charges of malicious damage aggravated by a terrorist connection, a designation that can result in longer prison sentences and continued terrorist monitoring for decades after release.

    Raza Husain KC, who represented Ammori in a judicial review of the UK’s proscription last November, noted that then UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer held two phone calls with Trump shortly after the incident, on March 10 and 30. Declassified UK reported that the British government has so far refused to confirm or deny whether the two leaders discussed Palestine Action during those conversations. Around the same time, Trump’s son Eric met with Scottish First Minister John Swinney, and a Freedom of Information disclosure showed Swinney “noted with concern the recent incident at the Trump Turnberry property, condemning the damage caused by vandalism and offered reassurance that the relevant authorities would continue to take the incident seriously”. Trump later took to his Truth Social platform to label the activists “terrorists” who had committed “serious damage” — language that echoed the wording of the UK’s 2000 Terrorism Act — and said they would “hopefully be treated harshly”. Ammori argued that the wording makes clear the proscription was discussed: “What emboldened him to use those words after speaking to Starmer? It must have been discussed.”

    In recent months, British courts have already begun applying terrorist designations to Palestine Action activists convicted only of property damage, a move that legal experts call unprecedented in UK history. In June 2025, four Palestine Action defendants were sentenced as terrorists in connection with a 2024 raid on an Elbit Systems factory near Bristol. Crucially, the jurors that convicted them of general criminal charges were never informed that prosecutors would seek a terrorist designation, which was determined by the presiding judge during a separate sentencing hearing. This marked the first time British courts applied a terrorist label to direct action protesters who had not been convicted of terrorist offences or intentional violence. In a separate case, Judge Phillip Parry initially announced he would consider applying a terrorist connection to five activists who vandalized a Barclays Bank branch in Lancashire, but Judge Altham rejected the designation at a recent hearing, ruling the damage caused was not substantial enough to warrant the label.

    The US designation of Palestine Action adds the group to the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) list, a regime created just days after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 via then-President George W. Bush’s Executive Order 13224. The first target of the list was the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Muslim charity operating in the US at the time, which resulted in five Palestinian-American men being sentenced to between 15 and 65 years in prison on charges of funding Hamas-linked groups. Notably, no court ever presented evidence linking the men to violent activity.

    In its official statement, the US Treasury Department claimed “The United States does not sanction persons for engaging in political speech or other constitutionally protected activities.” But Geller says the designation places Palestine Action in the same legal category as extremist groups like Boko Haram and al-Qaeda, and warns it signals a broader crackdown on dissent. “It seems to be a harbinger for where things are headed. A lot of people might soon find themselves in this position,” he said.

    The US action aligns with a broader administration-wide push to crack down on left-wing activist groups under the framing of countering a global “resurgence of far-left political terrorism”. The latest sanctions build on a November 2024 executive order signed by Trump that designated the loose anti-fascist network Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. In June 2025, a Texas court sentenced anti-ICE protesters accused of Antifa ties to up to 100 years in prison, a verdict widely seen as a test case for the national crackdown on left-wing activism. In July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted an international summit focused on countering what he called “a deliberate, ideologically motivated strategy to destabilize free societies by violently targeting our political and economic systems”.

    Many campaigners have questioned the timing of the US announcement, which comes just weeks after the UK Supreme Court granted Ammori permission to challenge the British government’s proscription of Palestine Action. “Is the Trump administration worried that Palestine Action might prevail at the European Court of Human Rights or in the British Supreme Court?” Geller asked.

    The designation also comes shortly after Spanish police arrested US citizen and left-wing humanitarian financier James “Fergie” Chambers at the request of US extradition authorities. Chambers has acknowledged participating in a Palestine Action protest and covering legal fees for some group members, and his lawyers confirm he has donated roughly $1 million to humanitarian projects in Gaza. Ammori revealed that the US submitted its indictment against Chambers on the exact same day the Treasury Department announced the Palestine Action sanctions. Geller argues the timing is no coincidence: “It feels like it’s truly only being done as a PR stunt to build a groundswell of public support for either extraditing Fergie or preempting another Palestine Action legal victory.”

    Middle East Eye, which originally reported this story, provides independent coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and global affairs.