After the US officially admitted it deployed weapons into outer space earlier this week, Russia and China expressed concerns, calling it a threat to international peace and demanding the immediate stoppage of all such activities.

During a regular press conference on Tuesday, September 15, Guo Jiakun, official spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that “China opposes any arms race in outer space or any attempt to weaponize it and turn it into a warzone.”

He further said that “China stands for the peaceful use of outer space and keeping it safe” and urged the US to “stop expanding military build-up in outer space, and uphold global strategic stability with concrete actions.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that the US weapons deployment is a threat to international security and puts a question mark on the stability in outer space. 

“Russia has for many years been consistently drawing the attention of the global community to the grave consequences for international security that Washington’s destructive course may lead to,” Zakharova said.  

She said her country seeks “urgent practical measures to prevent arms race in outer space” and reiterated Russia’s push for a “multilateral legally binding instrument banning the deployment of weapons in outer space.” 

Though it has long been a subject of speculation, a couple of US military officials, earlier this week, admitted that its military is operating weapons deployed in outer space.  

The admission was made by US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink on Monday during a conference. He said that the US “has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”

Meink’s statement was substantiated by US Space Force chief Douglas Schiess, who a day later, on Tuesday, said that in the coming years the US is even planning to increase the number of orbital weapons already used by the members of his military unit.

Urgent need of legal prohibitions

Underlining the threat that the deployment of weapons in outer space poses, several countries, including Russia and China, have been calling for an international treaty to prevent any arms race in outer space for decades now.

The existing instrument, the UN Outer Space Treaty (1967) makes clear that “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claims of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”

It also prohibits the deployment of “nuclear weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or stationing them in outer space in any other manner,” but it says nothing about the deployment of conventional weapons, despite declaring it should be used for peaceful purposes only.

None of the US military officials spoke about the nature of weapons deployed by the US in outer space.

Though only a handful of countries have the technological capability to explore outer space in any significant way, several countries have used satellites for military and war purposes for decades now.

The US has a dedicated space force which has recently held exercises related to possible military conflicts in space.

The deployment of weapons and claims of exclusivity, apart from increasing possibilities of an arms race between the existing powers in space; the US, Russia, and China, may also make the rest of the world more insecure.

Zakharova said that Russia is planning to submit a proposal for the creation of an international instrument legally prohibiting all weapon deployment in outer space during the upcoming annual UN General Assembly session.

She asked for more countries to join the Russian initiative and co-author the treaty document.

In the year of the 250th anniversary of US independence, the bipartisan US Semiquincentennial Commission released “America’s Soundtrack: The Sound of 250 Years.” Perhaps unsurprisingly – because the initiative was planned over the course of a decade with the support of corporations like Amazon, Oracle, and Palantir – the playlist is a romantic ode to the most paternalistic and militaristic sides of the United States.

However, activists have pointed out that there are “Two Americas at 250.” In other words, there is a working-class history and culture that directly contradicts the imperialist project of the billionaire class. Therefore, we must study another soundtrack: one based on the struggles, desires, and traditions of the people. One person that represents this soundtrack is “America’s favorite blues man,” 34-year-old Buffalo Nicols.

Music characterized Carl Nichols’s upbringing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Though not surrounded by musicians, he always had the sounds of jazz on the radio, his mother‘s music collection, his older brother’s hip-hop, and his older sisters, R&B, punk, and metal. This was the context in which he taught himself to play his sister’s guitar at the age of 12.

Performing with bands throughout high school, Carl found kinship among the West African community. As he played a cheap banjo along with a friend on the instrument known as the xalam, he embraced music as an opportunity to learn about other cultures. Traveling through countries like Senegal, Romania, Hungary, and Ukraine in his early 20s and learning their sonic traditions, motivated him to study Black American music with the same rigor.

Performers like Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie left a lasting mark on him, specifically relating to communal and commercial music. Similarly, the writing of Etheridge Knight, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Amiri Baraka helped him understand the blues as “a living thing” rather than a set of important names and dates. He said, “There’s always been this connection between activism and folk music because I think trying to exist as an artist in America has been a political thing.”

His 2025 song “Belly of the Beast“ is one example of this because it asks about the responsibility which domestic victims of US imperialism have for protecting victims abroad. Written during the heightened media coverage of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the song calls attention to the relationship between Black Americans and Palestinians. He conceptualized the song following a period of political education defined by a collection of Malcolm X speeches and Régis Debray’s 1967 “Revolution in the Revolution?”

I live in the belly of the beast

Though I only meant to look into his mouth

It was not opportunity but chains he used to capture me

And every day I’ve tried to get back out

While these lines of the chorus speak from the individual or first person perspective, Nichols uses them to describe a common experience.This is why the song ends with the collective “we live in the belly of the beast.” The song is neither nihilistic or romantic in its allusion to topics like police killings, occupation and ethnic cleansing. Rather, in verse four, the singer puts his hope for change in the hands of the people, saying “we cannot win ’till we get organized.”

Read more: Studying the changes: a Palestinian music teacher’s lesson on will

Some, who mistake folk music as apolitical, took offense to this song. They attack him in social media comments, direct messages, and hate mail. In the spirit of the blues, Nichols said he laughs at their assumption that they can hurt him. The same minority of listeners attacked him for his 2025 song “Ice Age Blues.”

He wrote the song in response to the second Trump administration’s escalation of ICE terror. Specifically, on the widespread sense of surprise that law-enforcement would use deadly force against the US residents. He said that it reminded him of the same realization among new activists during the 2020 uprising for George Floyd. However, Nichols shows that he was not shocked by the contradiction – he ends the song by asking,

You think all that money is for war fought abroad?

They won’t hesitate to kill you in your own backyard. 

They’d be happy to kill you in your own backyard.

Nichols said that political finger pointing will not help identify the common perpetrator of a shared oppression. Instead, he urges readers to understand the state and how it works against the people; to study the basis of its patterns and changes. By doing so, he calls listeners attention to the basis of repression rather than simply what accelerates it. 

Similarly, he recommends the new generation of blues people to “return to the root.” That is, to disregard stereotypes about their Black art and study those – like Zora Neal Hurston – who preserved long-standing traditions. By reclaiming their legacy, he said that culture workers can affect consciousness on a mass level.

I know no artist really wants to be a role model or to be representing an entire people but the reality is that Black culture is such a fragile, delicate and important thing that we have to be more mindful of how we share it and how we interact with it. 

Buffalo Nichols is currently touring through states like West Virginia, North Carolina, Illinois, and Minnesota.

At the BRICS Business Forum in Bharat Mandapam on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin read out the numbers. The eleven members of this grouping now produce more than 40% of the world’s output. The G7 produces 29. Over the last five years, BRICS countries generated more than half of all global growth. The G7 managed 18%. Narendra Modi, speaking at the same event, added that the bloc is home to half of humanity and a quarter of world trade.

This is not rhetoric. The center of gravity of the world economy has moved, and India is in the chair while it happens.

Now recall something else that took place in that same hall. On May 24 of this year, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down in Bharat Mandapam for an interview with India Today. Asked about Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, he called it “illegal, unlawful, reckless, dangerous, and unacceptable.” Then he said something more revealing. “I think the whole world needs to say that, and most of the countries in the world are saying that. India is saying that.“

A US official, sitting in Delhi, announced India’s foreign policy position on its behalf. Nobody in the room corrected him. In the same interview Rubio said the trade agreement was “weeks, not months” away. Four months later, it is still unsigned.

India and the construction of the Global South

In March 1947, months before independence, Delhi hosted the Asian Relations Conference. At the Bandung Conference in 1955, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was among the chief architects of an idea that seemed audacious then and remains unfinished now: that newly free countries did not have to rent themselves to Washington or Moscow to be taken seriously. The Bandung spirit produced the Non-Aligned Movement, then the Group of 77 in 1964, and then the demand through the 1970s for a New International Economic Order, which was simply a demand that the IMF and the World Bank stop working only for the countries that funded them. India made those arguments first and made them at a time when the material conditions were not as conducive as we see today.

What India has done inside BRICS follows directly from that. At the Delhi summit of 2012, under Manmohan Singh, the group took up the idea of a development bank and asked its finance ministers to study it. That became the New Development Bank, with an Indian, K.V. Kamath, as its first head. The same summit set up the $100 billion Contingent Reserve Arrangement. At Goa in 2016 both were made operational, and India put forward the idea of a BRICS credit rating agency, aimed squarely at the three Western firms whose verdicts decide what every poor country pays to borrow. In 2021 India proposed the BRICS platform for digital public goods. Across four chairships and two very different governments, India’s contribution has been consistent: turning complaints about an unfair world into institutions that can actually be used.

Now look at how Washington talks about the country.

In July 2025, announcing his first tariffs, US President Donald Trump called India and Russia “dead economies” and said they could “take their dead economies down together, for all I care.” He has called India the “tariff king” and its trade rules “obnoxious.” After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, Trump called the relationship “a totally one-sided disaster.” In April this year he shared, without comment, a post describing India as “some other hellhole on the planet.” Our foreign ministry replied that this was “uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste.” When Rubio was asked in Delhi about the racist abuse Indians face in America, he said that “every country in the world has stupid people.”

No country of India’s size is spoken to this way. The damage is not to anyone’s feelings. It is what other governments now expect of us.

Standing is not a sentiment. It is a prediction that other capitals make about how you will behave when you are pushed. For seventy years, the prediction about India was that it would not be told what its position was.

Five things India should do this week

Start with Iran, because the silence there has cost us the most.

Standing with Tehran has nothing to do with liking its government. A member state of the United Nations was illegally bombed by Israel and the United States of America, and its leadership killed. If the largest grouping of developing countries cannot say so plainly, then sovereignty becomes a privilege granted at Washington’s pleasure, and every country sitting in Bharat Mandapam holds it on loan. Bandung was convened to reject exactly this, and India wrote the rejection.

Our own losses are not abstract. The frigate Dena was sunk on March 4 with 87 men aboard, days after exercising with the Indian Navy at Visakhapatnam. Admiral Arun Prakash, a former navy chief, called it “a perverse act” by a country “supposed to be friends and partners.” More than 11 Indian sailors have been killed since. The Hormuz carries most of our cooking gas, and its closure puts queues outside Indian kitchens. The Iranian port city and free-trade zone Chabahar, representing a decade of Indian money and our only road to Central Asia that avoids Pakistan, was abandoned when an American waiver was allowed to lapse in April. We have been here before. In Trump’s first term, India resisted American sanctions on Iran and then gave in completely, ending every barrel of Iranian oil and damaging a relationship built over centuries.

So why does the Indian state keep walking towards Washington after every humiliation? Not out of confusion. The corporate class that matters politically in this country raises money in New York, lists there, sells services there and answers to regulators there. For them, alignment is good business. For the sorghum farmer in Rajasthan, whose tariff protection was traded away in February, it is ruined. Over 45% of Indians still depend on farming.

The chairship is the one thing Washington cannot take from India this week. Five demands would make the Delhi Declaration an important step towards global south solidarity and action.

One. Name it. The declaration must say what was done to Iran and to the Strait of Hormuz and must reject unilateral secondary sanctions as a category. Washington has increased sanctions on its targets by 933% in recent decades. A bloc that cannot describe the main act of force in its own year has told everyone what its words are worth.

Two. Put Global South debt at the center. Some 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on debt interest than on health or education. In 2023 the poorer nations paid $25 billion more to foreign creditors than they received. India should make debt relief the bloc’s headline demand and push the New Development Bank to lend without IMF-style conditions attached.

Three. Open the door wider. BRICS should stop behaving like a club of the eleven. Expand New Development Bank membership to developing countries outside the grouping, give partner states a real say rather than a seat at the back, and have India publicly champion Africa’s place in the bloc’s decision-making.

Four. Build food security together. Set up the grain exchange, and behind it a shared reserve that member and partner countries can draw on. India, of all countries, knows what it means to depend on someone else’s harvest. We must remember the history when India went to Washington for wheat in the 1960s and spent thirty years making sure we would never do it again.

Five. Make reform a demand of the bloc, not a bid for ourselves. India has spent two decades asking for a permanent Security Council seat. It should spend this week asking for Africa’s, and for an end to the 85% voting rule that gives the United States a permanent veto at the IMF. Ask for everyone, and the asking carries weight. Ask only for yourself, and it looks like what it is.

In 1947 India convened the Asia Relations Conference in Delhi with no power and enormous standing. In 2026 it has real power and is spending the time standing down. A new Bandung will not be built by a country that waits to be told what it thinks.

Atul Chandra is the Asia Co-Coordinators of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

The enlargement of BRICS presents Africa with a wider field of economic possibilities by bringing the continent into closer relationship with some of the world’s largest markets, important sources of development finance and countries possessing substantial capabilities in manufacturing, energy, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and advanced technologies. At a time when international economic relations are becoming increasingly fragmented, this wider range of relationships gives African countries greater room for maneuver.

But a wider choice of trading partners, financiers, and technological partners will mean considerably less if Africa continues to export raw materials, import sophisticated technologies, and occupy the lower reaches of global value chains, because the destination of our commodities may become more diversified without fundamentally altering our position in the international division of labor. It is not the direction of extraction that has ever been the problem, but its structure.

20 years of BRICS

This should therefore be the central African question about BRICS as it enters its third decade: how do we use this changing configuration of economic relationships to build productive power on the continent? The measure of Africa’s engagement with BRICS cannot simply be the increase in trade, investment or infrastructure finance, but must increasingly be whether these relationships enable African economies to convert their minerals, energy resources, labor, knowledge and expanding continental market into greater productive, technological and institutional capability.

Africa’s experience gives this question particular historical significance. The continent has been deeply integrated into the world economy for centuries, but largely through an economic structure in which minerals and agricultural commodities traveled enormous distances while much of the processing, manufacturing, technology, and financial value associated with them accumulated elsewhere. That structure remains recognizable in economies that export crude oil while importing refined petroleum products, export mineral ores while importing machinery and manufactured components and export agricultural commodities while importing processed goods derived from the same productive base.

Barriers to development

The post-colonial challenge has therefore never been to trade more but to build the productive capabilities that allow African economies to retain more value from what they produce. Yet this has become more difficult as several economies have experienced premature deindustrialization before manufacturing reached the scale needed to absorb large numbers of workers and sustain productivity growth. Domestic firms are frequently small, supplier networks remain shallow, and the relationship between universities, technical institutions and industry is often weak. Infrastructure still too often reflects the historical logic of moving commodities from sites of extraction to ports rather than connecting African centers of production.

Read more: The International Monetary Fund’s Africa policy is underdevelopment

The African Continental Free Trade Area creates the possibility of changing the scale at which we approach some of these problems. A continental market can support forms of industrial specialization that smaller national markets cannot, but the agreement will acquire its full developmental significance only when African firms possess the productive capacity to supply that market. Lowering tariffs creates trade opportunities; it does not by itself produce the firms, electricity, logistics, finance, skills and technical standards required to take advantage of those opportunities.

The emergence of BRICS creates new possibilities within this African project, but it does not guarantee the outcome. Consider the minerals required for the global energy transition. African countries possess significant deposits of manganese, platinum-group metals, cobalt, lithium, and other minerals required for batteries, electric mobility, renewable-energy systems and the wider low-carbon economy. Several BRICS economies already represent substantial sources of demand for these minerals, and their industrial and technological ambitions are likely to further increase that demand. The question is whether it can be structured to support African processing, refining and manufacturing rather than simply accelerating the export of unprocessed ore. For South Africa, this means asking whether its mineral endowments, established industrial base, scientific institutions and engineering capabilities can support new activities in batteries, fuel cells, electric mobility, and renewable-energy equipment. Elsewhere on the continent, mineral extraction can be progressively connected to refining, processing, component manufacturing, engineering services, and technical skills.

Regional integration consequently must become as much an industrial project as a trade project. A viable African battery value chain need not be reproduced inside the borders of a single country. Minerals extracted in one economy can be processed in another, components can be manufactured where industrial capabilities already exist, with assembly occurring close to sufficiently large markets. The strategic objective should be to connect these capabilities across the continent so that regional integration progressively expands the number of African firms, workers, and economies participating in higher-value activities. Regional institutions have recognized this opening. Both SADC and SACU have recently developed strategies to leverage their members’ critical mineral endowments for industrial development rather than raw export, embedding the beneficiation agenda within regional frameworks rather than leaving it to individual countries to negotiate alone. The question for BRICS partners is whether their infrastructure finance can connect regional production rather than reinforcing the extractive economic geography that routes everything to ports.

The experience of Indonesia is instructive in this respect. By restricting the export of unprocessed nickel ore, Indonesia used its resource endowment as an instrument of industrial policy, compelling downstream investment in domestic refining and processing and generating a measurable expansion of manufacturing activity around the minerals sector. The conditions in Indonesia differ from those across African mineral-producing economies, and no single approach transfers without adaptation, but the underlying logic, that a country with significant mineral endowments can use its position in global supply chains to anchor productive capability rather than to service demand, is directly relevant to the African debate. SADC and SACU frameworks enable the collective pursuit of that logic rather than individually, which considerably strengthens the negotiating position of member states.

Read more: For Africa to have digital sovereignty, it must control data and AI technology

A vehicle for regional integration and development

BRICS cooperation can be brought directly into this developmental space. Its members collectively possess capabilities that African economies require industrial finance, advanced manufacturing, energy technologies, digital systems, agricultural technologies, pharmaceuticals, logistics expertise and large consumer markets. The strategic African objective should therefore be to use these relationships to close specific productive gaps, rather than to approach BRICS principally as another destination for commodities. The test of each partnership is whether it leaves firms stronger, engineers more capable, supplier networks deeper, and regulatory institutions better equipped than before.

This requires developmental statecraft, understood not as a rhetorical commitment to the state’s role in development but as the organized capacity of public institutions to identify productive opportunities, direct finance towards them, negotiate technology partnerships on terms that leave capabilities behind, coordinate the different policy instruments that productive transformation requires, and sustain that effort through the inevitable difficulties of implementation. State capability, in this sense, is the operational form of sovereignty in practice. A government may possess all the formal attributes of sovereign authority whilst systematically lacking the institutional capacity to negotiate effectively with international capital, enforce agreements, direct finance towards developmental ends or build the regulatory knowledge that separates a beneficial technology partnership from another form of dependency.

The infrastructure and technology challenges illustrate the practical implications. Much of Africa’s transport network still reflects an extractive economic geography. The next generation of infrastructure must connect African economies and link transport corridors to processing facilities, industrial parks, energy systems, universities, cities, and regional markets rather than simply moving commodities more efficiently to ports. When an African country acquires sophisticated technology, the relevant question is what remains after the transaction: whether our engineers understand it, whether our universities can teach and improve it, whether domestic firms can enter its supply chains and whether we can progressively adapt it to local circumstances. The developmental value of technology partnerships lies ultimately in the capabilities they leave behind, and state capability is what determines whether those conditions are written into agreements and enforced when partners resist them.

Finance is an equally pressing matter in the African context. Large infrastructure projects can attract BRICS capital, but smaller domestic manufacturers and regional suppliers frequently lack the patient finance required to expand production, meet technical standards, and enter value chains. BRICS financing mechanisms, including the New Development Bank, could make a particularly consequential African contribution by complementing large infrastructure investment with financing for productive enterprises, supplier networks, and industrial projects.

Africa and BRICS

For Africa, these possibilities will not materialize automatically. The continent possesses many of the minerals upon which emerging industries will depend, the youngest population of any continent, enormous renewable-energy potential and a continental market whose importance will grow considerably during this century. But history provides ample evidence that endowments do not, by themselves, produce development, and the responsibilities that follow from this understanding fall primarily on African states rather than on any external partner. BRICS cannot perform these functions on Africa’s behalf, nor should it. What it can do is enlarge the range of instruments available to countries pursuing productive transformation.

Africa, therefore, confronts BRICS with both an opportunity and a test: the opportunity is a wider range of markets, finance, technologies, industrial partners, and development experiences, while the test is whether the continent uses this greater room for maneuver to change its productive structure or merely to diversify the destinations to which its commodities are exported. BRICS can enlarge Africa’s field of possibilities, but it cannot determine what Africa builds within it. The changing international order can give Africa greater room to act, while productive power will determine what we can do with that room.

Busani Ngcaweni is Director of the Centre for Public Policy and African Studies at the Johannesburg Business School, University of Johannesburg.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

At the end of August, the Greek government signed the “Achilles Shield” agreement – a €3 billion “defense” deal with Israel. Under the terms, Israeli companies including Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) will develop and build anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic systems for Greece.

“This is the largest defense export deal in the history of Israel-Greece relations, and one of the largest in the history of the State of Israel,” the occupation’s Ministry of Defense stated. “Greece’s choice of Israeli technology as the backbone of its most ambitious air defense buildup program in the past decade reflects the depth of trust built between the two countries.”

“Under the deal, Israel will build Greece a comprehensive, multi-layered air defense array, drawing entirely on Israeli-made systems and on the extensive operational experience Israel’s defense establishment has gained during the war.”

The “war” in the statement being the genocide Israeli forces have been conducting in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

An influx of Israeli investments in Greece

According to journalist Vangelis Ilias, the new deal should be contextualized within broader trends of Greek capital and subsequent governments deepening ties with the occupation power.  While the current Mitsotakis administration did not initiate this trend, he says, it deepened it both before and since the genocide in Gaza began. “Over the past 6-7 years, we have witnessed an influx of Israeli investment funds into Greece, both in the real estate sector and through the acquisition of former public – but not exclusively public – companies in various sectors of the economy, one of which is defense.”

Israeli real estate investments in Greece have already had a notable impact on people’s everyday lives, driving up rents and making housing more unaccessible. Endeavors in the defense sector might have been more lowkey, Ilias adds, but they are widespread and expanding under the sight of NATO and European institutions. “In the south of the country, in Kalamata, there is a large Greek Air Force base that also falls under the NATO umbrella as an International Pilot Training Center,” he says, emphasizing the presence of Elbit Systems in the area.

Israeli companies have also purchased local military enterprises, including Intracom Defense, operating in electronic warfare and drone production. “Through this acquisition, the Israeli state-owned company IAI gained access to the European Defense Fund (EDF), an EU mechanism intended exclusively for financing European defense procurement programs – something that was made possible only thanks to the active support of the Greek government,” Ilias adds.

“[Achilles Shield] has been promoted by the domestic media and the elite as an agreement that shields Greece,” he adds. “[Under the claim] that the money being spent, while not going to healthcare and education, or toward supporting the incomes of citizens who are still trying to recover from the years of economic crisis, protects us from those who seek to harm the country, with Turkey always implied in this context,” he explains. 

“In this era of crises, military buildup, and preparations for a full-scale war, they are trying to present this not only as something reasonable but also as something necessary, where strategic agreements between states take precedence over the needs of the people and international law, overlooking genocides or the ethnic cleansing of an entire people.”

The deal’s Achilles’ heel: reliance on Israeli arms

While Greek officials described the deal as a breakthrough for Greek sovereignty, critics have warned of dangers on several fronts. To begin with, in the announced distribution of funds, local industry expects only €750 million of the total €3 billion. The rest goes to Israeli arms companies making the genocide in Gaza technically feasible.

And despite the amount of money being spent, parts of the agreement have been presented inconsistently to the public. “We’re talking about a complex system of sophisticated weapons utilizing artificial intelligence, with a central control unit that operates based on computer code, Ilias emphasizes. “There has been extensive debate over whether this code will belong to Israel or be controlled by Greece. So far, the government’s responses to a barrage of questions from the opposition have been neither reassuring nor consistent. This remains to be clarified.”

The expenditure has been heavily criticized by left movements, including the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), in the context of EU armament taking place at the expense of labor rights and social services. “Costing more than €3 billion, this agreement forms part of the broader ‘2030 Agenda’ arms program serving NATO’s needs, for which our people are paying dearly – tens of billions of euros – at the expense of their rights and needs,” the KKE pointed out.

Like most other EU governments, the Mitsotakis administration has announced harmful labor and social reforms just as it committed billions for Israeli arms producers. This new-old austerity agenda has met widespread resistance. Recently, tens of thousands demonstrated in Thessaloniki demanding dignified wages and pensions, efficient public healthcare, and investments in education. “Not one euro for imperialist wars,” they insisted.

The “Achilles Shield” deal also adds to the case made by academics and activists worldwide that Israel is using the Gaza genocide to market its weapons. This is apparent not only from the purchase list, but from official statements as well. The Israeli Ministry of Defense announced similar deals are part of a broader strategy “to expand defense exports as a central tool for strengthening the IDF’s force buildup, influencing Israel’s foreign policy standing worldwide, and bolstering the Israeli defense industry and economy.”

Critics have argued that Greece’s arms deal risks making the country captive to Israel’s defense industry and alienating it from other countries in the region. “In practice, strategic relations with the murderous state of Israel, together with joint military preparations, are adding fuel to the fire of imperialist rivalries in the region, as well as the conflicts between the bourgeois classes of Turkey and Israel, and of Greece and Turkey, in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, with the peoples being the victims,” the KKE emphasized.

Read more: Amid mass protests in the West, Israel’s military footprint expands in Eastern Europe

“Greece’s ruling class has made a strategic choice to align itself closely with the Western alliance,” Ilias says, referencing events since the Greek Civil War. “It is particularly worth noting that, as a result, the Greek people have borne the brunt of the bloodshed.”

And while the post-Civil War regime attempted to crush “the popular and anti-imperialist movement that existed in the country,” he concludes, they did not succeed. 

“This is partially why we still see today such a stark contrast between the ruling class and the organized, collective reactions of significant segments of the Greek people throughout the country against the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people. These reactions are multifaceted, with segments of the working class – beyond just the youth – actively participating.

Abelardo de la Espriella has now been in office for one month. The far-right president won the election by a narrow margin over leftist Iván Cepeda (less than 1% of valid votes), despite allegations of irregularities made by then-President Gustavo Petro.

However, De la Espriella dismissed the allegations of irregularities and began his administration by attempting to demonstrate military strength, an overt religious faith (for which he had to issue a public apology), and a clear alignment with Washington’s political doctrine.

The earthquake and the return to a state policy of war

However, just three days after he took office, a powerful earthquake struck the western part of the country, leaving more than 300 dead and nearly 5,000 injured. The government’s actions drew controversy. His supporters applauded the government’s response, while critics accused the administration of exploiting the tragedy to boost his public image and giving certain countries – such as Israel – priority in search-and-rescue efforts, while denying entry to rescue teams from other countries.

Added to this is the rhetoric of a return to all-out war against subversive armed groups and criminal organizations that De la Espriella already put forward during his election campaign. But this has not been merely a matter of rhetoric. Since taking office, the executive branch has ordered a series of attacks against positions held by these groups, some of which were engaged in peace talks aimed at their demobilization.

In fact, De la Espriella canceled the peace negotiations, which had been resumed by the Petro administration as part of his “total peace” policy.

Read more: President De la Espriella cancels peace talks in Colombia

In addition, the government’s death-defying political communication strategy has caused quite a stir. In some videos, the president can be seen walking among the bodies of alleged “bandits and terrorists” (as the government calls them), which, according to the Executive Branch, number 40, in addition to the capture of nine people allegedly linked to illegal organizations.

But the bombings have also drawn significant domestic criticism. In the Guaviare Department, three minors were reported killed following the bombings ordered by the president, which were part of a series of attacks that left a total of about ten people dead. And while De la Espriella said that armed groups are responsible for the deaths of the minors, he has not been able to escape criticism from human rights organizations that view indiscriminate bombing as a dangerous threat to innocent people and the civilian population.

A return to neoliberalism

Ultimately, the contrast between Petro’s and De la Espriella’s administrations seems so evident that many wonder whether it is precisely this political distancing that serves as the compass guiding the new government – or whether Colombia is, in fact, attempting to establish a new form of state.

To understand this transformation, BreakThrough News spoke with Danilo Urrea, philosopher at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, who sees in this first month a clear shift toward a return to a state policy of war – one that had previously been implemented with negative results: “In Colombia, this was historically known as the era called ‘La Violencia,’ which was one of the worst periods the country has ever experienced in terms of the barbarity it generated.”

“The president presents the killing of people to the country as a success,” he added. “But he also does so with an aesthetic and a semiotics that portray death, murder, and the like as a possibility for the country. And in a context like Colombia’s – where we have the highest death toll on the entire continent, surpassing even the combined death tolls of all the region’s dictatorships – this shows us that it is a step backward in terms of the possibility of building a country based on dialogue and reconciliation.”

Urrea also says the current government is trying to push the idea that the country it has inherited is in a disastrous financial situation, which is why it must promote a radical neoliberal policy: “We’ve identified efforts to promote a supposed economic turnaround for the country through old formulas that have already been tried and proved disastrous for social cohesion, for the territories, and for the relationship between humans and nature – with negative impacts on the communities living in the very places where this return to an extractive economy is once again being proposed.”

Furthermore, he warns that in the short time De la Espriella has been in office, there has been a setback in environmental and labor matters: “He has also come under attack during this first month, as he has begun to dismantle the gains made in terms of wages, recovery, overtime pay, and certain labor protections … which had been restored under President Petro’s administration through reforms and which this administration is now once again rapidly undoing with the stroke of a pen, supposedly to improve economic conditions. That, in very general terms, is what we’re seeing and what’s projected: the deregulation of all social benefits, of all the hard-won gains; the complete dismantling of all reforms; and the surrender of the country – in the areas of health, education, food, and all fundamental rights – to privatization processes primarily for the profit of transnational corporations.”

A new (old) geopolitical doctrine

Following the Petro administration’s attempts to defend the Palestinian people against Israel’s onslaught, as well as its various clashes with Washington’s hemispheric geopolitical agenda, Urrea asserts that Colombia has joined a regional strategy of control orchestrated by Washington: “The rise of the far right, which is well known … Through this administration, Colombia has become yet another outpost of U.S. imperialism’s advance across the region. And obviously, this has far-reaching consequences for the geopolitics of Latin America and the Caribbean in particular.”

WATCH: Colombia’s new president declares ‘colonial allegiance’ to US & Israel

Furthermore, Urrea highlights the historical importance Colombia – a country with access to both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea – has held in the United States’ geopolitical strategy to control natural resources: “From a geopolitical standpoint, conditions are being created for Colombia to once again become one of the countries that facilitates U.S. military control – but above all, control over the natural resources and assets that are so coveted in this era of challenges for the United States in terms of its economic capacity, its dispute with China, and everything related to critical minerals.”

What is the opposition doing?

Urrea notes that, for now, the opposition parties have not managed to formulate a clear response to De la Espriella’s project. First, he points to a certain caution regarding a state policy that promotes violence and war: “There is obviously a great deal of fear regarding the actions I mentioned earlier – this language of violence, death, and murder. And obviously, in a country like Colombia, this has repercussions for the ability of those opposed to the current regime to act. Furthermore, because there has been an increase in the targeted killings of social leaders in various parts of the country, especially in areas most affected by geopolitical disputes as well as conflicts over economic and commercial control, illegal economies, and so on.”

However, Urrea notes that a coordinated opposition to the popular sectors could emerge, and the people might offer a peaceful and better-coordinated response: “We should consider an opposition that stems more from the popular sector, and there, I believe, there is also fear about how to react in the face of a violent scenario, a dangerous scenario, and manipulation. But I believe that organizations are now focusing on analyzing what the main peaceful and strategic causes might be to address the current situation. It seems to me that one of these fundamental aspects will undoubtedly be, and is already taking shape in the country through popular organization and mobilization, the defense of the environment, the defense of territories that are already being targeted for the control and exploitation of natural resources by transnational corporations, and the issue of fracking.”

Meta wants to build one of the largest data centers in the world in rural Louisiana. 

The facility, known as Hyperion, is being built to train and operate the artificial intelligence systems behind Meta’s products. What began as a $10 billion proposal has since ballooned into a more than $50 billion development spanning nearly 10 million square feet and roughly 3,650 acres. At full scale, Hyperion is expected to require 5 gigawatts of computing capacity, making it the largest data center in Meta’s global fleet and one of the largest ever built. According to Meta, the project is expected to employ around 7,500 workers during peak construction and support 1,000 permanent jobs once operational.

For residents of Richland Parish, the arrival of Meta has brought both desperately needed jobs and profound uncertainty about what the project will mean for the community. The enormous facility is being constructed on former farmland and will require an equally immense network of infrastructure to support it. In nearby Rayville, many residents view Meta as an economic lifeline after decades of limited employment opportunities, with local families securing jobs that pay far more than the parish’s median income. But the influx of highly paid, out-of-town workers has also driven up rent and the cost of living as landlords and businesses increasingly orient themselves toward Meta employees. Landlords routinely raise the rent of low-income housing in order to price out local tenants in favor of contractors, forcing residents to move out of the area to afford housing.

Bringing Meta to Richland Parish

Richland Parish is a rural stretch of northeast Louisiana dominated by flat, fertile land rich with cotton, soybeans, corn, and rice. The parish’s economy has historically revolved around large-scale, row-crop farming, but declining farm incomes and population loss has strained the region in recent generations. Richland’s employment rate sits at 49.9%, 9.4% below the already dismal state average, with a median income of $53,544. A total of 36% of the 20,000 person population is Black. Rayville, the parish seat, is 80% Black. For decades, Richland has been far removed from the state’s economic centers of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, receiving little of the investment that has flowed into Louisiana’s larger cities.

That changed in January 2024, when Entergy Louisiana, the state’s monopoly power company, began a year-long courting ritual to bring Meta’s largest data center to the impoverished parish. Following months of backdoor deals and nondisclosure agreements, Meta announced plans to build a $10 billion, 4-million-square-foot data center on a 2,250-acre flood plain. In July 2026, Meta expanded the project, committing more than $50 billion and nearly 10 million square feet to what may become the largest data center in the company’s fleet and home to its massive Hyperion AI training cluster.

Both Meta and Entergy have been quick to dismiss community concerns, with state officials claiming that “whatever comes out of it will be better than the mostly fallow farmland that was there.” Meta likewise touts a laundry list of benefits it promises to bring to the area, most notably permanent jobs and increased tax revenue. The company now claims that the expanded Hyperion AI center will create more than 1,000 permanent jobs, alongside thousands of temporary construction jobs.

But Meta has refused to provide the evidence behind those projections. On August 12, the Louisiana Public Service Commission voted 3–1 to overturn the recommendation of an administrative law judge that Meta turn over information substantiating its projected job creation, economic impact, and electricity demand, effectively shielding the company’s claims from public scrutiny.

Meta’s empty promises of economic growth

The public’s skepticism is warranted. Data centers routinely generate thousands of temporary construction jobs while creating only a fraction as many permanent positions once construction ends. Meta’s projects in Texas and Oklahoma, for example, are expected to leave only around 100 operational jobs each after thousands of construction workers leave. QTS similarly estimates that a data center campus in York County, North Carolina will produce roughly 1,000 construction jobs but only about 100 permanent onsite positions. Even Hyperion’s original proposal called for roughly 5,000 construction workers but only 500 permanent operational employees. None of these figures guarantee that the permanent positions will go to Richland Parish residents. Meta has offered assurances about local hiring, but there is no binding commitment requiring the company to employ local workers.

Meta also claims the data center will bring tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue to Richland Parish, an argument it bolsters by pointing to the 2,000% increase in sales-tax totals since construction began – $50,000 of which has funded bonuses for some local schoolteachers. But that windfall is largely a product of the construction boom itself, not a sustainable source of revenue generated by the completed data center. The teacher bonuses are distributed through Richland Parish’s longstanding one-cent sales-tax program, which provides annual “13th checks” to eligible school employees. As those construction workers spend money in the parish, that pool has temporarily grown; once construction ends, so will much of the revenue feeding it. The result is a temporary infusion of money that can obscure the longer-term fiscal consequences of the project. When the construction boom ends, Richland Parish will be left with the costs of a massive industrial project, and fewer public resources to pay for them.

Cementing Louisiana’s dependence on fossil fuels amid environmental devastation

The environmental impact of the Meta data center could also be deadly for residents of Richland Parish and Louisiana as a whole. The Hyperion AI data center is expected to consume roughly half of the state’s electrical capacity – approximately seven times the energy consumed by the entire city of New Orleans – placing enormous new demands on Entergy’s already overburdened power grid. Louisiana residents know what a fragile electrical system can mean in a disaster. After Hurricane Katrina, Entergy’s restoration efforts took 42 days to complete across its service territory. In 2021, Hurricane Ida left nearly 950,000 customers without power after an Entergy tower fell into the Mississippi River, a disaster that required 15 days of restoration work just to bring more than 90% of affected customers back online.

Rather than address these vulnerabilities, Entergy’s proposed solution to Hyperion’s unprecedented energy demands is to build an entirely new fossil-fuel energy infrastructure around the data center. The company plans to construct ten natural-gas power plants, including seven new facilities capable of generating roughly 5.2 gigawatts of electricity, alongside new transmission lines and a massive 500-kilovolt substation. Meta, Entergy, and the Louisiana state government are working to present these projects as investments that will strengthen Louisiana’s electrical grid and improve reliability for ordinary customers.

Louisiana is being asked to construct an enormous new fossil-fuel-based energy system so that a single private corporation can consume an unprecedented share of its electricity. More generation may increase capacity, but it does not eliminate the physical vulnerabilities that have repeatedly left Louisiana residents without power after hurricanes. Instead, the state is doubling down on a centralized, fossil-fuel-dependent grid whose infrastructure will remain vulnerable to the same storms that have already decimated Louisiana’s communities.

Entergy’s catastrophic deal with Meta has arrived as Louisiana is already on the front lines of an environmental crisis. The state has lost more than 2,000 square miles of coastal land since 1932 and continues to lose more than 16 square miles each year. The state has experienced 31 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters since 2018, leaving communities to repeatedly rebuild from hurricanes, flooding, and extreme weather. Meanwhile, along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the area known as “Cancer Alley” contains a dense concentration of petrochemical and chemical facilities, exposing surrounding communities to significant air pollution and toxic emissions which have resulted in a cancer rate fifty times higher than the national average.

People of Louisiana reject corporate profiteering

These environmental pressures are only compounded by an affordability crisis. In 2024, 49% of Louisiana households – nearly 900,000 – were either living in poverty or earning too little to afford basic necessities. A basic survival budget costs an estimated $30,708 a year for a single adult and $81,912 for a family of four, before accounting for savings or emergencies such as climate disaster. All the while, the state is being asked to absorb another enormous industrial project while nearly half of its households are already struggling financially and its communities confront environmental catastrophe.

Read more: A massive AI data center transforms rural Utah into a national flashpoint

Community opposition to the Hyperion project reflects a growing recognition that the promised benefits of corporate development cannot be separated from the costs that residents will be asked to bear. The fight is not simply over one data center, but over who gets to determine what Louisiana’s resources are used for and whose interests development is meant to serve. For generations, Louisiana communities have been told that jobs and investment require accepting pollution, environmental destruction, and the transformation of local resources into private profit.

Hyperion offers another version of the same bargain: enormous amounts of Louisiana’s land, electricity, water, and public infrastructure would be redirected toward the interests of one of the world’s largest technology companies. And the resistance to that bargain extends far beyond Richland Parish. Hundreds of Louisianans have mobilized around Public Service Commission meetings, traveling to the capital to demand that regulators prioritize the people who will bear the costs of Meta and Entergy’s expansion. Their concerns have repeatedly been dismissed or overridden by a majority of commissioners, even as the commission has approved billions of dollars in new generation and transmission infrastructure for the project. A 2024 investigation by the Louisiana Illuminator and Floodlight found that nearly 43% of campaign contributions to Louisiana utility commissioners over the previous decade came from utilities, energy-related businesses, and their attorneys and lobbyists, with Entergy Louisiana and its executives and family members contributing roughly $350,000.

The resistance emerging across Louisiana is more than a battle over a single data center. It is a decisive stand for the right of Louisianians to determine their own future, rather than surrender it to corporate interests. This is a battle for the future of working people everywhere, and the people have vowed to keep fighting. 

Kieran Spencer is a New Orleans-based historian and organizer.

On Saturday, September 5, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited Turmus Ayya village northeast of the West Bank central governorate of Ramallah and Al-Bireh.

The purpose of the visit was apparently to meet the residents of Turmus Ayya, the majority of whom hold US citizenship, and hear about the spike in Israeli settler violence against them in recent years that resulted in deaths and damages to their properties.

Read more: Family of Palestinian-American man killed by settlers in West Bank demands US take action

A symbolic and contradictory visit

While the unusual visit was seen by some as an important diplomatic engagement, commentators and analysts slammed the move as “largely symbolic,” doubting its ability to put an end to these ongoing crimes against Palestinian-Americans in the West Bank.

Critics also highlighted a contradiction in Huckabee’s rhetoric, pointing out that his condemnation of violent settler attacks as “criminal acts” and “terror” clashes sharply with his long-standing, unwavering support for the settlement movement.

“I hope you recognize that I’ve been very clear in public statements saying that when someone takes over another person’s home, if there are squatters that come in and put up their own flags and take possession of something that does not belong to them; if they burn a car, if they torch a mosque, if they go into someone’s home and vandalize it, paint graffiti on the walls, that’s a criminal act,” Huckabee stated at his town hall meeting with the residents of Turmus Ayyah in the presence of reporters. 

“But it extends beyond a criminal act. It’s an act of terror. I’ve been criticized a little bit for calling that terror, but terror is when a person is forced to change his or her behavior because of the behavior of someone else who is trying to use intimidation to make them afraid to live in their own homes, to make their children afraid to play in their own yards, to be able to walk their own streets,” he continued.

During the meeting, the US Ambassador admitted the Trump administration’s inability to stop settler attacks or even investigate them.

“There are things the American Embassy cannot do. We cannot investigate criminal activity, because we don’t have that authority in another country. We cannot adjudicate criminal activity in another country because we don’t have the authority to do that,” Huckabee noted. 

Huckabee was censured for downplaying the scale of settler violence by describing the perpetrators as “a very tiny minority,” “a tiny little group of marauders,” and “a few hundred people.” Critics suggest that this perspective diminishes the gravity of the situation, especially as reports indicate that over 4,500 settler attacks have been carried out in the West Bank since the beginning of 2026.

Moreover, the US diplomat drew heavy criticism for using the biblical terms “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the occupied West Bank, during his discussions with Palestinians in Turmus Ayya.

This in turn pushed Sky News correspondent Adam Parsons to challenge him on the use of these terms.

“You’ve called it Judea and Samaria, that’s not what the rest of the World calls it, it’s not what Palestinians call it, and you’ve said that there is a small number of settlers across the West Bank. People here say that your words are empowering violent settlers who live over there to intimidate and to commit acts of violence on a daily basis. Do you take personal responsibility?”  Parsons asked.

Huckabee answered, saying:

“I strongly disagree with your conclusion that I am endangering people. I am here today to listen to people who have their legitimate grievances. The reason I use the terms Judea and Samaria is because they’re ancient biblical terms of this land. 80% of the bible happened in the area of Judea and Samaria. The West Bank is a nebulous term to me.”

For many, Huckabee’s justification has not absolved him from the responsibility. It rather lays bare his pro-Israel stance, deeply anchored in his evangelical Christian faith and Christian-Zionist convictions.

It is worth noting that even during Huckabee’s visit to Turmus Ayya, two Israeli settlers drove directly past the home hosting the visiting delegation. While this provided a striking example of the routine intimidation the village faces, it was also widely interpreted as an act of direct defiance of the US delegation.

On September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers released a dust cloud containing pulverized cement, glass fiber, and asbestos, among other toxins – marking the health of thousands of community members and first responders. Twenty-five years later, New York City has announced it will finally release the full records on the day’s health impact.

In a statement released by the city administration, Manhattan Borough officials emphasized the dust and smoke to which first responders were exposed to contained over 2,500 contaminants and faced long-term health consequences, including respiratory illnesses and cancers.

“For 25 years, four different Mayoral administrations kept from the public, the US Congress, and the City Council documents showing what the City actually knew about the danger of the toxic chemicals in Lower Manhattan and Western Brooklyn after the World Trade Center collapse, even as City officials continued messaging to the public that the air was ‘safe and acceptable,’” the organization 9/11 Health Watch stated on September 8.

The risks posed by the contamination were known from the very beginning, given the date of the towers’ construction and the materials used at the time. From health professionals to left-wing activists, many emphasized the hazardous potential of the dust and insisted the effects could not be resolved in a matter of days. Despite these warnings, local health structures and administration assured people of air safety in affected areas as early as a week later – and did not change course even as their own analyses indicated elevated levels of toxic elements like lead.

City officials saw survivors as liabilities, documents show

Newly released documents expose that city officials were aware of the health risks posed by the toxic dust, yet they prioritized minimizing financial threats to the city budget. One of the related documents, the Harding memo, shows that by October 2001 the City feared it could face over 10,000 claims as a result of its health advice. 

Official reassurances to residents that it was safe to return to their homes too early contributed to thousands of people, including children, experiencing symptoms like rashes, heavy coughs, and nosebleeds, leaving them exposed to long-term health impacts.

The memo clearly indicates that city officials knew community members might realize official advisories led them to return to the impact area too soon – “causing toxic exposure or emotional harm” – and that rescue workers could complain they “were provided with faulty equipment or no equipment (i.e. respirators).”

Read more: The Trump Effect: pushing global health to the brink

Among the workers most exposed to the pollution were cleanup and recovery officers, along with members of the police and fire departments. Firefighters were particularly affected. Several reports over the years recorded the evolving health conditions they contracted as a result, including lung diseases, sarcoidosis, several types of cancer, and mental health issues. While some of these impacts could have been minimized by wearing appropriate gear, many of those arriving first relied on basic dust masks. “Respirators, which provide the actual protection needed, were seldom used on 9/11 and in the early days,” the Fire Department’s 2026 report notes.

“Firefighters described walking through dense clouds of dust and smoke in the hours immediately after the attack, in which ‘the air was thick as soup,’” a 2004 study pointed out. “FDYN responders inhaled this thick, polluted air,” the Fire Department also noted, “a situation made worse by the strenuous work that required increased respiratory effort and open-mouth breathing.”

Post-9/11 health landscape still evolving

With many conditions caused by the substances present in the dust taking decades to develop, the post-9/11 health landscape is still evolving – requiring ongoing monitoring and care. Despite leading to hundreds of additional deaths and chronic conditions, these cases have seen significantly less interest compared to the deaths caused directly by the attack on the WTC towers. 

The absence of a public healthcare system in the US also meant that 9/11 survivors could not automatically count on receiving the care they need. This is only one of the consequences of a system where health is treated as a commodity, as emphasized by socialist health professionals and activists. In 2006, one of these analysts, Vicente Navarro, pointed out that thousands of preventable deaths occurring each year in the US are directly linked to the lack of a strong public health system.

“The number depends on how one defines ‘preventable deaths,’” he wrote. “But even the conservative figure of 18,000 deaths per year is six times the number of people killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11. That event outraged people (as it should), but the deaths resulting from lack of health care seem to go unnoticed.”

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.