I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
Published date: 4 May 2026 12:14 BST | Last update:19 hours 42 mins ago
Israel has expanded its control of the
Gaza Strip to nearly 60 percent of the territory despite the ceasefire,
as it prepares for a possible resumption of the war, Army Radio reported
on Sunday.
Senior military officials, cited by the broadcaster, said they are pressing to restart fighting, arguing that now is the optimal moment to defeat Hamas.
Operational plans for renewed attacks have
been completed, the report said, with a final decision pending approval
from Israel’s political leadership.
The military has also reduced forces in southern Lebanon while redeploying brigades to Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The Army Radio also reported there has been an increase in attacks lately.
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Meanwhile, Israeli forces have expanded
the so-called “Yellow Line” to absorb more of Gaza, pushing the
population into roughly 40 percent of the enclave while troops remain
stationed across the remaining 60 percent in the south, north and east.
Gaza cannot be rebuilt until Palestinians control their own political future
The US brokered a ceasefire
in the Gaza Strip in October, intended to end Israel’s two-year
genocide by halting attacks and allowing humanitarian aid to flow into
the territory.
However, Israel has repeatedly violated the ceasefire, killing at least 832 Palestinians in near-daily shelling, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Overall, Israeli forces killed more than
72,000 Palestinians since October 2023. Thousands more remain missing
and beneath rubble.
Under the agreement, Israel was required
to lift restrictions and allow up to 600 aid trucks a day carrying food,
fuel, medical supplies, shelter materials and commercial goods.
However, Gaza authorities say Israeli limits have kept the average at
just over 200 trucks daily.
Additionally, the Israeli military
controlled nearly half of Gaza when the ceasefire began, establishing a
unilateral demarcation known as the “Yellow Line”. The agreement’s later
phases envisaged a gradual Israeli withdrawal from all of Gaza.
However, Israeli forces have since steadly
expanded the “Yellow Line” and now control 59 percent of the territory,
according to Army Radio.
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Joshua Scheer
This war isn’t just being fought with
missiles—it’s being waged through oil markets, currencies, and corporate
balance sheets. And while the world watches bombs fall, something
quieter—and far more consequential—is happening: a global energy system
is being weaponized in real time.
This on The Geopolitical Economy Report with Ben Norton.
Ben digs into the role oil plays at the center of the war on Iran—and
how the United States turned itself into the world’s top oil producer to
weaponize that power globally. He breaks down the push to sideline
OPEC, the UAE’s dramatic exit, and the political fiction of American
“energy independence.”
Oil Was Never Just Fuel — It Was Always the Weapon
One of the clearest lessons of the war on
Iran isn’t merely military. It’s structural. Oil is not just a
commodity. It is power. It is leverage. It is the bloodstream of the
global economy—and increasingly, the preferred instrument of empire.
For decades, the global system has
revolved around the petrodollar, a quiet but foundational arrangement
ensuring that most of the world’s oil is bought and sold in U.S.
dollars. Even today, an estimated 80% of global oil transactions still
run through that system. But the architecture is showing cracks.
Sanctioned nations such as Russia, Iran, and Venezuela have begun
trading outside the dollar, challenging the financial scaffolding that
has long underpinned U.S. dominance.
Yet the story is not simply one of
decline. Because while the dollar faces pressure, the United States has
quietly secured something arguably more consequential: control over
production itself.
In just over a decade, the U.S.
transformed from a major importer into the largest oil producer on
Earth, responsible for roughly 14–15% of global output. The shale boom
didn’t just reshape domestic energy markets—it rewired the geopolitical
landscape. Washington no longer merely polices the system; it helps
shape it directly. And in wartime, that shift becomes decisive.
Crisis for the World, Windfall for Big Oil
As the conflict with Iran escalated,
global oil prices surged—nearly doubling in 2026. For billions of
people, that spike translates into inflation, food insecurity, and
economic instability. For poorer nations, it is nothing short of
devastating.
But for U.S. and Western oil corporations,
the crisis has been a windfall. Profits have soared, with some
companies reporting earnings double those of the previous year. As
supply chains fracture and traditional exporters are destabilized or cut
off, American firms have stepped in—expanding exports to Europe and
Asia and filling the void left by war.
The pattern is unmistakable: global pain, concentrated gain.
The Strait That Can Shake the World
At the center of this crisis sits one of
the most strategically vital chokepoints on Earth: the Strait of Hormuz.
Before the war, roughly 20% of the world’s traded oil passed through
this narrow corridor each day. When Iran moved to disrupt it, the
message was not subtle—it was existential.
Shut the strait, and the global economy trembles.
This is what modern warfare looks like:
not just territory and airspace, but shipping lanes, pipelines, and
market flows. Control the flow of oil, and you control the tempo of the
world economy.
Breaking OPEC, Rewriting Power
Another quiet earthquake has reshaped the
landscape: the United Arab Emirates’ withdrawal from OPEC. On paper, it
looks bureaucratic. But historically, OPEC represented something
radical—a collective attempt by Global South nations to control their
own resources and wrest power from Western oil giants.
Weakening OPEC weakens that collective leverage. And it strengthens something else.
Washington has never opposed cartels in
principle—it has opposed cartels it doesn’t control. The long‑term
objective has been consistent: ensure that corporations aligned with
U.S. power, not sovereign states, set the terms of the global energy
market.
The Myth of “Energy Independence”
The familiar talking point insists that the U.S. is “energy independent,” insulated from global chaos. It isn’t.
Oil is priced globally. When prices spike,
everyone pays—regardless of where the oil originates. The U.S. still
imports millions of barrels per day, and its infrastructure depends on
specific grades of crude it does not produce in sufficient quantities.
“Independence” is political messaging, not economic reality.
From Oil Shock to Food Crisis
And here is where the crisis becomes
catastrophic. Oil is not just fuel—it is fertilizer, transport, and the
backbone of modern agriculture. As energy prices surge and supply chains
fracture, farmers worldwide are already facing shortages.
The likely result is grimly predictable:
rising food prices, shrinking harvests, and widespread hunger. This is
not speculation. It is the logical downstream effect of an energy shock
of this scale.
The Real Takeaway
This war is not contained. It is not regional. It is not temporary. It is systemic.
It is reshaping how power works—who
controls energy, who sets prices, and who pays the cost. And as always,
the burden falls downward: onto workers, onto poorer nations, onto the
global majority.
Meanwhile, at the top, the machinery hums.
Profits rise. Influence expands. The line between state policy and
corporate interest blurs even further.
Oil was never just fuel. It was always the weapon. And now, it is being used exactly as intended.
On 30 April 2026, I was on “Deep Dive”
with Lt. Col. (ret.) Danny Davis talking about what President Trump is
likely to do in Iran over the next few weeks and the consequences of
that war on the global order.
It is very difficult to know for sure what
Trump will do in Iran, as he is desperate and he was foolish enough to
start this disastrous war in the first place. My guess is that he will
continue the naval blockade until he is forced to accept defeat and cut a
deal because the world economy is about to go over the precipice. There
is no way, however, that he wins this war.
It is stunning how unsuccessful the US and
Israel have been in this war. Not only have they failed to achieve any
of the four major goals laid out before the war, but Iran now has a
stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, and — as Danny and I talked about
at some length — the US has wrecked the security architecture that it
built up with the Gulf states before 28 February 2026. And don’t forget
that the US, which has been committed to pivoting to East Asia to
contain China since the early days of President Trump’s first term
(2017), is now pivoting away from Asia to the vortex in the Middle East.
What a disaster!
Guido Reichstadter scaled the Frederick
Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC on Friday, May 1, 2026 in
order to protest the Iran War started by the President Donald Trump just
over two months ago.
Forty-five-year-old social justice activist named Guido Reichstadter, on Saturday morning, was still perched atop the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC, after first scaling the structure Friday afternoon in protest against President Donald Trump’s disastrous war against Iran, now in its third month, and the rapid and unregulated spread of artificial intelligencetechnology.
As Reichstadter, who described himself as the father of two children with master’s degrees in both math and physics, said in a video posted to social media
on Friday: “Hi, my name is Guido Reichstadter, and I’m currently
occupying the top of the Frederick Douglass memorial bridge in
Washington, DC.”
“I’m calling on the people of the United States,”
he continued, “to bring an immediate end to the Trump regime’s illegal
war on Iran and the removal of the regime’s power through mass
nonviolent direct action and non-cooperation.”
“I woke up on February 28th, and I found
that hundreds of school children had been blown apart. I think there are
many millions of Americans who reject the war in principle, but whose
actions have not yet been sufficient to bring it to an end.”
In a separate video, he explained he was
at the top of the bridge, which rises approximately 168 feet above the
Anacostia River at its highest point, “because the government of the
United States is engaged in acts of mass murder in my name. And I refuse
to be complicit in that.”
While bridge traffic in both directions
was closed at times on Friday and overnight, the bridge is reportedly
open to traffic Saturday morning, though with some lane restrictions, as
law enforcement said a “barricade situation” with the protester
continued.
Reichstadter, who has staged high-profile protests
in the past, spoke to Al-Jazeera via video stream on Friday to explain
his actions and call for an end to the war that he says—and tens of
millions of other Americans agree, according to polling—is a colossal
failure by the Trump administration.
“I mean, it’s an atrocity, right?” he said
when asked what motivated him. “I woke up on February 28th, and I found
that hundreds of school children had been blown apart. I think there
are many millions of Americans who reject the war in principle, but
whose actions have not yet been sufficient to bring it to an end.”
Democratic members of Congress, both in the US House
and Senate, have now brought several War Powers Resolutions to the
floor in an effort to end the US attack on Iran, which now includes a
naval blockade of the country, but Republican majorities in both
chambers, backing Trump, have thwarted those efforts.
Poll after poll,
meanwhile, shows that Reichstadter is completely correct in stating
that millions of people “reject the war,” but still the war continues
even after a 60-day deadline, according to the War Powers Act of 1973,
which says the president must either end military operations or get the
explicit approval of Congress, which came and went on Friday.
On Friday, a video showed Reichstadter
wearing a t-shirt that read “NO WAR” and unfurling a large black banner
along the side of the bridge’s central arch as part of the protest.
Before scaling the bridge, Reichstadter
also spoke with journalist Ford Fisher to explain his motivations and
what he hoped to accomplish with his one-person direct action:
Reichstatder stayed on the bridge overnight, even as fireworks exploded overhead from a nearby Major League Baseball game.
In his statement concerning AI,
Reichstadter said he wanted to “urgently warn the people of the US and
the world of the imminent danger we are in of crossing a point of no
return towards the development of artificial intelligence, which poses
the risk of catastrophic harm to humanity, including human extinction.”
“I call on the governments of the world to
take immediate action to end this danger by permanently banning the
development of artificial general intelligence and machine super
intelligence,” he said. “I also call on the people of the world to exert
all possible influence through nonviolent action to compel their
governments to end this danger with all possible speed.”
Americans have the “undeniable right and
the solemn duty” to demand accountability from the Trump administration
over the US-Israeli “war of choice” on Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman
Esmaeil Baqaei has said.
“It is beyond dispute that the US
administration’s ‘war of choice’ against Iran was a clear, unprovoked
act of aggression,” Baqaei said on X.
He posted footage of US Senator Kirsten
Gillibrand at a recent Senate hearing amid mounting criticism of the
war, saying, “We did not have any evidence that Iran intended to
imminently attack this country in any way, shape or form.”
In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we're doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.
Joshua Scheer, ScheerPost, May 1 2026
Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has delivered a rare rupture in official Washington’s script: accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza—and acknowledging that the United States is not a bystander, but a participant in its outcome.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Sherman pointed directly to the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing they have driven the devastation in Gaza while fueling wider instability across the Middle East. This is not the language of ambiguity or “both sides”—it is an indictment from within the establishment itself.
More damning still, Sherman underscored the uncomfortable truth at the heart of U.S. foreign policy: Washington’s actions are inseparable from its alliance with Israel. That relationship, she suggested, is no longer politically or morally sustainable without serious reassessment.
Her comments carry unusual weight. Sherman is not an outsider—she helped shape U.S. diplomacy at the highest levels. And her warning comes as global outrage grows over the scale of destruction in Gaza and the mounting civilian toll.
According to Gaza health authorities, at least 817 Palestinians have been killed and 2,296 wounded in reported Israeli violations of a ceasefire agreement since it took effect—figures that continue to climb as the violence grinds on.
International pressure is now building to force a reckoning: calls are intensifying to condition U.S. support for Israel on adherence to international law. The question is no longer whether the world is watching—it’s whether Washington will finally be forced to see what it has helped make possible.
In the full interview, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman—no outsider, but a career diplomat and reliable mouthpiece of empire—did not arrive at the word lightly. She is not a campus protester, not an antiwar dissident, not someone who has challenged the foundations of U.S. power. She is a lifelong architect and defender of it. That is precisely what makes her admission so jarring: Israel, she said, has “in essence created a genocide in Gaza,” and the United States helped pave the road that made it possible.
Let’s be clear—this is not an endorsement of Sherman’s worldview. She has spent decades advancing the very system now producing this devastation. But when even a figure so deeply embedded in that machinery begins to name what is happening, it signals something deeper than dissent—it signals rupture.
This is the moral collapse Washington keeps trying to launder as strategy. Gaza has been demolished, civilians slaughtered, hospitals and homes reduced to rubble, and still the political class hides behind euphemism while the dead pile up faster than the truth can be spoken. Sherman’s words matter not because she stands outside power, but because she doesn’t. They expose what official Washington already knows and refuses to confront: this is not an accident, not collateral damage, not a tragic excess of war. It is the destruction of a people—enabled, armed, and excused by the United States.
When a figure like that uses the word “genocide,” it punctures the careful language Washington relies on to avoid accountability. But it also reveals the limits of insider critique: naming the crime without challenging the structure that enables it. Her words expose a truth the political class already understands—that U.S. power is deeply entangled in this devastation—yet still stops short of confronting what that means. And that is the real indictment: not just what has been done, but how fully it has been absorbed into the logic of empire itself.
More from the interview
“Genocide” from inside the system Sherman—no outsider—says Israel has “in essence created a genocide in Gaza,” and admits the U.S. helped create the conditions for it. U.S. power ≠ strategy She warns Trump’s approach is “tactical” and impulsive, lacking any real long-term strategy—despite massive military escalation. Iran cannot be forced to surrender The idea that Iran will simply capitulate is fantasy—its nuclear knowledge, regional ties, and strategic posture cannot be bombed away. War is weakening U.S. global dominance Allies are drifting, trust is collapsing, and countries are turning toward China—accelerating a shift away from U.S. power. China and Russia are the real winners The war strengthens China economically and geopolitically, while also giving it justification for its own future military actions. Strait of Hormuz = permanent leverage Even after military strikes, Iran retains the ability to disrupt global trade—meaning the U.S. cannot fully control the situation. Negotiations are not about trust—only power Sherman bluntly states diplomacy isn’t about trust but managing competing interests between adversaries. U.S. foreign policy built this crisis She acknowledges decades of American decisions—from coups to wars—helped create today’s instability. Both parties share blame Republicans and Democrats alike failed to create stability in the Middle East, with Iraq and failed diplomacy fueling long-term chaos. Even insiders are “angrier” now Sherman admits growing anger and fear over the global cost—economic, political, and human—of current U.S. policy. Share this:
Experts warn abuses may amount to war crimes, urge international action to end impunity
Beyza Binnur Donmez, AA.com, 30 April 2026
GENEVA
UN experts said Thursday that sexual and
gender-based violence is being used as a “systematic tool” of control
and oppression against Palestinians under Israeli occupation, warning
that the acts may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“Israeli sexual violence has become
embedded in Palestinians’ daily lives under occupation,” the experts
said in a statement. “It is intersecting, structural and systematic, and
operates as a tool of control, subjugation and dispossession.”
The experts said abuses occur in multiple
contexts, including detention, checkpoints and house raids, and involve
Israeli forces and settlers.
They expressed concern about widespread impunity, saying investigations remain rare and accountability largely absent.
“Political convenience, strategic,
military and economic interests are placed above Palestinian lives,”
they said, warning that inaction “strikes the very basis of
international law.”
Citing previous UN findings, the experts
said the violence is used “to terrorise” Palestinians and contribute to
forced displacement by creating a coercive environment.
“Sexualised violence is deployed as a method of domination — to instil fear, punish, and fracture communities,” they said.
The experts urged Israel to end the
practices and urged the international community to take concrete steps
to ensure accountability and end the “climate of impunity extending
across both (Israel) state and illegal settlers.”
