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Sorry again to return to this execrable human being, but it keeps getting worse and weirder. This weekend, the "fascist-to-the-core" GOP candidate held an "Ultimate Trump Boat Parade" featuring neo-Nazis flying swastikas and yelling "Make America White Again!" Then he held a garbled "town hall" that mostly featured 40 minutes of him woodenly, inexplicably swaying glassy-eyed on stage to James Brown and Ave Maria. The consensus: "The October surprise is that Trump has completely lost his marbles."
Since the start of his vitriolic political rise, Trump has brazenly trafficked in once-unimaginable racist tropes. But in recent weeks, with his campaign and mind spiraling, he's increasingly embraced outright, blood-and-soil, fascist rhetoric: Brown-skinned migrants are monsters, rapists, stone-cold killers "infecting" our pristine shores with their blood libel against lovable pets while allying with Dems, Jews, queers, people of color and other "enemies from within" to usher in an amorphous apocalypse, ingeniously merging fascism and Marxism, only he can stop. Many note this is Authoritarianism 101, from a time-worn playbook in which a demagogue appeals to a disaffected populace who feel they've lost their political, economic or cultural power and need someone to blame for that loss; a Great Orange Leader gives them that, along with a welcome moral pass, in exchange for their unswerving loyalty in the face of what are often his lunatic, growing flaws and failings. Hence the judgment of Mark Milley, formerly the nation's and his own highest ranking military officer, that Trump is "now the most dangerous person in this country - a fascist to the core."
In one recent move toward totalitarianism, Trump said he'd use the military to quell "very bad people" like Adam Schiff and other dangerous critics, prompting brave GOP pols like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, when asked about it, to literally stammer in terror, "I don’t think that, again, I can’t speak for him, but I do - I do think that you are misinterpreting his 'thoughts','' even when directly quoted to him. Another dubious move: Announcing an upcoming rally at New York's Madison Square Garden suspiciously akin to an infamous 1939 Nazi rally, also at the Garden, organized by the pro-Hitler German American Bund. It featured an image of George Washington flanked by American flags and swastikas, uniformed Bund members giving the Nazi salute, and rhetoric about the need for a "white gentile America" to protect against "the oriental cunning of the Jew." “If ever there was a moment to make such a comparison," Dems argued, "it’s now." Still, the GOP was faux-outraged. "Shame on you," said one GOP candidate, noting half the country supports Trump. "You just called 150 million voters Nazies (sic)." Not to mention bad spellers.
Given all this, it was less than shocking when a boatload of swastika-flying, skull-masked neo-Nazis joined Sunday's "mother of all TRUMP boat parades" in very rich Jupiter, Florida. Also there, on a boat with a huge bust of a blood-streaked Trump - "Fight Fight Fight" - was Lara Trump, who organized the event, grinning Dumb-and-Dumber Eric, who'd boasted of "flags soaring," and their two kids, without life-jackets. Nearby the Nazis, reportedly led by the head of the hate group Goyim Defense League, gunned their boat, shrieking "Heil Trump!" and ”Lookit those beautiful swastikas! We gotta make America white again!" When MAGA patriots in another boat, evidently queasy about them saying the quiet Nazi part out loud, deliberately splashed the yahoos, they yelled "Sieg Heil!" and "fucking pussies!" Online, several MAGA-ites argued the Nazis were "infiltrators," "agitators," "Antifa scumbag imposters" sent from the left, "just like on Jan. 6." Trump later dismissed them as "liberal activists." Sneered one supporter, "Kamala WISHES she had this much support." Mary Trump, in despair at the ugly, clueless spectacle, wrote, “What the fuck are we even doing?”
Most distressing, of course, is that one of our so-called presidential candidates is not just a fascist, but a fascist with dementia who often seems to be emulating the blithering idiot of Steve Martin's The Jerk: "A cosmetologist? That's unbelievable. Must be tough handling the weightlessness." "For weeks and weeks, I'm up here ranting and raving. Flawless. Ranting and raving," he whined. "Then they'll say he's cognitively impaired...But Biden was obviously cognitively repaired.” In Detroit, he insulted Detroit: "Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president (with) a mess on your hands." Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: "Keep Detroit out of your mouth." In Las Vegas, "stunningly senile,” he told Hispanic voters "crazy" Democrats want to ban cows and windows. After backing out of a 60 Minutes interview - also a second debate and CNBC interview - he raged "Kamala was very crazy or dumb" when she did it. His tirades - sharks, windmills, bacon - are deemed "unhinged," "rambling," "meandering," "absolutely incomprehensible." One pundit: "He's one cloudless night away from baying at the moon."
This weekend, he went to must-win Pennsylvania for a Q&A "Town Hall" moderated by puppy killer Kristi Noem that got so weird even mainstream media called it out. "Trump Sways and Bops to Music for 39 Minutes in Bizarre Town Hall Episode," read the Washington Post headline. (The New York Times, ever hedging, dubbed it "an improvisational departure.”) The event began with a handful of questions from pre-selected attendees that Trump pretended to babble-answer. Then, someone in the room fainted from heat or boredom; during the pause for medical help, Trump mused, "While we're waiting. So we had a beautiful evening." Then, "Let's just listen to music." Cue, randomly, Ave Maria, a perfect choice "if your target voter base is white people who died in 1958." Another pause as another patriot faints. Trump hilariously asks "if anybody else would like to faint." Then, he gives up the ghost and the questions: “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” And for 39 minutes he swayed, pointed, stared blankly as Noem nodded along. Nothing to see here.
They ran through nine tracks of his Mar-a-Hell-Go playlist. James Brown sang It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World as a lurching Trump watched Brown on a video screen. Sinéad O’Connor sang Nobody Compares 2 U. More bobbing, interspersed with words - "Great song...This is the most important election in the history of our country...I like it so we will do some songs" - plus an ad for a Trump Combat Knife. Awkward pause, then "a couple of really beauties...Let me hear that music." Andrea Bocelli sang Con Te Partirò, or Time To Say Goodbye. Trump teetered. Online sage: "Goodbye. Forever. You piece of steaming garbage." A nervous Noem: "Sir, do you want to play your song and greet a few people?" Trump: "What song?" Then, "We're gonna have a good time, make our country gayer." Cue YMCA, the 1970s gay cruising anthem: "Nice and loud! Nobody's leaving, what's going on?" The dazed crowd "danced." The old man in the sweaty Joker makeup wobbled. Wonkette: "Go have some pudding." Rufus Wainwright sang Hallelujah. The next day, Leonard Cohen's estate issued a cease and desist order; Wainwright called it all "the height of blasphemy."
When confounded reports of an event charitably dubbed "unorthodox" started emerging, even Fox News deemed it "very strange." But the Trump campaign, masters of alternative reality, wasn't having it. "Total lovefest!" declared repugnant spokesperson Steven Cheung. "Everyone was so excited they were fainting. Nobody wanted to leave and wanted to hear more songs from the famous DJT Spotify playlist!” Bigot and wingnut Laura Loomer also loved it. "Trump jamming out to YMCA at his Town Hall, which he just turned into a concert!" she exclaimed. "There will never be another like him." (For God's sake, let's hope not.) Trump declared the event "amazing!" "When people began fainting from the excitement and heat. We started playing music while we waited, and just kept it going. So different, but it ended up being a GREAT EVENING!" Not, evidently, to a stunned-looking Nicolle Wallace, who described as "meandering and bizarre and uncomfortable to watch" a "town hall if you're still calling it that, but we're certainly not," especially when "the wheels came off" with his "musical fest, oh looky looky." The Harris campaign: "Hope he's okay."
Obviously, by any reasonable measure, he's not. Never mind the bonkers musical interlude. In Aurora, Colorado, he raged against "savage gangs" of migrants, aka poor people seeking safety: ”We have to live with these animals, but we won’t live with them for long." At an economic event in Chicago to talk about worker shortages, he veered uncontrollably into his hatred of immigrants: "These are killers, by the way, these, these, some of these killers are among the most evil killers...They'll look at you and they will kill you." On Sunday, he threatened to sic the military on them and every other "enemy within" - anyone who rejects his rabid racism. "Just a former president suggesting he’ll use the military against his fellow citizens for exercising their freedom of speech," said Jimmy Kimmel. "Nothing to worry about, folks. Seriously, when is he going to grow that little mustache already?"For Tim Walz, he has "crossed a line," one too many. "Just so you're clear," he told students in Wisconsin, "That’s you, that’s what he’s talking about. This is not some mythical thing out there. I tell you that because we need to whip his butt and put this guy behind us." Hallelujah.
With rescue and cleanup efforts underway in Florida following back-to-back disasters wrought by hurricanes Helene and Milton, scientists on Friday released an analysis highlighting how the latter storm was "wetter, windier, and more destructive because of climate change" driven by fossil fuels.
Hurricane categories are based on wind speed, and scientists have connected quick jumps in ratings to the climate emergency. Milton rapidly intensified to Category 5, the highest on the scale, while in the Gulf of Mexico but made landfall late Wednesday as a Category 3 storm—less than two weeks after Category 4 Helene hit Florida and then left a trail of destruction across the Southeast.
Based on modeling, "climate change was responsible for an increase of about 40% in the number of storms of this intensity, and equivalently that the maximum wind speeds of similar storms are now about 5 m/s (around 10%) stronger than in a world without climate change," World Weather Attribution (WWA) said Friday. "In other words, without climate change Milton would have made landfall as a Category 2 instead of a Category 3 storm."
WWA also detailed how the warming climate is connected to the water that Milton left in its wake. As the group said: "In 3 out of the 4 analyzed datasets we find that heavy one-day rainfall events such as the one associated with Milton are 20-30% more intense and about twice as likely in today's climate, that is 1.3°C warmer than it would have been without human-induced climate change. The fourth dataset shows much larger changes."
"These results are based on observational data and do not include climate models and are thus higher than the overarching attribution statement given for Hurricane Helene, where we combined observations and climate models. Nevertheless the results are compatible with those obtained for other hurricanes in the area that have been studied in the scientific literature," WWA continued. "Despite using different temporal and geographical event definitions, as well as different observational datasets and climate models, all these studies show a similar increase in intensity of between 10% and 50% and about a doubling in likelihood. We are therefore confident that such changes in heavy rainfall are attributable to human-caused climate change."
Both storms have generated fresh calls to "make polluters pay" for the damage and deaths caused by extreme weather exacerbated by fossil fuels. There are ongoing state-level lawsuits against Big Oil and recent demands for prosecutors to consider bringing criminal charges against companies, using attribution science to make their cases.
"This study has confirmed what should already be abundantly clear: Climate change is supercharging storms, and burning fossil fuels is to blame," Ian Duff, head of Greenpeace International's Stop Drilling Start Paying campaign, toldReuters about the WWA findings out Friday. "Millions of people across Florida—many of whom lack insurance—now face astronomical costs to rebuild shattered homes and communities."
Milton killed at least 16 people—on top of the over 230 deaths tied to Helene—and could cause up to $50 billion in insured losses for property owners in Florida alone, Fitch Ratings said Thursday. As of early Friday, over 2 million state residents still lacked power, according toCBS News.
While Milton barreled toward Florida on Wednesday, WWA published a report detailing how climate change was a "key driver of catastrophic impacts of Hurricane Helene that devastated both coastal and inland communities."
That followed a Monday analysis from the research organization Climate Central showing that high sea-surface temperatures that fuled Milton's rapid intensification were made 400-800 times more likely by the climate crisis.
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed to both of those studies on social media Friday, in a series of posts promoting his appearance on MSNBC's "All In With Chris Hayes" earlier this week.
During Khanna's MSNBC appearance, he pointed out how Democrats on Capitol Hill have fought for more funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which responds to disasters like Milton and Helene, while Republicans have opposed it.
Speaking to reporters last week, before Milton made landfall, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned that FEMA is urgently in need of more money for this hurricane season, which lasts until November.
"We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting," Mayorkas said in anticipation of Milton. "FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season."
While Republican proposals for solving the childcare crisis in the presidential campaign have ranged from recruiting "grandpa or grandma" as babysitters to slashing providers' certification requirements—with presidential candidate Donald Trump failing to give a coherent answer when asked about the issue last month—a new study delivers a simple message about how the benefits of public spending on childcare significantly outweigh the costs.
Researchers at Yale and Brown universities analyzed the universal pre-kindergarten program in New Haven, Connecticut, and found that "politicians could massively increase Americans' earnings" by expanding investments in such programs.
The New Haven program began as the result of a 1996 court ruling and is open to all families in the city regardless of income—but it uses a lottery system for enrollment due to limited funding and space.
The paper the researchers published with the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that parents whose children were selected in New Haven's lottery had 11 more hours of childcare than those who weren't able to benefit from the tuition-free universal pre-K program—enough to increase the parents' earnings by 21.7% even after their kids moved on to elementary school.
That increase makes childcare spending "one of the most effective, pro-work policies in the U.S.," said Washington Post economic columnist Heather Long.
The added earnings stemmed largely from the parents' ability to continue working without taking time off to fill in gaps left by a lack of childcare, particularly because New Haven's program includes extended hours, with children able to attend as early as 7:30 am and as late as 5:30 pm.
The paper emphasizes that families that didn't get a pre-K slot still utilized other childcare programs out of necessity—but they had to pay for them out of pocket and were able to send their children to the programs for fewer hours per week than those who won the lottery.
"A few more hours of care can have long-run returns for families that are quite a bit larger than the costs of provision," Seth D. Zimmerman, a research associate at Yale who co-authored the study, told the Post.
Combining the added earnings for parents and other economic benefits associated with early childhood education, the researchers found, every dollar spent on providing tuition-free full-time childcare yielded $6 in benefits.
"This kind of payoff is almost unheard of in government labor-market policies—much higher than for most other pro-work programs, such as the earned-income tax credit," wrote Post columnist Catherine Rampell in an analysis on Monday.
The study was published days after the White House released an issue brief titledChildcare Is Infrastructure, which the Biden administration said was made evident by its $24 billion investment in the industry through the American Rescue Plan.
"Introduction of universal pre-K across various states led to increased pre-K enrollment and higher employment rates among mothers with young children in those areas on average," said the White House. "Consistent with an increase in overall economic activity, places that introduced universal pre-k also had larger increases in new business applications and the number of establishments than places that did not."
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has expressed support for expanding childcare programs and lowering costs for families, including by restoring the expanded child tax credit and providing an extra tax break for families with newborns.
The new study suggests that in the presidential campaign, "childcare should be front and center," wrote Rampell. "If you want to help workers, help them care for their kids."
For the second time in 24 hours, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney struck down a Georgia election rule proposed by allies of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, with pro-democracy advocates applauding the decision for blocking the "administrative chaos" that, as one critic said, was "exactly the point" of the rule.
The judge temporarily blocked a rule passed by the Georgia Election Board late last month that would have required poll workers to conduct a hand count of all votes to ensure the tally matched that of electronic voting machines.
McBurney said the hand-count rule was "too much, too late" to add to the 2024 election process but said he would still weigh the merits of the proposal for future elections.
"The election season is fraught; memories of January 6 have not faded away," said McBurney, referring to the riot at the U.S. Capitol that Trump urged his supporters to take part in to stop the certification of the 2020 election, after the then-president spent weeks baselessly claiming he was the legitimate winner of the contest.
"Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public," added the judge on Tuesday.
The hand-count rule was set to go into effect on October 22, a week after early voting had already started in Georgia. County election boards were joined by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr—both Republicans—in opposing the rule, with Carr's office warning the Election Board had overstepped its authority by introducing the change weeks before the election.
"A rule that introduces a new and substantive role on the eve of election for more than 7,500 poll workers who will not have received any formal, cohesive, or consistent training and that allows for our paper ballots—the only tangible proof of who voted for whom—to be handled multiple times by multiple people following an exhausting Election Day all before they are securely transported to the official tabulation center does not contribute to lessening the tension or boosting the confidence of the public for this election," said McBurney.
At NOTUS, an online news outlet affiliated with the Allbritton Journalism Institute, Ben T.N. Mause wrote last week that the onerous hand-count requirement was already making it harder for election officials to ensure there would be enough poll workers on Election Day.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, applauded McBurney's ruling on Tuesday, saying the hand-count rule "was an effort to delay election results to sow doubt in the outcome.
"Our democracy is stronger thanks to this decision to block it," said the Harris campaign. "We will continue fighting to ensure that voters can cast their ballot knowing it will count."
Amanda Carpenter of nonprofit advocacy group Protect Democracy said demands for hand counts—like the ones that came from Trump and his allies after the 2020 election, which found no evidence of so-called "voter fraud" that would have swung the election—are "typically based on baseless conspiracies about voting machines, are intended to disrupt the voting process."
"Administrative chaos is exactly the point," said Carpenter. "Good ruling."
Georgia state Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes (D-7) called the rule "chaotic" and denounced Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for failing to investigate the MAGA-aligned Election Board members who pushed for the ordinance.
The ruling was handed down hours after McBurney ruled that local election officials must certify election results regardless of their beliefs that "voter fraud" has taken place—a defeat for Fulton County Board of Elections member Julie Adams, who refused to certify two primary elections earlier this year and has ties to groups that have denied Trump lost the 2020 election.
Human rights defenders on Monday underscored the links between the decolonization struggles of Native Americans and Palestinians—and the hypocrisy of celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day while the United States provides military aid and diplomatic support for Israel as it wages a war on Gaza for which it is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
"Several years ago Native activists successfully rallied their city councils to replace Columbus Day, the day that honors the Italian explorer who was a destroyer of Native worlds, with Indigenous Peoples Day, a holiday that celebrates the Natives who have resisted colonial oppression for over 500 years, since the arrival of Christopher Columbus," Jewish American scholar Benay Blend wrote for The Palestine Chronicle.
"It is also a good time to highlight Indigenous solidarity within the Americas as well as with other Indigenous people, including the Palestinians," Blend said. "Indeed, both people share a similar story of resistance to colonization, while the colonizers—the United States and Israel—share similar origin stories and tactics used to sever the Native people from their land."
Citing Steven Salaita—the Palestinian American professor of American Indian studies whose offer of a tenured position at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana was rescinded in 2014 over his criticism of Israeli bombing of Gaza—Blend noted that "both Israel and North America share similar rhetoric that justifies their origins."
"Infused with biblical references to 'salvation, redemption, and destiny,' settlers in both countries believed that they had reached the Promised Land, where God commanded them to eliminate the Indigenous populations to make way for more fertile land that had previously been 'underused and unappreciated by the natives,'" she added.
In a social media post that included video footage of Israel's bombing on Monday of a displaced people's encampment on the grounds of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, Uahikea Maile—a Native Hawaiian professor of race, diaspora, and indigenity at the University of Chicago—said on social media that "Indigenous Peoples Day is about commemorating our survival and endurance despite settler colonialism—resisting annihilation as distinct people."
"If your celebration doesn't condemn Israel's wanton destruction of Palestinian life, then it recklessly shores up settler colonization," he added.
Samoan poet and educator Terisa Siagatonu stressed that "Palestinians are an Indigenous people" and "a free Palestine is an Indigenous struggle."
"I'm saying this over and over again as clear as I can because I don't believe people are contending with this enough, and you need to," she added.
Nick Estes, a Lakota community organizer and University of Minnesota historian, asserted that "the cynical 'celebration' of Indigenous Peoples Day by a settler state backing another settler state's genocide against Palestinians and Lebanese shows us nothing is sacred, not even our own survival, until we bury colonialism once and for all."
Responding to an Indigenous Peoples Day proclamation by U.S. President Joe Biden "respecting tribal sovereignty and self-determination," labor historian, author, and Empire State University professor Jeff Schuhrke took a swipe at those "commemorating Indigenous Peoples Day while simultaneously facilitating the real-time colonial extermination of Palestine's Indigenous people."
The U.S. direct action group Jewish Voice for Peace chose Indigenous Peoples Day to stage a protest at which more than 200 activists were arrested while demanding an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. Sumaya Awad, a Palestinian American spokesperson for the event and member of Adalah Justice Project, toldThe Indypendent that "the fact that the United States claims to stand with and honor Indigenous people... while they're actively funding and financially backing the ethnic cleansing of an Indigenous population in Palestine is contradictory to their statements."
Rick Tabenunaka, a member of the Comanche Nation and leftist organizer who hosts the "Decolonized Buffalo" podcast, said on social media, "I find it ironic that settlers will claim that Indigenous peoples on the North 'American' continent aren't doing enough to fight against settler colonialism."
"Yet," he lamented, "these same settlers spent a whole year watching their colonial government support genocide in Palestine and did nothing."
An Oxfam report published Wednesday estimates that war-fueled hunger is likely killing as many as 21,000 people per day in dozens of countries as parties to global conflicts weaponize starvation against children and other vulnerable people in Gaza, Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, and elsewhere.
Food Wars, published to mark World Food Day, finds that nearly 278 million people across 54 war-torn countries faced crisis-level hunger last year. That population accounts for 99% of the people facing crisis-level hunger worldwide.
War, according to the new report, was a "major cause of food insecurity" in each of the 54 countries examined, "although in some of them, weather extremes or economic shocks may have been the principal driver."
"As conflict rages around the world, starvation has become a lethal weapon wielded by warring parties against international laws, causing an alarming rise in human deaths and suffering," said Emily Farr, Oxfam's food and economic security lead. "That civilians continue to be subjected to such slow death in the 21st Century is a collective failure."
Farr added that "today's food crises are largely manufactured," noting that "nearly half a million people in Gaza—where 83% of food aid needed is currently not reaching them—and over three-quarters of a million in Sudan are currently starving as the deadly impact of wars on food will likely be felt for generations."
Oxfam, other humanitarian groups, and United Nations experts have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of warfare against Gaza's population, much of which is facing famine conditions as the U.S.-armed Israeli military continues to obstruct the flow of lifesaving aid and attack food distribution centers.
On Tuesday, Oxfam warned that northern Gaza "is being erased" and "civilians are being starved and bombed in their homes and their tents" by Israeli forces.
"This is not an evacuation—this is forced displacement under gunfire," Oxfam said.
Across the globe, the number of people forcibly displaced by conflict reached a record 117.3 million last year, Oxfam's new report notes, "with 77% of them in countries affected by hunger crises."
Oxfam observed that "war-displacement-hunger crises occur in countries that continue to rely heavily on primary product exports," highlighting the need for systemic changes to global food and economic systems in addition to more immediate diplomatic efforts to end military conflicts.
"Paradoxically, peacebuilding efforts have often assumed that economic liberalization offers the best or only pathway to sustainable peace," the report states. "Yet struggle for control over fungible primary commodities can fund more violence, increased inequality, continued instability, and the risk of renewed conflict."
"Large-scale private investment—whether foreign or domestic in origin—adds to political economic instabilities where investors seize control over land and water resources and displace local peoples," the report continues. "Markets for high-value primary commodities need to be more carefully vetted and regulated, so they do not fund and fuel conflict."
Oxfam's report calls on governments to "make human rights, including the right to food, central to food system planning and transformation" and to "strengthen international accountability mechanisms to combat impunity and deter the use of starvation as a weapon of war," among other recommendations.
"To break the vicious cycle of food insecurity and conflict, global leaders must tackle head-on the conditions that breed conflict: the colonial legacies, injustices, human rights violations, and inequalities—rather than offering quick band-aid solutions," Farr said Wednesday.
"We cannot end conflict by simply injecting foreign investments in conflict-torn countries, without uprooting the deep inequalities, generational grievances, and human rights violations that fuel those conflicts," Farr added. "Peace efforts must be coupled with investment in social protection, and social cohesion building. Economic solutions must prioritize fair trade and sustainable food systems."
"We need resources and access for specialized development and early recovery interventions to help break the cycle of poverty and crisis," said one U.N. expert
Violent conflicts have contributed to pushing nearly half a billion people across the globe into acute poverty, and have made it harder for people to find their way out of extreme deprivation, according to a new United Nations report released on Thursday, the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
The U.N. Development Program (UNDP) joined the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) in publishing the latest update of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which measures acute poverty in 112 countries that are home to 6.3 billion people—a majority of the global population.
Researchers determined that 1.1 billion people are living in poverty, and 455 million of them are struggling to afford basic necessities while "living in the shadow of conflict."
"Conflicts have intensified and multiplied in recent years, reaching new highs in casualties, displacing record millions of people, and causing widespread disruption to lives and livelihoods," said Achim Steiner, administrator of UNDP.
The new research, he said, "shows that of the 1.1 billion people living in multidimensional poverty, almost half a billion live in countries exposed to violent conflict. We must accelerate action to support them. We need resources and access for specialized development and early recovery interventions to help break the cycle of poverty and crisis."
The communities studied by the groups face persistent deprivation of adequate housing, sanitation, electricity, cooking fuel, nutrition, and education, with well over half of the 1.1 billion poor people in the study facing undernourishment or living with someone who is malnourished.
UNDP and OPHI did find that countries have been able to significantly cut down on poverty in recent years, with 74 countries significantly reducing the incidence of poverty through investment in policies like cash transfer programs, child benefits, and nutritional services.
The index released Thursday showed that roughly 584 people under 18 are now experiencing extreme poverty, accounting for nearly 28% of children worldwide. Comparatively, about 13.5% of adults are living in acute poverty.
"Poverty reduction is slower in conflict settings—so the poor in conflict settings are being left behind."
"Ending child poverty is a policy choice," said the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). "Countries that have made this choice have drastically reduced the number of children growing up in poverty."
India is home to the largest number of people in extreme poverty, affecting 234 million of its population of 1.4 billion people. Nearly half of the world's 1.1 billion poor people live in India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Steiner emphasized that many countries in the Global South are being suffocated by debt repayments to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, hindering efforts to reduce or eradicate poverty.
"Onerous debt burdens continue to impede progress on tackling poverty in many developing countries," said Steiner. "On average, low-income countries allocate more than twice as much funding to servicing net interest payments as they do to pay for health or education services."
Without accelerating poverty reduction efforts, fewer than 3-in-10 countries are expected to be able to halve poverty rates by the end of the decade.
With nearly half of the world's acute poverty affecting people in conflict zones or countries with "low peacefulness," OPHI director Sabina Alkire warned, "We cannot end poverty without investing in peace."
In countries and territories with protracted conflicts, like South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen, and Gaza, "poverty is not their only struggle," said Alkire.
"In countries at war, over one in three people are poor (34.8 percent) whereas in non-conflict-affected countries it's one in nine (10.9 percent) according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program," Alkire added. "And sadly, poverty reduction is slower in conflict settings—so the poor in conflict settings are being left behind. These numbers compel a response."
Communities in places with violent conflicts experience "markedly more severe" disparities in nutrition, electricity access, and access to clean water and sanitation, said OPHI.
The index was published as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global authority on food insecurity, found that 41% of Palestinians in Gaza will face "catastrophic" levels of hunger in the coming months. Independent U.N. experts have already determined that Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza has pushed the enclave into famine.
Famine was declared in a refugee camp in North Darfur, Sudan in August, after more than a year of a civil war that has displaced 10 million people and blocked aid deliveries.
Steiner said that on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the U.N. is calling for the consideration of "a neglected dimension of poverty: the social and institutional maltreatment faced by people living in poverty augmented by conflict and lack of peace."
"Whether experienced through negative attitudes, stigma, discrimination, or through the structural violence embedded in institutions, it represents a denial of fundamental human rights," said Steiner. "From unequal access to education, healthcare, social protection, jobs, or legal identity, prejudicial policies that exclude those living in poverty further perpetuate cycles of inequality and exclusion."
"This is what the war in Gaza is about," said one critic. "This is what the U.S. is tacitly backing."
Bolstering fears that Israel plans to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to make way for Jewish colonization, the ruling Likud party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week sent out invitations to an event near the border of the embattled coastal enclave titled "Preparing to Settle Gaza."
Haaretzreported that the event—which is set to take place next week—is part of an initiative launched by Nachala, a Jewish supremacist movement whose members build illegal settler outposts in the occupied West Bank and whose ultimate objective is Israeli annexation of all of Palestine. The larger initiative's sponsors include the far-right Religious Zionist and Jewish Power parties.
"The event is not just a theoretical conference, but a practical exercise and preparation for renewed settlement in Gaza," Nachala said. "The return to settlement in Gaza is no longer just an idea but a process that is already in advanced stages, with government and public support."
A poster advertising the event declared: "Gaza is ours. Forever."
According to The Times of Israel, 10 of the 32 Likud members of the Knesset and one Cabinet member, Social Equality Minister May Golan—a self-described "proud racist"—said they would attend the event. Haaretz said far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, and Periphery Development Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf are also expected to attend.
Other Knesset lawmakers who say they'll go to the conference include Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi—who once called for Gaza to be "wiped off the face of the Earth"—and Tally Gotliv, who said Israel should use nuclear weapons for "crushing and flattening Gaza without mercy."
Nachala said the event will include a tour of Kibbutz Nirim, which was attacked by Hamas-led fighters on October 7, 2023. However, the kibbutz published a statement saying no such tour will take place.
"We are still waiting for the government and coalition members to take responsibility for the catastrophic failures of October 7 and for the deep wound still in our hearts," the community said. "Instead of holding political events aimed at establishing settlements, the government should focus on bringing home the 101 hostages and supporting the reconstruction of Gaza border communities."
Ben-Gvir and Smotrich attended and spoke at a similar event sponsored by Nachala in January. Both ministers called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.
Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed that he has no intention of resettling Gaza, which Israel conquered in 1967 and from which Jewish settlers and Israeli forces withdrew in 2005, while maintaining a physical and economic stranglehold on the strip.
The prime minister's claim stands in stark contrast with plans by others in his party and government to recolonize Gaza, as well as Likud's founding charter, which
states that "between the [Mediterranean] Sea and the Jordan [River] there will only be Israeli sovereignty."
Last year, Amir Weitmann, who chairs Likud's Libertarian faction, published a plan examining the economics of forcibly transferring Gazans to Egypt's Sinai Desert. A separate 2023 proposal by then-Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, who is also a Likud member, would ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, forcing them into the Sinai.
Former MK Moshe Feiglin, who quit Likud to found the right-wing Zehut Party, earlier this year invoked Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as he called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip and create a "Hebrew Gaza."
"This is our country, all of it," Feiglin said, adding, "As Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left.' We can't live here if one 'Islamo-Nazi' remains in Gaza."
Israeli forces earlier this month launched a major assault on northern Gaza that, in practice, resembles a plan pushed by a group of retired generals, which argued for forcibly displacing people in the north and starving those who remain.
Some Israeli opposition lawmakers condemned the upcoming settlement conference.
"A year later, and it's like we haven't learned a thing," MK Gadi Eisenkot of the National Unity party said Wednesday. "Today, we were informed of the intention to set up settlement projects in the Gaza Strip, a controversial issue in Israeli society."
"This is not what our sons and daughters sacrificed their lives for," added Eisenkot, whose son and nephew were killed in Gaza last year.
The resettlement conference comes amid Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza, for which the U.S.-backed country is
on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice. More than 150,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded—including at least 10,000 people who are missing and feared buried beneath rubble—by Israel's 377-day onslaught, which has also forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened millions of Palestinians.
"If everyone in America watched this two-minute clip, Trump would go down in a landslide," said climate leader Bill McKIbben.
Audience members at a town hall hosted by the largest Spanish-language network in the United States, Univision, did not hide their reactions to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's comments on the violent riot he urged his supporters to take part in on January 6, 2021—with several voters appearing perplexed as the former president called the attack on the Capitol a "day of love."
Ramiro González, a construction worker based in Tampa, Florida, said he voted for Trump in the past and was formerly registered as a Republican, but told the former president that his "action and inaction" regarding January 6 was "a little disturbing."
"What happened during January 6, and the fact that you know, you waited so long to take action while your supporters were attacking the Capitol," said González.
Trump gave a speech in Washington D.C. on January 6 and urged his supporters to march to the Capitol, where members of Congress were certifying President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election.
The day followed weeks of lies and legal challenges from the Trump campaign and the then-president's allies, who insisted that the election had been rigged, illegal votes had been counted, and voting machines had been hacked, and demanded recounts in several states—none of which found evidence of the claims.
In his answer to González, Trump suggested that his repeated lies about the security of the election had nothing to do with the attempted insurrection that took place on January 6.
"You had hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington," said Trump. "They didn't come because of me, they came because of the election. They thought the election was a rigged election."
Univision's camera panned over a section of the audience as Trump replied to González, showing one woman visibly shocked as the former president claimed "no one was killed" in the riot—right after he mentioned the death of Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who has fatally shot at the Capitol. Officials have linked five deaths to the attack.
González also appeared incredulous after Trump called January 6 "a day of love."
"This was the first attack on the Capitol in history by U.S. citizens and he calls it a day of love," said U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.). "I was there. It was a day of terror. Not just for us who were there. But for the American people. We CANNOT let this guy be back in the White House again."
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign posted a compilation video of other reactions from audience members as Trump spoke about the climate and his environmental policies.
Audience members at the town hall were credited by some political observers as giving a "masterclass" in questioning the former president. A farmworker named Jorge Velásquez asked about Trump's plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and pointed out that doing so would severely impact the agricultural labor force, asking how the plan would affect food prices.
"This Univision audience asked the best questions of the campaign," said progressive news outlet The Tennessee Holler on social media.