di Francesco Vietti, antropologo

Il primo giugno si sono tenute le elezioni politiche in Etiopia. Se non lo sapevate e non avete idea di chi fossero i candidati alla presidenza, non vi preoccupate: siete in buona compagnia. Non solo tra i cittadini che seguono normalmente la politica internazionale, ma sospetto anche tra i giornalisti e i politici di professione, e persino tra noi lettori del Fatto, ben pochi saprebbero rispondere a questa semplice domanda: conosci il nome di almeno un attuale leader politico dell’Africa sub-sahariana?

Quanto al Nordafrica, l’orribile omicidio di Giulio Regeni dovrebbe averci almeno reso tutti consapevoli che in Egitto sia al potere da qualche anno il generale Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Ma appena ci si allontana dalle coste mediterranee del Mare Nostrum, ecco che le nostre scarse conoscenze svaniscono del tutto.

Chi governa la Nigeria, un paese grande quasi un milione di chilometri quadri e con oltre 230 milioni di abitanti (circa la metà dell’intera Unione Europea)? Chi sono i politici che hanno portato il Ruanda, un paese che forse ricordavamo per il genocidio degli anni Novanta, a riaffacciarsi alle televisioni italiane lo scorso settembre come sede dei Mondiali di ciclismo su strada svolti nella capitale Kigali? Com’è che il presidente dell’Uganda è anche il presidente di turno per il triennio 2024-2027 del Movimento dei Paesi non Allineati, un’organizzazione che pensavamo relegata all’era della Guerra Fredda, e che invece esiste tuttora e riunisce un gruppo di 120 paesi (i due terzi del mondo intero)?

Ammettiamolo: nonostante ci piaccia dire la nostra sui fatti che avvengono in ogni parte del globo, ben poco sappiamo di come vadano le cose fuori dall’Italia o, al massimo, fuori dall’Europa. Ma se ancora possiamo dire di sapere almeno il nome di un paio di leader dell’Asia (Xi Jinping in Cina e Modri in India?), o dell’America meridionale (Milei in Argentina e Lula in Brasile? Maduro in Venezuela da qualche mese non vale più e nessuno si dà pena di ricordare il nome della Presidente ad interim che ne ha preso il posto…), quando arriviamo all’Africa navighiamo nelle tenebre.

Eppure, se invece che riempirci la testa di inutili informazioni sulla sala da ballo che Trump sta costruendo alla Casa Bianca, o sui cazzotti che Brigitte Macron ogni tanto rifila al suo bel Emmanuel, dedicassimo un po’ di tempo ed energie ad occuparci di politica africana, forse la realtà che ci circonda ci parrebbe meno incomprensibile. E ciò vale ovviamente anche per chi fa informazione: se il tempo dedicato a raccontaci che in un anno di Presidenza Donald Trump ha messo su sei chili di grasso fosse invece dedicato a spiegarci cosa ci fa Samia Suluhu Hassan, la Presidente della Tanzania, al Forum Economico Internazionale che si tiene in questi giorni a San Pietroburgo in Russia, forse ci sarebbe di maggiore aiuto nella nostra impresa impossibile di capire dove stia andando il mondo.

Ovviamente, non si tratta solo di memorizzare dei nomi difficili da pronunciare. Rendersi conto di non conoscere neppure un leader politico africano significa in realtà ammettere di considerare che l’Africa intera non sia un soggetto politico del nostro mondo contemporaneo.

Ai miei studenti in università lo dico spesso: quando nel 1940 i due antropologi britannici Fortes ed Evans-Pritchard pubblicarono il volume African Political Systems intendevano mostrare che tutte le società del continente erano dotate di istituzioni politiche, anche se i colonizzatori europei preferivano pensarle come primitive e selvagge, in modo da non stabilire relazioni tra pari, ma rapporti di dominio. Da quel tempo è passato quasi un secolo, ma non molto è cambiato: ci conviene continuare a pensare all’Africa come un continente a-politico, o pre-politico, dove le alleanze, i conflitti, le appartenenze si spiegano con vaghi riferimenti alle tribù, ai clan, alle etnie… tutti concetti presi in prestito proprio dall’antropologia e usati a casaccio, più o meno come sinonimi di “razza”.

Questo atteggiamento, diffuso nelle opinioni pubbliche e tra le élite politiche ed economiche europee, ha un’ulteriore grave conseguenza: de-politicizzare gli africani, e nello specifico le persone migranti provenienti dall’Africa che arrivano in Italia e negli altri paesi europei. Vi siete mai chiesti che idee politiche hanno i migranti africani? Quali partiti votassero nei loro paesi d’origine? Chi voterebbero in Italia, se potessero?

Schiacciato sulla sua presunta “identità etnica”, non c’è da stupirsi che chi arriva dall’Africa sub-sahariana venga immediatamente sospettato di essere un “falso rifugiato”, vedendosi negata ogni soggettività politica se non lo scomodo ruolo di vittima chiamata a mostrare gratitudine per lo spirito umanitario con cui viene, nel migliore dei casi, salvata e accolta.

Per concludere, torniamo in Etiopia, da dove avevamo cominciato. Si è votato il 1° giugno, è vero, ma i risultati delle elezioni saranno resi noti l’11 giugno. Abbiamo, dunque, ancora qualche giorno di tempo: prendiamoci qualche ora, o anche solo qualche minuto sottratto alle ultime novità su Garlasco, e andiamo a leggerci chi è Abiy Ahmed Ali, diamogli un volto, scopriamo quale sia la sua storia, la sua visione politica e perché sia tanto controverso il Premio Nobel per la Pace che gli è stato assegnato nel 2019. E già che ci siamo, cerchiamo qualche informazione anche su Bassirou Diomaye Faye, il Presidente del Senegal, o su Félix Tshisekedi, che dal 2019 governa la Repubblica Democratica del Congo e le sue strategiche risorse di cobalto, al centro di complessi accordi con la Cina e gli Stati Uniti.

Mandiamo a memoria i loro nomi. Sarà un esercizio senz’altro più utile che ricordare i dettagli della prossima “arma di distrazione di massa” con cui la cronaca nera cercherà di riempire l’imminente vuoto dell’estate.

L'articolo Sapevate del recente voto elettorale in Etiopia? Forse perché non vi siete mai chiesti chi governa in Africa proviene da Il Fatto Quotidiano.

As offshore wind farms expand rapidly in the global renewable energy transition, scientists are studying how these large marine infrastructure projects affect ecosystems beneath the waves. Research from Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands suggests that offshore wind may bring both risks and benefits for sharks and rays, known collectively as Elasmobranchii, which are highly sensitive to electromagnetic fields (EMFs). A six-year project called “Elasmopower” examined how EMFs from subsea power cables in offshore wind farms affect bottom-dwelling sharks and rays. These species depend on natural electric and magnetic fields for key behaviors such as navigation, prey detection, habitat use and long-distance movement, particularly in low-visibility environments. The studies conducted as part of the Elasmopower project have been published in four papers, with three additional papers currently undergoing peer review. Sharks and rays have specialized electroreceptors called ampullae of Lorenzini. The jelly-filled sensory canals around the head and snout can detect even extremely weak EMFs from prey and predators, water movement, and the Earth’s geomagnetic field, Erwin Winter, a scientist at Wageningen, told Mongabay. This system is central to hunting and orientation, making Elasmobranchii especially relevant for studying EMF exposure from offshore energy infrastructure, Winter added. Erwin Winter, a researcher with the Elasmopower project, presented findings on offshore wind, electromagnetic fields and bottom-dwelling sharks and rays at the Sharks International 2026 conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in May. Image by Malaka Rodrigo for Mongabay. During a presentation on a summary of the Elasmopower research at the Sharks International 2026…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Pela primeira vez, em maio de 2026, o exército maliano lançou bombas de fragmentação, proibidas pelo direito internacional, no norte do país. Apesar da intensificação das «operações antiterroristas», os jihadistas e os seus aliados tuaregues estão a aumentar o seu domínio territorial. A Argélia, indispensável para qualquer solução política, pretende recuperar a sua influência na região. Há catorze anos que o Mali é alvo de ataques jihadistas mortíferos e desestabilizadores. Os Acordos de (…)

- 2026/06 / Cartografia e Infografia

CHIRADZULU, Malawi — Diana Sitima’s farm on the outskirts of Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre, is both example and an exception. Where neighboring farmers have planted mostly maize for food and for sale in nearby markets, people drive out to buy sweet potato, pigeon peas and vegetables, bananas and avocado, and eggs produced on Sitima’s 3.5-hectare (8.6-acre) property. Sitima started farming in 1993. Unlike her neighbors, farming was a side hustle to begin with: she worked as an office assistant in Blantyre and her husband had a good job with a bank. Over the next seven years, she and her husband took out a series of micro-loans, renting small parcels of land and hiring people from the village to grow tomatoes for sale in the city. Sitima’s efforts went well, and because her family did not have to rely on their harvest for food or an income at that time, she was able to save the money she earned to take a next step. She quit her office job and acquired a farm of her own in Chiradzulu district, 15 kilometers (9 miles) east of the city. “That’s how I made money to be able to buy this land when it was put up for sale in 2006,” she says. While she was still a part-time farmer, Sitima attended several workshops, where she picked up ideas about agroecological farming — an approach combining crops, agroforestry, fish ponds, poultry and livestock, in a self-reinforcing system that protects soil health and reduces the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The US Supreme Court late Tuesday gave Alabama a green light to use an aggressively gerrymandered congressional map that a lower court said was “tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”

The unsigned decision, from which the high court’s three liberal justices dissented, enables Alabama’s Republican-dominated government to replace its current congressional map, which has two majority-Black districts, with a map that the US Supreme Court struck down in 2023. That map has just one majority-Black district.

In her dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the court today doubles down on chaos.”

“In addition to being wrong on the merits, the court’s decision inflicts two grave harms on the public,” wrote Sotomayor. “It debases the democratic process by upending Alabama’s entire election in the name of permitting Alabama to discriminate against Black Alabamians. It also corrodes the rule of law by rewarding Alabama’s gamesmanship and outright defiance of court orders.”

The liberal justice noted that in order to switch to the map previously struck down by the high court, Alabama election officials “will have to reassign hundreds of thousands of voters across the state to new congressional districts.”

“Three of Alabama’s counties will be particularly hard hit because they are split across two congressional districts,” Sotomayor noted. “These counties have about 600,000 registered voters between them (roughly 15% of the state’s total number of registered voters).”

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, postponed US House primary elections in the wake of the Supreme Court’s April decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which severely narrowed the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial discrimination and paved the way for Alabama and other states to impose new maps ahead of the 2026 midterms.

“The Supreme Court’s shameful ruling allowing Alabama to move forward with a gerrymander that was drawn with the explicit intent to dilute Black voting power—as found by a panel of judges that included two Trump appointees—is an absolute affront to the founding principles of our democracy, and wipes out whatever was left of the court’s credibility,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation. “This country deserves better, and we must continue to work toward federal legislation that not only bans partisan and racial gerrymandering but also ensures that our rights cannot be undermined by captured courts.”

The ruling drew condemnation from the two Democrats in Alabama’s US congressional delegation. Rep. Shomari Figures, who was elected to the US House under the independently drawn map that Alabama Republicans are working to replace, said in a statement that “the Supreme Court has now confirmed that there is no longer a Voting Rights Act in America, and states are essentially free to discriminate against minority voters with no consequences.”

“This is a dangerous ruling that sets the state and this nation back decades,” said Figures.

Rep. Terri Sewell called the ruling “just the latest in a pattern of outrageous Supreme Court decisions that help Republicans desperately cling to power ahead of the midterm elections while diluting Black voices and erasing decades of hard-fought civil rights progress.”

“No matter how hard Alabama state officials may try, they will not succeed in silencing our voices,” said Sewell. “We will not go back to the Jim Crow era. The fight for fair representation continues.”

di Giuliano Bastianello*

Il principio è semplice, e sta scritto nella Costituzione: il voto di ogni cittadino deve avere lo stesso peso. Ogni parlamentare eletto deve rappresentare, in misura sostanzialmente uguale, la medesima quota di elettori. È quanto prescrive l’articolo 48 violato sistematicamente dal Rosatellum pensato, come vuole replicare l’attuale governo, per favorire la maggioranza.

I numeri delle politiche del 25 settembre 2022 sono impietosi. Un parlamentare del centrodestra rappresenta in media 52.341 elettori; uno dell’opposizione 93.827. Uno scarto del 79,3%, che significa, in termini concreti, che il voto di un elettore dell’opposizione ha pesato meno della metà di quello di un elettore della coalizione vincente. Il caso più emblematico riguarda la Lega e il Movimento 5 Stelle: la prima, con 2,47 milioni di voti, ha ottenuto 66 seggi — un eletto ogni 37.424 elettori; il secondo, con 4,34 milioni di voti, quasi il doppio, ne ha ottenuti solo 52 — un eletto ogni 83.462 elettori. Un elettore leghista ha avuto un peso parlamentare 2,23 volte superiore a quello di un elettore del M5S. In una democrazia che si rispetti, questo è inaccettabile.

Non si tratta di irregolarità: è un effetto strutturale, prevedibile, incorporato nel sistema elettorale vigente. La Corte Costituzionale aveva già lanciato un campanello d’allarme preciso: con la sentenza n. 1 del 2014 — quella che dichiarò incostituzionale il Porcellum — i giudici enunciarono con chiarezza il principio per cui la legge elettorale non può produrre una distorsione della rappresentanza tale da compromettere l’eguaglianza del voto garantita dall’articolo 48. A distanza di oltre dieci anni, e dopo due leggi elettorali nel frattempo approvate, il problema non solo persiste: si è aggravato e si propone di peggiorarlo ancora.

La proposta che qui illustro interviene alla radice, attraverso quattro obiettivi tra loro coerenti: eguaglianza del voto, rappresentanza territoriale, scelta diretta degli eletti, parità di genere.

Il sistema è di tipo misto, con una netta predominanza proporzionale: l’80% dei seggi viene assegnato con il metodo Sainte-Laguë — adottato in Germania, Svezia e Norvegia, riconosciuto come il più equo in termini di proporzionalità complessiva — mentre il restante 20% è attribuito attraverso collegi uninominali. Questi ultimi, però, sono sottoposti a una correzione obbligatoria: se una lista ha ottenuto nei collegi uninominali più seggi di quanti ne spetterebbero in base al voto proporzionale nazionale, si assegnano seggi compensativi alle altre liste fino al ripristino della proporzionalità. È un meccanismo mutuato dal modello tedesco, che impedisce alla quota territoriale di alterare l’equilibrio complessivo della rappresentanza.

La soglia di sbarramento può oscillare dal 3% al 4% su base nazionale: abbastanza da garantire la funzionalità del Parlamento evitando la frammentazione, non così alta da escludere forze politiche con un radicamento reale nel corpo elettorale. Nessun premio di maggioranza, nessuna soglia differenziata per coalizioni. Il Parlamento eletto così rappresenterà la volontà degli elettori.

Basta liste bloccate, ritornano le preferenze: ogni elettore può indicare fino a tre nomi tra i candidati della lista prescelta. È la preferenza a determinare l’ordine degli eletti, restituendo ai cittadini un potere che oggi non hanno. Per la parità di genere, si adotta la doppia preferenza obbligatoria: se si esprimono due o tre preferenze, almeno una deve essere di genere diverso dalle altre. Nelle regioni italiane dove è in vigore, la quota di elette è salita in media dal 15% al 28%.

La simulazione sui dati del 2022 è eloquente: applicando questo sistema agli stessi risultati elettorali, lo scarto nel rapporto elettori/seggio tra la lista più favorita e la più penalizzata scenderebbe dal 79,3% al 4,1%. Il principio “un uomo = un voto” sarebbe sostanzialmente rispettato per tutte le liste ammesse.

Questa non è una riforma ideologicamente orientata, né una proposta di parte. Il principio di eguaglianza del voto è neutro: non avvantaggia la sinistra né la destra, non premia i grandi partiti né i piccoli, non è pensato per favorire la governabilità di questo o quell’esecutivo. È semplicemente la condizione minima perché un sistema possa dirsi democratico. La sua realizzazione attraverso il proporzionale con correzione uninominale è una scelta tecnica, matura, fondata su decenni di esperienze comparate di successo. Ed è, prima ancora, un obbligo costituzionale che questo Parlamento ha il dovere di onorare.

* Presidente ItaliaCivile.org — Premio Giorgio Ambrosoli 2018

L'articolo La mia proposta per una legge elettorale neutra e rispettosa di democrazia e Costituzione proviene da Il Fatto Quotidiano.

At a time when climate politics in the United States and globally remain deeply polarized, Will Hackman, a climate advocate and political operative, argues that the climate movement needs a new language — one rooted less in doom, guilt and abstract planetary crisis, and more in people’s everyday lives, health, safety, costs and communities. In his new book, Radically Reframing Climate Change: A Guide to Saving Ourselves, he makes the case that climate advocates have too often spoken to those who already agree with them, while failing to reach people who may be cautious, doubtful or simply disconnected from the issue. The challenge, he says, is not only scientific or technological. It is political, cultural and communicative. In the United States, climate change remains politically polarized, with surveys showing that Republicans are less likely than Democrats to view it as an urgent threat, making climate messaging particularly challenging across ideological divides. Mongabay spoke with Hackman over video call about climate messaging, grassroots activism, fossil fuels, political polarization, and why he believes the climate movement must rebuild, creating a broader and more hopeful constituency. Mongabay: You write in your book that much of climate messaging has been framed around fear, guilt and apocalypse. Is that still the right way to talk about climate change? Will Hackman: I think the nature-based messages — polar bears, melting glaciers, “there is no planet B,” “save the planet,” “world on fire” — work for people who already care about climate change. But they do not…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Initially welcomed, Mali's 2020 coup has created deepening insecurity: with ongoing jihadist insurgency in the north and the capital encircled, the balance of power across the Sahel is shifting.

- 2026/06 / article, 2026/06 mali

MANNAR, Sri Lanka — Each year, the arrival of greater flamingos transforms the lagoons of northern Sri Lanka into a mesmerizing spectacle of pale pink and white. Their synchronized movements across the shallow waters of Mannar attract birdwatchers, photographers, tourists and nature lovers from around the country and abroad. But behind this beauty lies a growing crisis. Recently, three flamingos were killed in Mannar after a collision with overhead power lines that crossed their flight path. Initial reports suggested electrocution, but according to Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) veterinary surgeon Balachandran Giritharan, who conducted the necropsies, the birds were not electrocuted. Instead, their long necks were slashed mid-flight when they struck the cables. The incident has renewed concerns among conservationists who have previously warned against energy infrastructure cutting across sensitive wetland habitats such as Vankalai Sanctuary, another Ramsar wetland in Mannar. Environmentalists had identified large waterbirds such as flamingos as being vulnerable to collisions. The latest flamingo deaths also add to the mounting environmental concerns surrounding development projects, particularly in Mannar, including proposed wind power projects. The issue drew international attention after the withdrawal of developer Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL) from a disputed wind power project in Sri Lanka earlier this year. The Mannar region, with its strategic wind resources, has increasingly become a battleground between renewable energy expansion and biodiversity conservation. Flamingos are more vulnerable to collisions with power cables during dusk and early morning hours. Image courtesy of Indika Jayathissa. A global threat to flamingos Across the world,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

A newly released book documenting urban forestry efforts across Africa argues that trees and green spaces are no longer a luxury for African cities, but a critical response to climate change, biodiversity loss, and urban inequality. Published by Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo (JCPZ), Urban Forests and Green Spaces in Africa: Case Studies and Lessons from Across the Continent brings together 34 case studies from 14 African countries, covering everything from restoring biodiversity around wetlands in Rwanda’s capital Kigali, creating Miyawaki forests (forests with native trees planted closely together) in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, greening heat-stressed neighborhoods in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, transplanting baobabs in Senegal to rehabilitating degraded urban land in South Africa. Hot days, hot nights, and heatwaves have become more frequent across Africa, concludes the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s most authoritative scientific assessment on climate change. The report also finds that coastal cities are vulnerable to floods related to rainfall events and sea level rise. Palm-lined trees provide near-continuous canopy cover along a boulevard in Bahir Dar, the capital of Ethiopia’s Amhara region. The book notes that canopy closure along some of the city’s main streets approaches 100%, making Bahir Dar one of the most heavily treed urban centers in Africa. Image courtesy of Cathy Watson/CIFOR-ICRAF. As African cities experience rising temperatures, worsening floods, biodiversity loss, and rapid urbanization, the book argues that urban forests and green infrastructure are essential tools for climate resilience. Beyond storing carbon, trees and green spaces…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Protests erupted on Sunday night outside of the Delaney Hall immigrant jail in Newark, New Jersey, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) moved to transfer a strike leader from the jail.

Some 300 detainees launched a hunger and labor strike on Friday in protest of the conditions at the ICE jail. On Sunday, activists and family members learned that the jail was preparing to move Martin Soto, one of the detainees who had announced the strike.

Gabriela Soto, Martin’s wife, saw ICE agents loading Martin into a van, and ran to block the van that held her husband from leaving the site. Other demonstrators joined in blocking the van from leaving the facility, and forced it back to the detention facility. Protestors formed a blockade for hours to prevent Martin Soto from being moved out of the site.

“Free Martin!” the protestors chanted. “Free them all!”

Later, around 1 am on Monday, ICE agents began to move a caravan of vehicles out of the facility, and protestors again attempted to block the vehicles from leaving. ICE agents then shoved aside protestors, pushing them against the sidewalk and against cars, and pepper sprayed at least one protestor.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson announced on Monday that after “ICE successfully dispersed approximately 70 agitators” it succeeded in transferring Martin to another facility.

Since the start of the hunger strike, family members and supporters have gathered outside of the detention center. Among others, a 10-year-old child spoke about her father, who is currently being imprisoned in the facility by ICE.

On Friday, Gabriela Soto translated calls from prisoners, including her husband Martin, who said, “We deal with racism, with bad conditions, with guards that do not help us…. It gets worse all the time, and they don’t treat us like people.”

The guards soon cut access to the detainees’ phones so that these calls could not continue.

People being imprisoned at Delaney began a hunger strike after signing two letters describing their circumstances and conditions.

“We feel vulnerable and, in a way, kidnapped — detained without justification — not to mention that we are being tortured physically and psychologically due to the poor food resources provided in these detention centers,” they wrote. “Families are being destroyed and separated.”

“We have seen judges in this detention center who are ready to carry out deportations and mass expulsions without properly reviewing cases,” they went on. “We live with anguish and fear of appearing in court.”

One participant in the labor and hunger strike wrote in a letter describing the conditions of the jail:

We have people sleeping on the floor for not being processed quick enough. They neglect medications for people who are in dire need of it. All of our bonds are denied and they are telling us to file habeas corpus for everyone that is in here, they constantly tell us we are a danger to society. The same judge that denies your bond is the same judge that reviews our immigration court cases and that is not fair.

Delaney opened as an ICE jail in May 2025 in a $1 billion, 15-year contract between private prison contractor GEO Group and ICE. It is the largest ICE facility on the East Coast and has faced pushback since the announcement of its opening.

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim visited the detention center Saturday, and wrote on X that he saw inside it a “high school student crying and saying she just wanted to graduate senior year”; a woman “who had a miscarriage in the detention facility” and was “left to manage [it] all on her own”; and a “carton with the milk inside congealed solid.”

On Monday, Kim returned to the site, and said that he was pepper sprayed. “Instead of engaging with me and others about the poor conditions, ICE sent in an armored vehicle and a line of armed agents that only poured gasoline on the fire,” he wrote on X. Kim described ICE agents tackling and restraining protestors and firing pepper balls and spray into the crowd.

On Tuesday morning, the protest continued, and video footage from outside Delaney once again shows ICE agents detaining and dragging protestors.

Leqaa Kordia — a Palestinian from East Jerusalem who was arrested in Newark when meeting with immigration officials about her status and then detained for over a year in ICE jails for her Palestine activism — wrote a statement in solidarity with the Delaney hunger strikers.

“When you choose hunger over submission, you’re doing something that terrifies ICE,” she wrote on Monday. “You are proving that even when they break your bodies, they can’t break your will. You are proving that a person stripped of freedom can’t be stripped of dignity.”

“I know the conditions you’re enduring,” she went on. “The rotten food. The medical neglect. The psychological torture of indefinite limbo. I know what it took for you to look at that tray of slop and say: No more. Not until I’m free.”

This article originally appeared on Dean Baker’s Patreon. It is reprinted here with permission.

Our Secretary of Defense (or War) Pete Hegseth seems to be having a really great time killing people in Iran, but his live action video games come at a big cost, not just in lives, but in budget dollars. To be clear, the main reason to be opposed to this pointless war is its impact on the people of Iran and elsewhere in the region. But it also has a huge economic cost that is seriously underappreciated.

The short-term cost is the shortage of oil, natural gas, fertilizers, and other items that would ordinarily travel through the Straits of Hormuz. This shortage has already sent prices of many items soaring. The impact is not just on the goods themselves, but there is a large secondary impact due to higher shipping costs, and if fertilizer supplies are not resumed soon, higher food prices, due to lower crop yields. This is a big hit to people in wealthy countries, but it is life-threatening to people living on the edge in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

But in addition to the short-term cost, there is also a longer-term cost insofar as we are making new enemies and therefore will have higher bills for military spending long into the future. We already got the first taste of this as the Trump administration floated the idea of a $200 billion special appropriation to cover the cost of the war.

The Military is Really Big Bucks

There is remarkably little appreciation of how much money is at stake with wars and the military. This is because the media have a deliberate policy of uninformative budget reporting. They just write huge numbers in the millions or billions, knowing they are completely meaningless to almost everyone who sees them.

It would be virtually costless to provide some context for these numbers, for example, expressing them as a percentage of the budget. That would take any competent reporter ten seconds and add maybe ten words to a news article. This would tell you that the $200 billion (2.7% of the budget) Trump wants for his Iran war is a relatively big deal, while the $550 million (0.008% of the budget) Trump saved us by defunding public broadcasting was not.  

It is striking to see that Congress might be willing to quickly cough up this money when it has refused far smaller sums that could have made a huge difference in the lives of tens of millions of people. For example, the extension of the Covid relief enhancement of the Earned Income Tax Credit would have cost around $40 billion (0.6% of the budget) annually. Extending the more generous Obamacare subsidies would have cost $27 billion (0.4% of the budget) annually.  

And it is important to remember that these increased costs are not likely to be just a one-year expenditure. The military budget was 3.0% of GDP in 2001, before the war in Afghanistan, and projected to fall to 2.7% over the next several years. Instead, we got the Afghan War followed by the invasion of Iraq. By 2010, spending was up to 4.6% of GDP. The difference between actual and projected spending comes to almost 2.0% of GDP, or more than $600 billion annually in today’s economy.

The Peace Dividend

In contrast to the Trump administration’s efforts to seek enemies, in the 1980s and 1990s, the United States looked to diffuse tensions with the Soviet Union and saved a huge amount of money on military spending as a result. Military spending hit a post-Vietnam War peak of 6.1% of GDP in 1986. It then fell sharply as Presidents Reagan and Bush I negotiated arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. It was down to 4.7% of GDP in fiscal 1992, when the Soviet Union collapsed. It continued to fall through the 1990s, when the United States faced no major enemies.

At that point, Russia was actually a limited ally. There were many people in the foreign policy establishment who wanted to keep it that way, looking to accommodate post-Soviet Russia in a post-Cold War world.

Instead, we took the direction of expanding NATO eastward, incorporating the former East Bloc countries into NATO, starting with Hungary. Eventually, all the former East Bloc countries were added to NATO, and then former Soviet republics such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were added. In 2008, George W. Bush pushed for the addition of Ukraine and Georgia as well.

It is worth noting that it was not pre-ordained that NATO would be expanded eastward. NATO was formed as an anti-Soviet alliance. With the Soviet Union out of business, it was reasonable to think that NATO would be disbanded.

This was not just the dream of fringe peaceniks; many fully credentialled cold warriors also argued against expanding NATO eastward. This list includes Jack Matlock and Richard Pipes, both of whom held high-level positions under Reagan. It also included George Kennan, the godfather of the Cold War doctrine of containment. Even Henry Kissinger opposed including Ukraine in NATO.

It’s not clear whether Russia would have developed into a hostile state and potential enemy if NATO had not continued to exist and expand Eastward. We can all share our speculations on that counterfactual, but one thing that is not debatable is that having a major enemy is costly.

The Iran Nuclear Deal and Trump’s War

President Obama negotiated an agreement to restrain Iran from developing nuclear weapons in 2015. While there were issued raised with the monitoring of the deal, rather than trying to work through these problems, Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018. That decision, along with Biden’s failure to restore the agreement, created the conditions under which a second Trump administration, could be push by Benjamin Netanyahu into this war. The war has already proved incredibly costly for the country and the world, and the costs could well go far higher.

But apart from this war, Trump seems determined to raise military spending even further. He has said he wants the country to spend 5 percent of GDP, or $1.5 trillion a year, on the military. This comes to $12,000 per household. That’s real money.   

That is a lot of money to spend for no obvious reason. It means less money for healthcare, childcare, education, and many other items that people care about.

The question people should be asking is who is this spending supposed to defend us against? Perhaps Trump has Russia in mind, but he is supposed to be good buddies with Putin. Besides, Russia’s GDP is less than a quarter the size of the U.S. economy. Do we really need to spend an amount that is more than 20% of Russia’s GDP to protect us against them? Can our military be that inefficient and corrupt?

Maybe Trump is thinking of China. That would be a problem, since China’s economy is already one-third larger than ours and growing far more rapidly. If Trump’s plan is to have a New Cold War with China, that is one we are likely to lose, especially since he just told all our allies to go to hell.

As with the Iran War, Trump’s push towards a newly militarized economy does not seem well-considered. Or at least it doesn’t seem well-considered as a defense strategy. If the point is to put taxpayer dollars into the pockets of his family and friends, it can work out just fine. Until there is evidence otherwise, we should assume this is Trump’s real agenda for his big military budget.

In addition to reducing our security and jeopardizing the well-being of people around the world, Donald Trump’s belligerence will cost us a huge amount of money. But at least his family and friends will get even richer. Who knows, maybe he will even get the Nobel Peace Prize this year.  

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday accused US President Donald Trump of “orchestrating a $1,700,000,000 fraud on the American taxpayer to line the pockets of his MAGA political allies” amid new reporting on the terms Trump is seeking in talks to settle his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.

ABC News reported late Thursday that Trump is expected to drop his lawsuit in the coming days “in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration.” The money would come from the Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund, which pays out court judgments and settlements against the federal government.

The president is also expected to receive a public apology from the IRS for the leak of his tax returns during his first White House term.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said in a statement that the reported settlement terms represent “another installment” in Trump’s “ongoing effort to turn the federal government into a personal cash machine for his unpopular extremist movement.”

“This is a massive and unprecedented presidential plunder of the American people,” said Raskin. “Worse still, this is only the beginning—a declaration that the prior payouts were just a down payment, and that he now intends to earmark billions more in taxpayer dollars for his political allies, sycophants, and private militia of unemployed insurrectionists.”

“The president has no authority to conjure up billion-dollar compensation schemes or raid the Judgment Fund, which exists to settle valid lawsuits. Trump is systematically converting neutral government mechanisms into a presidential slush fund to build his army of political dependents,” Raskin continued. “Congress must act immediately to reassert the power of the purse and stop this brazen looting of taxpayer funds before this ‘pilot program’ for corruption becomes the permanent operating system of our government.”

According to ABC, which cited unnamed sources who emphasized that the settlement’s terms should not be considered final until officially announced, the deal is “expected to prohibit Trump from directly receiving payments related to those three legal claims; however, entities associated with Trump are not explicitly barred from filing additional claims.”

“The arrangement would be an unprecedented use of taxpayer dollars with little oversight,” ABC noted. “Under the terms of the potential settlement agreement, President Trump would have the authority to remove members of the commission running the fund without cause, and the commission would be under no obligation to disclose its procedures or decision-making process for awarding more than a billion dollars.”

ABC’s story came on the heels of reports earlier this week revealing internal Justice Department discussions on settling Trump’s lawsuit, which he filed in late January. Last month, a federal judge questioned the constitutionality of Trump’s suit, noting that “he is the sitting president and his named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction.”

“Real story: Judge was about to throw out the case because Trump controls both parties,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) wrote late Thursday. “Before it’s dismissed, Trump tells both parties to reach a ‘settlement.’ Settlement shields Trump from any future audit and creates a secret slush fund that can dole out money to anyone with no transparency.”

“Mind-boggling corruption,” Goldman added.

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s plan to put weapons in space — pitched as a “Golden Dome for America” missile defense program — is estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over a 20-year period, according to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, a far heftier sum than the initial $175 billion price tag he gave last year. The nonpartisan CBO report, published Tuesday, is described as an analysis that reflects “one illustrative approach rather than an estimate of a specific Administration proposal.”