At Defense Tech Week 2025, senior figures from Israel’s defence establishment openly described how the genocide in Gaza has accelerated weapons development, unlocked new export markets and reshaped Israel’s global identity as a defence powerhouse.

Less than 70 kilometres from where the conference was held, Gaza has been reduced to rubble. More than two years of genocide, indiscriminate bombardment and mass displacement have left at least 70,000 Palestinians dead and 90% of the Strip destroyed.
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In her report on the “Economy of Genocide”, UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese stated that “for Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture.”

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He spoke in words of kindergarten grace,
“Tremendous,” “huge,” and “winning” filled the air,
The spray-tanned king with his ever-scowling face,
Topped by a wisp of engineered hair.

The Saudi princes lick their pens with glee,
The Russians raise their vodka, cold and neat,
While sovereignty drips from the carving tree—
A nation hung and bled like butchered meat.

~ Full poem…

Most mainstream U.S. media coverage of the TikTok deal has completely ignored the explicitly anti-Palestinian agenda of its biggest Western investors. TikTok has played a critical role in helping hundreds of millions of users see the ugly reality of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. But the Trump-favored billionaires who will take over TikTok’s U.S. operations have a documented agenda of both suppressing voices critical of Israel and supporting the very Israeli military that has killed so many Palestinian civilians. Without safeguards in place, TikTok’s U.S. operations could soon become an exercise in blocking users from seeing and reacting to the crimes against humanity perpetrated by a major U.S. ally.
[…]
This is a critical moment. The transfer of TikTok’s algorithm from ByteDance to Oracle would mean that TikTok’s content would move from being controlled by a company under the influence of a Chinese government committing genocide against Uyghurs to being controlled by U.S. investors who want to silence TikTok users’ opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

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Even the tourism businesses have been taken over by Russians. Georgians are annoyed by Russian companies that provide tours of Georgia rarely use Russian-speaking Georgian tour guides but employ Russian ones. These guides never mention the 2008 Russian invasion and continued occupation of one fifth of Georgian territory, or the continued animosity between Georgia and Russia.

What irks the Georgians the most is that Russian investors and entrepreneurs are starting to dominate the Georgian economy. Many Georgians suspect that this is a deliberate or accidental Russian plan to dominate Georgia and bring this tiny Caucasus nation back into the Russian World. The reality is that Georgia is still trying to join NATO and backs Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders.

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US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have presented a $112 billion reconstruction plan to Gulf officials to build a “high-tech metropolis” atop the remains of Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reported on 19 December.

The 32-page PowerPoint presentation labeled “sensitive” and titled “Project Sunrise” was developed over 45 days and reportedly presented to officials from Qatar, UAE, Egypt, and Turkiye.

The plan envisions turning the Gaza Strip into a “high-tech metropolis” over the next two decades with four phases of reconstruction beginning in southern Gaza.

It also calls for turning Rafah into Gaza’s new “administrative center,” housing over 500,000 residents.

However, the plan does not specify where two million Palestinians would be sheltered during the reconstruction period.

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Igor Kolomoysky built up Ukraine’s largest bank, then plundered it for billions in a scheme so elaborate it looks like a state intelligence operation. During the 2014 Maidan revolution, he ended up caught in a whirlwind of far-right militants, rising Western scrutiny, and a dramatic denouement with his bank – and fled abroad. Not one to give up, though, Kolomoysky had a plan for revenge and its name was Vladimir Zelensky.
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So who is Igor Kolomoysky and why does his name still echo in the halls of power in Kiev? This is the man who orchestrated one of the largest and most elaborate embezzlement schemes in modern history that cost the Ukrainian state 6% of GDP to remedy. This is the man who built up massive private security forces and financed far-right militias at an estimated cost of $10 million per month in the fraught post-Maidan period. And it is a man whose machinations Zelensky was loath to confront until Western pressure forced his hand.
[…]
The loosely organized Right Sector, which coalesced and came of age during Maidan, would soon find itself an extravagant sponsor in the name of Igor Kolomoysky. The oligarch, who had supported the Maidan events and referred to himself as a “die-hard European,” would soon become the largest sponsor of far-right militias in the country.

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The Oligarch Part 2: How one powerful man made Zelensky president, Ukraine his pocket state, and sent it to war

Just a month after Zelensky’s election, Kolomoysky made a triumphant return from exile to Ukraine and immediately set about settling scores and maneuvering to keep his local business empire afloat, even trying to claim billions in compensation due to losses he incurred in the 2016 nationalization of PrivatBank.

The president showed no inclination to confront his benefactor. In fact, the oligarch’s first year under Zelensky went well. Through various political intrigues, he managed to wrest informal control of state-owned Centrenergo, Ukraine’s most lucrative energy distribution company, and reasserted his influence over Ukrnafta (while this time leaving the headquarters unmolested by armed thugs).
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In September 2023, Kolomoysky’s luck finally ran out. Ukraine’s most notorious oligarch was arrested. The timing was not self-evident. Did Zelensky finally find the courage to move on his one-time benefactor? Or perhaps was it an attempt to compensate for a high-profile corruption scandal that had led to the resignation of Ukraine’s top military enlistment officer and even rattled allies?

The arrest was initially hailed as “a demonstration that there are no untouchables” in Ukraine, and a major step forward in Kiev’s fight against entrenched corruption. Alas, it was the system itself that would prove untouchable.

Exit Igor Kolomoysky, enter Timur Mindich. With a hand dipped surreptitiously in the till of numerous industries, Mindich was both everywhere and nowhere at the same time – or in some cases, in three places at once. He figures in Ukrainian property registers under at least three names: ‘Timur Mindich’, ‘Tymur Myndych’ and ‘Tymur Myndich’. These days, he is reportedly hiding out in Austria, although Israel has also been suggested as his bolthole. He narrowly escaped Ukraine ahead of a National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) raid on his home on November 10, 2025, almost certainly having been tipped off.

via Adbusters

Greek farmers face a 600 million euro ($700 million) shortfall in EU aid and other payments after a corruption scandal in which some farmers, aided by state employees, faked land ownership to qualify for payouts. Ongoing audits have slowed subsequent disbursements.

The delays to funding come just as farmers and stock breeders struggle with an outbreak of sheep pox that has led to hundreds of thousands of sheep and goats being culled.

“We don’t have help, climate change has influenced production a great deal, all of this with the (corruption) scandal – people who have nothing to do with the profession are getting enormous amounts,” said one farmer, Prokopis Bandzis, who protested on the island of Lesbos.

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Farmers’ protest turns nasty in Brussels

Farmers from across the continent of Europe have gathered in Brussels to protest against a free trade agreement with the Mercosur nations of South America. They fear that Europe will be swamped by cheap farm products. When protesters hurled stones, Belgian police deployed water cannon.

Something critical to understand about the proletariat’s relationship to AI is that AI isn’t the worker’s enemy, despite the efforts of the “creative class” to convince us as such. AI is simply a part of humanity’s evolution, one we cannot and should not wish away; and it’s the proletariat that’s capable of building the socialist system which can maximize AI’s usefulness, unlike the creative class which doesn’t know how to coherently respond to AI. Civilization’s progression is making the boutique labor aristocrats outmoded; for those who drive the means of production, this progress will bring unprecedented strength.

When the working class becomes in control of the state, and therefore in control of AI, it will make AI more fully embody the progressive role that it already has; this follows the revolutionary principle Marx described in Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: “By heralding the dissolution of the hereto existing world order, the proletariat merely proclaims the secret of its own existence, for it is the factual dissolution of that world order. By demanding the negation of private property, the proletariat merely raises to the rank of a principle of society what society has raised to the rank of its principle, what is already incorporated in it as the negative result of society without its own participation.” This is the vital piece of context behind all the ways AI is right now being used to hurt the working class: by its nature, AI is actually an ally of the workers.

When we understand this, we can figure out how to locate the counter-forces against our techno-dystopia, and to make allies out of these forces. Under our financial capitalist dictatorship, AI is being used to accelerate the rise in unemployment, a crisis which the big banks have explicitly desired to engineer; thanks to AI, companies can trap job-seekers in an endless cycle of fake applications, designed to grow the reserve army of labor and let employers reduce head count. This has countless domino effects; greater unemployment means fewer career prospects, most of all within the rural. The “youth drain” from the rural to the metropole increases, while poverty grows in both the countryside and the cities. Social cohesion becomes even more damaged, and the birth rate further drops.

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