MAGA

TOLLAH

Crude.

sack’s.

back.

(segregated)

fear/

resentment,

human,

(constraint)

restraint.

@mondoweiss

In the Progressive International’s twenty-eighth Briefing of 2025, we look at the brutal effect of imperialist sanctions on the peoples of the world.

The people of Gaza are being starved. The scale of this man-made catastrophe — a cruel, seemingly terminal phase in Israel’s genocide — is impossible to overstate. “The level of urban starvation in Gaza has not been seen since the Dutch Hunger Winter and the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War,” Alex de Waal, an expert on famine, wrote in the London Review of Books.

Those words were written in February. Today, at least one in three people in Gaza goes days on end without eating anything at all. At the same time, thousands of humanitarian aid trucks sit idle at the border, blocked by Israeli occupation forces. On its own, the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) has 6,000 trucks on standby, waiting to be allowed entry. “This is unlike anything we have seen in this century,” the United Nation World Food Program’s Director of Emergencies Ross Smith said. Everyone in Gaza is now at risk of slow and painful death by hunger.

But Gaza is just a microcosm, a radical condensation of a much broader crisis of structural violence that imperialism inflicts daily on the world’s working and oppressed people. Most victims do not die because of bombs, bullets, or artillery shells. They die from the thousands of deprivations that are threaded — actively or passively, with intent or as a byproduct of systems of accumulation — through the global economy.

Sanctions are one of the main tools in this arsenal of ruin, and their effect is lethal. According to a landmark new study of mortality rates and sanctions in 152 countries conducted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and published in The Lancet Global Health, United States and European Union sanctions have contributed to 38 million deaths between 1971 and 2021. In the past decade alone, these sanctions have killed approximately 560,000 people every year. That amounts to roughly 1,500 people per day, a death toll comparable to that imposed by Nazi Germany on Leningrad during its 872-day siege.

Economic sanctions are often framed as a humanitarian alternative to war — a way to pressure “rogue states” or “terrorist regimes” to change their behavior without resorting to armed conflict. But the latest research confirms what the victims of sanctions regimes have long known: sanctions are more lethal than any bomb. By some estimates, over the period subject to the CEPR study, US and EU sanctions have claimed at least as many lives as all the armed conflicts and genocides that swept the planet combined — forms of violence that were often also imposed by the very same sanctioners.

Today, roughly 25% of the world’s countries are under US, EU, or UN sanctions, with a large part of these imposed unilaterally by the US without the approval of the UN Security Council.

🔖 PI Briefing | No. 28 | 38 million lives

Endless rows,

nowhere.

houses.

how-we,

live,

how-we,

die,

DEAD-END.

DISCONNECT.

round-back,

humanity

@mb_ghalibaf

Wonderful pixel,

CITY. LIGHTS.

white-noise-of,

life blinking,

(brief)

second-of-time,

became a,

nobody,

I wish to,

never,

return again

Spain permanently withdrew its ambassador to Israel on Tuesday as a ​diplomatic standoff worsened between the two countries ‌over Spain’s opposition to the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran.

The ambassador was summoned back to Spain last September amid a diplomatic ​row over Spanish measures banning aircraft and ships ​carrying weapons to Israel from its ports ⁠or airspace due to Israel’s military offensive in ​Gaza, which Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar denounced ​as antisemitic.

On Tuesday, Spain published an announcement in its official gazette that the ambassador’s position had been terminated. Spain’s Foreign ​Ministry said its embassy in Tel Aviv ​will be led by a charge d’affaires for the foreseeable ‌future.

The ⁠move marks the latest escalation in diplomatic relations between the two countries, which have been heavily strained since Israel launched its assault on the Gaza ​Strip in ​October of ⁠2023.

Israel’s embassy in Spain is also run by a charge d’affaires after the ​country summoned its ambassador last May ​in protest ⁠at Spain’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

Tensions have heightened since the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, ⁠with ​Sa’ar accusing Spain in early March ​of “standing with tyrants” for opposing the war.

Reuters | Mar 11, 2026

🎥 USAID: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

LastWeekTonight | Mar 9, 2026

So tired,

of crying,

tired. of.

pretending,

against.

all.

hope.

🎶 Iggy Pop - The Passenger (Official Video)

Criss-cross!

forefront!

purpose?

coalition,

(foreskin)

of-the,

killing!

(recurring one)

pawns-in-a,

KILL! KILL!

killed-my-will

WELL..

well,

well,

well..

@ivan_ehlers

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