🚫 The Starvation in Gaza, the blockade has been tightened

🍽 That blockade has been tightened further for the past two months, during which hunger has been weaponised, with the apparent aim of ethnically cleansing Gaza.

📚 The author Omar El Akkad describes the term “genocide” as a “mechanic of forewarning”, not some “after‑the-fact resolution”.

⚠️ The world should consider itself warned that the genocide in Gaza has entered a new phase of mass starvation with hunger, thirst and disease stalking 2 million people.

🕊 The path to de-escalation lies in implementing the second phase of the ceasefire abandoned by Israel on 18 March.

💥 Israel has instead threatened to intensify its operations in Gaza, which will be catastrophic for Palestinians with two-thirds of Gaza already designated as either “no-go areas” or “under active displacement orders”.

🌍 Only external pressure on Israel and the governments complicit in its occupation will prevent this outrage.

🧭 The American academic activist Angela Davis has described Palestine as “a moral litmus test for the world” and we as citizens need to act accordingly.

🇬🇧 Sadly, the crisis for Palestinians in Gaza is one of the many things Keir Starmer doesn’t appear to “get”, but that doesn’t mean Labour MPs should show similar spinelessness: at the very least they should force an emergency debate and vote on action to be taken.

❓ Aren’t they ashamed to be abetting the slaughter with arms sales, ashamed that their government hasn’t demanded sanctions against Israelis similar to the ones imposed on Russia, and determined to steer a government that is lost in at least one right direction? Failing that, they should be forcing a leadership contest.

#Starvation #Gaza #blockade #tightened

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Starvation by Design: Israeli Officials Privately Warn of Famine in Gaza While Blockade Persists

📋 Internal Alarm Bells
While the Israeli government continues to publicly deny that Gaza faces a food emergency, senior military officers are quietly warning that mass starvation is imminent. According to three Israeli defense officials, unless humanitarian aid deliveries are resumed within weeks, many Gazans will be unable to meet basic nutritional needs.

📊 Contradictions Emerge
• Public vs. Private: The Israeli government maintains that there’s “no shortage” of civilian aid. But internal military briefings acknowledge a looming humanitarian collapse.
• UN Confirmations: The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification declared famine “imminent.” UN food stocks are depleted. Bakeries and kitchens are closing. Civilians are surviving on expired canned beans—if anything at all.

💣 Strategic Starvation?
Israeli officials say the blockade aims to break Hamas’s grip by choking off its access to supplies. But multiple aid organizations and legal experts argue this strategy is targeting civilians first—and may constitute a war crime:

“Enforcing a military blockade with the knowledge that it will starve the civilian population is a violation of international law,”

said Janina Dill, co-director at Oxford’s Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.

🏚 Gaza on the Brink
• Flour prices are up 60-fold.
• Over 80% of Gazans rely on charity meals, and those are rapidly disappearing.
• Aid officers inside COGAT and the Israeli military are pleading for rapid resumption of deliveries to prevent irreversible damage.

💼 Trump’s Controversial Plan
The Trump administration has proposed a workaround: a private aid distribution model run by NGOs and guarded by Israeli military and private contractors. But:
• The UN rejected the plan, calling it logistically unworkable and dangerously coercive.
• It would centralize food at a few hubs, displacing thousands and forcing civilians to pass through Israeli military zones—exposing them to detention or interrogation.

📍 Ethical Collapse
With famine looming, Israeli cabinet ministers were briefed last week that Gaza’s remaining food stocks could run out in just a few weeks. Yet Prime Minister Netanyahu remains defiant, pledging “full-force” military escalation.

🤔 A War Crime in Motion?
The Oxford Institute, the UN, and multiple international legal experts warn that if starvation is used as leverage, it legally qualifies as a war crime. The fact that Israeli officials are internally aware of the consequences—and continuing the blockade—intensifies the culpability.

#Gaza #HumanitarianCrisis #Israel #Blockade #FamineWarning #WarCrimes #InternationalLaw #TrumpAdministration #Hamas #UNAid #MiddleEastCrisis #COGAT

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Houthis Go Full Pirate: “No Ships for Zion” Strategy Hits Global Trade

💭 “Any company that deals with Israeli ports… your ships are fair game. Anywhere.”

— Yahya Saree, Houthi spokesman, July 28, 2025

📊 Shipping as a Battlefield
• The Houthis just upgraded their war manual: Attack any vessel with a traceable link to Israel. No more just Red Sea. No more just symbolism.
• Their new doctrine? Weaponize global logistics until Gaza breathes — or burns.

💼 $2 Trillion on Hold
• Traffic through the Red Sea, once a $2T artery of global trade, is down 70%.
• Insurance premiums? Sky-high. Rerouted traffic? Costly. World leaders? Quiet.
• Welcome to the new world order, where a militia can choke the Suez Canal from Sanaa.

📋 Humanitarian Optics vs. Naval Retaliation
• Israel paused some military ops to allow UN trucks in — and restarted electricity to one desalination plant.
• Meanwhile, it bombs Houthi positions in Yemen. A “relief-for-retaliation” loop is now official policy.

🤔 The Big Question
If $2 trillion in global trade isn’t enough to stop a siege — what is?

#houthis #gaza #redsea #blockade #israel #shippingwar #iranproxywar #geopolitics #siegeeconomy #logisticswarfare

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Gaza Flotilla Intercepted: Symbol or Sideshow?

It had all the makings of a media spectacle: Greta Thunberg, Nelson Mandela’s grandson, European lawmakers, and more than 500 activists from 47 countries on a 40-boat convoy bound for Gaza. They called it the Global Sumud Flotilla — “sumud” meaning steadfastness — and vowed to break Israel’s naval blockade.

⚓️ The Interception
Israeli forces stopped the flotilla about 70 miles off Gaza’s coast. One French-flagged vessel reportedly came within the 12-mile territorial limit before being boarded. Activists spoke of ramming, water cannons, and skunk spray, but not lethal force. Israel said all passengers were “safe and in good health” and would be deported.

🎭 The Politics
Among the detainees: Greta Thunberg, politicians from Italy and Spain, and American veterans. Italy sent a frigate to monitor events, while protests erupted in Rome and Milan. Turkey and Qatar denounced the raid, while unions in Italy called for a general strike. Israel insists its blockade is legal; critics call it collective punishment.

🌍 The Isolation Factor
The flotilla may not have reached Gaza, but it underscored Israel’s deepening diplomatic freefall. European broadcasters are threatening boycotts, South Africa comparisons echo louder, and UN reports accusing Israel of genocide grow harder to ignore. Even close allies hedge their votes at the General Assembly.

🤔 The Takeaway
The ships never broke the blockade. But they did pierce Israel’s image at a moment when the country can least afford more blows. In global politics, symbols travel faster than vessels.

#Israel #Gaza #Flotilla #GretaThunberg #MiddleEast #Diplomacy #Blockade #HumanRights

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🛢 The Freedom Marines Strike Again: Seizing Non-Sanctioned Democracy

It’s official — U.S. foreign policy has entered the “because we can” phase. Early Saturday, American forces boarded a Chinese-owned, Panamanian-flagged tanker in international waters for the crime of… carrying Venezuelan oil that wasn’t even under sanction.

As Homeland Security’s Kristi Noem posted triumphantly:

“We will find you, and we will stop you.”

Think Liam Neeson, but with destroyers instead of phone calls.

Trump’s blockade now treats every ship near Venezuela as guilty until proven Chevron. The “free market” has a new invisible hand — and it’s armed.

Meanwhile, Maduro plays pirate radio with his two little tankers, escorted by equally broke naval boats, pretending sovereignty still exists. It’s a Punch-and-Judy show: Washington’s “anti-narco-terror” crusade vs. Caracas’ “Bolivarian resistance.” Both sides selling their own heroic delusion — one oil barrel at a time.

The result? The world’s richest democracy now boards un-sanctioned ships in global waters, while the world’s poorest socialist pretends to still have ships to protect.

Who’s smuggling what, exactly — crude or legitimacy?

#venezuela #oil #blockade #trump #imperium

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🇧🇷 Lula’s Cold War Revival Tour: “Hands Off My Dictator”

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva just warned that a U.S. armed move against Venezuela would be a “humanitarian catastrophe.” Translation: please don’t bomb the oil, we just got Petrobras back on its feet.

At the Mercosur summit, Lula and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum preached “peaceful solutions” while Maduro’s economy bleeds out faster than his propaganda budget. “A dangerous precedent,” Lula said, as if Washington needed more encouragement to play global sheriff again.

Funny thing — South American presidents are now lecturing America about democracy and human rights… in defense of Nicolás Maduro. Forty years after the Falklands, they’re still haunted by ghosts — just not of imperialism, but of their own nostalgia for the Non-Aligned Fantasy League.

The regional consensus boils down to this:
The U.S. wants to blockade a regime that sells cocaine-funded oil.
Latin leaders want to protect a regime that starves its people.
And both sides call it “defending democracy.”

Maybe the real “humanitarian catastrophe” is having no one left who believes their own speeches.

#venezuela #lula #trump #blockade #latinamerica #fakeDemocracy

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Jeffrey Sachs: “Trump Will Attack Iran Within Two Weeks”

🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

The US blockade of ships using Iranian ports in the Gulf has come into force, turning the six-week-old conflict between the US-Israeli coalition and Iran into a test of economic endurance.

The US Central Command (Centcom) has not made any official announcement of the start of the blockade, but had said that it would begin on Monday at 17:30 Iranian time and would apply to all ships entering or leaving Iranian ports or coastal areas, while ships using non-Iranian ports would not be hindered.

Trump claimed that 34 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Gulf, on Sunday, but there was no evidence to support this claim. Speaking to reporters at the White House, the president also affirmed “We have been called by the other party”, which, according to him“ "would very badly like to conclude an agreement".

Throughout the conflict, which began with a US-Israeli attack on February 28, Trump has frequently claimed that Tehran has been in direct contact, desperately seeking an agreement, but these claims have never been substantiated.

Iran warned that ordinary Americans would pay the cost of Trump's latest decision in the form of higher gasoline prices, and also vowed that if the United States started bombing again, the Tehran regime was ready to retaliate.

For his part, Trump said that any Iranian attack boat approaching the American flotilla in the region would be "immediately eliminated". The American political analyst Jeff Sachs says that “Trump will attack Iran within two weeks.”

It appeared on Monday that the US naval forces would try to enforce the blockade east of the Strait of Hormuz, in the Gulf of Oman, beyond the easy range of Iranian missiles and drones. It was still unclear how Centcom intended to stop any oil tanker trying to break the blockade.

A missile attack could cause an environmental catastrophe, leaving open the possibility that American forces would seek to board and take control of any ship that did not obey American instructions.

Trump said that all Iranian "fast attack ships“ would be eliminated if they approached American ships enforcing the blockade with ”the same killing system" that the United States used to sink almost 50 small boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific.

They killed at that time at least 168 people who, according to him, without evidence, were involved in drug trafficking.

#trump #blockade #iran #hormuz #detroit

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

Trump ordered the blockade following the US-Iran talks in Islamabad that ended after 21 hours without an agreement.

The tactic is aimed at strangling Iran's heavily oil-dependent economy and forcing Tehran to respond to US demands to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ships from the ports of the Gulf allies and accept a complete ban on uranium enrichment.

Miad Maleki, a former US Treasury official now at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said on Twitter that the US naval blockade would cost Iran about $276 million per day in lost exports and disrupt $159 million per day in imports – representing a combined economic damage of $13 billion per month.

Mohammad Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament who also headed his country's delegation in Islamabad, told the Americans on Sunday in an article on X to “take advantage of the current figures at the pump", taunting Washington with a historical political sensitivity of the United States on gasoline prices.

“With the so-called 'blockade', you will soon have nostalgia for gasoline at 4 or 5 dollars,” Ghalibaf added.

The current average price of gasoline in the United States is $4.13 per gallon, compared to $2.98 before the United States and Israel launched the war against Iran on February 28.

He conceded Sunday that gasoline prices could be the same as today or higher when the nation votes in the congressional elections, telling Fox News that they could go “a little higher.”

Trump had reacted angrily to the criticism of the American-born pope over the administration's use of religious language to justify its war in Iran.

He called him “weak on crime“ and ”terrible for foreign policy," and published an AI-generated image of himself as a Christ figure caring for the sick, an image widely condemned as blasphemous.

On Monday, Trump claimed that the image (dressed in loose red and white dresses and the light emanating from his hands) was intended to present him as “a doctor".

Iranian President Pezeshkian spoke out on Monday against what he called the "desecration of Jesus".

“I condemn the insult to Your Excellency in the name of the great Iranian nation and declare that the desecration of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood, is not acceptable to any free person.”

The Pope told reporters on Monday that he had “no intention of debating” with Trump on Iran and added that he would “continue to speak out loudly against war, seeking to promote peace, to promote dialogue and multilateral relations between states to seek just solutions to problems”.

The US-Israeli bombing of Iran has ceased under a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan, which began on Wednesday. Trump said that US forces remain "locked and loaded" and ready to ”finish off what little is left of Iran".

Trump's claims that other countries would help enforce the US blockade, none came forward.

Starmer was adamant that his country did not support the blockade and that “we will not allow ourselves to be dragged into the war”.

Macron, meanwhile, said Paris would hold a conference with the UK and other countries to create a multinational mission to restore navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, but made it clear that this would come after the conflict.

#trump #blockade #iran #hormuz #detroit

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

#blockade #vance #hormuz #strait

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Trump Turns the Blockade Into the Whole Policy

Trump is no longer pretending the naval blockade is a temporary squeeze. Bloomberg says he has vowed to keep it in place, even as commanders brief him on more military options and allies are being pitched on a new maritime coalition for Hormuz.

That means the war is drifting from battlefield action into economic strangulation as statecraft. Tehran says the blockade is driving oil higher and must be lifted before real talks can begin, while Trump keeps insisting the pressure is “incredible” and that Iran’s economy is “crashing.”

The irony is obvious. Washington says it wants negotiations, but it is also trying to choke the waterway that makes those negotiations possible. That is less a peace strategy than a siege wrapped in diplomacy.

And the costs are already spreading. Oil is surging, the Strait of Hormuz remains largely shut, and even the coalition-building effort now comes with an asterisk: allies want a ceasefire first, not a permanent American blockade by another name.

So Trump’s line is simple, but the system underneath it is not. The blockade is supposed to force Iran to yield. So far, it is mostly forcing everyone else to pay more.

#Trump #Iran #Hormuz #blockade #oil #war

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Trump Declares the War “Terminated” — While the Blockade Keeps Rolling

Trump has now told Congress the Iran war has “terminated,” because the War Powers clock ran out and the White House needed a legal exit line.

But the Navy blockade is still in place, the Strait of Hormuz remains shut, and Trump is still refusing to rule out more strikes.

That is the whole trick in one sentence. The administration is trying to turn a live conflict into a finished one by letterhead, while leaving the pressure campaign, the naval presence, and the threat of escalation exactly where they were.

Congress, for its part, has done what Congress often does in wartime: complained loudly, voted narrowly, and then let the president keep driving.

The latest Senate vote failed again, and Republicans mostly stayed behind Trump even as Democrats argued the 60-day deadline was not optional.

Trump says the war is over, but also says Iran still needs to “cry uncle,” that no deal is enough unless Tehran gives up nuclear capability, and that the blockade is still doing the job.

So the war has been renamed, papered over, and pushed into a new phase where the legal label says one thing and the military reality says another.

#Trump #Iran #WarPowers #Congress #Hormuz #blockade

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Trump’s Strait Toll: Announced, Cashed In, Canceled

Trump's latest flip in the Hormuz war shows how easily a global chokepoint can now be monetized.

First he declares the US “guardian” of the Strait and announces a 20% fee on every cargo passing through, framing it as finally getting paid for “50 years of free protection.”

Within 24 hours, after calls from “kings and emirs,” he drops the toll idea — but keeps the blockade. The ships won’t be taxed, the waterway will still be militarized.

On Tuesday, US forces return to a high‑intensity bombing tempo: strikes near Bushehr and Qeshm, renewed naval interdiction, and a formal restart of the port blockade at 11:30 p.m. local time.

Iran fires back at tankers that try to hug Omani waters instead of Iranian‑controlled lanes, claims hits on US facilities in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, while those governments say defenses are intercepting most of it.

Both sides are back to treating the Strait as a battlefield, not an international artery.

The economic and civilian fallout is instant. Brent crude briefly spikes above 86 dollars, then slips back only after Trump abandons the toll — a price chart now wired directly to his improvisations.

Ship‑tracking data show a collapse in traffic: roughly 130 vessels a day before the war, just around 10 on Monday, the lowest in more than a month.

Europe’s aviation regulator warns airlines to avoid the airspace over Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and part of the Gulf of Oman, calling the risk to civil flights “high.”

Trump tells reporters “I don’t think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the Strait” — right after proving he’s willing to try it himself.

Iran vows it will not allow US “interference” in managing Hormuz and threatens consequences “beyond any planners’ calculations” if ports are blockaded.

Between them sits a global system that depends on this corridor for energy and trade, watching two governments turn it into a testbed for gunboat toll policy.

War powers, money, and messaging merge into one script: notify Congress that “defensive actions” have resumed, revive the blockade, float a fee on the world’s oil lifeline, then trade the toll away for investment promises while keeping the war mechanism intact.

The ships may not pay the 20%, but they still risk becoming evidence in the next strike video — and the bill for every zigzag in this policy doesn’t land in Washington or Tehran first. It lands in prices, flights, and economies that don’t get a say.

#usa #iran #Hormuz #oil #war #blockade #shipping #oligarchy #fakeDemocracy

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸