World roundup: October 9 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Myanmar, Haiti, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
October 9, 1740: Dutch colonial authorities and native sympathizers brutally suppress an uprising among ethnic Chinese citizens of the Indonesian city of Batavia (modern Jakarta). By the end of the massacre, on October 22, more than 10,000 people were dead—nearly all of them Chinese—and the city’s remaining Chinese residents were moved into a “Chinatown” outside the city that functioned more as a detention camp than a residential neighborhood.
October 9, 1967: Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed by Bolivian authorities one day after being captured while attempting to organize a revolution.
INTERNATIONAL
According to the AP, the United Nations is slashing its international peacekeeping budget by some 25 percent to account for a reduction in US support. As many as 14,000 peacekeepers out of a total of roughly 50,000 deployed to nine combat zones will be sent home as a result. The Trump administration has frozen most US contributions to the UN while ostensibly conducting a review of its programs.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Israeli government confirmed on Thursday that it has tentatively agreed to a Gaza ceasefire based on elements of the framework that Donald Trump released last week. It celebrated the occasion by killing at least 29 people across the territory (at time of writing). The ceasefire hasn’t officially taken effect yet because the Israeli cabinet hasn’t given it final approval, and I guess stopping the carnage before that approval would be inappropriate for some reason. Even then the Israeli military (IDF) may not stop—the ceasefire will go into effect “within 24 hours” of cabinet ratification, so there could be one more full day of killing in store. The US military is reportedly deploying 200 soldiers to Israel to assist in monitoring that ceasefire, though none of them will be stationed in Gaza.
Once the Israeli cabinet approves the deal—and despite opposition from the far right elements within the government approval seems to be a foregone conclusion—things could move fairly quickly over the next few days. Within 72 hours Hamas and the other Palestinian factions will release the remaining living Gaza captives (believed to be 20 people) and the Israeli government will release upwards of 2000 Palestinian captives (1700 detained since October 7 2023 and 250 longer term prisoners). Marwan Barghouti, who is often identified as the one person who could unite all of the Palestinian political factions, is reportedly not going to be among those who are released. The IDF will pull back to an agreed upon withdrawal line that still leaves it in control of most of Gaza, albeit less of the territory than it controls at present. Aid will begin flowing into Gaza at an initial rate of 400 trucks per day and increasing from there. At some point Hamas and company will repatriate the remains of dead Gaza captives to Israel though it may take some time to locate and identify them.
UPDATE: The Israeli government has approved the ceasefire.
Though the prospect of at least a temporary pause in the violence is genuinely good news for the people of Gaza, this need for the IDF to wring every last moment of death and destruction out of the process is another in a two year string of outrages that should stain the moral reputations of everyone involved.1 Another, which I can’t help but think about in this moment, involves the realization that this ceasefire, or something very much like it, could likely have been achieved at any point in the past two years had either of the two men who have led the US government over that period shown any semblance of basic decency or conscience and forced the Israeli government to cease its genocide. Joe Biden never did. Donald Trump finally has, at least for now, but only after overseeing the bloodiest and cruelest phase of this atrocity. The question “why now?” seems to be at the forefront of people’s minds today and I would argue that the better phrasing would be “why not at any time before now?” Because the only difference between today and 6/12/18/24 months ago is that the US government decided that enough was enough. Only the people involved can explain why enough wasn’t enough until today.
Of course the above paragraph assumes that this is in fact the end of the genocide, and that very much remains to be seen. Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya is claiming that he’s gotten “guarantees” from the US as well as regional leaders that this ceasefire will be permanent. Donald Trump will travel to the region this weekend to declare success and trumpet his prowess as a peacemaker, all of which will look pretty stupid if the killing resumes in a few days or weeks. But all that’s on paper right now is an agreement on the easiest parts of Trump’s framework. The difficult elements—Gaza’s future governance, Hamas’s potential disarmament, the IDF’s staged withdrawal from Gaza, and much more—are yet to be discussed. Trump is going to have to insist that the ceasefire stick even if those talks bog down or break down. If he doesn’t, there’s every reason to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu will eagerly resume the genocide.
IRAN
The Trump administration on Thursday blacklisted more than 50 individuals, companies, and oil tankers allegedly linked to Iran’s continued trade in petrochemicals despite US sanctions. These include at least a couple of targets, a port and a refinery, in China.
ASIA
MYANMAR
The AP reports on the toll that US aid cuts have taken in Myanmar:
Mohammed Taher clutched the lifeless body of his 2-year-old son and wept. Ever since his family’s food rations stopped arriving at their internment camp in Myanmar in April, the father had watched helplessly as his once-vibrant baby boy weakened, suffering from diarrhea and begging for food.
On May 21, exactly two weeks after Taher’s little boy died, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat before Congress and declared: “No one has died” because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program. Rubio also insisted: “No children are dying on my watch.”
That, Taher says, “is a lie.”
“I lost my son because of the funding cuts,” he says. “And it is not only me — many more children in other camps have also died helplessly from hunger, malnutrition and no medical treatment.”
Taher’s grief is echoed in families across conflict-ravaged Myanmar, where the United Nations estimates 40% of the population needs humanitarian assistance and which once counted the U.S. as its largest humanitarian donor. Now, in Asia, it has become the epicenter of the suffering unleashed upon the world’s most vulnerable by President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
CHINA
The Chinese government blacklisted 14 foreign companies on Thursday over their relationships with Taiwan or Taiwanese firms. They were added to Beijing’s “unreliable entity list,” which limits their ability to operate in China. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce also announced new restrictions on the export of “rare earth” minerals, which will require more companies to apply for licenses to obtain Chinese-produced minerals or mineral processing technology. The main target for these restrictions is the US.
AFRICA
SUDAN
Rapid Support Forces shelling hit a mosque in the besieged Sudanese city of Al-Fashir on Thursday, killing at least 13 people. The attack reportedly emanated from the Abu Shouk displaced persons camp outside the city, which RSF fighters have at least partially seized in recent weeks and are now using as a launch point for attacks. The RSF has been bombarding Al-Fashir heavily this week, particularly targeting the city’s main hospital.
ETHIOPIA
The Eritrean government is rejecting Ethiopian claims that it is colluding with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front to support an ongoing insurgency in Ethiopia’s Amhara region. Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Ghebremeskel accused the Ethiopian government of engaging in “provocative saber-rattling” after it sent a letter outlining its allegations to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres earlier this month. Eritrean officials have warned that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is trying to create a casus belli in order to seize the Eritrean Red Sea port city of Assab. The TPLF is likewise denying any wrongdoing, arguing that any improvement in relations between it and the Eritrean government should be viewed as a positive thing from the standpoint of regional stability.
MADAGASCAR
Madagascar’s “Gen Z” protests are continuing after President Andry Rajoelina more or less rejected organizer demands for his resignation. Protesters are apparently not satisfied with his offer of talks, and his pledge on Wednesday to resign in one year if he hasn’t satisfied the protesters’ grievances by then has similarly failed to move the proverbial needle. Organizers had called for a 48 hour strike starting Thursday, but I have not seen any indication as to whether that took place.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged on Thursday that it was Russian air defense systems that shot down Azerbaijani Airlines Flight 8243 near the city of Grozny back in December, killing 38 of the 67 people on board. This is the first official admission of something that was pretty clear at the time and it came as Putin was meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev during a regional conference in Tajikistan. Putin, presumably trying to smooth over what’s become a sore spot in the bilateral relationship, promised accountability for those who were responsible for the incident as well as compensation for the victims.
UKRAINE
The Russian military claimed earlier this week to have seized no fewer than eight Ukrainian villages, an indication that it is continuing a slow advance along several parts of the front line. There’s no confirmation, as is typical with these assertions, but it may be worth noting that Ukrainian officials are now evacuating children from areas near the hard-pressed city of Kramatorsk in Donetsk oblast. Local authorities cited a “deterioration of the security situation” around the city in announcing the evacuation order. Meanwhile, The Financial Times reported on Thursday that “a series of massive Russian air strikes in the past week has disabled nearly 60 per cent of Ukraine’s gas production.” With winter approaching that’s a major concern for Ukrainian officials. And further west, The Wall Street Journal reported on the apparently terrifying conditions in the city of Kherson:
Russian drone operators have turned daily life in Kherson into a terrifying gauntlet. A year ago, from the other side of the Dnipro River, they began sending drones, in addition to using bombs and artillery, to take potshots at civilians.
Now the attacks have intensified to such an extent that Ukrainian authorities, civilians and human-rights groups say it has become a systematic effort to keep people off the city’s streets under threat of execution from the skies.
The drones drop grenades or antipersonnel mines, or swoop on targets and explode on impact. They target buses, markets, gas stations, and even medical and police vehicles. Residents fear the approach of winter, as nights grow longer and trees shed their leaves that provide natural cover.
It is part of Russia’s growing strategy to terrorize civilians in an effort to sap Ukrainians’ strength to resist in the fourth year of war. The attacks have left Kherson and villages along the Dnipro almost deserted. The youngest victim killed in the region, also known as Kherson, was a 1-year-old boy.
AMERICAS
ARGENTINA
Argentine President Javier Milei’s incredibly successful experiment in radical libertarianism secured a bailout from the United States on Thursday in the form of a currency swap. The US is buying $20 billion worth of Argentine pesos in order to inject dollars into the country’s central bank. The bank has depleted its foreign currency reserves in an effort to stabilize the peso’s value. It’s all very libertarian and successful, you can be sure of that. Argentina will hold midterm elections later this month that may go badly for Milei and interfere with his aforementioned experiment.
HAITI
A new report from UNICEF paints a grim picture of conditions in gang-ravaged Haiti:
The number of children displaced by violence in Haiti has nearly doubled to 680,000, according to a new UNICEF report released Wednesday that warns minors are increasingly facing hunger, violence and recruitment by armed groups in the Caribbean nation.
Overall, around 6 million Haitians — half the country’s population — need humanitarian assistance, including more than 3.3 million children, UNICEF said.
“Without decisive action, the future of an entire generation is at stake,” the report stated.
Gang violence has displaced a record 1.3 million Haitians in recent years, with many cramming into makeshift shelters after their communities were razed.
The number of such shelters has doubled countrywide to 246 in the first six months of the year, according to the report. Of those, more than 30% lack infrastructure that would provide basic protection.
UNITED STATES
Finally, TomDispatch’s Alfred McCoy argues that Donald Trump is inadvertantly hastening the collapse of America’s “international influence”:
In his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch, which is eerily evocative of our current political plight, Gabriel Garcia Marquez described how a Latin American autocrat “discovered in the course of his uncountable years that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth, [and] became convinced … that the only livable life was one of show.”
In amassing unchecked power spiced with unimaginable cruelty, that fictional dictator extinguished any flicker of opposition in his imaginary Caribbean country, reducing its elite to a craven set of courtiers. Even though he butchered opponents, plundered the treasury, raped the young, and reduced his nation to penury, “lettered politicians and dauntless adulators… proclaimed him the corrector of earthquakes, eclipses, leap years and other errors of God.” When his slavishly loyal defense minister somehow displeased him, the autocrat had him served up, in full-dress uniform laden with military medals, on a silver platter with a pine-nut garnish to a table full of courtiers, forcing them to dutifully consume their slice of the cooked cadaver.
That macabre banquet presaged a recent luncheon President Donald J. Trump hosted at the White House for this nation’s top tech executives, which became a symphony of shameless sycophancy. Billionaire Bill Gates praised the president’s “incredible leadership,” while Apple CEO Tim Cook said it was “incredible to be among… you and the first lady” before thanking him “for helping American companies around the world.” Other executives there celebrated him for having “unleashed American innovation and creativity… making it possible for America to win” again and making this “the most exciting time in America, ever.” As Trump served up the corpse of American democracy, those tech courtiers, like so many of this country’s elites, downed their slice of the cadaver with ill-concealed gusto.
With Congress compliant, the Supreme Court complicit, and media corporations compromised, President Trump’s vision for America and its place in the world has become the nation’s destiny. Since the inauguration for his second term in office in January 2025, he has launched a radical “America first” foreign policy that seems primed to accelerate the decline of Washington’s international influence and, more seriously and much less obviously, degrade (if not destroy) the liberal international order that the U.S. has sustained since the end of World War II. Largely ignored by a media overwhelmed by daily outrages from the Oval Office, that initiative has some truly serious implications for America’s role in the world.
I understand demands for tangible justice and even reparations for what’s happened over the past two years but realistically I just don’t see how those things can be achieved, so reputational harm it is.