Bulletins and News Discussion from July 7th to July 13th, 2025 - Sanctions on Russia: The Sequel

Image is of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which transports gas from Russia to China. This isn't an oil pipeline (such as the ESPO) but I thought it looked cool. Source here.

Trump has recently proposed a 500% tariff on goods from countries that trade with Russia, including India and China (who buy ~70% of Russia's oil output), as well as a 10% additional tariff on goods from countries that "align themselves with BRICS." Considering that China is the largest trading partner of most of the countries on the planet at this point, and India and Brazil are reasonably strong regional players, I'm not sure what exactly "alignment" means, but it could be pretty bad.

Sanctions and tariffs on Russian products have been difficult to achieve in practice. It's easy to write an order to sanction Russia, but much harder to actually enforce these sorts of things because of, for example, the Russian shadow oil fleet, or countries like Kazakhstan acting as covert middlemen (well, as covert as a very sudden oil export boom can be).

Considering that China was pretty soundly victorious last time around, I'm cautiously optimistic, especially because China and India just outright cutting off their supply of energy and fuel would be catastrophic to them (and if Iran and Israel go to war again any time in the near future, it'll only be more disastrous). Barring China and India kowtowing to Trump and copying Europe vis-a-vis Nordstream 2 (which isn't impossible, I suppose), the question is whether China and India will appear to accede to these commands while secretly continuing trade with Russia through middlemen, or if they will be more defiant in the face of American pressure.

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"From economy of occupation to economy of genocide"
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese
- While life in Gaza is being obliterated and the West Bank is under escalating assault, the present report shows why the genocide carried out by Israel continues: because it is lucrative for many. By shedding light on the political economy of an occupation turned genocidal, the report reveals how the forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and big tech – providing boundless supply and demand, little oversight and zero accountability – while investors and private and public institutions profit freely. Too many influential corporate entities remain inextricably financially bound to Israeli apartheid and militarism.
  Post-October 2023, as the Israeli defence budget has doubled, and at a time of falling demand, production and consumer confidence, an international network of corporations has propped up the Israeli economy.
  the recent and ongoing ICJ and ICC proceedings have removed any possible doubt and put corporate entities – whether subsidiaries, parent companies or direct actors and investors – clearly on notice of the serious risk of being implicated in very serious violations of international law, including human rights violations and international crimes, and of their actions having contributed to or become criminally complicit in these violations and crimes.
  Corporate entities and their executives can, and indeed must, find themselves liable in civil or criminal law for such conduct, in addition to the multitude of other crimes and human rights violations that are part of the economy of occupation.
  The linked document describes the specific activities of a number of corporations. Why they are legally liable, in which jurisdictions etc. Also stressing that individuals who are in authority could be tried ala Nuremberg.
  I didn't realize the UN has a list of businesses involved in crimes against humanity in Palestine. It seems not to be public but they periodically issue reports. Their last report was published June 2023. There are 97 businesses on the genociders list. (And an additional 15 who managed to get themselves removed from prior editions. Good for you General Mills.)
  In May 2024 they solicited updates to the list and reported later in 2024
  OHCHR received a total of 733 submissions, which together included allegations of the involvement of 596 business enterprises in listed activities.
  Now they have a problem where it is so much work to investigate and obviously they will only publish such a serious allegation after doing their own diligence. So it is delaying release.
  A comparable interim report in 2020 (prior to the publication of the 2023 document) had allegations about 206 businesses.

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