Ukraine – what you weren’t told – 2022
Ukraine – what you weren’t told – 2023
The Ukraine – what you are not told – 2024
View of the world
There are many articles published each day which provide an interesting (and often insightful) analysis of the world in which we live – and how capitalism and imperialism manipulates populations and circumstances for its own financial gain.
Some might find a home in other pages on this blog but others are metaphorical ‘orphans’. This page seeks to provide them a home.
Reckoning with slavery: What a revolt’s archives tells us about who owns the past (2nd December 2020)
Wall Street takes workers’ retirement money and uses it against them (July 2021)
Britain is ensuring the death of a Palestinian state (23rd September 2021)
The UK claims to support a ‘two-state’ solution in Israel-Palestine but the body of a Palestinian state has long been in the morgue, although nobody dares to have a funeral. As long as Britain and other states continue to superficially endorse a two-state solution, Israel will become entrenched as a full-blown apartheid state with international blessing.
The Long Haitian Revolution (10th October 2021)
How developing countries can make mRNA covid vaccines (22nd October 2021)
Blockade Against Cuba Turns 60 (4th February 2022)
On fails to understand how it has been possible for the US to act against millions of people for so long and with so much hatred, a hatred without limits or rational explanation.
Give Putin what he wants (4th February 2022)
On October 8, 1962, Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós told the UN General Assembly that there would be no need for Cuba to possess nuclear weapons were the US to guarantee that it would not invade Cuba as the US had attempted to do the year before. In other words, Cuba would trade missiles for a US security guarantee.
Now, Russia’s Vladimir Putin is requesting a guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO. The US should agree.
UK spends over £80m on media in 20 countries around Russia (8th February 2022)
The British government is spending tens of millions on media projects in Eastern Europe which are often presented as fighting “Russian disinformation”, but which may involve the UK’s own information operations.
‘Deceitful activities’: US expands its intelligence and military presence in UK (9th February 2022)
The US is quietly preparing to upgrade its presence in Britain in moves with huge implications for UK security and vulnerability in an international crisis.
The legacy of Lester Mallory: Brief statement against the U.S. economic war against Cuba (10th February 2022)
It has now been 60 years since this U.S. enacted its “embargo” on Cuba. The term embargo is however, a gross understatement of the measures designed to undermine and overthrow the Cuban government, in the words of U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Interamerican Affairs, Lester Mallory (1960) “through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship”. The concept of ‘economic war’ is a much more accurate depiction.
Blood on London’s hands (10th February 2022)
Whitehall knew for decades that the UDA paramilitary group was carrying out wholesale murder – yet ministers long refused to ban it as a terrorist organisation and officials continued to meet its leaders.
How can the US accuse any nation of violating ‘Rules-Based International Order’? (10th February 2022)
Sometimes the hypocrisy of the US government, especially when it comes to foreign affairs, is just too much to let pass.
America’s real adversaries are its European and other allies (11th February 2022)
The U.S. aim is to keep them from trading with China and Russia
America’s sanctions on its allies hurt their economies, not those of Russia and China
Oil diplomacy and America’s dream for post-Soviet Russia
U.S. dreams of a neoliberalized China as a U.S. corporate affiliate
U.S. demands are driving its allies out of the dollar-NATO trade and monetary orbit
UK commanders in Ukraine met neo-Nazi-linked National Guard to ‘deepen military cooperation’ (15th February 2022)
Ukraine’s National Guard says that in meeting last year the UK military agreed to start training its forces, which include a thousand-strong neo-Nazi unit. The UK Ministry of Defence disputes the claim.
A billionaire literally dismantling public infrastructure to serve his most superficial whim — Jeff Bezos’s recent attempt to get the city of Rotterdam to dismantle its historic bridge to fit his gigantic yacht feels like a metaphor for our current stage of capitalism.
Suharto’s US-backed coup in Indonesia supplied a template for worldwide mass murder (15th February 2022)
Under the leadership of Sukarno, postcolonial Indonesia was an optimistic country finding its place on the world stage. Suharto’s 1965 coup drowned that experiment in blood, with US politicians and media cheering on his campaign of mass killings.
Britain and Australia’s resource grab in Afghanistan (16th February 2022)
A little-known aspect of the disastrous Western occupation of Afghanistan was that UK and Australian companies sought to access the country’s $3 trillion worth of untapped minerals – with little regard for the welfare of Afghans.
Can those prosecuted for acts of violence and recklessly endangering the public order, with no program, no proposals for positive change, be considered political prisoners? (16th February 2022)
A few days after the March 10, 1952 coup in Cuba, the young attorney Fidel Castro, “with a law office at Tejadillo, No. 57,” filed a complaint in court charging Fulgencio Batista with the crime of sedition. Motivated by personal interest or cowardice, the legal team of jurists, defending Batista’s coup against the 1940 Constitution, alleged that his actions did not constitute a coup, but rather a revolution, which was acceptable under the law.
Theranos Verdict: In the U.S., it is fine to lie to consumers but not to investors
Hyper-capitalism has systematically weakened regulations to help capital at the cost of consumers. The verdict on the Elizabeth Holmes case illustrates the truth: Protecting private property is central to bourgeois law, not people.
America’s Disastrous 60-Year War (21st February 2022)
Three generations of conspicuous destruction by the Military-Industrial Complex and a New Cold War.
Russia-Ukraine is an Information War, so government intelligence needs more scrutiny than ever (22nd February 2022)
The threat of war is difficult to beat when it comes to mending or enhancing a damaged reputation. President Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, both derided as ineffective in domestic policy only a few weeks ago, are now reborn as statesmen capable of guiding their countries through the minefield of Eastern European politics.
Bob Dylan, Masters of War and the Ukraine Crisis (23rd February 2022)
Red-white-and-blue chauvinism is running wild. Yet there are real diplomatic alternatives to the collision course for war.
WWII Redux: The endpoint of U.S. policy, from Ukraine to Taiwan (23rd February 2022)
The threatened peoples of East Asia and Europe can stop the U.S. drive to restore its global domination.
Arms industry sees Ukraine conflict as an opportunity, not a crisis (2nd March 2022)
On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine, pounding cities with ordnance and dispatching troops across the border. The sonic boom of fighter jets filled the air, as civilians flooded the highways in Kyiv, attempting to flee the capital. And the stock value of arms makers soared.
‘We are not the ones who owe; it’s capital and the state who owe us’: why feminists scholars and activists are working to destigmatise debt. (11th March 2022)
‘We want to be alive, free and without debt.’ With slogans such as these, Argentinian feminists are attempting to expose the connection between debt, global finance, labour exploitation and male violence.
Corporate Courts Vs The Climate (18th March 2022)
Fossil fuel companies are using secretive tribunals written into trade deals to sue governments for more than $18 billion over climate policy.
The horrific scam that water billionaires are running on poor countries (21st March 2022)
Mega corporations like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Danone are making around 494 times what they spend by bottling water in Mexico and selling it back to locals who have no choice but to buy it.
It’s all oligarchs all the way down (22nd March 2022)
Today’s US propaganda barrage seeks to demonize the Russians as thoroughly and completely as possible, which now ironically includes attacks on Russia’s oligarchy. This could, and hopefully will, open a can of worms for US oligarchic orchestrators of such propaganda, whose hypocrisy is apparently bottomless. If the Russian oligarchs are monsters, what about our own plutocrats? Today we are offered a typical capitalist “choice.” Which national set of oligarchs do we want to “support” and die for?
Bernie Sanders on the Worldwide Oligarchy (23rd March 2022)
‘We are in a struggle between a progressive movement that mobilizes around a shared vision of prosperity, security and dignity for all people, against one that defends oligarchy and massive global income and wealth inequality’
Judge Jackson’s hearing proves that all the Sold-Out GOP has left is performance art. (23rd March 2022)
They’ve sold out to big money and don’t give a rat’s ass about the issues that really matter to most Americans.
Julian Assange posed PR problem for UK government’s media campaign (23rd March 2022)
UK officials were worried about public reaction to their hosting a media freedom event a few miles from Belmarsh prison, where Assange is incarcerated. The Foreign Office monitored activity online, developed ‘lines to take’ and warned ‘we should be ready’, emails show.
A food crisis was brewing even before the Ukraine war (24th March 2022)
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the disruption, by sanctions or war, of two of the world’s largest grain exporters. This means 2022 is shaping up to be a very difficult year for the global food system. … Yet there were concerns that this system was creaking at the seams as far back as 2007.
Have We Forgotten…Afghanistan (24th March 2022)
The US 20-year war and occupation in Afghanistan, waged to avenge the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, has taken the lives of more than 71,000 Afghani and Pakistani civilians
Madeleine Albright Was a Killer (24th March 2022)
She was a pioneering imperialist who passionately advocated greater use of deadly violence in pursuit of a US-dominated post–Cold War global order — and killed many, many people in the process.
Unbeknown to most, a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) – enabled financial revolution is coming that will radically transform our lives (and probably not for the better) (25th March 2022)
Around 90 central banks are either in the process of experimenting with or are already piloting central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). In a world of just over 190 countries that is a large number, but given they include the European Central Bank (ECB) which alone represents 19 Euro Area economies, the actual number of economies involved is well over 100. Together those economies represent more than 90% of global GDP.
Britain uses vast swathes of one of the world’s most biodiverse countries for military training — and pays nothing. (29th March 2022 – originally posted on Declassified on 4th February 2020)
The British army is using one-sixth of Belize’s total landmass for jungle warfare training after gaining access to more than a dozen sites across the former UK colony in Central America, it can be revealed.
The Death Spiral of Globalization (30th March 2022)
After all, globalization is just a sanitized term to describe the ugly truth of the market system in which human and natural resources are exploited by wealthy nations that simply go to places with the fewest human rights and/or environmental regulations to obtain their goods — be it products of brutal sweatshops or oil, gas, and minerals. The resulting human and ecological disasters are then simply written off as the “price of doing business” in the global marketplace.
Afghanistan facing ‘total collapse’ as Biden refuses to release Central Bank assets (30th March 2022)
‘Their inflation strategy Is working’: corporate profits soared to record high in 2021 (31st March 2022)
We’ve regularly described how the corporate profits as a share of GDP has been at close to 12% for years, which is twice the level Warren Buffet deemed to be unsustainably high in the early 2000s. These egregious profits are at the expense of low and mid level workers.
The importance of custody, or NATO’s Internal Gold War (4th April 2022)
Russia´s new rubles or gold payment requirements for any of its goods or services will necessarily prompt a major gold war between the UK and the EU probably resulting in NATO´s first-ever internal head-on gloves-off confrontation.
Falklands: Should UK negotiate with or defy Argentina? (4th April 2022)
While Britain currently claims sole ownership of the disputed Falkland Islands, UK records show past governments being willing to compromise and that the question of sovereignty is far from certain.
ExxonMobil announces $10 billion oil investment the same day Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) signals end for fossil fuels (6th April 2022)
…. a $10 billion final investment decision for an oil and gas development project in the South American nation of Guyana that the company said would allow it to add a quarter of a million barrels of oil a day to its production in 2025.
The sun never set: British army’s secret payments to colonial-era farms (6th April 2022)
Almost 60 years after Kenya’s independence from Britain, the former colonial power is paying white landowners so it can conduct dangerous military exercises in East Africa. But the cost of these payments is shrouded in secrecy.
Ethiopia: crimes against humanity in Western Tigray Zone (6th April 2022)
Amhara regional security forces and civilian authorities in Ethiopia’s Western Tigray Zone have committed widespread abuses against Tigrayans since November 2020 that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. .. Ethiopian authorities have severely restricted access and independent scrutiny of the region, keeping the campaign of ethnic cleansing largely hidden.
Why Stop at the Russian Oligarchs? (12th April 2022)
At a time when Russian bombs are destroying Ukrainian cities, there is good reason to focus on the oligarchs supporting the Kremlin. But do American multi-billionaires and Saudi princes enjoy less political clout, stash less money abroad, and use their influence any better?
Stormy days coming for solar power in the Sunshine State (13th April 2022)
All-powerful for-profit utilities have apparently bribed/persudaded Floria officials to crush what they consider to be a developing threat – Solar Power.
Biometric Surveillance Systems are being hastily rolled out across the West, with next to no public debate (12th April 2022)
By embracing biometric surveillance, governments across the West are hurtling down a path that could lead us all to a very dark place.
How serious is antibiotic resistance? (16th April 2022)
‘By the 1950’s the US industry was “painting” steaks with antibiotics to extend their shelf life. They were washing spinach with antibiotics. Sometimes they even mixed antibiotics into ground meat. You could buy antibiotic soap. The stuff leaked everywhere. Studies at the time found penicillin even in milk and some people promptly developed an allergy to it.’
Latin America, the Caribbean and the War in Ukraine (18th April 2022)
As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine moves through its second month, its unconcealable economic impact continues to grow at the global level. Price rises in energy, food and fertilizer have driven up inflation to levels that haven’t been seen in decades, leading to higher interest rates that will stall economic growth.
British army destroyed files in Kenya (21st April 2022)
The UK military destroyed paper records from its Kenyan headquarters after the murder of a local woman, in an echo of Operation Legacy – the bonfire of records at the end of Empire.
British ammo almost certainly maimed Kenyan boy – new evidence (22nd April 2022)
A UK military investigation seen by Declassified found dozens of potential hazards to civilians in Kenya from unexploded bombs, and training exercises producing enough military debris to fill 13 shipping containers.
Jimmy Dore gives Barack Obama what’s what on censorship of social media (26th April 2022)
Prince William petitioned by Kenyan land grab victims (4th May 2022)
Their families were brutally evicted by the British empire to make way for tea plantations. Now they want the crown to apologise.
James Galbraith: The Dollar System in a Multi-Polar World (6th May 2022)
The dollar has by now been de facto the primary world reserve asset for over a hundred years, first because of US preeminence in the holding of gold and its creditor position with respect to the European belligerents in the Great War. In 1944 US military and industrial power, soon to be backed, in the shadows, by a monopoly over the atomic bomb, were the foundations of the gold-exchange standard established at Bretton Woods.
Our Men in Manila (6th May 2022)
The British establishment supported the authoritarianism of both Ferdinand Marcos in the 1980s and Rodrigo Duterte from 2016 until now – the two darkest chapters in the post-independence history of the Philippines.
MI5 asked police to spy on political activities of children (9th May 2022)
Schoolchildren as young as 14 targeted in 1975 for links to ‘subversive’ anti-fascist and socialist organisations.
US Air Force deployment in Britain is third largest in world (10th May 2022)
Only Japan and Germany, countries occupied by the US military after World War 2, host more US airmen than Britain. Nuclear-capable American B-52 bombers were recently deployed in Gloucestershire amid Ukraine tensions.
Hundreds of Native children died at Government boarding schools [in the US] (11th May 2022)
Hundreds of Native children died at boarding schools the U.S. government forced them to attend from 1819 to 1969 in a violent, racist attempt to assimilate Native people and take their territories, according to an Interior Department report.
Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh assassinated by Israeli Army troops in Jenin Refugee Camp (11th May 2022)
Veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli forces in occupied West Bank. The 51-year-old, covering an Israeli army raid on the Jenin refugee camp when she was shot in the face by a single bullet despite wearing a press vest
Britain plotted propaganda campaign against Amnesty International (11th May 2022)
Declassified files from the early 1970s show the UK government secretly sought to discredit the human rights organisation’s investigation into British torture in Northern Ireland and its notorious ‘Five Techniques’.
Hunger crisis grips Horn of Africa – but 80% of Britons unaware. (12th May 2022)
UK government urged to act as worst drought in 40 years threatens region while aid efforts and global attention remain focused on Ukraine war
Not war alone (12th May 2022)
The global food crisis. Made worse, but not caused, by the war in the Ukraine.
Johnson’s Saudi WhatsApps to stay secret (13th May 2022)
WhatsApp messages that may have been sent between Britain’s Prime Minister and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia will not be made public.
The super immunity of our fabulously wealthy corporate dictators (16th May 2022)
Ever since the heads of East India Trading Company (1600) and Hudson Bay Company (1670), were incorporated by English Royal charters, there have been corporate dictators. Their range and actions, have varied widely however. Today’s new corporate dictators shatter past restraints.
ICE is tracking your every move (16th May 2022)
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become known for both mass deportations and unmarked-van snatchings of peaceful protesters. ICE also turns out to be operating a vast intelligence system that tracks the movements of hundreds of millions of Americans.
Peru sues Spanish oil giant Repsol for billions after ‘worst ever’ oil spill (17th May 2022)
Peru’s prime minister, Mirtha Vásquez, claims that Repsol “apparently” did not even have a contingency plan in place for an oil spill.
How the US sent $12 billion in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish. (17th May 2022 – this article originally appeared in February 2007 but is reproduced here as it is relevant when we consider what is being proposed following the US Congress’s decision to approve a 40 billion dollar package for the Ukraine.)
‘A shameful distinction’: US ranked world’s biggest perpetrator of financial secrecy (17th May 2022)
‘That isn’t a prize the U.S. wants to claim for itself,’ said one critic.
Was Ozark Actually About the Clintons? (17th May 2022)
In its last season, Ozark goes beyond family drama. It critiques the insidious ways that capitalism and political power work in America and the self-interested choices elites make to keep climbing the ladder.
Global WHO Treaty Is real and will control you. (17th May 2022)
Flying under the radar and unbeknownst to most, the World Health Organization is quietly pursuing an international treaty that would hand national sovereignty over healthcare decisions to the unaccountable global body, allowing the WHO to unilaterally declare pandemics and impose responses on individual nations. Not surprisingly, major WHO funder Bill Gates is fully supportive of the idea.
Why we’re trying to shut down Israel’s arms factories in Britain (17th May 2022)
A co-founder of activist group Palestine Action outlines why it seeks to close down Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, from its UK sites, amid the firm’s growing collaboration with Boris Johnson’s government.
Hungry babies, regrettably, are just the price of the Free Market. (19th May 2022)
Pete Buttigieg says that in a capitalist economy, the government doesn’t and shouldn’t make baby formula. But around the world, even in the United States, the public sector has stepped in to correct market failures.
Nato bombing of Libya ‘exceeded UN mandate’. (19th May 2022)
A new book by the UN’s top man on the ground in Libya during the anti-Gaddafi uprising argues Nato indulged in “mission creep” and gave “unconvincing” arguments for promoting regime change in the name of protecting civilians.
The Tory Guide to Surviving the Cost of Living Crisis (20th May 2022)
Across the UK, parents are struggling to balance bills with feeding their children, workers are juggling several jobs at the expense of their mental and physical health, and more and more people are being driven to food banks, with food prices predicted to reach ‘apocalyptic’ levels. Luckily for all of us though, some kindly Tory MPs have offered their top-tier budgeting advice, to help people to cope with the crippling cost of living crisis.
The root of Haiti’s misery: reparations to enslavers (22nd May 2022)
In 1791, enslaved Haitians did the seemingly impossible. They ousted their French masters and founded a nation. But France made generations of Haitians pay for their freedom — in cash. How much has remained a mystery, until now.
Joe Biden has botched the Summit of the Americas. (23rd May 2022)
The United States is excluding Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from the forthcoming Summit of the Americas. Washington probably wasn’t expecting that much of Latin America, led by Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, would publicly push back in response.
Online learning costs many kids their privacy. (26th May 2022)
A new study by Human Rights Watch and media organizations found that governments of 49 countries harmed children’s rights by endorsing online learning products (EdTEch) during Covid-19 school closures without adequately protecting children’s privacy.
Is denying the Nakba antisemitism? (26th May 2022)
If expelling people because they are different does indeed constitute “anti-semitism,” then the Nakba — in which roughly 750,000 Palestinians were either expelled from their homes by Israeli forces or fled constitutes a vast “antisemitic” atrocity.
Understanding the global rise in inflation. (27th May 2022)
Since the start of the pandemic, global demand for tradable goods relative to non-tradable services has been exceptionally high. This column argues that this unusual demand pattern can push the global economy into stagflation, driven by scarcity of tradable goods. Countries running trade deficits export high inflation abroad, while policies that boost production of tradable goods and current account surpluses act as a benign disinflationary force. Due to a free riding problem, national monetary authorities may fall into a coordination trap leading to excessively high unemployment. High energy prices exacerbate all these effects.
Two Brazil cops torture 38-year-old Black man to death. (27th May 2022)
The victim, Genivaldo de Jesus Santos, died of asphhyxiation, media reports said. In the clip, the victim can be seen brutally tortured by the officers of Brazil’s Federal Highway Police. The cops put him in the trunk of a smoke-filled SUV. The smoke appears to be of tear gas.
The rise of NATO in Africa. (27th My 2022)
Anxiety about the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) toward the Russian border is one of the causes of the current war in Ukraine. But this is not the only attempt at expansion by NATO, a treaty organization created in 1949 by the United States to project its military and political power over Europe. In 2001, NATO conducted an ‘out of area’ military operation in Afghanistan, which lasted 20 years, and in 2011, NATO—at the urging of France—bombed Libya and overthrew its government. NATO military operations in Afghanistan and Libya were the prelude to discussions of a “Global NATO,” a project to use the NATO military alliance beyond its own charter obligations from the South China Sea to the Caribbean Sea.
Our global economic system Is broken. Are we headed for a mass revolt? (28th May 2022)
While it has long been blatantly obvious that the global economic model is not working for all, the rate of accumulation of wealth by a small minority is now breathtaking – if not totally obscene.
It’s not just Putin – UK ministers are also complicit in war crimes, in Yemen. (30th May 2022)
As Boris Johnson’s government galvanises international action to take Russia to the International Criminal Court over Ukraine, his officials are escaping accountability for their own complicity in violations of international humanitarian law.
The colonial mentality lives on in the Western media. (31st May 2022 – but originally posted on 23rd April 2022, only recently brought to our attention.)
How the old imperialist ‘masters’ look down upon and denigrate the countries in the ‘Global south’.
Attacks on education increased worldwide during pandemic. (1st June 2022)
More than 9,000 students, teachers, and academics were harmed, injured, or killed in attacks on education during armed conflict over the past two years, according to Education under Attack 2022, a 265-page report published today by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA). More than 5,000 separate attacks on education facilities, students, and educators, or incidents of military use, took place in 2020 and 2021, a significant increase over the previous two years.
How Elizabethan law once protected the poor from the high cost of living – and led to unrivalled economic prosperity. (1st June 2022)
In the closing years of Elizabeth I’s reign, England saw the emergence of arguably the world’s first effective welfare state. Laws were established which successfully protected people from rises in food prices.
The economic sh*tstorm coming is due to Reagan’s deregulated economy. (2nd June 2022)
In addition to an economy held together with the baling-wire of Fed stimulus (that’s ending), both the US & the world are facing a wild spectrum of assaults that could have huge economic impacts.
Let them eat (Jubilee) cake. (2nd June 2022)
When Marie Antoinette discovered her subjects were facing a bread shortage and starvation in around 1789, due to multiple poor crop harvests and rodent infestations, she apparently exclaimed ‘let them eat cake!’ Her hereditary privilege meant she had no grasp of the severity of their suffering, or the fact that cake was much more expensive than bread to produce.
To ‘level up’, the UK needs a real jubilee: a mass write-off of debts. (2nd June 2022)
Even before cost of living crisis, the poor owed the government – or, the Crown – £16 billion. Why not just write it off?
Anger as Queen bags ‘generous’ gift from dictator. (2nd June 2022)
As the Queen celebrates her Platinum Jubilee, she is facing calls to return a horse she recently received from a repressive regime – the third autocracy from which she has accepted such a gift.
The causal relationship between inequality and climate change. (5th June 2022)
Climate change has worsened global inequality, with poorer countries less able to withstand and adapt to climate change’s effects. It also has worsened inequality within countries between the rich and the poor: The impacts of drought, floods, hurricanes, and extreme heat are disproportionately felt by low-income communities and communities of color.
Mexican President boycotts Summit over US exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela. (6th June 2022)
Mexico’s leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced Monday that he is skipping the Summit of the Americas, following through on his threat to boycott the upcoming meeting if the White House refused to invite officials from all nations in the Western Hemisphere.
What is really causing our inflation: ‘Inflation in a time of corona and war’. (8th June 2022)
About the US but would also apply to the Uk and Europe.
Britain’s bumbling foreign policy over Taiwan and Ukraine. (8th June 2022)
‘Global Nato’. Help Taiwan ‘defend itself’. Recover the ‘whole’ of Ukraine. Promote ‘the free world’ – UK foreign policy under Liz Truss has become a series of empty slogans from a declining power desperate to remain a major one.
Abolish the Military-Entertainment Complex. (9th June 2022)
For every one of the few anti-militarist screenplays that are made into films, far more are reflexively spiked because their defiant content raises objections from military leaders.
MPs and landowners rake in energy subsidies as millions struggle. (10th June 2022)
Tory MPs, Lords members and multi-millionaire landowners are raking in eye-watering sums from a taxpayer-funded subsidy to heat their mansions even as millions face fuel poverty this winter.
Soft White Underbelly images of the drug addicted and homeless community in Kensington, a neighborhood in Philadelphia. (10th June 2022 – originally posted 13th May 2022)
A wordless, 7 minute video that says much about the ‘land of the free’.
The US war in Europe isn’t hot enough – dropping the climate bomb on Russia. (10th June 2022)
There ought to be a law, or at least a sanction – tenure cancelled, travel visa blocked – for American experts on Russia who claim to know from their reading of other American experts on Russia why Russia does things, and what will happen next.
Why what’s going on right now at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) matters. (11th June 2022)
The press has managed to find enough emotionally “hot” stories, like the Ukraine conflict, baby food shortages, shootings and gunz, and spiraling gas prices [in the US], that important policy struggles are getting even less attention than usual We’ve tried to remedy this a bit with this well-written overview of the issues at play in the upcoming WTO meetings, and how the various power blocks are squaring off.
Western self-destruction continues: US eyepoking China, US failed muscling of Latin America, EU Commission schemes to admit Ukraine. To what end? (13th June 2022)
We’ll try to keep this post at a high level, since each of the three fresh examples of actual or expected own goals are part of a much longer list. But it’s baffling to see incompetence and hubris become a routine part of geopolitics, Western style.
Lords complain of ‘poor wine’ and ‘too much salmon’ in Parliament. (13th June 2022)
Peers sent angry letters about the ‘disappointing’ taxpayer-subsidised food and drink served in the Lords.
Myanmar: The Rohingya’s Decade of Detention. (15th June 2022)
The Myanmar authorities have detained over 135,000 Rohingya and Kaman Muslims arbitrarily and indefinitely in Rakhine State for a decade, Human Rights Watch said in a web feature released today. Drawing on interviews with Rohingya and humanitarian workers from 2012 to the present, Human Rights Watch documents how the authorities have capitalized on the ethnic cleansing campaign launched in June 2012 to segregate and confine a population they had long sought to remove from daily life in the predominantly Buddhist country.
The rotten roots of the IMF and the World Bank. (15th June 2022)
The kind of far-reaching interventionist powers of international economic institutions that we associate with the Washington Consensus—powers to enforce austerity in borrowing states and demand they enact extensive liberalizing reforms—did not emerge out of the blue in the late 20th century. Instead, they originated many decades before, at the end of the First World War, when powerful states and private actors forged new partnerships to protect their interests at a moment of enormous global economic and political turmoil.
Summit of the Americas underlines widespread discontent with U.S. policy. (16th June 2022)
Criticisms of the United States and OAS underlined the need to revive regional integration initiatives independent of U.S. influence.
100 million people in America are saddled with health care debt. (17th June 2022)
Medical debt is an American disgrace. I know people who’ve had to declare bankruptcy and one now who is facing having to live in her car to pay for some cancer treatments…and even then probably not enough for her to recover. I’m sure readers have personal and one-degree-of-separation stories.
Why does the United States have a military base in Ghana? (19th June 2022)
The United States claims that its military presence on the African continent has to do with its counterterrorism campaign and aims to prevent the entry of China into this region.
Don’t blame workers for price rises – blame the profiteers. (23rd June 2022)
The establishment wants you to blame workers for price rises, but wages have flatlined for a decade – the real cause of inflation is the profiteering of big corporations and the super-rich.
Rail firm paid shareholders £500 million before asking workers to take wage cut. (23rd June 2022)
CEOs of the six biggest train companies also took home a combined salary of more than £5 million in 2020.
Right-wing intelligence cabal seeks UK Home Secretary Priti Patel’s help to ‘neutralize’ environmentalist enemies (28th June 2022)
Leaked emails expose Tory intelligence cabal scheming for Priti Patel’s authorization of MI6-style “counter-intelligence” operation against UK environmentalists. The cabal has turned on Boris Johnson and believes Patel is set to replace him.
Abolish the CIA (1st July 2022)
Just about every lousy U.S. foreign policy escapade from the 1950s to the late ‘70s traces back to the CIA. From the catastrophic1953 coup of Iranian president Mohammad Mossadegh, the 1954 regime change of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz for daring to step on United Fruit’s toes, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the many, some of them quite ridiculous, attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem’s demise, a possible right-wing Cuban link to the JFK assassination, the murder of Chilean general Rene Schneider and the overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende, the Watergate break-in and much, much more – the CIA’s fingerprints were all over these crimes. It got so bad that two high-level, echt-centrist government officials called for scrapping the CIA: senator Patrick Moynihan in 1995 and president Harry Truman in 1963. They were right.
How South Africa’s abandoned mines prey on local communities (5th July 2022)
Thousands of abandoned mines litter South Africa, and a combination of poor governance and business practices have left many communities living in their shadow. Abandoned coal mines pose a grave ecological risk to local communities, polluting critical water sources and arable land, and specifically endanger the safety and lives of people who return to these unsafe mines in the hopes of earning a scant income.
The coming sanctions-induced economic tsunami? (6th July 2022)
Today I am risking being too glib, but my excuse is aspiring to meet the Einstein standard, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” It’s not hard to see that as rough as economic conditions are now, they are set to get worse. And it’s not hard to see that despite the considerable blowback from the sanctions against Russia, the West is not going to relent.
UK Home Office launches new assault on the rights of modern slavery survivors (6th July 2022)
The UK Home Office seems to have a new project: help as few survivors of modern slavery as possible.
GOP ‘cancel culture’ is hard at work cancelling America (7th July 2022)
It turns out that America actually does have an issue with “cancel culture” but, the media has been focusing on the wrong one
Marx, Spinoza, and the political implications of contemporary psychiatry (7th July 2022)
Simple logic tells us that those atop a societal hierarchy will provide rewards for professionals—be they clergy or psychiatrists—who promote an ideology that maintains the status quo, and that the ruling class will do everything possible to manipulate the public to believe that the social-economic-political status quo is natural.
The end of Western Civilization – why it lacks resilience and what will take its place. (12th July 2022)
The greatest challenge facing societies has always been how to conduct trade and credit without letting merchants and creditors make money by exploiting their customers and debtors. All antiquity recognized that the drive to acquire money is addictive and indeed tends to be exploitative and hence socially injurious. The moral values of most societies opposed selfishness, above all in the form of avarice and wealth addiction, which the Greeks called philarguria– love of money, silver-mania. Individuals and families indulging in conspicuous consumption tended to be ostracized, because it was recognized that wealth often was obtained at the expense of others, especially the weak.
SAS accused of unlawful killings in Afghanistan, just a year after the British government made it harder to prosecute such crimes. (14th July 2022)
Lumumba’s politics are what really need to return. (17th July 2022)
Belgium has repatriated Patrice Lumumba’s gold tooth – his only remains. But there will only be justice when the Congolese win back what was truly killed in 1961: his politics of self-determination.
Evo Morales: ‘We lament the English were celebrating the sight of dead people’ (14th July 2022)
The President of Bolivia from 2006-19 invites Declassified to his house deep in the Amazon rainforest for an exclusive interview – on the UK role in the coup that overthrew him, how he reversed 500 years of history and industrialised Bolivia, and the efforts of the US and its British ally to bring him down.
How foreign private equity hooked New England’s fishing industry. (17th July 2022)
Owned by a billionaire Dutch family, Blue Harvest Fisheries has emerged as a dominant force in the lucrative fishing port of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Its business model: benefit from lax antitrust rules and pass costs on to local fishermen.
Sanctions cause global DeDollarization and don’t work. (19th July 2022)
An interesting approach to the issue but still made by Americans – who are so American-centric and don’t see the issue as crucial to the existence of capitalism.
Novichok investigation collapses in London court — Adam Chapman, lawyer appointed to represent Sergei and Yulia Skripal doesn’t (19th July 2022)
This case stank from the beginning and it’s getting worse, although most people would have forgotten about it now. And still no one (apart from the British state knows anything about the condition or whereabouts of the ‘victims’. And just down the road from Porton Down?
China calls for war crimes investigation into US and UK (19th July 2022)
Revealed: oil sector’s ‘staggering’ $3bn-a-day profits for last 50 years (21st July 2022)
Vast sums provide power to ‘buy every politician’ and delay action on climate crisis, says expert.
Seven Skripal secrets The Secret Intelligence Service didn’t want to let out (23rd July 2022)
The 1877 Class War that America forgot (23rd July 2022)
Creating the Capitalocene: endless accumulation. (25th July 2022)
The world system we know today was born in a time roughly from the mid-14th to mid-17th centuries. We understand them as a time when the world came out of the “Dark Ages” into the Renaissance, when the light was breaking through. In truth, writes Fabian Scheidler, it was a time of unprecedented violence in Europe, of wars across the landscape culminating in the genocide of the indigenous of the Americas. The world system we know today was born in a time roughly from the mid-14th to mid-17th centuries. We understand them as a time when the world came out of the “Dark Ages” into the Renaissance, when the light was breaking through. In truth, writes Fabian Scheidler, it was a time of unprecedented violence in Europe, of wars across the landscape culminating in the genocide of the indigenous of the Americas.
Unbeknown to most US citizens, Washington is preparing to share their biometric data with dozens of other national governments. (26th July 2022)
But the deal is that the US gets to receive all the biometric date of the population from all the countries that take up the ‘offer’. And how many of those governments will be open about that to their own people?
Organized Plunder (27th July 2022)
In the absence of the tax dollars city governments rely on, American are now funding themselves by fining the poor instead of taxing the rich.
Another Hiroshima is coming — unless we stop it now (6th August 2022)
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of premeditated mass murder unleashing a weapon of intrinsic criminality. It was justified by lies that form the bedrock of 21st century U.S. war propaganda, casting a new enemy, and target – China.
Pentagon contractors in Afghanistan pocketed $108 billion over 20 years. (9th August 2022)
MPs charged public £1.3 million to foot their tax bills (10th August 2022)
Council tax expense claims come on top of the £11.4m taxpayers already spend on MPs’ rent and energy.
The (US) Government should cancel the F-35 Program and replace it with nothing. (12th August 2022)
The F-35 fighter plane project is a complete failure. But if it ends up on the congressional chopping block, Lockheed Martin will do everything in its power to line up another trillion-dollar weapons manufacturing contract in its stead.
Giant satirical billboards – mounted on trucks driven all over the nation’s capital – are publicly shaming Democratic Party leaders for their illegal persecution of Julian Assange. (16th August 2022)
The mobile billboards are a brainchild of standup-comic-turned- activist Randy Credico. Each one is 15 feet long and circulates around DC’s most famous landmarks, skewering the hypocrisy of Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, Jerald Nadler, Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats.
Former judges who sent kids to jail for kickbacks must pay more than $200 million. (18th August 2022)
Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized in one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S. history.
UK fossil fuel company wins over £210m payout from secretive tribunal over oil drilling ban. (24th August 2022)
UK oil and gas company Rockhopper has won over £210m (over €250m consisting of an award of €190m plus interest), after it sued the Italian government following the introduction of a ban on offshore drilling. The ban prevented Rockhopper from opening a new oilfield, Ombrina Mare. The amount is more than 6 times more than Rockhopper’s actual investment in the Ombrina Mare project, which is understood to be around £33m.
The Bank of England increasing Interest Rates to 4% – as markets expect – could be enough to bring the whole economy down. (26th August 2022)
The FT noted this morning that “Financial markets are betting the Bank of England will more than double interest rates by May next year.” That means rates of 4% are being pencilled in. This is another catastrophe in the making…a thread.
You’ve been lied to about the 1963 march on Washington (28th August 2022)
How France Underdevelops Africa. (30th August 2022)
Most sub-Saharan African French colonies got formal independence in the 1960s. But their economies have progressed little, leaving most people in poverty, and generally worse off than in other post-colonial African economies.
How Shell and BP financed Britain’s Cold War propaganda machine (31st August 2022)
Formerly top secret files show how the two oil corporations bankrolled UK covert propaganda operations during the 1950s and 60s. The goal was to secure British access to key oil supplies across the developing world.
The cost of living crisis has been many years in the making – but politicians on both sides ignore this. (1st September 2022)
We are actually living through a slow-motion crisis which has been decades in the making and is set to continue. Understanding what is really happening is a vital first step to finding a way out.
China just gave a foretaste of one of the biggest dangers of biometric surveillance systems. (2nd September 2022)
Like just about anything on the Internet, biometric surveillance systems are eminently hackable as well as prone to human error.
Mississippi’s dry run for eco-apartheid (2nd September 2022)
The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, was thoroughly preventable. And it’s a vision of a disastrous future.
Remembering the Sabra Shatila Massacre, forty years later (2nd September 2022)
On the evening of September 14, 1982, we became aware that the President-elect of Lebanon had been assassinated. Around the break of dawn on the following day, we heard planes flying low into Beirut. Within hours, sounds of heavy artillery and machine guns could be heard close by. It continued all day and soon the periphery of the camp was hit relentlessly.
Creeping authoritarianism – the next threat to our civil liberties. (2nd September 2022)
While the mainstream media has been preoccupied by the Conservative Party’s infighting over who will be Britain’s new prime minister, sinister but barely noticed plans are being drawn up with profound threats to our civil liberties.
Hillary Clinton is wrong: electing a far-right woman Is not a step forward for women. (2nd September 2022)
Hillary Clinton has claimed that Giorgia Meloni becoming Italy’s first woman prime minister will “open doors” for women. Yet Meloni’s far-right agenda closes doors for women who want well-paid jobs, sexual autonomy, and reproductive rights.
Where’s the outrage? (6th September 2022)
Where’s the outrage? Bob Dole asked in the middle of the scandal-plagued presidency of Bill Clinton scandals. Voters, it turned out, cared more about prosperity.
The historic collapse of journalism. (6th September 2022)
Accuracy no longer matters. Witnessing no longer matters. Conformity matters.
John Pilger: Silencing the Lambs – how propaganda works. (11th September 2022)
In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Fuhrer. She told me that the “patriotic messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the German public.
Britain’s forgotten war for rubber. (13th September 2022)
70 years ago the UK stepped up a brutal colonial intervention in Malaya, presenting it as a war against Chinese communism. British forces herded hundreds of thousands of people into fortified camps, heavily bombed rural areas and resorted to extensive propaganda to win the conflict.
US States fail to protect children’s rights. (13th September 2022)
New Scorecard Gives Only 4 a ‘C’ Grade; 46 Get ‘D’ or ‘F’
Michael Hudson on debt relief, inflation, Ukraine disaster capitalism, petrodollar crisis. (13th September 2022)
We’re going to address the partial student debt relief in the United States, and the problem of debt, …. We’re going to talk about the inflation crisis, and some of the history of responses to the inflation that we’ve seen in the US. … We’re also going to talk about the history of the Volcker shock, …. We’re going to talk about neoliberalism. …. And I’m going to ask Professor Hudson about disaster capitalism in Ukraine. Ukraine’s leader Zelensky just did a virtual bell ringing to open the New York Stock Exchange, and announced $400 billion of giveaways to foreign corporations, mostly US corporations, who are salivating to get access to Ukraine’s assets.
Monarchs belong in the dustbin of history. (13th September 2022)
The fawning adulation of Queen Elizabeth in the United States, which fought a revolution to get rid of the monarchy, and in Great Britain, is in direct proportion to the fear gripping a discredited, incompetent and corrupt global ruling elite.
Our entire civilization is fake and stupid. (13th September 2022)
The more you learn about the world, the more fake and stupid our civilization looks. It’s because it is fake and stupid. Our news, our entertainment, our jobs, our legal systems, our political systems, our education systems, our financial, monetary, economic and commercial systems; the way our entire civilization is structured and organized has nothing to do with what’s true and good and everything to do with keeping human organisms compliantly turning the gears of capitalism and empire.
Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t a servant. She was a parasite. (13th September 2022)
The attempted rebranding of the monarchy as an institution for public service is nauseating, and must be resisted.
British police are now arresting people just for criticizing the monarchy. (15th September 2022)
In Britain, people are now being arrested just for saying things like “Who elected him?” about the newly crowned King Charles. It’s a shocking authoritarian clampdown — and it’s being applauded by the supposedly “pro-free-speech” right.
Like many Palestinians, I’m not mourning for the Queen. (16th September 2022)
Elizabeth’s death should serve as a reminder of the atrocities committed by the British Empire in Palestine.
Secret documents have exposed the CIA’s Julian Assange obsession. (17th September 2022)
New revelations show that the CIA secretly took control of the security company hired by Ecuador’s government to guard Julian Assange during his exile in London. The agency’s spying on Assange and his visitors constitutes a major breach of civil liberties.
We’re criminals but not as bad as Republicans! says Democrat Congressman (20th September 2022) – link to short video.
‘Comfortable in his coffin’ (21st September 2022)
A 10 year-old Belfast boy was killed by a plastic bullet fired by a British soldier in 1975 – one of 17 people who died from this ammunition during The Troubles. A coroner has now slammed the Ministry of Defence for failing to change its Rules of Engagement in time.
See also;
They Shoot Children – The use of rubber and plastic bullets in the North of Ireland
and
Plastic Bullets – Plastic Government – Deaths and Injuries by Plastic Bullets, Aug 1981 – Oct 1982
The US-led war on drugs, now in its 51st year, just hit a major snag in Colombia. (23rd September 2022)
After a million deaths in Latin America, Washington’s staunchest ally in the region, Colombia, just called time on the US’ ‘irrational war against drugs’.
IMF just flagged another multi-trillion dollar threat to the global financial system: open-end funds. (7th October 2022)
Open-end funds have grown significantly over the past two decades and now manage around $41 trillion in assets globally. And the risks they pose to the global economy are growing, says the IMF.
Britain’s covert war in Yemen. (5th October 2022)
The UK’s current war in Yemen is not the first time Britain has contributed to devastating the country. Sixty years ago, a coup in North Yemen prompted UK officials to begin a secret war that also led to tens of thousands of deaths – and, as now, no British minister was ever held to account.
So it begins, U.S. starts INVASION of Haiti with military force (14th October 2022)
A video presentation of present developments.
Three arguments why Just Stop Oil was right to target Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. (17th October 2022)
Waves of controversy were sparked recently when the Just Stop Oil activists threw tomato soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London. Although the painting was behind glass so not damaged, politicians were quick to condemn their “attention-seeking” vandalism while media commentators proclaimed that the act had “lost them” to the cause.
Biden’s tech-war goes nuclear. (18th October 2022)
Lots of people don’t know what happened yesterday. To put it simply, Biden has forced all Americans working in China to pick between quitting their jobs and losing American citizenship. Every American executive and engineer working in China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry resigned yesterday, paralyzing Chinese manufacturing overnight.
Behind the Iranian riots. (18th October 2022)
Over the last weeks there were some riots in Iran. At first there were protest about the falsely reported death of a young women, Mahsa Amini, who had suddenly collapsed (video) while waiting in a police station. She died a few days later. Mahsa Amini had previously had brain surgery and her collapse and death were related to that, not to police action.
‘Bang – just like that’: How Thatcher backed Bush in Panama. (19th October 2022)
The UK understood Washington’s invasion of Panama in 1989 was illegal but supported it anyway, recently declassified documents show.
US-backed foreign intervention has led to the disaster in Haiti. (19th October 2022)
US justifications for intervention ignore the ways in which Haiti has rarely, if ever, been allowed to manage its own affairs.
The [British] Ministry of Defence (MOD)’s £300 billion waste of public money. (20th October 2022)
The British public is facing a new round of austerity while the Ministry of Defence squanders vast sums of money on weapons that are unusable in any foreseeable conflict.
Colombian President says the unspeakable out loud: ‘The US is ruining economies around the World’. (25th October 2022)
Until recently Washington’s closest ally/client state in South America, Colombia is now under new management. And that management has a wildly different perception of US influence in Latin America and the wider world.
What U.S. Africa Command doesn’t want you to know. (24th October 2022)
What’s the U.S. military doing in Africa? It’s an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, straight-jacketed in secrecy, and hogtied by red tape. Or at least it would be if it were up to the Pentagon.
US waging brutal economic and tech war to halt China’s rise, Washington DC elites say openly – video presentation. (24th October 2022)
The presenter seems to evoke an attitude of surprise that the US might follow such a policy (although I’m sure that’s just for effect to convince people who had never thought about such matters before). However, this is the tactic of all moribund imperialists as they flay out in the vain hope of maintaining their dominance.
The grain giants have made a bonanza from hunger. Time to take them apart. (28th October 2022)
As economies tumble, inflation surges and global food prices soar to critically high levels, two sectors seem to have hit the jackpot in 2022 – energy giants and grain traders.
Haitians, peace activists denounce plan for another US-backed intervention. (30th October 2022)
As U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met Thursday in Ottawa to discuss a possible multilateral invasion of Haiti in the name of restoring “stability,” Haitian and anti-war voices denounced the prospect of yet another U.S.-backed intervention—which they say will bring the opposite of stability to the crisis-ridden nation.
After Bolsonaro’s failures, why was Brazil’s election so close? (2nd November 2022)
[Luiz Inácio] Lula [da Silva] has won the presidential elections in Brazil by a whisker– 50.9% to [Jair] Bolsonaro’s 49.1%. Why was it so close? Bolsonaro is arguably even crazier than Donald Trump. He mishandled the COVID situation even worse than Trump if that’s possible, and his family and many of his allies are up to their eyeballs in corruption. Why did he come within 2% of Lula and almost get reelected? Given the amount of support the far-right politics has, what does it mean for the future of Brazil?
Leaked documents: British spies constructing secret terror army in Ukraine. (3rd November 2022)
On October 28th, a Ukrainian drone attack damaged the Russian Black Sea fleet’s flagship vessel in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Moscow immediately blamed Britain for assisting and orchestrating the strike, as well as blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines – the worst acts of industrial sabotage in recent memory.
NHS hires US “spy-tech” firm Palantir to extract patient data without patient consent. (8th November 2022)
Palantir, with intimate ties to defense, intelligence and security industries around the world, is set to play an even larger role in the UK’s crisis-ridden National Health System (NHS).
When Britain backed Iran’s dictator. (8th November 2022)
The UK armed the Shah’s “autocracy” and directly aided his brutal security service in the decades leading up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, declassified files show.
US farmers and Big Ag Corps press panic button on Mexico’s upcoming GMO ban. (11th November 2022)
As Mexico’s GMO ban looms ever larger, the US National Corn Growers Association is calling for the The U.S. Trade Representative to intervene, “before it is too late”.
The US military is operating in more countries than we think. (13th November 2022)
U.S. military forces have been engaged in unauthorized hostilities in many more countries than the Pentagon has disclosed to Congress, let alone the public, according to a major new report released late last week by New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.
‘Julian is fighting for his survival and he’s going through hell’ Stella Assange. (13th November 2022)
The wife of the world’s most famous political prisoner is speaking to Declassified as part of her relentless battle to save her husband’s life.
Perverse priorities: Cut public spending, keep nuclear arms and warplanes. (14th November 2022)
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is considering billions worth of cuts in public spending while the Ministry of Defence, with Labour’s support, plans to spend vast sums on just two hugely expensive military projects.
China is making more big moves in Latin America. (15th November 2022)
What happens when one of Latin America’s smallest economies [El Salvador], perched on the US doorstep, decides to throw its lot in with China? It looks like we are about to see.
What my undercover investigations at arms fairs reveal about how the west supports military dictatorships. (15th November 2022)
COP27 has some of the most authoritarian security of any of the COP summits. Set in the walled resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, it is surrounded by 36km of concrete and razor wire, overseen by new surveillance technologies and a “security observatory”.
Britain’s secret role in the brutal US war in Vietnam. (16th November 2022)
There is a myth the UK did not support Washington’s war against Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, Labour and Conservative governments backed every phase of US military escalation and played secret roles in the conflict, declassified files show.
Britain’s secret propaganda campaign in the Vietnam war. (17th November 2022)
The UK Foreign Office’s propaganda unit, the Information Research Department, worked to gloss over Washington’s complicity in civilian bloodshed during its devastating war in Vietnam.
UK government deployed 15 staff on secret operation to seize Julian Assange. (28th November 2022)
New information raises further concerns about the politicisation of the WikiLeaks founder’s legal case.
11 years after toppling Gaddafi, UK gets Libya’s oil. (29th November 2022)
British oil giants BP and Shell are returning to the oil-rich north African country just over a decade after the UK plunged it into chaos in its 2011 military intervention, which the British government never admitted was a war for oil.
The disturbing parallels between Awaab Ishak’s death in Rochdale and the Grenfell Tower disaster. (1st December 2022)
A senior coroner in Rochdale, a large town in England’s northwest, has ruled that two-year-old Awaab Ishak died as a direct result of prolonged exposure to mould, due to the repeated failure of his family’s landlord to repair the property in which they lived.
Latin American leaders call for pardon and release of Julian Assange from his ‘unjust imprisonment’. (2nd December 2022)
‘Many people in Europe are following with admiration what is now happening in [Latin America],’ said Wikileaks’ editor-in-chief and close confidant of Assange. ‘When looking at the political landscape in Europe all we have are dark forces.’
Zapatistas versus the ‘neoliberal war against humanity’ (2nd December 2022)
The Zapatista revolution has survived in Chiapas, southern Mexico, since 1914, and that is a miracle. Zapatistas endured the assaults of government paramilitaries, the betrayals of Mexican presidents and crushing poverty. “They don’t care that we have nothing,” the Zapatistas said of Mexico’s elite at the start of their first uprising, “absolutely nothing, not even a roof over our heads, no land, no work, no healthcare, no food, no education, not the right to freely and democratically elect our political representatives nor independence from foreigners.”
The class conflict between elites and workers goes back to America’s founding. (11th December 2022)
You wouldn’t know it from the widespread glorification of America’s “founding fathers,” but the years around American independence were shot through with class conflict between elites and working people. And most of the founding fathers were on the wrong side.
Cambridge University’s course for spooks. (13th December 2022)
A former MI6 chief and an ex-CIA officer are offering a programme for budding intelligence practitioners at Magdalene College, Cambridge – one of several UK universities with links to British intelligence.
Will the fallout from ‘Qatargate’ (and now also ‘Moroccogate’) splatter the European Commission? (16th December 2022)
As the Qatargate scandal widens, questions are being asked as to whether its reverberations will reach the Commission, the EU’s executive branch. Recent revelations suggest the EU’s Chief Diplomat Josep Borrell could be implicated.
British empire killed 165 million Indians in 40 years: How colonialism inspired fascism. (18th December 2022)
A scholarly study found that British colonialism caused approximately 165 million deaths in India from 1880 to 1920, while stealing trillions of dollars of wealth. The global capitalist system was founded on European imperial genocides, which inspired Adolf Hitler and led to fascism.
Big Pharma’s obscene profits, not striking nurses, are Kklling the NHS. (22nd December 2022)
Th[e] global medical apartheid is created and perpetuated by pharmaceutical monopolies. Treatment pricing pursues a single sacrosanct goal: making profits. Trade laws allow corporations to keep most of their recipes secret, so that no one else can sell the same medicines at a cheaper price. Then the very same logic of capital menaces governments into withdrawing welfare nets – leaving families absolutely at the mercy of the market.
Netanyahu, the godfather of modern Israeli fascism. (22nd December 2022)
Israel’s next Netanyahu-led coalition government may be the most extremist in its history.
Congress decides Corporate Tax cuts are too expensive if it means also helping children. (22nd December 2022)
Cutting child poverty was not worth it if it could even be theorized that rich people might end up slightly less rich.
Israeli Government takes leaf out of EU Commission’s playbook, claims it can’t find Pfizer covid-19 vaccine agreement. (23rd December 2022)
Israel was the lab for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, as newly reelected President Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in a recent interview with Jordan Peterson. Yet the health ministry now claims to have mislaid or, even worse, never signed the vaccine agreement.
Guinea-Bissau’s Liberation Struggle transformed the face of world politics. (25th December 2022)
