Lenin sweeping the world clean
An alternative view of the world – up to end of 2022
An alternative view of the world – 2023
Ukraine – what you weren’t told – 2022
Ukraine – what you weren’t told – 2023
The Ukraine – what you are not told – 2024
An alternative view of the world – 2024
A voice for the oppressed: John Pilger, radical journalist and documentarian. (1st January 2024)
John Pilger was always on the side of the oppressed. He denounced Empire and all its violent predations–war, genocide, exploitation–as well as its endless lies and propaganda.
There is a war coming, shrouded in propaganda. (1st January 2024)
John Pilger’s final essay investigates why today there is ‘a silence filled by a consensus of propaganda’ as the world’s two greatest powers draw closer to conflict.
Death of a hero: John Pilger RIP. (1st January 2024)
John Pilger, who has died of pulmonary fibrosis aged 84, was a journalist who never shirked from saying the unsayable. Across half a century, in newspapers and in his documentary films – many for ITV, but later also in the cinema – he became an ever stronger voice for those without a voice, and a thorn in the side of those in authority.
John Pilger: Silencing the lambs:: How propaganda works. (first published 21st August 2023)
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 Führer. 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.
Constitutional violations: Julian Assange, privacy and the CIA. (1st January 2024)
While the US Department of Justice battles to indict Assange for absurd espionage charges, various parts of his case have begun to unravel.
‘Home Desk’: The Foreign Office’s covert propaganda campaign inside Britain. (3rd January 2024)
A secret unit of the Foreign Office monitored leftist journalists, intellectuals and trade unions deemed “subversive” and sought to discredit them during the Cold War.
Will 2024 mark the end of Ursula Von Der Leyen’s EU Presidency? (5th January 2024)
With court cases and EU elections looming in the first half of this year, big question marks hang over the future of the EU Commission president.
Assange’s rights and press freedom hang in the balance. (5th January 2024)
The deadline for Julian Assange’s fight against extradition to the United States looms, as British judges will decide his case on February 21. Meanwhile, the American demand that Wikileaks publisher Assange stand trial in Virginia on trumped-up charges is what has kept this journalist locked up in Britain’s maximum security Belmarsh jail for four years, and sequestered for refuge in the Ecuadoran embassy in London for seven years before that.
China’s capitalist reforms are said to have moved 800 million out of extreme poverty – new data suggests the opposite. (7th January 2024)
In contrast to the World Bank, we find that from 1981 to 1990 – at the end of the socialist period – China’s rate of extreme poverty was one of the lowest in the developing world. It averaged only 5.6%, compared to 51% in India, 36.5% in Indonesia and 29.5% in Brazil.
The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire (documentary film)
In the days of the British Empire, London served as the world’s most impressive financial center. As the empire began its decline, anti-colonial sentiment became more rampant and greater numbers of British territories began to strive for independence. The financial stronghold of its capital city began to deteriorate as well. The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire recounts how the country transformed to become a global financial power in the face of these challenges, and how their continued prominence shapes the world we live in today.
The UK government covertly plotted to discredit John Pilger. (8th January 2024)
The legendary foreign correspondent who has died at the age of 84 was monitored and targeted by a covert British propaganda unit.
UK Government prepares to launch massive attack on financial privacy, targeting benefits claimants and state pensioners. (9th January 2024)
The government’s Orwellian-dubbed “Data Protection and Digital Information Bill” — which, according to Stephen Cragg KC, “appears to be designed to downgrade the safeguards on the use of personal data for big business and government” — includes a proposal to grant the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) fresh powers to obtain data from banks and building societies to help detect breaches of eligibility rules for benefits, such as universal credit.
The ‘Ghost Budget’: How America pays for endless war. (9th January 2024)
There were three primary drivers of the Ghost Budget: unusual economic conditions, congressional budget dysfunction, and military assertiveness.
The social housing secret: how Vienna became the world’s most livable city. (10th January 2024)
In the Austrian capital, renters pay a third of what their counterparts do in London, Paris or Dublin. How is it possible?
Gonzalo Lira is dead (12th January 2024)
I am saddened and outraged at this news. It is a disgrace, particularly after Gonzalo reported having been tortured and extorted while in prison, that the State Department did nothing to assist him, when they clearly could have gotten him deported. But that was certain not to happen given his show on Victoria Nuland.
The American Way of Life in its foulest manifestation. (12th January 2024)
The United States has a long history of engaging in wars for economic and strategic gain, dating back to its colonial origins. From the Puritan colonization of Massachusetts to modern conflicts, the nation’s military actions have consistently prioritized profit and power over lofty ideals.
Chinese masterplan is a thing of beauty. (12th January 2024)
The Hegemon, is in a tremendous hurry: it’s all about Divide and Rule.
The general who terrorised the colonies. (15th January 2024)
General Sir Frank Kitson, who has died aged 97, saw the people of Kenya, Malaya and Northern Ireland as little more than laboratory rats to test his brutal military theories.
Controlling the World. (15th January 2024) Video.
The ‘fiction’ of money.
What happens when national governments and law enforcement agencies use biometric ID and surveillance systems illegally? (16th January 2024)
The answer, it seems, is nothing. But some governments, including the UK and Australia, are now modifying their laws to make sure it is no longer illegal.
If Wikileaks is the enemy, then the true criminals are perpetrating a powerful feat of optics. (17th January 2024)
When Julian Assange was disgracefully arrested in 2019, he shouted, as he was dragged out of the Ecuadorean Embassy with his hands shackled to his feet, “RESIST.” His and Wikileaks‘ story is a good illustration of why resistance is so necessary, timely, and urgent.
There’s no free press without a free Assange. (18th January 2024)
In September 1918, Eugene V. Debs stood trial on several charges brought following an anti-war speech he had delivered in June, at a gathering of socialists, workers, and sympathetic friends in Canton, Ohio. For delivering his speech, critical of the United States’ entry into World War I and heralding “the emancipation of the human race,” Debs was arrested and branded a traitor and seditionist by the U.S. government.
Labor and green colonialism in the Global South. (18th January 2024)
Making a transition away from fossil fuels is going to require a lot of work. But there’s a real concern that it will also require a lot fewer workers.
Finance firms gave Labour £2m in two years before banker bonuses U-turn. (1st February 2024)
Bankers and City-linked firms have handed Labour the equivalent of £2m since the party launched its charm offensive on big business in 2022, openDemocracy analysis of Electoral Commission data shows.
The concept of Just War and outlines of the Just War Theory in International Relations. (5th February 2024)
[Here] is a useful primer on the evolution of thinking around what constitutes a just war and an outline of what are now considered to be the key parameters. You’ll note that a just war can take place only between states, leaving wars of liberation and revolutions as presumed unjust.
Why is Tony Blair so keen for the UK’s National Health Service to sell off its patients’ health data to private companies? (6th February 2024)
What is being proposed is obviously a terrible deal for NHS patients. But could the Tony Blair Institute’s biggest donor benefit handsomely?
A visit to Julian Assange in prison. (7th February 2024)
In Mid-December 2023, Charles Glass, the esteemed writer, journalist, broadcaster, and publisher visited with Julian Assange, an inmate at Belmarsh Prison in the U.K. Assange has been confined there since April, 2019. He is awaiting his final appeal to quash U.S. efforts to extradite him.
From the History of Western War Crimes: The Dresden Massacre (February 1945) (15th February 2024)
That night in this one raid alone, more than 45,000 men, women, and children were killed in Hamburg. Half the houses in the city were destroyed, and more than a million Germans had to flee into the surrounding countryside.
CIA had foreign allies spy on Trump Team, triggering Russia collusion hoax. (15th February 2024)
In truth, the US IC asked the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies, say sources close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI) investigation. The Five Eyes nations are the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
How the CIA destabilizes the World. Jeffrey Sachs.(15th February 2024)
If only the CIA’s rogue operations had been consigned to history as a result of the crimes exposed by the Church Committee, or at the least had brought the CIA under the rule of law and public accountability. But that was not to be.
MPs must oppose US/UK nuclear arms accord. (15th February 2024)
A little known but long standing nuclear weapons agreement between Washington and London is up for renewal – and must be challenged.
The Tory appointee holding Julian Assange’s life in her hands. (16th February 2024)
Judge Dame Victoria Sharp’s family have attained high-level positions in the British establishment after being appointed by Conservative ministers.
Crocodile tears over Navalny while ignoring Assange. (17th February 2024)
The entire western political-media class are currently rending their garments about the prison death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and are being joined by the propaganda-addled citizenry of the western empire. Meanwhile Julian Assange’s last-ditch effort to appeal against extradition to the United States is coming up in a few days with a tiny fraction of the attention.
John J Mearsheimer speaks on behalf of Julian Assange. (17th February 2024). Short video.
Russiagate revived in latest MI6 operation against Russia — ‘A Spy Alone’ is spy baloney. (17th February 2024)
Just like those horrible movie franchises that lumber on through zombified sequels and prequels, Russiagate is getting a revival in the UK via a ludicrous tale of Russia being the moving force behind the Brexit vote.
Julian Assange’s Final Appeal – Chris Hedges. (18th February 2024)
Julian Assange will make his final appeal this week to the British courts to avoid extradition. If he is extradited it is the death of investigations into the inner workings of power by the press.
Julian Assange’s moment of truth has arrived – and the stakes are high. (18th February 2024)
If his appeal fails this week, the WikiLeaks founder could soon be on a plane towards a potential jail term of 175 years.
We’ve been lied to all along. (19th February 2024)
What brought down World Trade Centre Building 7?
Julian Assange judge previously acted for MI6. (19th February 2024)
The judge set to rule on the Assange extradition case was previously paid to represent the interests of MI6 and the Ministry of Defence – whose activities WikiLeaks has exposed.
What’s at stake for Julian Assange—and the rest of us. (19th February 2024)
On February 20 and 21, the High Court of Justice in London will conduct a hearing to decide whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can appeal the court’s earlier decision to extradite him to the U.S. to face 17 charges under the Espionage Act and one for computer crime, with a Methuselan prison sentence of 175 years. This, even though Julian is not an American citizen (he’s Australian), and he was not under U.S. jurisdiction when the “crimes” were allegedly committed.
Electric water wars: It’s a dam crazy world. (20th February 2024)
We live in a world of dangerous, deadly extremes. Record-breaking heat waves, intense drought, stronger hurricanes, unprecedented flash flooding. No corner of the planet will be spared the wrath of human-caused climate change and the earth’s fresh water is already feeling the heat of this new reality.
This is a panel I moderated on Monday evening with Stella Assange, attorney Jennifer Robinson and Kristinn Hrafnsson, Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks, at The Frontline Club in London. Chris Hedges Report. (20th February 2024)
The last days of Julian Assange in Britain. (20th February 2024)
The WikiLeaks publisher’s long and winding road through England’s legal system could soon be up. What he faces next is terrifying.
Julian Assange’s Day in Court. (21st February 2024)
Julian Assange’s lawyers — in a final bid on Tuesday to stop his extradition — fought valiantly to poke holes in the case of the prosecution to obtain an appeal.
A panel discussion I took part in with former UK Ambassador Craig Murray and other diplomats, activists and journalists following the first day of Julian Assange’s final appeal hearing. Chris Hedges Report. (21st February 2024)
Julian Assange’s Grand Inquisitor. Chris Hedges. (22nd February 2024)
The prosecution lawyers in the High Court seeking to ensure Julian’s extradition to the U.S. rely almost exclusively on the judicial opinions of Gordon Kromberg, a highly controversial U.S. attorney.
Identifying imperial venality: Day One of Julian Assange’s High Court Appeal. (22nd February 2024)
On February 20, it was clear that things were not going to be made easy for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who infuriated the US imperium, the national security establishment, and a stable of journalists upset that he had cut their ill-tended lawns. He was too ill to attend what may well be the final appeal against his extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States. Were he to be sent to the US, he faces a possible sentence amounting to 175 years arising from 18 venally cobbled charges, 17 spliced from that archaic horror, the Espionage Act of 1917.
Veterans Minister suspected S.A.S. of war crimes. (22nd February 2024)
Johnny Mercer changed the law to protect soldiers from “vexatious” prosecutions. Now the minister admits he always thought some were guilty of war crimes.
Imperial venality defends itself: Day Two of Julian Assange’s High Court Appeal. (23rd February 2024)
On February 21, the Royal Courts of Justice hosted a second day of carnivalesque mockery regarding the appeal by lawyers representing an ill Julian Assange, whose publishing efforts are being impugned by the United States as having compromised the identities of informants while damaging national security. Extradition awaits, only being postponed by rearguard actions such as what has just been concluded at the High Court.
CIA’s torture and abuse: America’s shame! (23rd February 2024)
The legacy of the CIA’s torture and abuse program continues to obstruct the Guantanamo trials of those responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000; the 9/11 bombings in 2001; and the nightclub bombing in Indonesia in 2002. The various defendants were subjected to waterboarding in CIA secret prisons; painful shackling; and solitary confinement in darkened dungeon-like conditions for years.
The Rich versus Poor Country stakes at the WTO’s 13th Ministerial Conference this month in Abu Dhabi. (24th February 2024)
The new Global Majority is challenging the established economic powers in more and more venues. Here we see power struggle expected at the upcoming WTO.
On Unipolarity – discussion between John Mearsheimer and judge Napolitano. (24th February 2024)
They also discussed the depressing course of events in both the Gaza War and the Ukraine War.
How to know if a news-medium is honest. (26th February 2024)
The most-accurate — the FIRST — single measure of whether a given news-medium is honest and deserves to be called “journalism,” or else is dishonest and deserves to be called “propaganda,” is whether that news-medium refers to the U.S. Government as being a “dictatorship” (or an “aristocracy” or “oligarchy,” which is its type of dictatorship), or instead as a “democracy” (or a “democratic republic,” which is the type of ‘democracy’ that the U.S. Government claims to be).
Imperial cartoons – the great Nalvalny hypocrisy. (26th February 2024)
The caricatures are of three men whose lives are, in one way or another, of great, indeed, of so obsessively great importance to The Empire that if feels it imperative to control absolutely what you think of or about these men. This is odd, because two of the men are dead, and one might suppose their need to make you understand them properly would be less important than when they were living, but that’s not how it works in The Empire. The three are Alexei Navalny, Gonzalo Lira, and Julian Assange.
Trident missile failure exposes folly of nuclear weapons. (26th February 2024)
Britain’s nuclear arsenal has failed two tests in a row. Why must we still pay for these extortionate weapons of mass destruction?
Navalny organization splits into Whites and Reds as lies multiply. (27th February 2024)
John Helmer is continuing to follow l’affaire Navalny, having documented that Navalny appears to have cut his wife entirely out of his will. That is not surprising given other accounts that Navalny’s wife was living off his money and name while swanning about with another man and not even bothering to visit Navalny in prison.
UK Government sued over NHS’s heavily redacted contract with US Spytech firm Palantir. (27th February 2024)
Even critical paragraphs on how NHS patients’ personal data will be handled have been blacked out.
US refuses to assure UK judges that Assange won’t be executed if he’s extradited. (27th February 2024)
UK law prohibits extradition to a country that may impose capital punishment.
The October 7th America has forgotten. (28th February 2024)
And the war deaths we no longer protest (or even think about). [A strange article this, but included here to remind ourselves that although the most vicious Gaza is not the only conflict initiated and sustained by the US.]
Assange: Our enemy of the State. (1st March 2024)
The intensity of the legal and information campaign against Julian Assange demonstrates the fragility of our soi-disant leaders. Even though he exposed war crimes and dirty election dealings, they did not represent threat to security. But you’d never know that if you listened to the calls for him to be drawn and quartered.
The Chris Hedges Report with Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Gretchen Morgenson on how Private Equity billionaires bought up America and turned workers into serfs. (1st March 2024). Video discussion.
Fatal Neutrality: Lumumba, the CIA, and the Cold War. (1st March 2024)
Ryan Grim speaks to Stuart Reid about his new book, “The Lumumba Plot.” Audio podcast.
Mistakes, misfiring and Trident: Britain’s flawed nuclear deterrence. (4th March 2024)
Nuclear weapons are considered the strategic silverware of nation states. Occasionally, they are given a cleaning and polishing. From time to time, they go missing, fail to work, and suffer misplacement. Of late, the UK Royal Navy has not been doing so well in that department, given its seminal role in upholding the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. In January, an unarmed Trident II D5 nuclear missile fell into the Atlantic Ocean after a bungled launch from a Royal Navy submarine.
Top Secret document exposes UK role in Ghana Coup. (4th March 2024)
The UK Foreign Office conducted a covert propaganda campaign to help remove Ghana’s president Kwame Nkrumah in 1966.
Global pet craze is becoming a major contributor to the extinction crisis. (6th March 2024)
In 2019, an independent international science group—the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services—announced that about 1 million species around the world are threatened with extinction.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s potential conflicts of interest are by now too big to ignore. (8th March 2024)
Sunak’s father-in-law’s company, Indian tech giant (and digital identity developer) Infosys, has been doing a roaring business with UK government departments since his son-in-law became chancellor and then PM.
The reach of JSOC ‘the President’s Private Army’. (8th March 2024)
Even though the existence of these special forces is not a surprise, the scale of their operation might be.
How Madeleine Albright got the war the U.S. wanted [in Yugoslavia]. (8th March 2024)
Twenty-five years have passed since the U.S.-orchestrated NATO attack on Yugoslavia. As the United States readied its forces for war in 1999, it organized a peace conference that was ostensibly intended to resolve differences between the Yugoslav government and secessionist ethnic Albanians in Kosovo on the future status of the province. A different scenario was being played out behind the scenes, however. U.S. officials wanted war and deliberately set up the process to fail, which they planned to use as a pretext for war.
The campaign to free Assange: reflections on Night Falls. (11th March 2024)
The town hall meeting is the last throbbing reminder of the authentic demos. People gather; debates held. Views converge; others diverge. Speakers are invited to stir the invitees, provoke the grey cells. Till artificial intelligence banishes such gatherings, and the digital cosmos swallows us whole, cherish these events.
Gen. Mark Milley’s Second Act: Multimillionaire. (14th March 2024)
Former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, has transitioned to lucrative roles at JPMorgan Chase, Princeton, and Georgetown post-retirement.
Why has Niger declared US military presence in its territory illegal? (19th March 2024)
Only months after forcing its former colonizer France to withdraw its troops, Niger, West Africa’s largest country, has said the presence of US troops is illegal. This could be a major blow to the US military’s power-projection capacity in the region.
Cutting the Pentagon down to size. (20th March 2024)
In an age when American presidents routinely boast of having the world’s finest military, where nearly trillion-dollar war budgets are now a new version of routine, let me bring up one vitally important but seldom mentioned fact: making major cuts to military spending would increase U.S. national security.
Inside the anti-Syria lobby’s Capitol Hill push for more starvation sanctions. (20th March 2024)
A week from the 13th anniversary of the US-backed Syrian dirty war, the American Coalition for Syria held its annual day of advocacy in Washington DC. I went undercover into meetings with Senate policy advisors and witnessed the lobby’s cynical campaign to starve Syria into submission.
PEN America self-destructs – Chris Hedges (23rd March 2024)
In May 2013 I resigned from PEN America over the appointment of former State Department official Suzanne Nossel. A decade later, PEN America has become a propaganda arm of the state.
The Empire’s surprise. (23rd March 2024)
The American press, has become a mouthpiece for deceit. The collapse of this empire is inevitable.
NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia: a quarter century later. (25th March 2024)
Over the years, much has been written about the consequences of this aggression – about the blatant violation of the principles of international law, as the UN did not sanction any military action against a sovereign state; about numerous human rights violations during the bombings; about orchestrated propaganda campaigns against Serbs, which had nothing to do with reality; and about the impact of the war on the civilian population – from post-traumatic syndrome to the increase in oncological diseases due to the use of depleted uranium ammunition.
The shameful way that the American empire is ending. (25th March 2024)
The American empire — which is now the largest empire in history — is ending not only with defeats on every front, but with the historically profound stigma of being one of the two perpetrators (the other and more-publicized one being Israel) of the largest ethnic-cleansing operation (to remove all of the 2.3 million Gazans from Gaza) ever since Hitler’s ethnic-cleansing campaign ended.
West Papua: The torture mode of governance. (25th March)
Budi Hernawan said it ten years ago: “torture in Papua … has become a mode of governance.” It hasn’t stopped. It’s got worse. It’s got worse precisely because it’s a mode of governance accepted and blessed by the international “community” whose neoliberal politics of extraction means extermination of anything and anyone getting in its way.
Deterrence by savagery? (25th March 2024)
The West’s historical success was rooted in organized violence, rather than its proclaimed values.
The Buoyancy of Psychopaths and the Genesis of the Great Asian War. (25th March 2024)
On the eve of the Great Asian War against China, in a rousing speech, Biden assured the American people that the war was necessary because China was the most dangerous country in Latin America and didn’t have American values.
Assange’s ‘reprieve’ is another lie, hiding the real goal of keeping him endlessly locked up. (26th March 2024)
The US has had years to clarify its intention to give Assange a fair trial but refuses to do so. The UK court’s latest ruling is yet more collusion in his show trial.
Julian Assange wins temporary reprieve in case against extradition to US. (26th March 2024)
This decision offers a temporary reprieve but leaves Assange’s future uncertain.
The empire slowly suffocates Assange like it slowly suffocates all its enemies.(27th March 2024)
The British High Court has ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may potentially get a final appeal against extradition to the United States, but only within a very limited scope and only if specific conditions are met.
The Crucifixion of Julian Assange. (27th March 2024)
British courts for five years have dragged out Julian Assange’s show trial. He continues to be denied due process as his physical and mental health deteriorates. This is the point.
How CIA and MI6 created ISIS. (31st March 2024)
Contrary to their mainstream portrayal, as inspired purely by religious fundamentalism, Daesh are primarily guns for hire.
Is justice finally catching up with Ursula von der Leyen? (5th April 2024)
The Mechanism: how the “order” based on made-up rules is descending into savagery. (9th April 2024)
Anyone applying critical thinking to the world around us can feel the collapse of the system.
Spies and their lies: the trials and tribulations at Guantanamo. (10th April 2024)
“And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
The biblical quotation engraved on the marble walls of the lobby of the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters in McLean, Virginia.
‘Quaint and obsolete?’ (10th April 2024)
Last weekend my father, Larry Greenberg, passed away at the age of 93. Several days later, I received an email from the French film director Phillippe Diaz who sent me a link to his soon-to-be-released I am Gitmo, a feature movie about the now-infamous Guantánamo Bay detention facility. As I was soon to discover, those two disparate events in my life spoke to one another with cosmic overtones.
Greece just gave a glimpse of how the EU’s ‘voluntary’ Digital ID Wallet will gradually become mandatory. (12th April 2024)
The EU Commission has repeatedly stated that EU citizens will not face discrimination or exclusion for not using its new digital identity wallet. However, the Greek government just signalled its intent to do just that.
Inside the global arms industry: what a secretive London trade fair reveals about international weapons sales. (12th April 2024)
One of the world’s largest arms fairs, Defence and Security Exhibition International (DSEI), takes place every two years at the ExCeL centre, a vast exhibition space in London Docklands. The venue usually hosts food, cosmetics and car events, but DSEI is a trade show for weapons.
War makes humans the most dangerous species. (13th April 2024)
To the victor goes the spoils, so it’s said, but a planet despoiled by thermonuclear war, cast into darkness, ravaged by radiation, disease, and death, would, of course, offer no victory to anyone.
House votes to approve law allowing warrantless surveillance of US citizens. (13th April 2024)
Fisa allows for monitoring of foreign communications, as well as collection of citizens’ messages and calls.
Eight decades after the Spanish Civil War, is Spain’s slow exhumation of its traumatic past a signal that it is ready to build a culture of memory? (15th April 2024)
Three people work in silence over a hole in the ground. They are hunched over, on their knees. One of them lays down to make it easier to manoeuvre. In front of them is a collection of bones: arms, pelvis, ribs emerging from deep in the ground; skulls too, several of them. At least five can be seen from above. Below, there are at least five more.
Assange extradition case moves forward while the CIA covers its tracks. (17th April 2024)
So they’re really doing it. The Biden administration is really ignoring Australia’s request to end the case against Julian Assange, and they’re proceeding with their campaign to extradite a journalist for telling the truth about US war crimes.
U.S. Government bullies weak nations. (19th April 2024)
Weak nations have long been terrified at the power that the U.S. regime has to destroy them such as has happened most recently with the CIA’s and U.S. military’s efforts ever since 2012 to grab control over Syria’s Government, and such as what the U.S. regime did to Iraq in 2003 and in its ever-continuing military occupation there (all on the basis of lies), and such as it did to Libya, and to so many other weak nations.
Britain’s covert propaganda campaign over Kosovo. (22nd April 2024)
Declassified files show how officials in Tony Blair’s government planted unattributable material in media outlets and coordinated a network to convince the public that its 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia was “a just cause”.
How to not get along with Apocalypses in other countries. (24th April 2024)
Gaza is a US-backed apocalypse and all of the Global South has been living through various grades and shades of apocalypse for decades and centuries. Ignored starvation, colonization, massacres and coups, torture, media belittlement, and erasure of identity, culture and history.
The Trump-Biden rematch is a stunning image of the Decline and Fall of the USA. (24th April 2024)
With those two old men, one of whom is also bizarre beyond compare, wrestling each other for the presidency, this country is threatening in its own odd fashion, like the USSR in 1991, to come apart at the seams.
Ignorance, its uses and nurture. (26th April 2024)
Democracy is flawed due to widespread public ignorance about international and national affairs. The article asserts that the public’s limited understanding makes functional democracy unattainable.
The wars come home. (28th April 2024)
As Russia continues to grind down Ukraine and Israel does the same to Gazans, with heavy US involvement in both arenas, it’s worth remembering how tools used and lessons learned in theaters of combat typically find their way back to the US to be used on American citizens.
How private ‘charities’ now replace the CIA for carrying out U.S. coups. (1st May 2024)
The Crucial Role that the ‘Nonprofits’ (‘Charities’ “NGOs”) Owned by U.S. Billionaires, Play in Fomenting ‘Revolutions’ (Coups) Abroad for the U.S.
New laws are turning police into ‘Supercitizens’. (May 8th 2024)
A series of legislative and judicial efforts have removed police oversight from oversight boards and communities.
A sick, dystopian system worth overthrowing. (10th May 2024)
Many friends and allies, especially younger ones, have been getting The Lecture from older Democratic Party relatives or friends – the Lesser Evil Lecture.
EU Commission plans to strip funding from Public Prosecutors investigating Ursula von der Leyen’s Pfizergate scandal. (17th May 2024)
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is facing a number of legal challenges over the Pfizergate scandal, including from the New York Times, the governments of Hungary and Poland, a Belgian lobbyist and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, or EPPO.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange wins bid to appeal extradition to US. (20th May 2024)
Julian Assange has been granted a full appeal over his US extradition. His wife hailed the decision as a turning point, while Amnesty International praised it as rare positive news for press freedom.
De-dollarization Bombshell: The coming of BRICS+ Decentralized Monetary Ecosystem.
Welcome to The Unit – a concept that has already been discussed by the financial services and investments working group set up by the BRICS+ Business Council and has a serious shot at becoming official BRICS+ policy as early as in 2025.
The slow-motion execution of Julian Assange continues. (24th May 2024)
The ruling by the High Court in London permitting Julian Assange to appeal his extradition order leaves him languishing in precarious health in a high-security prison. That is the point.
SouthCom Commander Laura Richardson just described ‘Plan Colombia’ as a success, a model for the region. (24th May 2024)
Even the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee has admitted that Plan Colombia was a resounding failure from a counter-narcotics perspective while providing short-term benefits from a counter-insurgency perspective.
Set the killers free: the pardoning of Daniel Perry. (24th May 2024)
In one of the most egregious uses of the pardon power since Bill Clinton freed billionaire tax cheat, Israeli agent and international fugitive Marc Rich as the clock struck midnight on his lamentable administration, last week Texas Gov. Greg Abbott freed an avowed racist who ran a red light, before plunging his car into a crowd of protesters and fatally shooting a man who was trying to protect people from being run over. Abbott granted the killer a pardon, even though the gunman had been obsessed for months with the idea of killing BLM activists.
The indicted Congressman’s Club. (24th May 2024)
Well-deserved indictments keep hitting Congress. The latest indicted legislator is Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, the politician backed by former House speaker Nancy Pelosi in his last election, against a more progressive opponent, of course.
‘To be America’s friend is fatal’: A current overview. (26th May 2024)
“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
-Henry Kissinger
When one looks today out over the carnage and destruction on the periphery of a declining empire, have those words ever been so true? One twist, nowadays, might be that to be America’s enemy is actually beneficial due to the parade of unforced errors by the falling hegemon.
Von der Leyen proposes ‘vaccines’ for minds and a ‘shield’ for democracy. (26th May 2024)
The European Commission president‘s campaign features an unprecedented preventive crackdown on wrongthink.
King Charles accepted award from Nazi veteran. (28th May 2024)
Charles received honorary degree from Ukrainian Nazi veteran when he was Prince of Wales in 1983.
Jeffrey Sachs: The untold history of the Cold War, CIA coups around the world, and Covid’s origin. (28th May 2024)
Professor Jeffrey Sachs is the President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is the author of many best selling books, including The End of Poverty and The Ages of Globalization. Here he is with probably the smartest and most accurate assessment of the Ukraine war, and American foreign policy more broadly, ever caught on tape.
The West foments chaos in the Caucasus. (29th May 2024)
Wedged between Russia, Iran, and Eastern Europe the Caucasus are considered a crossroads in more ways than one. That can be an uncomfortable place to be nowadays as great power games pick up steam. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and if we throw Türkiye in here as well, are all struggling in their own ways to navigate the pressure cooker.
How long must he wait? Assange wins right to appeal. (7th June 2024)
Washington and London have inflicted great damage on Assange, being directly and deliberately responsible for his mental and physical deterioration, no doubt in the hopes that his death will end what has become a very nettlesome publicity fiasco.
Two views on the future/importance of the US Dollar as it stands in June 2024.
The Petrodollar ended on June 9th; Sauds no longer ally with U.S. (13th June 2024)
The 50-year-old petrodollar agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia was just allowed to expire. The term “petrodollar” refers to the U.S. dollar’s role as the currency used for crude oil transactions on the world market.
‘Dollar doomsters have got it all wrong‘. (13th June 2024)
There’s been an odd failure to question the claims about the dollar being past its sell-by date date even as it trades at lofty levels, including relative to the Euro, renminbi, and rouble. For instance, the dollar is at .93 Euro, well above its 5 five-year low of .82 in January 2020, as in well before the US shock-and-awe sanctions against Russia and ring-leading an asset freeze (EU banks actually hold way more than US banks).
David Lammy’s big idea: Nothing will change under Labour. (13th June 2024)
The man who wants to be foreign secretary is reassuring elite audiences that UK foreign policy will not seriously change under a Keir Starmer government – a strategy confirmed in Labour’s election manifesto.
In our make-believe politics, the strings pulled by the super-rich are all too visible. (15th June 2024)
We live in a world of make-believe politics, a world where strings pulled in the interests of the super-rich are ever more visible. And yet we are expected to pretend we cannot see those strings. More astonishing still, many people really do seem blind to the puppet show.
Britain spends £12,000 a minute on nuclear weapons. (17th June 2024)
The lavish spending would continue under Labour.
The free trade myth: how the US manipulates global markets for economic supremacy. (17th June 2024)
In the rules-based multilateral trading system of today, China has not entirely played by the rules either. But China hasn’t come close to trying to change the rules to work in their favour as much as the US. So, who’s really cheating here?
Cheap and lethal: The Pentagon’s plan for the next drone war. (17th June 2024)
UAVs continually kill civilians, but the U.S. military wants to expand its arsenal with an army of new, mass-produced kamikaze AI drones.
Reuters reveals secret U.S. Government Anti-China Operation to increase Covid-19 deaths In East Asia and Pacific. (17th June 2024)
On June 14th, Reuters headlined Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic:
Land grabs squeeze rural poor worldwide. (18th June 2024)
Since 2008, farmland acquisitions have doubled prices worldwide, squeezing family farmers and other poor rural communities. Such land grabs are worsening inequality, poverty, and food insecurity.
The US list of countries allegedly sponsors of terrorism: Another imperialistic scam. (19th June 2024)
In the US State Department’s toolkit, unilateral coercive measures (UCMs) are used to blackmail, bully and intimidate States that do not readily accept US hegemony. Placing a country in the US list of countries sponsors for terrorism is intended to lend some phony legitimacy to UCMs imposed against targeted States.
The unreported irony of Hunter Biden’s conviction. (19th June 2024)
It has gone largely, if not completely, unremarked in all the verbiage spun out by the 24-hour news cycle in the US media that the law under which the president’s son, Hunter Biden was convicted on three felony counts, was something pushed by his own dad, Joe Biden as part of his effort to “lock up drug users” for lengthy terms in 1994.
British Government invents phantom Skripals to refuse to testify in the Novichok Inquiry. (23rd June 2024)
A new lawyer appeared in a London court on Friday claiming to represent Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Jack Holborn, a barrister specializing in what he calls human rights, told Lord Anthony Hughes, who is conducting a public inquiry into the alleged Novichok death of Dawn Sturgess in 2018, that the Skripals should not be called to give evidence or testify in the case.
Julian Assange strikes plea deal, Will return to Australia. (24th June 2024)
In April, President Joe Biden said he was “considering” dropping charges against the WikiLeaks founder.
Assange is free, but justice has not been done. (25th June 2024)
Justice would look like Assange being granted a full and unconditional pardon and receiving millions of dollars in compensation from the US government for the torment they put him through by his imprisonment in Belmarsh beginning in 2019, his de facto imprisonment in the Ecuadorian embassy beginning in 2012, and his jailing and house arrest beginning in 2010.
Washington frets as Chinese Company Cosco wraps up construction of South America’s largest deep sea port. (25th June 2024)
“Due to its potential size and volume of operations, Peru’s Chancay mega-port is destined to become a nerve centre of international trade.” And it will be exclusively controlled by Cosco.
It was the media, led by the Guardian, that kept Julian Assange behind bars. (26th June 2024)
The media’s villainy will soon be erased because it writes the script telling us what’s going on in the world.
Corruption, fraud, personal revenge – welcome to the U.S. Congress! (26th June 2024)
A growing number of Congressmen are being investigated by U.S. law enforcement agencies. They are accused of using their official positions to commit crimes.
Kyrgyzstan in its struggle for sovereignty. (26th June 2024)
Can Russia strengthen the statehood of a friendly republic and improve Eurasian integration?
You saved Julian Assange – Chris Hedges (26th June 2024)
After 14 years of persecution, Julian Assange will go free. We must honor the hundreds of thousands of people across the globe who made this happen.
70 years of the CIA-organized Coup in Guatemala. (27th June 2024)
In the 1950s, the United States began to actively apply the practice of overthrowing foreign governments.
Ursula von der Leyen: Beyond redemption. (27th June 2024)
To be accused of impropriety on one occasion may be regarded as a misfortune but to be accused on four occasions looks like carelessness. (With apologies to Oscar Wilde)
Yanis Varoufakis on Julian Assange’s release. (27th June 2024). Video.
The release of Julian Assange: Plea deals and dark legacies. (27th June 2024)
One of the longest sagas of political persecution is coming to its terminus. That is, if you believe in final chapters. Nothing about the fate of Julian Assange seems determinative.
What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July? (4th July 2024)
On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass was invited to address the citizens of his hometown, Rochester, New York. Whatever the expectations of his audience on that 76th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Douglass used the occasion not to celebrate the nation’s triumphs but to remind all of its continuing enslavement of millions of people.
Will a Keir Starmer Government make digital identity a reality in the UK? (5th July 2024)
Big tech and fintech companies would certainly like to think so, as too does the City of London Corporation and Starmer’s mentor, Tony Blair.
Why is Joe Biden not being tried for bribery and conspiracy? (5th July 2024)
And why are America’s ‘news’-media covering this up?
Who is Starmer – and where does he come from (and why)? (6th July 2024)
Discussion on the statistics about the UK General Election and the character of Starmer. (The first 45 minutes or so of the video – but the rest is also worth a watch.)
It is now Labour’s turn to expand the piecemeal privatisation of the UK’s National Health Service. (9th July 2024)
The UK’s new Labour government is only six days old but its grand project to further privatise the National Health Service (NHS) is already up and running. On his first day in office, “über-Blairite” Health Secretary (and wannabe prime minister) Wes Streeting announced that the NHS was “broken,” which should give his ministry plenty of leeway to inflict further damage while blaming all the resulting chaos and destruction on the last 14 years of Tory government.
Lovebombed by lobbyists: How Labour became the party of Big Business. (9th July 2024)
An openDemocracy investigation reveals the secretive mass lobbying campaign that shaped Starmer’s policies.
European election records highest turnout in 25 Years – but it is still barely 50%. (10th July 2024)
Brussels is indeed happy to note the Euro-friendly parties of the establishment have won the majority of the seats. However, they seem to omit the obvious facts. 50% of the population did not vote at the election, roughly 15% voted for various political groups at the far-right end of the political spectrum, another 7-8% voted for far-left-leaning groups and the Greens.
Something rotten in the State of Albion. (11th July 2024)
All imperial powers eventually wither away. Some through war, some through economic decline, some as a result of a smorgasbord of internal contradictions, and most through a combination of these. But even long after a state’s primacy has crumbled, the ruling class perpetuates myths designed to maintain a semblance of importance and respect.
How far goods travel: global transport and supply chains from 1965-2020. (13th July 2024)
Disruptions from conflicts, climate change, and the pandemic have raised the question of whether today’s supply chains and transportation networks [are] more resilient or vulnerable.
UK Government and Israeli energy firm are preparing to drill for oil in disputed seas off Falkland Islands (Malvinas). (16th July 2024)
The Malvinas, or Falkland Islands, dispute is back in the headlines in Argentina, albeit not on the front pages. The cause this time is mineral. For over a decade, the British government, together with the British company Rockhopper, has been exploring the islands’ waters for oil. And they appear to have finally struck black gold — purportedly some 500 million barrels of the stuff.
For the rest of the world, the U.S. President has always been above the law. (16th July 2024)
Americans will now know what a lack of accountability means.
EU elites are still treating Africans as savages that need ‘educating’. (17th July 2024)
The West regularly reveals its patronizing attitude towards Africa, and this is disturbing
How Big Pharma preys on poor countries – and patients pay the price. (18th July 2024)
US readers often hear tales of egregious Big Pharma price gouging, particularly for medications that are essential in treating dangerous conditions. Patients here are regularly told, regularly with specific examples, of how much cheaper anti-cancer meds or insulin are in other countries.
Looking ahead, but not forward, to five more years of “Queen” Ursula von der Leyen. (19th July 2024)
After five years of overseeing creeping digital censorship, corruption, economic decline, war and institutional support for genocide, Von der Leyen has been given five more years to do more of the same, or worse.
In major shift, British newspapers begin warning of perils of cashless society after global IT outage. (23rd July 2024)
The mainstream media has, until now, played a key role in advancing the Global War on Cash — a war that began with no official declaration but in which propaganda, as with all wars, is a vital weapon.
Is the food industry concealing possible destruction of the Tropics from the public? (24th July 2024)
Palm oil is one of the most used vegetable oils in the world and is found in a large variety of packaged products, from shampoos and lipstick to cookies and frozen pizza.
Massive US-led naval exercises in Hawaii and Pacific islands reflect over a century of colonial exploitation of the region. (25th July 2024)
Since the last week in June, navies and naval assets from 29 countries have been taking part the world’s largest naval exercises. The US-led Rimpac 2024 (Exercise Rim of the Pacific), the 29th such exercise to be held since 1971, claims to promote “a free and open Indo-Pacific”. But many of the Indigenous peoples of this region, which covers more than 50% of the Earth’s surface, don’t see it that way at all.
US sanctions policy ‘out of control’ – Washington Post. (25th July 2024)
Sixty percent of low-income countries have been economically punished by the US, an in-depth report by the outlet has claimed.
Dear West: your ‘Age of Monsters’ has begun. (25th July 2024)
Antonio Gramsci was not a professional philosopher. His intellect was refreshingly situated within an inherent bias towards the common people, the ‘subaltern’ classes, particularly the working class.
More poverty for the poor. (25th July 2024)
Many low-income countries (LICs) continue to slip further behind the rest of the world. Meanwhile, people in extreme poverty have been increasing again after decades of decline.
‘No children in the village’: Tribes’ losses to Indian boarding schools. (30th July 2024)
“My aunt said after we all left, after the planes came and we all left, she said the village was so quiet because there was no children. No children in the village,” another student from Alaska told a panel convened to hear from boarding students…
Starvation in Sudan. (31st July 2024)
Sudan is home to the world’s largest hunger crisis, as the war continues to devastate lives and livelihoods. As in Gaza, the deprivation is deliberate.
The Venezuelan people stay with the Bolivarian Revolution. (31st July 2024)
On July 28, the 70th birthday of Hugo Chávez (1954-2013), Nicolás Maduro Moros won the Venezuelan presidential election, the fifth since the Bolivarian Constitution was ratified in 1999. In January 2025, Maduro will start his third six-year term as president.
OpenAI closes its mind and opens yours. (31st July 2024)
In 2022, the CIA was celebrating its 75th anniversary and the NSA its 70th. Snowden, who worked for both agencies, seems intent on making sure the reader knows that the work they do isn’t always honorable or in the service of national security.
US research stations in Peru and elsewhere prepare for Biowarfare. (31st July 2024)
The U.S. government began preparing for biological warfare during World War II. Biological weapons were employed during the Korean War against North Korea and China.
Venezuela: an attempted coup by any other name. (2nd August 2024)
Once again, as in 2002, Venezuela has been the victim of a combined media and diplomatic coup attempt, but this time with the added element of organized crime and a cyber-attack.
Blank checks for war: Congressional abdication from Tonkin to Gaza. (2nd August 2024)
Sixty years ago, on August 7, 1964, Congress handed President Lyndon Johnson the power to wage a major war in Vietnam, solidifying its long-standing deference to the presidency on foreign policy. Not once since World War II has Congress exercised its constitutional responsibility to vote on declarations to decide if, when, and where the United States goes to war.
U.S. sanctions have devastated Venezuela. How does that help democracy? (2nd August 2024)
In the chaotic aftermath of Maduro’s contested reelection, the case that U.S. policy worked in Venezuela is on shaky ground.
National Lawyers Guild electoral observers praise fairness, transparency of Venezuelan election process. (5th August 2024)
National Lawyers Guild electoral observers condemn the U.S. backed opposition’s refusal to accept the outcome of democratic election
What’s the best way forward for Bangladesh after its regime change surprisingly succeeded? (6th August 2024)
What just happened in Bangladesh is ominously similar to 2014’s “EuroMaidan” in Ukraine where legitimate grievances gave rise to a nationwide protest movement that was then co-opted by political opportunists, radicals, and external forces to carry out regime change like the West wanted.
The undemocratic reality of capitalism. (6th August 2024)
Fans of capitalism like to say it is democratic or that it supports democracy. Some have stretched language so far as to literally equate capitalism with democracy, using the terms interchangeably. No matter how many times that is repeated, it is simply not true and never was.
What is the Milei Government doing with Argentina’s gold? (6th August 2024)
Where is Argentina’s gold?
This is a question that began doing the rounds, particularly in Argentina’s financial media, a few weeks ago.
If anyone got toppled in Venezuela, it was Juan Guaidó. (7th August 2024)
Despite the disapproval of Western governments and their cronies, the elections in Venezuela were conducted at an enviable level of democracy. Nicolás Maduro won a competitive struggle against opposition candidate Edmundo González and gained 51% of support against the latter’s 44%.
The Myanmar mess. (12th August 2024)
For those of you, like me, who have grievous little understanding of Myanmar, this presentation provides a history, particularly of British misrule and the major ethnic groups, discusses the interests and actions of the major powers, and reviews the recent fighting and the prospects for Myanmar.
Zombie wells: a $280 billion problem the U.S. can’t ignore. (17th August 2024)
It also confirms the consequences of subsidizing gas and fuel prices with no thought of the long-term consequences. Properly pricing oil and LNG production would include requiring large reserves for clean-up after shut-down and ongoing liability to operators.
Defence correspondents: the journalistic wing of the military? (19th August 2024)
There are stenographers – and then there are UK defence correspondents.
The Chokepoint: a ubiquitous and powerful tool for strategic analysis. (25th August 2024)
Everybody knows what chokepoints are — think a robber baron stretching a chain across the Rhine to collect tolls — but nobody seems to have noticed how ubiquitous the checkpoint concept is, or in how many contexts it appears.
What Kamala Harris meant by ‘most lethal fighting force’ in her DNC speech. (27th August 2024)
The Pentagon buzzword can apply to anything from missiles to pepperoni pizzas inside the military — while papering over the corpses that “lethality” produces.
Awareness of capitalists’ use of colonialism encourages international solidarity. (29th August 2024)
Those struggles for social justice and equality that are confined to the world’s industrial centers do target aspects of capitalism, but without far-reaching expectations. The full effort consists of: pushing for reforms that ease burdens placed upon working people, building mass opposition, and – crucially – advancing the international solidarity movement.
The farce is over, Long Live the Farce! (29th August 2024)
The whole world has been shown evidence of the corrupt activities of the US President, which has now been disavowed by the very Republicans who conducted the investigation.
Starmer permanently ties UK nuclear arsenal to Washington. (3rd September 2024)
Britain’s nuclear weapons are now forever reliant on US military scientists after a transatlantic treaty was quietly rewritten.
The persistent human costs of deindustrialization: lessons from the collapse of the British coal industry. (5th September 2024)
Industrial decline has been directly linked to a worsening of various social and economic indicators.
US prepares color revolution in Georgia. (6th September 2024)
American intelligence agencies have seemingly abandoned the idea of inventing original ways of conducting international relations and have returned to their traditional practices of blatant interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states around the world.
[Canadian] Liberals are finding new ways to undermine the Right to Strike. (16th September 2024)
The government has dusted off a rarely used section of the Canada Labour Code and sought to pre-empt strikes.
The Media against Julian Assange. (20th September 2024)
The liberation of the Australian journalist in late June closes an ordeal lasting fourteen years. On the other hand, it doesn’t lighten the responsibility of his persecutors. In this domain, Washington, London, and Stockholm have acted with the complicity of an institution supposed to speak truth to power and to protect the innocent—the press, for once, not very supportive of another journalist.
The biggest military base empire on Earth. (23rd September 2024)
The United States of America, unlike any other nation on Earth, maintains a massive network of foreign military bases around the world, more than 900 bases in more than 90 countries and territories.
War forever, everywhere. (24th September 2024)
Count on one thing: armed conflict lasts for decades after battles end and its effects ripple thousands of miles beyond actual battlefields.
‘Propaganda material will need to be disseminated’. (24th September 2024)
Whitehall officials and ministers connive with the BBC and the press during wars, to promote ‘propaganda’ to domestic and foreign audiences, declassified files show.
Hillary Clinton returns to muzzle everyone. (25th September 2024)
As the race enters the home stretch, Hillary Clinton is riding in like Joan of Arc to rescue truth – or at least to call for hammering government critics. But Hillary has been a triple threat to American democracy for 15 years.
How cities run dry. (25th September 2024)
In April 2024, more than 9 million residents of Bogotá, Colombia’s capital city, were told to collect rainwater – if the city was lucky enough to experience a storm.
The US Government’s viciousness and hypocrisy (Ecuador’s experience). (26th September 2024)
On September 24, 2024, Gallup issued a new report about the percentage of people in scientifically representative samples of 1,000 people, in each of 140 countries and areas around the world, the percentage who answered “Yes” to “Do you feel safe walking alone at night in the area where you live?” That percentage is the lowest in Ecuador.
How wokeness kills class politics and empowers empire – with Christian Parenti. The Chris Hedges Report. Video discussion.(25th September 2024)
How the fossil fuel industry helps spread anti-protest laws across the US – and the UK. (30th September 2024)
Lobbyists and lawmakers have coordinated to enact new laws that increase criminal penalties for peaceful protests.
‘Escalation Dominance’. . . and the prospect of more than 1,000 Holocausts. (1st October 2024)
Everything is at stake. Everything is at stake with nuclear weapons.
Robbing Africa’s riches to save the climate (and power AI). (11th October 2024)
Its white sand beaches, vibrant blue waters, and mild tropical climate have made Lobito a tourist destination in recent years. Yet under its shiny new façade is a history fraught with colonial violence and exploitation.
UK snubs Council of Europe over Assange inquiry. (25th October 2024)
Politicians across Europe want Britain to investigate why the WikiLeaks founder spent five years in jail.
The giant warships sinking Britain’s budget. (29th October 2024)
If chancellor Rachel Reeves is serious about public finances, she must stop the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers causing a black hole in the military budget.
An honest discussion of Covid vaccine side effects is overdue. (7th November 2024)
While seeing some big breaks with former code of omerta about Covid side effects is welcome, this piece is still frustrating. It still recites the tired and almost certainly false trope that Covid vaccine side effects are rare.
Labour hands £2.2bn in NHS contracts to corporate health in just two months. (15th November 2024)
NHS no-profit bid rejected and a contract handed to firm despite massive security breach as Starmer and Streeting NHS give-away through US-style so-called ‘integrated care’ ramps up.
Starmer says ‘most accurate focus group is local pub’. Local pub… (26th November 2024)
Deeply unpopular PM puts his foot in it again.
Biden declares another ‘National Emergency’ because of the threat posed by tiny Nicaragua. (27th November 2024)
In the dying days of his administration, President Biden must have needed a reminder by his officials on November 22. He had to decide whether Nicaragua still poses an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.
Happy Native American Heritage Month from the army that brought you the Trail of Tears. (28th November 2024)
After 250 years of armed attacks, forced relocations, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of Native Americans, the U.S. military wants to celebrate.
Thanksgiving and the whitewashing of history. (28th November 2024)
It’s Thanksgiving once again. That day, every year, when we are all gluttonous to celebrate the fact that ‘Pilgrims and Indians’ had a harmonious meal — at least that is how it has been framed historically.
Why are Americans celebrating this vigilante murderer as a freedom fighter? (11th December 2024)
Luigi Mangione, the killer of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, has been stirring up waves of online – but not at himself.
An alternative view of the world – 2023
Ukraine – what you weren’t told – 2022