World

Blacklisting the Merchants of Spyware

In a modest effort to disrupt the global spyware market, the United States announced last week that four entities had been added to its blacklist.  On November 3, the US Department of Commerce revealed that it would be adding Israel-based companies NSO Group and Candiru to its entity list “based on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to[Read More...]

The Politics of the Poor in an America on Edge

When President Biden first unveiled the Build Back Better agenda, it appeared that this country was on the path to a new war on poverty. In April, he told Congress that “trickle-down economics have never worked” and that it was time to build the economy “from the bottom-up.” This came after the first reconciliation bill of the pandemic included the child tax[Read More...]

Does Repeatedly Calling China a Threat Reify It?

Hegemony requires a coordinated mechanism to be in place for a belligerent entity to designate enemies, attack the leader(s) of the designated enemy, control the narrative (i.e., lie), launch unprovoked attacks that murder a citizenry, destroy the economic basis of the named enemy, loot its resources, topple the enemy’s leadership, and replace the leadership with one deemed acceptable to the[Read More...]

Hypersonic Panic and Competitive Terror

During his eventful time in office, US President Donald Trump took much delight in reflecting about the lethal toys of his country’s military, actual or hypothetical.  These included a hypersonic capability which, his military advisors had warned, was being mastered by adversaries.  Such devices, comprising hypersonic cruise missiles and hypersonic boost-glide vehicles, have been touted as opening a new arms[Read More...]

WHO warns of 500,000 new COVID-19 deaths in Europe by February

by Will Morrow and Alex Lantier In a press conference yesterday, World Health Organisation (WHO) director for Europe Hans Kluge issued an urgent warning: Europe and the republics of the former Soviet Union are now the epicentre of the pandemic. Kluge warned that there could be 500,000 more coronavirus deaths in Europe in just the next three months, beyond the[Read More...]

Ukraine’s complicated path to NATO membership

Amid numerous discussions about the future of Ukraine – a country that has been unable to form a single nation in 30 years of independence, and is torn apart by interethnic, linguistic and economic contradictions, Europe should ask itself just what Ukraine really means to it. And the answer will be the same – a buffer zone, because this clearly[Read More...]

As the Planet Wants to Go Green, France Has a Nuclear Habit It Just Cannot Kick

On July 28, French President Emmanuel Macron landed in Tahiti and said that France owed a “debt” to French Polynesia. The debt was related to approximately 200 nuclear tests France conducted in the 118 islands and atolls that comprise this part of the central South Pacific, which France has controlled since 1842. These tests were conducted between 1966 and 1996. Macron did not apologize[Read More...]

Cultivating Resistance: Food, Dependency and Dispossession

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved[Read More...]

Sanctions as a weapon targeting development

The United Nations is currently sanctioning groups in Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Libya, Guinea-Bissau, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Mali. Sanctions in Non-African countries include Iraq, Yemen, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Lebanon, and North Korea. The Security Council states that “since 1966, the Security Council has established 30 sanctions regimes, in Southern Rhodesia,[Read More...]

Ecuador’s Neoliberal Government Announces State Emergency to Impose Austerity

by Vijay Prashad and Taroa Zúñiga Silva On October 18, 2021, Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency for 60 days. This declaration led to the constitutional rights of Ecuadorian nationals being suspended and heavily armed troops flooding the streets in Ecuador. The immediate reason for the declaration was the murder of an 11-year-old boy named Sebastián Obando, who was killed in[Read More...]