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Actions speak louder than words, as the saying goes. So far, all we have from Andy Burnham – expected to become Britain’s new prime minister in little more than a week – are words.

His three-minute monologue to camera on Gaza, communicated via social media, was carefully, and cynically, calibrated.

The first minute was dedicated to condemnations of Hamas and concerns about antisemitism – designed to insure against the kind of pile-on endured by Jeremy …

On July 9 local time, the European Commission officially launched an anti-dumping investigation into “Peking duck” imports from China. Several media outlets noted that this marks the first time in recent years that the EU has extended trade defense measures to the Chinese agricultural sector. The UK’s Financial Times reported that the EU’s trade protectionist measures against China are running at record highs, but this anti-dumping investigation “takes the fight to new terrain,” warning that the move “could ignite a trade war between the EU and China.” From electric vehicles and photovoltaic products to duck meat today, the EU wields …

Remember the White Helmets? The Oscar-winning “rescue workers” who pulled “dying children” out of the rubble in Syria in their spare moments between regime change ops and false flag chemical weapons attacks? They were the best, weren’t they? Really showed the world that real-life superheroes do exist — in their spare time between regime change ops.

Well, they’re back! This time in Venezuela! And this time it clearly has nothing to do with regime change because the US and Britain have no interest in the country …

Enjoy the show, which is my attempt at left-of-left sanity in Oregon, on the Coast, in a county with the rich, the retired, the dilapidated, the old, the houseless, the former scientists, and a whole lotta people working in environmental conservation circles. Listen to Megan and me get down into the mud.
Henry Thoreau is the “Patron Saint of Swamps” because he enjoyed being in them and writing about them said,

“My temple is the swamp… When I would recreate …

(Full article …)

Let the mockery and disdain begin. The elected member of the Essex seat of Clacton, also leader of the populist Reform UK party, has decided to avoid the investigation into his financial affairs by going to the polls on August 13. To do so, Nigel Farage has resigned, thereby forcing the by-election vote. He senses a squeeze on various fronts: a parliamentary investigation into undeclared financial affairs, a dip in favourability as a potential Prime Minister (even if his party only has eight sitting members), and the nipping of a rival, even more savagely populist party, Restore Britain.

The payment …

Last week, millions of people around the world were subjected to record-breaking heatwaves. At least 25 deaths in the U.S. from this heat dome were reported. The French government also counted over 2,000 excess deaths during the June heatwaves. At the same time, this past weekend, a devastating super typhoon hit the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam, leaving islands like Rota, where 2,000 people live, without running water and most buildings impacted.
In both cases, the people least responsible for the climate crisis are the most vulnerable to …

The Ankara Summit Declaration  is vague enough and precise enough to mean everything and nothing to President Donald Trump (lead image) and those he regards as his subordinates, clients,  and marks in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

In White House politics, it balances between the party for escalation of the war against Russia and the party for de-escalation and peace; that’s to say, pause in the war against Russia.

In Kremlin politics, it tips the balance between the party for escalation dominance in the war …

Transoxania, the ancient Greek name for today’s Uzbekistan, has hosted many of the great turnings of history. The name signifies the lands beyond the Oxus River, which we now call the Amu Darya, the river which for millennia has given life to the oases of this desert region and made it a central node of the Silk Road. It was in Transoxania that Alexander the Great fought some of his hardest campaigns, against the Eastern Persian people known as the Sogdians.

The battles ended when Alexander took his Sogdian bride, Roxana — “Little …

Numa Molina is a Venezuelan Jesuit priest, theologian, journalist, and political commentator whose public life brings together Christian faith, liberation theology, anti-imperialism, and commitment to the Bolivarian Revolution. He was a friend of Pope Francis, Father Miguel d’Escoto, and President Hugo Chávez, and remains a friend of President Nicolás Maduro and of Cuba and Nicaragua. For Molina, politics and theology are inseparable from solidarity with the poor and the struggle for sovereignty; as he has said, “We must live with the poor, as the poor, and from the perspective of the poor” (venezuelanalysis.com).

The Bolivarian Revolution faces …

Military investments reduce the resources available for civilian investments. so NATO Secretary General Rutte is either ignorant and has no idea about military economics. Or he is deliberately deceiving the public.

In the largest veterans’ protest since the Vietnam era, 500 veterans, active-duty service members and military families gathered in Philadelphia on the Fourth of July and marched against ICE, the occupation of American cities by the National Guard, the war on Iran, and threats to deploy troops at polling sites in November.

PHILADELPHIA — On the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, a coalition of more than 500 veterans, active-duty military members and military families gathered in the birthplace of the nation to reject what they called the “Trump administration’s fascist vision for the country’s future.”

Undeterred by 101-degree …

Protests against the government in Tirana on June 13, 2026 – Albinfo, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

When one has witnessed not only a colour revolution in her own country (Macedonia, 2015–2016) but also sensed its arrival during Ukraine’s Euromaidan in 2014, every new outburst of supposedly spontaneous revolt provokes scepticism. Regrettably, this scepticism is usually justified. Nearly two years ago, I wrote similarly about student protests in Serbia and later about Nepal. The point is this: …

As the country and this administration launched its America 250 and Freedom 250  “Celebrations”, what we experienced in the nation’s capitol and a city of 700,000 residents replicated what the United States does to other parts of the world. The streets were invaded by the military, public spaces barricaded with multiple levels of security checkpoints, and the sky full of military flyovers, including a seven-hour schedule of flyovers on July 4th.

Military flyovers come at a devastating cost–economically, psychologically and environmentally. The most recent ones came in the middle of a heatwave where even Trump’s American State …

Yet again, FIFA, and its chief, Gianni Infantino, have distinguished the game of football by showing what it is all about. Not glorious athletes representing code and country across the globe. Not the sense of wellbeing that comes with exercise. No: it’s all about corrupt manoeuvrings, opaque decisions, and scandalous meddling. And who better to be at the centre of it than one of America’s most corrupt, self-enriching figures, one President Donald J. Trump?

On July 5, the one-game suspension for American striker Folarin Balogun was vacated in exchange for a one-year probation. Balogun had received a contentious red card in …

A decorated US Air Force serviceman with no history of violence suddenly abducted, raped and murdered a three-year-old girl.

When a search party found Jimmy Shaver wandering near San Antonio, Texas, he appeared to be in a trance, unable to explain where he was or how he had gotten there. After his arrest, he reportedly failed to recognize his own wife when she visited him in jail. Until the moment he was executed four years later, Shaver insisted he had no memory of committing the crime for which he had been sentenced to death.

More than seventy years later, some researchers …