It is a stew of inedible quality. But eat it we are expected to do. Consider the stomach-churning ingredients. FIFA, an opaque organisation of mafia qualities that governs world football. Add to the mix crawling-to-power President Gianni Infantino, a preposterous darling of authoritarian favour. Mix in his cringeworthy, very public association with US President Donald Trump, peace prize and all. And money. Money, money and some. Will that contaminated mix set?
Not happy with the loot secured from the just concluded Men’s World Cup, stained by criminally high-ticket sales and returns from the secondary market, Infantino was onto another venture. This …
Is the image at the top of this article freedom? Many people think so. A single individual with no ties to anything reaching out to an infinite horizon (The Grand Canyon). After all, how many car commercials have you seen with rugged individualist men tearing around curves which might just as well have been the edge of the Grand Canyon? But what global capitalists have done is to smuggle in the infinite horizons of the global marketplace for the infinite horizons of the Grand Canyon. Capitalists must strip individuals of their intermediate …
Fifty years ago, in August 1976, Colombo hosted the fifth Non-Aligned Movement Summit. The summit’s declaration embodied the Bandung Spirit, and its resolve for peace, sovereignty, and development in the Third World. Among the many points of emphasis was the militarisation of the Indian Ocean during the Cold War. In 1971, Sri Lanka had succeeded in pushing for the UN Declaration of the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace. The peace zone proposal therefore loomed large in the final declaration of the fifth NAM summit:
Buy my touch and feel book EVEN before it’s manufactured, printed and packaged: Send $16 through the Substack Stripe/Paulo Kirk; I will get $7 of it to Palestine (https://www.healpalestine.org/about-us/ )
HEAL Palestine is a nonpolitical, nonreligious U.S.-registered nonprofit founded in 2024 to deliver …
The Synthetic Mind: Humanity’s First Engineered Mirror, Part 4
by Sammy Attoh / August 1st, 2026
Humanity is living through a quiet eclipse — not of the sun or the moon, but of human consciousness itself. The digital world has grown so vast, so immersive, and so constant that it now obscures the way human beings perceive reality.
This eclipse is not darkness. It is mediation. It is filtration. It is the gradual replacement of direct human experience by engineered environments.
The digital eclipse is not a technological event. It is a civilizational one.
The Rise of Algorithmic Reality
We no longer meet the world directly. We meet it through:
Aerial view of China’s Huangyan Dao in South China Sea
China on Friday firmly rejected and said it will never accept the delimitation of the so-called “baselines of the territorial Sea” of China’s territory of by the Philippines, stressing it is illegal, null and void, according to a statement released by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on its website.
The statement came after the Philippines claimed it has deposited its official nautical chart of Huangyan Dao and its surrounding maritime zones with the United Nations Secretariat.
By depositing the chart, the Philippines’ Department of Foreign …
A conversation with Lena Petrova of World Affairs In Context
by Jan Oberg / July 31st, 2026
I am truly happy and honoured to have been invited by Lena to her unique channel, World Affairs In Context where she has over 600,000 subscribers. She covers a very wide range of global themes based not the least on her own deep and broad knowledge about economics. I want to thank her warmly for her immense contribution to global public education about the most important issues.
In our conversation, we focus a number of European trends of our time, among them the conversion to a war economy that she herself has also analysed in depth …
The Israeli military’s Orwellian use of artificial intelligence for surveillance, targeting, and execution of attacks against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank has been well-documented by journalists, reporters, and activists in Israel and the United States. Less known is the close collaboration between the military and police departments in the United States, which have been quietly adopting tactics pioneered by Israel in their perpetual campaigns in the occupied territories, including US police departments sending their officers to Israel for training. This dynamic, combined with the US’ direct funding of the Israeli military through taxpayer dollars, creates a feedback loop …
In his national address on July 19, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega stated that when the country’s next elections take place in 2027, none who promoted a violent anti-government insurrection in 2018 will be allowed to stand for office. The pledge was universally interpreted by Western media outlets as a total ban on voting, prompting hysterical interventions from the US State Department and throughout South Florida.
July 19 is a key date in Nicaragua’s calendar – the anniversary of the victory of its Sandinista revolution in 1979 and the overthrow of the vicious …
Curry Barker's horror hit gets a lot right about male entitlement and consent. But by the end, the film is guilty of the same thing it's trying to condemn.
by Omny Miranda Martone / July 30th, 2026
Content & Spoiler Warning: This article discusses sexual violence, manipulation, and suicide. It does not go into graphic detail. This article contains spoilers for Obsession.
Bear is a lonely, awkward guy in love with his friend Nikki, who does not love him back. One night, after failing to confess his feelings, he makes an impulsive wish on a novelty toy, “I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the fucking world.” The wish works, but more like a curse. Nikki is overtaken. Controlled by the wish, she brutally kills anyone perceived as a threat to her love …
Standing in line at a store the other day, I was nearly overcome by a malingering stench. I glanced around, sniffing.
I couldn’t tell where the smell was coming from.
An older woman in front of me, sixty-something, hair bleached blonde and lips botoxed to the max, was waiting with aspirin. In front of her a beefy, white dullard wearing a MAGA hat gleaming crisply over narrow, beady eyes was sorting through coupons for a purchase of Dude wipes across from a Black, female cashier.
In the summer of 2019, Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu reached ‘Day Zero’. As the city’s reservoirs shrank to 0.1% of their capacity, the crisis exposed a brutal hierarchy. While millions queued for hours at street corners for government tankers, the city’s luxury hotels continued to operate, fuelled by a fleet of private water tankers siphoning groundwater from surrounding villages.
This is the logical endpoint of an industrial mindset that views the world as a collection of parts to be managed and extracted. It is a system that prizes ‘high-tech’ laboratory-derived …
In case you had not noticed, looming over the recent 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was the somber shadow of an underwhelming event with the country’s subtle awareness that it was in the midst of a historic, political decline.
At a time when the 250th Anniversary should have restored a national pride as the country reached a historic milestone, there was a perception that the country was in a fast decline with an ambivalent, ineffectual Congress predominately fulfilling Israel’s expectations, a Congress more committed to benefiting its own financial well being than providing a balanced Federal budget.
Will reports of foreign influence campaigns be used to discredit valid criticisms of artificial intelligence?
by Andy Lee Roth / July 30th, 2026
Opposition to local AI data centers is bipartisan, according to a March 2026 Gallup poll, which found that majorities of Democrats (75 percent) and Republicans (63 percent) would oppose construction of an AI data center where they live. Overall, 71 percent of those surveyed expressed opposition to data center construction, a significantly greater figure than the 53 percent who said they would oppose a nuclear power plant being built near them.
But that opposition is not necessarily as straightforward as it seems, at least according to a July 2026 report produced by Alethea, a digital …
The Israeli embassy in Canberra had warned about it, and, with rattling confidence, thought it appropriate to remind the Australian Labor Party that they were going too far. The concerns – a nice dollop of political interference in the affairs of a supposedly sovereign state – came ahead of the national conference of the ALP that promised to emphasise certain unwanted themes in its draft platform.
Ahead of the July 23-25 meeting in Adelaide, the draft document reiterated the party’s support for the two-state solution “as the only path towards a future where Palestinians and Israelis can live …
Veterans For Peace condemns the recent report by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accusing Cuba of interfering in the internal affairs of the U.S. and, conversely, accusing U.S. peace and solidarity activists of being agents of a foreign country, Cuba. Talk about turning things on their head!
It is the U.S. that has waged an economic war against Cuba for 64 years with a blockade that prevents it from normal trade relations with the U.S. and other countries, stunts its economic development, and denies it access to medicines and other essentials.
When fear becomes the dominant force in public policy, compassion, justice and proportionality are often the first casualties. Laws that were originally devised to protect people fleeing oppressive regimes and hostile environments are increasingly being applied in ways that can work against those seeking protection. Like the magician’s sleight of hand, truth and justice have been inverted. Those trying to survive exploitation and terrorism are increasingly regarded in pejorative terms.
Africa’s diverse histories have been shaped by colonial legacies, unequal economic relationships and, in some cases, external interference in political affairs. These factors, alongside domestic governance failures and conflict, have contributed …
MOSCOW — In the wartime succession stories now screening in your neighbourhood – that’s President Donald Trump’s and President Vladimir Putin’s — the money does the talking which the special effects on the Imax screen cannot.
At the London BFI Imax cinema, the Odyssey film is booked out through its scheduled run from now until mid-September, which has encouraged the rig bettors like the Trump family to place their money on blockbuster profit after the film recovers its costs of $250 million to make; $125 million …
This was certainly an occasion when the mouse roared. At least the threatened lion thought so, if the latest hysteria-streaked US State Department report on Cuba is anything to go by. Reading this travesty of an assessment – shrill, stale, markedly undergraduate – was telling in one respect: The Trump administration is more eager than ever to oust the communist regime that seized power in 1959 from the blood-drenched hands of the demented Fulgencio Batista, whose pimping for Washington’s power interests was most appreciated as long as it lasted.
The unnamed authors are off to a sterling start with …
If you spent one to two years when you were 16-17 years old and full of wild physical and sexual energy assiduously translating Homer’s The Odyssey from the ancient Greek in little (7” x 4”) gray books where you placed your English translation interlineally, trying to get every word precisely right and the syntax flowing for the hawk-eyed inspection of a Greek obsessed Jesuit priest, you too might have felt wounded like Odysseus by a wild boar.
Hundreds of soldiers have already died or are dying, hit while defenseless, twiddling their thumbs, in an overwhelmingly unpopular war for Israel. Trump’s latest TACO says it all.
Prisoner’s dilemma
The prisoner’s dilemma is instructive for the US and Iran. If both sides don’t betray the other, they get off free.
If one betrays the other, he goes free, and the other gets 10 yrs. If they betray each other, they both get 5 yrs. The Iranians always take the high ground in negotiations. You may …
“The biggest shift in consciousness? I’d say it began in 2026. Really took off by 2028. That’s when the working-class vote for the far right started to collapse. For years, millions of people—especially white workers—were pushed into voting for reactionaries because of fear: fear of immigrants, fear of minorities, fear of losing control. Combine that with a deep and very often justified distrust of the Democratic Party, and what you got was Trumpism. But by the end of the decade that spell started breaking.” The Wind Cries Freedom: An Oral History of the Next American Revolution, by Michael Albert, …
No doubt, like many others who attend to world affairs, I do so these days with a mixture of horror, disbelief, frustration, anger, trepidation, disgust, and despair. The thin bands of my hopeful pessimism are stretched to the limit.
The Problem
Perhaps most of all, even knowing what we do about the depths of depravity and callous self-interest of Western elites and their contempt for the planet and for those they exploit and murder in the pursuit of profit, I still have trouble believing that they do not see or, if they do, care about the self-destructive, suicidal effects of their folly. …
Could it be put down to a measure of confidence on his part? On this occasion, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had, in the Wing of Zion, been less cautious in making a journey to Washington through European airspace. In September 2025, French airspace was avoided during a flight to New York. Most European states, with occasional hiccups of complaint, remain signatories of the Rome Statute, the document founding the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Israeli PM, along with his former defense minister Yoav Gallant, have extant arrest warrants for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
For a long time, the classic 18th-century song “Rule, Britannia!” by English composer Thomas Arne, with lyrics by Scottish poets James Thomson and David Mollett, effectively served as the United Kingdom’s second national anthem. Its refrain, “Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves,” powerfully captured the essence of the concept of “Mistress of the Seas,” a title Great Britain proudly bore for several centuries. For a long time, the guiding principle of the United Kingdom was to maintain a navy equal in strength to the two strongest navies of other powers combined. However, as the ancient saying goes, times change, and …
The deaths of Jeffrey Epstein and Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump assassination attempts have sparked furious debate in many parts of the U.S. and led internet sleuths to analyze videos and dig up information to corroborate their theories that the incidents were staged or covered up.
The mainstream media and liberal-progressive media, by contrast, have largely stuck to the official line of a suicide and deranged lone wolf gunmen, and either ignored the revelations of the internet sleuths or accused them of being “conspiracy theorists.”
This latter dismissive attitude fits a long historical lineage that goes back to at least the 19th …
