Latest articles

Across the Western world, the public realm is being sterilised. Benches are segmented or removed to deter resting, space is zoned for corporate retail footfall, cash is phased out in favour of digital payments and surveillance networks try to monitor every square inch. Spontaneity is being engineered away, and public space is being converted into a purely transactional ‘corporate plaza’.

Step onto an Indian street lane, and you are confronted with an entirely different logic. The environment is dense and ‘messy’, with pavement vendors displaying produce on canvas tarps and prices negotiated …

The scheme which Kirill Dmitriev (lead image centre), the Kremlin’s negotiator for American money-making schemes, has been planning with Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner for Russian diesel to be traded to the US, relieved of sanctions,  in exchange for  US delivery of Vladimir Zelinsky’s agreement to Russian end-of-war terms,  has failed.

No Russian diesel has been reported by international ship tracking sources as leaving a Russian port or redirecting from a high seas position to a US port fixed as its destination. The New York …

The Nobel Peace Prize is an institution long stuffed with straw. Established by the inventor of dynamite Alfred Nobel, its very creation suggested less contrition than a dark sense humour restless for recognition. That humour surfaces from time to time, usually when it comes to the choice of candidates. Former US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger remains a delightful example, showing how a mind amenable to conflict, coups and destabilisation can still be acknowledged by a Nobel Prize committee.

For some reason, 2026 proved to be a year when sober minds prevailed on the Norwegian Nobel …

There are moments when silence becomes complicity. This is one of them. Veterans For Peace will not remain silent while the machinery of killing is being normalized at home.

Across the country, governments are once again embracing state killing—the so-called death penalty—with disturbing enthusiasm. Oklahoma is preparing to execute veteran James Pavatt on November 12. The federal government is preparing to execute former Army Major Nidal Hasan by military firing squad.

Tennessee recently attempted to execute Christa Pike and failed, leaving behind yet another brutal example of the fiction that there is some clean, clinical, humane way for the …

From 1492 to 1504, C*lumbus took four voyages between Spain and the Americas. He set out to chart a western sea route to China and India but instead landed in the Bahamas. After landing in the Americas, C*lumbus named the Taino …

Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI models, is preparing what could be the largest initial public offering in history, raising more than $100 billion, according to the New York Times, at a valuation near $2 trillion. According to Reuters, which reviewed the draft prospectus (the document has not yet been made public), the company tells prospective investors that advanced AI could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity,” and that its own models could “resist shutdown,” “conceal or manipulate information,” or behave in ways “…

October 22–24 gathering intends to catalyze the national movement to create public banks in American cities, regions, and states; the October 24 public event and press conference features a costumed Colonial Town Crier reading the “Declaration of Financial Independence”

PHILADELPHIA – America’s local governments face increasingly challenging financial demands. Their reliance on Wall Street borrowing doubles project costs and extracts almost $200B in interest each year. These unsustainable realities will bring banking experts, policymakers, economists, and community advocates to Philadelphia October 22–24, 2026, for the national Public Banking, Public Prosperity Conference, hosted by the Public Banking Institute at Friends Center, 1501 …

On December 3, two traditions risk combining in a foul, if remarkable, fashion. In the United States, an execution is set to take place with a ghoulish offering of livestreaming through the World Wide Web. This, at least, is the sprightly proposal from Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defense (or War, depending on the mood) regarding the fate of Nidal Hasan. The former ex-US Army major and psychiatrist was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013 for the premeditated murder of 13 people at Ford Hood on November 5, 2009. This will make it the first US …

On October 9th, the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Navi Pillay, the South African international lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid political prisoners on Robben Island, and went on to serve as a judge on the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court (ICC), and as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In 2025, Navi Pillay led the UN Commission of Inquiry that confirmed that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

With the world in the grip of seemingly intractable war and chaos, the Nobel Committee clearly wanted to honor someone …

A ‘quisling’ may be an unfamiliar term.

The word’s root goes back to Nazi-occupied Norway, when politician and military man Vidkun Quisling led a puppet government – later coined the Quisling regime – which infamously collaborated with and was propped up by Berlin.

Alongside the Vichy government in France, Quisling was seen as one of Europe’s foremost traitors during WWII, and his surname became a synonym for treason, …

When people talk about Karl Marx, they immediately think about The Communist Manifesto and equate Marx with communism.

For his anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist stance, Marx is demonized as an enemy by default in the West ever since.

Few in the West have any idea about Marx’s actual economic thoughts, like with so many other things they are taught to hate without understanding by the propaganda machine.

In reality, Marx’s thoughts are profoundly relevant and prescient for today’s world when we look back at them with 150 years of hindsight.

When one peals …

The mainstream corporate media — always a mere two to three years behind every story — is finally coming to terms with (some of) the reality of the October 7, 2023, attack. It is suddenly acceptable for the liberal corporate pro-Israel outlets to say Netanyahu obviously knew October 7th was going to happen.

It’s been three whole years since the attack. For three whole years, many of us in the endlessly maligned and suppressed independent media world have been shouting from the hills that Israel’s ruling …

Ranbir Kaleka (India), Conference of Birds and Beasts, 2010.
At a moment of war and genocide, when words such as Gaza and Sudan have become tragedies, it is easy to ask whether the United Nations (UN) has outlived its usefulness or can be reformed. But the better question is: reform what, and for whom?

The UN Charter (1945) promises that states must settle disputes peacefully, refrain from the threat or use of force, and cooperate on common problems. Powerful states’ violations are a reason to defend and enforce the UN Charter, …

They are a trying lot, spruiking their overvalued, loss-making firms, sowing discord and fear, and then seeking state collaboration that will serve to implicate all the parties concerned should things sour. And what will the rest of us get? Hardly the promised land. But the United Nations, for the first time in history, became a centre stage for the propagandists from Artificial Intelligence firms during the September deliberations, diplomats hanging off the banal declarations from such figures as Sam Altman, the CEO from OpenAI, and Dario Amodei, his equivalent from Anthropic. …

The Nobel Peace Prize has just been awarded to Navi Pillay who is not, like last year’s laureate, pleading for the world’s largest military to attack her country. Nor is she, in the manner of various past laureates, waging war. Nor is she, like various past recipients, an admirable humanitarian working in a field unrelated to war. In fact, Navi Pillay has long been recognized as advancing the cause of peace. In 2025 she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize …