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The idea that a US-led West and its brand of ‘freedom and democracy’ are best has dominated international relations since at least the end of World War II. Its crescendo was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which led Fukuyama to proclaim, ‘the end of history’. But not very long after, by the turn of the century, the assumption had started to become so threadbare and the prejudices, falsehoods, and bad consequences so obvious that even the (brainwashed) likes of me began – politely – to question …

Most politicians pledge to work for the working class, or sometimes for working families, a less Marxist-sounding label. Meanwhile, scholars struggle to define the category. I won’t assess the political posturing or adjudicate definitional disputes, but my work experience—spanning six decades and a wide variety of jobs—illustrates why the claims of working-class authenticity that are prized in today’s politics are so fraught.

Once upon a time, the working …

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., speaks with ABC’s Jonathan Karl on August 9, 2026.

Many Democratic Party candidates emerging on what one might call the populist left are finding success in primaries across the country. But most of them have a shared liability: they were fully on board with the worst excesses and abuses of the “peak wokeness” that emerged in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 killing, enduring and contaminating most of our institutions for several years after.

Most of these successful candidates are quite young …

“Politicians,” the vituperative satirist Auberon Waugh observed, “can forgive almost anything in the way of abuse; they can forgive subversion, revolution, being contradicted, exposed as liars, even ridiculed, but they can never forgive being ignored.” An exception to this appropriate rule might be the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who is desperately wishing to be ignored, at least regarding an interview he need never have done.

Despite presiding over a formidable majority in the House of Representatives and facing a Coalition opposition awaiting immolation at the next election, Albanese has managed to contract that every-politician’s disease: the gaffe. However secure they …

A chatter about fresh elections is starting to rumble again in the shady corridors of (first) the US White House and (about 15-20 minutes later) Caracas’ Miraflores presidential palace.

The Orange President, Donald Trump, has mentioned them; the Crazy Cuban, Marco Rubio, has commented; and even the marionette siblings, Delcy and Jorge Rodriguez, have uttered the words.

Unsurprisingly, all claim the “time isn’t right” (when is the time ever right for a comfortably positioned status quo to ask the struggling people if they …

That grand old thing is getting on a bit. Still significant and still functioning wearily, the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951 has suffered abuse, subversion and neglect from state parties. At times, it is only honored in the breach. At other times, it is not honored at all. After three-quarters of a century, it is easy to forget the hot ideal that streaks through the document: that it contains, as Christopher Bentram aptly remarks, “a kind of substitute citizenship” for those who have left their country of origin and find their bonds “broken by the threat of prosecution.” …

An antitrust lawsuit by twelve Democratic states’ Attorneys General against the Paramount Skydance–Warner Bros. Discovery merger, valued at $111 billion, promises to be the most high-stakes—and potentially industry-changing—case in generations.

Paramount and state AGs struck an agreement on July 24 to bypass the legal wranglings of court injunctions in favor of going directly to a full trial. The outcome would determine whether a tech scion—Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison—backed by his billionaire father, Oracle founder and Trump ally Larry Ellison, and three Gulf sovereign wealth funds, will control a significant portion of the global entertainment and news industries, or if states …

How cool are spies?

In a single week in July 2026, 18,000 new cases of chickenpox, ectoparasitic infestations, and impetigo were recorded by the United Nations in Gaza. The deliberate exposure of a population to conditions that facilitate the spread of infectious disease can constitute a means of extermination and, in the context of genocidal intent, an act of genocide. Our latest visual captures genocide by attrition, which “occurs when a group is stripped of its human rights, political, civil and economic. This leads to deprivation of conditions essential for maintaining health, thereby producing mass death.”

CJPME’s Media Accountability Project (MAP) had two important victories this week against poor reporting on Palestine:

The CBC was forced to issue a country-wide on-air correction after falsely claiming that the illegally-occupied West Bank was “disputed territory.” After CJPME requested a formal review by the Ombuds, CBC aired an on-air correction across Canada, clarifying: “On July 27, World Report ran a story about violence in the occupied West Bank. At one point, it was incorrectly referred to as disputed territory. It should have been referred to as …

Throughout all the news cycles over the years, you can count on a continuity in U.S. government/media propaganda and strategy. Make a time capsule, fill it with today’s news, hide it away, and pull it out in five, ten, or fifteen years, and while many details (tactics) will have changed, the underlying themes will remain. Or do it in reverse.

Assuming the world miraculously escapes a nuclear war of annihilation, when the criminal Donald Trump is long gone from office, replaced by a …

I initially wrote this piece in 2024 during the student uprisings that took place around the United States. The content was focused on Gaza and the people who made up the movement for Palestine in the belly of the beast. I’ve rewritten some of it and replaced Gaza with Cuba. The arguments needed no editing at all.

In March, a delegation traveled to Cuba to bring medical aid to Cubans who were suffering under the fuel blockade imposed on them by the United States of America. In recent months, people and organizations who took part, including my own organization, have been …

Crisis of the West, Crisis of Realism
How do we explain the self-defeating and self-harming policies of Western states?

Europe seems to be happily deindustrializing, the US proxy war in Ukraine is killing hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Ukrainians—the very people NATO swears it wants to protect—and by now this warfare is close to swapping over into the continent. And what does Europe do? Doubling down on the policies that have been failing them for twelve years—creating a 21st sanctions package (!). No diplomacy in …

Adapted from Wired for Authoritarianism: American Oligarchies and How to Re-Wire America for the People
The reigning narrative of US democracy is based on two widely shared beliefs. The first is that the capitalist system and its free markets ensure freedom and pluralism throughout society. The second is that our constitution and electoral system are forms of political wiring designed to ensure a democratic state. While an important veneer of democracy perpetuates this story, and it sounds intuitively plausible, theoretical, historical and empirical studies suggest that it …

Economic change in India is usually told through statistics. Growth rates, foreign investment, digital payments, infrastructure projects and the expansion of the technology sector all contribute to a narrative of a country ‘developing’ and moving rapidly into the future.

The ideology of ‘development’ aside (see The Agrarian Imagination for a biting critique), critical observers will be aware that statistics can be manipulated and reveal only part of a story. Moreover, they may tell us about economic output while saying little about the everyday realities of the people who produce, transport, sell and consume the goods and services that keep …