Latest articles
Can citizen diplomacy build a safer future for everyone?
by Jan Oberg / February 24th, 2026
What a thrill to be interviewed by former British diplomat Ian Proud! Don’t waste a minute: acquaint yourself with him here on his homepage, which he elegantly calls “Proud Diplomat.” Notice also his book, A Misfit In Moscow.
Ian is, of course, also on Substack, where he calls himself The Peace Monger, and recently he set up his own PeaceMonger Channel on YouTube.
For once, I was not interviewed as if I were a military geopolitical expert, where I normally have to twist the whole thing …
Mark Zuckerberg takes the Stand
by Binoy Kampmark / February 24th, 2026
It’s not a rare thing to see the founder of Facebook ducking and weaving before the irate comments of Congress as he explains, for yet another time, why his network does not harm, has no intention to harm and, if harm arose, it was unforeseen and unintended. This dance of mendacity has been going on for years, and reached another level when Mark Zuckberg took the stand on February 18. Zuck has finally found his way to court where he faced cross-examination before counsel and the attention of a jury.
The trial being held in Los Angeles is considering the extent …
by Lee Hall / February 23rd, 2026
As you know Trump is gearing up to attack Iran. And I wanna be angry with him, but we must face the facts. Those Iranian assholes have to be stopped. There’s no other way to look at it. (Click the links to see the proof.)
Iran has 5,500 nuclear weapons.
Iran has around 750 or 800 military bases encircling the globe. It’s tough to know the exact number because a lot of them are secret.
Iran has encircled the United States with military bases.
They spend a …
Incomplete Truths and the High Cost of Official Secrecy
by Nolan Higdon / February 23rd, 2026
Notice: My goal is to provide fresh insights with every post. This article focuses exclusively on new developments regarding the Epstein Files. For a comprehensive background on the saga, please visit our [full archive here]; the most recent updates are located at the bottom of the page.
Recently, social media was flooded with images purportedly showing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a child alongside his mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, in the company of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine …
by Sammy Attoh / February 23rd, 2026
Invocation
The climate crisis is not a neutral storm. It is not an unfortunate accident of weather or a tragic twist of fate. It is the latest battlefield of empire — a slow, suffocating siege in which the Global South pays for the pollution of the Global North. Rising seas, burning forests, collapsing harvests, and vanishing species are not the random convulsions of nature. They are the predictable consequences of centuries of extraction, industrial greed, and colonial arrogance.1
The atmosphere has become the new frontier of conquest. Climate colonialism is the silent siege of our …
al-Quds al-Arabi interview
by Eric Walberg / February 23rd, 2026
Interview by: Hassan Salman
Canadian researcher Eric Walberg (left) stated that US President Donald Trump’s disregard for all diplomatic protocols and his indiscriminate insults directed at allies and adversaries alike are pushing the world to boycott the United States and seek new partners elsewhere.
In an exclusive interview with Al-Quds Al-Arabi, he also asserted that the Old World, or what is known as the “collective West” led by the United States, is struggling to enter the 21st century and has been negatively …
by Yader Lanuza / February 22nd, 2026
After the Trump administration illegally kidnapped the legitimate president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3rd, 2026, we saw two distinct and divergent responses from Venezuelans. On the one hand, the Venezuelan diaspora, especially in the United States, celebrated President Maduro’s kidnapping and bombing of their birth country. They congregated in small gatherings the weekend of the abduction, including in Miami. These celebrations, alongside videos online, were widely disseminated in corporate and social media for a US-based (and broader Western) audience, all broadcasting the same message: Venezuelans support President Maduro’s abduction. On the other hand, inside Venezuela, for weeks after the …
No Public Funds For Charter Schools
by Shawgi Tell / February 21st, 2026
While it is not the first state or court to rule that charter schools are unconstitutional and have no right to public funds, it is refreshing to see constitutional standards being upheld in an era where they are casually ignored by authorities at many levels.
On February 19, 2026, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that, “The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Republican-backed bill establishing a statewide public charter school system was unconstitutional. In a unanimous opinion authored by Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Michelle Keller, …
Radio interview of a Syrian and who is now living in Lebanon
by Paul Haeder / February 21st, 2026
by Binoy Kampmark / February 21st, 2026
In a feat of enterprising delusion and sinister suppression, Australia’s second largest state has decided to deal with what it regards as an antisemitic problem. After last December’s attacks on Sydney’s Bondi Beach by two gunmen on attendees of a Hanukkah event that left 15 people dead, it has become modish to insist that a blight has gripped the continent. On February 8, the State government of Premier David Crisafulli announced it was “delivering strong, decisive action to combat antisemitism [and] address terrorist-motivated offending to make Queensland safer.”
As with other parts of the country, antisemitism has been singled out as …
by Philip A. Farruggio / February 21st, 2026
John Sayles wrote and directed the blockbuster 1987 film Matewan, about the 1920 Battle of Matewan. This was centered around the Matewan, West Virginia coal miner’s strike that saw scores of people left dead. Fast forward 115 years to Minneapolis, Minnesota. On the one hand we have the US government, run by a wannabe dictator, sending what translated into Storm Troopers, aka ICE & Border Patrol, to intimidate the citizens of Minnesota. Looking back into Matewan WV and Sayle’s film, we have the coal company, a government to itself, sending the Baldwin-Felts detective agency AKA Storm Troopers into town to intimidate the fledging miners’ union. …
by Bruce Lerro / February 21st, 2026
Orientation
The socialist left trashes attempts to unite the left and right
Is it possible to oppose this centrist drift to the middle of the political spectrum by uniting socialists and conservatives? In the United States socialists howl at the prospect of uniting with conservatives. “How stupid” they might say. “Conservatives are pro-capitalists, pro-war and anti-communist. Besides, conservatives want to bring back the power of the church, the aristocrats and the king. What a dumb idea! How could any socialist find common ground with conservatives?” In the first place, our socialist leftist have …
The Decapitation that Failed
by John Perry and Roger D. Harris / February 20th, 2026
The kidnapping of a sitting head of state marks a grave escalation in US-Venezuela relations. By seizing Venezuela’s constitutional president, Washington signaled both its disregard for international law and its confidence that it would face little immediate consequence.
The response within the US political establishment to the attack on Venezuela has been striking. Without the slightest cognitive dissonance over President Maduro’s violent abduction, Democrats call for “restoring democracy” – but not for returning Venezuela’s lawful president.
So why didn’t the imperialists simply assassinate him? From their perspective, it would have been cleaner and more cost-efficient. It would have been the DOGE thing to …
by Robert Jensen / February 20th, 2026
Wes Jackson’s career demonstrates that sometimes the race goes not to the swift but to the unconventional, that the battle can be won not only by the strong but by the stubborn. Straight-A students don’t always lead the way.
Jackson, one of the last half-century’s most innovative thinkers about regenerative agriculture, has won a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called “genius grant.” He also received the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “alternative Nobel Prize,” in addition to dozens of other awards from various philanthropic, academic and agricultural organizations. Life Magazine tagged him …
A visionary peace proposal
by Jan Oberg / February 20th, 2026
This is not another geopolitical commentary on the Arctic. It is a visionary peace proposal that save the region from militarised rivalry and ecological ruin. A blueprint for shared security, sustainable development, and human dignity — benefitting Greenland, the Arctic, and the rest of us.
I. Four Principles for a New Arctic Vision
The Arctic is often framed as a cold arena of rivalry — a place where great powers test each other’s resolve. But this worldview is outdated, unimaginative, and ultimately self‑defeating. The Arctic is not a vacuum waiting to …
by Nicolas J.S. Davies / February 20th, 2026
After some delays, the United States is dispatching a second aircraft-carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, from the Caribbean to the Middle East to join the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and threaten Iran.
This is the third Atlantic crossing for the Ford’s crew since it set sail from Norfolk, Virginia, in June 2025, and the second time its deployment has been extended, first to redeploy from the Middle East to the Caribbean, and now to redeploy back to the …
by Binoy Kampmark / February 20th, 2026
With a sex trafficking, flesh peddling empire of favours, logistics and the good time to be had by the powerful, the gigantic scale of Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal network continues to disturb. The least savoury digital library on the planet, available through the offices of the US Justice Department as the Epstein Library, is being combed through with its 3.5 million items comprising 180,000 images, 2000 videos, email and text correspondence, not to mention an assortment of miscellaneous material.
The combing process has come to displace the sheer gravity of Epstein’s dehumanising …
by Edward Curtin / February 19th, 2026
Whenever a “scandal” like the Epstein files dominates the news, we can be certain that it is meant as a distraction from something more sinister on the horizon.
The Epstein files have been in the hands of the F.B.I. for eight years or more. Then why have redacted files been released just recently? Cui bono?
And who is behind the release that did not occur over the course of the first Trump and the Biden administrations? Cui bono?
Does the genocide in Gaza and the U.S. proxy war …
by Shawgi Tell / February 19th, 2026
Charter schools are private entities. They are businesses first and foremost, not schools. Calling them “public” does not make them public in any way, shape, or form. They also remain private in character whether they are considered secular or religious, or non-profit or for-profit.
As private organizations, charter schools have no valid claim to public funds. Thus, for example, to assert that a secular charter school can receive public funds but a religious charter school cannot is to promote confusion.
The main reason charter schools …
by Michael K. Smith / February 19th, 2026
His life work was mobilizing members of an underclass that was presumed not to exist where the “American Dream” reigned. In his second run at the presidency in 1988, he found them by the millions.
His Rainbow Coalition spanned the whole of society: farmers, white unionists, feminists, Hispanics, students, environmentalists, and a full 95% of black people. The only ones definitively outside the tent were the owners of massive concentrations of capital and their servant professionals.
Jackson’s ideology was a refreshing departure from Cold War …
by Phil Rockstroh / February 19th, 2026
Part and parcel of the phenomenology of hyper-authoritarian Christians: The more they claim their affinity and psychical binding to Jesus Christ, the more pronounced their shadow half, that could be termed as demonic. In essence, individuals who insist they are light-bearers — who insist they are delivering good news to the world — …
Prohibitive Puffing
by Binoy Kampmark / February 18th, 2026
The cutting of pleasures, the trimming of delights and telling people how they can enjoy life, is the sort of thing that will be tolerated, up to a point. Otherwise liberal countries do suffer moral convulsions, be it about sex, drug taking, smoking and boozing. Regulations and laws are inevitably passed, much of it tolerated. But instead of addressing the vice in question, invigilating rule makers and bureaucratic needlers often end up creating something worse. That’s when questions start being asked.
The demon tobacco is particularly relevant here. While tobacco companies deserve their satanic reputations for ruining health, knowingly denying medical …
Culture, population, and quality of life
by Robert Malone / February 18th, 2026
Marriage is the cornerstone of a healthy society, and children are the conduit to the future.
Introduction
For the first time in modern American history, we are quietly entering an era in which having children is no longer the cultural default. The United States now sits well below replacement-level fertility, and each generation, absent immigration, will be smaller than the one before it. This fact is often discussed in purely economic terms: labor shortages, aging populations, entitlement systems, and GDP projections. But fertility is not merely a statistical problem or an …
by Ted Glick / February 18th, 2026
A quarter of the way through this century, there is no doubt that the USA and the world are in deep trouble. This is true for everyone, even the families of those most responsible for this state of affairs, the “Epstein class” and those supporting them. Given the fact that the burning of fossils fuels and nukes, the continued reliance on destructive war as a way of determining who runs individual countries, and the growing disparity between the billionaire/multi-multi-millionaire (MMM) class and those who must work for a living, often barely making it—these and related injustices are what must be …
by Mahboob A. Khawaja / February 18th, 2026
Paradox of Time and History and the Myth of New World Order
America was not the superpower and European empires were more nationalists and aggressive when the 1857 Munich Conference held its assembly. Their delusional visions and priorities fell victim to their own vices and ruins, the consequential First World War and 2nd World War. What have Europeans learned from the past to unfold a New World Order? Paranoid, suspicious of mutual interests, devoid of rational global vision of peace and co-existence, American and European leaders continue to search for glory and triumph by military supremacy to dominate the rest of …
by Tricontinental Asia / February 18th, 2026
As the people of Thailand go to the polls this February, voters are offered three competing visions of progress: one that builds power from the village up, one that critiques from the seminar room, and one that pays to keep the countryside quiet. Amid the ongoing border war with Cambodia, Thailand is a microcosm of the Global South’s political laboratory.
The Phue Thai Party (PTP), often known to outsiders as the ‘Red Shirt Party’, has defined Thai politics for over two decades but has somehow itself defied definition – a peasant-backed populist movement in alliance with urban capitalists; privatising state assets …
by Jan Oberg / February 17th, 2026
Mette Frederiksen’s world view and threat statements as well as her disturbing stereotyping of the Russian people are beyond normal and must be seen as a threat to Denmark’s and Europe’s future.
Note the Prime Minister’s discriminatory remarks about the Russian people, which I document in the Note below. As Prime Minister, she speaks in effect as a representative of the Danish people. Is this acceptable in today’s Denmark? And what are the Russian people supposed to think of Denmark? Politics simply cannot be conducted in this way, and someone …
The current threat of an attack by the US did not begin with any failure by Iran to negotiate. On the contrary, it began with the United States’ repudiation of negotiations that had already succeeded.
by Jeffrey Sachs / February 17th, 2026
Distinguished Members of the Security Council,
The President of the United States is issuing grave threats of force against the Islamic Republic of Iran if it does not accede to US demands. His actions risk a major regional war that would be devastating. Asked if he wanted regime change, he responded that it “seems like that would be the best thing that could happen.” When asked why a second US aircraft carrier has been sent to the region, President Trump answered “in case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it … if we need it, …
by J.S. O’Keefe / February 17th, 2026
He repeats it with patient conviction to anyone who will stand still long enough: you enter this world without a shirt on your back, and you depart the same way. If there is food on your plate three times a day and cloth against your skin, you have already received more than you deserve and ought to keep quiet. He delivers this as a law of nature, as if all other human cravings were character flaws.
People nod when he speaks. They say he must be a man of rare spirituality, an upright figure who moves among us as though he’s …
by Binoy Kampmark / February 17th, 2026
Killing political leaders – metaphorically and actually – often ushers in a silly season where the Mad Hatter presides over an imbecilic party. Amidst coups, defections, dethronements and confusions on the right of Australia politics, we see ugly topics return to the fore with ghastly predictability. The Liberals, the Nationals, and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, are narrowing, rather than broadening the issues of debate. A suspicious, anti-establishment populism, if we are to believe the astrologers in the ranks of psephologists and pollsters, has become vibrantly feral, and top of the list of concerns is immigration.
Incapable of even coming up …
