Discussions of artificial intelligence typically begin with the question, What happens when the machines take our jobs? For thousands of years, work has been the means by which we fed our families, earned our place in society, and gave structure to our lives. We have come to equate paid employment with identity.
That presumption may soon be obsolete.
When Elon Musk proposed replacing Universal Basic Income with what he calls …
Orientation Why bother reading and writing if you aren’t paid to do it?
I am the co-founder and co-organizer of the website Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalismwith Barbara MacLean. We have been in existence since 2014 and have slowly built up and expanded our website to include a presence on Facebook (17,000 followers) and Twitter 20,000 followers. As part of my work for our site, I write 15-page articles every two weeks and they are published regularly in Countercurrents, Dissident Voice, The Greanville Post and OpED News. Recently, a comrade expressed disbelief …
In a time of genocide, Dwayne Booth, AKA Mr. Fish, lets creative expression explore the insanity of our times -- democrats, republicans, POTUS X and POTUS Y all cheering mass murder
by Paul Haeder / July 17th, 2026
The kill switch for us all is, well, calling them all warmongers, but the true sword we are falling on now in large numbers across Western Uncivilized Civilization is, well, From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.
Shoot, what would Mr. Fish do with this concept:
A Good IDF is a Dead IDF?
A Good Israeli Jew Backing the Genocide is a Dead Israel Jew Backing the Genocide?
Initially, on July 15, what was thought to be the most important vote of the day was the Massie/Khanna amendment which would have deleted $3.3 Billion from the US annual gift to Israel. What was unexpected was Congress seizing the opportunity to sneak through a vote on the $1.15 Trillion NDAA with its objectionable Section 224 merger of integrating the nation of Israel within the US Federal government.
In other words, there was a pre-planned secretive agenda to adopt the NDAA including the Israel merger without informing or alerting the public or to arouse citizen opposition.
Charter schools are the main form of school privatization in the United States. As is evident in many of the ideas and statements put forward by charter school “pioneers” 35 years ago,1 charter schools surfaced as a top-down neoliberal project. They did not start out as a public good and have never been a grass-roots phenomenon. Charter schools were about privatization from the start. They did not begin as a noble pro-social project that got “hijacked” by privatizers “along the way.”
Importantly, simply being called public or receiving public …
Every time the United States government tries to slow China’s rise, it backfires into long-term success for China. In 2019, the US government blacklisted Huawei, with the specific goal of strangling China’s largest tech company. But Huawei came back stronger than ever, by building its own chips, its own operating system, its own AI ecosystem, and today operates in over 170 countries, serving over 3 billion people worldwide.
In 2022, the US government banned the export of Nvidia’s most advanced AI microchips in an effort to hopefully “win” the AI race. But just two years later, Chinese developers shocked Silicon Valley …
Beijing and its president, Xi Jinping, are viewed more positively than Washington for the first time in nearly 20 years of tracking public opinion, Pew Research says
Nguyễn Đỗ Cung (Vietnam), Uncle Ho visiting the Gia Lam machinery factory, 1960.
On 30 April 1975, Vietnamese communist forces won a great victory in the war of resistance against United States imperialism. Fifty-one years later, the celebration of the liberation of Vietnam and the reunification of our people remains one of the most important days in our calendar – not only for what it commemorates, but for what it continues to teach us.
From 1965 to 1972, the US sent nearly three million troops to Vietnam. …
Fascism and the criminalization of free speech recently took one small step for man but one giant leap for mankind. And this time it wasn’t done by Trump but by neo-liberals. In Germany three bloggers with a small website were arrested for posting RT news. Yet this is not just uniquely German lunacy. As Reason reported:
Last week, the European Union’s supreme court ruled that German authorities can prosecute them for reposting clips from RT, a channel funded by the Russian government.
With its conventional naval forces stretched thin by persistent crises in the Middle East, Washington is hastily dispatching a handful of small Coast Guard cutters to the Western Pacific. This move is a textbook attempt at a “pepper-sprinkling” style of distributed deployment across a vast maritime theater. Will it unfold as the US wishes?
According to a Wednesday report from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), six US Coast Guard (USCG) fast-response cutters previously stationed in the Middle East are now being rerouted to …
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Some say “don’t speak ill of the dead,” but I say “when better?” In fact, it’s of the utmost importance that we speak ill of war criminals when they’re dead, alive, or in between.
Senator Lindsey Graham was one of the most vile, repulsive people to ever live. His defining characteristic was that he wanted the whole world to be as unhappy as he was. He wanted as many people to die or be impoverished or imprisoned as possible. He showed all the signs of a sociopath, as I …
Why are they so afraid? The Trump administration, pathologically obsessed about the exaggerated reach of the International Criminal Court, have decided to take to the barricades. In a July 13 media note released by a spokesperson for the US State Department, something akin to a declaration of war was made against the Hague-based tribunal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was getting bolshie about it, announcing “a sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by [the court] to US sovereignty.” The effort promises to “feature a whole-of-government response to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate, target American servicemen …
In June 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wrote to Republican Representative Marlin Stutzman of California, saying that “the time has now arrived [for Israel] to move from aid recipient to partner” with the United States. Yesterday, on Fox News, Netanyahu again repeated the proposal to move “from aid to partnership“.
What Netanyahu proclaims is at the core of the proposed “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative”, which has been included in a section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that seeks to push the Pentagon budget to $1.5 trillion in …
This month marks the 25th anniversary of Media Lens. Still in short trousers, we sent our first media alert to a handful of readers on 9 July 2001.
For a long time, our alerts focused on challenging journalists directly by email, publishing their responses, and encouraging readers to politely respond with their own views. One of the most positive exchanges involved the BBC’s diplomatic editor Paul Adams. From his news reports, we had always gotten the impression that Adams was a decent, amiable …
I don’t let polls determine my beliefs or actions, but when it comes to US elections, my experience is that, generally speaking, it is important to follow them. Although some polls are significantly non-objective with a decided tilt one way or the other, most of the ones that haven’t popped up during this Trump era, which are clearly Republican-leaning, are pretty objective.
What do recent polls say about macro political trends in the USA, and what does it look like with about 3 ½ months until the November 3 Big Election Day?
Here are the main takeaways from my …
With the Iran-US ceasefire all but retired to the infirmary of international politics, Washington has conducted air strikes on Iran for a third straight night. On early July 14, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported explosions in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas and six explosions on Kish Island, with further blasts on Qeshm Island.
Prior to those strikes, President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that, “We’re attacking them tonight, and we’re taking out all their capability for anything having to do with the Strait of Hormuz”. That bit of wishful thinking was also accompanied by …
“Why the Vetting of Graham Platner Failed,” read a July 2026 New York Magazine headline. The rapid ascent of political outsider Graham Platner to Democratic Party nominee for the Maine Senate seat, and his subsequent campaign suspension following sexual assault allegations by Jenny Racicot and Lyndsey Fifield, has been widely used by the media to criticize the democratic socialists who backed him. In fact, mainstream news narratives have framed democratic socialists as naive, unqualified political actors whose failure to properly vet candidates threatens to derail the entire Democratic Party. The New York Times called Platner’s campaign “messy, …
June 24 marked the start of the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, the world’s largest international naval war games. Led by the U.S., the military exercises bring together 31 countries and include more than 25,000 personnel, 40 surface ships, 5 submarines, and 140 aircraft. The event, which will run until July 31, marks the newest escalation of U.S. preparations for war on China, further militarizing the Pacific and normalizing the prospect of conflict through increasingly large-scale exercises and an ever-expanding web of alliances and military bases.
At the same time, the U.S. and partner nations kicked off the ten-day …
Much of the time, it seems as if the war machine runs on autopilot. Indeed, the United States has been engaged in warfare for almost the entirety of our 250-year history. It feels overwhelming to most people to attempt to intervene, yet we are all involved, as our tax dollars feed endless wars, interventions, and weapons transfers fueling violent conflict around the world (and at home, as evidenced by the murders of US citizens by ICE). So, intervene we must, if we want our government to pursue more productive, life-affirming policies and priorities.
This week, the Senate will vote …
In recent years, tensions in the South China Sea have strained China-Philippines relations. This year, despite encouraging diplomatic and economic developments, experts say security frictions continue. CGTN reporter Chen Yuan looks at what is standing in the way of a more stable bilateral relationship.
History is not so much past as vigorously present, often a scab to be irritated in fitful anger, or a romantic affectation to be cherished. When it comes to controlling trade and establishing new routes, this is particularly apt. The Hejaz Railway project, seemingly long past, is now being dusted down. In a June 9 memorandum of understanding signed by Türkiye and Saudi Arabia, a railway line is envisaged to traverse Jordan and Syria, creating a strategic logistics artery linking the Gulf states to Europe.
According to a media release from the Saudi Press Agency, the agreement will focus “on …
It was a distasteful affair, but Australian politicians have become accustomed to those toadying practices that accompany capitulations to power. On his visit to Melbourne, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was, as he had been on a previous trip, greeted by an evangelical atmosphere unseen and, it should be said, needless for other political leaders. Indian Australians mean votes for the politicians in Canberra; an Indian economy, strappingly moving ahead, means returns: education, services, and as became so clear on this Modi sojourn, uranium.
On July 9, Australian and Indian governments minted an administrative arrangement permitting the sale of Australian …
Here is a list of the things Britain's incoming prime minister is obligated to do to avoid collusion in Israel's genocide, according to an International Court of Justice ruling. Will he do any of it?
by Jonathan Cook / July 11th, 2026
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 …
