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Alex Saab’s April 6 hearing takes place in the setting of a mercurial world situation, where events in Ukraine may have indirect bearing on his case and on the larger US economic war against Venezuela.
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In a world where the US believes it makes the rules and the rest of humanity must follow its orders – what President Biden euphemistically calls the “rules-based order” – Washington has now even appropriated the prerogative to tell other countries who they may appoint as their ambassadors. As a consequence, Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab is fighting for his freedom before the 11th …

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Almagul Menlibayeva (Kazakhstan), Transoxiana Dreams, 2010.

On 16 March 2022, as Russia’s war on Ukraine entered its second month, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev warned his people that ‘uncertainty and turbulence in the world markets are growing, and production and trade chains are collapsing’. A week later, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released a brief study on the immense shock that will be felt around the world due to this war. ‘Soaring food …

This story is a combination of fiction and fact about a little known American socialist hero.

Obscenities occupy the annals of State behaviour, revolting reminders about what governments can do.  One of Australia’s most pronounced and undeniable obscenities is its continuing effort to gut and empty international refugee law of its relevant foundations.  Instead of being treated as a scandal, populists and governments the world over have expressed admiration, even envy: If they can get away with that, what might we do?

Along the way, Australia has also made its greatest contribution to deterring unwanted arrivals, creating the most ruthless, tropical detention network for individuals who, unblessed by paperwork, arrive by boat with the aid of people …

On 18 March 2022, I received a letter in my e-mail box from a certain Edward O’Reilly, an analyst for NewsGuard, a sort of international Decodex (which awards green or red stickers to news sites, i.e. justifies the censorship of such and such a site), linked to the CIA, NATO and the White House, concerning their analysis of the Donbass Insider site. After having sent them packing when they saw the obvious bias of this site, they insisted and sent me a week later a series of questions, which contradict each …

In a bizarre turn of events Tuesday, Russian and Ukrainian delegations taking part in peace negotiations in Istanbul appeared to have reached a breakthrough. But following a tepid response by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, contemptuously dismissing Russian peace overtures as nothing more than “delaying tactics” meant to “deceive people and deflect attention,” head of the Russian delegation Vladimir Medinsky walked back the earlier optimistic remarks, saying “a gradual military de-escalation does not necessarily mean an immediate ceasefire.”

Hours later on Tuesday evening, in what appeared to be …

Hewn in to human rights legislation borne of fascism’s decline in the mid twentieth century is a pool of glorious protections of civil liberties and press freedoms. It is deep, but it is not entirely immune from attack. Political opportunists undermine it in regular waves, repressing dissidence in their states and satellite states, even and especially in the West. Victims pile up, the criminalisation of journalism gathering steam, the propaganda to justify this awful retrenchment of civil liberties rising in the background. This is fascism resurgent.

Glasnost translates to ‘transparency’, and it …

The Totten glacier, East Antarctica. Photograph: Esmee van Wijk/Australian Antarctic Division
East Antarctica, often times referred to as “the final frontier of global warming,” is making headlines once again.

A few weeks ago East Antarctica’s temperatures soared by 50F to 90F above normal.  ((“Antarctica Crushes Records“, Dissident Voice, March 23, 2022.))

A couple of weeks later East Antarctica’s Conger Ice Shelf (1,200 sq km) completely collapsed and two additional calving events occurred at other glaciers, all in the same week.

This prompts an interesting dilemma.  According to David Spratt, research …

The impression given was that of a temple burgled by blaspheming reprobates.  But Australian politicians were having none of it.  A draft official document published online by an adviser to the Malaita Provincial Government of Premier Daniel Suidani suggested that China was considering some military presence in The Solomons.  In its current form, Beijing would be able to send police, armed police and military personnel.

The Canberra establishment got antsy: What were those wicked freedom-hating representatives of the Middle Kingdom up to?  This was, after all, part of the Australian backyard they were poking their noses in.  The response …

I have never doubted that apartheid – because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil – was going to bite the dust eventually.

— Desmond Tutu, 2007

Along with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Nelson Mandela ‘Madiba,’ and Martin Luther King, Jr., the world has lost one of the greatest souls of the last two centuries or any prior — the last of the rare iconic figures who truly, genuinely cared for and spoke up with courage and conviction for the oppressed, the downtrodden, the marginalized, the humiliated, and any and all abused humankind.

These years of …

On March 2 of this year the UN General Assembly met in an Emergency Session to pass a non-binding resolution condemning Russia’s February 24 intervention in Ukraine. ((The resolution “Deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine in violation of Article 2 (4) of the Charter.” (Article 2 (4) reads: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of …

In slightly hushed tones, of the kind so often uttered in workplaces, I conversed with a fellow civil servant the other day, one who could shed light on some of my past experiences. Over the years, we have met several times in passing, as we moved through the dank spaces of municipal life, and laughed about our mutual frustrations. Encounters of this kind are certainly not rare. In fact, one could even call our conversation ordinary or commonplace, if not for a single, defining moment.

In the half-light of dying florescence, as vending machines hummed and remnants of lunch enticed cockroaches …

The Internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we’re part of the medium. The scary thing is, we’ll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us.”
— Director Steven Spielberg, Minority Report

We have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by such …

In November 1784, Berlinischer Monatsschrift published an article titled “An answer to the question: what is enlightenment?” The article’s author was Immanuel Kant. “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from self-inflicted immaturity (Unmündigkeit),” he famously replied. And Kant’s stance on the question has yet to lose its charm. Nearly two hundred years later, Michel Foucault still asserts the question of “what is the Enlightenment?” and claims that modernity finds itself in a constant desire to know where we are right now. This long standing question is a historical staple that continues to preoccupy the present.

American author J.B. Burys, in The Idea …