Latest articles
A Brief Comment on Rare Earths, China and U.S. imperialism
by Gary Olson / October 31st, 2025
“Control over rare earth elements … is a central determinant of geopolitical power and industrial sovereignty in the 21st century.”
— Dr. Kalim Siddiqui[1]
As part of US-China trade talks, we are hearing a great deal about China’s near-total domination over rare earth elements, or REES. Beijing controls extraction, refining, and the global supply chains — over 70% of production, 85-90 % of refining, and 92% of the global output in processing.
These 17 elements on the periodic table are virtually ubiquitous in everything from Tomahawk missiles, high-end smartphones, and lasers to submarines, electric motors, and satellites. Just one example: A …
by Philip A. Farruggio / October 30th, 2025
With his storm troopers… oops, his ICEMEN, rambling into a town like a pack of ghosts, replete with no faces. With his navy , My **** navy, blowing up speedboats outside a sovereign nation (Venezuela) with no evidence of drug dealing or terrorism. With his Congress shutting down so the Big Man can keep the truth regarding Jeffrey Epstein and he and his Super Rich buddies from us. With his ‘Junior partner’ Benjamin Netanyahu getting the go ahead to continue the genocide in Gaza, while he boasts of developing another Riviera …
by Zeeshan Nasir / October 30th, 2025
A view of the Gwadar port of Pakistan Photo: VCG
While the rest of Pakistan’s major cities were drenched in monsoon rains, a group of children stood hand in hand and chorused this in unison in Gwadar’s New Tobagh Ward near Koh-a-Bun Ward:
“Pani Dho, bijli dho, warna Kursi Chor Dho.” ( Give us water, give us electricity, or vacate the chair).
As Gwadar and its surrounding villages and towns are confronting an escalated water crisis, protests — and this slogan to ask for water — have become common across the city. Just a …
by RT / October 30th, 2025
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited a military hospital in Moscow on Wednesday, meeting servicemen wounded in the Ukraine conflict. The president spoke about the frontline situation, namely the encirclement of Kiev’s troops in two critical locations, as well as the testing of new cutting-edge nuclear-powered weaponry, including the unlimited-range Burevestnik cruise missile and the massive Poseidon underwater drone.
Here are the key takeaways from Putin’s speech:
Moscow ready for pause in fighting
The frontline situation has been developing
The president floated the idea of briefly pausing fighting in the two locations to allow Western and Ukrainian journalists in. The proposal has already been discussed …
by Julian Cola / October 30th, 2025
A young man sports a Tupac (2Pac) Shakur t-shirt in Parque Carolina (Quito, Ecuador) Photo: Julian Cola
Cruising the streets of Quito, it’s my distinct impression that the top five music artists or groups, their name or image printed on fans’ t-shirts, are Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Black Sabbath, Guns N’ Roses, and Tupac (2Pac) Shakur. The order given is a random selection. No detailed survey indicates which artist stands first to fifth in terms of popularity and groups like …
by Phil Rockstroh / October 29th, 2025
Admiral Alvin Halsey resigned his post as the Pentagon’s Southern Commander after a fraught meeting with Pete Hegseth involving the US military’s unconstitutional attacks on Venezuelan fishing boats. Since then, the Trump administration has shown ever increasing signs of wanting to wage war on Venezuela.
Picture and think this through: Seagoing US vessels, leaving US ports, carrying cargo far more deadly than cocaine e.g., weapons bound for genocide-crazed Israel.
Imagine: If a foreign power began attacking said vessels claiming they were engaged in transporting deadly substances. The rage for blood vengeance would deafen …
by Stuart Littlewood / October 29th, 2025
Shameful US legislation commits to ensuring Israel always has superiority in weapons, technology, training, command and control, and intelligence over its neighbours.
It’s time everyone knew why the US is joined at the hip with a loathsome genocidal ethnocracy like Israel whose stated aim is domination of the Holy Land and beyond.
In 2008, Congress enacted legislation requiring that US arms sales to any country in the Middle East other than Israel must not adversely affect Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). This ensures the apartheid state always has the upper hand over it …
by Zeeshan Nasir / October 29th, 2025
Nako Dost Muhammad (image on left) had never heard the hum of a fan. Living in a village named Kolahu in Tump, a tehsil in district Kech tucked between dusty hills and near the edge of the Iranian border, Nako’s life has been cloaked in darkness.
Since 2016, the electricity connections in their village had been completely cut off, making them rely on the dim, choking flame of a kerosene lamp. He remembers a night when his grandson was bitten by a scorpion. There was no proper light to see where the …
by J.S. O’Keefe / October 29th, 2025
Beneath the town’s ancient stones, there is a tunnel holding secrets – ideas probably deemed outdated and, quite possibly, against the law. But superstitions and legends survive, morph into daydreams, false hopes. The universe weighs heavy on man’s heart.
deep under the feet of upright folks
the old tunnel coils dark and bold
We descend gingerly feeling our steps, lured by the siren calls of mystery. Carved on the tunnel walls are messages from the past, some religious, others are misquotes from wayward philosophers. A few simple notes, too. One stands out written in large white letters: STAY HERE. BE FREE.
stay in here …
Carol Van Strum, 83, is still kicking in Siuslaw Forest, with donkeys, dog, chickens and a sky that opens up after dumping that rainforest serving rain
by Paul Haeder / October 28th, 2025
The Unraveling Lie: Dialectics, Empire, and the Palestinian Truth
by Amel-Ba’al / October 28th, 2025
Intro: The following is a statement from a U.S. war criminal, Harry S. Truman, who authorized the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, revealing the foundational logic of American complicity in the Nakba:
I had been to Potsdam and I’d seen some of the places where the Jews had been slaughtered by the Nazis. Six million Jews were killed outright—men, women, and children—by the Nazis, and it was my hope that they would …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 28th, 2025
The October 20 performance saw few transgressions and many feats of compliance. As a guest in the White House, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in no mood to be combative, and US President Donald Trump was accommodating. There was, however, an odd nervous glance shot at the host at various points.
The latest turn of events from the perspective of those believing in Australian sovereignty, pitifully withered as it is, remains dark. In an attempt to seize a share of a market currently dominated by China, Albanese has willingly placed Australia’s rare earths and critical minerals at the disposal of …
by Michael K. Smith / October 28th, 2025
The disease gets worse and worse every year, and the only remedy that will have permanent effect is to abolish private ownership of industry and production for profit, and substitute public ownership with production for use.
— Upton Sinclair, “Production For Use” in New Deal Thought, 1933, edited by Howard Zinn
Donald Trump, after talking with the San Francisco mayor and wealthy business leaders in the Bay Area, has at least temporarily backed off from unleashing a Chicago-style ICE spectacle there.
This is but the latest un-fascist display by the Orange “Hitler,” who couldn’t …
by Kim Petersen / October 27th, 2025
Donald Trump: “If I were president, and I say this, I will end that war in one day. It’ll take 24 hours. I know Zelenskyy well; I know Putin well. I would get that ended in a period…
Interviewer interrupts: “You can broker that deal?”
Donald Trump: “100 per cent. It would be easy; that deal would be easy…. but I would get that deal done within 24 hours that war has to be stopped…
— “Trump says he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours if he were president,” 4 May 2023
Trump has been the US president in …
A Review
by Edward Curtin / October 27th, 2025
To weave a magnificent tapestry like the one James W. Douglass has created with Martyrs to the Unspeakable: The Assassinations of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK takes a steady hand, a hopeful heart, and a steadfast dedication to seeking truth and telling it through factually based and interwoven stories.
Because of its brilliant complexity and documented details, it is difficult to review, but I will say at the outset that it is a masterpiece, the culmination of Douglass’s life of writing about and fighting for peace and justice for our human family.
It is a book that could only be written …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 27th, 2025
We really have reached the crossroads, where such matters as having coitus with an artificial intelligence platform has become not merely a thing, but the thing. In time, mutually consenting adults may well become outlaws against the machine order of things, something rather befitting the script of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. (Huxley came to rue missed opportunities on delving into various technological implications on that score.) Till that happens, AI platforms are becoming mirrors of validation, offering their human users not so much sagacious counsel than the exact material they would like to hear.
In April this year, OpenAI …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / October 27th, 2025
On October 4th, 2025, in an interview with Axios, President Trump stressed that one of the main goals behind his Gaza plan was to restore Israel’s international standing. “Bibi took it very far and Israel lost a lot of support in the world,” Trump said. “Now I am gonna get all that support back.”
Under Trump’s plan, a supposed ceasefire took effect on October 10th. But Israel only withdrew from less than half of …
by Stuart Littlewood / October 27th, 2025
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes” (attributed to Mark Twain). [A misattribution. — DV ed]
Israel’s image is now so badly damaged that it is desperately stepping up its ‘hasbara’ (meaning propaganda and disinformation) programme on all channels, especially social media. In the past they’ve paid an army of students to push their lying texts. Now they’re hiring even more scribblers to poison our media channels.
It’s no surprise that Israel’s lie machine has an instruction manual for those it recruits into its vile business including the stooges they’ve positioned at …
“I don’t think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person.” — James Hillman
by Phil Rockstroh / October 27th, 2025
You have to see that the buildings are anorexic, you have to see that the language is schizogenic, that “normalcy” is manic, and medicine and business are paranoid.
— James Hillman, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling
The pain incurred by bracing awareness is crucial here:
The wound can act as a womb birthing art or will fester giving birth to the societal monster known in modernity as fascism. The latter comes into being as a result of the angst and anger created by …
by Ted Glick / October 27th, 2025
“I think we can do a lot, if a critical mass of organizations steps forward and develops a plan to go public and visible calling out the undemocratic and dangerous reality of what the Supreme Court majority is doing, particularly these shadowy, opaque, undemocratic ‘emergency’ decisions. Just like we have had and will be having, on October 18, successful mass actions of millions in the streets around the country calling for No Kings, worker justice, women’s rights, climate justice, racial justice and more, it is time for such a nationally coordinated …
(Part 1)
by John Rachel / October 27th, 2025
No Kings! YES! Of course!
That’s what inspired American independence in the first place.
But autocracy takes many shapes.
How about No Oligarchs? Or No Deep State? No Police State? No Mass Surveillance? No Compromised Politicians? No Corrupt Judiciary?
There was much enthusiasm and excitement. And talk of channeling that energy into constructive action. There would be regular Calls to Action sent across social media platforms and by direct email.
“Call your Senator today and urge …”
“Call your Representative today and object to …”
“Go to your congressman’s local office and …”
What? Is this a joke?
Let me …
by Tim Young / October 27th, 2025
For the past few weeks the Trump administration has intensified its long-standing aggression against Venezuela by deploying warships (including a nuclear submarine) in the Caribbean Sea in a purported anti-narcotics operation. US forces have carried out at least five incidents of strikes on boats in Venezuelan waters to date, killing 37 people. Trump’s latest move has been to authorise the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela.
President Nicolas Maduro, as Venezuela’s current leader, has been a focus of this …
Real peace demands Palestinian statehood, Ukrainian neutrality and the courage to defy the war lobby
by Jeffrey Sachs and Sybil Fares / October 26th, 2025
United States President Donald Trump styles himself as a peacemaker. In his rhetoric, he claims credit for his efforts to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Yet beneath the grandstanding lies an absence of substance, at least to date.
The problem is not Trump’s lack of effort, but his lack of proper concepts. Trump confuses “peace” with “ceasefires,” which sooner or later revert to war (typically sooner). In fact, American presidents from Lyndon Johnson onward have been subservient to the military-industrial complex, which profits from endless war. Trump is merely following in that line by avoiding a genuine resolution to …
by Gideon Polya / October 26th, 2025
The core ethos of decent Humanity is Kindness and Truth but this is grossly violated by the racism and mendacity of US-, UK-, Apartheid Israel- and Zionist-perverted and US lackey Australia. War is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate in racism. Australia has been involved in all 1950 onwards US Asian Wars, atrocities associated with 40 million Asian “deaths from violence and deprivation” (Google this phrase), with the Right-Far Right Coalition (presently in Opposition) involved in all and Centre-Right Labor (presently in Government) being involved in all except for the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. Australia ignores …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 25th, 2025
The wish to be credulous is central to the fraudulent scheme. The one playing the fraud can always rely on some connivance and collaboration from the tricked and the gulled. Many an art curator is bound to turn scarlet at the prospect that their expertise was utterly subverted by a counterfeiter of Picasso and Matisse. The Hungarian painter Elmyr de Hory, immortalized in Orson Welles’s F for Fake, is but one such example. Claiming to be a dispossessed aristocrat with a lucrative stash of originals, he could whip up a Matisse in a matter of minutes. The rest was …
by Heather Stroud / October 25th, 2025
In proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, along with criminalizing many of those who have challenged this government policy decision, the British Government has opened itself up to criticism and ridicule. In the past few months alone, there have been over 2,000 politically motivated arrests, mostly of elderly people who have held up placards saying that they ‘Oppose Genocide’ and ‘Support Palestine Action’. Lawyers, journalists, and doctors caught up in this dragnet of invented criminality for expressing views in support of Palestine have faced arrests and interrogation under counterterrorism laws. Particularly absurd was the arrest of someone for wearing …
by Eric Walberg / October 25th, 2025
Israel destroyed Iran’s press center in June.
Don’t be fooled by Trump’s words on “Gaza peace”, his peace gesture, and promises of international aid
It has been two years since the unequal war of the Zionist regime against the defenseless and resilient people of Gaza. We are now at the most sensitive and turning point in world history. The major media under the control of the Zionists and the United States are seeking to divert public attention towards US President Donald Trump’s alleged peace in …
Gen Z-led uprisings across the Global South point to long-term socioeconomic and environmental crises caused by neoliberalism. Yet they have often been coopted by entrenched social classes. Can their energy be channelled towards progressive ends?
by Vijay Prashad / October 24th, 2025
Guillermo Grebe (Chile), Muro sagrado de la dignidad (Sacred Wall of Dignity), 2021.
The walls of Santiago, Chile – the city where I live – are marked with faded graffiti from the estallido social (social uprising) of 2019. Years later, these slogans continue to spill onto the sidewalks, from Nos quitaron tanto que nos quitaron hasta el miedo (they took so much from us that they even took away our fear) to No son 30 pesos, son 30 años (it’s …
by David Swanson / October 24th, 2025
Kathryn Bigelow once worked with the CIA to make a movie widely criticized for dishonestly promoting torture and glorifying killing (Zero Dark Thirty). (She has also explicitly advocated for war-making.) Now she has made a movie highlighting the danger of nuclear apocalypse (A House of Dynamite). I know which film I would prefer for you to see. It’s on Netflix.
Netflix has a show called The Diplomat that supports false flag attacks, destructive fossil fuel extraction, government secrecy, the F-35, …
by Thomas C. Mountain / October 23rd, 2025
I have been informed by the leadership of what might best be described as the “black consciousness movement” of Azania (South Africa) that a formal call to include Israel in the “cultural boycott” of South Africa will be issued from inside South Africa within the next few weeks.
The Black Consciousness Movement was started under the leadership of Steve Biko (whose life and murder by the Pretoria regime was the basis for the film “Cry Freedom”) and was the first organization to call for a cultural boycott of South Africa.
This call, sent out especially to pop musical groups, eventually generated the …
