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It is a point verging on the trite: an arms corporation suspected of engaging in corrupt practices, spoiling dignitaries and officials and undermining the body politic.  But one such corporation is France’s Thales defence group, which saw raids on their offices in France, the Netherlands and Spain on June 26 and June 28.  The prosecutors are keen to pursue charges ranging from standard corruption and attempts to influence foreign officials to instances of criminal association and money laundering.

It is clear in this that even the French republic, despite having a narcotics grade addiction to the international arms industry, thought …

July 29, 2024, Caracas, Venezuela.  Shortly before midnight, the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, announced the re-election of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. Like the proverbial boy who cried wolf, the US-backed and funded opposition cried fraud.

Maduro won with 51.2% of the vote. His nearest rival, the US-backed candidate Edmundo Gonzalez trailed by 7%.

While the US corporate press refers to the “opposition” as if it were a unified bloc, eight other names appeared on the ballot. Unlike the US, where most of the electorate is polarized around two …

There’s no mention of their duty to the people in the oath of office that members of Congress take. It says they will support and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Maybe, in some regard, defending the Constitution would mean doing their job: representing the people that elected them. But today, the architect of the genocide against the Palestinian people walked in and out of the “people’s house” to a standing ovation. He was given more time with our lawmakers than any of us will ever get in …

Another entertainingly corrupt sporting event has just started in Paris, opening with a barge packed ceremony on the Seine.  Thousands of simpering commentators, paid-up media gawkers and bored influencers have been ready with their computers, phones and confected dreams.  As always, the Olympics throws up the question about how far the host city has managed to come through on the issue of facilities, infrastructure and organisation.  Few would have doubted that Paris has the facilities, but there was always going to be grumbling about the choice of opening, mode of execution and, most importantly, the cost both financial and social.

For …

Rwanda has become a curiosity as an African state.  The mere mention of its name tugs the memory: colonial tragedy, ethnic violence, genocide.  Then comes stable rule, for the most part.  It is assured, iron fisted, and corporate.  Since being elected in April 2000, the country has known one leader.

Paul Kagame has kept matters running as smoothly much like a well-oiled corporate machine, aided by his Rwandan Patriotic Front.  At times, he treats his country as such.  His model of economic inspiration is no less the city state of authoritarian Singapore, while such think tanks as the Heritage Foundation have …

One of the defining characteristics of the current crisis is the speed at which contradictory social, political and ideological dynamics can change with contradictions shifting from primary to secondary, antagonistic to non-antagonist and conflicts of interests, as well as struggles among the capitalist oligarchy producing new intra-bourgeois class alignments.

The replacement of Joe Biden as the presidential nominee of the Democrat party was a dramatic demonstration that the lords of capital are the only segment of the U.S. population with real agency. The fact that select oligarchs, in this case, the cabal that actually runs the Democrat party, can remove …

Don’t be fooled. The ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 July that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is unlawful is earth-shattering. Israel is a rogue state, according to the world’s highest court.

For that reason, the judgment will be studiously ignored by the cabal of western states and their medias that for decades have so successfully run cover for Israel.

Doubters need only watch the reception Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives during his visit to the United States this week.

Even though he is currently being …

Among the subjects of instruction in schools are the local language, spoken and written; the techniques of computation, arithmetic and algebra or geometry; the principles of the physical world, chemistry and physics; and the story of the country in which the school is located—unless it is a colony in which case the story of the country that rules it. That story and its episodes is what is commonly known as history. Sometimes it is taught generally. At some point a distinction may be made between local or national history and the …

In my youth I studied for many years as a classically trained oboist, and one day during the Yeltsin years whilst watching the squirrels in Washington Square Park it suddenly dawned on me that the stereotype of the classical musician being an elitist snob had an element of truth to it, and that there was something fundamentally wrong about the fact that most of us lived in a bubble utterly indifferent to catastrophic political and socio-economic problems. This revelation inculcated me with an understanding that the artist has a moral obligation to not turn away in the face of injustice, …

Palestinians inspect the damage following a raid by Israeli forces in the Tulkarm refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank on 23 July ( Mohammed Nasser APA images)
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority held a secret meeting with American and Israeli officials in Tel Aviv earlier this month to conspire on “day after” plans in Gaza that would involve the collaborative body in reopening the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

“Egypt wants personnel from the Palestinian Authority to operate the crossing,” Axios reported. The crossing, when …

Just when I thought things could not possibly get more shockingly totalitarian in New Normal Germany, where I’m being prosecuted in criminal court (for the second time) for tweeting, the German authorities have gone and surprised me again. No, they haven’t established an actual Nazi-style People’s Court (pictured above) yet, and, of course, there is absolutely no similarity between the current German justice system, which is totally fair and democratic and a paragon of impartial justice and the rule of law, and The People’s Court of Berlin during the Nazi …

How do “we” discern what, where, why, and how events are transpiring?

If you want to get ahead in Washington, devise the most dangerous, reckless, merciless and destructive plan for US world domination. If it kills millions of people (especially if they are mostly women and children), you will be called a bold strategist. If tens of millions more become refugees, it will be even more impressive. If you find a way to use nuclear weapons that would otherwise be gathering dust, you will be hailed as brilliant. Such is the nature of proposals for dealing with Russia, China and Iran, not to mention smaller nations like Cuba, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, North …

The citizens of India have a problem. In what the media like to call ‘the world’s biggest democracy’, there is a serious, proven conflict of interest among officials in the areas of science, agriculture and agricultural research that results in privileging the needs of powerful private interests ahead of farmers and ordinary people.

This has been a longstanding concern. In 2013, for instance, prominent campaigner and environmentalist Aruna Rodrigues said:

The Ministry of Agriculture has handed Monsanto and the industry access to our agri-research public institutions, placing them in a position to seriously influence agri-policy in India. …

(Full article …)

In a much-awaited case brought forth by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (Drummond v. Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board), the Oklahoma State Supreme Court ruled 6-2 on June 25, 2024, that St. Isidore of Seville Catholic K-12 Virtual Charter School is unconstitutional and cannot open and enroll students in Fall 2024.

The online religious charter school is sectarian and not permitted to receive any public funding, said the court. Writing for the majority, Justice James Winchester said that, “the contract between the state board and St. Isidore violates the Oklahoma Constitution, the Oklahoma Charter Schools Act and the …