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How they brought down Jeremy Corbyn

The Electronic Intifada   Asa Winstanley tells the story of how a hostile foreign government helped stop a socialist becoming Britain’s prime minister. 

West Africa is the latest testing ground for US Military Artificial Intelligence

In its preparation for great power competition, the US military is modernizing its artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques and testing them in West Africa.   by Scott Timcke   One striking feature of US military involvement in West Africa is the absence of an observable strategic vision for a desired end state. Nominally, US presence in the region’s multilayered conflicts revolves around building “security cooperation” with state partners to improve counterterrorism capabilities, ostensibly providing protection to communities that states cannot. Concurrently, the US military is typically the prime diplomatic entity for high-level bilateral engagements. The result is that the US military is propping up the public authority of weak states, albeit in an ad hoc fashion that lurches from crisis to crisis. Regardless of the reasons for US presence, there is hardly any deep public support for these operations; about 60% of US citizens do not view these kinds of conflicts as a

BlueAnon: Glenn Greenwald on why Russiagate disinformation never ends

The Grayzone   On the same day that the claim of "Russian bounties" in Afghanistan collapsed, another US intelligence-sourced, evidence-free claim was treated as vindication for conspiracy theories about Trump-Russia collusion.   Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Maté discuss the predictable demise of the "Russian bounties"; the Biden administration's new evidence-free assertion that Paul Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik passed Trump campaign polling data to Russia; and why major US media outlets continue to parrot Russiagate disinformation no matter how many times the "bombshells" turn into duds.

Biggest cover-up since Iraq exposed by journalist Aaron Maté

The Jimmy Dore Show   Jimmy Dore speaks with Aaron Maté about the evidence that comes out around the fact that there was no attack with chemical weapons in Douma, Syria.  

Biden said Trickle Down economics has never worked, but guess who else said that before and what happened

globinfo freexchange   Forget the fact that it took him about forty years to realize that one of the biggest neoliberal fairy tales is essentially the utter fraud. Not to mention that, all these years, he became part of the failed neoliberal system. That, he was faithfully following orders from the wealthy donors,  efficiently sustaining this utter fraud and other neoliberal deceptive policies, to protect their interests.   "Uncle Joe" suddenly discovered that Trickle Down economics has never worked and made the statement to a joint session of US Congress as if he had discovered an earth-like planet with a technologically advanced civilization.   This is one of the most suitable cases for someone to respond with the phrase: "No shit, Sherlock". Yet, the weirdness of this parody doesn't end here. It's even funnier the fact that someone else before "Uncle Joe" made this great "discovery". And it took another big crisis to realize it (or ad

How Bill Gates impeded global access to Covid vaccines

Through his hallowed foundation, the world’s de facto public health czar has been a stalwart defender of monopoly medicine.  by Alexander Zaitchik Part 1 - Advocates for pooling and open science confronted the possibility they’d been outmatched and outmaneuvered by the most powerful man in global public health On February 11, 2020, public health and infectious disease experts gathered by the hundreds at the World Health Organization’s Geneva mothership. The official pronouncement of a pandemic was still a month out, but the agency’s international brain trust knew enough to be worried. Burdened by a sense of borrowed time, they spent two days furiously sketching an “R&D Blueprint” in preparation for a world upended by the virus then known as 2019-nCoV. The resulting document summarized the state of coronavirus research and proposed ways to accelerate the development of diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines. The underlying premise was that the world would unite against the virus. The

Illiberal Conservatism Comes to Greece

Under cover of the pandemic, Greece’s right-wing government has passed a slew of new measures to benefit the wealthy at the expense of workers, while massively expanding police powers. On the back of a decade of austerity, the latest laws are set to transform the country into a client state and playground for foreign tourists.   by Matthaios Tsimitakis/Mihalis Panayiotakis    Part 1 When New Democracy, Greece’s conservative ruling party, won the July 2019 elections following a decade-long austerity crisis, it did so on a ticket promising tax relief, growth, law and order, and nationalism, but also on reassurances of social inclusion. Its leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a Harvard-educated scion of one of Greece’s most prominent political families, promised to lead Greece out of the “stagnation” of the Syriza years, deal with the refugee crisis, assert Greece’s position on the international stage, and introduce technocratic governance following five years of “populist mismanagement.” Due to

From RussiaGate to UkraineGate: Route to Apocalypse

Corruption and supposed efforts to reduce it have become a neoconservative weapon of choice with which to operate the controls on the funding sluice gates to acolytes of the U.S.-led international neoconservative empire.   by Oliver Boyd-Barrett   Part 3 - The 2014 Ukraine coup Trump had been roundly castigated, and impeached, for pressurizing a new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Trump’s likely rival, Joe Biden, for the 2020 election, in return for expediting U.S. arms support to Ukraine in its struggle against separatist republics of eastern Ukraine (the Donbass). Whatever its legality, Trump’s behavior certainly did not favor Russia. It could be argued that there was a stronger actual tie between Ukraine and President Biden than ever existed between former President Trump and Russia. Trump was unable even to interest Moscow or Russian President Vladimir Putin in a proposal for a Moscow Trump Tower. Biden left a much deeper impression on Ukraine.  In 2014 the

Will Lula make a comeback? Global imperialists and resource extractors shudder at the prospect

With the potential comeback of Lula da Silva, Brazil may once again be on a path away from fascism and one that puts economic justice and anti-imperialism first.   by Alan Macleod   Part 5 - Impact, political and economic If Lula and the Workers’ Party do come back to power, it seems likely that they will stymie many U.S. foreign policy goals, including isolating Venezuela, China and Russia. Yet Bolsonaro has proven so incompetent a leader and manager that both Ellner and Cannon believe that many in Washington will at least attempt to work with Lula, trying to move him to a more moderate position. However, the currently deeply divided political climate in Brazil does not bode well for centrists, as Ellner explained:                               Most likely, the 2022 elections will be polarizing, which means that more ‘moderate’ candidates will be shunted aside. In that case, it is unlikely that the Washington establishment will distance itself much from Bolsonaro or manifest any sympa

Biden’s claim to be ending America’s longest war misleading

Special Forces, Pentagon Contractors and Intelligence Operatives Will Remain   by Jeremy Kuzmarov  Part 2 - Mercenaries R Us The meaninglessness of President Biden’s announcement becomes apparent when we consider that the Pentagon employs more than seven contractors for every serviceman or woman in Afghanistan; an increase of one contractor for every serviceman or woman a decade ago. As of January, more than 18,000 contractors remained in Afghanistan, according to a Defense Department report, when official troop totals had been reduced to 2,500. These totals reflect the U.S. government’s strategy of outsourcing war to the benefit of private mercenary corporations, and as a means of distancing the war from the public and averting dissent, since relatively few Americans are directly impacted by it. Most of the mercenaries are ex-military veterans, though a percentage are third-country nationals who are paid meager wages to perform menial duties for the military. One of the biggest mercen