Control over and the effective use of the online space has proven crucial over the past two US election cycles, with a groundswell of pro-Trump memes helping propel the candidate to victory in 2016, and unprecedented censorship of a damaging story about Hunter Biden by tech companies aiding Joe Biden in his quest for the White House in 2020.

Former first lady, secretary of state and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has called on social media companies to ramp up the moderation and monitoring of content on their platforms if the powers that be want to maintain control of the information space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V79Q8jS9_ug

https://www.youtube.com/@OurCountryOurChoice

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by Daniel McAdams 

Love me some Pepe. Pepe Escobar and first met last December, during my first trip to Moscow. We were instant friends. When I arrived in Moscow in the midst of a record-breaking snowstorm, I was standing in line waiting to check in to the hotel and noticed that the man in front of me looked remarkably like Pepe Escobar. The man turned, looked at me, and then said, “Oh my God! You’re Larry Johnson.” And I said, “You look like Pepe Escobar.” He laughed with his iconic good cheer and we immediately agreed to meet for drinks and a snack. This was the birth of a dear friendship.

BY LARRY JOHNSON

Australia has always been aligned with military empires: first the British Empire and now that of the USA. In the current era this alignment is misguided. It comes with enormous social and economic costs and does not protect us from current threats – indeed it makes us more of a target. There are alternatives, and we can work together towards them.

Americans  grow up in a political culture in which many of them continue to believe into adulthood certain assumptions about America’s place in the world.

Chief among these is that U.S. motives abroad are to spread and defend democracy rather than to impose its economic and geostrategic interests, often through extreme violence. 

Consortium News is dedicated to challenging these widely-believed myths about America with factual reporting. 

Minds can be so poisoned, though, that a publication that does this is unlikely to be seen as genuinely trying to get at the truth, but rather as being an agent of an American enemy.  

Adam Hanieh’s new book, Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market (Verso, 2024) could not be timelier. As all eyes turn to Baku for COP29, the capitalist world heads to yet another performance of misdirection. In contrast to that monumental deception, we need to see things as they really stand and take action accordingly. So, let’s take a deep dive and get the record straight, the basic problem remains that capitalism is destroying planet Earth at an accelerating pace. Crude Capitalism—hereafter CC—goes a long way to explaining why the capitalist powers remain so fully committed to oil, come what may.

A probe by India’s Income Tax Department into five major nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating in the country has reportedly unearthed evidence that they used foreign funding for activities aimed at stalling economic and development projects. 

According to a report in Indian Express, the probe was launched after searches were conducted by tax authorities in September 2022 at the Indian offices of fine NGOs – Oxfam, Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Environics Trust, Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment, and Care India Solution for Sustainable Development. 

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has become increasingly displeased with the work of military intelligence head Kirill Budanov and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, and could replace them in the coming weeks, several outlets in Kiev have said.

Forbes Ukraine was the first to report the rumors, citing an official inside the presidential cabinet and two lawmakers on the defense committee of the Verkhovna Rada. As the main reason for the proposed personnel changes, they listed the “growing challenges at the front.”

Discussions about Budanov’s sacking have been going on for at least a month, according to Forbes’s sources. The head of the military intelligence service HUR reportedly has “strained relations” with Zelensky’s chief of staff Andrey Yermak and General Aleksandr Syrsky, the supreme commander of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Ukraine may have to recognize the loss of some of its territory to Russia in order to achieve peace and security guarantees, Jens Stoltenberg said in his first long interview after stepping down as NATO secretary-general. 

Stoltenberg ended his ten-year tenure as the chief of the US-led alliance on October 1. In a conversation with the Financial Times published on Friday, he said that Kiev may be forced to rethink seeing the restoration of the 1991 borders as a prerequisite for any peace deal. 

Stoltenberg suggested that “a kind of new momentum” would come after the US presidential election in early November, possibly ushering in “ways to try to get movement on the battlefield combined with movement around the negotiating table.” 

Former President Donald Trump has spent this week criticizing Democrats for their response to Hurricane Helene — going so far as to say party leaders aren’t interested in helping Republicans in the hardest-hit areas of southern Appalachia.

During a visit to Valdosta, Georgia, he claimed without evidence that the Biden administration — and Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper — were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.”

But Trump has his own record to stand on, Scott Waldman and Thomas Frank report.

P&I has obtained a copy of the confidential report to headquarters prepared by a recent intelligence gathering mission to Australia from Mars.

Your most esteemed and benevolent Excellencies

We have the honour to present the final report of our recent expedition to the Blue Planet, hereinafter referred to as Earth. Consistent with the expedition’s objectives, our report offers an assessment of the current civilisational status of earthlings and, in particular, whether the Greater Martian Cooperative Enterprise (GREMCEN) would benefit by now inviting Earth to join its councils.

Ukraine’s conscription drive ‘increasingly deceitful, coercive and violent’ – The Times
Kiev is resorting to dirty tactics in its efforts to bolster its troops, the British newspaper reports

Ukraine’s mobilization campaign is falling far short of targets, while the effort remains marred by violence, mistrust and rampant corruption, The Times reported on Thursday, citing local officials.

A UK security team found a listening device in the personal lavatory of then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson back in 2017, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the facility, the former British politician has reportedly claimed in his memoir.

The incident allegedly occurred at the British Foreign Office, which, according to Johnson, has a bathroom similar to “the gents in a posh London club,”located in a “secret annex” used by the foreign secretary, as reported by The Telegraph on Thursday. Netanyahu was in the building on an official visit, and apparently made a toilet trip while there.

“Thither Bibi repaired for a while, and it may or may not be a coincidence but I am told that later, when they were doing a regular sweep for bugs, they found a listening device in the thunderbox,” Johnson wrote.

Richard C. Cook is a retired U.S. federal analyst who served with the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury and as an aide to U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH).

He has just published a thoughtful book, Our Country Then and Now, which provides a sweeping economic history of the U.S. intermeshed with his own family history.

The book traces the rise of plutocratic rule in the U.S. and negative consequences of this rule, ranging from the cruelty directed against Native Americans to the decimation of U.S. manufacturing vitality and the working class to the waging of endless wars.