The West is looking to shut down criticism of its foreign policy in Ukraine and Gaza, according to one former CIA analyst.

Opposition to the Telegram encrypted messaging platform is driven by the West’s desire to surveil online activity and suppress criticism of its foreign policy, according to ex-CIA analyst Larry Johnson.

The analyst made the claim during an interview with Sputnik after news broke that Telegram founder Pavel Durov had been arrested by French authorities after his private jet landed at an airport outside Paris.

“I think the charges are all implausible, false,” said the co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. “They're charging him reportedly with terrorism. And with fraud. So this clearly smacks of a trumped up political case.”

On August 17, in dozens of cities across the world, people’s movements, left parties and trade unions, participated in an international day of action in solidarity with Venezuela, facing right-wing coup attempts and attacks on its electoral process following the victory of sitting president Nicolás Maduro.

    By Peoples Dispatch

Ordinary New Zealanders and Australians have little idea about the momentous changes coming our way. For a couple of centuries we have been outposts of a Western empire that is losing its dominance of the region.

Instead of having open national discussions about how our countries should respond to the rise of China, India and Indonesia – just part of the coming Asian Century – our leaders are shuttering our minds and framing public discourse in ways that hinder rather than help.

In the middle of the summer holidays, Switzerland wakes up from the twilight of the information void on the new version of the Swiss-EU Framework Agreement, which the then Federal Council had rightly halted in May 2021. The Federal Council has been “in dialogue” with Brussels again since November 2023. However, what exactly is up for negotiation is still up in the air, as the EU has long since passed its “Common Understanding”, which Switzerland can only decorate with a few plasters.1

It has been three weeks since ground units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine crossed into the Kursk province in southwestern Russia, surprising — or maybe not surprising — the U.S. and its clients in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Two days later, the AFU began artillery and drone attacks in Belgorod, a province just south of Kursk. It has been a little more than a week since explosions at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which lies in what is now Russian territory along the Dnipro River, ignited a fire in one of the plant’s two cooling towers. All six reactors are now in cold shutdown. 

By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost

Having just read journalist John Lyons’ book Balcony Over Jerusalem, I’m acutely aware of the ways in which the pro-Israeli Lobby in Australia exerts its influence on the media here to disparage journalists and their work and to even try to have them removed from their positions, if this lobby deems there is adverse critique of Israel. 

Is that why Patricia Karvelas and Steve Kinnane on the ABC Radio National AM program choose words of clarification that either suspend or diminish acknowledgement that genocide is happening in Gaza? Do they want to avoid a complaint by the Zionist Federation of Australia?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced he would back Republican candidate Donald Trump and end his independent run for president, but only in swing US states.

The son of Senator Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy first tried to challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination last April. Faced with obstruction within the party, he announced a third-party bid last October.

“Many months ago I promised the American people I would withdraw from the race if I became a spoiler,” Kennedy said on Friday afternoon. “In my heart, I no longer believe I have a realistic path to electoral victory.”

Declaration: In publishing this article, Croakey Health Media acknowledges that our future is at stake in these discussions, and also that our analysis comes from a particular standpoint of viewing public interest journalism as an important upstream determinant of health, while corporate media often undermine the determinants of health.

In the interests of transparency, our positions on key media reform questions are publicly declared in our submissions to various inquiries.

What you smell is the stench of a dying republic.

Our dying republic.

We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.

In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

Regrettably, I have no spiritual enlightenment to share this Sunday.

Perhaps, the message of “don’t vote, stop pretending this election is real” is a bit spiritually uplifting, as if you embrace the position that “voting is consent,” and then back that up with “it doesn’t matter anyway because it’s fake,” you will have a burden lifted from your soul.

BY Andrew Anglin

For four years, I’ve watched people talk about voting as if it was real. People saw Joe Biden get the 81 million, and said “this is completely fake,” then said “well, we just have to vote harder next time.”

CHICAGO (Sputnik) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is expected to make concessions to Russia to end the conflict in Ukraine, Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told RIA Novosti on the margins of the Democratic National Convention.

"Undoubtedly he will," Raskin said on Wednesday when asked if he expects Trump to make concessions to Russia to end the Ukraine conflict.

Raskin pointed out that Trump's running mate Sen. JD Vance has said that he wants to cut off US funding to Ukraine, "and he speaks for the whole ticket."

The 2024 US presidential race between Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will be a competitive and serious fight, Raskin added. 

"I think it’s gonna be competitive. It could be a serious fight," Raskin said on Wednesday.

Raskin currently serves as the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

The collective noun for a group of historians is an “argumentation,” and for good reason. At the very dawn of historical inquiry in the West, historians were already wrestling over the past, attacking each other, debating the purposes and uses of historical knowledge, choosing different subjects to pursue, and arguing about how to pursue them.

All History Is Revisionist History

Ever since Thucydides dismissed Herodotus, historians have differed about the past

James M. Banner Jr.

US Big Tech corporations have essentially colonized the world. In almost every country on Earth, the digital infrastructure upon which the modern economy was built is owned and controlled by a small handful of monopolies, based largely in Silicon Valley.

This system is looking more and more like neo-feudalism. Just as the feudal lords of medieval Europe owned all of the land and turned almost everyone else into serfs, who broke their backs producing food for their masters, the US Big Tech monopolies of the 21st century act as corporate feudal lords, controlling all of the digital land upon which the digital economy is based.

At present, international relations are in the process of restructuring: the weight and influence of the Western powers led by the United States is really falling and the positions of those who are usually referred to as the countries of the Global South are strengthening. It is quite remarkable that, despite the obviousness of these phenomena, they are gradually beginning to be accepted by states that had previously resisted recognizing these processes.

BY Vladimir MASHIN

Kamala Harris may well win the White House
Biden’s VP is a candidate with power, for which Donald Trump was not prepared – and that speaks volumes about his own popularity

Within just a month of becoming the Democratic Party nominee for president, Kamala Harris has forged ahead in the race for the American presidency.

How has this remarkable transformation of American politics come about?

The answer lies in the departure of the senile and unelectable Joe Biden; Harris’ unexpected effectiveness and dynamism as a campaigner that has re-energized the Democratic Party; and the apparent (post assassination attempt) tiredness, negativity, and ineptitude that now characterizes Donald Trump’s faltering election campaign.