The US has been relegated to vetting candidates for the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election. While still egregiously interventionist, the imperial power has failed to achieve outright regime change. The appearance of Venezuelan opposition politician Maria Corina Machado before a US congressional committee is the latest in the empire’s quest for a trustworthy confederate. Hopes are high among Republicans that she is the right collaborator. The Democrats may have another but complementary game plan. More

Times were supposedly better in 2022.  That is, if you were a lawmaker in the Australian state of Victoria, a busy Israeli arms manufacturer, or cash counting corporate middleman keen to make a stash along the way between the two.  That view is premised on the notion that what happened on October 7, 2023 in Israel was stunningly remarkable, a historical blot dripped and dribbled from nothingness, leaving the Jewish state vengeful and yearning to avenge 1200 deaths and the taking of 240 hostages.  All things prior were dandy and uncontroversial. More

Given how racist American policing is, the system of cash bail is intended to ensure that people of color who are disproportionately arrested are also disproportionately detained in jails without due process. A 2022 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights examined the impact of cash bail and found that between 1970 and 2015, the number of people jailed before trial increased by a whopping 433 percent, and there are currently about 500,000 such people stuck in jails across the nation who have not been tried or convicted of any crimes. More

Richard Falk: “Considering the timing of the Israeli complaint, the day after the ICJ ruling, and the heroic relief and sheltering role costing UNRWA more than a hundred staff deaths, the defunding response, especially given the humanitarian consequences of denying relief to surviving Gazans, is a further enablement of genocide.” More