CAPITALIST SICKNESS

ALASDAIR MACLEOD—This will take the geopolitical conflict with China and Russia to a new level. Their own intelligence services will almost certainly be fully aware of the American Deep State’s congressional manoeuvres. It might explain the timing of Russia’s pre-emptive announcement, that it has missiles capable of delivering a punch at Mach 20. It might also explain China’s recent announcement of its intention to increase military spending, even though the timing is likely to have been set by the recent National Peoples’ Congress.

AIDAN O’BRIEN—The Europeans are pushing against liberalism and its neoliberal progeny. Never mind the fact that the new or alternative political parties they vote for are failing to live up to their critical manifestos. The point is that probably 50% or more of the Europeans have had enough of liberal capitalism. And this means that they have had enough of the EU. How this plays out though is anyone’s guess.

JOHN WIGHT—Indeed, with the investigation into this crime still ongoing, the only people who are certain of Russian state involvement is a political class in Britain that is acting not in the interests the British public but instead the interests of the country’s aforementioned establishment press, combined and in cooperation with a murky and evermore influential network of neocon think tanks.

GLEN FORD—According to the official numbers, Brazil’s police kill 4, 224 civilians a year. Alves asks us to “imagine a country where twelve civilians are ‘legally’ killed by the police on a daily basis.” Seventy-six percent of the dead are Black, meaning nine Black men or boys are killed by Brazilian police every day (99 percent are male). Alves notes that these statistics “do not count the ‘disappeared’ and ‘unknown’ that have turned poor and predominantly black urban communities in Brazil into macabre geographies.”

JANINE JACKSON—The New York Times is talking about how Haspel’s nomination will “reignite the wrenching debate” over interrogation “techniques,” like waterboarding, confinement in boxes and sleep deprivation. First of all, it sounds like those being hurt are the ones who have to debate the issue, you know, or look at the photographs, rather than the people who were and who may be tortured.