Many have so admired Cuba’s brand of socialism as to assume that Cuba’s social gains and exuberant international solidarity would fire up such enthusiasm that, along with considerations of fairness, legality, neighborliness, and revulsion against U.S. cruelty, would make U.S. policymakers think anew about Cuba. It never happened.

On July 26, Niger’s presidential guard moved against sitting President Mohamed Bazoum and conducted a coup d’état. A brief contest among the various armed forces in the country ended with all the branches agreeing to the removal of Bazoum and the creation of a military junta. This is the fourth country in the Sahel region of Africa to have experienced a coup.

Again Victor Grossman turns to his faded history books, and to the uprisings—and then the defeat of divided leftists between 1919 and 1933. Where today is the LINKE, the party of peace, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, socialism? It is in a crisis!

Tough-minded federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, handling the government’s trial against Donald Trump for his conspiracies and the Jan. 6, 2021, coup d’état and insurrection, had a blunt message for the former Oval Office occupant and his lawyers: “Your client’s defense is supposed to happen in this courtroom, not on the internet.” In so many words, Judge Chutkan told Trump stop threatening witnesses and potential jurors.

Niger is shaping up to be the surprising frontline of the new Cold War. Yesterday, the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) ordered the “activation” and “deployment” of “standby” military forces to the country, an action that threatens to spark a major international war that could make Syria look minor by comparison. In this venture, ECOWAS has been fully supported by the United States and Europe, leading many to suspect it is being used as an imperial vehicle to stamp out anti-colonial projects in West Africa.

The coup in Niger threatens Western governments’ interests. The ramifications are regional and international. In the short-term, military cooperation with the US, France, and Canada has been suspended. In the long-term, European energy supplies may be impacted by Nigerien efforts to reassert national control over their resources, a move that would influence Europe’s wider global policies.

As Mark Zuckerberg’s platforms block Canadian news, it’s time to consider how to build alternative platforms that serve the public interest

In hooking themselves up to government subsidies and now government-ordered subsidies, the chains have apparently been willing to sell out press freedom in Canada to federal bureaucrats. But the chains overplayed their hand by failing to consider the possibility that Meta and Google might not sit still for such extortion and would simply walk away instead.

Meta’s blocking of Canadian news is a direct response to Canada’s Online News Act, which mandates major tech firms pay local news organizations for using their media links. But the “link tax” furor underscores a deeper issue: media ownership and control.

The typical Canadian worker, whether earning minimum wage or an average income, cannot afford housing in any of the country’s major urban centers — which happen to be where most jobs are located.

The U.S. has used its influence to steal another country’s oil revenues. Venezuela is in the crosshairs because it dares to be socialist in the hemisphere the U.S. claims as it’s “backyard.”

Mythology about these mass civilian slaughters warps thinking about U.S. militarism.

The present interview with Éric Toussaint aims at constructing a common position about debts and their payment. It also helps to understand the part played by debt and its mechanisms in the extraction of resources of the South by the North at an international level, and in the transfers of wealth from the poor to the rich within each society. The interview is not limited to Lebanon, except insofar as the Lebanese situation can be seen as a model of what is happening in many other places in the world and other times in history.

The FT makes a point: “China’s central government is one of the least indebted in the world… If China is to sustain its long run of economic success, it is down to Beijing to act.” But the FT’s idea of action is for government to make cash handouts to households and ‘free up’ the private sector. But it’s not a turn to a consumer-led market economy that China needs to get the economy going again, but planned public investment into housing, technology and manufacturing.

Artificial intelligence and jobs

The latest employment report from the OECD is a real eye-opener on the cost of living crisis and whether wage rises or profit rises have been the biggest contributor to the rise in inflation. On wages, the OECD finds that real wages have fallen an average 3.8% in the last year in the OECD. “Labour markets have pushed up nominal wages, but less so than inflation, leading to a fall in real wages in almost all industries and OECD countries.”

"Nothing less than a just global transformation... is required to ensure human well-being," researchers wrote.

The French establishment has dismissed the riots as a purely criminal affair, refusing to accept its true cause: widespread anger at murderous policing, racial inequality, social deprivation, and a state in total crisis.

As Owen Schalk and Henry Heller explain, given Ottawa’s increasingly belligerent actions in the Pacific, its growing military cooperation with states hostile to Beijing, and the openly antagonistic way Canadian officials discuss China, it seems that Canada wants to delink its economy from China’s in order to prepare for a direct military confrontation.

After years of low wages and precarity, Metro grocery workers in the Greater Toronto Area have spoken loud and clear, voting 100% in favor of a strike. It’s a strong start to nationwide grocery sector contract talks in the wake of the pandemic profit surge.