The U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center has been training highly skilled deep-water divers for decades who, once assigned to American military units worldwide, are capable of technical diving to do the good—using C4 explosives to clear harbors and beaches of debris and unexploded ordinance—as well as the bad, like blowing up foreign oil rigs, fouling intake valves for undersea power plants, destroying locks on crucial shipping canals.

Social theorists identify automation as both the main cause of unemployment and the future launchpad for a high-tech post-scarcity world. But, Aaron Benanav argues, the problem is the stagnation of global capitalism and its inability to generate enough jobs.

For the past fifteen years, the US has pushed its allies – including those organised in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – to strengthen their military power while increasing its techno-military power and reach by establishing smaller bases across the world and producing new aircraft and ships with greater territorial reach. This military force was then used in a series of provocative actions against those it perceived as threats to its hegemony, with two key countries, China and Russia, facing the sharp edge of the US spear. At the two ends of Eurasia, the US began to provoke Russia through Ukraine and provoke China through Taiwan. The provocations over Ukraine have now resulted in a war that has been ongoing for a year, while the new US bases in the Philippines are part of an escalation against China, using Taiwan as a battleground.

Mass protests on Tuesday showed the strength of popular anger at Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise the pension age. But the coalition of left-wing parties, NUPES, has fallen into infighting — which risks wasting the progress it has made since last spring.

Once a major national force, today’s French Socialist Party finds itself outcompeted by both the radical left and neoliberal president Emmanuel Macron. But last month’s congress shows many leaders would rather kill the party than sign up for radical policies.

During Covid, fossil fuel companies saw tanking oil prices as a sign to finally invest in renewables. Now they’re rolling back those initiatives – because for them, cash always comes before the planet.