Newly revealed documents reveal that MI5 taught Brazilian secret police the techniques deployed by the 1964-85 military dictatorship in horrific prisons like Rio de Janeiro’s House of Death. SARA VIVACQUA reports
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The great balloon fiasco
While it is impossible not to see the absurdity of ever-escalating US claims over balloon spying – in the press, by the military and by politicians – they have deadly serious consequences and raise the risk of war, argues ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
In this image provided by the FBI, special agents assigned to the evidence response team process
material recovered from the high-altitude balloon recovered off the coast of South Carolina, at the FBI
laboratory in Virginia; and (right) the remnants of the large balloon drift above the Atlantic Ocean
CHRISTOPHE DOMEC speaks to the France Insoumise politician facing constant persecution from French authorities
It can be hard to discern conspiracy theory from reality and under the Trump regime the two might just be the same thing, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
ALAN SIMPSON says responses to the Golders Green attacks risk deepening divides across our country
Capturing the general strikes history is a vital part of our struggles today, posits HENRY FOWLER
On a tumultuous day in Welsh politics DAVID NICHOLSON looks at the key issues for progressives in Wales to grapple with the rise of the far right
KARL MARX famously said in the Eighteenth Brumaire that history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”
While there are many examples of this insight from history, Marx could not foresee how farce would become the staple of the US ruling class, how elites would defend what they see as their interests with a web of calculated deception extending beyond the limits of the absurd.
Like the mad General Jack D Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s great film, Dr Strangelove, a US Air Force four-star General, Mike Minihan, “sent a memo on Friday [January 27] to the officers he commands that predicts the US will be at war with China in two years and tells them to get ready to prep by firing ‘a clip’ at a target, and ‘aim for the head’,” as reported by NBC News.
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From Vietnam to Iran, US leaders repeat a failed strategy of terror bombing – one that history shows cannot break a determined, resilient society, says DYLAN MURPHY
From anonymous surveys claiming Chinese students are spying on each other to a meltdown about the size of China’s London embassy, the evidence is everywhere that Britain is embracing full spectrum Sinophobia as the war clouds gather, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
JENNY CLEGG reports from a Chinese peace conference bringing together defence ministers, US think tanks and global South leaders, where speakers warned that the erosion of multilateralism risks regional hotspots exploding into wider war
In 2024, 19 households grew richer by $1 trillion while 66 million households shared 3 per cent of wealth in the US, validating Marx’s prediction that capitalism ‘establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with accumulation of capital,’ writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY