This is a repost from the World Socialists Website now regularly censored by google and the headline catches the essence of how things are panning out today.

On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a notice outlining extraordinary plans by the social media company to monitor all the postings and messages of its users, censor independent journalism, and use artificial intelligence (AI) to report users to the police and intelligence agencies. ... read full story / add a comment

This interesting piece from Thierry Meyssan outlines the real plan behind the recent positive news about Rojava. It seems the empire has been selling the story of a wonderful democratic paradise about to be setup in Rojava when in fact the whole thing is a cover for the empire and once again shows how the Left have been used and subverted to promote their plans.

The discussion in France on where the French jihadists captured in Syria would be judged, is a clear example of a false debate. It is animated by a television presenter and journalist that hide their links to their listeners. The issue of where jihadists of French nationality will be tried is in fact intended to lay the groundwork for getting rid of those that can testify to France’s military role against Syria. Hoping that its allies accept it, France is preparing to recognize a pseudo State, under the name “Rojava”, following the model used in “Kosovo”. ... read full story / add a comment

This is a repost of an important topic that doesn't get enough coverage by Peter Koenig for the Saker blog and is about the rapid move towards a cashless society which is being sold to us as only positive. This is highly unlikely to be the case.

The other day I was in a shopping mall looking for an ATM to get some cash. There was no ATM. A week ago, there was still a branch office of a local bank – no more, gone. A Starbucks will replace the space left empty by the bank. I asked around – there will be no more cash automats in this mall – and this pattern is repeated over and over throughout Switzerland and throughout western Europe. Cash machines gradually but ever so faster disappear, not only from shopping malls, also from street corners. Will Switzerland become the first country fully running on digital money?
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This is a republish of an important story covering the covert agenda of Facebook and outlining the dangers of uncritical acceptance of social media, The article first appeared on VoltaireNet.org by Shelley Kasli

What Alternative für Deutschland, Rodrigo Duterte, Mauricio Macri, Narendra Modi, Barack Obama, the Scottish National Party and Donald Trump have in common? They relied on their election campaigns on the advice of Mark Zuckerberg. Taking the case of the falsification of Indian elections, Shelley Kasli reveals the way Facebook manipulates democracies.

A recent Bloomberg report has revealed how a secret unit of Facebook has helped create troll armies for governments around the world including India for digital propaganda to influence elections [1]. Under fire for Facebook Inc.’s role as a platform for political propaganda, co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has punched back, saying his mission is above partisanship.

But Facebook, it turns out, is no bystander in global politics. What he hasn’t said is that his company actively works with political parties and leaders including those who use the platform to stifle opposition—sometimes with the aid of “troll armies” that spread misinformation and extremist ideologies [2]. ... read full story / add a comment

The Guardian published an article yesterday on how the Japanese have evaded through military technology the Sea Shepherd patrols that previously prevented them whaling and that they are now killing whales inside the internationally recognized Southern Ocean whaling sanctuary, that surrounds Antarctica.

A fleet of Japanese ships is currently hunting minke whales in the Southern Ocean. It is a politically incendiary practice: the waters around Antarctica were long ago declared a whale sanctuary, but the designation has not halted Japan’s whalers, who are continuing a tradition of catching whales “for scientific research” in the region. In the past, conservation groups such as Sea Shepherd have mounted campaigns of harassment and successfully blocked Japan’s ships from killing whales. But not this year. Despite previous successes, Sea Shepherd says it can no longer frustrate Japan’s whalers because their boats now carry hardware supplied from military sources, making the fleet highly elusive and almost impossible to track. As a result the whalers are – for the first time – being given a free run to kill minke in the Southern Ocean. ... read full story / add a comment

This is a repost of an recent article (Dec 1st) by economic analyst and trade unionist Michael Taft on www.tasc.ie covering the good news trend where there is now a trend in Europe of reversing privatisations. And that is certainly something positive.

There is a spectre haunting Europe – the spectre of de-privatisation, re-municipalisation, and re-nationalisation. Local, regional and national Governments throughout Europe and in other countries - fed up with high costs, low investment, deteriorating quality and poor working conditions – are taking services back into public control and ownership. For many, privatisation has produced poor results; now they are starting to reverse that process. Public ownership is back on the agenda. ... read full story / add a comment

Speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Sayed Hassan Nasrallah on November 20, 2017, following the victory of Al Boukamal and one day after the meeting of the Arab League which again designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization ... read full story / add a comment

We are reposting this story due to its importance and the way it highlights the workings of the empire work

On July 14 this year a British man from the Manchester area named Benjamin Stimson, aged 41, a man the London Times called a “socialist” to add to his crimes, was convicted under the British Terrorism Act for “facilitating” acts of “terrorism” by serving with one of the Donbass Republic militias for four months in 2015, as an ambulance driver. ... read full story / add a comment

In remembrance of 9/11 we are reproducing this important article from the Land Destroyer Report -Indymedia Ireland

The attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11) left nearly 3,000 dead in NYC, Washington D.C. and over Pennsylvania. The attacks transformed America into a deepening police state at home and a nation perpetually at war abroad.

The official narrative claims that 19 hijackers representing Al Qaeda took over 4 commercial aircraft to carry out attacks on New York City's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.

The event served as impetus for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan which continues to present day. It also led directly to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Attempts to cite the attack to precipitate a war with Iran and other members of the so-called "Axis of Evil" (Libya, Syria, North Korea, and Cuba) have also been made. ... read full story / add a comment

This article appeared as a guest article on the Saker Blog and is reproduced here to help draw attention to this issue.

August has been a month for exposing how the “Empire” works at the social media level, inside the activist communities and, in this case, through the social media movements aimed at defending Syria. Western governments have outlaid millions for this purpose and countless allied agencies are involved across various languages and media, from actual military personnel managing multiple fake characters [1], to other programs targeting online socio-political activism, even to the extent of online publications being created and “discovered” that appear as belonging to ISIS [2]. ... read full story / add a comment

The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.
Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist “assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal “review”. ... read full story / add a comment

WSWS.org carries a report on the plans of the new French president - Emmanuel Macron -who was presented as an outsider but in fact was not and in cohorts with the corporate controlled media misled the French people, for now he is about to launch the greatest assault yet on workers conditions.

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Many people still don't fully understand why events transpired the way they did during our financial crisis, but this analysis by Michael Hudson reproduced here serves to clearly outline how and why we ended up where we did. The interview is concerned with the greek situation with but the behaviours involved in "loaning to exploit" described in the interview are clearly recognisable from our own experiences. ... read full story / add a comment

Since April 4, 2017, violent anti-government protests have rocked Venezuela.

Characterised by deadly clashes between state security forces and opposition demonstrators, vandalism and destruction of public institutions, and the assassination of Chavista supporters, the unrest has left 31 people dead to date. Hundreds more have been injured.

Despite the heavy press coverage, there is significant confusion over how these deaths occurred and at the hands of whom. In a bid for clarity, Venezuelanalysis provides readers with an in-depth and a complete account of the deaths so far below. ... read full story / add a comment

In an article published in the Irish Times on April 8th, the paper's former foreign correspondent Patrick Smith claimed that the concept of neutrality was obsolete for Ireland. In a response published on April 14th John Maguire outlines why that is not the case. ShannonWatch has reprinted his excellent letter in full on their website and it is reprinted here too. ... read full story / add a comment

Donald Trump, a neo-fascist demogog brought to power on a wave of reactionary sentiment is also one of the cabal of white male billionaire oligarchs that have largely ruled that country since its inception as a slave-owning Anglo settler state. The only thing that will bring down this regime is for the rest of us to unite worldwide and economically STARVE this maniacal beast-Boycott Divest & Sanction the U.S. until this regime crumbles from lack of incoming profits to its Wall Street corporate mafia! ... read full story / add a comment

A kickstarter campaign plus a dedicated campaign of relentless annoyance by an activist has led to the CIA reluctantly releasing 13 million of their archived documents for public viewing on the internet. Releases from 1994 to 2016 are included. This translates as all documents from 1969 until 1989 They are released under Bill Clinton’s 1995 Executive Order 13526 instituted in 2006. One of the few good things he ever did.The Executive Order requires the declassification of non-exempt historically valuable records 25 years or older. These documents were previously only physically accessible from four computers at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland using the CIA Records Search Tool Get searching folks. It's a treasure trove!
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We reproducing this article by Dr Rory Hearne, Researcher & Author of "Public Private Partnerships in Ireland: failed experiment or the way forward ?" to highlight some important background and context to this issue

Fears about the privatisation of public water provision was a central motivating factor behind the Right2Water protest movement but concerns about the privatisation of water are held by many other political and civil society groupings. The recently published Expert Commission on Water Services Report highlighted a widespread public “concern about the potential privatisation of Irish Water”. They stated that public responses to their consultation “expressed concerns that water charges, and metering of domestic households, could eventually lead to privatisation”. The Report notes that this “was sometimes set in the context of wider concerns about privatisation of public services, and the commodification of water”. However, it is widely known that various public and private interests have been preparing the ground for the potential privatisation of the Irish public water system. In this article I provide evidence that should concern all those worried about the potential privatisation of Irish public water. This centres on the on-going implementation of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the provision of public water infrastructure in Ireland. These PPPs are a form of ‘creeping privatisation’ that makes the full privatisation of our public water system a real possibility in the future. ... read full story / add a comment

GARDA CHIEFS and Scotland Yard commanders allowed British undercover policeman Mark Kennedy to spy on environmental groups in Ireland, including the Shell to Sea campaign in Mayo. Dublin Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan wants Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald to get some long-overdue and straight answers from her British counterpart when she meets Home Secretary Amber Rudd this month. ... read full story / add a comment

LASC have written an good article by Liam Bradshaw covering the massacre of teachers and students by the police in Mexico back in 2014 and the join up the dots on this terrible event. It is republished here because to bring some attention to it.

On September 26, 2014, two years ago this week, student teachers form the Escuela Rural Normal Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa were attacked in Iguala, Guerrero by local police. Six people were killed, dozens injured, and 43 remain missing two years later. One of the murdered students had been tortured and his face cut off. Elements of the municipal, state and federal police as well as the army participated in the crime, making it a state crime. ... read full story / add a comment