THE impact of the West’s encounter with the Americas was devastating for its people.

ON Independence Day–August 15th–we generally take stock of the path we have travelled since 1947. Today, I will take a different tack and focus on how or why a handful of European countries end up controlling major parts of the world.

FIFTY years back, Pinochet’s coup destroyed Allende’s government and the structure of liberal democracy in Chile. Allende died with a machine gun in his hands, defending his attempt to build socialism in Chile against the combined power of the U.S. and the forces of reaction in Chile, including the military.

Never before has society had the ability it does today to bring together different communities and resources in order to produce new knowledge. It is social, universal labour, and its private appropriation as intellectual property under capitalism stands in the way of liberating the enormous power of the collective to generate new knowledge and benefit people.

The bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 heralded the atomic age and ushered in the military-industrial complex that took over the United States.

The coronation ceremony and centuries of plunder by the British Empire cannot be seen in isolation.

Kailath, originally from Kerala but settled in the U.S., is one of the foremost names in the world in communications, control and signal processing. I remembered his words while reading the recent startling headlines that China has become the world leader in 37 of 44 critical technologies evaluated by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

War rarely stays within the boundaries set or desired for it. That makes returning to arms control crucial for the survival of humanity.

In this episode of Mapping Faultlines, NewsClick’s Prabir Purkayastha explains the details of the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines as revealed by journalist Seymour Hersh. He also talks about how benefited from this sabotage.

THE newsfeeds from the US seem to be completely insane. First, an F22 Raptor, the most expensive U.S. military aircraft, is used to shoot down a Chinese balloon over the Atlantic ocean.

The dramatic changes in the technology of mass communications should be brought in line with the larger goals of humanity and a more humane society.

Neither clean energy nor lower temperatures, the latest scientific breakthrough is about testing the condition of the nuclear stockpiles of the United States.

THE crux of the issue is that non-fossil, or even a low fossil fuel path, will need grid-level storage costs to drop by a factor of 10 times what they are today!

If the U.S. wants to be a world leader, it has to match China in investing in knowledge generation for future technology. Why then is the U.S. taking the sanctions route? Sanctions are simpler to implement; building a society that values knowledge is much more difficult. This is the crisis of late capitalism.

A Marxist, activist and scientist, Lewontin fought a lifelong battle against racism, imperialism and capitalist oppression. He is among the most influential scientists in the field of biology and evolution.

Two major cyberhacks—of ‘SolarWinds’ and ‘Microsoft Exchange Server’—have affected a whole range of computer systems worldwide. Both are supply chain hacks, meaning that they appeared to be routine software upgrades for particular components in these systems instead of inserted malicious codes.

‘…all countries have offensive and defensive capabilities and ‘stealing” data and knowledge from other countries are time-honoured tasks of spook agencies. It becomes an act of war only if it leads to physical damage to critical equipment or infrastructure.’

The U.S. has bought up almost all of the stock of remdesivir from Gilead, making it nearly impossible for this COVID-19 drug to be available anywhere else in the world.

Donald Trump launched a new vaccine war in May, but not against the virus. It was against the world.

For capital, profits come from disease, not peoples’ health. COVID-19 shows the consequence of disease capitalism in a globalized world, the rich—countries or individuals—will not be spared either.