The United States and China both have military facilities in Djibouti. Russia has sought access to Port Sudan. Gulf powers, notably Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, have expanded their presence across the Horn of Africa. They’ve done this by investing in ports, infrastructure and military cooperation especially in Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia.

Turkey, Iran and Israel have also established political, economic and security ties. This links the Red Sea to the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.

However, external powers are not the only drivers of change in the region.

Local actors, from Ethiopia to Sudan, Eritrea, Egypt and Somalia, are exploiting global rivalries to advance their strategic objectives. They are courting competing external powers by trading military access for security guarantees, or seeking investments.

~ Full article…

What has been less clear is whether similar disparities occur within the courtroom. In our newly published study, we examined whether sentencing outcomes differ between Māori and New Zealand Europeans charged with nearly identical offences.

We focused on first-time drink-driving cases, using alcohol readings as an objective, standardised measure of offence severity. Our core question: do Māori face a higher likelihood of a community-based sentence, instead of the more common – and least severe – outcome of a fine?

The results suggest they do.

~ Full article…

Populist poetics

This brings us to the opening stanza of The Hollow Men, where Eliot presents aspiring religio-nationalist torchbearers with an effigy of liberal secularism, ready for immolation.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat’s feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us – if at all – not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

The scene is reminiscent of the “desolate plain lying between Hell’s portal and the river Acheron” in Dante’s Divine Comedy. When Dante asks his guide why the souls here lament so bitterly, he is told that it is because they were, while on earth, neither spiritually alive nor spiritually dead, neither good nor evil.

As such, they are forbidden from entering Hell proper. They are damned to an eternity of ineffectual fence-sitting, so to speak. Eliot ratifies the assignation elsewhere, when he determines: “So far as we are human […] it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least, we exist.”
[…]
The Hollow Men disregarded many of the liberal shibboleths of its time. In doing so, it communed with a populist, religio-nationalist mindset that was beginning to establish a foothold. One hundred years on, it is a poem that feels very much of our time.

~ Full article…

Animal subjects also played a starring role in research designed to enhance espionage efforts during the Cold War. Surgeons implanted microphones into cats’ ears. An elephant was allegedly injected with a massive amount of LSD. And, in one particularly grisly endeavor, scientists implanted electrodes into the brains of six dogs in an attempt to control their movement and turn them into remote-controlled assassins.

The goal of that last initiative, Subproject 94, which took place in 1961 and 1962, “was to examine the feasibility of controlling the behavior of a dog, in an open field, by means of remotely triggered electrical stimulation of the brain,” according to heavily redacted documents declassified in 2002.

Perhaps more remarkably, the experiments were largely successful. “You could, in fact, remotely control the behavior of these animals, especially using positive feedback,” says John Lisle, a historian and author of the book Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MK Ultra.

The project did face some setbacks. Dogs developed infections and researchers struggled to find a suitable secluded space to test out their mutant puppies. The agency cancelled Subproject 94 before the technique was ever used in a real operation. Yet by the end of the program, Lislle says, the CIA was weighing the creation of even bigger, braver remote-controlled mercenaries: bears, yaks, and even man himself.

~ Full article…

In fact, the researchers estimate that the total death toll from the war among Palestinians in Gaza is between 99,997 and 125,915, with a median estimate of over 112,000 killed. Even the lowest death toll estimate in the study is significantly higher than the death toll estimates in most media reports, which as of this week totaled roughly 70,000 Palestinians killed.
[…]
The study also found that the two-year Israeli assault led to a precipitous plunge in life expectancy. According to researcher Ana Gómez-Ugarte, life expectancy in Gaza “fell by 44% in 2023 and by 47% in 2024 compared with what it would have been without the war—equivalent to losses of 34.4 and 36.4 years, respectively.”

~ Full article…

Here are the documents we have obtained on these subjects so far from Freedom of Information requests. The documents are posted below in approximately the chronological order in which we received them.

In July 2020, U.S. Right to Know began submitting public records requests in pursuit of data from public institutions in an effort to discover what is known about the origins of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease Covid-19. We are also researching accidents, leaks and other mishaps at laboratories where pathogens of pandemic potential are stored and modified, and the risks of gain-of-function research, which involve experiments on such pathogens to increase their host range, infectivity, transmissibility or pathogenicity.

~ Full article…

Christmas Island, a 52-square-mile speck in the Indian Ocean, is perhaps best known for its annual red crab migration and its role as an asylum seeker detention center. Now, it’s poised to become a hub for AI-driven military operations. According to documents reviewed by Reuters and interviews with officials, the data center will support naval surveillance in strategic waters, enhancing Australia’s monitoring capabilities amid rising tensions in the region.

A Remote Outpost’s Strategic Allure

The island’s location, just 350 kilometers south of Indonesia and 2,600 kilometers northwest of Perth, makes it an ideal vantage point for observing Chinese submarine activity and other naval movements. Bryan Clark, a former U.S. Navy strategist, told Reuters that a command and control node here could be ‘critical in a crisis,’ enabling AI-enabled decision-making for military operations.

Google’s involvement stems from a three-year cloud deal signed with Australia’s Defence Department earlier in 2025. This partnership allows the military to leverage Google’s AI capabilities for data processing and analysis, potentially transforming how defense intelligence is gathered and utilized.

The Tech Giant’s Military Pivot

While Google has historically been cautious about military contracts—famously withdrawing from Project Maven in 2018 due to employee backlash—this new venture signals a shift. The company plans to install a subsea cable linking Christmas Island to Darwin, where U.S. Marines are stationed seasonally, as reported by Data Center Dynamics. This infrastructure will facilitate high-speed data transfer essential for real-time AI applications.

~ Full article…

Martin Bally, a vice president in Campbell’s information security department, said that the company’s product is highly processed and unhealthy food for poor people and suggested it was experimenting with bioengineered chicken “that came from a 3D printer.” Exposed in a lawsuit, Bally has been fired by the company, which is now in the extremely undesirable position of having to insist that its soup is made of actual chickens.

~ Full article…

In September 2025, 90 vessels operated under false flags — a six-fold increase from December 2024.

In the first three quarters of 2025, a total of 113 Russian ‘shadow’ vessels have flown a false flag during their operations, transporting thirteen percent of Russian oil — 11 million tonnes, valued at EUR 4.7 bn. This practice poses significant security and environmental risks, undermines global maritime rules, and exploits gaps in flag-state governance.

The most frequently used false flag is that of Malawi. The first such case occurred in June 2025, and since then, 24 vessels have flown Malawi’s flag while carrying Russian oil. Every one of these vessels is sanctioned.

Investigations have found that Malawi’s registry, in reality, does not exist. A purported Marine Services Administration runs the country’s flag registration website and has even established itself as a point of contact in the IMO’s official GSIS database.

~ Full article…

“The thought of America crumbling should bring you joy,” Wildflower told me in an interview last spring. As Christian anarchists see it, the problems that exist in our nation—poverty, white supremacy, militarism, economic inequality, and on down the list—are not aberrations in an otherwise good system, but rather inescapable outcomes of any system where some people have been put in power over others. And as people of God, Christian anarchists feel called to dismantle these oppressive systems and create radical alternatives.

~ Full article…