Cuba resists
The Cuban government shows no sign of acceding to the Trump administration’s desire for regime change, despite US economic victimisation of the country under what has been dubbed the ‘Donroe’ rather than ‘Monroe’ doctrine. This has seen the incarceration of Venezuela’s President Maduro and his wife in a New York jail. Recently, in what was arguably overblown rhetoric, US secretary of state Marco Rubio characterised the small Caribbean island as a “national security threat to the United States”. The economic sanctions the US has imposed on Cuba are straight out of the US imperial playbook, having been employed against countries such as Russia, North Korea and of course Iran. However, it is the blockade of oil that is most challenging, threatening food supply. In a realistic assessment for Inkstick Media, Tyler Hicks recounts the daily struggle for survival through the eyes of an ordinary Cuban gets the assessments of a range of US foreign policy analysts.
Soros Foundation funding insurrection in Indonesia
The activities of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA ‘cut-out’, is well documented by the Grayzone and other publications. Its purpose was to fund and support insurrectionist movements in countries deemed to be antithetical to the US liberal democracy agenda. The agency was de-funded by the Trump administration in February 2025 – more about this and the activities of the NED can be found here. It would appear that the Soros Foundation is taking up where the NED left off in Indonesia, where the country’s former and current governments have pursued social and foreign policies at odds with the US imperialist agenda. In an article for the Grayzone, Kit Klarenberg describes how the Soros Foundation is funding a local proxy (Kurawal) to influence young people in particular against the government of Prabowo Subianto, elected by popular mandate as Indonesia’s president in February 2024
German police violence and support for Israel
In striking footage from the NASKA ‘59 protest in Berlin on 5 June, a German policeman is seen punching a protester in the face. This kind of gratuitous violence by German police is not without precedent. A group of rapporteurs and independent experts from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees has raised concerns about the behavioural trend stating: “We are alarmed by the persistent pattern of police violence and apparent suppression of Palestine solidarity activism by Germany.” In an analysis by Factually, the nature of German support for Israel is reviewed, noting that much of it is based on continuing Holocaust guilt, which in the light of the Gaza genocide many will find ironic.
The unravelling of the EU regulatory framework
One of the defining characteristics of the European Union as it has developed from its beginnings as the post war coal and steel community in the 1950s, has been its regulatory function. Arguably this has been beneficial for EU citizens as consumers, allowing them to make informed choices and protecting them environmentally. Regulation (EC) 1829/2003 and Directive 2001/18/EC would be good examples of such regulatory oversight, dealing respectively as they do with labelling of GM foods and the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment. However, critics of the EU have tended to characterise such regulation as simply “red tape”. In an article for Social Europe, Antoine Vauchez, professor of political sociology at the Sorbonne, documents how the EU regulatory framework is being quietly dismantled to satisfy commercial agendas.
Australian politics moves in a populist direction
Australia, tucked away as it is 9,000 miles or so from London, is often forgotten about but it remains an important part of western/US hegemonic foreign policy. So, Australia is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence grouping, the AUKUS trilateral security partnership, as well as hosting what is effectively a United States satellite communications and signals intelligence surveillance base at Pine Gap in Alice Springs. Given this background, the direction that Australian domestic politics takes is worth being aware of. In an article for World Socialist Web, Oscar Grenfell relates how, in a trend seen in the UK with Reform, recent polling indicates the rising popularity of the One Nation Party as a reaction to the hitherto well-established two-party liberal consensus.
World population displacement
Displaced populations and refugees have become a common factor in world affairs, largely due to wars, initiated in most cases by Western imperialist agendas. Three cases in point are Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the latter now qualifying as a ‘failed state’ and far removed from the prosperity and stability enjoyed under Muammar Gaddafi. Ironically many of the western countries that have participated in such imperial adventurism are experiencing blowback from their electorates due to fleeing refugees, leading to a breakdown of political consensus and the rise of populist nationalist movements such as Reform in the UK and AfD in Germany. In a fascinating statistical overview of displaced population for Al Jazeera, by Hanna Duggal, Mohamed Hussein and UNHCR, they review the current state of affairs of world population and refugee movements.
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