Farmerless farms manned by driverless machines, monitored by drones and doused with chemicals to produce commodity crops from patented genetically engineered seeds for industrial ‘biomatter’ to be processed and constituted into something resembling food. Data platforms, private equity firms, e-commerce giants and AI-controlled farming systems.Mandla Langa and Mphuthumi Ntabeni’s new novels, The Lost Language of the Soul and The Wanderers, intersect in their reflections on the lives of Umkhonto weSizwe freedom fighters.
(Photograph by Thabang Malatji)Novelist, poet and short story writer Mandla Langa’s latest book, The Lost Language of the Soul, is a coming-of-age tale set largely in Zambia and apartheid South Africa in the late 1980s. The novel chronicles the odyssey of Joseph Mabaso, the son of an Umkhonto weSizwe soldier who goes in search of his mother after her sudden disappearance from their home in Lusaka. The search takes Langa’s teenage protagonist through various towns and borders until he ends up in South Africa.
“Early indications from South Africa and the United Kingdom signal that the fast-spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is less dangerous than its predecessor Delta. Now, a series of laboratory studies offers a tantalizing explanation for the difference: Omicron does not infect cells deep in the lung as readily as it does those in the upper airways.”
Ryuki Yamamoto (Japan), Chaos – Spin, 2019.Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
As we enter the new year almost two years after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, the official death toll from COVID-19 sits just below 5.5 million people. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says that there is a ‘tsunami of cases’ due to the new variants. The country with the highest death toll is the United States, where the official number of those who succumbed to the disease is now over 847,000; Brazil and India follow with nearly 620,000 and 482,000 deaths respectively. These three countries have been ravaged by the disease. The political leadership of each of these countries failed to take sufficient measures to break the chain of infection and instead offered anti-scientific advice to the public, who suffered from both a lack of clear information and relatively depleted health care systems.
By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and cross-posted
Maidan in Almaty? Oh yeah. But it’s complicated.
So is that much fear and loathing all about gas? Not really.
Kazakhstan was rocked into chaos virtually overnight, in principle, because of the doubling of prices for liquefied gas, which reached the (Russian) equivalent of 20 rubles per liter (compare it to an average of 30 rubles in Russia itself).
In a recent interview for the The Telegraph Damian Hinds, the British Minister of State for Security and Borders, named the most threatening states with which British politicians and secret service agents must contend. According to him, clear dangers are posed by Russia, China, and Iran.Pepe on Kazakhstan.
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2022/01/pepe-on-kazakhstan.html
Steppe on Fire: Kazakhstan’s Color Revolution
http://thesaker.is/steppe-on-fire-kazakhstans-color-revolution/
CSTO sends peacekeepers to Kazakhastan
http://thesaker.is/csto-sends-peacekeepers-to-kazakhastan/
In early 2019 the Pentagon financed think tank RAND published an extensive plan for soft attacks on Russia.
The 350 pages long report recommended certain steps to be taken by the U.S. to contain Russia. As its summary says:
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The decline of the U.S. empire began much earlier than when Washington’s downward trend in global influence became widely acknowledged. As far back as the middle of the twentieth century, the U.S.-led order that formed after the second world war began to come apart. In 1949, the empire lost China to communism, an event which would ultimately produce the current shift towards a new China-led multipolar order. The additional setbacks that imperialism had to undergo to reach this point began shortly after, with the Indochina wars that Washington would become embroiled in during the mid-twentieth century. Even as the empire garnered great victories during these decades, successfully carrying out numerous anti-communist coups which allowed for unprecedented exportations of capital to the peripheral countries, with each war there would appear more cracks in U.S. hegemony.
Covid Fueled by Neoliberal Austerity
The neo-liberal austerity model of governance ensures that Covid-19 will continue spreading and producing new variants. Only people focused public health remedies will end the pandemic.
Ukraine: What Does It Have to Do with Black Folks?
“…it is imperative that everyone, in particular Black and working-class people, understand that not having an awareness of the interconnections of the “grind” (the struggle to survive in the U.S.) and U.S. white supremacist, imperialist policies, and not being prepared to commit to altering those power relations, ensures that the conditions will persist that translates into suffering and even death for the colonized, the working classes, the oppressed, and all of global humanity”
The Open Regulations website and the website of the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructural Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan recently published information on the Kazakh government’s intention to build a “BSL-4 laboratory and underground storage facility for a collection of dangerous and highly dangerous strains” in the south of the country in the Korday district of Zhambyl Region in the village of Gvardeisky. It is where the Research Institute for Biological Security Problems, now part of the Science Committee of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which now works mainly on Pentagon research programmes, has been located since Soviet times. The “Laboratory” is scheduled to start construction at the beginning of 2022 and be completed in the Q4 2025. Its code BSL-4 stands for Biosafety Level 4.
I can’t get enough salsa, especially if it’s one by the numero uno master musician, Eddie Palmieri! Yo to Tonxti for this one.
Eddie Palmieri live and open air at the HDK – presented by http://www.salsa-berlin.de – First the introduction of the musicians – after 4:20 min starts the song La Malanga – Lead Vocal: Herman Olivera, Trombone: Jimmy Bosch, Conga: Pequeño Johnny, Tres Nelson Gonzales
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As the world waits for news on yet another round of legal battles over Julian Assange’s extradition, we have reached a somber milestone. Today is the 1,000th day Julian has spent in London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison.
And now for something completely different!
Este es un tema que me gusta mucho; hace un tiempo subimos un pequeño video de esta canción, hoy quisimos grabarlo con orquesta en vivo y la emoción que sentí fue única, espero que lo disfruten, pues me llena de alegría compartir con ustedes este video dedicado a todos los salseros del mundo.
Translation: This is a song that I like very much; some time ago we uploaded a short video of this song, today we wanted to record it with a live orchestra and the emotion I felt was unique, I hope you enjoy it, because it fills me with joy to share with you this video dedicated to all the salseros of the world.
Sebastián Chérrez Alvea
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A seasoned stock analyst colleague texted me a link today, and when I clicked it open, I could hardly believe what I was reading. What a headline. “Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64”. This headline is a nuclear truth bomb masquerading as an insurance agent’s dry manila envelope full of actuarial tables.
The wise men of that Academy of Wisdom (aka The Atlantic Council) tell us “How to deal with the Kremlin-created crisis in Europe“. The piece is mostly codswallop, boasting, cheap threats and hot air but there is one good thing about it:
It doesn’t threaten war.
Never mind that Russia won’t “invade Ukraine” for a host of reasons which I (for one – I certainly don’t pretend to be the only person who can see the obvious) laid out in 2014: Why Russia Hasn’t and Won’t Invade Ukraine. These reasons are only stronger now because Ukraine has become more decayed, more poor, more nazi, more corrupt, more divided and more hopeless. It is a huge hostile expensive liability that Moscow doesn’t want to pay for and police. Let those who broke it, pay for it.
Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, center, announces the creation of a controversial Justice Department effort called the “China Initiative”during a press conference at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 1, 2018. [Source: theintercept.com]The Justice Department’s China Initiative Was Established by the Trump Administration to Crackdown on Chinese Economic and Scientific Espionage.
However, its primary targets have been academics prosecuted for failing to properly disclose their connection to Chinese universities on grant forms and it has led to numerous miscarriages of justice.
The New Dark Age 