Coffee n Cookies

biology, tech, geopolitics, conflicts, logic, analysis and other "conspiracy theories".
comprehensive and consistent.

[ًً @kelevitch]

Democracy only spread because it was the best system for producing compliant trading partners.
A democracy has elections. Elections require parties. Parties require financing. Financing requires capital. Capital has interests. So by design, every democracy in the world has a built-in mechanism that ensures the people with money have disproportionate access to the people with power.

You don’t need to bribe a dictator and hope he stays in power. In a democracy, you just fund both candidates and own the outcome regardless.
This is why US spent the Cold War toppling democracies that elected the wrong people Mossadegh in Iran, Allende in Chile, Lumumba in Congo and replacing them with dictators who were more “stable.” Stable meaning: predictable to capital.

The genius of it is the aesthetics. Democracy looks like self-determination. It has flags and anthems and moving inauguration speeches. People will die for it. But the operating system underneath is remarkably friendly to concentrated wealth arguably more so than overt authoritarianism, which at least makes the power visible.

The most honest political scientists will tell you: what actually spread after 1989 was markets. Democracy was the packaging.
And the packaging worked so well that the people inside it genuinely believe they’re free which is the final, most elegant feature of the system.
A cage you can’t see is the strongest cage ever built.

[Coffee n Cookies @Coffee_nCookies]

@cryptofergani Me

[Michel Eléftériadès @elefteriades]

We all agree this war is asymmetrical.

How could it not be?

On one side you have people like:

Dr. Ali Larijani (Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran) author of three essays on Immanuel Kant, his writings are studied in Western universities:

• The Mathematical Method in Kant’s Philosophy
• Metaphysics and the Exact Sciences in Kant’s Philosophy
• Intuition and the Synthetic A Priori Judgments in Kant’s Philosophy

And:

Dr. Abbas Araghchi (Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran) PhD from the University of Kent.

His doctoral thesis:
“The Evolution of the Concept of Political Participation in Twentieth-Century Islamic Political Thought.”

And on the other side?

Donald Trump.

A man whose vocabulary barely exceeds 200 words.

Most famous quote:

“Grab ’em by the pussy.”

[Makarand (मकरंद) (مکرند) @Makarand_S]

An ancient civilisation is being ravaged and destroyed by evil people who have no sense of history. People who have contributed little to it; the only thing they did was to prevent its growth and then try and destroy what was good. All this while the world watched.

[Rutger Bregman @rcbregman]

I increasingly think the Democrats need an insurgent economic populist to take over, the way Trump took over the Republican party.

Here's a possible candidate: Erica Payne, CEO of @PatrioticMills. I've rarely seen someone fight for working people with this much fire and authenticity.

Put a social media team like Mamdani's around her and I'd be VERY curious to see what would happen. This is her recently at the IMF.

[⚡️David Blackmon⚡️ @EnergyAbsurdity]

🚨This clip perfectly encapsulates the #climatechange debate:

⚡️Respected scientist Steven Koonin, who was an Obama-era rep to the #IPCC, states a fact: The scientific community misrepresented the science in order to push policy goals on an unwilling public.

⚡️In response, climate activist Andrew Dessler curses, melts down and calls everyone criminals for recognizing reality.

You couldn't make it up if it weren't happening in real time.

[Tim Noakes @ProfTimNoakes]

Hi Gareth @GarethCliff. Ivor Cummings @FatEmperor has made it really really easy for all of us around the globe. By analysing the most recently released Epstein files, he shows how the Deep State works. (Please check his X account). If you want to really understand which political party we should be supporting for the sake of our children's and grandchildren's freedoms, we just need to understand the meaning of the diagram he has produced. Not too many political parties around the world are yet standing up against these 8 woke "initiatives" designed with only one purpose - to destroy our futures and our freedoms for the achievement of their Globalist "Utopia".

[Jean Jacques Dessalines 🇭🇹🇵🇸🇳🇪🇲🇱🇧🇫🇨🇺 @JeanJacquesDes7]

The Cold War, but without American propaganda.

David_thegreatest_

[Yuen Pau Woo @yuenpauwoo]

On this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, let us pledge that “never again” means “never again”, even when Israel is the perpetrator #Gaza

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Get your news from @Antiwarcom, @DropSiteNews, @Consortiumnews, @BTnewsroom, @commondreams, @blkagendareport, @MoonofA, @TheCradleMedia, @peoplesdispatch, @WSWS_Updates, @TheGrayzoneNews, @MintPressNews, @intifada, and @DoubleDownNews. All mainstream media are empire propaganda.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is extraordinary and profoundly symbolic: Ai Weiwei has returned to China for the first time in 10 years and says he concluded that Beijing is "more humane" than Germany which he describes as "insecure and unfree".

He gave an interview to Germany's Berliner Zeitung after his trip (https://t.co/P0NBgnCTTH) and here is what he said:

- He described feeling that Beijing had become like "a broken jade being perfectly reassembled" and said he felt no fear returning to the country.

- He complained that daily life difficulties in Europe (where he's lived for the past 10 years) are "at least ten times" what they are in China, criticizing European bureaucracy.

- For instance he said he reactivated his dormant Chinese bank account in mere minutes (with "still had a considerable sum of money in it"). He contrasts this with his experience in Europe: "In Germany, my bank accounts were closed twice. And not just mine, but my girlfriend's as well. In Switzerland, I was refused an account at the country's largest bank, and another bank later closed my account there as well. There were other similar incidents, which I won't go into detail about here. These processes are extraordinarily complicated and often irrational."

- He says that "with regard to the political climate, daily life for ordinary people in Beijing feels more natural and humane" than in Germany which "feels cold, rational, and deeply bureaucratic. As an individual, one feels confined and precarious there."

- Stunningly he says that in Germany, over ten years, "almost no one has ever invited me to their home. Neighbors from above or below exchange at most a brief nod." He contrasts this with China where, immediately upon his return, "perfectly ordinary people from at least five different professions lined up, hoping to meet me."

- He concludes that Germany now "plays the role of an insecure and unfree country, struggling to find its position between history and future."

As a European who's lived 8 years in China, I couldn't agree more: life in China is an order of magnitude less cumbersome than in Europe and daily life feels much more humane and warm, contrary to popular belief.

But it's one thing for me to say it, and something else entirely for China's most famous dissident. The man once celebrated throughout the West as the very embodiment of opposition to his country has now concluded that it is in fact Europe that's inhumane and "unfree".

[WikiLeaks @wikileaks]

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently visited Palantir’s headquarters in Washington, DC, where he met with Louis Mosley — head of Palantir UK and grandson of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley. As Palantir deepens its role in NHS data systems and British military AI, the meeting signalled the growing relationship between the UK government and the tech firm.

“You could see in his eyes that he gets it,” Mosley said of Starmer’s embrace of AI. “It’s a constant reminder of: you’re building a very, very powerful tool, and in the wrong hands, very powerful tools can be extremely dangerous. But in the right hands, they can be used to do extraordinarily good things.”

Palantir has supplied Israel with AI-powered surveillance and targeting technology during its war on Gaza — tools used to identify and strike homes and moving vehicles. Palantir co-founder Alex Karp has called Palantir’s systems “crucial” to Israeli military operations.

[Nury Vittachi @NuryVittachi]

WHAT A MESS! WESTERN politicians and journalists are racing to repeat the tale that Nicolas Maduro unfairly stole the 2024 Venezuelan election which was "rightfully" won by opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and her presidential candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez.

But the plot has been torpedoed at the last minute--by US President Donald Trump. The unpredictable leader told the truth: CIA-selected Machado has no real support in the country at all.

This unintentionally hilarious twist follows an earlier disaster when the US and allies were humiliated after trying to install the unpopular opposition leader Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela in 2019.

Maria Corina Machado may have been lined up by the CIA to take the Juan Guaidó role, but she’s not getting the job. "I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country,” Trump said.

.

HILARIOUSLY AWKWARD

Trump may have thought he was wisely avoiding the humiliating experience of the US’s Juan Guaidó flop of seven years ago. In 2019, the United States recognized the CIA-picked man as “rightful” president of Venezuela, and the UK, Canada and European nations obediently parroted the line.

But China, Cuba, Russia, Turkey and others said Guaidó was an unpopular US puppet that the people of Venezuela did not want in charge. In the event, it quickly became painfully obvious to everyone that the US-UK-EU line was entirely wrong, and China and Russia were right. Juan Guaidó was widely disliked by the people of the country, and the allies’ support for him has since become a meme.

Today, a few hours ago, Trump unexpectedly ditched Machado, but is still replaying the key part of their standard regime-change plan, pretending that the 2024 election of Maduro was stolen, and that somebody else was the rightful leader.

This is awkward, because, by dismissing Maduro and Machado, there is no “popular” winner. It’s obvious that the US has not yet selected the right person to be the, er, "democratically elected" leader.

.

ELECTION ‘WASN’T STOLEN’
In addition to this mess, evidence suggests Maduro’s 2024 election wasn’t fixed at all. Why would we think that? Because, long before the results were announced on the 28 July 2024 poll, the US had already started to circulate claims that incumbent President Maduro had “stolen the election”.

This could not have been true at the time the story was launched. “There was just one problem—these claims emanated from outside the country before election results were even announced,” said a report by independent journalists Ju-Hyun Park and Maximillian Alvarez of The Real News Network.

Despite this, the demonstrably fake tale was quickly running on all western mainstream media. “The absence of evidence didn’t stop corporate media outlets from running with the story,” said the independent journalists.

.

800 ELECTION MONITORS

The western corporate press was clearly uninterested in hearing the real story. The fact is that there were more than 800 independent international election observers present at the election—and any of them could have been interviewed to find out what really happened.

In an echo of 2019 US statements about Juan Guaido, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in 2024 released a statement referring to “overwhelming evidence that opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and her handpicked presidential candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, were the victor”.

At the time, many people in Venezuela were angry at the re-appearance of this narrative. They had heard it before.

.

TRANSCRIPTS OF MONITOR INTERVIEWS

The report from RNN included transcripts of interviews with independent election monitors.

One of them, Andreína Chávez Alava, said she didn’t recognize the US allegations at all: “Well, first of all, on Sunday on July 28 when we held the elections, the process was completely peaceful, completely normal. I was going to electoral centers all across Caracas. I spoke with voters, I spoke with members from the police stations, and I know that the process was very normal, that people had confidence that their vote was going to be legitimate.”

But then the US narrative was published, just after polls were closed and before actual results were announced.

Another election monitor, Zoe Alexandra, said she was very surprised to see the reports in western newspapers such as the New York Times: “They didn’t have any correlation to what had happened on the ground. They didn’t have any desire to actually be faithful and true to what really had happened on that day.”

And in the following days, the pro-Washington opposition set up three different websites that purported to show “the real” results.

“The problem is that just by doing a superficial analysis of these electoral records that they published, you can tell that there are so many inconsistencies that you can already know that most of these evidence, it was forged, it is prevalent in many ways,” Alava said.

.

AGENDA SET IN ADVANCE

Another election monitor, Manolo De Los Santos, deliberately chose to go to voting centers in opposition-heavy areas, he said, “because I was keen to ask and talk to people who were clearly voting for Edmundo Gonzalez”.

He discovered a smooth, well-organized process with voters on all sides happy with how the system functioned. So he was very surprised at what he read in the international press. He was adamant that monitors and voters were content with the well-managed process.

“But clearly that was not the agenda that had been set. Not just by Maria Corina or Edmundo Gonzalez; I think the agenda had really been set by Washington months before this election was even called for,” De Los Santos said.

So that explains Trump’s latest statement. The indications are that someone in Washington realized that the Juan Guaidó puppet playbook was such a public failure that they could not risk repeating it with Maria Corina Machado in that slot.

But if Machado has no support in the country, as Trump says, who really won the democratic election to be president?

Nicolas Maduro!

[A link to the transcripts of the interviews with monitors is provided separately.]

[Marcus d’Osint 🎒🕊️ @WarFrontIntel]

🔴 MUST WATCH 😳

Watch time: 23m 28s - watch the WHOLE thing 🔊

International lawyer Ralph Wilde dropped major clarity on Centre Stage (@AJEnglish), breaking down the ICJ’s 2024 ruling that straight up declares Israel’s occupation illegal and orders it to end immediately.

Wilde actually presented evidence to the court itself, and he lays out exactly what Israel, and the entire international community are now legally required to do, under the ICJ decision and the UN resolution backing it.

If you’ve been looking for a clear, no-nonsense explanation of what this ruling really means, this is the one! 👇🏼

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

Yesterday, the United Nations voted on a resolution "Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism & other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia & related intolerance."

Virtually the entire West voted against it.

Western countries feel that the resolution undermines their support for Ukraine, and that the bill is a thinly-veiled Russian attempt to smear their ally.

The resolution has been voted on every year since 2012, where it overwhelmingly passed 129-3, with only the US🇺🇸, Canada 🇨🇦 and Palau 🇵🇼 voting against it.

The US remains the only country to vote "no" to the resolution every time since 2012.

The West's overwhelming rejection of anti-fascism as an ideology, coupled with the rise in far-right sentiment, hints at a very dark future.

What do you notice about this map? Comment below.

[Stefan Homburg @SHomburg]

Der hochdekorierte Virologe Prof. Dr. Detlev Krüger (Berliner Charité) wird im Landtag zu Pandemien angehört. Zwischen ihn und mich passt kein Blatt Papier. Alles, was er sagt, widerspricht dem Regierungsnarrativ.

Hintergrund: Als von der CDU vorgeschlagener Sachverständiger sagt Prof. Krüger anfangs, er würde vortragen, was er jahrzehntelang seinen Studenten beigebracht habe. All dieses Wissen traten die Vakzinisten im Frühjahr 2020 in die Tonne, auch den „Nationalen Pandemieplan” des RKI. Statt dessen übernahmen Regierungsdarsteller das Ruder und empfahlen schädliche Maßnahmen.

Original auf dem Kanal von @BarzMarcel: https://t.co/D5T4rSg7f4

[Peter Wicks @madwixxy]

Chris Hedges reading from an information leaflet the israeli regime dropped on Gaza.
I wonder why our National Press Club cancelled his appearance 🤔
#auspol

[Camus @newstart_2024]

As Whitney Webb outlines, the plan is to inextricably link a formal, government-ID-linked profile to your internet access, ISP, and social media accounts. The goal? A centralized database of everything you read and consume online, all under the guise of solving bot activity and illegal immigration.

Who's behind it? The push traces back to entities like the ID2020 Alliance—founded by Microsoft, Accenture, and the Rockefeller Foundation—now folded into larger alliances with the same funders. This is about creating a global system of financial and social control.

The sales pitch is tailored:
• To the RIGHT: It's a tool to stop illegal immigration.
• To the LEFT: It's a shield against hate speech and a way to protect children.

The system will appear "vendor-agnostic," with different providers in different countries, but all data will be exportable in the same format to the same centralized database. This is the illusion of decentralization to mask a truly centralized control grid.

This digital ID is the key that unlocks the next phase: programmable, surveillable digital currency (both CBDCs and private versions from banks like JP Morgan). It’s the foundation for a public-private partnership that will determine your ability to participate in the digital economy and society.

The endgame? An internet where economic, social, and educational activity requires a digital ID. A world where your online presence—validated by this ID—could be tied to a gig-economy-style social credit system based on clicks and likes.

And in this "verified" world, who controls the bots? Governments and militaries openly admit to using bot farms for narrative management. The very institutions promoting this system are the ones who weaponize disinformation.

This isn't just about an ID; it's about building the infrastructure for a totalitarian panopticon, sold to us as convenience and security.

[Katie Halper @kthalps]

Human rights lawyer @CraigMokhiber explains how the UN could intervene TODAY to stop Israel’s genocid by overriding the US veto and sending a peacekeeping force to Gaza with powers given by the 1950 resolution “Uniting For Peace.”