Beginning in the 1950s, the Soviet Union launched an ambitious programme aimed at developing artificial intelligence. While the history of AI today seems to be shaped by the giants of Silicon Valley, ideas originating from behind the Iron Curtain had a significant influence, although they remain largely overlooked. 

AI before AI: The forgotten Soviet programme (1/3)

By: Sébastian SEIBT

As part of the 105th anniversary of the Communist Party of China, Xinhua asked several friends of China about their views on the CPC.

1. On the CPC's Self-Revolution
General Secretary Xi Jinping of the CPC defined "self-revolution" as a way for the CPC to escape the historical cycle of decline. In your opinion, what are the inspirations for this "self-revolution" for political parties around the world?

Interview with Jean Pierre Page by the Chinese news agency Xinhua

BY Jean-Pierre PAGE

Deeply divided by nationalism and deprived of its vast colonies by the last century’s catastrophic two World Wars, western Europe has been in decline ever since. Recently that decline has become drastic and desperate as western Europe falls ever further behind – economically, militarily, and politically – today’s two superpowers: the US and China... Mediocre and unpopular leaders reflect western European decline.

Why Europe’s Leaders Provoke War with Russia

BY RICHARD WOLFF AND DEMOCRACY AT WORK

The word “terrorism” is applied selectively to enemies of the US and its allies, turning a legal and moral category into propaganda that obscures state violence and normalises genocide.

Allies of the US are never designated as “terrorist”.

Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs” failed. Drugs are now more widely used around the world than ever before. Police forces disguise the failure by telling us about another record drug haul.

And George Bush’s “war on terror” has failed because continuing US attacks on Muslim people – as in Iran – inevitably triggers a response.

John Menadue

I have accomplished, to the best of my ability, this work which has occupied me for 15 years, on a subject near to me—that of art. By saying that this subject has occupied me for 15 years, I do not mean that I have been writing this book 15 years, but only that I began to write on art 15 years ago, thinking that when once I undertook the task I should be able to accomplish it without a break. It proved, however, that my views on the matter then were so far from clear that I could not arrange them in a way that satisfied me.

What Is Art?

By Leo Tolstoy

Translated From the Original With An Introduction By Aylmer Maude

… Australia was on the wrong side of the very qualities — his strength of will, singleness of purpose, his refusal to 'give way, in things great or small, large or petty', the power of his imagination to set grim reality at defiance, his mastery of the English language — that made Winston Churchill, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin described him, "the saviour of his country, the largest human being of his time." His total self-belief and his urge for action had their stubborn, reckless, and spiteful aspect. Australia often seemed to bring out that darker side.

Churchill and Australia
Graham Freudenberg

ISBN: 9781742623672

I’m a Sydney Bin Chicken

Born in a tall palm tree

I don’t so know when

Time is irrelevant to thee

All I want is quality garbage

That humans throw out in rage

Or drop like a pooping cow

Near street bins that overflow

With many a rotten tomato

Left over pizza is thus a treat

That Bin Chickens love to eat 

High class gourmet rubbish

Dreaming I was the king of Egypt 

Till I lost my privileged script

Badly transcribed in Hieroglyphs 

By a blind drunk stoned carver

Becoming nearly extinct forever

Until rescued by Taronga zoo

To avoid the vanishing eternal goo

And welcome street paradise

Of bin rubbish in glorious sunrise

As we multiply like educated rats

Our species is not full of ungrats

Some catastrophes disappear because they end. Others disappear because they continue for so long that the world grows accustomed to them. 

They cease to interrupt television schedules and Instagram reels, just as they no longer command the front pages of newspapers. 

Vijay Prashad: Silence on Gaza When Headlines Fade

The tapering off of media coverage of the U.S.-Israeli genocide hasn’t abated the violence. In fact, its permanence is what allows the world to look away.

Financial markets return to their ordinary calculations, the daily machinery of political and economic life resumes its familiar rhythm, and diplomats are asked to put away their briefing books on that tired but painful subject. 

The River Rhine has fallen to record low levels in several locations in Germany and the Netherlands as prolonged heatwaves continue across Europe.

Last week, levels were measured in Cologne in western Germany and in Lobith, where the Rhine crosses from Germany into the Netherlands, that were lower than at any point since records began.

Other major European rivers with important transport, industrial and agricultural functions have also seen record low levels, including the Danube, which flows through 10 countries, and Italy's Po river.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s departure from the Elysee Palace next year could open the door to Ukraine skeptics and create a “big problem” for the NATO coalition backing Kiev, The Telegraph reported on Sunday, citing sources.

Fears about what the British paper described as a “leadership vacuum”revolve mainly around the so-called “coalition of the willing” – a grouping of roughly 30, mostly NATO, states that has spent over a year drawing up plans to put troops in Ukraine as self-styled “peacekeepers” once a ceasefire is reached. Among the goals of the group – which is dominated by the UK and France – is also to coordinate aid to Kiev.

The weakly supported anniversary statement on the Hague ruling showed how isolated the US and Australia have become on the South China Sea, with ASEAN preferring diplomacy over confrontation.

Distinguished former senior Singaporean diplomat and strategic analyst, Kishore Mhabubani, asked in his 2020 book, whether China has won the geopolitical contest between the US and China.

Geoff Raby

Winston Churchill is still revered in Britain and by old-generation American conservatives and Make America Great Again (MAGA) patriots alike, as the epitome of an all-wise, brilliantly successful Warlord. The truth was the precise opposite, as the great Anglo-American biographer and historian Nigel Hamilton documents in his classic trilogy of books on President Franklin Roosevelt’s wartime leadership, “The Mantle of Command,” “Commander in Chief” and “War and Peace.”

Russia’s richest woman, Wildberries CEO Tatyana Kim, has been added to Ukraine’s notorious Mirotvorets ‘kill list’ amid Kiev’s claims that her company is aiding the Russian military.

Kim is the founder, CEO and largest shareholder of Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, often dubbed the country’s Amazon. She launched the company from her Moscow apartment while on maternity leave, building it into a business operating in ten countries with gross merchandise turnover of about $77.3 billion in 2025. With an estimated net worth of more than $8 billion, Kim is Russia’s richest woman, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and one of the country’s most influential business leaders.

Today in dystopia, billionaire corporations and plutocrats can hire trained CIA operatives to psychologically terrorize ordinary citizens who criticize them.

E-commerce giant eBay has just agreed to pay $56 million to settle a lawsuit for damages caused by the company’s shockingly aggressive gangstalking operation against a Massachusetts couple who criticized the company’s wealthy executives on their private website.

Today In Dystopia: eBay CIA Gangstalkers, Shredding Rare Books To Train AI

Today in dystopia, billionaire corporations and plutocrats can hire trained CIA operatives to psychologically terrorize ordinary citizens who criticize them.

BY Caitlin Johnstone