Life in Late Stage Capitalism
“It’s much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.”
– Slavoj Žižek
2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019
2025
- Venezuelan detainees at Texas center spell out S.O.S. with their bodies. The men fear deportation to El Salvador under wartime law despite maintaining they do not have gang ties.
- Global military expenditure sees steepest year-on-year rise since end of Cold War:
The world’s top ranked spenders — the US, China, Russia, Germany and India — spent a combined total of $1.635 trillion (€1.437 trillion), accounting for 60% of total global military spending.
Meanwhile, real term military spending increased by 9.4%, taking worldwide total military expenditure to $2.718 trillion (€2,389 billion), and the global military burden — the share of global economic output devoted to military expenditure — increased to 2.5% of GDP.
- Spain, Portugal and parts of France hit by massive power outage.
- America’s nuclear arsenal to cost $946 billion over next decade, U.S. government report reveals.
- Low-cost airline partners with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement for deportation flights.
- Pop star Katy Perry and television personality Gayle King will join Jeff Bezos’ fiancee Lauren Sanchez on Blue Origin spaceflight.
- One million Haitian children face “critical” food shortage, says U.N.
- LG TVs’ integrated ads get more personal with tech that analyses viewer emotions .
- U.S. Social Security lists thousands of migrants as dead to prompt them to “self-deport”:
By placing migrants in Social Security’s “death master file,” the Trump administration is seeking to cut off their access to credit cards, bank accounts and other financial services.
- U.K. creating “murder prediction” tool to identify people most likely to kill. Algorithms allegedly being used to study data of thousands of people, in project critics say is “chilling and dystopian”.
- Google is allegedly paying some A.I. staff to do nothing for a year rather than join rivals.
- There are more billionaires than ever before – and Elon Musk is the richest of them all, according to Forbes’ latest billionaires list.
- Easter eggs are so expensive Americans are dyeing potatoes.
- Trevor Milton, Trump-donor who was sentenced to prison last year for fraud, was pardoned by President Donald Trump.
- Florida to consider relaxing child labour laws to fill vacant jobs.
- C.E.O. of A.I. ad-tech firm pledging “world free of fraud” sentenced for fraud.
- Yale suspends scholar after A.I.-powered news site accuses her of terrorist link.
- U.S. administration deports hundreds of immigrants even as a judge orders their removals be stopped.
- Greenpeace ordered to pay more than $660 million over Dakota Access Pipeline protests.
- French scientist denied U.S. entry after phone messages critical of Trump found.
- China delays approval of BYD’s Mexico plant amid fears tech could leak to U.S.
- Elon Musk installs “quick and dirty” turbines to power Memphis data centers.
- U.N. judge guilty of forcing woman to work as slave.
- Amazon rainforest cut down to build highway for climate summit:
A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.
It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people - including world leaders - at the conference in November.
- Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints.
- Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit lost $1.5 billion to North Korean hackers.
- Mental health crisis pushing French farmers to a breaking point:
French agriculture is facing an unprecedented crisis as farmers struggle with falling incomes, mounting debts and bureaucratic burdens. Despite being the EU’s largest agricultural producer, France sees one farmer die by suicide every two days.
- BlackRock to buy Hong Kong firm’s Panama Canal port stake amid Trump pressure:
Trump refused to rule out military action to assert U.S. control over the canal, which is operated by the Panama Canal Authority, an autonomous agency overseen by the Panamanian government, and surrounded by several ports.
The U.S. president has complained about the presence of Chinese and Hong Kong-based companies in Panama, and American officials and politicians have said CK Hutchison’s control of the ports represents a security risk for the operation.
- Violent protests in Greece on rail crash anniversary as frustration at system failures boils over.
- Jeff Bezos narrows Washington Post opinion pages around “personal liberties” and “free markets”. Billionaire owner says overhauled section will focus on “underserved” viewpoints.
- BP shuns renewables in return to oil and gas.
- E.U. borders recorded over 120,000 migrant pushbacks in 2024, says report by N.G.O.s.
- Apple, Inc. pulls encryption feature from U.K. over government spying demands:
Apple has stopped offering its end-to-end encrypted iCloud storage, Advanced Data Protection (ADP), to new users in the UK, and will require existing users to disable the feature at some point in the future. The move comes following reports earlier this month that UK security services requested Apple grant them backdoor access to worldwide users’ encrypted backups.
- Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage.
- HP deliberately adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls:
HP Inc is trying to force consumer PC and print customers to use online and other digital support channels by setting a minimum 15-minute wait time for anyone that phones the call center to get answers to troublesome queries.
- New San Francisco public health chief was part of notorious McKinsey opioid-marketing operation.
- So many Americans died from COVID, it’s boosting Social Security to the tune of $205 billion:
The working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that approximately 1.7 million excess deaths among Americans 25 and older occurred between 2020 and 2023 related to the pandemic. Premature deaths related to COVID mean Social Security will not make retirement payments to those individuals in the future, reducing payments by about $294 billion, the researchers found.
- Brazil’s former President Bolsonaro charged over alleged coup that included a plan to poison Lula:
Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet alleges that Bolsonaro and 33 others participated in a plan to remain in power. The alleged plot, he wrote, included a plan to poison Lula and shoot dead Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a foe of the former president.
- Argentina’s president Javier Milei launches meme coin.
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to monitor and locate “negative” social media discussion about the agency and its top officials, according to contract documents.
- MI5 lied to courts to protect violent neo-Nazi spy.
- Germany bars climate activist from becoming school teacher.
- U.S.-funded “social network” attacking pesticide critics shuts down after journalist investigation:
The St Louis, Missouri-based company, v-Fluence, said it is shuttering the service, which it called a “stakeholder wiki”, that featured personal details about more than 500 environmental advocates, scientists, politicians and others seen as opponents of pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops.
- Trump halts enforcement of U.S. law banning bribery of foreign officials.
- Car company Stellantis introduces pop-up ads in vehicles:
In a move that has left drivers both frustrated and bewildered, Stellantis has introduced full-screen pop-up ads on its infotainment systems. Specifically, Jeep owners have reported being bombarded with advertisements for Mopar’s extended warranty service. The kicker? These ads appear every time the vehicle comes to a stop.
- Mass graves with bodies of nearly 50 migrants found in southeastern Libya.
- U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts:
Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.
- Google lifts a ban on using its A.I. for weapons and surveillance.
- Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows.
- Sweden aims to introduce law letting police wiretap children as gang violence rises.
- Kansas faces one of the largest tuberculosis outbreaks in U.S. history.
- The E.U. Commission paid N.G.O.s to influence parliamentarians within the interests of the E.U. Commission.
- U.S. restricts Switzerland’s access to A.I. chips.
- U.S. school’s $1 million A.I. gun detection system fails to detect weapon before fatal school shooting.
- Elon Musk makes fascist salute at Trump inauguration rally.
- Swedish man dies in South Korea after being denied urgent treatment at 21 hospitals:
Hospitals were reportedly reluctant to treat the individual due to his foreign nationality, the high cost of surgery, and concerns over reimbursement for his medical care.
- Biden pardons five members of his family in final minutes in office.
- Oxfam report finds billionaires’ wealth increased three times faster in 2024 than in 2023, outpacing the previous year’s growth.
- N.H.S. frontline nurses are being forced to give care in corridors, cupboards and car parks on a daily basis, report has revealed.
- U.S. schools using A.I. emulation of Anne Frank that urges kids not to blame anyone for Holocaust.
- Melania Trump launches her own cryptocurrency.
- Trump begins selling new crypto token:
The president-elect and his family have a direct and potentially lucrative stake in the sale of a cryptocurrency product that surged in value in the hours after going on sale, days before his inauguration.
- Top three insurers reaped $7.3 billion through their drug middlemen’s markups, F.T.C. says:
The top pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) — CVS Health’s Caremark Rx, Cigna’s Express Scripts and UnitedHealth Group’s OptumRx — generated roughly $7.3 billion through price hikes over about five years starting in 2017, the FTC said.
The “excess” price hikes affected generic drugs used to treat heart disease, HIV and cancer, among other conditions, with some increases more than 1,000% of the national average costs of acquiring the medications, the commission said.
- U.K. prisons recruit officers from Nigeria in move which sees some sleeping rough.
- At least 100 illegal miners have died while trapped in a South African mine for months, group representing the miners said.
- As wildfires rage in Los Angeles, private firefighters join the fight for the fortunate few.
- 2024 first year to pass 1.5 °C global warming limit.
- U.S. announces $25 million reward for arrest of Venezuelan President Maduro.
- Baby born on migrant boat crossing from Africa to Canary Islands.
- Number of homeless people in Germany rises to more than 500,000.
- U.K. Special Forces S.A.S. had golden pass to get away with murder, inquiry told.
- Italian village forbids residents from becoming ill:
Around half of Belcastro’s 1,200 residents are over the age of 65 and the nearest Accident & Emergency (A&E) department is over 45km (28 miles) away, the mayor said.
He added that the A&E was only reachable by a road with a 30kmh (18mph) speed limit.
The village’s on-call doctor surgery is also only open sporadically and offers no cover during weekends, holidays or after hours.
- U.S. president Trump refuses to rule out use of military force to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal.
- Nazi ties to Credit Suisse ran deeper than was known, hidden files reveal.
- Kenya police hide killings of anti-government protesters.
- Doctors call for more scurvy testing in British Columbia in light of vitamin C deficiency data.
- Washington Post cartoonist quits after Jeff Bezos cartoon is killed:
Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for The Washington Post, said on Friday evening that she was resigning after the newspaper’s opinions section rejected a cartoon depicting The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald J. Trump.
- U.K. girl, 12, designs solar-powered blanket for homeless.
- Poorer children hit hardest as scurvy makes a comeback in France:
Scurvy, a disease caused by severe vitamin C deficiency, is making a comeback in France. A new study links its resurgence, particularly among young children from low-income families, to rising food insecurity and inflation since the Covid pandemic.
“[E]mancipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’, must reveal what is presented as necessary and inevitable to be a mere contingency, just as it must make what was previously deemed to be impossible seem attainable.”
– Mark Fisher