The U.S.’s campaign against Iran has violated the most critical lessons that U.S. and UN officials claimed to have learned from the debacle in Iraq.
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Monthly Review Magazine
Why the U.S. might be angling for the return of a new ‘strongman’ like Saddam in Iraq
The departure of the former Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani is beginning to be felt in Iraq.
Fight for all or lose it all
If you want to predict the future, don’t speculate, study the past. In light of the knowledge gleaned, examine the present. The history of the future is planted, not buried, in the here and now.
Notes on a novel coronavirus
The virus’s final penetrance worldwide will depend on the difference between the rate of infection and the rate of removing infections—by recovery or death. If the infection rate far exceeds removal, then the penetrance may approach the whole of humanity, although there will likely accrue large geographic differences.
What the Right Wing in Latin America means by democracy is violence
It was a curious exchange. Frustrated by the attacks on his party—the Movement for Socialism (MAS)—former president of Bolivia Evo Morales made an audio recording in which he called upon his supporters to form militias. Maximilian Heath of Reuters went to Argentina to speak with Morales about this leaked recording.
The Lebanese Intifada, or the growth of an anti-capitalist mass movement
Today the cow is dry. Businessmen stepped on her neck for years, extracting the last drop of milk. There is nothing left for them to fight for, except for the hopes of using us to beg either from the U.S., the E.U. or the Gulf States.
The people of Colombia are cracking up the walls of war and authoritarianism
The protests that started with the national strike called by Colombia’s central union on November 21 to protest pension reforms and the broken promises of the peace accords have persisted for two months and grown into a protest against the whole establishment. And the protests have continued into the new year and show no signs […]
Defender and spearheads
Troop movements today promise anything but peace. Every two years military maneuvers encircle Russian borders; every nine months a new brigade of 4500 U.S. soldiers was flown over to “gain experience”. This year it will be a division of 20,000, joined by soldiers from 18 countries, 37,000 in all.
Britain exits the European Union and takes a sharp right turn
This article assesses the two recent historic events in Britain: the exit of Britain from the imperialist bloc known as the European Union (EU); and the crushing electoral defeat of the Labour Party. Neither Brexit, nor Labour’s defeat, can be understood in isolation from the other.
Not an inch: Indian students stand against the far-right
With her head bandaged and her arm in a sling, university student Aishe Ghosh went before the cameras to say that the students of the university she attends in New Delhi would move “not an inch back.”
Sanctioning Syria
U.S. measures are the most punitive of overlapping sanctions regimes also applied by the European Union, Japan, Canada, Australia and others. The U.S., in the words of a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, is waging “economic war” to “strangle to death” Assad’s government. The casualties are the poor, the sick and children—not the […]
What passes for reality is not worth respecting
In October of last year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its flagship World Economic Outlook. In that report, the IMF said that the global growth rate would stumble at 3% in 2019. A month ago, the IMF’s main economists returned to this theme; ‘Global growth’, they wrote, ‘recorded its weakest pace since the global […]
Is this the end of U.S. interference in West Asia?
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif reacted strongly to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s suggestion that Iraqis were “dancing in the street” to celebrate the assassination. On Twitter, Zarif posted pictures of the funeral procession for Soleimani and wrote, “End of U.S. malign presence in West Asia has begun.”
Dossier 24: The world oscillates between crises and protests
This dossier is dedicated to offering an assessment of the moment we find ourselves in today. Part 1 provides a quick overview of planetary affairs; and Part 2 there are more detailed reports from our offices on their respective regions: South Africa, India, as well as the Caribbean and Latin America.
A tale of two murals
No-one on Berlin’s main eastbound traffic artery could miss one of the two murals, five stories high, 2745 square feet in area, in shiny bright, red, green, yellow and blue colors up to the gabled rooftop of an older, isolated apartment building.
How Trump got himself into a World of trouble in Iraq
It’s a new year, and the U.S. has found a new enemy—an Iraqi militia called Kata’ib Hezbollah. How tragically predictable was that? So who or what is Kata’ib Hezbollah? Why are U.S. forces attacking it? And where will this lead?
A culture of reconciliation with nature
Christopher Caudwell, who died at age 29 fighting with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, wrote: “Either the devil has come amongst us having great power, or there is a causal explanation for a disease common to economics, science, and art.” That disease, he recognized, was the self-alienation of humanity under capitalism
The Last Earth: A People’s History of Palestine
This article is a book review of Ramzy Baroud’s The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story. Published in 2018, The Last Earth documents the lives of ordinary Palestinians and their battle against Israeli occupation. In the process of telling their stories, Baroud shows that the Palestinians not as passive victims of Israeli colonialism but as active […]
Making sense of a shattering defeat
As soon as the scale of Labour’s shattering defeat began to emerge last night, pundits began to push the line that this was not just about Brexit but about Jeremy Corbyn and the shift towards socialism. No election is just about one issue—but the evidence backs up the argument that Brexit was the defining factor.
The British establishment is very afraid of a Corbyn victory
The negative media barrage on Corbyn and Labour in the UK has been incessant but if Corbyn were to succeed it would be a major boost to the Sanders campaign in the U.S.
