Gilbert Achcar defends the recently “UN-authorized” imperialist intervention in Libya on the ground that general principles may require exceptions in concrete cases. “Every general rule admits of exceptions. This includes the general rule that UN-authorized military interventions by imperialist powers are purely reactionary ones, and can never achieve a humanitarian or positive purpose.”1 This kind […]
Geography Archives: Europe
Countries in the continent of Europe
Arming the Libyan Rebels
Jon Stewart: Jon Stewart: Oh, people, we are now into our third week of a military bombing campaign in Libya, Operation Odyssey Dawn. The operation cleverly named for the Odyssey, a 20-year harrowing journey through a hellscape where nearly everyone is killed. Adding “dawn” . . . so it’s the earliest part of that […]
How Many Cancers Did Chernobyl Really Cause?
There is a lot of confusion about how many excess cancer deaths will likely result from the 1986 Chernobyl accident in Ukraine. As we see below, 70,000 and 35,000 are reasonable estimates of the number of excess cancers and cancer deaths attributable to the accident. Much lower numbers of cancers and deaths are often cited, […]
African Diaspora against Sarko’s War in Ivory Coast
“Sarkozy the Murderer! Sarkozy the Murderer!” Paris, France, 4 April 2011 Manche, France, 5 April 2011 Brussels, Belgium, 5 April 2011 Douala, Cameroon, 5 April 2011 Cf. Bruno Ben Moubamba, “Nicolas Sarkozy engage des actes de Guerre contraires au Droit International en Côte d’Ivoire” (4 April 2011). What happened to the French Left? Stop Sarko! […]
Libya and the Laws of War: Interview with Michael Mandel
With respect to international law, in what ways does this intervention in Libya differ from those carried out in Afghanistan and Iraq? The intervention in Afghanistan, despite protestations to the contrary, was not authorized by the Security Council, whose relevant resolutions did not even mention Afghanistan, let alone authorize “all necessary means.” That was because […]
America’s Libyans
The Benghazi council chose as its leader the colorless former justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil. Jalil’s brain is Mahmoud Jibril, a former head of the National Economic Development Board (NEDB). A U.S. embassy cable from May 11, 2009 (09TRIPOLI386) describes Jibril as keen on a close relationship with the U.S. and eager “to create a […]
The Occupation Cookbook or the Model of the Occupation of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb
Excerpt from Marc Bousquet, “Introduction”: The Occupation Cookbook is a “manual” that describes the organization of the student occupation of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences that took place in the spring of 2009 and lasted for 35 days. It was written for two reasons: to record what happened, and to present the particular […]
Fukushima: IAEA Confirms Very High Levels of Contamination Far from Reactors
Today the IAEA has finally confirmed what some analysts have suspected for days: that the concentration per area of long-lived cesium-137 (Cs-137) is extremely high as far as tens of kilometers from the release site at Fukushima Dai-Ichi, and in fact would trigger compulsory evacuation under IAEA guidelines. The IAEA is reporting that measured soil […]
Russia Opposes West over Arming Libyan Opposition
The West should not arm the Libyan opposition, says Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. This video was released by Press TV on 30 March 2011. Cf. “Moscow absolutely disagrees with statements by certain participants in the operation in Libya and their intentions to arm rebels who resisted Muammar Gaddafi’s troops” (“Russia, Austria Reveal Close […]
Wisconsin, Ohio, Portugal: Shifting Political Winds
When the current economic crisis hit, the Obama campaign blew away Bush and McCain by promising hope, change, and a solution that would overcome this crisis and prevent future crises. Likewise some governments in Europe came to power based on public fear reacting to the global meltdown. Ongoing crisis, mass economic pain, and deepening public […]
NATO’s Fascist War
The rebel leaders tipped their hand too early. Now the whole of Libya, including the rebels, understand what they are: traitors dependent on invaders. The rebels thus now lack motive force as well as military training: “Libyan Rebels Flee as Kadafi’s Forces Defend Surt” (Los Angeles Times, 29 March 2011). The only way they can […]
Al-Jazeera: An Island of Pro-Empire Intrigue
The Empire admits: without Al-Jazeera, they could not have bombed Libya. How did Al-Jazeera, once dubbed the ‘terror network’ by some and whose staff were martyred by US bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, end up becoming the media war propagandist for yet another Western war against a small state of the Global South, Libya? We […]
French Leftists for the Libya War
What with the bruising pension battle antagonizing the whole of the French working class last year, and a spate of scandals, including one exposing financial ties between his short-lived foreign minister (since sacked) and the deposed president of Tunisia, French President Nicolas Sarkozy‘s popularity was at an all-time low, and his party was battered in […]
Joint Statement of 58 Communist and Workers’ Parties against Imperialist Aggression in Libya
The imperialist killers headed by the USA, France, Britain and NATO as a whole and with the approval of the UN started a new imperialist war. This time in Libya. Their allegedly humanitarian pretexts are completely misleading! They throw dust into peoples’ eyes! Their real goals are the hydrocarbons in Libya. We, the Communist and […]
Libya and Yemen — Study in Contrast
It is now clear that the no-fly zone has been expanded in Libya to a military campaign for a regime change, something that the UN Security Council did not authorize. Gaddafi’s residence in Tripoli has been bombed and more strikes are taking place in Tripoli and other towns. The argument of course is that Gaddafi’s […]
Nuclear Energy
Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain. The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 16 March 2011. | Print
Attack on Libya Slights African Diplomatic Option
Dakar, Senegal (PANA) — Ongoing attacks on Libya by Western forces occurred in defiance of the ongoing efforts by the African Union (AU) to explore the diplomatic option to resolve the crisis in the North African nation. The Western coalition, including the US, UK and France, unleashed a barrage of missiles on Libya starting Saturday, […]
Lavrov to Visit Mideast amid Crisis, during Military Operation in Libya
Note that Algeria has backed the Gaddafi forces while Egypt has sided with the rebels in Libya, going so far as to arm them. — Ed. MOSCOW, March 20 (Itar-Tass) — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov leaves for the Middle East on Sunday under the conditions of the political crisis in the region and the […]
Moscow Regrets Coalition Operation in Libya
MOSCOW, March 19 (Itar-Tass) — Moscow has expressed regret over the start of an international operation in Libya, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said. “Moscow regrets the armed action undertaken in Libya by a number of countries with reference to a hastily adopted U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973,” he said on Saturday, March 19. “We […]
The Libyan Rebellion: The West’s Cloak over the Gulf
Fidel Castro was right. The West was planning an attack on a sovereign third world nation imminently: Libya. Nothing like a good old war against brown and black people in Libya by the West to remind oneself of what Western civilisation is all about. Many of us who have been politically active since the 1990s […]
