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Uprising against the “War on Terror”: The Danger of US Foreign Policy to International Security
For those among us who hoped that 2007 would be a more orderly year in world politics, the current trends have been frustrating. Over the past few weeks, the Bush administration has pursued the escalation of two major international crises. The first major crisis is taking place in Somalia, where the Ethiopian Army and its […]
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Ammunition against the Empire
Need a crash course on the present state of the world? Want to untangle the terminology, separate the victims from the victimizers, understand the dynamics of unilateralism, and deduce what can be done about it all? I’d like to introduce you to a small literary arsenal. A good place to begin is the book […]
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Is the Big Ship America Sinking?Contradictions and Openings
There’s something happeningWhat it is ain’t exactly clearBuffalo Springfield, 1966 Are we in the midst of a momentous turn in world politics? Donald Rumsfeld has been shuffled out of the Pentagon. Daniel Ortega, Washington’s nemesis from the Sandinista Revolution of the late 1970s, is back as President of Nicaragua. Hugo Chavez has been triumphantly re-elected, […]
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Toward a Surge for “Out Now”
THE ANTI-SURGE GETS ROLLING It’s not about Bush’s surge anymore. It’s the Antiwar Surge that’s capturing the headlines and threatening to upset all the warmakers’ calculations. On January 27, “a raucous and colorful multitude” (Washington Post) brought their “Out Now!” message to the streets of Washington. With participants ranging from active duty GIs to members […]
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Jacques Chirac Minimizes the Threat of an Iranian Nuclear Bomb [Jacques Chirac minimise la menace d’une bombe nucléaire iranienne]
Jacques Chirac a fait, lundi 29 janvier, au sujet du programme nucléaire de l’Iran et de ses conséquences possibles au Moyen-Orient, une série de déclarations tranchant avec le discours habituel de la diplomatie française sur ce dossier. Il parlait à des journalistes du Nouvel Observateur, du New York Times et du International Herald Tribune. Le […]
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Mass Movement to End the War Now
To endorse the statement below, please go to: www.petitiononline.com/NYCLAW2/petition.html. January 24, 2007 Despite overwhelming rejection of its policies in the November elections, the Bush administration has steadily escalated its war in the Middle East. This has meant not only ordering thousands more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, but arming and financing Israel’s attacks on Lebanon […]
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A Counter-Revolution in Military Affairs? Notes on US High-Tech Warfare
When Colonel Harry Summers told a North Vietnamese counterpart in 1975 that “[y]ou know you never defeated us on the battlefield,” the reply was: “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.1 News stories surrounding the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq proclaimed the arrival of a long-promised “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA), a […]
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Somalia: A History of US Interventions
There’s a woman — some call her “Black Hawk Down” lady — who lives in a packed, squalid neighborhood in the middle of Mogadishu and runs a rather simple but grisly museum. For under a dollar, visitors can view her prized possession, the mangled, mud-splattered nose of a US Black Hawk helicopter that was […]
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The Iraq War and America’s Economic Imperialism
Several weeks ago, with much media fanfare, the James Baker-Lee Hamilton Committee submitted to President George W. Bush its long-awaited, bipartisan report on the U.S. war in Iraq. On balance, the report provided Bush with a face-saving strategy for pulling out all U.S. combat forces by the beginning of 2008. The Baker-Hamilton report favors an […]
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An “Islamic Civil War”
The war that Western powers — primarily US, Israel and Britain — began against the Islamic world after September 11, 2001 is about to enter a new more dangerous phase as their early plans for “changing the map of the Middle East” have begun to unravel with unintended consequences. Codenamed “the war against terror,” the […]
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Exacerbated Sectarian Conflict? Future of Iraqis Increasingly Uncertain [Le conflit confessionnel exacerbé ? L’avenir des irakiens de plus en plus incertain]
Do the last verbal exchanges between Saddam Hussein and anonymous men a few seconds before his execution prefigure a new conflagration of violence between Sunnis and Shi’is in Iraq?
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Cuba Stands Firm
Annual Fundraising Appeal Friends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers. Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge. We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]
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Ways of Denial
Annual Fundraising Appeal Friends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers. Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge. We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]
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Afghanistan: Bush’s Other War
Annual Fundraising Appeal Friends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers. Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge. We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]
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The Palestinian Scene Is the Mirror of the Relation of Regional Forces [La scène palestinienne est le miroir du rapport de forces régional]
Whoever denies that the division of the Palestinian scene is a function of the relation of regional forces is one who prefers to mouth vain slogans and proves that he does not have the capacity to resist. Some are happy to go on and on about the importance of Palestinian national unity, the unity of blood, the common enemy who does not distinguish between one Arab and another, one Muslim and another, but at the same time hides clear realities that rise to the surface, forcefully, from time to time, particularly during crises.
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One Big Push
A NEW MOMENT It’s a new political moment for the antiwar movement. Washington’s failure in Iraq is undeniable: even Henry Kissinger says a U.S. victory is impossible. The Iraq war was the prime reason the U.S. electorate delivered a huge “thumping” to George Bush on November 7. The administration is openly flailing about for any […]
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Empire’s Ally: Canadian Foreign Policy
Since the coming into power of the Stephen Harper Conservative government in January of this year, there has been much gnashing of teeth over the foreign policy stance of Canada. In particular, Canada’s relation with the U.S. on a phalanx of fronts has been at the center of controversy. One has been the softwood lumber […]
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Reflections on Arab and Iranian Ultra-Nationalism
Critical students of ethnically coded nationalism would agree: propagating the glory of “our” race or culture almost always entails the suppression of equal status for the race or culture that is represented as its other. West Asia is no exception. Iranian and Arab identity politics thwarted, perverted, and dismembered communitarian thinking for long periods in […]
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Naked Imperialism: An Interview with John Bellamy Foster
NAKED IMPERIALISM:The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance by John Bellamy FosterREAD EXCERPTBUY THIS BOOK John Bellamy Foster’s Naked Imperialism: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance was published by Monthly Review Press in May 2006. It consists of essays written between September 2001 and September 2005, addressing the origins of today’s undisguised imperialism, led by the […]
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Educating for Equality
Peter McLaren, Rage and Hope: Interviews with Peter McLaren on War, Imperialism, and Critical Pedagogy (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 394 pages, paper $32.95. “One morning they gave us a guinea pig. It came to the house in a cage. At midday, I opened the door of the cage. I returned home at nightfall and […]