It is intriguing to see how whoever the United States and Israel find interfering with their imperial or dispossession plans is quickly demonized and becomes a threat and target for that Real-Axis-of-Evil (RAE), and hence their NATO allies and, with less intensity, much of the rest of the “international community” (IC, meaning ruling elites, not […]
Geography Archives: United States
Headline: “Saudis Deny Discussing Pressure on China over Iran with US”
Sometimes headlines really do convey powerful messages. That was certainly the case with an AFP story, which appeared late last week under the headline, “Saudis Deny Discussing Pressure on China over Iran with US.” The story was prompted by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ visits to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates last week. […]
GTMO and Guantánamo: Labor Relations between Cuba and the United States
Jana K. Lipman. Guantánamo: A Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. x + 325 pp. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-520-25539-5; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-520-25540-1. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to serve on a Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations panel with Jana K. Lipman. […]
New York Times Calls for “Payback,” Psychs Up for Assault on “Entitlements”
An article in yesterday’s New York Times, from the Business Section, titled “Patchwork Pension Plan Adds to Greek Woes” is the latest in a series strikingly titled “Payback Time.” A friend of mine used to like to say: “The New York Times is the voice of the enlightened bourgeoisie.” This article conjures up that phrase. […]
Biden’s Israel Debacle Puts Obama’s Flawed Middle East Strategy in the Spotlight
Vice President Joseph Biden set out to massage U.S.-Israeli relations this week, but instead ran up against the reality of Israeli politics, manifested in the Netanyahu government’s announcement of the construction of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem. The result, as described by the normally rhetorically sober Financial Times, has been to expose “an emasculated […]
Sold My Soul to the Company Store
It is no secret that something must be done about our healthcare system — and soon. Even those lucky enough to have good coverage are aware that the current system is unsustainable. The number of uninsured people and the absurd costs of our medical needs continue to rise dramatically. Unfortunately, the problem with our […]
Greenspan’s Nightmare
Alan Greenspan had a dream, or rather a nightmare. Greenspan seems to have woken up in a cold sweat one morning in fear that the period of “disinflationary pressures” that had kept inflation low since the 1990s was about to end. This was 2007, when he published his autobiographical economic treatise, The Age of Turbulence. […]
Family Members of 9/11 Victims Seek Meeting with Attorney General Holder to Reinforce Call for Civilian Trial for Terror Suspect Khalid Sheik Mohammed
New York, March 9, 2010 — Today, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a national organization of more than 200 relatives of victims of the 9/11 attacks, delivered a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking to meet with him to discuss their support for civilian trials for Guantanamo detainees including alleged 9/11 master […]
Israel in OECD: Israel Set to Join Club of Richest Nations
Is Europe Planning Seal of Approval for Israeli Settlers? An exclusive club of the world’s most developed countries is poised to admit Israel as a member even though, a confidential internal document indicates, doing so will amount to endorsing Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territories. Israel has been told that its accession to […]
Don’t be BAMBOOZLED by the BudgetA University of Washington for the Elite and the Superwealthy? Not On Our Backs!
Democracy Insurgent is a majority people-of-color activist group animated by principles of democracy, anti-racism, anti-imperialism, queer liberation, Third World Feminism, and workers’ power. We are based in Seattle, Washington. We are a member group of the UW Student Worker Coalition. Find out more at <nobudgetcutsuw.blogspot.com> and <democracyinsurgent.org>. Contact us at <d.insurg@gmail.com>. | | Print […]
Is the Obama Administration Supporting Violent “Regime Change” in Iran?
We were in Tehran on February 24 — the day when Iranian authorities announced the capture of Abdol Malik Rigi, the head of Jundallah. Jundallah (the name in Arabic for “soldiers of God”; the group is also known as the People’s Resistance Movement of Iran) is a Sunni Islamist group that claims to be fighting […]
Clinton Strikes Out in Brazil: A Security Council Divided on Iran Sanctions
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Brasilia to mount a full court press on the Brazilian government to support a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities. (Brazil is presently one of the Council’s ten non-permanent members.) And, as accumulating media reports indicate, she was politely but […]
Lula Tells Hillary Clinton Brazil Seeks Negotiated Solution to Iranian Nuclear Issue
Brasilia — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva just reiterated, in a meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that Brazil will continue to maintain commercial relations with Iran and will seek a peaceful solution to Iran’s nuclear issue. After meeting with Hillary Clinton at the Bank of Brazil Cultural Center, the provisional […]
An Appeal to Anti-war Organizations and Activists to Oppose the Increasing Threats against Iran
Around the world, anti-war activists are preparing for major protests this spring to oppose the continuing U.S.-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, a storm of developments is dramatically increasing tensions between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. In response, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) is issuing […]
Cuba, the Corporate Media, and the Suicide of Orlando Zapata Tamayo
On February 23, 2010, Cuban inmate Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83 days on hunger strike. He was 42. This is the first such incident since inmate Pedro Luis Boitel died in 1972 under similar conditions. The corporate media put the tragic incident on the front page and emphasized the plight of Cuban prisoners.1 Zapata’s […]
“Rebuilding Haiti” — the Sweatshop Hoax
Within days of a January 12 earthquake that devastated much of southern Haiti, the New York Times was using the disaster to promote a United Nations plan for drastically expanding the country’s garment assembly industry, which employs low-paid workers to stitch apparel for duty-free export, mainly to the U.S. market. This, according to several opinion […]
Sexuality and the Law: An Uneasy Marriage
Matthew Waites. The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality, and Citizenship. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. viii + 285 pp. $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4039-2173-4. $29.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-230-23718-6. There are many “ages of consent.” But in common parlance, age of consent laws define the age at which a person can legally consent […]
Syria’s Strategic Ties to the Islamic Republic: Diplomacy in the Post-Iraq/Post-Peace Process Middle East
Last week, just after we had completed our regional tour to Beirut, Damascus, and Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his own journey to Damascus, for highly publicized meetings with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, HAMAS Political Bureau chief Khalid Mishal, and a “resistance” summit with Assad and Hizballah Secretary General Shaykh Hassan Nasrallah. Ahmadinejad’s trip […]
An AfPak Star over Central Asia
United States AfPak special representative Richard Holbrooke enjoys a fabulous reputation, no matter the current prospects of the Afghan war. The Eurasian space knew him as a potential Nobel winner who evicted Russia from the Balkans. The world at large expects him to take over if and when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton steps down […]
Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History
This is an exercise in historicization. This lecture concerns the relation between feminism, the movements of second-wave feminism, and the recent history of capitalism. My aim is to try to shed some light on where the feminist movement stands today in the current crisis of capitalism. So, I want to tell a story that has […]
