Subjects Archives: Empire

Scott McLemee reviews The Man Who Lived Underground: A Novel by Richard Wright.

“The world is not only watching, it’s judging.”

For the very first time in United States history, therefore, a jury composed of people of whom half identify as white convicted a white cop for the second-degree murder of a Black person, the most serious charge to date. If there is an exception, it certainly is not as visible as this instance. Thus, a historic milestone—a victory to be celebrated, a victory, more importantly, that points the way forward.

CounterSpin interview with Christy Mallory on anti–trans youth bills.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) offers a talk at MIT titled “The Myth of American Exceptionalism,”

If the state reserves the right to commit mass murder no one should be surprised that the people follow suit.

Sworn police officers take an oath to protect and serve. Recent independent news reports have drawn attention to the growing number of white supremacists and white nationalists infiltrating local law enforcement agencies, calling into question police officers’ commitment and ability to uphold this oath when encountering people and communities of color.

Back in the good old days, when things were more innocent and simple, the psychopathic Central Intelligence Agency had to covertly infiltrate the news media to manipulate the information Americans were consuming about their nation and the world.

In France’s former African colonies, imperialist monetary policies from Paris continue to cripple domestic economies and undermine democracy. Colonialism in Africa won’t have meaningfully come to an end until true economic sovereignty is allowed to flourish.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue package is one of the most ambitious measures to revive the U.S. and, with it, the world economy.

Amid renewed fear mongering about an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border, this week’s 175th anniversary of the 1846–1848 war the U.S. government instigated with Mexico is a reminder that throughout U.S. history, invasions have gone almost exclusively from north to south, not vice versa.

After twenty years, the United States government–and the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)–will depart from Afghanistan. They said that they came to do two things: to destroy al-Qaeda, which had launched an attack on the United States on 11 September 2001, and to destroy the Taliban, which had given al-Qaeda a base.

You remember the Paris Agreement, right? As a good thing, right?

The criminal legal system “relies heavily on collecting money from the very people targeted by the system,” in the process incentivizing police to punish as many people as possible, the authors of the ACLU report write.

The German Democratic Republic (DDR) was a socialist state founded in 1949 as a democratic, antifascist reaction to the Second World War. It redistributed land, socialised the means of production, and collectivised the agricultural system.

General Stephen Townsend, commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), and General Kenneth McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, are scheduled to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 22.

When veteran Minnesota police officer Kimberly Potter, who is white, stopped Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, for an expired registration tag, she committed an act of racial profiling.

Ecuador provides an example of a government which officially decided to investigate the process of indebtedness so as to identify illegitimate debt and suspend its repayment.

Two major cyberhacks—of ‘SolarWinds’ and ‘Microsoft Exchange Server’—have affected a whole range of computer systems worldwide. Both are supply chain hacks, meaning that they appeared to be routine software upgrades for particular components in these systems instead of inserted malicious codes.

If nuclear power needs to be part of the climate solution, why not continue to use what we have? I understand the reactors that we have are aging out. But why not either shore those up or use the same design that we currently have where we wouldn’t have to go through the lengthy and costly development phase?