Imagine for a moment what the reaction would be if Iranian intelligence was almost universally believed to have assassinated a leader of one of the organisations fighting the Tehran government in a western-friendly state. Then consider how Britain, let alone the US, might respond if the killers had carried out the operation using forged or […]
Subjects Archives: Imperialism
Imperialism, Globalization, and War
Israel Is at an Impasse: It Can Make Neither War Nor Peace
The Main Points of the Speech We reiterate on this occasion our condolences for the loss of our dear martyrs, and our congratulations as well, for they are ultimately the first victors. They are our glory and pride. I will discuss current challenges and our strategy for addressing them. When we remember these leaders and […]
Israel’s War Drums 2010
When the ceasefire went into effect on the Lebanese-Israeli border in 2006, nobody believed — not for a moment — that this was the end of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. After all, none of Israel’s objectives were met in 2006: Israel Defense Forces’ soldiers were still held captive in Lebanon; and far from being […]
Howard Zinn, 1922-2010
Filming our documentary The People Speak in Boston, one afternoon, Howard said that the camaraderie between our cast members, the sense of collective purpose and joy, was a feeling he hadn’t experienced with such intensity since his active participation in the civil rights movement. Since Howard’s passing, I have thought often of that moment, which […]
Famine, War, and Genocide in India
Binayak Sen: . . . [A body mass index] below 18.5 is regarded as chronic subnutrition. 33% of our adult population, one third of the country, have a body mass index below 18.5. For me this is a shocking figure. . . . We find that, in the scheduled tribes, more than 50% of the […]
Towards Demotic Cosmopolitanism
Ruth Ellen Mandel. Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. xxiv + 413 pp. $89.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8223-4176-5; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8223-4193-2. In September 1979, the first federal commissioner of foreigners’ affairs (Ausländerbeauftragte) Heinz Kühn declared Germany a country of immigration — a novel and controversial […]
Hugo Chavez Did Not Accuse the U.S. of Causing the Haitian Earthquake
On January 19, Spanish newspaper ABC, a newspaper of record in Spain, published a story entitled “Chavez Accuses US of Causing Earthquake in Haiti.” The story was quickly picked up by websites around the globe — most quoting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez as saying the U.S. used a new tectonic weapon to induce the […]
The crisis of capital: economy, ecology and empire
How is it that we could be facing a crisis of empire, of imperialism, of war, of conflict internationally, we could be facing an environmental crisis on a scale that threatens the whole planet as we know it, and we could be facing at the same time being in the midst of the greatest economic […]
US: From Sanctions to War against Iran?
Kenneth Katzman: Certainly, as long as the floor is open for talks, there is always a hope for a deal. But I think, from the US standpoint, the United States is certainly not counting on a deal. Obviously, the thrust of US policy, I think, is starting to shift, from a focus on getting […]
Ortega Warns of US Deployment in Haiti
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega says that the United States has taken advantage of the massive quake in Haiti and deployed troops in the country. “What is happening in Haiti seriously concerns me as US troops have already taken control of the airport,” Ortega said on Saturday. The Pentagon says it has deployed more than 10,000 […]
Disaster Imperialism in Haiti
Yesterday, I watched news of rescue efforts in Port-au-Prince. Elite rescue teams, such as the one from Fairfax County, VA, were focusing primarily on the Montana Hotel and the headquarters of the UN “peacekeeping” force, MINUSTAH. Anyone who knows Haiti knows that the Montana Hotel is the most lavish lodging your can find in […]
The Obama Administration Moves toward Regime Change in Its Iran Policy
In one of our posts surrounding our January 6, 2010 Op Ed in The New York Times, we noted that “analytic views of Iranian politics since the June 12 presidential election have important implications for the debate about U.S. and Western policy toward Tehran.” In particular, buying into the proposition that the Islamic Republic is […]
Bend It Like Iran (with Hooman Majd)
“The Iranians have always figured out how to beat the system. . . . Even Iranians who are opposed to this government, even Iranians who are opposed to the Islamic Republic, don’t really wanna return to being a client state of the United States.” — Hooman Majd
A Year after the Gaza War
Speech at the Protest Rally, Tel Aviv, 2 January 2010 Good evening to all who came to mark the first anniversary of the Gaza carnage, and to protest on the comfortable complacence which inhabitants of this city and this country exhibit in face of the slow annihilation which goes on and on in Gaza […]
The Future of Iran
Steven Scully: How serious a threat do we face from Iran’s nuclear capabilities? Flynt Leverett: I don’t view it as a serious or imminent threat. It is a problem that needs to be managed and dealt with, but it is not a threat. What we know about the Iranian nuclear program is that Iran […]
“Terrorists” in the Eye of the American Beholder
In the early 1970s the shah, via his intelligence organisation SAVAK, the CIA and the Israeli MOSSAD, sponsored a sustained “covert war” of Iraqi-Kurdish factions under the leadership of Mustafa Barzani against the Ba’thist leadership in Iraq which led to bombings of oil installations in Kirkuk and other infrastructural facilities with civilian use and subsequently […]
To Shoot an Elephant
“This is an embedded film. We decided to be ’embedded within the ambulances’ opening an imaginary dialogue with those journalists who embed themselves within armies.” — Alberto Arce
New York Times Op-Ed Calls for War on Iran
The New York Times published an op-ed today that calls for war against Iran. Alan J. Kuperman, director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin, argues that the unraveling of the uranium enrichment agreement proves that the United States must conduct air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent […]
Is War the Answer to a Depression?
Paul Jay: One of the big issues about the stimulus and government expenditure is the debate over military expenditure. People say that World War 2 helped to get America out of the 1930s depression. So, forget the kind of moral issues, ethical issues, or issues of international law — this expansion into Afghanistan may […]
Beyond Ecological Imperialism
So the Copenhagen summit did not deliver any hope of substantive change, or even any indication that the world’s leaders are sufficiently aware of the vastness and urgency of the problem. But is that such a surprise? Nothing in the much-hyped runup to the summit suggested that the organisers and participants had genuine ambitions to […]
