Subjects Archives: Imperialism

Since May 2015, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has sustained a permanent military invasion against Yemen, the poorest country of the Middle East. The House of Saud argues that the lands and air attacks are due to the advancement of the Ansarolá movement, born in the core of the Houthis tribe which exercises the Zaydi shi’a Islam.

Although Nicos Poulantzas is rightly regarded as one of the most innovative Marxist theoreticians of the state, most analyses tend to focus on his account of the relative autonomy of the capitalist state in the organization of the hegemonic bloc of the capitalist class.

Writing in the October 28 New York Times, conservative columnist David Brooks said the preceding week was “when Donald Trump and Steve Bannon solidified their grip on the Republican Party and America’s national government”.

This week, representatives of three major internet platforms — Google, Facebook, and Twitter — are testifying before Congress about their role in facilitating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. But a fourth giant sat comfortably removed: Amazon.

On October 4, four US soldiers were killed in a firefight in Niger. The United States government is convinced, with minimal intelligence, that fighters from the Islamic State (ISIS) killed these men.

A Spanish high court judge has ordered eight Catalan ministers, who appeared in a Madrid court, to be jailed on charges related to the Catalan Parliament declaration of independence on Oct. 27.

Brexit sold the country a dream; ostensibly a project built on anti-migrant sentiment, it also invoked delusions of grandeur, rooted in reanimating the glorious days of imperial rule and global British hegemony. Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit speech announced a vision for a ‘Global Britain’ – ‘a great, global trading nation that is respected around the world and strong.’

Few documents as brief as the Balfour Declaration have had as devastating an impact as this historical document. I do not want to minimize the European colonization of the Americas, an utterly ravaging catastrophe for the Indigenous peoples of these continents.

The island of Barbuda is currently devoid of human life, a bleak reality that is both unfathomable in its scope and seemingly inevitable under the conditions of racialized capitalism. The severity of Hurricane Irma’s impact was undoubtedly worsened by the gross consumption of natural resources, particularly by nations that historically benefitted from colonialism and the construction of empire.

Last week saw a flurry of humiliating pitches by North American cities for Amazon to pick them as the location of the corporation’s second headquarters.

The recent success of authoritarian-populist politicians and the critique of globalisation, unemployment and social insecurity they advocate has prompted renewed attention to the question of class. In Germany, this debate has been accompanied by discussions surrounding the publication of Didier Eribon’s recent book, Returning to Reims.

Frantz Fanon attended the All-Africa Conference convened by Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah in 1958. He met with anticolonial leaders, including Congolese Patrice Lumumba and Cameroonian Felix Moumié. During the Second Congress of Black Writers (Rome 1959), he expanded his network with activists from the Portuguese colonies, including Amical Cabral.

Between 2006 and 2010 the deployment of U.S. special forces troops in Africa increased by 300 percent. From 2010 to 2017 the numbers of deployed troops exploded by nearly 2000 percent, occupying more than 60 outposts tasked with carrying out over 100 missions at any given moment across the continent.

The implications of Marxist state theories developed by Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband are useful for framing issues related to leftist strategy in twenty-first century Venezuela. A relationship exists between each of the theories and three issues facing the Chavista movement: whether the bourgeoisie (or sectors of it) displays a sense of ‘class consciousness’; the viability of tactical and strategic alliances between the left and groups linked to the capitalist structure; and whether socialism is to be achieved through stages, abrupt revolutionary changes, or ongoing state radicalization over a period of time. During Poulantzas’ lifetime, his concept of the state as a ‘strategic battlefield’ lent itself to the left’s promotion of ‘strategic alliances’ with parties to its right. The same concept is compatible with the ‘process of change’ in Venezuela, in which autonomous movements play a fundamental role in transforming the old state and the construction of new state structures.

Corporate media have a long history of lamenting wars they themselves helped sell the American public, but it’s rare so many wars and so much hypocrisy are distilled into one editorial.

If newness doesn’t win everyone’s heart, then BEAUTIFUL will definitely do it. Who likes UGLY military equipment? Even the people we slaughter all over the world insist upon good-looking guns and bombs.

The meeting was seen by many in the Greek left as an “unprecedented manifestation of subordination to the U.S. imperialists,” who backed violent Greek monarchists and military juntas throughout the Cold War.

More than a month ago we published an article detailing some of the fallout of the ecological crisis in the Third World. The article detailed a study published by “greenpeace” that had shown figures projecting 1.2 million deaths in India every year due to air pollution-related conditions.

A conversation between Mariano Rajoy & Francisco Franco

“Standing by,” however, is not what the United States did during the Indonesian genocide of 1965–66; rather, it actively supported the massacres, which were applauded at the time by the New York Times.