Subjects Archives: Imperialism

  Additional number of American troops President Obama plans to deploy to Afghanistan: 30,000 Total number of U.S. troops that will be there after the deployment: 98,000 Number of private contractors working for the U.S. in Afghanistan as of September 2009: 104,101 Percent by which that number grew between June and September: 40 Percent of […]

  The elections held in Honduras on November 29 were inherently flawed.  Tens of thousands of troops and police officers manned polling stations and even distributed electoral literature.  These forces have been responsible for killings, rapes, beatings, and detentions of people opposed to the coup.  Media reports cited many people who said they did not […]

Over 300 antiwar protesters took part in a demonstration at the gates to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Dec. 1 as President Barack Obama sought to justify his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Facing police and soldiers at the Highland Falls gate to the Academy, demonstrators repeatedly chanted, “30,000 more! […]

The United States, in its struggle against the Revolution, had in the Venezuelan government its best ally: the choice specimen Mr. Romulo Betancourt Bello. We did not know it then. He had been elected President on December 7, 1958; he had not taken office yet when the Cuban Revolution triumphed on January 1st, 1959. Weeks later I had the privilege of being invited by the provisional government of Wolfgang Larrazabal to visit Bolivar’s homeland, which had been so supportive of Cuba.

In a decision that reflects the post-911 terrorism hysteria, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed prominent civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart’s convictions and remanded her case to district court Judge John G. Koeltl to reconsider her sentence.  The appellate panel directed Koeltl to remand Stewart to custody and the […]

  After ten years’ war with perpetual success, to tell us it is yet impossible to have a good peace, is very surprising, and seems so different from what has ever happened in the world before, that a man of any party may be allowed suspecting that we have either been ill used, or have […]

I know Chavez well, and no one could be more reluctant than him to allow a showdown between the Venezuelan and Colombian peoples leading to bloodshed. These are two fraternal peoples, the same as Cubans living in the east, center and west end of our island. I find no other way to explain the close relationship between Venezuelans and Colombians.

Alfred W. McCoy.  Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State.  Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. In the build-up to the Iraq and Afghan wars, liberal humanitarians and neoconservatives alike bantered on and on about the necessity of empire and its capability of removing tyrannical […]

The End of Poverty? is a kind of bookend to Capitalism: A Love Story: if Michael Moore’s movie examines how private enterprise operates at home, writer/director Philippe Diaz ‘s documentary explores what happens when that economic system is exported to the Third World.  As scathing exposes of exploitation these nonfiction films share much — ironic […]

“It is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home.” — Edward Said On the afternoon of November 3, 2009, the United States House of Representatives voted in favor of House Resolution 867 (H.Res.867), an AIPAC-backed bill that urges both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to “oppose unequivocally […]

Anyone with some information can immediately see that the sweetened ‘Complementation Agreement for Defense and Security Cooperation and Technical Assistance between the Governments of Colombia and the United States’ signed on October 30, and made public in the evening of November 2, amounts to the annexation of Colombia by the United States.

Our community is distraught by the tragic shooting at Fort Hood yesterday.  We extend our condolences to the families and friends of the victims. As upset as we are about this incident, this shooting does not come as a shock.  Eight years of senseless wars have taken a huge toll on our troops and their […]

Part 1: Eight Years and Counting The United States invasion and occupation of Afghanistan entered its ninth year in October, and the majority of Americans now tell opinion polls they want it to end.  So far the war has failed to achieve U.S. objectives, and it is likely the Obama Administration’s expansion of the fighting […]

  “I thought as soon as we hit the ground, we would immediately start changing things and making it better for the people, but, during the entire time I was there, we rarely did any kind of humanitarian aid missions.  They have a lot of social issues that they are dealing with, like poverty and […]

Yesterday, Carmen Nordelo Tejera passed away. She was the selfless mother of Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, a Hero of the Republic of Cuba who is unjustly serving two life-sentences plus 15 years of imprisonment.

  To Candidate Member of the Politburo of the CC CPSU USSR Minister of Defense Comrade Dmitry Timofeevich Yazov Moscow, USSR Ministry of Defense The Afghan problem continues to attract attention in the sphere of international affairs.  It begins to cause a certain concern on the part of the Soviet people as well.  This is […]

  Notes of Anatoly S. Chernyaev Gorbachev: My intuition tells me — something is worrisome.  I am afraid we are losing time!  Everybody is getting used to it.  I guess they say, well, there is a war going on, everything in its turn, such is life.  “The strange war!” — soon they will attach this […]

Significant events have taken place in our country lately.

Saadia Toor is an assistant professor at Staten Island College, author of a forthcoming book on Pakistan from Pluto Press, and part of the group Action for a Progressive Pakistan. The Pakistani Army has launched a major offensive against Taliban forces in the province of Waziristan.  What is behind this assault, and what impact will […]

  Dear friends, Over the last few years a number of timely publications have illuminated the connections between gender and sexuality, the War on Terror and racialisation.  One of these is Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality, edited by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake and published by Raw Nerve Books in 2008.  An edited […]