Subjects Archives: Imperialism

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its February 2010 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. Orissa is the poorest State with an official estimate of 39.9 per cent of people living below the poverty line, yet in regard to proposed investment it stood […]

  Great Britain has known about the Malvinas’ hydrocarbon wealth for decades.  The reserves may be worth half a billion dollars. Great Britain’s interest in the Malvinas’ oil dates back to at least 35 years ago.  In 1975, the Crown initiated surveys.  Two exploratory missions between 1998 and 2009 eventually demonstrated its potential. The inclusion […]

  Robert Aldrich.  Colonialism and Homosexuality.  London and New York: Routledge, 2003.  xii + 436 pp.  Maps, notes, bibliography, and index.  $104.95 US (cl.).  ISBN 0-415-19615-9.  $32.95 (pb.).  ISBN 0-415-19616-7. It is generally seen as a sign of maturity when gay scholarship moves beyond a mere self-affirmative search for “ancestry” and develops a critical and […]

  Burlington, VT, February 19, 2010 — Human rights activists from Vermont, New York and Israel interrupted a performance of the Israel Ballet at the Flynn Theater in Burlington, VT calling attention to the dance company’s complicity in Israeli war crimes. Using two banners that read “No Tutu Is Big Enough to Cover Up War […]

In a visit to Qatar and Saudi Arabia this week, Hillary Clinton said that Iran “is moving toward a military dictatorship” and continued the Administration’s campaign for tougher sanctions against that country. What could America’s top diplomat hope to accomplish with this kind of inflammatory rhetoric?  It seems unlikely that the goal was to support […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: “In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country. Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the […]

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 crisis since the Great Depression? And how do we deal with all these problems simultaneously?

  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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

TWO days ago, at almost six o’clock in the evening Cuban time and when, given its geographical location, night had already fallen in Haiti, television stations began to broadcast the news that a violent earthquake – measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale – had severely struck Port-au-Prince. The seismic phenomenon originated from a tectonic fault […]

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 […]

“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