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World Focus: The Anti-Empire Report: The American Elite
Friday, January 08 @ 06:30:42 UTC |  By William Blum
January 6th, 2010 - killinghope.org
Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr. Gordon was an executive on the War Production Board during World War II, a top administrator of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to Brazil, held other high positions at the State Department and the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, president of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon's diplomatic service as "a rare combination of experience, idealism and practical judgment".
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Latin America: Obama's Test: Democracy or Chaos in Latin America
Thursday, October 08 @ 20:17:11 UTC | By Ramzy Baroud
October 08, 2009
Latin America stands at the threshold of a new era: one that promises a return to political uncertainty, violence and chaos or one of political stability and economic prosperity. Honduras is a crucial indicator.
The possible outcomes of the Honduran crisis are likely to define the coming era for Latin America and the US future role in that hemisphere, and, in fact, beyond it. Indeed, the story is much more elaborate than a daring president holed up in a foreign embassy in his own country.
In her second visit to Asia as US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton declared on July 21 in Bangkok, "The US is back." The declaration was disconcerting to many Asian countries, despite Clinton's indistinct qualifications afterwards. Asian countries, exploring regional unity and economic cooperation are well aware of the subtle meaning of the term. However, it's unlikely that politically stable and economically prospering Asia countries would allow for unwarranted outside interferences, especially with the growing Chinese regional influence and the election of Yukio Hatoyama the prime minister of Japan.
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Latin America: Hispanics, Latin America and the Struggle Against the Empire
Tuesday, June 27 @ 13:09:03 UTC | An Interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal
By Rafael Rodríguez-Cruz, counterpunch.org
Strangers probably do not go unnoticed in the town of Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, where Mumia Abu-Jamal is incarcerated. Waynesburg is a small rural community of Western Pennsylvania with a total population of 4,000. It is certainly not racially diverse: roughly 97% of the inhabitants are White. Thus, you have to work hard to see a Black or Hispanic person walking around in this town. In fact, according to the U.S. Census, there are only 68 Blacks, 4 Native Americans and 27 Hispanics in the whole county of Green, Pennsylvania, which includes within its boundaries the town of Waynesburg. This is certainly very much in contrast with Springfield, Massachusetts, where my journey to visit Mumia Abu-Jamal began on May 23, 2006.
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War and Terror: The Basic Strategy for Syria and Iran
Thursday, October 21 @ 19:58:14 UTC | How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
By Gary Leupp, www.counterpunch.org
October 16 / 17, 2004
"Concern about Iraq specifically focused on the fact that Saddam Hussein had been, for years, listed on the state [department's] sponsor of terror [list] The effort that we've mounted with respect to Iraq focused specifically on the possibility that this was the most likely nexus between the terrorists and weapons of mass destruction."
Vice President Richard Cheney explaining why the U.S. invaded Iraq, in his "debate" with John Edwards
Premises:
* The U.S. position in the global economy has declined vis-à-vis Europe, Japan, and China since 1945. www.revolutionintheair.com/strategy/Waller1.pdf
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War and Terror: Chronicle of a Quagmire Foretold: The Deceivers
Wednesday, September 29 @ 13:01:38 UTC | By Chris Floyd, www.counterpunch.org
"How many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?"
--Bob Dylan
Yes, and how many times must the truth be told before it conquers the lies? Again and again, the brutal realities behind the rape of Iraq that it was planned years ago, that the aggressors knew full well that their justifications for war were false and that their invasion would lead to chaos, ruin and unbridled terror have been exposed by the very words and documents of the invaders themselves. Yet the reign of the lie goes on, rolling toward its final entrenchment in November.
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Inside U.S.A.: A Hierarchy of Suffering
Monday, September 20 @ 20:02:05 UTC | Since 9/11, America has Used its Victimhood to Demand a Monopoly on the Right to Feel and to Inflict Pain
by Gary Younge, www.guardian.co.uk
The tale of how I became a Nazi and my Nazi harasser became a Jew is as intriguing as it is instructive. Last November I wrote a column about a racist email sent to me by an employee of an insurance company and my frustrations over the manner in which my grievance was handled. The man in question (a white, South African supporter of the British National party who complained of "undesirables flooding into Britain") was subsequently fired. His dismissal was not as a result of my column but because my original complaint had alerted the company to a previously unreported pattern of racist behaviour on his part. Of the numerous responses from the public I received, most were supportive but many were more abusive than the original message. One stood out. Incensed that something as "trivial" as racist abuse could lead to a man losing his job, one reader compared me to the person who betrayed Anne Frank. And so, through contorted metaphor and contemptuous logic, the harasser became the victim and the harassed was transformed into the perpetrator.
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World Focus: American Exceptionalism: A Disease of Conceit
Wednesday, July 21 @ 14:22:08 UTC | By Ron Jacobs
July 21, 2004
Any person who is honestly opposed to the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has got to wonder why the movement that developed against the US war on Iraq before the March 2003 invasion has faltered so badly and now seems to be caught up in the movement to electorally defeat George Bush, even though that means supporting John Kerry-a politician who not only supported the invasion and occupation, but talks openly about widening the war to include the NATO countries and tens of thousands more US troops. One could place the blame on the failure of the movement's politics, always more liberal than anti-imperialist. Or, one could place the blame on the leadership. In both cases, one would find some basis for their argument.
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Invasion of Iraq: President's Business Partner Slices Up Iraq
Friday, December 12 @ 18:33:16 UTC | TomPaine.com
Monday, December 8, 2003
by Greg Palast
Well, ho ho ho! It's an early Christmas for James Baker III.
All year the elves at his law firm, Baker Botts of Texas, have been working day and night to prevent the families of the victims of the September 11 attack from seeking information from Saudi Arabia on the Kingdom's funding of Al Qaeda fronts.
It's tough work, but this week came the payoff when President Bush appointed Baker, the firm's senior partner, to restructure the debts of the nation of Iraq.
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Invasion of Iraq: Surprise Thanksgiving Dinner at 6 AM?
Friday, November 28 @ 22:47:03 UTC | Wag the Turkey
By WAYNE MADSEN
Yes folks, we are now all bit players in a real-life version of the movie "Wag the Dog." President Bush and his GOP advisers are ecstatic that the president made a secret trip to Baghdad to be with U.S. troops for a "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner. His polling numbers -- which I contend are as fixed as a Florida election -- will undoubtedly receive a huge boost.
I may be a bit naive, and it has been a while since I served on active duty, but I can't recall ever sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner at 6:00 AM. Air Force One touched down at Baghdad International Airport, under cover of darkness, at 5:20 AM Baghdad time. Bush was on the ground for two and a half hours, his plane departing Baghdad at around 7:50 AM. Considering that it likely took some 30 minutes for Bush to disembark from Air Force One and travel by a heavily secured motorcade to the hangar where the troops were assembled, that means our military men and women were downing turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and non-alcoholic beer at a time when most people would be eating eggs, bacon, grits, home fries, and toast.
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Invasion of Iraq: US occupiers compared to Mongol looters
Friday, October 17 @ 12:24:55 UTC | By Shaista Aziz, english.aljazeera.net
An influential British Muslim thinktank has compared the looting and vandalism of historical Baghdad during the American invasion to that of the Mongol occupation in 1258.
The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) organised a conference in London attended by the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and leading Iraqi historians, architects and economists.
The aim of the conference was to build stronger relations between the Muslim community in London and the wider British society.
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Invasion of Iraq: Another Nameless Victim in Baghdad
Monday, September 29 @ 12:36:08 UTC | Bomb Destroys the Media's Illusions
By ROBERT FISK, www.counterpunch.org
Arasat is a quiet, uneventful suburb of Baghdad, a place of good restaurants serving moderate Lebanese wine, middle class and educated and absolutely unassociated with violence. So the bomb which stopped the clock of the Christian family across the road from the Aike Hotel--it showed 6.51am--also exploded many illusions. The American NBC television network was based in the pseudo-Greek apartment block, there was only one night-watchman and the reporters felt secure far from the American tanks and armoured personnel carriers that guard the Palestine Hotel and the other targets of opportunity in Baghdad.
In bed yesterday morning, I heard the blast--a very minute increase in air pressure--that took the life of the Somali doorman at the Aike, and by the time I got there, it was the usual blood and bits of metal, the watch timer--found by a journalist--and possibly the battery for the bomb--found by The Independent on the roof of a villa opposite--that was left. A little bomb, left behind the hotel's generator, in the hope, no doubt, that it would ignite enough fuel to bring down the wretched place. In the event, of course, the dead Somali--remember Black Hawk Down?--played only a bit part in the drama.
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Inside U.S.A.: The Democratic Party: A disappointing alternative
Tuesday, September 23 @ 01:24:48 UTC | By Matthew Riemer, yellowtimes.org
(YellowTimes.org) – With the coming of the 2004 presidential election spoken of daily and with the leading Democrats on the campaign trail, Americans have entered into yet another cyclical period of delusion and naiveté. These maladies, however, do not affect those of all political stripes with equal force. Distinctly, it is the more progressive factions of the Democratic Party and "liberals," "leftists," and "independents" slightly beyond the mainstream in whom these mental conditions seem the most prevalent.
The most telling symptom of this delusion, especially as election time draws near, is the largely banal and unconvincing assertion that the Democratic Party represents an alternative to the Republican Party, and, more generally, that anyone with the name recognition and money to be a prominent candidate in the American political environment of 2003 represents a legitimate counterweight to the direction of the American body politic today.
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War and Terror: Was the US behind the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia?
Sunday, August 03 @ 12:03:58 UTC | By Stephen Gowans www3.sympatico.ca
It was one of those peeks into what really happened that are occasionally glimpsed long after anyone cares, like finding out after the invasion of Iraq that the US and Britain had already begun aerial operations to pick apart Iraq's defenses long before the invasion had begun, at a time both countries were denying they had already made a decision to go to war ("U.S. Moved Early for Air Supremacy: Airstrips on Iraqi Defenses Began Long Before Invasion, General Says," The Washington Post, July 20, 2003). Those who saw the news reports may have raised their eyebrows, but the reports were too obscure to have flitted, even briefly, across the consciousness of most (even ardent) newspaper readers. The secret, though technically out, remained a secret, lost in the deluge of other news, bereft of any urgency for being about an event that had happened months before.
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Inside U.S.A.: Victory?
Saturday, August 02 @ 14:48:37 UTC | By Howard Zinn, ZNet
The "victory" over an already devastated and disarmed Iraq led Bush, Rumsfeld and their teammates into a locker-room frenzy of exultation and self-congratulation. I half-expected to see Bush joyfully pouring beer on Rumsfeld's head and Ashcroft snapping a towel at Ari Fleischer's derriere.
But it turns out that they thought the Iraq game was over, when it was only the fifth inning. The war did not bring order to Iraq, but chaos, not crowds of cheering Iraqis, but widespread hostility. "No to Saddam! No to Bush!" were the signs, as Iraqis contemplated their ruined historic treasures, their destroyed homes, and the graves of their dead - thousands and thousands of civilians and soldiers, with many more men, women, children wounded. And it goes on as I write this in mid-June - an ugly occupation. I see a headline "U.S. Troops Kill 70 in Iraqi Crackdown".
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War and Terror: The Pirates' Blunt, Useless Instruments
Saturday, June 21 @ 11:02:23 UTC | The Iraq occupation cannot possibly succeed
The Black Commentator
The Bush men looked out upon the expanses of Iraq and saw the perfect staging ground for a glorious, global offensive that would lead, inexorably, to a New American Century. From Kurdistan and the Shi’ite south the United States would commandeer sufficient oil to become OPEC, thus thwarting any move to unhitch petroleum prices from the dollar and sustaining a domestic fossil fuel feast that might last through a hundred corporate quarterly reports. Once the U.S. military and its corporate camp followers were fully embedded on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the whole of the Eurasian land mass would be open to American power projection. Syria would swing wide the gates to Damascus, lest they be knocked down. Jubilant Iranians would sing Farsi songs in praise of Coca-Cola over Ayatollahs, while contributing their crude to the U.S.-controlled mix. Saudi Arabia would crumble from princely rot, ridding the U.S. of fat royal skimmers of profits rightfully belonging to people of Aramco.
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