Category Archives: Analysis

As of July 1, new sanctions against Iran are taking effect, effectively banning crude oil imports from the EU, which accounts for some 18% of Iranian crude oil exports. Continue reading →

“Will the Arab Spring serve the cause of Palestine?” is a question that has been repeatedly asked, in various ways, over the last year and a half. Many media discussions have been formulated around this very inquiry, although the answer is far from a simple “yes” or “no.” Continue reading →

Information has been leaked about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is being negotiated in secret by US Trade Representative Ron Kirk. Six hundred corporate “advisors” are in on the know, but not Congress or the media. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate trade subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the TPP, has not been permitted to see the text or to know the content. Continue reading →

The operation launched by the US Department of State and the CIA with the aim of displacing Paraguay’s first leftist president, Fernando Lugo, entered the final phase on June 16, when police forces were dispatched to evict squatters from the Morumbí farm in the Curuguaty district, near the Brazilian border. The land holding is known to be owned by Paraguayan businessman and politician Blas Riquelme. Upon arriving at the site, the police unexpectedly came under gunfire from rifles with the caliber high enough to drill bulletproof vests. The chief of a special operations police unit (GEO) and his deputy were shot dead, and the police, to which instructions had been issued to avoid using force, were left with no choice but to return fire. Eleven civilians were mowed down and dozens wounded as a result. Continue reading →

As the United States shifts the majority of its naval and air force assets to the Pacific and after President Obama signaled his primary interest in the Pacific region by his overwhelming support for the Asia-Pacific free trade Trans-Pacific Partnership zone, the nations and territories of the Caribbean are feeling abandoned and neglected. Continue reading →

In a March 2012 BBC interview, the Israeli deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor stated that the prospect of a nuclear Iran “sends shivers of fear to all Arab countries.” U.S. officials as well as most major Western media outlets are similarly spreading the notion that Iran’s Arab neighbours oppose an Iranian bomb. “Nobody wants a nuclear Iran” seems to be one of the cornerstones of Western discourse. Is this true? What do the Arabs think? Continue reading →

Almost a week since the Rio+20 Earth Summit ended, civil society is coming to terms with the ‘epic failure’ of global leaders to agree meaningful action for addressing the worsening planetary and social crises. Campaigners were near unanimous in decrying the inertia and lack of urgency shown by governments for tackling issues related to sustainable development, with national self-interest overriding any possibility of dealing with global problems in a genuinely cooperative and global manner. Continue reading →

The new Executive Director of Amnesty International USA—Suzanne Nossel—is a recent U.S. government insider. So it’s a safe bet that AI’s decision to seize upon a topic that dovetailed with American foreign policy interests, “women’s rights in Afghanistan,” at the NATO Conference last month in Chicago came directly from her. Continue reading →

If you’re dark-haired, brown-skinned and have the misfortune of living in Arizona in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in State of Arizona v. United States of America, get ready to be stopped, searched and questioned. Then again, if you’re a citizen living in the United States, this is merely one more component of the police state that appears to be descending upon us. Continue reading →

The Egyptian version of the “Arab Spring” ended, not blooming in a democracy fought for by the young revolutionaries of Tahrir Square, but frozen in the cold hard hands of fundamentalism and the military. It was not the sight for sore eyes expected after last weekend’s runoff election for president. Continue reading →

On June 14, fifty international organizations marked the fifth anniversary of the Israeli siege on Gaza by calling on Israel to end its blockade of the small, impoverished strip. Continue reading →

Since the early days of our republic, we have operated under the principle that no one is above the law. As Thomas Paine observed in Common Sense, “in America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.” Several years later, John Adams, seeking to reinforce this important principle, declared in the Massachusetts Constitution that they were seeking to establish “a government of laws and not of men.” Continue reading →

FALUN, Sweden—When most people think of Sweden, it’s of a country that once virtually defined the meanings of both integrity and social justice, a place that for many was once more an ideal than a nation. But unrealized by most, that place we knew was slowly dying, victim of the same neoliberal toxins that have poisoned so much, with another Sweden, a ‘Brave New Sweden,’ rising in its place. Continue reading →

“Freedom is a Western word.” Thus said Michael Caine as Thomas Fowler in the remake of the film The Quiet American. Continue reading →

At one point in my youth, it became clear that the U.S. was a violent force in the world, probably as I watched the Vietnam war news on the local TV news. Later, it also became clear that its whole history is one of violence, at home and abroad. More recently, I had naively hoped that as the U.S. Empire goes through its death throes that it would quit the world peacefully. The latter thought was more a suspension of belief of my knowledge that I knew violence was the U.S. way of life, that I feared what the end of empire might bring. My current thinking is that through this course of historical violence to all people who oppose the corporate state—from the labourers and workers at home, to the farmers, workers, and labourers in foreign countries—the ending of the empire is in process and is and will continue to be violent. Continue reading →

Not a week goes by without a new strategic leak from the White House about President Obama’s personal role in the CIA’s secret wars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Iran. Continue reading →

CHANTILLY, VA, 6/3/2012—The Bilderberg Group completed its annual meeting today in Northern Virginia. The group was founded in 1954 by the financial, political, and military elites of Europe and the United States. Annual meetings provide for “regular, off-the-record discussions [to] help create a better understanding of the complex forces and major trends affecting Western nations in the difficult post-war period.” Bilderberg Meetings, Official Website Continue reading →

As every 6 year old learns, there is real and there is make believe. The massive Post Office deficit that is driving its management to commit institutional suicide by ending 6-day mail delivery, closing half of the nations’ 30,000 or so post offices and half it’s 500 mail processing centers, and laying off over 200,000 workers, is make believe. Continue reading →

The age of revolutionary romance is over. Various Arab countries are now facing hard truths. Millions of Arabs merely want to live with a semblance of dignity, free from tyranny and continuous anxiety over the future. This unromantic reality also includes outside ‘players,’ whose presence is of no positive value to genuine revolutionary movements, whether in Egypt, Syria, or anywhere else. Continue reading →

Imagine a world plunged in darkness and extreme cold with the sunlight screened by a thick dust cloud. Imagine a world flung back into chaos. This is an image conceived of a world abandoned to dereliction by doomsday weapons. Continue reading →

The African Union (AU) has mutated into a particularly corrupt and brutal enforcer of Western rule in Africa. When it comes to the interests of Pax Americana, you must start with the crimes committed in the AU’s “War on Terror” in Somalia, a.k.a., the War on the Somali people. Continue reading →

Recent events in northern Ohio underscore the new COINTELPRO assault on activism. On Tuesday, May 1, federal authorities arrested five “anarchists” charging them with conspiracy in trying to bomb property used in interstate commerce, according to the Associated Press (AP). The target of this alleged plot was a bridge running through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, 15 miles south of downtown Cleveland. Continue reading →

Death is whimsical these days, manifesting itself in shapes most repellent to man: men posing with the mangled parts of dead bodies; men urinating on dead bodies; men cutting out the eyes of their brothers and killing them in the name of religion. Continue reading →

America and NATO have done a very bad thing, a perplexing thing–they have blurred the lines between war and peace, by turning “humanitarian intervention” into a tool of aggression. It is now logical to view all American humanitarian aid, in all of its forms, as the first stage of aggression, America’s foot in the door to meddle in the affairs of national government. On a sliding scale, with national subversion (under the cover of humanitarian intervention) on one end, and full-scale superpower “blitzkrieg” on the other, we can see the outlines of the modern distortion of humanitarian aid into a tool of war-making in a simple line, depicting levels of American military aggression. Continue reading →

Israel’s colonization policies are entering an alarming new phase, comparable in historic magnitude to the original plans to colonize Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem following the war of 1967. Continue reading →

Producing from his pocket a sheet of paper which contained a biblical quote from the Prophet Zachariah, former Shin Bet chief said, “I will tell you things that might be harsh. I cannot trust Netanyahu and Barak at the wheel in confronting Iran. They are infected with messianic feelings over Iran,” thereby dealing a heavy blow to the Israeli regime. Continue reading →

Western style “democracy” is destroying Africa. It seems everywhere you look in Africa you see elections marked by violence and bloodshed. “Buy, rig or steal” is the name of the game and if that doesn’t work, send in the French army and UN “peacekeepers” and rocket the presidential residence and just take over by brute force. Continue reading →

Washington has pressured the Philippines, whose government it owns, into conducting joint military exercises in the South China Sea. Washington’s excuse is that China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries concerning island and sea rights in the South China Sea. Washington asserts that China’s territorial disputes with the like of Indonesia and the Philippines are a matter of United States’ national interests. Continue reading →

Drones—unmanned aerial vehicles—come in all shapes and sizes, from nano-sized drones as small as a grain of sand that can do everything from conducting surveillance to detonating explosive charges, to massive “hunter/killer” Predator warships that unleash firepower from on high. Once used exclusively by the military to carry out aerial surveillance and attacks on enemy insurgents abroad, these remotely piloted, semi-autonomous robots have now been authorized by Congress and President Obama for widespread use in American airspace. The military empire is coming home to roost. Continue reading →

Once again Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir waved his walking stick in the air. Once again he spoke of splendid victories over his enemies as thousands of jubilant supporters danced and cheered. But this time around the stakes are too high. Continue reading →

Mitt Romney started running Bain Capital in 1984, earning a reputation as a bright star of private investment. A prospectus by Deutsche Bank would write that by the time he left in 1999, that Bain had averaged a glowing 88 percent annual return on investment. Romney would use that success to burnish his political career. But the dark side of that success was not forgotten by the legion of broken companies, fired employees, duped corporate buyers, unions and investors of his wares. He served one man only: himself. Continue reading →

First, there were ACTA, then PIPA, then SOPA, now there’s CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence and Sharing Protection Act, the worst of all. Continue reading →