6 September 2013 — James Petras
Introduction: As President Obama announces plans for another war, adding Syria to the ongoing and recent wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere, a profound gap has emerged between the highly militarized state and US public opinion.
2 September 2013 — James Petras
13 August 2013 — Prof. James Petras
Introduction
Representative democracies and autocratic dictatorships respond to profound internal crises in very distinctive ways: the former attempts to reason with citizens, explaining the causes, consequences and alternatives; dictatorships attempt to terrorize, intimidate and distract the public by evoking bogus external threats, to perpetuate and justify rule by police state methods and avoid facing up to the self-inflicted crises.
15 June 2013 — James Petras
Introduction: The exposure of the Obama regime’s use of the National Security Agency to secretly spy on the communications of hundreds of millions of US and overseas citizens has provoked world-wide denunciations.
30 May 2013 — James Petras
Many billions of Euros are being extracted from Europe’s vassal-debtor nations – Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland –and transferred to the creditor banks, financial speculators and swindlers located in the City of London, Wall Street, Geneva and Frankfort. Continue reading
30 April, 2013 — Global Research
The relation between the suspected Boston Marathon bombers and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Massachusetts State Police (MSP) and the Boston Police (BP) is a point of contention and controversy.
23 March, 2013 — Global Research
Introduction
As President Obama enters his second term with a new Cabinet, the foreign policy legacy of the past four years weighs heavily on their strategic decisions and their empire-building efforts. Central to the analysis of the next period is an evaluation of the past policies especially in regions where Washington expended its greatest financial and military resources, namely the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa.
20 December, <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>2012 — Global Research
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Introduction
The opening long decade of the 21st century (2000-<strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>2012) has been a period of repeated and profound economic and social crises, of serial and prolonged wars and declining living standards for the vast majority of Americans. How have people responded to this crisis? No large scale, long term, socio-political movements have emerged to challenge the bi-partisan dominent classes. For a brief moment the “ Occupy <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Wall Street ” movement provided a platform to denounce the 1% super-rich but then faded into memory.
3 December, 2012 — Global Research
By now we are familiar with imperial states using their military power to attack, destroy and occupy independent countries. Boatloads of important studies have documented how imperial countries have seized and pillaged the resources of mineral-rich and agriculturally productive countries, in consort with multi-national corporations. Financial critics have provided abundant data on the ways in which imperial creditors have extracted onerous rents, royalties and debt payments from indebted countries and their taxpayers, workers, employees and productive sectors.
28 November, 2012 — Global Research
Introduction
For the past forty-five years the state of Israel has been dispossessing millions of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, confiscating their lands, destroying homes, bulldozing orchards and setting-up ‘Jews-only’ colonial settlements serviced by highways, electrical systems and water works for the exclusive use of the settlers and occupying soldiers. Continue reading
16 October 2012 — Boiling Frogs
“God bless God damn London, the Parasites Paradise!”
24 September 2012 — www.boilingfrogspost.com
The so-called “Arab Spring:” is a distant and bitter memory to those who fought and struggled for a better world, not to speak of the thousands who lost, life and limb.
29 February 2012 — Boiling Frogs
A Step toward Greater Independence
Introduction: Between April 21-23, thousands of activists from most of the major urban and rural social movements and trade unions, human rights groups and indigenous, afro-Colombian movements will meet to unify forces and launch, what promises to be the most significant new political movement in recent history.
31 October 2011 — Dissident Voice: Argentina: Why President Fernandez Wins and Obama Loses
On October 23rd of this year, President Cristina Fernandez won re-election receiving 54% of the vote, 37 percentage points higher than her nearest opponent. The President’s coalition also swept the Congressional, Senatorial, Gubernatorial elections as well as 135 of the 136 municipal councils of Greater Buenos Aires. In sharp contrast President Obama, according to recent polls, is trailing leading Republican Presidential candidates and is likely to lose control of both houses of Congress in the upcoming 2012 election. What accounts for the monumental difference in voter preferences of incumbent presidents? A comparative historical discussion of socio-economic and foreign policies as well as responses to profound economic crises is at the center of any explanation of the divergent results.
11 July 2011 — Dissident Voice
The US government (White House and Congress) spends $10 billion dollars a month, or $120 billion a year, to fight an estimated ‘50 -75 ‘Al Qaeda types’ in Afghanistan’, according to the CIA and quoted in the Financial Times of London (6/25 -26/11, p. 5). During the past 30 months of the Obama presidency, Washington has spent $300 billion dollars in Afghanistan, which adds up to $4 billion dollars for each alleged ‘Al Queda type’. If we multiply this by the two dozen or so sites and countries where the White House claims ‘Al Qaeda’ terrorists have been spotted, we begin to understand why the US budget deficit has grown astronomically to over $1.6 trillion for the current fiscal year.
5 June, 2011 — Global Research
From Joplin, Missouri to Kabul, Afghanistan
Introduction
On May 29, 2011, President Obama visited Joplin, Missouri , the site of a devastating tornado that killed 140 and pronounced it a terrible “tragedy”. But were the deaths the inevitable result of ‘natural events’ beyond the human intervention?
30 March 2011 — Dissident Voice
Many critics of the ongoing Euro-US wars in the Middle East and, now, North Africa, have based their arguments on clichés and generalizations devoid of fact. The most common line heard in regard to the current US-Euro war on Libya is that it’s ‘all about oil’ – the goal is the seizure of Libya’s oil wells.
10 October, 2010 — Global Research
The abortive military-police coup in Ecuador, which took place on September 30, has raised numerous questions about the role of the US and its allies among the traditional oligarchy and the leftist social movements, Indian organizations and their political parties.
While President Correa and all governments in Latin America, and significant sectors of the Ecuadorian public described the violent actions as a coup, the principle organ of Wall Street – The Wall Street Journal – described it as a “police protest”. Spoke persons for Goldman Sachs and the Council of Foreign Relations referred to the police and military power grab against the democratically elected government as a self-induced “political crises” of the President. While the coup was underway the “Indian” movement CONAIE, launched a manifesto condemning the government, while the “Indian” party Pachakutik supported the ouster of the President and backed the police coup as a “just act of public servants”.
8 March, 2010 — Global Research
The Obama Administration has heightened tensions with China through a series of measures which can only be characterized as major provocations designed to undermine relations between the two countries. These provocations include political support for separatist movements, such as the US-funded theocratic-monk led Tibetan secessionists and the Washington-based Uyghur secessionists, as well as through the $6.4 billion-dollar advanced arms sales to Taiwan, a virtual protectorate of the US Navy. President Obama has publicly met with and openly backed these separatist and secessionists groups, flaunting Washington’s refusal to recognize China’s existing borders. This is part of the US strategy of encouraging the physical break-up of independent nations, which are viewed as ‘obstacles’ to its program of global military empire building.
In addition to continuing and escalating the hostile policies of his predecessor, the Obama Administration has exploited several other issues in order to rally American public opinion and mobilize overseas allies behind its confrontational posture. First, the Obama Administration claims that China’s currency (the Renminbi) is artificially undervalued to give Chinese exports an unfair price advantage, thus undercutting US manufacturing exports and costing ‘millions of American jobs’. And secondly, the Administration claims that, after the US had opened its domestic manufacturing market to Chinese firms, the Chinese would not ‘reciprocate’ and open their financial sectors to Wall Street investment banks.
Continue reading
Having captured the imagination of progressives across the globe with scenes of indigenous uprisings confronting right-wing governments and multinationals, Bolivia has become a key focus point of discussion within the left regarding strategies for change.
However, starry-eyed notions and schemas rather than reality have often influenced the views of left commentators on the revolutionary process unfolding in South America’s poorest nation.
At the centre of this debate is the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), led by indigenous President Evo Morales, and its strategy for refounding Bolivia.
After three years of the Morales government it is possible to draw some tentative conclusions about this social experiment.
The New Dark Age 