How the most powerful nation disabled itself - US: security’s bottom line

Just 15 numbers tell the history of the past seven years, in which a once wealthy and relatively secure nation near-bankrupted itself, pursued chimeras and funded chaos-causing wars that left it poorer and less safe then ever before.

Once upon a time, I studied the Chinese martial art of tai chi, until I realised I would [...]

Monocultures, multinationals and murders - ‘No unions, no strikes’

The Cavite Export Processing Zone in Rosario, 30km south of Manila, is the country’s most important free zone, with 10,000 workers and 250 businesses (clothing, electronics) in a huge area surrounded by a concrete wall topped with barbed wire. Visitors have to show their credentials to armed guards at a checkpoint.
On the evening of 10 [...]

The Philippines’ unfree zones

The government, armed forces and vested interests in the Philippines have used the excuse of counter-terrorism to murder, kidnap and pressure trade unionists and farmers’ organisations. They want a nation of docile labour and emptied land that can be sold on the world markets.
Ref: Le Monde

Speculate to accumulate

he International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation promised that more trade would help to eradicate poverty and hunger. Foodcrops? Self-sufficiency in food? They had a better idea. Local farms would be closed down or encouraged to concentrate on exports. This would make the most, not of natural conditions which might be good for [...]

The US gas garrison

The Carter Doctrine, established 28 years ago, put the US military in service of assuring the nation’s regular supplies of imported oil. This has near-bankrupted the US and corrupted the military, yet left the US insecure in energy sources and globally loathed. The time has come to demote petroleum and stand down the troops.
By Michael [...]

Lost in Translation: Alhurra—America’s Troubled Effort to Win Middle East Hearts and Minds

(excerpt from longer artical)…
Alhurra has not come close to realizing the Bush Administration’s hope that it would someday compete with Al Jazeera, the most-watched station in the Middle East. According to six years of polling by Zogby and the University of Maryland, Al Jazeera remains the favored channel for news for more than 50 percent [...]

Is Colonialism in Israel Untouchable?

Since the pages have turned in commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, do new headlines and reports covering stories other than Palestine suggest that its business as usual in Israel?
Indeed it would be an injustice to confine solidarity activism to calendar events such as “birthdays” for this will overlook other dimensions underpinning the [...]

Insider: Iraq Attack Was Preemptive

The name Douglas Feith may not mean much to most Americans, but to students of the Iraq war and historians already studying it, he is one of the main architects.
From 2001 to 2005, Feith was under secretary of defense for policy and the No. 3 man at the Pentagon, intimately involved both pre-war strategy [...]

The War on Terror: Why Do We Fight?

With recession in the wind neither Democratic nor Republican presidential candidates are talking much about the misbegotten war in Iraq. Even less, however, far less, do they talk about the root of that disaster—the “War on Terror.” Until the real but complex relationship between these two self-inflicted wars is understood, Americans, and the [...]

13. Torture in the Crucible of Counterinsurgency

After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the White House made torture its secret weapon in the War on Terror. Although Washington mobilized its regular military forces for conventional attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, the main challenge in this new kind of warfare was a covert campaign against “non-state actors,” terrorists who moved easily, elusively [...]