In “Syria, the United States, and the Left,” Ella Wind criticizes my April 2018 article, “U.S. Out of Syria.” Wind says that I misrepresent U.S. policy towards Syria by “demonstrate[ing] the scale and ferocity of the U.S. intervention by a . . .
Category: War and peace
Syria, Refugees and Solidarity
The recent Turkish offensive on north-eastern Syria and US withdrawal of troops from the region is unleashing yet another humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions.
In the past few days over 130,000 Syrians have fled for their lives, in desperate search of . . .
Declaration of Solidarity With the Kurds and People in Resistance in Northern Syria
In response to the U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria, decided by the President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and in anticipation of the impending military attack of the free people in Rojava that this deal enables, . . .
On Gutter Journalism and Purported “Anti-Imperialism”
Gutter journalism is unfortunately not the preserve of openly right-wing tabloids. There has existed since the advent of Stalinism a “left-wing” strand of public mudslinging: Zhdanov was the counterpart of Goebbels. The Stalinist slander apparatus originally targeted the USSR’s left-wing . . .
Trump, Syria, and Counter-Revolution
Much has transpired since Donald Trump’s announcement last December that the United States was to withdraw its 2,000 troops from Syria. While the “rapid” withdrawal initially suggested by Trump’s tweet has not come about, discussion among U.S. rulers ultimately points . . .
No to U.S. War with Iran! End the Sanctions Now! Solidarity with Iranian Workers!
Democratic Socialists of America emphatically and unreservedly opposes a U.S. war on Iran. It would be another “war of choice,” just like the Iraq War of 2003, and would likely be just as colossal a humanitarian disaster.
National security adviser John . . .
Venezuela: A Country Held Hostage
Under the global spotlight for the past two months, Venezuela is perhaps the most debated and at the same time misunderstood country in recent times. The truth embraces demanding paradoxes: a country ruined but rich in resources, with a civilian-military . . .
Escalating Threat of Direct U.S. War Against Iran: Is There A Way Out?
Stopping the ominous drive toward a direct U.S. war against Iran demands opposition both to U.S. imperialism and to the repressive Iranian regime.
Trump’s Controversial Decision on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
There is little question that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is bad news. Some of its units have engaged in severe repression of nonviolent dissidents, supported Assad’s brutal counter-insurgency operations in Syria, backed hardline Islamist militia in several foreign countries, . . .
Can the Military Be Reformed?
Six Unusual Veterans Ponder Active Duty and Its Aftermath
It happens all the time in small towns and big cities across the country. A young person from a poor or working-class family can’t find a good job or afford to pay for higher education. Other family members, a teacher, . . .
Peel Back Tulsi Gabbard’s “Progressive” Veneer
Tulsi Gabbard is getting a pass from people who should know better, first from Glenn Greenwald and then from the folks at Democracy Now! They describe her as “progressive except that some leftists on some issues . . .
Against the coup intervention in Venezuela!
This statement was issued by the PRT, Mexican section of the Fourth International, on 23 January 2019.
The Workers’ Revolutionary Party (PRT) stands emphatically against the new attempted coup d’état and imperialist intervention against Venezuela. In an open and cynically orchestrated . . .
Syria, the United States, and the Left
As the war in Syria draws to a close, the debate on the U.S. left over that conflict seems as intractable as ever.
Palestine on a Precipice
The rise and expansion of right-wing populism and the dramatic unfolding of global politics in the Trump era have had significant and alarming implications for the Palestinian people, leadership, and question overall.
What do Trump’s ‘withdrawal’ from Syria and the Gulf’s rapprochement with Assad have in common?
In the days since Donald Trump’s announcement that the US was to rapidly withdraw its 2,000 troops from Syria, an enormous amount of speculation about what this means has taken place. In my initial piece, I expressed a number of views that are not widely shared.
Trump’s “Withdrawal” — What Next?
Militarist hawks and liberal pundits alike are up in arms (figuratively speaking, of course) over Donald Trump’s “victory” proclamation and announcement of U.S. troops’ withdrawal from Syria. Howls of Republican outrage may signal a further deterioration of the big twit’s shrinking political support on the home front. The Trump gang’s crisis of legitimacy deepens by the day. But what does it actually mean for the cascading disasters in the Middle East?
He Got the Story
Seymour Hersh. Reporter: A Memoir. Knopf, 2018. 368 pp.
Writing in 1940, George Orwell opined in a review of a Bertrand Russell book that “we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” Much the same can be said about the more than fifty-year career of journalist Seymour Hersh, whose pioneering exposés of the lies of the Great Powers report and affirm facts that follow Orwell’s dictum.
Hard Questions in Israel-Palestine
Jamie Stern-Weiner, ed. Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine's Tought Questions. OR Books, 2018. 518 pp.
The fact that, after fifty years of Palestinian support efforts, the Israeli occupation is more entrenched than ever should inspire some intellectual humility among those hawking solutions to the conflict, notes Jamie Stern-Weiner in the introduction to his edited collection Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions. It is humbling as well to read through the volume, with more than seventy essays and rejoinders by more than fifty different authors, from almost every one of which something new can be learned.
The Collected Writings of Stanley Heller
Stanley Heller, The Uprising We Need. Amazon Digital Services LLC, 2017. 332pp. $5.99 on Kindle.
Apart from the many valuable insights contained inside The Uprising We Need, Stanley Heller’s collection of articles published over the period between 2003 and 2017, the book is a fascinating look back through that fourteen-year span in which so much has happened. There is a tendency in our isolated, consumer-disciplined culture to focus on the shiniest thing out there right now with little reference for how that particular thing got there in the first place.
Wars In The Middle East Since Trump
Following his new sanctions instituted against Iran, the dismissal by Donald Trump of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal is the continuation of the capitalist logic of militarization of the Middle East that was escalated by the last Bush administration and which has brought genocide and disastrous humanitarian crises to the region.
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