What does it mean to be a left anti-imperialist today? Stephen R. Shalom interviews Gilbert Achcar.
Category: War and peace
Progressives Break with Biden Over His Uncritical Support for Israel
For the first time, the Democrats face a small but determined group within the party who demand a break from unconditional support for Israel and support for Palestinian rights.
Biden to Remove U.S. Troops from Afghanistan
The U.S.-Afghanistan War, which has lasted almost twenty years, has cost the United States 2,300 soldiers’ lives and two trillion dollars, while more than 100,000 Afghanis have been killed.
The New Cold War With China
The West’s Greatest Folly
Once again, anti-communism is being used to stage a new Cold War. China is viewed as a systemic rival that should be denied access to technology and hampered in its access to markets. The goal is military containment and encirclement.
Review of Palestine, A Socialist Introduction
Palestine is one of the most controversial issues among liberals and even among some socialists. In the U.S., politicians and university administrators war against the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, also labeling it as anti-semitic.
Letter to Mass Peace Action and Peace Action NY State
Any group or entity that calls itself progressive must stand against oppression everywhere. An apologist for Assad’s genocidal regime and his Russian backers should not be normalized nor considered a valid source of information.
The empire strikes back: Joe Biden’s plan to restore U.S. hegemony
Biden is proposing to combine Obama’s muscular multilateralism with Trump’s focus on great power rivalry with China and Russia. This augurs not the peace that liberals hoped for, but a dangerous reassertion of U.S. imperial power.
Using an Award Ceremony to Support the Syrian Struggle
What can be done to show solidarity with Syrians who have risen up against their tyrannical government and its bloody allies? We in Promoting Enduring Peace thought a great gesture would be to give our Gandhi Peace Award to Syrians doing humanitarian work.
A Life in the Shadow of the Bomb
I am a child of the atomic age. The atomic bomb, that is, the threat of nuclear war and mass destruction, has been in my consciousness—sometimes in the background but frequently in the foreground—nearly all of my life.
Anti-Imperialism and the Rise of Authoritarianism, “Left” and Right
WITH MILITARISM AND AUTHORITARIANISM ON THE RISE in numerous global and regional powers, there is a crucial need for updating and strengthening a politics of socialist anti-imperialism. Historically, many on the left felt the need to ally with the Soviet
Union . . .
Unity in Israel Means New Low for Palestinians
Any hope of a far-off, mythical two-state solution is scheduled to vanish on July 1st with the annexation of an unspecified amount of settled Palestinian land. When that happens, the terms that have defined the last 50 years of negotiations in Israel/Palestine will have been officially overturned.
Trump Threatens Venezuela under Cover of Coronavirus
Although Venezuela is only reporting 153 coronavirus infections and seven Covid-19 deaths as of April 4, that is likely a radical underestimation of the contagion’s spread. Venezuela’s healthcare system has been pushed to the breaking point by years of U.S. . . .
Will Omar’s PEACE Plan Bring Peace?
Rep. Ilhan Omar put forward the Pathway to PEACE (Progressive, Equitable, and Constructive Engagement), a package of seven bills to move U.S. foreign policy in a progressive direction on Feb. 12. Ironically it . . .
Revolution in Permanence in Syria, After the Uprisings
Joseph Daher, Syria After the Uprisings: The Political Economy of State Resilience. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2019.
The Swiss-Syrian Marxist academic Joseph Daher’s sweeping study, Syria After the Uprisings, represents an important contribution to our political and historical understanding of Syria’s Revolution. . . .
Report: The China Question conference
The China Question will hopefully provide the impetus for a more confident response on the left to the challenge of what looms as a new Cold War. In wider progressive circles, of course, knowledge of China and consciousness of the strategic questions discussed here is mixed. In many ways, the debate is only just beginning.
IASWI’s Statement on Assassination of Qasem Soleimani and its Aftermath
Say no categorically and proactively to U.S. warmongering and stand firmly in solidarity with the working class and the poor and oppressed people of Iran, and not the tyrannical Iranian regime, and help strengthen anti-capitalist, anti-poverty and social and economic justice movements in Iran and across the region.
Remembering and Forgetting: No to War with Iran!
The criminal negligence of the Iranian regime and military — shooting down a passenger airliner that had just taken off from their own Tehran airport — should immediately remind us of the dozens, if not hundreds of occasions when United . . .
review
The AFL-CIO’s Cold War
The Cold War was the period in the twentieth century, approximately between 1946 and 1991, where world politics were dominated by the confrontation between two blocs of states, led respectively by the United States and the Soviet Union. . . .
Civic Resistance to Japanese Militarism
Japan’s 5.26 trillion-yen fiscal 2019 defense budget set a new record for the fifth straight year, as the country continued to beef up its armed forces while keeping a wary eye fixed on North Korea and China. The . . .
Enough!
Somewhere,
somewhere perhaps
in the desert of Iraq,
or perhaps in Palestine
or the Afghan hills,
amidst the cacophony of shells,
the reek of boiled-off flesh,
somewhere,
a voice awakens,
Read more ›
Doug Henwood Has It Wrong This Time
Doug Henwood, who often has so many intelligent and useful things to say about economics and politics, has it wrong this time. A few days ago on his Facebook page he commented on an article that I had written about . . .
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