Heeding Hurricane Cassandra
In any rational world, Hurricane Sandy (the diminutive for Cassandra) would be a major wake-up call for America. But Cassandra was not heeded when she foretold the downfall of Troy. Why should Sandy...
View ArticleOn Batman: Allegories of a faltering empire and the vagaries of an election
As the last week of President Obama's first term presidency is rapidly coming to an end with the climactic bang of Hurricane Sandy, and as we are getting ready for the finale of one of the most...
View ArticleSpace warfare and the future of US global power
It's 2025 and an American "triple canopy" of advanced surveillance and armed drones fills the heavens from the lower- to the exo-atmosphere. A wonder of the modern age, it can deliver its weaponry...
View ArticleBeyond Bayonets and Battleships
In the 1950s and early 1960s, the Cold War was commonly said to have partially plunged "into the shadows" as a secret, off-the-grid, spy-versus-spy conflict fought between the planet’s two...
View ArticleRespect the architect: Malcolm X, the elections and the politics of empire
With Guantanamo still open, drones still killing and anti-Muslim sentiment forming the rumbling bass line of empire, the upcoming US presidential elections have once again raised the spectre and...
View ArticleThe progressive president America needs
Particularly in the last month or so of the campaign - beginning with the surprise unveiling of "moderate Mitt" in the first debate - Mitt Romney tried to run as if he were Barack Obama, painting...
View ArticleObama moves to make the War on Terror permanent
A primary reason for opposing the acquisition of abusive powers and civil liberties erosions is that they virtually always become permanent, vested not only in current leaders one may love and trust...
View ArticleThe matrix reloaded or the miseducation of Barack Obama
He ran on a platform of "hope" and "change". But the only long-term change for which Barack Obama might well be remembered come November 7 will be to have breathed new life into an imperial machine...
View ArticleThe lost promise of Barack Obama
Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was a 16-year-old American citizen killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. His name did not come up in the confirmation hearings for John Brennan to be head of the CIA. Or in...
View ArticleStuart Hall's revolutionary legacy
Of all the insights offered by the seminal Jamaican-British cultural theorist Stuart Hall, who passed away on February 10 this year, one of the most relevant for anyone concerned about the Arab world...
View ArticleUS creates enemy-industrial complex
By Tom Engelhardt The communist enemy, with the "world's fourth largest military", has been trundling missiles around and threatening the United States with nuclear obliteration. Guam, Hawaii,...
View ArticleHow to Turn a World Lacking in Enemies into the Most Threatening Place in the...
The Enemy-Industrial Complex Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com The communist enemy, with the “world’s fourth largest military,” has been trundling missiles around and threatening the United States with...
View ArticleReviewing James Petras' The Politics of Empire: The US, Israel and the Middle...
It's Petras at his best. It's important reading. It covers vital topics. Petras tells readers what they need to know. His analysis is masterful. Below is an account of what he said. Washington and...
View ArticleWhy so many communist philosophers?
Reading and writing about Karl Marx does not necessarily make you a communist, but the fact that a number of distinguished philosophers are reevaluating Marx's ideas certainly means something. After...
View ArticleWashington’s Alliance With al-Qaeda
When I read Imperial Hubris, by Michael Scheuer – a former top CIA official and head of their bin Laden unit — I was floored by his opening paragraph: "As I complete this book, U.S., British, and other...
View ArticleObama’s Endless Kill List
Of the three presidential debates, Monday’s saw the only mention of U.S. drone warfare. But after the challenger Romney quickly affirmed his support of President Obama’s drone program, stating that it...
View ArticlePraying at the Church of St Drone
Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren't just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief. The last two...
View ArticleThe Enemy-Industrial Complex
The communist enemy, with the “world’s fourth largest military,” has been trundling missiles around and threatening the United States with nuclear obliteration. Guam, Hawaii, Washington: all, it...
View ArticleArab revolutions and Neoliberal illusions
Words “are witnesses which often speak louder than documents,” wrote Eric Hobsbawm in ‘The Age of Revolution 1789-1848.’ And in an age of Arab Revolutions (2010- ), words have become effective lethal...
View ArticleHow a community organiser became a robot president
President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC, 20500 Dear President Obama, Nothing you don't know, but let me just say it: the world's a weird place. In my younger...
View ArticleThe Great Transformation: From the Welfare State to the Imperial Police State
Introduction The United States has experienced the biggest political upheaval in its recent history: the transformation of a burgeoning welfare state into a rapidly expanding, highly intrusive and...
View ArticleAmerican Liberalism and the national security state
Cornell West, on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, reiterated his criticism that President Obama is a "war criminal" for killing innocent people through drone strikes. He went on to make a simple, but...
View ArticleOverthrowing the Washington Mindset
Our goal, here at Antiwar.com, is to change American foreign policy: to divert the US from its course toward empire and restore the old republic. How, exactly, is this going to happen? Well, to begin...
View ArticleNATO summit highlights neo-con/neo-liberal overlap
As the general election phase of the American presidential election gets underway, the recent NATO summit serves as a potent reminder of just how little difference there ultimately is between the...
View ArticleMitt Romney's 'other things'
It's the kind of remark we might have expected from President George W Bush. Looking out over a sea of wealthy Israeli Jews and Jewish American donors in Jerusalem, presumptive Republican presidential...
View ArticleThe End of the New World Order
by Seumas Milne The following is an edited extract from Seumus Milne's new book, The Revenge of History: the Battle for the 21st Century, published by Verso. In the late summer of 2008, two events in...
View ArticleOverwrought empire: The discrediting of US military power
Americans lived in a "victory culture" for much of the 20th century. You could say that we experienced an almost 75-year stretch of triumphalism - think of it as the real "American Century" - from...
View ArticleThe revolution, back in black
The last time kids in black caused this much trouble in Egypt, it was Satan's fault. Well, at least that's what the Muslim Brotherhood and the Mubarak government claimed during the infamous "Satanic...
View ArticleAn Egyptian Obama?
Last week a couple of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated activists, from a group called "We're Watching You", filed a complaint with the Interior Ministry through a lawyer working for the Freedom and...
View ArticleState of the drones
During his State of the Union Address last night, President Barack Obama said: We don't need to send tens of thousands of our sons and daughters abroad, or occupy other nations. Instead, we will need...
View ArticleGlobal rebellion: The coming chaos?
- As the crisis of global capitalism spirals out of control, the powers that be in the global system appear to be adrift and unable to proposal viable solutions. From the slaughter of dozens of young...
View ArticleReview: 'The Revenge of History: The Battle for the 21st Century'
A recurring theme in the tragedies of ancient Greek theatre was humanity's helplessness before the decrees of fate. Characters such as Laius in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex would attempt to defy powers...
View ArticleObama Moves To Make The 'War on Terror' Permanent
Eurozone crisis live: Greek austerity measures revealed Syria crisis: attacks dim hopes for truce – live updates I won't give prisoners the vote, says David Cameron Hillsborough: Norman Bettison...
View ArticleWhy Washington Can't Stop
The Coming Era of Tiny Wars and Micro-Conflicts Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com In terms of pure projectable power, there’s never been anything like it. Its military has divided the world -- the...
View ArticleThe Logic behind Mass Spying: Empire and Cyber Imperialism
Introduction Revelations about the long-term global, intrusive spying by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other allied intelligence apparatuses have provoked widespread protests and...
View ArticleTiny wars still don't work
By Tom Engelhardt In terms of pure projectable power, there's never been anything like it. Its military has divided the world - the whole planet - into six "commands." Its fleet, with 11 aircraft...
View ArticleIslamophobia: A Bipartisan Project
When the New York Times ran its story on Obama’s “kill list,” showing the president poring over names of people to potentially assassinate in drone strikes, it sparked a controversy. The content of...
View ArticleAnd Then There Was One
Delusional Thinking in the Age of the Single Superpower Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com In an increasingly phantasmagorical world, here’s my present fantasy of choice: Someone from General Keith...
View ArticleDelusional Thinking in the Age of the Single Superpower
In an increasingly phantasmagorical world, here’s my present fantasy of choice: someone from General Keith Alexander’s outfit, the National Security Agency, tracks down H.G. Wells’s time machine in the...
View ArticleWho is the terrorist? Violence and power in Egypt after Morsi
"... I saw that in Paris the simple and uninstructed multitude had actually been led by the enemies of the people into a cordial contempt for the Republic... I said to myself: the Republic is lost,...
View ArticleObama's haunting and the curse of governance
"These deaths will haunt us as long as we live..." I hope so. It would be nice to believe that the President of the United States, or any other leader, is actually haunted by the deaths of civilians at...
View ArticleObama's Disposition Matrix
Call it elevating Murder, Inc. to a higher level. A Washington Post Special Report discussed America's permanent war agenda. It includes targeted killings, Obama's secret kill list, global drone wars,...
View ArticleNEXT PHASE IN THE TERROR HUNT
Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.” The matrix...
View ArticleEdward Snowden's jihad
Let us assume, for the moment, that National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden is the person he's portraying himself to be: not merely a patriot, but a humanitarian who's given up all the...
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