| Old Articles | | Wednesday, March 06 | | · | Chavismo Lives! |
| Tuesday, March 05 | | · | Chávez Haters Not “Limited by Truth, Reality or Common Sense” |
| · | President Hugo Chavez has Died |
| · | American Foreign Policy - Have Our War Lovers Learned Anything? |
| Wednesday, February 27 | | · | Why North Korea Needs Nuclear Weapons |
| · | Gaddafi's warnings now used to justify Mali intervention |
| Wednesday, February 20 | | · | Imperial Jockeying in Africa: U.S. Intervention Sets to Deepen |
| · | Mugabe was right |
| Wednesday, February 13 | | · | Opportunities and War in Mali |
| Thursday, January 31 | | · | The Real Invasion of Africa is Not News |
| Tuesday, January 29 | | · | Many U.S. My Lai-Type Massacres in Vietnam |
| Thursday, January 24 | | · | The Impossible Discourse of the ‘Arab Spring’ |
| Thursday, January 17 | | · | How the International Community Failed Haiti |
| Monday, January 07 | | · | The Ultimate Logic of a Society Built on Mass Murder |
| Sunday, December 09 | | · | Venezuela’s Chavez’s Cancer Returns, Leaves Vice-President in Charge |
| Thursday, December 06 | | · | The Reality of the 'Lesser Evil' |
| Wednesday, December 05 | | · | A new call against standing idly by? |
| · | Why White People Get Mad |
| Saturday, December 01 | | · | Zimbabwe Empowerment Lessons for South Africa |
| Wednesday, November 21 | | · | Disconnecting the Dots on Israel-Palestine |
Older Articles
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 | | War and Terror: Red lines and other double standards
Thursday, May 09 @ 12:14:49 AST |  By Stephen Gowans
May 09, 2013 - gowans.wordpress.com
According to the White House, Israel has the right to defend itself. I would argue that it doesn’t. Based on the theft of another people’s land and denial of their right to return to the homes from which they fled or were driven, Israel no more than any other thief has the right to defend itself.
Judging by its indulgent attitude to Israeli aggressions, Washington claims that Israel has the right to defend itself in any way it pleases: by unprovoked air-strikes across international borders; by meting out collective punishment; by carrying out extra-judicial assassinations; by invasions and occupations; and through other outrages against international law, sovereignty and humanity. In fact, by doing what the United States, itself, regularly does.
The White House says that the most recent Israeli aggression, air-strikes carried out over the last few days against Syrian military facilities, were intended to stop a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran to the Lebanese resistance organisation, Hezbollah. Striking a dissenting note, The New York Times reported that, “Some American officials are unsure whether the new shipment was intended for use by Hezbollah or by the Assad government.”
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Latin America: U.S. Seeks to Get Rid of Left Governments in Latin America
Thursday, May 02 @ 07:39:07 AST |  By Mark Weisbrot
May 1st 2013 - CEPR
Recent events indicate that the Obama administration has stepped up its strategy of “regime change” against the left-of-center governments in Latin America, promoting conflict in ways not seen since the military coup that Washington supported in Venezuela in 2002. The most high-profile example is in Venezuela itself, during the past week. As this goes to press, Washington has grown increasingly isolated in its efforts to destabilize the newly elected government of Nicolas Maduro.
But Venezuela is not the only country to fall prey to Washington’s efforts to reverse the electoral results of the past 15 years in Latin America. It is now clear that last year’s ouster of President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay was also aided and abetted by the United States government. In a brilliant investigative work for Agência Pública, journalist Natalia Viana shows that the Obama administration funded the principal actors involved in the “parliamentary coup” against Lugo. Washington then helped organize international support for coup.
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Latin America: Venezuela’s Electoral Council Says Capriles Lacks Proof of Fraud
Tuesday, April 30 @ 05:20:45 AST |  By Chris Carlson
April 30, 2013 - venezuelanalysis.com
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced yesterday that they would not approve Henrique Capriles’ additional demands for the auditing of the April 14 elections, and explained that he lacks any proof of fraud.
The announcement was made on Saturday night via a televised statement by CNE President Tibisay Lucena.
Lucena explained that the expanded audit process would be carried out as planned, but the additional demands that the Capriles campaign have made in recent days would not be included.
“It is important to note that the political parties already audited the electoral process at each stage, certifying the integrity and correct functioning of the system,” said Lucena.
“Representatives from each party signed off on each one, as can be seen in the documents on the CNE website…there were a total of 18 auditing processes, but now they are being silenced and ignored in an attempt to discredit the electoral process,” she said.
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War and Terror: Washington's "playbook" on provoking North Korea
Tuesday, April 30 @ 05:11:37 AST |  By Stephen Gowans
April 30, 2013 - gowans.wordpress.com
In an April 3 Wall Street Journal article, “U.S. dials back on Korean show of force,” reporters Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes revealed that the White House approved a detailed plan, called ‘the playbook,’ to ratchet up tension with North Korea during the Pentagon’s war games with South Korea.
The war games, which are still in progress, and involve the deployment of a considerable amount of sophisticated US military hardware to within striking distance of North Korea, are already a source of considerable tension in Pyongyang, and represent what Korean specialist Tim Beal dubs “sub-critical” warfare.
The two-month-long war games, directed at and carried out in proximity to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, force the North Korean military onto high alert, an exhausting and cripplingly expensive state of affairs for a small country whose economy has already been crippled by wide-ranging sanctions. North Korea estimates that sanctions and US military aggression have taken an incalculable toll on its economy. [1]
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Africa Focus: US & France Intervene in Mali To Protect Land & Resource Grabs
Monday, April 29 @ 05:36:06 AST |  US & France Intervene in Mali To Protect Land & Resource Grabs, Not Because of Al Qeda
By Bruce Dixon
April 29, 2013 - blackagendareport.com
On March 15, former General and AFRICOM commander Carter F. Ham testified before the House Armed Services Committee that the situation in the West African republic of Mali is, along with that in Nigeria and Somalia, “a direct threat to the national security of the United States.” In plain language, claiming a direct threat to US national security is the standard justification for murderous military intervention around the world, and Mali has just been added to the hit list.
Echoing official sources like General Ham, corporate media tell us that Al Qeda and related Islamist forces, flush with weapons from the recent conflict in Libya, are poised to overrun Mali. Should we believe them? Aren't they the same folks who once assured us Saddam, and nowadays Iran, have nuclear weapons? Of course they are, and the real reasons for US intervention are something else entirely.
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War and Terror: Our Invisible Wars: What Dzokhar Tsarnaev has to do with Bradley Manning
Wednesday, April 24 @ 15:07:55 AST |  By Alyssa Rohricht
April 24, 2013 - thecrashculture.wordpress.com
The media is ablaze right now with discussions about Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Bomber, and whether or not he should receive a fair trial as an American citizen. A few politicians and general lunatics have called for torture, military tribunals, and even "a July 4 celebration of stringing this son-of-a-b-tch up in the Boston Common and letting the crows pick on his rotting flesh." (That last one is courtesy of Ted Nugent). And despite not being read his Miranda Rights, it does seem that, at the least, Tsarnaev will receive a trial-by-jury. How fair that trial will be remains to be seen, but one thing's for sure: The only reason Tsarnaev is getting this fair trial is because this case is so predominantly in the public's eye.
Certainly, it stands to the symbolic greatness of a country who promises a fair trial-by-jury to all of its citizens, regardless of the hideousness of the crimes committed. Unfortunately, this promise is only rhetorical and applies only when it serves the purposes of the power elite. Tsarnaev will get his promise of a trial with a jury of his peers, yet, behind the scenes, the Obama Administration and those in power wage a secret war against whistleblowers that the public does not see.
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Latin America: The United States shows its contempt for Venezuelan democracy
Tuesday, April 23 @ 11:18:26 AST | Washington's clumsy efforts to de-legitimise Venezuela's election mark a escalation of its push for regime change
By Mark Weisbrot
April 22, 2013 - guardian.co.uk
While most of the news on Venezuela in the week since the 14 April presidential election focused on the efforts of losing candidate Henrique Capriles to challenge the results, another campaign, based in Washington, was quite revealing – and the two were most definitely related. Without Washington's strong support – the first time it had refused to recognise a Venezuelan election result – it is unlikely that Capriles would have joined the hardcore elements of his camp in pretending that the election was stolen.
Washington's efforts to de-legitimise the election mark a significant escalation of US efforts at regime change in Venezuela. Not since its involvement in the 2002 military coup has the US government done this much to promote open conflict in Venezuela. When the White House first announced on Monday that a 100% audit of the votes was "an important, prudent and necessary step", this was not a genuine effort to promote a recount.
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Latin America: Nicolás Maduro is Venezuela's vote for Chávismo
Friday, April 19 @ 04:47:19 AST |  By Mark Weisbrot
April 17, 2013 - guardian.co.uk
After a short but bitterly fought, insult-laden campaign, Chavista standard-bearer Nicolás Maduro defeated challenger Henrique Capriles, thus assuring continuity in Venezuela after the death of President Hugo Chávez last month. But the election was much closer than the polls predicted: a margin of just 1.6 percentage points, or about 275,000 votes.
Capriles is demanding an audit of 100 percent of all votes; Maduro has apparently agreed. But the audit is unlikely to change the outcome. Unlike in the United States, where in a close election we really don't know who won, the Venezuelan system is very secure. Since there are two records of every vote (machine and paper ballot), it is nearly impossible to rig the machines and stuff the ballot boxes to match. Jimmy Carter called Venezuela's electoral system "the best in the world."
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War and Terror: What North Koreans Think
Saturday, April 13 @ 00:50:05 AST | "We learned the lesson in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan: be strong."
By Stansfield Smith
April 11, 2013 - counterpunch.org
I recently returned from a late March trip to North Korea [Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, DPRK], along with 45 others, through Koryo Tours. On that tour I had the opportunity to discuss with the Korean tour guides their views on the current situation. I only recall the DPRK view mentioned here once in the corporate media, when Dennis Rodman returned with a message from new President Kim Jong. The message was “I don't want war, call me.” Nobel Peace Prize winning President Obama refused to accept it, evidently preferring an escalating threat of a regional nuclear war to talking. I asked my Korean tours guides to be interviewed so I could present their views to US people.
Has the DPRK made proposals for peaceful national reunification?
Yes, now we have options: the historic option of a federal republic, and the recent option. In our history we proposed three principles for reunification: that the North and South unite the country independently of foreign forces, that we reunify peacefully, and that we work together over the years to create the unity of the whole nation.
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War and Terror: North Korea’s Justifiable Anger
Friday, April 12 @ 10:18:14 AST | By Stansfield Smith
April 10, 2013 - www.counterpunch.org
The corporate media reduces the DPRK (North Korea) to the Kim family and prefaces their names with the terms “madman”, “evil” and “brutal”. Such vilifications of foreign leaders are used here not only to signify they are target for US overthrow. They are meant to intimidate and isolate anti-war activists as being out in left field for ever wanting to oppose a war against countries ruled by “madmen” – be they Saddam, Fidel, Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Qaddaffi.
Yet to a sensible person, it is crazy that the US, with nuclear weapons thousands of miles from home, in South Korea, denies North Korea has a right to have its own nuclear weapons on its own land – particularly when the North says it is developing nuclear weapons only as a deterrent because the US won’t take its own weapons out of the Korean peninsula.
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Africa Focus: Africa: Imperialism's High Mark of Conquest in the 21st Century
Wednesday, April 10 @ 13:24:17 AST | The US-NATO military curtain has fallen the length and breadth of Africa. 'Zimbabwe and tiny Eritrea are among the few nations on the African continent that have not yet been absorbed into the AFRICOM matrix.'
By Glen Ford
April 10, 2013 - blackagendareport.com
“Imperialism with a Black face has been fantastically successful, in Africa.”
At present, nothing stands in the way of the militarization and occupation of Africa by the United States and its junior imperialist partners. Every global and multinational organization of any consequence on the continent has been suborned to the service of the neocolonial military project. AFRICOM, the United States Military Command in Africa, has become the headquarters of recolonization, augmented by the militaries of NATO and legitimized by the African Uni0n, itself, and the global credentials of the United Nations.
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Arab Spring: How Turkey's regional ambitions crumbled
Thursday, April 04 @ 10:26:36 AST |  By Ramzy Baroud
April 04, 2013
"Confused" may be an appropriate term to describe Turkey's current foreign policy in the Middle East and in Israel in particular. The source of that confusion - aside from the appalling violence in Syria and earlier in Libya - is Turkey's own mistakes.
The Turkish government's inconsistency regarding Israel highlights earlier discrepancies in other political contexts. There was a time when Turkey's top foreign policy priority included reaching out diplomatically to Arab and Muslim countries. Then, we spoke of a paradigm shift, where Istanbul was repositioning its political center, reflecting perhaps economic necessity, but also cultural shifts within its own society. It seemed that the East versus West debate was skillfully being resolved by politicians of the Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, along with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, appeared to have obtained a magical non-confrontational approach to Turkey's historic political alignment. The "zero problems" policy allowed Turkey to brand itself as a bridge between two worlds. The country's economic growth and strategic import to various geopolitical spheres allowed it to escape whatever price meted out by Washington and its European allies as a reprimand for its bold political moves - including Erdogan's unprecedented challenge of Israel.
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Africa Focus: The fallacy of the whiteman's burden
Wednesday, March 27 @ 11:36:20 AST | 
By Mthulisi Ndebele
March 27, 2013 - herald.co.zw
I am greatly concerned by the misconception that is awash in various foreign and local media that for Zimbabwe’s elections to be regarded as free and fair, they must be endorsed by the EU and USA.
The road from colonialism to one man one vote was a long one, accompanied by indiscriminate expropriation of African land and their rights. One such right was the right to one men one vote or universal adult suffrage which finally came after the sacrifices made by the gallant sons and daughters of Zimbabwe.
This right was fought for by our forebears for over 100 years from the first Umvukela to the war of independence. The ability to cast a vote meant they had a voice and they could choose our own leaders but through various colonial measures such as the qualified franchise a few Africans could vote in the then colonial Rhodesia.
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War and Terror: Armistice Agreement Withdrawal: North Korean Belligerence?
Thursday, March 21 @ 12:09:34 AST | By Stephen Gowans
March 21, 2013 - gowans.wordpress.com
Why has North Korea withdrawn from an armistice agreement that has kept overt hostilities on the Korean peninsula at bay since 1953? Does the withdrawal portend an imminent North Korean aggression? Hardly. North Korea is in no position to launch an attack on its Korean neighbour, or on the United States, at least not one that it would survive. North Korean forces are dwarfed by the US and South Korean militaries in size, sophistication and fire-power. The withdrawal serves, instead, as a signal of North Korean resolve to defend itself against growing US and South Korean harassment, both military and economic.
US provocations
For decades, North Korea has been subjected to the modern form of the siege. "The aim of the siege is to reduce the enemy to such a state of starvation and deprivation that they open the gate, perhaps killing their leaders in the process and throw themselves on the mercy of the besiegers." [1] North Korea withstood the siege, and even flourished, during the years it was able to trade with the Soviet Uni0n and Eastern Europe's socialist countries. But with the demise of Soviet socialism, the country has bent, but not broken, under the pressure of US-led sanctions of mass destruction.
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Latin America: Chavez's Enemies Hand Him His Greatest Tribute: Defamation
Saturday, March 16 @ 03:31:33 AST | By Stephen Gowans
March 16, 2013 - gowans.wordpress.com
The mass media's near universal defamation of Hugo Chavez, presumably to counter the outpouring of eulogies and tributes that attended the Venezuelan president's death, illustrates the lengths to which the wealthy (in whose hands the mass media repose) will go to vilify anyone who commits the highest international crime: curbing free enterprise.
To say that the anti-Chavez obloquies have been over the top would hardly be an exaggeration. Author and journalist Terry Glavin, whose credentials as a propagandist on behalf of the capitalist faith have been solidly affirmed by his loosing possibly the most extreme diatribe against Chavez ever written, assures us the Bolivarian revolutionary was "a sadistic, egomaniacal thug," a "megalomaniac" at the center of an "autocracy," who left "millions of Venezuelans living in fear of the knock on the door in the night." ("Hugo Chavez, incompetent fake socialist," The Ottawa Citizen, March 7, 2013.)
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