An editorial by Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer
January 16, 2012 – What a spectacle, the “first black president” of the United States celebrating Martin Luther King Jr Day. How far we’ve come, or so it would seem.
And while King was primarily a civil rights activist seeking equality amongst men based on their humanity, not the countenance of their skin, and the fact that a black man can become president is indeed progress, King was also a champion for humanity in general. He was a peace activist as much as a civil rights activist. Read more…
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What we thought certain, is not.
by Jacques R. Pauwels
Pearl Harbor: The USS Virginia seriously wounded by the attack.
Myth: The US was forced to declare war on Japan after a totally unexpected Japanese attack on the American naval base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. On account of Japan’s alliance with Nazi Germany, this aggression automatically brought the US into the war against Germany.
Reality: The Roosevelt administration had been eager for some time to wage war against Japan and sought to unleash such a war by means of the institution of an oil embargo and other provocations. Having deciphered Japanese codes, Washington knew a Japanese fleet was on its way to Pearl Harbor, but welcomed the attack since a Japanese aggression would make it possible to “sell” the war to the overwhelmingly anti-war American public. Read more…
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From our classic essays archives.
Editor’s Note:
Well, plus que ça change…here we are in 2012 and the imperial monster is as ravenous and vicious as ever, threatening wars in all latitudes, while its formal democracy rapidly dissolves into a badly concealed “friendly fascism” behind a bipartisan presidential façade. Though now four decades old, this overview of hemispheric conditions by John Gerassi (and the dialectics of US foreign policy chiefly afflicting Latin America in the 1960s) is disturbingly prescient for what it says about America itself, and in particular the role of American liberals. While his call for immediate action may sound outdated or premature to some, if not downright uncomfortable to many, his narrative attests to the fact that we face not so much passing personalities—no matter how despicable— but a system that produces them. Despite these caveats, this essay remains one of the finest lessons in US history likely to be found anywhere. —PG
Ernesto “Che” Guevara, as a young medical student, in Argentina.
“One Vietnam, Two Vietnams..Many Vietnams…”
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By John Gerassi (published in 1969)
A great deal is being written in America these days about Pax Americana and American hegemony in the underdeveloped world. No longer able to blot out the obvious, even calm, rational, conscientious academicians are publicly lamenting America’s increasingly bellicose policies from Vietnam to the Dominican Republic. Suddenly, as if awakened from a technicolor dream, intellectuals are discovering such words as “imperialism” and “expansionism.” And they are asking: Why? Who’s to blame? What can be done to stop all this? Read more…
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There They Go Again
Despite its capabilities, Iran’s navy is no match for a combined imperial assault.
by JAMES ABOUREZK
I watched another news program today—this one on MSNBC—with Dylan Ratigan shouting into the camera that if Iran shuts down the Strait of Hormuz through which 40 per cent of the world’s oil flows, it is an act of war.
That’s true.
However, like most everything we watch on news programs, history does not begin with the latest reaction of someone who feels aggrieved. Much like a football referee seeing only the last fist flying, blind to the first punch, the retaliating party is the one who gets the penalty. Read more…
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Marcel Liebman
Why social democracy remains the graveyard of authentic social change.
François Mitterand: a notorious SINO (socialist in name only)
It is now difficult to imagine that the term ‘Social Democracy’ once embodied socialism’s greatest hopes. Shortly before the First World War, the German labour movement or German Social Democracy, which placed itself officially under the banner of Marxism, enjoyed a series of resounding successes that seemed to be full of promise. Within the space of a few years and despite the arsenal of laws and measures that were directed against it, it had become the major political force in the -most powerful state in continental Europe. A membership of one million, the masses who voted for it and the group of deputies who represented it in the Reichstag, where they formed by far the most important group, all testified to its political strength. Its union strength could be measured in terms of millions of members. In organisational terms it seemed to embody both the genius of a nation and the irresistible emergence of a class. Read more…
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MICHAEL PARENTI needs little introduction to (genuine) left audiences. Via scores of excellent books (Democracy for the Few, Inventing Reality, etc.), numerous brilliant lectures here and abroad, and the lifetime example of a revolutionary intellectual, he has given people seriously committed to social change rich tools with which to wage their struggles. The featured lecture, The Assassination of Julius Caesar, delves deeply into the politics of the age of Caesar, and delivers a badly needed rectification in connection with his role and eventual place in history. The true story of Julius Caesar’s character and the policies that led to his murder are as absorbing as they are relevant to the struggles of our own time. The talk is based on his book, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome.
WATCH VIDEO BELOW Read more…
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Gaither Stewart, Senior Editor & European Correspondent
Gorbachev, 1995
(Rome) As a follow-up to Patrice Greanville’s article, “The Soviet Union—Environmental Degradation: Some Historical Antecedents”, I have presented here excerpts from some of my own articles written during the Gorbachev perestroika period, plus notes and reflections concerning Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and Chief of State of the USSR, and his role in the history of Socialism. As an intermittent correspondent in Moscow for a West European newspaper during the Gorbachev era I covered some of the evolving crisis in Russian Communism in the late 1980s-early 1990s. From my notes of over twenty years ago I have reconstructed here the essence of my various articles on the XIX Conference of the CPSU held in Moscow in June-July of 1988. Read more…
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