Over the past fifty plus years, over 125 mass shootings/massacres have occurred within the United States but not one perpetrator has been identified as a trained member of an international Islamist terrorist organization. A review…
Category: James Petras
James Petras, a retired Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, SUNY, New York, U.S., and adjunct professor at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He describes himself as a “revolutionary and anti-imperialist” activist and writer. He has worked with the Brazilian landless workers’ movement and the unemployed workers’ movement in Argentina. He is currently a member of the editorial collective of Canadian Dimension. Petras is the author of numerous books and articles and contributes to Counterpunch.
During her 4 years as Secretary of State of the United States (2009-2014), Hillary Clinton controlled US foreign policy. She had access to the most confidential information and state documents, numbering in the tens of thousands, from all of the major government departments and agencies, Intelligence, FBI, the Pentagon, Treasury and the office of the President. She had unfettered access to vital and secret information affecting US policy in all the key regions of the empire. Today, Mme. Clinton’s critics have focused on the technical aspects of her violations of State Department procedures and guidelines regarding handling of official correspondences and her outright lies on the use of her own private e-mail server for official state business, including the handling of highly classified material in violation of Federal Records laws, as well as her hiding official documents from the Freedom of Information Act and concocting her own system exempt from the official oversight which all other government officials accept.
What does it mean when the US and British financial systems launder hundreds of billions of dollars of illicit funds stolen by world leaders while their governments turn a ‘blind eye’, and yet the very same Anglo-American officials investigate, prosecute, fine and arrest officials from rival governments, rival banks and political leaders for corruption? What does it mean when the US government expands a world-wide network of nuclear missiles on bases stretching from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, the Gulf States to Japan, surrounding Russia, Iran and China, while the very same US and NATO officials investigate and condemn rival defense officials from Russia, China and Iran, as military threats to peace and stability?
Introduction President Obama is racing forward to establish his imperial legacy throughout Russia, Asia and Latin America. In the last two years he has accelerated the buildup of his military nuclear arsenal on the frontiers of Russia. The Pentagon…
The terror bombings in Paris and Brussels have raised a cacophony of voices, ranging from state officials, Prime Ministers and Presidents, to academics, journalists and media consultants. Tons of ink and print have focused on…
The presidential elections of 2016 have several unique characteristics that defy common wisdom about political practices in 21st century America. Clearly the established political machinery – party elites and their corporate backers -have (in part) lost…
The Islamic State (IS) has become a magnet for international brigades, drawing over 30,000 fighters from 5 continents and 86 countries to their war in Iraq and Syria. While the international brigades are part of a global movement, most of the volunteers come from two-dozen countries, mainly in the Middle East, Maghreb, Western Europe, Russia and Central Asia. Most Islamist internationalists are paid a salary to fight and engage in police functions within IS-occupied regions. This essay will identify the principle sources of recruitment of Islamist internationalists and the reasons underlying their commitment. We will also contrast and compare IS internationalists to the earlier international brigades fighting for the Spanish Republic against fascists in the 1930’s; fascist internationalists fighting for the Nazis against the USSR in the 1940’s; and the democratic internationalists in the 1970’s who joined the Sandinista revolution against the Somoza dictatorship.
Erdoğan began his ascent to power as a social reformer in opposition to the power elite; he was a rabble-rouser for popular Islam and social welfare. Once he takes political power he enriches his family…
Over the past 15 years the US has been engaged in a series of wars, which has led many writers to refer to the ‘rise of militarism’ – the growth of an empire, built primarily…
With the collapse of the Communist countries in the 1990’s and their conversion to capitalism, followed by the advent of neo-liberal regimes throughout most of Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America, the imperial regimes…