The Anti-Empire Report
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Issue #29 — January 9th, 2006
We read about things done and said by the Iraqi president, or the Ministry of this or the Ministry of that, and it’s easy to get the impression that Iraq is in the process of becoming a sovereign state, albeit not particularly secular and employing torture, but still, a functioning, independent state. Then we read about the IMF and the rest of the international financial mafia—with the US playing its usual sine qua non role—making large loans to the country and forgiving debts, with the customary strings attached, in the current instance ending government subsidies for fuel and other petroleum products. Keep reading →
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Issue #28 — December 6th, 2005
It’s time once again to remind ourselves of the big lie, the biggest lie of all, the lie that makes this whole current controversy rather irrelevant. For it didn’t matter if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, it didn’t matter if the intelligence was right or wrong, or whether the Bush administration lied about the weapons, or who believed the lies and who didn’t. All that mattered was the Bush administration’s claim that Iraq was a threat to use the weapons against the United States, an imminent threat to wreak great havoc upon America. Keep reading →
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Issue #27 — November 10th, 2005
Preparing for and combating the threatened bird flu pandemic would be tough enough under the best of circumstances. But the circumstances the United States has to deal with include the reality that the country, more than any other on earth, is privately owned. Keep reading →
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Issue #26 — October 17th, 2005
All the kindness, all the concern and generosity, the utmost empathy, taking strangers into their homes, donating so much money and goods and time, helping them find a roof over their heads, find a job, locate their loved ones ... But it must be asked: Why is it that so many of these same people can show so little concern for the many, many victims of US foreign policy—the bombed and the tortured, the maimed and the impoverished, the widows and the orphans, the overthrown and the suppressed? Keep reading →
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Issue #25 — September 5th, 2005
Such tough talk, such uncompromising, principled stands against those who violate the law. Zero tolerance! When do we hear this from our public officials when it comes to the corporations who loot the public treasury and workers’ pensions? Who pollute the air that we all breathe every moment of every day, killing far more people than all the rioters in the United States have ever done. Who raise gasoline prices to the point that people’s normal lives and desires are grievously trampled upon. Wouldn’t we like to see some of those well trained, experienced, battle-tested troops training their M-16s on the likes of CEOs of Enron or World.com or General Electric or ExxonMobil or Halliburton? Keep reading →
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Issue #24 — August 7th, 2005
“It is important to note that al Qaeda training manuals emphasize the tactic of making false abuse allegations.” This is now the official and frequent response of White House, Pentagon, and State Department spokespersons when confronted with charges of American “abuse” (read: torture) of prisoners, and is being repeated by many supporters of the war scattered around the Internet. Keep reading →
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Issue #23 — July 14th, 2005
In the period leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, from many quarters came the warnings of the great chaos and violence this would lead to in various parts of the world, the many new anti-Americans—terrorists and otherwise—who would be produced. But I think it can be said now that the consequences have been even worse than predicted. Keep reading →
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Issue #22 — June 13th, 2005
What if the problem is that people in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world understand the Pentagon and US foreign policy only too well? In short, what if they simply don’t believe that we’re so good? What if they—in their foreign ignorance and al-Jazeera brainwashing—have come to the bizarre conclusion that saturation bombing, invasion, occupation, destruction of homes, torture, depleted uranium, killing a hundred thousand, and daily humiliation of men, women and children do not indicate good intentions? Keep reading →
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Issue #21 — May 13th, 2005
Good ol’ George W. was traveling around Eastern Europe this past week celebrating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, spouting a lot of Cold War anti-Communist myths. These tales are all set in marble in American media, textbooks, and folklore, but please humor me as I engage in my usual futility of trying to correct some of the official record. Keep reading →
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Issue #20 — April 19th, 2005
In previous reports I’ve discussed why I thought that the political uprisings in Eastern Europe of the past 18 months, which have resulted in changes of government in Georgia and Ukraine and the potential for the same elsewhere, have not entirely been phenomena of spontaneous combustion. I’ve pointed out that in each case all or most of the usual American suspects have been involved—the National Endowment for Democracy (and two of its wings: the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs), the Agency for International Development (AID), George Soros’s Open Society organizations, Freedom House, et al. Keep reading →
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Issue #19 — March 21st, 2005
I don’t understand all this talk about how US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan have inspired a “democracy movement” in the Middle East. Well, actually, I do understand it. People are desperate to derive something positive from all the horror wreaked upon the region by the American interventions, something to reassure themselves that what their country has done isn’t so bad after all, that they themselves are not as gullible as they were starting to feel. Keep reading →
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Issue #18 — February 16th, 2005
After what was humorously designated an “election” in Iraq, there was a marked increase in calls for the United States to announce a timetable for withdrawal from that unhappy land. Senator Kennedy, The Brookings Institution, and a British government official were amongst numerous of the influential class to propose such action. The rationale behind the timing of these requests, one would assume, is that now that Iraq has displayed a measure of what the White House calls “democracy”, the United States can and should declare, once again, “mission accomplished” and leave, without loss of face. Keep reading →