:: United States
The Anti-Trump Institutional Coup and the Visible Operatives
12.30.2016There are various types of coups: the seizure of executive power by military officials who disband the elected legislature, judiciary and executive, shut-down the media that criticizes the military take- over and and outlaws’ independent social movements.
The Coup against Trump and His Military - Wall Street Defense
12.28.2016Introduction: A coup has been underway to prevent President-Elect Donald Trump from taking office and fulfilling his campaign promise to improve US-Russia relations. This ‘palace coup’ is not a secret conspiracy, but an open, loud attack on the election.
Broken Promises: The Structural Legacy of Capitalist Democracies
12.12.2016In recent times, and probably since the establishment of universal voting, presidents- elect have systematically violated or broken their promises to their supporters.
Foibles, Fables and Failures: The Financial Press and its Keepers
11.23.2016Introduction: US officialdom and their media megaphones have systematically concocted narratives having less to do with political reality and more with their hallucinogenic world view. Pre-election and post-election reportage weaves a tapestry of fiction and fantasy.
Presidential Elections: Myths and Deceits
11.17.2016Introduction: Every aspect of this year’s US Presidential election has been fraught with myths, distortions, fabrications, wishful thinking and invented fears.
Clinton Promotes War While US Public Opinion Speaks to Anti-Militarist Populism
11.14.2016Introduction: Castigating the US electorate as accomplices and facilitators of wars, or, at best, dismissing the voters as ignorant sheep-people (’sheeple’) herded by political elites, describes a partial reality. Public opinion polls, even the polls overwhelmingly slanted toward the center-right, consistently describe a citizenry opposed to militarism and wars, past and present.
US Public Opinion Speaks to Anti-Militarism, the Electorate Votes for Warmongers
11.09.2016Castigating the US electorate as accomplices and facilitators of wars, or at best describing it as ignorant sheep herded by political elites, speaks only to a partial reality; in public opinion polls, even in ones weighted overwhelmingly to the center-right, the American people consistently opposse militarism and wars, past and present.
Washington’s ‘Pivot to Asia’: A Debacle Unfolding
10.24.2016Introduction: In 2012 President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter launched a new chapter in their quest for global dominance: a realignment of policies designed to shift priorities from the Middle East to Asia.
Washington’s Global Economic Wars
10.18.2016Introduction: During most of the past two decades Washington has aggressively launched military and economic wars against at least nine countries, either directly or through its military aid to regional allies and proxies. US air and ground troops have bombed or invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.
Barbarism in Words and Deeds
10.03.2016The US representative to the United Nations, Ambassador ‘Ranting Sam’ Samantha Power, accused the Russian and Syrian governments of ‘barbarism’, claiming Moscow or Damascus had attacked an unarmed United Nations humanitarian convoy delivering aid to civilians in Aleppo.
Propaganda Techniques of Empire
10.02.2016Introduction: Washington’s quest for perpetual world power is underwritten by systematic and perpetual propaganda wars. Every major and minor war has been preceded, accompanied and followed by unremitting government propaganda designed to secure public approval, exploit victims, slander critics, dehumanize targeted adversaries and justify its allies’ collaboration.
The Financial Times: Megaphone for Mass Murder
08.28.2016Introduction: The Financial Times editorial page carries a logo that proclaims: “Without fear and without favour”. Indeed the editors have shown no fear when it comes to. . . fabricating lies, promoting imperial wars decimating countries and impoverishing millions, whether in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and now Venezuela. The fearless “Lies of Our Times” have been at the forefront forging pretexts for inciting imperial armies to crush independent governments.
Obama versus Trump, Putin and Erdogan: Can Coups Defeat Elected Governments?
08.09.2016Never in the history of the United States, has a President and Supreme Court Judge openly advocated the overthrow of a Presidential candidate. Never has the entire mass media engaged in a round-the-clock one-sided, propaganda war to discredit a Presidential candidate by systematically ignoring or distorting the central socio-economic issues of their opposition.
Polarization and the Powder Keg
07.22.2016Introduction: The constitutional order of the US, such as it exists, faces a profound crisis of legitimacy, rooted in the multi polarity of US society. The US is divided among (1) a deeply entrenched police - judicial - presidential state against civil society organized in community based Afro-American, Hispanic and disinherited workers; (2) a corrupt Federal police, Justice , State Department and Presidential Office against a constitutional legal system upheld by the vast majority of citizens; and (3) a rigged Presidential electoral system against the consent and approval of the majority of the electorate.
Genocide by Prescription: The ‘Natural History’ of the Declining White Working Class in America
James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya, MD :: 07.11.2016Introduction: The white working class in the US has been decimated through an epidemic of ‘premature deaths’ - a bland term to cover-up the drop in life expectancy in this historically important demographic. There have been quiet studies and reports peripherally describing this trend - but their conclusions have not yet entered the national consciousness for reasons we will try to explore in this essay.
New book: “The end of the republic and the delusion of empire”
Clarity Press :: 07.02.2016New book by James Petras. Are we approaching “peak America”, where the Republic has failed, and the Empire which put paid to it cannot be achieved?
Massacres: Where Have all the Islamist Gone?
06.30.2016Introduction: 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.
Only Clinton Can Save Trump’s Electoral Victory
06.10.2016Introduction: Rational Voters and Irrational Experts.Large swaths of the US electorate are voting for rational choices against a system controlled by an economic and political oligarchy.
Hillary Clinton: Electing a Foreign Spy for President?
06.05.2016Introduction: 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.
Clinton and Trump: Nuclearized or Lobotomized?
05.17.2016Introduction: Over half the US electorate views the two leading candidates for the 2016 Presidential elections with horror and disdain. In contrast, the entire corporate mass media, here and abroad, repeat outrageous virtuous claims on behalf of Hillary Clinton and visceral denunciations of Donald Trump.
The Imperial Empire: The Sun Never Sets but the Mote remains in the Emperor’s Eye
05.16.2016Post-colonial empires are complex organizations. They are organized on a multi-tiered basis, ranging from relative autonomous national and regional allies to subservient vassal states, with variations in between.
President Obama: The Race for the Imperial Legacy
04.29.2016Introduction: 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 has designed a high tech anti-missile system to undermine Russian defenses.