Category Archives: Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

Memories from Nemesis: Tale of a Peruvian Maoist Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Fourth Generation Warfare, History and Historiography, Left and Right • Tags:

A somewhat interesting review of Abimael Guzman’s autobiography. For quite some time, I have held the view that the Shining Path developed what is arguable the most advanced critique of imperialism on the Marxist “far-left,” although it’s not substantially different from what anarchist anti-imperialists were saying in the 19th century. Marxists still held to a generally pro-imperialist line at the time. Marxist anti-imperialism really begins with Lenin (at least as far as major theorists). It’s also interesting how the Shining Path’s emphasis on recapturing a supposedly glorious Inca past resembles the primordialism found in aspects of fascist thinking. Pol Pot’s emphasis on reclaiming Angkar was similar.

By Frank Beyer

“Mao Zedong Thought” was a major global ideology at a time when China didn’t have much to offer the world economically. Chairman Mao influenced a wide range of groups, such as the Black Panthers in the United States and revolutionary movements in Nepal, India, and the Philippines. Mao was also a guiding light for one particular Peruvian revolutionary: Abimael Guzman. This acolyte’s revolution caused radical waves long after Mao’s death in 1976 – and ultimately ended in failure.

In 1965, a philosophy professor at Peru’s University of Huamanga named Abimael Guzman — also known as “Chairman Gonzalo” — travelled to China with seven other Peruvian communists; he would return to become the most famous Maoist in Latin American guerrilla history. While in Beijing, Guzman got to see Chairman Mao, but only from afar.

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Imperial Exceptionalism Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

By Jackson Lears

The New York Review of Books

It is hard to give up something you claim you never had. That is the difficulty Americans face with respect to their country’s empire. Since the era of Theodore Roosevelt, politicians, journalists, and even some historians have deployed euphemisms—“expansionism,” “the large policy,” “internationalism,” “global leadership”—to disguise America’s imperial ambitions. According to the exceptionalist creed embraced by both political parties and most of the press, imperialism was a European venture that involved seizing territories, extracting their resources, and dominating their (invariably dark-skinned) populations. Americans, we have been told, do things differently: they bestow self-determination on backward peoples who yearn for it.

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Report EXPOSES how Biden team profits off endless war Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Electoralism/Democratism, Military • Tags:

A Biden regime will consolidate the “neoliberalism in economics/neoconservatism in foreign policy” ruling class paradigm while coopting the left by strengthening totalitarian humanism through all kind of woke legislation and policy initiatives while continuing Barr’s initiatives toward enacting greater repression against authentic enemies of the system.

Remembering Capitalism’s Crimes Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Economics/Class Relations
By Grace Blakeley

Any self-identifying socialist will be met with the question at some point in their lives, how many people have been killed in the name of socialism? They might have pointed out in response that Soviet-style state socialism is about as far removed from the democratic socialism proposed by politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn as Chinese state capitalism is from its free-market cousin. But they are unlikely to have noted that the world’s largest empire engaged in a programme of international assassinations more deadly than Stalin’s purges – all in the name of capitalism.

In his new book The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World, Vincent Bevins reveals the staggering death toll of the US’ foreign policy throughout the Cold War. The book centres on the anticommunist massacres that took place in Indonesia in 1965-66, as US-backed dictator Suharto deposed his anti-imperialist, developmentalist predecessor Sukarno.

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Colonialism, Explained 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Race and Ethnicity

Colonialism is actually much older than what this author discusses. To trace the history of colonialism, you have to go back to at least the Roman era. Roman colonialism had an impact on indigenous cultures across the Eurasian landmass that was similar to the impact of Western colonialism between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries.

By Jamila Osman

Teen Vogue

Colonialism is defined as “control by one power over a dependent area or people.” In practice, colonialism is when one country violently invades and takes control of another country, claims the land as its own, and sends people — “settlers” — to live on that land.

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Top Biden Nastec Aide RAN THE DRONE KILL LIST under Obama Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Electoralism/Democratism

A Biden regime will likely be a “ruling class unity” government that includes Hillaryites, “human rights imperialists” like Samantha Power, Bush Republicans, neocons, Boltonesque hawks, and Israel-firsters, with “woke” social policies being used to pacify the left-wing of the Democratic Party and co-opt left activism while strengthening recent efforts by Barr to target genuine radicals (from Antifa to Boogaloo).

NSA Dissents From Other Agencies Over Russian Bounty Intel Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags:

The NSA is the most secretive, most heavily funded, largest, and most technologically advanced of the 17 US intelligence organizations, i.e. the elite of the “intelligence community.” There is no such thing as egalitarianism among the power elite just as there is no such thing as egalitarianism in the wider society. The power elite itself is stratified into a layered hierarchy. It’s interesting that the NSA would be at odds with the CIA and FBI over this. My tentative theory is that while certain Deep State sectors are working to oust Trump and put the neocons back in charge of foreign policy, the highest strata of the Deep State is apparently indifferent because, like Goldman-Sachs in the financial realm, they are powerful enough to stand over and above conflicts even within the domestic US power elite itself.

By Dave Decamp

Antiwar.Com

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the National Security Agency “strongly dissented from other intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia paid bounties for the killing of US soldiers in Afghanistan.”

The Journal cites “people familiar with the matter” and does not give much detail, but the story is noteworthy, as the NSA has dissented from other agencies in the past over allegations against Russia. A January 2017 intelligence assessment that concluded Russia interfered in the 2016 election on President Trump’s behalf was given “high confidence” by the CIA and FBI while the NSA gave “moderate confidence.”

Another account of the NSA not giving much weight to this intelligence was given to CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge on Monday. An unnamed intelligence official told Herridge that the NSA deemed a report on the Russian bounties “uncorroborated.” The official said the report “does not match well-established and verifiable Taliban and Haqqani practices” and lacks “sufficient reporting to corroborate any links.”

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Will the Neocons Bait, Turn, Switch, and Purge the Antifa/SJWs While Suppressing the Lumpenproletariat? 1

This is important stuff.

I recently put a couple of questions concerning current events to a well-known intellectual historian, a Jewish man whose parents fled Hungary during the rise of Hitler, and who is a specialist in the history of 20th-century totalitarian movements.  His responses confirmed my suspicion that both the bizarre de facto alliance of the far-left, liberals, neocons, and Bush Republicans which has emerged in opposition to the Trumpists, and the seeming acquiescence of the state to both the iconoclasm spree of the far left and the lumpenproletarian insurrection, represents efforts by the capitalist class, the new clerisy, and the Deep State to weaponize both the far left and the insurrectionists against the Trumpists, subsequently purging or co-opting both, while restoring neocon dominance of the military-industrial-intelligence complex. In other words, it’s all about putting the neocons back in charge of US foreign policy. Remember that the neocons started out as Trots, and this is exactly how Bolshies do things.

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China’s worries about separatism run deep Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Secession • Tags:

Peter Zeihan has argued that China may eventually fracture due to its internal instability and fragmentation. If that were to happen, I would consider it to be a major victory for “pan-secessionism” as a revolutionary tactic, as was the overthrow of the USSR and its Eastern European satellites. In addition, the US empire would no longer be able to use the PRC as a whipping boy/bogeyman. As an anarchist, I am for the dissolution of large states everwhere: America, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria…they all need to go. A world of microstates is not pure anarchy, but it is far more tolerable and manageable.

Analysis by James Griffiths, CNN

In a speech on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sun Yat-sen — seen by many as modern China’s founding father — President Xi Jinping pledged to “resolutely oppose” any attempt to divide the country.

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‘What I Saw In The West Bank’ Series Is Coming! Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: ,

The most regrettable though predictable aspect of the recent uprising is that there has, for obvious reasons, been zero focus on the victims of state repression by the US and its allies in other countries. Most Americans, particularly the lumpenproletariat vanguard class, don’t know or don’t care about any of this, and the capitalist class/new clerisy elements that are trying to co-opt the insurrection wish to obscure it.

 

Here’s Why John Bolton Turned On Trump Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags:

I tend to agree with Kim Iversen that Biden is likely to be worse than Trump on foreign policy, with the exception being Trump’s total fealty to Israel and Saudi Arabia, particularly given that the Bush Republicans and neocons have successfully colonized the Democrats, with scumbags like Bolton clearly lobbying for a position in a Biden administration.

It really is hilarious how an axis that extends from the far left to the neocon and corporate Republican right has formed solely for the purpose of hating on Orange Man, who is really just a glorified carnival barker and who is constantly getting overruled by the Deep State and the military-industrial complex.

 

Biden Criticizes Trump Over Intelligence on Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

Before I would believe this, I would have to see it confirmed by independent sources other than “US intelligence.” This seems more like disinformation cooked up to undermine Trump’s reelection. It is clear that the Deep State, neocons, neoliberals, the bulk of the military-industrial complex, majority of the capitalist class, and 100% of the new clerisy (with most of the Left acting as useful idiots) have formed an axis for the purpose of purging the neo-realist insurgency within the ruling class that Trump symbolizes (however incompetently).

The objective of this dominant ruling class axis is to elect Sleepy Joe, cart him off to a nursing home or keep him doped up on pills (like they did with Reagan in the 1980s), install Kamala as the official acting prez, with the Dragon Lady being the real prez, and her old cronies Samanta Power Sunstein, Maudlin Half-bright, Susan Rice, the Kagan boys, Michele Flournoy, and Vicki Nuland being brought back into the State Department along with Republican defectors like Bill Kristol (or his puppets) and John Bolton, who is obviously lobbying hard for a position in a future Biden administration.

By Eric Schmitt, Michael Schwirtz and Charlie Savage

The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. assailed President Trump on Saturday for failing to punish Russia for offering bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan, while the White House denied that Mr. Trump had been briefed on the months-old classified intelligence assessment about Russia’s activities.

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Bolton Book Fight Shows Flaws in U.S. System to Protect Secrets Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags:

LOL. The existence of John Bolton shows flaws in the US system, not to mention the human gene pool.

By David Yaffe-Bellany

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) — The legal fight over John Bolton’s unflattering memoir about his time as national security adviser to President Donald Trump centers on a much-maligned government process for vetting what former U.S. secret-keepers can reveal to the public.

Former government officials say the process for screening their writings to prevent the release of classified information has become increasingly cumbersome over the years, with approvals taking far too long and demands for changes or redactions that seem to reflect political bias more than concern for national security.

“The whole system is so fundamentally broken,” said Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School who worked as a lawyer in the Defense Department during the Obama administration. “It provides a way for the government, when it doesn’t like what you’re saying, to prevent you from saying it.”

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India has 18 million modern slaves Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Economics/Class Relations, Race and Ethnicity

And a lot of these slaves are being used by Western corporations while Western governments look the other way. All of the rhetoric coming from Western elites about “human rights,” “democracy,” “civil rights,” etc has about as much seriousness and legitimacy as when the ancient Egyptian rulers claimed to be descended from the sun-god.

Also, notice that in the recent uprising, despite all of the leisure class virtue-signaling that has taken place, there has been literally zero mention of American oppression of people outside the United States. Domestic oppression is only the tip of the iceberg.

By Manu Balachandran

Quartz

India is home to the largest number of enslaved people in the world.

A little over 18 million people—equal to the entire population of Chile—are victims of modern slavery in Asia’s third-largest economy, according to the Global Slavery Index (pdf), published by Australia-based human rights group Walk Free Foundation. Such persons are often engaged in domestic work, construction, farming, fishing, manual labour, forced begging, and in the sex industry.

The index defines modern slavery as a situation where “a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power or deception, with treatment akin to a farm animal.” This also includes victims of human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced or servile marriage, and the sale and exploitation of children.

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A Reckoning With Race to Ensure Diversity for America’s Face Abroad Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Race and Ethnicity

“America’s face abroad” is bullets, bombs, and tanks, combined with McDonald’s golden arches, Coca-Cola cans, and Hollywood films. Americanization is antithetical to “diversity.”

By Lara Jakes

New York Times

WASHINGTON — Tianna Spears dreamed for years of becoming an American diplomat. She quit in January after two, and says she will never return to the State Department, given what she has described as its failure to protect her from racial discrimination — from the United States government — while on the job.

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