The Path to Disaster
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com
What is the future likely to bring? A reasonable stance might be to try to look at the human species from the outside. So imagine that you’re an extraterrestrial observer who is trying to figure out what’s happening here...
(599) Comments | Posted February 4, 2013 | 9:22 AM
Washington’s Dilemma on a “Lost” Planet
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com
[This piece is adapted from “Uprisings,” a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire, Noam Chomsky’s new interview book with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher,...
(390) Comments | Posted October 15, 2012 | 7:10 PM
The Cuban Missile Crisis and Ownership of the World
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com
The world stood still 50 years ago during the last week of October, from the moment when it learned that the Soviet Union had placed nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba until the crisis was officially...
(230) Comments | Posted July 23, 2012 | 9:58 AM
How the Magna Carta Became a Minor Carta
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com
Down the road only a few generations, the millennium of Magna Carta, one of the great events in the establishment of civil and human rights, will arrive. Whether it will be celebrated, mourned,...
(443) Comments | Posted May 8, 2012 | 8:52 AM
On the History of the U.S. Economy in Decline
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com
The Occupy movement has been an extremely exciting development. Unprecedented, in fact. There’s never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations it has established...
(750) Comments | Posted April 28, 2012 | 6:16 PM
(815) Comments | Posted February 15, 2012 | 9:45 AM
American Decline in Perspective, Part 2
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com
In the years of conscious, self-inflicted decline at home, “losses” continued to mount elsewhere. In the past decade, for the first time in 500 years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself from western...
(865) Comments | Posted February 14, 2012 | 10:12 AM
American Decline in Perspective, Part 1
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com
Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated -- Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example. Others are ignored, and we can often learn valuable lessons from them about what is likely to lie...
(656) Comments | Posted September 6, 2011 | 10:29 AM
Looking Back on 9/11 a Decade Later
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com
We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of September 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world. On May 1st, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden,...
(1049) Comments | Posted April 21, 2011 | 11:30 AM
Crossposted with TomDispatch.com. This piece is adapted from a talk given in Amsterdam in March. See video below.
The democracy uprising in the Arab world has been a spectacular display of courage, dedication, and commitment by popular forces -- coinciding, fortuitously, with a remarkable uprising of tens of...
(943) Comments | Posted April 27, 2010 | 4:35 PM
Crossposted with TomDispatch.com.
The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal...
(856) Comments | Posted June 4, 2013 | 10:41 AM