Today's Stories

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

May 7, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
Drowning in Dollars

Joanne Mariner
Torture After Dark

Col. Dan Smith
It's Lying and It's Murder: How KBR Electrocuted US Troops

Brian M. Downing
Reports From Foreign Provinces

Andy Worthington
Who are the Prisoners Released with Sami al-Haj?

John Stauber
Pentagon Propaganda Documents Go Online, But Will the Media Ever Report on Them?

Christopher Brauchli
Outsourcing Tax Collection

Nelson P. Valdés
Cinco de Mayo and Cinco de Agosto: Mexican History and Manufactured Identities

Rep. Keith Ellison
High Court Deals Blow to Voting Rights

Dan Bacher
Undam the Klamath, Mr. Buffett!

Website of the Day
Green Porno

May 6, 2008

Pam Martens
The Obama Bubble Agenda

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. is Promoting Secession in Bolivia

Marjorie Cohn
Under U.S. Law Torture is Always Illegal

Ralph Nader
America's Pay-or-Die Health Care System

Yigal Bronner
Archaeologists for Hire

Brian Cloughley
No Laws for Bush America

Jacob Hornberger
Killing Enemies Without Trial

Walter Brasch
People Who Don't Need People

Paul Krassner
An Open Letter to Michael Moore

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Running Mates from the Imaginary Plane

Website of the Day
Some People

May 5, 2008

Pam Martens
Obama's Money Cartel

Conn Hallinan
The Syrian Affair

Corey D. B. Walker
The End of Politics

Uri Avnery
Crusader Anxiety: Israel at 60

Dave Zirin
Refocusing Olympic Protest

Corporate Crime Reporter
Wiist's Crusade Against Corporations

Robert Jensen
The Selling and Shaping of Our Souls

Daniel White
What People Want to Hear About in Austin, Texas

Benjamin Dangl
May Day Raid on General Dynamics

Website of the Day
McCain's Pastor of Hate: "Starve. I Don't Care. Starve."

May 3 / 4, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Has Rev. Wright Cost Obama the Presidency?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Shameful Failure of the Black Congressional Caucus

Diane Farsetta
What the Pentagon Pundits Were Selling on the Side

Tariq Ali
New Labour is Dead

Harry Browne
The USA's Other Island: Irish Leaders and the War on Terror

Wajahat Ali
Pakistan's New Daughter of Destiny? An Exclusive Interview with Fatima Bhutto

David Yearsley
A Challenge to Jeffrey Eugenides

Greg Moses
Salamat, Riad Hamad

William Blum
Rev. Wright, the CIA and the AIDS Thing

Robert Fantina
The Rhetoric of John McCain

Fred Gardner
The Greatest Story Never Told

Dave Lindorff
Blame It On Paraguay: The Bush Family's Bad Real Estate Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Standardizing Learning

Binoy Kampmark
Brown, Boris and the British Council Elections

Howard Lisnoff
The Lost First Amendment

Daniel Cassidy
Slanguage: Paddy Works on the Erie

Bill Moyers
Shrink-Wrapping the Theology of Rev. Wright

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
John Holt / Akbar Khan

Website of the Weekend
Ed Abbey, Patron Saint of the Walker's Rights Movement

May 2, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
Secret Bush "Finding" Widens Covert War on Iran

David Isenberg
The Return of Limited Nuclear War?

Vijay Prashad
Driven to Terror: the Case of the Lackawana Six

William Blum
Spies Without Borders

David Macaray
Shutting Down the West Coast Ports: the ILWU's May Day Strike

Rannie Amiri
Is Sadr City Becoming the Next Gaza?

William James Martin
The Carter Coup

Stephanie Westbrook
As Italy Lurches Rightward, a Ray of Hope from Vicenza

Linn Washington, Jr.
A Battle Over Murals in Parisian Ghettos

Anthony Papa
How the Byrne Fund Corrupts Cops and Destroys Lives

Website of the Day
The Serota Petition

May 1, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Fed Sinks the Dollar

Behzad Yaghmaian
Blaming the Yuan for the Deficit with China

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight: the Real Rise of Obama

Dedrick Muhammad
Senator Obama, Please Come to Your Senses

Cynthia McKinney
Police in America Can Kill Some People With Impunity

Corporate Crime Reporter
Farm Broadcaster Fired After Ripping Monsanto's Goon Squads

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Speech That Might Have Been

Reza Fiyouzat
Stop Obliterating Yourself!

Leigh Saavedra
Suspending the Federal Gas Tax

Tom Semioli
Hollywood Hypocrite: an Open Letter to Michael Moore

Website of the Day
Why Won't McCain Release His Medical Records?

April 30, 2008

William P. O'Connor
The Day I Lost My Innocence

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
Did the Supreme Court Just Elect John McCain?

Tariq Ali
Storming Heaven: 1968 Revisited

John Ross
Bad Jazz in NOLA: Three NAFTA Leaders Sit It for the Last Time

Glen Ford
Pop Goes the Race-Neutral Campaign!

Joshua Frank
Election Season Piffle: Thinking Outside the Voting Booth

Ashley Smith
Iraq After Basra

Robert Weissman
Medical R&D That Works in the Developing World

Sen. Russ Feingold
Bush's Shroud of Secrecy

Website of the Day
Richard Nixon, April 30, 1970

April 29, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Military Option

Roedad Khan
Why Gen. Musharraf Must Go

Chris Floyd
The Torture Election

Paul Craig Roberts
The Iraq War Morphs Into the Iran War

Dave Lindorff
Invasion of the Pumpheads

Mats Svensson
Mental Barriers in Palestine

Peter Morici
Will the Fed Broaden Its Focus?

Mike Ferner
Inside American Royalty's Security Bubble

John Weisheit
Towing Icebergs to San Pedro

Amit Srivastava
China Olympics, Tibet Crackdown, Coke Profits

Website of the Day
Tom Friedman Gets Creamed

April 28, 2008

JoAnn Wypijewski
On Queen's Boulevard, the Night Sean Bell's Killers Got Off

Mike Whitney
Jeremiah Wright Delivers the Knockout Punch: But Will It Topple Obama?

Iris Keltz
The Fruiting Fig Tree: Memories of East Jerusalem

Steve Niva
The New Walls of Baghdad: the Israeli Model Surges Toward Iraq

David Macaray
CAFTA's Bloodtrails

John Ross
"Adelitas" Shut Down Mexico's Congress

Stephen Lendman
The Politics of Green Scare

Malou Innocent
On "Withdrawing Responsibly" from Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Want to Learn the Ins-and-Outs of the Slumping Economy? Just Ask Ashley ...

William Kaufman
Michael Moore's Embrace of Obama: a Polemic Devoid of Politics

Website of the Day
Get Your Fix

April 26 / 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Nothing Will Get Hillary Out of the Race

Ralph Nader
A World of Hunger

Peter Camejo
A Crying Shame: the Wages of Left Capitulation

Harvey Wasserman
Making You Pay for the Next Chernobyl--in Advance!

Franklin Lamb
Will U.S. Policy in Lebanon and the Middle East Ever Change?

Wajahat Ali
Fisk Fighting: an Exclusive Interview with Robert Fisk

Mike Whitney
Food Riots and Speculators

Andrew Wimmer
Obliterate Them!

David Yearsley
Nero, Frederick the Great, Nixon ... They All Did It Better Than Clinton

Greg Moses
Chicago: the Stupid Experiment

Ron Jacobs
Walking the Lonely Road

Robert Fantina
Bush v. Carter: Let History Judge

Missy Comley Beattie
Introducing President McCain

Linn Cohen-Cole
The Criminalization of Raw Milk: a Mennonite Farmer is Hauled Away

Paul Krassner
Remembering Ruben Salazar

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Buknatski, Khaiyat, Lair, and Kowit

Website of the Weekend
Justice for Sean Bell

April 25, 2008

George Ciccariello-Maher
Embedded with the Tupamaros

Dave Lindorff
The Bitter and the Biased: How Clinton Courted Racists in Pennsylvania

Franklin Lamb
The Israeli Project Has Failed in Lebanon

Alan Farago
Hacking the Development Code: the Politics of Zoning in Florida

John W. Farley
Syiran Nukes: the Phantom Menace

Kathleen M. Barry
Some Questions for "Femininists for Clinton:" Is There Really Any Difference Between Hillary and Condi?

Mohammed Alireza
Cowboys and Iranians

Nick Dearden
Haiti and the Black Hole of Debt

Carmelo Ruiz Marrero
Why Biotech is Betting on Biofuels

Bruce Springsteen
Farewell to Danny

Website of the Day
It's Bigger Than Hip Hop

April 24, 2008

Linn Washington, Jr.
Duplicity Demeans Clinton Campaign (or When Bill Praised Farrakhan)

Franklin Lamb
Bush to Nasrallah: an Offer Hezbollah Cannot Refuse?

Jennifer Van Bergen
The High Crimes of John Yoo: the President's Executioner

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Hypocrisy and the Malaysian Guantánamo

Mark Engler
Trade Politics and the Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party

Dave Lindorff
The Politics of Obliteration: Hillary's Monstrous Threat

John Blair
Obama's Missed Opportunities in Evansville: Did He Even Know It Was Earth Day?

De Clarke / Stan Goff
Politics is Food is Politics

Binoy Kampmark
Bowling for Boris: the Tories, Red Ken and the London Mayoral Race

Philippe Marlière
Sarkozy and the Specter of May 68

Peter Morici
The Bank of England Misses the Point

Website of the Day
Fair Food Nation

April 23, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Straggling to Denver

Vijay Prashad
McCain's Mask

Paul Craig Roberts
What the Iraq War is About

Stephen Soldz
The Involuntary Drugging of U.S. Detainees

Laura Santina
Hillary: Another Feminist Perspective

John Stauber /
Sheldon Rampton
Pentagon News Networks

Dave Lindorff
What Double Digit Win? Media Round Up in PA

George Ciccariello-Maher
Radical Chavismo Growls a Challenge

Ralph Nader
Andy Stern's Rackets

John Weisheit
Rearranging Deck Chairs at Glen Canyon Dam

Website of the Day
Wal-Mart's "Cost of Admission"

April 22, 2008

David Isenberg
Spinning Saddam's Linkages

Stan Cox
The Political Economics of Greenwashing

David Macaray
Memo to the Clinton Campaign: They Are Still Murdering Labor Unionists in Colombia

Jeff Birkenstein
Playing the Opposite Game: Or Why Can't I Sell Out?

Mike Whitney
Memo to Bernanke: Enough With the Rate Cuts, Already!

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush's Paraguayan Fiasco

Floyd Rudmin
From Lhasa to Bilbao: Journey of a Double Standard

Carlos Villarreal
Why John Yoo Should be Dismissed From Boalt Law School--And Prosecuted

Ray McGovern
What About the War, Pope Benedict?

Michael Gould-Wartofsky
El Barrio Fights Back Against Globalized Gentrification

Robert Ovetz
A Fish Tale

Pat Wolff
Rightwing Power Grab in Cornhusker State

Website of the Day
Defend the Rutgers 3!

April 21, 2008

Bill Quigley
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots

Uri Avnery
The Lion and the Gazelle

Dave Lindorff
The U.S. Economy and the Costs of War

Wajahat Ali
Finding Osama Bin Laden with Morgan Spurlock

Andy Worthington
Hollow Gestures at Guantánamo

Robert Jensen
The Sorrows of Race and Gender

Ron Jacobs
Clampdown at Evergreen

Dan Bacher
The Great Salmon Closure

Harvey Wasserman
Where's George?

Danny Alexander
Remembering Danny Federici

Website of the Day
Save Our Taco Trucks!

April 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
McCain: What Really Happened When He Was a POW?

Patrick Cockburn
A New Struggle is Beginning in Iraq

Wajahat Ali
Zinn Speaks

Andrew Wimmer
Papal Benedictions

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jeremiah Wright and America's Continuing "Separate and Unequal" Societies

David Rosen
Texas Two-Step: The Polygamy Raid and the Regulation of Sexual Life

Robert Fantina
McCain Detests War?

Ramzy Baroud
The Politics of Armageddon: McCain's Pastors and the Middle East

Saul Landau
The No Escape Clause on Iraq

Dr. Susan Block
Raelians, Aliens and Evolution

David Yearsley
Suitcase Arias and Ithacan Jazz

Phyllis Pollack
On the Red Carpet with the Rolling Stones

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Hartz, Newberry and Khaiyat

April 18, 2008

John Ross
The Bush Legacy: Losing Latin America

Dave Lindorff
Courage and Conviction: In Praise of Bill Ayers

Dan Glazebrook
An Interview with Robert Fisk

Carl Finamore
A Look Inside the Hangars

Rannie Amiri
J Street: Do We Really Need Another Pro-Israel Lobby?

Richard Morse
A Creepy Roadblock at Midnight

Ko Young-dae
CONPLAN 8022: Inside Bush's Nuclear War Plan for the Korean Peninsula

Farooq Sulehria
A Himalayan Surprise

April 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Hillary Joins the Vast Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Apologists

Kathy Kelly
Weary of War? Don't Collaborate

Madis Senner
The Carrion Feeders' Ball: How Hedge Funds Reap Billions Off Economic Misery

Peter Morici
The G7, the Banks and GE

Ron Jacobs
Washington, al-Maliki and the Militias

William S. Lind
A Confirming Moment in Basra

James Murren
Obama's Disconnect with Small Town America

Ben Terrall
Losing Haiti

Walter Brasch
Political Log Rolling in Clinton County, PA

Website of the Day
Stealth Attack: Homegrown "Terrorism" Bill

April 16, 2008

Bill Kauffman
The Candidates from Nowhere

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Colonization and Massacres

Saul Landau
How to Leave Iraq

Peter Morici
McCain's Economic Plan: GOP Out of Ideas (But So are the Democrats)

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Bankers Saved, Human Rights Sacrificed

Jeff Ballinger
Inside Nike's Asian Sweatshops: Squeezed Vietnamese Workers Strike Back

David Macaray
Union Strikes and Replacement Workers

Gary Leupp
Electoral Revolution in Nepal

Richard Morse
The Food Riots in Haiti

George Ciccariello-Maher
Einstein Turns in His Grave

Dave Lindorff
Letters from the Bitter Belt

Website of the Day
Surviving Prozac

April 15, 2008

Ralph Nader
The Politics of Distraction in an Age of Gotcha Capitalism

Uri Avnery
Manifest Destiny and Israel

Brian Cloughley
Arrogant Lies

David Price
Outrageous Pre-Tour de France Ban

Joe Bageant
Bitter America: Media Shit Storms and Heartland Reality

Steve Early
The Purple Punch-Out in Dearborn

Mats Svensson
To Create Something from Nothing: the Making of a Palestinian State

Michael Donnelly
Dead-Eye Hil and the Elitist

April Howard /
Benjamin Dangl
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President

Laray Polk
Let's Not Put the Torch in a Bubble

Charles Modiano
What Does a Woman Have to Do to Get on the Cover of Sports Illustrated?

Website of the Day
The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

April 14, 2008

Carl Finamore
Airline Deregulation Makes a Hard Landing

Michael Hudson
A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers

M. Shahid Alam
Hizbullah's Big Win: Has Israel Finally Met Its Match?

Patrick Cockburn
A Cleric, a Pol and a Warrior

Paul Craig Roberts
Petraeus Sets Up Iran

Joanne Mariner
Redition to Jordan: What Happens When the Gloves Come Off?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide and Cymbalta

Dave Lindorff
The Bitterness Thing: Is Obama Channeling Nader

P. Sainath
Hot Messages to Sex Dancer Doom Condi's New Finnish Pal

John V. Whitbeck
On Hypocrisy Over Tibet: a Personal Reflection

Website of the Day
Spying on Environmental Groups

April 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Olympic Torch Toasts US Candidates

Patrick Cockburn
Warlord: the Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Mike Whitney
Want to Save the Economy?

David Yearsley
Film Scores and Westerns: the Stealth Cavalry of Empire

Robert Fantina
Bush's Brand of Morality

Conn Hallinan
Another Defining Moment in Iraq

Bill Hatch
In Praise of Hippies and the Counter-Culture

Ramzy Baroud
The Basra Battles

George S. Hishmeh
Back to Square One

Ron Jacobs
The New New Left in Latin America

Nikolas Kozloff
Olympic Torch in Buenos Aires

Charles Thomson
The British Prime Minister and the Tate's Tin of Shit

Alexander Billet
The Disney-fication of CBGB

Missy Beattie
Huffing and Puffing to Failure

David Michael Green
America's Jones for War

Seth Sandronsky
Education Entrepreneurs

Prairie Miller
Meeting David Wilson

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Ko Un, Ibn Salma and Greaves

Website of the Weekend
Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights

April 11, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
The Clintons and Their Sordid Colombia Advocacy

Wajahat Ali
Revenge of the Ghetto Nerd: an Exclusive Interview with Junot Diaz

Sharon Smith
Let Them Eat Ethanol!

Yigal Bronner / Neve Gordon
Digging for Trouble: the Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem

Alan Farago
Eating South Florida

Dave Lindorff
On Waking Sleeping Giants: Lessons for America from China

George Wuerthner
Money for Nothing? The Problems with the Conservation Reserve Program

Christopher Brauchli
Prostitutes Don't Do Funerals

Website of the Day
Animals Explain the Insurance Industry: a Health Care Video

April 10, 2008

Mathieu Vernerey
Tibet for the Tibetans!

Elizabeth Schulte
Slavery in the Fields

David Macaray
Labor Unions Will Never Get a Fair Shake

Ashley Smith
The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Peter Morici
Driving Up Debt and Dragging Down Growth

Jacob Hornberger
The Military's Distintegrating Family Life

Harold Austin
Snitch or Else: Prison Officials Threaten Gang Drop Outs

Website of the Day
Hillary: the Wal-Mart Videos

April 9, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fading American Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congressional Theater: the Petraeus / Crocker Hearings

C. Hand
Why Dave Marash Left Al Jazeera

Paul Krassner
Sex and Violins

Paul Wolf
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years

Wajahat Ali
Alien Invasion!

Karyn Strickler
Lost in the Fumes: the Sierra Club Sells Out to Clorox

Dan La Botz
Confronting the Economic Crisis

Eric Walberg
The Shadow of Munich: Another NATO Flop

Robin Millenthal
Enough Already! Growth and the Tar Sands Economy

Website of the Day
Conservative Nanny State

April 8, 2008

Mike Whitney
Should Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be Set Free?

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Bullies Congress on Colombia Deal

Greg Moses
Migrant Detention in South Texas

Joshua Frank
The Other Military Draft

John Ross
Mexico City's Urban Tribes Go on the Warpath Against EMOS

Michael Donnelly
Hillary's Western Swing

John V. Walsh
Why Obama Lost Massachusetts

Jeff Nygaard
Health, Security and Mandates

Bill Piper
Last Shot for a Bush Legacy?

Sen. Russ Feingold
Legal Representation and the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Catonsville 9, Forty Years Later

April 7, 2008

Ishmael Reed
The Irish Black Thing

Harry Browne
Irish Peace Activist Acquitted; Deported

Uri Avnery
Tibet and Palestine

Lenni Brenner
Obama's Constitution, His Pastor and His Unbelieving Mom in Heaven

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
America Must Respect Pakistan's Democracy

Robert Fisk
Fearful Lives in the Land of the Free

Edwin Krales
Ensuring the Success of Fascism in Spain: the US Corporate Role

Chris Genovali
Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests

Website of the Day
LA Artists Against War

April 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Did the Elites Want MLK Dead?

Ramzy Baroud
There are No Checkpoints in Heaven

Ralph Nader
Runaway Bailouts

David Yearsley
How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down

Saul Landau
Sex Politics in America

Paul Craig Roberts
The Petraeus and Crocker Show

Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot

Seth Sandronsky
Meet America's Promise Alliance: Colin Powell's New Gig

John Ross
La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students in Ecuador Bombing

Robert Fantina
McCain, Republicans and Family Values

David Michael Green
Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad

Missy Beattie
McCan't

Patrick Bond
Vultures Circle Zimbabwe

Dr. Susan Block
The New American Pot Dealers

Phyllis Pollack
The Stones Meet the Press

Adam Engel
The Boobus in the Lie

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Diamand and St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Richard Pryor Goes to the Gun Shop

Subscribe Online

Perry Anderson on the Conjunction

The Way We Live Now

By C. G. ESTABROOK

Perry Anderson, seventy this year, is Professor of History and Sociology at UCLA and the quondam editor of New Left Review.  For more than forty years he has written on political and intellectual history, in a muscular and elegant prose bedecked with classical neologisms, and with a breadth and boldness practically unknown in the somewhat timorous profession of academic history, so that his work has been often nervously categorized as "historical sociology."

A brilliant member of the British New Left of the 1960's, Anderson in the 1970s published two volumes of general history -- Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism and Lineages of the Absolutist State -- that joined historical and political questions.  He followed them with studies of historians and philosophers, always in the context of the social significance of their work.  He has now published a 12,000 word analysis of the present political situation, "Jottings on the Conjuncture," -- modestly titled an editorial -- in the November-December 2007 issue of New Left Review.

The "conjuncture" of the title means a combination of events or circumstances, especially one creating a critical situation; a weaker synonym would be "situation."  It contrasts with "structure" and is used here to refer to the world political situation at the present time. Anderson, alive to linguistic nuance and the vagaries of post-marxist discussion, may even be thinking of the Institute of Conjuncture, founded by the economist Nikolai Kondratiev in Moscow in 1920. (Kondratiev suggested that Western capitalist economies have long-term boom-bust cycles of  more than fifty years, the so-called "Kondratiev waves.")

Anderson thinks that the deep structural changes in the world economy and in international affairs in the contemporary period -- which he dates "from the economic and political shifts in the West at the turn of the eighties [and] from the collapse of the Soviet bloc a decade later" -- are difficult to discern. He proposes instead attention to the conjuncture of the world political scene since 2000, a notably ambitious task in itself.  He describes his result as a “rapid survey [that] is limited to a brief span of time, no more than seven years, and clings to the surface of events,” but it is in fact a sweeping and consummate synthesis -- with a conspicuous contradiction.  He finds “US power, rationally applied elsewhere, skewed by Israeli interests in the Middle East.”  Of that, more anon.

I. NEO-LIBERAL VICTORY

"The emergence of China as the new workshop of the world ... [in] a close embrace with the United States" is the most salient fact of the last few years for Anderson: it has produced "a structural alteration of the world market" comparable to that of Victorian England.  The economic predominance of northeast Asia is paralleled in a lesser way by the European Union's economic incorporation of eastern Europe. "The EU is now a vast free-trade area [of governments] without much external common will or coherent inner direction." Germany, France and Italy "have drifted sluggishly in a more neo-liberal direction ... without yet matching New Labour in Britain."  (Neo-liberalism in general is the reduction of government control of the economy, to the advantage of the wealthiest members of society; a good basic account is David Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 2007.)

China and the EU both face a revived Russia, "financed by the world commodities boom," where "Putin has for some time now been far and away the most popular leader of any major state in the world"; an India that has so far avoided "any headlong neo-liberal turn"; and a Brazil that aspires to "a permanent seat in the Security Council," owing to its neo-liberal success. In the US, the Bush administration has continued "the regressive redistribution of wealth and income under way in the country since Reagan," but, "although its rhetoric has been radical right, the domestic record ... has been unremarkable ... No durable shift further to the right in the centre of gravity of American politics has occurred under Bush ... In the standard pattern for American presidencies since 1945, the activism of the Administration has by way of compensation been concentrated abroad, where its performance in the Middle East has aroused an international furore, giving rise to now familiar rival depictions of the unconcealed emergence of an American empire, or the precipitous decline of one."

"Together, China, Japan, the EU, Russia, India, Brazil and the US account for well over half of the world’s population, and 80 per cent of global GDP. If the twin objectives of American foreign policy since World War Two have been to extend capitalism to the ends of the earth, and uphold the primacy of the US within the international state system," then it has to be seen as a success, as "there has been a steady increase in the interlocking of all the major capitalist economies in a common dependence on each other."

Politically, there is "a modern equivalent of the Concert of Powers after the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars" -- with the difference that the US, "occupying a position unlike any other, holds the system together ... With still the world’s largest economy, financial markets, reserve currency, armed forces, global bases, culture industry and international language, the US combines assets that no other state can begin to match ... The other major powers make little attempt to balance against the United States ... both because of the degree of interdependence linking their interests to its economy ... and because of their common interest in Washington’s policing role ... Thus while the relative weight of America in the global economy is plainly declining, with the rapid rise of alternative capitalist power centres, the political leverage of the United States in a now densely interconnected universe of profit and privilege, all of whose elites regard themselves as fellow-members of the ‘international community’, remains incommensurable with that of any other state."

Nevertheless, "Russia and China do not want the United States to entrench itself too deeply in Central Asia, or corner Iran too aggressively. India remains on its guard against US patronage of Pakistan. The EU toys with a rapid deployment force of its own ... To date, however, the gaps and rough edges in the system have not seriously threatened the emergent legitimacy of the ‘international community’ as a symphony of the global capitalist order, even with a somewhat erratic conductor" -- Bush's US.

Perhaps Anderson's most surprising judgment is that, because "US primacy and a worldwide [capitalist] civilization are not logically interdependent" ... the most lucid theorists of American imperialism ... contemplate, calmly and explicitly, the passing of the first as soon as it has accomplished its mission of securing the second — within a generation, perhaps, according to one of the most cold-blooded of estimates."  That is hardly a view proclaimed with much volume by garden-variety pundits or political scientists in the US, but Anderson is surely right to note that "the overall drive of the Republican Administration has been substantially continuous with that of its predecessors"  -- despite all the talk in this country of the radicalism of the Neocons, which reduces to a matter of style rather than substance.  "In Europe public opinion, more swayed by style than substance, has been irritated by Bush’s straightforward rejection of Kyoto or the ICC, as opposed to discreet burial under Clinton.”  In fact, says Anderson -– surely correctly -- “American strategy has been, not rhetorically, but structurally continuous since the end of the Cold War."

II. AMERICAN HEGEMONY

"But if Washington is now, in the belief of much of its own establishment, trapped in a quagmire in Iraq, a catastrophic downfall of US positions in the Middle East still looks unlikely ... none of the bastions of American power in the region has yet been affected by the conflict.  All its client regimes remain as loyal as ever: on one side, the long wing of states stretching all the way from Morocco to Egypt; on the other, the entire Arabian peninsula; with Pakistan as the great anchor of the American system to the east ... Any radical change in Pakistan would, of course, alter the balance of forces across the region ... But the long-standing corporate unity of the Pakistani Army, its grip on the country immune to internal rifts or bouts of nominal civilian rule, makes a disagreeable surprise unlikely." Anderson thus agrees with the Democratic presidential candidates (and if truth be told, probably the Bush administration as well) about America's real strategic situation in the Middle East.  (The head of CENTCOM lost his job for saying it too openly.)

How in fact can neo-liberal power in the world be opposed, to the advantage of the dispossessed?  Anderson writes, "Of necessity, such opposition could not be other than ‘anti-American’: that is, antagonistic to the continuing role of the United States as world hegemon ... The two most obvious regions to consider are Europe and Latin America: the first as the homeland of the labour movement as a modern phenomenon ... the second as the only continent with a continuous record of radical upheavals across the entire 20th century, from the Mexican Revolution before the First World War and the Cuban after the Second to the Venezuelan and Bolivian experiences today, after the end of the Cold War ... Not by accident, it is these two regions which gave birth to the World Social Forum, so far the only international movement of opposition to the global status quo ... [but which] seems itself now winded" -- and neither region so far mounts much of a challenge.

For opposition within the US, "the Bush Presidency has had ambiguous effects -- on the one hand galvanizing it politically, on the other weakening its endemically frail defences against collapse into the arms of the Democrats, whose leading candidates have made clear their reluctance to evacuate Iraq, and willingness to contemplate an attack on Iran. But should the crisis in credit and housing markets deepen, discontent with two decades of widening social inequality, already vocal, would no doubt curtail their options abroad, forcing measures of local redressment at home."  Is that so clear?

Anderson concludes that the first years of the 21st century "have seen some spectacular demonstrations of popular will -- the WSF in 2001–02, Venezuela in 2002–03, Bolivia in 2004, France in 2005 -- and a patchwork of resistances elsewhere, but the overall drift of the period has been a further shift to the right, as a new Concert of Powers has increasingly solidified, the Arab street continues to be paralysed, and the imperatives of financial markets have more and more come to be taken for granted as conditions of social existence, from Europe to East Asia, Latin America to Southern Africa, Australia to remotest Micronesia ... neo-liberal doctrines are nearly everywhere the basic grammar of government. The conviction that there is no alternative to them runs deep in popular consciousness ... the cry ‘Another World Is Possible’ risks sounding increasingly desperate..."

III. MIDDLE EASTERN IRRATIONALITY

In a major departure from his overall thesis, Anderson believes that the Iraq War shows that in the Middle East “the US political system, as presently constituted, cannot act according to a rational calculus of national interest [as it does elsewhere], because it is inhabited by another, supervening interest ... its massive, ostentatious support for Israel.”

Anderson has accepted -- for him, remarkably uncritically -- the view defended by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in a famous article ("The Israel Lobby," London Review of Books, 23 March 2006) and book (The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2007), that American policy in the Middle East is decisively influenced by a US-based lobby dedicated to the policies of the government of Israel.  They argue that the Israel lobby, "a loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction" has succeeded in that "the United States has been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state" -- i.e., those of the government of Israel.

Mearsheimer and Walt were met by a "storm of controversy," wrote Noam Chomsky, "the anticipated hysterical reaction from the usual supporters of state violence [in the US], from the Wall Street Journal to Alan Dershowitz, sometimes in ways that would instantly expose the authors to ridicule if they were not lining up (as usual) with power" ("The Israel Lobby?" ZNet, March 28, 2006).  Although Chomsky suggested that they deserved "credit for taking a position that is sure to elicit tantrums and fanatical lies and denunciations," he concludes that their thesis is not very convincing.  "What is at stake is a rather subtle matter: weighing the impact of several factors which (all agree) interact in determining state policy: in particular, (a) strategic-economic interests of concentrations of domestic power in the tight state-corporate linkage, and (b) the Lobby." Anderson agrees with Mearsheimer and Walt that the latter "overwhelmingly predominates" -- but that cannot be true.

On the contrary, US Middle East policy has continually served the "strategic-economic interests of concentrations of domestic power" in the US, such as the energy corporations. "They have made 'profits beyond the dreams of avarice' (quoting John Blair, who directed the most important government inquiries into the industry, in the '70s), and still do."  Of course, the US government was not simply the instrument of one economic sector, but the "executive committee of the bourgeoisie": for generations, US foreign policy has been "based on control of what the State Department described sixty years ago as the 'stupendous source of strategic power' of Middle East oil and the immense wealth from this unparalleled 'material prize' ... The US has substantially maintained control -- and the significant reverses, such as the overthrow of the Shah, were not the result of the initiatives of the Lobby."

It is important to note that control of energy resources, not access to them, is the cynosure of US policy.  The US imports only a small percentage of its domestic energy needs from the Middle East; most comes from the Atlantic basin -- West Africa and the Western hemisphere.  But control of world energy is a weapon that the US has wielded against its real -- economic -- competitors: Europe and northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea).  The National Security Advisor in President Carter's administration, Zbigniew Brzezinski, recently wrote that "America has major strategic and economic interests in the Middle East that are dictated by the region's vast energy supplies. Not only does America benefit economically from the relatively low costs of Middle Eastern oil, but America's security role ["security role" is diplo-speak for "dominance by force" --CGE] in the region gives it indirect but politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the region" ("Hegemonic Quicksand," The National Interest 12.01.2003).

IV. AMERICAN CONSISTENCY

Mearsheimer and Walt asserted, amazingly, that "Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. *Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim.* Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure" [emphasis added].  Since they deny the crucial and generations-long motive for US involvement in the Middle East, they have to find something else to explain American actions, and that something is Israel.  Anderson unwisely follows them.

In fact the US adoption of Israel as client dates from "Israel's destruction of Arab secular nationalism (Nasser, 1967). In the Middle East, that established the close US-Israeli alliance and confirmed the judgment of US intelligence in 1958 that a 'logical corollary' of opposition to 'radical nationalism' (meaning, secular independent nationalism) is 'support for Israel' as the one reliable US base in the region (along with Turkey, which entered into close relations with Israel in the same year)."  Secular independent nationalists took the line that the wealth of the Middle East -- primarily oil -- should be used for the purposes of the inhabitants of the region, rather than those of foreigners, so the US had to oppose them.

Chomsky writes that the emergence of Israel as a military power in the Middle East forty years ago is "also when the intellectual-political class began their love affair with Israel, previously of little interest to them. They are a very influential part of the Lobby because of their role in media, scholarship, etc. From that point on it's hard to distinguish 'national interest' (in the usual perverse sense of the phrase) from the effects of the Lobby, [which] includes most of the political-intellectual class -- at which point the thesis loses much of its content."  In its demand for control of world energy resources, US policy in the Middle East is "similar to its policies elsewhere -- to which, incidentally, Israel has made important contributions, e.g., in helping the executive branch to evade congressional barriers to carrying out massive terror in Central America, to evade embargoes against South Africa and Rhodesia, and much else."

As an example of Israel's acting contrary to American policy, Mearsheimer and Walt instance Israel's "arms sales to China, which they bring up as undercutting US interests. But they fail to mention that when the US objected, Israel was compelled to back down: under Clinton in 2000, and again in 2005, in this case with the Washington neocon regime going out of its way to humiliate Israel -- without a peep from the Lobby, in either case, though it was a serious blow to Israel."

With Israel as a "stationary aircraft carrier" in the region, US policy in the Middle East "has been a remarkable success, in the face of many difficulties: sixty years is a long time for planning success," notes Chomsky.  Recognizing what drives US Middle East policy (in both Republican and Democratic administrations) -- control of energy resources, not Israeli interests -- is more consistent with Anderson's general description than accepting Mearsheimer and Walt's alternative explanation, given that Anderson's analysis conflicts with theirs, notably on the politics of oil.

At the end we find Anderson, by no means standing on his head, but seriously listing.  But all is not lost: with proper support on this one issue, his masterful survey can be winched upright -- and should be read.  In his conclusion, Anderson summarizes four “theoretical visions that offer exits from the perpetual free-market present.”  He has set us on the road to the important discussion.

C. G. Estabrook has recently retired as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he taught in the departments of sociology, history and religious studies; his weekly radio program is archived at www.newsfromneptune.com; he can be reached at galliher@uiuc.edu.