By PAT LYONS “Once your clients have a quasi-independent military capacity, you lose some control over them,” said Gregory Gause III, a military specialist at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A and M University. Gause was referring to the saturation bombing campaign of Yemen by Saudi Arabia and its “coalition of…
By JEFF MACKLER U.S. imperialism’s selective “War on Terrorism” excludes some terrorists that the Obama administration finds more than suitable as allies in its effort to bring down the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. On April 25, a combination of these “rebels” captured the city of Jisr al-Shoughour, the provincial capital and second largest city…
BY JEFF MACKLER Backed by U.S. logistical and intelligence support, the Saudi Arabian petro-monarchy and its allies have pounded Yemen with devastating air strikes aimed at preparing the way for a possible ground invasion. Saudi Arabia’s “coalition of the willing” oil monarchs and other Saudi allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Arab League…
By JEFF MACKLER In a short-lived but well-crafted move aimed at hyping President Obama’s credentials as a reasonable and democratic warmaker, the president submitted a resolution to Congress in mid-February requesting “authorization for use of force” to proceed full tilt with his administration’s now worldwide “war on [Islamic] terrorism.” At first glance, what struck his…
By U. KHAN YUSUFZAI At the time of this writing, the United States has been at war in Afghanistan for 13 years and in Iraq for 11 years. The United States has been engaged in a global drone bombing campaign since 2001 in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. The Arab Spring has opened up a…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER PHILADELPHIA—Federal judges in a Jan. 13 appeals court hearing have indicated that they are favorable to the premises of a suit against the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for its surveillance of Muslims in New Jersey. The suit, Hassan v. City of New York, had been dismissed by a federal district…
By MUMIA ABU-JAMAL In the week of the Senate Intelligence Select Committee’s report on CIA torture of terror suspects, we’re reminded how little Americans know about how the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency rolls in the real world. Predictably, the 500-page summary of a 6700-page report erupted into a political and media firestorm. Networks and cable…
UPDATED REPORTS FROM THE TRIAL: Socialist Action has received the following on-the-scene reports from the Rasmea Defense Committee. We express our solidarity with Rasmea Odeh, who was arrested in October 2013 for allegedly falsifying papers she had filled out for immigration to the United States. Previously, she had been imprisoned by Israel, who accused her…
By JEFF MACKLER A new coalition of the not-too-willing nations is in preparation as U.S. imperialism prepares for yet another war in the Middle East, its sixth or seventh in the past half decade. These include wars of conquest, resource exploitation, and covert bombings in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and Egypt—where the U.S.,…
By JEFF MACKLER Five hundred and sixteen children are among the over 2200 Gaza Palestinians murdered by the racist, Zionist, apartheid settler state of Israel. An estimated 75-80 percent of the Palestinians slaughtered were civilians. Some 1.8 million Palestinians “live” in perhaps the world’s largest prison, Gaza, virtually unable to enter or leave, starved and…
By JEFF MACKLER — UPDATED AUG. 3, 2014 — End U.S. aid to apartheid Israel! Stop the Zionist bombing of Gaza! The U.S.-backed racist, colonialist, apartheid Zionist entity known as Israel is once again saturation bombing the Palestinian people and destroying the infrastructure of the world’s largest open air prison—the Gaza Strip—a slip of land roughly…
INTERVIEW by CHRIS HUTCHINSON Over 600 people are dead in Gaza, and millions of workers around the world are speaking out against Israel’s brutal assault on the Gaza Strip. Workers everywhere are standing against genocide and apartheid as well as demanding justice for Palestinians living under military occupation. In London one march reported 100,000 participants.…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER As we go to press on July 17, Israel has undertaken a ground invasion of the beleaguered Palestinian enclave of Gaza. Naval gunships, drones, helicopters, and F-16 fighters have kept up a constant bombardment of the territory to accompany the assault by infantry and tanks. Israel has called up at least 50,000…
Political prisoner Dr. Sami Al-Arian is free! Al-Arian, a computer-engineering professor at the University of South Florida and nationally known as an activist in the struggle for civil liberties for the Muslim and Palestinian American community, has been jailed for over 11 years on spurious charges related to his support for the struggle for Palestinian…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER — UPDATED JULY 4 — The current conflict in Iraq gathered momentum with seemingly amazing speed as an armed coalition of secular and religious Sunni groups, spearheaded by the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, an al-Qaeda splinter grouping), wrested about a third…
By BARRY SHEPPARD Since the Obama administration arranged for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the last U.S. prisoner of war held by the Afghanistan Taliban, there has been a firestorm of outrage from the right wing of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Bergdahl has been pilloried as a traitor. His father has been…
By FALWAH ALWAN (Reprinted from Jadaliyya) Mosul and other cities in Iraq are experiencing dramatic, dangerous, and fateful changes. The media, especially that which is allied with the Iraqi government and western states, has been focusing on the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant/Syria (ISIS) and its control over several Iraqi cities, provoking its…
BY JEFF MACKLER When Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh published a report last year indicating that Syrian “rebels,” rather than the military forces of dictator Bashar Assad, fired deadly sarin gas missiles on Aug. 21, 2013, into the “rebel”-held town of Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, few took notice. Others responded with denunciations or efforts…
Socialist Action conducted this interview with Nuunja Kahina (the pen name of an Amazigh activist) in late 2013. Imazighen (the plural form of Amazigh) are often called “Berbers.” Their language is Tamazight. The interview has been edited and shortened for publication. Socialist Action: What is the geographic distribution of Imazighen? Nuunja Kahina: The Amazigh lands,…
By YASIN KAYA The Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office initiated a “corruption and bribery operation” on Dec. 17. About one week later, the Ministers of Economics, the Interior, and Urban Development all resigned after their sons were arrested. Events accelerated at a dizzying pace. Prime Minister Erdogan fired seven other ministers. The chief prosecutor was taken off…
BY JEFF MACKLER Egypt’s Supreme Electoral Committee hailed the two-day, Jan. 14-15, vote on the military’s proposed new constitution. They were not embarrassed to report that the vote was 98 percent in favor, with some 39 percent of the electorate participating. This was as compared to, they stressed, the 33 percent who participated in the…
Following is the introduction to a forthcoming Socialist Action pamphlet by Jeff Mackler, “Revolution and Counter-revolution in Egypt: Lessons of the Arab Spring.” Almost three years after the historic Jan. 25, 2011, mobilizations that led to the toppling of the U.S.-backed 30-year dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak, the once overflowing streets leading to Cairo’s famed…
By GAETANA CALDWELL-SMITH “Wadjda,” a film written and directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour. In Arabic with English subtitles, filmed in and around Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Al-Mansour’s beautiful, thought-provoking film focuses on a mother and daughter who live in socially, religiously, and culturally male-dominated Saudi Arabia. Here, females are so devalued they are not included in depictions…
BY JEFF MACKLER Egypt’s Cairo Court for Urgent Matters on Sept. 23 stamped the “legal” coup de grace on the now fully unmasked face of the U.S.-backed military dictatorship. The court dissolved the Muslim Brotherhood in all respects, confiscated its assets, seized its buildings and banned all MB activities. Egypt’s state newspaper Al Ahram, reporting…
By CHRISTINE MARIE Washington’s agreement to pursue a diplomatic route to secure the disarmament of Syria’s chemical arsenal produced sighs of relief the world over from opponents of a new Middle East war. The threat of an imminent U.S. missile attack on that nation, an attack that would undoubtedly lead to civilian deaths and a…
