We live in dangerous times. The last week has seen Russia impose trade sanctions on Australia, in a quite understandable response to the sabre rattling over Ukraine by our idiot politicians, and in particular, the enthusiasm displayed by Julie Bishop in backing sanctions against Russia. Sanctions and counter sanctions. The European Union and Russia are […]
09 Nov
Comments Off on The capitalist crisis, Obama’s re-election and the US Left
Perhaps more than for a long time, the US presidential vote earlier this week was dominated by a clear message to the Left, the working class and minority voters: the absolute necessity to vote for the “lesser evil” in Obama. Compared with the sense of hope that pervaded Obama’s election in 2008 (for one of […]
07 Aug
Comments Off on US capitalism: ‘Take the money & run,’ or, ‘This sucker could go down, Mark II’
By liz_beths and Dr_Tad It is hard to grasp the epochal significance of ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the United States’ credit rating, nothing less than an ideological humiliation of the world’s largest national economy. This after a week dominated by massive falls on stock markets across the globe and the “resolution” of the political […]
22 Mar
Comments Off on Barack Obama: How Mr. ‘Change You Can Believe In’ became Mr. ‘More Of The Same’
> Last time at Left Flank we noted that key neoconservative ideologues had encouraged the Obama administration to take action in Libya so that the United States could outflank the Arab revolutions by spreading its particular version of democratic reform. Stephen Walt, one of America’s most prominent realist foreign policy thinkers*, has suggested we shouldn’t […]
21 Mar
Comments Off on Libya, US intervention & the myth of the tail that wagged the dog
> Fissures emerge: abstentions in the Security Council One of the justifications used by liberal and Left supporters of Western intervention in Libya is that the United States has been dragged, kicking and screaming, into this conflict. It is part of painting a picture that here, if only just this time, the situation of a […]
04 Feb
Comments Off on Who’s afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood?
They are: The tyrant’s strategy seems clear. After 30 years of brutality, repression and feathering the nest of his globetrotting fellow elites, at the moment his regime is in peril he will act as the reasonable one. He will act to reverse the “chaos” and “anarchy” in the streets as gangs of violent thugs attack […]
03 Feb
Comments Off on The Egyptian revolution: Liberal democracy as the enemy of freedom
In February 2003 I was part of the 400,000-strong rally in Sydney opposing the impending US-British-Australian invasion of Iraq. It seemed for a moment that we were going to disrupt the plans of the self-styled Coalition Of The Willing by sheer force of numbers, part of probably the largest coordinated protest in Australian and world […]
11 Jan
Comments Off on After Arizona: The sickness at the heart of American society and its aetiologies
Despite shock being professed around the world, the shootings in Arizona over the weekend shouldn’t be surprising. The United States stands out for its high levels of political polarisation in a rich, industrialised country, and as Gary Younge points out, this polarisation has reached new highs during the presidency of Barack Obama. It is this […]
12 Aug
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