ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ[Link to the image of this book’s cover: https://images.app.goo.gl/iUjAjYfsYVbuccYK7] Mahmood Mamdani locates the founding moment of the modern nation-state at 1492. “That year marked the beginning of the nation-state… born of two developments in Iberia. One was ethnic cleansing, whereby the Castilian monarchy sought to create a homogeneous national … [Read more...] about The Americanization of Eastern and Southern European Immigrants
imperialism
Notes from the Editor – Left Turn #8
Let us Burn All Illusions in 2021 Left Turn welcomes the year 2021 without any illusions about the nature of the system that produced the severe political, economic, and public health crises of 2020 and the new horrors surely on their way if we as a society fail to counteract the ingrained tendencies and deliberate policies that have produced the present unsustainable … [Read more...] about Notes from the Editor – Left Turn #8
U.S. Crimes Don’t Matter
by Faramarz Farbod The U.S. has a bloody history of trampling on the sovereignty of other nations and committing atrocious acts, including torture, against the peoples of these countries. The U.S. also uses all means it deems necessary to stop others from effectively challenging the impunity it enjoys in the international arena for its nefarious behavior. However, none of … [Read more...] about U.S. Crimes Don’t Matter
10 Reasons Why Defunding Police Should Lead to Defunding War
by Medea Benjamin & Zoltan Grossman Since George Floyd was murdered, we have seen an increasing convergence of the “war at home” against Black and brown people with the “wars abroad” that the U.S. has waged against people in other countries. Army and National Guard troops have been deployed in U.S. cities, as militarized police treat our cities as occupied war zones. In … [Read more...] about 10 Reasons Why Defunding Police Should Lead to Defunding War
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
Daniel Immerwahr. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $35 (528p) ISBN 978-0-374-17214-5 Reviewed by Doug Heath In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr, Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University, reframes the standard account of US history to incorporate events in all of the lands outside the conterminous 48 states that were brought under formal US rule, thereby … [Read more...] about How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
The Making of Inheritance
Cambiz Amir-Khosravi While planning a trip to Florida in 2011 to see my ailing mother-in-law, I realized that the Department of Motor Vehicles had misspelled my last name. Instead of Khosravi, they spelled it Khosrui. It might be a minor issue to most people but having a Middle Eastern name in today’s xenophobic climate I naturally became paranoid. Having heard of … [Read more...] about The Making of Inheritance
Notes from the Editors (Left Turn #4)
Excessive gun violence and mass shootings have become the norm in the US, so has the trite and totally ineffective response of offering “our thoughts and prayers” by the governing political elite. There were about 252 mass shootings in the first 215 days of 2019. About 35% of mass shooters are young white men with prior training in how to use guns — often learned as high school … [Read more...] about Notes from the Editors (Left Turn #4)
“Know this now, you are killing a man”
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on the author’s Facebook page on October 9, 2009. Ten years has passed but the “tradition of silence” by the prestige media in the US regarding the CIA-backed execution of Ernesto Che Guevara continues. Faramarz Farbod Those were the last words of Ernesto Che Guevara before he was murdered by a Bolivian soldier who had … [Read more...] about “Know this now, you are killing a man”
A Brief Thought Experiment
by Gary Olson Recently I‘ve tried to make the case that only presidential aspirants who are vetted by the oligarchic elite, deep state, plutocracy or whatever nomenclature you prefer, have any chance of reaching the Oval Office. Further, as the chief administrative officer for the capitalist state, they often implement policies consistent with those of a psychopath. And they … [Read more...] about A Brief Thought Experiment
Venezuela and Totalitarian Media in the US
by Ted Morgan In speaking of media reporting leading up to the Gulf War of 1991, Noam Chomsky declared that the United States “went to war in the manner of a totalitarian state.” Mass media coverage so totally reinforced George H.W. Bush administration claims that the American public was not aware that there were real grounds for believing that war could be avoided. So it … [Read more...] about Venezuela and Totalitarian Media in the US