‘We ask you to relieve yourself of your post’: Kremlin officials are turning against Vladimir Putin

Brandon Gage Halfway through his invasion of Ukraine’s sixth bloody month, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power in Moscow is imploding as scores of Kremlin officials are calling upon the 69-year-old autocrat to quit. Putin had anticipated his February 24th “special military operation” to be a cakewalk through the Russian-controlled East into the Ukrainian… Read More ‘We ask you to relieve yourself of your post’: Kremlin officials are turning against Vladimir Putin

Vasili Arkhipov (1926-1998), the man who prevented nuclear war

First posted on October 27, 2012 The decision not to start world war three was not taken in the Kremlin or the White House, but in the sweltering control room of a submarine. The launch of the B-59’s nuclear torpedo required the consent of all three senior officers aboard. Arkhipov was alone in refusing permission.. … Read More Vasili Arkhipov (1926-1998), the man who prevented nuclear war

Alfred McCoy: To Govern the Globe – World Orders and Catastrophic Change

Reviewed by Brian Tanguay What factors contribute to the rise and fall of empires, and what characteristics distinguish an empire from a world order? In To Govern the Globe, American historian Alfred W. McCoy seeks to answer these questions by surveying seven hundred years of human history, from 1347 when the Black Death reached Europe and… Read More Alfred McCoy: To Govern the Globe – World Orders and Catastrophic Change

The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,  President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser  Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998  Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter, Dies at 89 Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [“From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began to aid… Read More The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

Book review: Resistance, Rebellion & Writing. Albert Camus’s dispatches on the Algerian crisis

Algerian Chronicles by Albert CamusReviewed by George Scialabba The problem of revolutionary violence was perhaps the most fateful question of political morality in the twentieth century. Two texts are indispensable to anyone wanting to engage that question: Camus’s “Neither Victims nor Executioners” (1946) and Sartre’s introduction to The Wretched of the Earth (1961), written one… Read More Book review: Resistance, Rebellion & Writing. Albert Camus’s dispatches on the Algerian crisis

Slavoj Zizek and the Terminal Collapse of the Anti-War Left. By Jonathan Cook

The US has 800 military bases around the world. The rest of the world has 30 outside of its own borders.   Washington learned a hard lesson from the unpopularity of its 2003 attack on Iraq aimed at controlling more of the Middle East’s oil reserves. Ordinary people do not like seeing the public coffers ransacked… Read More Slavoj Zizek and the Terminal Collapse of the Anti-War Left. By Jonathan Cook