Links between the Council on Foreign Relations and various U.S. corporations and institutions

Reading List: Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri - Empire (PDF)

Imperialism as we knew it may be no more, but empire is alive and well. It is, as the authors demonstrate in this work the new political order of globalization. It is easy to recognise the contemporary economic, cultural, and legal transformations taking place across the globe but difficult to understand them. Hardt and Negri contend that they should be seen in line with our historical understanding of empire as a universal order that accepts no boundaries or limits. Their book shows how this emerging empire is fundamentally different from the imperialism of European dominance and capitalist expansion in previous eras. Rather, today's empire draws on elements of US constitutionalism, with its tradition of hybrid identities and expanding frontiers. This book identifies a radical shift in concepts that form the philosophical basis of modern politics, concepts such as sovereignty, nation, and people. Hardt and Negri link this philosophical transformation to cultural and economic changes in post-modern society - to new forms of racism, new conceptions of identity and difference, new networks of communications and control, and new paths of migration. They also show how the power of transnational corporations and the increasing predominance of post-industrial forms of labour and production help to define the new imperial global order. More than analysis, "Empire" is also an utopian work of political philosophy, a new Communist Manifesto. Looking beyond the regimes of exploitation and control that characterise today's world order, it seeks an alternative political paradigm - the basis for a truly democratic global society.

MICHAEL HARDT & ANTONIO NEGRI - EMPIRE - PDF

EU agrees on Iran oil embargo

EU ambassadors have agreed to slap an embargo on Iran's oil exports in a bid to halt the country's nuclear program. The decision must now get formal approval from the EU's foreign ministers.

"The principal agreement on the ban for the Iranian oil imports was reached," news agencies quoted an unnamed diplomat in Brussels as saying.

Sources in Brussels reported that the sanctions would introduce a gradual ban on buying Iranian oil and petrochemicals, and that EU members would have to halt imports completely by July 1, 2012. Foreign ministers of the 27 EU member states are meeting in Brussels on Monday to further discuss the sanctions and their ratification. FULL STORY

Wikipedia to shut down for 24 hours in protest of SOPA and PIPA

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate – that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia. FULL STORY

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.

Immanuel Wallerstein - China and the United States: Rivals, Enemies, Collaborators?

The relations of China and the United States are a major preoccupation of the chattering classes (bloggers, the media, politicians, international bureaucrats). The analysis is usually posed as the relation between the declining superpower, the United States, and the rapidly rising “emergent” country, China. In the western world, the relation is usually defined negatively, China being seen as a “threat.” But threat to whom, and in what sense?

There are some who see China’s “rise” as the resumption of a central position on the globe, a central position that they once held and are now resuming. There are some who see it as something very recent – as China’s new role in the shifting geopolitics and world-economic relations of the modern world-system. FULL STORY

Immanuel Wallerstein - The World Left After 2011

By any definition, 2011 was a good year for the world left – however narrowly or broadly one defines the world left. The basic reason was the negative economic conditions from which most of the world was suffering. Unemployment was high and becoming higher. Most governments were faced with high debt levels and redced income. Their response was to try to impose austerity measures on their populations while at the same time they were trying to protect their banks.

The result was a worldwide revolt of what the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movements called “the 99%.” The revolt was against the excessive polarization of wealth, the corrupt governments, and the essentially undemocratic nature of these governments whether or not they had multiparty systems.

It is not that the OWS, the Arab Spring, or the indignados achieved everything they hoped for. It is that they managed to change world discourse, moving it away from the ideological mantras of neo-liberalism to themes like inequality, injustice, and decolonization. For the first time in a long time, ordinary people were discussing the very nature of the system in which they lived; they were no longer taking it for granted. FULL STORY