US Empire

“The truest truism that I’ve come to understand about the nature of war is that war is trauma,” Daniel Hale wrote. This article was originally published at The Dissenter. Subscribe here. As the President Joe Biden winds down United States military involvement in Afghanistan, a conflict spanning nearly 20 years, the U.S. Justice Department seeks the harshest sentence ever for the unauthorized disclosure of information in a case against an Afghanistan War veteran. Daniel Hale, who “accepted responsibility” for violating […]

A mainstream academic outlet called The Conversation green-lighted my article on foreign policy issues Western media refuses to discuss. With the piece ready to go live, everything went horribly wrong. This is a story about how the media works. Specifically, it’s about my failed attempt to publish an article with the mainstream media about some of the things that news outlets consistently avoid when they cover US/UK foreign policy. You’re maybe thinking, “That’s your own fault – why would you […]

The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton interview world-renowned economist Michael Hudson on his concept of American “super imperialism” and the economics of the new cold war on China and Russia. In this wide-ranging discussion on the Moderate Rebels podcast, Hudson addresses US sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, the policies of the Joe Biden administration, Beijing’s economic model, cryptocurrencies, and dedollarization – the potential end to the dollar as the global reserve currency. Transcript Ben Norton 0:03 Hello everyone, I’m […]

Red Lines host Anya Parampil explores an internal USAID report admitting the agency’s policy on Venezuela was driven by the State Department and National Security Council’s push for regime change. The report specifically investigated USAID’s attempt to use the US military to force aid through Venezuela’s border with Colombia on February 23, 2019. Anya highlights the most interesting findings in the audit, including that USAID failed to put proper fraud controls in place in order to appease US officials seeking […]

In violation of international law, the US is seeking to extradite and imprison foreign businesspeople for circumventing its unilateral sanctions. Washington’s targets include Venezuelan national Alex Saab, North Korean Mun Chol Myong, and Chinese Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. (Aquí se puede leer este artículo en español.) The United States uses economic sanctions as a weapon against states that choose a development path independent of US global domination. Sanctions can take the form of blocking a nation’s financial and trade transactions, […]

With encouragement from his patrons in Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is escalating against Russia and provoking a harsh response Red Lines host Anya Parampil speaks with Moscow-based international affairs analyst Mark Sleboda about recent developments in Ukraine. Sleboda provides an in-depth explanation of the history leading to up to the current situation and analyses domestic factors in Ukraine that are pushing the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to pursue a more bellicose posture towards Russia.

After convincing itself Vietnam would grant it access for missile bases against China, the Pentagon got a hard dose of reality. When the Pentagon began gearing up for a future war with China in 2018, Defense Department officials quickly realized that they needed access to Vietnamese territory for troops armed with missiles to hit Chinese ships in a US-China conflict. So they initiated an aggressive campaign to lobby the Vietnamese government, and even Communist Party officials, in the hope that […]

Richard Nephew has taken personal credit for depriving Iranians of food and driving up their unemployment rates, celebrating the economic destruction he caused as “a tremendous success.” Under Biden, he will help direct policy on Iran. The Joseph Biden administration has named Richard Nephew as its deputy Iran envoy. As the former principal deputy coordinator of sanctions policy for Barack Obama’s State Department, Nephew took personal credit for depriving Iranians of food, sabotaging their automobile industry, and driving up unemployment […]

2020 was a chaotic year for the planet. While the Covid-19 pandemic dominated global politics, The Grayzone continued shining a light on the machinations of empire, from the persecution of imprisoned journalist Julian Assange to the defeat of a US-backed coup regime in Bolivia, from the growing corporate war on free speech to the OPCW’s scandalous Syria cover-up. Throughout the year, The Grayzone’s website had more than 5.24 million views and 2.48 million unique visitors. Our small, independently funded team […]

Comedian Jimmy Dore has exposed a collection of self-styled leaders of progressive media as imperialist hacks joined at the hip with the Democratic Party and NATO. This video report originally appeared at Behind The Headlines. It’s no coincidence that the pundits who are circling the wagons around AOC and seething at a comedian for pushing for a Medicare For All floor vote are also a bunch of pseudo-left imperialists. They’ve positioned themselves as guard dogs and gatekeepers of the Democratic […]