
Some time has passed since our last update, but the war has not been put on hold. The u.$. imperialists have continued their campaign of murder and theft against the Afghan people, and have met with stiffer resistance as a result. The “forever war” drags on, despite the supposed “absolute superiority” of the amerikan military, […]

Months have passed since the so-called liberation of Mosul by the u.$.-led coalition in Iraq, and the city has yet to recover. Very little construction has taken place, as most buildings remain in ruin, hardly the sight one normally associates with a city rejoicing for its freedom. The Iraqi army, with the full support of […]

The Afghan occupation is unraveling. The invaders have been forced entirely into a defensive posture, always reacting to the advances of the Taliban forces, never advancing themselves. We hear sporadic news of increased aerial bombing—succeeding mostly in killing Afghan civilians—and the targeting of so-called drug labs, but nothing of real advance. The imperialists are stuck, […]

On October 7th, the Afghan war officially entered its 17th year, persisting as amerika’s longest running overseas conflict. The Trump regime is attempting to win an impossible war against the will of the Afghan people, and has violently reasserted the role of the united $tates in Afghanistan. In response to the troop surge and recent […]

U.S. ramps up militarism amid Obama re-election, people’s war and united front will prevail Amid re-election victory, Barack Obama is leading the U.S. “forward” to increase aggression against the world’s people. More a sign of weakness than strength, U.S. militarism can be defeated by people’s wars and a united front against imperialism. A struggle must […]
On Sunday morning, March 11, an Army Sergeant walked into an Afghan village and went house-to-house killing 16 civilians, 9 of them children. The Sergeant then took most of the bodies, including those of four little girls, and set them on fire. Once his identity is known, there surely will be much discussion in the coming week about […]
Islam’s roots and early significance lie in the changing conditions of 7th and 8th century Arabia. Not united by a single ethnic-religious formation prior to its development, through its pronouncements on religion, social and legal philosophy, early Islam sought and succeeded in creating a trans-tribal authority and source of identity through which later Arab and Middle Eastern empires could be built. Early Islam’s significance is that it was the guiding philosophy under which a series of large, precedent tributary socio-political orders were organized.
Samir Amin, an Egyptian-born Marxist associated with world-systems, dependency and unequal exchange theories, has described pre-modern history as the transition from communal societies to tributary ones, the latter of which have “witnessed the crystallization of social power in a statist-ideological-metaphysical form.” Under a tributary system, taxes and other fees collected by agents of a central power and the dominance of the social-religious-state power over economic affairs distinguishes it from later system of capitalism, which was defined in regards to the ascendancy of economic actors over metaphysical political power. (Amin 14) In the Arabian peninsula and outward, Islam provided the ideological basis under which power was assigned within such a tributary society.
The Qu’ran, the sacred text of Islam and its most important document, provides both a history of the region and lays down social and legal mores for future, ‘righteous’ rule. Unlike philosophical doctrines such as Confucianism, which grew out of a China’s Warring States period and resulted from the practice of previous large-scale tributary societies, Islam rose out of a period in which many religious-social doctrines and groups existed yet absent one doctrine’s hegemony. In this manner, Islam was part of an effort to fuse the loose patchwork of existing ethnic, religious, economic and tribal groups into a single Muslim identity and allegiance, incorporating all into a single tributary society. Continue reading

When queried by reporters concerning his views on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm X famously – and quite charitably, all things considered – replied that it was merely a case of “chickens coming home to roost.” On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens – along with […]

A new poll shows that the Arab world has a more negative opinion of the United States and president Barack Obama than the year before. As the U.S. attempts to position itself as a leader in the region in the wake of the Arab Spring revolts, the poll shows increased resistance to Amerikan hegemony. Obama […]

by Nick Brown (This article originally appeared at countercurrents.org) Barack Obama is the biggest Don the world has seen. He proved this on May 1st, 2011 after his hit squad, ‘Seal Team 6,’ entered a compound where Osama Bin Laden resided, assassinated the former CIA associate and dumped his body in the ocean from a […]