NM's blog

“Sanctions are  instruments of power  in the world market. They do not fall on states as such; they are transmitted through  prices, access to credit, logistics, and insurance , ending up as  lower real wages  and  higher reproduction costs  for the popular classes. In this sense, snapback is a  coercive economic act  that subordinates a semi-peripheral economy to the security priorities of the core. It invites us to ask: who pays, who decides, and who benefits? “Iran’s claim to  sovereign control  over peaceful nuclear technology is legitimate. The selective use of international law by powerful states is obvious: their allies’ arsenals are tolerated; their adversaries face blockade. The E3’s language of “non-performance” and the U.S. call for compliance reflect this  asymmetry of force —and this is why many inside and outside Iran see the move as  imperial overreach , not neutral rule-enforcement. “ Sanctions are  cl...

Convergence?

Nathan J. Robinson interviewing Osamah Khalil ,  the author of   A World of Enemies: America’s Wars at Home and Abroad from Kennedy to Biden “ You do something a little unusual in this book, which is hinted at in the subtitle. We are used to thinking about America's wars abroad and America's wars at home separately, in different domains. We talk about the history, from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, or we might talk about the war on drugs, but you put it all together and see it as one kind of unified history, domestic and foreign. Tell us why you think we need to consider America's wars as one category that includes domestic and foreign .” An interesting book, but it seems there is no grounding of 'domestic and foreign policy' in political economy, not even a section or a question in the long interview. Deindustrialisation and inequality, for instance, are part of the ‘domestic war’. 

What we can do is raise the demand for peace and for the British government to get off its bellicose high horse. Tory machismo at the expense of other people’s lives needs to be replaced by serious support for a diplomatic end to the war. Even President Zelensky knows the danger. There is a Nato camp, he said last week, which doesn’t “mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives.”

"The U.S debt to Syria"

I think that the article, contrary to its title, it is a more a summary of the main ways the Palestinian have followed in their struggle against a settler colonial state since the first Intifida  than "why Isreal kills". Why Israel kills

"Reasons include the United States' interest in maintaining lucrative arms deals with the Gulf states – primarily Saudi Arabia – and the fact that many U.S. politicians support bombing Iran (as demanded by the  right-wing Israeli leadership)." Middle East nightmare – made in Washington