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Author
James Petras

James Petras is a highly skilled professor of sociology at the Binghamton university of New York. His most recent books: Global Depression and Regional Wars, Clarity Press (2009).



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This author's articles
English: 39
Español: 37
Français: 6
Italiano: 2
Português: 8
русский: 2

 U.S.-Venezuelan Relations: Imperialism and Revolution

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 5 January 2010 | Voltaire, édition internationale | President Chavez’s election in 1998 marked a decline of US hegemony in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. In this study, James Petras reminds us that Washington’s chief interest in overthrowing Chavez was political, not economic, and revolved around his steadfast opposition to the Bush administration’s "War on Terror" doctrine. Washington feared that Chavez’s dissent might provide an alternative pole for the newly emerging ‘center-left’ regimes on the continent. Today, Petras reconceptualizes US-Venezuelan relations in light of declining US economic power and rising militarism.

The US and China: One Side is Losing, the Other is Winning

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 3 January 2010 | Voltaire, édition internationale | Asian capitalism, notably China and South Korea are competing with the US for global power. Asian global power is driven by dynamic economic growth, while the US pursues a strategy of military-driven empire building, illustrating the great divide in the world today. Expanding on a series of articles recently published in the Financial Times, James Petras highlights the stark contrast between these two strategic visions, a woefully misguided one in the case of the US.

Bended Knees: Zionist Power in American Politics

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 22 December 2009 | Voltaire, édition internationale | This is probably the most well-rounded and complete article by James Petras on the configuration of Zionist power - at all levels of the US political system and society - that far outweighs its numerical strength. More than a lobby, the ZPC has acted over the past fifty years as an agent in the interest of a foreign military power. Its influence is deeply entrenched in many parts of the world, denoting a trend that Petras describes as the globalization of Zionist power. However, support may be faltering, as divisions among the US policy elite over Zionist control have emerged. But, despite internal dissent, Obama still takes his marching orders from Tel Aviv on all major issues promoted by the ZPC.

Latin America’s Twenty-First Century Socialism in Historical Perspective

By James Petras | New York (United States) | 11 October 2009 | Voltaire, édition internationale | The electoral victory of center left regimes in at least three Latin American countries, and the search for a new ideological identity to justify their rule, led ideologues and the incumbent presidents to embrace the notion that they represent a new 21st century version of socialism (21cs). Petras undertakes a verification and comparative-historical analysis of this tenet by putting Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador under the loop.

The Destruction of a Civilization
The US War against Iraq

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 26 August 2009 | Voltaire, édition internationale | Baghdad was considered the ’Paris’ of the Arab world, in terms of culture and art, science and education. The destruction of the scientific, academic, cultural and legal foundations of an independent state means increasing reliance on the Western multinational corporations and their technical infrastructure, thereby facilitating imperial economic penetration and exploitation. In this piece, James Petras analyses the forces, strategies and converging interests that have contributed to the deliberate dismemberment of Iraqi society at every level.

The Boomerang Effect
Obama’s Rollback Strategy: Honduras, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan

By James Petras | New York (United States) | 12 July 2009 | Voltaire, édition internationale | The recent events in Honduras and Iran, which pit democratically elected regimes against pro-US military and civilian actors intent on overthrowing them can best be understood as part of a larger White House strategy designed to roll back the gains achieved by opposition government and movements during the Bush years. Petras offers a comprehensive canvass of the international scene six months into Obama’s administration and warns of the boomerang effect that its expanding militaristic drive and ill-fated imperial pursuits are already unleashing.

Class struggle and imperial propaganda
Iranian Elections: The ‘Stolen Elections’ Hoax

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 19 June 2009 | Voltaire, édition internationale | In line with the forecasts by western opinion leaders and reporters based in Tehran, the outcome of the Iranian presidential election leaves no room for doubt: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won by a landslide victory. This is hardly surprising, observes Professor James Petras, since people voted according to class interests : the incumbent national-populist candidate drew his support from the far more numerous lower classes while the pro-western elite voted for the liberal candidate, boosted by the western media. A similar electoral scenario has already been witnessed in other countries.

In the name of "Free Trade"
Peru: Blood Flows in the Amazon

By James Petras | New York (United States) | 13 June 2009 | Voltaire, édition internationale | Recent free trade agreements signed with the American and Canadian governments fueled the Peruvian government to go ahead with changes to domestic laws that would seek to advance mineral, logging, oil and agricultural ‘development’ into previously untouched areas of the Amazon. In early June, President Alan García, an ally of US President Barack Obama, ordered armored personnel carriers, helicopter gun-ships and hundreds of heavily armed troops to assault and disperse a peaceful, legal protest organized by members of Peru’s Amazonian indigenous communities protesting the entry of foreign multinational mining companies on their traditional homelands.

Reality versus Rhetoric
US-Latin American Relations in a Time of Rising Militarism, Protectionism and Pillage

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 9 June 2009 | Voltaire, édition internationale | One of the most striking aspects of contemporary US-Latin American relations is the profound divergence between the hopes, expectations and positive image of the Obama regime and the policies, strategies and practices which are being pursued. Many so-called progressive North American commentators and not a few Latin American writers have ignored the most elementary features of US foreign policy, and focused exclusively on the highly deceptive rhetoric of “change” and “new beginnings.” A serious understanding of US foreign policy toward Latin America requires a discussion of the main objectives of the Obama regime, the global priorities of imperial policy in times of multiple wars and world depression.

America’s dark side
Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars Equal Peace and Justice

By James Petras | New York (United States) | 17 May 2009 | Voltaire, édition internationale | Not considered ruthless enough for the job, Gen. David D. McKiernan, was forced out on Monday and replaced by Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the new commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. An Army rising star, McChrystal had been running the most secretive, ruthless force in the U.S. military: the Joint Special Operations Command. The appointment of Bush’s most brutal commander reveals Obama’s commitment to an unrestrained escalation of the war in Afghanistan, in keeping with his military-driven imperialistic agenda.

The Pentagon Minerva Research Initiative
Procuring Academics for Empire

 By James Petras | 8 April 2009 | Voltaire, édition internationale | The Pentagon’s military strategists have recognized that they have suffered political losses, with strategic consequences in their recent military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s time to adopt a "softer" and stealthier approach by employing academics to facilitate imperial conquest through cultural warfare and control of the opposition. Unmasking the role of the Pentagon’s Minerva Research Initiative, officially kicked off in June 2008, as an integral part of Obama’s military escalation is a challenge to all academics who are opposed to empire building and who support the reconstruction of an American republic supportive of international rights of self-determination.

The end of an entire epoch
World Depression: Regional Wars and the Decline of the US Empire

By James Petras | 5 April 2009 | Voltaire, édition internationale | James Petras renders a sobering diagnosis of the global crisis, in stark contrast with the upbeat spin emanating from the recent G-20 Summit. Leaving no stone unturned, he takes us through the various processes, including military-driven empire building, that have led inexorably to the current, deepening debacle. The elephant in the room is the capitalist system itself. With great eloquence, Petras fleshes out the message that protesters throughout the world have been shouting out: "capitalism isn’t working".

Testing the waters in Gaza
Israel Asserting Middle East Supremacy: From Gaza to Tehran

 By James Petras | 29 March 2009 | Voltaire, édition internationale | Was the Gaza blitz a dress rehearsal for an assault on Iran? In this incisive analysis completed before the February elections, James Petras alleges that Israel tested the waters in Gaza drawing the lesson that it can decimate a society, murder and maim thousands of civilians with impunity. Israel is engaged in a military buildup for a new and bigger war against Iran, as part of a regional strategy to secure imperial power. Israel knows it can continue to count on the US Zionist lobby to obtain White House and US Congressional support; and it now also knows that it can count on the passivity and impotence of Western governments.

Made in USA
Bernard Madoff: Wall Street Swindler Strikes Powerful Blows for Social Justice

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 26 December 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | Wall Street broker Bernard (‘Bernie’) Madoff, former president of NASDAQ, revered and respected investor confessed to pulling off the biggest fraud in history, a $50 billion dollar scam. Bernie was known for his generous philanthropy, especially to Zionist, Jewish and Israeli causes.

Barack Obama:
“America’s First Jewish President”

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 12 December 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | According to a nationally prominent Zionist spokesperson, former Congressman, Federal Judge, White House Counsel to President Bill Clinton and early backer of Obama, Abner Mikvner, “Barack Obama is the first Jewish President”. Mikvner’s affirmation reflects both Obama’s one-sided and longstanding commitment to the State of Israel and loyalty to the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the United States, as well as the long-term and successful effort of a network of financially and politically powerful Jewish Zionists to ‘embed’ Obama to their ‘Israel First’ political apparatus.

A Historic Moment:
The Election of the Greatest Con-Man in Recent History

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 12 December 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | Just as Obama’s electoral campaign and subsequent victory will go into the annals as the political con-job of the new millennium, his economic and political appointments will mark another ‘historic’ moment: The nomination of corrupt and failed speculators and warmongers. Let us join the inaugural celebration of our ‘First Afro-American’ Imperial President, who wins by con and rules by guns!

The Great Land Giveaway: Neo-Colonialism by Invitation

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 12 December 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | Colonial style empire-building is making a huge comeback, and most of the colonialists are late-comers, elbowing their way past the established European and US predators. Backed by their governments and bankrolled with huge trade and investment profits and budget surpluses, the newly emerging neo-colonial economic powers (ENEP) are seizing control of vast tracts of fertile lands from poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, through the intermediation of local corrupt, free-market regimes.

Mass Media and Mass Politics
Conservative, Liberal and Marxist Perspectives

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 28 November 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | The role of the mass media (MM) in influencing mass and class behavior has been a central concern among critical writers, especially since the turn of the Twentieth century. Debates and studies on the MM have focused on its political bias, ownership and links to big business, relationships and ties to the state, relative openness and diversity, promotion of wars and corporate interests among other major issues affecting the relations of power, wealth and empire.

Victory for Venezuela’s Socialists in Crucial Elections

By James Petras | New York (United States) | 28 November 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | The pro-Chavez United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won 72% of the governorships in the November 23, 2008 elections and 58% of the popular vote, dumbfounding the predictions of most of the pro-capitalist pollsters and the vast majority of the mass media who favored the opposition.

Western Progressive Opinion
Bring on the Victims! Condemn the Fighters!

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 22 November 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | We know in some detail of the willing and gratuitous support, which tens of millions of American citizens have bestowed on the White House and Congressional perpetrators of crimes against humanity. The Clinton Administration was freely re-elected in 1996 after deliberately imposing a starvation embargo on Iraq and mounting a relentless, unopposed bombing campaign on that devastated country for four straight years, leading to the documented deaths of over 500,000 children and countless more vulnerable adults.

The Elections and the Responsibility of the Intellectual to Speak Truth to Power
Twelve Reasons to Reject Obama and Support Nader/McKinney

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 28 October 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | The presidential elections in the US, once again, provide an acid test of the integrity and consequential conduct of US intellectuals. If it is the duty and responsibility of the public intellectual to speak truth to power, the recent statements of most of our well-known and prestigious public pundits have failed miserably.

A Class Perspective on Ecology and Indian Movements:
“Diversity with Inequality is Not Social Justice”

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 17 October 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | There are two opposing approaches to the analysis of ecological destruction and the emergence of Indian movements in Latin America: the liberal and the Marxist. Profesor James Petras answers about this questions.

Crisis
Lessons from the Collapse of Wall Street

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 4 October 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | The ongoing collapse of the stock market and the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars managed by Wall Street investment banks illustrate the pitfalls and danger of free market capitalism facing the entire working population of the United States.

Human Rights Watch in Venezuela
Lies, Crimes and Cover-ups

 By James Petras | New York (United States) | 29 September 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | Human Rights Watch, a US-based group claiming to be a non-governmental organization, but which is in fact funded by government-linked quasi-private foundations and a Congressional funded political propaganda organization, the National Endowment for Democracy, has issued a report “A Decade Under Chavez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela” (9/21/2008 hrw.org). The publication of the “Report” directed by Jose Miguel Vivanco and sub-director Daniel Walkinson led to their expulsion from Venezuela for repeated political-partisan intervention in the internal affairs of the country.

Masters of Defeat: Retreating Empire and Bellicose Bluster

By James Petras | New York (United States) | 11 September 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | Everywhere one looks, US imperial policy has suffered major military and diplomatic defeats. With the backing of the Democratic Congress, the Republican White House’s aggressive pursuit of a military approach to empire-building has led to a world-wide decline of US influence, the realignment of former client rulers toward imperial adversaries, the emergence of competing hegemons and loss of crucial sources of strategic raw materials.

Military or Market-Driven Empire Building: 1950-2008

 By James Petras | 3 May 2008 | Voltaire, édition internationale | As the U.S. presidential campaign predictably displays a competition in militarism and allegiance to Zionist interests, the militaristic model of governance, which has largely prevailed so far in this century within the power circles, has nonetheless failed in terms of empire building. James Petras takes a historical look at the competition between this military powered empire building model, and the market powered one, to point out that eventually, while the inefficient military colonial policy crippled the U.S. economy, it was paving the way for economic competitors to reap the benefits of globalization.

Dual conflict
The War Debate on Iran

 By James Petras | 12 September 2006 | Voltaire, édition internationale | Professor James Petras analyses the Lebanon war as a « dual conflict ». Taht is to say, a war that has as a purpose, at once, the destruction of the Lebanese resistance and the preparation of new wars against Syria and Iran. From this point of view, the UN Security C/uncil was exploited by the United States and the pro-Isralei lobby. The adopted resolutions are like so many means to add an international coercion to Tsahal’s efforts, with a view to remodel the Great Middle East, deeply wished by Washington.

Propaganda and terrorism
The Liquid Bomb hoax: The larger implications

 By James Petras | 31 August 2006 | Voltaire, édition internationale | The incredible "terrorist plot" allegedly thwarted in London this summer does not finish causing the consternation of the political analysts. Whereas the media continue to repeat the eccentric allegations of the British police forces, many personalities show, on the contrary, their foundation absence in a detailed way. After the analyses of the former British ambassador Craig Murray, the German journalist Jürgen Elsässer and the Unitedstator novelist Thomas C. Greene, we publish that one of the academic James Petras. In which he dismounts, point by point, the propaganda machine, and highlights its economic implications.

Is Latin America Really Turning Left?

By James Petras | Caracas (Venezuela) | 24 June 2006 | Alia2 | A new series of social and national polarities in the WesternHemisphere has dominated political life over the past few years. Atthe beginning of the new millennium the national confrontation was between Cuba and the US/EU, and the social confrontations between therural/indian and urban/unemployed movements and a continent-widecollection of neo-liberal regimes.

An Alternative to Imperialist Wars
War or Peace / War and Peace

 By James Petras | Brussels (Belgium) | 2 December 2005 | Voltaire, édition internationale | In a magistral contribution for the Axis for Peace conference 2005, Professor James Petras analyses the contradictions of the United-States’ imperialist system. He underlines the manipulation of the UN and International law by the great powers, describes the blind rush forward of civil militarists, neoconservatives and zionists. Far from sinking into pessimism, the famous American intellectual outlines the perspectives for an international popular resistance.

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