Manlio Dinucci
Geographer and geopolitical scientist. His latest books are Geograficamente. Per la Scuola media (3 vol.), Zanichelli (2008); Escalation. Anatomia della guerra infinita, DeriveApprodi (2005).
397 articles
Rome (Italy) | 14 May 2013The new Italian national coalition government eagerly began its reinforced collaboration with Washington. Emma Bonino, the new Minister for Foreign Affairs, met with her US counterpart, John Kerry, to polish the details. As Manlio Dinucci explains, it will be based on the military activity of the Special Forces, mainly in the Middel East.
Rome (Italy) | 24 January 2013It is too obvious that Western economic interests in Mali are not enough to explain France’s intervention there. Similarly, it is clear that islamism is not enough to explain vast terrorist action conducted simultaneously at an Algerian gas site. For Manlio Dinucci, this cocktail contains the classic ingredients of the strategy of tension. The target is Algeria, Mali is the rear base for the attack, and the islamists are a pretext for intervention.
Rome (Italy) | 28 November 2012After the "cease-fire" announced in Cairo by Hillary Clinton, a young man from Gaza, a twenty-year old called Anwar Qudaih, went to celebrate the event in the "buffer zone", the 300 metre-wide strip of Palestinian territory where his family used to farm the land. But when he drew close to the barbed wire, an Israeli soldier shot him in the mouth.
First victim of the "cease-fire", he must be added to the 170 killed, at least a third of them women and children, and more than 1,000 wounded in (...)
Rome (Italy) | 14 November 2012The new information technologies were going to transform the world into a global village where news reports would circulate instantaneously, assured Canadian sociologist Marshall McLuhan. But nothing could be further from the truth. An iron curtain has been drawn in front of Western audiences who are maintained in a state of ignorance about important current events, and are unable to access anti-imperialist satellite channels.
Rome (Italy) | 13 October 2012It is as a geographer that Manlio Dinucci scrutinizes the war in Syria: the deployment of NATO forces, the ad hoc coalition that the Alliance put together and, especially, the strategic motive. What is really at stake in this conflict is not regime change, but shutting down the Mediterranean outlet for Iranian gas and controlling Syria’s gas reserves.
Rome (Italy) | 7 October 2012Israeli Prime Minister wanted to impress public opinion by brandishing a naive drawing at the podium of the UN General Assembly, on 27 September, to accuse Iran of developing a nuclear bomb. But his approach backfired: he only succeeded in demonstrating the emptiness of his arguments and made it clear to everyone that he had much to hide.
Rome (Italy) | 29 September 2012Nearly 17 million Americans, or 5.5 percent of the population, suffer from hunger and have gone at least one full day without eating during the last three months because of a lack of money. Another 33 million can only afford to buy low-quality food and suffer from nutritional imbalances. Indifferent to their needs, Washington has completely geared its economy towards arms manufacturing. This trend towards a war-driven economy, which began in 1995 under the Clinton administration, suddenly picked up speed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks with the Bush Jr. Administration, and has maintained the same pace under Obama’s watch.
Rome (Italy) | 25 August 2012The Pentagon has come up with a show that has been scoring NBC’s highest ratings. Combining the principle of a reality show that puts reality on display, with that of a television game that simulates a situation to test the competitors’s reactions, the TV series treats the audience to real-life war games. This propaganda show, unparalleled since the sports competition in battle dress staged by Joseph Goebbels, aims to both enhance martial attitudes and obscure the cruelty of war.
Rome (Italy) | 20 August 2012Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and an areopagus of multinational bosses have made a long journey through Africa, from July 31st to August 10th, 2012, during which she endlessly boasted of the altruism and philanthropy of the United States. It was a grotesque masquerade as outlined by Manlio Dinucci, in terms of Washington’s disastrous colonial record and that of its corporations on the black continent.
Rome (Italy) | 10 August 2012The Western press lashed out against China’s medal-winning athletes at the London Olympics. Without the slightest shred of evidence, it systematically raised suspicions of doping, pointing the finger in particular at the young swimmer Ye Shiwen. Manlio Dinucci reminds us that such anti-Chinese racism has a bitter taste of déjà vu.
Rome (Italy) | 17 July 2012In the Orwellian world drawn up by NATO, wars are processes that allow the wealth of the people to flow to the cash registers of multinationals engaged in the manufacture of weapons. That same money will buy the media of the "free world", ensuring the promotion of wars invented for “humanitarian” reasons and hidden economic objectives. Strange these democracies in which people are informed about conflicts precisely by firms having the greatest interest in propagating war.
Rome (Italy) | 14 July 2012Contrary to the predictions of the Western media choir, the final communiqué put out by the Action Group for Syria in Geneva in no way suggests the departure of Bashar Al-Assad. The primary mission for the Russians and the Chinese was to compel all parties to take a stand against the militarization of the conflict and to respect the integrity of the Syrian territory, because the problem facing Syria is not the suppression of an uprising but the intervention of armed foreigners. The agreement arrived at in Geneva by the five permanent members of Security Council consigns the "friends" of Syria to the shelf of amusing memorabilia from a unipolar system of which the death certificate was signed on February 4, 2012 in New York.
Rome (Italy) | 4 July 2012All eyes are riveted on Egypt, international showcase of the "Arab" Spring regime change operations. The enthusiasm with which the Western media have been promoting the Egyptian "revolution" is enough to raise serious doubts as to its true nature. In reality, the Empire believed that the Arabs were ripe for the establishment of the most effective social control mechanism under the sun: an alternating two-party system.
Rome (Italy) | 29 June 2012The "Arab" Spring has so far mainly consisted in replacing secular pro-Western regimes with Sunni pro-Western governments, paving the way for a broad regional Sunni-Shiite confrontation. But the high risk of loss of control inherent in such a project not being to everybody’s liking in the West, the White House has undertaken some readjustments, as recently in Egypt. The military are rational interlocutors with whom one can always reach an agreement while it is sometimes difficult to know exactly what agenda drives religious leaders.
Rome (Italy) | 27 June 2012It’s a strange ritual indeed that is performed daily by the Nobel Peace Prize winner. Every day in the Oval Office, Barack Obama ticks off the list of people to be assassinated: men, women, adolescents, children, "reveals" the New York Times. The height of cynicism! In a country where the military-industrial lobby is all-powerful and where appeasement is interpreted as a sign of weakness, it sometimes pays off when starting an electoral campaign to make it be known that one is a "killer".
Rome (Italy) | 20 June 2012Officially present in order to combat piracy in the Indian Ocean, NATO forces are themselves behaving like pirates with military blunders that cost the lives of innocent fishermen, protection of industrial fishing fleets which deprive local fishermen of their stocks and protection of those dumping waste that destroys the environment. The fight against piracy is clearly more complicated than meets the eye…
Rome (Italy) | 5 June 2012"Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down" was the role of NATO in Europe in the words of its first Secretary General, Lord Hastings Ismay. Manlio Dinucci explores the prospects of Atlanticist vassalage that lie ahead following the Chicago summit in May 2012.
Rome (Italy) | 23 May 2012The allies will be able to pull out of Afghanistan; it’s mission accomplished. On the pretext of fighting terrorism, the colonial powers were able to establish a government under their thumb. But such an operation is too expensive: the Afghan regime is protected by 120,000 soldiers, two-thirds of whom are from the U.S. The time has come for this illegitimate political system to maintain itself in power under its own steam. Henceforth, the United States will simply administer their military bases and get their European "allies" to foot the police costs.
Rome (Italy) | 16 May 2012Since The end of WWII and the Nuremburg Trials, international justice and the denunciation of crimes against humanity have operated according to a double standard. The right of the strongest has functioned best for the U.S. and its allies which have accumulated crimes with complete impunity, all the while presenting themselves as the guarantors of human rights. International courts, organizations and the media, far from denouncing this state of affairs, support this “humanitarian” farce. Hence, for Manlio Dinucci, Obama’s newly-created Atrocities Prevention Board is just another tool for placing the humanitarian rubric at the service of warfare.
Rome (Italy) | 22 April 2012At Monsanto, Portugal, NATO has established a study center for self-evaluation and formulation of proposals to improve military effectiveness. Under the authority of the Allied Command Transformation established in 2003, its role is to ensure that the Organization, previously responsible for warding off a "Soviet threat," is now properly geared for its new task of supporting the neo-colonial conquests of the "war on terror" era.
Rome (Italy) | 10 April 2012The case of South Sudan is an exemplary illustration of the success of Israeli strategy in Africa. Relying on the armed forces of the United States, as in Iraq and Libya, the Hebrew state and its ally have been able to divide the country and thereby eject their most important commercial rival, China, from the part of Sudan richest in resources. Symbolically, the media promotion of this operation fell to the Hollywood actor, George Clooney, prodigal son and spokesperson for the marriage of convenience linking Israeli and American colonial interests.
Rome (Italy) | 30 March 2012It’s one year after the war in Libya and no one dares to make an assessment of its aftermath. The colonial powers declared they were supporting a democratic revolution against a tyrant. In fact, they have once more divided the country and restored the Senussi Dynasty to power in the eastern region of Cyrenaica. The Jamahiriya of Gadhafi’s time, a strange hybrid of Proudhonian anarchy and autocracy, has given way to a liberal chaos where torture and murder have become the norm while the multinationals are on a permanent binge.
Rome (Italy) | 27 March 2012Two major pipeline projects are at present vying to secure future energy supplies to Pakistan, India and China. One originates in Iran while the second one draws on reserves in Turkmenistan. The latter is promoted by an Israeli group and is supported by Secretary of State Clinton. According to Dinucci, an attack against Iran could cripple the Iranian project, which is currently ahead of the game. The question remains whether US leaders are still really in line with this strategy, as hinted in recent statements by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.
Rome (Italy) | 26 March 2012The Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa is one of two “commands” of AFRICOM, the new Unified Combatant Command of U.S. forces in Africa. Originally conceived by the Israeli-American Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, AFRICOM is the central command for the new ambitions of empire in Africa. The most recent illustration of this is the creation of the no-fly zone used in the conquest of Libya, allowing the United States to seize the oil resources of that country and the state of Israel to rid itself of its most serious rival on the African continent.
Rome (Italy) | 14 March 2012Mario Monti, of Goldman Sachs, the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission and currently Prime Minister of Italy, has just announced that the Italian Army will go on a strict diet. In reality, he will maintain the costly investment program for U.S. F-35 fighter planes despite their design problems and has put forward strategic choices that reveal the true nature of the coming changes. Briefly put, the "Senator-for-life" is reorienting his defense policy toward future wars of aggression.
Rome (Italy) | 12 March 2012Before being an economic doctrine, neoliberalism is a political project. Wherever it has extended its influence, even the armies have been put through the privatization grinder. As Manlio Dinucci explains, today’s wars are increasingly conducted by private companies and less and less by States. Since neoliberalism is based on the privatization of profits and the socialization of costs, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and in Libya proved very costly to the States, for little return. Wars in this neoliberal era are not necessarily waged to appropriate foreign resources, but to siphon the wealth of the conquered populations towards the private military sector of the conquering nations.
Rome (Italy) | 25 February 2012Although political assassination abroad constitutes an act of war, the United States has been making a daily practice of it. An independent military command structure, with an annual budget of 8 billion dollars, is capable of assassinating anyone, anywhere in the world within 48 hours after a presidential order. During 2011, it operated in 75 countries around the world unbeknownst to the public.
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