Empire

In October, George W Bush began a round of state visits to Asian and European countries. Peter Burt reports on the impact of the US president's visit to Thailand during the APEC talks.The problem is, the Thai government always obeys the US administration. They should realisethat a free trade agreement with the US would hurt Thai farmers. And Thailand might become a terrorist target if we support the US war on terrorism. Suriyasai Katasila, secretary general of Thailand's Campaign…

Empire has never completely gone out of style, but now in the early 21st Century it has very become popular for describing the current international system. In particular, there is a growing recognition that the United States is an empire. 1 Of course, most of the world saw the US this way already, but it comes as a bit of a shock to the “homeland.”

Accepting the “new” US Empire is usually linked to the claim that the US is the only remaining superpower and that it…

 According to sources close to the manoeuvres, jets and warships launched more than 200,000 pounds of projectiles at Vieques between 13 January and 4 February. Residents of the island reported intense explosions and low overflights by jets. Residents claim that a number of projectiles missed their targets, landing in lagoons, beaches and in the ocean.

The navy recently promised to withdraw permanently from Vieques in May 2003. Their statement follows intense activism in Vieques, which…

Gore Vidal knows how to write. The only problem is that you get the feeling he's written it all before. Literally. Nowhere on the cover (front or back) are you warned that three-quarters of the book is a reprint of articles that appeared previously in Vanity Fair (three) or The Nation (one), which were published as long ago as 1997 (although I can't say the material feels dated, far from it).

The drawback of having read it all before won't apply to everyone of…

With the classical meaning of a “diplomat is one who listens and reads twice”, I've been diplomatic with this book and diplomacy has paid. I underestimated the book when reading it first, I appreciate it better after going through it twice. Initially I was put off by some inaccuracies of fact and deficiencies of judgement when referring to Colombian history. Soon I came to value the usefulness of the overviews mainly for non Colombian readers and the ability of the book to fulfil its own…

What is our vision for the heavens? On a beautiful starry night do you look up to the moon and the stars and feel the connection to the ages? Can you imagine military bases on the moon and constellations of space-based lasers orbiting our planet? Can you envision the new military space plane, the successor to the shuttle, dropping off new space-based weapons systems and then returning to earth?

We are at a defining moment in history as the US leads the rest of the world into this…

Where will the election of Bush the younger take the US in the next four years? The election was, as readers know, remarkable. In my lifetime I've seen nothing like it. There is little doubt in objective observers that Al Gore not only won the popular vote but would also have won the Florida vote if it had not been for the Supreme Courts stunning decision to end the vote count. (The Supreme Court, in ruling 5 to 4, made Bush the first President elected by a single vote.)

There was a…

This is a guide to a trip every activist should take. There is, of course, only one rogue state -the United States of America. Any evil deed of the US that an activist can imagine in the wildest of paranoid dreams is described and referenced in this comprehensive guide by Blum, a journalist and ex-US State Department official.

In spite of the efforts of US leaders to make their actions appear humanitarian and democratic, Blum makes it clear that the US has run a global protection…

The opening page of this book reads like an unpleasant army thriller, full of mystery and gung-ho action. However repellent this may be, don't let it put you off, because it's not characteristic of most of the rest of Rodriguez's volume.

This is actually a detailed and often fascinating account of the runup to the attempted invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro forces backed by the US. The extent of this backing, and the depth of US hatred of any attempts at independence by states within…