By ALBERTO C. RUIZ - Counterpunch

U.S. labor, as represented...by the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, continue to march in step with the U.S. government and the Democrats in their imperial delusions about the Region. Thus, while for some time simply hiding the fact that it has been working in Venezuela at all, the Solidarity Center...has recently admitted on its website that it has been continuously working in Venezuela these past 13 years...aided and abetted by funneling monies from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to the anti-Chavez CTV union which was a major player in the coup.

By Edward S. Herman - Dissident Voice

...[T]he United States has become a large-scale manufacturer of failed states. By a failed state I mean one that has been crushed militarily or rendered unmanageable by political and/or economic destabilization and a resultant chaos and is unable...for long periods to recover and take care of its citizens’ needs...[W]e have seen a dramatic resurgence in more recent times...as in the cases of post-Soviet Russia and several of the Eastern European states, where income declines and sharply increased mortality rates resulted from “shock therapy” and Western-assisted...semi-legal grand larceny...

By William Blum - September 01, 2012

Louis XVI needed a revolution, Napoleon needed two historic military defeats, the Spanish Empire in the New World needed multiple revolutions, the Russian Czar needed a communist revolution, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires needed World War I, the Third Reich needed World War II, the Land of the Rising Sun needed two atomic bombs, the Portuguese Empire in Africa needed a military coup at home. What will the American Empire need?

By Chris Marsden - WSWS

When President Barack Obama threatened...that the movement of chemical weapons inside Syria was a “red line” that could trigger US military intervention, he did nothing that was not pioneered by George W. Bush before the 2003 war against Iraq. Obama now has the backing of British Prime Minister David Cameron...France’s François Hollande. The French president said his government was already working with Turkey to establish no-fly zones “in co-ordination with our closest partners.”

By RON JACOBS - August 24-26, 2012

It is my belief that a good part of the reason for the disintegration of the movement against the war in Iraq has to do with that movement’s politics...The presence of Democratic Party allies on the coordinating committee of the largest antiwar network...ensured this disintegration. There was never a genuine anti-imperialist politics that guided the majority of the movement. That fact explains not only the belated opposition to the Afghanistan occupation but also the seeming refusal to address the belligerent role played by Israel in the wars against Muslim and Arab nations and peoples.

By Jean Shaoul - WSWS

Within Lebanon, the Saudis and other oil-rich Gulf sheikhdoms have launched an unrelenting propaganda war against Hezbollah and financed and armed their Sunni supporters. The country is now awash with weapons, with Reuters reporting an “array of armed groups, which are already arming themselves, across the country.”

By Jean Shaoul - WSWS

The media is presenting the sectarian kidnappings and violence in Lebanon as an all but inevitable “spill-over” from the civil war in Syria. This is a cynical attempt to conceal what is, in fact, a concerted campaign by the United States and its regional allies to eliminate the Shi’ite Hezbollah movement, which is backed by Syria and Iran, as a political and military force in Lebanon.

By Johannes Stern - WSWS

Yesterday US and NATO officials discussed plans for a US military invasion of Syria to bring down Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, after US President Barack Obama announced that the US was contemplating a direct attack on Syria at a press conference Monday night...Senior US officials said that contingency plans for US intervention in Syria include scenarios requiring tens of thousands of American troops.

On August 15, 1945, Japan announced its surrender. On September 2, WW II officially ended. To this day, 67 years later, Japan remains occupied. A US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) stipulates terms under which American forces remain and operate.

By Patrick Martin - WSWS

A US soldier on patrol in southern Afghanistan with Afghan security forces was shot to death Sunday when one of the Afghans opened fire. It was at least the sixth such attack in the past two weeks...The latest incident brings the total of such attacks since the beginning of 2012 on US or NATO forces...to 32, resulting in 40 deaths. The number of soldiers wounded in such insider attacks is likely far greater, but concealed by a US-NATO policy of refusing to discuss non-fatal injuries.

By CHRIS FLOYD - Counterpunch Weekend Edition

Our imperial elites...simply cannot bear to have American power and domination resisted in any way, at any time, for any reason, anywhere, by anyone. It offends their imperial dignity. It undermines their extremely fragile, frightened, frantic egos, which can only be held together by melding themselves to an image of monstrous, implacable, unstoppable power.

By KEVIN CARSON - Counterpunch

Colonial regimes atomized or perverted local social institutions...They decimated social capital and uprooted local institutions that might have provided the basis for evolution of a more liberal society...[A]n authoritarian state led to the corruption and atrophy of civil society...The bipolar superpower dynamic also contributed to greater political authoritarianism in much of the post-colonial Third World. Left-wing nationalist regimes...adopted garrison state cultures and developed closer ties with the Soviet bloc.

Since taking office in February 1999, Chavez has been Washington's number one Latin American enemy.

By Alex Snowdon - July 27, 2012

Those on the left...who have been...sympathetic to the Gaddafi and Assad regimes, seeing them as a progressive bulwark against Western imperialism, may be consistent opponents of the U.S.-led 'war on terror,' but they don't understand the immensely positive and liberating role of the Arab revolutions...There are others on the left who have it the other way around...[T]hey underestimate the capacity of Western intervention to play an important role in the region...They fail to fully locate developments inside Syria in a larger political context.

Libya's new leader is a Washington imperial tool.