In a startling article, Daniel McCarthy, the admirable editor of The American Conservativemagazine (TAC), writes, “Successive British and American empires created and upheld the world order in which [classical] liberalism could flourish.” In other words, as he writes in “Why Liberalism Means Empire,” “Liberalism and empire reinforced one another in manifold ways.” Therefore, if we want an enduring liberal democratic society, we must acknowledge the necessity of a U.S.-enforced global empire. I say the article is startling because for years TAC has been the place to find solid critiques of George W. Bush/Barack Obama–style interventionist foreign policy. But this is a call for…

Dr. David Duke receives emails from all over the world in reaction to his articles, radio shows and videos. Among the letters, are some from Israel. One of these warranted a full response, and readers of this website will be interested to read it: Message Body: Hi Dr. Duke. I am an Israeli resident and terribly bothered by the death of so many people in this war. On the other hand, at least as I understand, Hamas is declaring they will continue fighting Israel under any conditions. What would you expect Israel to do? i’m not here to provoke, but…

[This essay, which originally appeared on TomDispatch, is excerpted from the first chapter of Patrick Cockburn’s new book, The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising, with special thanks to his publisher, OR Books.  The first section is a new introduction written for TomDispatch.] There are extraordinary elements in the present US  policy in Iraq and Syria that are attracting surprisingly little attention. In Iraq, the US  is carrying out air strikes and sending in advisers and trainers to help beat back the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (better known as ISIS) on the Kurdish capital, Erbil. The US…

In the first part of this article, we defined the concept of “Intellectual” as we understand it and mentioned the work of some prominent non-Muslim and Muslim intellectuals. We highlighted how Noam Chomsky, Betrand Russell, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Malek Bennabi, and Ali Shariati represented different types, or should we say facets, of intellectuals. We adopted the definition of the intellectual as one who espouses the concerns of his/her society and becomes an active participant in the social change he/she longs for! Imam: the Muslim scholar-intellectual One privileged type of intellectual in the Muslim world is the Imam!…

The release of a long-delayed investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency’s post-9/11 interrogation methods was held up yet again on Tuesday after the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee objected to the amount of information that had been censored by the Obama administration. “I have concluded that the redactions eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions,” Dianne Feinstein said Tuesday in a statement announcing her decision to delay publication of portions of the report, which was assembled by her committee. Feinstein said she had written a letter to the White House detailing which redactions she felt were…