humanitarian aid – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

American Exceptionalism, American Innocence

Review of American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News—from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror. By Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong. Foreword by Ajamu Baraka. Afterword by Glen Ford. 256 pages. Published: April 2, 2019. New York: Skyhorse Publishing Inc. ISBN: 9781510742369. Hardcover, $24.99 US; e-Book, $16.99 US. We […]

by Eva Bartlett

US-manufactured Crisis in Venezuela: Creating a “Need” for Intervention

Eva Bartlett, reporting from Venezuela, is a Canadian freelance journalist with extensive experience in the Gaza Strip and Syria. See her website, In Gaza, for more of her work, and see her page on Zero Anthropology for her other articles on this site. This report was originally published on RT.com on March 29, 2019. Venezuela […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Regime Change Reality Checks: Lessons from Hanoi, Caracas, and Beyond

Lessons from Hanoi: North Korea and the US The first Kim-Trump Summit, which took place in Singapore a mere eight months ago, seemed so hopeful—a real breakthrough, a new landmark, new history being made. Of course it was due to Trump’s extreme threats—to totally destroy North Korea with fire and fury—that inflated the value of […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

The Kursk Disaster: Facts Sunk Beneath Waves of Drama

At the turn of the millennium a trilogy of disasters gained a high profile in the international media. First, in July of 2000 the fiery crash of Air France’s Concorde flight 4590 from Paris to New York ended not just many lives (109 persons), but also the plane’s career. Second, on August 12, 2000, there […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Fake Humanitarianism Fails its Big Test in Venezuela

There it is: Saturday, February 23, 2019, has now come and gone—and it’s not to say that “nothing has changed”. In fact, some important changes did occur, none of which were the ones hoped for by either the self-declared “president” of Venezuela, Juán Guaidó, nor the ones commanded by the President of the US, Donald […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

A War for Oil: The US Economic War on Venezuela

A Bridge Too Far It resembled something from a post-apocalyptic setting in a movie: images of the blocked highway bridge linking Colombia to Venezuela, silent and desolate containers behind fences, not a person in sight, no movement. It was like a makeshift monument to a people’s understanding of how “humanitarian aid” is used by empire […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

(New Book) Force Multipliers: The Instrumentalities of Imperialism

From ALERT PRESS: Click here to order a printed copy, or, Click here for the free e-book (pdf) Friends and allies, partners and protégés, extensions and proxies—the vocabulary of US power in the form of multiples of itself has become so entrenched that it rarely attracts attention, and even less so critical commentary. Force multiplication […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

The Militarization of Humanitarian Aid to Haiti

The following is an extract from Keir Forgie’s chapter, “US Imperialism and Disaster Capitalism in Haiti,” published in Good Intentions: Norms and Practices of Imperial Humanitarianism (Montreal: Alert Press, 2014), pp. 57-75: Overview: Keir Forgie details some characteristic actions of the new, that is, US imperialism enforced upon Haiti leading up to and following the […]