Jim Lobe

James R. Lobe (born January 4, 1949 in Seattle, Washington) is an American journalist and the Washington Bureau Chief of the international news agency Inter Press Service. He has also written for Foreign Policy In Focus, Oneworld.net, Alternet, TomPaine.com, Asia Times, and other internet news publications. Lobe is best known for his criticism of U.S. foreign policy, American militarism, with a particular focus on the neo-conservatives, their worldview, their relationship to other political tendencies, and their influence in the Bush administration.^{[citation needed]}

Career

In 1970, Lobe graduated magna cum laude from Williams College in Williamstown (Massachusetts), with highest honors in History. He received his Juris Doctor from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley in 1974.

Journalist

Jim Lobe has served as the Washington D.C. correspondent and Bureau Chief of Inter Press Service (IPS) from 1980 to 1985, and again from 1989 to the present. IPS is an international news and feature agency that specializes in the coverage of events and issues of interest to or affecting developing countries. Since 2001, Lobe has served on the Foreign Policy in Focus Board of Advisors.

Lecturer

Lobe has lectured occasionally on U.S. Foreign Policy, Neo-conservative ideology, the Bush administration, and Foreign Policy and the U.S. Media at various colleges and universities around the United States, including: Jackson School of International Studies and School of Communications at the University of Washington, Seattle; Union College in Schenectady, New York; Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut; American University in Washington D.C.; University of San Francisco (USF); and New York University. He also lectured at the Institute of American Affairs, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China; the Institute of International Relations in Hanoi, Vietnam; and the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Switzerland (April, 2005). In 2004, he acted as defense attorney for the Project of the New American Century at the BRussells Tribunal in Brussels.

Coverage

Jim Lobe was the first journalist to cover the ties between the post-9/11 agenda pursued by the Bush administration and the recommendations of the neo-conservative-led Project for the New American Century.

He was the first to relate that agenda to the controversial Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) draft paper that was overseen by then-Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and leaked to the New York Times in March, 1992.

Lobe was among the first to cover the split within the Bush administration between the coalition of hawks – neo-conservatives, aggressive nationalists, and the Christian Right – on the one hand and the “realists” centered in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the other. Since 2001, many of his stories have dealt with the internal balance of power and its evolution over the six years in which Bush has been president.

Jim Lobe has written at some length on the general worldview of neo-conservatives, as well as of their policy agendas as they have evolved over time.

Interviews

Lobe has been recognized by major international media for his expertise on the neo-conservative movement and foreign policy. He appeared on the BBC’s public-affairs program Panorama: “The War Party”, broadcast May 18, 2003; and was interviewed for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners public affairs program: “American Dreamers”, broadcast March 10, 2003.

Publications

• Lobe, Jim and Oliveri, Adele; eds. (2003) I Nuovi Rivoluzionari: Il Pensiero dei Neoconservatori Americani. Milan: Feltrinelli. (Co-editor)
• Feffer, John; ed. (2003) Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy After September 11. New York: Seven Stories Press. (Contributor)
• Ackerman, S., Arkin, W., Marthoz, J., Wery, M.; eds., (2004) Les Etats-Unis a Contre-Courant: Critiques Americaines a L’Egard d’une Politique Etrangere Unilateraliste. Brussels: GRIP. (Contributor)

External links

• Lobe’s stories on the neo-conservatives published by IPS Inter Press Service
• Jim Lobe’s blog Lobelog.com
• Interview by Jonathan Holmes for the ABC public affairs program Four Corners on 17 February, 2003
• Lobe on “What is neo-conservative anyway?”, Asia Times (August 13, 2003)