Sometimes history repeats itself — the first time as tragedy and the second time . . . as another tragedy. The horrendous fire that just killed 112 workers, mostly young women, at the Bangladesh garment factory echoes the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City in 1911 that killed 146 workers, again mostly women. Both […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
For Whom Do the FAO and Its Director-General Work?
For farmers small and large? For the tens of millions of food-consuming households, poor or just getting by? For the governments and bureaucracies of small countries who want to import less and grow more? For the organic cultivators on their small densely bio-diverse plots? Or for the world’s large food production, trading, and retail corporations, […]
The Rise of a New, Revived Form of Liberal Interventionism
Opening Plenary, “Media and War: Challenging the Consensus” Conference, Goldsmiths, London, UK, 17 November 2012 Seumas Milne: We’ve seen the rise of a new, revived form of liberal interventionism, or humanitarian interventionism, in the last couple of years, and the key to it is the idea that there mustn’t be too many boots on the […]
New Nicaraguan Law Challenges Violence Against Women
Nicaragua’s adoption this year of a sweeping law for prevention and punishment of violence against women marks an important gain for women’s rights in this Central American country, says Sandra Ramos, founder and director of the “Maria Elena Cuadra” Movement for Working and Unemployed Women (MEC). Addressing a meeting at Casa Maíz in Toronto on […]
No Safe Haven: Civilians Under Attack in the Gaza Strip
Salem Waqef (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Haneen Tafesh (Photo: Gisela Schmidt-Martin) Ahmed Durghmush (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Basma Mahmoud el Tourouq (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Mohammed Abu Amsha (Photo: Gisela Schmidt-Martin) Zuhdiye Samour (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Duaa Hejazi (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Gaza City, 16 November 2012 The Israeli attacks across the Gaza […]
The Sad Legacy of Moose Dung and Red Robe
Squaw Point today (photo by David Thorstad)Silent City (photo by David Thorstad) In 1904, the Ojibwe village at Thief River Falls, in northwest Minnesota, was removed to the Red Lake Indian Reservation to the east, much diminished after the tribe’s cession of 256,152 acres between the reservation and Thief River Falls (known as the eleven […]
“Environmentally Responsible?”: “Rogue NGOs” Tackle Pacific Rim in El Salvador
On October 20th, hundreds of people marched in Cabañas, El Salvador to voice their opposition to the proposed gold-mining project of Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining company. The anti-mining movement in El Salvador has been growing over the past decade and in 2007, under pressure from this movement, the Salvadoran government began to put restrictions […]
Whose War? The War of 1812
Centennials, bicentennials, and other historical anniversaries — not to mention annual holidays — play a major role in the legitimation of power relations. And they can be sharp ideological battlegrounds like Columbus Day. This year is the two hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812, an inconclusive two and a half-year war with Great Britain […]
Police on Playback — Copwatch in New York City
Stories of police brutality are often told in a way that casts victims as helpless bystanders of cops run amok. We met with Sean Pagan, a recent victim of police violence, and found that his story changes how we think about policing in New York. Sean’s story shows that communities are finding new and […]
The Gift of the True Organizer
In 2003 when I was researching work to rule — a process by which workers slow down production, drive up costs, and thereby leverage negotiations — I called Dave Yettaw. Dave, a retired auto worker and former president of Flint UAW Local 599, was an old hand and a trusted advisor. Dave told me that […]
“Collectivized Torture”: Drone Warfare and the Dark Side of Counterinsurgency
The recent Stanford University report on drone strikes in Pakistan, Living Under Drones, raises the possibility that the US is intentionally using drones, not merely as hi-tech assassination devices, but also as weapons of state terror intended to subdue unruly regions and populations. The appalling reality of drone warfare along the Afghanistan border closely resembles […]
The Threat of Barbarism: US Imperialism Unleashed
With signs of a global economic downturn mounting, US aggression across the Middle East and North Africa ratchets up. Once again, US imperialism stands poised to open the gates of Hell. According to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook report released last week, the “risks for a serious global slowdown are alarmingly high.” The report projects […]
Candlelit Vigil to Honor Martyrs of the Maspero Massacre
Candlelit Vigil to Honor Martyrs of the Maspero Massacre Friday, 12th October 2012, 7:00 PM Union Square, Manhattan October 9, 2012 marked the one year anniversary of what has come to be known as the Maspero massacre, one of the numerous bloody attacks deliberately orchestrated and executed by counterrevolutionary forces under the direction of […]
The Sargasso Manuscript: Some Observations on Susan Sontag’s As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
Susan Sontag. As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980. Edited by David Rieff. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. I. David Rieff has played the last of Susan Sontag’s jokes upon the reader: to remain austerely cool, distant, and unsympathetic toward us even in “journals and notebooks.” The barbed wire of […]
Colombian Prisoners Demand Justice
Popular momentum is building to ensure that any settlement coming out of upcoming Colombian government peace negotiations with insurgents promotes social justice. New prisoner resistance and recent documentation of abuses in Colombian prisons serve as reminders that, ideally, a peaceful and just Colombian society should promote prisoner rights. Indeed, “Our people and a bit of […]
What Part of FREE SPEECH Does Whole Foods Not Understand?
On Saturday, August 18, several cars and a pickup truck with signs on top, in the windows or on bumpers, drove into the Whole Foods Market (WFM) parking lot in Brentwood, which borders St. Louis, Missouri. Police approached as soon as they arrived. “Yes, officer, we will take the signs off of the cars if […]
All Sorts of Roguery? The ‘Financial Aristocracy’ and Government à Bon Marché in India
My voice is a crime, My thoughts anarchy, Because I do not sing to their tunes, I do not carry them on my shoulders. — Cherabandaraju, who was the lead accused in a “conspiracy case” involving poets and their poetry. It’s been two decades and a year since India’s elite embraced neo-liberalism. Money — the […]
A Little-Known Film Master, Kurt Maetzig
An extraordinary mensch, an extraordinary filmmaker who made extraordinary films and lived to the extraordinary age of 101, Kurt Maetzig, who died last week, was virtually unknown in the United States, indeed, in the western world generally. The reason: he lived and worked in East Germany, the German Democratic Republic, whose films — many mediocre […]
Howard Zinn’s Zen Politics
Howard Zinn. The Historic Unfulfilled Promise. Foreword by Matthew Rothschild. San Francisco: City Lights, 2012. 256 pages. Howard Zinn was called a lot of different names: anarchist, socialist, and communist. He called himself a lot of different names, too: anarchist, socialist, and communist. No one ever seems to have called him Zen, but maybe it’s […]
Witness Venezuela’s Elections This October!
Travel to Venezuela for the Elections! October 1-9, 2012 This October, witness one of the most important elections in the history of Venezuela — and of the hemisphere. On October 7, the people of Venezuela will exercise their right to vote and decide whether to carry forward the Bolivarian Revolution through the reelection of President […]
