A curious article recently appeared in Canada’s Globe and Mail. The authors are US economist Paul Romer and Octavio Sanchez, chief of staff to the President of Honduras. They are promoting Romer’s idea for “charter cities,” in which Canada is invited to play a role in an ostensibly new model to promote development and prosperity […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
Greece at a Crossroads: Crisis and Radicalization in the Southern European Semi-periphery
Introduction The Greek crisis represents the deepening of a long systemic contradiction whose origins lie in the 1960s, in the stagnation of monopoly capitalism and the emergence of the South. The industrial centers of the world economy were struck by a crisis of profitability, which was displaced outward in space and forward in time by […]
March Against Homophobia Celebrates New Outlook in Cuba
“This discussion has changed my mind about homosexuality. Now I understand what my Lesbian friend went through. When she graduated from medical school in Cuba, she cried. She told me that she could live her life the way she wanted to when she was in Cuba. But now she would return to Honduras as […]
Always Occupy
And so I left Montserrat, a place of brief and merciful funerals. She does a good burial, Montserrat — the only place in the world where the barefoot gravedigger rules. He gets to choose the hymns sung, judge the quality of the choir’s voices, and keeps up a running conversation as he joyfully sets about […]
Democracy Imperiled: The Greek Political Crisis
Recent developments in Greece provide an acute illustration of the long-standing contradiction between capitalism and democracy. This contradiction has also been felt in Greece in the past, including in the history of military coups aimed at the repression of popular movements and at ensuring the country’s subordination to the wishes of the United States during […]
Impoverishing Europe
The crisis is not relinquishing its grip on Europe. From autumn 2008 to early 2009 the world market experienced the deepest slump in economic output since the Second World War. This is a global crisis. Even in emerging economies like China, Brazil, or India economic growth declined and could not compensate for the recession […]
The 67th Anniversary of the Victory over Nazi Fascism
No political action can be judged outside its epoch and circumstances. No one knows even one percent of the fabulous history of man; yet, thanks to that history, we know events that exceed the limits of the imaginable. The privilege of having known some of the people involved, including the places where some of the […]
Venezuela Strongly Condemns Terrorist Attacks in Syria
Communiqué The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comandante Hugo Chávez, in the name of the Venezuelan people and its government, expresses his strongest condemnation of the series of terrorist attacks perpetrated over the last several hours in the Syrian Arab Republic, which tragically left at least 40 people dead and hundreds wounded. The […]
Double Standards Against Change in Bahrain: Interview with Maryam al-Khawaja
Protests against the Formula One Grand Prix held in Manama on 22 April could have reminded the world that repression in Bahrain is still ongoing. But once more the so-called international community by and large turned a blind eye: no diplomatic pressure, certainly no “crippling” international sanctions. The Grand Prix went ahead as planned. A […]
Self-Defense for Workers, Against Market Tyranny: An Interview with Michael Perelman
Carlo Fanelli (CF): Your early work pays a great deal of attention to the classical political economists (e.g. Ricardo, Smith, J.B. Say, J.S. Mill, Marx, etc.), with later writings engaging with economic luminaries such as Alfred Marshal and John Maynard Keynes. Could you briefly discuss how this research has influenced your thinking about economics? And […]
Argentina and the Magic Soybean: The Commodity Export Boom That Wasn’t
One of the great myths about the Argentine economy that is repeated nearly every day is that the rapid growth of the Argentine economy during the past decade has been a “commodity export boom.” For example, the New York Times reported last week: Riding an export boom for commodities like soybeans, Argentina’s economy grew at […]
Flipping the Race Card
Teaching ethnic studies is hard. You have, on one side, folks who would universalize all human experience, not out of meanness but out of sincerity: “I know how you feel,” they say, “because my uncle had a similar experience, and let me tell you. . . .” Of course the uncle’s experience is nothing like […]
“Fail Again and Fail Better”: Matan Kaminer on J14 Protests in Israel
I met Matan Kaminer in Tel Aviv in January 2012, and we agreed to do an extended interview about the state of the left in Israeli society after the controversial J14 social justice protests. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background? How did you get involved in political activity? I was […]
General Strikes! Looking Backward, Looking Forward
It began on July 14, 1934. That day the San Francisco Labor Council pushed by radicalized rank-and-file workers declared a General Strike, and this led to four days of intense class struggle, the likes of which has rarely if ever been seen in this country. The aim of the General Strike was to support the […]
“It’s Time to Invent”: Economist Prabhat Patnaik on the Global Crisis
After an engaging half-hour interview with India’s pre-eminent Marxist economist during a conference at New York University, I told a friend about my one-on-one time with Prabhat Patnaik. “There are Marxists in India?” came the bemused response. “I thought India was the heart of the new capitalism.” Indeed, we hear about India mostly as a […]
What Iran Will Do With US RQ-170 Sentinel Drone
Sajjad Jafari is an Iranian cartoonist. This cartoon was first published by Fars News, reproduced here for non-profit entertainment purposes. Cf. “The number of [scientific] publications from Iran has grown from just 736 in 1996 to 13,238 in 2008 — making it the fastest growing country in terms of numbers of scientific publications in the […]
Llaguno Bridge: Keys to a Massacre
This feature-length documentary is a comprehensive audio-visual investigation into the events surrounding the 2002 coup d’état in Venezuela. Direction and Script: Ángel Palacios. General Production: Panafilms. Executive Production: ANMCLA. Production: G. Luis Serrano. Computer Graphics: Douglas Aponte. Audio and Video Post-Production: Andrés Petit, Carlos Yegres, Miguel Arias, Edgar Torres. Cameras: José L. Saldivia, Gabriela […]
Attacks on Teachers, Airline Workers, and Public Pensions in Canada Highlight Need for a Fighting Labor Movement
A trend is taking hold across Canada of working class resistance to the capitalist crisis and attacks by governments and corporations on workers’ rights and the social wage. Library workers in the city of Toronto and transit and university workers in Halifax recently went on strike, as did daycare workers in Quebec. Workers at Air […]
Tracing the Roots of Intersectionality
Intersectionality as a key concept in women’s studies has up until the present proven rather durable. Feminist journals are peppered with it and feminists use it pretty much without having to explain what they mean, the term’s affinity with feminism taken for granted and its import unquestioned. Attend any women’s studies meeting, and sooner or […]
Venezuelan Government Expresses Its Full Support for the Syrian People: Communiqué Following the Venezuelan Leader’s Conversation with His Counterpart Bashar al-Assad
The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comandante Hugo Chávez, communicated this Good Friday, 6 April 2012, with the president of the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar al-Assad, with whom he had a telephone conversation in the afternoon. The two presidents, who are united by long-standing personal brotherhood, said they continued to closely follow the […]
