President Obama’s first half year in office was singularly focused on reviving America’s desultory standing in the Muslim world. Last week marked the first anniversary of Obama’s Cairo speech — his widely heralded address “to the Muslim world” — which was intended as the culmination of a series of important steps. These included: Obama’s appointment […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
Cochabamba Conference: Climate Radicals Leave Much to Ponder
The climate crisis and efforts to tackle it have witnessed unprecedented mobilisation of popular movements, NGOs, think tanks, experts, intellectuals and activists, as was evident at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen last December. Of course, this “civil society” activism has embraced a very wide spectrum of opinion. Amongst the most vociferous, at various gatherings as […]
Latin America and the Middle East: A Threatening Alliance?
Whether in the media or in U.S. policy circles, the words “Middle East” and “South America” are rarely mentioned together in a positive light. Reports of Middle Eastern terrorist cells allegedly operating in South America’s Tri-Border region or on Venezuela’s Margarita Island have appeared intermittently in the U.S. press since at least 2003. These […]
China’s Evolving Calculus on Iran Sanctions
As the United Nations Security Council moves toward a vote on a resolution imposing additional sanctions on Iran over its nuclear activities, China is being remarkably silent, at least in public. In the wake of the announcement of the Iran-Turkey-Brazil Joint Declaration in Tehran on May 17 and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement in […]
Iran: Ruling Faction and Opposition Leaders Both Opposed to Israel
Ali Khamenei, Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution: The Zionists made a miscalculation. They made a mistake. They made a big mistake. This mistake has been repeated in recent years, again and again. They made a mistake of attacking Lebanon. They made a mistake of attacking Gaza. And they made a mistake of attacking the aid […]
Constructive Position
United States of America (clutching weapons of mass destruction): We are here to negotiate from a constructive position. Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist. This cartoon was published in Cambios en Cuba on 30 May 2010. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print
Israel, Turkey, and the United States
An act of piracy, war crime, blatant violation of international law, murder of unarmed civilians — each and every definition used by the international media is true, and altogether beside the point. The murderous Israeli operation is, in fact, the expression of the new Israeli modus operandi. And as such it is frightening. All over […]
Terry Eagleton and Tragic Spirituality
Terry Eagleton. Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. pp. xii, 185. $25.00. Terry Eagleton in the 1970s stood at the cutting edge of Marxist literary criticism, but his recent book, Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate — an expansion of his 2008 Yale […]
Farewell, Robin Wood (1931-2009): The Relevance of a Radical Film Critic
“It is probably impossible today for anyone to make an even halfway commercial movie that shouts, in some positive sense, ‘Revolution!’ as loudly as its lungs can bear, so one must celebrate the films that seem (whether deliberately or not) to imply its necessity.” — Robin Wood1 At a time when comedy shows tell […]
Food Sovereignty Tour + Agroecology Short Course in Venezuela
STUDY TOUR TO VENEZUELA: Food Sovereignty, Social Movements and Social Change July 19 to August 2, 2010 Please register asap! You are invited to participate in a two-week study tour to study food sovereignty, social movements, and social change in Venezuela, 19 July to 2 August, 2010. The tour will examine issues of land […]
Deepwater Lesson: Expropriate the Expropriators
“If an oil well is too far beneath the sea to be plugged when something goes wrong, it’s too deep to be drilled in the first place.” — Bob Herbert, June 1, 2010 Imagine “the Associated Producers, Rationally Regulating Their Interchange with Nature” Amidst mass capital-imposed structural unemployment and ever-escalating environmental collapse, the ongoing epic […]
The Empire and War
Two days ago, I briefly commented that imperialism was unable to resolve the extremely serious problem of drug abuse, which is assaulting the world’s population. Today, I would like to tackle another subject that, in my opinion, is of great significance. The current danger of North Korea being attacked by the United States, following the […]
Israel’s Attack on the Turkish Ships Complicates China’s Balancing Act on Iran and the United States
President Obama’s already diminishing chances to “steamroll” the Iran-Turkey-Brazil Joint Declaration by ramming new sanctions against the Islamic Republic through the United Nations Security Council during the next few weeks got even smaller this morning, when Israeli naval commandos stormed Turkish-flagged ships in international waters off Gaza, killing at least 16 people in the process. […]
Protest Israeli Murders of Freedom Flotilla Activists
International Solidarity Movement 31 May 2010, Free Gaza Movement Israel Murders at Least 10 Unarmed Civilians on Aid Flotilla to Gaza, Dozens Injured (Cyprus, June 1, 2010, 6:30AM local) — Under darkness of night, Israeli commandos from at least 14 warships and military helicopters boarded the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara, and began shooting. According […]
Rwandan Arrest of U.S. Lawyer Motivated by Politics
Professor Peter Erlinder, noted criminal defense lawyer and past president of the National Lawyers Guild, was arrested Friday morning in Rwanda for “genocide ideology.” Erlinder’s representation of high-profile defendants before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has incurred the wrath of government officials, who have charged him with “negation of the Tutsi genocide” for […]
Breaking the Blockade of Silence: L.A. Art and Advocacy for the Cuban 5
How do you break through the twelve-year blockade of silence that has kept five Cuban political prisoners invisible to the American public? How can art transcend U.S. prison walls and present the truth about these men, locked up in five distant prisons scattered across the United States, to a Los Angeles community? On May 22nd […]
No Justice, No Euro!
The current turmoil in financial markets around the world is another illustration of the damage that can be done by a bloated and politically powerful financial sector, combined with finance ministers and central bankers who identify with this sector and have their own right-wing policy agenda. Welcome to Europe, which has become the epicenter of […]
Someone Is Watching: The Peril and Promise of School Surveillance
Torin Monahan, Rodolfo D. Torres, eds. Schools under Surveillance: Cultures of Control in Public Education. Critical Issues in Crime and Society Series. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010. vi + 264 pp. $72.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8135-4679-7; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8135-4680-3. In the fall of 2009, Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, was caught […]
Vigorous Legal Advocate Arrested in Rwanda
New York — The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) demands the immediate release of its former president, Professor Peter Erlinder, whom Rwandan Police arrested early today on charges of “genocide ideology.” He had traveled to Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, on May 23, to join the defense team of Rwandan presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. Erlinder is […]
Arizona: Grassroots Organizing to Repeal All Anti-Immigrant Laws
Joel Olson is a member of the Repeal Coalition in Flagstaff, Arizona. Repeal spearheaded the grassroots mobilization that successfully pressured the Flagstaff City Council to pass an injunction threatening a lawsuit against the state for its anti-immigrant law SB 1070. SB 1070 has clearly reignited the immigrant rights movement. What is SB 1070 and […]
