As I have noted previously, Latvia has experienced the worst two-year economic downturn on record, losing more than 25 percent of GDP. It is projected to shrink further during the first half of this year, before beginning a slow recovery, in which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that it will not reach even its […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
$14 Million Suit Won against Illegal Arrests
Were you arrested at IAC demonstration on April 15, 2000 in Washington, D.C.? $14 Million Suit Won against Illegal Arrests $18,000 to each arrestee — IF you file before May 17, 2010! Spread the Word! Ten years ago this month, the International Action Center initiated a major demonstration focused on the Prison Industrial Complex. […]
Managing Liberalization and Globalization in Rural China: Trends in Rural Labour Allocation, Income and Inequality
Abstract: China’s integration into the global economy, while rapid, has been managed as part of a wider liberalization process. The structural changes in the rural economy arising from these twin processes have led to widening intra-rural inequalities. To address these, the central leadership has, in Polanyian manner, moved to counter some of the adverse […]
The Ecology of Socialism
Solidair/Solidaire, the weekly journal of the Workers Party of Belgium (PVDA-PTB), interviewed John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, 26 April 2010 Solidair/Solidaire: Many green thinkers reject a Marxist analysis because they think that the Marxist approach to the economy is a very productivist one, focused on growth and seeing nature as “a free […]
Bolivia’s Resource Dilemma
Jesse Freeston: Last week, the Bolivian city of Cochabamba and the country’s president Evo Morales played host to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. The conference sought to distinguish itself from the United Nations conferences for giving a greater voice to civil society and expanding the conversation beyond […]
Glimpses of Alternatives to Neoliberalism
Social Justice and Neoliberalism: Global Perspectives. Adrian Smith, Alison Stenning, and Katie Willis, eds. Macmillan/Zed Books, 2008. 253 pages. Following the tradition of critical geographers, this book explores the expansion of neoliberalism into different spheres and spaces of everyday life. It consists of a collection of essays by writers from the global South, the […]
Obama’s Slippery Slope to Military Strikes on Iran
Today, POLITICO published our newest Op-Ed, “Obama’s Slippery Slope to Strikes on Iran” (excerpts below but also worth reading in full on POLITICO.com). Our piece was prompted by the partial leak of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ January 2010 memo on Iran to the New York Times last week and subsequent statements by Gates and […]
Cochabamba Eyewitness: A Great Boost for Ecosocialism
I attended the alternative Climate Conference in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba as part of an eight-person Quebec activist delegation. I came back convinced that we witnessed a turning point in the global Climate Justice movement. Up to now it has been very difficult to link environmental demands to social justice issues. The mainstream ecological […]
Iraq Redux: “Conventional Wisdom” of Iran Analysts
The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler had an important story: “Even as Momentum for Iran Sanctions Grows, Containment Seems Only Viable Option.” Glenn states his thesis up front: After months of first attempting to engage Iran and then wooing Russia and China to support new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, the Obama Administration appears within reach […]
Shame on Arizona
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer just signed a law that will authorize officers to pull over, question, and detain anyone they have a “reasonable suspicion” to believe is in this country without proper documentation. It’s legalized racial profiling, and it’s an affront on all of our civil rights, especially Latinos. It’s completely unacceptable. Join us […]
US Community Learns about Rural Healthcare from Iran
Rosiland Jordan: In a Mississippi Delta neighborhood known as Baptist Town, the people have needed a miracle here for a long time now. Good-paying manufacturing jobs that were once here vanished long before the current economic crisis, and with them so did a lifeline. Sylvester Hoover, Greenwood Merchant and Music Historian: Those people who […]
No Indian Miracle
Jayati Ghosh and Paul Jay
Paul Jay: So there’s a lot of talk about the growth and expansion in India and China, and especially India these days. We’re hearing again about the Indian miracle. Whose miracle is it, anyway? And is it such? Jayati Ghosh: No, it’s not actually a miracle. First of all, let me clarify. India and […]
General Jones at the Washington Institute: Still Getting the Iran-Palestine Connection Wrong
National Security Adviser James Jones was the headline speaker at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy‘s 25th-anniversary gala dinner in Washington last night. Substantively, General Jones’ speech focused on “two defining challenges” confronting the United States and its allies in the region: “preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, […]
Why You Should Care about the Three Americans Held in Iran
Watching the news in August 2009, you may have heard about three U.S. citizens being detained in Iran. Arrested for allegedly crossing the Iran-Iraq border on July 31, 2009, they remain in detention nine months later in Iran’s Evin prison. Dubbed “the hikers” due to the fact that they were on a hiking trip in […]
Thailand: Latest from Red Shirt Protest
Red Shirt leader Wira has stated that, if the government dissolves parliament in 30 days and calls elections 60 days after that, the protesters will go home. The government must also set up an independent committee to investigate the killings on 10 April and the government must stop all aggressive actions against the Red Shirts. […]
Teabaggers = Hawks and Likudniks
By now it has been well established that the teabaggers are by and large rich white men who are implacably opposed to pro-working-class economic policy, real or imagined. It turns out that they are not even libertarians à la Ron Paul, Reason Magazine, or the Cato Institute — they are just a bunch of hawks […]
Whose Lost Cause?
Mark A. Lause. Race and Radicalism in the Union Army. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009. In the decades following the U.S. Civil War there was a rash of monument building. Plaques were sunk into ground still littered with shards of weaponry and human beings; statues appeared on the landscape like mute and […]
CCR Denounces Government Attempt to Frighten Jury in NYC Trial of Fahad Hashmi
April 21, 2010, New York — In response to a government motion today asking for jurors in the case of Fahad Hashmi to be anonymous and kept under extra security, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement: The case against Fahad Hashmi in itself raises many red flags related to the violation of […]
Speaking Out Against Israeli Apartheid
We asked queers in our city to tell us why they are against Israeli apartheid. Here’s what they said. Video by Alexis Mitchell * * * Editor’s Note: QuAIA has come under attack by the pro-Israel lobby and Toronto city bureaucrats: “An April 18, 2010 feature story in the Toronto Star revealed that City […]
Reason, Faith, and Revolution
Christianity Fair and Foul The Limits of Liberalism Faith and Reason Culture and Barbarism . . . Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God? Who would have expected theology to rear its head once more in the technocratic twenty-first century, almost as surprisingly as some mass revival of Zoroastrianism or […]
