Unfortunately, I shall not be able to be with you. Something has come up that prevents me from traveling. But I’d like to be, in some way, part of this meeting of yours, this meeting of mine, since I have no choice but to do the little that I can rather than the much that […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
Honduran Campesinos under the Gun: Part 2
Jesse Freeston: In Part 1, we described the landmark deal negotiated by the campesinos of the lower Aguán, despite the ongoing militarization of their communities. Land conflicts in the Aguán region are not new. Regular occupations by landless peasants in Aguán and elsewhere in Honduras during the 1970s forced the military dictatorship to enact land […]
What “Populist Uprising?”Part 1: Facts and Reflections on Race, Class, and the Tea Party “Movement”
The right-wing Tea Party “movement” has recently grabbed attention in the dominant media again. On Tax Day last April, it garnered headlines by rolling out its standard high-decibel complaints against “big government,” deficits, taxes, and the supposed “radical” agenda of “Obama, Pelosi, and Reid” and the rest of the Democratic Party. As usual, the Tea […]
World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth
For more information, visit <cmpcc.org>. | | Print
An Open Letter of Reconciliation and Responsibility to the Iraqi People
Two former soldiers from the Army unit responsible for the Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” incident have written an open letter of “Reconciliation and Responsibility” to those injured in the July 2007 attack, in which US forces wounded two children and killed over a dozen people, including the father of those children and two Reuters employees. […]
The Global Securitization of Religion
My first thought upon reading the Chicago Council’s report “Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for U.S. Foreign Policy” is that the title is misleading. This report is not about engaging religious communities abroad — one hears little if at all from such communities — nor does it say anything particularly new. There is, […]
The Extra-territorial Establishment of Religion
There is an embarrassing giddiness in the religious studies world today. With our new mantra in hand — the new “salience” of religion — we, both scholars of religion and other self-appointed spokespersons for religion, feel licensed to instruct the world on the importance of religion. We are suddenly relevant again. Or so we […]
The Social Cost of Carbon: A Report for the Economics for Equity and the Environment Network
Executive Summary: In its first attempts to regulate carbon emissions, the U.S. government is undermining its own efforts by relying on deeply flawed economic models that lead to gross miscalculations of the impact of carbon on the climate and on the nation’s economic future. Agencies seeking to incorporate climate change considerations in rules and regulations […]
Message to the Tehran International Nuclear Disarmament Conference “Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None”
I would like to welcome the honorable guests who have gathered here. It is a pleasure for the Islamic Republic of Iran to be the host of the International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament today. I hope this occasion will be an opportunity to yield enduring and important results from your dialogues and discussions for the […]
Honduran Campesinos under the Gun: Part 1
Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa: I will not allow armed groups of any kind in Honduras. Jesse Freeston: With that, the president of Honduras, Pepe Lobo, moved these 2,000 soldiers into the region of Bajo Aguán, a biofuel farming zone in northern Honduras, where 3,500 campesinos, organized as the Unified Campesino Movement of Aguán, or MUCA, […]
Will Feminism Be Articulated to the Left or to the Right?
EA: You are one of the leading theorists trying to develop the notion of the public sphere. In what ways has globalisation affected the public sphere? Has the public sphere become more transnational? NF: Today, the flow of public political discourse does not respect borders, but is often transnational. The result is a serious […]
UN Must Oppose US Threat to Use Nuclear Weapons
Iran’s UN ambassador Mohammad Khazaee calls on the United Nations Security Council and other UN bodies to oppose the US President’s nuclear policy and his threat against an NPT signatory which does not have nuclear weapons. Below is a letter that Khazaee sent to UN Security Council President Yukio Takasu, UN General Assembly President Ali […]
The Left and Marxism in Eastern Europe
You now describe yourself as a Marxist, with plans for a Marxist theory group in Hungary in addition to your ongoing work as a writer and political commentator from the Left. Why Marx now? In Central and Eastern Europe after 1989, Marxist ideas and theories were hard-pressed to survive their connection to state socialism […]
No Crisis in Public Retirement Systems: Debunking the Hype and the Attacks on Employee Benefits
For years, right-wing groups have been beating the drums to roll back decent pensions and retirement benefits for American workers. At the federal level, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, ranking member on the U.S. House Budget Committee, proposed a “Road Map” plan to privatize social security, cut payments, and slash Medicare benefits for all seniors. […]
Iran: New Challenges in the New Year
About one month after the beginning of the new Iranian calendar year (21 March 2010), and following the international recognition of Norouz by the United Nations General Assembly, Iran is facing new challenges. Some of the challenges are domestic, while others emanate from Iran’s regional and international policies as well as international pressures put […]
Venezuela Needs an Economic Development Strategy
Throughout Venezuela’s record-breaking economic expansion, the government’s opponents — which includes most of the international media as well as Washington — were “crying, waiting, hoping,” as the rock and roll legend Buddy Holly once sang. The “oil bust” had to be just around the corner, they prayed and wrote. But for five and a half […]
Chomsky and the Teabaggers
Do the teabaggers represent the vanguard of fascism in the United States? Noam Chomsky seems to think so. As The Progressive recently reported, Chomsky is rather frightened by the people who apparently think Lipton is the name of a headwear designer rather than a brand of tea: “I’m just old enough to have heard a […]
Asian Countries and the Dutch Disease
The Dutch disease does not derive from abundant and cheap natural resources, but from the combination of low wages and high wage dispersion. The American government was about to declare China an exchange rate-manipulator country, but, since bilateral negotiations continue, the American Treasury decided to postpone the decision, probably because it expects China to yield […]
China Will Do Whatever It Wants to Do . . . about Its Currency and Iran
The United States and China seem to have reached an agreement with regard to the exchange rate between their two currencies. The agreement is that the U.S. government will stop yelling about it, and China will do whatever it wants to do, which will probably include some modest rise in the renminbi some time in […]
Cuban Prisoners, Here and There
For more than half a century Western political leaders and their corporate media have waged a disinformation war against socialist Cuba. Nor is there any sign that they are easing up. A recent example is the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, an inmate who died in a Cuban prison in February 2010 after an 82-day […]
