The Real News tiene prueba de como el Tribunal Supremo Electoral de Honduras reportaron cifras equivocadas. Cifras, se dice, han servido para consolidar el golpe de estado. Realizado por Jesse Freeston, desde Honduras. In English: Jesse Freeston, “Honduran Elections Exposed” (The Real News, 6 December 2009). | | Print
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
An Open Letter to the UN Climate Change Gathering in Copenhagen
Allow me to make a few points about the current international negotiations which are likely to make a huge impact on the future of the planet. At the heart of the issue is the trade off that has to be made between those who want to continue on a path of exploitation and the protesters […]
Christian Communists, Islamic Anarchists? Part 2
In Part 1 of this article we argued that Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou’s account of the foundation of Communist universalism in the event of Christianity signals a number of inconsistencies immanent to their respective ontologies (Coombs 2009). For Žižek it appears difficult to reconcile his touted open interpretation of Hegel with the ontological significance […]
Selling Out Health Care Reform: Interview with Dr. Andy Coates
The battle for health care reform is heating up in Congress. The House has already passed one bill, and the Senate is debating another version. But as Dr. Andy Coates explains, both bills will fail in solving the health care crisis — and, in fact, place a greater financial burden than ever on working people. […]
Christian Communists, Islamic Anarchists? Part 1
The defeat of the Marxist emancipatory project has brought an end to radical secular universalism. The result has been twofold: identity politics and their post-modern ideologies of difference have become the legitimating motifs of Western democracies, whilst radical political Islam has taken the anti-systemic baton of secular Marxism, but subverted it with a brand of […]
End Monopoly Capitalism to Arrest Climate Change
Human societies have created the bases of our survival, sustenance and advancement through the use of our natural resources in production with rudimentary tools and rising levels of science and technology. Yet in no time in history has environmental destruction been systematically brought about in most parts of the world. The people of the […]
The Idea of Iran
Michael Axworthy. A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind. New York: Basic Books, 2008. 352 pp. $27.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-465-00888-9. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, a large number of Iranians joined the ranks of expatriates living in Europe and the United States. Suddenly uprooted and finding themselves in unfamiliar surroundings, some of […]
Beyond Optimism and Pessimism: The Differential Effects of Nuclear Proliferation
Abstract: What is the effect of the spread of nuclear weapons on international politics? The scholarly debate pits proliferation optimists, who claim that “more may be better,” against proliferation pessimists, who argue that “more will be worse.” These scholars focus on the aggregate effects of nuclear proliferation, but never explicitly consider the differential effects […]
In Response to the Bosnia Genocide Lobby
The original title for the article that follows was “Response to ‘Raoul Djukanovic’.” “RD” is the Internet pseudonym of Daniel Simpson, who we mention in our second paragraph (below), and who, as a member of what we refer to as the Bosnia Genocide Lobby, assails us wherever we publish something related to the former Yugoslavia. […]
Bolivia under Evo Morales: The Pace and Depth of Social and Political Change
General elections were held in Bolivia on Sunday, December 6, 2009. A few weeks before these elections I had the opportunity to discuss the contours of Evo Morales’ first term in office with the Bolivian Ambassador to Canada, Edgar Tórrez Mosqueira. The following interview provides a backdrop to the elections that were held yesterday, […]
America Crashes White House Dinner
(PU) Last night, in another embarrassing lapse of security, nine Secret Service agents were trampled to death when approximately 658,000 U.S. residents of every race, age, and sexual orientation mobbed the White House, demanding admission to a state dinner. Most explained that their reason for crashing the dinner was to have a chance at appearing […]
Honduran Elections Exposed
Jesse Freeston, Producer, The Real News Network: The Honduran elections of Sunday, November 29 were unique in that they were less about who was going to win than they were about how many people were going to vote. Both major presidential candidates were supporters of the June 28 coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya and […]
Memories, Nightmares, and Hopes
Eric Davis. Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 397 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-520-23546-5. This review has been a long time coming, but during this time, Davis’s book has become the subject of extensive comment, achieving an almost iconic, certainly landmark, status in […]
A Middle Way: The Best Solution to the Nuclear Crisis
Explaining about a draft agreement on nuclear fuel for the Tehran research reactor, Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Manouchehr Mottaki noted: “The two sides decided to review the draft. It is being reviewed in Vienna, and Iran will soon declare its viewpoint.” However, some officials have already voiced their opposition to the recent nuclear […]
Brazil’s Differences with Washington Are Unavoidable, and Positive
Over the last decade an epoch-making political change has taken place in the Western Hemisphere: Latin America, a region that was once considered the United States’ “back yard,” is now more independent of Washington than Europe is. But while Latin America has changed, U.S. foreign policy has not — even now, with the election of […]
Electoral Gore: Warlord Violence, Oligarchic Decay, and US Neocolonial Domination in the Philippines
The mass slaughter of 57 civilians in Maguindanao, the Philippines, on November 23 by a local warlord may seem a minor incident compared with the much more heinous destruction of whole villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan by US drones. In the Philippines, however, it acquires symbolic density by the resonance of contextual historic factors linked […]
Turning Activists into Voters in Uruguay: The Frente Amplio and José Mujica
Torrential rain didn’t keep voters away from the polls on Sunday, November 29th when José “Pepe” Mujica was elected president with 52% of the vote. The 74-year-old Agricultural Minister spent 14 years in jail for his participation in the Tupamaro guerilla movement and has pledged to continue the policies of his predecessor, current left-leaning president […]
Global Imbalances: Remarkable Reversal
An important feature of the global monetary regime of the last three decades is the imbalance in the distribution of current account balances across countries and country groupings. Recently, the most glaring discrepancy is the fact that a huge US balance of payments deficit is being substantially financed by developing countries and not largely by […]
Stronger Estate Tax Urged by United for a Fair Economy in Response to House Vote
Boston, MA, December 4, 2009 — “More tax breaks for the super wealthy is one of the last things our economy needs right now,” says Lee Farris, Estate Tax Policy Coordinator for United for a Fair Economy (UFE). “Back in 2001, the Bush Administration enacted a massive tax cut for multi-millionaires by gradually reducing the […]
Barack Obama’s Myopic Iran Policy
By giving Israel veto rights and threatening more sanctions, the U.S. is squandering the best chance we have for a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Ordinarily, it would have been easy to dismiss the latest resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency censuring Iran as a text, drafted by idiots, full of sound […]
