Martin V. Melosi, Joseph A. Pratt, eds. Energy Metropolis: An Environmental History of Houston and the Gulf Coast. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. vii + 344 pp. $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8229-5963-2; $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8229-4335-8. Much of the American past is connected to the growth of cities. Throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
Embedded with Organized Labor: An Interview with Steve Early
Steve Early is a 25-year veteran of the labor movement, journalist, and author of the new book Embedded with Organized Labor (Monthly Review Press, 2009). His is a voice for a more militant rank-and-file democratic form of trade unionism which attempts to challenge the bosses by re-energizing a mostly dormant labor movement. Kristin Schall: […]
American Public Still Ahead of Its Leaders on Foreign Policy
Americans are famous for not paying much attention to the rest of the world, and it is often said that foreign wars are the way that we learn geography. But most often it is not the people who have little direct experience outside their own country that are the problem, but rather the experts. The […]
Immigration Past, Immigration Present: Confronting the Internal “Other” in Europe
Oliver Grant. Migration and Inequality in Germany. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. 416 pp. $190.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-927656-1. Leo Lucassen. The Immigrant Threat: The Integration of Old and New Migrants in Western Europe since 1850. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. 296 pp. $25.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-252-07294-9. Elia Morandi. Italiener in Hamburg: Migration, Arbeit und […]
U.S. Continues to Provide Honduran Regime with MCC Aid Money, Despite Having Cut Off Other Countries Following Coups
The U.S. continues to provide the coup regime in Honduras with tens of millions of dollars in aid money through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), despite having cut off MCC assistance to Mauritania and Madagascar following coups d’etat in those countries, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) describes in a new issue brief. […]
The “Cosmopolitan Century”: European Re-Membering
Natan Sznaider. Gedächtnisraum Europa: Die Visionen des europäischen Kosmopolitismus; eine jüdische Perspektive. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2008. 153 pp. EUR 16.90 (paper), ISBN 978-3-89942-692-2. As Europe moves into the twenty-first century, its search for a shared identity continues to occupy academic journals, the feuilleton pages, and Eurocrats eager to underwrite a by-and-large successful administrative […]
What Is Cosmopolitanism?
Chris Rumford, ed. Cosmopolitanism and Europe. Studies in Social and Political Thought. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007. 272 pp. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-84631-046-1; $30.00 (paper), ISBN 978-1-84631-047-8. Rebecca L. Walkowitz. Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 248 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-13750-8. These two explorations of cosmopolitanism from quite […]
Coup Protestor Gang-Raped by Honduran Police
On Friday, Latin America scholars sent an urgent letter to Human Rights Watch, urging HRW to speak out on violations of human rights under the coup regime in Honduras and to conduct its own investigation. HRW hasn’t made any statement about Honduras since July 8. One of the things Human Rights Watch should be investigating […]
The Responsibility to Protect, the International Criminal Court, and Foreign Policy in Focus: Subverting the UN Charter in the Name of Human Rights
It was just a matter of time before members of the collapsing left enlisted in the imperial attack on the most fundamental principles of the UN Charter, and added their voices to the growing chorus of support for Western power-projection under the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). But this […]
Young Lords Party 40th Anniversary Reunion, Sunday, 23 August 2009
Familia Forty years ago this summer the presence of the Young Lords came into the consciousness of all New Yorkers. What had once been a gang on the streets of Chicago now was present in New York City. The Young Lords, no longer a gang, was now a Puerto Rican Revolutionary Nationalist organization fighting for […]
Who Are the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Republicans?
Daniel Lee and I made these graphs showing the income distribution of voters self-classified by ideology (liberal, moderate, or conservative) and party identification (Democrat, Independent, or Republican). We found some surprising patterns: Click to enlarge Each line shows the income distribution for the relevant category of respondents, normalized to the income distribution of all […]
Human Rights Watch, Speak Up on Honduras Coup!
On Friday nearly 100 Latin America scholars and experts sent an open letter to Human Rights Watch urging HRW to speak up about human rights violations in Honduras under the coup regime and to conduct its own investigation of these abuses. The letters’ signers include Honduras experts Dana Frank and Adrienne Pine, Latin America experts […]
Swazi Queens’ $6m Shopping Spree
There is growing anger in Swaziland as it emerges that the media have been forced to censor news that a group of King Mswati III‘s wives have been on another international shopping trip squandering up to E50 million (6 million US dollars) that should belong to ordinary Swazis. When the wives went on a […]
Elections in Afghanistan
“Light! Camera! Action!“ Gervasio Umpiérrez is a cartoonist based in Montevideo, Uruguay. This cartoon was featured on the home page of Rebelión on 22 August 2009. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).
Obama’s Deafening Silence on Honduras
Seven weeks after the Honduran military overthrew the democratically elected president of Honduras, the divide between the United States and Latin America continues to grow — although you might not get that impression from most mainstream media reports. The strategy of the coup regime is obviously to run out the clock on President Zelaya’s remaining […]
Amnesty: Honduras Photos and Protestor Testimonies Show Extent of Police Violence
There has been very little attention in the U.S. press to repression in Honduras under the coup regime. Hopefully, that will now change: Amnesty International issued a report yesterday documenting “serious ill-treatment by police and military of peaceful protesters” in Honduras, warning that “beatings and mass arrests are being used as a way of punishing […]
Choosing the Path of Critical Debate on Iran
Tariq Ramadan just got purged from not only his position as “integration advisor” to the city of Rotterdam but also his visiting professorship at Erasmus University. — Ed. An Open Letter to My Detractors in the Netherlands Tuesday 18 August 2009 Once again I have come under attack in the Netherlands. Last May and June, […]
Declaration of the ALBA Political Council on Honduras
Document of the First ALBA Political Council Meeting, Quito, Ecuador, 9 August 2009 1. We reiterate the terms of the ALBA Extraordinary Presidential Council Proclamation, of June 29, 2009, issued in Managua, Nicaragua, in which the Heads of State demand the safe, immediate, and unconditional return, to his constitutional functions, of the legitimate and constitutional […]
Here in America
Here in America pistols are brandished by upbeat protestors swaggering to the downbeat hustle of what are called “town hall meetings” Their pieces swivel cowboy-style on pink stubby fingers like a blur of chrome hubcaps at a Nascar dragstrip Here, at these “town hall meetings” where the Grand Ole Opry meets the Beltway grim men […]
The People’s Drawing Room
Lisa Keller. Triumph of Order: Democracy and Public Space in New York and London. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. xvii + 338 pp. Illustrations. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-14672-2; (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-51847-5. How do a city’s parks, squares, and boulevards enable democracy, and how does the local state negotiate the sometimes fine line between free […]
