Introduction Vaclav Smil’s Energy in World History (1994) provides an overview of global changes in human energy use from before the Neolithic Revolution to modern times. In various places in the book, Smil discusses the relationship between energy use and the rise of centers of economic and political power in world history. In explaining what […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
May Day Protests Cancelled by Swine Flu (H1N1) As Mexican Workers Face Yet Another Crisis
In Mexico, May Day, the international labor holiday, has been cancelled for the first time in the country’s history. All of the major federations — the government-backed, conservative, and often corrupt “official” unions of the Congress of Labor (CT) as well as the independent National Union of Workers (UNT) and Mexican Union Front (FSM) — […]
The Return of the Shadow
A talk given at a Left Forum panel, April 2009. It’s spring and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about reincarnation. If I’m a good adjunct can I come back as a tenured professor? If I stay a loyal Cub fan, can I come back as a Yankee fan? Actually, it’s political reincarnation that I’ve […]
Re-visiting Race and Class in “The Age of Obama”
Remarks delivered at the Thomas Foley Institute, Washington State University,, Pullman, Washington, April 18, 2009 Recently appointed Attorney General Eric Holder, whose parents hail from the Barbados, aroused instant ire when he remarked last February 18 that the U.S. remains a “nation of cowards” for not talking enough about things racial. But is this […]
Roxana Saberi’s Case: How Should the U.S. Respond?
Q.: Iran is urging President Obama not to comment on Roxana Saberi’s case. How should the Obama administration proceed at this point? “To be honest with you, as of right now, I think the best thing is just to wait. President Ahmadinejad announced that they’re gonna give her a fair shot, and I think […]
Chrysler’s Plan? Send Pay and Standards Down the Drain
The media consensus is that union auto workers escaped the government-imposed restructuring of their industry basically unharmed, exchanging a few dings for control of the companies. Nothing could be further from the truth. Chrysler retirees — like me — were assured in 2007 that our retiree health care benefits, funded through the Voluntary Employee […]
Troubled Assets: The IMF’s Latest Projections for Economic Growth in the Western Hemisphere
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published its latest projections for economic growth around the world.1 At first glance, the IMF projections for Latin America seem unlikely. The IMF has a lengthy record of biased projections of growth in the region2 and has been consistently underestimating growth in countries such as Argentina and Venezuela, which […]
The Immigration System: Maybe Not So Broken
David Bacon, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, Beacon Press, 2008. Hardcover, 261 pages, $26.95. With the Obama administration reportedly set to push for immigration reform this year, the debate on immigration seems likely to start up again. If it’s anything like the debate we got from the mainstream media in previous […]
Has Change Come to Post-Katrina New Orleans? Bush, Obama, and the First 100 Days
As people in the U.S. and around the world evaluate President Barack Obama’s first one-hundred days, many — that is, those who truly wanted a break from the racist, militarist, anti-working class policies of the Bush regime — are coming to the conclusion that the ‘change’ his campaign promised seems to have turned into […]
Let’s Hope This Gift Keeps on Giving
Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, 25th anniversary edition (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997). As Editorial Director of Monthly Review Press, I was delighted to learn that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez gave his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins […]
Lessons from History: The Case against AFRICOM
Africa has historically been less of a priority to U.S. foreign policy planners than other regions, such as the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. This was certainly the case when George W. Bush took office in 2001. But during the course of his tenure, “Africa’s position in the U.S. strategic spectrum . […]
Is Obama a Justice President?
Will Obama emancipate US farmworkers and domestics from involuntary servitude? The man has a busy agenda, but it’s a fair question. The vast majority of immigrants to the US have had to serve a sentence, often a life sentence, of involuntary servitude for the privilege of coming to America. Historically, first generation immigrants have endured […]
Argentina Remembers: Mobilizations Mark 33rd Anniversary of Military Coup
The weekend that the hemisphere’s Presidents met in Trinidad at the Summit of the Americas marked the same weekend that Cuba defeated the US in the Bay of Pigs invasion 48 years ago. At the Summit, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega recalled the invasion in a speech that rightly criticized US imperialism throughout the 20th century. […]
How to Disappear Completely
“We know today is an important day in Argentina, which marks the 33rd anniversary of the military coup d’état. We’d like to dedicate the following song to all the victims who suffered, to those who lost their loved ones, to those who were imprisoned and tortured, to those who were disappeared. . . . […]
Excessive Liquidity Preference
Any recession by definition is associated with an excessive liquidity preference. An ex ante excess supply of goods and services, i.e. the demand for goods and services falling short of the base output at the base prices corresponding to that output, which is what a recession is, must be associated with an ex ante excess […]
Homage to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
A great American theorist and intellectual Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, one of the founders of queer theory and the author of Epistemology of the Closet, Between Men, and Tendencies among other books and articles, died on the night of Sunday, 12 April 2009. To pay homage to her, I posed questions to two of her […]
Israel Forcefully Condemned at UN Conference against Racism
The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, attended the conference to condemn the Israeli government’s brutal and repressive policy against the Palestinians. The European delegates walked out when he called the government of Israel “racist,” but the Latin Americans stayed. The United States and eight other countries boycotted the event. The Israeli government’s stance against […]
“What about Cuba, Mr. Obama?”
Barack Obama hopes to be received differently at the summit in Trinidad and Tobago: he can talk about the crisis, his administration’s new positions on Iraq and Iran, and any number of other things, but he can’t escape the fact that what matters most is his position on Cuba. The imperial vision of the United […]
Eduardo Galeano’s Book Soars to No. 1 after Being Gifted to Obama by Chávez
The Best Seller in a Matter of Hours Open Veins of Latin America, a book by Eduardo Galeano, soared from No. 54,295 to No.1 once the Venezuelan leader gave a copy of it to his US counterpart at the Fifth Summit of the Americas. The Amazon.com sales rank of the English version of Las venas […]
Why Do the NATO Powers Think That Durban 1 Was a Setback and Fear Another at Durban 2?
1. The title of this note is intentional. Over the past twenty years, the Western powers in a military alliance (NATO) have arrogantly cast themselves as representatives of the “international community” and thus marginalized the United Nations, the only institution qualified to speak in its name. This attitude is now systematic, and, in all international […]
