Islamabad, Pakistan — Some lessons learned while spending time in a different culture come from paying attention to the wide diversity in how we humans arrange ourselves socially. Equally crucial lessons come from seeing patterns in how people behave similarly in similar situations, even in very different cultural contexts. This week in Pakistan, as I […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
Florida Unilaterally Restricts Travel to Iran, “State Sponsors of Terror”
National Call-in Day on Iran Blockade Resolutions Wednesday, July 9 is a national call-in day for H.Con.Res 362, the blockade resolution.Call your member of Congress and ask him or her not to support a blockade on Iran. Washington, DC — A law has been passed by the Florida legislature making it significantly more difficult […]
Iran-US: A Gesture for Peace
July the 3rd marked the 20th anniversary of the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the US-guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, killing all its 290 passengers. The timing of the shootdown in 1988 and the circumstances surrounding it were significant in that they contradict the US government’s official position describing the incident as wholly […]
Is Iran Currently an Existential Threat to the United States? A Side-By-Side Comparison of Military Capabilities
A side-by-side comparison of the two countries’ conventional military capabilities demonstrates the overwhelming superiority of the United States. It is time to inject realism into discussions about U.S.-Iranian relations. Hyping the threat about Iran obscures the bottom line: Iran does not currently represent an existential threat to the United States or its allies, and […]
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits Be Won in US Courts?
A telling remark about US imperialism’s double standards was uttered by Clinton-era deputy treasury secretary Stuart Eizenstat, who a decade ago was the driver of reparations claims against pro-Nazi corporations, assisting plaintiffs to gain $8 billion from European banks and corporations which ripped off Holocaust victims’ funds or which were 1930s beneficiaries of slave labor […]
Bolivia: Regroup the Patriotic Movement
The decree to nationalize hydrocarbons (1 May 2006), which enjoyed 95% public approval, was the zenith of the Evo Morales government. Now it has lost the Chuquisaca Prefecture, by a narrow margin, but legally, which lets the referendums that approved the autonomy statutes in Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni, and Pando camouflage their illegality. It should […]
An Open Letter to Barack Obama on Iran
Dear Senator Obama, We the undersigned may have different views on U.S. foreign policy with respect to Iran. We all, however, are deeply concerned about the stories in the press in the past few weeks suggesting that the Bush administration might be considering a military strike on Iran, that it might give a green light […]
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?
The aftershocks of the late-May defeat of the American Axle and Manufacturing (AAM) strike will be felt in the unionized sections of the auto industry — and beyond — for years to come. Swinging in line with the deep concessions made in the Big 3 contract settlements last fall, the AAM deal effectively completes the […]
Evaluation of the June 28-29, 2008 National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation
Our overall assessment is that the conference was an overwhelming success. Over 400 people from many parts of the country and Canada attended, including a bus of 44 — mostly youth — from Connecticut (see breakdown by states below*). The conference met its main objective, which was to urge united and massive mobilizations in the […]
When the Tough Decide to Become Diplomatic
President George W. Bush and his neo-con coterie made it a point of pride that their relationship to regimes they did not like was one of toughness, not of soft-soap diplomacy. In his State of the Union speech in 2002, Bush denounced the “Axis of Evil” — composed of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea — […]
OPEC Warns against Iran War
Oil prices rise and rise. New record on Thursday: a barrel (159 liters) of oil costs more than US$145 for the first time. In the event of an attack on Iran, prices could really explode. Yesterday, the Secretary General of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Abdallah Salem El-Badri, warned. “It would be […]
The Rise of Food Fascism: Allied to Global Agribusiness, Agrarian Elite Foments Coup in Bolivia
Like many third-world countries, Bolivia is experiencing food shortages and rising food prices attributable to a global food marketing system driven by multinational agribusiness corporations. With sixty percent of the Bolivian population living in poverty and thirty-three percent in extreme poverty, the price of the basic food canasta — including wheat, rice, corn, soy […]
Arroyo Welcomes More US Participation in the “Killing Fields” of the Philippines in the Guise of Humanitarian Intervention
A historic event worthy of the Guinness Book may have occurred in Washington in the last week of June. The worst “torture” president that the United States has ever had met the most corrupt and brutal president ever inflicted on the Filipino people. Grotesque or farcical? Bush is now credited with the horrendous deaths […]
CUBA: Toward Gay Marriage
Shasta Darlington, CNN Maylin Alonso, TeleSur Broadcast on the occasion of International Day against Homophobia (17 May) in 2008. | | Print
Iraq: We All Work for the Casino in the Green Zone
As you know, there’s a talk of developing the Green Zone. The Marriott Hotel chain is here, and I too am involved in hospitality. I’m representing interests that are building a hotel. . . . Five stars, a casino, gambling, and it’s going to be here in the Green Zone. The sponsors are a […]
Lebanon: Five Reasons That Demand Women’s Participation in Government
In his book entitled Silence of the Poor, French writer Henri Guillemin said that those who were the foundation of the victory of the Revolution of 1789, the urban and rural poor, including women, were excluded from politics by an electoral law giving the right to elect and be elected only to citizens who could […]
Bolivia: Between Popular Reform and Illegal Resistance
Two members from a rightwing Santa Cruz youth group were arrested outside the Trompillo airport on June 19 with a rifle, telescopic sight, and 300 rounds of ammunition in a purported assassination attempt on President Evo Morales. In an unprecedented and highly questionable move, the accused were freed the very next day by a […]
Catastrophic Equilibrium and Point of Bifurcation
Introduction by Richard Fidler The following article, based on a speech given in December 2007 but only recently transcribed and published, is an important statement by a leading member of Evo Morales’ government on the political situation in Bolivia in the wake of the Constituent Assembly’s vote on a draft Political Constitution. The draft Constitution […]
Anti-FSLN Opposition Seeks Unity to Topple Ortega Government
On June 11 the axe of Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) came down on the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS1) and the old historic Conservative Party of Nicaragua (PCN), now a tiny shell of its former self. The CSE unanimously decided to deregister both parties on the grounds that they had failed to fulfill the requirements […]
On a Quest for Secular Piety: Reviewing Tarek Fatah’s Chasing a Mirage
Tarek personally asked me to review his book, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State (CM). With a book being favorably reviewed in the Canadian (and US and UK) media, including the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Huffington Post, the UK Guardian, and the Asper-family owned newspapers (Ottawa Citizen and […]
