“Con este último pago (al Banco Mundial), esa deuda que era en 1998 de casi 3 mil millones de dólares, les puedo decir hoy que no tenemos ni un centavo de deuda ni con el Fondo Monetario Internacional, ni con el Banco Mundial”, exclamó. Declaraciones del Presidente Chávez (MP3 3m) Haga click para escuchar el […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
“We Talk about the Truth, and That’s Hard for People to Accept Sometimes”:A Conversation with Three Iraq Veterans against the War
When I was in high school, I lived on a military base and socialized and worked with GIs opposed to the war in Vietnam. These guys weren’t very different from me — we liked rock and soul music and we liked to get high — yet most of them had experienced war. That was something […]
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (and Why They Don’t Want Anyone to See It)
“Out of sight, out of mind” is a basic rule of political propaganda. If a political event is not reported to the public, the public cannot react to it. If that same event is misreported, public reaction can be manipulated. U.S. reports on the attempted coup to overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002 were […]
Straight from the Billionaire’s Mouth
Social critics, from Ida B. Wells to Noam Chomsky, recognize that the elite press can serve as the best tool against the elite. Today’s business magazines have no problem “naming the system,” and they write with clarity and frankness on the inner workings of capitalism and imperialism. My good friend and correspondent Skip recently sent […]
Why U.S. Trade Unionists Should Attend the U.S. Social Forum
Trade Unions and Social Forums Since 2001, trade unions and other social movements, ranging from environmentalists to women’s organizations, from urban youth movements to indigenous peoples fighting for land rights, have come together at the World Social Forum (WSF) to debate and promote alternatives to the race-to-the-bottom, corporate model of globalization. While participation from U.S. […]
Human Development and Practice
Opening comments at Conference on Participation, Change, and Human Development at the Centro Internacional Miranda in Caracas, Venezuela on 27 March 2007 The Bolivarian Constitution, in my view, is unique in its explicit recognition (in Article 299) that the goal of a human society must be that of “ensuring overall human development.” From the declaration […]
Neoliberalism and Canada’s Ruling Class
For a discipline explicitly engaged in the study of power, particularly as exercised in liberal democracies, it is striking how little Canadian political science has actually examined the concentration of private economic power, the political organization of the business classes and the extension of that power into the political realm. Indeed, Canadian political science has […]
Ten Lashes against Humanism [Diez azotes contra el humanismo]
Una tradición menor del pensamiento conservador es la definición del adversario dialéctico por su falta de moral y por sus deficiencias mentales. Como esto nunca llega a ser un argumento, se encubre el exabrupto con algún razonamiento fragmentado y repetido, propio del pensamiento posmoderno de la propaganda política. No es casualidad que en América Latina […]
Wynton Marsalis Checks In on The Land That Never Has Been Yet: A Review of From the Plantation to the Penitentiary (Blue Note, 2007)
I’ve been listening to Wynton Marsalis’ new disc From the Plantation to the Penitentiary a lot. It’s got the music — a neat jazz combo running through a variety of styles. It’s just enough bop and bebop so it doesn’t put one to sleep like a Kenny G. solo, but it’s not an avalanche of […]
The Internationalization of Genocide
Havana. April 4, 2007 The Camp David meeting has just ended. We all listened with interest to the press conference by the presidents of the United States and Brazil, as well as news about the meeting and opinions stated. Confronted by the demands of his Brazilian visitor regarding import tariffs and subsidies that protect and […]
China Blue: The Girls at the Other End of the Supply Chain
Good documentary films help us understand the world by allowing us to see things outside of, but relevant to, our immediate experience. Occasionally, we discover one that expands and alters our worldview. China Blue, a film directed by Micha X. Peled, is one of those rare finds. In this film, the viewer meets the girls […]
A Compendium on the Iraq War
Judging by the intensity of the debate that plagued much of the 2004 presidential election, the divisiveness of the Vietnam war has not been resolved. If anything it has festered, inflamed by similar concerns and questions regarding the legality, morality, purpose, and necessity of the war in Iraq. The continued polemic about a war […]
Reflections of President Fidel Castro
Havana March 29, 2007 More than three billion people in the world condemned to premature death from hunger and thirst. THAT is not an exaggerated figure, but rather a cautious one. I have meditated a lot on that in the wake of President Bush’s meeting with U.S. automobile manufacturers. The sinister idea of converting food […]
Bolivia: A Movement toward or beyond “Statism”?
It is now more than three decades since neoliberal economic and political ideas began to supplant Keynesian orthodoxies within the treasuries and finance ministries of Western governments and in the policy-making centers of development agencies and financial institutions. Bolivia was one of the first Latin American countries to adopt a neoliberal approach back in the […]
Against Party Bureaucracy: Venezuela’s PSUV and Socialism from Below
In recent weeks, it has become clear that three of the major parties constituting the Chavista coalition will not immediately dissolve themselves to pave the way for the construction of the unified socialist party (PSUV) that president Hugo Chávez has demanded be created to usher in the next phase of the revolution. These “dissidents” include […]
Capitalism’s Three Oscillations and the US Today
Throughout its history and across its geography, capitalism has swung back and forth between private and state forms. The former reduces while the latter enlarges the state’s intervention in the economy. The economic events that precipitate swings (in both directions) have been various mixes of recession and widening inequality. Political oscillations have paralleled the economic. […]
The Empire Tightens Its Grip: DHS Targets Cross-Border Activist
Because empire creates so many enemies it has to be rigorously defended. To gain support of the citizenry, agents of empire create bogeymen, founded in fact but demonized, behind which the ongoing work of empire can be accomplished. In the 20th century the demon was communism; in the 21st it is terrorism. Currently, defense of […]
Capital and Empire: An Interview with John Bellamy Foster
Q. 2007 is the 140th anniversary of the publication of Volume One of Marx’s Capital. In your opinion, what is its main contribution to understanding contemporary capitalism? Marx’s object in Capital was to explain capital as a social relation in the fullest dialectical sense and in the process to describe its law(s) of motion. I […]
Hating the Rich
“The rich are not like you and me.” “The poor will always be with us.” Get real and accept it, we are told. Give alms and aid to the poor, tax the rich. Establish private foundations, be a responsible trust baby and give. You’ve heard it all and maybe even believe it in your heart. […]
Canada and World Order after the Wreckage
The active imagining of an alternate global politics could hardly be more pressing. Mounting global inequalities, the turbulence of climate change, and recurring military interventions by Western powers have been the daily fare of the neoliberal world order. This world order was constructed over the last two decades under the hegemony of the U.S., in […]
