Geography Archives: Americas

Russia went to the Group of Eight (G-8) summit meeting at Deauville as an inveterate critic of the “unilateralist” Western intervention in Libya, but came away from the seaside French resort as a mediator between the West and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.  The United States scored a big diplomatic victory in getting Moscow to work […]

  Michael A. Lebowitz.  The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development.  Monthly Review Press, New York, 2010. Michael Lebowitz’s important book portrays a vision of the socialist alternative to capitalism through a synthesis of some of Marx’s most important philosophical arguments concerning human development, revolutionary practice and radical democracy.  Developed from his experiences in Hugo Chavez’s […]

Venezuela’s central bank (BCV) has released GDP data for the first quarter of 2011.  The report points to an accelerating recovery: GDP grew 4.5% over its first-quarter 2010 level.  However, if we want to look specifically at the first quarter of 2011, we need seasonally adjusted data so we can compare it to the quarter […]

  Executive Summary: The Brazilian economy grew by 4.2 percent annually from 2004-2010, more than double its annual growth from 1999-2003 or indeed its growth rate over the prior quarter century.  This growth was accompanied by a significant reduction in poverty and extreme poverty, especially after 2005, as well as reduced inequality.  This paper looks […]

Ollanta Humala’s apparent presidential electoral victory in Peru represents a consolidation of the gains made by left-leaning leaders in South America over the past decade, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said today. “Democracy, national and regional independence, and economic and social progress have gone hand-in-hand with South America’s leftward political […]

In January the government of the United States of America saw fit to seize $4.207 million in funds allocated to Cuba by the United Nations Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the first quarter of 2011, Cuba has charged.  The UN Fund is a $22 billion a year program that works to […]

  June 2, 2011 Dear Colleague: Yesterday, NATO announced it would continue combat operations in Libya for at least another 90 days.  NATO.  The President went to NATO on Libya, not the U.S. Congress, as the Constitution requires.  The U.S. has thus far provided 93% of the cruise missiles, 66% of the personnel, 50% of […]

On Friday, more than two months after President Obama ordered U.S. forces into a war of choice in Libya without Congressional authorization, and more than two weeks after the expiration of the 60 day limit of the War Powers Resolution for the unauthorized use of force, the House finally debated and voted on the deployment […]

One less emphasised lesson from the global financial crisis was that developing countries that are successful in attracting foreign financial investors take a hit when such a crisis occurs because of a reverse flow of capital.  Foreign financial firms needing to cover losses or meet commitments at home withdraw their capital, generating a credit crunch […]

In just a few days, on June 5th, an election will take place that will have a significant influence on the Western Hemisphere.  At the moment it is too close to call.  Most of official Washington has been relatively quiet, but there is no doubt that the Obama Administration has a big stake in the […]

Just as in past periods of rising struggle, the democratic social and anti-imperialist movement in Egypt is up against a powerful reactionary bloc.  This bloc can perhaps be identified in terms of its social composition (its component classes, of course) but it is just as important to define it in terms of its means of […]

“You better keep ’em far away from the water supply.”

  NBC recently aired a show called America’s Next Great Restaurant.  Contestants, each of whom hoped to open a restaurant chain, were put through a series of tests to see whose idea had the best chance for success.  A panel of judges eliminated one person at the end of each program, until the last one […]

Painful events have been continuing in Syria for nearly two months, since the emergence of a protest movement raising legitimate local and general demands among people in the governorate of Daraa. This movement threw light on the presence of major problems in the political life in Syria: the continuation of the state of emergency, the absence of laws governing political activity, and so on.

Last year, we took the Washington Post‘s Joby Warrick to task for stories he published that relied “almost entirely on unnamed U.S. officials and a known terrorist organization” to advance “Iraq-redux” claims that the Islamic Republic is seeking to build nuclear weapons.  Now, Warrick published a front-page story in the Washington Post — a story […]

  Greenwashing Apartheid: The Jewish National Fund’s Environmental Cover Up.  JNF eBook (Volume 4).  May 15, 2011. The 63-year old State of Israel has had overwhelming success at hiding its true intentions and purposes, effectively whitewashing actions which, if properly understood, would be extremely disturbing to most people.  Thus the passage of laws discriminating on […]

Former Honduran President Zelaya’s return home today has important implications for the Western Hemisphere that, we can predict, will be widely overlooked.  Zelaya was ousted from the presidency when he was kidnapped at gunpoint by the military on June 28, 2009.  Although no hard evidence has yet emerged that the U.S. government was directly involved […]

The last thing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev did before departing for France to attend this week’s Group of Eight summit meeting in Deauville was place a call to Damascus. Prima facie, one may think the call made sense, since, as Reuters reported, “Syria’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests” is going to be high on the agenda […]

In the long and impressive catalogue of Michal Kalecki’s contributions to economics, the proportion of writings devoted to what is now called “development economics” is relatively small.  And most of his work in this area is concise to the point of being terse, in short articles that simply state some crucial principles, typically without much […]

  Compañero Manuel Zelaya: we are back in the place where we last met.  Your return to Honduras is only the first step for which we took to the streets. In Honduras we still await justice and punishment for those responsible for the coup d’état and for the violations of human rights. All of Latin […]