Geography Archives: Americas

In this interview, author and activist Michael Albert discusses his new book, RPS/2044: An Oral History of the Next American Revolution.

There is now a political appointee of the Trump administration at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), John Konkus, reviewing grant solicitations and proposals in the public affairs office.

The 25-year national gamble on charter schools has been a losing bet, resulting in a series of missed opportunities and creating a tragic distraction from what most education researchers agree are the real inequities underlying the so-called achievement gap, former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch said this week.

The implications of Marxist state theories developed by Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband are useful for framing issues related to leftist strategy in twenty-first century Venezuela. A relationship exists between each of the theories and three issues facing the Chavista movement: whether the bourgeoisie (or sectors of it) displays a sense of ‘class consciousness’; the viability of tactical and strategic alliances between the left and groups linked to the capitalist structure; and whether socialism is to be achieved through stages, abrupt revolutionary changes, or ongoing state radicalization over a period of time. During Poulantzas’ lifetime, his concept of the state as a ‘strategic battlefield’ lent itself to the left’s promotion of ‘strategic alliances’ with parties to its right. The same concept is compatible with the ‘process of change’ in Venezuela, in which autonomous movements play a fundamental role in transforming the old state and the construction of new state structures.

Only mainstream macroeconomists could possibly have thought that capitalism is self stabilizing. The rest of us—who have read Marx and Keynes…—actually knew something about the roots of capitalist instability.

Corporate media have a long history of lamenting wars they themselves helped sell the American public, but it’s rare so many wars and so much hypocrisy are distilled into one editorial.

If newness doesn’t win everyone’s heart, then BEAUTIFUL will definitely do it. Who likes UGLY military equipment? Even the people we slaughter all over the world insist upon good-looking guns and bombs.

Given the thick haze of disinformation surrounding the economic situation in Venezuela, we thought it would be useful to publish the first chapter of The Visible Hand of the Market: Economic Warfare in Venezuela.

What happened to Herman isn’t unique in New York State, where brutal—sometimes fatal—assaults by guards on prisoners have persisted for years.

The images below are from a lecture I gave to at SOAS, London University, on 18 October. This was part of a series organised by the SOAS Economics Department, and my lecture covered the forms taken by corporate power today, focusing on Apple, Google/Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba.

When parents turn childhood into a left-wing boot camp, their kids are not likely to remain on the shining path of their own politics for long. In fact, when the personal gets too political, parent-child relationships can be poisoned with resentment, anger, and recriminations.

There was only once, in the final year of my PhD, that my supervisor and I butted heads. I had just submitted my fourth chapter for her review and, because I was living in another city at the time, she sent me an email saying we needed to speak on the phone urgently.

The recent “burqa bans” in Austria and Quebec appear to be troubling legal manifestations of the rising tide of Islamaphobia in Europe and North America.

The resounding Chavista victory in the October 15 gubernatorial elections provides a golden opportunity to take bold measures to overcome shortcomings even while risking clashes with powerful individuals or groups.

In a context as special as the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the murder of Ernesto Che Guevara, the participants of the Second Latin American Encounter of Anti Imperialist Communicators, gathered in Vallegrande, Bolivia, couldn’t help being touched by the thought and practice of journalist and communicator Guevara.

Believing in Che is, above all, permanently fueling the possibility of a revolution. Making the revolution every day.

Last week, CNN’s Jake Tapper interviewed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and asked if he thought President Donald Trump’s punishing response to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico had something to do with “race or ethnicity.” Sanders hesitated a bit but ultimately said, “We have a right to be suspect.”

The United Socialist Party of Venezuela won 54 percent of the total vote, marking a significant recovery since the ruling party’s landslide defeat in 2015 parliamentary elections when it garnered only 43.7 percent of the vote.

The long-awaited The Vietnam War documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick has arrived. It is powerful and moving, disturbing, enlightening, and challenging. But it is not without its omissions and distortions.

It is an understatement to say that relations between the US and North Korea are very tense—the US government continues to threaten to further tighten economic sanctions on North Korea and launch a military attack to destroy the country’s missiles and nuclear weapons infrastructure.  And the North for its part has said it would respond to any attack with its own strikes against US bases in the region and even the US itself.