Geography Archives: Americas

The recent Stanford University report on drone strikes in Pakistan, Living Under Drones, raises the possibility that the US is intentionally using drones, not merely as hi-tech assassination devices, but also as weapons of state terror intended to subdue unruly regions and populations.  The appalling reality of drone warfare along the Afghanistan border closely resembles […]

With signs of a global economic downturn mounting, US aggression across the Middle East and North Africa ratchets up.  Once again, US imperialism stands poised to open the gates of Hell. According to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook report released last week, the “risks for a serious global slowdown are alarmingly high.”  The report projects […]

  Candlelit Vigil to Honor Martyrs of the Maspero Massacre Friday, 12th October 2012, 7:00 PM Union Square, Manhattan October 9, 2012 marked the one year anniversary of what has come to be known as the Maspero massacre, one of the numerous bloody attacks deliberately orchestrated and executed by counterrevolutionary forces under the direction of […]

Susan Sontag.  As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980.  Edited by David Rieff.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. I. David Rieff has played the last of Susan Sontag’s jokes upon the reader: to remain austerely cool, distant, and unsympathetic toward us even in “journals and notebooks.”  The barbed wire of […]

Popular momentum is building to ensure that any settlement coming out of upcoming Colombian government peace negotiations with insurgents promotes social justice. New prisoner resistance and recent documentation of abuses in Colombian prisons serve as reminders that, ideally, a peaceful and just Colombian society should promote prisoner rights.  Indeed, “Our people and a bit of […]

On Saturday, August 18, several cars and a pickup truck with signs on top, in the windows or on bumpers, drove into the Whole Foods Market (WFM) parking lot in Brentwood, which borders St. Louis, Missouri.  Police approached as soon as they arrived. “Yes, officer, we will take the signs off of the cars if […]

My voice is a crime, My thoughts anarchy, Because I do not sing to their tunes, I do not carry them on my shoulders. — Cherabandaraju, who was the lead accused in a “conspiracy case” involving poets and their poetry. It’s been two decades and a year since India’s elite embraced neo-liberalism.  Money — the […]

An extraordinary mensch, an extraordinary filmmaker who made extraordinary films and lived to the extraordinary age of 101, Kurt Maetzig, who died last week, was virtually unknown in the United States, indeed, in the western world generally.  The reason: he lived and worked in East Germany, the German Democratic Republic, whose films — many mediocre […]

Howard Zinn.  The Historic Unfulfilled Promise.  Foreword by Matthew Rothschild.  San Francisco: City Lights, 2012.  256 pages. Howard Zinn was called a lot of different names: anarchist, socialist, and communist.  He called himself a lot of different names, too: anarchist, socialist, and communist.  No one ever seems to have called him Zen, but maybe it’s […]

Travel to Venezuela for the Elections!  October 1-9, 2012 This October, witness one of the most important elections in the history of Venezuela — and of the hemisphere.  On October 7, the people of Venezuela will exercise their right to vote and decide whether to carry forward the Bolivarian Revolution through the reelection of President […]

In a recent PBS interview with Bill Moyers, journalist Chris Hedges discussed protest for social change.  “Revolt,” he said, apropos of salvaging a collapsing world, “is all we have.  It is our only hope.” I agree.  So would my friend Tito Gerassi, who believed all his life in revolution.  And, since rising unemployment is part […]

Several thousand union and non-union workers came together in Manhattan the afternoon of July 24 for an unusual display of solidarity between people who until the 2008 economic crisis had often seemed to belong to completely different social classes. The event, the “New York Workers Rising Day of Action,” brought out a mix of low-wage […]

  Testimony of Rev. Ismael Moreno Coto, S.J. for the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission hearing on “Worldwide Threats to Media Freedom,” 25 July 2012 Standing up for freedom of expression is, without a doubt, one of the most uncomfortable experiences in life; and in a country like Honduras, it means living with anxiety, insecurity, […]

  Montevideo From his usual table at Café Brasilero downtown, leaving the cold weather of southern winter outside its large window, Eduardo Galeano insists that “the grandeur of humanity lies in small things, quotidian things, done every day, what’s done by the nameless without knowing that they are doing it.” So, his answers mingle with […]

My wife’s uncle, Adil, was shot and killed in cold blood in a Damascus street.  He had no blackmail money.  He was poor.  So he was shot.  He was shot by killers financed and organized by the USA and Turkey, in particular by Barack Obama and Turkey’s prime minister and prime collaborator, and their equally […]

Communiqué The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comandante Hugo Chávez, in the name of the Bolivarian government and the Venezuelan people strongly condemns the terrorist attack perpetrated today in the city of Damascus, Syrian Arab Republic, causing more deaths of civilians and high-ranking officials of the Syrian government. The Bolivarian government wishes to […]

Each bullet hole on the downtown Asunción, Paraguay light posts tells a story.  Some of them are from civil wars decades ago, some from successful and unsuccessful coups, others from police crackdowns.  The size of the hole, the angle of the ricochet, all tell of an escape, a death, another dictator in the palace by […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. Mark Weisbrot, “Mexico Still Far From Fair Elections” (9 July 2012). | Print

(For Justin Hero Cassell) I heard a foolish man say the other day that everything of interest on the island of Montserrat can be seen in two days.  I kept my own counsel and did not talk of either his mother or his lineage.  But the truth is this, friend: It takes a week at […]

I sent the following note to Amnesty on June 16 after it put out a detailed report on the conflict in Syria: Dear Amnesty In your most recent report on Syria you ask the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on the Syrian government.  You ask for no such arms embargo on the […]