Geography Archives: Americas

A year after the chaotic Copenhagen summit, the 2010 UNFCCC climate conference begins in Cancun.  Expectations are low this time around, especially compared to the eve of Copenhagen. That’s probably both good and bad.  The conference last year had been so hyped up beforehand, with so much hopes linked to it, that the lack of […]

Trade disputes with China have been heating up lately, but there really is no reason for the hostility.  Essentially the dispute boils down to the fact that China wants to subsidize the consumption of people in the United States and elsewhere, by propping up the value of the dollar. This is raising objections from the […]

The media spin on the latest batch of WikiLeaks revelations gives the impression that, next to Israel, it’s the Arab states that are most energetically pressuring the U.S. to attack Iran.  In terms of the real threat to Iran, that’s definitely putting the cart before the horse. In the first place, the Arab governments mentioned […]

  It was cold in the tiny, windowless interview room at the Wood Street Police Station.  I looked across the wooden table at the large-boned woman with a short Afro who was shaking and sobbing. . . .  “Fred never really woke up,” she said.  “He was lying there when they pulled me out of […]

There is much to talk about when the United States is involved in a colossal scandal as a consequence of the documents published by Wikileaks, whose authenticity – independent of any other motivation on the part of that website – has not been questioned by anyone. However, at this moment, our country is immersed in […]

By July 24, 2009, the U.S. government was totally clear about the basic facts of what took place in Honduras on June 28, 2009.  The U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa sent a cable to Washington with subject: “Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup,” asserting that “there is no doubt” that the events of […]

November 29, 2010 We will be writing about the WikiLeaks documents and Iran throughout this week.  As we sort through the cables that are available so far, the first major point is that, as even the New York Times‘ quasi-neoconservative David Sanger and his colleagues noted in their first story on the documents, the Obama […]

  Reference ID Date Classification Origin 09RPODUBAI177 2009-04-22 11:11 SECRET//NOFORN Iran RPO Dubai Game of Attrition.  Ahmadinejad’s defeats on the budget and his plan to distribute cash payments to lower-income Iranians show that power centers, such as the Majles, are actively working to pressure the President prior to the June election, according to [Source removed].  […]

  Reference ID Date Classification Origin 09TEGUCIGALPA645 2009- 07-24 00:12 CONFIDENTIAL Embassy Tegucigalpa VZCZCXYZ0000 OO RUEHWEB DE RUEHTG #0645/01 2050023 ZNY CCCCC ZZH O 240023Z JUL 09 FM AMEMBASSY TEGUCIGALPA TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0237 INFO RUEHZA/WHA CENTRAL AMERICAN COLLECTIVE IMMEDIATE RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS IMMEDIATE 0735 RHEHAAA/THE WHITE HOUSE WASHDC IMMEDIATE RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC IMMEDIATE RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON […]

The economic crisis that Obama rode to victory in 2008 also rode him down in the 2010 elections.  Obama and his economic advisors badly “mismanaged the crisis.”  While the Obama team seems to have learned little from its failure, we need to draw its lessons if we are to reduce the costly social consequences of […]

Bolivian President Evo Morales lamented this Friday that his proposal as well as that of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, calling on the rich countries to halve their greenhouse gas emissions, has not been welcomed into the Cancún Summit on climate change to be held next week. Morales indicated at a press conference that the petitions […]

There has been much publicity about the so-called “currency war” arising from the discussions at the recent G20 meeting.  Can you explain what is meant by currency war? The discourse, the rhetoric, on the currency war is very superficial and even misleading.  As everybody knows, what is being said is that the Chinese yuan is […]

Since returning to government service to take up his current position, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been a sober skeptic about the wisdom of military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets — under President Obama as well as under President George W. Bush, and regardless of whether such strikes would be carried out by the […]

An unprecedented meeting had taken place in the United States Capitol building between a group of legislators from the fascist right of that country and leaders of the Latin American right and pro-coup oligarchy. In that meeting there was talk of the defeat of the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. The event took […]

Negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program are due to start again shortly, and once again the European Union is called upon as a “mediator.”  This is no minor challenge.  With Iran insisting on discussing Israel’s nuclear capacity and the United States preparing a tougher uranium swap agreement, a deal seems as far away as ever.  Nevertheless, […]

When a firefighter or medical team make a rescue, the person is usually better off as a result.  This is less clear when the rescuer is the European Central Bank (ECB) or the IMF. Ireland is currently experiencing a 14.1 percent unemployment rate.  As a result of bailout conditions that will require more cuts in […]

  Some time before the offer [at the meetings with the IMF and the WB in Dubai on 22 September 2003], [Argentine Economy Minister Roberto] Lavagna was already preparing the ground: he realized that after the offer “there are going to be sad faces everywhere.”  And indeed the first reaction of the creditors was rejection. […]

Acclaimed philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He shared his perspectives on international affairs, economics, and other themes in an interview conducted at his office in Boston on September 14, 2010. Keane Bhatt: Your new book Hopes and Prospects begins with the story of […]

  Table 14 summarizes the main technical characteristics of the debt restructurings studied in this paper: the size of the exchange, the participation rate, the numbers of instruments tendered and new instruments issued, the options available to investors, etc.  Table 15 contains the main results, both in terms of the level and dispersion of NPV […]

Many people feel sickened on hearing the name of that organization. On Friday, November 19, 2010 in Lisbon, Portugal, the 28 members of that bellicose institution engendered by the United States, decided to create what they cynically describe as “the new NATO.” The institution emerged after World War II as an instrument of the Cold […]