Geography Archives: Americas

  Michael Axworthy.  A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind.  New York: Basic Books, 2008.  352 pp.  $27.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-465-00888-9. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, a large number of Iranians joined the ranks of expatriates living in Europe and the United States.  Suddenly uprooted and finding themselves in unfamiliar surroundings, some of […]

  Abstract: What is the effect of the spread of nuclear weapons on international politics?  The scholarly debate pits proliferation optimists, who claim that “more may be better,” against proliferation pessimists, who argue that “more will be worse.”  These scholars focus on the aggregate effects of nuclear proliferation, but never explicitly consider the differential effects […]

The original title for the article that follows was “Response to ‘Raoul Djukanovic’.”  “RD” is the Internet pseudonym of Daniel Simpson, who we mention in our second paragraph (below), and who, as a member of what we refer to as the Bosnia Genocide Lobby, assails us wherever we publish something related to the former Yugoslavia.  […]

  Eric Davis.  Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.  397 pp.  $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-520-23546-5. This review has been a long time coming, but during this time, Davis’s book has become the subject of extensive comment, achieving an almost iconic, certainly landmark, status in […]

(PU) Last night, in another embarrassing lapse of security, nine Secret Service agents were trampled to death when approximately 658,000 U.S. residents of every race, age, and sexual orientation mobbed the White House, demanding admission to a state dinner.  Most explained that their reason for crashing the dinner was to have a chance at appearing […]

Jesse Freeston, Producer, The Real News Network: The Honduran elections of Sunday, November 29 were unique in that they were less about who was going to win than they were about how many people were going to vote.  Both major presidential candidates were supporters of the June 28 coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya and […]

  General elections were held in Bolivia on Sunday, December 6, 2009.  A few weeks before these elections I had the opportunity to discuss the contours of Evo Morales’ first term in office with the Bolivian Ambassador to Canada, Edgar Tórrez Mosqueira.  The following interview provides a backdrop to the elections that were held yesterday, […]

  Explaining about a draft agreement on nuclear fuel for the Tehran research reactor, Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Manouchehr Mottaki noted: “The two sides decided to review the draft.  It is being reviewed in Vienna, and Iran will soon declare its viewpoint.”  However, some officials have already voiced their opposition to the recent nuclear […]

Over the last decade an epoch-making political change has taken place in the Western Hemisphere: Latin America, a region that was once considered the United States’ “back yard,” is now more independent of Washington than Europe is. But while Latin America has changed, U.S. foreign policy has not — even now, with the election of […]

An important feature of the global monetary regime of the last three decades is the imbalance in the distribution of current account balances across countries and country groupings.  Recently, the most glaring discrepancy is the fact that a huge US balance of payments deficit is being substantially financed by developing countries and not largely by […]

The mass slaughter of 57 civilians in Maguindanao, the Philippines, on November 23 by a local warlord may seem a minor incident compared with the much more heinous destruction of whole villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan by US drones.  In the Philippines, however, it acquires symbolic density by the resonance of contextual historic factors linked […]

Torrential rain didn’t keep voters away from the polls on Sunday, November 29th when José “Pepe” Mujica was elected president with 52% of the vote.  The 74-year-old Agricultural Minister spent 14 years in jail for his participation in the Tupamaro guerilla movement and has pledged to continue the policies of his predecessor, current left-leaning president […]

Boston, MA, December 4, 2009 — “More tax breaks for the super wealthy is one of the last things our economy needs right now,” says Lee Farris, Estate Tax Policy Coordinator for United for a Fair Economy (UFE). “Back in 2001, the Bush Administration enacted a massive tax cut for multi-millionaires by gradually reducing the estate tax over several years. Now, instead of reversing at least part of this damaging Bush tax break, the House voted to make that cut permanent.”

By giving Israel veto rights and threatening more sanctions, the U.S. is squandering the best chance we have for a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Ordinarily, it would have been easy to dismiss the latest resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency censuring Iran as a text, drafted by idiots, full of sound […]

  The elections held in Honduras on November 29 were inherently flawed.  Tens of thousands of troops and police officers manned polling stations and even distributed electoral literature.  These forces have been responsible for killings, rapes, beatings, and detentions of people opposed to the coup.  Media reports cited many people who said they did not […]

Less than 100 miles from Guantanamo, 200 delegates from 54 nations and all seven continents converged in Holguín, Cuba between November 19-23rd.  The occasion was the Fifth International Colloquium dedicated to five Cuban political prisoners who have been held for eleven years in prisons across the United States.  I was one of the U.S. participants […]

Abstract: The terrain of “progressive labor” in the U.S. has shifted dramatically in recent years.  The two-million member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — long associated with the remaking of labor as a force for social justice — has become embroiled in a series of controversies that have alienated past campus, community, and political allies. […]

  Jean Paul Sartre in the fifties made the somber remark that things were so bad at the Sorbonne in the 1920s that the University did not even have a Chair in Marxism.  In asserting the fact at that time, he was of course assuming that things at mid-century had changed dramatically and that Marxism […]

December 3, 2009 To Whom It May Concern: A modest set of financial transaction taxes could raise a substantial amount of needed revenue while having little impact on trades that have a positive economic impact. The cost of trading financial assets has plummeted over the last three decades as a result of computerization.  This has […]

The new self-titled humanist president has been a key supporter of the regime through five months of massive human rights violations. “They’ve imposed a coup regime on us.  They’ve assassinated at least 34 of our companions since the coup that removed the legitimate president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya Rosales.  Nationwide, they’ve detained more than 5,000 […]