Geography Archives: Americas

Within a few days the book titled The Strategic Victory, in which I narrate the battle waged for the extermination of the little Rebel Army, is to be published.

I begin it with an introduction in which I explain my doubts as to its title “…I didn’t know whether to call it ‘Batista’s Last Offensive’ or ‘How 300 defeated 10,000,'” the latter of which sounded like a science fiction story.

It includes a small autobiography: “I did not wish to wait for the publication some day of the responses to numerous questions asked me about my childhood, adolescence and youth, stages which converted me into a revolutionary and armed combatant.

Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  This cartoon was published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 27 July 2010.  Cf. Hugh Bronstein, “Colombia Taking Venezuela Rebel Accusation to OAS” (Reuters, 17 July 2010); “Chávez advierte que EE.UU. está detrás de acusaciones […]

  Financial crises and uncertainty go hand in hand; some make sacrifices and others plan on having to.  But how many countries stricken by the global crisis actually feel existentially threatened? Iceland does.  Since the start of the kreppa (“catastrophe” in Icelandic) in the fall of 2008, the small island nation of 320,000 has had […]

Joyce Appleby.  The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism.  New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.  $29.95.  Pp. xii, 494. Joyce Appleby, who taught U.S. history for many years at UCLA, presided over both the Organization of American Historians and American Historical Association, and served her term as professor-in-exile among the Brits at Oxford, comes to the […]

In much of the world, including the United States and Europe, a debate is taking place about whether the government’s first responsibility should be to reduce unemployment — which is at elevated levels — or to reduce government deficits and debt.  Many of the arguments for deficit reduction are simplistic, based on ignorance, or ideologically-based. […]

DKK: Joan, because people know you as many things — as a theorist of gender, as a cultural historian, as an inveterate advocate for academic freedom and defender of the rights of the professoriate — I’m curious how you would describe yourself to someone who had never met Joan Scott. JWS: That’s really hard . […]

  Paul Jay: So we’ve been talking about macroeconomic policy, the G-20, austerity.  And there was one little line in the G-20 document I thought was interesting, and it’s sort of buried in amongst everything.  It said countries could facilitate wages going up proportional to productivity, which is rather interesting, ’cause it’s the only time […]

  In international politics, if an action seems reckless or callous and the ones taking it are not certified loonies, usually it’s because it was made to look that way, on purpose.  To send a message. Take Israel’s attack in international waters on a civilian flotilla that resulted in the death of nine Turkish passengers. […]

As we have pointed out on more than one occasion in this space, the government deficit is far from being a primary trouble spot.  In fact it serves as an important counteracting force to the prevailing stagnation.  On the other hand, the business community here and abroad sees the deficit, presumably because of its effect […]

I recently returned from the quadrennial International Sociology Association’s World Congress held in Gothenburg, Sweden.  It’s kind of like the World Cup of sociology.  There I sat in on a session organized by the Iranian Sociology Association, where a few presenters, including its president Hossein Serajzadeh, discussed the state of social science in Iran.  I […]

I love the prospect of secular stagnation (raised by Bob Reich) primarily because the answers are so easy: Let’s keep our eyes on the ball.  The problem in this picture is that we are capable of producing more goods and services than we want to consume.  It’s a problem of too little money chasing too […]

No medium of propaganda is as powerful and effective as film.  Think of the classics, the most notorious efforts to sway the public with the electrifying and collective passion of cinema: racial apartheid was justified in the US with Birth of a Nation.  The Soviets glorified their revolution with The Battleship Potemkin.  Then there was […]

  Excerpt: Between December 2007 — the official first month of the recession — and December 2009, the U.S. economy lost more than eight million jobs.  Even if the economy creates jobs from now on at a pace equal to the fastest four years of the early 2000s expansion, we will not return to the […]

  Day One of the ICAHD Work Camp, July 19, 2010 Rubble covers the tile floor at the site of the demolished home we are beginning to rebuild in the East Jerusalem section of Anata, a Palestinian town divided between occupied “East” Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.  Activists from the United States, Britain, Germany, […]

  “At all times throughout history the ideology of the ruling class is the ruling ideology.” — Karl Marx Lynne Stewart is a friend.  She used to practice law in New York City.  I still do.  I was in the courtroom with my wife Debby the afternoon of July 19th for her re-sentencing.  Judge John […]

When is a tax haven not a tax haven?  When Mauritius’ Vice Prime Minister Ramakrishna Sithanen says so.  “We are a not a tax haven,” stated Sithanen, who is also the country’s Minister of Finance.  Ironically, Sithanen would go on to reveal that ring-fenced financial services (FS) — the legal and financial secrecy vehicles facilitating […]

  Executive Summary: This report concludes that military action against Iran should be ruled out as a means of responding to its possible nuclear weapons ambitions.  The consequences of such an attack would lead to a sustained conflict and regional instability that would be unlikely to prevent the eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran […]

It has become an annual ritual each July to commemorate the “Srebrenica massacre,” which dates back to July 11-16, 1995.  The now institutionalized characterization is that “8,000 [Bosnian Muslim] men and boys” were executed by the Serbs at that time, in “the worst mass killing in Europe since the Second World War.”  This memorial is […]

  Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil.  Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007.  Vii + 208 pp.  Illustrations, notes, and index.  $24.94 U.S. (cl), ISBN 978-0-691-1243-5. On March 15, 2004, the French government passed a law banning the wearing of « conspicuous signs » of religious affiliation within public schools.  The decision […]

  “In contrast to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, no one is predicting that it will possible to contain the blood spill that is being prepared for the Persian Gulf.” Pedro Méndez Suárez is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 19 July 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi […]