Geography Archives: Americas

Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas.  Produced by Michael Fox and Sílvia Leindecker.  Purchase from PM Press. The new documentary Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas proves that democracy can and should be more than casting a ballot every four years.  This empowering film gives hopeful and concrete examples from around the Americas […]

“Caracas: one of the most dangerous cities of the planet. . .” goes the blurb for the movie Express Kidnapping — the only Venezuelan film viewed internationally so far, and the top grossing movie here. Crime, according to the Latinobarometro 2008 report, is the biggest problem in Venezuela for 57% of its respondents.  So it […]

FTA (Dir. Francine Parker, 1972). Preamble: “This film was made in association with the servicewomen and men stationed on the United States bases of the Pacific Rim, together with their friends whose lands they presently occupy.” Accepting his Oscar for Best Actor, Sean Penn jokingly referred to the Academy as lovers of “commies and homos.”  […]

When Venezuelan voters approved a referendum allowing for indefinite re-election on all elected posts, commentary immediately turned to what the reform meant for chavistas — particularly, the prospect of having Hugo Chávez as president until 2019 or later.  Far less attention was paid to what the defeat meant for the opposition or to its reaction. […]

People in Cincinnati, like others around the country — either having lost their jobs or fearful of losing them — have been waiting anxiously, some desperately, for news that President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan would help them.  Now the news has arrived, and the news is that help is coming.  Help for the banks and […]

MRZine Editor’s Introduction The crisis in which we find ourselves is not a crisis of the capitalist class, much less a crisis of the capitalist mode of production.  Nor is it even a crisis of neoliberalism.   It’s a crisis of the working class, plain and simple.  What’s in store for us, especially in the […]

Background Raymond Deane, “A Public Stoning in Germany,” Electronic Intifada, 6 March 2009; and Yossi Bartal, “The German Left and Israel,” Alternative Information Center, 18 March 2009. We are peace activists of Jewish background.  Some of us typically identify in this way; others of us do not.  But we all object to those who claim […]

Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas.  Produced by Michael Fox and Sílvia Leindecker.  Purchase from PM Press. The new documentary Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas proves that democracy can and should be more than casting a ballot every four years.  This empowering film gives hopeful and concrete examples from around the Americas […]

  Chestnut Hill, MA — After administrators at Boston College forced the cancellation late Friday afternoon of an academic lecture featuring Professor Bill Ayers, student organizers of the event have decided that the show will go on — off-campus.  Student groups and faculty at Boston College drew criticism from a right-wing talk radio show host […]

“It’s a well-established fact,” reports the New York Times Book Review, “that Americans are reading fewer books than they used to.”1  According to the National Endowment for the Arts, more than 50% of those surveyed haven’t cracked a book in the previous year.  In labor circles, the percentage of recent readers may be even smaller.  […]

On Wednesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez convened state governors, city mayors, and legislators from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) to discuss the next stage in the construction of “21st Century Socialism,” following two important electoral victories for Chávez and his supporters over the past four months. Chávez urged governors and mayors to promote […]

Letter from the legitimate president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to Secrectary of State of the Government of the United States of America, Hillary Clinton on the occasion of her visit to Mexico in March 2009.  Translation by Dan La Botz.  Spanish language original follows. Federal District, Mexico March 25, 2009 Mrs. Hillary Clinton […]

  HAVANA, 26 March (IPS) — While the work of women filmmakers in Latin America and the Caribbean has made its presence undeniable, their work still suffers from certain invisibility in a medium where men have traditionally had hegemony. The “Women in the Contemporary Audiovisual Media” Web site, created by the New Latin American Cinema […]

The government estimates the growth rate will be 2% at the maximum this year.

“The strategy is to create a public instrument in which the banks place certain percentages of their targeted portfolios.”

Yesterday Reuters headed the list of the international news agencies that mention Pedro Miret and Osmany Cienfuegos as two historical figures who have been dismissed from their posts by Raul Castro.

Patrick Cockburn is the Baghdad correspondent of the Independent and the author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. How do you interpret the latest election results in Iraq? Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has obviously done well and so has his […]

  The Venezuelan minimum wage, including the value of food vouchers, will reach $636 in September this year, when the process of raising it by 20% gets completed; the second highest minimum wage in South America is Argentina’s $310 per month. The anti-crisis measures announced by the Bolivarian government last Saturday, although affecting Venezuelans negatively […]

A visit to Western Europe in early March provided some slightly different — if unsettling — insights into global economic arrangements and their socio-cultural co-ordinates.  As the crisis unfolds, people everywhere are questioning current economic institutions and processes, and naturally enough their fears, insecurities and concerns also affect their visions for the future.  The fundamental […]

A legal battle being waged by Palestinian families to stop the takeover of their neighborhood in East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers has received a major fillip from the recent souring of relations between Israel and Turkey. After the Israeli army’s assault on the Gaza Strip in January, lawyers for the families were given access to […]

Iran’s response to a supposedly conciliatory address March 20 by U.S. President Barack Obama has been met with a torrent of “we-told-you-sos” by the U.S. media. The Los Angeles Times reported that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had simply “dismissed President Obama’s extraordinary Persian New Year greeting. . . .” The Christian Science Monitor […]