Geography Archives: Americas

  • Comrade Sa’adat: End Occupation in All of Historic Palestine

    Comrade Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, denounced any negotiations with the occupation, saying that “the solution to the critical historical conflict in the Middle East will only be the establishment of one state on the entire Palestinian national soil, from river to sea, with full […]

  • Marxism Is the Mother Lode for all Critiques of Capitalism: An Interview with Alexander Saxton

    A longtime reader of Monthly Review, and a Marxist for all his adult life, Alexander Saxton might be one of the oldest, continuously active radicals in the United States.  Born in Manhattan in 1919, he met the novelist, John Dos Passos, and the poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, when he was a young man, and […]

  • Restructuring the Bretton Woods Twins

      Prabir Purkayastha: The BRIC and IBSA Summits seem to have been indicating that G20 is the solution to the problems of the world, and they are happy that they have come out of the grip of G7 as it were.  Do you really think that this is something that is going to happen? Jayati […]

  • Practicing Dialectic: Chto Delat and Method

      Mixing Different Things “Perestroika,” Graphic and Video Installation, 11th International Istanbul Biennial, 2009 The editorial and exhibition policy of Chto Delat is often accused of inconsistency, of lacking a clear “party line.”  What is important for us today is to arrive at a method that would enable us to mix quite different things — […]

  • The Hateful Tyranny Imposed on the Third World

    THE HATEFUL TYRANNY IMPOSED ON THE WORLD The painful reality should not come as a surprise to anyone. It could be seen rapidly advancing in the past few decades, at such a pace as it is hard to imagine. Does it mean that Obama is the promoter of this threat or that he is responsible […]

  • Bolivia: Morales Asks Workers to Be Rational and Responsible for the Country

    President Morales exhorted workers to rethink, because the latest wage increase of 5 percent is superior to what previous governments offered and, moreover, over the four years under his administration, the wages have risen 40 percent.  He called on workers’ unions to compare this wage increase with the current inflation rate of 0.26 percent in […]

  • Hooman Majd’s Postcard from Tehran

    Author and analyst Hooman Majd traveled to Iran last month and has published an initial report from his travels, “Postcard from Tehran,” in ForeignPolicy.com.  Hooman makes a number of important points in his article, which largely reinforce our analysis of Iranian politics since the Islamic Republic’s June 12, 2009 presidential election and of U.S/Western policy […]

  • Venezuela Is Not Greece

    With Venezuela’s economy having contracted last year (as did the vast majority of economies in the Western Hemisphere), the economy suffering from electricity shortages, and the value of domestic currency having recently fallen sharply in the parallel market, stories of Venezuela’s economic ruin are again making headlines. The Washington Post, in a news article that […]

  • Lula and Erdoğan Go to Tehran: Alternative Perspectives on Their Diplomatic Prospects

    Brazil’s President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, will travel to Iran this weekend, ostensibly to attend the G-15 summit meeting that opens in Tehran on Monday.  But Lula’s trip is attracting enormous international attention because the Brazilian leader will use his visit to try, in collaboration with Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to broker […]

  • Puerto Rico: Long Live the Students!

      In support of the students of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) on strike against the $100 million budget cuts, elimination of tuition wavers, privatization, etc. . . . ¡Que vivan los estudiantes! Note: The indefinite strike declared on the Río Piedras campus is on its 15th day today.  The one declared in the Mayagüez […]

  • Spill Here, Spill Now

      “So today we’re announcing the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration. . . . We’ll protect areas that are vital to tourism, the environment, and our national security.” — Barack Obama, 31 March 2010 “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills.  They are technologically very advanced.  […]

  • The Mural Speaks

    The Rachel Corrie Foundation andBreak the Silence Mural Project co‐presentThe Mural Speaks Come celebrate the completion of this dynamic, interactive mural at a free event at 6:00 p.m., Saturday, May 8 at the Labor Temple building, corner of State and Capitol, downtown Olympia.  The Mural Speaks event is more than a mural commemoration; it’s a […]

  • Mexico: A New Slogan for the Drug War

      New Slogan Federal Government: So that drugs won’t get to your children . . . WE ARE KILLING THEM FOR YOU. José Hernández is a Mexican cartoonist.  This cartoon — drawn on 23 March 2010 in response to Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs, especially the deaths of Juárezyouth and Monterrey Tec students as its […]

  • BP: The Worst Safety and Environmental Record of All Oil Companies Operating in the United States

      BP is a London-based oil company with the worst safety and environmental record of any oil company operating in America.  In just the last few years, BP has pled guilty to two crimes and paid over $730 million in fines and settlements to the US government, state governments, and civil lawsuit judgments for environmental […]

  • Bolivia: Evo Sticks to 5% Wage Increase; COB Threatens to Blockade Streets

      Wages: the president calls for rationality while workers foresee an indefinite strike. President Evo Morales stuck to the 5% wage increase, ruling out a possibility of revision.  Meanwhile, the Bolivian Workers’ Center (COB) and manufacturing workers will discuss today the possibility of launching an indefinite general strike and street blockade to demand a higher […]

  • Israel’s Stasi Watch over Imams

    Job interviews for the position of imam at mosques in Israel are conducted not by senior clerics but by the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, a labor tribunal has revealed. Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajwa, 36, is fighting the Shin Bet’s refusal to approve his appointment as an imam in a case that has lifted the […]

  • Tricks of the Theatre

      The following statement by Wallace Shawn and Deborah Eisenberg was delivered outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on May 3, 2010 where supporters of Fahad Hashmi have been gathering since last October to bear witness to the inhumane conditions of Fahad’s detention and to call for an end to the US […]

  • The Non-Proliferation Treaty Is an Intrinsically Unfair Treaty

    Ambassador Cabactulan, President of the Review Conference, Ambassador Sergio Duarte, High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish to congratulate you, Mr. President, for the chairmanship of this Conference.  You can count on my delegation’s best cooperation. The Non-Proliferation Treaty is an intrinsically unfair treaty, which divides the world between “haves” and “have-nots.”  […]

  • Iran’s Challenge to the Nuclear Order

    Excerpt: Three nations in the Middle East dominate any present-day discussion of nuclear weapons, yet only one is subjected to an unprecedented degree of international scrutiny.  Two have nuclear weapons; the third does not.  Yet it is the third nation that is widely considered the threat to world peace and the target of ever increasing […]

  • Mohamed ElBaradei on the Iranian Nuclear Issue

    As we follow the NPT Review Conference in New York and the enormous salience of the Iranian nuclear issue there, it is useful to consider some recent observations about the Iranian case by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s former Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei.  Baradei was in the Boston area last week, where, among other things, […]