Geography Archives: Americas

Today, the United Nations Security Council will adopt a new resolution imposing sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran over its nuclear activities.  Predictably, the Obama Administration is working to spin its “victory” in New York as both a great diplomatic achievement and a serious intensification of international pressure on Iran over the nuclear issue. […]

SINCE the day of March 26, neither Obama nor the president of South Korea have been able to explain what really happened to the flagship of the South Korean Navy, the state-of-the-art submarine hunter Cheonan, which was taking part in a maneuver with the U.S. Navy to the west of the Korean Peninsula, close to […]

President Obama’s first half year in office was singularly focused on reviving America’s desultory standing in the Muslim world.  Last week marked the first anniversary of Obama’s Cairo speech — his widely heralded address “to the Muslim world” — which was intended as the culmination of a series of important steps.  These included: Obama’s appointment […]

  Brodwyn M. Fischer.  A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.  xx + 464 pp.  $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8047-5290-9. From the 1920s to the 1950s, largely under the impetus of reforms associated with Getúlio Vargas (president, 1930-45, 1951-54), the Brazilian state expanded significantly and extended […]

  Whether in the media or in U.S. policy circles, the words “Middle East” and “South America” are rarely mentioned together in a positive light.  Reports of Middle Eastern terrorist cells allegedly operating in South America’s Tri-Border region or on Venezuela’s Margarita Island have appeared intermittently in the U.S. press since at least 2003.  These […]

The climate crisis and efforts to tackle it have witnessed unprecedented mobilisation of popular movements, NGOs, think tanks, experts, intellectuals and activists, as was evident at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen last December.  Of course, this “civil society” activism has embraced a very wide spectrum of opinion.  Amongst the most vociferous, at various gatherings as […]

As the United Nations Security Council moves toward a vote on a resolution imposing additional sanctions on Iran over its nuclear activities, China is being remarkably silent, at least in public.  In the wake of the announcement of the Iran-Turkey-Brazil Joint Declaration in Tehran on May 17 and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement in […]

Ali Khamenei, Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution: The Zionists made a miscalculation.  They made a mistake.  They made a big mistake.  This mistake has been repeated in recent years, again and again.  They made a mistake of attacking Lebanon.  They made a mistake of attacking Gaza.  And they made a mistake of attacking the aid […]

United States of America (clutching weapons of mass destruction): We are here to negotiate from a constructive position. Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist.   This cartoon was published in Cambios en Cuba on 30 May 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

An act of piracy, war crime, blatant violation of international law, murder of unarmed civilians — each and every definition used by the international media is true, and altogether beside the point.  The murderous Israeli operation is, in fact, the expression of the new Israeli modus operandi.  And as such it is frightening. All over […]

I was left with no alternative other than to write two “Reflections” on Iran and Korea, which explain the imminent danger of war with the use of nuclear weapons. I have also expressed the opinion that one of them could be overcome if China decided to veto the resolution that the United States is promoting […]

Terry Eagleton.  Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.  pp. xii, 185.  $25.00. Terry Eagleton in the 1970s stood at the cutting edge of Marxist literary criticism, but his recent book, Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate — an expansion of his 2008 Yale […]

  STUDY TOUR TO VENEZUELA: Food Sovereignty, Social Movements and Social Change July 19 to August 2, 2010 Please register asap! You are invited to participate in a two-week study tour to study food sovereignty, social movements, and social change in Venezuela, 19 July to 2 August, 2010.  The tour will examine issues of land […]

  “It is probably impossible today for anyone to make an even halfway commercial movie that shouts, in some positive sense, ‘Revolution!’ as loudly as its lungs can bear, so one must celebrate the films that seem (whether deliberately or not) to imply its necessity.” — Robin Wood1 At a time when comedy shows tell […]

“If an oil well is too far beneath the sea to be plugged when something goes wrong, it’s too deep to be drilled in the first place.” — Bob Herbert, June 1, 2010 Imagine “the Associated Producers, Rationally Regulating Their Interchange with Nature” Amidst mass capital-imposed structural unemployment and ever-escalating environmental collapse, the ongoing epic […]

Two days ago, I briefly commented that imperialism was unable to resolve the extremely serious problem of drug abuse, which is assaulting the world’s population.  Today, I would like to tackle another subject that, in my opinion, is of great significance. The current danger of North Korea being attacked by the United States, following the […]

Two days ago, I said in a few words that imperialism was unable to solve the extremely serious problem of drug abuse, which has become a scourge for the people all over the world. Today, I wish to deal with another issue that I consider of major significance. The current danger that the United States […]

President Obama’s already diminishing chances to “steamroll” the Iran-Turkey-Brazil Joint Declaration by ramming new sanctions against the Islamic Republic through the United Nations Security Council during the next few weeks got even smaller this morning, when Israeli naval commandos stormed Turkish-flagged ships in international waters off Gaza, killing at least 16 people in the process. […]

International Solidarity Movement 31 May 2010, Free Gaza Movement Israel Murders at Least 10 Unarmed Civilians on Aid Flotilla to Gaza, Dozens Injured (Cyprus, June 1, 2010, 6:30AM local) — Under darkness of night, Israeli commandos from at least 14 warships and military helicopters boarded the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara, and began shooting.  According […]

WHEN I was detained in Mexico by the Federal Security Police who, by pure chance became suspicious of certain movements of ours, despite the fact that we were making them with maximum care in order to avoid being snatched by the killer hand of Batista – like Machado did in Mexico when his agents assassinated […]