Geography Archives: Americas

In the midst of its Nuclear Security Summit and in the wake of President Obama’s bilateral meeting with China’s President Hu yesterday, the Obama Administration is vigorously spinning the U.S. and Western media that it has won Chinese support for new sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear activities.  To say the least, this […]

  The Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) is facing a $30 million shortfall for the 2010-11 budget.  To add to the bad news, an assessment prepared by Durrant Engineering indicates that the district faces approximately $86 million in “pressing maintenance needs.”1  According to the budget summary, Since 1993, the Madison School District has created efficiencies […]

As we noted last week, the Obama Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, issued last Monday, included a provision asserting a U.S. prerogative to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapons states that Washington deems not be in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  Following the release of the Nuclear Posture Review last week, both President Obama and […]

Background The West Bank has been occupied by Israel since 1967.  Israel maintains authoritative jurisdiction over the happenings in the West Bank via its military apparatus.  Decisions governing the simplest aspects of Palestinian life, from traveling from one area to another to building a home, ultimately lie under the jurisdiction of the Israeli Military’s High […]

  Shlomo Swirski, Economist, Adva Center: The government cut its yearly budget for four consecutive years.  The cuts were very severe.  They hit the school system, universities, the health system, and, more than anything else, the social security system.  So, within two years the level of the poverty rate for families jumped from 17 to […]

Jesse Freeston, Producer, The Real News Network: Since the inauguration of Pepe Lobo as the president of Honduras on January 27, the US State Department has been the new government’s most vocal supporter, urging the region to follow the US lead in restoring relations with the Honduran government, relations that were largely cut after the […]

Journalist: “What is the name of your husband who you say is a political prisoner?” Lady in White: “Jack the Ripper.” Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist. This cartoon was published by Cambios en Cuba on 25 March 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

Comrade Khalida Jarrar, member of the Political Bureau of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, called for the development of a united Palestinian strategy that strengthens Palestinian resistance and rejects the failed and dangerous path of negotiations with the occupation. In an interview on April 8, 2010 with Jerusalem News Net, Comrade Jarrar […]

  A coalition of nearly 20 Jewish groups, ranging from the right-wing David Project and the Jewish National Fund to the liberal J Street, is distributing a misleading statement condemning a Student Senate bill at UC Berkeley.  The ground-breaking bill calls for divestment from companies that profit from the perpetuation of the Israeli military occupation […]

I had the privilege of following directly the voices, images, ideas, arguments, faces, reactions and applause of the delegates taking part in the final session of the 9th Congress of the Young Communist League of Cuba held at the Convention Center last Sunday, April 4. The TV cameras show details from much better angles and […]

Of all the misunderstandings that guide U.S. foreign policy — including foreign commercial policy — perhaps the most important and long-lasting is the failure to recognize or understand what national self-determination means to most people in the world.  Or why it might be important to them.  Our leaders seem to have learned very little since […]

Although final figures will not be known until April 24, the results of Bolivia’s April 4 regional elections have ratified the continued advance of the “democratic and cultural revolution” led by the country’s first indigenous President Evo Morales.  However, it also highlights some of the shortcomings and obstacles the process of change faces. Initial results […]

Tony Judt.  Ill Fares the Land.  The Penguin Press, 2010.  237 pp.  $25.95. In December, the New York Review of Books transcribed an October 2009 speech delivered by the eminent historian Tony Judt at New York University under the title “What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?”  A major address by Judt […]

The “Cedar Revolution” of Lebanon and the “Orange Revolution” of Ukraine were democratically brought to an end.  A “Green Revolution” in Iran that Washington hoped for has turned out to be just a figment of its geopolitical fantasy.  And now there goes another color revolution. It is clear that the political revolution in Kyrgyzstan caught […]

In his column, the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius presents an important piece of reporting about the Obama Administration’s approach to Iran and the Palestinian issue.  David opens his column by citing “two top administration officials” as telling him that President Obama is seriously considering putting forward an American plan for a two-state solution to the […]

  Paul R. Hanson, Contesting the French Revolution.  Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.  xii + 229 pp.  Bibliography and index.  $89.95 U.S. (cl).  ISBN 978-1-4051-6083-4; $34.95 U.S. (pb).  ISBN 978-1-4051-6084-1. When Blackwell published a volume on the French Revolution in its Essential Readings in History series in 2001, Ronald Schechter began his introduction to […]

This cartoon was published by Vos el Soberano on 6 April 2010. | | Print

Today — Tuesday, April 6, 2010 — the Obama Administration will proclaim, as a matter of declaratory policy, that the United States claims the prerogative to use nuclear weapons against the Islamic Republic of Iran, even as Iran remains a non-nuclear-weapons state.  The Administration will make this declaration as part of its much anticipated Nuclear […]

Leading global scientists have been exonerated of blame in the “climategate” controversy, although this won’t stop right-wing and corporate-funded pundits from attacking the science of global warming.  The British government recently released its first investigation on the activities of East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit, finding no evidence that its scientists manipulated data or distorted […]

A group of Jews and Arabs are fighting in the Israeli courts to be recognized as “Israelis,” a nationality currently denied them, in a case that officials fear may threaten the country’s self-declared status as a Jewish state. Israel refused to recognize an Israeli nationality at the country’s establishment in 1948, making an unusual distinction […]