Geography Archives: Americas

Address to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect, the United Nations, New York,  23 July 2009 The discussions about Responsibility to Protect (R2P), or its cousin “humanitarian intervention,” are regularly disturbed by the rattling of a skeleton in the closet: history, to the present moment. Throughout history, there have […]

The recent elections in Iran, and the subsequent challenges to their legitimacy, have been a matter of enormous internal conflict in Iran, and of seemingly endless debate in the rest of the world — a debate that threatens to linger for some time yet.  One of its most fascinating consequences has been the deep divisions […]

We are a group of university educators and antiwar activists with diverse political views who are based in Europe and North America.  During the past few years we have been active in defending Iran’s national rights — particularly those relating to the peaceful use of nuclear energy — against the pervasive deception created by western […]

July 31, 2009 It is Friday afternoon, and I am in the Johannesburg Oliver Tambo Airport preparing for my journey back to New York where I will arrive Saturday morning.  I left South Africa and Swaziland at the beginning of July, only to return two weeks later to put together the project that I am […]

The mediation effort that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arranged to try to resolve the Honduran crisis, which began when a military coup removed Honduran President Mel Zelaya more than four weeks ago, has failed.  It is now time — some would say overdue — for the Latin American governments to play their proper […]

  In the 1970s, when Iran’s Fedayeen and Mojahedin1 groups were engaged in an urban guerrilla struggle against the former Shah’s dictatorial regime, a faction of the Iranian Student Association (ISA) in the United States called Ehyaa2 had managed to convince some in the US Left, in particular America’s Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), that a […]

  Andrew Hartman.  Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.  x + 251 pp.  $74.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-230-60010-2. Although world affairs are inherently distant from the local activity of running a school, international events can often heighten a sense of threat from abroad and a related […]

  En Clave Roja / No Pasarán Pan y Rosas Brought online by TV PTS (Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas) of Argentina on 27 July 2009, for the march today against the coup in Honduras.  En Clave Roja, <www.enclaveroja.org.ar>; No Pasarán <www.np.org.ar>; and Pan y Rosas <www.pyr.org.ar>.

  One month after the interruption of constitutional order in Honduras through a military coup d’etat and in the wake of widespread reports of human rights violations harkening back to events of the 1980s, the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC) is bringing a delegation of civil society representatives from that country […]

Patrick Barrett, Daniel Chavez, and Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito, eds., The New Latin American Left: Utopia Reborn, Pluto Press (2008), 320 pages. The conflict in Honduras has been an ongoing challenge for governments across the political spectrum in Latin America.  In the years leading up to this tense and decisive event a number of leaders and social […]

On July 22, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez again declared his complete support for the proposal by industrial workers for a new model of production based on workers’ control. This push from Chavez, part of the socialist revolution, aims at transforming Venezuela’s basic industry.  However, it faces resistance from within the state bureaucracy and the revolutionary […]

Iranians are writing their history.  The pen of the revolutionaries of the 1970s has been supplemented by the keyboard of a new generation.  Ayatollah Khomeini’s supporters perfected clandestine pamphleteering and the distribution of audio cassettes to subvert the regime of the shah; today’s activists use Facebook and Twitter to get their message across.  This is […]

According to Ervand Abrahamian, a scholar of Iran’s contemporary history, George Rudé’s observation that “perhaps no historical phenomenon has been so thoroughly neglected by historians as the crowd” is particularly true about the Middle East.1  While European journalists have invariably portrayed oriental crowds as “xenophobic mobs” hurling insults and bricks at Western embassies, local conservatives […]

So, how many leftists are United for Iran?  “8,000 people at the event in Paris, 4,000 in Stockholm, 3,000 in Amsterdam, more than 2,500 in Washington DC, 2,500 in New York, 2,000 in London. . . ,” says United4Iran.org, the sponsor of the global day of action on 25 July 2009.  The low numbers1 (in […]

Take Action in Solidarity with the People of Honduras Gather on Saturday, July 25 at 10:30 am at NW 87th Ave & NW 36th St in Miami On June 28, SOA-trained Honduran generals overthrew the democratically-elected government of President Manuel Zelaya in a military coup.  The Honduran social movements are resisting the coup regime and […]

There are many problems with the Campaign for Peace and Democracy’s “Question & Answer on the Iran Crisis,” issued by the CPD on July 7, and widely circulated since then.1 The CPD adopted this format, it tells us, because “some on the left, and others as well, have questioned the legitimacy of and the need […]

  Today in passing, a Honduran colleague told me that the latest news was that the national police were on strike because they had not been paid and that, when the de facto regime’s designate to run the Treasury, Gabriela Nuñez, said she would get them back pay, they said they would refuse to accept […]

The U.S. economy continued in a deep recession and hopes for a rapid recovery faded as new national unemployment figures of 9.5 percent were announced early this month.  If one includes discouraged workers and the underemployed (those with part-time jobs who would like full-time work) in the calculations, then the figure soars to 16.5 percent.  […]

The never-ending document read yesterday by the Nobel Laureate Oscar Arias is much worse than the 7 points of the surrender paper he had proposed on July 18th.

When the Managua embassy press conference of the constitutional president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya Rosales ended, I was able to get into the president’s vehicle along with his Minister of the Presidency, Enrique Flores Lanza, to go to an interview with international media.  In just a few days — or perhaps hours — President Zelaya […]