Geography Archives: Americas

It doesn’t matter what I say about the friendly meeting, some news agencies and papers will take the information and will print that the old man, convalescing after a serious illness or some other description directed towards reducing the modest value of whatever I expressed to my prestigious interlocutor.

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian residing in Britain, said he was tortured after being sent to Morocco and Afghanistan in 2002 by the U.S. government.  Mohamed was transferred to Guantánamo in 2004 and all terrorism charges against him were dismissed last year.  Mohamed was a victim of extraordinary rendition, in which a person is abducted without […]

  After a decade of political polarization and international standoff, the debate on Zimbabwe has finally been opened up to a wider reading public, thanks to Mahmood Mamdani’s “Lessons of Zimbabwe,” appearing in the London Review of Books (04/12/2008).  Renowned scholars, within and without Africa, have broken their silence and have taken public positions.  The […]

  “Supporting the Palestinian people’s struggle for self-determination is a duty of Israeli communists.” The Communist Party of Israel (CPI) and its front Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) were the only political forces in Israel that confronted the massacre perpetrated by the Tzahal (IDF), the Israeli armed forces, in Gaza last January.  Regrettably, […]

Fatah and Hamas The results of the public opinion poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center (JMCC) during the period 29-31 January 2009 show that the majority of respondents (46.7%) believed that Hamas came out of the war victorious compared with only 9.8% who said that Israel won the war.  Over one-third, 37.4%, […]

  CP: After twenty-five years of sporadic growth and extreme polarization of income and life conditions around the world, actually existing neoliberalism seems to be on the verge of collapse.  Where do you situate the current crisis in the history of the development of global capitalism? JBF: Neoliberalism has clearly collapsed.  But as Fred Magdoff […]

Fog covered El Alto, Bolivia on Saturday morning as social movements from around the country marched into the city to mark the official passage of Bolivia’s new constitution.  “This is the second independence, the true liberation of Bolivia,” Bolivian President Evo Morales said as he signed the new constitution. The new constitution was approved by […]

What is the story American Jews have been told about Israel and Zionism, and how does it differ from the reality of what happened in Palestine?  Like many American Jews, I was told by my teachers at Hebrew School and in the Jewish Day School I attended that the creation of Israel meant that Jews […]

34 year-old Kashif ul-Huda runs TwoCircles.net, the leading Indian Muslim news and features web site.  In this interview with Yoginder Sikand he talks about his work and reflects on Indian Muslims and the media. Q: What made you set up TwoCircles.net?  What was your source of inspiration? A: I come from a working class family […]

As economists in the US warn against the potential for double-digit unemployment, much of the world is already experiencing that reality.  In Spain, 200,000 workers lost their jobs in January alone, the most for a single month on record, pushing that country’s unemployment rate to over 14%.  Over 9% of workers in the Republic of […]

The response came barely a few hours later. Rahm Emmanuel, the White House chief of staff, spoke. It is of no importance that he failed to mention my modest Reflection. What is important is the response.

First they rammed the Dignity.  Then they harassed the Spirit of Humanity into turning back to its berth.  Now 18 corsair ships from the Israeli Navy have surrounded the Al-Ikhwa (The Brotherhood) ship, out of Lebanon, and boarded it, ransacking the boat and assaulting its passengers.  The ship was plainly up to no good: it […]

The other day I noted some of Obama’s ideas that point to his role within a system that is the negation of every just principle.

please keep in mind as you prepare to pass sentence you may at some time be in need of a presidential pardon and I may, understandably, be reluctant to grant it. Dennis Brutus is a South African poet.  Active against Apartheid, he was arrested in 1963 and imprisoned for 18 months on Robben Island.  After […]

  Hadash released a great set of four election commercials today, which feature conversations between a supporter of Meretz and a supporter of Hadash, “The Left vs. the New Left.”  You can see the clips here. My favorite is the one on the Gaza war, which you can watch here in Hebrew.  The Leftie stutters […]

COSATU and PSC launch Week of Action for Palestine supported by YCL and other progressive organisations In a historic development for South Africa, South African dock workers have announced their determination not to offload a ship from Israel that is scheduled to dock in Durban on Sunday, 8 February 2009.  This follows the decision by […]

Babylon has fallen, has fallen Yea, Babylon has fallen Woe!  Woe!  Woe! Towers that soared into clear blue are at blocks of stone settled into earth all gone, all shattered ground into scattered dust Babylon has fallen, has fallen Yea, Babylon has fallen Woe!  Woe!  Woe! Now hordes of warring barbarians literate, skilled in killing […]

As job losses hemorrhage, the American economy is in desperate need of a stimulus.  It is becoming increasingly clear that Congress must work rapidly to approve some version of President Obama’s plan. Then, Obama and the Congress should very quickly turn to taking a second, temporary step to create more jobs: creating incentives for companies […]

Want to hear something weird about the Left?  It’s chock-full of human nature.  For example: Some communist, in the dead of winter, stole my girlfriend’s coat. I take you back a few months.  A cold December.  My girlfriend and I are invited to a “holiday party,” as the Americans say.  Note how the festive noun […]

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) wants its members to believe that their union is just like the alluring but ultimately nightmarish hostelry immortalized by The Eagles.   It’s a place of permanent imprisonment only “programmed to receive” workers and their dues money, not let either go elsewhere when the rhetoric of “progressive unionism” wears thin […]