Geography Archives: Americas

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Brasilia to mount a full court press on the Brazilian government to support a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities.  (Brazil is presently one of the Council’s ten non-permanent members.)  And, as accumulating media reports indicate, she was politely but […]

A front page headline in the New York Times on March 7, 1970 announced: “Townhouse Razed by Blast and Fire; Man’s Body Found.”  The story described an elegant four-story brick building in Greenwich Village destroyed by three large explosions and a raging fire “probably caused by leaking gas” at about noon on Friday, March 6. […]

  Interview with Salim Lamrani, French professor, writer, and journalist, specialist on the relationship between Cuba and the U.S., and author of the recently published book Cuba. Ce que les médias ne vous diront jamais (Paris: Editions Estrella, 2009). You have just published a new book about the treatment the communications media give to Cuba. […]

Within days of a January 12 earthquake that devastated much of southern Haiti, the New York Times was using the disaster to promote a United Nations plan for drastically expanding the country’s garment assembly industry, which employs low-paid workers to stitch apparel for duty-free export, mainly to the U.S. market.  This, according to several opinion […]

Around the world, anti-war activists are preparing for major protests this spring to oppose the continuing U.S.-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Meanwhile, a storm of developments is dramatically increasing tensions between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.  In response, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) is issuing […]

On February 23, 2010, Cuban inmate Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83 days on hunger strike.  He was 42.  This is the first such incident since inmate Pedro Luis Boitel died in 1972 under similar conditions.  The corporate media put the tragic incident on the front page and emphasized the plight of Cuban prisoners.1 Zapata’s […]

The unusually lengthy list of nominees for this year’s Best Picture Oscar features a slew of do-gooder films about the suffering of others.  Most are about people who’re at a considerable cultural distance from the white, middle-class Americans who are the primary consumers of these films. Lee Daniel’s Precious transports us to Harlem, to the […]

  Brasilia — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva just reiterated, in a meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that Brazil will continue to maintain commercial relations with Iran and will seek a peaceful solution to Iran’s nuclear issue. After meeting with Hillary Clinton at the Bank of Brazil Cultural Center, the provisional […]

  Matthew Waites.  The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality, and Citizenship.  Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.  viii + 285 pp.  $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4039-2173-4.  $29.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-230-23718-6. There are many “ages of consent.”  But in common parlance, age of consent laws define the age at which a person can legally consent […]

The U.S. ruling class and its political representatives at all levels have launched an all-out assault on public education.  While disparate elements of this campaign have been in place for the past three or four decades, we are today seeing a confluence and culmination of these trends, orchestrated by President Obama and his Education secretary […]

United States AfPak special representative Richard Holbrooke enjoys a fabulous reputation, no matter the current prospects of the Afghan war.  The Eurasian space knew him as a potential Nobel winner who evicted Russia from the Balkans.  The world at large expects him to take over if and when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton steps down […]

Last week, just after we had completed our regional tour to Beirut, Damascus, and Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his own journey to Damascus, for highly publicized meetings with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, HAMAS Political Bureau chief Khalid Mishal, and a “resistance” summit with Assad and Hizballah Secretary General Shaykh Hassan Nasrallah.  Ahmadinejad’s trip […]

This is an exercise in historicization.  This lecture concerns the relation between feminism, the movements of second-wave feminism, and the recent history of capitalism.  My aim is to try to shed some light on where the feminist movement stands today in the current crisis of capitalism. So, I want to tell a story that has […]

We met in Managua, on July 1980, 30 years ago, –during the commemoration of the first anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution– thanks to my contacts with the followers of the Liberation Theology, which had started in Chile when I visited President Allende there in 1971. I had heard about Lula from Friar Betto. He was […]

Does Israel want another war in Lebanon and/or Gaza?  Certainly, the Israeli posture toward both Lebanon and Gaza has grown increasingly provocative.  Violations of Lebanese airspace by Israeli military aircraft are not new, but have increased dramatically in recent weeks.  For the past several weeks, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri has been warning of escalating […]

From 21 January to 2 February 2010, Eric Toussaint and Olivier Bonfond — both involved in alterglobalization activism and members of the International Council of the World Social Forum, of the world coordination of social movements, and of the Committee for the Abolition of the Third World Debt 1 — participated in various events and […]

  The document below is a list of 40 political murders since the June 2009 coup d’état in Honduras.  The list includes only the murders that members of the Committee of the Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) personally investigated. Translation by Quixote Center.  See, also, “Informe Situación de Derechos Humanos en […]

OAS Do not stop stirring until it dissolves. Osval, Las Tunas, Cuba.  This cartoon was published by Rebelión on 27 February 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  See, also, “Evo Morales, presidente de Bolivia: Latinoamérica y el Caribe necesitan luchar ‘juntos sin Estados Unidos’” (TeleSur, 22 February 2010); “Vicepresidente boliviano saluda […]

OAS Do not stop stirring until it dissolves. Osval, Las Tunas, Cuba.  This cartoon was published by Rebelión on 27 February 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  See, also, “Evo Morales, presidente de Bolivia: Latinoamérica y el Caribe necesitan luchar ‘juntos sin Estados Unidos’” (TeleSur, 22 February 2010); “Vicepresidente boliviano saluda […]

The 18th annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival, which takes place yearly during Black History Month, is one of Los Angeles’ cultural jewels.  Arguably America’s top Black movie venue, PAFF is a leading U.S. showcase for independent, studio, student, foreign (especially African) political and progressive pictures.  Many movies have their U.S. debuts at this […]