Geography Archives: Americas

Following a range of sometimes violent protests across the country last week over the temporary suspension of TV station RCTV, as well as one protest last Monday in Merida which left two youths dead, president Hugo Chavez has called for calm, arguing that the protests, together with a media terrorism campaign, are aimed at creating […]

  Part I: Brenda Villacorta JRW: It’s in the evening of January 25, in Tegucigalpa, outside the Brazilian embassy, where a gathering of the anti-coup resistance is taking place.  So, you’re a part of the Resistance against the coup, and, in particular, a part of the feminist resistance to the coup? Brenda Villacorta BV: That’s […]

  Haitians’ incredible plight has always been difficult to fully appreciate.  Then the earthquake struck: hundreds of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands more hurt, a million homeless, and two million in need of food.  It defies imagination. And according to a journalist just returned from Haiti, even the heart-rending footage we’ve seen here on television […]

(PU) In an oak-paneled conference room somewhere in Manhattan’s Goldman Sachs building, the Republican National Committee today signed over its soul to the Reverend Pat Robertson. “They had a soul?” asked a reporter at a press conference shortly after the signing.  “Oh yes,” explained RNC chairman Michael Steele.  “You see, the legal reality of corporate […]

When I write about U.S. foreign policy in places like Haiti or Honduras, I often get responses from people who find it difficult to believe that the U.S. government would care enough about these countries to try and control or topple their governments.  These are small, poor countries with little in the way of resources […]

Back in May 2009 — before the Islamic Republic’s June 2009 presidential election — we took a lot criticism for our view in a New York Times Op Ed that “President Obama’s Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed.”  In particular, we argued that Obama “has made several policy and personnel decisions that have […]

  Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans took to the streets on Wednesday, January 27 to protest the inauguration of Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Soza.  Lobo was the victor in fraudulent elections held last November and his new regime is seen by the Honduran resistance as a continuation and consolidation of the coup regime that first came […]

  About Repression in Honduras by Jeremy John This powerful video was made by César Silva, a publicist who before the coup in Honduras worked for Channel 8, the State Television Channel.  He made this video in collaboration with Edwin Renán Fajardo Argueta.  Once the coup happened, and Channel 8 was no longer directed by […]

On January 14, two days after the Port-au-Prince earthquake, I finally got a chance to look over my email, courtesy of a small Haitian NGO in a quiet, relatively undamaged neighborhood in the south of the city.  After reading and answering personal messages, I noticed that a lot of my mail consisted of appeals for […]

We are not the quickest on the draw in pulling out humanitarian aid, but when it comes to foreign occupation there is no one ahead of us. Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published by Rebelión on 30 January 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] […]

Join us for an evening of discussion, music, art, and refreshments inspired by a recent delegation to Bolivia focused on indigenous resistance and food sovereignty. When: Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 7 PM Where: 1199 SEIU MLK Labor Center, 310 West 43rd St., Auditorium Last November, a group of twenty activists from different parts of […]

John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and author of The Great Financial Crisis (2009, with Fred Magdoff) and The Ecological Revolution (2009) — both from Monthly Review Press.  This interview was conducted from Dhaka by Farooque Chowdhury (editor of Micro Credit: Myth Manufactured, 2007) for MRzine and Bangla Monthly Review.  It is part […]

In a State of the Union address that devoted less time or attention to foreign policy than any recent counterpart, President Obama provided disturbing evidence as to the ongoing strategic regression of his administration’s Iran policy. Obama has moved, during just one year in office, from relatively forward-leaning expressions of interest in engaging Iran on […]

  Last night, President Obama said he wanted ideas on health care reform. Obama put it this way: “If anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.  Let me know.  Let […]

  27 January — De facto President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo took power today as the international business press suggested that the coup had finally triumphed over the resistance or at the least the crisis is over.  Meanwhile, despite the ongoing human rights crisis of kidnapping, murder, and intimidation, hundreds of thousands of Hondurans of all […]

As we noted yesterday, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass has attracted considerable attention with an opinion piece in Newsweek entitled “Enough is Enough: Why We Can No Longer Remain on the Sidelines in the Struggle for Regime Change in Iran.”  As we reflected on Richard’s arguments, we recalled another high-profile piece of policy […]

  In 1999, under newly elected President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan people were given a rare opportunity: to participate in the writing of what would become arguably the world’s most radical constitution.  The result of an extensive constitutional process and an assembly voted on by Venezuelan citizens contrasts with the United States constitution, one created […]

Can we ever get equal care for all?  We can’t — at least, not by going down dead-end roads. A year ago hope was alive for equal health care for all.  Bush was defeated, and the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress.  Throughout 2009, though, every week brought a slap across the face […]

  Richard Haass, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, has attracted considerable notice with an opinion piece out now in Newsweek arguing that “the United States, European governments, and others should shift their Iran policy toward increasing the prospects for political change” in the Islamic Republic — in sum, that the United States […]

In politically polarized Venezuela, both supporters and opponents of President Hugo Chavez marched peacefully in the capital, Caracas, on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the civic-military uprising that overthrew US-backed dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez on January 23, 1958. Addressing tens of thousands of red-clad supporters in O’Leary Plaza, in western Caracas, Chavez used the […]