Geography Archives: Americas

An important and perhaps growing feature of official and strong-interest-group propaganda is the resort to personal attacks and flak to keep dissidents at bay and inconvenient thoughts out of sight and mind.  This has been notable over many years in the case of pro-Israel propaganda, where we can observe a positive correlation between upward spikes […]

“Cuba, Venezuela, Spain, and other countries send in the medical brigades; the Yankees send in the troops.” “It must be so they won’t go out of character.” Alfredo Martirena Hernández was born in 1965 in Santa Clara, Cuba.  This cartoon was published by Rebelión on 21 January 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi […]

On Monday, six days after the earthquake in Haiti, the U.S. Southern Command finally began to drop bottled water and food (MREs) from an Air Force C-17.  U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had previously rejected such a method because of “security concerns.” The Guardian reports that people are dying of thirst.  And if they do […]

Republican Scott Brown’s defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts’ Senate race proves it’s time for real progressives, activists, and independents to dump and jump the Democratic Party’s sinking ship of state.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, expecting a different result.  Every electoral cycle people who consider […]

[The author was in Port-au-Prince with a delegation when the January 12 earthquake struck the city.  Because of limited electricity and internet access, he was unable to send this report out until after he got back to New York the morning of January 18.] PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan. 16 — Wednesday night, January 13, the second night […]

  Sebastián Piñera obtained half a million more votes than in the first round, despite the fact that the total number of voters in the second round declined by 34,161 compared to that in December.  Eduardo Frei added 1.3 million votes to his December results (2,043,514), but he still lost by 222,742 votes. The null […]

Just five days prior to the 7.0 earthquake that shattered Port-au-Prince on January 12th, the Haitian government’s Council of Modernisation of Public Enterprises (CMEP) announced the planned 70% privatization of Teleco, Haiti’s public telephone company. Today Port-au-Prince lies in ruins, with thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands dead, entire neighborhoods cut off, many buried alive.  Towns […]

Thursday, January 21 7:30 pm Brecht Forum 451 West Street (between Bank & Bethune Streets)New York Citybrechtforum.org/directions While the earthquake in Haiti has revealed the faultlines of United States intervention in the country since its founding in 1804, the relief efforts led by grassroots activists and organizations has opened up new political space for a […]

  Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change, Sage Publications, 2009, 192 pp., $37.75 (paperback). In a 2004 essay titled “Feminism and Femininity: Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Thong,” self-proclaimed third-wave feminists Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards offer their analysis of the state of contemporary feminism. […]

  Kenneth Katzman: Certainly, as long as the floor is open for talks, there is always a hope for a deal.  But I think, from the US standpoint, the United States is certainly not counting on a deal.  Obviously, the thrust of US policy, I think, is starting to shift, from a focus on getting […]

  In June of 2004, I went to Haiti with two other members of the Haiti Action Committee.  We were there to investigate the effects of the political earthquake in which the democratically elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been overthrown by a coup orchestrated by the United States, France and Canada. What we […]

Jesse Freeston: . . . [T]he Heritage Foundation think tank responded within hours of the earthquake, with the demand that the US should use the crisis to its advantage.  They quickly took the post down, but a new one appeared soon after laying out four demands for US intervention in Haiti. Send the military. Appoint […]

Labor productivity soared in the United States in 2009.  According to the Transport Times of December 3, 2009, productivity increased by 6.4% in the second quarter and leaped by 8.1% in the third quarter. Labor costs fell at a 2.5% rate in the third quarter of 2009, capping the biggest 12-month drop in seven years. […]

[The author was in Port-au-Prince with a delegation when the January 12 earthquake struck the city.  Because of limited electricity and internet connection, he was unable to send this report out until he got back to New York the morning of January 18.  For an earlier report, see “Singing and Praying at Night in Port-au-Prince.”] […]

The news reported from Haiti describes a great chaos that was to be expected, given the exceptional situation created in the aftermath of the catastrophe. At first, a feeling of surprise, astonishment, and commotion set in. A desire to offer immediate assistance came up in the farthest corners of the Earth. What assistance should be […]

  There appear to be some rising tensions between countries leading the relief efforts in Haiti.  We know the US is sending in upwards of 10,000 troops to the country.  But since 2004, Brazil’s military has been the commanding force leading the Haiti UN peacekeeping mission, technically referred to as MINUSTAH.  Brazil has about 1,700 […]

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega says that the United States has taken advantage of the massive quake in Haiti and deployed troops in the country. “What is happening in Haiti seriously concerns me as US troops have already taken control of the airport,” Ortega said on Saturday. The Pentagon says it has deployed more than 10,000 […]

  Open and Collective Proposal: To Build a Transnational Network Since its beginning, edu-factory has tried to be a place of political discussion and communication, a site of the free circulation of knowledge and networking at the global level.  In the “double crisis” (i.e., the global economic crisis and the crisis of the university in […]

  Yesterday, I watched news of rescue efforts in Port-au-Prince.  Elite rescue teams, such as the one from Fairfax County, VA, were focusing primarily on the Montana Hotel and the headquarters of the UN “peacekeeping” force, MINUSTAH.  Anyone who knows Haiti knows that the Montana Hotel is the most lavish lodging your can find in […]

The news reported from Haiti describes a great chaos that was to be expected, given the exceptional situation created in the aftermath of the catastrophe. At first, a feeling of surprise, astonishment, and commotion set in.  A desire to offer immediate assistance came up in the farthest corners of the Earth.  What assistance should be […]