Geography Archives: Americas

On April 25, 2009, El Universal from Mexico published that “Francis Plummer, a scientist with the Canadian government microbiology laboratory stated that the influenza virus attacking the Mexicans is new not only to humans but to the world. Just one week ago… he was asked to analyze some specimens from Mexico…”

To watch my country of birth unravel has been a curious thing. As the Taliban continues to sweep across vast swaths of northern Pakistan, American pundits and officials ask incredulously, “How can their government let this happen?  How can their people let this happen?”  The United States looks on anxiously like a jolted passerby watching […]

  Countless academics have sought to measure the tangible benefits of being a union member.  The difference between union and non-union wages, often referred to as the “union premium,” can be calculated in many different ways.  It’s a profoundly complex field. . . .  Here’s a classic example of the poop one has to wade […]

“You don’t have to do this.”  Those are the near-last words of several victims in the Coen brothers’ classic, No Country for Old Men, as they try to convince the movie’s unrelenting assassin that he should spare them.  The assassin, played by Javier Bardem, finds this annoying, because in his mind these murders are pre-determined. […]

Paul Jay:  So, we left off the first segment of the interview with you suggesting that there really doesn’t seem to be any kind of sensible strategy of the US in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  What would the sensible strategy be right now?  Obama seems to have . . . it’s very strange, they assessed the […]

On May 9, 2009, the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency in the regions of Loreta, Amazonas, Cusco, and Ucalyali — where thousands of indigenous people have mobilized against several new laws that threaten to strip away their indigenous land rights. In effect, the state of emergency (SoE) is a “declaration of war” against […]

  The latest economic indicators in the United States and other industrial countries suggest that economic decline might finally be coming to an end and a recovery can begin by late 2009.  Once it starts, however, the global recovery can face a new potential threat from rapidly rising commodity prices, particularly for oil, food, and […]

Among leftists and fighters against the system, the predominant idea is usually that the current crisis is “their” crisis, a crisis of capital and capitalists, which has dramatic consequences for the world of labor.  It turns out to be very difficult to accept that we, too, are going through “our” crisis, a crisis of our […]

  Paul Jay: So, President Karzai has just been in Washington, President Zardari has been in Washington, meeting President Obama.  What effect are the policies of the three presidents having in Pakistan? Aijaz Ahmad: We know that the pressure from the United States that has been mounted over the last two weeks has led to […]

Today, the presence of the Flu A (H1N1) virus was announced in Cuba. The carrier is a young Mexican citizen who is studying medicine in our country. The only thing that can be confirmed now is that it was not the CIA that introduced it. It came from Mexico. What was the Mexican president complaining […]

  “I also made it clear that the United States will work with our Afghan and international partners to make every effort to avoid civilian casualties as we help the Afghan government combat our common enemy,” US President Barack Obama promised.  He received his Afghan and Pakistani counterparts Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari at […]

Governments can change but the instruments they used to turn us into a colony are still the same.

JOHANNESBURG, 11 May 2009 (IRIN) — Rich countries and firms are leasing or buying massive tracts of land in developing nations for the production of food or biofuel.  An area equivalent to Germany’s farmed land is at stake, and tens of billions of dollars on offer.  On the plus side, agro-industrial production could develop underused […]

Yesterday the German cable service DPA revealed that the ICHR of the OAS approved a report pointing out that Cuba “continued to transgress” on fundamental rights by keeping “restrictions” on the population’s political and civil rights, while at the same time continuing to be the “only” country in the region where there is absolutely no freedom of expression.

  On May 6, 67 Mexican human rights organizations (all non-governmental organizations) along with several other Mexican organizations and individuals, made a call to end US support to the Mexican military in the war on drugs. The letter came after the approval of the 2009 installment of the controversial three-year Merida initiative which provides US […]

Carter is the only ex-president of the United States that I have had the honor of meeting, other than Nixon who was not one yet.

The wave of pressures exercised by Washington on Israel could signal the beginning of a new era in the relations between the US and Israeli governments.  The administration of US President Barack Obama has reiterated the requirement that a Palestinian state be created, a key issue, which is not supported by the new right-wing government […]

Washington, DC (May 7, 2009) — The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 280 organizations working to change U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality, today criticized the Obama Administration for including $2.775 billion in unconditioned military aid to Israel in its FY2010 […]

Antonio Giustozzi, a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science, is one of the internationally recognized specialists on the Taliban.  Author of Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan (Columbia University Press, 2008) among other books, this academic divides his time between London and Afghanistan.  Talking to Le Monde in […]

  5 May 2009 — It has finally happened right here in the United States.  Citizens who believe healthcare is a human right have been arrested and are being processed like criminals through the Southeast District of Columbia police station.  Their crime? Asking for single payer healthcare reform — publicly funded, privately delivered healthcare — […]