Geography Archives: Americas

In the current recession, state and local governments are struggling.  As economic activity slumps and tax revenue dwindles, governments have fewer resources at their disposal.  At the same time, there is growing demand for government services during hard economic times.  As more people lose their jobs, there is a greater demand for unemployment benefits.  As […]

RELATIONS WITH THE US 1. Diplomatic Ties Six in ten Iranians favor restoring diplomatic relations with the US.  An equal number favor unconditional negotiations between the countries.  Many favor cooperation on dealing with the Taliban. Thirty years after the United States and Iran broke diplomatic relations, Iranians overwhelmingly support repairing that longstanding breach.  Both governments […]

Washington, D.C. – The Honduran de facto regime suspended constitutional guarantees to civil liberties, including freedom of assembly and freedom of the press, for 45 days on the eve of mass protests planned to mark the three-month anniversary since the coup d’etat against President Manuel Zelaya took place.  The regime has also shut down Radio […]

“Medvedev-watching” graduated from pure science to applied science during the four-day visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to New York and Pittsburgh last week. The Western perception that the famous Prime Minister Vladimir Putin-Medvedev “tandem” in Moscow would inevitably transform and the Russian president would incrementally create his own power center in the Kremlin received […]

Faced with the growing impact of the global economic crisis, Washington’s intentions to establish seven military bases in Colombia, and growing challenges in solving structural problems, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reaffirmed the need to build a new state. Chavez explained: “We have inherited a capitalist state that serves the interests of the bourgeoisie and is […]

Last July 16, I literally said that the coup d’etat in Honduras “was conceived and organized by unscrupulous characters on the far-right who were officials in the confidence of George W. Bush and had been promoted by him.”

Rights Group Critical of New DOJ Policy Promises September 23, 2009, New York — In response to news the Attorney General is establishing new policy on the question of the use of the state secrets privilege, the Center for Constitutional Rights issues the following statement: While CCR welcomes greater accountability in the Executive’s invocation of […]

Can Iran beat gasoline sanctions?  The answer seems to be yes. On the front page of the Financial Times on 23 September 2009 (Javier Blas and Carola Hoyos, “Chinese Begin Petrol Supplies to Iran”): Chinese state companies this month began supplying petrol to Iran and now provide up to one-third of its imports in a […]

Now that President Zelaya has returned to Honduras, the coup government — after first denying that he was there — has unleashed a wave of repression to prevent people from gathering support for their elected president.  This is how U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the first phase of this new repression last night […]

  In the current recession, millions of Americans have lost their jobs.  Unemployment has increased nationwide to levels not witnessed since the 1980s.  Much of the job loss has occurred in private industries, but the public sector has also felt the sting of layoffs.  Decreasing tax revenues and expanding budget deficits have forced public officials […]

  On Thursday, September 24, an unprecedented coalition of UC faculty, undergraduates, grad students, postdocs, lecturers, and staff will engage in a system-wide walkout.  As UC Davis graduate students and lecturers concerned with the quality of all UC students’ education, we write to clarify the reasons for this walkout as we understand them. This summer, […]

Dear friends, This is a national appeal for your help in the effort to save one of this country’s most important Black History sites — an effort that has now reached a critical stage. Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom was once the site of the second largest slave market in the United States.  In the three decades […]

  Asia Society’s exhibition Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan (10 September 2009 through 3 January 2010) brings to New York some of Pakistan’s most significant, provocative, and influential artists in the first US museum survey exhibition of contemporary Pakistani art.  Hanging Fire is curated by Salima Hashmi, one of the most influential and well-respected […]

  Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar.  The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.  xiv + 288 pp.  $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-13846-8; (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-51101-8. Over the last couple decades, histories of the partition of India and its consequences have proliferated.  But Vazira Zamindar’s study stands […]

September 21, 2009 Washington, D.C. — President Manuel Zelaya’s reported return to Honduras would be a significant move and could force an end to the political crisis that followed the June 28 coup d’etat, Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said today. “This could be the moment of truth for […]

  Come one, come all Down to the hall We’re gonna make noise We’re gonna bust balls We’re gonna disrupt We’re gonna jump in the fray I got a list of all the things that we’re supposed to say We’re gonna get real rowdy Have a barrel of fun But we’re the USA, so by […]

  Laurent Dubois.  Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.  384 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-01304-9; $20.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-674-01826-6. Laurent Dubois’s Avengers of the New World builds on a body of Caribbean scholarship that has been torn between trying to place Haiti’s independence from France […]

The Honduran police began, on Tuesday morning, repressive actions against the hundreds of people who have gathered around the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, where the legitimate president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, resides, having made a surprise return to his country on Monday. Adriana Sívori, TeleSUR correspondent in Honduras, said that the military forces are located […]

  Gervasio Umpiérrez is a cartoonist based in Montevideo, Uruguay.

  Literary critic Terry Eagleton discusses his new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, which argues that “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens “buy their rejection of religion on the cheap.”  He believes that, in these controversies, politics has been an unacknowledged elephant in the room. Nathan Schneider: Rather […]