Geography Archives: Americas

Far-reaching strategic debate is underway about how to respond to the global financial crisis, and indeed how the North’s problems can be tied into a broader critique of capitalism. The 2008 world financial meltdown has its roots in the neoliberal export-model (dominant in Africa since the Berg Report and onset of structural adjustment during the […]

Listen to Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez’s interview with Steve Early and FMPR President Rafael Feliciano on Democracy Now! (27 October 2008). When last seen on the picket-line, Puerto Rican teachers were fighting their way through police barricades to appeal to fellow workers from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), at its lavishly funded convention […]

Labor unions around the world have reacted to the financial crisis and the economic recession with words and actions reflecting their national experience, their political ideology, and their leaderships. Unions and workers have already seen the financial crisis and the growing recession result in the closing of plants and offices, in shorter workweeks, pay cuts, […]

  We have nothing against voting.  We plan to vote in the upcoming election.  Some of our best friends are voters. But we also believe that we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that the most important political moment in our lives comes in the voting booth.  Instead, people should take politics seriously, which means […]

After months of street battles and political meetings, a new draft of the Bolivian constitution was ratified by Congress on October 21.  A national referendum on whether or not to make the document official is scheduled for January 25, 2009. “Now we have made history,” President Evo Morales told supporters in La Paz.  “This process […]

The next three months are unlikely to see much movement on any of the crucial issues that have been simmering just below the boiling point in the Middle East.  On October 13 Kadima leader Tzipi Livni and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak signed a draft agreement to form a new Israeli government under her leadership.  […]

International Political Economy Conference Responses from the South to the Global Economic Crisis Caracas, Venezuela Final Declaration Academics and researchers from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, Spain, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay and Venezuela participated in The International Political Economy Conference: Responses from the South to […]

It is a spiritual force. In the critical moments of Russian history it played an important role. When the Great Russian War began after the treacherous Nazi attack, Stalin turned to it in support of the workers and peasants that the October Revolution made owners of the factories and the land.

The financial crisis does not skip over Israel.  The country that has been integrating itself in global capitalist markets in the last decades is once again seeing the ugliest side of capitalism, as the stock markets have dropped over a stunning 10 percent since the beginning of the month and the GDP growth forecast for […]

Within the political and intellectual circles in the country I am living in, and maybe even beyond, in mainland Europe and North America, an ignorant and insidiously complacent attitude towards the war in Afghanistan is more or less taken for granted.  At the time of writing it is exemplified in the few editorials, scholarly analyses […]

The current financial crisis in Iceland is of course part of and connected to the international upheaval, but it also has its domestic roots.  To put it briefly, for more than 17 years, we Icelanders have had a right-wing government led by the right-wing Independence Party in coalition with social democratic or center parties.  The […]

  Zaa Nkweta, The Real News: Venezuela just announced that it plans to buy Russian tanks as well as Russian armed reconnaissance vehicles.  At the same time, the Russian naval fleet is on its way to Venezuela to conduct joint military exercises. What do you make of this? Forrest Hylton: On the one hand it’s […]

Don’t panic!  That’s the panicked cry of governments and central bankers around the world.  Meanwhile their behaviour shows that they expect a very, very deep recession. After repetition over more than a quarter of century — by mainstream economists, ministers, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund — neo-liberal platitudes have been forgotten.  Today, we […]

  Klassekampen: Is the credit crisis a symptom of overaccumulation of capital?  It seems to me that investments worldwide, but especially in the United States, were funneled into the traditionally “safe” housing market following the bursting of the dotcom-bubble.  This overinvestment in turn generated a new bubble, thus causing today’s havoc.  Is this correct? JBF: […]

The depression has started.  Journalists are still coyly enquiring of economists whether or not we may be entering a mere recession.  Don’t believe it for a minute.  We are already at the beginning of a full-blown worldwide depression with extensive unemployment almost everywhere.  It may take the form of a classic nominal deflation, with all […]

“I was born by the river in a little tent And just like the river I’ve been running ever since It’s been a long time coming But I know a change is gonna come.” — Sam Cooke Dear family & friends, Had Sam Cooke not been shot on a tragic day in 1964, he’d be […]

The questions regarding variations in social development, economic progress, and political empowerment have produced a voluminous literature over the past century, and because of the complexity of these issues, much important reflection will continue well into the future.  In the early 1980s, a United Nations’ Commission coined the term “sustainable development” as a public statement […]

As the dramatic combats developed in Cangamba we could see that the enemy intended more than an isolated action. First, we had to save the Cuban internationalists and the men of the 32nd Brigade FAPLA.

Notwithstanding the renewed public concern about the economy in the wake of the implosion of the global financial architecture, the so-called “war on terror” remains at the forefront of the American presidential election campaign as it heads into its final stretch.  Despite continuing popular opposition to Washington’s blatant empire-building policies both within the US and around the world, both Messrs. Obama and McCain are reiterating their commitment to good, old-fashioned American-style war making.  Indeed, how to take forward the Project for a New American Century will almost certainly be the preeminent issue facing the new occupant of the White House come January.

Three days ago, on Friday October 10, the world was shocked by the impact of the Wall Street financial crisis. There is no way to count the millions of dollars in paper money injected by the Federal Reserve into the world’s finances to keep up banking operations and to prevent depositors from losing their money.