Geography Archives: Americas

Two of my friends were just beaten and arrested by Brooklyn police.  My friends, Michael Tarif Warren and Evelyn Warren, are African-American attorneys whose work consists, in part, of defending victims of police violence.  I want to tell you about how police punched and humiliated these good people on the corner of Vanderbilt and Atlantic, […]

Vladimir Putin has not been getting good press in the United States or even Western Europe in the last year or so.  He has been charged with being authoritarian, with attempting to recreate Russia‘s imperial control over its neighbors, and with reviving Cold War obstructionism in the United Nations. So it is with some surprise […]

“Containing Russia: Back to the Future?” by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov was published on the Web site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation on 19 July 2007.   The account of Lavrov’s conflict with the journal Foreign Affairs, which follows his essay, was published on the same Web […]

  The post-911 immigration regime originates in 2003 when immigration control shifted from the Department of Justice to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  The Immigration and Naturalization Service was abolished March 2003, and its functions were transferred into the newly created DHS, in a merger of some 180,000 employees from 22 different agencies.  […]

Imperial rulers and violently fixated Cuban exiles need Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program to accelerate learning processes and not continue to repeat mistakes.  Hey, on Cuba policy, it’s only been 48 years! Fidel Castro, in contrast, learned fast.  He used Washington and Miami to improvise material for three chapters in future releases of Machiavelli’s […]

The March 1 House of Representatives vote for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was an important milestone for legislation intended to help employees form and join unions, but that vote was as close as this bill would get to becoming law for the next two years.  Even if the Senate had passed EFCA, neither […]

  Since the first pictures of Abu Ghraib, the collusion of medical personnel, including psychologists, in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Bagram, and CIA detention centers is no longer open to question: Mark Benjamin, “The CIA’s Torture Teachers,” Salon.com, 12 June 2007; Valtin, “Fact Sheet: Psychologist Participation in Torture,” Invictus, 6 July […]

I will not refer to Bush’s health and education, but to that of his neighbors. It was not an improvised declaration. The AP agency tells us what his opening words were: “Tenemos corazones grandes en este país” (We have big hearts in this country); he said this in Spanish in front of 250 representatives of […]

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — For my first three days in Pakistan, no conversation could go more than a few minutes without a reference to the crisis at the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) compound.  I had landed in Islamabad on July 8, and by then it seemed clear that government forces would eventually storm the mosque and […]

1. Introduction: The War We are in the fight of our lives.  The hostile onslaught against U.S. labor that was launched after the Second World War and redoubled in the 1980s is entering a new phase that will profoundly influence the future of all working people in North America.  How we respond to this latest […]

Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko indicts private health insurance and calls for its abolition.  Sicko joins an American tradition that includes Lewis Hine‘s photographs of child laborers (1908) and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), two examples among many.  But can Moore’s theme change our nation in 2007? Private health insurance, usually obtained […]

Recientemente, aprovechando un nuevo aniversario del nacimiento de George Washington, el presidente George W. Bush aprovechó para comparar la Revolución americana del siglo XVIII con la guerra en Irak.  De paso recordó que el primero, como el último, había sido “George W.” La técnica de las asociaciones es propia de la publicidad.  Según ésta, una […]

  The first US Social Forum wrapped up on Sunday, July 1 in Atlanta, Georgia.  That it happened at all seems almost miraculous.  It is hard to remember any previous comparable gathering of diverse currents of US social movements.  This is not a particularly dynamic moment in their history — the anti-war movement is bland […]

The June 29 announcement of the approval of a wage-cutting agreement between Delphi Corporation, an auto parts manufacturing giant, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) means that U.S. labor has suffered yet another defeat in the ongoing war of attrition that is being waged against working people around the world. Details of the pact have […]

In regular high-school rituals, teachers berate students for their disinterest in, mockery of, and/or failure to focus on “the important issues” in elections for student government.  Students are forced to hear about cherishing their right to vote, taking the issues seriously, and participating fully.  Most never do.  Some notice that teachers likewise take little interest […]

CHAIN OF DISASTERS & THE WEAKEST LINK The only thing that Bush’s “war on terror” has spread faster than disaster and misery has been opposition to its means and ends.  Six years into this self-righteously promoted crusade, Washington is more isolated internationally than ever.  Within the U.S., the Commander Guy’s approval rating has fallen below […]

Harlem’s Canaan Baptist Church, long associated with human rights activism, hosted a fundraising rally for women in Darfur, on June 13.  Billed as “Voices for the Voiceless,” the program featured speeches and fund-pitches by the program’s emcee, business developer Judith Price, and main speaker, peace activist and church leader Dr. Thelma Adair, with proclamations by […]

28 June 2007 On the 20th anniversary of the chemical bombing of the Kurdish city of Sardasht in western Iran, a crime committed by the puppet Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussain and with full provision, support, and acquiescence of Western governments, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII), commemorates the forgotten victims […]

Introduction From the very start, the recent Nigerian elections, which saw Olusegun Obasanjo placing his hand-picked successor Umaru Yar’ Adua into the Presidential palace, were mired in controversy.  The ballot papers for the election, which were printed in South Africa, contained no counterfoils or serial numbers — features which would have made vote riggingdifficult.  In […]

Before we deal with the topic of the Iranian role in the Arab region, it is useful to recall the complexity of Iran and its different entanglements: For one, Iran is not a “Banana Republic,” and its regime is not a puppet or a client regime of Imperialism.  Iran has a regional project and works […]