Geography Archives: Americas

I’ve just about had it.  I cannot watch one more episode of the Daily Show which makes racist jokes about Arabs and Muslims.  I am sick and tired of people who see themselves as part of the left writing articles that put a liberal gloss over what is, in essence, a right-wing “clash of civilizations” […]

El 22 de enero del año 2002, Evo fue expulsado del Paraíso.  O sea: el diputado Morales fue echado del Parlamento. El 22 de enero del año 2006, en ese mismo lugar de pomposo aspecto, Evo Morales fue consagrado presidente de Bolivia. O sea: Bolivia empieza a enterarse de que es un país de mayoría […]

The United Transportation Union, which represents railroad conductors and some engineers, reports that negotiations with the railroad corporations had broken down over the issue of crew reduction.  The carriers are demanding the implementation of one-person train crews for many routes on the US freight rail system.  The current standard train crew is two, an engineer […]

  During the twentieth century, there were two major shifts in mainstream economic thinking.  These two major changes were the Keynesian revolution of the 1930s and the return of orthodoxy on the back of the Rational Expectation and Monetarist school in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Each of the shifts was preceded by a […]

  Oslo is dead.  This is not much of a scoop, as analysts and pundits have been saying and writing these words for many years, at least since the Intifada of September 2000 began.  But now that the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections of January 25th, 2006, are over, we can officially turn off the […]

There is screaming, hugging, chanting, and many shhhs; the group takes a momentary pause in their celebration to hear the news.  A delegation of 70 women from all over the world, including, India, Uganda, Guyana, the UK, and the US, stand together in the community of La Padera, Venezuela, awaiting the details. Juanita Romero, also […]

“The only domestic terrorist attack here is the U.S. government’s attack on the people of Puerto Rico.” — New York State Assemblyman José Rivera1 In a move reminiscent of a U.S. Marine invasion of a foreign country, the FBI descended in droves on Puerto Rico on February 10.2  Without breathing a word of the invasion […]

  The fate of socialism after the fall of the socialist bloc will be determined, more than ever, by socialism’s capacity to sustain in theory and in practice the . . . idea that the intellectual’s adherence to the Revolution (like that of any other ordinary citizen), if the intellectual “really wants to be useful, […]

RED SEAS: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica by Gerald HorneBUY THIS BOOK Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica.  By Gerald Horne.  New York University Press, 2005, 358 pp. The political connections of Harlem and the British West Indies have been […]

  The US Green Party called for divestment from Israel on 21 November 2005: The Green Party of the United States (GPUS) publicly calls for divestment from and boycott of the State of Israel until such time as the full individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people are realized. . . .  The party […]

MANUFACTURING DISCONTENT: The Trap of Individualism in Corporate Society by Michael PerelmanBUY THIS BOOK Given the absence of criminal penalties for corporate misbehavior, society needs an alternative means to protect itself against corporate abuses.  Ideally, effective regulation might help to keep corporations in line, but the regulatory structure in the United States is embarrassingly weak. […]

  Caracas, Venezuela — Under the elevated lines in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union has been waging a battle against poverty that has taken them to center stage of the World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela.  Led by Cheri Honkala, a formerly homeless mother, the KWRU began by building encampments […]

Las Krudas is a Cuban hip hop duo, an interracial couple of HOT, HOT, HOT lesbians Odaymara Cuesta and Olivia Prendes.  Their feminist lyrics and performance battle machismo and celebrate the power and beauty of women of color. In “Vamo’ a vencer la dificultad,” the track that opens their CD Cubensi, Las Krudas repeat: Sexo […]

Thanks to Michael Moore, the growth of a moderately-aroused left-liberal public since the invasion of Iraq, and the low manufacturing costs of DVDs, the politically-conscious documentary film has reemerged in the United States.  A central figure in this movement has been the seasoned producer-director Robert Greenwald.  Formerly known for TV epics like Flatbed Annie and […]

The following is a conversation with Heinz Dieterich about his friendship with Hugo Chávez, irregular war, the new Venezuelan military doctrine, and an account of the Bolivarian revolution in Latin America. Heinz Dieterich is a sociologist and economist.  He has been a professor at Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City since 1977.  Since the 1990s, […]

It could be worse, I say to myself, as I buy my Trailways ticket, he could be on death row.  He could be dying in a prison infirmary; he could be getting beaten up by racist gangs.  Instead, Herman Bell is doing 25 years to life at a prison outside New York City, where we […]

Last Sunday, my fifteen year old daughter and I went to Querétaro, Mexico.  We were trying to visit Cristina Rosas Illescas at the state penitentiary of San José El Alto, five miles northeast of the state capital.  At the entrance, my daughter refused the guards’ orders to take her clothes off and let them conduct […]

What has been left out of reports and analysis in both the mainstream press and among anti-imperialists and leftists about the triumph of Evo Morales’ election as President of Bolivia is the role played by the three-decade international indigenous movement that preceded it.  Few are even aware of that powerful and remarkable historic movement, which […]

Las organizaciones sociales y populares más combativas y revolucionarias de Bolivia amenazaron con hacer renunciar al nuevo presidente Evo Morales, si éste no cumple con sus promesas de nacionalizar los hidrocarburos, elevar los salarios, dar tierra a los campesinos y erradicar el neoliberalismo. Por separado, una masiva asamblea de dirigentes de la Central Obrera Boliviana […]

Click on the image for a larger view. Photo by Richard D. Vogel The NAFTA corridors system currently under construction will irreversibly divide the U.S. geographically, economically, and socially for the sake of profit.  The cumulative consequences of this “biggest engineering and construction project in the history of the U.S.” promise to be more damaging […]