Geography Archives: Americas

El Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de la República de Cuba ha conocido con extrema preocupación de la operación militar a gran escala iniciada por Israel, desde horas tempranas de la madrugada del 28 de junio del 2006, en la Franja de Gaza, con la movilización de cerca de cinco mil soldados, cientos de tanques y […]

In an operation carried out throughout the West Bank and the Jerusalem area early on Thursday, Israeli forces kidnapped some 65 Hamas government ministers, parliament members, and activists in an effort to overthrow the democratically elected Palestinian government.  Palestinians fear that the officials were kidnapped to serve as bargaining chips for negotiating the release of […]

Click on an image for a larger view. Gaza: Free Fire Zone Does the Israeli Army Need Smart Bombs or Smart Soldiers? Accept the Existence of Israel Carlos Latuff, born in Rio de Janeiro on 30 November 1968, is a political cartoonist.  He is the author of the famous “We Are All Palestinians” series, comparing […]

I am so tired of hearing Tel Aviv complain that certain Palestinian factions do not recognize Israel’s right to exist.  Regardless of their opinion of Israel’s right, even Hamas leaders have stated that the fact is that Israel does exist.  Meanwhile, Israel is once again waging a military campaign against the Palestinians that, in essence, […]

Here in the purported paragon of electoral democracy, the United States of America,  we have now suffered through presidential elections in 2000 and 2004 that were widely regarded as questionable.  I am referring of course to the fiasco’s of Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. Even before the Supreme Court made Bush President by […]

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Iran must really adore the American model of state conduct.  Contrary to popular perceptions, the decision-makers in Tehran agree with their nemesis, Akbar Ganji, who recently told the Voice of America that the West was “the cradle of civilization.”  Two recent moves by Iran are especially noteworthy […]

Against a bloody backdrop of massacres and lynchings aimed at blacks in early 20th century America, W.E.B. DuBois observed that the suffering of the nation’s darker-skinned sons and daughters gave many whites a feeling of “fierce, vindictive joy.”  He further wrote, “A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons […]

Capitalism’s demand for cheap labor is the thread that runs throughout the history of immigration in the U.S. and remains the central issue today.  Currently, the crux of the immigration issue is the status of the undocumented Mexican and Central American labor force working in this country.  Just how closely the U.S. economy is linked […]

A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEOLIBERALISM by David HarveyBUY THIS BOOK Neoliberalism has left an indelible, smoldering mark on our world for the last thirty years.  Eminent Marxist geographer David Harvey, author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, 2005), spoke earlier this year to Sasha Lilley, of the radical radio program Against the Grain, about […]

  My father’s travels ended in 1980. We came back to live the Iran-Iraq war. Zinnah, my sister, was a child of ten when she attended the Dijla (Tigress) Primary School. One day she returned to ask my mother, “Are we Sunni or Shooyouii (Arabic for Communist)?” a word she had most probably picked up […]

I watched the World Cup match of Iran and Mexico — two peoples with whom Washington is at odds! — on 11 June, with my Iranian friends (mainly men).  So I adopted Iran as my team for the day. Knowing little about Iranian footballers, before the match began, I told my friends to point out […]

“Whoever battles monsters should take care not to become a monster too, for if you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you.”                                     — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche “Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us — and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, […]

¿Qué mujer en México, sin importar sus ideas, puede honestamente quedarse callada? Los días 3 y 4 de mayo del 2006, quedarán en la memoria de los habitantes de San Salvador Atenco, como unos de los días más tristes y violentos de su historia contemporánea.  Este pueblo, de unos 33 mil habitantes, dependientes aún de […]

  El presidente de Bolivia, Evo Morales, rendirá hoy homenaje al Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara, en el 78 aniversario de su natalicio y en la aldea de La Higuera, donde el guerrillero vivió sus últimas horas. Según confirmó la Presidencia de la República, el mandatario encabezará el tributo, consistente en la apertura de un centro […]

Former Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern‘s recent commentary on labor “The End of ‘More’” (Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2006), albeit apologetically, confirms that liberal orthodoxy is on the side of telling U.S. workers and working-class communities to quit struggling against the tide of “a new competitive reality.”  But whose reality is […]

Last night, I saw Al Gore’s new movie, An Inconvenient Truth.  There is much to like in this film, not least its clear presentation of stark and convincing evidence about the reality of global warming.  But, as you might guess from knowledge of its star’s balsa-wood political career, this movie is a sheep in wolf’s […]

On May 26, 2006, a representative of the violent Iranian fugitives based in Iraq, known as MEK, addressed a forum  — an anti-war forum — sponsored by the liberal Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists in Berkeley, California, as he had done the year before.  Introduced as Ali Mirardal, the speaker lamented human rights abuses in Iran […]

Real wages in the US rose during every decade from 1830 to 1970.  Then this central feature of US capitalism stopped as the figures below show: Source: Labor Research Associates of New York based on data from the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics; wages expressed in constant 1982 dollars. 1964 $302.52 1974 […]

  Click on a photo for a larger view. 23-25 May 2006 29 May 2006 On the eighth day of the Olympia Port Militarization Resistance, the U.S.S. Pomeroy has docked to take the Stryker Brigade to Iraq.  The resistance escalates, the Port fence is shaken and nearly taken down before a riot squad enters the […]

  Andrew Stern, president of the 1.7-million-member Service Employees International Union, once likened the leadership of a mass movement to the crew on a sailboat.  What matters is the wind in the sails, he said, not the fight over who steers. The wind behind the movement for immigrant rights had reached gale force by May […]