Geography Archives: Americas

María Luisa Mendonça brought to the meeting in Havana a powerful documentary film on the subject of manual sugarcane cutting in Brazil. As I did in my previous reflection, I have written a summary using María Luisa’s own paragraphs and phrases.  It goes as follows: We are aware that most of the wars in the […]

Atilio Borón, a prestigious leftist intellectual who until recently headed the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), wrote an article for the 6th Hemispheric Meeting of Struggle against the FTAs and for the Integration of Peoples which just wrapped up in Havana; he was kind enough to send it to me along with a […]

  The Center for Labor Renewal was conceived in 2005 when the national U.S. labor union leadership was engaging in a ‘debate’ which largely ignored the fundamental crisis of our nation’s working class.  It was launched in the Spring of 2006 following a meeting of activists from unions, worker centers, educators, and working class organizations […]

I cannot speak as an economist or a scientist.  I simply speak as a politician who wishes to unravel the economists’ and scientists’ arguments one way or another.  I also try to sense the motivations of each one of those who make statements on these matters.  Just twenty-two years ago, here in Havana, we had […]

I wrote this as a paper for a seminar in history during my first year of grad school at the University of Washington in 1984.  It was a labor of love for me because it gave me an opportunity to read every single issue of Monthly Review , all of which were carefully kept in […]

I hold nothing against Brazil, even though to more than a few Brazilians continuously bombarded with the most diverse arguments, which can be confusing even for people who have traditionally been friendly to Cuba, we might sound callous and careless about hurting that country’s net income of hard currency.  However, for me to keep silent […]

When the chairman of Iran’s Jewish Council, Haroun Yashayaei, criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a letter condemning his remarks on the Holocaust, he was supported by a range of Iranian intellectuals, artists, poets, and others both within the country and without.  For those amongst us with some understanding about the Jewish presence in Iranian history, […]

American capitalism has been addicted to cheap Mexican labor since the U.S. conquest of Mexico in the nineteenth century. The Border Industrialization Program, the bi-lateral treaty that granted U.S. industries almost unlimited access to Mexican labor along the U.S.-Mexico border in the 1960s, fed the addiction.  Following on the heels of the runaway shop movement […]

(Because most conference participants face repressive conditions in their homelands, individual’s names are omitted from this report. — JR) Part OneA New Pole of Anti-Imperialist Leadership CAIRO, EGYPT — More than 1,500 activists from the Middle East and around the world met in Cairo, March 29-April 1, under the banner “Towards an International Alliance against […]

1.  The year 2007 marks the 140th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Marx’s Capital.  In your perspective, what is the main contribution of that major work to the understanding of contemporary capitalism? Marx’s Capital establishes three essential contradictions of capitalism which grow in intensity as the system develops historically.  These contradictions […]

Contrary to both mainstream dogma and received cultural-leftist/neo-Marcusian canon, access to commodities has never been anything like equal in the United States.  In fact, in this epoch of escalating income and wealth polarity, the newest statistics show that inequality among U.S. “consumers” is now at an all-time high. Bradley Johnson of Advertising Age magazine’s “American […]

As productive industry in the United States is systematically dismantled and sent to low-wage production zones all over the world, the number of products and services actually exported by our country continues to dwindle.  Our mind-boggling and staggering trade deficit for 2006 was $763 billion dollars, the fifth consecutive year of record-breaking deficits.  Be clear […]

Just less than a year ago in May 2006, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario unanimously passed in convention its path-breaking Resolution 50 in support for the global campaign against Israeli apartheid.  The resolution called on the union to educate its members on the apartheid nature of the Israeli state.  It also mandated […]

THE PRICE OF FIRE: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia by Benjamin DanglBUY THIS BOOK For Bolivia’s indigenous majority, the year 1781 is engrained in popular memory as one of open rebellion against Spanish colonialism.  Led by Tupak Katari, the indigenous Aymaras of the highlands lay siege to the city of La Paz for […]

The reign of the automobile in the United States is imperiling the entire planet.  Meanwhile, in 2005, a wholly typical year, automotive collisions took the lives of 43,443 residents of the United States.  That is 119 people killed per day, almost four times the 32 people murdered this Monday at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State […]

Dear friend, relative, or acquaintance of Bob McChesney, The news media are covering the tragic murders in Virginia this morning, and as they do an extraordinarily significant story is slipping through the cracks. On very rare occasions, I send a message to everyone in my email address book on an issue that I find of […]

For the first time since its rise as a superpower the United States is facing a serious threat to its hegemony across the globe. In February this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed a security conference in Munich that had 250 of the world’s top leaders and officials in attendance, including such luminaries as the […]

The macro march backward of domestic income and wealth distribution has become remarkable.  At least we thought so enough to pen the following remarks.  In 2006 the corporate profits share of the national economy retouched its 1929 high.  Wage and salary income broke its 8 decade low watermark.  Our new economy increasingly replicates the distributional […]

KARL MARX: A Life by Francis WheenBUY THIS BOOK It is fitting that a man who framed a dialectic based on violent contradiction — on thrust and counter-thrust, struggle and counter-struggle — should have lived a life fraught with contradictions.  In Francis Wheen’s biography, Karl Marx is neither hero nor nemesis, but a man of […]

“Con este último pago (al Banco Mundial), esa deuda que era en 1998 de casi 3 mil millones de dólares, les puedo decir hoy que no tenemos ni un centavo de deuda ni con el Fondo Monetario Internacional, ni con el Banco Mundial”, exclamó. Declaraciones del Presidente Chávez (MP3 3m) Haga click para escuchar el […]