Geography Archives: Americas

As election day (now rescheduled for December 18, 2005) approaches, musicians are mobilizing in Bolivia. Who are on the side of Evo Morales and el Movimiento al Socialismo? Arawi, Tupay, Alejandro Cámara, Semilla, and la banda Real Imperial de Oruro, among others. Here are two samples of music for the MAS. “Cholita Marina para Evo” […]

[Lisa N. contributed all photographs below that illustrate Remi Kanazi’s essay. Lisa came back to the United States from her nine-month sojourn in Palestine two months ago. Over the last several years, she spent twenty-seven months in Palestine, working with Palestinians and Israelis struggling to end the Israeli occupation. She took some of the photographs […]

  “I’ve always loved George Plimpton, Norman Mailer, those kinds of guys,” said Kevin’s smiling, catastrophically Caucasian father from his overstuffed recliner, as I waited for the boy to come down the wide, oak stairway with the sheets of music he had scribbled his ideas down onto, but which he had mistakenly left upstairs in […]

Ten years after the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty, with its razor-thin victory for the No side, and 25 years since the first referendum, mass media and academics alike have been immersed lately in speculation on the likely result of a third such vote, which could occur as early as 2007. This is not an […]

  One of the most pleasant (and, for us, unanticipated) consequences of finishing a film is the chance to travel on other people’s tab. In the coming months, we have invitations to travel and screen Zizek! in venues as far flung as Vienna and New York City, Beirut and Columbia (Missouri, that is), primarily at […]

The protest against the Nazis in Toledo on October 15, 2005 was an appropriate response to the violent racism that the Nazi party represents. Wherever racist groups like the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan go, they need to be exposed for what they are, not ignored. Sure, they may be (willing) pawns in a […]

For some time, business and government leaders in the United States have aggressively promoted policies designed to expand opportunities for private profit making.  The result has been growing instabilities and inequalities.  Many opposed to this development have called for the imposition of controls on private production, investment, and price decisions.  However, those in power routinely […]

The small Andean nation hit the news again on October 31, 2005 with the announcement that elections originally scheduled for December 2005 were to be postponed indefinitely. This most recent political crisis was orchestrated by the agro-industrialist elite from Santa Cruz, who are using procedural rules to thwart the move towards the deepening of democracy. […]

On October 6, 2005, Carla Del Ponte, prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), gave a talk before an audience at Goldman Sachs in London that throws light on the role of the ICTY as well as the character of Ms. Del Ponte and qualities of her efforts.1 Speaking before this […]

Scott Campbell lives in Oakland, California, and is an organizer with the San Francisco Bay Area Coalition to Fight the Minutemen.  He and 600 others protested on October 29 at the state Capitol in Sacramento against the Minuteman Project, which turned out 200 supporters. Mario Galván lives in Sacramento, California.  He has been working with […]

  Epistemological Remarks Questions about religion can be put into two categories.  In the first are those about the truth of the prominent assertions peculiar to many faiths, such as that one or more gods (as described by the believers) exist, that such beings hear myriad prayers, that they perform various miracles, and that some […]

  Listen to Michael D. Yates’ keynote speech (mp3) at the conference “How Unions Matter in the New Economy” in Toronto, 28-29 October 2005. Excerpt First, working people want and need good jobs and benefits, but the vision worthy of a struggle to achieve, they need that, too.  People are likely to do great things, […]

Industrial salmon farming corporations have learned an important lesson from their corporate cousins about what to do with their tarnished images of ecological and social injustice: simply pour money into a public relations campaign and overwhelm dissent.  After years of bad publicity, the salmon farming industry is adopting a damage control PR campaign. A recent […]

Continuing turmoil in Germany since the elections on 18 September 2005 suggests a turning point in European politics, with implications for global politics: the European Left may have finally ceased its steady retreat. It all began with stunning election results, so stunning that even normally glib liberal commentators seem to be taken aback. The German […]

Not only Washington but Berlin, too, has a new crisis, and no one can predict how it will end! The dramatic factor, almost totally ignored by the media, has been the crucial importance of Germany’s new Left Party. When neither Gerhard Schroeder’s ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Greens nor the right-wing Christian Democrats and […]

It’s time for the antiwar movement to take the US threats against Iran and Syria very, very seriously. Not only are stories of such threats appearing at an increasing rate in antiwar journals and websites, they are now a topic of concern on Capitol Hill and at the United Nations. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, […]

In Purple Hearts, the documentary photographer Nina Berman (2004) presents forty photographs — two each of twenty US veterans of the American war in Iraq — plus a couple of accompanying paragraphs of commentary from each vet in his or her own words.  Their comments cohere around their service, their sacrifice, their suffering.  Purple Hearts […]

Without much examination of the concept, Americans are quick to declare that they live in a civilized society.  Indeed, many Americans believe that their country is the most “civilized” country in the world.  Without much digression on the arrogance of such a belief, it is sufficient to say that at least the rest of the […]

Whoopee! The Change to Win Coalition has established itself in the labor movement! Happy Days are here again! Andy Stern’s going to lead us to the promised land! And the overwhelming response by American workers: yawn. At the time when American workers — indeed, US society as a whole — so much need a new […]

That “Sex Machine” ever got approved for air play is testimony to the stupidity of radio censors. It’s little more than James Brown, the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business (one of several), encouraging his penis to labor just as hard: Stay on the scene Like a sex machine. In case you miss the point, the […]