Geography Archives: Colombia

It would be hard to find a better test of the integrity of the establishment U.S. media than in their comparative treatment of Iran and Honduras over the past couple of years (2009-2010). Iran has been on the United States’ regime-change hit list for many years.  Since the first-half of 2003 (and overlapping its soon-to-be-discredited […]

Three days ago the news was made public that the Attorney General of Colombia, Alejandro Ordóñez Maldonado, had removed the eminent Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba from her post and barred her from political office for 18 years, because of her alleged promotion of and collaboration with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Faced with […]

THREE days ago the news was made public that the Attorney General of Colombia, Alejandro Ordóñez Maldonado, had removed the eminent Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba from her post and barred her from political office for 18 years, because of her alleged promotion of and collaboration with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Faced with […]

1. The Cost of the Occupation to Israeli Society The majority of Israel’s anti-occupation movement, unfortunately, does not focus on the rights of Palestinians to live free, but on the damage that the occupation causes to Israeli society (Sternhell, 2009). The arguments that the occupation is a major investment of resources that could be useful […]

  In your view, does the combat troop withdrawal mean that the mission has been completed successfully? Viewed from all conceivable angles the war must be considered a strategic failure and a humanitarian disaster.  True, the US government, together with its allies primarily the United Kingdom, managed to oust Saddam Hussein who was, by all […]

No one should be surprised when The Economist or another controlled opinion source misrepresents tensions in the Persian Gulf as religious rivalry while overlooking decades of U.S. and Israeli success in stoking them for imperial gain.  The so-called mainstream press typically repeats unsubstantiated charges to pretend that Arab client states of Washington buy tens of […]

There is a very pervasive view that the current capitalist crisis consists exclusively of the financial crisis and, in so far as the financial crisis is now over, the crisis as a whole is over.  This, I believe, is erroneous, and this is because, like Bob Brenner, I also believe that the current financial crisis […]

In March I wrote about the Obama Administration’s contribution to the election campaign under way in Venezuela, where voters will choose a new National Assembly in September.  I predicted that certain things would happen before September, among them some new “discoveries” that Venezuela supports terrorism.  Venezuela has had thirteen elections or referenda since Hugo Chávez […]

DKK: Joan, because people know you as many things — as a theorist of gender, as a cultural historian, as an inveterate advocate for academic freedom and defender of the rights of the professoriate — I’m curious how you would describe yourself to someone who had never met Joan Scott. JWS: That’s really hard . […]

  Paul Jay: One of the moments of the war that we hear, as we’ve been in Beirut, people talking about is one point during the war where Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, is making a speech and tells people to look out to the sea. Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General, Hezbollah: Now . . . […]

When the Soviet Union was in terminal crisis in 1990 and the prospect emerged of the United States establishing long-term domination of the international political system, the influential Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer sought to capture the character of the unfolding geopolitical era. The term he used became a buzzword in then-emerging neo-conservative circles, and […]

Joseph A. Massad.  Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan.  New York: Columbia UP, 2001.  Paperback, 396 pages, ISBN: 0-231-12323-x. In Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan, a book that is painstakingly researched (there are almost 75 pages of end notes alone), Joseph A. Massad explores and analyzes the roles […]

In the last five years, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has gone from being a media darling to generating more bad press for itself than any other labor organization.  Some of SEIU’s negative publicity is a product of right-wing union bashing.  But a huge amount is self-inflicted — the result of conflicts with other […]

  Gervasio Umpiérrez is a cartoonist based in Montevideo, Uruguay.  This cartoon was published in his blog on 28 June 2010, shortly after the second round of the Colombian presidential elections on 20 June 2010. | Print  

The province of Alberta is well known as a climate-destroying behemoth.  The tar sands developments in the north of that province are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. Less well known are the ambitions of its neighbouring province, British Columbia.  It shares similar fossil fuel reserves and ambitions as Alberta. […]

  Paul Jay: So, what happened in the Colombian elections on Sunday? . . . Before the runoff election, the last time you and I talked, which is I guess just over a month ago, the other candidate, Mockus, looked like [trending up] — in fact, I think the headline of our story was “Upset […]

  In Cauca, Colombia is still at war.  You find trenches in every corner, tanks, Blackhawk helicopters and lots of soldiers.  Fighting takes place here almost every day and people have gotten used to it.  More than that, they are certain that on election day there will be attacks. But in spite of all that […]

The global Sixties began in Tokyo on June 15, 1960, with the death of Michiko Kanba, an undergraduate at Tokyo University.  On the night of her death she had joined a group of fellow university students at the front of a massive demonstration — 100,000 people deep — facing off against the National Diet Building. […]

If it were set in, say, Manhattan, Kansas, it would be a spectacular sight: a twisting, shimmering 51-story tower of glass. As it is, though, it doesn’t stand out in Midtown Manhattan, New York — a stylized office tower, topped by a harpoonish spire. In short, another glass office building that screams “architecture” while exuding a vague and somewhat threatening sense of private power.

  “It is probably impossible today for anyone to make an even halfway commercial movie that shouts, in some positive sense, ‘Revolution!’ as loudly as its lungs can bear, so one must celebrate the films that seem (whether deliberately or not) to imply its necessity.” — Robin Wood1 At a time when comedy shows tell […]