Geography Archives: Colombia

I know Chavez well, and no one could be more reluctant than him to allow a showdown between the Venezuelan and Colombian peoples leading to bloodshed. These are two fraternal peoples, the same as Cubans living in the east, center and west end of our island. I find no other way to explain the close relationship between Venezuelans and Colombians.

  One side is the barely veiled alliance between Washington and Micheletti.  The other side consists of the Constitutional Zelaya Government, the National Front against the Coup d’Etat and the principal former presidential candidate linked to the latter who has decided to boycott the November 29 elections.  The candidate had formally taken his final position […]

Edgar White was born in Montserrat West Indies.  He has lived in the United States and England.  His plays have been successfully presented in New York, London, and Africa.  In the following autobiographical extract, he describes how his radical activities in the seventies led him to being sent down from Yale. for Cornel West It […]

Prabhat Patnaik.  The Value of Money.  New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2008/New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.  Excerpt: “Introduction.” Prabhat Patnaik is an eminent and prolific economist who has worked creatively for 40 years at the intersection of Marxian and Keynesian theoretical traditions.  In addition to his writings on Marxism and Keynesianism per se, he has […]

A shift in US policies toward Iran was already discernible at the end of the Bush presidency.  With the extreme right wing of the neoconservative movement marginalized and the US army bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration amended its policies in accordance with a re-assessment of the United States’ capabilities after the […]

  The Anthony Hyman Memorial Lecture, School of Oriental and African Studies University of London, 2009 I feel both honoured and gratified to be offering the 7th Anthony Hyman Memorial Lecture.  This gives me the opportunity to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Tony for his unwavering support and friendship over the years.  When I […]

  Jasmin Hristov.  Blood and Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia.   Ohio University Research in International Studies Series.  Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009. xxiii + 263 pp. 28.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-89680-267-4. Jasmin Hristov’s book is an exploration of the history and evolution of armed paramilitary forces in Colombia, focusing primarily on the past two decades.  […]

(for Hafiz) The stillest fall of all is the fall from grace.  No louder than a feather falling in a forest, and yet we fall.  There are many ways to kill a man.  Gun and knife will work well but to make a man irrelevant will also do, and what better way to ignore an […]

“The movement which we saw this summer is a sign of a new group who were not fighting for a certain ideology but believed in freedom.” — Shirin Neshat Shirin Neshat is an Iranian-American visual artist.  Women without Men (based on the novel Women without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur), Neshat’s first feature film, won her […]

In June, the People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project visited Venezuela in order to assess the state of its healthcare system.  The People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project models itself on the Cuban community-based approach to healthcare, and has established a project along those lines in a small neighborhood in Washington, DC.  The visit was […]

It is spell-binding to see how the U.S. establishment can inflate the threat of a target, no matter how tiny, remote, and (most often) non-existent that threat may be, and pretend that the real threat posed by its own behavior and policies is somehow defensive and related to that wondrously elastic thing called “national security.” […]

Analytical Monthly Review On Monday, October 12th, it was reported that Manmohan Singh — despite the request of air chief marshal P. V. Naik to permit IAF personnel in helicopters to attack inhabitants of the hilly regions — had announced that the armed forces would not be deployed against the domestic left-wing opponents of the […]

Gregory S. Taylor.  The History of the North Carolina Communist Party.   Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009.  258 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-57003-802-0. The History of the North Carolina Party by Gregory S. Taylor offers a window into the efforts of the North Carolina Communist Party (NCCP) and further dispels stereotypes that early […]

This political crisis has more to do with manufactured “diplomatics” ahead of Thursday’s meeting in Geneva than with the facts.  The revelation by President Barack Obama that Iran is constructing a “secret” nuclear fuel facility, a few days after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) received a letter from the Iranians declaring that a new […]

In the current recession, state and local governments are struggling.  As economic activity slumps and tax revenue dwindles, governments have fewer resources at their disposal.  At the same time, there is growing demand for government services during hard economic times.  As more people lose their jobs, there is a greater demand for unemployment benefits.  As […]

  Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar.  The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.  xiv + 288 pp.  $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-13846-8; (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-51101-8. Over the last couple decades, histories of the partition of India and its consequences have proliferated.  But Vazira Zamindar’s study stands […]

Umut Özkırımlı, Spyros A. Sofos.  Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.  viii + 220 pp.  $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-70052-8. Tormented by History by Umut Özkırımlı and Spyros A. Sofos provides a comparative approach to Turkish and Greek nationalisms from the late nineteenth century to the present.  The […]

Joseph Andoni Massad.  Desiring Arabs.   Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007 . xiv + 453 pp.  $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-226-50958-7. With Desiring Arabs, Joseph Massad makes a significant contribution to the existing scholarship on sexuality.  He merits praise for boldly tackling the problematic of knowledge in a world that continues to be unevenly carved […]

It was a winter day in the Argentine city of Bariloche when 12 South American presidents gathered there on August 28. It was so cold that Hugo Chavez wore a red scarf and Evo Morales put on a sweater. The presidents arrived at the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) meeting to discuss a US […]

  When I decided to teach Joseph Conrad‘s Heart of Darkness at Berkeley High School, it had been out of favor as an appropriate text because it was considered too controversial.  I wanted to do a whole unit on Africa and the Congo, including African authors, journalism, and history, and I figured we could start […]