Geography Archives: Haiti

  Just what did Barack Obama and his spinners do to the critical faculties of so many leading American progressives?  Some of my regular readers might be surprised to know that I often bring a significant measure of disinclination to my recurrent radical criticism of President Barack Obama and his “progressive” defenders.  The reluctance stems […]

The polarization of the debate around WikiLeaks is pretty simple, really.  Of all the governments in the world, the United States government is the greatest threat to world peace and security today.  This is obvious to anyone who looks at the facts with a modicum of objectivity.  The Iraq war has claimed hundreds of thousands, […]

It truly pains me having to deny it. Today he is nothing more than a simple fellow consigned to history, as if the empire’s history, and even more importantly, the history of the human race, were guaranteed beyond a few dozen years, without a nuclear war breaking out in Korea, Iran or some other area […]

About three weeks ago news and photos were published showing Haitian citizens throwing stones and protesting in indignation against the forces of MINUSTAH, accusing it of having transmitted cholera to that country by way of a Nepalese soldier. The first impression, if one doesn’t get any additional information, is that this deals with a rumour […]

ON Friday, December 3, the UN decided to devote a session of the General Assembly to an analysis of the cholera epidemic in this neighboring country. The news of that decision was hopeful. Surely it would serve to alert international opinion to the gravity of the situation and mobilize support for the Haitian people. At […]

There is much to talk about when the United States is involved in a colossal scandal as a consequence of the documents published by Wikileaks, whose authenticity – independent of any other motivation on the part of that website – has not been questioned by anyone. However, at this moment, our country is immersed in […]

By July 24, 2009, the U.S. government was totally clear about the basic facts of what took place in Honduras on June 28, 2009.  The U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa sent a cable to Washington with subject: “Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup,” asserting that “there is no doubt” that the events of […]

Negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program are due to start again shortly, and once again the European Union is called upon as a “mediator.”  This is no minor challenge.  With Iran insisting on discussing Israel’s nuclear capacity and the United States preparing a tougher uranium swap agreement, a deal seems as far away as ever.  Nevertheless, […]

Acclaimed philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He shared his perspectives on international affairs, economics, and other themes in an interview conducted at his office in Boston on September 14, 2010. Keane Bhatt: Your new book Hopes and Prospects begins with the story of […]

  Juliana Ruhfus: In these elections Haitians actually have a choice between no less than 19 different presidential candidates. . . .  Haiti’s political history has been one of revolt, dictatorship, and violence. . . .  Democracy arrived in the country in 1990, with the election of the priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide.  But, over the following […]

In the early years of the past decade, two hard-line Cold Warriors, closely associated with radical right-wing Cuban exile groups in Florida, occupied strategic positions in the U.S. foreign policy machine.  Otto Reich, former head of the Reagan administration’s “black propaganda” operations in Central America, and Roger Noriega, co-author of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, took […]

Washington, D.C. – “The Obama Administration should explain why it is contributing millions of dollars for Haiti’s November 28 presidential and legislative elections, despite the arbitrary exclusion of over a dozen political parties — including the country’s largest party — from the ballot,” Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said […]

Paper prepared for the American Sociological Association Meetings in Atlanta, August 16th, 2010. There are many explanations for the crisis of capital that began in 2007.  But the one thing missing is an understanding of “systemic risks.”  I was alerted to this when Her Majesty the Queen visited the London School of Economics and asked […]

  Among those who signed the books of condolences, leaving diverse expressions of love and respect, are students of the Latin American School of Medicine who are from the United States, the youth that the Reverend Lucius Walker, leader of Pastors for Peace, brought to Cuba. At the Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos […]

What is José Serra trying to do?  In his campaign for president of Brazil he has accused Bolivia of complicity in drug trafficking and criticized Lula for trying to mediate in Washington’s fight with Iran and for refusing (along with the most of the rest of South America) to recognize the government of Honduras, which […]

  Slavoj Žižek.  Living in the End Times.  Verso, 2010. Reading Žižek has always been as challenging as it is enjoyable, an experience of pleasure and pain that seems at times an intellectual correlate to the operation of objet petit a (little object a).  The concept of objet petit a has been a constant in […]

  The Israeli raid on the Gaza flotilla that resulted in the deaths of eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American has led Israel and its supporters to argue (see The Weekly Standard, 5/31/10) that the Turkish government and a prominent Turkish humanitarian organization are “terrorist” sympathizers with ill intentions toward Israel and the United States. […]

How do you break through the twelve-year blockade of silence that has kept five Cuban political prisoners invisible to the American public?  How can art transcend U.S. prison walls and present the truth about these men, locked up in five distant prisons scattered across the United States, to a Los Angeles community?  On May 22nd […]

  Rosiland Jordan: In a Mississippi Delta neighborhood known as Baptist Town, the people have needed a miracle here for a long time now.  Good-paying manufacturing jobs that were once here vanished long before the current economic crisis, and with them so did a lifeline. Sylvester Hoover, Greenwood Merchant and Music Historian: Those people who […]

  There is an embarrassing giddiness in the religious studies world today.  With our new mantra in hand — the new “salience” of religion — we, both scholars of religion and other self-appointed spokespersons for religion, feel licensed to instruct the world on the importance of religion.  We are suddenly relevant again.  Or so we […]