Geography Archives: Iraq

  Oslo is dead.  This is not much of a scoop, as analysts and pundits have been saying and writing these words for many years, at least since the Intifada of September 2000 began.  But now that the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections of January 25th, 2006, are over, we can officially turn off the […]

  The US Green Party called for divestment from Israel on 21 November 2005: The Green Party of the United States (GPUS) publicly calls for divestment from and boycott of the State of Israel until such time as the full individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people are realized. . . .  The party […]

  Caracas, Venezuela — Under the elevated lines in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union has been waging a battle against poverty that has taken them to center stage of the World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela.  Led by Cheri Honkala, a formerly homeless mother, the KWRU began by building encampments […]

Thanks to Michael Moore, the growth of a moderately-aroused left-liberal public since the invasion of Iraq, and the low manufacturing costs of DVDs, the politically-conscious documentary film has reemerged in the United States.  A central figure in this movement has been the seasoned producer-director Robert Greenwald.  Formerly known for TV epics like Flatbed Annie and […]

The following is a conversation with Heinz Dieterich about his friendship with Hugo Chávez, irregular war, the new Venezuelan military doctrine, and an account of the Bolivarian revolution in Latin America. Heinz Dieterich is a sociologist and economist.  He has been a professor at Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City since 1977.  Since the 1990s, […]

Click on the image for a larger view. Doug Minkler, “Campus Predator” (3 February 2006) All over the country, organized citizens are fighting to restrict the military’s presence in schools. But having recruiters troll high school cafeterias is just one way the Pentagon inundates our youngsters with messages to “Go Army!” Since 2002, the U.S. […]

The Bush “State of the Union” speech said more about the speaker than the issues. Working people from coast to coast issued a collective groan as the wildly popular American Idol program ended, and the annual State of the Union program began.  Millions and millions of viewers found the remote and tuned out, in search […]

Much is being made of George W Bush’s road-to-Damascus conversion on the need for alternative energy.  “America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world,” Bush said in the annual State of the Union speech given by US Presidents at the beginning of the year. Enthusiasts for renewable energy […]

While George Bush, the man who controls the trigger of the world’s greatest nuclear arsenal, expresses his fear that a “non-transparent” and nuclear Iran might use its non-existent nuclear weapons to blackmail the world, and his Secretary of State tells the media that the time for talking with the regime in Tehran is over, a […]

El futuro de la Revolución Bolivariana en América Latina se ve más brillante desde que Evo Morales participa en la construcción del Bloque Regional de Poder (BRP) de América Latina, en lo que será probablemente el año más peligroso para la humanidad desde el fin de la “Guerra Fría”: el año del ataque de la […]

Andre Vltchek Andre Vltchek is a Czech-born American writer who has written for Der Spiegel, Asahi Shimbun, the Guardian, and many other international papers.  He has reported on the violence of the neo-liberal order from all over the globe,  but especially from Indonesia, about which he has made a ground-breaking documentary: Terlena: Breaking of a […]

A short time ago, Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein wrote a column starting, “I don’t support our troops.” It was a well-reasoned piece by most standards, though Stein unthinkingly repeats the urban legend about “peaceniks” spitting on troops returning from Vietnam. For his honesty, he received a hundred “hate e-mails” on his (unpublished) personal […]

Paul Krell, UAW spokesperson, is not a person.  Paul is an answering machine.  Which explains why he can’t return calls and always says the same thing, i.e., “The UAW has no comment.”  Since the UAW does not have a spokesperson per se, I don’t have to be concerned about stepping on anyone’s toes.  Thus, I […]

  I. A Brooklyn federal court in March 2005 dismissed a civil suit filed on behalf of millions of Vietnamese against U.S. chemical companies charged with war crimes for having supplied the military with Agent Orange. The dismissal was on technical grounds, not on its merits; the contention that the chemical defoliants used during the […]

Guatemala City, Guatemala Carlos, my driver, was a former federal policeman.  He weighed a good two hundred pounds and was well over six feet.  He was assigned to me by a local businessman whom I knew in Guatemala City after I explained that I wanted to visit some areas where I could see gang activity.  […]

“I’ve told the American people before that this will not be another Vietnam, and I repeat this here tonight. . . . I’m hopeful that this fighting will not go on for long and that casualties will be held to an absolute minimum. This is an historic moment. We have in this past year made […]

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is no armchair theorist.  She was and is on the front lines of struggles for social justice at home and abroad.  An acclaimed author, Dunbar-Ortiz is also a professor of ethnic studies at California State University, Hayward.  Her substantial body of work includes Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the […]

Unless political elites change strategy and tactics in 2006, North-South relations will continue to degenerate.  By the end of last year, opportunities ranging from rock concerts to summits and trade negotiations were lost. South Africa’s role in this failure of global nerve was substantial.  Three leading politicians of South Africa — Thabo Mbeki, Alec Erwin, […]

On January 1,  2006, thirty-two private oil companies in Venezuela lost their contracts to operate independently.  The replaced contracts were given to the oil companies by the pre-Chavez government in Caracas during the 1990s, the latest in a series of oil agreements that were much more beneficial to the oil companies than they were to […]

The summer 2005 revelations by former FBI assistant director W. Mark Felt that he was the source known as Deep Throat that helped bring down Richard Nixon has revived talk among certain US residents regarding the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney.  While I have great reservations about the likelihood of such an event […]