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 […]
Geography Archives: Latin America
Currency War and US Imperialism: Interview with Samir Amin
There has been much publicity about the so-called “currency war” arising from the discussions at the recent G20 meeting. Can you explain what is meant by currency war? The discourse, the rhetoric, on the currency war is very superficial and even misleading. As everybody knows, what is being said is that the Chinese yuan is […]
Squeezing Iran: The European Connection
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, […]
Noam Chomsky on Hopes and Prospects for Activism: “We Can Achieve a Lot”
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 […]
Who Benefits from Deflation?
Paul Jay: So if you’ve got more or less zero percent inflation and you’re getting 3 percent on your bond, you’re making 3 percent. But if inflation’s 3 percent and you’re getting 3 percent on your bond, you’re down to zero. Now, the Fed is saying that we can do this quantitative easing, increasing […]
European Authorities Pushing Ireland Down the Wrong Track
As another one of the so-called “PIIGS” countries is being led to the slaughterhouse, it is worth asking whether all the carnage advocated by the European authorities is really necessary. Ireland is in its third year of recession and income per person has already declined by more than 20 percent since 2007. Unemployment has more […]
The Gains from Trade: South American Economic Integration and the Resolution of Conflict
It has long been argued that expanding commercial relations between countries acts as an incentive for nations to avoid hostilities up to and including armed conflict. Indeed this was a major impetus behind the economic integration of Europe1 after World War II, which led to the European Union and more recently the currency union of […]
G-20 Barking Up the Wrong Tree
If the G-20 is going to be nothing more than a talking shop on economic issues, they ought to at least talk about the economic problems that really matter, and the ones that they can do something about. Not that currency values don’t matter — they are actually very important. And it is interesting to […]
Emerging Markets Confront QE2: Capital Controls, Reserve Accumulation, or Both?
Paul Jay: You recently wrote a piece in the Guardian. The title is “Who Pays the Bill for the Fed’s QE2? By Depressing US Interest Rates, Quantitative Easing Forces Developing Countries to Defend Their Currencies at Crippling Cost.” What do you mean by that? Kevin P. Gallagher: One of the unintended effects of QE2 […]
Certified Right-Wing Extremists Set to Take Control of House Foreign Affairs Panels
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 […]
Taking the Measure of Rot
I gave this talk at a very good conference, New Deal/No Deal, at Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, on October 29. The panel chair was Michael Reich, who was the main organizer of the conference along with Richard Walker of the geography department. The dual themes were reflecting on the New Deal […]
Freedom Restored: “We’ve Come to Take Our Country Back”
The Republican and Tea Party counter-revolution is on the march. Faced with a major voter rebellion against his hard socialist agenda yesterday, the Marxist-Leninist United States president Barack Obama has met with Tea Party icons Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, and Glenn Beck and “FreedomWorks” chief Dick Armey. Obama has agreed to significantly roll back the […]
Dilma’s Victory in Brazil
Like the rally led by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central that brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets of Washington DC on Saturday, Brazil’s election on Sunday was a contest of “Restore Sanity” versus “Keep Fear Alive.” Dilma Rousseff of the governing Worker’s Party coasted to victory against the opposition […]
Death Squads in Honduras
Anyone who thinks that social and political instability in Honduras ended with the election of Porfirio Lobo as the president of the republic is mistaken, according to the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH). Human rights violations, political persecution, and selective political murders continue to be the order of […]
The House of Latin America in Iran
In mid-October, a nongovernmental organization in Iran called the House of Latin America, or HOLA, invited several anti-imperialist organizations from North America to Tehran with the goal of building the movement against war and sanctions against Iran. Among those who attended were representatives of the International Action Center, ANSWER Coalition, Toronto Coalition Against the War, […]
Kirchner Rescued Argentina’s Economy, Helped Unite South America
The sudden death of Néstor Kirchner today is a great loss not only to Argentina but to the region and the world. Kirchner took office as president in May 2003, when Argentina was in the initial stages of its recovery from a terrible recession. His role in rescuing Argentina’s economy is comparable to that of […]
Iran and Honduras in the Propaganda System: Part 2, The 2009 Iranian and Honduran Elections
As we stated at the outset of Part 1,1 there is no better test of the independence and integrity of the establishment U.S. media than in their comparative treatment of Iran and Honduras in 2009 and 2010. Iran held its most recent presidential election on June 12, 2009. This followed a typically short three-week campaign […]
Ten Theses on New Developmentalism
On May 24 and 25 of 2010, a group of economists sharing a Keynesian and structuralist development macroeconomics approach convened in São Paulo to discuss ten theses on New Developmentalism — the name that some of them have been using for some years to describe the national development strategy that middle income countries are today […]
French Protesters Have It Right: No Need to Raise Retirement Age
The demonstrations that have rocked France this past week highlight some of its differences from the United States. This photo, for example, shows the difference between rioting in baseball-playing versus soccer-playing countries. In the U.S., we would pick up the tear gas canister and THROW it — rather than kick it — back at the […]
Medvedev and Chávez Sign Agreement to Build First Nuclear Power Plant in Venezuela
After a high-level meeting of the Russian and Venezuelan delegations, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed this Friday a series of strategic agreements, including an agreement to build the first nuclear power plant in Venezuela. The agreement, which had been negotiated during Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to Caracas last April, […]
