Geography Archives: Mexico

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 […]

I recently returned from the quadrennial International Sociology Association’s World Congress held in Gothenburg, Sweden.  It’s kind of like the World Cup of sociology.  There I sat in on a session organized by the Iranian Sociology Association, where a few presenters, including its president Hossein Serajzadeh, discussed the state of social science in Iran.  I […]

  “In contrast to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, no one is predicting that it will possible to contain the blood spill that is being prepared for the Persian Gulf.” Pedro Méndez Suárez is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 19 July 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi […]

A high-level meeting in Venezuela earlier this month, in which senior Latin American and Caribbean diplomats from 32 countries discussed the creation of a new forum for regional concertation, slipped under the radar of the entire U.S. media.  Indeed, the only English-language report on the event that appeared in the mainstream media was filed by […]

Statement to the Commission on Deficit Reduction by James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen, jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, and Vice President, Americans for Democratic Action, June 30, 2010 Mr. Chairmen, members of the commission, thank you for inviting this statement. I […]

The West is worried about Turkey.  Its spokespeople fear that the West might have “lost” Turkey since its Prime Minister, Recep Erdoğan, associated himself with President Lula, proposed to act as intermediary between the West and Iran, and, later, reacted with determination against Israel’s violent raid on a boat sailing under the Turkish flag and […]

The system under which offshore drilling rigs, and now oil tankers, operate was set up at the end of the second world war to ensure that the US was supplied with the cheapest possible oil without having to consider, or pay for, the consequences. The offshore drilling company Transocean celebrated the explosion on the Deepwater […]

  The global crisis has led some to question the dollar’s place as the dominant currency.  This column discusses three camps in the literature: those advocating a new synthetic global currency, those arguing that a new reserve currency will emerge, and those suggesting a return to sharing the role.  It concludes that talk of the […]

In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides relates how Pericles, in the fifth century BC, imposed economic sanctions against the city of Megara, which had allied itself with Sparta.  Athens prohibited trade with this city state and sent a message: if Megara did not break its alliance with Sparta, it would be punished.  Megara […]

It’s time to stop blaming BP — alone.  At least four other oil companies hired the same firm to write their plans for handling spills in the Gulf of Mexico.  They ended up with nearly identical plans, complete with thoughtful concern about impacts on walruses.  The CEO of ExxonMobil called it “unfortunate” and “embarrassing” that […]

Something unusual happened on June 18: an important figure on the U.S. political scene spoke sensibly and realistically about immigration. The occasion was a speech at the City Club of Cleveland, and the speaker was AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka.  The news wasn’t that labor was backing a rational, equitable reform of U.S. immigration laws; the […]

  Paul Jay: So, in talking to people in Israel, one thing I hear constantly is the fight here is about national identity, it’s about the defense of the Jewish state.  I don’t hear very much about economics of Israel or the economics of occupation.  So how does national identity relate to the economics here? […]

  Production, Camera, Post Production: Janeth Berrettini.  Dance: La Serpiente – Abdiel Villaseñor, Laura Martínez, Yesenia Rivera.  Music: Hermann Bühler.  Mexico/ Switzerland, 2005/2006. | Print  

  27 June 2010 The U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) endorses and supports the call for Boycott of Arizona on account of its manifestly racist laws, HB1070 and SB 2281. SB1070 calls for police officers to require documentation from people to establish resident status.  The law essentially requires police […]

The name BP is now forever ingrained in people’s minds as the oil giant responsible for what has become the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history.  But the mammoth oil spill resulting from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t the first time British Petroleum has brought disaster […]

BP, the company responsible for what is already the worst single-source environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, is the largest corporation in Britain, fourth largest in the world, and the world’s third largest energy company.  Over the course of its 100-year history, this company has caused a number of environmental and workplace disasters. But the harm […]

In the film Guantanamera, the last by renowned Cuban director Tomás Gutierrez Alea, the Yoruba creation myth is presented as a metaphor for the difficulties of bringing about change.  In this myth, humans were at first immortal, but the result was that the old suffocated the young, and so death had to be created. Here […]

The merger would create an international union of one million metal workers and miners. The United Steelworkers (USW), which represents 850,000 workers in Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States, and the National Union of Miners and Metal Workers (SNTMMSRM), known as the Mineros, which represents 180,000 workers in Mexico, have announced plans to explore […]

Four years ago, when the government of Evo Morales re-nationalized its hydrocarbon industry, the Brazilian media was spoiling for a fight.  After all, Petrobras, the Brazilian oil and gas company, had major interests there.  But President Lula Da Silva was calm.  “I haven’t had a fight with George W. Bush,” he told the press.  “Why […]

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. […]