For more than half a century Western political leaders and their corporate media have waged a disinformation war against socialist Cuba. Nor is there any sign that they are easing up. A recent example is the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, an inmate who died in a Cuban prison in February 2010 after an 82-day […]
Geography Archives: Mexico
Here Comes the Neighborhood: The Housing Movement Goes Global in East Harlem
Here, amid the glittering ruins of globalized gentrification’s gilded age, a kind of glocal tenants’ movement is taking shape, at once locally rooted and globally connected. On April 6, 2008, a gathering of global dimensions was afoot on the steps of New York’s City Hall. You may have missed it at the time. You may […]
Greater Equity through Redistribution: What Can the Targeting of Subsidies Do in Iran?
The Fifth Five-Year Plan of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1389-93, 2010-14), still under review by the parliament, has a clear goal for reducing inequality in five years — a Gini index of 0.35 for income. This is a substantial reduction from the high level of inequality that has plagued Iran in recent years. The […]
Food Crisis before Financial Crisis
What are the consequences of the implementation of neo-liberal economic philosophy for industrialization and development of poor countries? The answer: de-industrialization of many low-income countries; destruction of their food production (influenced also by protectionist agricultural policies of developed countries), thus their heavy dependence on food imports. The boom in commodity prices had improved the […]
Immigration Update: The Fall of the Great Wall of Boeing
On March 16, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that she was cutting millions of dollars from SBInet, a high-tech “virtual fence” that Boeing Co. has been developing for use along the U.S. border with Mexico. Her announcement came just two days before the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) was scheduled to issue a […]
What Are the Real Threats to Democracy in the Americas? A Honduran Constitutional Convention and the New Cold War of the U.S.A.
On March 10, the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere held a hearing to chart the course of their agenda in the Western Hemisphere over the coming year. On March 12-15, the National Popular Resistance Front in Honduras (FNRP) held a national meeting to pave the way for a Honduran Constitutional Convention, even in […]
Israel in OECD: Israel Set to Join Club of Richest Nations
Is Europe Planning Seal of Approval for Israeli Settlers? An exclusive club of the world’s most developed countries is poised to admit Israel as a member even though, a confidential internal document indicates, doing so will amount to endorsing Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territories. Israel has been told that its accession to […]
Clinton Strikes Out in Brazil: A Security Council Divided on Iran Sanctions
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Brasilia to mount a full court press on the Brazilian government to support a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities. (Brazil is presently one of the Council’s ten non-permanent members.) And, as accumulating media reports indicate, she was politely but […]
“Rebuilding Haiti” — the Sweatshop Hoax
Within days of a January 12 earthquake that devastated much of southern Haiti, the New York Times was using the disaster to promote a United Nations plan for drastically expanding the country’s garment assembly industry, which employs low-paid workers to stitch apparel for duty-free export, mainly to the U.S. market. This, according to several opinion […]
Lula Tells Hillary Clinton Brazil Seeks Negotiated Solution to Iranian Nuclear Issue
Brasilia — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva just reiterated, in a meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that Brazil will continue to maintain commercial relations with Iran and will seek a peaceful solution to Iran’s nuclear issue. After meeting with Hillary Clinton at the Bank of Brazil Cultural Center, the provisional […]
Will Capitalism Absorb the WSF?
From 21 January to 2 February 2010, Eric Toussaint and Olivier Bonfond — both involved in alterglobalization activism and members of the International Council of the World Social Forum, of the world coordination of social movements, and of the Committee for the Abolition of the Third World Debt 1 — participated in various events and […]
New Immigrants in a New South
Mary E. Odem, Elaine Cantrell Lacy, eds. Latino Immigrants and the Transformation of the U.S. South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009. xxvii + 175 pp. $59.95 (library), ISBN 978-0-8203-2968-0; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8203-3212-3. In the past two decades, the Latino population of the American South has grown faster than in any other region […]
Indigenous Struggles in the Americas: Interview with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a writer, teacher, historian, and social activist, is Professor Emeritus of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies at California State University. You have been deeply involved in Indigenous peoples’ activism in the United States. What is the current situation of Indigenous people in the US economically and politically? Decolonization is a difficult and long-term […]
Chutzpah, Inc.: “The Brave People of Iran” (versus the Disappeared People of Palestine, Honduras, Afghanistan, Etc.)
It is almost a commonplace, at least for the real — as opposed to the cruise-missile — left, that the flow of information, opinion, and moral indignation in the United States adapts well to the demands of state policy. If the state is hostile to Iran, even openly trying to engage in “regime change,” and […]
How Credible Is Human Rights Watch on Cuba?
In late 2009 the New York-based group Human Rights Watch published a report titled New Castro, Same Cuba. Based on the testimony of former prisoners, the report systematically condemns the Cuban government as an “abusive” regime that uses its “repressive machinery . . . draconian laws and sham trials to incarcerate scores more who […]
Jose Naranjero’s Long Walk to Work
I first met Jose Naranjero* in a dusty little Mexican town called Naco, which lies just across the border wall from Bisbee, Arizona. I’d been working nearby as a volunteer for No More Deaths, a Tucson-based group that tries to help immigrants passing through the dangerous Sonoran desert. I was part of a team that […]
Helping Haiti: Our Dollars Aren’t Enough
On January 14, two days after the Port-au-Prince earthquake, I finally got a chance to look over my email, courtesy of a small Haitian NGO in a quiet, relatively undamaged neighborhood in the south of the city. After reading and answering personal messages, I noticed that a lot of my mail consisted of appeals for […]
We Send Doctors, Not Soldiers
In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: “In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country. Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the Haitian […]
Emir Sader: The Post-Neoliberal Challenge
With the passing of a year and the coming of another, it’s time to look at the balance sheet and define the prospects. Who can help us do so better than Brazilian sociologist and political scientist Emir Sader, one of the best-known critical thinkers in our America today? Sader is currently executive secretary of […]
Wake Up, It’s Happening NOW!A New Immigrant Revolution Takes Shape
On January 1, five South Florida residents stopped eating in a protest action. They are demanding that the Obama administration take measures now to put an end to the deportations that are separating families — at least until Congress can provide more permanent relief by fixing our harsh immigration laws. The Fast for Our Families […]
