Geography Archives: Spain

(for Hafiz) The stillest fall of all is the fall from grace.  No louder than a feather falling in a forest, and yet we fall.  There are many ways to kill a man.  Gun and knife will work well but to make a man irrelevant will also do, and what better way to ignore an […]

“We are the children of an illusion that consisted in believing that the independences of our countries signified the end of colonization.” — Interview with Houria Bouteldja, spokesperson of the decolonial movement in France known as the “Mouvement des Indigènes de la République” (MIR — Movement of the Indigenous of the Republic).1 Why do you […]

Amidst misery, hunger, and desolation Somebody planted a flower in the mud A certain Bolívar, they call him the Liberator The Liberator Shouts for justice, land, and freedom Again resonate in South America A new revolution has begun And this time it’s advancing with conviction Agrarian reform and just redistribution Health, culture, and good education […]

In June, the People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project visited Venezuela in order to assess the state of its healthcare system.  The People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project models itself on the Cuban community-based approach to healthcare, and has established a project along those lines in a small neighborhood in Washington, DC.  The visit was […]

It is spell-binding to see how the U.S. establishment can inflate the threat of a target, no matter how tiny, remote, and (most often) non-existent that threat may be, and pretend that the real threat posed by its own behavior and policies is somehow defensive and related to that wondrously elastic thing called “national security.” […]

WORK MORE, EARN LESSA reputable company, a leader in the global market, seeks a docile unemployed individual without a source of income, to work for nothing without rights. Job Description: Combat Crisis Juan Kalvellido, born in Cádiz, Andalucía, Spain in 1968, is a working-class cartoonist who has never stopped believing in revolution. He currently lives […]

Six million Jews Annihilated in the manner most cruel, An imperialist genocide by the fascist armies. You must understand history. The victims have become executioners, Switching roles, Colonizing Palestinian territories, against all common sense. Dead, dead! In whose name? Dead, dead! In the name of Israel. Dead, dead! In whose name? Dead, dead! In the […]

President Obama is coming under attack from the Right for his reluctance to grant the request of General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, for more U.S. troops.  On the other side of the equation sits the majority of the American people, who are against sending more troops and in fact oppose […]

  Laurent Dubois.  Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.  384 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-01304-9; $20.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-674-01826-6. Laurent Dubois’s Avengers of the New World builds on a body of Caribbean scholarship that has been torn between trying to place Haiti’s independence from France […]

“Admit that now you have more freedom of expression . . . or I will kill you.” Juan Kalvellido, born in Cádiz, Andalucía, Spain in 1968, is a working-class cartoonist who has never stopped believing in revolution. He currently lives in Fuengirola, Málaga, Spain. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).

— You must respect the rules of the game. — Then, tell me what the rules are. — There is only one rule. — Namely. . . — “You are not authorized to play.” “I’m in favor of dialogue!” “Shut up when the rest of us are speaking.” Juan Kalvellido, born in Cádiz, Andalucía, Spain […]

“You have the right to remain silent.  Anything we say or do can and will be used against you. . . .” Juan Kalvellido, born in Cádiz, Andalucía, Spain in 1968, is a working-class cartoonist who has never stopped believing in revolution. He currently lives in Fuengirola, Málaga, Spain. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | […]

  Today in passing, a Honduran colleague told me that the latest news was that the national police were on strike because they had not been paid and that, when the de facto regime’s designate to run the Treasury, Gabriela Nuñez, said she would get them back pay, they said they would refuse to accept […]

Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia, Simon Reich, eds.  Immigration, Integration, and Security: America and Europe in Comparative Perspective.   The Security Continuum: Global Politics in the Modern Age.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.  xi + 480 pp.  $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8229-4344-0; $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8229-5984-7. Migration and security have always been linked, but, as Ariane Chebel […]

  The exit from the systemic crisis of capitalism needs to be political, and “a socialist project can mature in this turbulence.”  So says the Argentine economist, philosopher, and sociologist Claudio Katz, who also warns that the “global economic situation is very serious and is going to have to hit bottom, and now we are […]

Introduction In most countries, political leaders and bosses are using the global economic crisis to once again unleash an attack on workers and the poor.  As part of this, we have seen corporations around the world trying to make workers pay for the crisis by retrenching tens of millions of people.  In the most extreme […]

Barack Obama’s Cairo speech heralds a shift from the Islamophobic rhetoric of the Bush regime, but not from the long-term aims of the U.S. empire. Predictably, Barak Obama’s speech in Cairo came under hysterical criticism from the right.  Sean Hannity screamed that Obama gave “sympathizers of 9/11” a voice on the world stage, Charles Krauthammer […]

  Humanism and Human Rights Who or what is the ‘human’ of human rights and the ‘humanity’ of humanitarianism?  The question sounds naïve, silly even.  Yet, important philosophical and ontological questions are involved.  If rights are given to beings on account of their humanity, ‘human’ nature with its needs, characteristics and desires is the normative […]

Paul Ginsborg is Professor of Contemporary European History, University of Florence and a frequent public commentator on politics and life in Italy.  His books include A History of Contemporary Italy, Society and Politics 1943-1988, Italy and Its Discontents: Family, Civil Society and the State, 1980-2000, and the bestselling biography Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony. He […]

Nancy Fraser‘s analysis of the obstacles to social and political justice represents an advance at a theoretical level for those who face the dilemmas of social practice.  In this sense, her work reinforces the importance of the role of the intellectual, not only when it comes to dealing with moments of crisis, but also with […]