More than 100 of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo are starving themselves to death. Twenty-three of them are being force-fed. “They strap you to a chair, tie up your wrists, your legs, your forehead and tightly around the waist,” Fayiz Al-Kandari told his lawyer, Lt. Col. Barry Wingard. Al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti held at Guantanamo for […]
Geography Archives: United States
Reflections on Anti-Cuban Terror
Bombs set off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15 killed three and wounded over 200 people. The metropolitan area became a virtual war zone. Officials at every level let loose with doomsday-style retaliatory proclamations. For some, however, the clamor served to resurrect memories of U.S. terrorism — against Cuba for […]
Once Again on So-called “Extractivism”
Since Marx, we know that what characterizes and differentiates societies is the way in which they organize the production, distribution and use of the material and symbolic resources they possess. In other words, the mode of production1 is what defines the material content of the social life of the distinct human territorial collectivities (nations, peoples, […]
The Climate Space and the Future of the Climate Justice Movement: An Interview With Pablo Solon
Pablo Solon is the Executive Director of Focus on the Global South based in Bangkok. He was formerly Bolivia’s Ambassador to the United Nations and Bolivia’s chief negotiator on climate issues as part of the UN COP process. He was also instrumental in organizing the People’s Climate Summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He spoke with […]
Drones, Sanctions, and the Prison Industrial Complex
In the final weeks of a six-month prison sentence for protesting remote-control murder by drones, specifically from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, I can only reflect on my time of captivity in light of the crimes that brought me here. In these ominous times, it is America’s officials and judges and not the anarchists […]
What’s Behind the US Escalation Against North Korea?
Aijaz Ahmad: Ever since this young man [Kim Jong-un] became the president, the head of state, of North Korea . . . the West has been testing his will, to see whether he can be stared down. . . . Every year these very provocative war games take place, involving South Korea and the […]
Open Letter
“I’m in Cuba, I love Cubans This communist talk is so confusing When it’s from China, the very mic that I’m using” Jay-Z is an American rapper, whose licensed trip to Cuba with Beyoncé has driven the anarchronistic Cuba embargo enforcers bonkers. | Print
Confronting the Amnesty Scare
The anti-immigrant right has been mounting a scare campaign since late January about the supposed dangers of legalizing the country’s estimated 11.5 million undocumented immigrants. — “When you legalize those who are in the country illegally,” Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, announced on January 28, “it costs taxpayers millions of dollars, costs American workers […]
Can Worker-Owners Run a Big Factory? How Mexican Tire Workers Won Ownership of Their Plant With a Three-Year Strike and Are Now Running It Themselves
Part 1: Mexican Workers Win Ownership of Tire Plant With Three-Year Strike “If the owners don’t want it, let’s run it ourselves.” When a factory closes, the idea of turning it into a worker-owned co-operative sometimes comes up — and usually dies. The hurdles to buying a plant, even a failing plant, are huge, and […]
Change of Epoch: Imperialism Counterattacks, But Chávez Lives, the Struggle Continues
Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa‘s idea that we are not “living in an epoch of change” but rather “in a change of epoch” is very much to the point. There is an obvious worldwide decline of existing imperialisms and historic changes in the correlation of social, class, and nation-state forces. There have arisen popular movements of […]
The Relevance of Marxism Today: An Interview With Michael A. Lebowitz
Do you think Marxism is still relevant today? If so, which parts? I think that Marxism is completely relevant for understanding capitalism now. It’s an error to think that capitalism has changed and that therefore we have to change Marxism. Marx grasped the nature of capitalism; and, although capitalism has changed in some of […]
White Earth Band of Ojibwe Chairwoman on Hugo Chávez
The following comments were made by White Earth Chairwoman Erma J. Vizenor during her “State of the Nation Address,” March 7, 2013, in Mahnomen, Minnesota. They are taken from the Nation’s newspaper, Anishinaabeg Today, March 13, 2013, reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. On Tuesday Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez passed away. President Chavez was a […]
What’s in the Boxer-Sanders Climate Change Bill?
Days before last month’s climate change demonstration on the doorstep of the White House, two Senate Democrats introduced legislation that they say would put the U.S. on the path to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
Where Have All the Muslims Gone? The 2018 Hashmi Award
New York, N.Y., 2018 — Every year about this time, since way back in 2013, the City of New York has bestowed its prestigious Hashmi Award upon a worthy New York resident who lives openly as an observant Muslim. The Hashmi recipient — preferably of Asian, Middle Eastern, or African descent — must have paid […]
Strategizing to Defeat Control Unit Prisons and Solitary Confinement: An Interview with Author/Activist Nancy Kurshan
Author and longtime activist Nancy Kurshan’s new book, entitled Out of Control: A Fifteen Year Battle Against Control Unit Prisons, has just been released by the Freedom Archives. Kurshan’s book documents the work of The Committee to End the Marion Lockdown (CEML), which she co-founded in 1985 as a response to the lockdown at the […]
“Whose Streets? Our Streets!”: Reflections on the World’s Largest Demonstration, Ten Years Later
Leo Zeilig and Sarah Grey
February 15, 2003 Sarah, New York: The wind that whips down the avenues is bitterly cold, but that doesn’t stop us from protesting the drive to war in Iraq. People from all over the city and the Northeast — young and old, hardened activists and first-time protestors — have converged on Manhattan, where the […]
‘Toward the United Front’: Translations for the Twenty-first Century
On February 3, 120 socialists took part in a Toronto meeting to celebrate publication of Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922, available in paperback from Haymarket Books. This 1,300-page volume is the seventh book of documents on the world revolutionary movement in Lenin’s time edited by John […]
Update on the Colombian Peace Dialogues: Politiquería vs. Program
The most recent victim in Colombia’s conflict, in spite of ongoing conversations between the government and the FARC-EP guerrillas that began last year, seems to be common sense itself. With the government declining to enter a two-part truce at the conclusion of the insurgency’s unilaterally assumed ceasefire on January 20, the war naturally resumed its […]
Expanding Executive Power for Extrajudicial Executions: An Interview with Marjorie Cohn About DOJ Drone Memo
DB: We continue our discussion of the revelations around a memo coming out of the Justice Department that the administration plans to keep up these assassinations and expand the program. Joining us to take a legal look at this is Marjorie Cohn, Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former President of the […]
The Talented Mr. Takeyh: Why Doesn’t the Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Like Flynt & Hillary Mann Leverett?
If there’s one thing mainstream “Iran experts” hate, it’s well-credentialed, experienced analysts who dare challenge Beltway orthodoxies, buck conventional wisdom, and demythologize the banal, bromidic, and Manichean foreign policy narrative of the United States government and its obedient media. Such perspectives are shunned by “serious” scholars who play by the rules they and their former […]
