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Geography Archives: United States

Obama Spurns Real Health Reformers . . . Again

  In a brash move, the White House is again demonstrating the exclusion of those who advocate for real health reform.  At the end of August, in response to the heated Town Halls and the opposition to health reform, Physicians for a National Health Program and the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care sent letters […]

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Beyond Sun and Dung

Rajendra Pachauri heads TERI, The Energy and Resources Institute, based in New Delhi.  An engineer of the railways in his early career, Pachauri went to the United States to earn a PhD in industrial engineering and another in economics, after which he returned to India in 1981 to work with TERI.  In 1995, he joined […]

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Speech Delivered by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, H.E. Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla

  I wish to congratulate you on your election and reiterate to you our confidence on your capacity to unerringly conduct our works and deliberations. Likewise I would like to recognize the excellent work developed by Father Miguel D’Escoto, President of the recently concluded session.  The ethical dimension and the political scope of his presidency, […]

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Has President Obama Heard about Mohammad Othman?

I cannot tell you how many times I have been asked whether there is an Arab counterpart to Jewish Voice for Peace.  The implicit false assumptions behind the question are clear: Palestinians are violent; Jews seek peace but there is no one peaceful on the other side of the equation. Tell President Obama: Keep Your […]

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Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide Segregation of Women and Men

Maria Charles and David B. Grusky.  Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide Segregation of Women and Men.  Stanford University Press, 2004, 400 pp.  $US 55.00 hardcover (0-8047-3634-0). There is a substantial body of literature showing that, across time periods and nations, men and women have tended to do different types of work.  While many studies suggest that […]

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Senate Finance Committee Rejects Any Public Option

  The momentous decision to reject any public option by the Senate Finance Committee today underscores how completely private insurance companies dominate Congressional activity.  The author of the bill for the committee, Liz Fowler, is herself a former VP of WellPoint, the nation’s largest private health insurer.  This highlights the importance of the single payer, […]

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Iran, Etc.

Hooman Majd Answers the Nuclear Question Question: How do you respond to concerns over Iran’s nuclear ambitions? Majd: Stop worrying.  Don’t learn to love the bomb, but stop worrying.  First of all, Iran is so far away from having a nuclear weapon.  I know there are all these reports, these alarmist reports: Iran has enough […]

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Iranian Public on Current Issues

RELATIONS WITH THE US 1. Diplomatic Ties Six in ten Iranians favor restoring diplomatic relations with the US.  An equal number favor unconditional negotiations between the countries.  Many favor cooperation on dealing with the Taliban. Thirty years after the United States and Iran broke diplomatic relations, Iranians overwhelmingly support repairing that longstanding breach.  Both governments […]

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Obama Plays Medvedev against Putin and Iran

“Medvedev-watching” graduated from pure science to applied science during the four-day visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to New York and Pittsburgh last week. The Western perception that the famous Prime Minister Vladimir Putin-Medvedev “tandem” in Moscow would inevitably transform and the Russian president would incrementally create his own power center in the Kremlin received […]

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Can Iran Beat Gasoline Sanctions?

Can Iran beat gasoline sanctions?  The answer seems to be yes. On the front page of the Financial Times on 23 September 2009 (Javier Blas and Carola Hoyos, “Chinese Begin Petrol Supplies to Iran”): Chinese state companies this month began supplying petrol to Iran and now provide up to one-third of its imports in a […]

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UC Walkout

  On Thursday, September 24, an unprecedented coalition of UC faculty, undergraduates, grad students, postdocs, lecturers, and staff will engage in a system-wide walkout.  As UC Davis graduate students and lecturers concerned with the quality of all UC students’ education, we write to clarify the reasons for this walkout as we understand them. This summer, […]

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Save Black History from Developers

Dear friends, This is a national appeal for your help in the effort to save one of this country’s most important Black History sites — an effort that has now reached a critical stage. Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom was once the site of the second largest slave market in the United States.  In the three decades […]

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