Geography Archives: United States

The United States District Courthouse in Jefferson City, Missouri, is a modern and graceful structure sitting on a bluff over the Missouri River.  Less than one year old, it is a virtual temple in white marble, granite, and glass, its clean lines all the more immaculate in contrast to its nearest neighbor, the crumbling 19th […]

On May 11 in Honduras’ Mosquito region, helicopter gunfire killed two women, two men, and seriously wounded four more, including children.  They were targeted as drug traffickers.  The helicopters belonged to the U.S. State Department.  On board were agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in military uniforms, plus Honduran soldiers.  Many Hondurans say agents […]

Recent developments in Greece provide an acute illustration of the long-standing contradiction between capitalism and democracy.  This contradiction has also been felt in Greece in the past, including in the history of military coups aimed at the repression of popular movements and at ensuring the country’s subordination to the wishes of the United States during […]

  The crisis is not relinquishing its grip on Europe.  From autumn 2008 to early 2009 the world market experienced the deepest slump in economic output since the Second World War.  This is a global crisis.  Even in emerging economies like China, Brazil, or India economic growth declined and could not compensate for the recession […]

Protests against the Formula One Grand Prix held in Manama on 22 April could have reminded the world that repression in Bahrain is still ongoing.  But once more the so-called international community by and large turned a blind eye: no diplomatic pressure, certainly no “crippling” international sanctions.  The Grand Prix went ahead as planned.  A […]

Carlo Fanelli (CF): Your early work pays a great deal of attention to the classical political economists (e.g. Ricardo, Smith, J.B. Say, J.S. Mill, Marx, etc.), with later writings engaging with economic luminaries such as Alfred Marshal and John Maynard Keynes.  Could you briefly discuss how this research has influenced your thinking about economics?  And […]

Teaching ethnic studies is hard.  You have, on one side, folks who would universalize all human experience, not out of meanness but out of sincerity: “I know how you feel,” they say, “because my uncle had a similar experience, and let me tell you. . . .”  Of course the uncle’s experience is nothing like […]

The most demolishing article I have seen nowadays about Latin America was written by Renán Vega Cantor, full professor at the National Pedagogical University of Bogotá, which was published three days ago by the website ‘Rebelión’ under the title “Ecos de la Cumbre de las Américas” (Echoes of the Summit of the Americas). It is […]

It began on July 14, 1934.  That day the San Francisco Labor Council pushed by radicalized rank-and-file workers declared a General Strike, and this led to four days of intense class struggle, the likes of which has rarely if ever been seen in this country.  The aim of the General Strike was to support the […]

After an engaging half-hour interview with India’s pre-eminent Marxist economist during a conference at New York University, I told a friend about my one-on-one time with Prabhat Patnaik. “There are Marxists in India?” came the bemused response.  “I thought India was the heart of the new capitalism.” Indeed, we hear about India mostly as a […]

  Sajjad Jafari is an Iranian cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published by Fars News, reproduced here for non-profit entertainment purposes. Cf. “The number of [scientific] publications from Iran has grown from just 736 in 1996 to 13,238 in 2008 — making it the fastest growing country in terms of numbers of scientific publications in the […]

I took a good look at Obama in the famous “Summit Meeting”. Sometimes he was overcome by tiredness, he unwillingly shut his eyes but, at times, he slept with open eyes. The Cartagena Summit was not a meeting of a trade union of misinformed presidents, but a meeting among official representatives of 33 countries of […]

Intersectionality as a key concept in women’s studies has up until the present proven rather durable.  Feminist journals are peppered with it and feminists use it pretty much without having to explain what they mean, the term’s affinity with feminism taken for granted and its import unquestioned.  Attend any women’s studies meeting, and sooner or […]

  WHEN: Friday, April 20 – Sunday, April 22 (schedule below) WHERE: Cooper Union, New York, NY TICKETS: RIGHT HERE There are communities around the world that have stopped waiting for the systems around them to change.  They are engaged in alternative practices right now — in economics, safety, media and communications, politics and more. […]

  This is a 10-minute film dedicated to freedom fighter Louis Reyes Rivera.  Rivera was a member of the 1969 occupation of City College, which was led by students of color and won open admissions.  He spoke to Students United for a Free CUNY at the AME Church in Harlem on October 27, 2011 before […]

The 66-day hunger strike of Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan brought overdue attention to Israel’s practice of detaining Palestinians for lengthy periods without criminal charges.  It also brought attention to the same practice in other countries, including the United States, where, as Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald pointed out, indefinite detention is “now firmly in place” for […]

  We are calling for massive protests in Frankfurt this May against the crisis regime of the European Union.  We are activists representing a multitude of movements and struggles from different European countries and elsewhere, who have risen up in the past months and years to protest the assaults on our freedoms, jobs, and livelihoods […]

In recent weeks, there has been a notable shuffle in the positions of key external players in the Syrian crisis.  Momentum has quite suddenly shifted from an all-out onslaught against the Assad government to a quiet investigation of exit strategies. The clashes between government forces and opposition militias in Baba Amr were a clear tipping […]

  There is an undeclared war going on in the United States that threatens the lynchpins of American intellectual freedom.  In a statement worthy of Cassandra, Noah Davis wrote in Business Insider last October,  “Amazon is coming for the book publishing industry.  And not just the e-book world, either.”  When titans battle, it is tempting […]

I recently wrote an article about my personal experiences in dealing with the medical system while undergoing surgery (“Free Market Medicine: A Personal Account”).  In response, a number of readers sent me accounts of their own experiences trying to get well in America. Health care in this country is hailed by conservative boosters as “the […]