Geography Archives: United States

I feel embarrassed to be unaware of the subject, one that I have not even heard mentioned before. On the contrary, I would have understood much earlier that the risks of a nuclear war were far more serious than I imagined. I assumed that the planet would be able to withstand the explosion of hundreds […]

In recent days, a good deal of attention has been focused on Iran’s first nuclear power plant at Bushehr, still in its final stages of development.  We believe that there are some important lessons to be learned from the Bushehr experiences that could help move U.S. policy on the Iranian nuclear issue in a much […]

  Excerpt: Household Debt and Credit Developments in 2010Q21 Aggregate consumer debt continued to decline in the second quarter, continuing its trend of the previous six quarters.  As of June 30, 2010, total consumer indebtedness was $11.7 trillion, a reduction of $812 billion (6.5%) from its peak level at the close of 2008Q3, and $178 […]

“What a victory it is for all independent nations, that is, nations independent of US hegemonic power when it comes to energy interests.  And what a victory also for those Russian families and corporations outside the United States’ sphere of influence.” — Afshin Rattansi Afshin Rattansi is a journalist, currently a presenter at Press TV.  […]

After referring on August 17 and 18 to the book written by Daniel Estulin, which narrates, through undeniable facts, the horrible way in which the minds of American youth and children are distorted by the consumption of drugs and the influence of the media, in connivance with American and British intelligence agencies, in the final […]

While President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and the new President of Colombia, Manuel Santos, met in Santa Marta, Colombia, last Tuesday and agreed to normalize relations after a fierce diplomatic fight, there are no indications that such détente is in the cards for Venezuela and the United States.  Washington, it now appears, may not even […]

  Paul Jay: In China in June, leaders of the Chinese Communist Party said that it’s time for workers’ wages to go up.  And there’s been a lot of discussion about whether China’s actually restructuring its economy to try to boost domestic demand.  Certainly in what leaders say in other parts of the world they […]

  “Someday coal’s gonna run out.  And we’re going to have to have jobs, we’re going to have to have energy, when that happens.  So, why not start now?” — Lorelei Scarbro, Coal River Mountain Wind Project Produced by the New York Times.  See, also, Tom Zeller, Jr., “A Battle in Mining Country Pits Coal […]

Like Gerald Caplan’s hostile “review” of our book, The Politics of Genocide, Adam Jones’s aggressive attack on our response to Caplan can be explained in significant part by Jones’s deep commitment to an establishment narrative on the Rwandan genocide that we believe to be false — one that misallocates the main responsibility for that still […]

As we anticipated, Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in The Atlantic, “The Point of No Return,” laying out the neoconservative case for attacking Iran, is attracting a lot of attention and comment.  We are pleased that, as of this afternoon, our response to Goldberg is the top-ranked “Most Commented” piece on the Foreign Policy website and the […]

  In the wake of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the public and the media have turned their attention to some of the subsidies provided through the tax code to BP, the corporation that leased the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling platform.1  The truth is that oil and gas companies have for […]

No one should be surprised when The Economist or another controlled opinion source misrepresents tensions in the Persian Gulf as religious rivalry while overlooking decades of U.S. and Israeli success in stoking them for imperial gain.  The so-called mainstream press typically repeats unsubstantiated charges to pretend that Arab client states of Washington buy tens of […]

  Eyeing the United States Fourth Fleet from Costa Rica: “They say they came here to consume, I mean, combat, drugs.” Pedro Méndez Suárez is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 12 August 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print  

  “Artists struggling with the legacy of Agent Orange were invited to exhibit their work at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.  Nguyen Dinh Trung and Le Thi Be Nga are two of 140 artists who have learned to overcome their own disabilities and are taking their lives into their own hands […]

  The best thing is to ignore the parameters of discussion that are being presented to you, and to shift those parameters. . . . That is the heart of the struggle for us in the United States where the story is already framed, and they are just trying to discuss things within the parameters. […]

There is an old saying:  “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  Many of the same writers, thinkers, political actors, and organizations that persuaded the American people and others to support invading Iraq in 2003 are now working to build public support for the United States to initiate a war […]

The ex-CIA officers Phil Giraldi and Larry Johnson; W. Patrick Lang from U.S. Military Intelligence and the U.S. Army Special Forces; Ray McGovern, from Naval Intelligence and the CIA; and other former senior officers with many years of service, are right to warn Obama that the Israeli prime minister has plans for a surprise attack with the idea of forcing the United States into the war on Iran.

Campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008, Senator Barack Obama said: “I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.” But as Andrew Bacevich notes in his new book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, as President, Barack […]

Yes, in the strange but true category, we have a columnist with a major national newspaper worrying that population growth in the United States could slow or even reverse.  Yes, I have the same fear every time I push my way into the metro at the rush hour or get caught in a huge traffic […]

We have argued for some time that the policy debate about Iran here in the United States is distorted by a number of “myths” — myths about the Islamic Republic, its foreign policy, and its domestic politics.  One of the more dangerous myths currently affecting America’s Iran debate is the proposition that, through concerted diplomatic […]