Geography Archives: United States

The men who executed Bin Laden did not act on their own: they were following orders from the US Government. They had gone through a rigorous selection process and were trained to accomplish special missions. It is known that the US President can even communicate with a soldier in combat.… A few hours after accomplishing that mission in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, home to the most prestigious military academy of that country as well as important combat units, the White House offered the world’s public opinion a carefully drafted version about the death of Osama Bin Laden, the chief of Al Qaeda.… Of course, the world and the international media focused their attention on the issue, thus pushing all other public news into the background.

John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York.  The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth.  Monthly Review Press, 2010.  544 pages. Climate change is often called the greatest environment threat facing humanity.  The threat is very real.  Unless we cut carbon pollution fast, runaway climate change will worsen existing environmental and social problems, and […]

  To Tea Partiers and supporters of the Far Right, Madison, Wisconsin has become the latest “Shining City Upon a Hill,” where one of their courageous leaders, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, is waging a heroic battle to tame big government and balance the state’s budget.  American Exceptionalism has always defined liberty as keeping government off […]

Statement of Cuban Ambassador Rodolfo Reyes, at the Special Session of the Human Rights Council, on the human rights situation in Syria, Geneva, 29 April 2011 Mr. President: Cuba condemns the hypocrisy and double standards on which the convocation of this special session is based.  Human rights are not its genuine motive.  The motive is […]

  Robert Rabil.  Syria, the United States, and the War on Terror in the Middle East.  Westport: Praeger, 2006.  xxvi + 289 pp.  $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-275-99015-2. Robert Rabil’s book examines the ups and downs in Syrian-U.S. relations.  The final portion of its title, the War on Terror in the Middle East is, in reality, […]

It shouldn’t surprise us that many American liberals, including Muslims, are now joining the celebrations of Osama bin Laden’s death. They may not agree with how the War on Terror has been conducted, but they have at least tolerated it and have no reason to view Bin Laden with sympathy in any case. Let us also not forget that Barack Obama, who campaigned for the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, is a liberal himself. To view the mass relief at Bin Laden’s death as a pathology of conservative tea partiers and frat boys who don’t know any better is therefore to miss the point. Bin Laden was the most successful terrorist this country had seen, and the trauma of 9-11 and the fear that he could strike again anytime haunted American minds in ways they were not prepared for. It is, for those who wish to be rid of the imperial anxieties of the past ten years, the time to feel triumphant.

Let’s drink a toast to all those farmers, workers, artists and intellectuals of the last 100 years who without thought of fame and profit . . . worked tirelessly in their dream of a worldwide socialist revolution, who believed and hoped that a new world was dawning and that their work would contribute to a […]

  We invite graduate students and young researchers to participate in the URPE (Union for Radical Political Economics) Summer School entitled “Topics in Radical Political Economy: Marxist Theory,” which will take place in Amherst, Massachusetts on the UMass campus on May 24-27, 2011 (right before the World Association for Political Economy conference on May 27-29). […]

This 2011 edition of “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect” marks the 20th year the AFL-CIO has produced a report on the state of safety and health protections for America’s workers.

This year is historic for workers’ safety and health. It is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, where 146 workers — most of them young immigrant women — were killed, trapped behind locked doors with no way to escape. This year is also the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the right of workers to safe jobs.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Chicago’s Daley Plaza on April 29, 2011 to demand an end to the oppression of the people of Bahrain “at the hands of the Bahraini military and the security forces provided by other states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).”  The action was heavily attended by representatives from Chicago area […]

Various observers have noted this week that China’s economy will be bigger than that of the United States in 2016.  This comes from the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) latest projections, which were made in its semi-annual April World Economic Outlook database.  Since 2016 is just a few years away, and it will be the first […]

Testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on TARP and Financial Resources, 15 March 2011 Thank you, Chairman McHenry and Ranking Member Quigley, for inviting me to testify before the subcommittee and to share my views on the debt problem facing state and local governments.  I will make three main points in my […]

On April 9, Vittorio Arrigoni — Vik to us — wrote to me in an e-mail that “I will go out immediately after this shame” ends.  The “shame” was Israel’s latest flurry of F-16-delivered explosives that landed on the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. On April 14 at noon I learned of Vik’s abduction at […]

Caracas, 25 April (PL) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said today that the government of Syria is a victim of a plot to justify future actions — including military ones — against it. “They are infiltrating terrorists into Syria and causing violence and deaths, and all of a sudden the president is pronounced guilty, immediately, […]

The price decline since July has eliminated more than $1 trillion in housing wealth. The Case-Shiller 20-City index fell by 1.1 percent in February, the fifth consecutive month where it has fallen by at least 1.0 percent.  It is now down by 6.5 percent from its peak in July.  Eighteen of the twenty cities had […]

I was reading abundant materials and books to make good my promise of continuing writing on the Reflection of April 14 about the Battle of Girón when I had a look at the recent news that came yesterday, which were also as abundant as they are everyday. You could pile up mountains of news on […]

Corruption takes many forms, and if the United States seems like it has less of it than many developing countries, this is partly because we have legalized so much of it.  Election campaign contributions are only the most costly and debilitating form, a legalized bribery that, for example, gives the pharmaceutical and insurance companies a […]

  Ebrahim Sharif is a 53-year-old Bahraini politician, businessman, husband, father — and now, a political prisoner.  He serves as the secretary general of the National Democratic Action Society (also known as Waad), a secular, moderate, and peaceful political opposition group in Bahrain. Ebrahim Sharif Speaks At around 2 AM, on Thursday, March 17, 2011 […]

Guy Hocquenghem.  The Screwball Asses.  Trans.  Noura Wedell.  Semiotext(e), 2010.  88 pp.  $12.95 “Speak to my ass.  My head is sick.” — Southern French proverb This little book was first published as an anonymous essay at the end of Félix Guattari’s Recherches no. 12, its March 1973 special issue titled Trois Milliards de Pervers [Three […]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced this Sunday that he will reactivate the peace proposal for Libya at the urging of his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  The Venezuelan leader called upon the nations of the world to form a larger commission to try to “stop this madness” of imperialist “aggressions” against the Libyan people. “Ahmadinejad asked […]