Geography Archives: United States

The USA: Prisonhouse of Nations The United States deserves the title, the Prisonhouse of Nations:1 The US imprisons more of its citizens than any nation in the world.  As of midyear 2008, over 2.3 million US citizens were behind bars and the prison population continues to expand as a result of the growing inequality and […]

The Mexican Preventive Police (PFP) are preparing to occupy the facilities of the Central Light and Power Company in Mexico City in an attempt to break the militant Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), according to a union press release.  The union warns that the quasi-military occupation of the plants could come within a week. The […]

  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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

Rights Group Critical of New DOJ Policy Promises September 23, 2009, New York — In response to news the Attorney General is establishing new policy on the question of the use of the state secrets privilege, the Center for Constitutional Rights issues the following statement: While CCR welcomes greater accountability in the Executive’s invocation of […]

  In the current recession, millions of Americans have lost their jobs.  Unemployment has increased nationwide to levels not witnessed since the 1980s.  Much of the job loss has occurred in private industries, but the public sector has also felt the sting of layoffs.  Decreasing tax revenues and expanding budget deficits have forced public officials […]

Now that President Zelaya has returned to Honduras, the coup government — after first denying that he was there — has unleashed a wave of repression to prevent people from gathering support for their elected president.  This is how U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the first phase of this new repression last night […]

  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, […]

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 […]

  Asia Society’s exhibition Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan (10 September 2009 through 3 January 2010) brings to New York some of Pakistan’s most significant, provocative, and influential artists in the first US museum survey exhibition of contemporary Pakistani art.  Hanging Fire is curated by Salima Hashmi, one of the most influential and well-respected […]

September 21, 2009 Washington, D.C. — President Manuel Zelaya’s reported return to Honduras would be a significant move and could force an end to the political crisis that followed the June 28 coup d’etat, Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said today. “This could be the moment of truth for […]

  Laurent Dubois.  Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.  384 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-01304-9; $20.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-674-01826-6. Laurent Dubois’s Avengers of the New World builds on a body of Caribbean scholarship that has been torn between trying to place Haiti’s independence from France […]

  Come one, come all Down to the hall We’re gonna make noise We’re gonna bust balls We’re gonna disrupt We’re gonna jump in the fray I got a list of all the things that we’re supposed to say We’re gonna get real rowdy Have a barrel of fun But we’re the USA, so by […]

  Literary critic Terry Eagleton discusses his new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, which argues that “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens “buy their rejection of religion on the cheap.”  He believes that, in these controversies, politics has been an unacknowledged elephant in the room. Nathan Schneider: Rather […]

It started with a Single Payer caucus at 8 in the morning where Mark Dudzic, Rose Ann DeMoro, and others brought us up to date on how they saw the day unfolding. The two-resolution agreement was holding up.  The resolutions would be discussed after the Obama speech.  The general sentiment of the meeting was that […]

BMR:What is the likely impact of the present financial crisis on geopolitics, especially if the crisis is considered in the context of the energy crisis including the peak oil issue, the food crisis, The Great Hunger, the environmental crisis, and the declining dollar?  Will the world experience war(s) as an effort to survive?  Will monopoly-finance […]

In the early 1950s, the then united Communist Party had led a famous struggle against the increase in tram fares in Calcutta by one paisa, and had succeeded in rescinding the increase.  In the sixties, leaders like Ahilya Rangnekar and Mrinal Gore had led a remarkable struggle against price rise in Bombay when housewives came […]