Geography Archives: United States

Foreign Affairs Minister Celso Amorim yesterday phoned U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in New Delhi, India, to “express concern” about the slow pace and handling of the negotiations for the reinstatement of the democratic order in Honduras, the Brazilian Minister’s press office said. Amorim conveyed Brazil’s criticism to Hillary regarding the way […]

It is now a commonplace that we are experiencing the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  The downward trajectory on a global level is similar to the 1930s, though in the United States — the epicenter of the crisis — there are indications that the rate of decline may be slowing.1  […]

  From Nawal el Saadawi to Janet Afary Dear Janet, I am glad to see you’ve been reading my work since you were a graduate student.  Did you read my work in English or Persian?  (I write in Arabic.)  I very much enjoyed your book: Sexual Politics in Modern Iran.  Egypt, my country, and Iran […]

  A controversial facility at Ft. Benning, Ga. — formerly known as the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas — is still training Honduran officers despite claims by the Obama administration that it cut military ties to Honduras after its president was overthrown June 28, NCR has learned. A day after an SOA-trained army general […]

  Robert Cassanello, Melanie Shell-Weiss, eds.  Florida’s Working-Class Past: Current Perspectives on Labor, Race, and Gender from Spanish Florida to the New Immigration.  Working in the Americas Series.  Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008.  320 pp.  $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8130-3283-2. Once upon a time, but within this reviewer’s scholarly lifetime, the primary focus of labor […]

Marvin Perry, Frederick M. Schweitzer, eds.  Antisemitic Myths: A Historical and Contemporary Anthology.   Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.  xxiii + 352 pp.  $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-34984-2; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-21950-3. This collection of ninety-some documents is the third major product of a long-term collaboration between historians Marvin Perry and Frederick Schweitzer.  It is intended […]

The meeting in Costa Rica didn’t, nor could it, lead to peace. The people of Honduras are not at war, it’s just the perpetrators of the coup who are using weapons against the people. One should demand that they cease their war against the people. That meeting between Zelaya and the coup was only good for discrediting the constitutional president and wearing away at the energies of the Honduran people.

15 July 2009 The Department of State had prior knowledge of the coup. The Department of State and the US Congress funded and advised the actors and organizations in Honduras that participated in the coup. The Pentagon trained, schooled, commanded, funded, and armed the Honduran armed forces that perpetrated the coup and that continue to […]

Back to the past — and with a landslide.  The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which for 70 years, from 1928 to 2000, ruled Mexico as a one-party state won a decisive victory in the mid-term elections on July 5.  The PRI’s victory represented a defeat both for the conservative economic and social policies of President […]

Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia, Simon Reich, eds.  Immigration, Integration, and Security: America and Europe in Comparative Perspective.   The Security Continuum: Global Politics in the Modern Age.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.  xi + 480 pp.  $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8229-4344-0; $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8229-5984-7. Migration and security have always been linked, but, as Ariane Chebel […]

  The exit from the systemic crisis of capitalism needs to be political, and “a socialist project can mature in this turbulence.”  So says the Argentine economist, philosopher, and sociologist Claudio Katz, who also warns that the “global economic situation is very serious and is going to have to hit bottom, and now we are […]

On my last day in Tegucigalpa, I conducted an interview with writer/documentarian Manuel Antonio Villa, 37, who for the last seven years has traveled through his country studying the economic circumstances of the peasantry and the workers.  For Villa, Honduras has entered a new, revolutionary era, while the golpe against Mel Zelaya has commenced a […]

The military coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras took a new turn when Zelaya attempted to return home on Sunday.  The military closed the airport and blocked runways to prevent his plane from landing.  They also shot several protesters, killing at least one and injuring others. The violence and the enormous crowd — […]

The “Iranian people” have not spoken. What’s happening in Iran today is a developing conflict between two forces that each represent millions of people.  There are good people on both sides and the issues are complicated.  So before U.S. progressives decide to weigh in, supporting one side and condemning the other, let’s take a little […]

  Saturday, July 11, 2009; 2 to 5 pm Bowery Poetry Club in New York – 308 Bowery (between Houston and Bleecker) F train to 2nd Ave, 6 to Bleecker. Join us as these and other artists of conscience bear witness, in poetry and music, to the struggle for democracy in Iran. Readings and performances […]

  The US war machine continues to inflict untold miseries on the people of the world and particularly those of the Muslim faith.  Barack Obama, the first black president in the history of the United States, has repeatedly promised to repair some of the damage wreaked by his predecessor on the international stage.  But the […]

  The military coup currently underway in Honduras is a hard coup accompanied by various vain attempts to make it appear soft and “constitutionalist.”  Behind the coup are diverse social, economic, and political forces, of which the most important is the administration of President Barack Obama.  No important change can happen in Honduras without Washington’s […]

Caracas, 5 July 2009, ABN — The legitimate president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, said this Sunday from El Salvador that the repression that the de facto government of Honduras carried out against demonstrators, who were peacefully calling for the return of the constitutional president, is a criminal act. “The acts of violence committed on Sunday […]

Questionnaire/Methodology (PDF) When President Obama arrives in Russia for the Moscow summit he may face a cool reception.  A new poll of Russians, conducted by the Levada Center as part of a larger WorldPublicOpinion.org poll, finds that just 23 percent of Russians have confidence in Obama to do the right thing in international affairs, while […]

Manuel “Mel” Zelaya is a rancher and business owner who wears large cowboy hats and, in November 2005, was elected president of Honduras, an impoverished Central American country with a population of 7.5 million.  On June 28 of this year the Honduran military, backed by the country’s elite, removed Zelaya from power.  He instantly became […]