Geography Archives: United States

  Flying into Hong Kong with my wife, Amy Demarest, early in the morning of June 8, 2006 and jetlagged, I wasn’t sure I’d be up to the next two days of a fully packed conference on the Cultural Revolution.  The conference was sponsored by the China Study Group, Monthly Review, and the Contemporary China […]

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I am so tired of hearing Tel Aviv complain that certain Palestinian factions do not recognize Israel’s right to exist.  Regardless of their opinion of Israel’s right, even Hamas leaders have stated that the fact is that Israel does exist.  Meanwhile, Israel is once again waging a military campaign against the Palestinians that, in essence, […]

El Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de la República de Cuba ha conocido con extrema preocupación de la operación militar a gran escala iniciada por Israel, desde horas tempranas de la madrugada del 28 de junio del 2006, en la Franja de Gaza, con la movilización de cerca de cinco mil soldados, cientos de tanques y […]

Click on an image for a larger view. Gaza: Free Fire Zone Does the Israeli Army Need Smart Bombs or Smart Soldiers? Accept the Existence of Israel Carlos Latuff, born in Rio de Janeiro on 30 November 1968, is a political cartoonist.  He is the author of the famous “We Are All Palestinians” series, comparing […]

In an operation carried out throughout the West Bank and the Jerusalem area early on Thursday, Israeli forces kidnapped some 65 Hamas government ministers, parliament members, and activists in an effort to overthrow the democratically elected Palestinian government.  Palestinians fear that the officials were kidnapped to serve as bargaining chips for negotiating the release of […]

Here in the purported paragon of electoral democracy, the United States of America,  we have now suffered through presidential elections in 2000 and 2004 that were widely regarded as questionable.  I am referring of course to the fiasco’s of Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. Even before the Supreme Court made Bush President by […]

Against a bloody backdrop of massacres and lynchings aimed at blacks in early 20th century America, W.E.B. DuBois observed that the suffering of the nation’s darker-skinned sons and daughters gave many whites a feeling of “fierce, vindictive joy.”  He further wrote, “A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons […]

A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEOLIBERALISM by David HarveyBUY THIS BOOK Neoliberalism has left an indelible, smoldering mark on our world for the last thirty years.  Eminent Marxist geographer David Harvey, author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, 2005), spoke earlier this year to Sasha Lilley, of the radical radio program Against the Grain, about […]

“Whoever battles monsters should take care not to become a monster too, for if you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you.”                                     — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche “Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us — and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, […]

Former Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern‘s recent commentary on labor “The End of ‘More’” (Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2006), albeit apologetically, confirms that liberal orthodoxy is on the side of telling U.S. workers and working-class communities to quit struggling against the tide of “a new competitive reality.”  But whose reality is […]

Last night, I saw Al Gore’s new movie, An Inconvenient Truth.  There is much to like in this film, not least its clear presentation of stark and convincing evidence about the reality of global warming.  But, as you might guess from knowledge of its star’s balsa-wood political career, this movie is a sheep in wolf’s […]

  Click on a photo for a larger view. 23-25 May 2006 29 May 2006 On the eighth day of the Olympia Port Militarization Resistance, the U.S.S. Pomeroy has docked to take the Stryker Brigade to Iraq.  The resistance escalates, the Port fence is shaken and nearly taken down before a riot squad enters the […]

  Andrew Stern, president of the 1.7-million-member Service Employees International Union, once likened the leadership of a mass movement to the crew on a sailboat.  What matters is the wind in the sails, he said, not the fight over who steers. The wind behind the movement for immigrant rights had reached gale force by May […]

In June 2004, the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), resolved to consider a phased, selective divestment from companies profiting from Israel’s occupation.  Subsequently it came under intense pressure from Jewish organizations (and their allies) and will consider rescinding the resolution at the next General Assembly meeting on June 15-22 in Birmingham, Alabama.  To firm up […]

  The Palestinian gay and lesbian community has yet to leave the closet, but it’s on its way.  Today it’s possible to go to parties of gays from the Occupied Territories and see young residents of the West Bank perform drag.  They have not told their mother about this, but one day they intend to […]

At the annual convention of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario, held 24-27 May 2006 in Ottawa, the union passed a resolution of historic importance.  Resolution 50 — adopted unanimously by the 900 delegates at the largest convention in the union’s history — expressed support for the global campaign against Israeli apartheid.  The […]

Mister Bush, you deserve a good reaming for your performance at the United States Military Academy graduation on Saturday.  Post around to my room for some character guidance. Come in, wackhead.  Slam up against that wall!  Suck up that capacious gut!  Shoulders back!  Pop up that puny chest!  Fingers along the seams of your trousers!  […]

Erik C. Nisbet & James Shanahan, “MSRG Special Report: Restrictions on Civil Liberties, Views of Islam, & Muslim Americans,” Media & Society Research Group, Cornell University, December 2004 Actual mass murderers are higher on my watch list than those who just think or shout hateful beliefs.  But you would be mistaken if you thought the […]

A nation of immigrants: This is a convenient myth developed as a response to the 1960s movements against colonialism, neocolonialism, and white supremacy. The ruling class and its brain trust offered multiculturalism, diversity, and affirmative action in response to demands for decolonization, justice, reparations, social equality, an end of imperialism, and the rewriting of history — not to be “inclusive” — but to be accurate. What emerged to replace the liberal melting pot idea and the nationalist triumphal interpretation of the “greatest country on earth and in history,” was the “nation of immigrants” story.