Geography Archives: United States

We have pledged to help reclaim the honor of the United States of America.  Accordingly, we call for the impeachment of the president of the United States, George W. Bush. Since lying in combat could needlessly cost the lives of fighting men and women, West Point graduates have been trained to live by a code […]

Every day I walk from my fashionable neighborhood to the university and pass a pair of very kind, white-uniformed police officers.  They stand in their almost blindingly clean attire, only a block from my crumbling apartment building, smoking Egypt’s cheapest Cleopatra cigarettes and directing traffic.  “Ya Pasha!” they shout, “Habibi!”  This is my daily greeting […]

Caracas, 28 Jun. ABN. — Con la finalidad hacerle seguimiento a las relaciones bilaterales y discutir sobre el tema energético, los presidentes de la República Islámica de Irán, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad y la República de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, se reunirán en Teherán a finales de julio. Haga click en la foto para agrandar. Hugo Chávez […]

Click on an image for a larger view. Israel Has the Right to Defend Itself We Didn’t Intend to Kill the Civilians 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 oppressed peoples at various times […]

“America is addicted to oil.”  Thus spake George W. Bush in his 2006 “State of the Union” speech. At first hearing, this sounds like a remarkable breakthrough in public discourse.  A sitting U.S. President admitting that the nation’s relationship to petroleum is one of addiction?  Sounds like a major advance in honesty, doesn’t it?  And, […]

The AFL-CIO has just formally petitioned the Bush Administration to “take immediate action to stop exploitation by the Chinese government and multinational corporations of workers in China, who are paid as little as 15 cents per hour”  (AFL-CIO, “AFL-CIO Files Workers’ Rights Case Against China ,” Press Release, June 8, 2006).  It appears that the […]

I loved Bob Fitch’s new book, Solidarity for Sale.  For someone like myself, who has been battered around a bit by a few union leaders, it was like a drink of cool water at the end of a long, hot run. I’m troubled by the tone of some critical reviews of Solidarity for Sale I’ve […]

  Editor’s Introduction It’s no secret that there exists (1) a high turnover rate among entry-level organizers, many of whom are (2) young college graduates, rather than people recruited out of the communities that are organizing targets — the interrelated problems that Kevin Funk’s essay below illustrates. Daisy Rooks’ qualitative study (based on interviews with […]

  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 […]

Submissions

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 […]