Geography Archives: United States

Andre Vltchek Andre Vltchek is a Czech-born American writer who has written for Der Spiegel, Asahi Shimbun, the Guardian, and many other international papers.  He has reported on the violence of the neo-liberal order from all over the globe,  but especially from Indonesia, about which he has made a ground-breaking documentary: Terlena: Breaking of a […]

Let me begin by getting the boilerplate that appears in every review of a movie by Lars von Trier out of the way: a) Lars von Trier is a provocateur whose films may very well be mere exercises in cynicism; b) Lars von Trier dares to make films about America without ever having visited the […]

A short time ago, Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein wrote a column starting, “I don’t support our troops.” It was a well-reasoned piece by most standards, though Stein unthinkingly repeats the urban legend about “peaceniks” spitting on troops returning from Vietnam. For his honesty, he received a hundred “hate e-mails” on his (unpublished) personal […]

  Download the flyer: pdf; and doc! Guest Speakers: Jerry Tucker: Former UAW Intl Executive Board Member & co-founder of the New Directions Movement in that union and labour educator/activist; Dennis Delling: Long-time Delphi worker and participant in current struggle; Mike Vince: President, CAW Local 200 (Ford); Sam Gindin: Retired CAW staff and currently Packer […]

I met Clint Jencks in about 1959 when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley.  He was getting his Ph.D. and was the teaching assistant in economics for our section.  I knew of his history and was honored to get to know him.  We spent many hours together talking about labor history and his own life.  […]

It’s odd that Bolivian president elect Evo Morales should have chosen South Africa as his first port of call in drumming up international support ahead of his January 22 presidential inauguration.  In a televised speech during his recent visit to South Africa, Morales said he wanted to “learn from South Africa’s experience of nation-building.”  But […]

Guatemala City, Guatemala Carlos, my driver, was a former federal policeman.  He weighed a good two hundred pounds and was well over six feet.  He was assigned to me by a local businessman whom I knew in Guatemala City after I explained that I wanted to visit some areas where I could see gang activity.  […]

While it isn’t literally true that Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned (the violin wasn’t invented yet), he did build himself a glorious new palace atop the ashes.  And he was one of the prime suspects in the great arson of 64 a.d.  According the Roman historian Suetonius, “under cover of displeasure at the ugliness […]

In the past few years, Hayao Miyazaki has finally achieved recognition in the United States as a great filmmaker. Thanks to a deal between his Studio Ghibli and Disney, all of his films will be available in new, uncut English language DVDs; the New York premiere of his latest work, Howl’s Moving Castle, was the […]

  [The Los Angeles Times recently ran a series of investigative articles by Miriam Pawel on the problems of the United Farm Workers:  “Farmworkers Reap Little as Union Strays From Its Roots” (8 January 2006); “Linked Charities Bank on the Chavez Name” (9 January 2006); “Decisions of Long Ago Shape the Union Today” (10 January […]

Martin Luther King, Jr., arrested on 3 September1958, outside the Montgomery courthouse. Photo by Charles Moore. It’s Martin Luther King Jr.‘s birthday and, for the first time since 1977, I am remembering the man and his life in a town below the Mason-Dixon line.  At the library I work, Blacks were denied entrance.  Denied the […]

Since quoting Marx makes a writer appear both more educated and more serious, I figured I’d start this piece about Iran with a bit of Marxism . . . from Duck Soup. Ambassador Trentino: “I am willing to do anything to prevent this war.” President Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho): “It’s too late.  I’ve already paid […]

  Most of us grew up thinking that the United States was a strong but humble nation, that involved itself in world affairs only reluctantly, that respected the integrity of other nations and other systems, and that engaged in wars only as a last resort. This was a nation with no large standing army, with […]

  José Martí and Simón Bolívar, two of Latin America’s most respected independence fighters, recognized nearly a century ago that their homelands would never be free of imperial domination, until Latin America came together in solidarity as a united force. Martí and Bolívar’s insights remain relevant in the age of neo-liberal globalization.  The colonizers of […]

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is no armchair theorist.  She was and is on the front lines of struggles for social justice at home and abroad.  An acclaimed author, Dunbar-Ortiz is also a professor of ethnic studies at California State University, Hayward.  Her substantial body of work includes Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the […]

“I’ve told the American people before that this will not be another Vietnam, and I repeat this here tonight. . . . I’m hopeful that this fighting will not go on for long and that casualties will be held to an absolute minimum. This is an historic moment. We have in this past year made […]

Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines, eds. “Takin’ It to the Streets”: A Sixties Reader, Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 533 pages. Max Elbaum. Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. London: Verso, 2002. 370 pages, including index. Barry Sheppard. The Party, A Political Memoir, The Socialist Workers […]

  [This essay is a winner of an essay contest held by Left Hook and sponsored by Monthly Review. — Ed.] During the last two summers, I did not spend my days relaxing on a beach reading great novels and poems.  I did not write the grand story I promised myself I would write.  Instead, […]

Physicians for a National Health Program held its annual meeting on December 10, 2005. Originally planned for New Orleans, it was relocated to Philadelphia after Hurricane Katrina. Founded in 1987, the organization has over 14,000 members nationally. PNHP advocates and educates for a single national health insurance plan: in the words of PNHP National Coordinator […]

On January 1,  2006, thirty-two private oil companies in Venezuela lost their contracts to operate independently.  The replaced contracts were given to the oil companies by the pre-Chavez government in Caracas during the 1990s, the latest in a series of oil agreements that were much more beneficial to the oil companies than they were to […]