Geography Archives: Venezuela

Last November 15, I referred to a third reflection on the Latin American Summit which, as I then wrote, “I have yet to publish”. It strikes me as timely, however, to do so before the referendum of December 2.

Introduction On the 17th and 18th of November 2007, the finance ministers and reserve bank governors of the G20 countries, along with leading International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank officials, will be gathering in the seaside village of Kleinmond, South Africa.1  During this meeting — which will be hosted by the current Chair of […]

On November 5th, retired general Raúl Baduel shocked many in Venezuela and abroad by delivering a prepared statement condemning the proposed constitutional reform and urging a “NO” vote on December 2nd.  The shock felt by many and the outrage by some is no doubt the result of such a high-level defection: until July, Baduel had […]

Everything Americans do requires transportation because our individualized homes, like our jobs and shopping locations, are all considerable distances from one another except in our largest, densest cities.  The private automobile rules.  Everything we buy in a store got there by truck.  Two-thirds of US oil consumption goes for transportation, most of that for private […]

On October 9, the Oregon AFL-CIO passed a resolution opposing the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement and three other pending trade deals with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea.  A state federation condemning a free trade deal would normally be an unremarkable event, except for the remarkable absence in the Peru case of a typically heavy-weight free […]

A savage war is being waged against the majority of the people on Earth by the governments of the North on behalf of their multinational companies.  This war is not being fought with bombs or bullets; it is being fought through neo-liberal economic policies.  Its weapons are not being delivered by stealth bombers; they are […]

  (Mainly regarding Urban Development Themes) If we had to give a brief definition of the city under socialism, we might say that it is a sustainable human settlement with a life project planned and carried out collectively. If we wanted to flesh out this definition with some descriptive characteristics, we might add that it […]

Many Iranians, ranging from university presidents in Iran to immigrants here in the United States, feel insulted by the treatment president Ahmadinejad received in New York in September.  This is understandable, coming in the midst of a larger media campaign to demonize Iran, including the newspaper cartoon last month that depicted Iranians as cockroaches crawling […]

AN UNBROKEN AGONY: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President by Randall RobinsonBUY THIS BOOK Randall Robinson has written the story of a great tragedy of recent times — the violent overthrow of Haiti’s elected president and government on February 29, 2004.  An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a […]

On Sunday, the 30th of September, yet another blow was struck against the advocates and beneficiaries of neo-liberalism in Ecuador and Latin America when Rafael Correa‘s coalition won the majority of seats in the Constituent Assembly.  With this, Correa and his allies have secured the driving seat in the process of rewriting Ecuador’s constitution, which […]

Today’s two most conspicuous global flashpoints — the Middle East and Latin America — have widely exposed the fact of US imperialism and highlighted some of its limitations.  Adding the apparent cracks in US economic hegemony seems to indicate an empire in decline.  Yet a more cautious assessment would recall that the earlier defeat in […]

Caracas, 25 ago (PL) Partidos y movimientos de izquierda de América Latina y el Caribe fueron convocados hoy por el presidente venezolano, Hugo Chávez, a realizar en 2008 una reunión para crear una organización internacional. Al hablar ante miles de aspirantes a miembros del Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), Chávez precisó que recientemente conversó […]

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN by Tariq AliBUY THIS BOOK The Pirates of the Caribbean identified by Tariq Ali in his slender volume titled the same are Evo Morales of Bolivia, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and of course, Fidel Castro, the “Old Man,” of Cuba. These three men and the movements they lead, according to Ali, […]

  Rutgers Students Visit Hugo Chavez Jason Bellifemini is one of the Rutgers students who recently visited Venezuela and co-authored “Traveling Rutgers University Students Share Their Views on Developments in Venezuela” (MRZine, 4 June 2007).  Bellifemini has put together an interactive Web site, with many photo albums, to share his and other Rutgers students’ experience […]

  Achievements of the Cuban Revolution are well known to Monthly Review readers.  What is striking about Raúl Castro Ruz’s address on 26 July 2007 (an excerpt from which is reproduced below), on the occasion of Cuba’s National Day of Rebellion, is not his tribute to them but his candid assessment of the “errors which […]

Two of my friends were just beaten and arrested by Brooklyn police.  My friends, Michael Tarif Warren and Evelyn Warren, are African-American attorneys whose work consists, in part, of defending victims of police violence.  I want to tell you about how police punched and humiliated these good people on the corner of Vanderbilt and Atlantic, […]

Imperial rulers and violently fixated Cuban exiles need Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program to accelerate learning processes and not continue to repeat mistakes.  Hey, on Cuba policy, it’s only been 48 years! Fidel Castro, in contrast, learned fast.  He used Washington and Miami to improvise material for three chapters in future releases of Machiavelli’s […]

  The first US Social Forum wrapped up on Sunday, July 1 in Atlanta, Georgia.  That it happened at all seems almost miraculous.  It is hard to remember any previous comparable gathering of diverse currents of US social movements.  This is not a particularly dynamic moment in their history — the anti-war movement is bland […]

Before we deal with the topic of the Iranian role in the Arab region, it is useful to recall the complexity of Iran and its different entanglements: For one, Iran is not a “Banana Republic,” and its regime is not a puppet or a client regime of Imperialism.  Iran has a regional project and works […]

Michael A. Lebowitz is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and the author of Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class, winner of the Isaac Deutscher memorial prize for 2004, and Build It Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century, just published by Monthly Review Press.  The videos were […]