Subjects Archives: Empire

  General elections were held in Bolivia on Sunday, December 6, 2009.  A few weeks before these elections I had the opportunity to discuss the contours of Evo Morales’ first term in office with the Bolivian Ambassador to Canada, Edgar Tórrez Mosqueira.  The following interview provides a backdrop to the elections that were held yesterday, […]

The United States, in its struggle against the Revolution, had in the Venezuelan government its best ally: the choice specimen Mr. Romulo Betancourt Bello. We did not know it then. He had been elected President on December 7, 1958; he had not taken office yet when the Cuban Revolution triumphed on January 1st, 1959. Weeks later I had the privilege of being invited by the provisional government of Wolfgang Larrazabal to visit Bolivar’s homeland, which had been so supportive of Cuba.

I know Chavez well, and no one could be more reluctant than him to allow a showdown between the Venezuelan and Colombian peoples leading to bloodshed. These are two fraternal peoples, the same as Cubans living in the east, center and west end of our island. I find no other way to explain the close relationship between Venezuelans and Colombians.

Alfred W. McCoy.  Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State.  Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. In the build-up to the Iraq and Afghan wars, liberal humanitarians and neoconservatives alike bantered on and on about the necessity of empire and its capability of removing tyrannical […]

Anyone with some information can immediately see that the sweetened ‘Complementation Agreement for Defense and Security Cooperation and Technical Assistance between the Governments of Colombia and the United States’ signed on October 30, and made public in the evening of November 2, amounts to the annexation of Colombia by the United States.

Yesterday, Carmen Nordelo Tejera passed away. She was the selfless mother of Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, a Hero of the Republic of Cuba who is unjustly serving two life-sentences plus 15 years of imprisonment.

  Notes of Anatoly S. Chernyaev Gorbachev: My intuition tells me — something is worrisome.  I am afraid we are losing time!  Everybody is getting used to it.  I guess they say, well, there is a war going on, everything in its turn, such is life.  “The strange war!” — soon they will attach this […]

Significant events have taken place in our country lately.

The Empire has ruled the world through economy and deceit rather than force. At the end of WWII, it had attained the privilege of minting the convertible hard currency, the monopoly over the nuclear weapon and the possession of most of the gold in the world while it was the only large-scale producer of manufactured equipment, consumer goods, food and services worldwide. However, there was a limit to the printing of paper money: the gold standard at a regular price of 35 dollars a troy ounce. This was the situation for over 25 years, until August 15, 1971, when an executive order issued by President Richard Nixon led the United States to unilaterally call off that international arrangement thus defrauding the world. I’ll never tire out of repeating it. That was how it threw on the world economy its military buildup and war adventure expenses, especially the Vietnam War, which according to conservative estimates cost no less than 200 billion dollars and the lives of over 45 thousand American youths.

Bolivarian President Hugo Chavez really made a clever remark when he referred to the “riddle of the two Obamas.”

On occasions direct news coming from the United States prompts indignation and sometimes repugnance.

This Reflection is not addressed to the governments but to the fraternal peoples of Latin America.

  Lungisile Ntsebeza.  Democracy Compromised: Chiefs and the Politics of the Land in South Africa.  Leiden: Brill, 2005.  300 pp.  $38.00 (paper), ISBN 978-90-04-14482-8. One central question forms the backbone for this local study of governance in a rural district of the Eastern Cape: how is it that the chiefs and headmen, many of whom […]

On July 29th, Tortilla con Sal managed to talk to Salvador Zuniga, a veteran leader of the indigenous peoples’ movement in Honduras. Zuniga talked about what is currently happening in Honduras. At the time of the interview, Zuniga and other leaders like Bertha Caceres and the Garifuna Miriam Miranda were in temporary encampments in Nicaragua set up to give some respite to Hondurans from the fierce military repression in Honduras, especially along the frontier with Nicaragua.

  Dietrich Eichholtz.  Krieg um Öl: Ein Erdölimperium als deutsches Kriegsziel 1938-1943.  Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2006.  141 pp.  ISBN 978-3-86583-119-4; EUR 19.90 (paper), ISBN 978-3-86583-119-4. Dietrich Eichholtz does not mince words.  From the first page of this powerfully argued book, his underlying argument is clear: “The imperialist interest in oil played a role in the […]

Introduction Vaclav Smil’s Energy in World History (1994) provides an overview of global changes in human energy use from before the Neolithic Revolution to modern times.  In various places in the book, Smil discusses the relationship between energy use and the rise of centers of economic and political power in world history.  In explaining what […]

Proposal for the Creation of the “Petro” Currency Should Not Be Seen in Isolation Caracas, 31 Mar (ABN) — The proposal of the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, to create a new currency called the “Petro” should not be seen in isolation from what is happening in today’s global economy, said the governor of […]

Over 3,000 Bolivian and Peruvian indigenous activists recently marched in El Alto in commemoration of the March 13th, 1781 siege of La Paz, Bolivia launched from El Alto by indigenous rebels Tupac Katari and Bartolina Sisa.  The siege was against Spanish rule and for indigenous liberation in the Andes.  At a gathering the night before […]

  “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we […]

  For years, the U.S. never considered Africa as a priority foreign policy agenda.  The only context in which Africa came up in Washington was for preferential trade as in AGOA (Africa Growth & Opportunity Act) or in AIDS funding from PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and of course humanitarian assistance.  Despite its […]