March 27th, 2003

As a kid, I had trouble understanding why my parents and siblings lived in Montreal and the rest of my family — grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins — were scattered across the United States. On long car trips to visit relatives in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, my parents would tell us about the Vietnam war, and the thousands of US peace activists who, like us, snuck across the border to Canada in the late sixties.

March 13th, 2003

On a muddy piece of squatted land in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Florencia Vespignani is planning her upcoming tour of the United States, where she will be speaking with students and activists about Argentina’s resistance movements.

February 27th, 2003

At the Pentagon they call it the “Voila Moment.”

That’s when Iraqi soldiers and civilians , with bombs raining down on Baghdad, suddenly scratch their heads and say to themselves: “These bombs aren’t really meant to kill me and my family, they are meant to free us from an evil dictator!” At that point, they thank Uncle Sam, lower their weapons, abandon their posts, and rise up against Saddam Hussein. Voila!

February 13th, 2003

Poor Endy Chávez, outfielder for the Navegantes del Megallanes, one of Venezuela’s big baseball teams. Every time he comes up to bat, the local TV sportscasters start in with the jokes. “Here comes Chávez. No not the pro-Cuban dictator Chávez, the other Chávez.” Or “This Chávez hits baseballs, not the Venezuelan people.”

January 30th, 2003

The key word at this year’s World Social Forum, which ended yesterday in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was ‘big.’

Big attendance: more than a hundred thousand delegates in all! Big speeches: more than 15,000 crammed in to see Noam Chomsky! And most of all, big men. Lula da Silva, the newly elected president of Brazil, came to the Forum and addressed 75,000 adoring fans. Hugo Chavez, the controversial president of Venezuela, paid a ‘surprise’ visit to announce that his embattled regime was part of the same movement as the forum itself.

January 25th, 2003

How do you celebrate the anniversary of something that is impossible to define? That was the question faced by tens of thousands of Argentinians on December 20 2002 as they marched from all corners of Buenos Aires to the historic Plaza de Mayo. It was a year ago to the day since the first “Argentinazo”, a word that is completely untranslatable into English or, for that matter, Spanish. The Argentinazo was not a riot exactly, although it sure looked like one on the television, with looters ransacking supermarkets and mounted police charging into crowds; 33 people were killed across the country. It wasn’t a revolution, either, although it sort of looked like one on the face of it, with angry crowds storming the seat of government and forcing the president to resign in disgrace.

January 15th, 2003

Well, it could have been true.

That’s what Senator Hillary Clinton had to say after finding out that five Pakistani men did not actually sneak into the United States through Canada so they could blow up New York on New Year’s Eve. Because they were never in the United States at all, and they weren’t terrorists, and the whole thing was dreamed up by a man who forges passports for a living.

November 11th, 2002

A bunch of people have written to the site and asked me if I planned to respond to the attack on me in the current issue of The Economist. Frankly, I think the article is so nuts, it’s not even worth responding. But I would like to add some context that might help explain why an article so personal and childish was allowed to go to press in a publication that prides itself on being a cool voice of reason and authority on all matters economic.

April 24th, 2002

I knew from email reports that something new was going on in Washington D.C. last weekend. A demonstration against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund was joined by an anti-war march, as well as a demonstration against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. In the end, all the marches joined together in what organizers described as the largest Palestinian solidarity demonstration in U.S. history, 75,000 people by police estimates.

March 19th, 2002

On Tuesday in Buenos Aires, only a few blocks from where Argentinian President Eduardo Duhalde was negotiating with the International Monetary Fund, a group of residents were going through a negotiation of a different kind. They were trying to save their home.

March 16th, 2002

Most of the news out of Argentina focuses on angry professionals who have lost access to their savings. The truth is that, in a country where half the population lives below the poverty line, the vast majority of the protests are simply attempts meet desperate needs for food, shelter and work.

March 11th, 2002

When the White House decided it was time to address the rising tides of anti-Americanism around the world, it didn’t look to a career diplomat for help. Instead, in keeping with the Bush administration’s philosophy that anything the public sector can do the private sector can do better, it hired one of a Madison Avenue’s top brand managers.