Geography Archives: England

  • Civil Warfare in Central India

      Maoist guerrilla attack kills 75 security personnel in Dantewada, in the indigenous homelands of Central India.  Are security personnel cannon fodder in the ‘Maoist infested’ heartland of India?  Should the state send in the Air Force?  But what about collateral damage?  These are some of the loud speculations in the never-fail-to-miss-the-point mainstream media, the […]

  • Walking with the Comrades

    The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India’s Gravest Internal Security Threat.  I’d been waiting for months to hear from them.  I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days.  That was to […]

  • Criminal Courts under Revolution and Empire

      Robert Allen, Les Tribunaux criminels sous la Révolution et l’Empire, 1792-1811.  Collection « Histoire » Translated by James Steven Bryant (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2005) 318 pp. 22€ ISBN 2-7535-00095-9. At the end of the Old Regime, the judicial system of the kingdom stood accused of all manner of barbarities and atrocities — […]

  • Of Daughters and Fathers

    Daughters are God’s irony on men.  Not His vengeance or His revenge on us, but surely His irony. Daughters, when they come, are never expected and seldom asked for, especially if she is a first child.  Always a surprise, usually more for the father than the mother, who, if she suspects at all, keeps it […]

  • Marx’s Ecology and The Ecological Revolution

      Interview by Aleix Bombila, for En Lucha (Spain), of John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, and author of Marx’s Ecology and The Ecological Revolution En Lucha: In your book Marx’s Ecology you argue that Marxism has a lot to offer to the ecologist movement.  What kind of united work can be established between […]

  • The WTO as Barrier to Financial Regulation

    In most parts of the world today (except perhaps in India, where optimism about the benefits of unregulated financial markets still seems to dominate over the undisputable evidence of their many fragilities) most policy makers talk about imposing regulations on the financial sector.  Of course, the events of the past two years in the world […]

  • The Ugly Face of the Beautiful Game

      Christos Kassimeris.  European Football in Black and White: Tackling Racism in Football.  Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008.  viii + 267 pp.  $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7391-1959-4; $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7391-1960-0. Soccer fans held in thrall by the European Championships have no doubt observed the significant display of anti-racist statements and activities before, during, and after the […]

  • The Time for Single Payer Health Care Is Now

      Yesterday the Labor Campaign for Single Payer joined the growing number of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare advocates who have responded to President Obama’s State of the Union challenge to “let him know” if there is a better approach that “will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare, and […]

  • The Night They Drove Old EFCA Down

    Scott Brown’s January 19 defeat of Martha Coakley in the race to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat has been greeted as a “game changer” for Barack Obama and his political backers.  This GOP victory has deprived Democrats of their “filibuster-proof” super-majority in the Senate, making Obama’s health care plan — at least, in its current […]

  • Haiti and the “Devil’s Curse”

      Peter Hallward: The role that journalists tend to be comfortable with when it comes to talking about Haiti is the role of victim.  If you ask why the Haitians are so poor . . . it has to do with three factors, all of which are functions really of Haiti’s independence and the strength […]

  • Stone Hammered to Gravel

      The office workers did not know, plodding through 1963 and Marshall Square station in Johannesburg, that you would dart down the street between them, thinking the police would never fire into the crowd. Sargeant Kleingeld did not know, as you escaped his fumbling hands and the pistol on his hip, that he would one […]

  • Dennis Vincent Brutus, 1924-2009

    World-renowned political organizer and one of Africa’s most celebrated poets, Dennis Brutus, died early on December 26 in Cape Town, in his sleep, aged 85. Even in his last days, Brutus was fully engaged, advocating social protest against those responsible for climate change, and promoting reparations to black South Africans from corporations that benefited from […]

  • Manchester: Back to No Future

      Manchester: Looking for the Light through the Pouring Rain, by Kevin Cummins, is a book of photographs of Manchester’s music scene over the last thirty years, with weighty prose by the likes of Paul Morley and Stuart Maconie, participants and witnesses all.  It was published in autumn 2009 in London by Faber. The photos […]

  • Green Mountain Mustering for the War at Home or Abroad?

    Earlier this month, the Burlington had a busy weekend mustering its “troops” for active duty on several fronts, one at home and the other abroad. On Saturday, Dec. 5, two hundred labor and community activists gathered in this leading progressive city to plan more effective resistance to job cuts and contract give-backs demanded by recession-ravaged […]

  • For a Mandatory Universal Pension System

    Most people have heard that our retirement income security system is built as if it were a three-legged stool, where income comes from Social Security, from employer-based pensions, and from personal wealth.  That image implies that there are equal sources of income coming from each of those sources for all retired families, and that image […]

  • What’s Wrong with a 30-Hour Work Week?

    With millions of jobs lost during the first part of 2009, who is calling for a shorter work week to spread the work around?  Not the Republicans.  Not even the Democrats.  But why is there nary a peep from unions? In the U.S., auto sets the pace for organized labor.  The only discussion at the […]

  • In Response to the Bosnia Genocide Lobby

    The original title for the article that follows was “Response to ‘Raoul Djukanovic’.”  “RD” is the Internet pseudonym of Daniel Simpson, who we mention in our second paragraph (below), and who, as a member of what we refer to as the Bosnia Genocide Lobby, assails us wherever we publish something related to the former Yugoslavia.  […]

  • An Open Letter from Economists in Support of Financial Transaction Taxes

    December 3, 2009 To Whom It May Concern: A modest set of financial transaction taxes could raise a substantial amount of needed revenue while having little impact on trades that have a positive economic impact. The cost of trading financial assets has plummeted over the last three decades as a result of computerization.  This has […]

  • Of Islands and Their Sons

    (For MAAS BOB, father of the Trade Union.  And for Sam White who singlehandedly impregnated half of the women of Montserrat and so made beautiful cousins for me.  Bless you and may you find peace.) My time is sunrise, dawns and mornings clean before the wickedness comes in.  When I see the Montserrat sunrise I […]

  • The Swiss and the Muslims

    The Swiss, known for cheese, Alps, watches, chocolate, and secret bank accounts, at least two of which are full of holes, have now added a sixth important product: intolerance.  57.5 percent of its 8 million population, or of those who went to the polls, voted to forbid minarets next to Muslim mosques. As nearly everyone […]