Geography Archives: Europe

  • Austerity versus Stimulus

    It is obviously silly to push for austerity in the midst of a recession, not just silly but cruel, since it prolongs the pain of unemployment.  The recession is caused by a deficiency of aggregate demand.  To overcome it what is necessary is an increase in demand which requires larger expenditure.  Since private expenditure on […]

  • Intercepted Phone Call: NATO Ground Troops Assisted Tripoli Invasion; “Mass Graves” in Misurata

    US and European troops participated in the invasion of Tripoli and are still stationed there, according to an intercepted telephone call between officials of Libya’s National Transitional Council, the body purporting to represent NATO-allied rebels in the Libyan civil war. The call also reveals the existence of mass graves in or near Misurata which, one […]

  • The Jolly Roger Flies in the Berlin Elections

    Berlin voted on Sunday.  Mayor Klaus Wowereit, a Social Democrat, retains his office but his government needs reshuffling.  The only real surprise was a hefty 9 percent vote for an unusual new party, the Pirates, whose fifteen delegates in the new city parliament will be their first anywhere in Germany. With Pirates in parliament (though […]

  • We Are the Children of Malcolm and Martin

    We are the children of Martin and Malcolm,          Black, brown, red and white, Our birthright is to be creators of history,Our Right, Our Duty           To shake the world with           A new dream! At this time of mass unemployment and foreclosures, failing banks and failed states, floods, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, and global warming that […]

  • The Euro at the End of the Tunnel

    “Look, the light at the end of the tunnel!” Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 14 September 2011.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. “Merkel […]

  • The New Scramble for Africa

      Is current U.S. foreign policy in Africa following a blueprint drawn up almost eight years ago by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, one of the most conservative think tanks in the world?  Although it seems odd that a Democratic administration would have anything in common with the extremists at Heritage, the convergence in policy and […]

  • Salvaging September: An ICAHD Statement regarding the Palestinian Statehood Initiative at the UN

    The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) has been one of the leading critical Israeli peace and human rights organizations struggling for Palestinian rights during its more than 14 years of existence. ICAHD activists resist the demolition of Palestinian homes, both inside Israel and in the Occupied Territory, and together with our Palestinian and International […]

  • On the Regime and the Opposition in Syria

      Despite my very negative position on the regime for private and public reasons, the truth is that the regime is very strong, and neither the outside nor the inside were able to make it change its usual stances.  This strength does not come from a vacuum.  The regime has a broad popular base that […]

  • Special Declaration of the ALBA-TCP Foreign Ministers on the Situation of Libya and Syria

    The Foreign Ministers of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, meeting in Caracas, Venezuela on 9 September 2011, recalling the Special Communiqué of the Political Council on 4 March 2011 and the Special Communiqué of the Ministerial Social Council on 19 March 2011, condemns the NATO intervention in Libya and its illegal […]

  • Outcome of the Visit to Syria by a Mission of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

      In August a UN OCHA Mission visited Syria to assess humanitarian needs in the country stemming from the ongoing crisis there.  The Mission included staff from several UN institutions and humanitarian agencies (UNHCR, UNICEF, WHO, WFP, IOM, etc.).  The Syrian authorities provided the Mission unimpeded access to all objects of interest.  The UN officials […]

  • Syria: What Kind of Revolution?

      The Syrian uprising which erupted nearly six months ago seems to be settling into a dangerous deadlock with neither side — the regime or the opposition — willing to budge from its stated position.  The daily toll of deaths and injuries climb ever higher with no resolution in sight.  The regime seems insistent on […]

  • Syria: Testing Time

      Syria remains relatively calm as efforts to destabilise its government through orchestrated attacks by rebels fail. Life in the Syrian capital, Damascus, seems to be continuing as normal.  The streets and the mosques are crowded after the devout break their Ramazan fast in the evening.  The security presence is minimal.  In fact, there are […]

  • The Neocolonization of Libya: Interview with Aijaz Ahmad

    Aijaz Ahmad: . . . Europeans, and Italians in particular, are celebrating the 100th anniversary of their first aerial bombing ever done in the world.  The Italians bombed in Libya in 1911.  Now, of course, with 100 years of development of the technology, there have been 20,000 aerial attacks on Libya. . . .  They […]

  • NATO Divides the Libyan Cake

    Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 5 September 2011.  Cf. Vittorio de Filippis, “Pétrole : l’accord secret entre le CNT et la France” (Libération, 1 September 2011). | Print

  • George Monbiot and the Guardian on “Genocide Denial” and “Revisionism”

    On Tuesday, June 14, the Guardian of London published “Left and Libertarian Right Cohabit in the Weird World of the Genocide Belittlers.”1  In this nearly 1,100-word commentary, the British writer George Monbiot attacked the two of us (among others) as “genocide deniers” and “revisionists” for our writings on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.  Monbiot also […]

  • Subjecting Spanish Constitution to Market Reform

      Spanish Constitution, Approved by the Constituent Cortes on 31 October 1978, Reformed by Markets in 2011 Juan Ramón Mora is a cartoonist in Barcelona.  This cartoon was first published in his blog on 30 August 2011 under a Creative Commons license.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. “Folletos para imprimir […]

  • Corruption and Party Politics in the Late Soviet Period

      Luc Duhamel.  The KGB Campaign against Corruption in Moscow, 1982-1987.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010.  312 pp.  $26.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8229-6108-6. Luc Duhamel’s study of an extensive anticorruption campaign in Moscow in the mid-1980s is riveting.  At multiple levels, this work provides new information and perspectives on a period of stalemate, factional competition, […]

  • New York Times Points Out “Racist Overtones” in Libyan Rebel Disinformation It Helped Spread

    Claims that the Libyan government was employing African mercenaries against the rebels were given credence in some left-wing media as well, even after information contradicting the claims began to surface: e.g., “. . .  [I]t must be pointed out that the Qaddafi regime helped create the conflict [“violence against Black Africans by Libya’s rebel forces”] […]

  • NATO’s Rebel Forces

      At its peak, the 26 of July Movement had some 300 fighters, ill fed and poorly armed, bitten by mosquitoes and accompanied by the rain.  Against them, Gen. Fulgencio Batista mobilized an army, a navy, an air force, a coast guard, and the Rural Guard, aside from a network of spies and irregular bands […]

  • Austerity Politics Descends on US States

    Last week, Democratic Governors in New York and Connecticut repeated the austerity politics of Greece’s Prime Minister Papandreou and Portugal’s Socrates.  In doing so, they likewise imitated the austerity politics of their Republican and Democratic counterparts across virtually all 50 states.  Austerity for labor and the public is everywhere capitalism’s Plan B.  After all, even […]