Geography Archives: Europe

In the usual roll call of religious communists, Father Thomas J. Hagerty — one of the central figures involved in establishing the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or the Wobblies) in 1905 — seems to have slipped off the radar, with nary an entry on the Marxist Internet Archive and the smallest comment on […]

Egyptians are celebrating the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, as I write.  Inshallah they will celebrate for a long time to come.  But leaderless crowds are not well placed to govern.  The triumph of the Egyptian people leaves the military in control.  Let us hope that Egyptians will find no reason to share the complaint of […]

The Six Mercenaries All for One and a Few against All Cf. “Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the highest leaders of trade unions and employers signed . . . at the Moncloa Palace the economic and social accord to face the crisis.  The photo of the pact, featuring the six “musketeers” joining their […]

“At your age, I was already working.” “And, at your age, grandma, I’ll be still working.” Juan Kalvellido is a Spanish cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published in Kaos en la Red on 1 February 2011; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. Kalvellido, […]

  You are watching other people’s revolutions, in Tunisia, Egypt, etc., on TV, thinking, “Wow, that’s wild”; meanwhile, your pocket is being picked and your brain is being taken from you, too. . . . Juan Ramón Mora is a cartoonist in Barcelona.  This cartoon was first published in his blog on 29 January 2011 […]

“Freedom lies behind a door closed shut,” the great Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawqi wrote in the last century.  “It can only be knocked down with a bleeding fist.”  More than that is bleeding in the Arab world at the moment. The uprisings we are witnessing in Egypt have been a rude awakening for all those […]

The West has financed dictatorships in the Middle East and Arab World for more than a century. The pro-democracy protests against Western-backed dictatorships in the Arab world have shown, once again, the immense hypocrisy of our rulers.  Which side are the Western governments on — the side of protesters or the side of dictators?  The […]

Second Round Will Be between Candidates Who Received around 6.4% and 4.5% Percent Support from Registered Voters in First Round, Respectively Haiti’s democracy and national sovereignty were severely undermined today, Mark Weisbrot, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), said today, reacting to news that Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) had […]

It didn’t get much attention in the media, but U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did something quite surprising on Sunday.  After taping interviews on five big Sunday talk shows about Egypt, she then boarded a plane to Haiti.  Yes, Haiti.  The most impoverished country in the hemisphere, not exactly a “strategic ally” or a […]

Vijay Prashad is a prominent Marxist scholar from South Asia.  He is George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, Connecticut.  He has written extensively on international affairs for both academic and popular journals.  His most recent book The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the […]

“Guttenberg trotz Ansehensverlust beliebtester Politiker” [Guttenberg, Germany’s Most Popular Politician, Despite Scandals] (AFP, 28 January 2011). The German man of the hour is Baron Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg.  Actually he has eight other given names, which modestly prohibits him from using, but the title shows that his family traces back to 1158.  He is […]

Well-known Do-nothings’ GalleryUGT: Whatever you vote for, we’ll be with you!CCOO: Yeah, what he said!UGT: Of course, that’s already taken into account! Juan Kalvellido is a Spanish cartoonist.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. LibreRed, “Contra el ‘pensionazo’” (22 January 2011); Nigel Davies, “Spain Passes Pension Reform with Union Backing” (Reuters, […]

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 28 January 2011.  Cf. Nigel Davies, “Spain Passes Pension Reform with Union Backing” (Reuters, 28 January 2011). | Print

  Introduction by Analytical Monthly Review There have been moments when an event catches the public eye, and suddenly illuminates a process of decay and disintegration that has been proceeding in the background, slowly, step-by-step.  The outrage and national attention focused on the conviction of, and imposition of life sentence on, Dr. Binayak Sen for […]

J27: No to the Bonfire of Pensions! Let them pay for the crisis themselves! Juan Kalvellido is a Spanish cartoonist.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. LibreRed, “Contra el ‘pensionazo’” (22 January 2011); “Spain’s cabinet is expected to approve a pension reforms bill on Friday in another step to show investors […]

A Plenary Address at the American Studies Association Presidential Panel, San Antonio, Texas, 18 November 2010 For Ruthie Gilmore. I am an imposter here: not a real American Studies scholar.  I went to graduate school in the late 1980s to study History and Anthropology.  My interest was in the contemporary history of India.  When I […]

Jean Tulard is a historian, specializing in the French Revolution and revolutions in general.  According to Tulard, the future of the Tunisian uprising will depend on the role played by the army. In a month of uprising, the Tunisian people has successfully toppled the Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali regime.  Is it a revolution? Right now […]

January 20, 2011, New York — Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued a written appeal to Fox News president Roger Ailes to help put a stop to the increasing threats against progressive Professor Frances Fox Piven, largely incited by Fox News host Glenn Beck.  In the letter, co-written by Legal Director Bill Quigley […]

Haiti’s infamous dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier returned to his country this week, while the country’s first elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is kept out.  These two facts really say everything about Washington’s policy toward Haiti and our government’s respect for democracy in that country and in the region. Asked about the return of Duvalier, who had […]

This paper highlights a number of concerns about the nature of the EU-IMF loan agreement with Ireland. It is based on the experience of global justice organisations that have long monitored the impact of IMF policies in the Global South. The paper first takes up that experience and highlights the pernicious impacts the IMF — whose governance is skewed towards the interests of rich countries — has wreaked throughout the Global South.