Geography Archives: Europe

Paul Jay:  So, we left off the first segment of the interview with you suggesting that there really doesn’t seem to be any kind of sensible strategy of the US in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  What would the sensible strategy be right now?  Obama seems to have . . . it’s very strange, they assessed the […]

  Tariq Ali says in an interview with Der Standard: To continue its war in Afghanistan, the US accepts the risk of destabilizing Pakistan.  But only a regional diplomatic approach can help. STANDARD: How would you evaluate the danger often invoked today that Pakistan is collapsing and its nuclear weapons may fall into the hands […]

  This action was led by the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), especially Omar Slaouti, who heads the NPA list in Île-de-France, as well as by Senator Alima Boumediene-Thiery (Greens), conducted in a clear, educational fashion, with the participation of many local politicians.  The NPA walks the walk, demonstrating that the call for the boycott of […]

JOHANNESBURG, 11 May 2009 (IRIN) — Rich countries and firms are leasing or buying massive tracts of land in developing nations for the production of food or biofuel.  An area equivalent to Germany’s farmed land is at stake, and tens of billions of dollars on offer.  On the plus side, agro-industrial production could develop underused […]

On Monday, 4 May 2009, 4,000 prison guards went on strike in France, protesting prison overcrowding (63,351 prisoners held in facilities designed for only 52,000), which has led to rising suicides of prisoners (96 in 2007, 115 in 2008, and 42 so far this year), inadequate budgets (resulting in the low starting salary of 1,200 […]

Antonio Giustozzi, a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science, is one of the internationally recognized specialists on the Taliban.  Author of Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan (Columbia University Press, 2008) among other books, this academic divides his time between London and Afghanistan.  Talking to Le Monde in […]

Francis R. Nicosia.  Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany.  Cambridge University Press, 2008.  xiv + 324 pp.  $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-88392-4. In his latest book, Francis R. Nicosia returns to and explores in greater detail one of the major topics of his important earlier book, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (1985): the complex […]

POINTE-A-PITRE, 1 May 2009 (AFP) — The leader of the New Anti-Capitalist Party Olivier Besancenot marched on Friday in Guadeloupe, joining the procession organized by 13 trade unions of the LKP, which started the recent general strike in the island.  Besancenot characterized his presence as “hats off” to the movement. Several thousands of people (30,000 […]

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 […]

In Mexico, May Day, the international labor holiday, has been cancelled for the first time in the country’s history. All of the major federations — the government-backed, conservative, and often corrupt “official” unions of the Congress of Labor (CT) as well as the independent National Union of Workers (UNT) and Mexican Union Front (FSM) — […]

The religious struggle in Berlin which ended Sunday with joy for some and great disappointment for others was primarily a political battle, even though it dealt with schools and religious lessons.  Many Berliners never did understand the complicated issue.  For an outsider to even try, a few German peculiarities need explaining. First of all, church […]

A talk given at a Left Forum panel, April 2009. It’s spring and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about reincarnation.  If I’m a good adjunct can I come back as a tenured professor?  If I stay a loyal Cub fan, can I come back as a Yankee fan?  Actually, it’s political reincarnation that I’ve […]

Testimony of David U. Himmelstein, M.D. before the Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee, at the hearing on “Ways to Reduce the Cost of Health Insurance for Employers, Employees, and Their Families,” 23 April 2009 Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee.  My name is David Himmelstein.  I am a primary care doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts […]

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published its latest projections for economic growth around the world.1  At first glance, the IMF projections for Latin America seem unlikely.  The IMF has a lengthy record of biased projections of growth in the region2 and has been consistently underestimating growth in countries such as Argentina and Venezuela, which […]

  Alfredo Jaar: There are two thinkers, Italian thinkers, that I admire greatly: Antonio Gramsci and Pier Paolo Pasolini.  I was invited for a series of exhibitions in Italy last year, and I wanted to make homage to both men.  In the world of culture today, I miss Gramsci, and I miss Pasolini.  I miss […]

  “The class struggle, which is always present to a historian influenced by Marx, is a fight for the crude and material things without which no refined or spiritual things could exist.  Nevertheless, it is not in the form of the spoils which fall to the victor that the latter make their presence felt. [. […]

The brutal murder of three nationalist leaders of Balochistan and the ensuing crisis has brought the issue of the Baloch national struggle to the forefront once again, only to be met with feigned surprises and arrogant dismissals by a major part of the rest of Pakistan.  We in Pakistan — and particularly those of us […]

  Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, 25th anniversary edition (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997). As Editorial Director of Monthly Review Press, I was delighted to learn that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez gave his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins […]

  22 April 2009 — On Wednesday, Scotland joined Ireland and South Africa when the Scottish Trade Union Congress, representing every Scottish trade union, voted overwhelmingly to commit to boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.  This is the third example of a national trade union federation committing to BDS and is a clear indication that, […]

  L’image de la femme au Maghreb (Images of Women in the Maghreb), a collection of articles edited by Barzakh in Algeria and by Actes Sud and the Mediterranean Center for the Humanities (MMSH) in France, is a work of research by four writers on the representation of women in their countries.  The project was […]