Geography Archives: Europe

Senator McCain, President Bush, and some of their oil industry friends are urging Americans to support overturning a 26-year ban on offshore drilling as a way to bring down gas prices.  Of course, it’s snake oil designed for what the Joe Lieberman campaign affectionately called “low information voters.” As Dean Baker and Nichole Szembrot of […]

This month the Bush administration finally blinked. After years of bluster about “staying the course” and “not rewarding evildoers by talking to them,” a shift in White House declarations indicated that failure is forcing even this President to adjust. First, about Iraq: Three months ago Bush was promising an imminent “Status of Forces Agreement” that […]

Obama has founded his campaign and become attractive to the American voters in large part on the basis of his position on the Iraq war.  He opposed it publicly since 2002.  He has called it a “dumb” war.  He voted against the “surge.”  He has called for a withdrawal over 16 months of all combat […]

“The main actor of the Iranian Revolution was really the crowd.  One American sociologist has described it as ‘the largest protest event in world history’ . . . in fact it had more mass participation than any other major political crisis or revolution.  What is striking about the Iranian crowd is that it’s very, very […]

  Penelope Rosemont, Dreams & Everyday Life: André Breton, Surrealism, Rebel Worker, sds & the Seven Cities of Cibola, Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, Chicago, 2008, ISBN 978-0-88286-234-2 Despite an era made for modern-day state and corporate Metternichs there are stirrings, movement, growing discontent.  In the words of Buffalo Springfield’s song, “There’s something happening here.  […]

I attended the big rally with Obama in Berlin Thursday evening, not as a press representative but as one of the crowd.  And what a giant crowd it was!  The news reports counted “over 200,000,” but, to someone sandwiched in so tight I could hardly lift my hand to scratch my itching nose, much less […]

Click on the link and read the full transcript of RussiaToday’s interview with Chavez: “Chavez: Russia and Venezuela Unite as Oil & Gas Giants,” 24 July 2008. This program was broadcast on RussiaToday on 23 July 2008. | | Print

In April 2006, hundreds of thousands of immigrant rights protestors marched in cities across the United States.  They countered prolonged debates about the pros and cons of comprehensive immigration reform with a short but sweet affirmation, scrawled on placards: “No Human Being Is Illegal.”  Their direct assertion challenged the deeply entrenched practices of our government […]

There is an entire genre of theory explaining why the Western capitalist democracies did not undergo socialist revolution in the 20th Century, as Classical Marxism had predicted.  Not surprisingly, most of this material comes from the Left itself.1 We can include Antonio Gramsci’s work on hegemony in this genre, as well as the entire output of […]

Adam Hanieh, “Palestine in the Middle East: Opposing Neoliberalism and US Power: Part 1,” MRZine, 19 July 2008. Neoliberalism, the “New Middle East” and Palestine In the late 1960s, with the definitive collapse of British and French colonialism in the Middle East, the US rose to become the dominant imperial power within the region.  Because […]

Kendall Hale.  Radical Passions: A Memoir of Revolution and Healing.  Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2007.   225pp.  $18.95 (pbk). Radical memoirs of 1960s veterans seem to be coming out in considerable numbers now, and that’s no surprise.  The veterans are getting old and summing up their lives’ experiences, just at the moment when the Iraq war […]

This is a serious subject.

The summit meeting of leaders of the eight most highly industrialized powers on the planet took place July 7-9 at a mountain retreat on the banks of the Toyako, a lake formed inside a volcanic crater located in the north of the island of Hokkaido, in the northern reaches of the Japanese archipelago. It would be hard to choose a site more removed and distant from the madding crowd than this.

  On Monday, May 12, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., in an operation involving some 900 agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed a raid of Agriprocessors Inc, the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant located in the town of Postville, Iowa.  The raid  — officials boasted — was “the largest single-site operation of […]

  Songs of My Country I’m dying from cold and my voice is angry because at this gate of the river they stabbed the sun because at this gate of the river, my country, they stabbed the sun oh, my country, my country, my country This land has a name from the sea to the […]

WASHINGTON, DC — The answer to one of the biggest questions in Washington D.C. has been manifesting for over five months and more than 8,000 miles that span across the sacred grounds of living sovereign nations.  The question is what steps can be taken to make known that “All Life Is Sacred, Save Mother Earth?” […]

He receives us at the door, at the entrance to a one-story house located on the hills of Damascus. No protocol, no security measure: we are not searched, nor are our recording devices inspected. “Here is the house where I read, where I work. There are only this room, a conference room, and a kitchen. And, of course, the Internet and television. My wife Asma often comes here, too. Here I am productive; at the presidential palace, that is not the case.” For nearly two hours, he covers all topics, without evading any question. He takes obvious pleasure in discussion and uses his hands to emphasize his arguments.

  A side-by-side comparison of the two countries’ conventional military capabilities demonstrates the overwhelming superiority of the United States. It is time to inject realism into discussions about U.S.-Iranian relations. Hyping the threat about Iran obscures the bottom line: Iran does not currently represent an existential threat to the United States or its allies, and […]

July the 3rd marked the 20th anniversary of the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the US-guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, killing all its 290 passengers. The timing of the shootdown in 1988 and the circumstances surrounding it were significant in that they contradict the US government’s official position describing the incident as wholly […]

Dear Senator Obama, We the undersigned may have different views on U.S. foreign policy with respect to Iran.  We all, however, are deeply concerned about the stories in the press in the past few weeks suggesting that the Bush administration might be considering a military strike on Iran, that it might give a green light […]

The aftershocks of the late-May defeat of the American Axle and Manufacturing (AAM) strike will be felt in the unionized sections of the auto industry — and beyond — for years to come.  Swinging in line with the deep concessions made in the Big 3 contract settlements last fall, the AAM deal effectively completes the […]