Geography Archives: Europe

Paper presented at the Congrès Marx International V, Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre, October 2007 1.  Introduction About a decade ago the radical left, both in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, had been gripped by an understanding of contemporary capitalism as based on a three-pronged tendency: ‘globalization’ as an already accomplished state, the ‘end of labor’ due […]

Sonya Huber.   Opa Nobody.   Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.  xvi + 358 pp.  Illustrations.  ISBN 978-0-8032-1080-6; $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8032-1080-6. In recent years, scholars have grappled with the specific manner in which recent generations of Germans and Austrians have confronted their own familial complicity in Nazism.  The narratives revealed by these studies […]

If we take a look at the recent self-described progressive US presidents (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton), we will notice that their progressiveness invariably fades away, not even intentionally.  That is because the beast compels them to align themselves with its own reality.  Carter, who campaigned against the wage stagnation of the Nixon-Ford years, collapsed […]

Boris Kagarlitsky: “Moldovan Turmoil Grew Out of Unresolved Social Problems” Moldova Blames Romania for Riots Opposition Promises Larger Protests Violence Escalates in Moldovan Capital Mikhail Chernov: “Defeat of Moldovan Democracy” Kirill Koktysh: “Those Taking Part in Moldovan Protests Are Mainly Migrant Workers Who Had to Return Home amid the Financial Crisis” Aleksandr Fomenko: “Protest in […]

In the Financial Times of March 31st, Martin Wolf set down a straightforward criterion to evaluate the outcomes of the G20 meeting in London.  Will they decide, he asked, to put forward a plan to shift world demand from the countries with a balance of payments deficit to those with a surplus?  The underlying reasoning […]

  2008 — Annus Horribilis for the world economy — produced successive food, energy, and financial crises, initially devastating particularly the global poor, but quickly extending to the commanding heights of the US and core economies and ushering in the sharpest downturn since the 1930s depression. As all nations strive to respond to the financial […]

The clashes between police and anti-NATO demonstrators in Strasbourg on Thursday, 2 April resulted in 300 people arrested and 105 detained, according to the figures released by the police on Friday.  DDP, a Germany news agency, reported that its photographer was injured by a rubber bullet during the clashes. The Résistance des Deux Rives collective […]

  – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – See also TeleSur‘s coverage of the protest. Hamish Macdonald’s report was broadcast by Al Jazeera on 1 April 2009.

  A group of seven highly indebted rich countries (HIRC) of the world have organized a meeting of twenty nations in London in order to discuss the future of the world’s finances.  They have invited some creditors among developing countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, some Arab countries, China, and India, leaving aside all the […]

  Activists interviewed by an alternative journalism collective Pueblos Sin Fronteras reported that the police provocation made the protests violent, penning demonstrators in separate corrals and preventing them from moving for hours, without access to water, food, or restrooms.  This may explain the collapse of a citizen who died this Wednesday while the demonstrators were […]

“Caracas: one of the most dangerous cities of the planet. . .” goes the blurb for the movie Express Kidnapping — the only Venezuelan film viewed internationally so far, and the top grossing movie here. Crime, according to the Latinobarometro 2008 report, is the biggest problem in Venezuela for 57% of its respondents.  So it […]

  The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement: Investigate the Israeli Missile Contract The Rs. 10,000 crore missile production deal with an Israeli company, the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), has now been exposed as a deal involving massive kickbacks besides being an unnecessary contract.  The Left parties […]

FTA (Dir. Francine Parker, 1972). Preamble: “This film was made in association with the servicewomen and men stationed on the United States bases of the Pacific Rim, together with their friends whose lands they presently occupy.” Accepting his Oscar for Best Actor, Sean Penn jokingly referred to the Academy as lovers of “commies and homos.”  […]

Background Raymond Deane, “A Public Stoning in Germany,” Electronic Intifada, 6 March 2009; and Yossi Bartal, “The German Left and Israel,” Alternative Information Center, 18 March 2009. We are peace activists of Jewish background.  Some of us typically identify in this way; others of us do not.  But we all object to those who claim […]

People in Cincinnati, like others around the country — either having lost their jobs or fearful of losing them — have been waiting anxiously, some desperately, for news that President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan would help them.  Now the news has arrived, and the news is that help is coming.  Help for the banks and […]

MRZine Editor’s Introduction The crisis in which we find ourselves is not a crisis of the capitalist class, much less a crisis of the capitalist mode of production.  Nor is it even a crisis of neoliberalism.   It’s a crisis of the working class, plain and simple.  What’s in store for us, especially in the […]

Dear friends, Today was Land Day in Palestine and around the world.  Hundreds of events were being held in honor of our Land that so many trespassers now live on.  The first land day in 1976 set a trend of defiance and resistance.  Different groups mark the day differently.  Demonstrators in Hebron were attacked by […]

Private capitalism (in which productive assets are owned by private individuals and groups and in which markets rather than state planning dominate the distribution of resources and products) has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to flare out into overproduction and/or asset inflation bubbles that burst with horrific social consequences.  Endless reforms, restructurings, and regulations were all […]

  HAVANA, 26 March (IPS) — While the work of women filmmakers in Latin America and the Caribbean has made its presence undeniable, their work still suffers from certain invisibility in a medium where men have traditionally had hegemony. The “Women in the Contemporary Audiovisual Media” Web site, created by the New Latin American Cinema […]

Patrick Cockburn is the Baghdad correspondent of the Independent and the author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. How do you interpret the latest election results in Iraq? Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has obviously done well and so has his […]