Geography Archives: Europe

  • Afghanistan: Why Canada Should Withdraw Its Troops

      This Thursday the House of Commons passed a Confidence Motion put forward by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to extend the Canadian mission in Kandahar, Afghanistan to December 2011 past the current commitment to 2009.  With the support of the Liberal Party (breaking their previous position of a call for a […]

  • An Invention Called “the Jewish People”

      Israel’s Declaration of Independence states that the Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel and was exiled from its homeland.  Every Israeli schoolchild is taught that this happened during the period of Roman rule, in 70 CE.  The nation remained loyal to its land, to which it began to return after two millennia […]

  • The Politics of Non-Proliferation

    If there was a time when Iranian analysts and decision makers would question the benefits of continuing to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, it would be now.  The IAEA has allowed systematic US intervention in Iran’s nuclear file, paving the way to a third round of sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programme.  But while […]

  • One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008

      The Largest Prison Population, the Highest Incarceration Rate The United States incarcerates more people than any country in the world, including the far more populous nation of China.  At the start of the new year, the American penal system held more than 2.3 million adults.  China was second, with 1.5 million people behind bars, […]

  • Hamburg and the Horns of a Dilemma

    There was plenty of suspense Sunday evening in Hamburg, Germany’s second biggest city.  Would the mayor, Ole von Beust, win a majority again and keep ruling the city-state without requiring support from any other parties?  Or could the Social Democrats, possibly with the help of the Greens, overtake him and regain control of a city […]

  • Why Another History of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict?

    James L. Gelvin.  The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. x + 294 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliographies, glossary, time line, biographical sketches, index. Those who have noted, but not read, James Gelvin‘s The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War may well ask themselves, “do we need another […]

  • Kosovo and International Law

      Here are two documents on the Kosovo question in light of international law: an appeal of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law and a diplomatic initiative of University of Belgrade law students. — Ed. APPEAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BELGRADE FACULTY OF LAW The Senate of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law […]

  • End of Japan’s National Development State for Higher Education

      Introduction Japan’s vast higher education system has around 5,000 institutions.  This includes a tertiary level of about 1,300 government-approved, degree-awarding colleges and universities.  Seven hundred forty-five of these are designated as ‘daigaku,’ a term which refers to any institution that has received government sanction to award four-year degrees equivalent to a baccalaureate.  These four-year […]

  • Reviving the Iranian Revolt

    At the height of the Iranian revolution in the winter of 1979, French philosopher Michel Foucault described what he was seeing in Tehran as “perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.” “Islam,” he wrote, “– which is not simply a religion, […]

  • East Timor’s Crisis The Strangest Yet

    East Timor’s latest crisis is the strangest yet.  The shoot-out that left president Jose Ramos Horta in intensive care, and killed the charismatic rebel Major Alfredo Reinado, is still unexplained. At first they told us it was a coup attempt by Reinado’s forces, disaffected ex-soldiers who had come from their hiding places in the hills […]

  • Interview with Shahla Lahiji on Women’s Presence in the Labor Market: No Vocation Must Be Prohibited for Women

      Shahla Lahiji is the first Iranian woman who succeeded in getting a publisher’s license registered in her own name.  She founded Roshangaran and Women’s Studies, a publishing house, 23 years ago.  Lahiji sees herself in a kind of living history on the question of women’s labor, for her mother was the fifth woman who […]

  • Dror Ze’evi on the Sexual Discourses of the Early Modern Ottoman World

      Dror Ze’evi.  Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourses in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900.    Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. xiv + 223 pp.  Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. According to one tradition, the Prophet Muhammad once ordered a handsome youth from the tribe of ‘Abd Qays to sit behind him, so that he (the […]

  • Race, Poverty, and the Neoliberal Agenda in the United States: Lessons from Katrina and Rita

    Abstract The global economic system has come to be dominated de facto by institutions subscribing to and enforcing the neoliberal agenda.  Since the end of World War II, these institutions have sought not only to regulate but, in a manner reminiscent of classical colonialism, to control global resources facilitated by the emergence of the neoliberal […]

  • Fear of the Left Cripples German Defense Chiefs

    What a difference a party on the left can mean! US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, at the annual International Security Conference in Munich, stepped up pressure on Germany to send more troops to Afghanistan and commit them to active fighting there, not only in the currently more peaceful north but in the battle-ridden south […]

  • On the Boycott Appeal: Israel as the “Guest of Honor” at the Book Fairs in Turin and Paris

    It is difficult to be critical of Israel without having one’s words misinterpreted, twisted, their meaning inverted.  A controversy centering on the Turin Book Fair is raging in Italy, amid conflicting claims and counter-claims.  French Journalist Pierre Assouline in a recent blog entry further distorted the terms of the debate. The facts are these: The […]

  • 2008: The Demise of Neoliberal Globalization

    The ideology of neoliberal globalization has been on a roll since the early 1980s.  It was not in fact a new idea in the history of the modern world-system, although it claimed to be one.  It was rather the very old idea that the governments of the world should get out of the way of […]

  • Indianismo and Marxism: The Missed Encounter of Two Revolutionary Principles

    This important article by Álvaro García Linera, now Vice President of Bolivia, was first published in 2005. It traces the contradictory evolution of the two most influential revolutionary currents in the country’s 20th century history and argues that Marxism, as originally interpreted by its Bolivian adherents, failed to address the outstanding concerns of the indigenous majority. García Linera suggests, however, that the evolution of indianismo in recent decades opens perspectives for a renewal of Marxist thought and potentially the reconciliation of the two currents in a higher synthesis. Although framed within the Bolivian context, his argument clearly has implications for the national and anti-imperialist struggle in other parts of Abya Yale (the indigenous name for the Western hemisphere).

  • Cliff-hangers in Hessian Elections

    The German elections on Sunday, like so many Hollywood films, were full of suspense until the last minute.  Was there also a happy ending?  To use the handy German word combination for Ja and Nein — Jein. The elections were for the legislatures in two of Germany’s sixteen provinces, Hesse and Lower Saxony.  In the […]

  • Africom Threatens the Sovereignty, Independence, and Stability of the African Continent: A Position Paper of the National Conference of Black Lawyers

    The National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) concludes that the mission of Africa Command (Africom) infringes on the sovereignty of African states due to the particularity of Africa’s history and Africa’s current economic and political relationship to the United States.

  • The Dollar and US Hegemony: Suspended in Air

    Once again, speculation about a dollar crash abounds.  The hegemonic roles of the US currency and economy have repeatedly been called into question since the 1970s.  Skeptics saw each major economic downturn and depreciation of the dollar as the beginning of the end of US hegemony.  In defiance of the often predicted decline, the US […]