Geography Archives: Europe

Three all-German congresses were held this past weekend, all important but very different. The bad news first: The beautiful old city of Bamberg hosted the national congress of the National Party (NPD) — the main neo-Nazi party.  All attempts to bar it from the city’s Congress Hall foundered on a Bavarian court decision, since the […]

  David A. Bell.  The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.  x + 420 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index.  ISBN 978-0-618-91981-9. The concept of “total war” is not a new one to historians, particularly those of the twentieth century.  For many, the […]

Hezbollah is the big winner in the accord on Lebanon signed in Doha, Qatar. But everyone — including Washington — is welcoming this asymmetrical compromise. Why? Hard bargaining is underway. . . .

In the Middle East, neither the worst nor the best is ever certain. But what happened in Doha, the capital of Qatar, on Wednesday, at 3 o’clock in the morning, is a historic event. The accord putting an end — for now — to the political crisis that tore Lebanon for the past eighteen months (and many more in fact) contains a tough lesson for the West: its weakened friends in Beirut had to bend themselves to the force of Hezbollah and its allies Amal, another Shi’i party, and the Christians led by Michel Aoun. The Party of God will enter the government without laying down its arms, as a minority with veto power.

Marjane Satrapi’s film Persepolis must have made George Bush and his new ally Nicolas Sarokzy quite happy.  After all, despite Satrapi’s rhetoric against the two leaders, her film’s core argument is one that Bush and Sarkozy have long been busy constructing: the evil state versus the wonderful people. Aesthetically, Persepolis is a refreshing and beautiful […]

In 1984, the Margaret Thatcher regime and the British National Coal Board annulled an agreement reached after the 1974 British miners’ strike.  The Board told the British public that they intended to close 20 coal mines and privatize the previously nationalized industry.  At least twenty thousand jobs would be lost, and many communities in the […]

“Even after fifty years of living the Palestinian exile I still find myself astonished at the lengths to which official Israel and its supporters will go to suppress the fact that a half century has gone by without Israeli restitution, recognition, or acknowledgment of Palestinian human rights and without, as the facts undoubtedly show, connecting […]

Thursday, May 1, 2008 Dear Andy: We are writing to you as journalists, authors, political activists, and educators who are committed to organized labor because of its important role in social justice struggles in the U.S.  Some of us have longstanding ties to SEIU and have done research, writing, or labor education work involving its […]

On May 1st, International Workers’ Day, ten peace activists in Burlington, Vermont entered General Dynamics and locked themselves together in the main lobby of the building in protest against the company’s weapons manufacturing and war profiteering.  University of Vermont student Benjamin Dube, one of the dozens of other activists present at the event, leaned out […]

May Day remains a national holiday in Germany.  So does Jesus’s Ascension Day (whose German name, I’m afraid, is Himmelfahrt) and this year, for the first time in many years, both occurred on the same day.  Less pious males frequently celebrate the religious holiday with markedly sexist outings of loud tipplers, often on horse-drawn wagons […]

This time the message was delivered by the Pentagon’s own premier educational institute.  The opening line of a report released April 17 by the National Institute for Strategic Studies read: “Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle.” The document goes on […]

“What I find a bit reprehensible is the tendency of certain Western voices to . . . raising concerns about China’s attempt to get into the African market because it is a bit hypocritical for Western states to be concerned about how China is approaching Africa when they have had centuries of relations with Africa, […]

For some time now the rising cost of food all over the world has taken households, governments and the media by storm.  The price of wheat has gone up by 130% over the last year.1 Rice has doubled in price in Asia in the first three months of 2008 alone,2 and just last week it […]

La Paz — In recent days the Haitians have gone into the streets to protest against the brutal increase in the cost of food.  The response of the police — with the support of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) — was repression that cost the life of at least five demonstrators and […]

  The following statement was started by the participants in the Climate Change|Social Change conference.  Anyone who agrees with it is welcome to add their signature, and an updated list of signatories will be issued on a regular basis (contact: <climateconf@greenleft.org.au>.). It is being distributed to environmental, trade union, Indigenous, migrant, religious and community organisations […]

Nicolas Sarkozy has gone out of his way to sound pro-American.  He made a special visit in 2007 to Kennebunkport to have a cozy meeting with George W. Bush.  Since neither spoke the other’s language, they must have had translators.  So perhaps I might be allowed to try to translate what has been going on. […]

In 2005 the journalist Michael Deibert published a book applauding the overthrow, the previous year, of Haiti’s elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.  More recently he wrote a long and critical review of my own book about this 2004 coup, Damming the Flood, and posted it on his blog.  Since we have both already written substantial books […]

Several months ago, an English sociologist told us that she was commissioned by her government to conduct a survey of “moderate Muslims.”  The survey was about what a score of Muslim leaders in Great Britain thought about the fight against terrorism, the place of Islam in Europe, religious fundamentalism, etc.  According to the sociologist, not […]

As Abe Osheroff’s body slowly began to betray him in his 80s and 90s, one of his favorite lines was, “I have one foot in the grave but the other keeps dancing.” That dance ended on Sunday, April 6, when the 92-year-old Osheroff died of a heart attack at his Seattle home. Osheroff is remembered […]

When I was growing up in the 1950s, a photo of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1932-1945) still hung in the homes of some family members and friends.  Our only four-term president was remembered by them as the leader — and even the savior — of the country.  Those like my parents, who experienced the Great […]

The Student Muqtada al-Sadr has decided to take time out of his rebellion for studies.  The increasingly popular Iraqi nationalist and Shi’i religious leader, it was reported late last year, is seeking the title of Ayatollah (“Sign of God”).  Muqtada’s Iraqi supporters presently confer on him the title of Hujjat al-Islam (“Proof of Islam”), although […]