Geography Archives: Europe

Introduction From the very start, the recent Nigerian elections, which saw Olusegun Obasanjo placing his hand-picked successor Umaru Yar’ Adua into the Presidential palace, were mired in controversy.  The ballot papers for the election, which were printed in South Africa, contained no counterfoils or serial numbers — features which would have made vote riggingdifficult.  In […]

Before we deal with the topic of the Iranian role in the Arab region, it is useful to recall the complexity of Iran and its different entanglements: For one, Iran is not a “Banana Republic,” and its regime is not a puppet or a client regime of Imperialism.  Iran has a regional project and works […]

Michael Heinrich is a political scientist and mathematician in Berlin and a member of the editorial board of Prokla — journal for critical social science.  Below is an interview with the “. . . ums Ganze!” [. . . All or Nothing!] coalition. “…ums Ganze!”: The federal government has staked out a position for the […]

Sponsored by “Mercy for All” (www.mercyforall.org) — in partnership with other NGOs — a cycling tour around Europe and North America is conveying the Iranian people’s message of peace, friendship, and solidarity to the rest of the world. On this journey, which began on 10 May 2007, are fourteen Iranian cyclists.  They traveled across four […]

Por alguna razón, la frase “la violencia engendra violencia” se popularizó en todo el mundo al mismo tiempo que su significado implícito se mantenía restringido a la violencia del oprimido.  Es decir, la violencia del amo sobre el esclavo es invisible en un estado de esclavitud, como en un estado de opresión la fuerza que […]

Vacationers visiting Baltic Sea beaches in the area have always loved the little small-gauge railroad affectionately called Mollie.  But during the G-8 summit of presidents and premiers, Mollie was strictly reserved for those directly connected with the conference in the swank hotel at the beach.  To all others it was definitely a No Go Zone. […]

Introductory Note: This essay is an adaptation and reworking of a historic 1963 document of the Students for a Democratic Society.  Its original was mimeographed in several thousand copies and distributed jointly by the SDS National Office and the newly-created Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP).  America and the New Era was intended to be […]

“Avoir défini l’Etat d’Israël comme un Etat juif est la clef de sa perte.  Un Etat juif, c’est explosif, c’est de la dynamite.”  Ces propos sont ceux de l’ex-président de la Knesset de 1999 à 2003 et ex-président de l’agence juive, Avraham Burg. M. Burg n’a jamais mâché ses mots, mais, dans un entretien publié […]

An attractive social democrat, Ségolène Royal, just lost the French presidential race to a neoliberal candidate, leaving French leftists debating the causes of their failures and what to do about them.  The center-left in Italy recently defeated the staunch neo-liberal, Sylvio Berlusconi.  Yet its incapacities to define a new and different social program or mobilize […]

This month, US Labor Against the War, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and other organizations are sponsoring an “Iraq Labor Tour” in various U.S. cities. One of the featured speakers represents the Iraq Federation of Oil Workers, which spearheads opposition to privatization of Iraqi oil and demands immediate U.S. withdrawal. However, the tour also […]

The protest demonstrations have already begun, well in advance of the G-8 summit — and they are already sending strong messages.  The big summit meeting on June 5th and 6th in the seaside resort of Heiligendamm on the Baltic coast aims at winning a row of Brownie points for Angela Merkel and improving the images […]

The following is the text of Delia D. Aguilar’s keynote address at the 22-23 March 2007 Pacific Northwest Regional Conference of the National Association for Chicana/o Studies, University of Washington: “Class Dismissed?  Reintegrating Critical Studies of Class into Chicana and Chicano Studies.” — Ed. I cannot begin to tell you how delighted I am at […]

A People’s History of the World by Chris Harman Universal or synoptic histories are not favored by professional scholars.  As specialists, they prefer the detailed monograph to sweeping world histories.  They look askance at those naive enough to believe that global history can be encompassed in one volume.  They know better, they say. It is […]

WCP leader Maryam Kousha addresses protesters in London in 2005.  Also pictured is Peter Tatchell. It is a sad day when self-described progressive gay rights defenders risk their credibility to promote the agendas of Middle Eastern fanatics.  Yet that was just the scenario when Doug Ireland and Peter Tatchell broke with several reputable rights groups […]

France’s presidential election results are deeply contradictory.  The victory for the “patronat” — the nation’s dominant big business community — may prove extremely dangerous in terms of an enemy reawakened by that victory.  The losses for the French left — which still retains the support of half the nation’s electorate — may provoke its return […]

This article by John Mage of Monthly Review also appears in the May 19th, 2007, issue of Economic and Political Weekly of Mumbai, India. A revolutionary civil war in Nepal ceased de facto with the popular triumph over King Gyanendra in April 2006, and de jure with the peace agreement reached in November 2006.  The […]

In the only provincial election of the year in Germany, voters in the city-state of Bremen in northwestern Germany punished the ruling coalition parties, the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats, for their policies and, for the first time, sent deputies from the newly forming party, The Left, into a legislature in West Germany. The […]

BLACK EARTH: A Journey through Russia after the Fall by Andrew MeierBUY THIS BOOK Andrew Meier’s Black Earth is a travelogue of epic proportions.  In its finely written pages Meier, Moscow correspondent for Time from 1996 to 2001, recounts a reportorial odyssey that took him to every point of Russia’s compass, even to Chechnya and […]

  The Center for Labor Renewal was conceived in 2005 when the national U.S. labor union leadership was engaging in a ‘debate’ which largely ignored the fundamental crisis of our nation’s working class.  It was launched in the Spring of 2006 following a meeting of activists from unions, worker centers, educators, and working class organizations […]

I wrote this as a paper for a seminar in history during my first year of grad school at the University of Washington in 1984.  It was a labor of love for me because it gave me an opportunity to read every single issue of Monthly Review , all of which were carefully kept in […]