Geography Archives: Europe

It’s been more than three months since this year’s senatorial elections were held in the Philippines, and there have been since then plenty of people saying that, far from breaking away from election fraud, the country has witnessed more cheating this year than ever before.  I had the opportunity to witness the election process when […]

Many folks on the Left, and in our labor movement, are afflicted with frequent bouts of anguish and outrage as we observe the action or inaction of some Democrat in office — or running for office.  Those on the Left who claim to be recovered — or never afflicted — by this disease often seem […]

  In recent months Iran has made large strides toward mastering nuclear technology.  Alarmed by these advances, the Bush administration and its European allies have stepped up their hostile actions and threats, specifically: Attempting to prevent the entry into service of Iran’s first nuclear power plant at Bushehr.  The Bushehr reactor will use nuclear fuel […]

“The Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has said the age of materialism is over and the world is moving towards spiritual values” (“Ahmadinejad: Materialism Is Outdated,” Press TV 15 August 2007).  Is it? His dear imam wrote a letter to Gorbachev in 1989.  Among other things, Khomeini said, “However much the Western world may appear to […]

  On August 8, 2007 a German labor court in Nuremberg issued a temporary restraining order preventing a strike called by the GDL train drivers’ union, to the delight of the business press. The strike had been approved by a great majority of the train drivers, and was due to start on August 9th.  The state-owned […]

A Cardinal Principle of Modern Liberalism The basic assumption of modern liberalism is that freedom is involved in an ongoing, all encompassing struggle against a dangerous enemy, totalitarianism.  The existence of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were and still are presented as the quintessential totalitarian formations.  Liberal thinkers stress that totalitarianism is on the […]

Visions of Peace & Justice: San Francisco Bay Area, 1974-2007: Over Thirty Years of Political Posters from the Archives of Inkworks Press.  Berkeley: Inkworks Press, 2007, 150pp, oversized color, $30 pbk. The history of colorful political art on the US Left goes back, arguably, to black and white versions of the socialist cartoons borrowed from […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its Summer 2007 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. Prior to the Friday, August 3rd, 2007 release of the agreed text of the U.S.-Indian nuclear agreement, the media build-up in favor of civilian nuclear technology “transfer” and […]

Message of Louise Arbour, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Special Rapporteur, on the occasion of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples Geneva, 7 August 2007 As we celebrate the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People on 9 August this year, the focus of attention for many of […]

  NEW DEPARTURES IN MARXIAN THEORY by Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff BUY THIS BOOK Being a Marxist requires considerable gumption — especially in the United States.  Those who take Marxism seriously in a hostile intellectual and political environment are only too aware of this struggle.  At worst, interest in Marxism is perceived […]

Let us refer to a famous poem by Mao that stirs excitement among us all: “A cuckoo is crying in the midnight until she throws up blood; she believes that her crying can bring the east wind back!”  We deeply hope our respected leaders will stir up the east wind! General Secretary Hu Jintao and […]

Ayub Nuri, a Kurdish man from Halabja, was a fixer for the Western media in Iraq (he is now based in New York City, having received a scholarship from Columbia).1  A fixer, in the words of Nuri, is “a journalist’s interpreter, guide, source finder and occasional lifesaver.”2  Local fixers, more or less, shape what foreign […]

  Herbert’s Hippopotamus is a search for the turbulent life in California of philosopher, writer, and activist Herbert Marcuse, visionary force for the youth and student movements during the 1960s and 1970s. Blending personal narration, archival news footage, staged imagery, and interviews, the documentary examines the media frenzy generated by Marcuse’s presence in Southern California […]

Debates concerning the “Socialism of the 21st Century” are experiencing an upswing at the moment.  However, this century will initially be rather one of capitalism than socialism.  Not because there is once more an economic recovery.  Prosperity and crisis alternate constantly in capitalism, but behind this up-and-down process are tendencies towards an extension and further […]

Harvey Pekar and Heather Robertson, Macedonia: What Does It Take to Stop a War? Illustration by Ed Piskor (New York: Villard Books, 2007), 121pp, $17.95, pbk. Readers who haven’t watched the award-winning 2003 film American Splendor may still recall a younger Harvey Pekar on the Tonight Show, attacking network-owner General Electric and being banished for […]

Vladimir Putin has not been getting good press in the United States or even Western Europe in the last year or so.  He has been charged with being authoritarian, with attempting to recreate Russia‘s imperial control over its neighbors, and with reviving Cold War obstructionism in the United Nations. So it is with some surprise […]

“Containing Russia: Back to the Future?” by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov was published on the Web site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation on 19 July 2007.   The account of Lavrov’s conflict with the journal Foreign Affairs, which follows his essay, was published on the same Web […]

Imperial rulers and violently fixated Cuban exiles need Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program to accelerate learning processes and not continue to repeat mistakes.  Hey, on Cuba policy, it’s only been 48 years! Fidel Castro, in contrast, learned fast.  He used Washington and Miami to improvise material for three chapters in future releases of Machiavelli’s […]

Following months of criticism and sharp internal debate, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) ended its controversial partnership agreement with a group of California nursing homes on May 31.  The four-and-a-half-year-old deal was a quid pro quo arrangement that brought over 3,000 workers into SEIU after the union secured higher state government payments to nursing […]

Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko indicts private health insurance and calls for its abolition.  Sicko joins an American tradition that includes Lewis Hine‘s photographs of child laborers (1908) and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), two examples among many.  But can Moore’s theme change our nation in 2007? Private health insurance, usually obtained […]