Geography Archives: Europe

[John S. Saul is professor emeritus of politics at York University in Toronto. He is the author of many highly-acclaimed books on the politics of southern Africa, including Recolonization and Resistance: Southern Africa in the 1990s, Namibia’s Liberation Struggle: The Two-Edged Sword, The Crisis in South Africa, and A Difficult Road: The Transition to Socialism […]

The exiled German philosopher Walter Benjamin, 48 years old, portly and with a heart condition, joined a hiking tour group in Banyuls-sur-Mer on the French side of the Pyrenees on September 24, 1940. He had no backpack, only a briefcase. He let the group return without him and spent the night on the open hillside. […]

The farmed salmon industry has recently been dealt yet another blow as the world learns about the contaminated product it offers for the public’s dinner plates.  In June, 2005, a multi-national aquaculture company, Stolt Sea Farms, confirmed that nearly 320,000 of its farmed salmon from British Columbia were contaminated with the illegal fungicide “malachite green” […]

  The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the […]

The elections in Germany ended in almost total confusion, and forming a ruling coalition will be almost as tough as squaring the circle, but some things are clear.  The antisocial policies of the main government party, the Social Democratic Party of Gerhard Schroeder, were punished severely by angry voters. But so was the major opposition […]

All last week I had a rare opportunity — to join several impressive speakers on the “Bring Them Home Now” tour’s northern route.  Al Zappala, whose son was killed in Iraq last year; Tammara Rosenleaf, whose husband is due to deploy to Iraq this fall; Stacy Bannerman, whose husband has already served a tour in […]

“I hope they kill each other . . . too bad they both can’t lose.” — Nobel laureate Henry Kissinger (on the U.S. arming both sides of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s) “Do not support dictators. Do not sell them weapons.” — Nobel laureate Jose Ramos Horta, East Timorese peace negotiator It’s not every […]

The post-crisis trajectory of the South Korean economy has been a disaster for working people there, and South Korean labor and left movements are engaged in a very difficult struggle to roll back the ongoing neoliberal restructuring.  In this essay I discuss some of the challenges these movements face.  I do so because workers and […]

  [Peter Berkowitz is a long-time Monthly Review subscriber. He was in New Orleans bringing his son Ernesto to begin his freshman year at Loyola when they were caught in the hurricane. Peter and Ernesto spent five days on the street by the Convention Center. Below is a letter Peter sent to his mother upon […]

“In vain do I try to soar in fancy and imagination above the dull reality around me but beyond the roof of the factory I cannot rise.” — anonymous Lowell Mill worker, 1826 Lowell, Massachusetts was named after the wealthy Lowell family. They owned numerous textile mills, which attracted the unmarried daughters of New England […]

I have often wondered about the legal and moral issues involved in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Armed resistance is permitted against an occupier, and there’s no rule requiring that attackers have a getaway planned. I’m not in favor of attacking civilians, of course — in fact, I find it hard to support attacking anyone. But as […]

In the Spring of 2005, workers’ votes in France and the Netherlands made the difference in defeating the draft European constitution and ending socialist party control of the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg. In the few weeks after those momentous events, most politicians and reporters offered one basic explanation. It tells us much more about the […]

The Front Lines of Social Change: Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. By Richard Bermack, Introduction by Peter Carroll. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2005. 120pp, oversize. $19.95pbk. This is a photo book with text, and Richard Bermack is the master photographer of veteran political activists on the West Coast. He has been on the job for […]

The United States was a land of farmers, from first settlement to the industrial revolution that took off in the 1830s.   European settlers, mainly from England, Scotland, and Ireland, were overwhelmingly farmers, peasants, from generations of the same.  They came to North America for land to farm.  With the support of the British colonial institutions, […]

  [Author’s note: Let me repeat my invitation at the end of Part Three of this series. Readers are invited to submit short essays, about 1,000 words, about their work. What do you do? In what ways is your work satisfying? In what ways is it not? How could it be made better? Send your […]

“So far as I am aware,” wrote Paul Sweezy in 1973, “the political economy of the automobile has never been subjected to serious analysis in the Marxian literature.” Amazingly, despite the apparent onset of global warming, “peak oil,” and permanent petro-war, Sweezy’s observation remains true today.  We Marxians have not yet begun to do more […]

Global capitalism is in danger. Leading lights of global finance capital are sending out warning signals with growing urgency and desperation. Alan Greenspan is puzzled, referring to the decline of long-term interest rates at a time of rising short-term interest rates as a “conundrum.” To solve the conundrum, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times argues, […]

In the years since W’s re-election, activists around the world have re-examined their methods. Questioning the accustomed lesser evil electoral politics, the boring rallies, the bursts of direct action, and frustrated tears, a new cohort of political actors have emerged with a new series of playful approaches. They have turned to a uniquely distinct form […]

The news of world affairs these days is highly unlikely to delight the Japanese survivors of the two nuclear terrorist attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States’ armed forces sixty years ago. Those attacks were not meant to convince the Japanese leaders to surrender, something which they were about to do anyway, but […]

When I was a child, I used to watch cartoons at home after school (I understand there is a debate about the wisdom of letting children watch TV.  However, I am doing fine today). My favorite cartoon was Superman.  Let me clarify. It was a little confusing watching Superman growing up in Puerto Rico.  Although […]