Geography Archives: Europe

Everything has changed! Nothing has changed! Barring unexpected difficulties, a new coalition has been formed in Berlin. Gerhard Schroeder, confident, even arrogant until his final days as leader, has been replaced by the first woman in German history to head a government, and she’s an East German at that, though she has never yet pushed […]

  Introduction Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, this beautiful island in the Caribbean has aroused passions everywhere in the Americas.  Since its inception, the revolution has had a profound impact on the popular classes throughout Latin America and haunted the political elites and wealthy classes in the United States […]

Today the planet is an immense gulag. The resources of the periphery of the empire — the great majority of human beings — are channeled towards the imperial centre — the richest countries — in the manner of a colossal funnel. There are now in the world two practical routes of resistance to the US […]

Much of the discussions surrounding the Afghan legislative elections on September 18, 2005 has centered on poll-related violence, logistical obstacles, and potential frauds.  Lost in the discussions is a problem of much greater significance to the future of Afghanistan. The institutional arrangements of Afghanistan’s political frameworks are incapable of solving its most debilitating problem — […]

“Then came this battle called the Civil War, beginning in Kansas in 1854, and ending with the presidential elections of 1876, twenty awful years. The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again towards slavery. The whole weight of America was thrown to color caste.”1 — W.E.B. DuBois, Black […]

Going Global Supporters and even critics of the European Monetary Union (EMU) often see its policies — its rejection of Keynesian demand management that was written into the Maastricht Treaty and later transformed into the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), as well as its monetarist belief in the priority of anti-inflationary policies over any other […]

An Italian-born former law student, Gabriele Zamparini moved to the States in 1998 where he worked as an Italian teacher and freelance journalist. It was post-9/11 when Zamparini got the idea to make a documentary about “the fast growing, grassroots peace movement” he was witnessing in America. The result was a seven-part film series called […]

MANUFACTURING DISCONTENT: The Trap of Individualism in Corporate Society by Michael PerelmanBUY THIS BOOK Imagining the workplace as a network of voluntary relationships has dire political implications. For example, in 1997, a California state agency, the Industrial Welfare Commission, bowing to employer pressure voted to reinterpret an overtime regulation dating back to 1918. For almost […]

[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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]