Geography Archives: Europe

“la mayor amenaza a la Revolución está por dentro” “Estamos enfrentando al poder más grande que hay en el planeta con una gran capacidad de presión, de chantaje”, afirmó Chávez al referirse al Gobierno de Bush. “La Alternativa Bolivariana que tiene ya una serie de caminos Petrocaribe, Petrosur, Petroandina, algunas propuestas ya está en marcha”, […]

The massive grief for Tower Records is staggering.  Since the announcement that it would be liquidating and selling to Los Angeles-based Great American Group, music fans and journalists alike have been dreading the moment when the super-chain will be closing its doors; a moment which will arrive any day now.  Anyone who passes by a […]

  This is Sid Shniad’s presentation to the LaborTech 2006 panel on “The Corporate Media Assault and Developing a Labor Media Strategy” (18 November 2006). — Ed. This panel is called Corporate Media Assault and Developing a Labor Media Strategy.  In my view, the issue should be framed as a discussion of the overall corporate […]

  “The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’  But . . . the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’” — Martin Luther King, Jr.1 “The truth […]

NAKED IMPERIALISM:The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance by John Bellamy FosterREAD EXCERPTBUY THIS BOOK John Bellamy Foster’s Naked Imperialism: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance was published by Monthly Review Press in May 2006.  It consists of essays written between September 2001 and September 2005, addressing the origins of today’s undisguised imperialism, led by the […]

Occidente aparece, de pronto, desprovisto de sus mejores virtudes, construidas siglo sobre siglo, ocupado ahora en reproducir sus propios defectos y en copiar los defectos ajenos, como lo son el autoritarismo y la persecución preventiva de inocentes.  Virtudes como la tolerancia y la autocrítica nunca formaron parte de su debilidad, como se pretende ahora, sino […]

  The bus rumbled along a highway in southwest Iran, passing a series of anti-aircraft batteries and rickety guard towers before pulling in through a checkpoint to the Bushehr nuclear plant compound.  Having anticipated significant difficulties finding, much less nearing, the reactor, I stared in stunned silence at its dome.  So much for state secrets.  […]

I. Three Metropoles, Four Peripheries Many of us on the Left have pondered what would replace the Cold War division of the planet into the First, Second, and Third World.  Though the three worlds thesis was arbitrary at best — the social divisions within nation-states are often more significant than the distinctions between nation-states — […]

Orhan Pamuk in The Black Book jokingly referred to Ibn ‘Arabi as “the existentialist of all time.”  In his Sufism and Deconstruction: A Comparative Study of Derrida and Ibn ‘Arabi, Ian Almond, a teacher of English literature at Bosphorus University, is not interested in giving the medieval Sufi mystic a catchy label.  Rather, his aim […]

An Introduction to Marx’ Notion of Money What is money?  This question hardly plays a role in everyday commerce.  What matters is that there is enough.  Bourgeois economic theories reduce money to its economic function.  But the ubiquity of money is fateful and presupposes certain conditions.  Hence, the critique of financial markets is incomplete when […]

En setiembre del 2006, en Lewisburg, Tennessee, un grupo de vecinos protestó porque la dirección de la biblioteca pública estaba invirtiendo recursos en la compra de libros en español.  De los sesenta mil volúmenes, sólo mil pertenecen a alguna lengua diferente al inglés.  El presupuesto del presente año, calculado en trece mil dólares, destina la […]

Pauline Kael, the American film critic, once said that Gillo Pontecorvo was the most dangerous kind of Marxist: a Marxist poet.  When the Italian film director died last week at the age of 86, he had not made a full-length feature in over twenty-five years.  Yet the potency of Pontecorvo’s firebrand poetry can still be […]

In case you’ve been too stunned by other newsworthy disasters to pay proper attention, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was just signed into law.  This law gives the U.S. government legal permission to do things they’ve been doing sub-legally for years, such as: designate people as “unlawful enemy combatants”; deny these people the right […]

For much of the period from the 70s through the 80s, I was quite concerned with the way in which Third World movements for national liberation were sidelining women’s issues and relegating these to the background.  In this piece I centerstage the Philippines which I believe may serve as an illustrative case.  Let me try […]

  CHEAP MOTELS AND A HOTPLATE: An Economist’s Travelogue by Michael D. Yates ORDER THIS BOOK This essay complements my forthcoming book: Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate: an Economist’s Travelogue (Monthly Review Press). We Meet an Economist Karen and I were hiking in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the Atalaya Mountain Trail, which begins […]

“Philosophy always comes on the scene too late.” — G.W.F. Hegel1 “They say we don’t stand for anything.  We do stand for anything.”  — Sen. Barack Obama2 For years it’s been a political commonplace to observe that the Republicans represent the party of ideas while the Democrats are the stupid party.  Even Bush-phobic Democrats like […]

August 29, 1949 — Soviet Union.  October 16, 1964 — People’s Republic of China.  October 7, 2006, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.  Three dates.  Three first-time nuclear tests by three enemies (at their respective times) of Washington.  All three tests were preceded by threats from that same Washington that warned of dire consequences for the […]

  The Spanish and Portuguese colonization of America is still a kind of theoretical no-man’s land and a political taboo.  One can easily understand why Spanish and Portuguese intellectuals avoid any discussion of the topic.  Remember the magnificent Centennials of both the Spanish discovery of the Caribbean and the Portuguese discovery of Brazil.  Any critical […]

Nous appelons, alors que le Moyen-Orient est plongé dans sa crise la plus grave depuis des années, à une action urgente de la part de la communauté internationale en vue d’un règlement global au conflit israélo-arabe. Nous sommes tous perdants dans ce conflit, à l’exception des extrémistes, qui prospèrent à travers le monde en exploitant […]

Under the star of a globalized capitalism the entire earth oozes blood.  What seems so smooth, so firm, so reliable and so supportive of our wishes — the glossy, pleasurable carnival of daily life — is the crust of a barely-healed scab; our steps must be swift and light, lest blood and pus seep through […]