Geography Archives: Europe

“Rosa Luxemburg, imprisoned in the Breslau penitentiary, is able to continue working on her herbarium. Her secretary Mathilde Jacob, the only one able to visit her in prison, brings along the plants. ‘I can botanize once again, this is my favourite occupation and best way to relax. Since May 1913 I have pasted in about […]

Although the strategy is older than the mean sheriff and his less sadistic deputy in the Old West, we need to only go back a few years here.  If one recalls, prior to the US/UK invasion on Iraq in 2003, there were several initiatives to “promote democracy” in that country.  Usually it was the State […]

  Click on the image to watch video interviews with Anne Braden. The 6 March 2006 issue of the Louisville Courier-Journal reports the death at 81 of Anne Braden, the veteran Southern white civil rights leader and organizer of the fight for black integration and equality, and an American radical of untameable commitment who — […]

Dear Ms. Ebadi: Rostam Pourzal, “Open Letter to Iran’s Nobel Laureate: Part 1 “ (27 February 2006) Poet Khosro Naaqed, a prominent promoter of your reformist coalition, demonstrated in a published commentary last summer why a majority in Iran is now disillusioned with your “democracy” project.  As you know, he speaks for almost all Iranian […]

The more things change, the more they remain the same.  This commonplace contains more than a little truth of what liberal democracy has become in Canada today.  The daily political discourse might adopt a “compassionate conservatism,” a “social liberalism,” or even a social democratic “third way,” but all the parties agree that the benefits of […]

Hopes were high.  There was near euphoria among left-wing Germans a half year ago: two main wings of the progressive movement, one quite strong in the eastern states, the other small but growing stronger in the much larger, more populous western states, joined together for an election campaign last year, had unprecedented success (over 8 […]

Jyllands-Posten stood Clausewitz on his head.  Its now infamous cartoons of Mohammed are not so much speech as acts.  Acts of provocation and belligerence.  They are the latest round of politics as war by other means. Make no mistake.  Jyllands-Posten is not in the business of promoting the freedom of speech.  Nor are the European […]

Dear Ms. Shirin Ebadi: The appeal you and Mohammad Sahimi addressed to “Western democracies” in the International Herald Tribune on January 19 disappointed this former admirer of yours.  Your invitation to the current and previous imperial powers to intervene for human rights in Iran fails precisely on grounds of the noble principles you invoked to […]

I’ve just about had it.  I cannot watch one more episode of the Daily Show which makes racist jokes about Arabs and Muslims.  I am sick and tired of people who see themselves as part of the left writing articles that put a liberal gloss over what is, in essence, a right-wing “clash of civilizations” […]

Michael Steinberg, “The Architecture of Dreamworld 1: Like a Sex Machine” (31 October 2005); “The Architecture of Dreamworld 2: The Disarming Reflex” (17 November 2005); “The Architecture of Dreamworld 3: Going Postal” (28 December 2005) There’s probably no way to make critical generalizations about popular culture without sounding like a curmudgeon.  As I look over […]

  During the twentieth century, there were two major shifts in mainstream economic thinking.  These two major changes were the Keynesian revolution of the 1930s and the return of orthodoxy on the back of the Rational Expectation and Monetarist school in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Each of the shifts was preceded by a […]

  Oslo is dead.  This is not much of a scoop, as analysts and pundits have been saying and writing these words for many years, at least since the Intifada of September 2000 began.  But now that the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections of January 25th, 2006, are over, we can officially turn off the […]

RED SEAS: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica by Gerald HorneBUY THIS BOOK Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica.  By Gerald Horne.  New York University Press, 2005, 358 pp. The political connections of Harlem and the British West Indies have been […]

  The US Green Party called for divestment from Israel on 21 November 2005: The Green Party of the United States (GPUS) publicly calls for divestment from and boycott of the State of Israel until such time as the full individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people are realized. . . .  The party […]

MANUFACTURING DISCONTENT: The Trap of Individualism in Corporate Society by Michael PerelmanBUY THIS BOOK Given the absence of criminal penalties for corporate misbehavior, society needs an alternative means to protect itself against corporate abuses.  Ideally, effective regulation might help to keep corporations in line, but the regulatory structure in the United States is embarrassingly weak. […]

Las Krudas is a Cuban hip hop duo, an interracial couple of HOT, HOT, HOT lesbians Odaymara Cuesta and Olivia Prendes.  Their feminist lyrics and performance battle machismo and celebrate the power and beauty of women of color. In “Vamo’ a vencer la dificultad,” the track that opens their CD Cubensi, Las Krudas repeat: Sexo […]

  LAS KRUDAS Las Krudas <http://www.krudas.org/> is a Cuban hip hop duo, an interracial couple of HOT, HOT, HOT lesbians Odaymara Cuesta and Olivia Prendes.  Their feminist lyrics and performance battles machismo and celebrates the power and beauty of women of color. In “Vamo’ a vencer la dificultad,” the track that opens their CD Cubensi, […]

The following is a conversation with Heinz Dieterich about his friendship with Hugo Chávez, irregular war, the new Venezuelan military doctrine, and an account of the Bolivarian revolution in Latin America. Heinz Dieterich is a sociologist and economist.  He has been a professor at Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City since 1977.  Since the 1990s, […]

What has been left out of reports and analysis in both the mainstream press and among anti-imperialists and leftists about the triumph of Evo Morales’ election as President of Bolivia is the role played by the three-decade international indigenous movement that preceded it.  Few are even aware of that powerful and remarkable historic movement, which […]

Last Sunday, my fifteen year old daughter and I went to Querétaro, Mexico.  We were trying to visit Cristina Rosas Illescas at the state penitentiary of San José El Alto, five miles northeast of the state capital.  At the entrance, my daughter refused the guards’ orders to take her clothes off and let them conduct […]