This paper was presented at “Color Revolution and Cultural Hegemony,” the 6th World Socialism Forum in Beijing, China, October 16-7, 2015. The term “color revolution” is code. It is a code for regime change, and the term is often treated as synonymous with activities of the CIA and its assorted vehicles such as the National […]
Geography Archives: Europe
Countries in the continent of Europe
A Wonderful Parade Against TTIP
It was a day to remember, a date for the record books! It marked a surprising development in German politics! And who said Germans don’t like protest marches or demonstrations? The organizers counted 250,000, a quarter of a million. Of course the police scaled that down — to 150,000. But who’s counting? It was definitely […]
Resisting Wholesale Electronic Invasion of the Fourth Amendment
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) Foundation for Criminal Justice dinner, Denver, Colorado, July 24, 2015 A few months ago, I spoke to a group of lawyers in Los Angeles. I talked about legal ethics. I mentioned Henry Drinker, author of ABA ethical rules, author of a book that was the basis for the […]
RISE: Scotland’s Left Alliance
One year on from the historic Scottish independence referendum politics here are utterly changed. The long dominant Labour Party, which opted to campaign against independence — alongside the Conservatives, loathed by the big majority of Scots voters, and the now virtually demolished Liberal Democrats in the Better Together alliance — reaped the whirlwind at the […]
Altruism: Viral & More Dangerous Than ISIS
Early this month in Germany, a few thousand refugees from war-torn Syria and neighboring countries spilled out of a train station and into Munich. Rather than being tripped by the locals, or thrown inside cargo trucks, or sorted out according to skin color (as per quaint Old World custom), the migrants were actually welcomed by […]
Bombs for Peace: A Review
George Szamuely. Bombs for Peace: NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013 (Distributed in the U.S. and Canada by the University of Chicago Press). Paper. Pp. 611. In Bombs for Peace, George Szamuely, a senior research fellow at the Global Policy Institute at London Metropolitan University, has produced a revealing and sharply […]
Immigrants, Welcome and Unwelcome
A silent three-year-old, lying drowned on a Turkish beach; the tearful protest of a Syrian man as he, his wife and baby are torn from the tracks next to a locomotive by Hungarian police; desperate families jammed into tiny, leaky boats, hoping to reach Europe alive or, if they do, facing ever new obstacles from […]
The Devaluation of the Yuan
The Chinese central bank’s decision last week to let the yuan depreciate, in three stages by almost 4 percent against the US dollar, was officially explained as a move towards greater market determination of its exchange rate. Though this explanation pacified stock markets around the world, China’s devaluation of the currency portends a serious accentuation […]
What Would the KKE Do If It Were in SYRIZA’s Place?
We often hear the following, well-intentioned question: “What would you have done if you had been in the place of the SYRIZA government?” The question is not illogical. But we must put it in the right perspective. If we, the KKE, were in the “place” of SYRIZA, meaning the place of bourgeois management, the place […]
German Know-Nothings Today
“I don’t know.” Those words, often repeated 160-odd years ago in the USA, earned the gang of those using them the nickname “Know-Nothing Party.” Those were no expressions of intellectual modesty; party doings were secret, so members were not supposed to disclose anything about them, but just say, “I don’t know.” Their patriotic title was […]
Europe’s Moment of Truth
Greek Premier Alexis Tsipras’ acceptance of an “austerity package” on July 13, which contained measures rejected by the Greek people in a referendum barely a week before, represents not just an abject surrender by the Syriza government, or a sign of contempt on the part of German finance capital for the Greek electorate; it marks […]
Why Greece Doesn’t Matter
We have to stop talking about Greece. What must emerge from the calamity of SYRIZA-ANEL is a renewed call for democracy. There is a scene in the 1972 political satire The Candidate where Robert Redford looks at the camera and quietly says, “Politicians don’t talk, they make sounds.” For the past five years Greece […]
Vulliamy and Hartmann on Srebrenica: A Study in Propaganda
In their recent article on “How Britain and the US Decided to Abandon Srebrenica to Its Fate” (Observer, July 5, 20151), Ed Vulliamy, a veteran reporter for the Guardian and Observer newspapers, and Florence Hartmann, a reporter and former spokesperson for the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia […]
With Capitulation in Greece, the Front Moves Outward
Since at least the beginning of this year, the project of achieving a decent, reasonable Europe had set its eyes on Greece. I say nothing of radically transforming Europe into something just and fair and ecologically sound — that prospect is far beyond the present horizon — but hopes that Europe could slowly turn […]
Berlin, July 1, 1990 — Athens, July 1, 2015
In a recent news video I watched people pushing and shoving at a bank entrance. I immediately recalled another scene, also with people pushing at a bank entrance. In the older scene people looked eager and gleeful, pushing so hard, I believe, that one man’s rib was broken. In the recent pictures they looked very […]
Lessons from a defeat in Europe
The Troika are celebrating the end of negotiations with Greece, proclaiming that thanks to their tireless efforts the Eurozone remains whole. And why wouldn’t they celebrate? They have demonstrated their power to crush, at least for now, the Greek effort to end austerity and its associated devastating social consequences. Tragically, Syriza has not only surrendered, […]
General Strike Called in Greece Against the Third Memorandum
There are more powerful things than the Troika Solidarity needed more than before Συλλαλητήριο ενάντια στο νέο μνημόνιο Δευτέρα 13.7.15 και ώρα 7:00μμ http://t.co/RtYvlT17wT — Α.Δ.Ε.Δ.Υ. (@adedygr) July 13, 2015 Civil servant union ADEDY also calls public sector workers for anti-bailout demonstration outside Parliament at 7pm local time. #Greece — Elena Becatoros (@ElenaBec) July […]
Glory to the Lucid Courage of the Greek People, Facing the European Crisis
The Greek People are an example to Europe and the world. With courage and lucidity the Greek people have rejected the ignoble diktat of European and international finance. They have won a first victory by affirming that democracy cannot exist unless it knows how to put itself at the service of social progress. They have […]
ΟΧΙ!
For some in other lands and continents Greece may seem distant and marginal, a few narrow peninsulas and scattered archipelagos jutting out of the sea. Some may vaguely recall school knowledge about it. “Didn’t some fellow named Prometheus steal fire from the gods? Or was it Alexander the Great untying some “Gordian knot”? Or a […]
A Doctor’s Degree at 102
102-year-old Ingeborg Syllm-Rapoport receives diploma 77-years after Nazis denied it http://t.co/KBB4iyTPfo — Ruptly (@Ruptly) June 9, 2015 The frail, white-haired little lady stepping slowly up onto the stage of the Babylon cinema theater in Berlin — to giant applause — was not wearing a collegiate cap and gown. But she had undoubtedly made academic history. […]
