During my month in my home country, the USA, things kept moving along on this eastern side of the Atlantic. I must try to catch up! In early June Europe had to digest results of the European Parliament elections — and choke down some pretty revolting clumps. Far-right groups took alarming leads in France and […]
Geography Archives: Europe
Countries in the continent of Europe
A Restive Rank and File Fighting for — and Beginning to Win — New Teacher Union Leadership
It’s a hard time to be the leader of any union, but those elected by teachers are really on the firing line. Corporate-backed education reformers and their political allies want to weaken the collective voice of public school educators. Teacher union bargaining rights or contract protections have come under attack throughout the country. The two […]
Venezuela: Questions about Democracy and a Free Press
First question: Why? If Venezuela’s government is a dictatorship, why have there been 18 elections in 15 years under the late president Hugo Chávez Frías (d. 2013) and his democratically elected successor Nicolás Maduro? Why is it that according to many international observers Venezuela’s democratic elections are, in the words of ex-president Jimmy Carter, “the […]
Germany’s Left Party on the EU and NATO
Running up a down escalator is itself mighty difficult. Trying to keep your footing both on an up and a down escalator at the same time is simply hard to imagine. Yet it gives an idea of Germany’s present Ukrainian policy. Soon after Soviet soldiers left East Germany between 1989 and 1994, the newly-unified country […]
Gabriel García Márquez and the Coming-into-Being of Latin America
One of the greatest Latin American authors, Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, died last Thursday. As with any writer whose work becomes a mass culture phenomenon, his work is also the focus of diverse readings. These readings in turn have a direct bearing on the understanding of our continent’s reality. For this reason putting pressure […]
Imagining Socialism
Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA. Edited by Frances Goldin, Debby Smith, and Michael Steven Smith. HarperPerennial, 304 pp., $15.99. The need for socialism became clear to me more than fifty years ago when I was working as an orderly in the University of Minnesota Hospitals. One of the patients I was working with in […]
Russia and the Ukraine Crisis: The Eurasian Project in Conflict with the Triad Imperialist Policies
Moscow, March 2014 1. The current global stage is dominated by the attempt of historical centers of imperialism (the US, Western and Central Europe, Japan — hereafter called “the Triad”) to maintain their exclusive control over the planet through a combination of: so-called neo-liberal economic globalization policies allowing financial transnational capital of the Triad to […]
The Revolutionary Legacy of Bhagat Singh: An Interview with Chaman Lal
Chaman Lal retired as professor of Hindi translation from the Centre of Indian Languages, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and is now associated with the Centre for Comparative Literature as Professor-Coordinator at the Central University of Punjab, Bathinda. His most recent book is Understanding Bhagat Singh (Aakar Books, Delhi, 2013). BD: March 23 marks the […]
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Its Uses and Limits
Thomas Piketty. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. $39.95. Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty has caused a stir, which it deserves. Capital 21, as we will abbreviate the title, grapples with a prominent current issue: outrageously unequal incomes and wealth. It is a data-rich, […]
Don’t Pray for Venezuela: The Struggle Against Contemporary Fascism
The progressivist view of history often goes hand in hand with the faith that a new class — sometimes the proletariat, at other times “the people” — has a privileged perspective or consciousness. If scientific (as opposed to vulgar) Marxism debunks this idea on a theoretical level — showing how commodity and money fetishism’s inversions […]
Ukraine Between “Popular Uprising for Democracy” and “Fascist Putsch”
Let’s begin with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s version. One can think what one likes about deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, but his election in 2012 was recognized as legitimate by international observers and, after a certain hesitation, by the defeated candidate, Yulia Timoshenko. In fact, relatively honest elections were just about the only positive […]
Rendszerváltás? (A Nagy Csalódás) / System Change? (The Great Disappointment)
Over twenty some years now We’ve been waiting for the good life For the average citizen Instead of wealth we have poverty Unrestrained exploitation So this is the big system change So this is what you waited for No housing, no food, no work But that’s what was assured wouldn’t happen Those on top […]
Jesus Quits as Evangelical Savior: My Biggest Scoop Ever!
(New York, NY) At 11:00 EST last night, Jesus H. Christ interrupted regularly scheduled programs on every TV channel across the Western Hemisphere with a stunning simulcast announcement. Effective immediately, Jesus stated, “I resign My post as Lord and Savior at every evangelical church or Christian organization that sponsors antigay legislation or seeks to deny […]
Venezuela: Socialism Is Still a Real and Inspiring Possibility
In one of his last important public discourses, popularly known as the Golpe de Timón speech, the late President Hugo Chávez told a joke about an indigenous tribe and a priest. The priest baptized the indigenous people giving them Christian names, held communion, and told them not to eat meat on Friday but rather fish […]
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Venezuela
As protests have been taking place in Venezuela for the last couple of weeks, it is good to check on the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Empire’s “stealth” destabilizer. What has the NED been up to in Venezuela? Before going into details, it is important to note what the NED is and is […]
Come Together: Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Solidarity March
All the leaders and many of the active members of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU) — arbitrarily held responsible for the violent 18 July 2012 incident in the Manesar works of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd in the province of Haryana — 148 of them, repeatedly denied bail, are in jail since August of that […]
Treme Rewrites Post-Katrina History. And That’s a Good Thing.
After three and a half seasons, HBO’s Treme concluded in December, and last week the entire series became available as a box set. The show started with low ratings that got lower as time went on, never won many awards, and divided critics. But as time passes and more audiences discover the show, it may […]
Europe’s Future — Wanna Bet?
There are many TV talk shows in Germany, sometimes hot, often vacuous. But the one on January 16th hit the roof, with far more people watching it afterwards via Internet than at the time it was aired. And their comments, by the thousand, were mostly pounded away in great anger! A main cause of such […]
Europe’s Future — Wanna Bet?
There are many TV talk shows in Germany, sometimes hot, often vacuous. But the one on January 16th hit the roof, with far more people watching it afterwards via Internet than at the time it was aired. And their comments, by the thousand, were mostly pounded away in great anger! A main cause of such […]
The “Brown International” of the European Far Right
In the lead-up to the international day of action against fascism on 22 March, Thanasis Kampagiannis, writing in the latest issue of Σοσιαλισμός από Κάτω (Socialism From Below), the theoretical journal of the Greek Socialist Workers Party (SEK), looks at the danger of a major far Right breakthrough in May’s European Parliament elections and […]
