What follows below is about the economic and political significance of the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK hereafter), the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. It will say nothing about the merits (or lack thereof) of the charges against DSK. All cases of alleged sexual assault brought against high-profile men place two equally important […]
Geography Archives: Europe
Countries in the continent of Europe
Russia and China on Syria
Moscow against UN Security Council Taking Up Syria — Source MOSCOW, May 11 (Interfax) — Moscow is against the Syria issue being put before the UN Security Council, a Russian Foreign Ministry source said on Wednesday. “Syria mustn’t be discussed in the Security Council, that is obvious,” the source told Interfax. China Calls on […]
Cairo and Athens: A Long Hot Summer
Convinced that Hosni Mubarak would inevitably resort to overt military force against protesters, my wife and I landed in Athens on February 4. Days of protesting, nights spent guarding the streets, and concerns for the sanity of our geographically distant family had taken its toll. Ironically, after less than 24 hours in Athens, I said […]
Lèse Majesté, the Monarchy, and the Military in Thailand
Excerpt: Despite the fact that millions of Thais believe that the centre of power among the conservative elites today is the Monarchy or the Privy Council, the real centre of power, lurking behind the Throne, is the Military. . . . The power of the Military is not unlimited and it relies on the ideology […]
On the True Agenda behind Der Spiegel’s Story That Greece Is Thinking of Exiting the Euro
The Spiegel story that “Athens is considering withdrawing from the euro zone” is not exactly false — just economical with the truth. Yes, a few weeks or months ago, the Greek government commissioned (as it ought to) several secret studies of the repercussions of various scenarios involving different forms of debt restructure, including one desperate […]
On Syria, Democracy, and Imperialism
The trajectory of the democratic movement in the Arab world was never going to be a straight line with clear goals and objectives. The Arab regimes are not homogeneous; they have medieval Islamist monarchies, as in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, and secular but completely authoritarian regimes, both Western puppets like Mubarak and […]
The Ecological Rift: A Radical Response to Capitalism’s War on the Planet
John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York. The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. Monthly Review Press, 2010. 544 pages. Climate change is often called the greatest environment threat facing humanity. The threat is very real. Unless we cut carbon pollution fast, runaway climate change will worsen existing environmental and social problems, and […]
Statement of Principles and Call for International Trade Union Support for BDS
Occupied Palestine, 4 May 2011 — In commemoration of the first of May — a day of workers’ struggle and international solidarity — the first Palestinian trade union conference for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel (BDS) was held in Ramallah on 30 April 2011, organized by almost the entirety of the Palestinian trade […]
The Euro Crisis as a Twin Recycling Problem: A New Rationale for the “Modest Proposal”
1. Introduction: The Twin Recycling Problems in Brief Europe’s crisis is caused by its institutional failure to confront two recycling problems: a debt recycling problem and a surplus recycling problem.
A Fire That Could Burn Everyone
“To cap it all came the decision by the US administration to authorize the use of drones to kill Libyan men, women, and children, like in Afghanistan, thousands of kilometers from Western Europe, but this time against an Arab and African country, before the eyes of hundreds of millions of Europeans and no less than […]
Norman Gottwald: A Pioneering Marxist Biblical Scholar
Norman Gottwald belongs to a rare breed — an American Marxist biblical scholar. More than one jarring juxtaposition in that epithet! Unfortunately, he is less well known outside the relative small circle of biblical scholars than he should be. In order to introduce him to a wider audience, let me say a little about his […]
When China Overtakes the United States
Various observers have noted this week that China’s economy will be bigger than that of the United States in 2016. This comes from the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) latest projections, which were made in its semi-annual April World Economic Outlook database. Since 2016 is just a few years away, and it will be the first […]
Russia Defends Syria from Outside Interference
United Nations, April 27 (Xinhua) — Russia said here on Wednesday that the current situation in Syria, despite an increase in tension and confrontation, does not threaten international peace and security, but “a real threat to regional security . . . could arise from outside interference in Syria’s domestic situation.” Alexander Pankin, Russia’s deputy permanent […]
How Many Cancers Did Chernobyl Really Cause? (Updated Version)
This is an update of my April 7 post on cancers resulting from Chernobyl — this post includes more detailed information and a more recent estimate of the total radioactive dose from the Chernobyl accident. There is a lot of confusion about how many excess cancer deaths will likely result from the 1986 Chernobyl accident […]
Vik Arrigoni, Remembered for His Dreams
On April 9, Vittorio Arrigoni — Vik to us — wrote to me in an e-mail that “I will go out immediately after this shame” ends. The “shame” was Israel’s latest flurry of F-16-delivered explosives that landed on the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. On April 14 at noon I learned of Vik’s abduction at […]
Easter Peace March in Berlin
The Easter holiday in Germany lasts from Good Friday to Easter Monday, four days. It arrived very late this year, at the end of April, and amazing summer weather drew multitudes to lakes or the seaside. Some, it was hoped — if not exactly multitudes — would be drawn by their consciences to a rather […]
From Places Like Mine and Yours
On the progressive potential of small, quasi-autonomous states (like Scotland, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, etc.). . . . The strong Scottish accent was conspiring with the noisy pub background to make it difficult for me to understand the words spoken in my ear by an imposing trade union figure. Thankfully, I managed to decipher his words, […]
Lenin and Keynes
At first sight no two persons could have been more dissimilar. One was a Cambridge don, with more than one foot in the British government; a supporter of the Liberal Party, staunchly opposed to the Bolshevik Revolution; an aesthete and a member of the Bloomsbury Group; a life peer in imperial Britain, and a solid, […]
Guy Hocquenghem on Homosexual Desire, Capitalism, and the Left
Guy Hocquenghem. The Screwball Asses. Trans. Noura Wedell. Semiotext(e), 2010. 88 pp. $12.95 “Speak to my ass. My head is sick.” — Southern French proverb This little book was first published as an anonymous essay at the end of Félix Guattari’s Recherches no. 12, its March 1973 special issue titled Trois Milliards de Pervers [Three […]
Crisis
Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain. The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 18 April 2011. | Print
