I. Apartheid of a Special Type In the previous section I made a distinction between historical apartheid (unique to South Africa) and apartheid in its generic form — a structured system of political exclusion and social marginalization on the basis of origins (including but not restricted to race). I concluded that Israel is different from […]
Geography Archives: Europe
Countries in the continent of Europe
The Greek Laboratory: Shock Doctrine and Popular Resistance
5 May 2010 “There is a shadow of something colossal and menacing that even now is beginning to fall across the land. Call it the shadow of an oligarchy, if you will; it is the nearest I dare approximate it. What its nature may be I refuse to imagine. But what I wanted to say […]
Just Like Bushehr, Iranian Enrichment Is No Threat
In recent days, a good deal of attention has been focused on Iran’s first nuclear power plant at Bushehr, still in its final stages of development. We believe that there are some important lessons to be learned from the Bushehr experiences that could help move U.S. policy on the Iranian nuclear issue in a much […]
Israel/Palestine and the Apartheid Analogy: Critics, Apologists and Strategic lessons (Part 1)
I. Introduction In the last decade, the notion that the Israeli system of political and military control bears strong resemblance to the apartheid system in South Africa has gained ground. It is invoked regularly by movements and activists opposed to the 1967 occupation and to various other aspects of Israeli policies vis-à-vis the Palestinian-Arab people. […]
Hormel Strike a Key Event in Nation’s Labor History
From the late summer of 1985 into the early spring of 1986, the small town of Austin, Minnesota, figured prominently in the national news. The dramatic themes and issues, twists and turns, of a labor conflict there captured the national imagination. This interest was not merely passive, as more than thirty support committees formed across […]
Bushehr Launch a Sign of US Power Fading
“What a victory it is for all independent nations, that is, nations independent of US hegemonic power when it comes to energy interests. And what a victory also for those Russian families and corporations outside the United States’ sphere of influence.” — Afshin Rattansi Afshin Rattansi is a journalist, currently a presenter at Press TV. […]
Will Chinese Workers Challenge Global Capitalism?
Paul Jay: In China in June, leaders of the Chinese Communist Party said that it’s time for workers’ wages to go up. And there’s been a lot of discussion about whether China’s actually restructuring its economy to try to boost domestic demand. Certainly in what leaders say in other parts of the world they […]
Marx and Engels on Music
In 1857 Charles Dana invited Karl Marx to contribute to the New American Cyclopaedia. Marx was the European political correspondent for the daily New York Tribune, of which Dana was the editor; Dana and George Ripley, his former mentor at the utopian colony of Brook Farm, were co-editors of the encyclopedia. In due time Marx […]
Adam Jones on Rwanda and Genocide: A Reply
Like Gerald Caplan’s hostile “review” of our book, The Politics of Genocide, Adam Jones’s aggressive attack on our response to Caplan can be explained in significant part by Jones’s deep commitment to an establishment narrative on the Rwandan genocide that we believe to be false — one that misallocates the main responsibility for that still […]
The Seduction of Feminism
Hester Eisenstein. Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World (Paradigm 2009). xv, 293pp. The 20th century is often called the American century because of the US’s advance during that time to become the single greatest power in the world — economically, industrially and militarily. The century’s story […]
Politics and Poetics: Palestinian Art and Culture as a Form of Resistance
The best thing is to ignore the parameters of discussion that are being presented to you, and to shift those parameters. . . . That is the heart of the struggle for us in the United States where the story is already framed, and they are just trying to discuss things within the parameters. […]
Coping with Global Crises: A Tale of Two Countries
Even before the turmoil caused by the global financial crisis has been adequately dealt with in terms of the adverse effects on employment and living conditions, governments across the world are being told that fiscal consolidation is the most important macroeconomic policy to be addressed. The calamities resulting from sovereign debt crises are widely advertised […]
The State under Neo-liberalism
Much has been written on the subject of the capitalist State in the era of neo-liberalism. Two features of the “neo-liberal State” in particular have been highlighted.1 One relates to the change in the nature of the State, from being an entity apparently standing above society and intervening in its economic functioning in the interests […]
Hungary’s Defiance of IMF and European Authorities Scares the Guardians of Austerity in Europe
The government of Hungary has taken on a lot of powerful interests in the last couple of months, and so far appears to be winning — despite provoking outrage from “everybody who’s anybody.” “The IMF should hold the line,” shouted the Financial Times in an editorial the day after Hungary sent the IMF packing in […]
Sartre and Beauvoir
Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir, directed by Max Cacopardo, 1967. Director First Run/ Icarus Films, Brooklyn, NY, 1967. Video and DVD, 60 mins., b/w. A “time capsule” was how Simone de Beauvoir described Max Cacopardo’s documentary about her and Sartre, made for Canadian television in 1967 and re-issued in 2005. She was certainly […]
900,000 Frames between Us
“I left them all small — my daughter wasn’t even one month old. In videos — that’s how I’ve seen them grow up.” Since 2007 a group of young people from Tetlanohcan, Mexico have been working with filmmakers and theatre professionals from England and the USA, creating videos about their lives and their community. This […]
Fiscal Discipline and All That
Rarely has an economic idea had such a brief revival. After several years of almost undisputed sway of monetarist ideology over economic policy makers across the world, suddenly Keynesian ideas were back in fashion, in particular the idea that active state intervention in the form of increased state expenditure is necessary to bring a market […]
A New Type of Political Organization? The Greater Toronto Workers Assembly
At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Left around the world is undergoing reformation. As the Great Recession has vividly demonstrated, more than three decades of neoliberal capitalism have eroded many of the significant gains won in the immediate decades following WWII. From wage and benefit concessions to reductions in […]
The Revolutionary Road in India
The editors of Aneek have asked us to present, in brief, our stand regarding what we think is “the correct path” towards equality, cooperation, community, and human solidarity, that is, socialism in India. The struggle for socialism is going to be long, hard, and violent, and I, for one, cannot imagine a socialist India […]
The Key to Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran
It seems increasingly likely that we will see another round of nuclear diplomacy with Iran in September. This round will probably include discussions with the “Vienna Group” (the United States, Russia, and France) at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on refueling the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) in light of the Iran-Turkey-Brazil Joint Declaration announced […]
