The austerity measures imposed on Greek workers to reduce the deficits are nothing but a prelude of what may happen to the other European countries. The Greek crisis demonstrates the divisions in the ruling class on the strategies to adopt. For the second time since December 2008, Greece is at the heart of politics […]
Geography Archives: Europe
Countries in the continent of Europe
Collateral Damages of Smart Sanctions on Iran
The prospects for democracy, socio-economic development, and conflict resolution will suffer if the West continues to rely on punitive measures. This time, the warmongers’ silly season found its apogée in U.S. neo-conservative Daniel Pipes’ advice to Obama to “bomb Iran,” which appeared shortly after Tony Blair, having outlined why he helped invade Iraq, remarked ominously, […]
Sans-Culottes
Michael Sonenscher, Sans-Culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. x + 493 pp. $45.00 U.S. (cl). ISBN 978- 0691124988. Michael Sonenscher begins, “This is a book about the sans-culottes and the part that they played in the French Revolution” (p. 1). Actually, there are no revolutionary sans-culottes […]
Greek Workers under the Mistress of Europe
Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print
An “Economic Guernica” for Greece
A street of Guernica after the fascist bombardment of 26 April 1937 Greece faces a veritable economic Guernica, a massacre, in the face of which the European Left shows an unforgivable passivity. What is imposed on Athens is meant as an example, to strike terror into Spain, Portugal, and even Italy. But even France, […]
Greenspan’s Nightmare
Alan Greenspan had a dream, or rather a nightmare. Greenspan seems to have woken up in a cold sweat one morning in fear that the period of “disinflationary pressures” that had kept inflation low since the 1990s was about to end. This was 2007, when he published his autobiographical economic treatise, The Age of Turbulence. […]
Violence and Revolution
Jean-Clément Martin, Violence et Révolution: Essai sur la naissance d’un mythe national. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2006. 339 pp. Bibliography and index. 23.00 Euros (pb). ISBN 2-02-043842-9. This work subtitles itself an “essay on the birth of a national myth”. The “myth” in question, as the first pages of the Introduction make clear, is […]
Capitalism and the Useful Nation State
The nation state is once again proving its special usefulness as a vehicle for managing capitalist crisis. Partly, this follows from the renewal of Keynesian monetary and fiscal policies. Other key dimensions of state usefulness include its more direct provision of financial guarantees to private enterprises and its over-priced purchase of “toxic” assets (those that […]
Criminal Courts under Revolution and Empire
Robert Allen, Les Tribunaux criminels sous la Révolution et l’Empire, 1792-1811. Collection « Histoire » Translated by James Steven Bryant (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2005) 318 pp. 22€ ISBN 2-7535-00095-9. At the end of the Old Regime, the judicial system of the kingdom stood accused of all manner of barbarities and atrocities — […]
Spring Thunder Anew
The white man called you Bhagat Singh that day, The black man calls you Naxalite today. But everyone will call you the morning star tomorrow. — Excerpt from the Telugu poem ‘Final Journey: First Victory’ by Sri Sri 1 It has been a long and tortuous route. Forty-three years ago, a group of Maoist […]
Fragile Europe of the Single Currency
There is now a general crisis in Europe without a visible or credible way out. It is clearly evidenced by the continuous flare-up of hotspots of tension: from Greece to the Iberian Peninsula and back, and then onto increasingly less veiled allusions to Italy and a dramatic about-face of Paris. Until just over a month […]
Interview with Juan Goytisolo: “No One Emerges Unscathed from an Encounter with Genet”
The Barcelona-born writer recalls his intense relationship with one of his “greatest literary idols.” Juan Goytisolo has just published Genet en el Raval (Genet in El Raval, Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg/Círculo de lectores, 2009), a chronicle of a literary as well as emotional friendship. The Barcelona-born writer met the poet Jean Genet (1910-1986), one of […]
Of Daughters and Fathers
Daughters are God’s irony on men. Not His vengeance or His revenge on us, but surely His irony. Daughters, when they come, are never expected and seldom asked for, especially if she is a first child. Always a surprise, usually more for the father than the mother, who, if she suspects at all, keeps it […]
Clinton Strikes Out in Brazil: A Security Council Divided on Iran Sanctions
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Brasilia to mount a full court press on the Brazilian government to support a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities. (Brazil is presently one of the Council’s ten non-permanent members.) And, as accumulating media reports indicate, she was politely but […]
The Butcher of Gaza Is Coming to America
Attention all US law enforcement agencies! Be on the lookout: a war criminal is coming our way. The Butcher of Gaza is coming to America. One year after the war on Gaza, during which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) murdered 1,400 Palestinians including 400 children, the IDF and war criminal Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi will […]
An Appeal to Anti-war Organizations and Activists to Oppose the Increasing Threats against Iran
Around the world, anti-war activists are preparing for major protests this spring to oppose the continuing U.S.-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, a storm of developments is dramatically increasing tensions between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. In response, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) is issuing […]
Cuba, the Corporate Media, and the Suicide of Orlando Zapata Tamayo
On February 23, 2010, Cuban inmate Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83 days on hunger strike. He was 42. This is the first such incident since inmate Pedro Luis Boitel died in 1972 under similar conditions. The corporate media put the tragic incident on the front page and emphasized the plight of Cuban prisoners.1 Zapata’s […]
Sexuality and the Law: An Uneasy Marriage
Matthew Waites. The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality, and Citizenship. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. viii + 285 pp. $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4039-2173-4. $29.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-230-23718-6. There are many “ages of consent.” But in common parlance, age of consent laws define the age at which a person can legally consent […]
An AfPak Star over Central Asia
United States AfPak special representative Richard Holbrooke enjoys a fabulous reputation, no matter the current prospects of the Afghan war. The Eurasian space knew him as a potential Nobel winner who evicted Russia from the Balkans. The world at large expects him to take over if and when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton steps down […]
Pederasts and Others
William A. Peniston, Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris. New York: Harrington Park, 2004. xii + 258. Maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $49.95 US (hb). ISBN 1-56023-485-7; $24.95 U.S. (pb). ISBN 1-506023-486-5. As part of the burgeoning of the history of gender and sexuality, recent years have seen several […]
