Geography Archives: France

  • “Big Setback” for Haitian Democracy as U.S. Gets Its Way; Forces Runoff Elections between Two Right-Wing Candidates, CEPR Co-Director Says

    Second Round Will Be between Candidates Who Received around 6.4% and 4.5% Percent Support from Registered Voters in First Round, Respectively Haiti’s democracy and national sovereignty were severely undermined today, Mark Weisbrot, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), said today, reacting to news that Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) had […]

  • Haiti Resists US Pressure, Announces Aristide Can Return

    It didn’t get much attention in the media, but U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did something quite surprising on Sunday.  After taping interviews on five big Sunday talk shows about Egypt, she then boarded a plane to Haiti.  Yes, Haiti.  The most impoverished country in the hemisphere, not exactly a “strategic ally” or a […]

  • “The Year 1789 of the Tunisian Revolution”: Interview with Jean Tulard, Historian of the French Revolution

    Jean Tulard is a historian, specializing in the French Revolution and revolutions in general.  According to Tulard, the future of the Tunisian uprising will depend on the role played by the army. In a month of uprising, the Tunisian people has successfully toppled the Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali regime.  Is it a revolution? Right now […]

  • Fox News’s Glenn Beck Incites Threats against Professor Frances Fox Piven

    January 20, 2011, New York — Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued a written appeal to Fox News president Roger Ailes to help put a stop to the increasing threats against progressive Professor Frances Fox Piven, largely incited by Fox News host Glenn Beck.  In the letter, co-written by Legal Director Bill Quigley […]

  • Aristide Should Be Allowed to Return to Haiti

    Haiti’s infamous dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier returned to his country this week, while the country’s first elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is kept out.  These two facts really say everything about Washington’s policy toward Haiti and our government’s respect for democracy in that country and in the region. Asked about the return of Duvalier, who had […]

  • Borderline, 1 & 2

      Monique Renault, born in Rennes, France, is a feminist animator in the Netherlands.   var idcomments_acct = ‘c90a61ed51fd7b64001f1361a7a71191’; var idcomments_post_id; var idcomments_post_url; | Print  

  • Analysis of the OAS Mission’s Draft Final Report on Haiti’s Election

    A draft copy of the Organization of American States (OAS) Report on Haiti’s election, “Organization of American States Expert Verification Mission, President Election — First Round 2010 — Final Report,”1 was leaked to the press last week, and the Center for Economic and Policy Research posted a copy on its website after receiving it from […]

  • Arafat’s Ghost

      Asʻad Ghanem.  Palestinian Politics after Arafat: A Failed National Movement.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.  x + 208 pp.  $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-35427-3; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-22160-5. November 2010 marked the sixth anniversary of the death of Palestinian National Authority (PNA) president Yasser Arafat.  For the last two years of his life, the once […]

  • Fintan O’Toole’s Own Cultural Revolution

    Fintan O’Toole.  Enough Is Enough: How to Build a New Republic.  Faber.  £12.99. Suppose you were swept to power on the back of a massive popular vote — say something like 80%, the kind of number that usually has the USA and its client states jumping up and down and calling you a leftist narco-terrorist. […]

  • Evo Morales Promulgates Law That Lowers Retirement Age

    Bolivian President Evo Morales, this Friday, promulgated the Law of Pensions whose content was, for the first time in the history of Bolivia, concretized by workers and representatives of social movements.  The Bolivian leader declared that the promulgation of this new law is evidence of the deepening of democracy in the nation. “What is most […]

  • Globalizing Homophobia

    After September 11th, 2001, one of the liberal justifications for the military intervention against Afghanistan was the oppression of women, but also of gays, by the Taliban.  People in Europe and the USA received with shock the news that same-sex couples were publicly executed in the Kabul Stadium by bringing down a wall upon them […]

  • Abraham Serfaty

    On November 18, I received the sad news: my Moroccan friend and teacher, Abraham Serfaty, passed away in Marrakesh, Morocco.  Serfaty was a well-known Moroccan communist dissident and an anti-Zionist Jewish Arab.  He died at the age of 83, after a long illness. My relationship with Abraham started four decades ago with a small book […]

  • A Letter from Tel Aviv: The Right in Israel Is Playing with Fire

      I am in Tel Aviv.  70 km away from the fires, I cannot even see the smoke cloud above the Haifa area, which is moving into the sea and may reach Cyprus before it comes to me.  The pictures on my plasma TV are, however, very saddening.  You see tens of thousands evacuated from […]

  • Gates’ False Iran Premise: Sanctions Will Not Sow Internal Discord and Change Iran’s Nuclear Calculations

    Since returning to government service to take up his current position, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been a sober skeptic about the wisdom of military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets — under President Obama as well as under President George W. Bush, and regardless of whether such strikes would be carried out by the […]

  • China’s Export Conundrum

      In 2009, the European Union, United States and Mexico filed a complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against China’s export restrictions on certain raw materials, including bauxite, coke, fluorspar, silicon carbide and zinc.  They said that, firstly, these constraints — in the form of export taxes, quotas, licences and so on — caused […]

  • Germany: Greens Rise as the Left Party Struggles . . . with Itself

    Using ropes, some young people descended halfway from railroad bridges to force the train to stop.  Others hastily grabbed stones out from under the tracks and in this way prevent their use.  Far more, young and old from all over Germany, simply sat down on the tracks until police carried them away.  Banners and witty, […]

  • French Trade Unions: Going All the Way or Just Going Along to Get Along?

      One of the key elements of the current new movement against the retirement reform is the unity of trade unions, which has so far survived.  This unity of trade union leadership is perceived by a large section of workers, as well as by the population in general, as an asset, a fulcrum of the […]

  • Chronicles of Insurrection: Tronti, Negri and the Subject of Antagonism

    Once I went to May Day.  I never got workers’ festivities.  The day of work, are you kidding?  The day of workers celebrating themselves.  I never got it into my head what workers’ day or the day of work meant.  I never got it into my head why work should be celebrated.  But when I […]

  • Iran and Honduras in the Propaganda System: Part 2, The 2009 Iranian and Honduran Elections

    As we stated at the outset of Part 1,1 there is no better test of the independence and integrity of the establishment U.S. media than in their comparative treatment of Iran and Honduras in 2009 and 2010. Iran held its most recent presidential election on June 12, 2009.  This followed a typically short three-week campaign […]

  • Cine-Tract: No to Retirement Reform

    No to the retirement reform, yes to better work sharing. This cine-tract was created by art and film students at Lycée Gabriel-Guist’hau in Nantes, France, to support the social movement against Sarko’s retirement reform. | Print