Geography Archives: France

  • Chavismo: Christian, Anti-Nazi, Pro-Muslim, and Pro-Jewish

      Roy Chaderton, Venezuela’s Ambassador to the Organization of American States, speaks of numerous members of the Jewish community who have supported the struggles of peoples against imperialism and Zionism, and he rejects any attack against the Jewish people. Watching television footage of one of the necessary and legitimate protests against the Israeli Embassy in […]

  • 29 January 2009: Eyes of All Europe on Strikes and Demos in France!

    Thursday, 29 January 2009 On 29 January, the united mobilization organized by the initiative of all trade unions resulted in very broad participation in the strikes in many sectors and demonstrations of rare magnitude.  It’s a resounding rejection of the “gravediggers” of unionism. Several million workers in the private and public sectors, the unemployed, the […]

  • France: Thursday, 29 January — A Red Letter Day

      The mobilization for the day of action on Thursday promises to be impressive, with the unions’ call for refusal to pay for the crisis.  On Thursday, France will confront the crisis, perhaps with anxiety, no doubt with anger, but also with ideas. Ooh la la!  It’s hard to row against the current.  Budget Minister […]

  • Continuing Gaza Protests, as Seen on Al Jazeera

    and unseen on American TV. . . . Demos Call for Closure of US Embassy — Police and Protesters Clash, Awkar (North of Beirut), Lebanon, 19.01.09 Demos in Solidarity with Gaza in Cities of Australia — Sydney Demo, the Largest, Draws 20,000, 19.01.09 Tens of Thousands Protests in Solidarity with People of Gaza, Karachi, Pakistan, […]

  • Gaza Protests, as Seen on Al Jazeera

    . . . and unseen on American TV More Than 100,000 Protest in Paris, France, 11.01.09 USA, 11.01.09 Algeria, 11.01.09 Kenitra, Morocco, 11.01.09 Los Angeles, USA, 11.01.09 Journalists Protest the Israeli Army’s Targeting of Journalists, 10.01.09 Chicago and D.C., USA, 10.01.09 Tokyo, Japan, 10.01.09 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 10.01.09 Rabat, Morocco, 10.01.09 Manama, Bahrain, 10.01.09 Algiers, […]

  • Africom: From Bush to Obama

    “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

  • Indigenous Peoples Rising in Bolivia and Ecuador

    Introduction Indigenous peoples in Indo-Afro-Latin America, especially Bolivia and Ecuador, are rising up to take control of their own lives and act in solidarity with others to save the planet.  They are calling for new, yet ancient, practices of plurinational, participatory, and intercultural democracy.  They champion ecologically sustainable development; community-based autonomies; and solidarity with other […]

  • Cats, Dogs, and Creationism: On Intelligent Design and the Left

    “The criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.” — Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right With all due respect to cats and dogs, I don’t expect them to ever understand the laws that govern planetary motion.  Does this prove the existence of God?  Of course […]

  • Desperate Need for Serious Change in Transatlantic Foreign Policy

    Almost eight years of the Bush/Cheney Administration have plunged the world into a deep political, economic, and moral crisis, whose overcoming will probably require decades if a sharp turn does not immediately take place.  That is why the newly elected Obama/Biden Administration must bring about serious change. After having lost the popular national vote against […]

  • “Next Year We’ll Go Back. . .”: The History of Turkish “Guest Workers” in the Federal Republic of Germany

      Karin Hunn.   “Nächstes Jahr kehren wir zurück. . .”: Die Geschichte der türkischen “Gastarbeiter” in der Bundesrepublik.  Moderne Zeit: Neue Forschungen zur Gesellschafts- und Kulturgeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts.  Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005. 598 pp. Tables, bibliography.  EUR 46.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-89244-945-4. Karin Hunn’s meticulously researched, highly informative, and well-structured study is a […]

  • European Paranoia about Non-European Sovereign Wealth Funds

    In a hard-hitting speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg (France) on October 21, French President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed that European countries should create their own sovereign wealth funds to protect national companies from foreign “predators.” “I’m asking that we think about the possibility of creating, each one of us, sovereign funds and maybe these […]

  • Iran: Comprehensive Sustainable Development as Potential Counter-Hegemonic Strategy

    The questions regarding variations in social development, economic progress, and political empowerment have produced a voluminous literature over the past century, and because of the complexity of these issues, much important reflection will continue well into the future.  In the early 1980s, a United Nations’ Commission coined the term “sustainable development” as a public statement […]

  • Before the Gathering Storm

    Patrick Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, New York, 2008. Patrick Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War is an uncompromising attack on the US ruling class and its course in the world from 1917 to the present.  He says that US foreign policy today is “headed inexorably for an American Dienbienphu” (p. 423). […]

  • Can SEIU Members Exorcize the Purple Shades of Jackie Presser?

      Thousands of SEIU members are expected in San Jose this Saturday, September  6, to protest spreading corruption and Andy Stern’s latest grab for control over SEIU’s third largest local (which has helped blow the whistle on scandalous behavior elsewhere in the union). The rally is being organized by United Healthcare Workers (UHW) and allied […]

  • Can NATO Survive Georgia?

    Amidst all the journalistic brouhaha about a new cold war, most analysts are missing out on the real crisis that has been crystallized by Saakashvili’s imprudent excursion into South Ossetia.  The very existence of NATO has been put into question. To understand that, we have to go back to the beginning of NATO as an […]

  • Georgian Crisis: Vis-à-vis Russia, 56% of the French in Favor of Compromise

    EXCLUSIVE POLL.  As the crisis between Russia and Georgia intensifies, 56% of the French want France to seek compromise with Moscow, according to a CSA-Le Parisien–Aujourd’hui en France poll to appear in the Saturday edition. Asked about the position to adopt towards Russia, only 27% advocate a hard-line position after Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s declaration […]

  • Geopolitical Chess: Background to a Mini-war in the Caucasus

    The world has been witness this month to a mini-war in the Caucasus, and the rhetoric has been passionate, if largely irrelevant.  Geopolitics is a gigantic series of two-player chess games, in which the players seek positional advantage.  In these games, it is crucial to know the current rules that govern the moves. Knights are […]

  • The powerless powers

    This is a serious subject.

    The summit meeting of leaders of the eight most highly industrialized powers on the planet took place July 7-9 at a mountain retreat on the banks of the Toyako, a lake formed inside a volcanic crater located in the north of the island of Hokkaido, in the northern reaches of the Japanese archipelago. It would be hard to choose a site more removed and distant from the madding crowd than this.

  • How Europe Underdevelops Africa and How Some Fight Back

      In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered.  Turns in the class struggle might have surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa provided detailed critiques of corporate looting. […]

  • A Region in Chaos: An Interview with Dr. Mohssen Massarrat

      Mohssen Massarrat, born in Tehran in 1942, is Professor of Political Economy and International Relations at Universität Osnabrück.  Deutsche Militärzeitung: Professor Massarrat, William Fallon, US Commander responsible for the Middle East, unexpectedly resigned after just one year.  A cause for his resignation is obviously the US policy toward Iran.  Admiral Fallon criticized the US […]