The European tour of Wen Jiabao is taking place while the conflict between the US and China over the yuan/dollar exchange rate is getting worse. At the same time, a similar if less noisy clash exists between China and the Eurozone countries. Last but not least, tensions have also arisen in the Sino-Japanese relations following […]
Geography Archives: France
How to Fight Islamophobia and the Far Right, in Europe and the United States
An alarming trend is sweeping Europe. Far-right parties, using anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric, have made electoral gains in several European countries. In the June European parliament elections, these parties were able to garner votes in a way they haven’t before. The British National Party (BNP), which has its roots in fascist parties of the past, […]
Germany: SPD and Greens Regaining Lost Ground While the Left Gets Stuck in Debates
Angela Merkel always seems to smile when she faces a camera. Only once in a while does an unnoticed camera show her looking tired, if not worn and slightly haggard. Things are not all going her way. More and more people are moving in Germany, mostly in the wrong direction, at least for Merkel. In […]
Banks’ Monopoly Capital and Basel 3
The new regulations on banks’ capital requirements known as Basel 3, made known to the public in mid-September, are a major institutional boost to the monopolistic position of the largest banks.1 In the new framework the capital that banks must hold against lending activities has been raised from a ratio of 2%, established by Basel […]
Germany: The Shadows of the Recovery
We are being told that Germany is successfully recovering from the crisis. However, despite the recovery, the German economy is below most other countries’ in relation to the pre-crisis levels of output. When the crisis began the German economy’s dependence on exports caused a sharp fall in industrial production. The initial liquidation and the subsequent […]
How Does the World Bank Function?
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) was established at Bretton Woods in July 1944, at the initiative of forty-five countries that had come together for the first monetary and financial conference of the United Nations. In 2010, it had 186 member countries, with Kosovo its latest addition (it joined in June 2009). The […]
Against the Stream: Interview with Gideon Levy
For decades Gideon Levy has used the platform provided by the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz to shine a light on the brutal realities of Israel’s occupation. His journalism, along with that of his colleague Amira Hass, has been an invaluable resource not only for Israeli readers but, through the Ha’aretz website, for international audiences seeking […]
France under Sarkozy
Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain. This cartoon was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 6 September 2010. | Print
Europe in Crisis
Part 1: The German Space of Accumulation The present state of affairs in the Eurozone and in the EU reflects the partition of the European Union into three groups. The first is a group of neomercantilist countries centred on Germany and formed by Holland, Belgium, Austria and Scandinavia. Their neomercantilism can be defined as a […]
A Would-Be Paul Revere in Germany: “The Muslims Are Coming!”
The “mosque menace” is not confined to Lower Manhattan or the USA. In many European countries similar alarms are sounded, usually in tones recalling Paul Revere: “The Muslims are coming!” Although according to Sarkozy in France, Berlusconi in Italy, and the militarized neo-fascist Jobbik party in Hungary the danger is more from the Roma people […]
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 […]
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 […]
Economic Recovery for the Few
Where is this elusive recovery? The banks, some say, have “recovered.” Yet they remain dependent on Washington, they do not make the loans needed for a general recovery, and many medium and small banks keep collapsing. The stock market shows no recovery. The Dow index was 14,000 in late 2007 when capitalism hit the fan, […]
Greece and the IMF: Who Exactly Is Being Saved?
Excerpt: Importantly, the initial collapse and following standstill in economic activity and nominal levels of GDP is also extremely bad news for the strategy of fiscal consolidation itself. On the one hand, to keep on servicing interest payments (see above), nominal debt will continue to go up. On the other hand, nominal GDP goes […]
“Secularism . . . a Really Interesting Problematic”: A Conversation with Joan Wallach Scott
DKK: Joan, because people know you as many things — as a theorist of gender, as a cultural historian, as an inveterate advocate for academic freedom and defender of the rights of the professoriate — I’m curious how you would describe yourself to someone who had never met Joan Scott. JWS: That’s really hard . […]
The Politics of the Gold Standard in France, 1914-1939
Kenneth Mouré, The Gold Standard Illusion. France, the Bank of France and the International Gold Standard, 1914-1939. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. x + 297 pp. Figures, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $72.00 (cl.) ISBN 019-924904-0. Kenneth Mouré’s new book extends and develops the analysis of his previous study of Bank […]
A New Order in “Greater West Asia”: AfPak to Palestine
When the Soviet Union was in terminal crisis in 1990 and the prospect emerged of the United States establishing long-term domination of the international political system, the influential Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer sought to capture the character of the unfolding geopolitical era. The term he used became a buzzword in then-emerging neo-conservative circles, and […]
A Lesson in Bad Faith: The Vienna Group’s Response to the Tehran Joint Declaration
The countries comprising the “Vienna Group” (i.e. USA, France, and Russia, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA) have expressed their “Concerns about the Joint Declaration Conveyed by Iran to the IAEA.” Iran has repeatedly declared that the Tehran Brazil-Iran-Turkey Joint Declaration was never intended as a final binding document, but as a basis […]
Paris, October 1961
Leïla Sebbar, The Seine Was Red. Paris, October 1961: A Novel (translated by Mildred Mortimer). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008. xxiv + 116pp. $17.95 U.S. (pb). ISBN 10-0253-2202-38. The official French obfuscation of the police violence against Algerians in Paris in October 1961 has inspired long-term personal and collective memory retrieval that […]
Apartheid South Africa’s Secret Relationship with Israel
Thank you for having me, Yousef [Munayyer], and thank you all for coming out on a day when it’s over 100 degrees. I know it wasn’t easy. I’m going to talk a little about the research that went into this book [The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa] and where my interest […]
