Geography Archives: France

Mr. István Mészáros, you are coming to visit Brazil to talk about György Lukács.  As a profound expert of the work of the philosopher, how do you evaluate the importance of his ideas today? György Lukács was my great teacher and friend for twenty-two years, until he died in 1971.  He started publishing as a […]

  CJP: What began as a financial crisis in 2007 has become one of the biggest unemployment crises in the advanced capitalist world.  Could this perhaps mean that the crisis of 2007-08 was not actually caused by finance itself but had its underlying causes in the real economy? JBF: No one doubts that it was […]

Francisco Louçã.  Photo by Paulete Matos. Francisco Louçã is an economics professor at Lisbon’s Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão.  He is the author of numerous books and essays including Ensaio para uma Revolução [Rehearsal of a Revolution]; As Time Goes By — From the Industrial Revolution to the Information Revolution, with Chris Freeman; Portugal […]

Part 1: Mexican Workers Win Ownership of Tire Plant With Three-Year Strike “If the owners don’t want it, let’s run it ourselves.”  When a factory closes, the idea of turning it into a worker-owned co-operative sometimes comes up — and usually dies. The hurdles to buying a plant, even a failing plant, are huge, and […]

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa‘s idea that we are not “living in an epoch of change” but rather “in a change of epoch” is very much to the point.  There is an obvious worldwide decline of existing imperialisms and historic changes in the correlation of social, class, and nation-state forces.  There have arisen popular movements of […]

  February 15, 2003 Sarah, New York: The wind that whips down the avenues is bitterly cold, but that doesn’t stop us from protesting the drive to war in Iraq.  People from all over the city and the Northeast — young and old, hardened activists and first-time protestors — have converged on Manhattan, where the […]

“An economic recovery has begun.”      — President Obama, Second Inaugural Address President Obama’s optimism — baseless as it may be — was surely appreciated at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.  For in what was described as the “most optimistic” meeting since 2007, 2,600 members of the global elite convened over the weekend […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its January 2013 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. We know nothing about the beliefs of the canon (religious) lawyers among the Christians, but can safely assume that they would consider it a sign of movement in […]

  Here is the full-text of what I said — as also, what I wanted to say but restrained myself because of the time constraint or because of my diffidence — at the book release of Gautam Navlakha’s Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion (Penguin Books, 2012), organised by Sanhati at the Gandhi […]

In the celebrated section of The Wealth of Nations in which he discusses the advantages of the division of labor, Adam Smith advances the thesis that “common to all men” is a “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.”  Smith hedges on whether this “propensity” is a matter of original human nature […]

Dr Issa Chaer is a member of the Syrian Social Club (based in England). Carlos Martinez: Thanks very much for agreeing to be interviewed.  You have been very active in spreading information about the Syria conflict.  Can you explain why you have chosen to give so much time and energy to this cause? Issa Chaer: […]

As Muslims around the world protest their contemptuous treatment by the West, catalyzed by the provocative, racist American film Innocence of Muslims, the French media added fuel to the fire of by publishing offensive cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.  Left-wing alt-weekly Charlie Hebdo ran cartoons that depicted a naked, turbaned Muhammad in profoundly racist and […]

My voice is a crime, My thoughts anarchy, Because I do not sing to their tunes, I do not carry them on my shoulders. — Cherabandaraju, who was the lead accused in a “conspiracy case” involving poets and their poetry. It’s been two decades and a year since India’s elite embraced neo-liberalism.  Money — the […]

Ammar Waqqaf is an independent Syrian political analyst based in England. Q: Why do you think the western powers are so keen to see regime change in Syria? A: Western powers would be fools not to exploit such an opportunity to turn a key regional player from an opposing side into an allied one.  Achieving […]

  The crisis is not relinquishing its grip on Europe.  From autumn 2008 to early 2009 the world market experienced the deepest slump in economic output since the Second World War.  This is a global crisis.  Even in emerging economies like China, Brazil, or India economic growth declined and could not compensate for the recession […]

Protests against the Formula One Grand Prix held in Manama on 22 April could have reminded the world that repression in Bahrain is still ongoing.  But once more the so-called international community by and large turned a blind eye: no diplomatic pressure, certainly no “crippling” international sanctions.  The Grand Prix went ahead as planned.  A […]

  We are calling for massive protests in Frankfurt this May against the crisis regime of the European Union.  We are activists representing a multitude of movements and struggles from different European countries and elsewhere, who have risen up in the past months and years to protest the assaults on our freedoms, jobs, and livelihoods […]

Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela.  Cf. “A Libyan diplomat who served as ambassador to France for Muammar Gaddafi died from torture within a day of being detained by a militia from Zintan, Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Friday. . . .  On January 26, humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres said […]

Papandreou writes on a blackboard as a punishment meted out by Germany and France: “I must not consult the Greek people I must not consult the Greek people I must not consult the Greek people I must not con. . . .” Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | […]

  Salim Lamrani.  État de siège; les sanctions économiques des États-Unis contre Cuba(State of Siege: The United States’ economic sanctions against Cuba).  Prologue by Wayne S. Smith.  Preface by Paul Estrade.  Paris, Editions Estrella, 2011.  15 euros. CSF: You’ve just published a new book under the title État de siège.  What exactly do you cover […]