Tsipras-Schleuder #Rosenmontag #Helau #Düsseldorf #Merkel pic.twitter.com/EiRvyRvf7k — Christoph Ullrich (@ullrich001) February 16, 2015 Every year the Rhine region and southern Germany go crazy. Carnival or Fasching, a cousin of Mardi Gras, officially beginning at 11:11 AM on 11/11 and ending with the Lent period, has been celebrated in Catholic areas since the 1820s — with […]
Geography Archives: Middle East
American Exceptionalism, Working-Class Wars, and Working-Class Peace Movements
Christian Appy. American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity. New York: Viking, 2015. Christian Appy is the author of two splendid previous books about the Vietnam War: Working-Class War and Patriots. Patriots was extraordinary in that it offered oral histories by soldiers on both sides of the conflict. The main argument of Appy’s […]
Je Suis Cumhuriyet: Charlie Hebdo as Seen from Turkey
Seeing the crowned heads of Europe march in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo has aroused vigorous dissent from many liberals and leftists in western countries — aimed both at the display of European unity and at the content of the cartoons themselves. Are these images bold anti-clerical statements or rather racist caricatures of a despised minority? […]
PEGIDA, SYRIZA, and the Future of Europe
Recent events here in Germany remind me of a playground seesaw, with constant ups and downs of one side and the other. All autumn we watched the upward swing of PEGIDA, “Patriotic Europeans Against Islamization of the West,” most rapidly but not only in Saxony’s capital Dresden. Its main features were a fast-talking, shady leader […]
Samir Amin on the Charlie Hebdo Murders: Imperialism and International Terrorism
The Western errors and neo-liberal damages: Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi knew how to contain the Islamist drift, but they were slaughtered. In Libya, Paris and Washington have it all wrong. We reached Samir Amin — philosopher, economist, and director of the Third World Forum based in Dakar — in Paris by phone, to […]
Black Lives Matter in the Best Films of 2014
More than 100 years after the birth of cinema, it sometimes feels like every story has been told. But the best films of 2014 dared to break out of their genres, explore new ways of filmmaking, and inspire viewers. Some of them even provided tools for popular understanding of our current political moment. This year, […]
Dresden and Its Dangerous Demonstrators
Dresden, Saxony’s beautiful capital, has a distinguished history. One ruler, August the Strong, could bend horseshoes with his bare hands and, so legend has it, sired 354 children. In 1697 he pushed and bribed his way onto the royal throne of neighboring Poland, made possible by his quick conversion to Catholicism. (His wife, refusing the […]
The “Responsible Nuclear State”: The United States and the Bomb
In light of the revelations that the United States was prepared to use nuclear weapons in the event of war between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea, it may be worth revisiting the idea that America represents a “responsible” nuclear power, in opposition to countries like Iran and […]
Imperialism and The Interview: The Racist Dehumanization of North Korea
The haze of political chaos in America surrounding the Ferguson protests, the Torture Report, and the “relaxing” of US-Cuba relations has been broken by a media spectacle almost too ridiculous to comprehend. A hacker group called the “Guardians of Peace” conducted a “cyber attack” on Sony Pictures Entertainment, leaking emails, documents, presentations, and information […]
An Interview with Dawn Paley, Author of Drug War Capitalism
Dawn Paley is a Canadian author. Drug War Capitalism (AK Press, November 2014) is her first book. We conducted an e-interview as protests grew against police and military policies in Mexico and the U.S. The drug war on both sides of the border has played no small role in generating such dissent. Seth Sandronsky: Can […]
Cops, Hooligans, and Neo-Nazis in Germany
Confrontations with the police in Germany have not been quite the same as in Ferguson and other USA cities. But some were dramatic enough. Back in September 2010 mass protests in Stuttgart against a huge underground railroad station at the cost of a prized old building and a central park were hit hard by cops […]
They Fear and They Kill
It’s open season on wild turkeys. They harm no one, are decorative feathered dinosaurs. Tough to eat, so why shoot? But the season ends. It’s open season on Black youths all year, so long as you have a uniform and a gun. They are genuinely scared, the cops. Kids of color are going to eat […]
“I Have No Real Politics”: Susie Day Talking Trash
“[S]urviving evil doesn’t make you a good person: Surviving evil and not passing it on does,” writes Susie Day in her recent book Snidelines: Talking Trash to Power. One possible way to not pass on evil is to laugh about it. Day, through her comedic ability and shrewd observations reveals (with a giant spotlight) […]
Armed Woman Massacres All-Male Harvard Club, NRA Chief Calls for Gun Control
Harvard University remains shut down one day after a lone woman wielding a Bushmaster .223 semiautomatic rifle broke through security at the university’s elite, men-only Porcellian Club and shot 14 white male students to death. The female — of indeterminate age, race, and sexual attractiveness — was described as wearing a torn leather jacket emblazoned […]
Democracy, Hypocrisy, and President Gauck
In the USA Republicans are jubilant. Jubilation here in Germany is about an event twenty-five years ago: “We beat those red SOBs!” But is there not, hidden behind the confetti, helium balloons, and crowing of the victors in both Germany and the USA, an occasional jarring note of anxiety? A man with good reason for […]
On Taking Risks and Eating Crow
A long, warm, coatless autumn made some wonder whether climate change might cancel winter this year in a reverse of the canceled summer two centuries ago in a year called “Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.” But no, I now read that the weather will change after all. Northern blasts may soon be here. Perhaps […]
PFLP Calls for Unified Revolutionary Front of Solidarity with the Struggle of People of Kobane against ISIS
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine expresses its solidarity with the Kurdish resistance in Kobane struggling to defend themselves and their community from the reactionary armed group, ISIS, whose entry into our region has been facilitated and supported by imperialist powers and their lackeys. Comrade Khaled Barakat said that “All Palestinian and Arab […]
Call for Solidarity with Kobanê
On Monday, October 6th, ISIS forces entered the autonomous Kurdish canton of Kobanê in Western Kurdistan (North Syria) following a siege which began on September 15th. Defending Kobanê are the skilled but ill-equipped People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), who are up against The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), […]
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood: A Review
It is difficult to put into words the effect of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014). But, I suspect that the power of this spell-binding film lies in its ability to mirror for us both the cinematic experience and a certain truth about life in the first decade and half of the new century, i.e., the […]
Who Can Stop the “Islamic State”?
The most severe crisis in the Middle East to date, the coming to power of the “Islamic State” in Iraq and Syria, has entered an extremely absurd phase. The European states are about to follow the lead of the U.S. by exporting arms to the Kurdistan Regional Government under the command of Mustafa Barzani. This […]
