Oliver Grant. Migration and Inequality in Germany. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. 416 pp. $190.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-927656-1. Leo Lucassen. The Immigrant Threat: The Integration of Old and New Migrants in Western Europe since 1850. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. 296 pp. $25.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-252-07294-9. Elia Morandi. Italiener in Hamburg: Migration, Arbeit und […]
Geography Archives: Russia
The Great Tehran Expo Privatization Scandal You’ve Never Heard Of
Most Iranian politicians, no matter what faction they belong to, place an inordinate amount of faith in the concept of privatization. Whatever woes the Iranian economy may suffer from, privatization seems to be the solution. All four candidates in the June election spoke about the need for privatization of state-owned enterprises, with little difference in […]
After the Orange Revolution: “Worldwide Low 4% of Ukrainians Approve of Their Country’s Leadership”
The Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which began with a dispute over the 21 November 2004 run-off vote between the leading presidential candidates, ended by installing Viktor Yushchenko, the Western favorite who cried fraud, into presidency on 23 January 2005. Ian Traynor of the Guardian put the price tag of the Orange Revolution at about $14 […]
U.S. Considers Cutting Off Iran’s Gasoline Supplies
Martin Savidge: What do you think will happen if the United States were to try to impose gasoline sanctions on Iran? Trita Parsi: I think, first of all, it’s going be very difficult to impose effective gasoline sanctions on Iran because you would have to get the cooperation of all the countries in the […]
Petroleum and Energy Policy in Iran
Iran, a major oil producing and exporting country, also imports gasoline because of inadequate refining capacity and rising petrol consumption. This article examines the problems faced by an economy dependent on the export of crude oil and gas that are compounded by the dilemmas of rising domestic consumption, a significant decline in productive capacity, […]
Mr. Mousavi’s Gas Embargo on Iran?
In serious contention for Dumbest Washington Consensus for September is the idea of cutting off Iran’s gas imports to pressure Iran to stop enriching uranium. A majority of Representatives and Senators have signed on to legislation that seeks to block Iran’s gas imports, a top legislative priority for the so-called “Israel Lobby.” But it’s a […]
The End of Chimerica?
Like the star gazers who last week watched the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, diplomatic observers had a field day watching the penumbra of big power politics involving the United States, Russia and China, which constitutes one of the crucial phenomena of 21st-century world politics. It all began with United States Vice […]
The World Left and the Iranian Elections
The recent elections in Iran, and the subsequent challenges to their legitimacy, have been a matter of enormous internal conflict in Iran, and of seemingly endless debate in the rest of the world — a debate that threatens to linger for some time yet. One of its most fascinating consequences has been the deep divisions […]
Responsibility to Protect?
On July 23, a debate concerning the Responsibility to Protect took place in front of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The responsibility to protect (R2P) is a notion agreed to by world leaders in 2005 that holds States responsible for shielding their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and related crimes […]
“Come Over and Help Us”: A History of R2P
Address to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect, the United Nations, New York, 23 July 2009 The discussions about Responsibility to Protect (R2P), or its cousin “humanitarian intervention,” are regularly disturbed by the rattling of a skeleton in the closet: history, to the present moment. Throughout history, there have […]
Education and Its Cold War Discontents
Andrew Hartman. Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. x + 251 pp. $74.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-230-60010-2. Although world affairs are inherently distant from the local activity of running a school, international events can often heighten a sense of threat from abroad and a related […]
Iran’s “Leftist” Don Quixotes
In the 1970s, when Iran’s Fedayeen and Mojahedin1 groups were engaged in an urban guerrilla struggle against the former Shah’s dictatorial regime, a faction of the Iranian Student Association (ISA) in the United States called Ehyaa2 had managed to convince some in the US Left, in particular America’s Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), that a […]
Riding the “Green Wave” at the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and Beyond
There are many problems with the Campaign for Peace and Democracy’s “Question & Answer on the Iran Crisis,” issued by the CPD on July 7, and widely circulated since then.1 The CPD adopted this format, it tells us, because “some on the left, and others as well, have questioned the legitimacy of and the need […]
Iran’s Green Protesters: “Death to China! Death to Russia!”
Mousavi, Rafsanjani, and their supporters get an F in foreign policy: “‘Death to China!’ and ‘Death to Russia!’ chanted supporters of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi during a sermon by influential former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, according to news reports” (Kristen Chick, Christian Science Monitor, 17 July 2009). “Death to China! Death to Russia!” […]
Antisemitism as Metanarrative
Marvin Perry, Frederick M. Schweitzer, eds. Antisemitic Myths: A Historical and Contemporary Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. xxiii + 352 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-34984-2; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-21950-3. This collection of ninety-some documents is the third major product of a long-term collaboration between historians Marvin Perry and Frederick Schweitzer. It is intended […]
Recapturing the Middle Ground: “Reasonable Belief” in the European Enlightenment
David Jan Sorkin. The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. xv + 339 pp. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-691-13502-1. On January 14, 1791, the Comte de Mirabeau delivered a speech to the National Assembly in defense of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the controversial project […]
Russian Public Wary of Obama
Questionnaire/Methodology (PDF) When President Obama arrives in Russia for the Moscow summit he may face a cool reception. A new poll of Russians, conducted by the Levada Center as part of a larger WorldPublicOpinion.org poll, finds that just 23 percent of Russians have confidence in Obama to do the right thing in international affairs, while […]
The Israeli Idea of a “Palestinian State”
To judge by the next day’s headlines, Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy speech last month was a great success. “Israeli Premier Backs State for Palestinians,” declared the New York Times. “Israel Endorses Two-State Goal,” said the Washington Post. “Netanyahu Backs Palestinian State,” announced the Guardian. He did no such thing, of course, unless by “state” one understands […]
Iran: An Alternative Reading
Iran does not just have an authoritarian system of government, it has a totalitarian one. It is powerful, highly centralised, with sophisticated administrative and control systems, and it applies an ideology that claims to have answers for everything and that seeks to permeate all aspects of life. Instead of a political party and youth organisations, […]
Cinema as a Democratic Emblem1
Philosophy only exists insofar as there are paradoxical relations, relations which fail to connect, or should not connect. When every connection is naturally legitimate, philosophy is impossible or in vain. Philosophy is the violence done by thought to impossible relations. Today, which is to say “after Deleuze,” there is a clear requisitioning of philosophy by […]
