Geography Archives: Russia

The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comandante Hugo Chávez, communicated this Good Friday, 6 April 2012, with the president of the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar al-Assad, with whom he had a telephone conversation in the afternoon. The two presidents, who are united by long-standing personal brotherhood, said they continued to closely follow the […]

In recent weeks, there has been a notable shuffle in the positions of key external players in the Syrian crisis.  Momentum has quite suddenly shifted from an all-out onslaught against the Assad government to a quiet investigation of exit strategies. The clashes between government forces and opposition militias in Baba Amr were a clear tipping […]

  See, also, <chtodelat.wordpress.com>; <seansrussiablog.org>; and <www.sublimeoblivion.com>. | Print  

  Famous Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie recently directed a movie called In the Land of Blood and Honey in which Serbs are depicted as raping Muslim women prisoners during the Bosnian War.  As the movie doesn’t show the conduct of Bosnian soldiers, among the Serbian public it has been characterized as one-sided and anti-Serbian.  We […]

“But see how quickly the slave of yesterday is straightening his back, how the spark of liberty is gleaming even in his half-dimmed eyes” (Lenin 1905 [1963]: 541). Lenin and freedom — it is perhaps a jarring juxtaposition for many.  Was not Lenin the harbinger of what is occasionally called the most dictatorial and authoritarian […]

Still stinging from the “travesty” of their defeat in the United Nations Security Council over the weekend, the United States and the “international community” have already begun to hatch their next ploy for intervention into Syria. On Monday — with the Security Council, and ostensibly diplomacy as well, having been deemed “neutered” by Secretary of […]

Dear Amnesty ([email protected]): “Russia’s threats to abort a binding UN resolution on Syria for the second time are utterly irresponsible,” said José Luis Díaz, Amnesty’s representative to the UN.  “Russia bears a heavy responsibility for allowing the brutal crackdown to continue.”1 With Libya still suffering the lethal consequences of western military “liberation,” with Iran gravely […]

One state or two?  Boycott of Israeli goods or goods from the settlements?  Is the lobby the genesis of American wrongdoing in Palestine or is it imperialism?  The questions — regarding vision, strategy, and analysis — produce sharp cleavages on the Left.  Indeed, generally ones much deeper than they need to be.  And they remain […]

Sasha Lilley: Protests against Wall Street have inspired many people to move their money from big banks to smaller banks and credit unions and encourage others to do the same.  Why might you be skeptical of this effort? Doug Henwood: There are several reasons.  First of all, I think a lot of the big banks […]

  From the editorial board of Skepsis, an appeal to the Russian speople to not to be fooled into thinking their problems can be solved by elections. Don’t Step on That Rake Again! The public mood is changing. Even before the elections, on the streets of Moscow and Petersburg, in the major cities’ (and even […]

Hurray!  Merkel won the day!  It took a long night of backroom bargaining, but except for that Tory, David Cameron, all European Union members agreed to save the euro, save the economy, save the world!  It had been on the brink of disaster, Sarkozy warned on the eve of the meeting: unless we reach agreement […]

Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela.  Cf. Vitaly Churkin, “Russia Against Any Sanctions on Syria” (2 December 2011); “Done Deal: Russia Supplies Cruise Missiles to Syria” (RT, 2 December 2011). var idcomments_acct = ‘c90a61ed51fd7b64001f1361a7a71191’; var idcomments_post_id; var idcomments_post_url; | Print

Shlomo Sand.  The Invention of the Jewish People.  Verso, 2009. By this time already, after 60-plus years of heatedly arguing the topic back and forth, is there anything new and insightful to be said that might have a bearing on the Israel-Palestine conflict and help to bring some political and intellectual closure at long last […]

World Peace Forum Teach-In, Vancouver, Canada, November 12, 2011 (Modified from Notes) We are at what social theorists call a “historic moment,” in which real change suddenly seems possible.  It is therefore all the more important to learn from past struggles.  One of the first lessens of a long history of dissent from the early […]

  The Occupy Wall Street movement has transfixed the nation.  In just a few weeks, it has spread from Manhattan to hundreds of towns and cities, and it has now taken root in other countries.  It has focused the widespread anger that we feel toward a tiny group of extraordinarily rich individuals (the 1%) who […]

What’s the origin of the Islamic Republic’s biggest banking scandal? The financial conglomerate Amir Mansour Arya Investment Development Company allegedly procured several letters of credit from domestic banks totaling $2.8 billion — far above the company’s available collateral.  The Arya Group, founded by Amir Mansour Khosravi and now controlled by his son Mah-Afarid, controlled around […]

  In the wars currently waged on the backs of the Arab revolutions, one particular term stands out in the lexicon of Arab politicians and their columnist and media acolytes: the phrase “convergence of interests,” which has made a big comeback. In Tunisia, liberals of the worst kind, and Islamists of the opportunist variety, have […]

There has been a lot of hand-wringing and moralizing about the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) blocking a resolution in the UN against the government of Syria last week.  China and Russia used a rare double veto as permanent members of the Security Council, and the other three abstained. “During this […]

  As I have understood the task at hand, the editors of Aneek expect me to respond to the question: Is ‘Maoism’ in India an authentic application of ‘Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought’?  Frankly, I am not comfortable with such a positing of the question for it seems to suggest one “correct” interpretation of ‘Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought’ […]

Most Western Marxists suffer from a deep resentment: they have never experienced a successful communist revolution.  For some unaccountable reason, all of those successful revolutions have happened in the ‘East’: Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, China, Vietnam and so on.  And none of the few revolutions in the ‘West’, from Finland to Germany, […]