Geography Archives: Russia

  • 1848

      Mike Rapport.  1848: Year of Revolution.  New York: Basic Books, 2009.  xvi + 461 pp.  $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-465-01436-1. Mike Rapport is one of the few scholars who write European history not as the history of a few select countries, but of the entire continent.  Rapport is at home in the history of the […]

  • Colored Revolutions in Colored Lenses: A Comparative Analysis of U.S. and Russian Press Coverage of Political Movements in Ukraine, Belarus, and Uzbekistan

      This study compared The New York Times‘ and The Moscow Times‘ coverage of the political movements in three former Soviet republics.  Data analysis revealed a clear pro-movement pattern in The New York Times’ reporting.  The U.S. newspaper used more pro-movement sources than pro-incumbent sources.  Overall, The New York Times depicted the protesters favorably and […]

  • The Oliver Kamm School of Falsification: Imperial Truth-Enforcement, British Branch

    An important and perhaps growing feature of official and strong-interest-group propaganda is the resort to personal attacks and flak to keep dissidents at bay and inconvenient thoughts out of sight and mind.  This has been notable over many years in the case of pro-Israel propaganda, where we can observe a positive correlation between upward spikes […]

  • US: From Sanctions to War against Iran?

      Kenneth Katzman: Certainly, as long as the floor is open for talks, there is always a hope for a deal.  But I think, from the US standpoint, the United States is certainly not counting on a deal.  Obviously, the thrust of US policy, I think, is starting to shift, from a focus on getting […]

  • Debating the Strategic Significance of Iran’s Natural Gas

    Following on from our recent post, “Iran, the Competition over Eurasian Natural Gas, and the Revival of Classical Diplomacy in the 21st Century,” we want to draw readers’ attention, first of all, to a very thoughtful comment on that post from Ed Chow, our friend and colleague at CSIS.  Ed generously notes his agreement with […]

  • Year of Resistance: Interview with Eva Golinger

      Listen to Sheehan’s interview with Golinger: Eva Golinger: Venezuela is a very wealthy country in oil and gas reserves.  It’s actually one of the largest oil producers in the world.  It has over 24% of oil reserves in the entire world.  That’s a lot for a country of 27 million people.  And of course […]

  • Transitions between Economic Systems

    The transition out of feudalism to capitalism in Europe, mostly from the 17th to the 19th centuries, took multiple forms.  It was uneven as well, happening in different ways at different rates in different places.  Marx studied that transition’s various dimensions because they offered valuable lessons for the different transition he was interested in: out […]

  • Slouching Toward D.C., Trailing Bags of Tea

    In The Taming of the American Crowd: From Stamp Riots to Shopping Sprees, I argue that unlike the kind of crowds that have surged across the pages of American history and unlike crowds in certain other parts of the world, today’s American crowds seldom even figure in the news.  We have crowds of shoppers, spectators, […]

  • The Manama Dialogue and Iran’s Pivotal Regional Role

      But for Iran, the 6th Manama Dialogue would have failed to achieve its very objective, namely serving as a forum for debating regional security.  Held in Bahrain from 11 to 13 December, the occasion attracted Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki following a two-year absence from the annual event. Senior Iranian officials shunned the 2007 […]

  • Washington’s Two Lost Wars

    The United States has already lost the war in Afghanistan, just as it has lost the war in Iraq. President Barack Obama’s vast expansion of the Afghan war announced Dec. 1, and the extension of the violence into neighboring Pakistan, are intended to camouflage the reality of defeat, as was the Bush Administration’s “surge” in […]

  • Poverty: A Political Football in Iran among Rival Factions

    Iran is not going to the 2010 World Cup, but there is another football being kicked around in the domestic Iranian media: the extent of poverty in Iran. Last month, the Statistical Center of Iran reported that 70 percent of Iranians earn less than a monthly income of $450 for a household of five.  This […]

  • The Current Conjuncture: Short-run and Middle-run Projections

    1. Where We Are: a) The world has entered a depression, whose greatest impact is yet to come (in the next five years). b) The United States has entered a serious decline in geopolitical power, whose greatest impact is yet to come (in the next five years). c) The world environment is entering into serious […]

  • US-Iran Talks: The Road to Diplomatic Failure

      The talks between the G5 plus 1 and Iran are careening toward a premature breakdown.  If they do fall apart, it will be due in large part to a serious diplomatic miscalculation by the Obama administration. Along with its European allies, the Obama administration seized on a plan that cleverly asked Iran to divest […]

  • The Impact of the Crisis on Women in Central and Eastern Europe

      1. Impact on Women in Different Social Groups Financial and economic crises and a rapid loss of existential security are nothing new for women and men in the former socialist bloc countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).  These crises have been a permanent condition of everyday life for the majority of populations in […]

  • Why Are We in Afghanistan?

    Take a look at the map.  Afghanistan is next to or near Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan, and India.  These are all countries that are vitally important to the United States as key allies or enemies, and as potential economic and political competitors.  Afghanistan is also next to Turkmenistan and other Central Asian Republics that are […]

  • The Contradictions of Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez

    On November 7, 2009, the Western media devoted ample space to the Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez.  The news from Havana about the dispute between the dissident and Cuban authorities circled the world and overshadowed the rest of the news.1 Sanchez recounted her mishap in detail on her blog and in the press.  In doing so, […]

  • Christian Communists, Islamic Anarchists?  Part 1

    The defeat of the Marxist emancipatory project has brought an end to radical secular universalism.  The result has been twofold: identity politics and their post-modern ideologies of difference have become the legitimating motifs of Western democracies, whilst radical political Islam has taken the anti-systemic baton of secular Marxism, but subverted it with a brand of […]

  • America Crashes White House Dinner

    (PU) Last night, in another embarrassing lapse of security, nine Secret Service agents were trampled to death when approximately 658,000 U.S. residents of every race, age, and sexual orientation mobbed the White House, demanding admission to a state dinner.  Most explained that their reason for crashing the dinner was to have a chance at appearing […]

  • Barack Obama’s Myopic Iran Policy

    By giving Israel veto rights and threatening more sanctions, the U.S. is squandering the best chance we have for a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Ordinarily, it would have been easy to dismiss the latest resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency censuring Iran as a text, drafted by idiots, full of sound […]

  • On Political Economy and Political Theory

      Jean Paul Sartre in the fifties made the somber remark that things were so bad at the Sorbonne in the 1920s that the University did not even have a Chair in Marxism.  In asserting the fact at that time, he was of course assuming that things at mid-century had changed dramatically and that Marxism […]