Long ago, while earning a library science degree, I worked as a manuscripts processing archivist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I handled letters and materials from the 17th century up through modern times. (More…)
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Heading into the March regional elections, the political landscape in the Veneto, one of Italy’s most politically and economically important regions, displays a dominant centre-right coalition headed by a Northern League (LN) candidate and a weak and disorganized centre-left opposition. (More…)
In Walla Walla, Washington during the early 1980s I could count the punks on the fingers of one hand. We felt like we had it pretty tough. There was the ever-present possibility that some random person would decide they wanted a piece of you. (More…)
It is now more than 30 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, bringing at least a nominal close to one of the most brutal and intractable conflicts in European history. The major paramilitary organizations decommissioned their stockpiles of weapons, the savage tit-for-tat rhythm of atrocity and reprisal ended. People in England, the Republic, and Northern Ireland moved on. Except for those who didn’t. (More…)
This has been the first time in the history of Israel that elections were held in conditions of war. On the eve of the elections, there was intensified military activity and there was great political tension. (More…)
‘If you’re not busy being born you’re busy buying’. All the sales girls in the flash boutiques are made to dress the same and have the same make-up, representing the 1940’s. In fashion as in everything else, capitalism can only go backwards. We’ve nowhere else to go. We’re dead. (More…)
The history of anti-Semitism shows us that one of the motors of pogromist revolts in Poland was the belief that Jews are privileged by the authorities. (More…)
It is not pointless to specify, in order to help us understand our times, through which process the development of capitalism has resulted in a planetary crisis which is the crisis of the economy in its totalitarian functioning. (More…)
Turkey will never be the same again. The papers are filled with news of the crisis in Iraq, Soviet intrigues in Turkey, the persecutions of Christians, fears of a Turkish-Italian war, the hanging of opposition members of the Grand National Assembly, Turkish women demanding votes and claiming complete emancipation, and the Kurds rising in rebellion against the new “infidel,” Kemal Pasha. (More…)
Italy’s fascist movement was built up and installed in power by the most powerful and reactionary sections of the ruling class as their chosen means of perpetuating their profits, power, and class rule. (More…)
Every Ramadan, the terraces of Arnaud Bernard are filled with trays of traditional cakes, which local families consume at night after Iftar. The mayor of Toulouse finds it unbearable and sends in the ‘white and bourgeois’ to impose order in the popular area. (More…)
The young people who have been pushed to the margins of Italian capitalism are creating their own theory with their actions. They have realised not only that there is nothing for them within the present structure, but also that they want nothing from it. They want to destroy it in every form it presents itself, and this involves not only institutions but the people who make them function as such. (More…)