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With Kafka, The Ending is at the Beginning

John Banville The New York Review of Books
Kafka's life was itself Kafkaesque, and if you want to know its span and its ending better- the book's author contends and the reviewer agrees - readers need to start at the beginning. The book under review is the third of a three-volume biography that critics widely call definitive.

Fire and Riddles at Hamburg G-20 Conference

Victor Grossman Portside
Victor Grossman reports from Germany, giving a European left perspective on the recently concluded G20 Summit in Hamburg. Was anything accomplished in polished conference rooms and luxurious hotel suites carefully protected from the wild, fiery street scenes? Was it worth hundreds of injured police officers and arrests and millions in damage? His answer: maybe.

What's Next for the French Left?

Cole Stangler The Nation
There is no denying it: The last few months have been disastrous for the French left. As the gospel of neoliberalism goes up in flames across the Channel, French voters have handed over the republic to one of its true believers. These will be trying times for the French working class, and really anyone concerned with the country's collective well-being. Macron's electoral success does not equate with a broad democratic mandate for his policies.

labor

Reactionary Working Class?

Asbjørn Wahl spectrezine
That millions of workers worldwide become "losers" in the process of globalization, should not surprise anyone. Nor that many react with mistrust and blind rebellion. That part of the working class – lacking left political parties with strategies to address this crisis -- are attracted by the extreme right’s verbal anti-establishment rhetoric, is against this background understandable. To understand, however, is not the same as to accept, let alone support.

books

Franz Kafka: In His Times and Ours

Alan Wald Against the Current
For the author of the work under review--much heralded by the reviewer--Czech novelist Franz Kafka was no chronic pessimist or dour, fatalistic misbeliever in human emancipation, but a consistent partisan artist siding with the humiliated.

Declaration of the Third Mediterranean Conference of the Left

European Left
Left parties and movements have a huge role to play to respond to the call and despair of ordinary people in Southern Europe, North Africa and the Mideast. We need to build a movement for social and climate justice, democratic participation, peace and socialism to oppose austerity, oppression, militarization and a lack of democracy.

Friday Nite Videos | April 21, 2017

Portside
Bernie: 'Our Job Is to Radically Transform the Democratic Party'. John Oliver | French Elections. Ode to Joy in Nuremburg. Dirt and Deeds in Mississippi. A Message to Trump from Climate Scientists.

French Elections

The presidential election in France could determine the political future of Europe. John Oliver visits an excessively French bistro to deliver an urgent message to voters.

books

Where Prince Charles Went Wrong

Zoë Heller The New Yorker
Critiquing a somewhat fawning book by a well-trod biographer of the Atlantic aristocracy, the reviewer nevertheless finds enough merit in the work to present a picture of the royals and their long-suffering and sometimes insufferable prince as a window on Britain's royal family and a glimmer as to why masses of British subjects still revere the preposterous institution.

These Are the Elections That Will Decide Europe's Fate

Conn Hallinan Foreign Policy in Focus
While France teeters on the brink of the far right, left parties elsewhere are showing surprising strength. Predicting election outcomes is tricky these days, the Brexit and the election of Donald Trump being cases in point. The most volatile of the upcoming ballots are in France and Italy. Germany's will certainly be important, but even if Merkel survives, the center-right will be much diminished and the left stronger. And that will have EU-wide implications.
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