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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Until recently, any proposal to "save" Europe was regarded sympathetically, albeit with skepticism about its feasibility. Today, the skepticism is about whether Europe is worth saving. The European idea is being driven into retreat by the combined force of a denial, an insurgency, and a fallacy. progressives need to ask a straightforward question: Why is the European idea dying? The answers are clear: involuntary unemployment and involuntary intra-EU migration.
Hit that old song again, loud and clear! "Over there, over there, Send the word, send the word, That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming." Yes, sirree! Shades of 1918 and the Battle of the Marne! Shades of 1944 and the beaches of Normandy! But no, not just shades and not just words have already been sent. The U.S. is sending significant military assets to Germany, and to countries bordering Russia.
The U.S. government, following the 9/11 attacks, expressed no intention of reforming its Constitution. It was left free of any procedure for exception or emergency. This does not mean that the United States has remained a more democratic country than France. Attacks against privacy, civil rights, and, above all, habeas corpus have proven even more virulent in the United States than in Europe.
Austria’s far right has suffered a setback, but it would be a mistake to believe the dynamic they created is broken.
Spread the word