Le Monde diplomatique (Oslo)
Eurozine
Le Monde diplomatique (Oslo)
2008-04-10
Summary for Le Monde diplomatique (Oslo) 4/2008
Mathieu Vernerey
Tibet: tremor on the roof of the world
China is worried that recent resentment and resistance among the Tibetans could spread to other major minorities whose traditional territories have been colonised and exploited by the majority Han Chinese. The Tibetans clearly want some form of autonomy, which they are not likely to get.
Pierre Conesa
Is the US a possible threat to Europe
Can the US become a serious threat to Europe in the next twenty years? This topic was not on the agenda at the NATO-summit in Bucurest in the beginning of april, but the American unipolar foreign policy makes the NATO-alliance vunerable, and potentialy harmful, to the European countries.
John Gering and Joshua Yesnowitz
Obama: the Democrats in person
Who Barack Obama is, and what he represents, is just as important in the US presidential nomination campaign as what he says or what he proposes by way of policy. He has come to embody everything the Democratic party has stood for and pursued for 50 years.
Jean Ziegler
Hunger-refugees
Two million refugees try to cross into Europe each year. Using the pseudo-military organisation Frontex, EU defends its borders against the hunger-refugees its own devastating dumping-policy has created.
Philippe Rekacewicz
The world on the move
The UN finds it almost impossible to compute the number of refugees and internally displaced people in the world, let alone do anything to help those who have lost everything to war, persecution, disaster, environmental damage -- and the global economy.
Serge Halimi
To serve and protect
In theory, the United States is in favour of free trade and is the leading advocate of the system. But, faced with a recession and a colossal trade deficit, it is reconsidering, as everyone knew it would.
Kim Bredesen
The war on terror: Al-Arians health is deteriorating
An islamofobic and heavily politicised US justice system is literally killing Sami Al-Arian, the political activist from the Norwegian documentary US vs. Al-Arian.
Renaud Lambert
Mexico: Carlos Slim -- state-sponsored wealth
Mexican Carlos Slim has relegated Bill Gates on the Forbes list of the world's richest men. According to the capitalist myth, talent and hard work is the key to success, and this is the way Slim is presented in the mainstream media. Corruption and connections seem to be closer to the truth. Slim's wealth is almost entirely a result of being given state monopoly and control over nationalized companies.
Jean Gueyras
Armenia: Violence and vote-rigging Yerevan
In the beginning of March the Armenian government started a brutal repression against the peaceful demonstrations that ensued after the, most likely, rigged presidential elections. The new president Serzh Sargsyan will not have an easy task being in charge of a state on the verge of chaos, and having to deal with the as yet unresolved question of the autonomous Nagorno-Karabakh.
Rudi Ghedini
Italy's fragmented left
Post Romano Prodi, a new far left alliance has formed in Italian politics; the Rainbow Left. It's a reluctant grouping, chiefly concerned with denying Silvio Berlusconi yet another return to power in Italy's parliamentary elections on 13-14 April, but lacking contact with (or interest in) the dispersed radicals of the Italian left.
Philippe Rivière
Unrest in the shantytowns of Cape Town
The housing problems in South-Africa is gigantic. In the Western Cape province alone, there's an estimated 500 000 people waiting for a home. Yet, the authorities choose to evacuate illegal settlements, rather than build new homes.
Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui
Arabian democracy in the age of terrorism
Where are the progressive forces in the Arabian world? Since the first Gulf War, most of the Arab states have experience a number of challenges, yet the old leaders have managed to cling on to their power and position. Is there no hope left for democratisation in the Arab world?
Maurice Lemoine
Miami revised
There may soon be a change in Miami's politics. For the first time, Latin American Democratic candidates have a serious chance of challenging the incumbent Republican Cuban Americans in the House of Representatives, with their strong links to the far right and with the privileged exiles who left Cuba soon after Castro's revolution.
Alain Gresh
How enlightment turned into empire
The enlightenment understood and empathized with slaves, and imagined universal freedoms; it professed to believe in human equality across societies, races and continents; and it was at its most profoundly persuasive at exactly the same time that the slave trade, and French participation in it, peaked in the eighteenth century.
Rune V. Harritshøj
Alternative media: The chaotic South-America
What is the role of the alternative media in South-America?
Steffen Moestrup
At the movies: The war always follows you home
Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah portrays the traumas haunting the American society. Traumas that make dysfunctionality and inhumanity the defining characteristics of the US.
Truls Lie
Peter Greenaway: Standing in the shadow of Godard
"I don't particulary wish to have a 'meaning'," said director Peter Greenaway to Le Monde diplomatique's Truls Lie when he met him in Trondheim in March. Is Jean-Luc Godard's vision of film history and will to political change not preferable to Greenaways clichees?
Arnstein Bjørkly
The shots fired in Dallas, Chicago and Salamanca
While the Obama-Clinton ordeal is entering its final stage, and there is speculation on who is most likely to be assassinated, a new president-gets-assassinated-movie hits the theatres. Does Vantage Point offer any reflection on the internal and external threats faced by the US and the West?
Morten Harper
Animation: Satirical exit for Bush jr.
The satirical cartoon Lil' Bush does its best to the trample on the last remaining dignity the Bush administration might still have.
Antonio Negri, Constantin Petcou, Doina Petrescu
What makes a biopolitical space?
Toni Negri discusses the significance urban space plays in new forms of opposition. The city, he says, is where the "political diagonal" intersects the "biopolitical diagram" -- where people's relation to power is most pronounced. Negri's interlocutors are involved in exploring "soft" forms of activism, urban projects that create collectivities on micro, neighbourhood levels. Negri is critical of "soft" forms, however, preferring rupture and revolution over accumulation and gradual change.
Remi Nilsen
Documentary: The book of soul and capital
What is the connection between the multinationals corporate lingo and the brutally repressive regime in Turkmenistan?
Alexander Carnera
Biographies: The fascination for the Revolution
Recently, numerous biographies on Che Guevara, Lenin and Fidel Castro have been published in Scandinavia. What is the reason for this fascination with the old revolutionaries?