MLR's blog

With the fall of the USSR in 1991, a new world order of the US/UN as chief superpowers seemed inevitable. The multi-national cooperation against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War seemed to evidence this trend: a US-led internationalist force (diplomatically, militarily, and economically).

With the election of right-wing Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to the presidency of France yesterday, an interesting trend in European politics is beginning to develop. For, while Europe is often characterized as hopelessly liberal and socialistic, recent elections have proven a greater level of conservatism than is given credit in the United States.

Today marks May Day, the international celebration of organized labor/Socialism/Communism, and...fertility?

An interesting dynamic within the US is the relation of modern "culture war" battles over church-state relations and the tradition from which this country rose. For, undoubtedly, the US was formed and governed by European-Americans with strong Judeo-Christian backgrounds and principles, if not practicing religious belief.

As President Bush centers his foreign policy on the "advance of freedom", he re-introduces Wilsonian rhetoric into world affairs which, if only in principle, seems to center on self-determinism for the peoples of the world, especially as the Cold War has opened up former colonies which, though indepedent, were truly split between the US or USSR camps, often with both supporting non-de

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely", or so the saying goes. Nowhere does that seem more evident than in present day Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe's rule has turned into an autocratic regime persecuting political opposition and rewarding itself while exponential inflation racks the country's largely poor population.

Earlier today, suicide bomb attacks in the Algerian capital city of Algiers killed 23 people, only a day after 3 suicide bombers killed themselves pending arrest by Moroccan police in Casablanca.

To mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, and the regime of Saddam Hussein, to US-led coalition forces, thousands of Sh'ia Iraqis answered the call of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and converged on their holy cities to protest the continued US-led occupation of their nation. While such a development is in opposition to the US, this does show some improvements for the situation in Ira