Le Coup D’oeil: Call for Writers

Le Coup D’oeil is seeking to bring on emerging writers interested in political issues and provide a forum for their work to be displayed. We also hope to share the workload of provding weekly content in order to maintain visibility in the ever-changing political landscape.  The format for posts has changed since the blog launched last August, but the central goal has remained the same through all the transitional forms: to write well-researched, well-documented work that clarifies current and ongoing political issues and events.

Greece as a proving ground for corporate-backed nationalism.

On May 11, 2012, I posted a SitRep entitled Is There A Civil War in Greece’s Near Future? In that post I got some things right and some things wrong.  Sure enough, a new election was called, the Greek people swung their vote more to the left, Golden Dawn lost seats in the parliament, and violence from the Golden Dawn party has increased.  However, the Greek voters did not swing as far left as I anticipated and the increase in Golden-Dawn-backed violence has been more focused on immigrants than left-leaning Greek citizens.  I believe the Greeks would have swung further left to give SYRIZA the narrow win but a not-so-veiled threat from German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had its intended impact on middle-of-the-road voters with PASOK, New Democracy, and the Democratic Left forming another coalition.

I was premature to think that Golden Dawn members would immediately start attacking fellow Greek citizens when a more obvious target was easily available, immigrants.

Sitrep: Human Rights and the Image of America Abroad

On June 24, former President Jimmy Carter published an op-ed in the New York Times on the United States’ weak adherence to human rights since the turn of the century. Carter posits that America’s turn from human rights “began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public.” He then says that “the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past.”¹

The primary problem with former President Carter’s argument is that America’s abuse of human rights did not begin after 9/11. As James Peck observed, Carter made precisely this argument at the start of

SitRep: Occupy Wall Street’s “Summer Disobedience School!” Workbook

With headlines like “Could the end be near for the Occupy Wall Street movement?” and “Can Occupy Wall Street survive?” one wonders how much longer the Occupy movement will continue. The major events some thought would reinvigorate the movement—May Day and the NATO protests—were underwhelming and derailed by violence (in the case of May Day, at least).¹

To help rejuvenate its efforts, the Occupy movement released its “Summer Disobedience School!” workbook in May.² The workbook’s primary focus is to explore the extent and effects of capitalism over the course of twelve weeks. It aims to do so by