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The Politics of Non-Proliferation
If there was a time when Iranian analysts and decision makers would question the benefits of continuing to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, it would be now. The IAEA has allowed systematic US intervention in Iran’s nuclear file, paving the way to a third round of sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programme. But while […]
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Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel
In the strange world of Israeli academia, an Arab college lecturer is being dismissed from his job because he refused to declare his “respect for the uniform of the Israeli army.” The bizarre demand was made of Nizar Hassan, director of several award-winning films, after he criticized a Jewish student who arrived in his film […]
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Reviving the Iranian Revolt
At the height of the Iranian revolution in the winter of 1979, French philosopher Michel Foucault described what he was seeing in Tehran as “perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.” “Islam,” he wrote, “– which is not simply a religion, […]
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Interview with Shahla Lahiji on Women’s Presence in the Labor Market: No Vocation Must Be Prohibited for Women
Shahla Lahiji is the first Iranian woman who succeeded in getting a publisher’s license registered in her own name. She founded Roshangaran and Women’s Studies, a publishing house, 23 years ago. Lahiji sees herself in a kind of living history on the question of women’s labor, for her mother was the fifth woman who […]
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Walking Away: The Least Bad Option
Except for a hardy band of neo-con optimists and the official apologists of the Bush regime, almost everyone is agreed today that the United States has gotten itself into a nasty, self-wounding mess in Iraq where it is fighting a drawn-out guerrilla war it cannot win. At the same time, a very large number of […]
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Our Encounter with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
It was a bright, hot July day in Yazd, an ancient, oasis city in central Iran. The five members of our 2007 People’s Peace Delegation were following our tour guide to see one of the city’s famous Wind Towers, which boast a hundreds-years-old form of natural air-conditioning. I had fallen a bit behind the rest […]
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The Futility of Sanctioning Tehran
Do facts matter in international relations? One day after the latest US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) established with high confidence that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, President Bush stepped in front of the cameras to declare that the NIE makes it clear that Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace. […]
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Evidence of Israeli “Cowardly Blending” Comes to Light
It apparently never occurred to anyone in our leading human rights organizations or the Western media that the same moral and legal standards ought be applied to the behavior of Israel and Hizbullah during the war on Lebanon 18 months ago. Belatedly, an important effort has been made to set that right. A new report, […]
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Can the Antiwar Movement Take Advantage of Bush’s “Spectacular” Failure?
“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day “Help fund the good fight. By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]
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From Diego to the People of Iran [De Diego al pueblo iraní]
“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day“Help fund the good fight. By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]
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A Major Reversal? The NIE Report on Iran
“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day “Help fund the good fight. By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]
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In a Hole? Dig Deeper! A Reply to the Left on Ron Paul
“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day “Help fund the good fight. By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]
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Bush Still Spinning Nukes in Iran
“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day “Help fund the good fight. By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]
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World Against War Conference
“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day“Help fund the good fight. By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]
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Bombing for Peace: An Interview with Diana Johnstone
“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day “Help fund the good fight. By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]
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For Whom the Bells Jingle
This time of year, when cute reindeer And ruddy-suited Santa Inspire shoppers everywhere To spend more than they’d planned-ta We’d like to glean for MRZine The money Santa draws, But we are godless communists And can’t appear bourgeois This time of year, when Season’s cheer Means Jesus and things votive, We stand as godless communists […]
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Trading the National Rights of Iranians for Factional Gain
“Help fund the good fight. By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel“To do my part, I just got out my checkbook and wrote a check for $100 to the Monthly Review Foundation. That’s on top of my Monthly Review Associate membership, which I […]
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Response to Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, et al. on Nandigram
We read with growing dismay the statement signed by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and others advising those opposing the CPI(M)’s pro-capitalist policies in West Bengal not to “split the Left” in the face of American imperialism. We believe that for some of the signatories, their distance from events in India has resulted in their falling […]
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Critique of the Arab Left: On Palestine and Arab Unity
The situation of the Arab Left is similar to “the phenomenon of the transformation of the Left” on the global scale and a reflection of it. The reason is simple: the Arab Left, as a general rule though with some exceptions, was never a “Left” in the dialectical materialist sense. It has always been a […]
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The Danger of War Grows: The Scenario Reminiscent of the Iraq War [Die Kriegsgefahr wächst: Das Szenario erinnert an den Irak-Krieg]
Die ständigen Mitglieder des UN-Sicherheitsrats hatten sich im Atomstreit mit dem Iran Anfang Oktober geeinigt: Die Entscheidung über verschärfte Sanktionen wird vertagt, bis die Internationale Atomenergiebehörde (IAEO) einen neuen Bericht über das Atomprogramm Irans vorgelegt hat. Aber so viel Geduld wollten die USA nicht aufbringen. Im Alleingang verschärften sie die Wirtschaftssanktionen, stuften die Revolutionsgarden […]