Geography Archives: Iran

(Because most conference participants face repressive conditions in their homelands, individual’s names are omitted from this report. — JR) Part OneA New Pole of Anti-Imperialist Leadership CAIRO, EGYPT — More than 1,500 activists from the Middle East and around the world met in Cairo, March 29-April 1, under the banner “Towards an International Alliance against […]

  Murmurings of a political tsunami are emerging with regards to Israel’s policies towards the “non-Jewish” citizens of the “Jewish democratic state.”  Azmi Bishara, perhaps the most prominent political leader of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, was in the midst of engaging in his routine activities of propagating the rights of the Palestinian Arab […]

For the first time since its rise as a superpower the United States is facing a serious threat to its hegemony across the globe. In February this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed a security conference in Munich that had 250 of the world’s top leaders and officials in attendance, including such luminaries as the […]

Havana.  April 4, 2007 The Camp David meeting has just ended.  We all listened with interest to the press conference by the presidents of the United States and Brazil, as well as news about the meeting and opinions stated. Confronted by the demands of his Brazilian visitor regarding import tariffs and subsidies that protect and […]

  Ron Jacobs is the author of the first comprehensive history of the Weather Underground: The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground.  His articles, essays and reviews have appeared in CounterPunch, Monthly Review,  MRZine, Alternative Press Review, Jungle World, Works in Progress, State of Nature, and a multitude of other places.  Ron […]

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, is also a former head of the Foreign Office’s maritime section, who was personally involved in negotiations on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.  His 27 and 28 March 2007 blog entries disputing the British claim that its sailors, seized by Iran, were in Iraqi […]

From Protest to Resistance I didn’t make it to the march on the Pentagon.  The storm up and down the east coast of the United States knocked down a thirty foot tree in my yard in Asheville, North Carolina, messed up my flight from Asheville to Washington, DC, and left me with a choice of […]

We DO have a chance to reverse this in committee, but we urgently need to make phone calls TODAY. The Supplemental Appropriations bill is scheduled to be marked up in full committee Thursday at 9 am. The list of Members of the full Appropriations committee is given below.  If your Congressional representative is not on […]

JASMINE AND STARS: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran by Fatemeh KeshavarzBUY THIS BOOK Fatemeh Keshavarz, author of Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran, on how literature can be used to create or destroy stereotypes. Q: How did Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran come to be? A: You […]

  I have been very puzzled by how many on the left and in the liberal media seem to imagine that the situation in Iraq and the Middle East is bad for the Imperialists.  They are having a heyday with the so-called WOT. . . . It is going very well for them . . […]

(PU)  Amid growing concern over military losses in Iraq and reports that the US might broaden its presence in the Persian Gulf by attacking Iran, President George W. Bush today called an emergency press conference at the Pentagon.  His purpose, he said, was to alert Americans everywhere to the “nondisputable” fact that, regardless of her […]

  As Christian leaders from the United States, we traveled to the Islamic Republic of Iran at this time of increased tension believing that it is possible to build bridges of understanding between our two countries.  We believe military action is not the answer, and that God calls us to just and peaceful relationships within […]

For those among us who hoped that 2007 would be a more orderly year in world politics, the current trends have been frustrating.  Over the past few weeks, the Bush administration has pursued the escalation of two major international crises. The first major crisis is taking place in Somalia, where the Ethiopian Army and its […]

  Need a crash course on the present state of the world?  Want to untangle the terminology, separate the victims from the victimizers, understand the dynamics of unilateralism, and deduce what can be done about it all?  I’d like to introduce you to a small literary arsenal. A good place to begin is the book […]

There’s something happeningWhat it is ain’t exactly clearBuffalo Springfield, 1966 Are we in the midst of a momentous turn in world politics?  Donald Rumsfeld has been shuffled out of the Pentagon.  Daniel Ortega, Washington’s nemesis from the Sandinista Revolution of the late 1970s, is back as President of Nicaragua.  Hugo Chavez has been triumphantly re-elected, […]

THE ANTI-SURGE GETS ROLLING It’s not about Bush’s surge anymore.  It’s the Antiwar Surge that’s capturing the headlines and threatening to upset all the warmakers’ calculations. On January 27, “a raucous and colorful multitude” (Washington Post) brought their “Out Now!” message to the streets of Washington.  With participants ranging from active duty GIs to members […]

Jacques Chirac a fait, lundi 29 janvier, au sujet du programme nucléaire de l’Iran et de ses conséquences possibles au Moyen-Orient, une série de déclarations tranchant avec le discours habituel de la diplomatie française sur ce dossier.  Il parlait à des journalistes du Nouvel Observateur, du New York Times et du International Herald Tribune. Le […]

To endorse the statement below, please go to: www.petitiononline.com/NYCLAW2/petition.html. January 24, 2007 Despite overwhelming rejection of its policies in the November elections, the Bush administration has steadily escalated its war in the Middle East. This has meant not only ordering thousands more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, but arming and financing Israel’s attacks on Lebanon […]

When Colonel Harry Summers told a North Vietnamese counterpart in 1975 that “[y]ou know you never defeated us on the battlefield,” the reply was: “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.1 News stories surrounding the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq proclaimed the arrival of a long-promised “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA), a […]

  There’s a woman — some call her “Black Hawk Down” lady — who lives in a packed, squalid neighborhood in the middle of Mogadishu and runs a rather simple but grisly museum.  For under a dollar, visitors can view her prized possession, the mangled, mud-splattered nose of a US Black Hawk helicopter that was […]