Geography Archives: Iraq

  Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman is a slim but muscular volume, whose pithy prose goes straight to the heart of the challenges currently facing contemporary feminism.  Constructed as a series of short, cut-to-the-chase essays on a diverse range of ‘raw-nerve’ topics, from Sarah Palin and the War on Iraq to the veil and pornography, […]

The polarization of the debate around WikiLeaks is pretty simple, really.  Of all the governments in the world, the United States government is the greatest threat to world peace and security today.  This is obvious to anyone who looks at the facts with a modicum of objectivity.  The Iraq war has claimed hundreds of thousands, […]

Yesterday was the 10th day of the Muslim holy month of Muharram — commemorated by Shi’a Muslims for centuries as the holy day of Ashura.  (We send our best wishes to all of our readers who are observing this special time.)  One of our readers highlighted something truly striking that happened yesterday, in connection with […]

Scarcely a day after the WikiLeaks disclosures of U.S. State Department cables the U.S. political establishment went ballistic.  Some called for the assassination of WikiLeaks’ spokesperson, Julian Assange, whereas others wanted to amend the 1917 Espionage Act to target the website.  Targeted “denial of service” attacks shut down the web site, and then the political […]

Israeli police have been criticized over their treatment of hundreds of Palestinian children, some as young as seven, arrested and interrogated on suspicion of stone throwing in East Jerusalem. In the past year, criminal investigations have been opened against more than 1,200 Palestinian minors in Jerusalem on stone-throwing charges, according to police statistics gathered by […]

  Hooman Majd: Most average Americans, if they only follow the news on Iran the way it is presented, wouldn’t even know that there is a parliament, wouldn’t even know that there are three branches of government in Iran, like America: there’s the executive; there’s the legislative, which is the parliament; and there’s the judiciary.  […]

  On Sunday, 12 December, the Iran Committee organized a demonstration in Amsterdam against “human rights violations” in Iran.  This committee was initiated by the Centre for Information and Documentation about Israel (CIDI), which is an influential pro-Israel lobby.  The leadership of this committee consists of right-wing politicians, Christian fundamentalists, anti-Muslim racists, and unfortunately a […]

December 3, 2010 Dear President Obama, A week ago, I wrote you on this same subject but since I’ve not yet received a reply either personal or automated, I felt I should try again. As president of Veterans For Peace (VFP), a national organization of military veterans, I want to convey to you our serious […]

After September 11th, 2001, one of the liberal justifications for the military intervention against Afghanistan was the oppression of women, but also of gays, by the Taliban.  People in Europe and the USA received with shock the news that same-sex couples were publicly executed in the Kabul Stadium by bringing down a wall upon them […]

UAW President Bob King and his corporate partners at GM, Ford, and Chrysler-Fiat will blame the competition they’ve rigged on workers and relentlessly degrade them into believing they are worth less and less as profits rise.  That’s not a guess, it’s the drill. History lessons must be revised before the profiteers of war and labor […]

In the run-up to a new round of nuclear talks between the P5+1 and Iran on Monday, Western commentators are re-hashing old arguments that the Islamic Republic is either too politically divided or too dependent on hostility toward the United States for its legitimacy to be seriously interested in a nuclear deal.  From this perspective, […]

Dear Mr. Stewart, Remember your “Rally to Restore Sanity” in DC last October?  I’m sorry, but my sanity remains unrestored.  In fact, I’ve been feeling increasingly deranged.  It’s like I’m speeding down Life’s superhighway at 666 miles per hour, headed for Nut City, where I am due to give my inaugural speech as Mayor. At […]

The corporate media are reliable and consistent.  They consistently focus on the sensational, and they reliably take the position of the US government.  So, it should come as no surprise that the recent release of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks is being covered with much sound and fury, signifying little. On the sensational and gossip-mongering […]

  In eyes that hate your hunger It’s like a jungle sometimes It makes you wonder. . . . The Narcicyst, Yassin Alsalman, is an Iraqi rapper (born in Basra, raised in Dubai, and now living in Montreal, Canada).  Shadia Mansour is a British-born Palestinian singer.  Directed and edited by Ridwan Adhami (Ridzdesign).  Written by […]

The media spin on the latest batch of WikiLeaks revelations gives the impression that, next to Israel, it’s the Arab states that are most energetically pressuring the U.S. to attack Iran.  In terms of the real threat to Iran, that’s definitely putting the cart before the horse. In the first place, the Arab governments mentioned […]

We were struck by a piece published by Reza Marashi — former State Department desk officer for Iran who now works as the National Iranian American Council’s research director.  For us, the most striking passage is the following: It should now be clear that U.S. policy has never been a true engagement policy.  By definition, […]

WikiLeaks document dumps are largely what media want to make of them.  There’s one conventional response, which goes something like this: “There’s nothing new here, but WikiLeaks is dangerous!”  But there’s another option: “There’s nothing here, except for the part that confirms a storyline we’ve been pushing.”  In those cases, WikiLeaks is deemed very, very […]

  Reference ID Date Classification Origin 05TELAVIV1593 2005-03-17 14:02 SECRET Embassy Tel Aviv This record is a partial extract of the original cable.  The full text of the original cable is not available. S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 TEL AVIV 001593 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/14/2015 TAGS: PARM PREL MNUC […]

Since returning to government service to take up his current position, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been a sober skeptic about the wisdom of military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets — under President Obama as well as under President George W. Bush, and regardless of whether such strikes would be carried out by the […]

Negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program are due to start again shortly, and once again the European Union is called upon as a “mediator.”  This is no minor challenge.  With Iran insisting on discussing Israel’s nuclear capacity and the United States preparing a tougher uranium swap agreement, a deal seems as far away as ever.  Nevertheless, […]