Former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday said it was imperative that the Obama administration supported Ireland’s call on the Israeli authorities to ensure safe passage for the Irish-flagged Rachel Corrie to carry humanitarian aid to Gaza, the Irish Times reports. Speaking by satellite phone from on board the Rachel Corrie, Halliday called on Irish-Americans […]
Geography Archives: Iraq
The Real Strategic Challenge That Turkey and Iran Pose to Israel
As the interlinked dramas of Israel’s attack on Turkish civilian ships on the high seas and the Obama Administration’s push for a new Iran sanctions resolution in the Security Council play out, some in the American foreign policy establishment are beginning to realize that the Middle East — and America’s place in it — are […]
Farewell, Robin Wood (1931-2009): The Relevance of a Radical Film Critic
“It is probably impossible today for anyone to make an even halfway commercial movie that shouts, in some positive sense, ‘Revolution!’ as loudly as its lungs can bear, so one must celebrate the films that seem (whether deliberately or not) to imply its necessity.” — Robin Wood1 At a time when comedy shows tell […]
Empire against Democracy
After the Second World War, from which the Allied forces emerged victorious, the government of the United States sought to make the most of its military victory. It structured the Assembly of the United Nations to be led by a Security Council composed of the seven most powerful countries, with veto power over decisions […]
Israel: Persecuting Ameer Makhoul
A leading human rights activist from Israel’s Palestinian Arab minority was charged yesterday with the most serious security offences on Israel’s statute book, including espionage. Prosecutors indicted Ameer Makhoul, the head of Ittijah, an umbrella organization for Arab human rights groups in Israel, with spying on security facilities on behalf of Hizbollah after an alleged […]
Obama Steps Up America’s Covert War against Iran
When, in an Op Ed published in the New York Times in May 2009, we first criticized President Obama’s early decision to continue covert anti-Iranian programs he inherited from George W. Bush, some expressed disbelief that Obama would undermine his own rhetoric about engaging Tehran in a climate of mutual respect by conducting a dirty […]
South Africa: An Unfinished Revolution?
The Fourth Strini Moodley Annual Memorial Lecture, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 13 May 2010 I In her historical novel, A Place of Greater Safety, which is played out against the backdrop of the Great French Revolution through an illuminating character analysis and synthesis of three of that revolution’s most prominent personalities, viz., Maximilien Robespierre, Georges […]
Israeli Public Sector’s Door Closed to Arab Workers
Unemployed computer engineer Morad Lashin would like to work in Israel’s Electricity Company, a large state utility, but admits his chances of being recruited are slim. The reasons were set out in graphic form this month when a parliamentary committee revealed that only 1.3 per cent of the company’s 12,000 workers are Arab, despite the […]
New York Times Tale on BP Oil Spill: From Bad to Worse
The New York Times ran a story on May 4 that advanced a rather unusual argument: BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill was probably bad, but not that bad. Helping the paper flesh out that line was a group called the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, which the Times dubbed “a conservation group in Corpus Christi, […]
The US-Russia START Treaty: Just What Does “Arms Control” Really Mean?
There’s a funny if intimidating gun-nut bumper sticker you may have seen on the road: “gun control means using both hands.” It’s clever, invoking and mocking gun control at the same time. This last week the United States government, by its actions, formally adopted this bumper sticker as its de-facto nuclear weapons and arms control […]
Hooman Majd’s Postcard from Tehran
Author and analyst Hooman Majd traveled to Iran last month and has published an initial report from his travels, “Postcard from Tehran,” in ForeignPolicy.com. Hooman makes a number of important points in his article, which largely reinforce our analysis of Iranian politics since the Islamic Republic’s June 12, 2009 presidential election and of U.S/Western policy […]
Israel’s Stasi Watch over Imams
Job interviews for the position of imam at mosques in Israel are conducted not by senior clerics but by the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, a labor tribunal has revealed. Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajwa, 36, is fighting the Shin Bet’s refusal to approve his appointment as an imam in a case that has lifted the […]
Mohamed ElBaradei on the Iranian Nuclear Issue
As we follow the NPT Review Conference in New York and the enormous salience of the Iranian nuclear issue there, it is useful to consider some recent observations about the Iranian case by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s former Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei. Baradei was in the Boston area last week, where, among other things, […]
Iraq Redux: Defectors, Terrorists, and Unnamed Officials in the Media’s Iran Coverage
On April 25, the Washington Post had another piece on Iran, this time on the front page, that could easily have been run about Iraq back in 2002. We have recently criticized the Post for relying on Green Movement partisans for ostensibly objective “analysis” about Iranian politics. This front page article relies almost entirely on […]
Is the Washington Post Hyping the Iranian Nuclear “Threat” Once Again?
Yet again, the Washington Post has published another highly inflammatory article on Iranian nuclear developments, “Iran’s Advances in Nuclear Technology Spark New Concerns about Weapons,” by Joby Warrick. As we wrote, Warrick co-authored another recent story for the Washington Post on Iran’s nuclear program that “could easily have been run about Iraq back in 2002.” […]
Threatening Iran Is Wrong
The antiwar movement everywhere should be extremely alarmed about the Obama Administration’s declaration in April that Washington can target Iran with nuclear weapons. Although vague “all options are on the table” warnings were also issued under George W. Bush, now the threat of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran is enshrined in the revised […]
Why Are the US and Israel Threatening Iran? And Who Really Rules the World?
Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 while at the same time sending more troops to the Afghanistan War. What has become of the promise of “change”? I am one of the few who are not disillusioned, because I had no expectations. I had written about Obama’s positions and prospects even before […]
The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. New Afrikaners
Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture, Palestine Center, Washington, D.C., 29 April 2010 It is a great honor to be here at the Palestine Center to give the Sharabi Memorial Lecture. I would like to thank Yousef Munnayer, the executive director of the Jerusalem Fund, for inviting me, and all of you for coming out […]
What “Populist Uprising?” Part 2: Further Reflections on an “Astroturf Movement”
The much-ballyhooed Tea Party “movement” that has arisen to absurdly accuse the corporate and imperial Barack Obama administration with “socialism,” “favoring the poor,” and other “radical leftist” crimes claims to be a decentralized, independent, “grassroots,” and popular/populist uprising against concentrated power. Contrary to that claim, Part 1 of our report presented recent polling data showing […]
Obama’s Slippery Slope to Military Strikes on Iran
Today, POLITICO published our newest Op-Ed, “Obama’s Slippery Slope to Strikes on Iran” (excerpts below but also worth reading in full on POLITICO.com). Our piece was prompted by the partial leak of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ January 2010 memo on Iran to the New York Times last week and subsequent statements by Gates and […]
