Geography Archives: Iraq

Over 300 antiwar protesters took part in a demonstration at the gates to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Dec. 1 as President Barack Obama sought to justify his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Facing police and soldiers at the Highland Falls gate to the Academy, demonstrators repeatedly chanted, “30,000 more! […]

Only a few weeks after US-Iran diplomacy began in earnest, it seems to be heading towards a premature ending.  Rather than tensions reduction, the world has witnessed the opposite.  Iran is refusing to accept a fuel swap deal brokered by the IAEA, the IAEA has passed a resolution rebuking Iran, and Tehran has responded by […]

Discrimination, not culture, keeps families in poverty. Israel’s finance minister was accused last week of trying to deflect attention from discriminatory policies keeping many of the country’s Arab families in poverty by blaming their economic troubles on what he described as Arab society’s opposition to women working. A recent report from Israel’s National Insurance Institute […]

President Barack Obama The White House Washington, D.C. November 30, 2009 Dear President Obama, With millions of U.S. people feeling the fear and desperation of no longer having a home; with millions feeling the terror and loss of dignity that comes with unemployment; with millions of our children slipping further into poverty and hunger, your […]

  Lula from Brazil and Ahmadinejad from Iran.  What is this — the new axis of evil?  No — Luladinejad is a new axis of business. In the latest round of the increasingly warm embrace between Latin America and the Middle East, Lula and Ahmadinejad, meeting in Brazil, signed agreements on energy, trade and agricultural […]

Dear Friends of Lynne Stewart, Immediately following an uplifting rally, Lynne Stewart was escorted by a determined crowd of supporters to jail and is now incarcerated in the Manhattan Correctional Center.  As fortune would have it, she will be there for at least 10 months, perhaps longer, that is, a good part the total term […]

In his wild and slanderous “Open Letter to Amnesty International” (signed, fittingly, “Yours, in disgust and despair”),2 The Guardian-Observer‘s veteran reporter Ed Vulliamy explains that two “main concerns” motivated him to draft his repudiation of AI’s choice of Noam Chomsky to deliver this 2009 Stand Up for Justice lecture: One is that the “pain” individuals […]

Lynne Stewart in Jail! Protest Lynne Stewart’s incarceration! San Francisco Federal Courthouse, 7th and Mission, SF Monday, November 23, 5:00 pm Dear Friends of Lynne Stewart, I just got off the phone with Lynne Stewart a few minutes ago, that is, late Wednesday (early Thursday, November 19, New York time).  She bravely told me that […]

Prabhat Patnaik.  The Value of Money.  New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2008/New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.  Excerpt: “Introduction.” Prabhat Patnaik is an eminent and prolific economist who has worked creatively for 40 years at the intersection of Marxian and Keynesian theoretical traditions.  In addition to his writings on Marxism and Keynesianism per se, he has […]

Alfred W. McCoy.  Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State.  Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. In the build-up to the Iraq and Afghan wars, liberal humanitarians and neoconservatives alike bantered on and on about the necessity of empire and its capability of removing tyrannical […]

The End of Poverty? is a kind of bookend to Capitalism: A Love Story: if Michael Moore’s movie examines how private enterprise operates at home, writer/director Philippe Diaz ‘s documentary explores what happens when that economic system is exported to the Third World.  As scathing exposes of exploitation these nonfiction films share much — ironic […]

On 3 November 2009, the United States House of Representatives voted 344-36 in favor of House Resolution 867, making it Congress’ official response to the 575-page Report submitted by Justice Richard J. Goldstone to the United Nations Human Rights Council at the conclusion of a “fact-finding” mission on the Gaza conflict.  The Resolution does little […]

“It is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home.” — Edward Said On the afternoon of November 3, 2009, the United States House of Representatives voted in favor of House Resolution 867 (H.Res.867), an AIPAC-backed bill that urges both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to “oppose unequivocally […]

When the Iranian Revolution exploded on the world scene three decades ago, John Limbert was a greenhorn diplomat assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.  After that station was taken over by revolutionary students, he spent 14 months as a political hostage in the building that came to be known as the “Nest of Spies.” […]

  Amandla: Early in 2009 you published your book The Great Financial Crisis (coauthored with Fred Magdoff).  Could you reflect now almost a year later on what made the current recession more severe than previous recessions?  Why has it been compared to the Great Depression and what type of recovery are we likely to see? […]

In the months following the outbreak of the financial crisis in late 2007, the general climate among economists and economic commentators was kind of a stupor.  Mainstream economists and conservative politicians — who had clamored for decades for the government to keep its hands off the economy, for balanced budgets, and for taxes as low […]

Juan Cole’s very positive report card for President Barack Obama’s foreign policy is a bit shocking, given his knowledge and frequent enlightening comments.  (“Obama’s Foreign Policy Report Card,” Salon, October 27, 2009.1)  “[Obama] receives his lowest grade for his failure to force America’s chattering classes to take notice,” Cole judges — policy issues resolve into […]

  The Iranian nuclear crisis has been on the international agenda for nearly eight years now.  At the heart of the matter is Iran’s insistence on its right under the IAEA protocols to uranium enrichment, and international concern lest the Islamic regime acquire the capability to develop nuclear weapons should it decide to embark on […]

A shift in US policies toward Iran was already discernible at the end of the Bush presidency.  With the extreme right wing of the neoconservative movement marginalized and the US army bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration amended its policies in accordance with a re-assessment of the United States’ capabilities after the […]

Over 21,000 people in Okinawa protested on Sunday to demand the removal of the US bases from the prefecture, criticizing the plan to only relocate the Futenma US air base from its current location of Ginowan City to the Henoko district of Nago City, also in Okinawa.  US President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive […]