The brutal murder of three nationalist leaders of Balochistan and the ensuing crisis has brought the issue of the Baloch national struggle to the forefront once again, only to be met with feigned surprises and arrogant dismissals by a major part of the rest of Pakistan. We in Pakistan — and particularly those of us […]
Geography Archives: Iraq
Israel Forcefully Condemned at UN Conference against Racism
The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, attended the conference to condemn the Israeli government’s brutal and repressive policy against the Palestinians. The European delegates walked out when he called the government of Israel “racist,” but the Latin Americans stayed. The United States and eight other countries boycotted the event. The Israeli government’s stance against […]
Humanitarian Blues
Conor Foley, The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War, Verso, 2008. All is not well within the world of humanitarian aid organisations. In his new book, The Thin Blue Line, Conor Foley, an experienced aid worker, discusses many of the problems associated with the burgeoning relationship between contemporary aid organisations and recent […]
“What about Cuba, Mr. Obama?”
Barack Obama hopes to be received differently at the summit in Trinidad and Tobago: he can talk about the crisis, his administration’s new positions on Iraq and Iran, and any number of other things, but he can’t escape the fact that what matters most is his position on Cuba. The imperial vision of the United […]
Why Do the NATO Powers Think That Durban 1 Was a Setback and Fear Another at Durban 2?
1. The title of this note is intentional. Over the past twenty years, the Western powers in a military alliance (NATO) have arrogantly cast themselves as representatives of the “international community” and thus marginalized the United Nations, the only institution qualified to speak in its name. This attitude is now systematic, and, in all international […]
Rethink Afghanistan
Part 1: Afghanistan + More Troops = Catastrophe Part 2: Pakistan: “The Most Dangerous Country” Part 3: Cost of War Anand Gopal, Afghanistan Correspondent, Christian Science Monitor: The United States has only forces to go and control certain urban areas. . . . They don’t have the troop size, nor could they conceivably ever […]
Patterns of Adjustment in the Age of Finance: The Case of Turkey as a Peripheral Agent of Neoliberal Globalization
Abstract Following the 2000-01 crisis, Turkey implemented an orthodox strategy of raising interest rates and maintaining an overvalued exchange rate. But, contrary to the traditional stabilization packages that aim to increase interest rates to constrain domestic demand, the new orthodoxy aimed at maintaining high interest rates to attract speculative foreign capital. The end result was […]
Arab Students Marginalized by Israeli Universities
Obstacles to Israel’s Arab minority participating in higher education have resulted in a record number of Arab students taking up places at universities in neighboring Jordan, a new report reveals. Figures compiled by Dirasat, a Nazareth-based organization monitoring education issues, show 5,400 Arab students from Israel are at Jordanian universities — half the number of […]
Demonstration in Baghdad against US Occupation
Thousands of supporters of Shi’i leader Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in Baghdad to demand an end to the “US occupation,” on the sixth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. From early morning, a multitude of youths, waving Iraqi flags and upholding portraits of Muqtada al-Sadr, assembled, despite the relentless rain, in Firdos Square, where, […]
Wrestling with the Past
Sonya Huber. Opa Nobody. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. xvi + 358 pp. Illustrations. ISBN 978-0-8032-1080-6; $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8032-1080-6. In recent years, scholars have grappled with the specific manner in which recent generations of Germans and Austrians have confronted their own familial complicity in Nazism. The narratives revealed by these studies […]
China’s Way Forward? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Hegemony and the World Economy in Crisis
2008 — Annus Horribilis for the world economy — produced successive food, energy, and financial crises, initially devastating particularly the global poor, but quickly extending to the commanding heights of the US and core economies and ushering in the sharpest downturn since the 1930s depression. As all nations strive to respond to the financial […]
Israel Railways Accused of Racism over Sacked Arab Guards
A decision by Israel’s state-owned railway company to sack 150 Arab workers because they have not served in the army has been denounced as “unlawful” and “racist” this week by Arab legal and workers’ rights groups. The new policy, which applies to guards at train crossing points, is being implemented even though the country’s Arab […]
Summer 2009 Medical Mission to Treat Iraqi and Palestinian Refugees in Syria
The home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees for over half a century, Syria has since 2003 taken in over 1 million Iraqi refugees. The International Crisis Group estimates that 57% of Iraqis in Syria are affected by chronic medical conditions and a late 2007 survey conducted by IPSOS found depression and anxiety highly […]
The Obama Stimulus — A View from Cincinnati, Ohio
People in Cincinnati, like others around the country — either having lost their jobs or fearful of losing them — have been waiting anxiously, some desperately, for news that President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan would help them. Now the news has arrived, and the news is that help is coming. Help for the banks and […]
The State of Iraq: An Interview with Patrick Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn is the Baghdad correspondent of the Independent and the author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. How do you interpret the latest election results in Iraq? Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has obviously done well and so has his […]
Media Crisis and Grassroots Response
The media landscape in the US is changing rapidly. As all forms of journalists face massive layoffs, analysts fear that journalism’s role as a counterforce against the powerful is in jeopardy. For progressives and radicals working in media, it’s important to not only question what format news will come in, but also how to approach […]
Turkey’s Falling-out with Israel Deals Blow to Settlers: Ottoman Archives Show Land Deeds Forged
A legal battle being waged by Palestinian families to stop the takeover of their neighborhood in East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers has received a major fillip from the recent souring of relations between Israel and Turkey. After the Israeli army’s assault on the Gaza Strip in January, lawyers for the families were given access to […]
On the Tenth Anniversary of the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia
On March 24, 1999, NATO began an aerial bombing campaign against what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. For 78 days, bombs rained down on military targets and civilian infrastructure under the guise of ‘humanitarian intervention.’ Operation Allied Force precipitated the displacement of over one million people and directly resulted in the deaths […]
Protests Mark the Sixth Anniversary of the Iraq War
From the Bush Wars (more Iraq than Afghanistan) to the Obama Wars (more Afghanistan and Pakistan than Iraq). . . . Scenes from the “March on the Pentagon” RallyVideo by William Hughes Hollywood San Francisco Atlanta St. Paul, Minnesota Madison Tacoma
Bring In the Dead: Martyr Burials and Election Politics in Iran
اعتراض دانشجویان پلیتکنیک به پروژه دفن شهید Beating their chests and wearing black, a procession of young men and women filed toward the gates of Tehran’s Amir Kabir Polytechnic University on February 23. The mourners — drawn primarily from the ranks of the Basij militia and unaffiliated hardline Islamist vigilantes — were carrying the […]
