Geography Archives: Iraq

Introduction Indigenous peoples in Indo-Afro-Latin America, especially Bolivia and Ecuador, are rising up to take control of their own lives and act in solidarity with others to save the planet.  They are calling for new, yet ancient, practices of plurinational, participatory, and intercultural democracy.  They champion ecologically sustainable development; community-based autonomies; and solidarity with other […]

  In an effort to establish peaceful diplomacy with the government and people of Iran, and to model for the new Obama administration the power of cooperative good will, three highly regarded American peace makers have ventured to Iran.  CodePink cofounders, Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin, along with former Army Colonel and decorated Foreign Service […]

Hakan Ozoglu. Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries.   Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004.  xv + 186 pp.  $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7914-5993-5. Identifying Kurdish nationalism as “one of the most explosive and critical predicaments in the Middle East,” the author notes that “the subject regrettably […]

The American Empire, like other empires in the past, relies on two myths.  The first is that, internally, the American system is a meritocracy.  “Hard work and enterprise can overcome a disadvantage at birth whereas rich good-for-nothings soon lose their wealth.”  The second is that American foreign policy is principled and essentially just.  “It is […]

In the face of mass protests to roll back the recent anti-gay marriage election ballot measures, especially California’s Proposition 8, some leftists are a bit queasy.  Why, they ask, should radicals be so adamant about defending the right of gays and lesbians to enter into an institution that is decidedly mainstream and tied to the […]

The middle-of-the-night eviction last week of an elderly Palestinian couple from their home in East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers is a demonstration of Israeli intent towards a future peace deal with the Palestinians. Abu Dhabi TV, 10 November 2008 Mohammed and Fawziya Kurd are now on the street, living in a tent, […]

The U.S. Congress will vote this week on what to do about the America’s Big Three automakers — Chrysler, Ford, and GM.  GM teeters on the brink of bankruptcy and is screaming for help.  The Bush administration does not want to give more than the$25 billion it has already promised to develop more fuel-efficient cars.  […]

The latest tightening of Israel’s chokehold on Gaza — ending all supplies into the Strip for more than a week — has produced immediate and shocking consequences for Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants. The refusal to allow in fuel has forced the shutting down of Gaza’s only power station, creating a blackout that pushed Palestinians bearing […]

With Barack Obama, the US could improve its position in the Middle East.  Lebanon’s Hezbollah believes that an attack on Iran is unlikely. Nawaf al-Moussawi is Deputy Secretary and a member of the Politburo of Hezbollah in Lebanon.  Al-Moussawi, a Doctor of Philosophy, is Hezbollah’s spokesman for international relations. Mr. al-Moussawi, does the election of […]

  Keith David Watenpaugh.   Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class.   Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.  xi + 325 pp. $37.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-691-12169-7. One of the great modern landmarks of the city of Aleppo is the Baron Hotel.  The Mazloumians, a wealthy Armenian family of […]

PDF: www.nytimes-se.com/pdf Ongoing video releases: www.nytimes-se.com/video The New York Times responds: cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/pranksters-spoof-the-times/ Hundreds of independent writers, artists, and activists are claiming credit for an elaborate project, 6 months in the making, in which 1.2 million copies of a “special edition” of the New York Times were distributed in cities across the U.S. by thousands of […]

  Dear President-elect Obama, Members of the American Iranian Friendship Committee (AIFC) congratulate you on your glorious victory that was felt and admired especially by common men, women and children of all races and economic status in the United States and around the world.  Tuesday, November 4, 2008 is a date that will live in […]

Barack Obama has won.  What happens when what appears to be the people’s victory is also the victory of the economic elite?  Where is that convergence of interests located?  And how long can such a coincidence of interest last?  What are the tasks of the left and the social movements in the face of the […]

Will Obama prove, at the helm of government, that his threats of war against Iran and Pakistan were only words, broadcast to seduce difficult ears during the election campaign? I hope.  And I hope he will not fall, even for a moment, for the temptation to repeat the exploits of George W. Bush.  After all, […]

(PU) Barack Hussein Obama, newly elected President of the People’s Republic of America, today announced his choice of William Ayers, a former leader of the 70s militant antiwar group, the Weather Underground, for U.S. Secretary of Defense.  The appointment allays concerns of many peace movement progressives who had feared that Defense Secretary Robert Gates, overseer […]

Almost eight years of the Bush/Cheney Administration have plunged the world into a deep political, economic, and moral crisis, whose overcoming will probably require decades if a sharp turn does not immediately take place.  That is why the newly elected Obama/Biden Administration must bring about serious change. After having lost the popular national vote against […]

Israel seems to have little time for the irony that a modern Jewish shrine to “coexistence and tolerance” is being built on the graves of the city’s Muslim forefathers. The Israeli Supreme Court’s approval last week of the building of a Jewish Museum of Tolerance over an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem is the latest […]

I’m a sociology teacher, a member of the Pacific Green Party of Oregon, an almost-pacifist, and a libertarian socialist.  My intellectual heroes are people like Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, C. Wright Mills, and Noam Chomsky.  I believe democracy is much more in the streets than in the halls, and that Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin […]

Some of you may have been present at our meeting in this building in May this year, when I recalled what I had said to Lucien Goldman in Paris a few months before the historic French May 1968.  In contrast to the then prevailing perspective of “organized capitalism,” which was supposed to have successfully left […]

The libertarian moment in U.S. bourgeois politics is quickly passing today.  It was burning bright in the spring, when Ron Paul banners were hung from every overpass.  Soon his books will be remaindered.  Libertarians have nothing to say that will get a hearing in a period of crisis.  Libertarianism can rationalize the economic success or […]