Geography Archives: Iraq

Absent a national antiwar political formation on the horizon, local politics can point to the wave of the future.  Take Sacramento.  A peace-in is underway at the office of Doris Matsui in the Robert T. Matsui Federal Courthouse, named after her late husband who represented California’s 5th congressional district for over two decades.  She was […]

  The American Historical Association (AHA) is the most prominent professional organization for American historians.  Its annual meeting, held recently in Atlanta, featured abstruse panels and presentations with titles such as “Disciplined Bodies and the Production of Space, Place, and Race: Atlanta’s Latino Day Laborers at the Cusp of the Twenty-First Century” and “The Desire […]

When I was a teenager apprenticing at being a trade unionist and a left winger both, two of my favorite books were Labor’s Untold Story and History of the Great American Fortunes.  I recommend them to any readers desiring a review of our own history as working people here in the United States.  Both are […]

  President Bush’s troop escalation, the anti-war sentiment of the new Democratic Congress, and the rising cost of the war are motivating thousands of union members to board buses bound for an anti-war protest Jan. 27 in Washington, D.C. A CALL TO ARMS AGAINST WAR: Edward Hysyk, a top District Council 37 official, said unions […]

To endorse the statement below, please go to: www.petitiononline.com/NYCLAW2/petition.html. January 24, 2007 Despite overwhelming rejection of its policies in the November elections, the Bush administration has steadily escalated its war in the Middle East. This has meant not only ordering thousands more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, but arming and financing Israel’s attacks on Lebanon […]

“Un esercito segreto contro di noi ma gli sciiti sapranno resistere” BAGDAD – Si sente braccato e si nasconde.  Non dorme mai più di una notte nello stesso letto.  Qualcuno dei suoi fedelissimi gli ha già voltato le spalle.  Ha perfino trasferito la famiglia in un luogo segreto.  Moqtada al Sadr sente che la fine […]

When Colonel Harry Summers told a North Vietnamese counterpart in 1975 that “[y]ou know you never defeated us on the battlefield,” the reply was: “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.1 News stories surrounding the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq proclaimed the arrival of a long-promised “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA), a […]

Romanticized, demonized, celebrated, denounced — among activists in the United States and Canada, academia is all of these things. It is a gate-keeping institution that shapes and is shaped by relations of power and privilege. It is a site of intense struggle: those who are structurally excluded battle for access, while those who study there fight for affordable and relevant education, and those who work there demand dignity, respect, and living wages. It is a place both where people develop radical politics and transformative visions and where people seclude themselves in insular, disconnected ivory towers. These contradictions are stark. Yet radicals have tried to make use of the academy. Since the 1960s, in particular, graduate school has become an attractive pathway for many activists, but also often an isolating and depoliticizing one. This is still true today, as radicals active in a variety of movements are choosing to go to grad school.

Several weeks ago, with much media fanfare, the James Baker-Lee Hamilton Committee submitted to President George W. Bush its long-awaited, bipartisan report on the U.S. war in Iraq.  On balance, the report provided Bush with a face-saving strategy for pulling out all U.S. combat forces by the beginning of 2008.  The Baker-Hamilton report favors an […]

Passing the grim marker of 3,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq briefly focused Americans’ attention on the war.  But we live in a big country with lots of malls. To be sure, the death of 3,000 soldiers is tragic and sickening, yet we are a nation of over 300 million and most families have not […]

The war that Western powers — primarily US, Israel and Britain — began against the Islamic world after September 11, 2001 is about to enter a new more dangerous phase as their early plans for “changing the map of the Middle East” have begun to unravel with unintended consequences. Codenamed “the war against terror,” the […]

Members of the Service Employees (SEIU) in Northern California are demanding just immigration reform.  That’s not too surprising.  For the past two decades, SEIU has been one of organized labor’s strongest advocates for immigrant rights. This campaign, however, pits SEIU members not against anti-immigrant employers or politicians, but against their union’s top officials.  Dubbing their […]

“Freedom House is an independent non-governmental organization that supports the expansion of freedom in the world.” — Freedom House Freedom House is a small but influential organization based in Washington and New York with more than 120 offices around the world and an annual budget of US$19 million.1  Calling itself “America’s oldest human rights group,” […]

Do the last verbal exchanges between Saddam Hussein and anonymous men a few seconds before his execution prefigure a new conflagration of violence between Sunnis and Shi’is in Iraq?

Was it only two days ago that we read the exultant news stories and saw the frenzied TV news coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein?  I know that I had to turn off CNN in revulsion as the evening progressed. President Bush took time off from his chainsaw assaults on the underbrush of his […]

  GLADYS: Harry had a wonderful life! PERCY: And he had a wonderful death, too! GLADYS: We arrived in Burlington, Thursday evening, December 29th to be with Harry.  Taking care of Harry, in addition to his son Fred and daughter-in- law Amy, was his devoted home helper and amanuensis, Joan Ladoucer. I was with Harry, […]

  Annual Fundraising AppealFriends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers.  Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge.  We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]

  Annual Fundraising AppealFriends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers.  Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge.  We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]

Annual Fundraising Appeal Friends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers.  Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge.  We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]

Annual Fundraising Appeal Friends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers.  Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge.  We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]