Vijay Prashad is a prominent Marxist scholar from South Asia. He is George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, Connecticut. He has written extensively on international affairs for both academic and popular journals. His most recent book The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the […]
Geography Archives: Israel
Tomorrow’s Tunisia and Egypt: Reform or Revolution?
Arab uprisings are taking place with the historical speed of light. I began writing this piece following the downfall of Tunisian dictator Ben Ali and closed with the imminent downfall of the Egyptian one Hosni Mubarak. The Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings are not, as some armchair pundits called the Tunisian one, Jasmine Revolutions. They […]
Can the Obama Administration Learn Lessons from the Egyptian Uprising?
Karl Marx, in his famous treatise on Louis Bonaparte’s coup d’état of 2 December 1851, pointing out its similarities to the coup undertaken by Napoleon Bonaparte a little over 50 years before, remarked that history has the tendency to repeat itself, ‘the first [time] as tragedy, then as farce’. As with so many other […]
“They Want to Abort This Revolution, But We Will Win”: Interview with Nawal El Saadawi
Amy Goodman: Your feelings today in the midst of this popular rebellion against the Mubarak regime, calling on Mubarak to leave? Do you agree? Nawal El Saadawi: We are in the streets every day, people, children, old people, including myself. I am now 80 years of age, suffering of this regime for half a […]
The Showdown in Cairo!
Tomorrow the Egyptian people will go to the streets en masse to give the final blow to the regime. The people are talking of a rally of millions, and people have been pouring into Midan Atahrir, Tahrir Square, today and heading towards Cairo from the provinces. The regime closed all the roads and stopped the […]
Egypt: On the Appointment of Suleiman As Vice President
Only a few days after the start of the revolution, the regime is beginning to take desperate measures. Appointing Omar Suleiman as vice president means telling everybody that Hosni Mubarak is over and out and that Gamal Mubarak will never be president. At the same time it means telling the people that Suleiman, the man […]
The Shifting Balance of Power in the Middle East: The Cases of Egypt and Lebanon
America’s international standing is under mounting strain on multiple fronts. Nowhere is this more glaring than in the Middle East, where the balance of influence (and hence power) is shifting away from the United States and toward Iran, Turkey, and their allies. This trend may, in fact, accelerate as a consequence of ongoing unrest in […]
Two Scenarios for the People and the Army in Egypt: Interview with Mohammed Ezzeldin
Mohammed Ezzeldin: We have two main scenarios now regarding the relation between the people and the army. We have the Tunisian scenario. There’s a division in the ruling elites, there is division in the regime, so the army will be neutral: the tanks and soldiers and officers in the streets, they are just maintaining the […]
Egypt: Can the Army Neutralize the People?
Hope is a powerful feeling, it is contagious, and it tends to increase geometrically. And hope is exactly what Tunisia gave our Arab people everywhere. Tunisia the land of the revolution where today three martyrs fell in the Kasbah, is still the inspiration of a whole Nation. Our great dormant nation, from Rabat to Baghdad. […]
Egypt and Tunisia: How Do Revolutions Start, and When Do Revolutions End?
Egypt’s revolution is still cooking, but not boiling yet. Today the people took to the streets in a fragmented way, after the police heavy-handedly dispersed the crowd yesterday. In Cairo one demonstrator and one police officer died today in the clashes. That gives an idea of the level of protest; the government is denying this, […]
Egypt Answers Tunisia!
25 January 2011 They do not belong to a political party, they do not follow a particular ideology, they make an appointment on Facebook, an appointment we all laughed about, telling them you cannot have a revolution like you have a blind date, but today in tens of thousands they came. . . . They […]
Tunisia: Interview with Dyab Abou Jahjah
Listen to the interview with Dyab Abou Jahjah: 4th World War: To what extent do you think this popular revolution can achieve not just democratic rights but also something else: social change? Dyab Abou Jahjah: After the dictator left the country, many people of what was the legalized opposition, the parties that were legal […]
The Lesson of the Tunisian Revolution
“Saad Hariri went to the United States and had meetings there. Right after that, the Saudis contacted the Syrians to tell them that they could no longer continue this initiative [of Syria and Saudi Arabia to broker a deal between Hezbollah and Hariri on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon]. . . . The Americans and […]
30,000 March in Tel Aviv against McCarthyism in Israel
30,000 activists, Jews and Arabs, from left-wing parties, movements, and human rights organizations marched in Tel Aviv on Saturday, 15 January 2011, in protest of the Knesset’s decision to set up a committee of inquiry to probe the funding sources of organizations that rightists allege “participate in delegitimization campaigns against Israel Defense Forces soldiers.” “Demonstration […]
Tunisia: The Logic of Revolution
The Tunisian revolution continues to dictate its own logic on all levels. . . . After attempts by regime leftovers to spread chaos by several techniques (cars driving through the streets shooting at people and houses randomly, destroying infrastructure, etc.), the Tunisian people organized itself in committees that spread all across the country, in every […]
Notes on the Tunisian Revolution
From day one it was clear this was a revolution that was not about bread only, it was also against dictatorship and corruption. The revolution was supported by all segments of society. Poor, middle class, and even upper middle class. Especially the middle class showed its claws in the last days in Tunis. Many friends […]
Violent Media Rhetoric Beyond Tucson: When Some Calls for Violence Are Acceptable
The discussion of violent and paranoid rhetoric in the media is long overdue, whether or not it is ever determined that accused Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner was somehow influenced or motivated by such rhetoric. Before the shooting, there had been a remarkable surge of politically motivated violence (FAIR Blog, 1/12/11). Despite media efforts to […]
Arafat’s Ghost
Asʻad Ghanem. Palestinian Politics after Arafat: A Failed National Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. x + 208 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-35427-3; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-22160-5. November 2010 marked the sixth anniversary of the death of Palestinian National Authority (PNA) president Yasser Arafat. For the last two years of his life, the once […]
Tunisia: The Force of Disobedience
Sadri Khiari, Tunisian activist exiled in France since early 2003, is one of the founding members of the Party of the Indigenous of the Republic (PIR), of which he is currently one of the key leaders. He has published, among others, Tunisie. Le délitement de la cité : coercition, consentement, résistance, éditions Karthala, Paris, 2003; […]
Lebanese Bloggers Support Tunisian Protests against “Arab Pinochet”
Lebanese bloggers have joined the chorus of concern over the Tunisian riots that have thus far claimed 24 lives. Sympathy and support is extended to the Tunisian youth protesting the authoritarianism, corruption, and poor economic management of President Zine el Abidine ben Ali, dubbed the “Arab Pinochet” by Lebanese blogger, the Angry Arab. The protests […]
