Geography Archives: Israel

  But for Iran, the 6th Manama Dialogue would have failed to achieve its very objective, namely serving as a forum for debating regional security.  Held in Bahrain from 11 to 13 December, the occasion attracted Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki following a two-year absence from the annual event. Senior Iranian officials shunned the 2007 […]

I’m going to discuss the utility of non-violent resistance as it applies to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict and, specifically, the occupation and blockade of the Gaza strip.  Even more specifically, I’m going to discuss the Gaza Freedom March (GFM), of which I’m one of the organizers.  But before discussing Palestinian non-violence, several things must be […]

  For many Shia Muslims in Lebanon since the late 1970s — particular practices of piety have become part of a discourse that is held up as an alternative to notions of a secular modernity.  In this process, an identity has been forged that is understood to be both pious and modern, and where notions […]

“Sanctions alone cannot eradicate apartheid; that task is ultimately left to the people of South Africa themselves.  But economic pressure and political isolation of the South African government can hasten the day when justice and freedom reign in that troubled land.” — Richard L. Trumka, June 23, 1987 “We call on other workers and unions […]

Western media commentary continues to depict Iran as having “rejected” the Baradei proposal for refueling the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), thereby setting the stage for the Obama Administration to pursue, at a minimum, tougher multilateral and unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic. As we wrote about in The Race for Iran, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr […]

1. Where We Are: a) The world has entered a depression, whose greatest impact is yet to come (in the next five years). b) The United States has entered a serious decline in geopolitical power, whose greatest impact is yet to come (in the next five years). c) The world environment is entering into serious […]

  The talks between the G5 plus 1 and Iran are careening toward a premature breakdown.  If they do fall apart, it will be due in large part to a serious diplomatic miscalculation by the Obama administration. Along with its European allies, the Obama administration seized on a plan that cleverly asked Iran to divest […]

A.S. Dhillon’s recent decision to paint again has to be seen not as his abandonment of creating public installations but as a step towards extending his social practice by specifically addressing the specialized audience of contemporary art.  This transition from the outside to the gallery, the specialized space of art, is a process that began […]

Toufic Haddad: A prisoner exchange would be a real game changer in the Middle East if it is actually able to take place.  I’m less optimistic that it will.  The fact is it would be the first time that a political faction would be able to win such concessions out of Israel.  We’re talking about […]

The defeat of the Marxist emancipatory project has brought an end to radical secular universalism.  The result has been twofold: identity politics and their post-modern ideologies of difference have become the legitimating motifs of Western democracies, whilst radical political Islam has taken the anti-systemic baton of secular Marxism, but subverted it with a brand of […]

The original title for the article that follows was “Response to ‘Raoul Djukanovic’.”  “RD” is the Internet pseudonym of Daniel Simpson, who we mention in our second paragraph (below), and who, as a member of what we refer to as the Bosnia Genocide Lobby, assails us wherever we publish something related to the former Yugoslavia.  […]

  Eric Davis.  Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.  397 pp.  $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-520-23546-5. This review has been a long time coming, but during this time, Davis’s book has become the subject of extensive comment, achieving an almost iconic, certainly landmark, status in […]

Abstract: The terrain of “progressive labor” in the U.S. has shifted dramatically in recent years.  The two-million member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — long associated with the remaking of labor as a force for social justice — has become embroiled in a series of controversies that have alienated past campus, community, and political allies. […]

By giving Israel veto rights and threatening more sanctions, the U.S. is squandering the best chance we have for a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Ordinarily, it would have been easy to dismiss the latest resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency censuring Iran as a text, drafted by idiots, full of sound […]

“The more a ruling class is able to assimilate the foremost minds of the ruled class, the more stable and dangerous becomes its rule.” — Karl Marx A few days back, I received a ‘Dear friends’ email from Mr. Najam Sethi, ex editor-in-chief of Daily Times, Pakistan, announcing that he, together with several of his […]

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 […]

November 29, 2009 The true divides in Latin America — between justice and injustice, democracy and dictatorship, human rights and corporate rights, people’s power and imperial domination — have never been more visible than today.  People’s movements throughout the region to revolutionize corrupt, unequal systems that have isolated and excluded the vast majority in Latin […]

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 […]

26 November 2009 I arrived in Israel at about 15:00 on Wednesday, 25 November afternoon to visit my mother, brother, and sister who are Israeli (and US) citizens resident in Israel since 1973.  My mother has been ill, and this visit was prompted primarily for that reason.  I have visited Israel dozens of times before […]

  The NLG NYC Condemns the Israeli Government for the Detention of African American Political Activists 25 November 2009 The New York City Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild condemns the actions of the Israeli government for its unlawful and racially motivated detention of two African-American political activists. On November 23, 2009, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, […]