Geography Archives: Middle East

  December 22, 2010 Dancing and singing to a parody of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s “Telephone,” more than forty members and friends of the St Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee (STL-PSC) serenaded holiday shoppers at Best Buy and AT&T stores in Brentwood, MO.  They urged patrons to join the boycott of Motorola products because of the […]

Excerpt: From the descriptions given by the soldiers, one comes to grasp the logic of Israeli operations overall.  The testimonies leave no room for doubt: while it is true that the Israeli security apparatus has had to deal with concrete threats in the past decade, including terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens, Israeli operations are not […]

Chilean government spokeswoman Ena Von Baer declared on Tuesday that her country “supports the establishment of a Palestinian state.”  With this declaration Chile joins Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia, which in past weeks have recognized Palestine as a free and independent state. Von Baer explained that Chile’s support is offered in the context of the […]

When discussing the current state of Iran’s economy, commentators, activists, politicians, and the U.S. government all seem to agree on the massive role played by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).  Stanford University Professor Abbas Milani told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, D.C. in June 2010 that this “military junta” controls “minimally […]

Tehran, December 19, 2010. On what he called “the historic economic night,” President Ahmadinejad appeared on Iranian television to announce the imminent launch of the subsidy reform law, starting with energy prices at midnight (see below for new prices).  He produced an impressive array of facts and figures from memory, hoping to calm fears about […]

Phases of Imperialism Lenin dated the imperialist phase of capitalism, which he associated with monopoly capitalism, from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the process of centralization of capital had led to the emergence of monopoly in industry and among banks.  The coming together (coalescence) of the capitals in these two spheres led to […]

  Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman is a slim but muscular volume, whose pithy prose goes straight to the heart of the challenges currently facing contemporary feminism.  Constructed as a series of short, cut-to-the-chase essays on a diverse range of ‘raw-nerve’ topics, from Sarah Palin and the War on Iraq to the veil and pornography, […]

داد بزن صدات برسه ساکت نباش چون سکوت کنی نوبت تو هم می‌رسه Salome is an Iranian rap artist.  This song is about Israel’s war on Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009.  See, also, Salome, “Grown Green on This Land” (MRZine, 11 February 2010). | Print

The polarization of the debate around WikiLeaks is pretty simple, really.  Of all the governments in the world, the United States government is the greatest threat to world peace and security today.  This is obvious to anyone who looks at the facts with a modicum of objectivity.  The Iraq war has claimed hundreds of thousands, […]

Yesterday was the 10th day of the Muslim holy month of Muharram — commemorated by Shi’a Muslims for centuries as the holy day of Ashura.  (We send our best wishes to all of our readers who are observing this special time.)  One of our readers highlighted something truly striking that happened yesterday, in connection with […]

  Shahla Haeri: There are many misconceptions, but unfortunately the media are so very powerful.  The image that they have created has become so powerful that it becomes very difficult for people to get any other image, any other perceptions, of women in their mind.  There is this tendency to categorize, to generalize and lump […]

Scarcely a day after the WikiLeaks disclosures of U.S. State Department cables the U.S. political establishment went ballistic.  Some called for the assassination of WikiLeaks’ spokesperson, Julian Assange, whereas others wanted to amend the 1917 Espionage Act to target the website.  Targeted “denial of service” attacks shut down the web site, and then the political […]

  On Monday, 13 December 2010, a flash mob hit a fundraiser for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Oakland, California, singing (to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”): We don’t need no bombs and sanctions . . . Hey, AIPAC, leave Iran alone! . . . All in all […]

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation revealed today the text of a secret anti-Palestinian resolution to be voted on by the House of Representatives later in the day.  The full text of the draft resolution, not yet made public officially, is reprinted below.* The resolution, introduced by Rep. Howard Berman, Chair of the […]

Israeli police have been criticized over their treatment of hundreds of Palestinian children, some as young as seven, arrested and interrogated on suspicion of stone throwing in East Jerusalem. In the past year, criminal investigations have been opened against more than 1,200 Palestinian minors in Jerusalem on stone-throwing charges, according to police statistics gathered by […]

  “The silent vigils started with the disappearance of Hasan Ocak, who was detained by police in Istanbul on March 21, 1995.  55 days later, his tortured body was uncovered in a graveyard for unidentified people.  Ocak’s family and friends led the first sit-down protest. . . .” Bijoyeta Das is an independent multimedia journalist […]

  Hooman Majd: Most average Americans, if they only follow the news on Iran the way it is presented, wouldn’t even know that there is a parliament, wouldn’t even know that there are three branches of government in Iran, like America: there’s the executive; there’s the legislative, which is the parliament; and there’s the judiciary.  […]

  On Sunday, 12 December, the Iran Committee organized a demonstration in Amsterdam against “human rights violations” in Iran.  This committee was initiated by the Centre for Information and Documentation about Israel (CIDI), which is an influential pro-Israel lobby.  The leadership of this committee consists of right-wing politicians, Christian fundamentalists, anti-Muslim racists, and unfortunately a […]

  “When you are in love with two persons at the same time. . . .” “I could have married the both of you if I were a man.” “Well, of course I wouldn’t have accepted your proposal while another woman named Ahmad was also involved. . . .” Written, edited, and directed by Saeed […]

  Reed Lindsay: It’s election day in Egypt, the second round of parliamentary balloting.  But in this working-class suburb of Cairo, few people seem to care. “There are no free and fair elections.  All the opposition parties withdrew.  A lot of us are unemployed.  So why should we vote?” “All we are seeing is corruption, […]