Geography Archives: Middle East

On July 10, 1996, at a Joint Session of the United States Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a standing ovation for these words: “With America’s help, Israel has grown to be a powerful, modern state. . . .  But I believe there can be no greater tribute to America’s long-standing economic aid to […]

  Brasília — Since the beginning of his trip to the Middle East, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said that the unity of two Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah is essential to the achievement of peace in the region. Today (17 March 2010), after meeting with President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud […]

President Lula da Silva has come under fire from opponents lately for refusing to join the United States’ campaign for increased sanctions against Iran.  Washington recently switched from a brief phase of “engagement” with Iran over its nuclear program to the more aggressive posture of threats and confrontation that had been the strategy of the […]

Yesterday, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) concluded its annual policy conference in Washington, DC.  This year saw the largest-ever turnout for AIPAC’s annual conference, with 7,800 people in attendance, an important percentage of whom were not Jewish but evangelical Protestant Christians.  At the climax of the conference, participants deployed to Capitol Hill to […]

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine salutes the efforts of the Danish comrades in Opror (Rebellion) and Fighters + Lovers to challenge so-called “anti-terror” laws and defend the right to support national liberation movements.  We salute Patrick Mac Manus and all those who struggle around the world in solidarity with the cause of […]

The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India’s Gravest Internal Security Threat.  I’d been waiting for months to hear from them.  I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days.  That was to […]

A red alert from Americans for Peace Now and the National Iranian American Council:* On 3/18/10 Rep. Gohmert (R-TX) began circulating a draft resolution (and seeking original cosponsors on that resolution), “Expressing support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to […]

A Tehran Bureau correspondent in Germany reports on the IranHaus celebration of “cultural dialogue” held at the International Conference Center in Hamburg on 14 March 2010, featuring Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.  “A number of young Iranians were there,” the sight of whom the pro-Green Tehran Bureau correspondent found “very disheartening.”  According to the correspondent, Mashaei, “the […]

  A talk delivered at the conference “The Left in Palestine/The Palestinian Left,” School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 28 February 2010 This talk is dedicated to the memory of my late friend and comrade, the Arab Marxist Jabra Nicola (1912-74). The terms “Right” and “Left” as used in Israel are misleading: they do […]

  “My friend told me to call Israel the ’48 lands while in Gaza.  Here’s one of many reasons why, and why a one-state struggle is the right(er) struggle.” — Max Ajl Targeted Citizens, written, directed, produced, and edited by Rachel Leah Jones for Adalah, surveys discrimination against Palestinian citizens in Israel.  With the participation […]

Most of the Western media failed to report on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s annual, live Nowruz (Persian New Year) address yesterday in his hometown of Mashhad.  Instead they took conventional snippets from his earlier pre-recorded message for state television.  In doing so, the Western media have again missed important content and context regarding Khamenei’s […]

  Even as hundreds of thousands gathered across Iran on Thursday [11 February 2010 — ed.] to mark the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic, it’s worth noting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn’t the religious fanatic he is portrayed as in the West.  In fact, in a country where overt allegiance to fundamentalist Shiism […]

“In the police you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos.” –George Orwell, Shooting An Elephant and Other Essays “. . . the […]

The United States was founded as an “infant empire,” in George Washington’s words.  The conquest of the national territory was a grand imperial venture, much like the vast expansion of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.  From the earliest days, control over the Western Hemisphere was a critical goal.  Ambitions expanded during World War II, as […]

  EM: Over the last couple of years you have been working on the question of religion from a series of perspectives: philosophical, political, sociological, moral, and cognitive.  In your Yale lectures from the fall of 2008, you approached the challenge of the vitality and renewal of religion in world society in terms of the […]

Earlier this week, journalists highlighted U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Poneman’s statement that the Obama Administration had “offered to facilitate Iran’s procurement through the world markets of the medical isotopes its citizens need,” but that “Iran’s leaders apparently prefer to reject the most responsible, cost effective, and timely options to ensure access to medical […]

The standing of Iran’s so-called Green Movement is a deeply serious matter, with potentially profound implications for America’s Iran policy.  Since the Islamic Republic’s June 12, 2009 presidential election, it has become widely accepted among Iran analysts in the United States and the Western political class more broadly that the emergence of the Green Movement […]

The picture we usually get of the Iranian poor in the media is one of two extremes: the wretched of the earth, or the equivalent of Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens.”  (If you remember, Reagan attacked the meager US welfare system by inventing a group of people who did not even exist: pink-Cadillac-driving, children-producing, unwilling-to-work black […]

As an organization that focuses on the critical role of the United States in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jewish Voice for Peace is deeply concerned by the ongoing activities of U.S. organizations whose 501c3 (non-profit) status enables them to raise money from American donors to support and maintain settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. […]

  Athens, Greece, 11.03.10. — Tens of thousands of trade unionists and anti-capitalists demonstrated during a nationwide strike against the cash-strapped government’s austerity measures.  People explain why the have taken to the streets. “Today’s 24-hour general strike was called by GSEE and ADEDY (private and public sector unions).  They are demanding that working people not […]