Geography Archives: Middle East

  • A Middle Way: The Best Solution to the Nuclear Crisis

      Explaining about a draft agreement on nuclear fuel for the Tehran research reactor, Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Manouchehr Mottaki noted: “The two sides decided to review the draft.  It is being reviewed in Vienna, and Iran will soon declare its viewpoint.”  However, some officials have already voiced their opposition to the recent nuclear […]

  • Electoral Gore: Warlord Violence, Oligarchic Decay, and US Neocolonial Domination in the Philippines

    The mass slaughter of 57 civilians in Maguindanao, the Philippines, on November 23 by a local warlord may seem a minor incident compared with the much more heinous destruction of whole villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan by US drones.  In the Philippines, however, it acquires symbolic density by the resonance of contextual historic factors linked […]

  • The Progressive Quandary About SEIU: A Tale of Two Letters to Andy Stern

    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. […]

  • Barack Obama’s Myopic Iran Policy

    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 […]

  • Of Islands and Their Sons

    (For MAAS BOB, father of the Trade Union.  And for Sam White who singlehandedly impregnated half of the women of Montserrat and so made beautiful cousins for me.  Bless you and may you find peace.) My time is sunrise, dawns and mornings clean before the wickedness comes in.  When I see the Montserrat sunrise I […]

  • Native Orientalists at the Daily Times

    “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 […]

  • The Swiss and the Muslims

    The Swiss, known for cheese, Alps, watches, chocolate, and secret bank accounts, at least two of which are full of holes, have now added a sixth important product: intolerance.  57.5 percent of its 8 million population, or of those who went to the polls, voted to forbid minarets next to Muslim mosques. As nearly everyone […]

  • Military Families Respond to Announcement of Increased Troop Deployments to Afghanistan

    Military Families Speak Out, an organization of over 4,000 military families opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, issued the following statement in response to last night’s speech by President Obama regarding Afghanistan. President Obama’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan by deploying another 30,000 troops has sent the message to military families […]

  • West Point March and Rally Protests Obama’s War Plan

    Over 300 antiwar protesters took part in a demonstration at the gates to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Dec. 1 as President Barack Obama sought to justify his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Facing police and soldiers at the Highland Falls gate to the Academy, demonstrators repeatedly chanted, “30,000 more! […]

  • On Iran’s Plan for New Nuclear Enrichment Facilities

      Daljit Dhaliwal: What do you make of Iran’s announcement to build ten new nuclear enrichment facilities? Ervand Abrahamian: It sounds impressive, but it should be taken as grandstanding for internal public opinion.  Iran is trying to look tough: it’s going to stand up tall against the United States.  The question is what Iran actually […]

  • Washington Can Prevent an Israeli Attack on Iran

    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 […]

  • Israel: Arab Women Workers Need Not Apply

    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 […]

  • Bogus Honduran Elections

    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 […]

  • United Antiwar Movement Tells Obama: No Escalation!

    President Barack Obama The White House Washington, D.C. November 30, 2009 Dear President Obama, With millions of U.S. people feeling the fear and desperation of no longer having a home; with millions feeling the terror and loss of dignity that comes with unemployment; with millions of our children slipping further into poverty and hunger, your […]

  • IMF: Back from the Dead

    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has definitely had a very good crisis.  Just over a year ago, it was an institution on life support: ignored by most developing countries; derided for its failure to predict most crises in emerging markets and its often counterproductive responses to such crises; even called to book by its auditors […]

  • Another Sign of the Times

    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 […]

  • On Being Detained by the Israeli Government

      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, […]

  • Luladinejad

      Lula from Brazil and Ahmadinejad from Iran.  What is this — the new axis of evil?  No — Luladinejad is a new axis of business. In the latest round of the increasingly warm embrace between Latin America and the Middle East, Lula and Ahmadinejad, meeting in Brazil, signed agreements on energy, trade and agricultural […]

  • Brazil-Iran: New Boost to South-South Diplomacy

      Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‘s controversial visit to Brazil further underscored the independence of this country’s diplomacy, and gave Tehran a chance to defend its points of view on the construction of a lasting peace in the Middle East. Ahmadinejad’s one-day trip to Brasilia Monday was the third visit to Brazil by a Middle Eastern […]

  • The Politics of Freedom: Geopolitics, Minority Rights, and Gender

      The Sixth Annual Helen Pond McIntyre ’48 Lecture, Barnard College, 5 November 2009 The right to religious freedom is widely regarded as a crowning achievement of secular liberal democracies, one that guarantees the peaceful coexistence of religiously diverse populations.  Enshrined in national constitutions and international laws and treaties, the right to religious liberty promises […]