Geography Archives: Middle East

  Iranian director Soudabeh Moradian films the daily life of her country, as she sees it, as she lives it, without comment.  A new episode of her chronicles of Iran is broadcast on ARTE.tv each week. Watch five episodes — “The Bus Driver,” “In Front of the University of Tehran,” “To Be 24 Years Old […]

Sofie from Norway Asks What Iranians Would Think about Her Art Project of Having a Woman Pose in Burqa in the Red Light District of Amsterdam Sara in Iran Compares Her Project with Sofie’s Sofie Asks Iranian Women: “Are You Protected in a Burqa?” Sara Answers Sofie’s Question Couscous Global makes and broadcasts movies of […]

This video was first released by EuroPalestine on 11 March 2009.

Patrick Cockburn is the Baghdad correspondent of the Independent and the author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. How do you interpret the latest election results in Iraq? Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has obviously done well and so has his […]

Questions to Young Iranians Young Iranians Discuss Iran’s Government Young Iranians Debate Israel, America, and Iran’s Nuclear Program Young Iranians Debate Obama and Ahmadinejad Couscous Global makes and broadcasts movies of young people in debate all over the world.  The project originated in the audience’s responses to Couscous and Cola, a documentary TV series about […]

A legal battle being waged by Palestinian families to stop the takeover of their neighborhood in East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers has received a major fillip from the recent souring of relations between Israel and Turkey. After the Israeli army’s assault on the Gaza Strip in January, lawyers for the families were given access to […]

The media landscape in the US is changing rapidly.  As all forms of journalists face massive layoffs, analysts fear that journalism’s role as a counterforce against the powerful is in jeopardy.  For progressives and radicals working in media, it’s important to not only question what format news will come in, but also how to approach […]

Iran’s response to a supposedly conciliatory address March 20 by U.S. President Barack Obama has been met with a torrent of “we-told-you-sos” by the U.S. media. The Los Angeles Times reported that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had simply “dismissed President Obama’s extraordinary Persian New Year greeting. . . .” The Christian Science Monitor […]

  On March 24, 1999, NATO began an aerial bombing campaign against what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.  For 78 days, bombs rained down on military targets and civilian infrastructure under the guise of ‘humanitarian intervention.’  Operation Allied Force precipitated the displacement of over one million people and directly resulted in the deaths […]

GAZA CITY, 19 March 2009 (IRIN) — The main kitchenware supplier in Gaza, Al-Dahshan Company, last received a shipment from Israel over two years ago through the Karni crossing. Karni, the only commercial crossing with the facilities to allow large numbers of trucks to enter Gaza, has been closed since June 2007 except for the […]

From the Bush Wars (more Iraq than Afghanistan) to the Obama Wars (more Afghanistan and Pakistan than Iraq). . . . Scenes from the “March on the Pentagon” RallyVideo by William Hughes Hollywood San Francisco Atlanta St. Paul, Minnesota Madison Tacoma

Like 2008, this year is witnessing waves of strikes and demonstrations by Egyptian workers in various sectors and organizations.  Students, pharmacists, lawyers, railway drivers, media people, and even microbus drivers and street cleaners are all demanding more just rights, protesting against their decreasing incentives or trying to rebel against their poor economic status. And as […]

Political,1 more so, militant Islam has become an influential religious and social force in many post-colonial states.2 The militants face very little by way of real political opposition within Muslim-majority societies, but they are now targeted and attacked militarily by the United States, other Western imperial interests, and client post-colonial states. In the context of the war in Iraq, the occupation of Afghanistan, and the “war on terror,” much has been written by people on the left. But, there is little by way of understanding political Islam from a historical materialist perspective. Some months back, however, Samir Amin offered his traditional historical materialist analysis of political Islam (Monthly Review, December 2007) and very briefly touched on a range of issues, such as modernity, secularism and imperialism. Amin has been generally dismissive of political Islam and unambiguous in saying that Islamists have been in the “service of imperialism.”

  اعتراض دانشجویان پلی‌تکنیک به پروژه دفن شهید Beating their chests and wearing black, a procession of young men and women filed toward the gates of Tehran’s Amir Kabir Polytechnic University on February 23.  The mourners — drawn primarily from the ranks of the Basij militia and unaffiliated hardline Islamist vigilantes — were carrying the […]

The Roman historian Tacitus denounced Roman imperialism for its plunder and destruction of its colonies, declaring, “They make a desert and call it peace.”  No phrase is more apt in describing what the U.S. has done in Iraq. Two new studies released by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Oxfam reveal the devastating toll on […]

Obituaries for the Islamic Republic of Iran appeared even before it was born.  In the hectic months of 1979 — before the Islamic Republic had been officially declared — many Iranians as well as foreigners, academics as well as journalists, participants as well as observers, conservatives as well as revolutionaries, confidently predicted its imminent demise.  […]

“Religious despotism is most intransigent because a religious despot views his rule as not only his right but his duty.” — Abdolkarim Soroush The French philosopher Michel Foucault, at the request of one of Italy’s biggest dailies Corriere della Sera, went to Iran to cover the growing unrest and protests against the increasingly despotic regime […]

Last February saw the launch of the Web site “Who Profits?” (URL: ).  The Web site presents an extensive list of Israeli and multinational corporations that are financially involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, whether by the funding of businesses in illegal settlements or by the supply of services, as well as military […]

It’s been several months since the crisis of capitalism was unleashed on the international level, with its epicenter in financial capital and the US economy.  Now we have more evidence that this crisis will be profound and prolonged, affecting all the peripheral economies — including Brazil. Many analyses of the crisis have been published in […]

Barack Obama announces that everyone is coming home except for several dozen thousands of soldiers. President Barack Obama: Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end. Jon Stewart: War — is — over . . . . (swaying to the song “Happy Xmas […]