Geography Archives: Middle East

  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 […]

  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 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 […]

Dear Friends of Lynne Stewart, Immediately following an uplifting rally, Lynne Stewart was escorted by a determined crowd of supporters to jail and is now incarcerated in the Manhattan Correctional Center.  As fortune would have it, she will be there for at least 10 months, perhaps longer, that is, a good part the total term […]

On the night of October 10, Mexican police and soldiers occupied installations of Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LFC), the publicly owned electric company that provided power to Mexico City and the surrounding states.  A few minutes later, center-right Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa decreed the company’s liquidation, merging it with the national power company, […]

In his wild and slanderous “Open Letter to Amnesty International” (signed, fittingly, “Yours, in disgust and despair”),2 The Guardian-Observer‘s veteran reporter Ed Vulliamy explains that two “main concerns” motivated him to draft his repudiation of AI’s choice of Noam Chomsky to deliver this 2009 Stand Up for Justice lecture: One is that the “pain” individuals […]

The Killing Continues Since the suspension of the death penalty in Japan in September of 2009, the US is the only developed nation in the world that continues to execute its citizens — but, perhaps, not for long.  The unmasking of the political agenda behind state-sanctioned killing during the past 25 years and the growing […]

  Judith Butler’s lecture is preceded by Eduardo Mendieta‘s introduction. A certain problem emerges between religion and public life when public criticism of Israeli state violence is taken to be anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish.  For the record, I would like to make clear that some of those criticisms do employ anti-Semitic rhetoric and do engage anti-Semitic […]

  Introduction to Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People by Bertell Ollman The Invention of the Jewish People is divided into two parts.  The first is a long section on the theory of nationalism, whose main characteristic, according to Sand, is the tendency to invent a past that suits the current needs and […]

OK, so the Palestinian Authority will not unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian state.  In fact, the whole issue seems a misunderstanding.  Concerned that the US has backtracked on a two state solution based on the 1967 borders and that Israel was getting the world used to the “fact” that the settlements and the Wall, rather […]

Lynne Stewart in Jail! Protest Lynne Stewart’s incarceration! San Francisco Federal Courthouse, 7th and Mission, SF Monday, November 23, 5:00 pm Dear Friends of Lynne Stewart, I just got off the phone with Lynne Stewart a few minutes ago, that is, late Wednesday (early Thursday, November 19, New York time).  She bravely told me that […]

  Abstract: Using Jowett and O’Donnell’s system of propaganda analysis, the present case study concentrates on America’s dominant propaganda messages, techniques, and media channels used in Iran during the time period between 1951 and 1953.  The chosen period is of historical significance since it entails the Iranian nationalization of oil crisis and the 1953 coup […]

  Director’s Statement I first had the idea to make a film about anti-Semitism when my earlier work Checkpoint was released.  In one of that film’s many reviews, I was called “the Israeli Mel Gibson,” not because of my good looks, but because the views I had expressed, critical of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, […]

  Dina A. Amin.  Alfred Farag and Egyptian Theater: The Poetics of Disguise, With Four Short Plays and a Monologue.  Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008. xxx + 321 pp. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8156-3163-7. This urgently needed book is an investigation of Egyptian theatre through the works of the preeminent Egyptian playwright Alfred Farag (1929-2005), during […]

Is it just me, or is the pontification of Western leaders about corruption in Afghanistan growing rather tiresome? There is something very Captain Renault about it.  We’re shocked, shocked that the Afghans have sullied our morally immaculate occupation of their country with their dirty corruption.  How ungrateful can they be? But perhaps we should consider […]

Prabhat Patnaik.  The Value of Money.  New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2008/New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.  Excerpt: “Introduction.” Prabhat Patnaik is an eminent and prolific economist who has worked creatively for 40 years at the intersection of Marxian and Keynesian theoretical traditions.  In addition to his writings on Marxism and Keynesianism per se, he has […]

Alfred W. McCoy.  Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State.  Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. In the build-up to the Iraq and Afghan wars, liberal humanitarians and neoconservatives alike bantered on and on about the necessity of empire and its capability of removing tyrannical […]

The End of Poverty? is a kind of bookend to Capitalism: A Love Story: if Michael Moore’s movie examines how private enterprise operates at home, writer/director Philippe Diaz ‘s documentary explores what happens when that economic system is exported to the Third World.  As scathing exposes of exploitation these nonfiction films share much — ironic […]

On 3 November 2009, the United States House of Representatives voted 344-36 in favor of House Resolution 867, making it Congress’ official response to the 575-page Report submitted by Justice Richard J. Goldstone to the United Nations Human Rights Council at the conclusion of a “fact-finding” mission on the Gaza conflict.  The Resolution does little […]

“It is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home.” — Edward Said On the afternoon of November 3, 2009, the United States House of Representatives voted in favor of House Resolution 867 (H.Res.867), an AIPAC-backed bill that urges both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to “oppose unequivocally […]