Geography Archives: Middle East

The Foreign Ministry of Venezuela condemns the vicious and unfounded campaign to discredit the institutions of the Islamic Republic of Iran, unleashed from outside, to roil the political climate.  The ministry denounces the acts of interference in the internal affairs of Iran, designed to threaten and destabilize the Islamic Revolution. (MPPRE) Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela […]

  Embedded video from CNN Video LEMON: Well, the opposition is up in arms, but there are plenty of people cheering the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Earlier I spoke with an Ahmadinejad supporter.  He is a former political science professor at Tehran University and also a former adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) […]

Hamid Dabashi1 points out that, whatever the truth on the elections, the “fix” has become a “social fact” inasmuch as millions of Iranians are staking their lives on that very belief.  He also pointedly satirizes Orientalist assumptions of the Reading-Lolita-in-Tehran variety and takes the opportunity to remind people that solidarity, not “democracy promotion,” is what […]

Washington, DC (June 16, 2009) — As the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs prepares to mark up the FY2010 budget tomorrow, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation sent today an open letter to subcommittee members calling on them to cut off or, at the minimum, condition military aid […]

Here comes the hysteria and bold-faced lies.  In the wake of the Iranian election, various commentators and so-called reporters in the United States are reacting as if the end of the world was at hand.  Although nobody knows for certain and everyone only has the words of Western press pundits and an angry candidate to […]

Introduction In most countries, political leaders and bosses are using the global economic crisis to once again unleash an attack on workers and the poor.  As part of this, we have seen corporations around the world trying to make workers pay for the crisis by retrenching tens of millions of people.  In the most extreme […]

With high-volume class strife heard in the rumbling of wage demands and the friction of township “service delivery protests,” rhetorical and real conflicts are bursting open in every nook and cranny of South Africa. The big splits in the society are clearer now.  Distracting internecine rivalries within the main left bloc — which saw off […]

I remember that, when I visited the People’s Republic of Poland, during Gierek’s government, I was taken to Osviecim, the most notorious of all concentration camps. There I learned about the horrible crimes committed by the Nazis against Jewish children, women and senior citizens, which resulted from the implementation of the ideas contained in the book Mein Kampf written by Adolph Hitler. Those ideas had been implemented before at the time when the territory of the USSR was invaded in the quest for ‘living space.’ By that time, the governments of London and Paris incited the Nazi chief against the Soviet State.

In May 2007, the battle between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese army broke out in Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon.  Amidst heavy fighting, the Lebanese army had systematically destroyed the entire camp by September 2007.  Two years later, nearly all the rubble has been cleared from the “old camp,” the core of Nahr […]

Barack Obama’s Cairo speech heralds a shift from the Islamophobic rhetoric of the Bush regime, but not from the long-term aims of the U.S. empire. Predictably, Barak Obama’s speech in Cairo came under hysterical criticism from the right.  Sean Hannity screamed that Obama gave “sympathizers of 9/11” a voice on the world stage, Charles Krauthammer […]

June 11, 2009 Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has entered the second week of his hunger strike to protest the policy of isolation and solitary confinement practiced by the Israeli prison administration against Palestinian prisoners. This is an urgent situation and requires broad solidarity and […]

Results of a New Nationwide Public Opinion Survey of Iran before the June 12, 2009 Presidential Elections Executive Summary: In a new public opinion poll across Iran before the critical upcoming June 12, 2009 Presidential elections, a plurality of Iranians said they would vote for incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iranians also continue overwhelmingly to favor […]

  An excerpt from a report published by the Congressional Research Service: “Middle East Elections 2009: Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq” (18 May 2009). Major Candidates and Possible Outcomes The incumbent is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a non-cleric elected in a two-round contest in 2005, who derives support from conservative factions and has opposed any compromise with […]

  Since June 2007 Gaza has been under siege by Israel.  Israel has been preventing the import of food, medical supplies, fuel, electricity and spare parts needed for water and sanitation systems. LifeSource, founded in 2007, is a Palestinian-led collective of people who recognize it is crucial to address the current and unfolding regional water […]

Monday 8 June 2009 We are a group of Iranian academic and antiwar activists in Europe and the United States who, in the past few years, have consistently defended Iran’s national interests in all areas including its right to develop peaceful nuclear technology.  Our varied activities in the face of anti-Iran propaganda by the neoconservatives […]

Dear Friend, In partnership with Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, the Free Gaza Movement (FG) is launching its “Right to Read” campaign which will use the FG boats to deliver textbooks and other educational supplies to universities throughout the occupied Gaza Strip. This is not a charitable endeavor.  Rather it is an act of solidarity and […]

On the US-Iran relationship, President Obama seems to be talking from both sides of his mouth.  From one side we hear promising messages of dialogue and a “new beginning” with Iran; from the other side provocative words that seems to be coming right out of the mouth of his predecessor, George W. Bush. For example, […]

  Every so often someone comes along who is so brave and so inspiring that you just can’t sit by and remain silent when you learn they need your help. We’re writing to you today about one of these rare people. His name is Ezra Nawi. You’ve probably never heard of him, but because you […]

See, also, Food Crisis and the Global Land Grab at , a new Web site set up by Grain. PHNOM PENH, 10 June 2009 (IRIN) — Sam Pov, a rice farmer in Cambodia’s western Battambang Province, is very worried that his land will be taken over by a foreign investor. “I’ve heard the rumours about […]

A community in northern Israel has changed its bylaws to demand that new residents pledge support for “Zionism, Jewish heritage and settlement of the land” in a thinly veiled attempt to block Arab applicants from gaining admission. Critics are calling the bylaw, adopted by Manof, home to 170 Jewish families in Galilee, a local “loyalty […]