Geography Archives: Middle East

The status of the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt remains unsettled.  Egypt is under heavy pressure from both Israel and the United States to reestablish control and seal the border.  In an uncharacteristically blunt criticism of the regime of President Husni Mubarak, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified before the House Foreign Affairs […]

At the height of the Iranian revolution in the winter of 1979, French philosopher Michel Foucault described what he was seeing in Tehran as “perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.” “Islam,” he wrote, “– which is not simply a religion, […]

  Shahla Lahiji is the first Iranian woman who succeeded in getting a publisher’s license registered in her own name.  She founded Roshangaran and Women’s Studies, a publishing house, 23 years ago.  Lahiji sees herself in a kind of living history on the question of women’s labor, for her mother was the fifth woman who […]

  Lara Deeb.  An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon.   Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics Series.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. ix + 263 pp. Illustrations, footnotes, glossary, bibliography, index. An Enchanted Modern by Lara Deeb is an important book that illustrates and explores the lives of real, modern, Muslim women.  Published […]

Except for a hardy band of neo-con optimists and the official apologists of the Bush regime, almost everyone is agreed today that the United States has gotten itself into a nasty, self-wounding mess in Iraq where it is fighting a drawn-out guerrilla war it cannot win.  At the same time, a very large number of […]

  Dror Ze’evi.  Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourses in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900.    Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. xiv + 223 pp.  Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. According to one tradition, the Prophet Muhammad once ordered a handsome youth from the tribe of ‘Abd Qays to sit behind him, so that he (the […]

Abstract The global economic system has come to be dominated de facto by institutions subscribing to and enforcing the neoliberal agenda.  Since the end of World War II, these institutions have sought not only to regulate but, in a manner reminiscent of classical colonialism, to control global resources facilitated by the emergence of the neoliberal […]

What a difference a party on the left can mean! US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, at the annual International Security Conference in Munich, stepped up pressure on Germany to send more troops to Afghanistan and commit them to active fighting there, not only in the currently more peaceful north but in the battle-ridden south […]

It is difficult to be critical of Israel without having one’s words misinterpreted, twisted, their meaning inverted.  A controversy centering on the Turin Book Fair is raging in Italy, amid conflicting claims and counter-claims.  French Journalist Pierre Assouline in a recent blog entry further distorted the terms of the debate. The facts are these: The […]

The mark of Cain won’t sprout
from a soldier who shoots
at the head of a child
on a knoll by the fence
around a refugee camp —
for beneath his helmet,
conceptually speaking,
his head is made of cardboard.

Let’s pretend for a moment that Israel and not Gaza is under siege by its Arab neighbors.  The Arabs are preventing all food supplies, medicine, and fuel from reaching starving Israelis.  The reason given: Israel’s refusal to accept the Arab peace initiative (land for peace). What would America and the rest of the world do? […]

At what point does an individual stop supporting the lesser of two evils?  The question became particularly important this primary race, as one man ascended to political stardom ostensibly breaking free from the evils of mainstream politics and creating a platform based on hope and change.  This transcendent figure is presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Searching […]

INTRODUCTION: UNDERSTANDING FOR PEACE Much has been written about the Kenya elections — the rigging and the violence that has ensued, and the way to peace.  But next to nothing has been written regarding the nature of Raila’s Orange Democratic Movement. To struggle for peace, which in turn calls for engaging with the political leadership, […]

Written hurriedly in Caracas February 2008 Background These are some brief impressions and reflections in the midst of a short visit to Venezuela.  For 10 days I traveled with a wonderful group of 23, mainly from the New York City area (with delegates from Washington, DC, Washington State, and myself from Vermont).  It was led […]

The ideology of neoliberal globalization has been on a roll since the early 1980s.  It was not in fact a new idea in the history of the modern world-system, although it claimed to be one.  It was rather the very old idea that the governments of the world should get out of the way of […]

After more than a decade of military aggression and genocidal sanctions, on March 19, 2003, the United States launched its most recent attack against the people of Iraq.  The following day, the people of the world took to the streets in protest.  More than 20,000 turned out in San Francisco to take part in coordinated, […]

The German elections on Sunday, like so many Hollywood films, were full of suspense until the last minute.  Was there also a happy ending?  To use the handy German word combination for Ja and Nein — Jein. The elections were for the legislatures in two of Germany’s sixteen provinces, Hesse and Lower Saxony.  In the […]

The National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) concludes that the mission of Africa Command (Africom) infringes on the sovereignty of African states due to the particularity of Africa’s history and Africa’s current economic and political relationship to the United States.

It was a bright, hot July day in Yazd, an ancient, oasis city in central Iran.  The five members of our 2007 People’s Peace Delegation were following our tour guide to see one of the city’s famous Wind Towers, which boast a hundreds-years-old form of natural air-conditioning. I had fallen a bit behind the rest […]

Saturday 26.1.08: A countrywide relief convoy and Israeli demonstration in solidarity on the Gaza border with a parallel Palestinian demonstration in the Strip. It is impossible to keep one and a half million people in a huge prison, and if you try an explosion is bound to happen, as happened today at the Gaza Strip’s […]