Geography Archives: Middle East

When University of Texas faculty members opened the local Austin newspaper in mid-August, many were surprised to read that that their institution was raising funds for an endowed chair to honor Charlie Wilson, described charitably by the paper as “the fun-loving, hard-living former East Texas congressman portrayed by Tom Hanks in last year’s ‘Charlie Wilson’s […]

For some, Barack Obama’s stature as a man of the Left has fallen precipitously, like late autumn leaves shed by branches bowing to the will of winter. Disappointment has often been self-inflicted.  Supporters have dipped their pens deeply into the inkwell of Obama’s inspiring story and written their own lines on Afghanistan, oil drilling, or […]

  On Saturday, after 32 hours on the high seas, I sailed into the port of Gaza City with 45 other citizens from around the world in defiance of Israel’s blockade.  We traveled from Cyprus with humanitarian provisions for Palestinians living under siege.  My family in Michigan was worried sick. They are not naïve.  They […]

As headlines focus on conventions and running mates, the third anniversary of Katrina offers an opportunity to examine the results of disastrous federal, state, and local policy on the people of New Orleans.  Several organizations have released reports in the past week, examining the current state of the city, and grassroots activists have plans to […]

Yehudit Genud hardly feels she is on the frontier of Israel’s settlement project, although the huddle of mobile homes on a wind-swept West Bank hilltop she calls home is controversial even by Israeli standards. Despite the size and isolation of Migron, a settlement of about 45 religious families on a ridge next to the Palestinian […]

GAZA (23 August 2008) – Two small boats, the SS Free Gaza and the SS Liberty, successfully landed in Gaza early this evening, breaking the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. The boats were crewed by a determined group of international human rights workers from the Free Gaza Movement.  They had spent two years organizing […]

In a historic vote on 15 August 2008 in Kathmandu,  Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda), chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M), was elected first Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, where now a “Maoist leads from the top of the world.”  Prachanda garnered 80% of the votes cast in the […]

  As a young Palestinian from Gaza, I had been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to study at the University of California San Diego on a Fulbright scholarship.  The chance to escape Gaza’s confines and immerse myself in an American education was deeply thrilling.  With Israel controlling Gaza’s border exits, air space and sea access — […]

Today’s critical labor struggles revolve around immigrants’ rights, while today’s struggles over immigrants’ rights are grounded in workplace and labor organizing.  Global, national, and local histories have woven these issues tightly together.  In the U.S. we are seeing the beginnings of a multifaceted movement which engages these dynamically linked histories. Twenty-five years ago, U.S. labor […]

On the seventh of December 2006, 3,000 female garment workers went on strike in the Nile Delta town of Mahalla, which is home to 27,000 workers working in a textile mill, shoulder to shoulder.  It’s the biggest textile mill in the region.  These women workers went on strike and started marching in the factory compound, […]

The world has been witness this month to a mini-war in the Caucasus, and the rhetoric has been passionate, if largely irrelevant.  Geopolitics is a gigantic series of two-player chess games, in which the players seek positional advantage.  In these games, it is crucial to know the current rules that govern the moves. Knights are […]

Summary Paul Collier, in an attempt to bring development economics to a wider audience, has written a book that departs from what he calls the “grim apparatus of professional scholarship.”  The result is a book that is almost entirely unverifiable.  What is verifiable turns out to be an elaborate fiction.  Collier’s thesis is based upon […]

  The Orissa police detained Mr. David Pugh, a teacher from the US on 12th August along with advocate Miss Protima Das and an anti-displacement activist Mr. Pradeep who accompanied him assisting in translation and showing the area in Kalinganagar and Sukinda on their way back to Bhubaneswar. They were taken to the Badchan Police […]

Due to its abundance of gas and oil resources, not many countries believe that Iran truly needs nuclear power for energy purposes.  However, when one looks at the energy situation in Iran, it becomes evident that there is in fact a dire need. Iran’s total electricity production capacity stands at 33,000 megawatts (MW).  75% is […]

Perhaps some governments are unaware of the concrete facts, and so for that reason Raúl’s message setting Cuba’s position seemed to us to be very timely.  I shall be generous in the aspects that cannot be dealt with in a brief and precise official statement. The government of Georgia would never have launched its armed […]

“Georgia is a sovereign nation and its territorial integrity must be respected.”  Had George Bush said what he said about Georgia from Beijing about Serbia as well, this is how he would have approached the so-called independence of Kosovo.  The truth, of course, is far from this.  The US was the first country to recognize […]

  This is Vanunu Mordechai from East Jerusalem. I’m the man who exposed Israel’s atomic secretes 22 years ago, in 1986, sentenced to 18 years in prison. Now, since my release in 2004, I have not been allowed to leave Israel. I’m still under Israel’s power, imprisoned in East Jerusalem. Today, I’m reading my message […]

Celebrated Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died on 9 August 2008, at the age of 67, after open-heart surgery.   Here is a video of his most famous poem “Identity Card” (published in 1964): A poet of exile par excellence, Darwish died in exile.   The village of his birth in western Galilee, al-Birwa (whose Arabic […]

Efforts to beat the drums of war for an attack on Iran’s nuclear reactor facilities are promoted in both the USA and Israel scenes.  The recent New York Times opinion piece of July 18th, written by the Israeli historian Benny Morris, serves to consolidate those political forces.  The Jewish opposition here expresses our outrage in […]

The Israeli Coalition for a Middle East Free of Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons demonstrated in a vigil to mark Hiroshima Day in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv on 6 August. Their statement called for An international initiative to create a Middle East free of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, in a […]