Geography Archives: Middle East

Senator McCain, President Bush, and some of their oil industry friends are urging Americans to support overturning a 26-year ban on offshore drilling as a way to bring down gas prices.  Of course, it’s snake oil designed for what the Joe Lieberman campaign affectionately called “low information voters.” As Dean Baker and Nichole Szembrot of […]

From the first day it appeared online, Climate and Capitalism’s masthead has carried the slogan “Ecosocialism or Barbarism: there is no third way.”  We’ve been quite clear that ecosocialism is not a new theory or brand of socialism — it is socialism with Marx’s important insights on ecology restored, socialism committed to the fight against […]

Obama has founded his campaign and become attractive to the American voters in large part on the basis of his position on the Iraq war.  He opposed it publicly since 2002.  He has called it a “dumb” war.  He voted against the “surge.”  He has called for a withdrawal over 16 months of all combat […]

  Frances Hasso.  Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan.  Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East Series. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005.  ix + 231 pp.  Bibliography, index.  $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8156-3087-6. Frances Hasso makes abundantly clear what her book, Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan, […]

This month the Bush administration finally blinked. After years of bluster about “staying the course” and “not rewarding evildoers by talking to them,” a shift in White House declarations indicated that failure is forcing even this President to adjust. First, about Iraq: Three months ago Bush was promising an imminent “Status of Forces Agreement” that […]

“The main actor of the Iranian Revolution was really the crowd.  One American sociologist has described it as ‘the largest protest event in world history’ . . . in fact it had more mass participation than any other major political crisis or revolution.  What is striking about the Iranian crowd is that it’s very, very […]

So far, Bush’s plan to maintain a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq has been stymied by resistance from the Iraqi government.  Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawal of American troops has evidently been joined by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Bush has mentioned a “time horizon,” and John McCain has waffled.  Yet Obama favors leaving […]

Blood and Oil: The Middle East in World War I Part 1: Surprise Attack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuRoWA-t2B0 Part 2: Military Disaster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG-bj-G5me4 Part 3: The Dardanelles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCFVyEWsh5Q Part 4: Suez Advance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbDS3yqQ3a0 Part 5: Gallipoli https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Kl8hLOIvk Part 6: Iraq Expedition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4bUWGBbKr8 Part 7: Caucasus Front https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SudftJJvKuo Part 8: Iraq Revisited https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iUcIg28TYs Part 9: Desert War https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kC5BvoyYmc Part […]

  Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, proposes that Iran sue the U.S. in the World Court to enjoin it against threats to attack Iran. Part 1: The Libya Precedent “We filed papers with the International Court of Justice in the Hague, on behalf of Libya against the US and […]

Fatima Hassan, is a prominent South African human rights lawyer who was part of a South African Human Rights Delegation that in early July visited Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.   The delegation undertook the mission in order to: “support those, Palestinian and Israeli, working daily, by non-violent means, to bring an end to the […]

I attended the big rally with Obama in Berlin Thursday evening, not as a press representative but as one of the crowd.  And what a giant crowd it was!  The news reports counted “over 200,000,” but, to someone sandwiched in so tight I could hardly lift my hand to scratch my itching nose, much less […]

  On the occasion of US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s visit to Berlin, Christine Buchholz, a member of the Left Party executive board, comments: Many hopes are tied to Barack Obama, since George W. Bush is the most unpopular American President ever, and Obama promises to improve the social situation and bring the Iraq […]

The regime that will succeed the nation-state will not be the fruit of preconception or social engineering, but of sociological and political imagination wielded through transformative actions. — Gustavo Esteva Que se vayan todos (‘Let’s get rid of them all’). — message written on the walls of Argentina The No-state Solution Even as the neo-liberal […]

Responding to the Israeli voices and actions noisily advocating a preemptive strike against Iran, Ha-Aretz columnist Uzi Benziman (July 21, 2008) writes, “Before bombing Iran, it would be best [for Israel] to solve the conflict with the Palestinians.  By the way, there does appear to be a link between the two threats.”  While Benziman doesn’t […]

Adam Hanieh, “Palestine in the Middle East: Opposing Neoliberalism and US Power: Part 2,” MRZine, 19 July 2008. Over the last six months, the Palestinian economy has been radically transformed under a new plan drawn up by the Palestinian Authority (PA) called the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan (PRDP).  Developed in close collaboration with institutions […]

Adam Hanieh, “Palestine in the Middle East: Opposing Neoliberalism and US Power: Part 1,” MRZine, 19 July 2008. Neoliberalism, the “New Middle East” and Palestine In the late 1960s, with the definitive collapse of British and French colonialism in the Middle East, the US rose to become the dominant imperial power within the region.  Because […]

Steve Ellner.  Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict, and the Chavez Phenomenon.   Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 2008. Since the arrival of Hugo Chavez on the Venezuelan scene — and later, for the left and the right, on the world scene — he’s been the source of considerable interest.  Is he a new caudillo in […]

Kendall Hale.  Radical Passions: A Memoir of Revolution and Healing.  Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2007.   225pp.  $18.95 (pbk). Radical memoirs of 1960s veterans seem to be coming out in considerable numbers now, and that’s no surprise.  The veterans are getting old and summing up their lives’ experiences, just at the moment when the Iraq war […]

In 2006, things seemed to be going badly for the U.S. military efforts in Iraq.  The Iraq war became a top issue in the 2006 Congressional elections in the United States.  It is generally agreed that the Republicans did poorly in those elections, largely because the U.S. electorate had become disillusioned with the viability and […]

Nine US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this week in a major attack attributed to the Taliban. More US troops have been killed in Afghanistan than Iraq in the past several months. We can expect as a result that the Democrats and their Presidential candidate Obama will intensify their calls for shifting the “war […]