Geography Archives: Middle East

The November ’06 election presents socialists and progressives in the US with a (thankfully) new situation.  The next couple of years offer many opportunities, questions, and dilemmas . If we squarely face the many complications inherent in the current balance of class forces in America, maybe we can help to keep things moving away from […]

For those among us who hoped that 2007 would be a more orderly year in world politics, the current trends have been frustrating.  Over the past few weeks, the Bush administration has pursued the escalation of two major international crises. The first major crisis is taking place in Somalia, where the Ethiopian Army and its […]

  A Sense of History? “Kahin building, kahin trame, kahin motor, kahin mil; sab milta hai yahan par bas milta nahin dil,”1 croons the late Johnny Walker to Sahir Ludhayanvi‘s immortal lyrics (CID, 1956) while ruing the difficulties one has to face in finding true love in a world of industry, automation, and speed.  In […]

  Need a crash course on the present state of the world?  Want to untangle the terminology, separate the victims from the victimizers, understand the dynamics of unilateralism, and deduce what can be done about it all?  I’d like to introduce you to a small literary arsenal. A good place to begin is the book […]

There’s something happeningWhat it is ain’t exactly clearBuffalo Springfield, 1966 Are we in the midst of a momentous turn in world politics?  Donald Rumsfeld has been shuffled out of the Pentagon.  Daniel Ortega, Washington’s nemesis from the Sandinista Revolution of the late 1970s, is back as President of Nicaragua.  Hugo Chavez has been triumphantly re-elected, […]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. […]

Now that I have mastered the art of writing for social change, I have decided to become a famous literary agent!  Of course, before I open my own agency, I’ll need to practice editing.  Luckily, the right manuscript recently came to my attention, and I have just finished crafting this cutting-edge feedback. Dear Karl Marx […]

Les derniers développements politiques au Liban, notamment les événements sanglants du jeudi 26 janvier, ont poussé les représentantes de 15 associations féminines libanaises (dont la « Ligue des droits de la femme libanaise », l’« Association « Wardé Boutros » des femmes communistes », « Kafa », « Les dames de Choueifat »…) ainsi que […]

  Milenko Srećković is a spokesperson for the Balkan anarchist movement FreedomFight and is one of the editors of the webzine www.freedomfight.net. Q: Could you start by telling us a bit about the alternative media initiative you are involved with? A: FreedomFight is an anarchist, alter-globalist movement created in Serbia in 2003.  The FreedomFight movement […]

Nostalgic?  Curious?  Historian? We would like to take this occasion to present to you and your friends our new Web site data base: ISRAELI-LEFT-ARCHIVE.ORG The Web site is built around collections of historical documents from various important sections of the Israeli left and peace forces: Women in Black and other sections of the women’s peace […]

THE ANTI-SURGE GETS ROLLING It’s not about Bush’s surge anymore.  It’s the Antiwar Surge that’s capturing the headlines and threatening to upset all the warmakers’ calculations. On January 27, “a raucous and colorful multitude” (Washington Post) brought their “Out Now!” message to the streets of Washington.  With participants ranging from active duty GIs to members […]

View Current Signatures Sign the Petition To:  U.S. Congress Whereas: the U.S. military occupation of Iraq is a cruel and illegal occupation that has cost nearly 700,000 lives, shattered a viable society, and displaced more than a million people, and Whereas: the occupation itself is the single greatest causative agent of inter-Iraqi violence, and Whereas: […]

Jacques Chirac a fait, lundi 29 janvier, au sujet du programme nucléaire de l’Iran et de ses conséquences possibles au Moyen-Orient, une série de déclarations tranchant avec le discours habituel de la diplomatie française sur ce dossier.  Il parlait à des journalistes du Nouvel Observateur, du New York Times et du International Herald Tribune. Le […]

Le 25 janvier 2007 se tenait, à Paris, la Conférence internationale de soutien au Liban, dite « Paris III », convoquée et présidée par Jacques Chirac. Etaient réunis les représentants de trente-six pays, notamment la secrétaire d’Etat américaine Condolezza Rice, et de quatorze institutions internationales dont le nouveau secrétaire général des Nations Unies Ban Ki-Moon, […]

Veterans, community groups, and campus activists organized an action of solidarity to make the University of Oregon the second school in the nation to visually represent the Iraq death toll.  Two hundred volunteers placed 112,000 white flags around school property, with each flag representing 6 Iraqi lives destroyed during the US occupation.  3,000 red flags […]

Jane Fonda told the crowd at the January 27, 2007 demonstration in Washington DC that it had been 34 years since she had appeared at an anti-war demonstration, due to the lies told about her by the right wing. It has been almost 38 years since my first DC demonstration, the great outpouring of November […]

Absent a national antiwar political formation on the horizon, local politics can point to the wave of the future.  Take Sacramento.  A peace-in is underway at the office of Doris Matsui in the Robert T. Matsui Federal Courthouse, named after her late husband who represented California’s 5th congressional district for over two decades.  She was […]

  The American Historical Association (AHA) is the most prominent professional organization for American historians.  Its annual meeting, held recently in Atlanta, featured abstruse panels and presentations with titles such as “Disciplined Bodies and the Production of Space, Place, and Race: Atlanta’s Latino Day Laborers at the Cusp of the Twenty-First Century” and “The Desire […]

  Hard to tell which is more upsetting: Hrant Dink’s “unsurprisingly shocking” murder, or the hypocrisies uttered by government officials in his wake. Once words of condolences and condemnation are quickly dispensed with — in a monotone reminiscent of a computerized voice telling a caller that “the number you have dialed is not in service” […]

When I was a teenager apprenticing at being a trade unionist and a left winger both, two of my favorite books were Labor’s Untold Story and History of the Great American Fortunes.  I recommend them to any readers desiring a review of our own history as working people here in the United States.  Both are […]