Geography Archives: Middle East

The priority of the Iranian people, according to the Zogby poll released on 13 July 2006,1 is economy: 41% say economy should be Iran’s top priority, a far larger proportion than those who regard nuclear capability (27%) or freedom (23%) as the most important.  The correct priority if you ask me, as the Supreme Leader […]

International intrigues and eventually war — with all its now daily horrors — flow partly from the highly unstable economics of global oil.  Not only has this been true for a long time, it promises to continue that way unless and until some mass movement ends it.  The report of US planning to bomb Iran […]

  As trade union and community activists, socialists, and officials in our respective union organizations, we strongly support the recent Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario resolution supporting the international Boycott Israel campaign.  The resolution criticizes Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian territory, characterizing it as “apartheid.”  It calls on the union to develop an […]

We have pledged to help reclaim the honor of the United States of America.  Accordingly, we call for the impeachment of the president of the United States, George W. Bush. Since lying in combat could needlessly cost the lives of fighting men and women, West Point graduates have been trained to live by a code […]

From August  4th through the 7th, a new incarnation of Students for a Democratic Society  (SDS) will hold its first national convention.  This organization will have been around for almost a year when it meets in Chicago.  Obviously taking its inspiration from the famed US student organization of the 1960s, the new SDS is an […]

How welcomes can vary in content within one week in Germany! In the past four weeks, Germany was seized by a soccer fever which sometimes seemed almost alarming.  The outdoor temperature was steadily hot and dry, but it was the hot fever of flag-waving patriotism — or was it nationalism — which affected so many. […]

Every day I walk from my fashionable neighborhood to the university and pass a pair of very kind, white-uniformed police officers.  They stand in their almost blindingly clean attire, only a block from my crumbling apartment building, smoking Egypt’s cheapest Cleopatra cigarettes and directing traffic.  “Ya Pasha!” they shout, “Habibi!”  This is my daily greeting […]

I received the following open letter from Yassamine Mather, signed by seventeen activists and intellectuals in the Iranian diaspora including herself, and with her permission, I am publishing it here.  Among activists and intellectuals on the Left committed to the advancement of women in particular and the working class in general, as well as to […]

Caracas, 28 Jun. ABN. — Con la finalidad hacerle seguimiento a las relaciones bilaterales y discutir sobre el tema energético, los presidentes de la República Islámica de Irán, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad y la República de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, se reunirán en Teherán a finales de julio. Haga click en la foto para agrandar. Hugo Chávez […]

Click on an image for a larger view. Israel Has the Right to Defend Itself We Didn’t Intend to Kill the Civilians Carlos Latuff, born in Rio de Janeiro on 30 November 1968, is a political cartoonist.  He is the author of the famous “We Are All Palestinians” series, comparing oppressed peoples at various times […]

The AFL-CIO has just formally petitioned the Bush Administration to “take immediate action to stop exploitation by the Chinese government and multinational corporations of workers in China, who are paid as little as 15 cents per hour”  (AFL-CIO, “AFL-CIO Files Workers’ Rights Case Against China ,” Press Release, June 8, 2006).  It appears that the […]

  Flying into Hong Kong with my wife, Amy Demarest, early in the morning of June 8, 2006 and jetlagged, I wasn’t sure I’d be up to the next two days of a fully packed conference on the Cultural Revolution.  The conference was sponsored by the China Study Group, Monthly Review, and the Contemporary China […]

Click on an image for a larger view. Gaza: Free Fire Zone Does the Israeli Army Need Smart Bombs or Smart Soldiers? Accept the Existence of Israel Carlos Latuff, born in Rio de Janeiro on 30 November 1968, is a political cartoonist.  He is the author of the famous “We Are All Palestinians” series, comparing […]

I am so tired of hearing Tel Aviv complain that certain Palestinian factions do not recognize Israel’s right to exist.  Regardless of their opinion of Israel’s right, even Hamas leaders have stated that the fact is that Israel does exist.  Meanwhile, Israel is once again waging a military campaign against the Palestinians that, in essence, […]

Stop the Israeli Attack in Gaza Immediately: A Statement by the Alternative Information Center 29 June 2006 The Alternative Information Center (AIC) strongly condemns the Israeli army’s invasion of the Gaza Strip.  This invasion is a punishment for the results of the democratic Palestinian elections held in January and is irrelevant to the security of […]

In an operation carried out throughout the West Bank and the Jerusalem area early on Thursday, Israeli forces kidnapped some 65 Hamas government ministers, parliament members, and activists in an effort to overthrow the democratically elected Palestinian government.  Palestinians fear that the officials were kidnapped to serve as bargaining chips for negotiating the release of […]

El Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de la República de Cuba ha conocido con extrema preocupación de la operación militar a gran escala iniciada por Israel, desde horas tempranas de la madrugada del 28 de junio del 2006, en la Franja de Gaza, con la movilización de cerca de cinco mil soldados, cientos de tanques y […]

The depth and breadth of bipartisan commitment to the US empire among America’s political elite is best seen in the House vote on HR 282, the “Iran Freedom Support Act,” essentially a bill to “make U.S. sanctions against Iran under ILSA permanent unless there is a change of government in Iran”1:   YEAS NAYS PRES […]

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Iran must really adore the American model of state conduct.  Contrary to popular perceptions, the decision-makers in Tehran agree with their nemesis, Akbar Ganji, who recently told the Voice of America that the West was “the cradle of civilization.”  Two recent moves by Iran are especially noteworthy […]

Against a bloody backdrop of massacres and lynchings aimed at blacks in early 20th century America, W.E.B. DuBois observed that the suffering of the nation’s darker-skinned sons and daughters gave many whites a feeling of “fierce, vindictive joy.”  He further wrote, “A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons […]