Geography Archives: Middle East

A Ramallah l’enfant éventré par une bombe à fragmentation me regarde les yeux mi-clos comme pour me dire « Pourquoi ? » In Ramallah the child blown apart by a fragmentation bomb looks at me with his half-closed eyes as if to say “Why?” This poem was posted to assawra by Djamal Benmerad, an Algerian […]

An argument at a summer fair in the small town of Muegeln, between Leipzig and Dresden, ended with a mob of fifty drunken young men wielding knives and other weapons and shouting “Foreigners Get Out!” chasing eight men from India — longtime residents in Muegeln — across the town square.  The Indians, some badly wounded, […]

27 August 2007 In July 2007, a group of labour leaders from the U.S. issued a statement opposing the growing international campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The statement was signed by a number of presidents from unions including the American Federation of Teachers, the American Postal Workers Union, the Communication Workers […]

Two years after the devastation of New Orleans highlighted racism and inequality in the US, the disaster continues.  New Orleans’ health care and education systems are still in crisis.  Thousands of units of public housing sit empty.  Nearly half the city’s population remains displaced.  A report released this week by the Institute for Southern Studies […]

  We are writing to ask for your support for a mural on 24th and Capp St that is under attack by Zionists.  The mural depicts related images of struggle by indigenous communities against forces of imperialism, racism, and economic oppression.  Its major theme is breaking down walls — those in Mexico, Palestine, Iraq — […]

St. Louis — A young man from Palestine and another from Israel riveted 400 U.S. military veterans to their seats last week in this city on the Mississippi River.  What captivated the audience was their recent decision to put down the guns they’d pointed at each other for years. The two members of Combatants for […]

“WAR . . . huh . . . yeah What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.” — Edwin Starr‘s No. 1 Hit, “WAR,” 1970 Edwin Starr’s antiwar blockbuster hit Number 1 less than a year after the Vietnam Moratorium brought millions of us into the streets in October 1969. Nearly forty years later, we are […]

(PU) Former Vice President Richard B. Cheney was found dead today at the Daniel Ellsberg Reeducation Center for War Criminals and the Psychopathically Challenged.  Using twine he had pilfered from a macramé class, Mr. Cheney apparently hanged himself after a particularly grueling group therapy session in which participants were asked to go deep within themselves […]

  In recent months Iran has made large strides toward mastering nuclear technology.  Alarmed by these advances, the Bush administration and its European allies have stepped up their hostile actions and threats, specifically: Attempting to prevent the entry into service of Iran’s first nuclear power plant at Bushehr.  The Bushehr reactor will use nuclear fuel […]

This week marks a year since the end of hostilities now officially called the Second Lebanon war by Israelis.  A month of fighting — mostly Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon, and rocket attacks from the Shia militia Hizbullah on northern Israel in response — ended with more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and a small but […]

A Cardinal Principle of Modern Liberalism The basic assumption of modern liberalism is that freedom is involved in an ongoing, all encompassing struggle against a dangerous enemy, totalitarianism.  The existence of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were and still are presented as the quintessential totalitarian formations.  Liberal thinkers stress that totalitarianism is on the […]

If someone can silence whatever he or she doesn’t like, we are all going to be in big trouble soon. While everyone is on holidays, a new blow to online free speech has taken place, and I would like to share it with you and ask for help. Last Friday, my blog was shut down […]

[O]ccupation proceeds from the same ideological infrastructure on which the 1948 ethnic cleansing was erected  [. . .] and in whose name there take place every day detentions and killings without trial.  The most murderous manifestation of this ideology is now in the Territories.  It should and must be stopped soonest.  For that, no expedient […]

Sermon delivered August 5, 2007, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. It may be the fate of humans always to believe that we live at the most important time in history, that our moment is the decisive moment.  But even factoring in this tendency toward collective self-centeredness, it is difficult to ignore that today we face […]

International Statement for a Middle East Free of All Weapons of Mass Destruction Despite the unfolding tragedy in Iraq and the dangerously spiraling crises in the Middle East, another war of an unprecedented scale, this time against Iran, is looming near.  The environmental and human cost of this war would, by comparison, dwarf the suffering […]

Iran is the new Nazi Germany and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new Hitler.  Or so Israeli officials have been declaring for months as they and their American allies try to persuade the doubters in Washington that an attack on Tehran is essential.  And if the latest media reports are to be trusted, it looks […]

حسن جمعه عواد الاسدي رئيس اتحاد نقابات النفط Hassan Juma’a Awad al Assadi, President of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU), spoke to over 200 people at Friends Meeting House in London on Wednesday, 18 July 2007.  The IFOU represents 26,000 workers across Iraq.  They have struck three times against the privatization of Iraqi […]

Farid Esack, a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, is the author of Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression and On Being a Muslim: Finding a Religious Path in the World Today.  A former national commissioner on gender equality appointed by President Nelson Mandela, Esack was active in the […]

The July 2007 elections ended with results beyond the expectations of most observers.  We will watch for possible coming earthquakes. To explain the AKP’s election victory, in addition to the AKP’s own tactics and policies, exogenous factors should be taken into consideration.  These include the large vacuum at the centre right and center left of […]

Ayub Nuri, a Kurdish man from Halabja, was a fixer for the Western media in Iraq (he is now based in New York City, having received a scholarship from Columbia).1  A fixer, in the words of Nuri, is “a journalist’s interpreter, guide, source finder and occasional lifesaver.”2  Local fixers, more or less, shape what foreign […]