Geography Archives: Middle East

Soha Béchara, 39 ans, est une figure emblématique de la résistance à l’occupation israélienne dans le Liban sud. Cette ex-militante communiste a été emprisonnée durant dix ans, sans jugement, dans la prison de Khiam, après avoir tenté d’assassiner, en novembre 1988, en pleine guerre, le général Antoine Lahad, chef de l’Armée du Liban sud (ALS), […]

Havana.  April 4, 2007 The Camp David meeting has just ended.  We all listened with interest to the press conference by the presidents of the United States and Brazil, as well as news about the meeting and opinions stated. Confronted by the demands of his Brazilian visitor regarding import tariffs and subsidies that protect and […]

The following is Bernardine Dohrn’s letter to The Nation regarding Christopher Phelps’ “The New SDS“ published in its 16 April 2007 issue. — Ed. The Nation Chicago Christopher Phelps has written a timely but ultimately disappointing article about the vibrant and growing student movement.  He transforms the tough challenges of movement-building into a set of […]

TODAY’S ANTIWAR DILEMMAS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE In March 1965, before ordering the first deployment of U.S. ground troops to Vietnam (U.S. “advisers” had been there for years) President Lyndon Johnson told Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara: “I don’t think anything is gonna be as bad as losing, and I don’t see any way of winning.” […]

  Ron Jacobs is the author of the first comprehensive history of the Weather Underground: The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground.  His articles, essays and reviews have appeared in CounterPunch, Monthly Review,  MRZine, Alternative Press Review, Jungle World, Works in Progress, State of Nature, and a multitude of other places.  Ron […]

Dear Peter Pace, As a lesbian, I often turn, in my quest for moral guidance, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  You, Peter Pace, being Chairman of the JCS, are to me a virtual guru of ethical enlightenment!  So, naturally, I was struck by your recent Chicago Tribune interview, in which you said, “I believe […]

  Judging by the intensity of the debate that plagued much of the 2004 presidential election, the divisiveness of the Vietnam war has not been resolved.  If anything it has festered, inflamed by similar concerns and questions regarding the legality, morality, purpose, and necessity of the war in Iraq.  The continued polemic about a war […]

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, is also a former head of the Foreign Office’s maritime section, who was personally involved in negotiations on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.  His 27 and 28 March 2007 blog entries disputing the British claim that its sailors, seized by Iran, were in Iraqi […]

Boots Riley — The Coup‘s revered, thought-provoking MC — is hoping to utilize a post of his band’s incendiary, anti-war song “Captain Sterling’s Little Problem” on its MySpace Blog as a means to spark a G.I. Rebellion against the War In Iraq. Riley is encouraging The Coup’s 25,000 MySpace friends to download the “Pick A […]

Throughout its history and across its geography, capitalism has swung back and forth between private and state forms.  The former reduces while the latter enlarges the state’s intervention in the economy.  The economic events that precipitate swings (in both directions) have been various mixes of recession and widening inequality.  Political oscillations have paralleled the economic. […]

Q.  2007 is the 140th anniversary of the publication of Volume One of Marx’s Capital.  In your opinion, what is its main contribution to understanding contemporary capitalism? Marx’s object in Capital was to explain capital as a social relation in the fullest dialectical sense and in the process to describe its law(s) of motion.  I […]

From Protest to Resistance I didn’t make it to the march on the Pentagon.  The storm up and down the east coast of the United States knocked down a thirty foot tree in my yard in Asheville, North Carolina, messed up my flight from Asheville to Washington, DC, and left me with a choice of […]

The active imagining of an alternate global politics could hardly be more pressing.  Mounting global inequalities, the turbulence of climate change, and recurring military interventions by Western powers have been the daily fare of the neoliberal world order.  This world order was constructed over the last two decades under the hegemony of the U.S., in […]

We talk often of military service in war as a civic and patriotic duty.  But as the realities of combat and of the battlefield become apparent, patriotic sentiments, political ideologies, and mythologies fade quickly beneath the screams of the unbearable pain of the mutilated and the dying.  Ultimately, warriors fight, kill, and accept injury and […]

The Egyptian writer and novelist Nawal El Saadawi well known both in the Arab world and internationally is facing a political and religious campaign mounted against her by the authorities of Al-Azhar.  Basing themselves on a play written by her entitled “God Resigns at the Summit Meeting” published during the month of January 2007 in […]

In the jargon of military recruiters, “influencers” is the term used to refer to the family members, close friends, and peers of those young women and men who are considering enlistment in the U.S. armed forces.  It’s the circle of people in the daily home, school, work, religious, and social life of the potential inductee […]

Local 2627, DC 37, AFSCME interviews labor leader Houzan Mahmoud. This interview was conducted on March 5, 2007, at an event sponsored by the Center for Study of Working Class Life and cosponsored by U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW).  Houzan Mahmoud is the international representative of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in […]

When people think of militant political action in the United States, their thoughts usually turn to cities like San Francisco, Chicago, and New York.  The South and the Pacific Northwest probably don’t immediately spring to mind.  This is despite the rich legacy of militant labor protest in the filed, woods, and apple orchards of the […]

Raising the minimum wage and increasing the level of social assistance is a component part of challenging the large, low-wage multinationals that make up the vast majority employers of the working poor.  The largest of them all is Wal-Mart. For socialists, Wal-Mart is more than just a series of big retail stores that threaten our […]

His foot, that is.  After four years of conducting an illegal war in Iraq, which has killed almost one million people, maimed, wounded and dislocated millions more, tortured countless thousands, and in general brutalized and destroyed a once sovereign, secular country, wreaking havoc and disgrace in the world for his own country, the military’s top […]