Geography Archives: Middle East

That some reviewers gave Syriana a poor rating is a direct consequence of the journalistic practice of delegating film reviews to uninformed writers.  (The worst example comes from William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “[I]t’s simply not a very good movie. Its story line is populated with so many characters and meaningless names that it’s […]

Harry Magdoff — coeditor of Monthly Review since 1969, socialist, and one of the world’s leading economic analysts of capitalism and imperialism — died at his home in Burlington, Vermont on January 1, 2006. Harry Magdoff was born on August 21, 1913 in the Bronx, the son of working-class Russian Jewish immigrants.  His father worked […]

The summer 2005 revelations by former FBI assistant director W. Mark Felt that he was the source known as Deep Throat that helped bring down Richard Nixon has revived talk among certain US residents regarding the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney.  While I have great reservations about the likelihood of such an event […]

It won’t be a very happy New Year for working people in 2006 . . . at least until November. For working people, the coming year promises to be loaded with danger on the political action front.  Many political battles remain unfinished from 2005, with President Bush and his Republican Congressional majority determined to continue […]

To many of us in the United States, the US contra war against the Nicaraguan government in the 1980s seems like very long ago.  Since the CIA-manufactured defeat of the revolutionary government in Managua — a defeat engineered through mercenary war, media manipulations, CIA and Special Forces covert ops, drug-running and arms smuggling by people […]

In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky posit that the “‘societal purpose’ of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state” (p. 298).1  Lately, however, the media has been taking […]

  Michael D. Yates, “Revelation” (29 October 2005); and “Mobilization” (13 November 2005) It was a mid-Sunday afternoon in late Winter.  We had just finished our match, and I was disappointed with my poor performance.  For some reason I could not prevent my left wrist from turning over when I released my bowling bowl, and […]

Santa came riding a tank Riding a tank came he With cannon guns and beating drums With soldiers, jeeps and marching feet Santa came riding a tank Riding a tank came he Who brings gifts on a tank? What gifts do tanks bring? Ask the children  of Iraq They know And now so do we […]

Randy Rowland I just got off the phone with Randy Rowland in Seattle.  For those readers who don’t know, Randy was a a GI resister and a member of the Presidio 27 — one of the first acts of GI resistance to the Vietnam War. When I spoke with him, Randy had just returned from […]

“Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” — I.F. Stone Photo by Keith Jenkins/Burnt Pixel December 24 is I.F. Stone‘s birthday (he would have been 98).  His journalistic example is about as good a reason as any to celebrate. Born Isador Feinstein, the incomparable I.F. Stone served as an […]

The threatened New York City Transit strike is just the latest sign of a growing labor-management confrontation across the US railroad system. While the workers of Transit Workers Union 100 battle off attacks on their pensions and health care, Bush Administration hirelings on the Amtrak Board prepare to launch an assault on the national passenger […]

In recent weeks, the battle of words between Tel Aviv and Tehran has reached ever more heated levels.  On December 8, 2005, the populist and fundamentalist president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, questioned the truth of the Nazi holocaust and suggested that Israel be moved to Europe.  These comments were made in the wake of previous […]

“What started it?” “A blind man with a pistol.” “That don’t make sense.” “Sure don’t.” — Chester Himes Minorities and most poor people in the inner cities have always lived with the knowledge that (for them at least) the forces of unlawful suppression and misuse of power far too often masqueraded as the forces of […]

I just finished reading a US news account of the third day of former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein’s trial in Baghdad.  Like almost every bit of news coming out of Iraq, this account showed the prejudices of the reporters and editors of the periodical that it appeared in.  In this instance, that meant that Saddam […]

THE LANGUAGE OF EMPIRE: Abu Ghraib and the American Media by Lila RajivaREAD EXCERPTBUY THIS BOOK Baltimore resident Lila Rajiva is the author of The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media (Monthly Review Press, 2005).  She has taught at the University of Maryland and is a prolific freelance journalist, whose work can […]

Over the last twenty-five years, economic inequality in the US grew. As the gap between haves and have-nots worsened, social injustices and tensions increased. As usual, politicians in power have devised projects and campaigns designed to distract attention from these realities. Opposition politicians wonder whether they dare attack growing inequality and champion programs for less […]

On a Thanksgiving visit home two years ago to his family in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Jim Loney tried to explain to his father why he wanted to go to Iraq with Christian Peacemaker Teams.  He told his Dad about a grade school chum, Rick, sent to Afghanistan with the Canadian Armed Forces, who narrowly […]

  In 1958 I wrote the following: There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false. I believe that these assertions still make sense and do […]

Who would have ever thought I would still be working as an Administrative Assistant here at the Head Start program in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, 28 years later?  When I started here on February 16, 1977, I was 28 years old, married with two young daughters in elementary school.  My husband was employed, and I thought that […]

Paralyzed from the chest down, Iraq war vet Tomas Young speaks out against the war and occupation.   Tomas Young Pfc. Tomas Young, 25 years old, was sent to Iraq last year with the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division. He joined the military for college money to further his education and, in his own words, “to […]