Geography Archives: Middle East

Recently, news reports in US and European newspapers have suggested that Washington and London are considering a major reduction in their forces in Iraq.  These reports usually fail to mention that those same forces were increased only last summer and that the rumored reduction is really not as large as advertised if you look at […]

I half-suspected NPR to exhume Henry Kissinger (he is dead, isn’t he?) the other day when they did a promo about a story on “Iraqization,” but no, they spared us the sonorous tones of Doctor Strangelove, only to give us his pin-headed sidekick, former Nixon Defense Secretary, Melvin Laird. Since it’s clearly too much to […]

After years of creeping concessions, United Auto Workers (UAW) rank and filers received an offer they had to refuse. When Delphi proposed to cut workers’ wages by two-thirds on October 8, the anger and anxiety wasn’t limited to those working in the struggling auto parts company’s plants — it spread to concerned workers across the […]

Will the full story of Abu Ghraib come to light this year? Government documents acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request have turned up a mountain of evidence proving that what happened really was torture, that it was widespread, and that it was authorized from above.1 Torture is once again serious business. But with […]

“Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” — Bob Dylan The beginning of this year’s holiday season and the Major League Baseball offseason (when most of the trading and dealing of players occurs) has led me to ponder, once again, money and American popular culture.  The re-release of Bruce Springsteen‘s 1975 tour de force Born to Run […]

The Lighter Side of Mass Murder Picture a necrotic, sinister, burned-out wasteland — a vast, dull mound of rubble punctuated by moments of bleak emptiness and, occasionally, smoking. Those of you whose imaginations alighted instantly on the Late Christopher Hitchens have only yourselves to blame, for I was referring to Fallujah.  The “city of mosques” […]

While I have been critical of developments in the labor movement at the national level for quite a while, there are stirrings at the local levels in some places that are encouraging. I want to report on a recent effort by the Northwest Indiana Federation of Labor. Indiana, as many know, strongly supported President Bush […]

Bombay, Our City Early on, in Anand Patwardhan‘s Bombay, Our City (1985), a passionate film made with the working people who live in Bombay’s slums and are coping with and organizing against their displacement by the police, the bureaucracy, and the business community, a woman reproaches the filmmakers. “Why do you take pictures of the […]

Until last Thursday, the ideological battle lines of the occupation of Iraq were drawn around a central question — to “stay the course” or withdraw the troops immediately.  Of course, the reality was more complicated, with many Americans who opposed the war arguing that to leave now would be “abandoning our responsibility” to Iraq, letting […]

“Our sons made the ultimate sacrifice, and we want answers.” — Cindy Sheehan, Camp Casey, Crawford, Texas “If you want to see the true face of war, go to the amateur porn Web site NowThatsFuckedUp.com. For almost a year, American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been taking photographs of dead bodies, many of […]

  On November 2, 2005, thousands of students from across the country walked out of class and onto the streets to protest Bush’s war in Iraq and military recruitment in their schools. In August, the call went out from Youth Against War and Racism chapters across the country to mobilize for student walkouts and protests […]

Over the course of the whole debacle, there was a lot of criticism directed against Mandeep and me — even from our purported supporters — for the way that we handled the public relations angle of our case. Much was made, particularly, of the so-called “Kafka Declaration” episode wherein, against the cool protestations of our […]

Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example —
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Nazim Hikmet, “On Living,” 1947

To the Public Editor: I think the Times owes a response to James Bamford’s reporting (“The Man Who Sold the War”) on Judith Miller in Rolling Stone (17 November 2005). Miller, encouraged by the Rendon PR firm (which had largely created Chalabi‘s Iraqi National Congress) boosted the claims of Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri about Iraq’s […]

“Arlington Midwest,” a memorial of over 2,000 tombstones on display on the grounds of the Immaculate Heart of Mary motherhouse, in Monroe, Michigan, November 18-19. The IHM national headquarters building is in the background. Inspired by VFP Santa Barbara’s “Arlington West,” this memorial has been displayed three times in the Toledo area since the second […]

Lila Rajiva, the author of The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media, will discuss her book at the following venues. Wednesday, December 14 7:00 PM Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., T: 510-658-1448 OAKLAND, CA Thursday, December 15 7:30 PM The Marxist School of Sacramento, Sierra 2 Center, Curtis Hall, 2791-24th St., […]

On November 4, 2005, Democratic Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts introduced a bill whose purpose is to “prohibit the use of funds to deploy United States Armed Forces to Iraq.” This bill, numbered HR 4232, is co-sponsored by twelve other representatives, including Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Barbara Lee (D-CA). The bill was […]

  “There is a great deal of misinformation feeding on itself about U.S. forces allegedly using ‘outlawed’ weapons in Fallujah. The facts are that U.S. forces are not using any illegal weapons in Fallujah or anywhere else in Iraq.” — U.S. Department of State, 9 December 20041 “But I repeat the point made by my […]

In recent decades, many well-meaning thinkers and activists have peddled or purchased the idea that class conflict has somehow waned or been “de-centered” in the richer nation-states.  As workers in these countries have lost more and more power, and as vast tides of wealth have sloshed around in the form of automobiles, shopping malls, and […]

Military bands played and choirs of sweet-voiced children sang today at Arlington National Cemetery, as President George W. Bush officially commemorated nearly a century of anticommunist hysteria in a stirring ceremony consecrating the Tomb of the Unknown Red-Baiter. “We Americans owe so much to communist witch-hunts,” declared a tearful President Bush, exhibiting an uncharacteristic degree […]