Geography Archives: Middle East

It had been five years since I last set foot in China as a graduate student doing research on Chinese workers’ protests of privatization in Zhengzhou City, the (ironic) site of the February 7th incident memorial that commemorates the repression of the first general strike against colonial administrators of the rail system in 19231  In […]

Cindy Sheehan has breathed new life into the U.S. antiwar movement. The Vacaville, CA mother did so — alone then with others — by protesting outside the Crawford, Texas ranch of a vacationing President Bush, dubbed “Camp Casey” for her son who died in oil-rich Iraq. Sheehan’s demand to speak with Bush about the “noble […]

All last week I had a rare opportunity — to join several impressive speakers on the “Bring Them Home Now” tour’s northern route.  Al Zappala, whose son was killed in Iraq last year; Tammara Rosenleaf, whose husband is due to deploy to Iraq this fall; Stacy Bannerman, whose husband has already served a tour in […]

“I hope they kill each other . . . too bad they both can’t lose.” — Nobel laureate Henry Kissinger (on the U.S. arming both sides of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s) “Do not support dictators. Do not sell them weapons.” — Nobel laureate Jose Ramos Horta, East Timorese peace negotiator It’s not every […]

Though in my university days I was no more of a party person than I am now, I had friends with other tastes. Visiting one on a morning many years ago, I found him blearily looking for traces of furniture amid the mess he and some others had generated through a long night. “I feel […]

The Western version of “peace” is overrated. The West would have us believe that Israel made the ultimate sacrifice by “disengaging” from the Gaza Strip, putting “the ball in the Palestinian court.” But let’s look at the facts. Yes, Israel removed 8,500 settlers and is dismantling their military posts in Gaza. Israel, however, still controls […]

As one considers developments in and around the main currents of the US labor movement — the recent split in the AFL-CIO, and the reaction of both sides of the split to the ongoing strike by AMFA against Northwest Airlines, most particularly — it is difficult not to get discouraged by lack of leadership. Let […]

  The world watched as people of New Orleans were herded into the Superdome, only to find themselves in a wretched and unsanitary place with no food, water, or proper medical care. Those in areas of high flooding fled to their rooftops, begging rescue helicopters to airlift them to safety. Many died trapped in their […]

  [Peter Berkowitz is a long-time Monthly Review subscriber. He was in New Orleans bringing his son Ernesto to begin his freshman year at Loyola when they were caught in the hurricane. Peter and Ernesto spent five days on the street by the Convention Center. Below is a letter Peter sent to his mother upon […]

I have often wondered about the legal and moral issues involved in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Armed resistance is permitted against an occupier, and there’s no rule requiring that attackers have a getaway planned. I’m not in favor of attacking civilians, of course — in fact, I find it hard to support attacking anyone. But as […]

David Houston changed my life.  If it weren’t for Dave, I wouldn’t be a political economist, a political activist, and I wouldn’t have a sense of my life as part of a larger historical struggle for economic and social justice. Dave, along with his friend David Bramhall who concentrated on teaching undergraduates, were the sole […]

In the “old days” of the U.S. peace movement, when many people focused on the threat of a global nuclear “exchange,” an organization called Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) foretold what would happen if a major American city was actually blasted by an atomic bomb. Horrific scenarios extended far beyond the numbers of dead and […]

See the Bible. The Bible is a textbook. It is all you will ever need to know about anthropology, zoology, astronomy, psychology, or nuclear fission. Why is the Bible all you need to know? Because President George W. Bush said that the theory of “Intelligent Design” should be taught along with the Darwinian theory of […]

[What follows is a talk Rela Mazali presented at the panel on “Linking Local with International Issues: Future Plans and Strategies for Struggle” at the International Women in Black Conference, East Jerusalem, 11-16 August 2005.] I’d like to read you something. This is part of a declaration: There is widespread opposition to the occupation. Political, […]

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a military man turned “peacenik,” is unilaterally “disengaging” from the Gaza Strip. It’s all over television, play by play — the hardship Israel is enduring. Scenes of Israeli soldiers emotionally and physically struggling to remove the 8,500 settlers from the Gaza Strip are displayed while CNN anchors utter soft words in […]

In the years since W’s re-election, activists around the world have re-examined their methods. Questioning the accustomed lesser evil electoral politics, the boring rallies, the bursts of direct action, and frustrated tears, a new cohort of political actors have emerged with a new series of playful approaches. They have turned to a uniquely distinct form […]

This month will mark the 25th Anniversary of the overwhelmingly successful Literacy Crusade spurred by the Sandinista Revolution. This article examines the various programs implemented during the revolution, the US reaction to the revolution, and Nicaragua’s present situation. Revolution On July 19, 1979 a broad-based popular revolution, inspired by the legacy of Augusto Cesar Sandino […]

President George W. Bush and Congress slashed $10 billion from the Medicaid budget for this coming year. Medicaid is the primary public health care program for impoverished persons that serves over 53 million people. The cut is clearly an attack on poor people, and it may wind up killing disabled and chronically ill persons before […]

The news of world affairs these days is highly unlikely to delight the Japanese survivors of the two nuclear terrorist attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States’ armed forces sixty years ago. Those attacks were not meant to convince the Japanese leaders to surrender, something which they were about to do anyway, but […]

On Monday, August 8th, Japan’s upper house of Parliament unexpectedly joined the French and Dutch electorates to give a sharp slap to neoliberal inevitability. Much to the totally delicious distress of all the usual suspects, from the Financial Times to the Christian Science Monitor, the parliamentarians turned down Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s key piece of […]