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Geography Archives: Middle East

Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

  We went on “Israeli Independence Day” to Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, to celebrate the “ethnic cleansing” along with the people of Israel.  We distributed maps prepared by Zochrot documenting the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the beginning of Zionism to 67.  Reactions?   The “best” you can find on the Zionist streets. Here […]

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A New Pakistan?

“These people who are commonly known as leaders view politics and religion as that crippled, lame and injured man, displaying whom our beggars normally beg for money.  These so-called leaders go about carrying the carcasses of politics and religion on their shoulders, and to simple-minded people who are in the habit of accepting every word […]

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Death Is Preferable to Life at Obama’s Guantanamo

More than 100 of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo are starving themselves to death.  Twenty-three of them are being force-fed.  “They strap you to a chair, tie up your wrists, your legs, your forehead and tightly around the waist,” Fayiz Al-Kandari told his lawyer, Lt. Col. Barry Wingard.  Al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti held at Guantanamo for […]

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International Peace Delegation to Syria, May 2-10, 2013

Former U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire from Northern Ireland are two of twenty participants from seven countries that will participate in an international delegation to Syria, May 2-10, 2013.  The purpose of the delegation is to meet with communities affected by the fighting, with a view towards facilitating peace and […]

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Free Hassan — Defend Iraqi Workers

Hassan Juma’a Awad, president of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, faces three years in jail and heavy fines for organizing workers in the Iraqi oil fields.  They oppose privatization of Iraqi oil and demand fair treatment and respect at work.  Meet Hassan in this short video and act in international solidarity as requested in […]

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Drones, Sanctions, and the Prison Industrial Complex

In the final weeks of a six-month prison sentence for protesting remote-control murder by drones, specifically from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, I can only reflect on my time of captivity in light of the crimes that brought me here.  In these ominous times, it is America’s officials and judges and not the anarchists […]

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Homonationalism & Pinkwashing: LGBT Rescue Narratives

This video shows a panel discussion, moderated by Gayatri Gopinath, featuring the following scholars and papers: Katherine Fobear, “Queer Settlers: Exploring the Intersections of Colonial Violence and Settler Homonationalism With LGBTQ Refugees in Canada”; Colleen Jankovic, “Paranoia, the ‘Untold Story’ of Queer Palestine, and Non-Aligned Queer Solidarity”; Emrah Yıldız, “Alignments of International Refugee Law, Liberalism […]

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Confronting the Amnesty Scare

The anti-immigrant right has been mounting a scare campaign since late January about the supposed dangers of legalizing the country’s estimated 11.5 million undocumented immigrants. — “When you legalize those who are in the country illegally,” Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, announced on January 28, “it costs taxpayers millions of dollars, costs American workers […]

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Just Another Shin Bet Interrogation

  I was fortunate this week.  I had a quick and easy crossing from Jordan back into Israel.  No delays, no questions, no invasive body searches and no lengthy rummaging through my luggage.  The border guard sitting next to the computer took my passport, opened it and looked at the screen, presumably to check for […]

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The Story of Ordu Is the Story of Every University in Turkey

  In a society where employees are only expected to perform well according to predetermined criteria, where loyalty to superiors and management is permanently tested through the nightmare of contract non-renewal, where there is a desire to transform universities into subsidiaries of monopoly capital, those who say “a university should not be like that” will […]

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World Social Forum Opens in Tunisia

Tunis, Tunisia Tens of thousands of people marched through downtown Tunis on Tuesday in a spirited march celebrating the beginning the 13th World Social Forum — the first to be held in an Arab country.  The majority of marchers were from Tunisia and neighboring nations, but there was substantial representation from Europe, as well as […]

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The Resistible Rise of a New One-Party System

Conversation in Germany these days, when not about soccer, dealt often with beef which was part horsemeat, high-priced organic “bio” eggs which weren’t all they claimed to be, or, in thrilling, moving detail, the last weeks, days, and hours of the one and only German Pope (since 1058 A.D.). Also under often heated debate was […]

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The Uncommon Courage of Bradley Manning

Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty to 10 charges including possessing and willfully communicating to an unauthorized person — all the main elements of the WikiLeaks disclosure.  The charges carry a total of 20 years in prison.  For the first time, Bradley spoke publicly about what he did and why.  His actions, now confirmed by his […]

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The Unusual Uprising in Iraqi Kurdistan, Two Years On

“Under Fire in Iraqi Kurdistan,” Extract from The Fourth Estate in Iraqi Kurdistan, a film by Rozh Ahmad On February 16th, 2011, in solidarity with the mass uprisings sweeping the Middle East, Kurds took to the streets of Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan and the following day demanded an end to their one and only official […]

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Golden Dawn: The Development of Greek Fascism

As was the case in 1930s Germany, Greek liberalism has revealed itself to be politically spent.  In dealing with the austerity measures imposed upon the country from outside by an international troika consisting of the IMF, European Commission, and European Central Bank, the government has failed comprehensively in the eyes of its electorate. When the […]

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