If there’s one thing mainstream “Iran experts” hate, it’s well-credentialed, experienced analysts who dare challenge Beltway orthodoxies, buck conventional wisdom, and demythologize the banal, bromidic, and Manichean foreign policy narrative of the United States government and its obedient media. Such perspectives are shunned by “serious” scholars who play by the rules they and their former […]
Geography Archives: Middle East
“Iranian Mothers for Peace” Alert the World on Sanctions and Shortage of Medicines
“Iranian Mothers for Peace,” in an open letter of January 2013 to Mr. Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, and Dr. Margaret Chan, the Director General of the World Heath Organization, have alerted the responsible world bodies and human rights organizations to the critical shortage of vital medication due to the US/EU-led sanctions on Iran […]
SNC’s Khatib Now Ready for Dialogue With Syria’s Assad — Why?
Note: Moaz al-Khatib is the President of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (commonly known as the Syrian National Coalition, SNC, the successor to the Syrian National Council, also known as SNC). | Print
Zero Dark Thirty: The Woman’s Guide to Success Thru Torture
I. The Globe See the Globe. More than half the 7 billion people on the Globe are women. Women are different from men. Why are women different from men? Because, according to international humanitarian agencies, women have special percentages that stick out. See women’s percentages: Women make up 70% of the world’s poor. Women do […]
The Kurdish Rebellion in Syria: Toward Irreversible Liberation
The Kurds in Syria, the country’s largest ethnic minority, number an estimated three million. Despite having stayed neutral amid the civil war, they now control most of Syria’s Kurdish north they claim they have “liberated” from the Ba’athist regime and self-govern independently of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA). Although many Kurds still fear “re-occupation” […]
Syrian Kurds — a Photo Essay
Syrian refugees fleeing for Iraqi Kurdistan, at the Girbalat crossing, northeast of Syria. In 2012 alone, over 50,000 Syrian refugees have fled the civil war for Iraqi Kurdistan, according to Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) officials. An empty frame now, it long displayed a portrait of President Bashar al-Assad in central Derek, a Kurdish town bordering […]
Afghan Peace Volunteer Says Drones Bury Beautiful Lives: Raz Mohammad Interviewed by Kathy Kelly
January 10, 2013 Raz Mohammad: Salam ‘aleikum. I am Raz Mohammad. I’m from Maidan Wardak province and I’m Pashtun. Below is a transcript of an interview of Raz Mohammad, an Afghan Peace Volunteer, with questions prepared by Maya Evans of Voices for Creative Non Nonviolence UK. Kathy Kelly: Raz Mohmmad, what do you think […]
Crisis, Resistance, and Prospects: The Arab Revolutions and Beyond
The “Crisis, Resistance, and Prospects: The Arab Revolutions and Beyond” conference is being planned as a three-day event scheduled to take place at York University (4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) on March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, 2013. The objective of this conference is to provide a critical intervention that seeks to challenge the dominant […]
Seeking Security in Afghanistan
January 10, 2013 This week, in Washington, D.C., Presidents Obama and Karzai will discuss a proposed Bilateral Security Agreement between Afghanistan and the United States. Presumably, they’ll note some of the main security problems Afghanistan faces. The people of Afghanistan have only seen cosmetic improvement in their living conditions. UNICEF reports that 36% of […]
Where Is the Left in the Austere Germany of the “Patriots”?
Things in Berlin are all really up in the air! No, cancel that! Just the opposite; they are grounded — indefinitely! That giant new hub airport for Berlin, named after Willy Brandt, was due to be opened last June after weeks and months of ballyhoo. But it wasn’t. Something was not quite OK with the […]
Gaza’s Only Fisherwoman Continues to Sail
Madleen Kulab, December 19th, 2012. Photo by Maher Alaa. “The problems started for me at eighteen,” Madleen Kulab said quietly, sitting just meters from the shore of the Mediterranean. “The police and port authorities did not want me to sail as a woman.” Though Madleen has emerged from this recent challenge, receiving a permanent permission […]
Connection to the Land Cannot Be Broken: The Struggle for Land Rights Near the Gaza Border
Gaza City, December 15th, 2012 Yesterday in al-Faraheen, Gaza, Israeli Occupation Forces shot and wounded an unarmed 22-year-old farmer, Mohammed Qdeih, from behind. Mohamed and nine others went out to their fields in the early afternoon, walking approximately 250 meters from the Israeli border. Within minutes, two heavily armed Israeli military jeeps rushed to the […]
International Initiative to Stop the War in Syria: Yes to Democracy, No to Foreign Intervention!
We, the undersigned, who are part of an international civil society increasingly worried about the awful bloodshed of the Syrian people, are supporting a political initiative based on the results of a fact-finding mission which some of our colleagues undertook to Beirut and Damascus in September 2012. This initiative consists in calling for a delegation […]
‘Naxalbari . . . Will Never Die’: The Power of Memory and Dreams
Here is the full-text of what I said — as also, what I wanted to say but restrained myself because of the time constraint or because of my diffidence — at the book release of Gautam Navlakha’s Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion (Penguin Books, 2012), organised by Sanhati at the Gandhi […]
The Rise of a New, Revived Form of Liberal Interventionism
Opening Plenary, “Media and War: Challenging the Consensus” Conference, Goldsmiths, London, UK, 17 November 2012 Seumas Milne: We’ve seen the rise of a new, revived form of liberal interventionism, or humanitarian interventionism, in the last couple of years, and the key to it is the idea that there mustn’t be too many boots on the […]
Egypt: “No Regime Leftovers, No Brotherhood, the Revolution Is Back in the Square!”
“We won’t go! Morsi will go!” Mosireen is a non-profit media collective in Cairo, Egypt. For more information: ; and . | Print
What’s Behind the Growth of Right-Wing Hatred in Germany?
No, it wasn’t shredded wheat. This shredding was not of breakfast food and has been much harder to digest; it was evidence on serial murder! The related biliousness is all the more painful due to a worrisome new survey of rightist hatred in Germany. But first some background. For a year now the case of […]
Egypt’s New Pharaoh
Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print
The Weakening of Syria Emboldens Israel
With over 100 now reported killed by Israeli airstrikes, and a further 700 injured, the attack on Gaza is already starting to resemble the 2008-9 ‘Operation Cast Lead’ massacre. A ground invasion is feared, and Israeli politicians are again trotting out the usual Zionist crowd-pleasers about the need to “bomb Gaza back to the Middle […]
No Safe Haven: Civilians Under Attack in the Gaza Strip
Salem Waqef (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Haneen Tafesh (Photo: Gisela Schmidt-Martin) Ahmed Durghmush (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Basma Mahmoud el Tourouq (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Mohammed Abu Amsha (Photo: Gisela Schmidt-Martin) Zuhdiye Samour (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Duaa Hejazi (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Gaza City, 16 November 2012 The Israeli attacks across the Gaza […]
