Geography Archives: Middle East

My voice is a crime, My thoughts anarchy, Because I do not sing to their tunes, I do not carry them on my shoulders. — Cherabandaraju, who was the lead accused in a “conspiracy case” involving poets and their poetry. It’s been two decades and a year since India’s elite embraced neo-liberalism.  Money — the […]

I would like to start off by saying that I am not a journalist.  However, I do know that there are some common practices in journalism involving privacy.  Some investigative journalists use hidden camera footage to raise awareness of issues of vital public interest when there is no other means of obtaining information about them.  […]

  “The remains of the human beings, each weighing 70, 80, 90 kg when alive, fit into just five 20-kg plastic bags.  I mean, even their bones had burned down.  I am a lawyer and I have seen many autopsies after murders and accidents, but I have never seen anything like this.  Even their teeth […]

See, also, “Rojava Revolts: The Politics of Kurds in Syria” (MRZine, 24 July 2012). | Print

For more information, follow the hashtags #Rojava and #TwitterKurds. | Print

My wife’s uncle, Adil, was shot and killed in cold blood in a Damascus street.  He had no blackmail money.  He was poor.  So he was shot.  He was shot by killers financed and organized by the USA and Turkey, in particular by Barack Obama and Turkey’s prime minister and prime collaborator, and their equally […]

Communiqué The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comandante Hugo Chávez, in the name of the Bolivarian government and the Venezuelan people strongly condemns the terrorist attack perpetrated today in the city of Damascus, Syrian Arab Republic, causing more deaths of civilians and high-ranking officials of the Syrian government. The Bolivarian government wishes to […]

NEW YORK, N.Y. — In what promises to be a real boost for the U.S. presidential incumbent, a team of doctors has devised a “miraculous” new method of brain surgery that purportedly will enable thousands of radical leftists, progressives, and revolutionaries to vote — on purpose — for Barack Obama in the fall election. The […]

Syrian National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar is optimistic, but still thinks that “Syria is on top of a volcano.” Haidar, who is also the President of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), maintains that he “joined a project and not a ministry,” revealing that contacts with the armed opposition are underway.

  The situation in the country has exacerbated to the point now it started threatening the social fabric and national sovereignty, which we and the national forces of democratic opposition sought to avoid compromising. However, the authority neglected the social fabric and national sovereignty and placed them in the field of conflict to reaffirm the […]

I sent the following note to Amnesty on June 16 after it put out a detailed report on the conflict in Syria: Dear Amnesty In your most recent report on Syria you ask the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on the Syrian government.  You ask for no such arms embargo on the […]

The electoral victory of the Muslim Brotherhood and of the Salafists in Egypt (January 2012) is hardly surprising.  The decline brought about by the current globalization of capitalism has produced an extraordinary increase in the so-called “informal” activities that provide the livelihoods of more than half of the Egyptian population (statistics give a figure of […]

  People around the world are deeply concerned about the ongoing crisis in Syria. While we are being presented with some perspective of what is occurring on the ground to the people of Syria, the door seems closed to others.  We search for voices we can trust, voices which point to a peaceful, lasting solution […]

Ten months to go till the upcoming elections, the Senate of Paraguay dismissed the President of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, by a vote of 39-4, for allegedly “poor performance in office,” in an express impeachment whose legitimacy has been questioned by not only the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) but also the Organization of American […]

Ammar Waqqaf is an independent Syrian political analyst based in England. Q: Why do you think the western powers are so keen to see regime change in Syria? A: Western powers would be fools not to exploit such an opportunity to turn a key regional player from an opposing side into an allied one.  Achieving […]

I would like to focus this interview on three distinct but related questions: your vision of the world and the possibilities of changing it; your conceptual and political proposal on the implosion of capitalism and delinking from it; your analysis of the global context, seen especially from Africa and the Middle East.  What is your […]

The first Syrian parliamentary elections under the new constitution, passed by 90% of voters in a referendum with 57% turnout, concluded in May with seat gains for Syria’s Communist Parties.  The elections had a turnout of 51% (active duty military and police were ineligible) and voters elected 250 representatives from 16 geographic constituencies.  The majority […]

The United States District Courthouse in Jefferson City, Missouri, is a modern and graceful structure sitting on a bluff over the Missouri River.  Less than one year old, it is a virtual temple in white marble, granite, and glass, its clean lines all the more immaculate in contrast to its nearest neighbor, the crumbling 19th […]

To you at whose side we struggle, From the beginning of the Egyptian revolution, the powers that be have launched a vicious counter-revolution to contain our struggle and subsume it by drowning the people’s voices in a process of meaningless, piecemeal political reforms.  This process aimed at deflecting the path of revolution and the Egyptian […]

Women With a Vision (WWAV), a New Orleans advocacy and service organization that provides health care and other support for poor women of color, was the victim of a break-in and arson late Thursday night.  A small organization that has won a national reputation for its work, WWAV was founded in 1991 by a collective […]