A tale of politicians, seats, and struggles in a parliament far, far away. . . . Script, Design, and Animation by Zach Cohen. This video is his final project at the Shenkar School of Engineering and Design in Israel. Click here to view other works by Cohen. | Print
Geography Archives: Middle East
Gulf Arab Support for Attacking Iran: The Strange Case of the UAE
The Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the United States, Yousef Al-Otaiba, is in the news for comments he made yesterday at the Aspen Ideas Festival — comments in which he apparently expressed some measure of support for a U.S. military attack on Iranian nuclear targets. We have known Yousef since before his […]
Egyptian Police: To Serve the People
Abdallah Ahmed is an artist based in Cairo, Egypt. He blogs at . This cartoon was published in his blog on 15 June 2010 under a Creative Commons license. Among the latest victims of police brutality in Egypt is Khaled Said, a 28-year-old man from Alexandria. The murder of Khaled Said sparked major protests in […]
Iran, Israel, and Air Defense: What, Exactly, Is the “Threat”?
A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran had sent Syria a “sophisticated radar system that could threaten Israel’s ability to launch a surprise attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.” The story cited reporting from “two Israeli officials, two U.S. officials and a Western intelligence source,” and was “confirmed . . . by […]
The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation
Shir Hever and Paul Jay
Paul Jay: So, in talking to people in Israel, one thing I hear constantly is the fight here is about national identity, it’s about the defense of the Jewish state. I don’t hear very much about economics of Israel or the economics of occupation. So how does national identity relate to the economics here? […]
Nuclear Power: Implications of Loan Guarantees for Reactors with Foreign Control and Foreign Jobs
As the United States government does what it can to halt Iran’s nuclear program, it may be suspected that it is seeking to build up its own nuclear industry, denying Iran the capacity to develop its own technology while pressuring it to open itself up for US technological export and to become dependent on […]
Genocide Denial and Genocide Facilitation: Gerald Caplan and The Politics of Genocide
In his June 17 “review” of our book The Politics of Genocide, for Pambazuka News,1 Gerald Caplan, a Canadian writer who Kigali’s New Times described as a “leading authority on Genocide and its prevention,”2 focuses almost exclusively on the section we devote to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.3 Caplan says virtually nothing about […]
Interview with Dissident Israeli Intellectual Michel Warschawski: “Obama’s Priority Is Iran”
Israeli intellectual Michel Warschawski said yesterday, at the European Social Forum in Istanbul, that he is certain that US President Barack Obama’s priority is a war against Iran. Warschawski was taking part in a seminar on how the international Palestine solidarity movement can challenge Israeli impunity. Warschawski, founder of the Alternative Information Center in […]
Austerity: Why and for Whom?
Clearly, the global capitalist crisis that started in 2007 will be neither short nor shallow. The government rescue of the US financial industry pumped enough extra money into the economy and sufficiently reduced interest rates to give banks and the stock market the heavily hyped “recovery” that started March 2009 and is now over. What […]
Persian Gulf History and Politics: Manama since the First Era of “Global” Capitalism
Nelida Fuccaro. Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama since 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xvi + 257 pp. $99.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-51435-4. In many ways, the city of Manama (now the capital of Bahrain) shares affinities with other Gulf city-states. Like Dubai, Kuwait, and Muscat, the port city drew […]
Beirut, I Love You (I Love You Not)
Cyril Aris and Mounia Akl
Written and directed by Mounia Akl and Cyril Aris. Music by Mashrou’ Leila, Barnabas Folk, and Yann Tiersen. Cast: Mounia Akl and Cyril Aris. Lebanon, 2009. | Print
Nuclear Club
The American “referee” seeks to red card (sanction) Iran out of the nuclear club and to make the Iranians sit on the bench with the Arabs. Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist. This cartoon was first published in his blog on 24 June 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. The text above […]
Ni’lin
Emily Henochowicz is a young Jewish American artist and activist. While demonstrating in Jerusalem against the Israeli massacre of activists on the Mavi Marmara, Henochowicz lost her left eye to one of the tear gas canisters fired by Israeli border police. The image above was published under a Creative Commons license in her blog […]
Iran Sanctions: An Obsession Explained in Five Acts and a Poem
Act I In the second half of the 1990s, at the onset of his first term as Brazil’s president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, or FHC for short, faced a dilemma. To honor his recent conversion to the Washington Consensus, he had to get rid of State companies to make money to pay the interests on […]
Iran, Natural Gas, and EU Sanctions: “Is Europe Shooting Itself in the Foot (to Russia’s Benefit)?”
Earlier this month, after the United Nations Security Council authorized new multilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic by adopting Resolution 1929, the member states of the European Union (EU) approved guidelines for expanding European sanctions against Iran. Any new sanctions that the EU might apply against Iran on the basis of the new guidelines must […]
Open Letter in Support of the Boycott of Arizona
27 June 2010 The U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) endorses and supports the call for Boycott of Arizona on account of its manifestly racist laws, HB1070 and SB 2281. SB1070 calls for police officers to require documentation from people to establish resident status. The law essentially requires police […]
New York Times’ Larry Rohter, Military Coup Supporter, Attacks Film That Celebrates Triumph of Democracy South of the Border
Letter to the New York Times, June 27, 2010 Larry Rohter attacks our film, “South of the Border,” for “mistakes, misstatements and missing details.” But a close examination of the details reveals that the mistakes, misstatements, and missing details are his own, and that the film is factually accurate. We will document this for each […]
BP and the Other Gulf
The name BP is now forever ingrained in people’s minds as the oil giant responsible for what has become the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history. But the mammoth oil spill resulting from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t the first time British Petroleum has brought disaster […]
United against Us, Divided among Themselves: Toronto and European Assault on Living Standards
Martin Wolf described it as “a bloodbath.” The Financial Times editorial called it a “chilling read.” Britain’s budget is one of austerity, the likes of which has not been seen in generations. A 25 per cent cut in public spending; a quarter of a million or more public sector jobs to be slashed. It […]
BP — A Long, Bloody History of Reckless Greed
BP, the company responsible for what is already the worst single-source environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, is the largest corporation in Britain, fourth largest in the world, and the world’s third largest energy company. Over the course of its 100-year history, this company has caused a number of environmental and workplace disasters. But the harm […]
