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 […]
Geography Archives: Middle East
Expelling Palestinians from Jerusalem: The Case of Four Hamas Politicians
Israeli human-rights groups and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, have condemned a decision by Israel to expel four Palestinian politicians from East Jerusalem by the end of this week. The Israeli government revoked their residency rights in Jerusalem a few weeks ago, after claiming they were “in breach of trust” for belonging […]
Lieberman’s “Peace” Plan: Strip Palestinians of Citizenship
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister, set out last week what he called a “blueprint for a resolution to the conflict” with the Palestinians that demands most of the country’s large Palestinian minority be stripped of citizenship and relocated outside Israel’s future borders. Warning Israel faced growing diplomatic pressure for a full withdrawal to the […]
What US Soldiers Say about Afghanistan: We’re Fucking Losing This Thing
“But we’re fucking losing this thing.” — Staff Sergeant Kennith Hicks This video was released by Brave New Films on 26 June 2010. See, also, Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General” (Rolling Stone, 22 June 2010). | Print
Saudi King Abdullah to Meet President Obama: Iran, Iraq, and Palestine on the Agenda
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah will come to Washington for a meeting with President Obama on Tuesday; there is little doubt that Iran will be a high-priority topic for discussion between the two leaders. Notwithstanding the extraordinary importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, it is striking how relatively few meetings there are between American presidents and Saudi […]
Peace Negotiations
The only kind of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations that Obama promotes: one that doesn’t fly, shackled as it is in the ball and chain of settlements. Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist. This cartoon was first published in his blog on 2 May 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. The text above is […]
Shanghai Power Politics: China Shuts Out Iran from SCO
Two weeks ago, the 10th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council summit, held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, approved the SCO Rules of Procedure and the regulation on procedure for future membership expansion. Before the summit, Chinese diplomats ritually pointed out that approval of the admission regulations was the first step in forming the basis for a […]
The Excess of the Left in Iran
Maziar Behrooz. Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran. I.B. Tauris, 2000. The role of the left in the Iranian Revolution is complicated, what Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek would call the ‘vanishing mediator’ of the event. The fact that at their peak Iranian Marxists commanded the loyalty of millions, and […]
Iran Vote Shows China’s Western Drift
This month, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed a resolution to tighten sanctions on Iran, imposing a ban on arms sales and expanding a freeze on assets of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in response to the country’s uranium-enrichment activities, which Tehran says are for peaceful purposes but other countries contend are driven […]
Excerpt from “The Prophet and the Proletariat”
What the group around Khomeini succeeded in doing was to unite behind it a wide section of the middle class — both the traditional petty bourgeoisie based in the bazaar and many of the first generation of the new middle class — in a struggle to control the hierarchies of power. The secret of […]
Iraq
The text below is an excerpt from “Imperialism and the Gulf War,” which was first published as the “Review of the Month” of the April 1991 issue of Monthly Review (42.11). While the exact character of the Iraqi Ba’ath Party state is certainly debatable (“lack of government corruption”? — only relatively so in comparison to […]
Gasoline Sanctions against Iran Will Be Futile and Counterproductive
H.R.2194 (the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2009) passed the Senate by a vote of 99-1 and the House by a vote of 408-8 (1 “present” and 16 “not voting”) yesterday. — Ed. The U.S. Congress, in its infinite wisdom, passed a new piece of legislation authorizing the President to impose so-called […]
Russia, Iran, and the United States
Russia’s Iran Policy Since the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, the Islamic Republic has worked hard to cultivate a strategic partnership with post-Soviet Russia. Of course, for many Iranians, there is heavy historical “baggage” attached to relations with Russia/the Soviet Union. But, from an Iranian perspective, Russia is […]
How the Media Mislead the Public about Venezuela: The Case of Stephen Sackur’s Interview with Hugo Chávez
Stephen Sackur provides a misleading and one-sided picture of Venezuela after a brief visit there, during which he interviewed President Hugo Chávez (“A Chat with Chávez — Oliver Stone’s New Lead Tells All,” 14 June). I am the co-writer of Oliver Stone’s forthcoming documentary on Chávez, South of the Border, and was present throughout the […]
A University at the Center of Iran’s Internal Power Struggle
World media are focused so narrowly on Iran’s nuclear program and election-related turmoil and Western threats and sanctions that the public is unaware a battle over ownership of a politically connected Iranian university is likely to help shape the future of the Islamic Republic and its foreign relations. We hear all about the Revolutionary Guard […]
The Green Movement Is Not the Future of Iran
Western analysts and policymakers need to rethink their basic calculations about the Islamic Republic’s domestic politics. This rethinking should start with a recognition that the Green movement is not the future of Iranian politics; in fact, it’s not even the future of what at least used to be called the “reform movement.” By sticking with […]
Brazil and Iran: Our Motives and the Bullying Trio
Despite what the experts of barefoot diplomacy1 never stop repeating, there is nothing even remotely anti-American in the Brazilian position on Iran: our motives, unlike those of the bullying trio (USA, France, United Kingdom), are clear, transparent and openly stated several times. We support the peaceful development of nuclear energy. We do not believe […]
The Mousavi Cartoon Censorship Affair
A cartoon mocking “Green Wave” leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi, drawn by an Iranian cartoonist in exile Nikahang Kowsar, has reportedly been withdrawn from Rooz Online: Mir-Hossein Mousavi penning his Statement No. 300 in Khordad 1399/June 2020 Golnaz Esfandiari of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty writes that “Kowsar . . . a contributor to Rooz, confirmed the removal […]
Afghanistan: Empire, Minerals, and Taliban
Marzieh Hashemi: American geologists say Afghanistan is filled with minerals, from iron ore, lithium, to gold and much more. The values of the minerals are said to be estimated at around a trillion dollars. . . . Would a mineral-rich Afghanistan affect the way that the United States is running its war machine there? […]
About South of the Border
Listen to Amy Goodman’s interview with Oliver Stone and Tariq Ali: Oliver Stone: So, Chávez was sort of a natural [as a subject for his work] because he is such a demonized, polarizing figure, but when I met him, it was not at all what I thought, you know, what we made him out […]
