Abstract: This study examines the informal work aspects of global restructuring with a focus on relations of gender, solidarity, and conflict in the workplace. Rather than trying to conduct a macro level analysis of restructuring process, the study aims to explore how this process is embedded at the local level by focusing on industrial […]
Geography Archives: Middle East
Israel’s Big and Small Apartheids: The Meaning of a Jewish State
A talk delivered to the Fifth Bil’in International Conference for Palestinian Popular Resistance, held in the West Bank village of Bil’in on April 21 Israel’s apologists are very exercised about the idea that Israel has been singled out for special scrutiny and criticism. I wish to argue, however, that in most discussions of Israel it […]
Obama’s Slippery Slope to Military Strikes on Iran
Today, POLITICO published our newest Op-Ed, “Obama’s Slippery Slope to Strikes on Iran” (excerpts below but also worth reading in full on POLITICO.com). Our piece was prompted by the partial leak of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ January 2010 memo on Iran to the New York Times last week and subsequent statements by Gates and […]
Glimpses of Alternatives to Neoliberalism
Social Justice and Neoliberalism: Global Perspectives. Adrian Smith, Alison Stenning, and Katie Willis, eds. Macmillan/Zed Books, 2008. 253 pages. Following the tradition of critical geographers, this book explores the expansion of neoliberalism into different spheres and spaces of everyday life. It consists of a collection of essays by writers from the global South, the […]
Iran: What Is the Green Movement?
Caught in the intoxicating effects of a violent moment in the history of a nation, one is particularly susceptible to reactionary outbursts. But it is exactly during such moments that intellectual discourse must prevail over ideological cacophony. And the cacophony about the causes and consequences of the recent unrests in Iran has been deafening, exactly […]
Iraq Redux: “Conventional Wisdom” of Iran Analysts
The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler had an important story: “Even as Momentum for Iran Sanctions Grows, Containment Seems Only Viable Option.” Glenn states his thesis up front: After months of first attempting to engage Iran and then wooing Russia and China to support new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, the Obama Administration appears within reach […]
No Indian Miracle
Jayati Ghosh and Paul Jay
Paul Jay: So there’s a lot of talk about the growth and expansion in India and China, and especially India these days. We’re hearing again about the Indian miracle. Whose miracle is it, anyway? And is it such? Jayati Ghosh: No, it’s not actually a miracle. First of all, let me clarify. India and […]
Earth Day in Israel: Apartheid Showing through the Greenwash
On April 22, as part of the global Earth Day celebrations, homes, offices, and public buildings in 14 Israeli cities turned out the lights for one hour in an effort to “increase awareness of the vital need to reduce energy consumption.” The Earth Day celebrations included scenes of green fields, wind generators, and rainbows projected […]
US Community Learns about Rural Healthcare from Iran
Rosiland Jordan: In a Mississippi Delta neighborhood known as Baptist Town, the people have needed a miracle here for a long time now. Good-paying manufacturing jobs that were once here vanished long before the current economic crisis, and with them so did a lifeline. Sylvester Hoover, Greenwood Merchant and Music Historian: Those people who […]
Teabaggers = Hawks and Likudniks
By now it has been well established that the teabaggers are by and large rich white men who are implacably opposed to pro-working-class economic policy, real or imagined. It turns out that they are not even libertarians à la Ron Paul, Reason Magazine, or the Cato Institute — they are just a bunch of hawks […]
General Jones at the Washington Institute: Still Getting the Iran-Palestine Connection Wrong
National Security Adviser James Jones was the headline speaker at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy‘s 25th-anniversary gala dinner in Washington last night. Substantively, General Jones’ speech focused on “two defining challenges” confronting the United States and its allies in the region: “preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, […]
Prisoners’ Day in Beit Ummar
“April 17, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, is an important commemoration for the Palestinian people. Over 30% of Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israel, and there are more than 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners currently languishing in Israeli jails. Israeli abuses of power further include administrative detentions, i.e. those without charges or trial, juvenile incarceration, and torture and […]
Why You Should Care about the Three Americans Held in Iran
Watching the news in August 2009, you may have heard about three U.S. citizens being detained in Iran. Arrested for allegedly crossing the Iran-Iraq border on July 31, 2009, they remain in detention nine months later in Iran’s Evin prison. Dubbed “the hikers” due to the fact that they were on a hiking trip in […]
Reason, Faith, and Revolution
Christianity Fair and Foul The Limits of Liberalism Faith and Reason Culture and Barbarism . . . Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God? Who would have expected theology to rear its head once more in the technocratic twenty-first century, almost as surprisingly as some mass revival of Zoroastrianism or […]
Speaking Out Against Israeli Apartheid
We asked queers in our city to tell us why they are against Israeli apartheid. Here’s what they said. Video by Alexis Mitchell * * * Editor’s Note: QuAIA has come under attack by the pro-Israel lobby and Toronto city bureaucrats: “An April 18, 2010 feature story in the Toronto Star revealed that City […]
Europe Is Failing Its Muslims
Thank you. Thank you for the invitation, and, as we don’t have much time, let me go straight to some of the main points supporting this motion “Europe is failing its Muslims.” Let me start by saying that we are living in a difficult situation. If you listen to what is said in the European […]
Why Iran Won’t Attack Israel
Palestinians are in Israel today because they managed to survive the depopulation of 1948, the year the Jewish state was founded (Arabs constitute about 20% of Israel’s population). Ironically, while Benny Morris’ scholarship suggests that the mere existence of these Palestinians in Israel — and millions more in the occupied territories — irks him, Israel’s […]
Another Kind of Volcano
Another Kind of Volcano: Part 1 “It’s a pity that there is no active volcano in Israel.” “Why?” “To discharge a cloud of ashes in its airspace.” “And then?” “The country would be subjected to a total aerial blockade.” “You mean, like Gaza?” “Not at all. The blockade of Gaza is comprehensive, by air, by […]
The Global Securitization of Religion
My first thought upon reading the Chicago Council’s report “Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for U.S. Foreign Policy” is that the title is misleading. This report is not about engaging religious communities abroad — one hears little if at all from such communities — nor does it say anything particularly new. There is, […]
Letter to a Friend on Israel’s Independence Day
Tonight you celebrate the independence day of the state of Israel. I do not. You probably believe that the Jews deserve a state, that the Holocaust survivors and their children had a right to a safe home of their own, and that the Land of Israel is the natural and legitimate place to fulfill the […]
