Geography Archives: Middle East

  Tuesday, April 12, 2011 Yassin Al-Hajj Saleh in the New York Times Of course, Saleh suffered from the brutality of the Syrian regime and I share many of his criticisms of the Syrian regime although I don’t share his decision to write about Syria in racist anti-Syrian (people) right-wing publications, like An-Nahar and Al-Hayat […]

Today, our friend and colleague, Vittorio Arrigoni, a journalist and human rights defender working in the Gaza Strip, was kidnapped by Salafists, members of a very small extremist group in Gaza. Vittorio has been active in the Palestine cause for almost 10 years.  For the past two and a half years, he has been in […]

To hear the mainstream media tell it, America confronts a choice: Republican plans for cutting domestic spending or President Obama’s plans for cutting domestic spending.  That’s what they want us to think. You’d never know from the mainstream media that 80 Members of Congress have put forward an alternative to cuts in spending on domestic […]

A number of news reports by AFP, the Guardian, and other news agencies and outlets are suggesting that Syrian security forces were responsible for shooting nine Syrian soldiers, who were killed in Banyas on Sunday.  Some versions insist that they were shot for refusing orders to shoot at demonstrators. Considerable evidence suggests that this is […]

  International Solidarity Movement activist Vittorio Arrigoni was kidnapped in Gaza today.  News sources in the Gaza Strip say that the kidnappers are members of a Salafi group.  In a YouTube video, the group threatens to kill Arrigoni in 30 hours, counting from 11 AM in Gaza (10 AM in Italy), if the Hamas government […]

Amy Goodman: The Bahraini government is intensifying its crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.  In a pre-dawn raid Saturday, masked police officers broke into the home of Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, a prominent Bahraini human rights activist.  Alkhawaja and other family members were beaten and detained.  They remain in police custody at an unknown location.  Human Rights Watch has […]

  “Syria hosts the largest number of Iraqi refugees who have fled their home since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.  Estimates as to how many refugees are huddled in Syria vary, but most organizations estimate that roughly 1.2-1.5 million Iraqis have staked a temporary claim on neighboring soil.  ‘Temporary,’ however, is a relative time-frame for the […]

  Yaara Bou Melhem: On the edge of the capital, Manama, thousands gather for the funeral of a young man.  Hani Jumah was 32 years old and the father of two children. . . .  It’s a scene repeated over and over in Bahrain, where there are more and more killings, more and more funerals, […]

  There are some sectarian slogans being chanted by SOME (not all) protesters in Syria (they refer to the need for “Sunnis who fear God”).  It is an opportunity to make this point: if one supports protests and revolutions against all Arab regimes (and Iran), it does not follow that one should endorse all strands […]

  Flynt Leverett, a professor of international affairs at Penn State and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of Inheriting Syria: Bashar’s Trial by Fire.  Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is the author of the forthcoming book In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness […]

  The US left and progressives have been preoccupied about what we can do to impact events in the Mid-East, particularly obsessing about what we can do to counter US intervention.  In general, it is good to want to act, not just talk or analyze, in a crisis situation. However, despite the valiant and necessary […]

Thousands of Lebanese took to the streets on Sunday to demand the abolition of the sect-based electoral system in Lebanon, according to which the key political offices are apportioned among religious communities. The demonstrators, starting from the national museum in Beirut, marched to the parliament.  They demanded the overturning of the sect-based system and democratic […]

“Fortunately, they are our ‘allies.’” Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela.  His cartoons frequently appear in Aporrea and Rebelión.  This cartoon was first published in his blog on 7 April 2011; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. Alan J. Kuperman, “5 Things […]

It has finally sunk in that the Egyptian military are not on the side of the people.  Egyptians are up against a military apparatus that is maintaining the status quo “system.”  In other words, we are confronting a global neo-liberal regime whereby the Egyptian government would follow the instructions of the powerful: protect Israel, obey […]

Hi, my name is Sukant Chandan.  I’m 32 years old.  I was born in Chandigarh in North India, in Punjab, in April 1978.  I always say, teasingly to my parents, they brought me here, in the winter of 1981 without my consent, at the age of three and a half. . . .  I remember […]

Gilbert Achcar defends the recently “UN-authorized” imperialist intervention in Libya on the ground that general principles may require exceptions in concrete cases.  “Every general rule admits of exceptions.  This includes the general rule that UN-authorized military interventions by imperialist powers are purely reactionary ones, and can never achieve a humanitarian or positive purpose.”1  This kind […]

The full extent of the ramifications of the extraordinary developments in Egypt since the beginning of this year — for Egypt itself, for the Middle East, and for the world — will not be clear for some time.  At this juncture, though, it seems virtually certain that post-Mubarak Egypt will have a much more balanced […]

Paul Jay: The title of your upcoming book, Syria’s Democratic Experiment, first of all, what is the experiment?  And then talk a little about how we got there. Joshua Landis: Well, the book really deals with a period at the time of independence — 1946, ’45, ’46 — in Syria, when the French left and […]

Washington is broken — there has been no real debate on the $126 billion requested to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet $33 billion is being cut from vital programs — from heating oil for poor families to milk for infants to Pell grants for college students.  We have a new opportunity to […]

  Juliano Mer-Khamis embodied the uncompromising struggle for freedom and for dignity.  With his brutal murder the Palestinian struggle has lost a brilliant, charismatic, and courageous fighter for justice and freedom.  Both parts of his life’s work were seamlessly joined.  His art was inseparable from his political commitment.  The dignity and humanity which his art […]