Geography Archives: Middle East

An advertisement for America’s nuclear industry from the 1970s Seymour Hersh, the acclaimed journalist who, in 1970, won a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and has subsequently broken many other important stories dealing with America’s foreign and national security policies (e.g., prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib), has published his most […]

  Jean Bricmont: There’s no limit to how crazy they can be.  They haven’t finished the war with Libya, which was supposed to last days, not weeks, not months.  Now it’s been months, they say another three months.  So they haven’t even finished Libya yet, and they are maybe going to go to another war […]

On June 1, a week past her 31st birthday, civil rights activist Catrina Wallace was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.  This was a first arrest for Wallace, a single mother who became politically active when her brother was arrested in the case that later became known as the “Jena Six.”  Wallace was part of […]

  Today, with the declaration of “Day of the Clans,” it becomes obligatory for one to distance oneself from the dominant reactionary forces within the Syrian opposition.  It is clear that the same reactionary forces that have been at the heart of the Iraqi opposition under occupation are there in the Syrian opposition.  What about […]

  Statement by the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Society Palestinian queer activists from Al Qaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, Aswat — Palestinian Gay Women, and PQBDS (Palestinian Queers for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions) have issued a joint statement on June 1st 2011 calling on organizations, groups and […]

  RIA Novosti Russia is against any UN resolution on Syria as the situation in the country is not threatening to global security, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Thursday. Britain and France submitted a new draft resolution on Syria on Wednesday.  The UN Security Council will vote on the document in the next […]

According to the New York Times, a quarter of the passengers on the U.S. Boat to Gaza are Jewish. What does it mean that the U.S. Boat to Gaza is a quarter Jewish?  According to the noted American Jewish commentator Adam Sandler, a quarter Jewish is “not too shabby!”  Maybe the U.S. Boat to Gaza […]

An old story from Istanbul in the Ottoman era mentions a Turkish imam who killed a Christian and confessed the crime, whereupon he was advised by the judge to talk things over with the mufti who told him privately that a good Muslim never admitted felony against infidels and he should simply recant his confession.  […]

  Toby Craig Jones.  Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.  312 pp.  $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-04985-7. Toby Craig Jones opens his book, Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia, with a description of a scheme to transport Arctic icebergs to Saudi Arabia in […]

Russia went to the Group of Eight (G-8) summit meeting at Deauville as an inveterate critic of the “unilateralist” Western intervention in Libya, but came away from the seaside French resort as a mediator between the West and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.  The United States scored a big diplomatic victory in getting Moscow to work […]

  So Syrian opposition groups met in Antalya.  I closely followed that conference and read about their deliberations and received reports about it. There are Syrian leftists who argue with me constantly that I should not reduce the Syrian opposition to lousy Khaddam or lousy Ma’mun Humsi (a tool of Hariri Inc.) or lousy war […]

About 25,000 people took part in a march in central Tel Aviv on Saturday evening supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. The march ended with a rally at the Tel Aviv Museum.  MKs Dov Khenin (Hadash), Daniel Ben-Simon (Labor), Nino Abesadze (Kadima), and Zahava Galon (Meretz); the Mayor of […]

This poster was produced to commemorate the “setback” (naksa): the 1967 war that Israel waged and that resulted in the loss of the Sinai, the Golan, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank.  While a dark moment in history, it nonetheless planted the seeds that will lead to eventual victory (nasr) and a restoration of Palestine […]

“As for US AID, we’re ready.  A lot of US AID.  The important thing: Don’t depend on yourself, and keep depending on us.  Otherwise you won’t listen to us.  Then, we’ll be angry.  As for the topic of Palestine, we want to find a solution.  We’ll recognize your country on the 67 borders.”  “Mr. President, […]

  A few months ago, just walking too close to the Military Prosecution Complex in Cairo’s district of Nasr City could have landed you in jail.  But on May 31, the area surrounding the complex was the stage for a demonstration in solidarity with OnTV’s presenter Reem Maged, socialist activist and blogger Hossam El Hamalawy, […]

Just as in past periods of rising struggle, the democratic social and anti-imperialist movement in Egypt is up against a powerful reactionary bloc.  This bloc can perhaps be identified in terms of its social composition (its component classes, of course) but it is just as important to define it in terms of its means of […]

  Syrian opposition groups will be meeting for three days in Antalya, Turkey in a conference organised by the Egypt-based National Organisation of Human Rights (NOHR).  The conference, set to begin on Tuesday, 31 May, is to ‘support the revolt in Syria and claims of the Syrian people,’ said Ammar Qurabi, NOHR president.  The conference […]

Which is the tyrant? say you.  Well, ’tis he That has the vine-leaf strewn among his hair And will deliver countries to the care Of courtesans — but I am vague, you see. Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma’arri (973-1057), born in Ma’arra in what is today Syria, was a poet and philosopher.  This poem is from The […]

Painful events have been continuing in Syria for nearly two months, since the emergence of a protest movement raising legitimate local and general demands among people in the governorate of Daraa. This movement threw light on the presence of major problems in the political life in Syria: the continuation of the state of emergency, the absence of laws governing political activity, and so on.

  Mere days after the Egyptian Military Council received a cash payment of $4 billion from Saudi Arabia, the Egyptian government uncovered an Iranian spy in Egypt.  It is widely known in the Arab world that countries that receive cash payments from Saudi Arabia usually uncover Iranian plots days after the arrival of the cash. […]