BAHAWALPUR, 22 September 2009 (IRIN) — Fears have been raised of a possible increase in food insecurity in Pakistan if a deal to lease out 202,342.8 hectares of farmland to Saudi Arabia goes ahead. Talks are reportedly under way between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to finalize an agreement. The land, to be acquired in all […]
Geography Archives: Middle East
Why Should Russia Bail Out America?
The Obama administration’s decision to scrap the Bush era anti-missile defense plans in Eastern Europe was actually expected. Nonetheless, this was a very pragmatic move on the part of Washington. However, the immediate talk and plans for a different American-led “stronger, smarter, and swifter” anti-missile strategy was not helpful. I will reserve judgment on […]
A Winnable Fight: No More U.S. Troops to Afghanistan
The stars are aligning for a winnable and worthwhile fight on U.S. policy in Afghanistan in the next several weeks: stopping the Obama Administration from sending more troops. It should be winnable, because the public is against sending more troops, the overwhelming majority of Democrats are against sending more troops, key Democrats in Congress have […]
Nationalism and “Existential Schizophrenia”: Comparing Greece and Turkey
Umut Özkırımlı, Spyros A. Sofos. Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. viii + 220 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-70052-8. Tormented by History by Umut Özkırımlı and Spyros A. Sofos provides a comparative approach to Turkish and Greek nationalisms from the late nineteenth century to the present. The […]
Iraqi Trade Unionists Speak Out at AFL-CIO Convention
Iraqi trade unionists participated in a panel of Middle Eastern unionists at a reception held at the USWA headquarters on 16 September 2009 during the 2009 Pittsburgh AFL-CIO convention. The trade unionists from Iraq who spoke were Falah Alwan, President of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq, and Rasim Hussain Abdullah Al-Awady […]
The Financial Crisis and Imperialism
BMR:What is the likely impact of the present financial crisis on geopolitics, especially if the crisis is considered in the context of the energy crisis including the peak oil issue, the food crisis, The Great Hunger, the environmental crisis, and the declining dollar? Will the world experience war(s) as an effort to survive? Will monopoly-finance […]
Class War
US workers’ real wages (money wages adjusted for the prices workers actually pay) have not risen from their levels in the 1970s. Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data confirm that real wages continued to stagnate through 2009. Across the same 30-year period, the productivity of labor kept rising: the average worker produced ever more output […]
Other Inscriptions: Sexual Difference and History Writing between Futures Past and Present
Joseph Andoni Massad. Desiring Arabs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007 . xiv + 453 pp. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-226-50958-7. With Desiring Arabs, Joseph Massad makes a significant contribution to the existing scholarship on sexuality. He merits praise for boldly tackling the problematic of knowledge in a world that continues to be unevenly carved […]
Back to the Future: The Arab Nationalist Tradition and the Political Imagination of Today
The Arab and Muslim world is indeed in crisis. This crisis, however, may give us a new opportunity to reclaim our fate from foreign powers, local autocrats, and religious fanatics. To do so, we can benefit from recuperating the best elements from our great tradition of Arab nationalism. Under the banner of “Arab nationalism,” […]
Palestinian-Arabs in Israel to Strike against Wave of Racism
The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee in Israel announced yesterday (Wednesday, September 2) that it will hold a general strike next month (Thursday, October 1) in protest of the racist government’s policies. In the meeting, held in Nazareth, it was decided that the strike will take place on the same day that the events of October […]
Beirut: City of Projected Fantasies
Beirut has been labelled the Paris, sometimes the Switzerland, of the Middle East. According to one recent New York Times article, it is now the region’s Provincetown (the Cape Cod resort favoured by gay visitors). This ever-changing city seems to have become a mirror where people project their own fantasies. Comparing Beirut with another […]
Long Peace Movement Needs a Noisy Next Phase
As the peace movement digs in for long-haul opposition to continuing U.S. wars, we simultaneously face urgent immediate challenges. Policy fights that may well determine Washington’s course for many years ahead regarding Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, and Honduras (and Latin America in general) are at important junctures. It will take more noise — in the streets and […]
About No Sex in the City
Suad Amiry Presents No Sex in the City, 10 October 2007 Suad Amiry Speaks at the Casa Internazionale delle Donne, Roma. January 2009 Suad Amiry, Public Lecture, UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, 8 April 2008 Play now: Excerpt from Ines Gramigna and Virginia Fiume, “Portrait of a Lady: Encounter with Suad Amiry” (Alternative […]
American Public Still Ahead of Its Leaders on Foreign Policy
Americans are famous for not paying much attention to the rest of the world, and it is often said that foreign wars are the way that we learn geography. But most often it is not the people who have little direct experience outside their own country that are the problem, but rather the experts. The […]
The Gay Electronic Intifada of Lebanon
“Intifada” is Arabic for uprising. People of the Lebanese gay community and their supporters are working very hard on their own intifada of supporting LGBTIQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersexual, and Queer) people and defeating homophobia. A lot of this work is being done by Helem and Meem. I personally work with Helem (“Dream” in […]
The Soldier and the Road
Nahid Ghobadi has directed five short films (Closed Circle, First Journey, Build Our Homeland, Last Fever, and A Simple Excuse for Happiness). She was Script Supervisor of Turtles Can Fly, Assistant Director of Marooned in Iraq, and Co-editor of Half Moon. She is also a published poet. This film, released in 2008, was written, […]
Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower
In his life he neither wrote nor read. In his life he didn’t cut down a single tree, didn’t slit the throat of a single calf. In his life he did not speak of the New York Times behind its back, didn’t raise his voice to a soul except in his saying: “Come in, […]
Muslim in America: Identity and Isolation
An early morning flight to D.C., day-long conference and empty cityscape drained me of energy. Exhausted, I stepped out of my nondescript hotel into the street and felt a heavy air pregnant with moisture. Heading down the sidewalk to find dinner, I came across the shadow of a man who had the unmistakable gait of […]
The “Cosmopolitan Century”: European Re-Membering
Natan Sznaider. Gedächtnisraum Europa: Die Visionen des europäischen Kosmopolitismus; eine jüdische Perspektive. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2008. 153 pp. EUR 16.90 (paper), ISBN 978-3-89942-692-2. As Europe moves into the twenty-first century, its search for a shared identity continues to occupy academic journals, the feuilleton pages, and Eurocrats eager to underwrite a by-and-large successful administrative […]
The Responsibility to Protect, the International Criminal Court, and Foreign Policy in Focus: Subverting the UN Charter in the Name of Human Rights
It was just a matter of time before members of the collapsing left enlisted in the imperial attack on the most fundamental principles of the UN Charter, and added their voices to the growing chorus of support for Western power-projection under the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). But this […]
