In the Beginning I am a child of the cold war. I was born in 1940, was an adolescent in the 1950s, and devoid of political consciousness when President Eisenhower warned of the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” in 1960. I was modestly inspired by the young President Kennedy’s […]
Geography Archives: Middle East
Imperialism and Struggles for Democracy in West Asia
The history of the West Asia for over a century is one long history of how colonial and imperialist powers, both old and new, have arrogantly plundered, looted, dismembered, manipulated and raped a region for their unbridled self interests. It is a history of total disregard and callous disrespect for the peoples of this […]
Letter to the People of Israel
August 8, 2009 When your government denied us our rights, many ordinary Israelis did not look away. Instead they stood with us. They showed us that Israelis are able to look past our differences and stand up for what is right. I call on the Israeli people once again to help. Early on Sunday, […]
Petroleum and Energy Policy in Iran
Iran, a major oil producing and exporting country, also imports gasoline because of inadequate refining capacity and rising petrol consumption. This article examines the problems faced by an economy dependent on the export of crude oil and gas that are compounded by the dilemmas of rising domestic consumption, a significant decline in productive capacity, […]
Who Wants Sanctions on Iran?
In a recent congressional hearing, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman called the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act “a sword of Damocles over the Iranians” that will soon come down if President Obama’s diplomatic overture did not show signs of success by the fall. That sword is no mere metaphor and might kill more […]
Mr. Mousavi’s Gas Embargo on Iran?
In serious contention for Dumbest Washington Consensus for September is the idea of cutting off Iran’s gas imports to pressure Iran to stop enriching uranium. A majority of Representatives and Senators have signed on to legislation that seeks to block Iran’s gas imports, a top legislative priority for the so-called “Israel Lobby.” But it’s a […]
Contrary to Its Hard Line, EU Bends to Iran
Despite its criticism of Tehran’s handling of protesters, the EU shies away from a serious diplomatic conflict with Iran. Both the Swedish EU Council Presidency and individual EU member states will participate in the inauguration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that, “given the circumstances surrounding the controversial reelection” of […]
“Human Beings Are Members of a Whole”: Protecting the Iranian Civil Society
Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain. If you have no sympathy for human pain, The name of human you cannot retain. — A poem by the Persian poet Sa’adi (1210-1290) gracing the entrance of […]
The End of Chimerica?
Like the star gazers who last week watched the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, diplomatic observers had a field day watching the penumbra of big power politics involving the United States, Russia and China, which constitutes one of the crucial phenomena of 21st-century world politics. It all began with United States Vice […]
Honduran Resistance to the World: Organize a Boycott against the Military-Business Dictatorship of Roberto Micheletti
June 28th of the this year when the Honduran population was preparing to participate in a popular opinion poll about the installation of a fourth ballot box in which it would decide whether or not to convoke a Constitutional Assembly, thousands of military soldiers kidnapped the Constitutional President of the Republic, Manuel Zelaya Rosales, […]
Uneven Development Is the Root of Many Crimes
Address to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect, the United Nations, New York, 23 July 2009 The phrase, responsibility to protect, brings to my mind painful memories of lack of protection of many people who died of ethnic cleansing in Kenya earlier this year. The incidents of ethnic cleansing […]
“Come Over and Help Us”: A History of R2P
Address to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect, the United Nations, New York, 23 July 2009 The discussions about Responsibility to Protect (R2P), or its cousin “humanitarian intervention,” are regularly disturbed by the rattling of a skeleton in the closet: history, to the present moment. Throughout history, there have […]
Reply to the Campaign for Peace and Democracy
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy1 has chosen to interpret our “Riding the ‘Green Wave’” article2 as a “vitriolic and dishonest attack” on its authors, and an “offensive impugning of [their] integrity.” In fact, it is nothing of the sort. Instead, it is concerned with issues of central importance to the left in the United […]
The World Left and the Iranian Elections
The recent elections in Iran, and the subsequent challenges to their legitimacy, have been a matter of enormous internal conflict in Iran, and of seemingly endless debate in the rest of the world — a debate that threatens to linger for some time yet. One of its most fascinating consequences has been the deep divisions […]
Responsibility to Protect?
On July 23, a debate concerning the Responsibility to Protect took place in front of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The responsibility to protect (R2P) is a notion agreed to by world leaders in 2005 that holds States responsible for shielding their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and related crimes […]
Truth and Reconciliation for Iran
We are a group of university educators and antiwar activists with diverse political views who are based in Europe and North America. During the past few years we have been active in defending Iran’s national rights — particularly those relating to the peaceful use of nuclear energy — against the pervasive deception created by western […]
Is Israel Guilty of Piracy?
On June 30th, the Israeli Navy hijacked our small boat, the Spirit of Humanity, 19 miles off the coast of Gaza. They kidnapped 21 crewmembers and passengers, including a former US congresswoman and a Nobel laureate. Then, they forced them into a port in Israel. Was this an act of piracy? And did Israel break […]
Iran’s “Leftist” Don Quixotes
In the 1970s, when Iran’s Fedayeen and Mojahedin1 groups were engaged in an urban guerrilla struggle against the former Shah’s dictatorial regime, a faction of the Iranian Student Association (ISA) in the United States called Ehyaa2 had managed to convince some in the US Left, in particular America’s Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), that a […]
Iraqi Government Moves against Iranian Mojahedin
Play now: Patrick Cockburn: I think the government would have liked to have done it earlier, but the Mojahedin-e Khalq, these dissidents, were protected by the Americans in Iraq really since 2003 because the Americans, one way or another, saw them as an ally against the Iranian government. Marco Chown Oved: And does this […]
Mapping a Legal Geography of Yugoslavia’s Disintegration
Ana S. Trbovich. A Legal Geography of Yugoslavia’s Disintegration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xiv + 522 pp. $80.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-533343-5. Ana S. Trbovich’s A Legal Geography of Yugoslavia’s Disintegration is a valuable intervention in the long running and, at times, torturous debate over the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. The […]
