Geography Archives: Russia

  Despite my very negative position on the regime for private and public reasons, the truth is that the regime is very strong, and neither the outside nor the inside were able to make it change its usual stances.  This strength does not come from a vacuum.  The regime has a broad popular base that […]

The Foreign Ministers of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, meeting in Caracas, Venezuela on 9 September 2011, recalling the Special Communiqué of the Political Council on 4 March 2011 and the Special Communiqué of the Ministerial Social Council on 19 March 2011, condemns the NATO intervention in Libya and its illegal […]

  In August a UN OCHA Mission visited Syria to assess humanitarian needs in the country stemming from the ongoing crisis there.  The Mission included staff from several UN institutions and humanitarian agencies (UNHCR, UNICEF, WHO, WFP, IOM, etc.).  The Syrian authorities provided the Mission unimpeded access to all objects of interest.  The UN officials […]

  The Syrian uprising which erupted nearly six months ago seems to be settling into a dangerous deadlock with neither side — the regime or the opposition — willing to budge from its stated position.  The daily toll of deaths and injuries climb ever higher with no resolution in sight.  The regime seems insistent on […]

  Syria remains relatively calm as efforts to destabilise its government through orchestrated attacks by rebels fail. Life in the Syrian capital, Damascus, seems to be continuing as normal.  The streets and the mosques are crowded after the devout break their Ramazan fast in the evening.  The security presence is minimal.  In fact, there are […]

Aijaz Ahmad: . . . Europeans, and Italians in particular, are celebrating the 100th anniversary of their first aerial bombing ever done in the world.  The Italians bombed in Libya in 1911.  Now, of course, with 100 years of development of the technology, there have been 20,000 aerial attacks on Libya. . . .  They […]

On Tuesday, June 14, the Guardian of London published “Left and Libertarian Right Cohabit in the Weird World of the Genocide Belittlers.”1  In this nearly 1,100-word commentary, the British writer George Monbiot attacked the two of us (among others) as “genocide deniers” and “revisionists” for our writings on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.  Monbiot also […]

  Luc Duhamel.  The KGB Campaign against Corruption in Moscow, 1982-1987.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010.  312 pp.  $26.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8229-6108-6. Luc Duhamel’s study of an extensive anticorruption campaign in Moscow in the mid-1980s is riveting.  At multiple levels, this work provides new information and perspectives on a period of stalemate, factional competition, […]

  Russia Should Pressure U.S. to Lift Anti-Iran Sanctions: MP Russia should pressure the United States to lift the sanctions imposed on Iran, Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Chairman Alaeddin Boroujerdi said on Friday. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has so far taken important steps in order to create transparency concerning its peaceful […]

We have long argued that there will not be a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue without explicit recognition — from the United States and other Western countries, first of all — of the Islamic Republic’s right to the full range of civil nuclear technologies and activities, including uranium enrichment.  Two recent developments affirm […]

Comment by Press and Information Department of Russian Foreign Ministry on a Question from Interfax News Agency Regarding the Situation in Syria Question: Please comment on the calls of US President Barack Obama and EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Catherine Ashton for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down. Answer: Our position on the […]

It is becoming widely acknowledged that the leading ideas of some of the most prestigious late-20th-century economists (such as Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers in the American government) are outmoded and that a new paradigm of economics is needed.  Part I of this essay will focus on two issues which we think it has to […]

It started in mid-July, when Dafni Leef, a Tel Aviv filmmaker, was met with a hike in her rent that she couldn’t afford to pay.  Instead of moving to a new apartment, she moved to a tent on Rothschild Boulevard, the city’s sleekest thoroughfare, and set up a Facebook event calling for her compatriots to […]

  James Rodger Fleming.  Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control.  Columbia Studies in International and Global History Series.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.  Illustrations. xiv + 325 pp.  $27.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-14412-4. In Fixing the Sky, James Rodger Fleming traces human efforts to control weather and climate from ancient […]

Egypt Amin Saikal (ABC, 29 July 2011): “The Islamist parties [in Egypt] now stand a good chance to win an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections in November, and also contest successfully the presidential election. . . .  According to an Aljazeera public opinion survey, released on July 7, 2011, nearly 50 per cent of […]

Josephine Berry Slater and Anthony Illes.  No Room to Move: Radical Art and the Regenerate City.  Mute Books.  124 pp. “Gentrification was already coming.  The feta-cheese footprint.” — Stewart Home Broadway I Located on the historic drovers’ road that led from Essex to the slaughterhouses of Smithfield, Broadway Market in Hackney is one of the […]

There was a time when global oil prices reflected changes in the real demand and supply of crude petroleum.  Of course, as with many other primary commodities, the changes in the market could be volatile, and so prices also fluctuated, sometimes sharply.  More than anything else, the global oil market was seen to reflect not […]

Javier Batiz, the great Mexican rock-and-roll guitarist, played and sang last week in a concert that embodied and gave voice to everything that is most wonderful about Tijuana and the U.S.-Mexico border region.  Batiz, who since he was thirteen has played in the bars and nightclubs of Tijuana, performed this time with the Baja California […]

Iran’s recent successful launch of a second satellite into orbit has drawn considerable attention around the world. As in the past, Iran’s announcement of the launch of its domestically built satellite into space received mixed reactions in the West. Some mainstream U.S. media treated the announcement with skepticism and ridicule. “Before you cancel that European vacation or start building a bomb shelter, it’s worth taking Iran’s boasts with a grain of salt,” one commentator wrote in Wired. “While Iran has cooked up some indigenous weaponry over the years, its desire to puff out its chest and pronounce immunity from the effects of international sanctions has led to some absurd exaggerations and outright lies.”

Merkel just wouldn’t let the cat out of the bag.  In the first days after the arms sale scandal began, her front seat in the Bundestag was conspicuously empty.  When she finally did show up she wore a sour look but said not a word.  The decision made and any reasoning behind it were highly […]