Geography Archives: United States

Job interviews for the position of imam at mosques in Israel are conducted not by senior clerics but by the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, a labor tribunal has revealed. Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajwa, 36, is fighting the Shin Bet’s refusal to approve his appointment as an imam in a case that has lifted the […]

Excerpt: Three nations in the Middle East dominate any present-day discussion of nuclear weapons, yet only one is subjected to an unprecedented degree of international scrutiny.  Two have nuclear weapons; the third does not.  Yet it is the third nation that is widely considered the threat to world peace and the target of ever increasing […]

Ambassador Cabactulan, President of the Review Conference, Ambassador Sergio Duarte, High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish to congratulate you, Mr. President, for the chairmanship of this Conference.  You can count on my delegation’s best cooperation. The Non-Proliferation Treaty is an intrinsically unfair treaty, which divides the world between “haves” and “have-nots.”  […]

As we follow the NPT Review Conference in New York and the enormous salience of the Iranian nuclear issue there, it is useful to consider some recent observations about the Iranian case by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s former Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei.  Baradei was in the Boston area last week, where, among other things, […]

Yet again, the Washington Post has published another highly inflammatory article on Iranian nuclear developments, “Iran’s Advances in Nuclear Technology Spark New Concerns about Weapons,” by Joby Warrick.  As we wrote, Warrick co-authored another recent story for the Washington Post on Iran’s nuclear program that “could easily have been run about Iraq back in 2002.” […]

  The antiwar movement everywhere should be extremely alarmed about the Obama Administration’s declaration in April that Washington can target Iran with nuclear weapons.  Although vague “all options are on the table” warnings were also issued under George W. Bush, now the threat of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran is enshrined in the revised […]

Midtown Manhattan, 25 April 2010 Dov Hikind, NY State Assemblyman (D-Brooklyn): “From day one, this president proved that he was not Barack Obama, but Barack Hussein Obama.” Audience (carrying signs reading “Racism.  Sexism.  Apartheid.  Stop Shariah Islam” among other signs): “Boo!” Demonstrator: “He’s a Nazi!” * * * Demonstrator: “This government is pressuring Israel right […]

  Speech by Salvador Valdés Mesa, General Secretary of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC) and member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba General Raúl Castro Ruz, President of the Councils of State and Ministers, Compañeros of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, […]

  Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 while at the same time sending more troops to the Afghanistan War.  What has become of the promise of “change”? I am one of the few who are not disillusioned, because I had no expectations.  I had written about Obama’s positions and prospects even before […]

The government will fall or the people will rise.  Thousands have already arrived in Kathmandu, occupying the private schools shut down by Maoist students last week.  500,000 villagers are expected to join the workers and students in the city.  The Nepal Army is on alert, the People’s Liberation Army is, too.  The people are coming […]

  Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture, Palestine Center, Washington, D.C., 29 April 2010 It is a great honor to be here at the Palestine Center to give the Sharabi Memorial Lecture.  I would like to thank Yousef Munnayer, the executive director of the Jerusalem Fund, for inviting me, and all of you for coming out […]

The much-ballyhooed Tea Party “movement” that has arisen to absurdly accuse the corporate and imperial Barack Obama administration with “socialism,” “favoring the poor,” and other “radical leftist” crimes claims to be a decentralized, independent, “grassroots,” and popular/populist uprising against concentrated power.  Contrary to that claim, Part 1 of our report presented recent polling data showing […]

As I have noted previously, Latvia has experienced the worst two-year economic downturn on record, losing more than 25 percent of GDP.  It is projected to shrink further during the first half of this year, before beginning a slow recovery, in which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that it will not reach even its […]

  Solidair/Solidaire, the weekly journal of the Workers Party of Belgium (PVDA-PTB), interviewed John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, 26 April 2010 Solidair/Solidaire: Many green thinkers reject a Marxist analysis because they think that the Marxist approach to the economy is a very productivist one, focused on growth and seeing nature as “a free […]

Today, POLITICO published our newest Op-Ed, “Obama’s Slippery Slope to Strikes on Iran” (excerpts below but also worth reading in full on POLITICO.com). Our piece was prompted by the partial leak of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ January 2010 memo on Iran to the New York Times last week and subsequent statements by Gates and […]

THERE is no alternative but to call things by their name. Anyone with minimal commonsense can observe without much effort how little realism remains in the current world. When United States President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Michael Moore stated “Now please earn it!” That witty comment pleased a lot of people […]

  Arizona Governor Jan Brewer just signed a law that will authorize officers to pull over, question, and detain anyone they have a “reasonable suspicion” to believe is in this country without proper documentation.  It’s legalized racial profiling, and it’s an affront on all of our civil rights, especially Latinos.  It’s completely unacceptable. Join us […]

The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler had an important story: “Even as Momentum for Iran Sanctions Grows, Containment Seems Only Viable Option.”  Glenn states his thesis up front: After months of first attempting to engage Iran and then wooing Russia and China to support new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, the Obama Administration appears within reach […]

By now it has been well established that the teabaggers are by and large rich white men who are implacably opposed to pro-working-class economic policy, real or imagined.  It turns out that they are not even libertarians à la Ron Paul, Reason Magazine, or the Cato Institute — they are just a bunch of hawks […]

National Security Adviser James Jones was the headline speaker at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy‘s 25th-anniversary gala dinner in Washington last night.  Substantively, General Jones’ speech focused on “two defining challenges” confronting the United States and its allies in the region: “preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, […]