Subjects Archives: Movements

Elias Muhanna: Since when have Middle Eastern governments, or any governments for that matter, managed to stifle religious parties in the Middle East by preventing them from coming to the fore?  If they pass a political parties law in Syria but they don’t allow religious parties, don’t you think that’s just gonna blow up in […]

(Scene: an elevator, downstage right.  Stuck inside are ROY COHN and ETHEL ROSENBERG, characters in Tony Kushner’s landmark play, Angels in America.  McCarthyite lawyer, ROY prosecuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were accused of spying for the USSR and executed in 1953.  ETHEL now paces impatiently, pushing elevator buttons.  Above the stage, captions from recent […]

Arguably the most important reason for the international interest in Iran is its strategically pivotal geography.  Like some of its Muslim neighbours, it has tremendous oil and gas reserves.  For the United States, the revolution in Iran was nothing less than a geopolitical shock. Revolutionary dynamics in the Arab World have recently rekindled the debate […]

The parties involved in the revolt in Syria so far have not made their programs public.  Undoubtedly, the drift of the Ba’athist regime, won over to neoliberalism and singularly passive in the face of the Israeli occupation of Golan, is the reason for the uprising of people.  However, the CIA’s intervention must not be ruled […]

  Tegucigalpa, 22 May 2011 This afternoon in the city of Cartagena, Colombia, former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya Rosales and incumbent regime leader Porfirio Lobo met to sign the Cartagena Accord. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, his foreign minister María Angela Holguín, and Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro added their signatures to this Accord as […]

  Ballot boxes are like black boxes. Upon opening them you’ll discover the causes of the accident. Juan Ramón Mora is a cartoonist in Barcelona.  This cartoon was first published in his blog on 22 May 2011 under a Creative Commons license.  Cf. <resultados2011.mir.es/99MU/DMU99999TO_L1.htm>; <resultados-elecciones.rtve.es/municipales/>; and “More revealing perhaps, however, is to examine votes relative […]

There is no doubt about it.  The wind that has electrified the Arab world in recent months, the spirit of the repeated protests in Greece, the student struggles in Britain and Italy, the mobilizations against Sarkozy in France . . . has come to Spain. These are not days of “business as usual.”  The comfortable […]

  “All of the Egyptian people are behind you and anyone who wants to make a revolution, anyone who wants to achieve something.  There is a saying: If the people want life, destiny should give it to them.” Hamdy Reda is an Egyptian visual artist.  Artellewa Space for Contemporary Art in Giza, established in 2007, […]

  The movement, which I’d call a popular movement for a Syrian revolution, has sought the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad since it first began in the southern city of Daraa when [two teenagers were arrested for painting a slogan on the walls] that has been the main one at every demonstration ever since: “The people […]

  Question: Today, Clinton stated that the US considered it necessary to step up pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  How can you comment on this? Foreign Minister Lavrov: No one is happy when in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, as in all other states there are disturbing developments, with blood […]

Scores of protesters in Cairo clash with Egyptian security forces in front of the Israeli embassy. They were gathering to urge Egypt to cut ties with Israel and also show support for the Palestinians’ Third Intifada. As tensions grew, security forces used live rounds, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. According to Egyptian officials over 10 protesters were injured and 30 arrested.

  The sun had not yet risen in Cairo, as the Stay Human convoy began to prepare the departure for Gaza.  The journey about to be embarked upon was one filled with expectations and hope.  The importance of crossing the border at Rafah following the protests that brought down the Mubarak regime was on the […]

  STITCH invites you to join us on a ten-day women’s delegation to Honduras as we assess the impact of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) five years later.  Our labor solidarity delegation to Honduras, PUSHING BACK: WOMEN SPEAK OUT ON TRADE will take place July 27-August 06, 2011. Participants will meet with women […]

  Moscow against UN Security Council Taking Up Syria — Source MOSCOW, May 11 (Interfax) — Moscow is against the Syria issue being put before the UN Security Council, a Russian Foreign Ministry source said on Wednesday. “Syria mustn’t be discussed in the Security Council, that is obvious,” the source told Interfax. China Calls on […]

  Following up on earlier efforts to highlight human rights abuses in Puerto Rico, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) hosted a high-publicity fact-finding delegation in San Juan on May 2 and 3.  The group, which included ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero, political scientist Angelo Falcón, actress/choreographer Rosie Perez, and recently retired baseball player […]

  Excerpt: On January 11, 2006, the United States signed into law the U.S.-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which entered into force between the United States and Bahrain on August 1, 2006.  In light of the ongoing brutal repression of peaceful protest carried out by the police and armed forces of Bahrain and the Gulf […]

What Michael T. Heaney and Fabio Rojas’ “The Partisan Dynamics of Contention: Demobilization of the Antiwar Movement in the United States, 2007-2009” (Mobilization 16.1; now linked to MRZine) shows is that, in the United States, the anti-war/peace movement is much narrower and more shallow than many believe.  Whereas there remains an enduring core of genuinely […]

  Whatever your point of view, it would be difficult to deny that the referendum on South Sudan — unity or independence — was a historic moment.  Self‐determination marks the founding of a new political order. Nationalists may try to convince us that the outcome of the referendum, independence, is the natural destiny of the […]

The trajectory of the democratic movement in the Arab world was never going to be a straight line with clear goals and objectives.  The Arab regimes are not homogeneous; they have medieval Islamist monarchies, as in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, and secular but completely authoritarian regimes, both Western puppets like Mubarak and […]

I’ll be talking about the relationship between food and the uprisings.  I call them uprisings, I don’t call them revolutions, for a multitude of reasons that I will address. . . .  One of the most common assertions is that these uprisings were triggered, at least partly, by high food prices.  I would like to […]