(By Andrew Beale) Map of Palestine from late 19th century. (Flickr/T.H. McAllister) Lior Amihai didn’t grow up knowing the location of the internationally recognized border between his native Israel and the West Bank. “It wasn’t until I was 24, 23, 25-ish when it hit me that I don’t really understand what the Green Line is,” […]
Has Consumerism forever Killed the American Revolutionary Spirit?
(By Lewis Lapham) [This essay will appear in “Revolution,” the Spring 2014 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly. This slightly adapted version is posted at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of that magazine.] In case of rain, the revolution will take place in the hall.— Erwin Chargaff For the last several years, the word “revolution” has been hanging […]
BP Permitted back into The Gulf Despite all the Damage Done
(By Sarah Lazare) Four years after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, oil still washes up on the Gulf Coast shore, and residents and cleanup workers face health hazards from the millions of gallons that spilled and British Petroleum's chemical dispersant that followed. Yet, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that BP — after pleading guilty to […]
Turkey’s PM Erdogan can weather Corruption and Islamic Politics: But Can he Weather Twitter?
(By Ahmet T. Kuru) Erdoğan has consolidated the executive, legislative, and the judicial powers under his authority; yet he has been unable to control another source of power— Twitter. When the Arab uprisings began, Turkey emerged as a role model in the Middle East in terms of combining Islam and democracy. The Arab uprisings have […]
Has the US lost Iraq to Iran over Arms Deal?
(By Mustafa Sadoun in Baghdad) Documents indicating that Iraq was going to buy almost US$200 million worth of armaments from neighbouring Iran have had foreign policy analysts fizzing. Is it a reward for Iraq’s support in Syria? Is it about the spread of Iran’s backers, Russia’s influence? But first, exactly how real is this deal […]
Dear Arab Liberals: The Enemies of your Enemies aren’t Necessarily your Friends
(By Karim Emile Bitar) One of the principal reasons the revolutionary impulse unleashed in 2010 proved so inspiring was that it finally gave full voice to liberals, democrats and progressives of the Arab world, who rejected the idea that their only governmental options lay in sinister alternatives of authoritarian military cliques that had ruled for […]
What Ukraine Means to the U.S. 1% and to the 99% (Editorial Cartoon)
(By Paul Jamiol) Courtesy Jamiol’s World
The Theater of Conspiracy in the Run-up to Turkey’s Elections
(By Erdağ Göknar) The novel Snow by Nobel-prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk exposes the logic of Middle Eastern nationalism. Not surprisingly, political conspiracy has a prominent role to play in it. Turkish realities and their ideologically colored representations are constantly switching places in the novel. As a result, it becomes harder and harder for characters […]
By the Way, Your Home Is On Fire: The Climate of Change and the Dangers of Stasis
(By Rebecca Solnit via Tomdispatch) As the San Francisco bureaucrats on the dais murmured about why they weren’t getting anywhere near what we in the audience passionately hoped for, asked for, and worked for, my mind began to wander. I began to think of another sunny day on the other side of the country 13 […]
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