Juan Cole Informed Comment Baghdad is under a state of emergency on Sunday a day after members of the Sadr Trend stormed the Green Zone and invaded the…
Mohammed Nabulsi Warscapes The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, launched on July 9, 2005 by the Palestinian Civil Society (consisting of more than 170 Palestinian civil organizations),…
Gabi Zimmer Links International Speech given by Gabi Zimmer, chair of GUE/NGL, in Athens at the International Conference “Alliance For Democracy – Against Austerity in Europe”, 18-20 March…
Max Ehrenfreund, Washington Post In an apparent rejection of the basic principles of the U.S. economy, a new poll shows that most young people do not support capitalism. The Harvard…
The Jewish Socialist Group’s response to the right wing witch-hunt sparked by accusations of anti-semitism by prominent British Labour Party members Naz Shah MP and Ken Livingstone. “Antisemitism…
Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian More than 33,000 civilians were killed or injured by explosive weapons in 2015, an increase of more than 50% in five years, according to…
Perry Anderson London Review of Books The BRIC countries are in trouble. For a season the dynamos of international growth while the West was mired in the worst…
Gabriel Rockhill Counterpunch The movement Nuit debout—‘night on our feet’ or ‘stand up night!’—is a potent reminder of the existence of an indefatigable global struggle against the neoliberal…
Green Left The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a Kurdish-led party that has united a swath of Turkey’s broad left, has proposed a new law in parliament to establish…
Richard Hardigan Counterpunch According to the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, an Israeli NGO, the Israeli government has demolished 28,000 Palestinian structures since the Occupation of the West…
Malihe Razazan Jadaliyya On 26 March 2016, tens of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets of the capital Sanaa to mark the first anniversary of the US-backed…
Ellen Brown Counterpunch Of the 3,000 emails released from Hillary Clinton’s private email server in late December 2015, about a third were from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal,…
Juan Cole Informed Comment Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act in 1990, and since then the FBI has been issuing annual reports on crimes of bias or…
Fehim Taştekin interviews Eldar Halill Links The US Department of State and the Pentagon had given certain warnings to the YPG, in an attempt to appease Turkey’s anger…
Noam Rotem +972 The heads of the Freedom Party of Austria, an extremist, far-right political party, are currently visiting Israel following a formal invitation from the ruling Likud…
Julia Glum msn As the Islamic State group grows its presence online and in headlines, its influence among young people is shrinking. At least, that’s according to the…
Majid Nafici Iroon The day is sunny After much rain. I run on Venice beach And know that Another storm is coming. At the pier Water has clogged…
Joseph Daher Problematica/Syria Freedom Forever Recent mass movements in Middle Eastern and North African countries, despite their defeats and failures, showed prospects and possibilities of a progressive change…
Patrick Cockburn Counterpunch Three years ago I was in Baghdad after it had rained heavily, driving for miles through streets that had disappeared under grey-coloured flood water combined…
David W Leach Syria Comment This spring marks the fifth year anniversary of the events that launched a civil war in Syria. Typically, there were some huge miscalculations…
Susanne Kemp Redline It isn’t only the Greek working class that the Alexis Tsipras’ leadership of Syriza has betrayed. One of the distinguishing features of his ‘socialist’ government…
Syrian freedom forever On Friday March 4, 2016 massive popular demonstrations throughout the liberated areas of Syria occurred under the slogan “The revolution continues”. More than 100 protests…
Ghaleb Attrache Berkley Journal of Sociology For many, the “Syrian tragedy” is a prime example of popular aspirations gone disastrously awry, the “revolution-turned-civil-war”. Was any of this was…
Jonathan Cook The debate about 1948 war and what constitutes truth and myth from that period still provokes raw emotions. Israelis fear, and Palestinians crave, a clearer picture…
Robin Yassin-Kassab Syria Solidarity UK Talk given at LSE on March 21 2016. Robin Yassin Kassab is author of Road from Damascus and is closely involved with the…
Interview by Karlos Zurutuza Links Salih Muslim Muhammad is co-chairman of the Democratic Union Party – PYD, the political force that has led the uprising of the Kurds in…
Andea Germanos Common Dreams A new analysis reveals that global water scarcity is a far greater problem than previously thought, affecting 4 billion people—two-thirds of the world’s population—and…
Ardeshir Mehrdad Illustration by Ardeshir Mohassess Despite claims to the contrary, political Islam is a child of late capitalism, growing where capitalist development is more advanced. There are…
Fred H Lawson Le Monde Diplomatique As Syria’s civil war enters its sixth year, President Bashar al-Assad finds himself steadily gaining strength relative to the country’s disparate collection…
Patrick Martin World Socialist Web Site Two attacks on a US firebase in northern Iraq, which killed one US Marine and wounded several more, have led to revelations…
Joshua Stacher MERIP An authoritarian regime may be unpopular, even loathed, but at least it has rules. The rules may bear little resemblance to the law, but relations…
Christina Lin Asia Times The house of international law could be shaken to its foundations if Secretary of State John Kerry removes a critical cornerstone that holds it…
Thomas Nagel London Review of Books American philosopher Thomas Nagel attempts to lay out an ethical framework for how the rights and wrongs of drone warfare may be…
John Smith Monthly Review Winner of the first Paul A. Baran–Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Award for an original monograph concerned with the political economy of imperialism, John Smith’s…
Adam Shatz L0ndon Review of Books Ahmad Tibi, a long-standing Arab member of the Knesset, once remarked that ‘Israel is democratic towards Jews, and Jewish towards Arabs.’ For…
Alain Badiou translated by Yassamine Mather Weekly Worker Alain Badiou discusses the consequences of neoliberal capital’s disastrous policies worldwide and what he calls new imperial practices. He writes:…
London Review of Books Joost Hiltermann reviews a new book on the Iran-Iraq war by Pierre Razoux, translated into English by Nicholas Elliott. Hiltermann, a program director of…
Abdullah Demirbas New York Times Former mayor of Diyarbakir’s historic Sur district in eastern Turkey describes how an experiment in peaceful communal living among different ethnic and religious…
By Moshé Machover Weekly Worker The second of a three part historical analysis examines the roots and possible solution to the asymmetrical confrontation between two discrete national groups:…
Ardeshir Mehrdad in interview with the Farsi site tabaqeh (class) You can see in the coming parliamentary election the central and ongoing contradiction of the Islamic regime. On…
Seymour M Hersh London Review of Books The investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports on the confusions and disagreements within the US over its policy in Syria. He also…
Pinar Tremblay Al-Monitor The current war imposed on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Kurdish people by the Erdogan regime in Turkey is not only causing terrible…
By Moshé Machover Weekly Worker The Zionist colonisation of Palestine, ongoing since the turn of the 20th century, has engendered a conflict with exceptional features. In essence it…
by Adam Hanieh Jacobin In the wake of the November 13 attacks in Paris, much of the Left has linked the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq…
Editorial commentary – MER276 Middle East Research and Information Project In early June 2014 the world was shocked by news of the fall of Mosul, the third largest…
Editorial by Perry Anderson New Left Review Since the turn of the century, the Arab states have come to constitute a zone for Western military intervention without parallel…
Interview with Joseph Daher Radio Zamaneh Joseph Daher is a Syrian-Swiss Marxist intellectual with a PhD in Development at the University of SOAS, London. He is also a member of Solidarités…
By Nathan Thrall London Review of Books Periphery: Israel’s Search for Middle East Allies by Yossi Alpher Rowman and Littlefield, 196 pp, £23.95, January, ISBN 978 1 4422 3101 6 Israel is now confronted…
By Major Rob Taylor Armed Forces Journal You can’t understand the conflict without talking about natural gas. Much of the media coverage suggests that the conflict in Syria…
By Gray Anderson in Jacobin From Algeria to the Paris attacks, French elites have used state of emergency legislation to consolidate power and repress dissent. Read more
By Ardeshir Mehrdad Illustration by Ardeshir Mohasses The last three decades have witnessed a relentless growth of Islamist movements, so that today political Islam is an undeniable reality…
By Mohammad Reza Shalguni The Marxist left must settle accounts with the traditions it has inherited. The normally conservative role played by religion, especially in the process of…
By Mohammad Reza Shalguni Ernest Gellner is one of the most well known figures of modern sociology among Western academic circles and one of the most influential exponents of the…
By Mohammad Reza Shalguni There is a prevalent view of Islam that portrays it as incompatible with modernism. In its more extreme form, this is considered the main reason for the…
By Mohammad Reza Shalguni Is fundamentalism an inevitable development of Islam? The fifth part of a eight-part series Mohammad Reza Shalguni refutes the notion that whenever confronted by modernity, Islam…
By Mohammad Reza Shalguni How flexible is Islam when it comes to women’s rights? The absence of rights for women in Islamic countries is usually taken as the…
By Mohammad Reza Shalguni Like all religions Islam was born under special social circumstances, and has changed under the influence of changes in social relations. In part three…
By Adam Shatz – London Review of Books In a wide-ranging essay in the LRB, Adam Shatz, discusses the causes and repercussions of the recent Daesh (ISIS) attacks…
By Robert Fisk – The Independent Isis was quick to understand a truth the West must now confront: that the national borders imposed by colonial powers 100 years…
By Mohammad Reza Shalguni Historic evidence refutes the view that Islam is a religion of warrior nomadic tribes In second of an eight-part series Mohammad Reza Shalguni rejects the…
by John Smith The globalization of production and its shift to low-wage countries is the most significant and dynamic transformation of the neoliberal era. Its fundamental driving force…
Mohammad-Reza Shalguni Islam is no more incompatible with modernisation or even modern culture than other religions There is a view that in countries where Muslims form the majority,…
Middle East 4 Change