Mustafa Habib. The process to install new governors in Basra and Baghdad is proving almost as chaotic as the formation of the federal government. In Basra last weekend,…
Michael Safi and Greame Wearden. What happened on Saturday morning? Saudi pipelines, oil installations and tankers have occasionally been attacked over the past two years, but analysts say…
Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Immanuel Wallerstein, a giant of the critical social sciences and a steadfast ally of contemporary social movements, passed away at the age of 88…
Said Soltanpour, poet, playwright and director changed the pace of the revolution that toppled the Shah. It was mid October 1977. Already the voices of protest against the…
Leïla Ouitis When in early February Algeria’s ailing octogenarian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced his intention to run for the presidency for a fifth term, millions of Algerians took…
Esen Uslu. As the temperature rose to an unprecedented high at the beginning of August, the Turkish army was poised to invade Rojava in Syria. While this was…
Alastair Crooke. It’s pretty clear. Saudi Arabia has lost, and, notes Bruce Riedel, “the Houthis and Iran are the strategic winners”. Saudi proxies in Aden – the seat…
Cigerxwin (“The bleeding heart”), is a pseudonym for Sheikmous Hasan. He came from north Kurdistan and was mainly known as a poet. He made a great impact on…
Michael Snyder Are we about to see World War 3 erupt in the Middle East? Over the past several days, Israel has attempted to prevent attacks by Iranian…
Saghf (Persian: سقف)(Literary: Roof) is one of the most beautiful Iranian songs. It was first performed by Farhad Mehrad in the 1970s. The lyrics are composed by Iraj…
Paul Khalifeh. The New Hezbollah has emerged. In the past, the Lebanese Shia party proclaimed its allegiance to Iran through resistance to the state of Israel, and by…
Bashar al-Assad has started confiscating the homes of Syrians who fled during the Civil War. For decades, his clan has purged the state of all but the most…
Norman Finkelstein and Colter Louwese. Norman Finkelstein is a leading authority on the Israel-Palestine conflict. While most observers have proclaimed Jared Kushner’s ongoing ‘peace’ initiative to be dead…
Today Saudi Arabia finally lost the war on Yemen. It has no defenses against new weapons the Houthis in Yemen acquired. These weapons threaten the Saudis economic lifelines….
Robert Fisk. We like our anniversaries in blocks of 50 or 100 – at a push we’ll tolerate a 25. The 100th anniversary of the Somme (2016), the 75th anniversary of…
Civaka Azad and Mahmut Şakar. Mahmut Şakar talked to Civaka Azad about his experience as Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan’s attorney. On May 2, 2019, Öcalan’s lawyers had…
Yassamine Mather. The conflict between Iran and the United States is in its early stages, yet we are already witnessing war propaganda, and the presentation of outright lies…
Cesar Chelala. Gender violence, manifested essentially as violence against women, is one of the most significant epidemics in the Middle East today. This kind of violence occurs in…
Your eyes are a thorn in my heart Inflicting pain, yet I cherish that thorn And shield it from the wind. I sheathe it in my flesh, I…
Robert Fisk. It’s about time we wised up to what is going on in this utterly farcical “crisis” in the Gulf, this charade of lies and pomposity which…
Kourosh Ziabari. Iran is a country in which many aspects of public life: governance, education, foreign relations and even people’s lifestyles are peculiarly determined by ideology. The authorities…
Esen Uslu. The Turkish airforce base at Mürted near Ankara had an interesting history. The name means ‘renegade’, and it has been associated with the Battle of Ankara…
Richard Falk. Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. By Noura Erakat. Stanford University Press, 2019. I make no claim to approach this book with an…
Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik. Harry Magdoff’s The Age of Imperialism is a classic work that shows how postwar political decolonization does not negate the phenomenon of imperialism….
First I built on sand, then I built on rock. When the rock caved inI no longer built on anything.Then I often built again On sand and rock,…
Hamidreza Azizi Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi issued a decree July 1 obliging the overwhelmingly pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) to fully integrate into the Iraqi armed…
Dr Hakim Young. Dear fellow human beings, Some of us have wondered, “Are people today too disconnected and frantic to calm down, in order to solve global challenges…
Xander Sneider. Summary Iran has long struggled to manage its paltry water resources. As Tehran wrestles with the effects of decadeslong drought and record flooding, it’s clear that…
Gülistan Gürbey. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) was able to win the mayoral election in Istanbul (31 March and 23 June 2019) and at the same time experienced…
Media outlets are creating a climate for a US military attack on Iran by hyping the idea that Iran is an imminent threat to peace, by failing to…
Evgeny Morozov. More than a decade after the onset of the financial crisis, capitalist ideologues are eager for good publicity. Once-alluring promises of meritocracy and social mobility ring…
Esen Uslu. The results of the March 30 local elections across Turkey were a blow to the ruling coalition of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the…
Solmaz Sharif. Suitcases Suitcases of dried limes, dried figs, pomegranate paste, parsley laid in the sun, burnt honey, sugar cubes hardened on a baking sheet. Suitcases of practical…
Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman Not so long ago, human rights were seen as a way out of the crises of a divided world. From the late 1970s, almost all political…
A voice from the dark called out, ‘The poets must give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar imagination of…
Marjorie Cohn. The New York Times is reporting that on June 20, President Trump ordered military strikes against Iran to retaliate for its shootdown of a U.S. drone, but then pulled back…
Dr Alias Ankle. The economic war waged by Trump’s administration against Iran seems to have been escalated to involve false flag attacks against oil tankers in the Gulf…
We condemn unequivocally the sentencing to prison of Turkish doctors promoting peace. A 2000 World Health Organization working paper begins with two simple declarations: “The first principle of…
Podcast by David Harvey. Social media has been a powerful took in organising mass movements. Their use in organising more durable structures such as trade unions, women’s organisation…
Book Review by Ben Tarnoff. The idea that computers will soon steal our jobs is an article of faith among many of the world’s most powerful people. The…
Fariba Amini. May this year was a very pleasant time in Tehran when it comes to the weather. The abundant rain had cleared the pollution for a while,…
Vijay Prashad. Tensions between the U.S. and Iran are again ratcheting up as the Trump administration accused Iran of orchestrating an attack Thursday on Japanese and Norwegian oil…
Hind Khoudary. Abed Nasser, the owner of Cedar restaurant in Gaza City, broke the news to his customers in a Facebook post: the highly-anticipated music night scheduled for…
Omar Dahi. The question of donor conditionality and how it could be used to influence behavior and promote respect for human rights and political inclusion has increasingly gained…
Samuel Ramani. On May 14, Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen launched multiple drone strikes against Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities. These drone strikes targeted a major oil pipeline located…
As the Sudanese uprising enters its most critical conjuncture, with negotiations between the military council and the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change collapsing, and the…
Adrian Searle. Whitechapel Gallery, London: The Beatles play a presidential funeral while Nimrud’s Palace is rebuilt with sardine cans in this angry, thought-provoking journey though time. Michael Rakowitz’s…
Book Review: Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance. By Amy Kaplan Rashid Khalidi. The American publishing industry does not skimp when it comes to Israel….
L K Sharma. The people accepted electoral authoritarianism for their security. This neutralised warnings by intellectuals and opposition parties that Modi’s India was heading towards fascism. Narendra Modi’s…
Lee Fang. Defense executives from around the country crowded into Goldman Sachs’ glimmering tower in downtown Manhattan in mid-May, eager to present before a conference of bankers and financial analysts….
Ariel Rodriguez. Sometimes, the best way to understand the complexity of a conflict is through art. Words can echo in people’s hearts as much as images can inspire…
Michael Roberts. Despite all the optimistic talk by President Trump about the state of the US economy, the latest data on economic activity and industrial production suggest that…
Robert Fisk. We like to take the Big Boys on trust. No longer do we believe in our meretricious little leaders with their easy lies and twitters: the…
The United States has played a major role in fomenting violence across Yemen, backing the Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led forces attacking the country while also conducting a…
Pat Fry. It was 7 AM April 30th in Caracas when I awoke to hear gun shots outside my hotel. Our group, seven US citizens and one Canadian,…
Juan Cole. The Trump administration is now in full disinformation mode, using all the classical techniques of propaganda to put the gullible US public on a war footing…
Melvin Goodman. Many American presidents have blundered in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, but Donald Trump’s personal involvement in the region has been particularly disastrous. President…
Corinna Mullin, Nada Trigui and Azadeh Shahshahani Building on decades of struggle, the January 2011 Tunisian uprising triggered a wave of popular revolt that spread across North Africa…
Richard Falk. Prefatory Note: There are important recent developments in Turkey. An unprecedented decision by the High Electoral Council (HEC) of Turkey to cancel the outcome of the…
Phyllis Bennis “We don’t want to go through the history on this.” Jared Kushner said in discussing his supposed peace plan for Israel-Palestine. But in fact, it is…
Yassamine Mather. A common question journalists ask these days – if they are not asking about Brexit – is ‘Will there be a war against Iran?’ and, if…
Omar Hassan speaks to Algerian scholar and activist Hamza Hamouchene, coordinator of Environmental Justice North Africa and co-founder of the Algeria Solidarity Campaign, about the mass movement sweeping Algeria. In…
English Translations of selected Poems and Poetry of the great Iranian Poet Forugh Farrokhzad فروغ فرخزاد Forugh, one of the most famous Persian Women poets died in a…
Vincent Lofazo. With the United States strangling Iran’s oil exports, Iran threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. On…
In most conflicts, women are grouped with children; they are categorized among the most vulnerable groups. This designation erases, in many cases, women who are engaged in the…
Asad Rehman. For too long the severity and scale of the climate crisis has been deliberately understated, but October’s release of the IPCC’s Special Report on the Global…
Robyn Creswell. In March, 2011, when civil protests broke out in cities and towns across Syria, the country’s most famous poet, Adonis—who is in his eighties and has…
Moshé Machover. Binyamin (‘Bibi’) Netanyahu’s motive for calling an early election to the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), one year before the end of its term, was purely personal: it…
Mehdi Farji. Located 125 kilometers south of Tehran, Qom is a holy city known for its many seminaries and the thousands of clerics and seminarians who live and…
Patrick Cockburn. Two very different political waves are sweeping through the Middle East and north Africa. Popular protests are overthrowing the leaders of military regimes for the first…
Jonathan Fenton-Harvey Civil societies and political actors in the Middle East and North Africa have continuously fought for democratic change and positive reforms since the 2011 Arab Spring…
Diana Buttu and Dennis J Bernstein Without question, the reporting on recent Israeli elections was devoid of a Palestinian perspective, despite the fact that Palestinians will be deeply…
Adam Shatz. Israel’s legislative elections on 9 April were a tribute to Binyamin Netanyahu’s transformation of the political landscape. At no point were they discussed in terms of…
Jan Oberg. You have certainly not heard much about this in the West. And it didn’t get a fraction of the media attention (and none of the hundreds of millions…
Edo Konrad. Tuesday’s election results were obvious to anyone paying attention. Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and rival Benny Gantz’s Blue and White won the same…
On Thursday night, hundreds of people packed into the Old South Church in Boston to hear the world-renowned dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky speak. He looked back at…
“Vartan didn’t Say a Word” is a political poem by Ahmad Shamlou that underwent censorship because of being addressed to a political prisoner who was tortured to death…
Vijay Prashad. The West and the Gulf Arabs have condemned Libya to the strongman. You can well imagine the tension when Libya’s beleaguered Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj met…
Hamza Hamouchene. What is happening in Algeria is truly historic. The people won the first battle in their struggle to radically overhaul the system. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president for…
Esen Uslu. Turkey is no longer a dark space, about which the British public occasionally gets scraps of information – it has become a centre of news fed…
Emma Graham-Harrison. The death toll from two weeks of flooding in Iran has risen to 62 as frustration mounts inside the country at the government’s handling of the…
Robert Fisk. Khaled Abol Naga – an outspoken critic of the Egyptian government – stands accused of treason ( AFP )It was comical, farcical, droll. An actor’s dream if…
Carlotta Gall. Step by step over the years, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey sought to ensure nobody could challenge him. He marginalized adversaries. He purged the army,…
Tony Greenstein. In most western countries, political parties compete in general elections over issues such as taxation, nationalisation/privatisation, poverty, etc. Those in most European countries, with the exception…
Ramzy Baroud. “(At dawn) … I will resist … (Since) upon the wall there is still a white sheet … And my fingers are yet to (completely) dissolve.”…
Semir Amin. Radical political economist Samir Amin (1931–2018) left behind a cherished oeuvre of Marxist writings. Amin’s intellectual range—from economics to culture—was admirable, and his lessons remain essential….
Robert Fisk. After all the headlines about the supposed defeat of Isis, anyone who doesn’t believe a word of it may seem a bit of a spoilsport. But whenever…
Tony Greenstein. In 1984 rabbi Meir Kahane of the ultra-nationalist Kach party entered the Israeli parliament (knesset), having received over 25,000 votes. Kach stood on a programme which,…
Ramzy Baroud. Political commentators sympathetic to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Fatah Movement, in particular, fanned out as soon as the news was announced of Mohammad Shtayyeh’s…
المركز الفلسطيني للبحوثالسياسية والمسحية Palestinian Center for POLICY and SURVEY RESEARCH Public Opinion Poll No (69). As Fatah and Hamas lose popular support and more than 60% demand…
Ian Black. The meeting publicly showcased the remarkable fact that Israel, as Netanyahu was so keen to advertise, is winning acceptance of a sort from the wealthiest countries…
Anna Taylor. It started in front of the Swedish parliament, on 20 August – a regular school day. Greta Thunberg sat with her painted sign and some homemade…
Brianna Fruean and others. Lovina, 15, and Delema Janvier, 17, Alberta, Canada: As indigenous youths we have a close connection to the Earth We strike for the Earth,…
Orhan Kemal Cengiz. On March 31, Turkey will elect mayors for 81 provincial capitals and 957 towns. Under normal conditions in Turkey, local elections are considered to be of…
Bob Dreyfuss. Here’s the foreign policy question of questions in 2019: Are President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, all…
Dougie Gerrard. By any measure, Leyla Güven is in a bad way. She is assailed by painful cramps, the result of a protein breakdown in her muscular tissue….
Nicholas Lyall. The Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia and away from the Middle East, followed by current President Donald Trump’s “America First” approach, has seen U.S. attention on…
Rohollah Faghihi. The phenomenon of “dirty” or suspicious money appears to have increasingly found a new haven: Iran’s cinema and TV production industry. In 2015, Interior Minister Abdolreza…
Ed Vulliamy. The Syrian city of Aleppo crumbles into rubble, assailed by Russian bombs, government artillery and chemical weapons. In the heat of battle, Turkish troops and Kurdish…
Yassamine Mather. Friday March 8 is International Women’s Day, which this year coincides with the 40th anniversary of the first major protest by Iranian women against the Islamic…
Middle East 4 Change