Articles tagged “Middle East”

Resistance on the part of labor, students, women, ethnic minorities, and intellectuals is growing in the face of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repression and Holocaust denial, and the economic crisis.  New philosophical discussions are taking place around Islamic reformism and around the translation of Marxist works by Dunayevskaya and Lukacs, among others. — Editors

Israel’s invasion of Lebanon last summer will have a lasting impact not only on the Middle East but also on the world. Hezbollah is not only becoming the main power in Lebanon, but the war has also made the Iranian government into a major power in the region.

Israel’s murderous invasion of Lebanon was an overreaching comparable to the US war in Iraq, as the Islamist Hezbollah movement emerged stronger than before. It also placed Hezbollah’s sponsor, Iran, at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the first time. Leftist positions uncritical of Hezbollah and Iran are also critiqued as part of a call for a return to Marx’s vision of a total uprooting of capitalism — Editors

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The Danish cartoons demonizing Muslims should not be defended as free speech given the context of their publication, in which oppressed minorities inside Europe were demeaned in a racist manner by the dominant media. At the same time, equally reactionary forces in the Muslim world have taken advantage of the controversy to shore up their support — Editors

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Wadood Hamad is correct that many today are “stuck between two inadequate visions” — either apologizing for U.S. imperialist actions or “cheering any misguided ‘apparent’ resistance to imperialism.” Avoiding these false alternatives is not only needed to develop a successful antiwar movement; it is needed to ensure that the idea of freedom is not forsaken by today’s radicals.

Published in Capitalism, Nature, Socialism; Dec 2004; 15, 4

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The U.S. occupation of Iraq has turned into a quagmire of nightmarish proportions, with many now calling it the most serious setback for U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War. At the same time, some on the left like Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein have fallen into uncritical support of fundamentalist forces that oppose the US, most notably the Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. As the controversy over Bosnia showed, attitudes similar to Stalinism persist after the collapse of the USSR — Editors

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An analysis of the September 11 Commission Report– Editors

An analysis of the revelations of the torture of prisoners by US guards at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and its implications for the region — Editors

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George W. Bush’s illegal, unwarranted and barbarous war against Iraq clearly has nothing to do with “liberating” the Iraqi people and everything to do with extending U.S. global power at the expense of both the Iraqi AND American populace. The U.S. war against Iraq is rooted in its drive for single world mastery. It’s been with us since the end of World War II, when the U.S. contended with Russia for world domination. By 1991 the collapse of the Soviet Union forced one side to drop out of this drive for world domination. Yet the U.S. continued its drive, unencumbered by competition from another superpower  — Editors

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