Place: Middle East

Behind the US-Iran Tension

Clearly the attacks on Norwegian and Japanese tankers off the Gulf of Oman on Thursday 14 June increase the risk of a miscalculation leading to military clashes in the region. However, these attacks were probably not carried out by any . . .

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To the Arab Readers of “Marx at the Margins”

Published as “Letter to My Arab Readers” for the new translation into Arabic, Cairo: Arweqa Institution for Studies, Translation, and Publishing, 2019, translated by Hisham Rouhana.

The State of the Sudanese & Algerian Uprisings: Livestream Event, June 1

What sparked these latest uprisings, and what has made them so successful thus far? What are the balance of forces today in Algeria and Sudan? And what has changed since 2011 that may allow for a different outcome than the bleak reality we have seen across the Middle East for the past six years?

Escalating Threat of Direct U.S. War Against Iran: Is There A Way Out?

Stopping the ominous drive toward a direct U.S. war against Iran demands opposition both to U.S. imperialism and to the repressive Iranian regime.

To give up on Arab-Jewish partnership is to give up hope

Most of the people in Israel are victims of the Netanyahu government. Partnership between them is the only way to fight its various forms of oppression — including the occupation.

Trump’s Controversial Decision on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards

There is little question that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is bad news. Some of its units have engaged in severe repression of nonviolent dissidents, supported Assad’s brutal counter-insurgency operations in Syria, backed hardline Islamist militia in several foreign countries, . . .

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Call for the Formation of a Transnational Socialist-Humanist Solidarity Network

Critical developments around the globe compel the creation of a new type of transnational socialist and anti-authoritarian solidarity network.

Solidarity with the Algerian People

Solidarity with the Algerian people in their struggle for popular sovereignty
Renaissance of the Algerian revolution
Statement of Fourth International Bureau
Algeria is experiencing a popular uprising that is unprecedented since the proclamation of national independence. Since 22 February 2019, following calls launched . . .

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Who’s for a Palestinian State?

Labor Party leader Avi Gabai is right when he says: “The peace process vis-à-vis the Palestinians is interesting only for people over 50.” “Do you think,” he told his supporters, “that people care about a Palestinian state when [President Mahmoud] . . .

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Peel Back Tulsi Gabbard’s “Progressive” Veneer

Tulsi Gabbard is getting a pass from people who should know better, first from Glenn Greenwald and then from the folks at Democracy Now! They describe her as “progressive except that some leftists on some issues . . .

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The #MeToo Movement in the Middle East

The #MeToo movement against sexual assault and rape has animated women throughout the world.  In the Middle East too, despite the wars led by authoritarian states, various imperialist powers,  and extremist religious fundamentalist forces, a #MeToo movement is rising. How . . .

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Syria, the United States, and the Left

As the war in Syria draws to a close, the debate on the U.S. left over that conflict seems as intractable as ever.

Palestine on a Precipice

The rise and expansion of right-wing populism and the dramatic unfolding of global politics in the Trump era have had significant and alarming implications for the Palestinian people, leadership, and question overall.

What do Trump’s ‘withdrawal’ from Syria and the Gulf’s rapprochement with Assad have in common?

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In the days since Donald Trump’s announcement that the US was to rapidly withdraw its 2,000 troops from Syria, an enormous amount of speculation about what this means has taken place. In my initial piece, I expressed a number of views that are not widely shared.

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Bizarre Assertions

I read New Politics because it provides an in depth socialist perspective on politics available nowhere else, but some of your contributors make bizarre assertions.

Statement on Threat of Turkish Planned Military Invasion Against Northern Syria

Internationalist Solidarity Needed

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Donald Trump’s sudden decision to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria is a green light to Recep Tayyip Erdogan to decimate the Kurds in what remains of Rojava in northern Syria. Earlier this year, Turkey invaded the Afrin area with the assistance of Syrian reactionary armed opposition groups, leading to the forced displacement of large sections of Afrin’s Kurdish population and continuous violations of the human rights of the local population.

Hard Questions in Israel-Palestine

ImageJamie Stern-Weiner, ed. Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine's Tought Questions. OR Books, 2018. 518 pp. 

The fact that, after fifty years of Palestinian support efforts, the Israeli occupation is more entrenched than ever should inspire some intellectual humility among those hawking solutions to the conflict, notes Jamie Stern-Weiner in the introduction to his edited collection Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions. It is humbling as well to read through the volume, with more than seventy essays and rejoinders by more than fifty different authors, from almost every one of which something new can be learned.

The Collected Writings of Stanley Heller

ImageStanley Heller, The Uprising We Need. Amazon Digital Services LLC, 2017. 332pp. $5.99 on Kindle. 

Apart from the many valuable insights contained inside The Uprising We Need, Stanley Heller’s collection of articles published over the period between 2003 and 2017, the book is a fascinating look back through that fourteen-year span in which so much has happened. There is a tendency in our isolated, consumer-disciplined culture to focus on the shiniest thing out there right now with little reference for how that particular thing got there in the first place.

Wars In The Middle East Since Trump

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Following his new sanctions instituted against Iran, the dismissal by Donald Trump of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal is the continuation of the capitalist logic of militarization of the Middle East that was escalated by the last Bush administration and which has brought genocide and disastrous humanitarian crises to the region. 

Life of a Salesman

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Marine Le Pen’s partner had just left the country. A Jew of Algerian background, Louis Aliot had been dispatched to Israel to raise funds for the Front National (FN).

Indefensible: Idlib and the Left

A critique of the response to the suffering of Idlib by too much of the left.

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