By
Brian Ulrich, on September 2nd, 2010
Reidar Visser has something critical to say:
“There has been much talk about conspiracies by hostile powers to divide Iraq into separate statelets, and most of it is probably unfounded. This partition conspiracy, however, is real and since it mostly goes undiagnosed it represents arguably far most dangerous aspect of the Iraq War: Brilliant Western academics [...]
By
Brian Ulrich, on August 27th, 2010
IWPR has an article uncovering some of the political sinews moving events in Iran away from the Green Movement. It highlights the opposition between the Ahmadinejad administration and a traditional conservative political party called Motalefeh. Here’s the economic component:
“Motalefeh also has effective control of the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, the largest charity in [...]
By
Brian Ulrich, on August 23rd, 2010
Israel’s Ministry of Education is ordering teachers not to attend a workshop that promotes including the facts of Palestinian dispossession in classes:
“Government officials warned Israeli teachers last week not to cooperate with a civic group that seeks to educate Israelis about how the Palestinians view the loss of their homeland and the establishment of the [...]
By
Brian Ulrich, on August 6th, 2010
I haven’t agreed much with Jeffrey Goldberg lately, but on the Cordoba House, he has been excellent:
“The Cordoba Initiative, which is headed by an imam named Feisal Abdul Rauf, is an enemy of al Qaeda, no less than Rudolph Giuliani and the Anti-Defamation League are enemies of al Qaeda. Bin Laden would sooner dispatch [...]
By
Brian Ulrich, on July 19th, 2010
An interpretation advanced by me among others holds that the growing economic role of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards was an important factor contributing to the 2009 electoral coup. The fact that economic role is increasing in any case makes this interesting:
“Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards will not be involved in developing Tehran’s part of the world’s [...]
By
Brian Ulrich, on July 15th, 2010
By coincidence, this week I’ve been reading Arang Keshavarzian’s Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace, an extremely theory-heavy political science monograph examining the effects on political mobilization of transformations within the Tehran Bazaar since the Iranian Revolution. It usefully examines the bazaar, not as a unity, but as a [...]
By
Brian Ulrich, on July 13th, 2010
IPS News reports that bazaaris aren’t the only ones with complaints in Iran:
“Meanwhile, industrial workers are increasingly restive. According to the Iran Labor Report, a Web publication of Iranian labour activists, 180 workers at the Alborz china company in the northwestern city of Qazvin staged a demonstration Jul. 6, complaining that they had been paid [...]
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