From the Editors

Jadaliyya Revamps Arabic Section . . . click here

Jadaliyya Launches Arabian Peninsula Page . . . Click here!

الآن . . . القسم العربي بحلة جديدة

The Culture Page Returns . . . . click here

Jadaliyya launches its new Syria page . . . Click here.

Want to find out about new books? Visit our expanding NEWTON page. Click here.

Call for Photos: Become a Contributing Photographer at Jadaliyya

Internship Opportunities at ASI (Jadaliyya, Arab Studies Journal, FAMA). Click here!

The Jadaliyya Egypt Elections Watch page archives! Click here for comprehensive coverage.

Interested in writing a Review for Jadaliyya? Visit our Call for Reviews here.

Natural Resources

Shock-and-Awe Nation Building: Iraq's Neo-Liberal Reconstruction

1 May 14 2012 by Haytham Bahoora

[View of Sadr City in the days preceding the December 2005 Iraqi legislative election. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]

The Iraqi government’s contractual delivery of Iraqi oil fields to foreign multinationals is perhaps the most consequential long-term economic consequence of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Contracts have been signed, production rights to massive oil fields sold, and a steady stream of propaganda disseminated about Iraqi oil production eventually rivaling that of Saudi Arabia and Iran. The celebratory narrative of Iraq’s expanding oil production has been marketed as an essential component of Iraq’s re-integration into a world economic system that will, we are told, become increasingly dependent on Iraqi oil, much of it waiting to be tapped. The ...

Keep Reading »

Beautiful Water Day

0 Mar 29 2012 by Adalah

[Slide from video posted below. Image by Adalah.]

Nearly 70,000 Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel live in thirty-six unrecognized villages in the Naqab. The State of Israel deliberately limits access to water in these villages, as well as all other basic services, as a means of forcing the Bedouin to give up their just land claims and move to government-planned townships, the poorest in Israel. As the Bedouin community struggles to remain on their ancestral land, most villagers obtain water via improvised, plastic hose hook-ups or unhygienic metal containers, which transport the water from a single water point located far from their homes, causing health risks and daily hardships. The health ramifications ...

Keep Reading »

The Fire Next Time Is Now: An Interview with Angus Wright

0 Nov 10 2011 by Robert Jensen

[Angus Wright. Image from unknown archive.]

Angus Wright has a way of saying things we may not want to hear in a way that is hard to ignore. An example: During a meeting of environmentalists about shaping the public conversation on our most pressing ecological crises, folks were wrestling with how to present an honest analysis in accessible language—how to talk about the bad news and the need for radical responses without turning people off. During the discussion about the effects of climate change, Wright offered a simple suggestion for a slogan: “No more water, the fire next time.” Those words from a black spiritual, made famous by James Baldwin’s borrowing for his 1963 book The Fire Next Time, are usually ...

Keep Reading »

Call for Participants: IFPB Olive Harvest Delegation (Palestine, 29 October-11 November, 2011)

0 Sep 26 2011 by Jadaliyya Reports

IFPB Olive Harvest Delegation Palestine October 29 - November 11, 2011 This delegation will provide an opportunity to participate in the Palestinian olive harvest season — generally a time of great community activism, where people of all ages from Palestine, Israeli peace and justice groups, and international groups join farmers as they reap their harvest. It is international support that makes the harvest possible in many cases. You will hear from Palestinian farmers and learn of the importance of agriculture to the Palestinian economy and culture. As with other delegations, you will also meet additional Israelis and Palestinians working for peace and justice. To ...

Keep Reading »

Democracy Now! Interview with Gilbert Achcar on the Libyan Rebels

0 Aug 25 2011 by Jadaliyya Reports

[Gilbert Achcar. Image from screen shot of interview.]

This is an interview conducted with Gilbert Achcar on Wednesday, August 24, in regards to news of the Libyan rebels entering Tripoli. The interview addresses the events surrounding this development, highlighting the dynamics of the NATO intervention and discussing the identities and interests that make up the rebel forces. Transcripts of the interview follow the below video. Libyan rebels have consolidated their grip on the capital of Tripoli by capturing Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s main compound, but the whereabouts of the Libyan leader remain unknown, and he has vowed his forces would resist "the aggression with all strength" until either victory or death. ...

Keep Reading »

New Hope on the Nile

3 May 11 2011 by Ramzi El Houry

[Image from http://blog.gohoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/River-Nile-Egypt-Gohoto.jpg]

A new, post-Mubarak Egypt has given both Egyptians and other Arabs alike, hope that Egypt can once again reclaim its role as the focal point from which Arab culture and politics emanate. The opening up of the Rafah border crossing into Gaza and the active promotion of a unity government in the Palestinian Territories are both indications that this is slowly happening. However, Egypt’s regional affiliation is not only with the Middle East, but extends towards its riparian partners along the Nile as well. And on that front, events in the immediate months after the fall of Mubarak indicated that an Egypt in transition, unable to take firm political positions, could be taken ...

Keep Reading »

Egypt's Power-Cuts (Part 2)

0 Sep 04 2010 by Mohamed Waked

In part one we saw how exceptional heat wrecked havoc on Egypt this summer, as it supposedly increased demand for electricity beyond the national generation capacity. This prompted the authorities to cut power off whole cities and neighborhoods for long durations everyday to bring demand down to a level within the network’s capacity. As we have seen, the social and economic cost of doing so have been plain huge. And as such, they signalled the state’s failure to all. But the reason why all of this happened remained a matter of speculation, as people explaining it in terms of increased demand only failed to hold any water. Thus the question remained, why did this collapse ...

Keep Reading »

Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States

0 Apr 30 2012 by Omar Dahi

Adam Hanieh, Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. [This review was originally published in the most recent issue of Arab Studies Journal. For more information on the issue, or to subscribe to ASJ, click here.] What if capitalists in a particular country could draw on a reserve army of semi-skilled labor that includes hundreds of millions of noncitizens whom they could import, hire, fire and expel at will, without worrying about laws, regulations, and ...

Keep Reading »

The Nature of Oil: Reconsidering American Power in the Middle East

0 Jan 12 2012 by Muriam Haleh Davis

Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. New York: Verso, 2011. Toby Craig Jones, Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. Robert Vitalis, American Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2006. For most of those who consider themselves politically liberal, oil—along with environmental degradation and foreign occupation—form a kind of political axis of evil on the ...

Keep Reading »

New Texts Out Now: Alan Mikhail, "Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt"

0 Oct 19 2011 by Alan Mikhail

Alan Mikhail, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. [Winner of the 2011 Roger Owen Book Award] Jadaliyya: What made you write this book? Alan Mikhail: In the most general sense, I wrote this book because I wanted to understand the period of Ottoman rule in the Arab World. The Ottomans were in Egypt for over 350 years, so they clearly must have had a fundamental role in shaping its history, politics, culture, and economy. ...

Keep Reading »

Doctors without Borders on the Situation in Tripoli

0 Sep 02 2011 by Jadaliyya Reports

[The following report was issued by Médecins Sans Frontières on August 28, 2011. It was recently published on Médecins Sans Frontières Australia.] Libya: “Almost all of the hospitals around the city are receiving wounded” Libya / 25.08.11 A three-person Médecins Sans Frontières team is currently in Tripoli with supplies and is starting to support facilities that are already overwhelmed with patients wounded in the fighting currently taking place in the Libyan capital. Médecins Sans Frontières has also ...

Keep Reading »

Sowing the Arab Spring

0 Jul 30 2011 by Dan Sisken

Rami Zurayk, Food, Farming and Freedom: Sowing the Arab Spring. Charlottesville, VA: Just World Books, 2011. Is there a link between the decline in the availability of hearty village bread in Lebanon and the Arab revolutions of the past several months? In Food, Farming, and Freedom: Sowing the Arab Spring, Rami Zurayk, Professor of Agronomy at the American University of Beirut, answers in the affirmative and goes on to show why. Food could be fairly described as the book version of Zurayk's essential ...

Keep Reading »

Breaking News: "Black Gold" Actually (Dark) Blue Ink

1 Oct 23 2010 by Nadya Sbaiti

“What we always thought was oil is actually the same stuff you find in a Bic pen,” shocked analysts say. An emergency G7 meeting was called last night in response to the earth shattering news that what has been thought for over a century to be oil – petroleum – is in fact nothing more than the viscous ink used in certain ballpoint pens.

Keep Reading »

To Stay Modern

1 Aug 22 2010 by Sherene Seikaly

On 4 August, after more than five million barrels of oil battered the Gulf of Mexico for over 100 days, BP proclaimed the success of its “static kill strategy.” Pumping the blown out well with mud and cement was working to stop what BP calls the “leak” or alternatively, “the Gulf of Mexico incident.” The company, its website explained, was “doing everything we can to make this right.” In the meantime, the environmental and economic devastation of the worst spill in US history and the world’s largest ...

Keep Reading »

Infomous

New Pages

Hot on Facebook

"We Didn't Know It Was Impossible, So We Did It": The Quebec Student Strike Celebrates Its 100th Day

About Last Night

Egypt's Working Class and the Question of Organization

Egypt's Presidential Election: Meet the Contenders

"We are All Palestinian Prisoners": Exclusive Interview with Artist Hafez Omar (VIDEO)

Al-Jazeera's (R)Evolution?

Without Principle, There is Nothing: On the Undignified Politics of the American Task Force on Palestine

سنان أنطون: العراق تعمق فيه تشويه التاريخ

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, it is tempting to want to linger on the part about “being right,” but it’s more important to focus on why “it didn’t matter” because we are still right, and it still doesn’t matter.

click me | أنقرني email quote to a friend