Shortly after the September 11 attacks occurred, a colleague and I found ourselves feeling a need to put together a course that would help students put those attacks in some kind of historical perspective.  The course we constructed and taught twice at St. Lawrence University drew heavily on the history of imperialism and sought to position 9/11 as a key moment in the emerging (and at that time, still relatively unacknowledged) story of U.S. imperial decline.  In recent years this notion of imperial decline has slowly begun to seep into public consciousness.  What are the cultural manifestations of this growing awareness?  One of the most provocative cultural interventions of the last several years is the song "Patriot's Heart," written by perpetually underappreciated singer-songwriter Mark Eitzel (pictured at right) and originally recorded by his band, American Music Club on their 2004 album Love Songs For Patriots.  I wrote an extended review of this remarkable album in 2005, focusing on Eitzel's lyrical exploration of the theme of denial and its corrosive influence on American politics and culture.  Last month I had the pleasure of hearing Eitzel perform "Patriot's Heart" in Madrid as part of a solo tour that has drawn rave reviews.  The song draws a close comparison between pornography and patriotism, portraying the U.S. as only Eitzel could...as an aging gay male stripper.

US news in recent days, particularly in the shadow of Veterans Day, has been dominated by a series of urgent questions that have left many people scrambling to cover their rear ends:

• Who had prior knowledge of this man's violent intentions?
• Why did no one sound the alarm?  And if they did, why did no one take them seriously?
  
• Should we have seen it coming? 
  
• How could it have been prevented?
  
• How should we treat someone who is responsible for the deaths of a group of American soldiers?

Israel is now home to a sizable group of residents who are neither Jewish nor Palestinian.  Many of these people are labor migrants who occupy a precarious position within Israeli society and a relatively invisible position within the often binary discourse on Israel/Palestine.  In order to get at some of the specific political dynamics associated with these realities, I recently interviewed Haim Yacobi (left), a lecturer in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University in Israel.  An architect and planner by training, Yacobi does research on the geopolitics of cities. In 1999 he formulated the idea of establishing "Bimkom - Planners for Planning Rights," an NGO that deals with spatial planning, human rights and disadvantaged communities in Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, and currently he serves as the Chairperson of Bimkom.

It appears that those who responded skeptically to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, insisting it would never amount to much, are slowly being forced to eat their words.  Since I began writing this series on BDS, the movement has celebrated a number of significant victories in its struggle to mobilize ordinary citizens and key sectors of civil society in opposition to Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians.  In this fourth installment on the BDS movement, I will provide a brief overview of some of the movement's recent successes, including the creation of an ongoing campaign to free activist Mohammad Othman (pictured at left - image courtesy of Free Mohammad Othman) from Israeli custody. 

This week on the perpetually interesting and funny Daily Show with Jon Stewart, we witnessed a significant event that illustrated how the public discourse on Palestine is changing, slowly but surely.  Stewart hosted Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian democracy activist, and Anna Baltzer, an American Jewish activist and author who has advocated openly for Palestinian rights.  The two have been working together to promote a nonviolent approach to the struggle for justice in Israel/Palestine.  Such an appearance would have been almost unimaginable on a major cable program even a few years ago! 

At the same time, the interview also revealed the extent to which we are still struggling to overcome the weight of a deeply flawed set of assumptions about what is happening in Israel/Palestine.  (For more on this, see my recent post on the misleading language of "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict").  While Stewart was engaged, respectful, interested, and (of course) funny, he was also unable to hear fully what Barghouti and Baltzer were saying. 

Israel/Palestine.  Everyone knows it's one of the world's perpetual "hotspots," a place of seemingly endless violence carried out by the Israeli state and, to a lesser but still significant extent, Palestinians seeking to rid themselves of Israeli domination.  Over the years, this deadly dance has come to be known, almost universally, as "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."  Most journalists, scholars, government officials, and other observers who speak and write about the situation tend to use this phrase reflexively, without even thinking about it.  The phrase has even received the all-important Wikipedia seal of approval.  And why not?  Isn't it an accurate label?  Actually, no.  Far from being a common-sense way to describe what is happening in Israel/Palestine, the phrase "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" is inaccurate and misleading.  Why?  Because what is happening in Israel/Palestine is not a "conflict."

As the scandals of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi continue to dominate news out of Italy, I recently got some valuable perspective from Andrea Teti (left), Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland).  A native of Naples, Italy, he has a longstanding interest in both Italian and Egyptian politics.  His current research focuses on Western democracy promotion in the Middle East and on Foucault's analytics of power.  He received his MA (Hons.) and PhD from the University of St. Andrews. 

The cracks in the Israeli state's formidable ideological edifice are beginning to crumble in the face of growing pressure from determined and media-savvy international activists.  A case in point: the reception given to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently at a lecture in Chicago.  Olmert, the architect of Israel's 2006 war in Lebanon and its December 2008 assault on Gaza, faced a storm of protesters who repeatedly called attention to the human cost of his government's policies.  A video of the event prepared and posted by Electronic Intifada has "gone viral" in recent days.  Watch it here:

You know you are not in the United States any more when, in the span of less than a week, your city plays host to both Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales.  Both leaders have played key roles in a recent wave of political change in Latin America that has been pushing, sometimes quietly and sometimes not so quietly, against the long and continuing tradition of U.S. imperialism in the region. Yesterday I had the privilege of hearing Morales, Bolivia's charismatic indigenous president, speak to a packed house at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.  In a brief but inspiring speech delivered at the university's Faculty of Political Science and Sociology, Morales gave ample evidence of why he has been such a powerful and inspiring voice on the global stage in recent years. 

Having already cleared the ground and covered the basics of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, I had planned to continue by addressing some of the early successes of this growing activist campaign.  But the case of Prof. Neve Gordon comes first because it represents the latest chapter in what is, not surprisingly, a growing backlash against individuals who speak out publicly in favor of BDS.

In the first post of this series, I introduced the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and addressed some of the perceptions that often lead people to dismiss either the legitimacy of the movement or its prospects for success.  In this second installment, I will offer a basic overview and analysis of the BDS movement itself: its origins, philosophy, membership, and strategies. 

Sasha Tedeschi graduated from St. Lawrence University in 2007 with a double major in History and Global Studies.  He is currently doing research sponsored by the Fulbright Program in Russia.  I recently had the chance to interview him about a range of issues related to the public role of Islam in Russia. 

Whenever I tell someone about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that has arisen in recent years as a response to Israel's continuing colonization of Palestinian territory, the response is usually a skeptical one.  There seems to be an some sort of deeply conditioned reflex that leads people to want to dismiss the movement and its chances for achieving anything.  Despite the significant efforts of BDS activists to get the word out and educate the public, there is clearly a need for more work in order for the movement to gain legitimacy.  To this end, I will be writing a number of posts on issues surrounding the BDS movement, beginning with the question of why there is so much skepticism about it. 

Tomorrow, July 7, will mark the first day of one of Spain's most iconic rituals, known here as los San Fermines.  Each year the city of Pamplona hosts a week-long festival whose highlight is the "Running of the Bulls," a series of dramatic, frenetic events in which a group of bulls are released into the city to be chased by thousands of adventure-seekers, Spaniards and non-Spaniards alike.  As any guidebook will tell you, Ernest Hemingway was famously attracted to this ritual, describing it at length in his novel The Sun Also Rises.  Like so many such cultural forms, however, the San Fermines have now become commercialized media spectacles - and objects of political protest.

One of the great joys of living in Madrid is the opportunity to attend some of the many book presentations that regularly fill up the calendar.   Last evening I attended the very moving and thought-provoking presentation of a book of poems written by brigadistas: international volunteers who came to Spain during the country's civil war (1936-39) to fight on the side of the Second Spanish Republic against the forces of fascism led by General Francisco Franco. 

The following article is reprinted with permission.  I'm posting it here because I think the author, Ali Alizadeh, raises some very important issues regarding the ways in which the ongoing political crisis in Iran is being framed (and misunderstood) in the international media. (See also the excellent analysis at Juan Cole's blog.) You can find Alizadeh's original post here. 

why are the iranians dreaming again?*

[The following is a guest post from Ali Alizadeh, Researcher at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University]

As any student of news analysis knows, the mainstream media's attention is quite easily diverted from important stories once a moment of "crisis" has passed.  The Israeli strangulation of Gaza is an ongoing story that is decades in the making and, for ordinary Gazans, an ongoing reality.  While Israel's recent full-scale military assault on Gaza has ended, the suffering of Gaza's colonized population goes on.  Here is an update on some key Gaza stories that are flying under the radar. 

A recent article in Al-Ahram Weekly by a St. Lawrence University alumnus tackles the thorny issue of the intercommunal tension that continues to plague Indian society.  Somdeep Sen, who graduate from SLU in 2007 and is currently doing graduate work at Central European University in Budapest, argues that India's large Muslim minority continues to bear the brunt of the society's internal contradictions. 

One of the most underreported aspects of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has been its detrimental impact on the environment.  Living under occupation, Palestinians are unable to engage in fully autonomous and effective development efforts.  In response to this situation, a new local NGO called Bustan Qaraaqa (the Tortoise Garden) has emerged in Beit Sahour, a town famous for its inspiring tax revolt during the first Palestinian intifada (uprising) in the late 1980s. 

As Americans and the world digest the horrifying Bush-era torture memos that were released yesterday by the Obama administration, it is easy to pretend that the torture policy was simply the product of rogue elements within the US government.  Such a view conveniently allows Americans to express their shock - shock! - at the war crimes (as Gil Scott-Heron once joked, "America leads the world in shock!") while ignoring the ways in which the nation's collective response to 9/11 paved the way for those very crimes.  A case in point is New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks, most recently seen waxing lyrical about the "loud and promised land" called Israel.  Given Brooks' ability to separate "Israel" (read: his idealized image of Israel, sanitized of its past and current Arab presence) from the actions of the Israeli state, it is not surprising to find that he once led the cheers - in advance - for the kind of barbarity we saw at Abu Ghraib. 

I recently interviewed Dr. Ronnie Olesker about the results of the national elections held in Israel and their implications both for the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for US policy in the region.  Dr. Olesker is an Assistant Professor of Government at St. Lawrence University and has done extensive research on Israeli politics and majority-minority relations in Israel.  On March 30 she will deliver a lecture titled "One Land - Three Peoples? Future Prospects for Jewish-Arab-Palestinian Relations in Israel" as part of St. Lawrence's Contemporary Issues Forum.

Six years after the tragic death of Rachel Corrie, international solidarity activists in Palestine are again in the news.  Another American activist, Tristan Anderson, currently lies in in critical condition in an Israeli hospital after an Israeli soldier shot him in the head with a teargas canister.  Anderson, a 37-year-old from California, was taking part in a protest in the West Bank against the continued construction of Israel's infamous "apartheid wall."  The continued willingness of international activists to risk their lives in order to act in solidarity with Palestinians tells us a great deal about the global significance of Palestine in 2009. 

For an interesting visual representation of how the global economic crisis is affecting employment in different locations around the world, check out this page from al-Jazeera English.  Their map gathers together and plots dozens of al-Jazeera stories on job losses going back to February 2007.  Meanwhile, the head of the International Monetary Fund is warning that the crisis could have a

March's Theme of the Month centers around the current global economic crisis. Throughout this month our bloggers will be examining a variety of issues related to the crisis, from policy issues to media coverage to the effect of the crisis on students. 

Veteran journalist and blogger Helena Cobban has published a fascinating (and troubling) interview with Prof. Efraim Inbar, an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu.  The interview, published under a Creative Commons license, appears on Cobban's invaluable blog, Just World News.   Here is the full text: