MER Article Migrants, Workers and Refugees The outset of the Gulf crisis in August 1990 saw a dramatic exodus of more than a million Asian and Arab workers as well as some 460,000 Kuwaitis from Iraq and Kuwait. Perhaps a million Yemenis felt compelled to leave Saudi Arabia. During the civil war in Iraq that followed the ground war, a million Michael Humphrey • 13 min read
MER Article Clinton, Israel and the Hamas Expulsion On December 16, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin issued Order 97, authorizing military commanders to “expel inciters from among the population of their locality.” Israeli forces that day seized, bound and blindfolded 418 Palestinian men and threw them onto buses which then headed north. The military censor forbade the broadcast or The Editors • 5 min read
MER Article Books on Oil Simon Bromley, American Hegemony and World Oil (Pennsylvania State, 1991). Daniel Yergin, The Prize (Simon and Schuster, 1990). These two books present a historical account of the development of the international oil industry and the struggle for control of oil over the past century. Both authors Majid Alsayegh • 4 min read
MER Article Gulf War Journalism John J. Fialka, Hotel Warriors: Covering the Gulf War (Woodrow Wilson Center, 1991). John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (Hill and Wang, 1992). Jacqueline Sharkey, Under Fire: US Military Restrictions on the Media from Grenada to the Persian Gulf (Center for Barbara Harlow • 4 min read
MER Article Israel Stonewalls US Aid Investigation An Israeli general and a General Electric official diverted more than $40 million in US military aid to Israel from 1984 to 1990 for unauthorized military projects, according to an ongoing investigation by the House Commerce and Energy Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Presenting his pa Jack Colhoun • 4 min read
MER Article Softening Structural Adjustment As we discussed in our last column, the US Agency for International Development’s “Governance and Democracy Program” is ostensibly intended to foster political liberalization, democracy and official accountability in Egypt and other countries where USAID provides economic assistance. Closer scrutiny Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article The Media and the Polls In the relationship between public opinion and government decision-making, the trajectory of influence goes from top to bottom. Policymakers try to mold public opinion to suit their needs, not mold policies to suit the public. On many controversial foreign policy issues, there is often a gap between informed public opinion (Author not identified) • 8 min read
MER Article "Images from Elsewhere" “You chase colonialism out the door, it comes back through the sky,” observed the Algerian Press Service several years ago, alluding to the phenomenon of satellite broadcasting that has literally brought European television into the living rooms of North Africa. [1] More than 95 percent of urban hou Miriam Rosen • 7 min read
MER Article From Broadcasting to Narrowcasting Transnational media conglomerates and television networks from RCA to Associated Press to CNN have created and dominated a model of broadcasting which might be called “centralized global broadcasting.” Worldwide restructurings and rapid technological advances, though, have ushered in a new model of Hamid Naficy • 9 min read
MER Article Islam and Public Culture Walk the streets of Cairo or village lanes in Egypt any early evening and you will see the flicker of television screens and hear the dialogue and music of the current serial (musalsal). Read the newspapers and you will find articles and cartoons that can only be understood if one is following these Lila Abu-Lughod • 15 min read
MER Article Cartoon Commentary A cartoon image is short and direct and does not move when you look at it. Condensing history, culture and social relationships within a single frame, a cartoon can recontextualize events and evoke reference points in ways that a photograph or even a film cannot. Like graffiti, jokes and other genre Susan Slyomovics • 7 min read
MER Article Muhammad al-Saqr on Kuwait's Press Muhammad al-Saqr has been editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti daily al-Qabas since 1983. Although he has a business background, the paper’s reputation for balance and accuracy has grown under al-Saqr’s leadership. Al-Saqr was detained and interrogated a week before he received a Press Freedom Award from (Author not identified) • 2 min read
