MER Article Two Views of Said, The Question of Palestine Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Quandrangle, 1979). In the late 1950s, my political education began at the knees, or rather the soapboxes, of Union Square’s old lefties. Saturday morning meanderings among the Fourth Avenue bookstores were followed by afternoon “classes” in New Stu Cohen, Beshara Doumani • 12 min read
MER Article Massive Arrests Precede Sadat's Assassination On September 3 and 4, 1981, just four weeks before he was assassinated, President Anwar al-Sadat launched a crackdown that overnight swept nearly 1,600 Egyptians into prisons. Hundreds more were detained under house arrest, or stripped of official positions in professional associations. Sadat attrib Joe Stork • 5 min read
MER Article The Theory of Imperialism and Its Consequences Between 1900 and the end of World War I, the concept of imperialism developed among Marxist thinkers and activists to denote the contemporary expansion of formal colonial empires and the intense conflicts over that expansion among particular capitalist industrialized countries. In subsequent decades Gavin Kitching • 18 min read
MER Article "The Palestinian Demand for Independence Cannot Be Postponed Indefinitely" Salim Tamari was born in Jaffa and now teaches sociology at Birzeit University, in the West Bank. He spoke with Penny Johnson, Peter Johnson and Judith Tucker in Boston in July 1981. The Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is entering its fifteenth year. How would you characterize Salim Tamari • 20 min read
MER Article The Arc of Crisis and the New Cold War The latter half of the 1970s witnessed a sustained and geographically diverse series of social upheavals in the Third World which, taken together, constituted a lessening of Western control in the developing areas. In Africa, the Ethiopian revolution of 1974 was followed by a series of changes in th Fred Halliday • 37 min read
MER Article The Arab Economies in the 1970s The 1970s were undoubtedly the most dramatic and important years in recent Middle Eastern history. The decade began politically with the death of Nasser, the formal withdrawal of the British from the Gulf and the first sharp increase in the price of oil. Oil -- its production and marketing, its reve Roger Owen • 27 min read
MER Article From the Editors (October-December 1981) This is our one hundredth issue, and our tenth anniversary. The variety and scope of the articles, and the size of the magazine, go beyond anything we have attempted before. At the same time, this issue incorporates and represents much of what MERIP has tried to do over its ten years past. We are ve The Editors • 4 min read
MER Article Capitalism in Rural Iran Parvin Ghorayshi: Fred Halliday has suggested in the chapter on agricultural development in the first edition of his book, Iran: Dictatorship and Development, that the Iranian state successfully imposed capitalist relations on the rural areas by means of a land reform. While I agree that rural Iran Fred Halliday, Parvin Ghorayshi • 12 min read
MER Article Government's Nabavi on Inflation and Labor Unrest Edited text of Tehran Radio interview with Behzad Nabavi, minister of state for executive affairs and chief government spokesman, February 23, 1981: What practical steps has the government taken to combat inflation? What you mean in fact is the high cost of living. Incidentally, we have been follo (Author not identified) • 3 min read
MER Article Khomeini Workers' Day Message Text of message by Ayatollah Khomeini on the occasion of Workers’ Day, May 1, 1981, as read by announcer on Tehran Radio: In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. Blessed be Workers Day for the ranks of the valuable workers, for the nation in general and for the oppressed the world over (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article Mojahed: "At the Beginning of the Third Year" Edited text of lead article in Mojahed (February 12, 1981), the organ of the Mojahedin-e Khalq: Having celebrated the second anniversary of the revolution, we are at the brink of the third year. The anniversary of the revolution and the days of Bahman remind us of...the days of great victories and (Author not identified) • 4 min read
MER Article Exonerating US Policy Barry Rubin, Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience in Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). Fred Halliday • 13 min read
