Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

James Paul

James Paul was publisher of Middle East Report from 1980-1988. He recently retired from his long-time post as director of the Global Policy Forum, a New York-based UN watchdog.

MER Article

Information Services on the Middle East

Mideast File (Learned Information, Anderson House, Stokes Road, Medford, NJ 08055) Mideast Press Report (Claremont Research and Publications, 160 Claremont Ave., New York, NY 10027)

James Paul • 2 min read

MER Article

The Egyptian Arms Industry

Egypt, with the earliest industrial economy in the Middle East, has engaged in some military production for many years, supplying its own armed forces with light arms and small naval ships. Such production remained minor until recently, both in terms of the Egyptian economy and in terms of the arms

James Paul • 7 min read

MER Article

Arms Sales and the Militarization of the Middle East

Over the last decade, the Middle East has become a focal point of the world arms buildup. Each year, the regional arsenal grows, as the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Britain and others ship billions of dollars worth of weapons to the countries there. During the 1970s, while the world arms

James Paul, Joe Stork • 19 min read

MER Article

The Middle East Arms Race

Andrew J. Pierre, The Global Politics of Arms Sales (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). Paul Jabber, Not By War Alone: Security and Arms Control in the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). Steve Weissman and Herbert Krosney, The Islamic Bomb: The Nuclear Thr

Eric Davis, James Paul • 7 min read

MER Article

Relief Efforts in the South

Richard Butler is director of the Middle East office for the National Council of Churches. Jim Paul interviewed him in New York in August 1982. When were you in Lebanon?

James Paul • 5 min read

MER Article

The War in Lebanon

On Sunday morning, June 6, 1982, 40,000 Israeli troops, with hundreds of tanks and armored personnel carriers, rolled across the 33-mile border with southern Lebanon. Israeli seaborne troops landed on the Lebanese coast at Sidon and near the mouth of the Zahrani River, while the Israeli air force co

James Paul, Joe Stork • 26 min read

MER Article

Foreign Investment in Egypt

According to data gathered by the UN Center on Transnational Corporations, the overwhelming majority of foreign investment in Egypt has been from the United States, with the exception of the banking sector. There has been very little European investment, and virtually no Japanese presence. The UN da

James Paul • 2 min read

MER Article

Halliday and Molyneux, The Ethiopian Revolution

Fred Halliday and Maxine Molyneux, The Ethiopian Revolution (London: Verso, 1982). Most Western commentators sharply criticize the current Ethiopian regime and the process that brought it to power. They argue that there has been no genuine revolution in Ethiopia, but rather a military coup followed

James Paul • 5 min read

MER Article

Introduction

The embryonic proletariat of the towns is in a comparatively privileged position. In capitalist countries, the working class has nothing to lose.... In the colonial countries the working class has everything to lose. —Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth Such are the workers of the Middle East.

James Paul • 7 min read