MER Article Water and Women As the year 2000 approaches, humanity has passed an important milestone, one that has nothing to do with the new Millennium, but which may have many more consequences than the Y2K bug. On October 12, the world’s population officially passed six billion. While pundits debated whether this was cause f Sally Ethelston • 14 min read
MER Article The Middle East at the Millennial Turn Any attempt to summarize the direction of the Middle East at the cusp of the Millennium is hazardous indeed: We should long ago have resisted the temptation to see the region as a single, integrated political or socio-economic whole, or to reduce what are, perhaps now more than ever, contradictory r Fred Halliday • 11 min read
MER Article An Open Letter to Abu Jerry For two decades, human rights lawyers struggled to publicize that thousands of Palestinians were being tortured under Israeli interrogation. Officials denied these allegations and accused the lawyers of being "terrorist sympathizers." It was a minor vindication when, in 1987, an official commission confirmed that the General Security Services Lea Tsemel • 5 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Winter 1999) Although the Middle East's role as the cradle of Judeo-Christian-Islamic civilization figures prominently in the West's sense of historical time and its perceptions of the impending millennial transition, most people in the region, being Muslims and Jews, attach no significance to the current year. The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Fall 1999) Abrahamian, Ervand. Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999). Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999). Batatu, Hanna. Syria’s Peasantry, The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Clipped Wings, Sharp Claws Sarah Graham-Brown, Sanctioning Saddam: The Politics of Intervention in Iraq (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999). Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein (New York: HarperCollins, 1999). Scott Ritter, Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem Once and For All (New Joost Hiltermann • 7 min read
MER Article Women's Space/Cinema Space Post-Revolutionary Iranian cinema has attracted critical attention abroad while constituting a vibrant focus of cultural, narrative and technical experimentation at home. In the politically restrictive context of the Islamic Republic, film has become one of the key ways that sensitive topics are bro Norma Claire Moruzzi • 13 min read
MER Article "The Temptation of Democracy" Launched in 1992, Goft-o-Gu (Dialogue) aimed to open channels of constructive dialogue between Iran’s disparate political and intellectual currents. Given the highly polarized and repressive atmosphere at the time, Goft-o-Gu’s publication was a strikingly bold move. The journal discussed issues that Kaveh Ehsani • 11 min read
MER Article Iran and the United States While visiting the desert city of Yazd during my most recent trip to Iran, a young female physician confronted me in the living room of her family home. The intense, chadored Iranian sharply demanded my answers to four questions: Why did the US oppose the Iranian revolution? Why did the US support S James A. Bill • 7 min read
MER Article "Existing Political Vessels Cannot Contain the Reform Movement" Sai’id Hajjarian, a leading theorist of the democratic Islamist new left, is one of President Khatami’s closest political advisers. In 1998 he ran for the Tehran City Council, receiving the second largest number of votes. Hajjarian is also the official permit holder for the daily Sobh-e Emrooz and s (Author not identified) • 6 min read
MER Article Iranian Press Update The press has played a crucial role in advancing Iran’s emerging reformist agenda. Following the initial wave of attacks on the reformist press, which culminated in the closure of Jame’eh and Tous in the summer of 1998, a second crop of independent dailies appeared in late 1998. These papers exposed Sha'banali Bahrampour, Ramin Karimian • 3 min read
MER Article "The Conservatives Have Misjudged" During his brief tenure as vice minister of Islamic guidance and culture, Ahmad Bourghani oversaw the issuance of hundreds of press permits and the flowering of an independent Iranian press for the first time since 1979. Kaveh Ehsani • 8 min read
