MER Article Liberating Arnoun This interview with student activist Hassan Marwany was conducted, transcribed and translated by Marlin Dick of The Daily Star in May 1999. The initial spark for the liberation of Arnoun was a candlelight vigil and march from St. Joseph’s University to UN House in central Beirut, organized by the T Marlin Dick • 3 min read
MER Article The Gulf War Battlefield: Still “Hot” with Depleted Uranium The men guarding the ruins of the remote Kharanj oil pumping station near Iraq’s border with Saudi Arabia don’t wander around much. Parts of this facility, destroyed by American air raids during the 1991 Gulf war, remain “hot” -- radioactive. The guards confine themselves to one small building, avoi Scott Peterson • 10 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Summer 1999) Although a decade has passed since President George Bush proclaimed the dawn of a “new world order” characterized by global US military and economic supremacy, it is increasingly obvious that the leaders of the new world order understand less about its dangers and contradictions than do those at its The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Alternative Information Center Staffers On January 24, 1999, five members of the Alternative Information Center (AIC) and the son of a staff member went hiking in a wadi in the region of Ain Gedi near the Dead Sea. Flash floods overtook the group without warning, killing Inbal Perelson, Yohanan Lorwin and Elias Jeraiseh. The deaths of the Geoff Hartman • 2 min read
MER Article The Social History of Labor in the Middle East Ellis Jay Goldberg, ed., The Social History of Labor in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996). The advent of structural adjustment programs since the 1980s has rekindled interest in workers and labor organizations, perhaps the greatest “losers” in recent reform processes. This edited volume Christopher Alexander • 2 min read
MER Article Women and the Political Process in Twentieth Century Iran Parvenu Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth Century Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). This book argues that in neither the Pahlavi nor the Islamic eras have Iranian women enjoyed direct and independent control over the establishment of gender policies. “By destroyi Shiva Balaghi • 1 min read
MER Article The Palestinian Economy: Between Imposed Integration and Voluntary Separation Arie Arnon, Israel Luski, Avia Spivak and Jimmy Weinblatt, The Palestinian Economy: Between Imposed Integration and Voluntary Separation (Leiden: Brill, 1997). Emma Murphy • 5 min read
MER Article Structural Adjustment and Rural Poverty in Tunisia World Bank and IMF sponsored neoliberal reforms can have different effects on the political and social structure of receiving nations. Reforms may fortify a status quo unfavorable to the poor, or may even make a bad situation considerably worse, or they may undermine the existing economic system, em Stephen King • 7 min read
MER Article Egyptian Privatization After decades of delay, privatization in Egypt is now taking off. [1] Since 1993, 119 of 314 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been fully or partially sold. [2] These have been mainly manufacturing ventures, but the government has also pledged to offer utilities, public sector banks and insurance Marsha Pripstein Posusney • 8 min read
MER Article Labor and the Challenge of Economic Restructuring in Iran During the last 20 years, the Iranian economy has had to adjust to a revolution, an eight-year war with Iraq, economic isolation and the collapse of its oil revenues. As a result, Iran witnessed the complete undoing of its gains in per capita income from the boom years of the 1970s. The generation o Djavad Salehi-Isfahani • 12 min read
MER Article Dreamland: The Neoliberalism of Your Desires Neoliberalism is a triumph of the political imagination. Its achievement is double: While narrowing the window of political debate, it promises from this window a prospect without limits. On the one hand, it frames public discussion in the elliptic language of neoclassical economics. The collective Timothy Mitchell • 15 min read
MER Article How Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan and Even Egypt Became IMF "Success Stories" in the 1990s Just as European missionaries were the spiritual handmaidens of nineteenth-century colonialism, so has the International Monetary Fund (IMF) assumed a modern-day mission in support of world trade, finance and investment. The mission aims to convert the benighted heathen in developing countries to th Karen Pfeifer • 12 min read
