Travels

Pay no attention to these anti-American protests in Cairo

I was in Cairo 48 hours ago: there is no great wave of anti-Americanism right now

In Paris, this photo is illegal

Street photography is against the law in the place in which it was born

Mubarak the undead

Mubarak, Sharon, Arafat: there are new actors on the stage now and the old men have been forgotten


Syria, citizen journalism and the New York Times

The paper of record embraces citizen journalism at last

Mubarak dead. Revolution critical.

The regime has already demonstrated it can survive without Mubarak

Looking at the war in Syria

Unlike Gaddafi, Assad has international allies who will protect him so this is likely to get worse


Mubarak gets life in prison, Egypt gets nothing

Mubarak earned the sentence a hundred times over but it does not feel like justice was done

The ‘unexpected’ China slowdown was entirely foreseeable

Analysts profess surprise at the China slowdown that I saw out the car window in Fujian a year ago

What I saw at the (Occupy May Day) revolution today

The point of today’s large rally: “Memo to the 1%, this is so not over”


Football on the anniversary of the Guernica bombing

The Basques cheer Real Madrid’s defeat by Bayern Munich, but it was the Germans who bombed Guernica

Good coffee arrives in Paris at last

Parisians will one day have the heated partisan debates about coffee they now have about macarons

Did Gaddafi give Sarkozy 50m euros?

France’s dealings in Africa have often been sordid but Libya had seemed a break from this tradition


The China boom is over. That could be good

Will young Chinese respond to slower economic growth by going into the arts? Or politics?

Did Yemen just have a revolution?

Ali Abdullah Saleh is out at last but it looks like the Saleh regime remains

Weegee: self-promotion is his business

An exhibit at the ICP shows Weegee’s New York was gritty in the most unreal possible way


Beirut Art Center at the New Museum in New York

Lebanese artists address how art is changed or destroyed by its display

Typography and world conquest

This exhibition shows the moment colonial expansion brought the Gutenberg revolution to the world

The Egyptian police beat protesters senseless

The video is hard to watch but it shows why freedom in Egypt has not yet been won


Mapping the invisible city of Beirut

How a city fed up with thinking about war knows where the next frontlines will be

What to make of the elections in Egypt?

Millions turned out, but will the electoral process prove worthy of the hopes invested in it?

Egypt votes today, but it’s a mess

The elections were badly organized, the military undermined them, but turnout has been significant


Hope or acquiescence in Myanmar?

Aung San Suu Kyi returns to politics, but is she a challenge to the junta or a cover?

The last moment in history to see the tulou

The future is grim for China’s unique, centuries-old communal housing

On the Carsten Höller exhibit at the New Museum

There’s too little to experience for an exhibit called ‘Experience’ but the slide is exhilarating