Posts Tagged ‘Middle East’

The UN calls out the Iranian nuclear program

But what if Iran is just bluffing? Saddam did that and it worked for years

On the Overblown Islamist Threat

Breathe deeply right-wingers: even the former Jordanian foreign minister doesn’t fear the Islamists

On Arab intellectuals during the revolution

Really, did anyone need an intellectual to tell them what the revolution was about?


Saudi women given the right to vote, at last

Too bad that no one’s vote counts much in Saudi, so it’s mostly symbolic

Palestine goes to the UN

Palestine already exists. Only its form remains to be determined

Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh is back

As promised. That’s bad news. Now what happens?


The Yemeni government kills its children

After months of peaceful protests, the Yemeni government heads down the path of Libya and Syria

Syria jumps the shark

Syrian TV says Al Jazeera is building movie sets of Syrian cities to film fake rebel victories

Where were you on September 11th?

Mapping where I stood on that day, and where others stood around the world at the same moment


A Savage War of Peace by Alistair Horne

The best book about the 9/11 attacks and war in Iraq, though it is about France in 1950s Algeria

Liberal hawk Bill Keller changes his mind on the Iraq war

But the former New York Times executive editor still misses the main reason to have opposed the war

My journals on September 11th, 2001

I still can’t believe how slowly I grasped the scale of what was happening that day


Ten years gone

On the street, watching the World Trade Center fall and our nation misinterpret why it happened

Are American conservatives the new French?

Libya suggests that conservatives want chest-beating glory more than they want success

The Gaddafi family photo album

Gaddafi made himself a celebrity. Is that why the Times decided to publish his stolen family album?


Film of a garden party in Alexandria, Egypt c1920s

A lifestyle now lost captured on a film that cannot be watched

In Egypt, the disillusionment sets in

Egypt had half a revolution that now needs to be made whole

Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh can see!

It’s a miracle! How else to explain his remarkable recovery in a Saudi hospital?


Gaddafi’s mercenaries reveal all

They are the ‘smart money’ in the stockmarket battlefield and started to flee two weeks ago

The Libya my family knew in the 1960s

These archival videos make Libya look more modern than it was but many who knew it then loved it

Mabrouk, ya Seif al-Islam!

Gaddafi’s son shows up in the night. Did he accidentally reveal where his father is hiding?


They are dancing in Tripoli

Suddenly, the rebels have taken the heart of Libya’s capital and Gaddafi’s end is near

When not at war, Beirut feels like Santa Monica

But the city braces as the UN accuses Hezbollah of assassinating Rafik Hariri in 2005

Where tourists and locals go in Cairo

Genius mash-up map uses Flickr photos to reveal insiders’ favorite areas in cities around the world