Posts Tagged ‘Middle East’

Arab arts and political radicals in London this weekend

And there are cool Arab arts of all sorts in London this summer

On the Palestinian request for UN recognition

A former AIPAC lobbyist says Palestine is ‘imaginary’ and unworthy of UN recognition. Surprise

Samandal comic book, debut issue, 2008, Beirut, Lebanon

An eclectic mix of graphic styles and languages that captures the cultural mixed-up-ness of Beirut


A landmark moment in Turkey

The decades-long shadow play between the military and the state took a most dramatic turn last week

Into the darkness of the New York Times comments section

The central challenge for a superpower: strong views, little knowledge, limitless power to intervene

Daunt Books tote bag, Marylebone, London

The bag that created a security risk in Beirut, Lebanon


Was the Egypt revolution a ‘foreseeable surprise’?

Slate says yes, but bungles the argument

Is this really Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh?

And what was he thinking he’d gain from appearing on TV like this?

The CIA history in Syria

Americans might forget but the Syrians surely remember


Google Maps finally does a better job hiding Tel Aviv

Israel’s many satellite image “parks” change their colors

‘Sheikh’: a spelling manifesto

Finally, one Middle East conflict that can be settled: it’s not pronounced like ‘chic’

President Ali Abdullah Saleh finally leaves Yemen

It is a shame for Saleh, and Yemen, that it took violence to get him out


Newsreel: ’67 War and party balloons for Red China

Newsreels declare: US neutral in ’67 War in the Middle East and Red China fears party balloons

Mubarak on trial: should the past be prosecuted?

Forgetting the past is unacceptable, but so too is shelving it through superficial justice

How my journey to Beirut ended up on an art gallery wall

I had become a migratory subject for the artist Walead Beshty


On Obama’s second big Middle East speech

There has been a revolution in the Arab world but, thus far, no revolution in American thinking

John McCain demolishes the Bush-era torture apologists

Torture didn’t get us Osama bin Laden, but it cost us dearly

An evocative group portrait at a cafe in Egypt, 1934

A moment captured during an outing to Roda island in the 1930s


My grandfather’s sketch of the home he’d found in Cairo in 1956

Part of an effort to entice his family to join him in Egypt in the aftermath of the 1956 war

Osama bin Laden killed after 3,519 days of freedom

Osama bin Laden is dead but it is the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions that are killing Al Qaeda

Osama bin Laden still free 3,514 days later

What is most astonishing is that there is no public pressure whatsoever to capture him


Another dinosaur nears the end, this time in Yemen

Yemen is a hard place to govern but Ali Abdullah Saleh has done a poor job of it all the same

Reading the Times on the architectural symbolism of Cairo

Much right and a few key things wrong about Tahrir Square in Cairo, the center of the revolution

The truth about the Egyptian military

In the revolution, Egyptian reverence for the military shamed them into not opening fire. Now what happens?