The Battle of Chile and the wonder of movie theaters
The Battle of Chile is a great film that was made more powerful by the sound of anguish in the audience
Warrior-gymnasts in Tonkin, Vietnam, 1909
French overlords in colonial-era Vietnam make the locals do ridiculous things
Homs, Syria after five years of war
Drone video footage shows there’s no life left in Syria’s third largest city
Syrian-American composer who plays for peace
A symphony for Syria reminds me of Sarajevo and the hope that cosmopolitan tolerance will survive
Bashar al-Assad stonewalls Charlie Rose
Charlie Rose gets in a theater of the absurd debate with Assad and loses
Activists in Raqqa exposing the Islamic State
We owe a great debt to the people documenting the devastation around them
The cultural destruction of war in the Middle East
My beloved Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo may not be a total loss but much is elsewhere
Looking for Ukrainians to lead the separatist movement
Santa Claus and a dog whisperer among those leading the Ukrainian separatist movement
The ancient theater in Sabratha, Libya
Anarchy in post-Gaddafi Libya sends me into storage to find photos I took on my trip there in 2004
98.1% of Egyptians vote for the Sisi constitution
By comparison, Mubarak only claimed 88.6% of Egyptians voted for him in his last election in 2005
Prayer of Fear by Mosireen
The media collective Mosireen perfectly captures the current moment in Egypt
Robin Wright carves up the Middle East
Wright is wrong and her analysis risks looking prescriptive rather than descriptive
Was the coup in Egypt even necessary?
Morsi might have been forced from power anyway, but the military short circuited that
Draft articles of impeachment for Morsi now
Even elected leaders can lose their legitimacy; Egypt needs a legal statement to that effect
Video drones over Taksim Square in Istanbul
When the police control the streets, video drones can see what they are up to
The Yugoslav war reappears in Syria
War never ends: it breeds skills that just get applied to perpetrating bad deeds later on
The Aldo Moro assassination, Reggio-Emilia, Italy, 1978
A prized book of Italian newspapers and a dead terrorist; is there a connection?
My twenty years in Egypt
My first trip to Cairo was in 1992. Here are some thoughts on how it has changed
If you missed the Egyptian royal family…
A film made by the Egyptian royal family about a coup d’état that was lost for nearly sixty years
New York Times op-ed on Syria is wrong about the Obama doctrine
How not to make the case for US intervention in Syria
The embassy mobs and Obama’s ‘failure’ in the Middle East
Is Obama’s policy in the Middle East in ‘epic collapse’? Hardly. But serious people have doubts now
Latest in the battle over the Mohamed Mahmoud mural
The New York Times blog The Lede picks up the battle over street art in Cairo
The amazing mural on Mohamed Mahmoud that was just painted over
What a loss for Cairo, artistically as much as politically