BY STEVEN SALAITA A few months ago, The Intercept published an eye-opening investigation into alleged war crimes perpetrated by the famed Navy SEAL Team 6, the elite military unit credited with killing Osama bin Laden. While the report highlights troublesome, often deranged, behavior of individual SEALs acting in accordance with a culture of contempt for … More "Playing Indian" and the US colonial imagination.
BY NIMA NAGHIBIAssociate professor of English at Ryerson University, Toronto In this first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, diasporic Iranians, many of them women, are deploying the autobiographical form to narrate their personal experiences of life in post-revolutionary Iran and in the diaspora. The explosion of life writing in North America since … More Nostalgia for a lost nation in diasporic Iranian memoir.
This post is excerpted from the essay “Syria” by Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto, which appears in Dispatches from the Arab Spring (UMP, 2013). ——-A long history of resistance and opposition to the Baathist regime existed in Syria before the uprising that began in 2011. While both secular and religious political movements had tried to counter … More Syria: Traditions of Protest and the Reconfiguration of Baathist Authoritarianism
Author Waleed Hazbun surveys the aftermath of Egypt’s historic protests on NYT’s Opinion pages. Read Hazbun’s January article about geopolitical transformation in the Middle East.
In Cairo, Egypt, a big banner that spells out “Leave,” in reference to Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak, appears on Feb. 1st, 2011. Throughout the Mubarak regime’s tenure, citizens have experienced violations of their civil rights on a daily basis. Photo by Essam Sharaf, courtesy of Creative Commons. Photo from Flickr. BY SALWA ISMAILProfessor of politics … More Egypt Q&A: Unrelenting protests are rooted in many years of civil unrest and bear the marks of a social revolution.
After this month’s uprising in Tunisia, many scholars and journalists pondered whether its example could spark other revolts. Still, many were taken by surprise when massive protests erupted in downtown Cairo on January 25th, 2011. Photo from Flickr. BY WALEED HAZBUNAssistant Professor of International Relations, American University of Beirut Watching Al Jazeera English in the … More How widespread protests in Tunisia and Egypt could lead to a rapid transformation of geopolitics in the Middle East.
Almost two months ago, author Waleed Hazbun wrote a provocative piece on this blog about the current economic climate of Dubai. At the time, the article came on the heels of the news that Dubai’s state-owned real estate firm, Nakheel, was deeply in debt and seeking help to make bond payments. Now, in light of … More Understanding Dubai’s political economy
In previous years, the brash city-state of Dubai has made news with its exuberant stream of headline-grabbing megaprojects. The emirate, one of the seven that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE), erected iconic buildings such as the billowing-sail-shaped Burj al Arab. It was a place where architects could realize visions considered impracticable anywhere else, … More The Future of Dubai?
