It was my second visit to the town of Sittwe, in Burma’s western Rakhine state this year, and my third visit to the country itself in six months. Prompted as much by what seemed like fate as opportunity, I had journeyed once again to this part of the world in order to write about the plight of the Rohingya ethnic minority, a stateless people whose suffering and increasing proximity to disaster are not well-known in the West. (More…)
The turmoil in the United States surrounding the Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare”, has baffled onlookers around the globe. Most Americans pay far more for their medical expenses than people in other countries. Yet a sizable percentage of them seem to equate this state of affairs with freedom. (More…)
Alfonso Cuarón is one of Hollywood’s most important filmmakers. With the release of Gravity, it’s not hard to understand why. Cuarón’s direction, and Emmanuel Lubezki‘s cinematography, are stunning. Indeed, Gravity is as much its own cultural moment as Cuarón’s past features, including Y Tu Mamá También, and Children of Men. (More…)
It has a triumphalist feel about it. Put Wagner on the stereo, call up the image, and you’re in an episode from Apocalypse Now. Well, not really. But you get the idea. Artillery rockets, fired by dozens of mobile launchers, screaming across the Saudi sky. It’s a great piece of agitprop. You could almost see it in an Elks Lodge. (More…)
Nuclear weapons negotiations between the United States and Iran are looking increasingly likely to portend a seismic shift in the Middle East. That shift, though, is not the one that was hoped for in some quarters. Especially in Riyadh and Jerusalem, who fear being sidelined by an ending of hostilities between Washington and Tehran. (More…)
Their proximity is in the back of my mind, as I motor up Central, but, after decades of wanting desperately to see them, I am suddenly reluctant. The point of this drive is to search out what gets overlooked, left out of the story, not the one landmark that writers have returned to over and over. But then I see the small, green sign with an arrow pointed rightward and relent: “Watts Towers”. (More…)
It’s not every day you walk into your local newsstand and find a twelve-year-old zine written by one of your favorite musicians, seemingly abandoned behind a stack of vintage copies of Punk Planet, and way too many issues of Revolver. But I did. Call me nostalgic, but I still can’t get over it. With good reason. (More…)
From the looks of it, they were all members of the same family. Twenty-five, maybe thirty years old, max. Hebrew words were mixed in with their Arabic. I wondered where they were from. Nazareth? The Wadi Ara area? Something told me they were neighbors. Not just from the region, but the Arab towns nearby, close to where my parents live. (More…)
There’s an extremely passionate debate circulating in Middle Eastern studies circles about an article by Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi. A noted analyst, al-Qassemi argues that Gulf cities have seized the mantle of “centers of the Arab world” from the traditional capitols of Cairo, Beirut, and Baghdad. (More…)
Idle No More is back. After a lull, the movement has been reinvigorated by a march at a shale gas field in Rexton, New Brunswick last week that turned violent. Now that discussions of the group are once again making headlines, it’s a perfect time to discuss what led to the movement’s creation, as well as how it functions within the broader context of Canadian multiculturalism. (More…)
One of the more absurd international crises could be coming to an end. The word out of Geneva this week is that the P5+1 (which consists of the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France plus Germany) was impressed with the presentation made by the Iranian delegation. It’s only the beginning of what is sure to be a difficult process. (More…)
Check out Paragh Khanna‘s new article, on the end of the nation-state. He makes a familiar argument: globalization has unleashed a devolution in state authority that will ultimately usher in new forms of governance. Although the piece has its problems, I’m most intrigued by how he foresees this playing out in the Middle East. (More…)