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19 Oct 2012
Interview with The Guardian on the Situation in Syria
I was interviewed by The Guardian about the situation in Syria, the role of the SNC and other opposition groups, and the general prospects of the Syrian uprising. Read an excerpt here or listen to the audio version here.
9 Oct 2012
Slavoj Žižek: Romney, Big Bird, and the prospect of avian apocalypse
A brilliant take by Slavoj Žižek about Romney and Big Bird, which I am republishing here with complete disregard to copyrights.
The
bourgeois media and the Democratic party machine were confounded by Mitt Romney’s
invocation of Big Bird during the first US presidential debate, a sentiment
that soon gave way to cynical amusement and playground mockery. But Romney had
inadvertently revealed a deep truth about the Capitalist canon’s troubled relationship
with oversized birds. Birds at once represent freedom, a visual cliché widely
used by Liberal parties around the world depicting a bird in flight, never in
repose, and the possibility of being devoured by the feathered creatures that
have learned to negotiate gravity far better than un-mechanised humans could
ever do. Romney’s Big Bird metaphor deserves more analysis than it was given by
the mainstream media arm of the post-wage capitalist complex.
Icarus
meets Hitchcock
Alfred
Hitchcock’s The Birds was a seminal revelatory moment of this troubled
relationship with avian species that capitalism has obsessed about. Hitchcock’s
vision was the inverted dystopia of that fragile peace we have established with
birds through an economy of breadcrumbs. It is not accidental that the
Reagan-Thatcher trickle-down effect has also been discussed in terms of
breadcrumbs. Abandoning social safety nets for the sake of an organic
redistribution mechanism driven by aggressive growth was a central pillar of
the Late Capitalist Order of the 80s, the Thatcherite fantasy of forcing more
and more people to leave the perceived safety of the welfare state nest, if you
excuse the pun.
4 Oct 2012
The Louvre Islamic Wing - BBC Radio 3 Night Waves Programme
Listen to the BBC Radio 3 Night Waves Programme about the new Louvre Islamic Wing, broadcast on 25 September 2012. We discuss the political context around the gallery, its architecture and the fantastic art works exhibited. We also visit a different type of institution that deals with Islamic art and culture, L’Institut des Cultures d’Islam and talk to its director, Véronique Rieffel.
On Middle East Expertise: The Decline of Narrative
Since the
beginning of the Arab uprisings I must have read hundreds of analytical and opinion
pieces about the dynamics of the revolts and the role that external powers are playing.
The one thing that stands out clearly to me after nearly two years is the total
lack of a principled approach among the multitude of analysts and experts
writing about the region. While it’s clear that many are now sceptical about
the notion of expertise itself, I myself still believe in the role that
specialised analysts can play based on extensive study of the historic
literature and thorough observation of current developments.
Such a cold
analytical approach seems to be at odds with the visceral emotive form of
discourse that revolutions produce, but also with the humanitarian prism through
which we now almost exclusively see events in other parts of the world. It’s
probably that context that is responsible for both the proliferation and
impotence of expertise. We are approaching a point at which independent
detached observation is becoming obsolete, despite the fact that it is urgently
needed.
2 Oct 2012
Pamela Geller: A Letter of Love to Muslimics
In her continuing effort to build bridges with the Arab world,
we have received the following article from Pamela Geller which we are
publishing below. We decided to keep Ms. Geller's unique style of grammar and
punctuation in the interest of authenticity, even though it doesn't resemble
the English language as everyone else understands it.
To Muslimanics everywhere, I say I have a message of love. I
love for you to stay where you are. Stop coming to America and, trying to change
our freedom-loving ways. You notice that I am big on love. You
must have seen the famous photo of me, I am wearing a necklace that says ‘LOVE’.
Someone once told me that’s ironic. But I didn’t understand his fancy liberal
university talk.
Claire Danes and 'Homeland' in Beirut
In the new season of the American series 'Homeland',
Claire Danes' character, a CIA agent, visits Beirut. The scenes were
actually filmed in Israel for an unexplained reason. The first image is a
still from the series, in a place that doesn't look like Beirut at all.
We offer these alternative images.