They can’t help themselves. Really, they can’t. Like children, the most monstrous of secret police outfits evidently come to believe themselves immortal. They lose all ability to imagine that they might ever go down and so keep records to the very moment of their collapse. Those records, so copious, damning, and unbearably detailed (which doesn’t …
Continue reading “Mummies and Models in the New Middle East”
A week or so ago, a friend of mine noticed a poster taped to a wall inside the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol building, where American demonstrators were camped out. It showed a lone demonstrator walking toward a line of helmeted Egyptian police, holding high a protest sign. Under the photo, a caption said …
Continue reading “Where Did All the Fatwas Go?”
On more than a few occasions in the last decade, I have been the recipient of lectures—almost always by people with no discernible hands-on experience with foreign cultures in general, nor the Arab world in particular—about just how different and unlike us “those Arab people” in the Mideast really are. “You know, for them, life …
Continue reading “Not So Different After All?”
Can anyone doubt that Israel and its American friends direct U.S. Middle East policy? Do senior members of the administration ever dispute the axiom that Israel’s enemies must be America’s enemies? Does Congress or the corporate media ever question the huge financial, military, and diplomatic support Israel receives? Every year witnesses the shameful spectacle of …
Continue reading “America in the Middle East: US Policy Fails Its Purchasers”
As I watch the popular uprisings unfold against brutal dictatorships supported by my own government, I cannot help but reflect upon the moral implications of my participation in the American empire. My crimes began almost before I can remember, but I will address only the most immediately pertinent of them here. I am a citizen …
Continue reading “The Immorality of Empire”
“Saudi Arabia did not build a causeway to Bahrain just so that Saudis could party on weekends. It was designed for moments like this, for keeping Bahrain under control.” —Dr. Toby Jones, expert on Saudi Arabia at Rutgers University If Saudi Arabia was rattled by the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, they will …
Continue reading “Bahrain and the Freedom Contagion”
Tens of thousands gather in the streets of Sa’na, demanding the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh—it’s the Yemeni edition of the Great Arab Awakening sweeping the Middle East and toppling governments previously counted as US allies. Aside from framing events within this rather broad narrative, however, what is really going on inside Yemen—and why …
Continue reading “Yemen and the Arab Awakening”
The revolutionary wave sweeping through the Middle East promises to topple sclerotic Arab regimes throughout the region, but there is a marked difference between, say, Egypt and Iran – and the difference is the nationalist factor. In Egypt, the people rose up against a US-supported dictatorship which had ridden on their backs for 30 years. …
Continue reading “Nationalism, Democracy, and the Arab Awakening”
Pat Buchanan sure hopes so
With Hosni Mubarak gone, let’s do a little Egyptian math on the Mubarak years. According to experts, the fortune amassed by Egypt’s former president and his two sons (both billionaires) could reach $70 billion. That includes funds in secret offshore bank accounts and investments in residences and real-estate properties reaching from Rodeo Drive in Beverley …
Continue reading “The Freedom Reading List” 
