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“a rhetoric feast of meaningless blah”.
The Arabist
The website on Arab politics and culture.
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Succession Mubarak style
This is almost making me nostalgic. Well done, sir . Someone had to do it pic.twitter.com/XlqrT752Iu — Glall (@AhmedGlall) November 30, 2021
Biden's "unexpected powers of resistance" against the blob
David Bromwich, writing in the London Review of Books on Biden’s foreign policy nerve: On the face of things, Biden has surrounded himself with the conventional advisers of the Clinton-Obama circle – Jake Sullivan, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Thomas Donilon, Ash Carter, Michèle Flournoy. It is hard to imagine any of them straying far from the Cold War groove of shepherding Nato against Russia and…
“He has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Robin Wright, writing in The New Yorker on Biden’s foreign policy chops: For all his experience, however, Biden has also backed controversial policies and made bad calls during his decades in foreign policy. As a senator, he opposed authorizing Operation Desert Storm, to oust Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from Kuwait, in 1991; it succeeded with lightning efficiency. He then supported the U.S. invasion of…
Links April-May 2020
Belated linkdump… * The American Virus | LRB Elliot Weinberger on Trump and Covid. * No Bark, No Bite | Jewish Currents Peter Beinart: "With each passing week, it becomes clearer that Joe Biden’s victory over Bernie Sanders is making it easier for Israel to annex the West Bank." * Biden 'completely' opposes withholding aid to Israel over West Bank policy, adviser says - Haaretz This is the…
Links up to 11 March 2020
Trying to get into the habit of posting these links again, so clearing up the backlog… Egypt jails prominent political figure for a year over 'false news' - Reuters About Zyad Elelaimy. While GERD’s Reservoir Remains Empty, Tensions Rise in Dam Dispute – The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy From Harvard Medical Student to Detained Egyptian Activist | The Crimson From Harvard Medical Student…
Links 1-30 November 2019
Tab dump. Moral Leadership and the Lebanese Military | Carnegie Reforming Tunisia’s military courts | Brookings Iraqi Prime Minister Resigns in Deepening Political Crisis | NYT Sudanese protesters demand justice for killed and missing. |Middle East Eye Saudi Aramco flotation to rely on local money. | FT "Saudi Aramco’s stock market flotation will rely almost exclusively on local money" What the…
Links 16-31 October 2019
Egyptian government documents: Officials in Cairo tried to cover up arms deal with North Korea | Washington Post Probably a senior military official's arms trade deal (Libya?) Another Birthday Behind Bars: The UAE’s Unjust Imprisonment of Ahmed Mansoor – POMED Joe Stork The spectre of Syria silenced Arab protest. But now it’s finding its voice | Guardian Nesrine Malik Egypt to press for outside…
Links 1 September - 15 October 2019
Resuming the long-interrupted link dumps… * A Reporter From Hell | Tablet Quite a piece by Armin Rosen on Syria and Nir Rosen - it over-complicates things, but a good read. * The Emirati Lobby: How the UAE Wins in Washington | Center for International Policy A new report by Ben Freeman * Pullback Leaves Green Berets Feeling ‘Ashamed,’ and Kurdish Allies Describing ‘Betrayal’ | NYT To be fair, US…
Links 9-28 February 2019
Bolsonaro’s Brazil | LRB Read this masterful piece by Perry Anderson even if you know nothing about Brazil, it has insights about weak democracies and clientelist systems that are universal Bitch Nation | LRB Musab Younis on the sexual fetishization of Arab men in France The Otherworldliness of Ibn Khaldun | NYRB Malise Ruthven reviews Robert Irwin's new bio of Ibn Khaldoun Yemen Under Siege |…
Mediapart: Rafale jet crashed as Macron visited Egypt
The French website Mediapart has an interesting scoop about the crash of a Rafale jet just as French President Emmanuel Macron was visiting Egypt. According to the report, the crash took place on 28 January, on the day that Macron met with Egyptian President Abdelfattah al-Sisi: they were discussing some €1.5bn’s worth of contracts being negotiated and Macron let Sisi know that he would bring up…
Links Late 2018 - 8 February 2019
Having not posted links since last August (it’s been a very busy few months), I am now resuming more regular linking. Look for them once a week or so - in the batch below, the more recent ones are on top, the rest may date back several weeks or even months. * “Let it Spoil!”: Morocco’s Boycott and the Empowerment of ‘Regular’ Citizen | MIPA Mohammed Masbah. * Iraq’s Post-ISIS Campaign of Revenge |…
Lindsey Hilsum on Marie Colvin
Lovely piece by Lindsey Hilsum for the Financial Times , who has written a biography of the journalist Marie Colvin , recently immortalized on film, that does not hide her personal turmoil: I wrote at length about Marie’s problems with alcohol. Although she was professionally successful, had a supportive network of close friends and a life she enjoyed in London, she was often unhappy and at times…
Amro Ali on Arab Berlin
Amro Ali, writing on his blog (and originally in al-Sharq ): Following the 2011 Arab uprisings and its innumerable tragic outcomes, Berlin was strategically and politically ripe to emerge as an exile capital. For some time now, there has been a growing and conscious Arab intellectual community, the political dimensions of which to fully crystalize is what I wish to further explore. When the storm…
Levy on 25 years of Oslo
Daniel Levy – who was involved in Oslo negotiations on the Israeli side in the late 1990s – the 25th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, in Foreign Policy : What is presented today as the peace process is in fact little more than a tag-team bullying effort by the powerful parties—Israel and the United States—against the stateless Palestinians. He adds: Yet the alternative path still exists. It harks…
Buttu on negotiating with Israel
Diana Buttu, a former legal advisor to the PLO since the Oslo years, in Haaretz : I am often asked why the negotiations process failed. It is easy to point to the rise of right-wing Israeli governments, poor leadership or weak or uninterested U.S. presidents. But the real reason for failure lie beyond these factors. It is because the parties should not have started negotiating in the first place.…
Must-read: Nathan Thrall on BDS
Wonderful long read in the Guardian by Nathan Thrall – a really good exploration of how BDS emerged and how Israel and its supporters are seeking to counter it, including in ways that are deeply dangerous to freedom of speech. Here's a sample but set aside some time to read the whole thing: The Ministry of Strategic Affairs has outsourced much of its anti-BDS activity in foreign countries, helping…
Links 1 July - 20 August 2018
Now that the summer holidays are over, time to get rid of the backlog of links for the last few weeks: Uri Avnery, veteran peace activist and among first Israelis to meet Arafat, dies at 94 - Haaretz One Million Muslim Uighurs Have Been Detained by China, the U.N. Says. Where’s the Global Outrage? | The Intercept Les fantômes de Raba’a planent sur l’Egypte | Mediapart Long piece deconstructing the…
Amjad Iraqi on anti-BDS legislation
This is an outrageous attack on freedom of speech and political organization: Late last month, the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee approved the latest version of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which is now one step closer to becoming law. The bill was introduced to Congress in March 2017, with the aim of prohibiting American companies from assisting international governmental…
Links 19-30 June 2018
Buy on Amazon Do check out the latest episode of the Bulaq podcast , in which Marcia and Ursula talk to the legendary Karl Sharro aka @KarlRemarks about his new book and more. And buy Karl's book, his Twitter account alone is a public good for mental sanity! The links for the last couple of weeks are below. Anfass propose une loi d'amnistie générale en faveur des activistes des mouvements sociaux…