the occidental orientalist

arabist.
orientalist.
in the west.

what the District's think tank crowd is reading about the MENA
6 months ago
4 notes
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

—Eisenhower, as quoted in “The Permanent Militarization of America,” by Prof. and Marine Aaron B. O’Connell in one of the most thoughtful op-eds I’ve read this week. 

11 months ago
1 note
Recent legislation has made legal the president’s right to detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist organizations or “associated forces,” a broad, vague power that can be abused without meaningful oversight from the courts or Congress (the law is currently being blocked by a federal judge). This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.

—Jimmy Carter’s brilliant op-ed yesterday in the NYT.

1 year ago
6 notes

I’m an editor, and here’s an example why the NYT is terrible.

From the After Hours section, which features my alma mater prominently:

IN recent years, the Middle East has become an increasingly popular spot for American college students on study-abroad programs, choosing Arab over French or German and the dusty capitals of Damascus and Cairo over Berlin or Madrid.

- Error 1: dangling gerund phrase, “choosing.” Who is choosing? The Middle East? ‘Cause that’s how this reads.

- Error 2: “Arab.” It’s Arabic, you dolt.


1 year ago
1 note

Why the NYT sucks at Middle East Coverage -- and nicely put.

I’ve noticed that every once in a while, the NYT produces one these kinds of articles in which some kind of imported musical tradition takes shape in a cooky, backwards tribal land, as evidence of the slow waning of the cooky toward the embrace of modern, inclusive, edgy democracy. That’s the power of ideology – the failure to imagine an alternate world, an alternate world where equality and hope and justice come in different flavor

1 year ago
27 notes
When my team tried to give away fruit tree seedlings to replant ruined orchards, a farmer spat on the ground and said, “You killed my son and now you are giving me a tree?

—Peter van Buren in NYT, on tomorrow’s official change of command in Iraq: the US mission will be handed over from the US military to the State Department.

1 year ago
30 notes

Kristof interviews Ahmadinejad

Or, as Jon Stewart calls him, “Spongenut Crazypants.”

Worth reading, though I can totally tell you right off the bat that A’s claims to want to start a dialogue are bogus: this was one of the key behind-closed-doors moves of the Obama administration back around Nawruz — POTUS even sent 2 personal letters to Khamenei attempting to open dialogue. 

No response.