Tag: Middle East
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The Sack-Pie Treaty of Mordor
I’ve been reading The Man Who Created the Middle East by Christopher Simon Sykes, a fascinating—and frankly bewildering—account of how a couple of diplomats, armed with little more than pencils, whiskey, and a vague sense of geography, managed to redraw an entire region. It’s the kind of history that feels so absurdly implausible that it…
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Syria
I was reading The Man Who Created the Middle East by Christopher Simon Sykes—a fascinating account of Mark Sykes and the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement—when the news broke that the Syrian government seemed to be teetering on the brink. It was almost surreal: the legacy of imperial lines drawn on maps a century ago now intersecting…
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A Palimpsest of Power
The Middle East has always been a battleground, not merely of armies but of narratives, symbols, and structures of meaning. Its history is a cyclical tragedy: every civilization that enters it—whether Macedonian, Roman, Ottoman, or Israeli—comes armed with the conviction that they can succeed where others have failed. Yet, time and again, they are unmade,…
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Disclaimer
Any mention of human rights in this statement applies selectively and is generally contingent upon geopolitical convenience. We would like to clarify that “universal” human rights claims may not universally apply and are subject to selective enforcement. Specific populations, such as the Palestinians, may experience inconsistencies in the application of these rights due to complex…
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See You in 3000 Years
Fire licking at the edges of my retinas, I pound out this screed on a typewriter fueled by equal parts mescaline and Middle Eastern mayhem. The news, a brackish tide of reports, washes over me – the Third Temple, that shimmering mirage in the desert, remains but a pipe dream. Israel, that ambitious experiment in a homeland, seems to be dissolving like Alka-Seltzer in…
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Westworld
Scratching at the surface, man, you see Israel as the iron fist, the puppeteer yanking the US strings. But the Control Panel running Deeper, a roach motel of power where shadows writhe. Israel, is just a fleshy extension, a tentacle of the American Dream dipped in radioactive isotopes – Manifest Destiny dripping with Islamophobia and the sweet, fleshy tang of conquest. Israel, a flickering…