Five years on, and still we have not learnt. With each anniversary, the steps crumble beneath our feet, the stones ever more cracked, the sand ever finer. Five years of catastrophe in Iraq and I think of Churchill, who in the end called Palestine a “hell-disaster”.
Read more in The Independent…

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Today’s New York Times reports not once but twice about a planned arts supercomplex in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The articles cover all the art hot topics of the day: the pros and cons of the development, east meets west, the Bilbao effect, art as franchise is good or bad, and art as global [...]

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The World Press Photo of the Year 2006 shows upscale young Lebanese men and women visiting a bombed-out Beirut neighborhood like disaster tourists — or at least that’s what everyone thought. Bissan Maroun, one of those featured in the photograph, told SPIEGEL ONLINE the true story.

Photo credits: Spencer Platt of Getty Images
Read more in Der [...]

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Ali M. Ansari’s book, Confronting Iran, is an honest and dispassionate account of the less than honest intentions and lost opportunities that have been a part of the U.S. approach towards Iran.
Read more on The Hindu…

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Reza Abedini (1967, Iran) is generally known as one of the best designers in the Arab world who combine the rich graphic history of Persia with contemporary and timeless design at the same time. Last week he got the Principal Prince Claus Award in Amsterdam.
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A shocking, eye-opening documentary about islam which has turned into radicalism, inhuman hatredness and an endless Jihad… A short movie which everyone should have seen in a globalizing world of interconnectedness and increasing threats.

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Just over two centuries since Napoleon’s arrival in Egypt heralded the advent of the modern Middle East — some 80 years after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, 50 years after the end of colonialism, and less than 20 years after the end of the Cold War — the American era in the Middle East, [...]

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In an act of stark cruelty, the US dominated Sanctions Committee refuses to permit Iraq to import the clean-up equipment that they desperately need to decontaminate their country of the Depleted Uranium ammunition that the US fired at them. Approximately 315 tons of DU dust was left by the use of this ammunition.The Sanctions Committee [...]

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Spring 2004, Hamza Yusuf toured around the UK, appearing on BBC’s Question Time in London and speaking to Muslim and non-Muslim audiences in several cities. In this tour, Hamza Yusuf emphasized that continuing to treat the bitter fruits of problems such as terrorism and not dealing with the roots themselves, will not rid us [...]

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The Bush Administration reversed itself and declared that non-Iraqis captured fighting in Iraq are not protected by the Geneva Conventions; such prisoners, it was reported, have already been transferred out of Iraq in recent months and could be taken to Egypt or Saudi Arabia where torture is more common than it is in the United [...]

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