The piece opens with voice notes exchanged with my cousin in Tehran, my childhood best friend unseen for 27 years, as internet servers fall under shutdown and cyberattack, and moves outward: into the Persian concept of ghorbat, the open-ended strangeness of exile; into the false binary Western media has imposed between supporting foreign intervention and tolerating the Islamic Republic’s repression; and into a genealogy of American and Israeli interference that has historically destroyed the very conditions for democratic flourishing.
Category Archive: foreign policy
We live in a time of hopes and horrors and mirrors. Just enough funhouse distortion to make everything un-understandable.
In their haste to embrace the new Syrian regime, the international community has yet again shunted the Kurdish people aside. It must stop.
I’ve gotten physically assaulted by anti-trans psychos twice in the last few months, but… like the limo driver in The Big Lebowski, I can’t complain.
The NYT journalist and the British historian shot barbs at each other over US atrocities and the idea of withdrawing from Vietnam.
Nixon long portrayed himself as a victim of the press. However, from the 1952 Checkers speech to his post-presidency PR offensives, Nixon proved himself an able manipulator of the media.
Le Carré elevated quit lit into something sublime and deserving of literary awards, unlike my overwrought internet Weltschmertz.
Any film that so handedly breaks from the mainstream script about Cuba deserves our praise—and our scrutiny.