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Poor Alternatives

Anne Applebaum, liberal-ish Washington Post and Slate correspondent, former-USSR expert, and wife of the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, recently published the most ridiculous op-ed of all time, entitled “Morocco, an Alternative to Iran.”  On Slate, it was published as “Morocco Makes Peace With Its Past” (perhaps even more proposterous), and I perhaps wouldn’t have [...]

30.06.2009

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A Step Forward for Women?

As Hisham notes here, the Moroccan elections were significantly overshadowed on the world stage by those in Iran, and no wonder – no matter the outcome, they would have been met with little protest anyway.  What was notable this time around however was a rise in the number of female candidates, as reported by MAP: [...]

26.06.2009

3 Comments

On Admiration

I am surrounded by writers. Every morning when I wake up, one of the first things I do is scan my RSS reader for something to bring meaning to my day. I scan the loads of Moroccan blogs I subscribe to, I scan those of my Global Voices friends and colleagues, I read up on [...]

15.06.2009

6 Comments

On the size of the world

The hardest part of growing up is leaving friends behind, all over the world.  Such is the burden of my generation: it seems everyone I know has at one time left a love halfway around the world, or has made friends in many places then realized those friends would never meet.  Or, like me, realized [...]

13.06.2009

3 Comments

On Evil

A day after I write this, an 88-year-old white supremacist walks into the Holocaust museum and shoots a security guard.  Racism comes from all sides. I believe strongly in unlimited free speech.  Yet one glance at the shooter’s  Web site gives me at least some insight into why countries like Germany and Austria have banned [...]

10.06.2009

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On Racism and the Northern Elite

So there’s this video circulating the viral Web; a bunch of American Jews in Tel Aviv are interviewed by Max Blumenthal on the eve of President Obama’s speech in Cairo and are shown on camera spouting racial epithets and hateful words, directed at the president. I’ve actually heard people express surprise at such racist outbursts. [...]

09.06.2009

4 Comments