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You Can’t Take It With You

I woke up this morning to a jarring phone call from my roommate; one of us had accidentally left the front door unlocked and my cat had escaped (to the fourth floor, where she was coddled until we popped up there and retrieved her).  So you can imagine the mood I was in when I [...]

28.04.2010

2 Comments

The Price of Beauty

Yesterday, I watched an episode of Jessica Simpson’s The Price of Beauty which took place in Marrakesh. I hadn’t seen the show before, so had no idea what to expect, but knowing J.Simp’s provocative attire, imagined that I was in for a treat. The first surprise was who Jessica’s host was – Khansa Batmaa! I [...]

23.04.2010

1 Comment

Couscous, Djellaba, Tajine.

Originally posted at Talk Morocco Julia Roberts, McDonald’s, Mickey Mouse. This was how a young Moroccan student of mine described the United States to me. Images from his youth: Pretty Woman, glimpsed illicitly on satellite TV as a boy, or downloaded by BitTorrent. McDonald’s, which arrived in his hometown when he was eight, a beacon [...]

22.04.2010

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Morocco Bans Swimsuits

(Note: This is a beautifully done, elaborate joke) From Ahmed BlaFrancia’s blog, 3alash?: ردا على مشاريع القوانين الجديدة في بعض الدول الأوروبية التي تمس الحريات الدينية للمواطنين المغاربة في أوروبا بمنعها لإرتداء الحجاب والنقاب وما شابه ذلك، قررت الحكومة المغربية في اجتماع عاجل منع كل القاطنين والسياح الأوروبيين من ارتداء ملابس مخلة بالحياء ولا تتطابق [...]

22.04.2010

2 Comments

How Banking Should Be

19.04.2010

4 Comments

Net Freedom Starts at Home

David Ignatius is one journalist whose work I greatly respect. I followed his PostGlobal project with Fareed Zakaria for its duration and know that, as a journalist, he tends toward openness and honesty, with a definite global (and sometimes even developing world) slant. Yesterday, in a Washington Post op-ed entitled, “The case for spreading press [...]

19.04.2010

1 Comment

Infiltrators

A recent military order by the IDF calls for the deportation of Palestinians residing in the West Bank who are not in possession of West Bank ID cards. Worth noting before I get into this post is that, while typically Palestinians born in Gaza have Gaza ID cards and those born in the West Bank [...]

15.04.2010

1 Comment

Talk Morocco Wins the BOBs!

On a hot summer day in July of 2009, I was sitting at my kitchen table, imagining an idea for a PostGlobal-like forum for Moroccans. Fed up with the existing platforms and lack of cross-blogosphere discussion in my adopted second country, the idea sprung to life. Excited, I asked Hisham Khribchi, my long-time blogger friend [...]

15.04.2010

4 Comments

Slippery Sloping

I’ve been horribly busy with travel planning (shameless plug: I’m speaking at the IJF next week in Perugia, Italy; yes that’s an awful photo of me) and non-blog writing that I haven’t updated you since that last post about Facebook (which I’m currently expanding into a more academic piece). So here’s some candy: Check out [...]

14.04.2010

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On Facebook Deactivations

Update/note: Since writing this a few hours ago, I’ve been flooded by e-mails from Facebook users who have also experienced this. Those users include gay rights activists, Jewish activists, activists for a free Palestine, and activists against the Venezuelan regime (among others). Clearly this is happening to many users across the board. I will follow [...]

08.04.2010

35 Comments

The Haifa Wehbe Post

Before I get into the meat of this post, I’d like to thank the inept American mainstream media for giving me an excuse to write about Haifa Wehbe, Ruby, and Nancy Ajram on my blog. Frankly, I’ve never found a better one than this… Pop quiz—What does more to galvanize radical anti-American sentiment in the [...]

01.04.2010

22 Comments