The Nomad and the Olive Branch

It was supposed to be one flag, a flag that united Arabs of different origins, backgrounds, cultures, religions, and ethnicities into one common cause for rebellion, freedom, and self-determination. The flag depicted represents the flag of the initial Arab revolt in World War 1, the "war to end all wars". While it may have ended for some, it did not end for the Arabs, especially those now in Palestine, Iraq, and Syria let alone the entire Middle East, now ruled by despots and tyrants willing to lick the boots of the same colonial powers that divvied up and shattered the unity of Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa. Make no mistake: this is not a hearkening back to "the old days" or a call for open rebellion or revolt, but rather a thorough and damning examination into the state that we Arabs are in today. With the occupation of Palestine, the invasion of Iraq, the massacre of innocents in Syria, the bombardment of Lebanon not too forgotten in recent memo...

There really is no such thing as bad publicity let alone checks and balances against those who promote it. However, there is such a thing as intellectual dishonesty, and such ignorance is a pox on how we conduct our affairs, and it is this same ignorance that prevents us from seeing the world through a more objective lens. Nevertheless, that humans operate the media and our sources of information only adds to the subjectivity, and there is an increasing and frightening authoritarian trend to dismiss all efforts of objectivity even from within the media sources themselves. Now, more than ever, do we need a strong and objective press, even in the face of all these allegations of "fake news", a dumbed-down, infantile, thuggish, and inane accusation lobbed to dismiss all objective yet negative depictions of certain asinine, incompetent, and unscrupulous politicians. To put things in perspective, Kant spoke of noumenal and phenomenal realities, reality impervious to our subj...

Photo by Gigi Ibrahim | CC BY 2.0 When I first went to Palestine as a young reporter in the 1960s, I stayed on a kibbutz. The people I met were hard-working, spirited and called themselves socialists. I liked them. One evening at dinner, I asked about the silhouettes of people in the far distance, beyond our perimeter. “Arabs”, they said, “nomads”.  The words were almost spat out. Israel, they said, meaning Palestine, had been mostly wasteland and one of the great feats of the Zionist enterprise was to turn the desert green. They gave as an example their crop of Jaffa oranges, which was exported to the rest of the world. What a triumph against the odds of nature and humanity’s neglect. It was the first lie. Most of the orange groves and vineyards belonged to Palestinians who had been tilling the soil and exporting oranges and grapes to Europe since the eighteenth century. The former Palestinian town of Jaffa was known by its previous inhabitants as “the place of ...

The bulk of modern history regarding the Crusades has an unashamedly Western slant to it. Even a cursory search of the word "crusade" on Amazon Books reveals a plethora of books written by authors from the U.K., the U.S., and elsewhere in the Western world, but a severe (emphasis) paucity of books from a more Arab perspective. One book that stands out is Amin Maalouf's "The Crusades through Arab Eyes", a book I believe is much-needed given the overall bias inherent in the gestalt of Western history books on this topic. The gold standard for history on the Crusades is currently the "The Oxford History of the Crusades", another book I will review in the not-so-distant future (and expect comparisons to this book given that I have completed reading it). The too-long-didn't-read version of this review is the following: if you're interested in history, buy it, read it, and keep it. Nevertheless, my full review follows. For those who are un...

I didn't know what to expect when reading a book composed by one of the most prominent Muslim intellectuals of the 21st Century. For a second, I thought I was gonna read a book about the traditional tropes of radicals in the 3 Abrahamic faiths being rooted in a minority of their respective followers. The shocking thesis of Reza Aslan portrayed in this book describes a much more endemic problem: the idea of a "cosmic war" between what each radical group perceives as "good" and "evil", and how that differs and at the same time finds common ground between the 3 faiths. The backdrop of globalization further emphasizes the de-nationalization of identity and the construction of a new identity that transcends geographical and racial boundaries, whether he talks of the radical groups such as Al Qaeda, the Christian right-wing extremists in the USA, or the Zionist settler groups in the West Bank. He asserts that such a history goes back to some of the ear...

You know the phrase "Cut off the head of the snake and the body dies"? I'm sure that applies to every living creature out there... except for maybe starfish because those guys don't even have heads. Anyways, I'm writing on this topic because I've come across countless cases where brain-dead patients are forced to suffer untreatable and progressive end-organ damage in a slow, agonizing death because family members and MPOA's cling to the delusional hope that, somehow, a brain that has been literally killed by anoxic injury will receive the same blessing Jesus gave to Saint Lazarus of Bethany and somehow flicker to life.  Futility  is defined by many scholars as a less than 1% chance of management success. One such scholar, Griffin Trotter, defined it as occurring in the following setting: 1. There is a goal 2. There is an action and activity aimed at achieving this goal 3. There is virtual certainty that the action will fail in achieving this goal ...

It is not the most rosy topic, sure, but at least one group in every major era of history has come out with End-Times theological ramblings. From the Sumerians and Mayans to the terrorist groups and evangelical zealots of today, the Apocalypse has become a subject of controversy, satire, and foreboding. The Mahdis and Messiahs of prophecies passed on long ago are starting to look more and more wanting. Ultimately, it is the battle between "Good" and "Evil", "Order" and "Chaos", or what-have-you that will decide the fate of this world in the years to come. Wolves in sheepskin and other Anti-Christ-like figures have surfaced to the forefront of political discussion. Demons and Demon-worship have become topics of popular culture, even to the extent of glorification. Clerics espouse ideologies centered on hate and discord, at the same time warning of an impending slaughter that will spare no home, school, or hospital. Dishonesty is becoming the way...

I can't believe it has been ten years since I first started this website, and a lot has changed since then. My newfound apathy to everything economical and, these days, political can only go so far when I see something like "Daraprim prices soar to new heights" and "Volkswagen caught with its pants down modifying diesel fuel emission statistics from its automobiles". Dystopian literature has always conceived a future where every aspect of life, from body parts to the pollutants we breathe in, undergoes extensive commodification. Even Marx himself stated that capitalism in its current form would eventually be its own undoing, where the wealthy elite will consolidate power to the extent that the masses will have no viable alternative to living a life constantly in debt to their superiors other than to revolt against them. One can argue that what Martin Shkreli, the smug-faced CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, did was immoral albeit not illegal [ 1 ]: he was withi...

  While most of modern science fiction is associated with the latest in Hollywood spectacles (*cough* Star Wars *cough*), it's easy to forget about the roots of science fiction as a whole, which goes back as far as the late 19th Century. One of the most prolific writers in this genre was a Frenchman named Jules Verne, and his books 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth are the epitome of his storytelling expertise. This review will focus on the latter book as I have yet to read the former (though it is on my backlog of books). The book is split into many chapters, so it makes for an easy read without dragging on and on until you reach a part you're sure you can place a bookmark on. While archaic, the style is simple and easy to follow without delving into big vocabulary and monologues. The characters, as few as they may be, are quirky and memorable, in particular Professor Otto Lidenbrock. The pace is just as intense and exciting from start...

Critical reception for the titular novel has been fairly mixed. Although the book has been dubbed "the most famous science fiction novel" ever and has received the Hugo Award for best novel, the book was panned by many critics, such as NYT writer Orville Prescott, as a "disastrous mishmash of science fiction, laborious humor, dreary social satire and cheap eroticism", so bad that "when a non-stop orgy is combined with a lot of preposterous chatter, it becomes unendurable, an affront to the patience and intelligence of readers". Despite the vitriol poured at the novel, it has become a cult classic. Named as one of the 88 books that "shaped America" by the Library of Congress, " Stranger..." has inspired much of the hippie subculture of the 60's and 70's. Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" , an allegory to the prophet Abraham, is about the "Man from Mars", Valentine Michael Smith...