Category Archives: Palestine

Your Intifada was Made in China: Commodity Fetishism Killing Palestine

A version of this is up at Mother Jones, but this one is too hard for the homepage. Oh the keffiyeh. How long have I waited, in vain, for you to die? Before it was the emblem of the hipster generation, … Continue reading

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Filed under 3rd World Imagineering, Brooklyn, Eastside, Economy, Israel, Palestine

Little Big Things in South Asia Part 1—Lanka and what the 1W is missing

Lots o’ stuff going on in South Asia this week! Tata unveils the Nano, world’s cheapest car (cue whine-track from self-serving American environmental movement) U.N. announces Humanitarian Crisis in Sri Lanka (cue crickets). Orphanage in Bangladesh actually a terror cell? … Continue reading

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Filed under India, it's a small world, Palestine, Sri Lanka, United Nations

3WI Special Report—Why they’re not listening to us

We spout off a lot about human voices and narratives and shit, but I’d rather read a bunch of solid numbers behind a single, strong argument than see another Maya/Fatima/Yelena, etc propped up in front of a camera and poked with a stick until she spills her unimaginably brutal survival story for another wannabe foreign correspondent’s lede. Human beings are the ONLY way to tell a story, especially a foreign story, but only if you treat them like humans instead of units of commoditized suffering. Anything else is just prostitution, and nobody likes a fucking pimp. Continue reading

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Filed under 3rd World Imagineering, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, India, it's a small world, MUMBAI, Palestine, Sri Lanka, United Nations

Gaza: an editor’s note (camels on the b-roll)

*I post this out of love, because even (and often) the most earnest among us are also the most absurd. I was trolling Facebook as I often do when i came across a friend’s photo album from a recent Gaza … Continue reading

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Filed under 3rd World Imagineering, Israel, Palestine, The Liberal Media, United Nations

Terrorist, moi? Why the Maya Arulpragasam LTTE-drama is NYT Tiger-shit

The fact that it takes an emphatically pregnant young rapper who samples Bollywood and AK47s, writes songs about Bird Flu and does Day-Glo animal-print schizophrenia as an ethos rapping with Jay-Z on her due date to make us stand up and take notice of a conflict an order of magnitude more deadly than the one in Gaza should say something about us, not her. Continue reading

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Filed under 3rd World Imagineering, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Coney Island, Immigration, Los Angeles, MUMBAI, Palestine, Religion, Sri Lanka, The Liberal Media, United Nations

News You Need to be Reading, part 1

Dear Readers, There is so much going on! First the inauguration, then the Clinton confirmation and Caroline Kennedy’s graceful departure from the NY Senate contest. Israel once again departed the Gaza Strip.  One might almost forget there was a whole … Continue reading

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Filed under 3rd World Imagineering, Economy, Immigration, India, Israel, it's a small world, Palestine, Sri Lanka, The Liberal Media

Actively Ignoring Gaza: or, why I won’t write about the conflict

FACT:

There are, on average, 1,000 foreign correspondents reporting from Israel and the occupied territories–a nation with about the same geographic size and population as New Jersey–at any given time. In times of war, like right now, the number swells to upwards of 3,000.

Consider, then, that on the entire continent of Africa–the world’s second most populace continent after Asia– with its myriad wars, legions of corrupt governments, genocides, AIDS and MDRTB, pirates, inflation, starvation and hotbeds of militant fundamentalism, there are an average of 900.

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Filed under Israel, Palestine, The Liberal Media, United Nations