Last year, I was interviewed for a @frontlinepbs.bsky.social documentary about Germany's far right, with a nod to Russia and the US. The documentary came out last month and makes for deeply uncomfortable viewing.
www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontli...
White House photo op for the president's granddaughter's new $130 sweatshirt line
Worst logo ever, to top it all off
My article on the controversial impact of TikTok in Egypt - originally appeared on @theconversation.com - was republished by The Globe and Atlas.
theglobeandatlas.com/tiktok-egypt...
Tried to get at this in my column last night but the wild thing about the Epstein story is that it seems to interest everyone & answers to nobody, even Trump. It is an unstable compound being used by political actors to get attention or score political points but it can easily blow up in their faces
"Amusing ourselves to death": in the 1980s, media scholar Neil Postman offered a prescient vision for a future in which entertainment would eat up politics, and where we would die by a thousands laughs.
My contribution to The Conversation:
"TikTok in Egypt: where rich and poor meet – and the state watches everything". TikTok’s ability to expose divisions in Egyptian society and connect citizens across demographic cleavages has unsettled the authorities.
theconversation.com/tiktok-in-eg...
Pope Leo XIV today called on global leaders to stop waging wars during his first major speech to the faithful after his election as the Catholic Church’s new leader.
My contribution to The Conversation:
"TikTok in Egypt: where rich and poor meet – and the state watches everything". TikTok’s ability to expose divisions in Egyptian society and connect citizens across demographic cleavages has unsettled the authorities.
theconversation.com/tiktok-in-eg...
"The comeback of Donald Trump is the pinnacle of the career of a risk taker with little concern for established norms. But his willingness to bend reality to suit his vision might push global politics to the breaking point."
My piece for The Cairo Review of Global Affairs:
shorturl.at/xMt0P
When scholars of authoritarianism and fascism leave U.S. universities because of the deteriorating political situation here, we should really worry.
Today, thousands of openly-transgender service members will put on their uniform and do what needs to be done because they honor their oath to our country, while Pete Hegseth denigrates their service and violates his oath by brazenly sharing classified intel in text groups.
Just a reminder.
Disinformation is how autocracies and weak democracies censor the truth: it gets drowned out by a tide of rumours, lies and fabrications.
I wonder why
The Ukrainian president made his comments as Vladimir Putin praised the US-Russian rapprochement and argued that European leaders had excluded themselves from the talks. www.ft.com/content/dc98...
"The comeback of Donald Trump is the pinnacle of the career of a risk taker with little concern for established norms. But his willingness to bend reality to suit his vision might push global politics to the breaking point."
My piece for The Cairo Review of Global Affairs:
shorturl.at/xMt0P
How democracies gradually turn into tyrannies, without people realising, from four witnesses who saw that happen in their own countries. Eye-opening cautionary tales for the US, and for the rest of the world.
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/o...
The cravenness of Mark Zuckerberg
https://www.ft.com/content/682ca921-ccfd-445e-b486-94f4b8542b12
Trolligarch @elonmusk is an obscenely wealthy fascist, about time that the @EU_Commission takes seriously the huge threat he poses to European democracies.
www.politico.eu/article/elon...
Elon Musk true colors in full display, once more
Elon Musk’s tech bros have clashed with the Maga rank and file over immigration for Silicon Valley workers, exposing the fragile alliance forged to put Donald Trump in the White House ⬇️
There's nothing to return to in Jabaliya refugee camp, every element of human life destroyed.
Palestinians told us about whole blocks being cleared off the map in the past two months and what they describe is so apparent when you look at the aerial imagery.
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
A high-ranking Russian general has been killed in an explosion in Moscow less than 24 hours after Ukraine accused him of ordering the use of chemical weapons against its forces
12/12: Such an upheaval has been nearly expunged from the collective memory, but its causes are still very much present, as are also the seeds for a future uprising. “My love is for the people of the alleys, not only the old alleys of Cairo but the alleys of the whole world.” Naguib Mahfouz
11/12: Mahfouz wrote “Children of the Alley” in a moment of disillusionment, but he concludes the novel with an uplifting vision: “We shall see the end of tyranny and the dawn of miracles.” In 2011 , the “the alley” erupted and toppled a regime, nothing short of a miracle.
10/12: The Gebelawi mansion, in all its forbidding might, indeed appears as the blueprint for the kind of society and architecture that is booming in Al-Sisi’s Egypt, epitomized by the sprawling and secluded New Administrative Capital.
9/12: The novel is still a clear prism through which one can understand the predicament of Egypt under the rule of Al Sisi, who has built his legitimacy by stamping out religious fundamentalism, only to create a brutal system of oppression for the Egyptian destitute masses.
8/12: After rising to fame with The Cairo Trilogy, Mahfouz was disoriented by the 1952 coup that toppled the monarchy but also ended the liberalism of the ‘30s. He took a five-year break from writing, and returned to his art with Children of the Alley, his most political work
7/12: The plight of the alley is temporarily assuaged by the emergence, across generations, of prophetic figures symbolically modeled on Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. However, with the passing of time, the preachings of the prophets become hardened into repressive dogmas.
