هذا العدد

This Issue

Bidayat

This issue delves into neoliberalism and consumer society, revealing how they reshape cities, transport, and social relations, leading to segregation, privatization, and new forms of wealth display.

هل الاقتصاديات العربية ريعية؟ حالتا مصر ولبنان

Are Arab Economies Rentier? The Cases of Egypt and Lebanon

Bidayat

The concept of "rentier economy" is inverted from a negative symptom to an inherent feature of capitalism, where exploitation extends beyond production to strongly impact the market.

Mamdouha Bobst Center for Peace and Justice – Princeton lecture

A Princeton lecture: neoliberalism banned "social justice" for a quarter century—and the Arab revolutions diagnosed the problem: unemployment, despotism, class inequality. No military solution to ISIS, only drying up its social sources.

Social Justice Lecture

A lecture: the Arab revolutions are a critique-in-practice of neoliberalism—the World Bank forgot about job creation, and "we are ruled by Ali Baba and the forty thieves—and they don't even reach forty."

من يحاسِب؟ ومن يحاسِب مَن؟

Who Holds Accountable? And Who Holds Whom Accountable?

As-Safir

The issue is not merely the overthrow of the ruler, but preventing immunity, exile, and assassination from swallowing the revolutions' first achievement: the right to accountability.

هي ثورة

It Is a Revolution

As-Safir

These are revolutions, not a 'spring' or uprisings: they erupt when rulers can no longer govern and the ruled can no longer tolerate them, imposing systemic change, not just reform, through popular power.

حرير وحديد – مقابلة مع سنان أنطون ـ جدلية

Silk and Iron - Interview with Sinan Antoon, Jadaliyya

Jadaliyya

"Silk and Iron," a book born from surplus research for "A Modern History of Lebanon," narrates how individual and collective destinies intertwined in the 19th century through historical facts stranger than fiction.

سنة اولى ثورة: درس اول

First Year of Revolution: First Lesson

As-Safir

Democracy in our countries is revolution — all counter-revolutionary forces share one goal: clearing the streets. Life is provocative!

الرأسمالية المؤمنة و«الدولة المدنية»

Believing Capitalism and the "Civil State"

As-Safir

A "believing bourgeoisie" captures the state — the "Renaissance Project" follows World Bank dictates so faithfully that the Bank itself applauds.

الثورة والدساتير

Revolution and Constitutions

As-Safir

The battle over constitutions is the real one — whoever writes them decides whether revolution becomes democracy or is aborted.

العمل والعمال في الثورات العربية

Labor and Workers in the Arab Revolutions

As-Safir

I am a worker, not a slave — the millions in the squares are workers and unemployed, not middle class, and Islamists replace rights with charity.

٢٥ يناير المصري والشرعيات الثلاث

Egypt's January 25 and the Three Legitimacies

As-Safir

To be revolutionary in the Arab revolutions now means to be in opposition.

الثورات في العام الثالث – الشعب لا زال يريد

Revolutions in the Third Year - The People Still Want

As-Safir

Destroying the Iraqi state in the name of "civil society" unleashed not freedom but sectarian demons — every Arab revolution has two wings: modernist and regressive.

فواز طرابلسى فى حوار خاص عن مصر والمنطقة: مسار الثورة غير قابل للارتداد

Fawwaz Traboulsi in an Exclusive Interview on Egypt and the Region: The Course of Revolution Is Irreversible

Ash-Shorouk

The path of the Arab revolutions is irreversible, but their fate depends on external intervention and the internal balance of power, amidst containment attempts and challenges from Islamist and leftist forces.

أم كلثوم مسكّن – الاوجاع لا يشفي من مرض

Umm Kulthum as Painkiller - A Sedative That Does Not Cure

As-Safir

Umm Kulthum was not merely a talented singer, but a Sufi priestess for societies in historical crisis, offering them a painkiller for their woes, not a cure for their illness.

Arab Revolution – AUB

The Arab revolutions are directed not only against the present but against the "until now"—the moment when the voiceless make the experts voiceless.

The Left in Time of Revolution

Bidayat

A founding essay in Bidayat: the Arab uprisings are a movement against neoliberalism—"the people want" is popular sovereignty above all others, and "work, freedom, bread" places unemployment at the heart of democracy.

Social Justice is back? – Princeton lecture

Is social justice back? Neoliberalism banned it for a quarter century—and the Arab revolutions brought it back with "The people want": a return to the concepts of the national liberation phase.

الاسلاميون في القول والفعل 

The Islamists in Word and Deed

As-Safir

They forbid usury but sanctify profit and replace social rights with charity meat — the "civil state" is dhimmi status in new language.

الثورة في شبابها

The Revolution in Its Youth

As-Safir

Libya wasn't a country but one man named Gaddafi — Arab youth offer a third way beyond despotism and theocracy: brazen, fragile, but carrying hope.

القاهرة ٩ اكتوبر: الحدث ليبقى حدثا

Cairo, October 9: Lest the Event Be Forgotten

As-Safir

A presenter "lost his nerve," soldiers "lost their nerves" — losing your nerve in a way that kills is a crime. The military council is the suspect saying: catch me.

Revolutions bring down ideas as well!

Heinrich Boll Stiftung

Revolutions do not merely change governments; they shatter the ideologies that made those governments seem permanent and legitimate, and undermine decades of intellectual frameworks that naturalized authoritarian rule.

Does Guilt Matter?

Does guilt matter in politics? The paper interrogates the suppression of collective guilt in post-war Lebanon, calling for the restoration of the memory of causes, not just violence, as a condition for conscious forgetting that enables coexistence.

الثورة مهرجان

Revolution Is a Festival

As-Safir

The revolution is a festival — 62 people own as much as half of humanity. The test: holding rulers accountable and recovering the stolen to the people's treasury.