Mai Masri 3000 nights

An introduction to Mai Masri's film: her films are about women and children not as victims but as resisters—and a child born in prison asks: "What is a bird?"

Saudi expansion: The Lebanese Connection (1924-1952)

Hussein 'Uwayni—the first "Saudi national" to govern Lebanon, four decades before Hariri—and through him the Kingdom penetrated Lebanese politics: wealth buys honor, and the regional broker makes prime ministers.

The Woes of Confessionalism

As-Safir

Translation of two columns from as-Safir: Yousif Bey Karam said it in 1867—sectarian division invites external domination. The question: "Do we change the system or the people?"

Lebanese Wars: Memory and Forgetfulness

Forgetting is "the life force of memory"—and what Lebanon practiced is programmed amnesia. What is needed is remembering causes—and we need daydreams (hope) as much as memory.

Trauma and Memory

Three processes: amnesia, memory, forgetting. Lebanon practiced programmed amnesia—what is needed is remembering causes, not violence. "We can only forget what we remember."

AHDR: a critique

300 books translated per year is an unreliable figure—and culture is used to mask neoliberal agendas: unemployment cannot be solved by translation but by productive economies. The Alexandria Charter is a shopping list, not a roadmap.

مقابلة لجريدة السفير

Al-Safir Newspaper Interview

As-Safir

Hariri's project rebuilds the pre-war system with all its flaws amplified — a dangerous disregard for its role in igniting the war threatens to rebuild the conditions for explosion.