Category: The Middle East

The better they got…

Zajal on Arak By Zein El-Amine, Jan 26, 2015 I remember when electricity came to my village. I must have been about seven or eight. The government installed a transformer in the village center. The thing was housed in a metal locker. The villagers called it ‘The Clock.’ At first, The Clock was a thing …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2024/02/08/the-better-they-got/

Another obituary

Dr. Jim Ragland, of Allen, Texas, died September 24, 2023 at the age of 99. He was born in Ada, Oklahoma in 1924 to James Jordan Ragland and Zelda Keithley Ragland. He was preceded in death by his wife of almost 70 years, Leola Lee Ragland, his parents, and his sister JoAnn Craddick. He is …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2023/09/24/another-obituary/

Before there was Trump

Is This the End of Bibi? By David Remnick, July 22, 2023   Netanyahu’s coalition of zealots, the resistance in the streets, and the Israeli Kulturkampf. Benjamin Netanyahu has been Prime Minister of Israel longer than anyone in the history of the state, longer than F.D.R. was President of the United States. And yet, for …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2023/07/29/before-there-was-trump/

Don’t know much about history

Sunk By Jeff Stein, August 21, 2012   Gwenyth Todd had worked in a lot of places in Washington where powerful men didn’t hesitate to use sharp elbows. She had been a Middle East expert for the National Security Council in the Clinton administration. She had worked in the office of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2023/05/05/dont-know-much-about-history-2/

When a tangled web woven unravels

1950s U.S. Foreign Policy Looms Large in Lebanon By Jacob Boswell, July 29, 2022   The Cold War may be over, but the legacy of containment looms large over Lebanon. For decades, the U.S. has been the single largest financial supporter of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), in a bid to balance Iran’s influence in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2022/08/03/when-a-tangled-web-woven-unravels/

Thank you for your service

  ‘I didn’t know who I was any more’: how CIA torture pushed me to the edge of death By Abu Zubaydah, Sat 29 Jan 2022 04.30 EST   I found myself chained to a steel bed in a white room. As soon as I started letting myself fall asleep, a small amount of water …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2022/01/30/thank-you-for-your-service/

100 Years Ago

What is Happening in Palestine Danger of Zionists Acquiring Supreme Power. By Lord Syndenham of Combe, June 1 1921   Do the British people understand whither Mr. Balfour’s Palestine policy is leading us? asks Lord Sydenham in an article in the Nineteenth Century, and he goes on to give a pessimistic view of the results …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2021/07/23/100-years-ago/