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31 Oct 2014

The Jezebel Complex and Lebanese Women Today

There’s a persistent stereotype when it comes to Lebanese women today that I often come across both in real-life conversations and on social media. Lebanese women pay excessive attention to their appearance, they do too much plastic surgery, they use too much makeup and so on. The implication is that Lebanese women are superficial and this supposed excessive attention to physical appearance reflects a lack of intellectual capabilities.

29 Oct 2014

How To Use Brown People To Illustrate A Story About Overpopulation

Yesterday a report was published by the National Academy of Sciences warning that even major wars and catastrophes won't curb population growth. Good news, you might think, we are resilient as a species but of course that's not the version that the media will go with. Naturally it's too good an opportunity to miss for another round of scaremongering about human population growth. There's nothing that gets western media, in particular, giddy with excitement as the prospect of disasters brought about by population growth.

13 Oct 2014

Fascinating Observations of Life in the West by an Iraqi Anthropologist

Until now there have been very few authoritative anthropological studies about the Western World, of which we know very little aside from inaccurate media representations and what we see in TV and film which can be hardly representative of the reality of Western culture. However a major study by Iraqi anthropologist Hassan Daqiq is set to change that. Daqiq spent years living among Western people and meticulously documenting their culture and lifestyle. The result is a rich archival encyclopaedia of the habits and daily lives of Western people.

10 Oct 2014

We Went Busking With Slavoj Žižek

Superstar Communist philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek once claimed that his lectures are more rock and roll than The Beatles in their heyday. We decided to put the idea to the test by taking the unkempt Slovenian philosopher busking and see how much money he can make by ad-libbing about politics, philosophy and psychoanalysis on the streets of London. The results will surprise you.

8 Oct 2014

Qassem Suleimani Iran’s Shadowy Commander Who Has No Shadow

It was a hot summer evening in Tehran, as the scents of spices wafted through Tehran’s Grand Bazaar and the voice of the muezzin could be heard in the distance calling the pious for the evening prayer and something suitably mysterious and oriental about Persian carpets, a group of official-looking people were walking silently among the crowd. To the casual eye there would have been nothing special about this group of middle-aged men, but the casual eye didn’t recognise Iran’s most important weapon in its war against the US and its pathetic sidekicks: Qassem Suleimani.

7 Oct 2014

Global South Launches ‘Best White Saviour’ Award

From Bono to Al Gore, there can be no doubt that white saviours are great. Sadly the Global South has done little to acknowledge the greatness of white people over the recent decades, claiming it was busy with the challenges of post-colonisation, nation-building and fending off hunger. These are poor excuses however and a wide coalition of Global South governments, NGOs and ordinary people are now attempting to rectify this historic omission by launching the ‘Best White Saviour’ award this year.