“We reject the refugee in the orderly nations because he is the sum of our worst fears, the looming future of the 21st century brought in human form to our borders. “

Recent Posts

• Shubh Diwali — photo from Will Dalrymple
• “Iraq will remain united.” Does al Abadi have a point?
• Catalans’ second thoughts: ‘…the last refuge of the wallet-minded’: nationalism in all its petit bourgeois glory
• Cool: Arabs discovered the Western Hemisphere along with everything else.
• Turkish Jews: A Spanish right of return redux
• Castille and Catalonia: a kulturkampf much older and psychologically complex than we think
• NikoBako told-you-so prediction: someone’s gonna start b*tching that Bollywood promotes irresponsible drinking…
• From TIMES: Greg Weiner: an unusually moving piece about the beauty of the law and custom and language and the constitution…
• TIMES: end of Little Italy: “We took it for granted that New York would always be New York.”
• Bodegas
• Ha… Catalonia is finally getting the West to rethink what it did to YUGOSLAVIA!
• Turks don’t suffer from Sèvrophobia; they suffer from Lausannitis.
• Así… ¡por joder!
• Times: ‘I Am Spanish’
• The internet, stupid-making, looney-bin simulacrum — from the ATLANTIC’s Andrew Sullivan: “I used to be a human being…”
• Another NikoBako I-told-you-so: Antiocheia, Idlib, Turkey and goddamn “referenda”
• Constantinople: 1200 A.D.
• Times: El Deportivo
• From Tablet: “…Sukkos?”
• The Atlantic: AIM was perfect (or why it made instinctive sense to ignore Jeremy C. at CUNY)
• October 4th: “San Francisco de Asis Orante,” Diego Velázquez and Zurbarán
• PUERTO RICO Fundraiser: Everybody has to go to this tomorrow; it’s our obligation as New Yorkers
• From Politico: “Brussels says Catalan referendum was ‘not legal’” — thank God
• Tsipras to Rajoy:
• Vullnet‏ @vuIInet: if Catalans do not want to share their wealth with Castilians, imagine how happy Bavarians are to share theirs with the rest of EU
• Repost: Catalonia: “Nationalism effaces the individual…”
• #CatalanReferendum: As a foil for your own nationalist narcissism, you made up the myth of an intolerant, fascist Spain …and you got it.
• From Tablet: “A Yom Kippur Ritual I Can’t Give Up”
• A poem for Ashura, Agha Shahid Ali
• “What happened to the Turks of Old Greece?” 196 years ago today: the fall of Tripolica
• From the Times: “A Mix of Tradition and Trend in Kabul”
• Never was a more perfect climate wasted on so undeserving a people: how Greeks drive you nuts
• Howard Jacobson: two interviews, on how screens are making us stupid and the stupidity of democracy
• Diyarbakır
• Amen. From Tablet, a New Year reading.
• See “Родные” — “Close Relations” — at the MMI in Astoria
• Do Kurds need to do this right now, just at this very moment?
• “When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”
• Durrell on Cavafy: “He was by divine choice only a poet…”
• Riz Ahmed, Immigration, Suketu Mehta and me, Identity Politics, and Varun and Sidharth’s “shining future”
• Spain and Catalan domino effect and Barca: has the European Union encouraged orgy of separatism and regionalism?
• Sometimes a shofar is just a shofar.
• Suketu Mehta in Foreign Policy addendum, whole text
• “We reject the refugee in the orderly nations because he is the sum of our worst fears, the looming future of the 21st century brought in human form to our borders. “
• Video from Times: 36 Hours in Athens
• Photo: A Mughal lady in a moonlit terrace holding a lamp which she conceals under her dupatta. Delhi, c.1720.
• The Turkish Islamist’s frightening animus toward Alevis
• Catherine Tate, prophet: When England wakes up it’ll be 1951
• Why are Turks flocking to Greece?
• The Balkanist’s heart goes thump thump