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51.3%ANMag Issue 19 Public Surveillance
The Beauty and the Beast of Dubai
By Farah Salka, Staff Writer
Beirut, Lebanon – Have you heard of the most flourishing city with the most ambitious buildings in the Gulf? Have you seen the tallest tower block? Have you read about the world's first seven-star hotel, Burj Al Arab? Have you liked the idea of the crazy ski-slope in the middle of the desert state? Have you visited the Mall of Arabia, the world’s largest shopping mall, twice the size of the Mall of America? [More]
The Woes of Pervez
By Raja Abou Reslan, Staff Editor
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates – Developing countries usually have a knack for instability and turmoil, but as it has been proven time and time again, it is usually not their fault. But sometimes, those countries' rulers pass legislation or policies that exacerbate the already-fragile systems of those countries and threaten to plunge them into mayhem. The country is then lucky if it does not fall prey to others willing to take advantage of the pertinent situation for its own interests. Furthermore, there has always been the debate, all negative happenstances held constant, about which modes of government benefit a developing state the most. Developing countries have the habit of adopting dictatorships, autocracy, totalitarianism, and military rule. This question does not hold truer than with the state of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. [More]
Why Blame Oil Companies?
By Yousef Salama, Staff writer
Toronto, Canada – Since 2004, oil prices have skyrocketed to record levels, and a turbulent new era has begun with high oil prices and soaring inflation. For the last thirty years, the price of oil has been the single most important determinant of the world economy. People only need to look at their own pocketbooks to discover the effects oil prices are having on their own financial well-being. As prices at the pumps continue to rise, oil and gas companies are enjoying record profits, never before seen by any other industry in corporate history, making it on the surface, understandable that the fingers are pointed at the oil companies and their greed. But they are not to blame for the record prices and to do so is foolish. Unfortunately, because more and more Lebanese are suffering from the price hikes and poor economic policy within the country, blaming oil companies for their misfortune has become convenient. [More]
Breeding Terrorism: Re-analyzing the Sunni/Shi'a Regional Divide
By Vanessa Zuabi, Staff Writer
Paris, France – Islamic fundamentalist groups such as Fatah al-Islam do not appear out of thin air. While many were shocked and dismayed by their untimely emergence, given the regional and Lebanese domestic situation, fundamentalist groups are an expected effect to disorder and areas plagued by divided loyalties. The Shi’a/Sunni division that has become a highlighted theme in Middle East regional analysis, as well as the absence of the rule of law has produced conditions conducive towards the establishment of groups such as Fatah al-Islam, groups that have virtually no political or social aim aside from creating greater levels of instability and disorder. [More]
Life through a Lens
By Hanin Ababneh, Contributing Writer
Beirut, Lebanon - Al Mahraqa (the Burning). Holocaust in Arabic has the same literal translation in languages all over the world. In the devastating wake of World War II, much more has come to stake than ever could be imagined would prevail. The Holocaust, through adamancy in attaching itself to the Jewish religion and now covered in the black cloak of "anti-Semitism", would eventually become a pivotal point for politics in generations to come and regions all around the globe in ways that its advocators never intended. Then if this is the case, how has the Holocaust come to define and describe so much in our everyday lives that it has in effect come to shape them? It has happened in the same way that approximately everything has been shaped in our twenty-first century − life through the media. [More]