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Shiva Balaghi
Covering Iran's Ninjas
![[Ninjutsu. Image from Wiki Commons]](/content_images/3/sm_5495384625_265baeb41f.jpg "[Ninjutsu. Image from Wiki Commons]")
On the evening of 29 March, a line in my twitter feed read, “You don’t want to mess with Iran’s lady ninjas.” Cara Park’s snarky comment had been retweeted by someone I follow in Cairo. I clicked her link to find she’s a deputy managing editor of Foreign Policy, blogging on the suspensions of Reuters’ accreditation in Iran over their reporting on women training in ninjutsu: In case it wasn’t obvious, you don’t want to offend a highly-trained cadre of Iranian ninjas. Anger ...
Keep Reading »Our Friend Anthony Shadid's Stories
![[Anthony Shadid. Image from the author.]](/content_images/3/sm_shadid12349876.png "[Anthony Shadid. Image from the author.]")
I feel like I need to write the stories, he would say, or the stories will not get told. And so often Anthony Shadid did write the stories no one else would—the stories from Iraq, from Lebanon, from Libya, from Syria. In the end, he died on a dirt road in Syria, carried by a fellow journalist across the border to Turkey, like a fallen hero. To many, he was a hero, but he was also a beloved friend, a son who adored his parents, a father who lived for his children, a husband ...
Keep Reading »War Talk: The Obama Administration and Iran
![[President Obama delivers 2012 State of the Union address. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_Obama2012StateoftheUnion.JPG "[President Obama delivers 2012 State of the Union address. Image from unknown archive.]")
“Let there be no doubt,” President Obama declared in his 2012 State of the Union address. “America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.” The comment drew a rousing and sustained standing ovation from the US Congress. “But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible,” the President continued to a smattering of applause that tumbled awkwardly across the silent chamber. The ...
Keep Reading »Murdoch's Homeland
![[Image from Showtime,]](/content_images/3/sm_Homeland.jpg "[Image from Showtime,]")
Terrorists have backstories, and American politicians play dirty in the “war on terror”. These revelations are what propel the Showtime’s hit series, Homeland, seemingly setting it apart from other pop culture representations of post-9/11 America. “How do you tell a thriller in the post-9/11, post-Abu Ghraib, and post-Guantanamo world?” asks Howard Gordon, one of the show’s creators. “Homeland will challenge people’s notions of what a hero and a villain are. The show lives ...
Keep Reading »Greek Translation of "Tragic Day for Norway; Shameful Day for Journalism"
![[Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_osloshiva1.jpg "[Image from unknown archive]")
[This article was written in English by Shiva Balaghi and translated/published in Greek by the popular blog Parapolitik.] Μέρα τραγωδίας για τη Νορβηγία, μέρα ντροπής για τη Δημοσιογραφία To ...
Keep Reading »Tragic Day for Norway; Shameful Day for Journalism
![[Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_norwaybombing-camp.jpg "[Image from unknown archive]")
A friend’s status update on Facebook alerted me that something horrible had happened in Oslo. Horrible things tend not to happen in Oslo, so I immediately turned to the news to learn what was going on. I read a story in the New York Times that squarely pointed to jihadi groups angered at the war in Afghanistan. The expert the Times cited was Will McCants. I checked in on his twitter feed throughout the day, as he allegedly translated an alleged website by the alleged ...
Keep Reading »Running on Empty: International Education Funding Gets Deep Cuts
![[President Barack Obama in Cairo, 2009]](/content_images/3/sm_6a00d8341c630a53ef011570bf1a88970b-800wi.jpg "[President Barack Obama in Cairo, 2009]")
Although education reform is a hallmark of the Obama presidency, we have just witnessed the largest cuts ever to the US Department of Education’s international education programs. In 2009, Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, announced Race to the Top. A $4.3 billion program, it is one of the largest and most expensive education programs in US history. A central goal of Race to the Top is to “prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to ...
Keep Reading »NYT Reporter Anthony Shadid Missing in Libya
![Shadid at Brown University, April 2010 [photo credit: AP]](/content_images/3/sm_063664-anthony-shadid.jpg "Shadid at Brown University, April 2010 [photo credit: AP]")
[UPDATED March 21: The NYT announced that the Libyan government has released all four reporters, who are reportedly on their way home. Reports indicate the Turkish government played a key role in negotiating their freedom.] [UPDATED March 18: In an interview with Christiane Amanpour for ABC, Saif Qadaffi said that the NYT reporters had been detained and were in Tripoli. The NYT announced that they believed the reporters would be released on Friday. We still await official ...
Keep Reading »Focus on Freedom: In Solidarity with Iranian Filmmaker Jafar Panahi
In December 2010, a court in the Islamic Republic of Iran sentenced filmmaker Jafar Panahi to six years in prison for collusion against the government. Even after his body is released from prison, the government wants to control his thoughts, his dreams, his words and prevent him from expressing them in cinematic form. The court also banned him from writing scripts, making films, traveling abroad, and speaking with any media for twenty years. “It’s depressing,” said director ...
Keep Reading »Why Tahrir Infuriates the Neo-Cons
![[Niall Ferguson. Image from CNReview]](/content_images/3/sm_niall-ferguson-hand.jpg "[Niall Ferguson. Image from CNReview]")
Everywhere you turn, Niall Ferguson is berating Obama’s “muddling” of Egypt. He’s blogging on The Daily Beast, spewing angrily on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and inaugurating his new column in Newsweek with a cover story blasting Obama. Tahrir Square is the neo-cons’ worst nightmare… And Ferguson is one of the scribes who helped globalize and legitimize the neo-cons’ ideas. Since 9/11, Ferguson’s books on empire have become airport bestsellers, and he’s gone from Oxford to ...
Keep Reading »Bio
Shiva Balaghi is an International Humanities Fellow at the Cogut Center of Brown University, where she teaches History and Art History. Her books include Saddam Hussein: A Biography (2005, paperback 2008, Chinese translation 2008), Picturing Iran: Art, Society, and Revolution (co-edited, 2002, Arabic translation 2005), and Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East(co-edited, 1994). She is Vice-President of the American Institute for Iranian Studies and an Associate Editor of Review of Middle Eastern Studies. Balaghi is currently completing a book on the cultural underpinnings of political transformation in Iran from 1848-2005. Follow her on Twitter @SBalaghi.
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