Rashid Khalidi on Obama at Columbia's Global Center in Amman

Hadn't it been for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, I wouldn't have heard about Rashid Khalidi. Sad or not that an Arab had to hear about a political Palestinian activist through the American elections isn't the issue here. It's about the stories that have been weaved to attack Obama via this academic Columbia figure (NYT, LAT).

Well today, right here in Amman, this New Yorker spoke about his relationship with Obama, at the inaugural speech for Columbia's Global Center in Amman. See for yourself:

Like Music to My Ears

Columbia University, the New-York City positioned Ivy League opens it's Middle East research center in Amman.
As of today.
Rashid Khalidi, used as a token of fight by the Clinton campaign against Obama, is to roll an event in the next days, about his book Sowing Crisis.
What a start.

A New Yorker's Take on Sustainability, Future of Cities, & Gaza

Interview with Michael Sorkin by yours truly. Full version to be presented here once magazine is sold out.

JO Magazine, February 2009

When Bigger Isn't Necessarily Better

"Although compared variously to Las Vegas, Manhattan, Orlando, Monaco and Singapore, the sheikhdom is more like their collective summation and mythologization: a hallucinatory pastiche of the big, the bad and the ugly." The Mike Davis take on Dubai.

Dubai: a city which presents itself in part as a Manhattan replicator & competitor. Manhattan: a borough which presents itself as itself.

I Am Not A Paper Cup

In New York City the paper cup is a hallmark of a particular case of urbanism: the dwellers & commuters are constantly drinking while on the go. Each block generates almost as many paper cups per day as the numbers of the people living on it (according to my crude reasoning). But then paper cups go a long way. The trash can is just the first journey along many for this paper cup to sustainably reincarnate itself in another form.


The metro-governance of the City of New York is busy untying big development knots like those going on at Ground Zero or at the yards of Hell's Kitchen. And it's busy selling porcelain cups that look exactly like their paper counterparts but that are more friendly to the waste management system. "I Am Not A Paper Cup" is officially brought to you by the Official Store of the City of New York. I say buy it and spare some more trees from your Caffeine rush.

A Katz Effect

5th Avenue. Spring. 365. Wednesdays with Katz. A write-up on Amman.

JO Magazine. October 2008. Published by Al-Farida.

The Bay Ridge View of Manhattan

Courtesy of Andrew Henderson