Spring has sprung late this year in Amman, with the first noticeably warm day being April 7. The markets are full of strawberries, green almonds and local garlic, below is what Amman’s central fruit markets sound like on a morning stroll, as vendors vigorously announce the prices of their fruits and vegetables.
People come and go, veges stay – Amman
by Alex Ray
Jutting out from the eastern side of Amman’s Jebel Weibdeh is a partially used car park with a twist. Each level of the exterior displays a line of an uncredited poem written in Arabic. Continue reading
by Alex Ray
Below a five-star hotel in the West Amman suburb of Shmeisani, three young boys spend their Saturday morning scrounging for pieces of plastic, aluminium and other metals that can be sold for recycling.
Marwan sorting rubbish
by Alex Ray
Culture Street Shmeisani
A tiny blue and grey Tourist Police kiosk sits at one end of Culture Street, a 350 metre strip of low-rise apartment buildings in Shmeisani, an inner suburb of the Jordanian capital Amman. The area attracts tourists mostly from the wealthy Gulf states: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the U.A.E.
by Alex Ray
“Let’s see what the policeman says. Maybe he’s in a good mood and he’ll allow us to stay; maybe his wife gave him a hard time this morning and he’ll be in a bad mood,” said my Careem driver when I asked him to take me to the airport and drive me back to Amman. Continue reading
by Alex Ray
On Friday mornings – the one time of the week when the daytime clatter of Amman settles momentarily – one spot is already buzzing with activity.
Souk al-Juma’a (The Friday Market) is Amman’s weekly clothes and fleamarket, located in Ras al-Ain, south of Second Circle. Continue reading
by Alex Ray
At 6.30 pm Asia Mart in Amman’s ‘Second Circle’ is doing a steady trade. One of the few noticeably multicultural areas in Jordan’s capital , the area is seeing an expansion of shops and services for migrant workers from South, and East Asia. Continue reading
By Alex Ray
For every civilisation that has arisen on the territory now occupied by Beirut, one asset has been central – its harbour. Nowadays the port district (Al Marfa in Arabic) has an air of neglect. It remains vital to the economic life of modern Beirut but is barely visible to most inhabitants of today’s sprawling, chaotic city.
By Alex Ray
“The Kebabs are ready dad!” Faris yells over his shoulder. His father, busy preparing the bread and tomatoes cannot hear him, so he calls again. “Dad, they are ready!”
Taking matters into his own hands, Faris locates a near-full jerry can of water and drags it across the grassy picnic ground to douse the coals on the barbecue. Faris is only four years old and the jerry can is only slightly shorter than he is. But like most of Jordan’s refugee children he is fast learning to be independent.
By Alex Ray – in Off-Guardian on the 5th of October
Not-so-subtle dehumanisation of the targeted “other”.
A UK House of Commons inquiry into the 2011 attack on Libya and the country’s subsequent collapse has found what many suspected: NATO and its Gulf Arab allies used their ‘Responsibility To Protect’ to launch their attack even though: “
…the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence.”
Though the MPs’ damning report blames Libya’s political and economic collapse on former Prime Minister David Cameron, the manipulation of public opinion to lay the basis for war is built upon longstanding – but now sharpened – processes and semantic structures that prepare populations to accept punitive action against a targeted ‘other’.
In an earlier example, on October 10 1990, a young Kuwaiti woman known as ‘Nayirah’ testified before the United States’ Congressional Human Rights Caucus that invading Iraqi soldiers…
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