Unless you’ve been living under a rock these past 24 hours, the biggest Wikileak dubbed “cablegate” has revealed thousands of US embassy cables. The results have been obviously quite embarrassing for the US government, which has spent the better part of the past week preparing for a visit to the diplomatic emergency room, which began [...]

It happened quickly. On a lazy Thursday afternoon, somewhere in Amman’s Tla Al Ali district, Hamas leader Khalid Mishal saw nothing more than a blur of movement as he emerged from his car only to be faced with two unknown assailants. The sound of an explosion nearby, a tussle of activity as Mishal’s driver, Abu [...]

To Jordanian readers, it goes without saying that this year’s Blog Action Day issue is probably one of the most relevant issues in our country. Amidst the ongoing election season, a season rife with slogans, practically no candidate seems to be talking about energy policy, and more specifically water. Probably not a shocking revelation given [...]

Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo. It’s that time of year again. Time to start a global conversation on the blogosphere for a single day. Blog Action Day will be held on October 15th and this year the global issue is water. What more fitting a topic than that for [...]

For myself, Ramadan has always been one of those months that reminds me of the fact that there people who are worse off. Charity has always been an interesting concept and one that I’ve been involved in since I can long remember. In the past three years since I’ve come back to Jordan, perhaps some [...]

To all the readers of the Black Iris, a Ramadan Mubarak inshallah, and may your prayers and fasting be accepted! If you’re in the giving mood, as well you should be, please take some time to head on over to Islamic Relief and help out those in need, especially our brothers and sisters in Pakistan, [...]

I read “If I Were Another”, a collection of beautiful poems by Darwish some time ago. The collection was released in 2009, and having purchased it in Beirut back in December, I thought today, the day that Darwish left us some two short years ago, was a symbolic day to retrieve it from my bookshelf [...]

“The attack stunned the world because of its blatant and absurd disregard for anything resembling international law, human rights, and diplomatic norms. Its glaring outrageousness stunned, but didn’t surprise, me. It cannot be viewed in isolation. It is another upshot of a dogma long fermenting on Israel’s political landscape. It is a doctrine that lives [...]