basit kareem iqbal
@biqbal.bsky.social
anthropologist, editor. author of THE DREAD HEIGHTS: TRIBULATION AND REFUGE AFTER THE SYRIAN REVOLUTION (https://fordhampress.com/the-dread-heights-hb-9781531510312.html). bookmarking in the wasteland
is this a joke aeon.co/essays/can-a...
Can AI tell us anything meaningful about Bob Dylan’s songs? | Aeon Essays
Generative AI sheds new light on the underlying engines of metaphor, mood and reinvention in six decades of songs
aeon.co
November 8, 2025 at 11:43 PM
is this a joke aeon.co/essays/can-a...
maybe don't talk to the NYT about zohran mamdani lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...
Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani
It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…
lithub.com
November 7, 2025 at 5:57 PM
maybe don't talk to the NYT about zohran mamdani lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
For two years, our team of journalists in Gaza illuminated what Israel sought to keep hidden, while enduring the very displacement, starvation, and loss that they reported on.
This is the genocide through their eyes: An illustrated timeline.
www.972mag.com/the-genocide...
This is the genocide through their eyes: An illustrated timeline.
www.972mag.com/the-genocide...
The genocide through their eyes: An illustrated timeline - +972 Magazine
For two years, our team of journalists in Gaza illuminated what Israel sought to keep hidden, while enduring the very displacement, starvation, and loss that they reported on. This is what they saw.
www.972mag.com
November 6, 2025 at 6:09 PM
For two years, our team of journalists in Gaza illuminated what Israel sought to keep hidden, while enduring the very displacement, starvation, and loss that they reported on.
This is the genocide through their eyes: An illustrated timeline.
www.972mag.com/the-genocide...
This is the genocide through their eyes: An illustrated timeline.
www.972mag.com/the-genocide...
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
My latest article, "Genocide and the Limits of History in Gaza," was just published in the Journal of Palestine Studies www.tandfonline.com/eprint/4MBPN...
Genocide and the Limits of History in Gaza
This essay, parts of which were initially delivered at the annual Indigenous art gathering aabaakwad in December 2024 at the University of Toronto, offers three contributions to the historiography ...
www.tandfonline.com
November 5, 2025 at 9:07 PM
My latest article, "Genocide and the Limits of History in Gaza," was just published in the Journal of Palestine Studies www.tandfonline.com/eprint/4MBPN...
ughhhhhhhhh
The federal government’s budget signals an abandonment of previous government’s climate commitments. By @simonenoch.bsky.social @policyalternatives.ca #climatecrisis www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...
Will the feds’ climate climb down placate petro-province premiers? - CCPA
Perhaps lost in yesterday’s federal budget news dominated by job cuts and military spending is the extent to which the federal government is also abandoning the climate commitments of the previous gov...
www.policyalternatives.ca
November 5, 2025 at 7:36 PM
ughhhhhhhhh
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
"This new age will be one of relentless improvement." Read, re-read, maybe even memorize Zohran Mamdani's electrifying victory speech.
Zohran Mamdani: “Hope Is Alive”
A full transcript of the mayor-elect's victory speech to supporters.
www.thenation.com
November 5, 2025 at 4:55 PM
"This new age will be one of relentless improvement." Read, re-read, maybe even memorize Zohran Mamdani's electrifying victory speech.
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
Zohran Mamdani has made history—New York City has elected its first Muslim, socialist mayor.
@emanabdelhadi.bsky.social reflects on what this moment means for working-class New Yorkers, for Muslims, and for the city itself.
@emanabdelhadi.bsky.social reflects on what this moment means for working-class New Yorkers, for Muslims, and for the city itself.
Zohran Mamdani Wins and It Is a Celebration of My New York
Mamdani will be New York City's first Muslim, socialist mayor. But his victory does—and should—mean much more.
inthesetimes.com
November 5, 2025 at 2:56 AM
Zohran Mamdani has made history—New York City has elected its first Muslim, socialist mayor.
@emanabdelhadi.bsky.social reflects on what this moment means for working-class New Yorkers, for Muslims, and for the city itself.
@emanabdelhadi.bsky.social reflects on what this moment means for working-class New Yorkers, for Muslims, and for the city itself.
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
if democrats are serious about winning they need to learn from tonight and convert to islam
November 5, 2025 at 2:48 AM
if democrats are serious about winning they need to learn from tonight and convert to islam
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
Looking for a budget summary and you aren't an oligarch or the owner of a mid-sized company? Check out what the @ccpa has put together:
www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...
www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...
Post-election budget could plunge Canada into another federal election - CCPA
With so much on the line, the newly elected federal government has tabled a budget that, in many ways, could pass as a Conservative budget.
www.policyalternatives.ca
November 4, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Looking for a budget summary and you aren't an oligarch or the owner of a mid-sized company? Check out what the @ccpa has put together:
www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...
www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
A piece about having Big Feelings about Mamdani. @mid-theory.bsky.social was a dream to work with 💖
Now glueing myself to election coverage. 🍺📺
Now glueing myself to election coverage. 🍺📺
On the day of the NYC mayoral election, Ali Raz pens a gorgeous essay reflecting on how Mamdani's rhetoric evinces a poetics of the Universal and convokes a shared commons united by labor and by the rhythms of life spent working in cities most of us cannot afford.
mid-theory.com/2025/11/04/m...
mid-theory.com/2025/11/04/m...
Mamdani Feelings
Starting from a place of extreme negativity, political speech can brush the bright membrane that forms literature’s impossible horizon. The rent is too high in Los Angeles. Consider a number: “One …
mid-theory.com
November 4, 2025 at 8:25 PM
A piece about having Big Feelings about Mamdani. @mid-theory.bsky.social was a dream to work with 💖
Now glueing myself to election coverage. 🍺📺
Now glueing myself to election coverage. 🍺📺
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
Dick Cheney won't see your mean jokes about his death, but Tony Blair will, hopefully.
November 4, 2025 at 11:49 AM
Dick Cheney won't see your mean jokes about his death, but Tony Blair will, hopefully.
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government is ramping up its drive for AI glory while deepening an alignment with Canada’s own “tech bros” movement. Christopher Holcroft writes. #canpoli
Say Hi to Tech Bro Carney | The Tyee
As his government heedlessly embraces artificial intelligence, the threats to Canadians are clear.
thetyee.ca
November 3, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government is ramping up its drive for AI glory while deepening an alignment with Canada’s own “tech bros” movement. Christopher Holcroft writes. #canpoli
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
Jennifer Acker talks to Teju Cole about genre-bending and how artists bear witness to tragedy: “I really believe in the novel as an innovative form. Yet I didn’t want novelty for its own sake.”
The Epiphany in the Ordinary: A Conversation With Teju Cole
For Teju Cole, prose, poetry, and photography tug against and bleed into one another. At the tenth anniversary of Amherst College’s LitFest, on March 1, 2025, Cole spoke with The Common’s Editor in…
buff.ly
November 3, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Jennifer Acker talks to Teju Cole about genre-bending and how artists bear witness to tragedy: “I really believe in the novel as an innovative form. Yet I didn’t want novelty for its own sake.”
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
The ceasefire continues according to virtually every media outlet. Israel is demolishing entire neighbourhoods in Gaza to make sure Palestinians never go back.
The genocide is ongoing
The genocide is ongoing
Israel razes entire neighbourhoods east of Khan Younis: Report - https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/israel-razes-entire-neighbourhoods-east-khan-younis-report
Israel razes entire neighbourhoods east of Khan Younis: Report
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<span class="field field-title">Israel razes entire neighbourhoods east of Khan Younis: Report</span>
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<p data-end="277" data-start="76">Israeli occupation forces are bulldozing large swathes of land east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, destroying what little remains of homes and infrastructure after months of relentless bombardment.</p>
<p data-end="447" data-start="279">Al Jazeera's correspondent on the ground reported that the army is conducting extensive demolition operations in the area, flattening residential blocks and farmland.</p>
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www.middleeasteye.net
November 1, 2025 at 11:33 PM
The ceasefire continues according to virtually every media outlet. Israel is demolishing entire neighbourhoods in Gaza to make sure Palestinians never go back.
The genocide is ongoing
The genocide is ongoing
what a guy
أنا اسمي زهران ممدان وعم رشّح حالي لأكون العمدة الجديد في مدينة نيويورك
November 1, 2025 at 10:56 PM
what a guy
the voice and the nothing: the an-archic ontolinguistics of giorgio agamben link.springer.com/article/10.1... ("the language of artificial intelligence has as its sole objective the enslavement of the human, binding it once and for all to history, i.e., to injustice and to suffering")
The Voice and The Nothing: The An-Archic Ontolinguistics of Giorgio Agamben - International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - This paper investigates Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy of language, highlighting its...
link.springer.com
November 1, 2025 at 2:13 PM
the voice and the nothing: the an-archic ontolinguistics of giorgio agamben link.springer.com/article/10.1... ("the language of artificial intelligence has as its sole objective the enslavement of the human, binding it once and for all to history, i.e., to injustice and to suffering")
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
For Giorgio Agamben, hell is the lie that blocks the passage to a happy, simple, anarchic existence.
illwill.com/where-are-we
illwill.com/where-are-we
October 27, 2025 at 2:55 PM
For Giorgio Agamben, hell is the lie that blocks the passage to a happy, simple, anarchic existence.
illwill.com/where-are-we
illwill.com/where-are-we
brushing your teeth is hamas
October 29, 2025 at 12:24 PM
brushing your teeth is hamas
the best
Important update from two months into my “experiment” (lol) assigning college juniors and seniors to read whole physical books and then having a seminar where they use the physical book and physical notebooks and their ideas and questions to fill three hours of class time:
It rules
It rules
October 25, 2025 at 2:32 PM
the best
faraj bayrakdar on my public radio www.cbc.ca/listen/live-... ideas has been consistently knocking it out of the park
© CBC/Radio-Canada 2025. All rights reserved.
www.cbc.ca
October 24, 2025 at 11:09 PM
faraj bayrakdar on my public radio www.cbc.ca/listen/live-... ideas has been consistently knocking it out of the park
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
Wrote a thing on the hot summer of uni AI adoption for @defector.com
A huge thanks to @nathankhensley.bsky.social and @anniemcc.bsky.social. @brandyjensen.bsky.social is a legend. And anything smart in hear is thanks to hours of discussion, texting, and draft reading by @smosment.bsky.social
A huge thanks to @nathankhensley.bsky.social and @anniemcc.bsky.social. @brandyjensen.bsky.social is a legend. And anything smart in hear is thanks to hours of discussion, texting, and draft reading by @smosment.bsky.social
Higher Ed’s Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI | Defector
If you don’t work at a university or have college-age kids, you may have missed the flurry of news stories and social media banter about AI adoption in higher ed, stories which have snowballed into th...
defector.com
October 23, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Wrote a thing on the hot summer of uni AI adoption for @defector.com
A huge thanks to @nathankhensley.bsky.social and @anniemcc.bsky.social. @brandyjensen.bsky.social is a legend. And anything smart in hear is thanks to hours of discussion, texting, and draft reading by @smosment.bsky.social
A huge thanks to @nathankhensley.bsky.social and @anniemcc.bsky.social. @brandyjensen.bsky.social is a legend. And anything smart in hear is thanks to hours of discussion, texting, and draft reading by @smosment.bsky.social
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
‘What unifies Qureshi’s beguiling case studies is the claim that extinction is “both a human idea and a political choice”, a matter of human agency – more specifically, human culpability. Even more specifically, imperialist culpability.’
Lorraine Daston on extinction.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Lorraine Daston on extinction.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Lorraine Daston · Kaboom! Slow-Motion Extinction
Historians who address such topics as extinction, which straddle the history of humans and of the Earth, face the...
www.lrb.co.uk
October 23, 2025 at 5:30 PM
‘What unifies Qureshi’s beguiling case studies is the claim that extinction is “both a human idea and a political choice”, a matter of human agency – more specifically, human culpability. Even more specifically, imperialist culpability.’
Lorraine Daston on extinction.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Lorraine Daston on extinction.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
"The fall of the Assad regime should have brought answers but to so many families of Syria’s disappeared, it has only brought a new kind of absence.
We ask for names, for lists, for truth. We are given nothing. No answers, no records, no acknowledgment."
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
We ask for names, for lists, for truth. We are given nothing. No answers, no records, no acknowledgment."
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
The families of Syria’s disappeared are asking for the truth. Our country cannot rebuild until we have it | Wafa Mustafa
Over 160,000 people, including my father, were abducted by the Assad regime. The country’s new commission for the missing must be inclusive and independent to restore our trust
www.theguardian.com
October 22, 2025 at 10:28 PM
"The fall of the Assad regime should have brought answers but to so many families of Syria’s disappeared, it has only brought a new kind of absence.
We ask for names, for lists, for truth. We are given nothing. No answers, no records, no acknowledgment."
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
We ask for names, for lists, for truth. We are given nothing. No answers, no records, no acknowledgment."
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
Reposted by basit kareem iqbal
It’s hard to convey just how much Chicagoans are mobilizing against ICE. Don’t want to downplay the harm, or make it seem like a fair fight. But in neighborhoods across this city, ICE is getting chased by people blowing whistles and shouting. People are running TOWARD ICE to protect their neighbors.
October 22, 2025 at 12:12 PM
It’s hard to convey just how much Chicagoans are mobilizing against ICE. Don’t want to downplay the harm, or make it seem like a fair fight. But in neighborhoods across this city, ICE is getting chased by people blowing whistles and shouting. People are running TOWARD ICE to protect their neighbors.