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Flaubert Describing the Spectacle of the Orient

That great French novelist … “To amuse the crowd, Mohammed Ali's jester took a woman in a Cairo bazaar one day, set ber on the counter of a shop, and coupled with her publicly while the shopkeeper calmly smoked his pipe. On the road from Cairo to Shubra some time ago a young fellow had himself publicly buggered by a large monkey-as in the story above, to create a good opinion of himself and make people laugh. A marabout died a while ago-an idiot-who had long passed as a saint marked by God; all the Moslem women came to see him and masturbated him-in the end he died of exhaustion-from morning to night it was a perpetual jacking-off. . . . Quid dicis of the following fact: some time ago a santon (ascetic priest) used to walk through the streets of Cairo com­pletely naked except for a cap on his head and another on his prick. To piss he would doff the prick-cap, and sterile women who wanted children would run up, put themselves under the parabola of his urine and rub themselves with

Unexpected Things Happen

For the first time in its history, the Austrian Communist Party has unexpectedly won a municipal election in the country’s second-largest city, Graz. According to preliminary results, the KPÖ came out on top on Sunday with 29% of the vote, ahead of the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) on 25.7%. “Their success in Graz is down to their focus on local issues -- especially housing policy -- while scaling back any Marxist ideology.” In Berlin, however ,  Germany’s highest court ruled  in favour of capital in April saying  that a cap the local government imposed on rent prices last year was unconstitutional and void.   The rule froze rents for some 90% of Berlin apartments at June 2019 rates for five years. In many cases, existing rents needed to be reduced to conform to the new threshold. After the court ruling, many tenants faced hefty back payments.

A Decade of Syrian Comics

“ Syria, virtually alone among major Arab states, blocks the entry of other Arab [comic] strips, creating its own monopoly of images. […] Nowhere in the Arab world does a government so effectively control the comic strips as in the Syrian Arab Republic.”  “Committed to freedom and dignity, [our] aim is to document events during the revolution as well as the catastrophic consequences of rupture, displacement and dislocation in its aftermath. […] As the name indicates, the comic is the medium of choice to record everything from brutality in prisons, activities at demonstrations and the violence of military interventions.” The short comic strips below portray a complex image of the way the war translates into everyday life. As I see it, this is where one of Comic4 Syria’s major strengths lies: in their conscious decision to avoid a Manichean view by refusing to rely on easy dichotomies of good and evil.  Archiving Syria’s hopes and despairs