MER Article Countering the Surveillance State While investigating the harmful impact of government surveillance on an Arab-American community a filmmaker turns the tables by offering a primer on counter-surveillance research. Andy Clarno • 6 min read
MER Article Revealing State Secrets through FOIA Research Making FOIA requests for classified government documents can be a powerful way to breach the wall of secrecy regarding state actions that would otherwise stay secret or await future historians to uncover. The basics of filing a FOIA request are simple and learning how to press for unredacted or with David H. Price • 4 min read
MER Article Protest Camp as Counter-Archive at a Moroccan Silver Mine Eight years ago, residents of Imider in Morocco's rural southeast shut down a silver mining company's water pipe on a nearby mountain to protest the damages to their health and livelihoods. This direct action turned into the longest sit-in protest encampment in Moroccan history. Perched on a rugged Zakia Salime • 13 min read
MER Article Uncovering Protection Rackets through Leaktivism The small Gulf Arab state of Bahrain is using digital-era tools of surveillance, deception and repression to quell popular dissent. But a group of well-meaning tech-savvy geeks are mobilizing new digitally enhanced methods to expose who is behind this repression and how it operates today. Ala’a Shehabi • 17 min read
MER Article Exposing Jordan’s Gas Deal with Israel The Jordanian government has gone to great lengths to hide information about its 2014 multi-billion dollar gas deal with Israel from the public. But the government’s attempt to keep the public in the dark has only energized a popular campaign demanding full disclosure of its terms. Hisham Bustani • 11 min read
MER Article The Egyptian Revolution’s Fatal Mistake Early in the 2011 Egyptian revolution, activists and protesters battled their way into state security archives around the country. But the revolutionaries handed over the documents to the army, who later took power. Inside the state security archives were the blueprints for uprooting the police stat Aly El Raggal • 16 min read
MER Article Paper Trails Pedagogy In order to uncover the paper trails of the powerful, one has to first learn how to track down, read and decipher obscure planning documents that are often available in the public sphere. Laleh Khalili • 4 min read
MER Article The Secret Lives of UAE Shell Companies The UAE’s growing number of free zones are providing secretive havens for offshore companies to avoid taxes, regulation and accountability at home. Shell companies and money laundering abound. But it is still possible for determined researchers to discover who controls and ultimately benefits from t Florence Wolstenholme • 15 min read
MER Article An Archive of Literary Reconstruction after the Palestinian Nakba A close reading of a literary journal’s table of contents in colonized Palestine reveals a vibrant culture of resistance and renewal in the midst of destruction and dispossession. Hana Morgenstern • 7 min read
MER Article Israel’s Vanishing Files, Archival Deception and Paper Trails The Israeli government is keeping many of the state's archival documents classified, censored and out of the reach of potentially critical historians. But determined scholars continue to uncover tantalizing paper trails that challenge Israel's air-brushed official narratives. Shay Hazkani • 14 min read
MER Article Weaponizing Iraq’s Archives The Bush Administration’s exploitation of Iraqi state archives for atrocity material to justify its failing 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on precedent. The genealogy of exploiting Iraqi archives for political ends serves as a warning for how the self-evidently virtuous notion of human rights can b Wisam H. Alshaibi • 19 min read
MER Article The Politics of Paper Trails States often hide their accountability in plain sight: in redacted documents, incomplete flight manifests, encrypted data, shredded memos and reclassified archives. They also go to great lengths to keep their internal affairs private: banning oppositional media, jailing investigative journalists and disappearing dissenters. Economic and political elites also obscure accountability in The Editors • 6 min read
