A Newsweek reporter, Maziar Bahari, wrote an account of his captivity in an Iranian prison this past summer, following the disputed elections. The account is brilliantly written and heartbreaking, but also filled with some absurd moments that would be achingly funny in any other context.
One such moment has been reported all over the place: how he was interrogated because of a seconds-long moment of an interview for the Daily Show.
Ridiculously long block quotes after the jump.
Some of the reactions to the Fort Hood massacre defy all logic. Take Jeffrey Goldberg, who takes issue with the fact that massacres often teach us nothing more than that the individual was deeply psychologically disturbed. NOT SO FAST, he and Andrew Sullivan say: THEY WERE MUSLIM/ARABS! But this godamn liberal American army was too P.C. to say anything.
As an aside, this kind of discourse always conflates the two (Muslims/Arabs): after all, all Muslims are Arabs (well, no, really only 20% of the world’s Muslims are Arab)–and all Arabs are Muslims (no, actually only 25% of Arabs in the United States are Muslims). Prejudice knows no facts, only linkages based on identity–a practice more broadly understood as either racism or racial profiling.
Both Goldberg and Sullivan effectively call for investigations into American Arabs/Muslims, particularly those in the military. Right, good idea: let’s alienate the few Arabs/Muslims who love their country–in spite of their country’s and fellow soldiers’ prejudices against them, drawn out by incidents like the Fort Hood massacre–enough to die for it.
Fort Hood was incredibly tragic, and incredibly sad. Did Major Hasan scream Allahu Akbar? It does not matter. He may have believed himself to be religiously motivated, he may have had ties to radicalizing Imams, but at the end of the day — he was clearly disturbed. Indeed, the military and society as a whole should watch out for people who gave warning signs of mental instability — but not warning signs based on their religious or ethnic identity, which is what Goldberg and Sullivan are demanding
There are so many underlying assumptions to Goldberg’s arguments that I’m going a little crazy myself trying to unpack all of them. I really can’t focus on it for too long, because my blood will literally boil. TNC took him down at the obvious point: what do we learn by focusing on Islam as the cause of violence?
I think this mostly hinges on what “means” means. If we grant that Hasan was motivated by religion, what does that actually tell us? What is there beyond the fact that people will, at times, interpret religion as a justification to commit heinous acts? … That’s really my issue. What is the big “thing” that we should be seeing, in this case? What are those elite blinders preventing us from seeing?
Goldberg’s response is telling:
Let me use an example from my own religious group (I’m Jewish, in case any of you were wondering) to illustrate a possible answer to this question. Jonathan Pollard, an intelligence analyst for the Navy, was convicted of spying on behalf of Israel in 1986. Pollard’s actions cast a shadow over many Jews working in the American national security apparatus. Loyal Americans were questioned, and sometimes denied security clearances, simply because they were Jewish, or had visited Israel. The FBI pursued some dubious cases, including the recently-aborted prosecution of two former AIPAC employees, in large part because of fears that another Pollard was lurking somewhere inside the American government.
Was it fair that loyal American Jews had their patriotism questioned by the FBI? No. Was it right of the FBI, in the wake of the Pollard case, to be concerned that Israel, having turned one American Jew into a spy, had turned others? Unfortunately, yes. I’m not excusing the witch-hunts that took place after the Pollard scandal, but I am saying that it would have been a dereliction of duty on the part of the FBI to ignore, because of political correctness, an actual threat. Ultimately, it was the fault of Jonathan Pollard, and the Israeli officials who used him as a spy, that innocent American Jews were suspected of spying for Israel.
Here’s the logic: America has wrongly used racial profiling in the past to discrimate against ethnic groups. Therefore, we should commit that same wrong again, because political correctness endangers us. Plus, it’s the terrorist’s fault anyway that people who have similar background are then discriminated against.
Here’s Goldberg’s logic applied to another historical example: America put Japanese-Americans in internment camps during World War II. It was wrong. But, they were a threat. Anyway, it’s the Japanese’s fault: they shouldn’t have bombed Pearl Harbor in the first place.
What Goldberg/Sullivan’s argument misses is the motivation behind attacks like September 11th, or the violence at Fort Hood: terrorists use violence to achieve their ends. Marc Lynch brilliantly describes why Goldberg/Sullivan’s arguments are so dangerous: they in fact, fulfill, the goals of terrorists like th 9/11 hijackers:
Since the Ft Hood atrocity, I’ve seen a meme going around that it somehow exposed a contradiction between “political correctness” and “security.” The avoidance of Nidal Hassan’s religion out of fear of offending anyone, goes the argument, created the conditions which allowed him to go undetected and unsanctioned in the months and years leading up to his rampage. American security, therefore, demands dropping the “political correctness” of avoiding a confrontation with Islamist ideas and asking the “tough questions” about Islam as a religion and the loyalty of Muslim-Americans.
This framing of the issue is almost 100% wrong. There is a connection between what these critics are calling “political correctness” and national security, but it runs in the opposite direction. The real linkage is that there is a strong security imperative to prevent the consolidation of a narrative in which America is engaged in a clash of civilizations with Islam, and instead to nurture a narrative in which al-Qaeda and its affiliates represent a marginal fringe to be jointly combatted. Fortunately, American leaders — from the Obama administration through General George Casey and top counter-terrorism officials — understand this and have been acting appropriately.
It’s worth walking through the connection once again, because how America responds to Ft. Hood really is important in the wider attempt to change the nature of its engagement with Muslim publics across the world. Get the response right, as the administration thus far has done, and they show that things really have changed. Get it wrong, as its critics demand, and the world could tumble back down into the ‘clash of civilizations’ trap which al-Qaeda so dearly wants and which the improved American approach of the last couple of years has increasingly denied it.
Terrorism is a means towards that end. The object is to create a violent, polarized environment in which Muslims are forced to embrace a narrow, extreme version of Muslim identity. They want Muslims to accept a master narrative in which the Islamic umma is existentially threatened by Western aggression, and the only theologically and strategically appropriate individual response is to join the jihad in the path of god (as they have defined it).
They recognize that most Muslims won’t embrace this radical conception of their identity just through messaging, internet rhetoric, or preaching. To make inroads with mainstream Muslim communities, they need to change the context in which they live — to render their status quo unacceptable and to make their narrative resonate. And for that to happen, they need a lot of help — for the targeted governments to take inflammatory measures against their Muslim populations, for the non-Muslim citizens in the targeted countries to discriminate against them, and for the media to fan the flames of hatred and mistrust.
Understanding this strategy points towards some fairly obvious guidelines for judging various responses. Al-Qaeda and its affiliated ideologues don’t just want their targets to overreact with blanket crackdowns on the mainstream Muslim community — they are counting on it. They want to create a homogenous, undifferentiated Islam on whose behalf they speak and a coherent master narrative which justifies and validates their actions. American reactions which feed AQ’s master narrative, lump together disparate Muslim movements, and tar a wide range of Muslims with the AQ brush therefore serve al-Qaeda’s strategy. Responses which disrupt AQ’s narrative, disaggregate the Muslim world and relegate AQ to a marginal fringe frustrate its strategy.
I’m proud of the Obama Administration’s response thus far, which has not given into racial or religious prejudice and fearmongering. Fort Hood was tragic. Investigations will determine if he had terrorist connections, etc.
But there is another tragedy that can be averted: the impulse toward racial profiling, alienating Arabs and Muslims, and all the accompanying garbage to the “clash of civilizations” narrative. It would be so sad to fall back into that trap because of the senseless violence of one disturbed individual.
Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Robert De Niro, et. al.
The Doha Tribeca Film Festival ended a week ago, but YouTube has taken up the slack, prominently featuring four short films and one feature from the festival in the screening room. So far I’ve only gotten through the most-watched short film of the bunch (the English title given in the credits, The North Road, leaves something to be desired: compare with its top-billed French title, La Route du Nord, and the Arabic title, الطريق الى الشمال). In the interest of better expressing the film’s contents, I propose the film be retitled The Road to the North, or The Road North. But I digress. Here’s a link to the film on YouTube in high-quality (no embedding sadly).
I highly recommend it. It’s pretty short, about 25 minutes, and it’s a fascinating meditation on French-Lebanese identity, memory, belonging, loss, post-colonialism, culture. Don’t miss it. Just try not to read the absurd comments beforehand.
Just as a quick update for those wondering the fate of Mazen Abdul Jawad, the Saudi who spoke openly about his escapades on an LBC program over the summer: A Saudi court has sentenced the divorced father of four to five years in prison and 1,000 lashes–for violating the Kingdom’s law against “publicizing vice.” Video of the segment here (knowledge of Arabic helps … but you can get the gist, I think, from the visuals):
In other visual media news, the Yemen Embassy is participating in the Arabian Sights: Contemporary Arab Cinema (starting tonight in D.C., dear readers), with the very first Yemeni-produced movie, according to the press releases/the amazing trailer:
“Yemen’s first locally produced film, An intriguing and compelling plot, An exploration to the price of terrorism”
I’m not exactly sure what the plot will be, but based on the trailer, if you know what Allahu Akbar means, you can get by without knowing Arabic. I’m also left wondering; does first locally-produced film really just mean first government-funded propaganda feature-length propaganda piece? Interesting timing, with the Yemeni government confirming yesterday that “hundreds” of soldiers have been wounded and killed in the fighting against the Houthi in the northern region of Sa’ada.
(HT: BT for the Jawad update.)
Note: Posting will be more sporadic going forward. Now’s the time, if there ever was one, to hook up Google Reader and add this blog as an RSS feed, so your Reader will magically tell you when I’ve written something new.
Dubai in the 1960s.
Over at Steve Clemons’s The Washington Note, guest poster Jim Krane whipped up a storm last week by claiming that Dubai offers up an ideal model, one that other countries in the region should emulate. Call it the “Arabs need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps” theory. I’m actually having a really difficult time trying to summarize the post, which is just all over the place, but I’ll give it a shot anyway:
Then, watch how Krane parries the straw-man counterargument!
But wait, Dubai is in financial trouble. How could it be a role model?
Dubai’s downturn is temporary. Being one of the world’s most globalized cities, it couldn’t help but be infected by a global recession. The contagion kneecapped each one of its economic pillars: Shipping, logistics, tourism, and its binging real estate sector. Most of these pillars remain sound.
I guess he meant to say temporarily kneecapped? Bit of a strong word for something that remains “sound.”
The whirlwind, logic-free tour continues, with a reminder of the controversy from 2006 when a Dubai-based firm bought the operations of some U.S. ports.
Then we arrive at my favorite part of his incoherent evangelism:
The Dubai model is a mixture of social freedom, unbridled immigration, and raw capitalism. It is overseen by a government that is one of the world’s least democratic. This is no accident. Dubai avoids both elections and the Arab obsession with politics, especially the syndrome of feeling slighted by the West.
The writing is, if you haven’t been able to tell already, a train-wreck. “Unbridled immigration”? I suppose by unbridled he means to say unregulated and prone to coercive practices. Near the end, he concedes that the labor market is “abusive,” the dependence on the real estate market is crippling, and “raw capitalism” and its attendant consumerism also mean unbridled pollution and general deterioration of the environment.
But let’s ignore all that, and focus on the best part of Dubai: it is undemocratic, so it doesn’t have to deal with pesky elections or ideas of citizenship that demand engagement and involvement from the people of the country. Instead, citizenship in Dubai is predicated purely on transfers of wealth and privilege from the government to its citizens.
If Dubai wasn’t autocratic, think of how terrible it would be! Guest workers would (hopefully? eventually?) have a voice, or at least the ability to advocate for themselves without being subject to arrest.
Putting aside arguments about the inherent strengths and weaknesses of democracy, it’s absolutely daft to call Dubai a model that could be replicated elsewhere in the Arab world. I’m sure that if the Palestinians had a booming real estate market and large petroleum/natural gas reserves, the Emirati self-help model would serve them well. But as it stands, I don’t think the Gazans can count on tourism to fix their problems.
Burj Dubai, the tallest man-made structure in the world. Burj means tower in Arabic.
Brian Stelter wrote yesterday in the business section of the nytimes about the fallow film production studios in Dubai. Check the great lede:
When the heiress Paris Hilton traveled here in June and July to audition female friends for her show “My New BFF,” her producers had access to state-of-the-art studios and a government eager to import a touch of Hollywood glamour to the Middle East.
But to adhere to the region’s Islamic norms, many of the ingredients in reality TV were taboo: there would be no drinking, no cursing, no dramatic displays of affection. The producers thought about filming a scene at a water park, but passed on the option of dressing the contestants in religiously appropriate swimwear.
I do have to fault the article for relying on the simple equation of Hollywood/America = Sex. After all, not all American films revolved around sex–though if they are set in the Middle East, they’re probably about terrorism and oil.
“Syriana” and “The Kingdom” were both filmed in Dubai (though arguably, that was a win/win for both Dubai and the filmmakers, since it let the filmmakers approximate Saudi Arabia–while Dubai could make themselves look better, at the expense of Saudi’s flaws). But to date, they are the only Western films to be partially made in the Emirates. I have to wonder, why was “Body of Lies,” a similar political thriller about terrorism, turned down in 2007? Maybe Dubai doesn’t want to get typecast …
This month, the government rejected the request from the producers of the sequel of “Sex and the City,” which was to be partially set in Dubai:
Dubai Studio City’s facilities have been used in 26 feature films, mostly from gulf countries and Bollywood. … In rejecting the request from the producers of the “Sex and the City” sequel this summer, Mr. Sharif said, the authorities took into account “the multicultural fabric of the society and its perceptions.”
According to a government official familiar with the script, its plot lines — with the women coming to Dubai, spending money lavishly and cavorting — were perceived to reinforce negative stereotypes about the region.
Good luck with that. When I was in Doha, and told female (khalijeeat) acquaintances that I had lived in New York City, they immediately asked if it was like “Sex and the City.” Some of them wanted nothing more than to move there and live like Carrie Bradshaw and the rest of them. So are the censoring authorities more afraid of stereotypes of the Gulf, or of their women following the Western example?
And so the article goes, assessing the hurdles to film production in Dubai, including failed co-productions (the abysmal “Shorts,” which just opened to pathetic box office returns in America). The articles focuses on Islamic law and censorship as the principal problem for the Gulf’s investments:
Dubai, its rival Abu Dhabi and other Persian Gulf cities face enormous hurdles as they try to diversify their economies by fostering creativity and becoming entertainment capitals. Chief among those hurdles: they operate under Islamic law. Hollywood does not. So far, the oil-rich countries have proved more able to pay for fancy media productions and to build expensive film facilities than to actually lure production to the Middle East, as economic efforts run up against their traditional values and censorship.
The article also ends on this note:
Even more than the staff issues, enduring issues of censorship may be the most stubborn hurdle for the gulf region — even if, as Mr. Hirschorn jokingly said, “our government censor turned out to be a really nice guy.”
Perhaps that’s part of the problem. Perhaps that’s why (DUH) a Paris Hilton reality TV show probably won’t have much to with the Gulf.
But the real problem in my eyes is not the strict moral codes in the Gulf countries, but the failure of their labor markets. The piece briefly touches on this point:
Some of the other hurdles are logistical. For instance, local requirements for full-time work visas mean that the country lacks a robust freelance market to support productions. Jamal al-Sharif, the executive director of Dubai Studio City, which was founded in 2005 to stimulate the regional film industry, acknowledged that “a vital ingredient for building the film industry is access to talent.”
The current business model of Hollywood is dependent on putting together “packaged” deals. Essentially, every film is established as a singular corporate entity, a one-0ff, a model that requires a lot of flexibility–negotiations must occur between every component part in a film production.
This essentially means that the talent–not just actors, writers, directors, but the production assistants, set designers, everyone beyond the camera and behind the scenes–must be brought in to Dubai for one movie. And then, once the production is over, everyone goes home–because the countries’ visa laws won’t permit unemployed foreigners to remain in the country.
There is no efficiency involve. The Emirates doesn’t have taxes, but that doesn’t negate the expense required to move an entire production–full of all these moving parts, subject to shifting negotiations–to a country far away. And it’s not like someone can stick around after the filmmaking is done, or if something changes in the negotiations and participants need to shift around–visas in the Gulf countries are subject to strict regulations. Lose your current job, and you must leave.
The Gulf’s labor laws are one of the biggest problems in capitalizing on their outsized capital investments. Places like the Media Zone in Abu Dhabi or Education City in Doha won’t flourish on their own. Regardless of their stellar, expensive facilities, these places actually require even more, continuous investments in human capital. Skilled workers, whether engineers or educators or filmmakers or journalists, must be recruited from the West or other Arab countries and brought over on a case-by-case basis. And once again, it’s not terribly easy to change jobs once you’re in country–don’t count on an unemployment period for job hunting, because even as a Westerner or a fellow Arab, you will be deported.
This is to say nothing of the unskilled laborers, working in the Gulf. For more on them, read this lengthy investigative article I wrote while in Doha. It also delves a little deeper into the problems of the labor laws if you’re curious on that count.
In the end, if the Gulf countries want to make the most of their investments, it’s not the morality laws that need to be changed. It’s the labor laws.
P.M. Maliki looks weary. Bear with the weary, over-the-top opening, I'm trying to illustrate how easily the media slips into one-sided, overly-pessimistic, elite-dominated coverage.
Iraq is going straight to hell in a hand-basket. The government’s overconfidence in its ability to provide security made it take down key blast walls, which was promptly rewarded with the massive truck bombing of two government ministries. The government blamed the remnants of Saddam’s Ba’ath party and a mysterious man in Syria, broadcasting a purported confession across national television in an effort to staunch the bleeding of its legitimacy. Meanwhile, the Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni insurgent group, blew up two buses heading from Baghdad to the predominatly Shi’a city of Kut, drawing in shades of renewed ethnic conflict. The AP is reporting that the same Islamic State of Iraq–purportedly an al-Qaeda umbrella group–is claiming responsibility for the ministry bombings, a claim the U.S. military finds highly plausible.
At the center of all this is Maliki and his government–which may not include him in the future. Intra-Shi’a politics and Maliki’s own pragmatic political calculations are threatening to rive the government and markedly increase Iranian influence, which the AP forecasts as a coming storm of conflict.
And here ends the depressive portion of the media narrative. The bottom half of that same AP story leaves open the possibility that all this hubub about Maliki and the rest of the Shi’a coalition is just political maneuvers and posturing–and not, say, the annexation of Iraq by Iran, or another Iraqi civil war.
The WaPo coverage of the same event is more tempered, even positive:
The new alliance and the likelihood that Maliki will be forced have to partner with Sunnis suggest that Iraqi politicians are increasingly willing to cross sectarian lines in the pursuit of power.
Maliki’s exclusion from the alliance was not entirely surprising. Despite his considerable popularity, the prime minister has become a divisive figure, and a recent surge in violence has triggered criticism from Iraqis who view his administration as cocky and incompetent.
Because of the volatile nature of Iraqi politics and the fickleness of alliances, analysts cautioned that the political groupings are likely to change between now and the time the ballots are printed. Alliances could even be redrawn after the votes are tallied.
As severely pessimistic as the AP and nytimes coverage I cited in the first graf is, the other half of the nytimes coverage is positively delightful. It’s interesting that this is also the side of journalism that demands that reporters go out among ordinary people, and talk to them about their daily lives. I’m not sure what that says; maybe politics and political coverage just makes us all feel a bit jaded?
The first is the coincidence that this year, Ramadan has begun on the same day for both Shi’a and Sunna in Iraq.
Ramadan begins after the waxing crescent moon first comes into view, which, according to astronomical calculations, happened in Baghdad at precisely 6:42 p.m. on Friday.
By Islamic tradition, however, the ninth month in the Islamic calendar begins only after religious authorities see the crescent with their own eyes. When Ramadan comes in summer, as this year, the sliver of the waxing moon is invisible for most of the day, and in Baghdad it sets just a half hour after dark, making it an elusive target in the often sandy haze along the horizon.
To make matters more difficult, Shiite religious leaders say they must spot that first crescent with the naked eye. Sunnis allow themselves the aid of binoculars or a telescope, which often gives the Sunni Ramadan a full day’s jump on the Shiite observance.
This year, Iraq’s Sunnis took their cue from Abdul al-Ghafor al-Samaraie, head of the Sunni Endowment, who spotted it on Friday with the unaided eye. “This will unite the religious messages of our two sects and is a good sign,” he said.
Iraq’s Shiites begin observing Ramadan when the howza, the committee of their top ayatollahs, announces that the moon has been spotted. That word came many hours after sunset on Friday, catching many Shiites asleep and unprepared for a predawn breakfast on Saturday.
This is reckoned to be a very good omen, one that augurs cooperation between Sunna and Shi’a.
Since the war began, and with it the widespread arrival of cellphones, Iraqis have grown accustomed to sending congratulatory text messages to one another by the dozens when Ramadan is announced.
Many of the messages read like greeting cards, and some even strike a conciliatory note:
While Ramadan is at our doors,
Let us review the reasons
We became as strangers,
And live peacefully as friends.
The texts serve a practical function, too, warning those who might be asleep or not watching the news that they needed to get up before sunrise to have an early breakfast, girding themselves for the daylong fast ahead.
But with staggered starts for Ramadan, the texts became an annoyance if they arrived on the wrong day. In mixed areas there were arguments over eating and drinking in public. The biggest problem, though, was the Id al-Fitr feast at the end of the month. It is the biggest holiday of the Muslim calendar, and sheep are slaughtered in the streets, a distressing sight to those still fasting.
What wonderful understatement. For those who haven’t experienced Ramadan, or fasted for any reason, it’s surprising how cranky you can get. And understandable how resentful you can be of those who can eat. (As the article notes, the embattled Iraqi Christians will have it much worse this Ramadan, since those who break their fast in public are subject to arrest, even for smoking, and nearly all restuarants have been ordered closed. A bit khaliji, eh?)
The other bright spot in the news is a spot of desert in Anbar province:
A few hours outside Baghdad in the middle of Iraq’s vast western desert is a sight that could understandably be mistaken for a mirage: a long, sandy beach filled with thousands of people swimming and dancing barefoot under the hot sun without apparent care.
A disc jockey — “Mr. D. J.,” he calls himself — is shouting into a microphone over a thumping Syrian dance song and blurts out something remarkable in its ordinariness.
“A shoutout to everyone from Baghdad!” he says in Arabic.
“Yea!” responds the crowd that has gathered around him.
“Everyone from Adhamiya and Sadr City who came from Baghdad, show me what you got!” Mr. D. J. yells, referring to two neighborhoods in the capital — the first almost exclusively Sunni, the second nearly entirely Shiite.
In response, energetic dancing breaks out all around, and Sunnis and Shiites share a rare moment of careless bliss together.
It is amazing, but it is real: for the first time since the outbreak of the sectarian war in 2006, Iraq is enjoying a beach season.
The article is a very fast, great read with lots of telling detail. I suggest you get over to the nytimes and finish it. Don’t miss this piece.
Did you know that camel milk does not curdle easily? If you didn't, now you do.
The Atlantic food blog Abroad is an absolute delight.
Take for instance, a post today by Graeme Wood about a chocolatier who moved to Dubai in order to make (and spread the word about) Camel milk chocolate:
Selling chocolate in 130-degree Dubai heat is slightly absurd, like opening a gelato stand in the Sahara. The Emirate is not known for its food, or for its friendliness to expensive things that can melt. … Camel milk chocolate, he says, produces a vaguely salty taste, distinct from the usual cow’s milk. High-end outlets in Dubai, most notably the ultralux Burj al Arab hotel, snapped up his stock, and now international chocolatiers are catching on as well.
Mmmmm… well, if it doesn’t sound all that tasy, consider what else is on offer at the Burj al-’Arab. Personally, I’d rather eat Camel chocolate than caviar with gold sprinkled on it. Or anything else with gold sprinkled on it. I’m pretty sure that’s what you do with money only after you’ve exhausted all other possibilities of uses for it, like diving into money and swimming through it.
The chocolatier-turned-camel-derivatives-evangelist has some interesting ideas for his chocolate, the best of which seems to be a camel milk chocolate bar flecked with dates. Man, that sounds good.
The post also makes me feel much less guilty about skipping camel meat during my time abroad (and incidentally makes for an excellent lede):
At one point in Wilfred Thesiger’s journeys in Arabian Sands, a rival tribe cuts him off from his source of food and water. Thesiger’s Bedouin guides reassure him: if we get desperate, we will shove stick a throat down a camel’s throat, and eat what comes up.
Is there any large animal less appetizing than the dromedary camel? It screams hoarsely and loudly, for no obvious reason. It stinks. And its meat (prized in some cultures, though nowhere known for haute cuisine) is as dry as the places it inhabits. A few years ago, I used to frequent the Birqash market outside Cairo, Egypt, where hundreds of camels caper around on spindly legs, like big hairy flamingos, and are thwacked intermittently with rods by their Nubian herders. Something is fundamentally wrong with an animal that smiles at you when you beat it with a stick.
Poor camels. I bet they’d rather be milked than thwacked.
The food Abroad blog also had a great series on Gazan cuisine a little while back. A commenter named jeff (who a friend–perhaps unduly–speculates is Jeffrey Goldberg, Atlantic bogger) took issue with its content:
Though it is interesting to hear about food in Gaza, the many political references and digs at Israel are extremely inappropriate.
Check out the series (in two parts, here and here, with an accompanying slideshow here) and decide for yourself. For me, it’s a fascinating and heartbreaking illustration of how the Gaza blockage/siege affects daily life. The IDF now limits fisherman to three nautical miles offshore, limiting the amount of fish that can be caught and sold. Beef is very rare, leading to lamb substitutions in many traditional dishes. Why? Because live animals are not allowed into Gaza legally. Smuggling could circumvent this, but calves either won’t fit into the tunnels running from Egypt into Gaza, or they get claustrophobic and panic. Sheep, on the other hand, just need a thwack, and then they’ll dutifully find their way through the tunnel on their own.
Finally, about the upscale camel chocolate, check out the punny name the chocolatier has on hand in case someone figures out how to make camel cheese.
(HT to RAG)
The head Houthi
This is some old news, in internet time, but I’m a bit behind on my reading today.
Yemen kept up its military offensive today against Shiite rebels in the northwest as troops, artillery and aircraft attacked a militant stronghold near the border with Saudi Arabia.
The mountainous Saada province shook with gunfire and explosions for a second day. The Sunni-led government, which claims the rebels have killed more than 330 people over the last year, said that militants had taken over schools and seized teachers. The Associated Press quoted a health official as saying that 12 people had been killed in the fighting.
I’d just like to point again to Babylon & Beyond, the brilliant LA Times blog about the Middle East, which carries the most fascinating stories. Like the tale of the pitiful Mazen Abdul Jawad, the pimp of Jidda (which a friend likened to being “the coldest point in hell”), who was arrested for discussing his sexual exploits on a Lebanese TV show, which is broadcast by satellite into his home state of Saudi Arabia–with public outcry leading to a bit of a goverment/media frenzy. And now the ministry of culture in Saudi has closed the Lebanese station’s offices in Saudi.
Anyway, back to Saudi’s neighbor to the South. This insurgency is closest to their larger northern neighbor, so that may explain the much harsher response:
The battle against the Shiite militants in the northwest is the latest flareup in a 5-year-old rebellion led by Abdul Malik Houthi. The Shiites, who want a return to clerical law, claim they are persecuted and that their region has not been developed. The government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh said the offensive was called after the insurgents violated a recent ceasefire.
A statement earlier this week by Yemen’s Supreme Security Committee said: “The state will strike these elements . . . with an iron fist until they surrender themselves to justice.”
The other possibility is sectarian. I’m too many miles away to tell. I hear the countryside is quite beautiful. But not the kind of place where you want to go for a picnic. Not coincidentally, the Yemeni government has blamed the Houthis for the kidnapping of those 9 foreign workers, 3 of whom were killed, while the other 6 remain missing.
Comparisons to the Barbary pirates are imminent. Prepare thyself.
I was going to write a follow-up post about how inevitable it was that the coverage of the Holbrooke event would center around an off-hand line (or “flippant quip,” as Katherine Tiedemann at the Washington Note/NAF/AfPak Daily Brief would have it, who admits that much more substantial items were discussed, and then proceeds to write about nothing but the “flippant quip”:
I’ve just come from live-tweeting a conference with Amb. Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and members of his interagency team hosted by the Center for American Progress. While there were certainly substantive issues discussed (the role of Iran, the upcoming presidential elections in Afghanistan, the state of the Pakistani Taliban post-Baitullah Mehsud), what caught my attention was a flippant quip by the ambassador.
Yes, the parentheticals in my writing are getting out of control. I’ll try to keep that in mind.)
But I think the final straw was Spencer Ackerman’s self-twittered/promoted/described “omnibus thinkpiece about the shape and the stakes of the current Afghanistan debate,” entitled “Obama Faces Rising Anxiety on Afghanistan.” The only anxiety rising was mine, as I slogged through his lengthy summary of progressive handwringing in the nation’s capital. So that’s that for that topic, at least for me and for now.
Onto the topic at hand. The A.P. filed a story early this afternoon:
First the ship reported it had been attacked in waters off Sweden. Then it sailed with no apparent problems through one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. And then it disappeared.
The Arctic Sea, a Maltese-flagged cargo ship, was supposed to make port in Algeria with its cargo of timber on Aug. 4. More than a week later, there’s no sign of the ship or its Russian crew.
Piracy has exploded off the coast of lawless Somalia — but could this be an almost unheard of case of sea banditry in European waters?
Naturally, near the end, the article cites a number of experts who say no:
”There have been no attacks in European waters,” said Pottengal Mukundan, director of the London-based International Maritime Bureau. ”It’s not the kind of area where pirates would find it easy to operate.”
Nick Davis, the chief executive of the Merchant Maritime Warfare Centre, told the BBC that if anything had happened to the ship, cargo would have been found.
”I strongly suspect that this is probably a commercial dispute with its owner and a third party and they’ve decided to take matters into their own hands,” he said Wednesday.
But that’s never stopped inane journalistic parallels before!
UPDATE: A very belated thanks and HT to RAG.