Monthly Archives: December 2007

Iraq: The Hidden Human Costs

[Note: The following excerpt is from a book review published in the latest New York Review of Books by Michael Massing. The full article is available free online and describes two compelling memoirs of the invasion of Iraq, one by a Marine and one by a reporter embedded with the Marine’s unit. It is well worth reading for a side of the fighting usually sanitized out of reports.]

by Michael Massing, New York Review of Books, December 20, 2007

As the Marines fall back, some are clearly exhilarated at this first exposure to battle; others express remorse. “Before we crossed into Iraq, I fucking hated Arabs,” says Antonio Espera, a thirty-year-old sergeant from California. “I don’t know why…. But as soon as we got here, it’s just gone. I just feel sorry for them. I miss my little girl. Dog, I don’t want to kill nobody’s children.” Coming under heavy fire for the first time, Wright is surprised to find himself calm, but he is astonished at the fierceness of the barrage being directed at Nasiriyah. It includes high-explosive rounds that can blast through steel and concrete as well as DPICMs (Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions), cluster shells that burst overhead, dispersing dozens of bomblets designed to shred people. Continue reading Iraq: The Hidden Human Costs

Baghdad in the 80’s

Baghdad in the 1880’s, in case you are curious.

As university libraries desperately look for space to hold old and rarely used volumes, many books fall by the wayside. My university holds an annual sale in which most of the books being discarded deserve to be. But then there are the occasional old and rare books that I cannot bear knowing will end up in a dumpster or landfill. One of these that I recently picked up for a dollar was Geographische Charakterbilder aus Asien. Aus den Originalberichten der Reisenden gesammelt von Dr. Berthold Volz mit 87 Illustrationen (Leipzig, Fues’s Verlag, 1887, 384 pages). The discursive Althochdeutsch aside, this text is a bit of print paradise for the lover of 19th century lithographs, all 87 of them. Continue reading Baghdad in the 80’s

Mass-Mediated Violence in Morocco and the US: Suicide Bombing and Shooting Sprees


Scene in Meknes, Morocco

by Emilio Spadola
Colgate University
Dept of Sociology and Anthropology

Recently, my efforts to think on Moroccans’ quality of modern (i.e., mass-mediated) life have turned on violence both there and in the US, and, especially, to two forms of youth violence: suicide bombings and suicide shootings. In 2007 Moroccans witnessed separate bombings in Casablanca and Meknes; in separate cases Moroccan state intelligence traced other accused suicide bombers to one neighborhood in Tetouan. In the US in December an Omaha teenager with an automatic weapon shot and killed eight mall goers, then himself; four deaths shortly after in Colorado added to the long year of suicide sprees by young men: six deaths in a Utah mall in February, 33 deaths on the Virginia Tech campus in April.

Emphasizing putative differences, cultural pundits habitually link suicide bombings to the Middle East, and, specifically, to an Islamic culture of violence. And shooting sprees seem typically, if pathologically, American. They are nonetheless strikingly redolent. Yet to compare them, that is, to abstract them from their separate contexts, takes special care. In so doing one faces what Benedict Anderson calls the “specter of comparisons,” that is, the distinctly modern moment in which persons appear, like commodities and print, as serial copies. Yet it is precisely this imagined quality of commensurability—when “anyone” rather than a specific someone can be a target (of mass-mediated messages)—that marks as contemporary suicide bombing and suicide shooting. Continue reading Mass-Mediated Violence in Morocco and the US: Suicide Bombing and Shooting Sprees

The Sad Case of Sa‘da

[Note: News about internal affairs in Yemen rarely makes the news, unless the word Al-Qaeda is associated with a local act of terrorism. But there are grievances and skirmishes that have virtually nothing to do with the West’s fear of global jihad. One of these is the ongoing violence in the north of Yemen near Sa‘da. The following report by Mohammed Bin Sallam brings us up to date on the problem.]

Al-Houthi warns of annihilative catastrophe amid indicators of fifth Sa’ada war

by Mohammed Bin Sallam, Yemen Times, December 16

The military authorities are deploying huge army units these days throughout the restive governorate of Sa’ada. The excessive presence of troops implies a government’s intention to wage a new war against Houthi supporters after Eid Al-Adha vacation.

SA’ADA, December 16 — Sa’ada is currently experiencing much scornful conducts by authorities such as the extensive arrest campaigns, demolition of homes, forcing children and women to live outdoors and the excessive deployment of troops. “Such procedures usually indicate a government’s intention to wage a war against innocent people in the war-ravaged governoratet,” Abdulmalik Badraddin Al-Houthi, field leader of Houthi loyalists said in a letter sent out to Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) and NGOs last week.

He confirmed that he and his supporters are compelled to defend themselves and confront any new attacks by the government troops against them.

“I fear any destructive consequences of such a tragic and dangerous situation in the war-torn governorate. Earlier, we sent you a letter during the fourth war urging you to intervene in the crisis, taking into account that you are concerned with what is happening in Sa’ada and that you are partners in religion, homeland and fate,” Al-Houthi said in his letter, addressed to JMP leaders. “All the Yemeni people suffer from the consequences of Sa’ada wars. Those who don’t suffer from murder and property damage are bound to face negative economic impacts because the influential groups exploit the country’s wealth and exercise property theft at the expense of starving and poor citizens.” Continue reading The Sad Case of Sa‘da

What’s Cooking in the Ottoman Empire

There are many cuisines in the Middle East and Central Asia and one of the great fusion examples occurred in the Ottoman Empire. In a recent book (500 Years of Turkish Cuisine) published in Turkey, Marianna Yerasimos provides a colorful survey of the various foods and drinks along with recipes and an array of images from Turkish illuminated manuscripts. Here is a sample from her introduction (with recipes to follow on future days):

“No one influence alone, central Asia, Anatolia or Byzantium, is by any means enough to explain Ottoman cuisine and its extraordinary richness in terms of ingredients and variety of dishes. As you will see in the recipes, especially in the 15th and 16th centuries, Ottoman cuisine shared ingredients, cooking methods and dish names with the Middle East. As there are inadequate sources available, it is at least for the time being impossible to definitively determine what it shared with Byzantine cuisine. There are also other veins fat and thin, which nourished Ottoman cuisine, such as Rumelia (the part of the Ottoman empire which was in Europe) and the Balkans. Continue reading What’s Cooking in the Ottoman Empire

Apostasy in Islam

In the furor throughout the Islamic world over the publication of negative caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in Danish newspapers, and more recently giving the name Muhammad to a teddy bear, the earlier anger about author Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses was rekindled. The critical difference, of course, is that Rushdie was condemned not only for blaspheming the Prophet but for leaving Islam as the faith he was born into. This issue of apostasy — leaving Islam — resurfaced a year ago in the case of an Afghan man named Abdul Rahman, who proudly claimed he had converted to Christianity. Several Islamic nations, including Afghanistan regard apostasy as a crime and impose the death penalty for this.

The issue seems to be simple; it is egregious to any modern notion of human rights and Islamophobes are quick to dredge up a long history of Islamic legal rulings that legitimize such a death penalty. In point of fact no contemporary Islamic nation state follows all the ascribed shari’a penalties to the letter of the law. Even when constitutions state that the laws are based on the shari’a, it is the state itself which takes over many of the functions once given to Islamic judges. What might have worked (and we know that laws were always unevenly applied) at some point in the caliphate is not working today. Continue reading Apostasy in Islam

Apocalypse Watch: The Man Who Knows Squat

Most people find it hard to take cartoons seriously, apart from political satire and that can become a deadly issue, depending on the target. Given the recent Danish cartoon controversy it would seem that comics and religion do not mix well or at least settle well for the believers who see themselves as the target. But what about comic relief for the political struggle between Israel and the Palestinians? Fundamentalist tract artist Jack Chick, whose comic empire is dedicated to winning souls for Christ by drawing on God’s hate, has been using his pen to spread a rather nasty version of the Gospel for over 40 years. One of his more recent offerings is called “The Squatters” and it provides a virtual roadmap to apocalypse. Continue reading Apocalypse Watch: The Man Who Knows Squat