Category Archives: Countries

On Colonels, pantyhose and honor killings

Afghanistan, Gender and Sexuality, Islamophobia, Taliban

At the start of one of my all-time favorite movies, The Ruling Class, actor Harry Andrews as the 13th earl of Gurney returns to his well-groomed estate to relax after a long day of waxing conservative in the House of Lords. While this film should be required viewing for the current British parliamentary campaign, my interest is in the way this revered judge and former soldier relaxes: by dressing in a ballet skirt and jumping off a stool with a silk noose around his neck. Last Friday the New York Times carried a story about Col. David Russell Williams, a Canadian commander of a major air base in the Afghanistan war. He is described as “once among Canada’s most successful military officers,” the automatic pilot for visiting dignitaries, including Prime Minister Harper. Why “once”? Because the colonel on the battlefront against those honor-killing Taliban appears to be a “serial sexual predator.”

Ottawa police arrested Colonel Williams last February in connection with two murders of women, two sexual assaults and numerous break-ins in the Ottawa area “most of which involved lurid sexual details.” Continue reading On Colonels, pantyhose and honor killings →

Food Crisis in Yemen: A Rocky Road

Development, Food and Drink, Yemen


Shahara bridge in northern Yemen

Poverty and famine are old comrades in much of the world. Add to this drastically declining water tables and economic stagnation and you have a sense of Yemen today. But a recent World Bank project makes a virtue out of the rocky road by literally providing jobs for skilled Yemeni stone cutters to build roads. Check out the video on the website by clicking here.

Suicide bomber attacks UK ambassador’s convoy in Yemen

Terrorism Issue, Yemen


Ambassador Torlot

Suicide bomber attacks UK ambassador’s convoy in Yemen

Hugh Macleod in Sana’a and Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian, April 26, 2010

The British ambassador to Yemen escaped assassination this morning when a suicide bomber attacked his security convoy as it drove through a crowded street near the embassy.

The ambassador, Tim Torlot, was unharmed, but one person – believed to be the bomber – was killed in the blast. Two local men and a woman were injured.

Torlot’s armoured car was passing through a poor neighbourhood in the eastern part of the capital, Sana’a, when the explosion occurred.

Witnesses described the suspected bomber as a young men dressed in a tracksuit and trainers who was waiting by the side of a busy road for the convoy to pass. Continue reading Suicide bomber attacks UK ambassador’s convoy in Yemen →

Yosef Tobi at Hofstra

Books You Should Read, Conferences and Talks, Judaism, Scholars, Yemen, Zaydi

Professor Yosef Tobi of Haifa University will be presenting a talk entitled “The Legal Status of the Jews in Muslim Yemen, 897-1948” at Hofstra University on Tuesday, April 27 at 9:35 am in 201 Barnard Hall. This lecture is sponsored by the Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies Program and the program in Jewish Studies at Hofstra. Dr. Tobi is one of the leading experts on the history of Yemenite Jews and has written several important books on the topic, including The Jews of Yemen: Studies in their History and Culture (1999).

For a review of Dr. Tobi’s The Jews of Yemen, click here.

For an article by Dr. Tobi entitled “THE CONTRIBUTION OF YEMENITE
JEWISH WRITINGS TO YEMENITE HISTORY” click here.

Tobacco and Toe Stepping

Afghanistan, Egypt, Folklore and Proverbs, India, Lebanon, Lithographs, Orientalism, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia

Kimball Tobacco Company Factory (1846-1905) in Rochester, New York, published a series of “Dancing Girls of the World.” These appear to be from the late 1880s. Several of these purport to depict women dancing in the Middle East. But it seems the artist had never actually seen ladies of the exotic harem. Take a peek for yourself.

Continue reading Tobacco and Toe Stepping →

ON MILITANCY AND THE ART OF THE EGG

Anthropology/Sociology, Conferences and Talks, Literature, Osama Bin Laden, Poetry, Yemen

The Colloquium for Unpopular Culture and NYU’s Program for Asian/ Pacific/ American Studies present a new series: AUSCULTATIONS: sound, noise, (nervous heart)beats

FLAGG MILLER (University of California at Davis)
ON MILITANCY AND THE ART OF THE EGG: THEOLOGICAL LESSONS FROM THE OSAMA BIN LADEN AUDIOCASSETTE COLLECTION

Cosponsored by NYU’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies

When: Monday 19 April 2010, 12:30pm
Where: Room 471, 20 Cooper Square (East 5th and Bowery)
Free and open to the public

The alleged fantasies of Islamic militants provide Western audiences with an ample repertoire not only for stereotyping Muslims but also for severing acts of terror from realms of human experience. With the aim of bringing Muslim militants’ narratives of violence back to the complexities of situated cultural interaction, Flagg Miller will investigate the ways in which militancy is conceptualized through audiocassette-mediated sound production. In the winter of 2002, over 1500 audiocassettes from Osama Bin Laden’s former compound in Qandahar, Afghanistan were acquired by Cable News Networks. Miller will focus on one cassette entitled “With the mujahidin” (ma` al-mujahidin) that features participants cooking breakfast in a makeshift Afghan Arab kitchen. Continue reading ON MILITANCY AND THE ART OF THE EGG →