Rebuff the Radicals

Terrorism Issue, Yemen



The Egyptian televangelist Amr Khaled with a group of young Yemeni performers at the opening ceremony of a new campaign to combat religious extremism in Yemen. Yemen Times photo

by Tom Finn. Yemen Times, November 25, 2010

ADEN, Nov. 23 — A campaign has been launched by the Yemeni government to win over Yemeni hearts and minds, in a battle to confront extremist ideology and favour Islam’s moderation.

The project was launched on Wednesday at an opening ceremony in Aden attended by the Deputy Prime Minister and representatives from the Ministries of Tourism, Culture and Justice.

As well as an array of performances by Yemeni children, the ceremony included a speech by Amr Khaled, the world renowned Egyptian televangelist, whose organization, the Right Start Foundation, will be leading the two week project to confront religious extremism in Yemen. Continue reading Rebuff the Radicals →

Afghan Trucks 1

Afghanistan, Contemporary Art, Travel

Way back in 1976 I picked up a delightful photographic book called Afghan Trucks, published by the Stonehill Publishing Company in New York. The photographer was Jean-Charles Blanc, who obviously had a far easier time trucking around Afghanistan than a photographer would today. The brief introduction says nothing about the photographer. It does say a lot about Afghan drivers:

“The driver and his mates are conditioned to a hard, lonely, even painful life, but its austerity is brightened by the dazzling exterior decor of the truck. Flowers transform it into a moving oasis: with rows of tulips and bouquets of roses clinging to its sides, the Afghan truck is like a traveling art gallery wending its way through arid mountains and deserts. Continue reading Afghan Trucks 1 →

Worse than Vietnam

Afghanistan, Iraq War, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


by Robert Wright, The New York Times, Opinionator, November 23, 2010

“We did the Cole and we wanted the United States to react. And if they reacted, they are going to invade Afghanistan and that’s what we want … . Then we will start holy war against the Americans, exactly like the Soviets.”
— Mohammed Atef, military commander of Al Qaeda, in November of 2000

You have to give the people at Al Qaeda this much: They plan ahead. And they stick with their goals. If bombing the U.S.S. Cole failed to get American troops mired in Afghanistan, maybe 9/11 would do the trick?

You might say. Last week at the NATO summit President Obama pushed the light at the end of the tunnel further down the tracks. By the end of 2014, he now tells us, American combat operations in Afghanistan will cease.

It’s not as if we need those four years to set any records. At just over nine years of age, this war is already the longest in American history. And this Saturday we’ll eclipse the Soviet Union’s misadventure in Afghanistan; the Soviets brought their own personal Vietnam to an end after nine years and seven weeks.

Is Afghanistan, as some people say, America’s second Vietnam? Actually, a point-by-point comparison of the two wars suggests that it’s worse than that. Continue reading Worse than Vietnam →

Raising Dust in Palestine

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Books You Should Read, Development, Music and Dance, Palestine, Photography


Sword dance at a Bedouin wedding in Palestine, early 1900s; Rowe 2010, opposite p. 116

We hear so much about the political turmoil between Palestinians and Israelis that the traditional culture and its transformation are all but forgotten. Bombs continue to go off or be dropped, settler slabs destabilize the opportunity for a variety of people to live together, hawks and doves flitter away in a rhetorical fog. Yet there is movement, especially in dance. Nicholas Rowe, a choreographer and dancer from Australia has recently published a moving portrait of the changing dance tradition among Palestinians, with a focus on how dance reflects political stalemate and obstacles. This is his Raising Dust: A Cultural History of Dance in Palestine (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010).

A brief description of the book is provided by the publisher: Continue reading Raising Dust in Palestine →

Pizza my mind

Anthropology/Sociology, Food and Drink, Lebanon


Pizza Hut in Beirut, 2009; photograph by Daniel Martin Varisco

Being Italian by family name, and Sicilian at that, I feel qualified to talk about pizza. Whether or not pizza really was invented in Italy, Italian Americans have made pizza parlors the strip mall contender with Chinese takeouts. Pizza was not invented once, any more than the wheel. Once you start baking flat bread, and that goes back millennia, all you need is a few of the right kinds of droppings and the rest is culinary evolution. In the current global economy food has been ethnicized and consumer friended around the world. The Pizza Hut, with humble beginnings a half century ago in Kansas (yes Kansas!), now boasts franchises throughout the Middle East. There is even a website in Arabic. Of course, real Italians (those with the requisite last names) go to local parlors rather than give in to the fast food giant.

But this commentary is not really about pizza; it’s about what we choose to eat rather than what we actually eat. Choosing Pizza Hut in Beirut is branding yourself, even if you convince yourself it tastes good. Continue reading Pizza my mind →

On Gadflies and Burlesque Phonies

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Gender and Sexuality, Israel, Libya, Luke R. E. Publican


Some say a picture is worth a thousand words. Surely the above photograph above of two aging heads of state on opposite sides of the Mediterranean is worth a thousand or even more or less. If you did not know the headline, what do you think these two men would be talking about? If you guessed immigration, you would be almost right. If you guessed romance and cross-cultural marriages, you would be exactly right, if The Guardian is to be believed. The Libyan government is using the services of an Italian match-making site called hostessweb to bring Italian women to Libya. The site is even available in 53 different languages, including Arabic, Swahili and Persian. All you need is an Internet connection and a credit card and some mutual language besides the universal code of love.

It seems that both Colonel Gaddafi and Silvio Berlusconi are friends. One might speculate on what they have in common. Being unpopular perhaps for their dictatorial ways? A soft spot for the gentler gender? Or maybe just a penchant to do favors for nephews. It seems that Colonel Gaddafi is worried about his nephew’s matrimonial future. As The Guardian reports: Continue reading On Gadflies and Burlesque Phonies →

What’s Cooking in Yemen 1

Folklore and Proverbs, Food and Drink, Yemen

In yesterday’s post the cover of a recent book published in Yemen was featured. This book is a pictorial introduction to the art of traditional cooking in rural Yemen. It was published in 2008 by the Center for Heritage of Sanaa University. The picture on yesterday’s cover was of a Yemeni woman preparing to bake bread. The steps above illustrate the preparation and baking of round barley bread, known as malûj in Yemen’s central highlands. The bread dough is formed into a ball and then stretched out with a makhbaza (see below) to a flat found shape that can be patted to the sides of the tannûr oven. The taste is hard to describe, since it is almost impossible to find pure barley bread in America. It is a hard, crisp bread and tough to break apart, but goes well with a variety of traditional stews.

to be continued