Archive for July, 2004
Republicanism
No, not the American political party, but the French system of government. Writing in The Guardian, Jon Henely blames French anti-semitism on French Republicanism; specifically, their inability to recognize the very existence of a Muslim underclass.
For it seems to me that the real racial and religious problem in France, the real time-bomb quietly ticking away […]
DNC Surprise
My first thought when Pakistan, on the eve of John Kerry’s speech at the DNC, announced the capture of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a top al-Qaeda fugitive, was very much the same as that of Kevin Drum:
Maybe it’s time to get measured for a tinfoil hat after all.
I mean, just how convenient could the timing be? […]
Reality TV
“Labor and Materials” is Iraq’s answer to “Extreme Home Makeover” and the country’s first reality TV show. In 15-minute episodes, broken windows are made whole again. Blasted walls slowly rise again. Fancy furniture and luxurious carpets appear without warning in the living rooms of poor families. Over six weeks, houses blasted by US bombs regenerate […]
Vigilante
The New York Times reports that an award-winning documentary filmmaker was arrested in Afghanistan for allegedly participating in vigilante activities with the subject of his film, the now famous vigilante Jonathan Keith Idema. The filmmaker, Edward Caraballo, together with “Mr. Idema and another American, Brent Bennett, were charged in Kabul with running a private jail […]
Skazeetch
I’m very happy to know about the Don Martin Dictionary, having grown up on a steady diet of Don Martin sound effects.
(Both LanguageLog and, appropriately, BoingBoing linked to this.)
UPDATE: This is a good one, can you guess what it is?
SHIF-SHAF SHABAMP MAMP SHOMPAH-BOMBAH DIMPAH MIMPAH FOMP-DABOMP! GADIFF-GADIFF GADAFF GADAFF GASMITCH GASMATCH […]
Faking It
Shashwati has two posts about fakes. One on the mockumentary “The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan,” and another on a woman who is accused of having made up her story about having been the victim of an “honour killing” in Jordan.
Dostum
General Dostum on Thursday resigned as President Karzai’s military adviser in order to stand against him in the poll on 9 October.
This is very bad news. More than the ethnic Uzbeks in the Northern region he controls, Dostum represents the worst of the warlordism that gave the Northern Alliance a bad name.
The forces he commanded […]
Ordinary Crimes
The crime wave in Iraq is so bad that people cannot go shopping without protection, they cannot go for picnics on the river, and many families simply stay locked in their houses, fully armed.
… Until now, the Times, the Post, and the other mass media have all conveyed the impression (or stated as fact) that […]
Golda Meir
Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, asks what the Israeli papers would look like “if it were the reverse“:
But when we’re implicated and the victims are Palestinians, we prefer to avert our eyes, not to know, not to take an interest and certainly not to be shocked. Palestinian victims - and their numbers, as everyone knows, […]
Catch-22
If Washington has decided US troops do not need to be in Fallujah, why do they need to be in Karmah, or Shababi, presenting targets for the rebels? It is a question with no obvious answer. Officially, India company is in Karmah to act as a surrogate police force until the Iraqi police and army, […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
