Holy Jesus, Moses and Muhammad. The power-points, I urge you to drop everything and just stare at them, are amazing. They really are. They show, quite clearly, the mental acuity of a 12 year old child when confronted with a newspaper. There is reading comprehension, of course, and even retention and maybe some kind of [...]
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I am rather stuck on the fliegender Teppich in the NPD ad. I want to continue the link I made between Hans Schweitzer’s anti-Semitic cartoons and the NPD flying-carpet by focusing on this particular relationship between orientalism and anti-Semitism. The 1926 Lotte Reiniger movie Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed was one of the first “animated” [...]
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When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled “made in Germany”; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism;it will be called, of course, “Americanism.” Halford E. Luccock, Keeping Life Out of Confusion Before Times were good for many Americans—or, at least, times were good [...]
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The New York Police Department is doing everything it can to make sure there’s not another 9/11 here and that more innocent New Yorkers are not killed by terrorists,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said. “And we have nothing to apologize for in that regard.” – “With CIA help, NYPD built secret effort to monitor mosques, [...]
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One thing that the First World really gets right is good dental care. The more money you have, the better the teeth. Unfortunately, despite the fact that we Americans (at least those with good dental insurance) have some of the pearliest, straightest teeth in the world, we are seldom grateful for this gift. The word [...]
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The saying goes that we all have rituals – and the sayer points, often times metaphorically, to baseball players. The raise, the pinch, the shuffle, the swing, the dust-off, the spit, the spit, the spit. Ritual seems a bad word, suddenly. Habit? Superstitious habit? Let us stick with ritual for a second. I don’t think [...]
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I have a new piece up at The National, Pakistan: why the US must think outside the ‘military’ box: A decade after the events of September 11, we continue to know little and understand even less of Pakistan. This despite the fact that we are entering a golden age of production of knowledge on that [...]
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I. A Terribly Attractive Man I probably first heard the name Qaddafi on the radio, from NPR, an always present background noise in my childhood. But the name only acquired meaning when I heard it uttered by my Great Aunt in a stage whisper to my mother: “That Mr. Qaddafi is terribly attractive!” She hissed, [...]
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Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) by D. H. Lawrence BENJAMIN FRANKLIN had a specious little equation in providential mathematics: Rum + Savage = 0. Awfully nice! You might add up the universe to nought, if you kept on. Rum plus Savage may equal a dead savage. But is a dead savage nought? Can you [...]
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You fill the air with smiles For miles and miles and miles Though you’re no Mona Lisa For worlds I’d not replace Your sunny, funny face I love your funny face Your sunny, funny face You’re not exotic but so hypnotic You’re much, too much If you can cook the way you look I’d swim [...]
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I. Rudolph says to the sheriff, “For five long years you’ve tried. And you can search as long as you like, you can try with all your might, but I’ll see you in the sweet bye and bye. I’ll see you in the sweet bye and bye.” Sheriff says to Eric Rudolph, “Through caves and [...]
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In the Fall, I am hoping to teach a class on Experts as a category of Knowledge Brokers in the colonial and postcolonial world. Thinking a riff from Richard F. Burton to TE Lawrence to Rory Stewart by way of Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami. Plus databases and spying drones. Here is somewhat of a [...]
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The opening of Interpolation: the Safeway at Oracle and Ina: Absolutely, that was my turf. Less than a mile from the four or five houses and apartments where we took turns living. We did our shopping there. Not that you could tell this from a photograph; you would have to distinguish it from eighty other [...]
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It seems as if the Almighty had spread before this nation charts of imperial destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with many a deep intestine difficulty, and human aggregate of cankerous imperfection, — saying, lo! the roads, the only plans of development, long and varied with all terrible balks and ebullitions. You said in your [...]
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Talking briefly on twitter with Joshua Foust (whose book Afghanistan Journal you need to purchase RIGHT NOW) I commented how draining the Af-Pak-Af world is now. I do not feel like I can respond to any outrage, any calamity, and new development, any more drone strikes. It all seems so pointless. We have all said [...]
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Go read all of The Language of Developmental Literature by zunguzungu. But this brought smiles. As I hope is clear, the appeal to the American example is specious on its own terms. But that’s what makes it such an interesting rhetorical move: however problematic it might be to declare that American literary history must be [...]
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I am currently re-reading Shame. Last I read it, I was maybe 17 or 18. I remember liking parts of it and not understanding any of it. It is an insider novel, drowning in in-jokes, self-allusions, winks and sad nods. I never realized how sad it is – Rushdie pokes into the narrative (in a [...]
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It’s open season now, innit? From the recent protests. Previously on Yes! I, II, III, IV, V,VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI
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Robert of Ketton’s Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete(The Religion of Mahumet, the Pseudo Prophet) was the one of the earliest Latin translation of the Qur’an, done under the aegis of Peter the Venerable (d. 1156). It became the standard text, getting circulated and printed through the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Islam was long considered a Christian [...]
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I have a new piece, The cultural damage of the ‘war on terror’ up at the The Review, National UAE, September 2. 2010. It was a difficult piece for me, mainly because I have perhaps too much to say on this, and I began to ramble and it was only the finest critical editing that [...]
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