The attempt to make Nelson Mandela respectable is an ongoing effort of Western government spokesmen and the Western media. He wasn’t respectable in the business circles of twentieth-century New York or Atlanta, or inside the Beltway of Washington, D.C. He wasn’t respectable for many of the allies of the United States in the Cold War, […]
Tunisian Rapper Jailed for 4 Months for Insulting the Police
Tunisia Live reports that: “Rapper Ala Yaacoubi, known by his stage name Weld el 15, turned himself in to a court in Hammamet today, where his 21-month prison sentence was reduced to four months.” He was sentenced for public indecency (because of his rap lyrics) and for insulting officers of the state (his most famous […]
Muslim-American Tolkiens? Throne of Crescent Moon Author on Ethnic High Fantasy
Saladin Ahmad, a Muslim-American fantasy author from Dearborn, Michigan, is the author of the novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon. He spoke in Grand Rapids on the meaning of his background for his writing and imagination: He made the interesting point that much high fantasy is already ethnic, it is just from the unmarked ethnicity […]
Jon Stewart: Fox seems a little Hysterical about Muslim-American Women Swimming
Jon Stewart has discovered the most horrible thing in the world on Fox Cable News. A YMCA in St. Paul Minnesota has set aside an hour for Somali Muslim women to swim at the pool, no men allowed. Actually gender-segregated swimming is quite common and is an accommodation also made for some Jewish Americans and […]
A Jewish Woman in Tunis, 1880: Photo of the Day
Jewish Woman in Tunis, c. 1880. via University of Chicago Middle East Photos For the history of Tunisian Jews see this site
Trashing the Law against warrantless GPS tracking: NSA nabs 5 Billion Phone location Records a Day
Remember when the National Security Agency officials maintained that they were “only” collecting “metadata” from your cell phones? What they meant by that was that they weren’t listening in on your calls, just noting who you call and when. I said at the time that ‘metadata’ on cell phones inevitably includes information on where you […]
GOP: No Climate Change because, Bible
Opposing views points to the scary ignorance and bible-thumping to which GOP representatives in Congress are appealing in their genocidal stand against quick action on climate change. If you have to have a biblical theology about these things, it should be the old-fashioned one that human beings are stewards of the earth and have a […]
Jazz Oud from Tunisia: Dhafer Youseff, “Eastern Waves”
Tunisian oud jazz by Dhafer Youseff Dhafer Youseff Quartet, “Eastern Waves” (“Les Ondes Orientales”) For more on the artist see CCTV :
Almost Human: How Robots, Race and Neoliberalism killed Detroit and what it Means for You
Detroit can go into bankruptcy, a judge has ruled. Likely it means that workers’ pensions will be at least in part stolen from them. It is a good occasion to reprint this recent piece on post-industrial decline, robots and the future of capital and labor: Reprint Edition The big question is whether Detroit’s bankruptcy and […]
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