Though it's almost 2 months old, this article in Paste on the Palestinian hip-hop trio DAM and the Israeli roots septet Sheva caught my attention when I found the magazine curiously lying about the kitchen. A few comments worth making:

• "[DAM] began to see hip-hop as an outlet...to confront day-to-day life inside what they refer to as the 'occupied territories.'" Oh, I'm sorry, guess I didn't realize that they actually are occupied territories.
  
  
• "In a region wracked by centuries of strife, bigotry, and ethnic resentment..." Because everyone knows that Jews and Muslims have never gotten along. And Jim Crow sure didn't have the ethnic resentment characteristic of Palestinians either.
  
  
• While DAM is recognized as one of the founding groups of the Palestinian hip-hop movement, why not mention other popular acts like Ramallah Underground or G-Town? Or the documentary Slingshot Hip-Hop (which, I confess, is still on my to-watch list)?

And Mark A. LeVine's Heavy Metal Islam is the featured review for nonfiction in the same issue.

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If that doesn't scare the hell out of you...

The BEST clip I have watched this fall, both from Palin bombing it to Cafferty laying it on thick.

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Banksy at the wall.

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This just in from the Jordanian blogsphere - Books@Cafe has been shut down for serving alcohol during Ramadan.

A few of my posts have been about or written from Books@, a popular cafe on Rainbow Street in Amman.

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LHC, pt. 2

The Economist reports on the grand opening of the LHC.

Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?

Playing God, the Mayan Calendar, and Doomsday

...and then we start getting into conspiracy theories that will keep you up all night. Thanks Dick Gordon, Jr.

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What's the difference between Palin and Muslim Fundamentalists...

...according to Juan Cole? Lipstick.

And more on Palin's religious convictions.

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Come with me if you want to live

SARAH CONNOR RETURNS WITH A VENGEANCE!

Complete with religious themes and all!

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Islamofascism Awareness Week returns for a third season!

"Stop the Jihad on Campus," October 13 - 17! So little time to prepare!

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From Gulf News: Jordan sees rush of young Americans (via Angry Arab)

















This a picture of Liza at Books@Cafe on Rainbow Street in Amman. I spent the Fourth of July here and with Liza, her roommates, and several of their friends at their apartment. I was at Books@ the night this picture was taken, sitting at the table right next to the one in the foreground. I recognize the two girls pictured, in particular because the subtly politco one wearing the chic purple kuffieyeh also sports a "NUKE ISRAEL" shirt.

I will confirm that there are bucketfulls of American students studying Arabic in Jordan, including 60+ from BYU in Amman this summer (three of whom I lived with).

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From the Huffington Post:

Speaking before the Pentecostal church, Palin painted the current war in Iraq as a messianic affair in which the United States could act out the will of the Lord.

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

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Mark LeVine on the one-state two-states debate:

With Palestinians wielding binationalism as a threat and Israelis imagining it as a curse, it's not surprising that the idea still has relatively few supporters. But what if a binational state was reimagined as a positive development, one that allows for the greatest possible realization of both Jewish and Palestinian aspirations? Indeed, the idea had this connotation for progressive Zionists such as the Brit Shalom movement during the pre-1948 period, and an increasing number of Israeli academics and activists are giving the idea a second look today.

Even Theodor Herzl, in Zionism's ur-text, Altneuland (Old-New Land), describes the future Jewish state as one where Jews and Palestinians have equal rights and responsibilities in the civic and economic life of the country.

Of course, Herzl also imagined “spiriting” Palestinians “across the border” to ensure the creation of a Jewish state. And it is precisely such paradoxical sentiments towards Palestinians—wanting to live with them as good neighbors and wanting to get rid of them in order to ensure unfettered possession of the land—that has defined the serpentine trajectory of Zionism during the last century.

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