Laila Lalami

The BBC tries to address the question that’s been on everyone’s mind. Is Salam for real? And the Guardian has a piece on him too. And ABC News. And so on.

The Moroccan weekly “Al-Usbu’ As-Siyassi” [This Week in Politics] published a piece that “accused the government Monday of providing unusual assistance to U.S. troops fighting in Iraq by offering them 2,000 monkeys trained in detonating land mines. Morocco offered the U.S. forces a large number of monkeys, some from Morocco’s Atlas Mountains and others imported, to use them for detonating land mines planted by the Iraqis. A highly-informed source was quoted as saying, “that is not a scientific illusion but a well-known military tactic.”
When I heard about that, I just laughed. I know Morocco is a staunch U.S. ally, but monkeys? And “Al-Usbu” doesn’t really have a great reputation for journalistic seriousness so I thought it was a hoax and moved on. But by Tuesday the item was picked up by the fearless fact-checkers at United Press International and the conservative Washington Times, and today by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Only the Washington Post seems to have thought it a joke: “An official at the Moroccan Embassy could not confirm the presence of monkeys in the coalition of the willing.”
Then someone pointed me to this link: Dolphins Help Spot Mines in War. So hmm…if Dolphins can do it…

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books will be held on April 26 and 27 at UCLA, and will include the usual lectures, signings, workshops, etc. Authors expected to attend include Sherman Alexie, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Ray Bradbury, Sandra Cisneros, Christopher Hitchens, Maxine Hong Kingston, George Plimpton, and Elmore Leonard.

Meet John Abizaid. A graduate of Stanford, he is a three-star general and a deputy to Gen. Tommy Franks. Abizaid is the man who “moves the pieces on the chessboard for Franks to approve.” He is the highest ranking Arab-American serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.
Meet John Watersbey, a 29-year-old Marine and crew chief, husband and father. He lost his life during the helicopter crash on March 20, the first day of the war. He was one of an estimated 10,000 Arabs/Muslims serving in the Armed Forces.
Although you may not be familiar with Abizaid or Watersbey, I’m sure you’ve heard of Sgt. Hasan Akbar (a.k.a. Mark Kools), the man who allegedly shot at his own comrades-in-arms in the elite 101st Airbone Division, killing one and injuring a dozen others. Reports said that the suspect had an “attitude problem,” after allegedly being passed over for promotion, and that he had complained of racism in the military. So he went postal. The attack was disturbing and demoralizing to everyone, both within the military and here in the U.S.
When I heard that the suspect in the 101st Airborne attack was a Muslim, I thought: Why? Why must Islam get all the wackos (Richard Reid, anyone?) I swear, the muftis should get together and issue a fatwa: if you’re a wacko, go convert somewhere else. We’re all stocked up here.

Advocates of war with Iraq point out (rightly) that the French have huge financial stakes in Iraq. Unfortunately, they also argue that the U.S.’s motives are much more noble: disarming Saddam, removing a brutal regime, liberating the Iraqi people, cutting off financial support of suicide bombers, bringing democracy to the Middle East (Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, bombing Iraq will also get you a date and give you fresh, minty breath, so get on board already.)
Anyway, yesterday, the Bush Administration announced that the first of many Iraq rebuilding contracts had been awarded, one of which was to Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s company. The exact amount of the award was not disclosed. Halliburton’s profits from the “War on Terror” also extend to the U.S. Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where it was awarded a $9 million contract last year to build cells for prisoners, and to Afghanistan where, through its subsidiary Brown and Root, it was awarded a contract for camp support services.

that’s the tile of a “short story about Europe and America” by Jonathan Franzen, in today’s Guardian. Here’s the opening
“Once there was a mansion in which there lived five brothers. The four oldest brothers, who had played and fought and survived the diseases of childhood together, lived comfortably in the beautifully furnished older wing of the mansion.
The fifth brother, Joseph, was much younger. By the time he came of age, there were no comfortable rooms left for him, and so he was given the raw rooms in the mansion’s newer wing. Joseph was a strange, solitary, somewhat frightening child, and although his brothers loved him, they were relieved to have him out of their hair.”
Read on.

Tim Cavanaugh of Reason.com comments on the differences in coverage between Al-Jazeera and American networks. In particular, he discusses the oft-mentioned pictures of American POWs, but also those of bloody Iraqi casualties. Both sets of images have been broadcast by Al-Jazeera but not by the major networks here.
“I must admit I too was more bothered by pictures of dead American servicemen than by that of a dead Iraqi kid (…) But I cannot share Drudge’s and I suspect, many other Americans’ feeling of outraged violation at these broadcasts. (…) A country that goes to war and then expects to see no evidence of war’s actual results is not a serious country. And Al Jazeera is remarkably consistent in its presentation of horrific, chaotic and disturbing imagery, regardless of its origin or its potential for swaying audience opinion. (…) What was most troubling about the images of American bodies in enemy hands was that they gave a strong impression of a war effort so badly derailed that our forces can’t even collect their own casualties (…) This has been Jazeera’s real triumph so far in the campaign. Unlike any of the American, British or European news networks available overseas, Jazeera (and to a lesser extent some of its Arabic knockoffs) is presenting a coherent and convincing picture and that picture is of an American war effort going disastrously wrong.”
Cavanaugh’s observations underscore how our views and opinions, here in the U.S. and in the Arab World, are shaped by the images we see. So the question is, who is winning the information campaign?

Read the complete commentary from Tim Cavanaugh. Link via Arts and Letters Daily.
And, of course, there is also Salam Pax’s first-hand account of life in Baghdad right now (not for the squeamish.)

I start quoting Franz Kafka: “War is a monstrous failure of imagination.”

Boris Johnson was asked to write an Op-Ed for the New York Times. He was thrilled. Then he got a call from one of their editors. “Everybody loves it. But we have, uh, a few issues of political correctness that I have to go through with you (…)
Some of the changes were unobjectionable. For American readers, Tony Blair leads the Labor party. The NY Times is too grand to call Rumsfeld “Rummie”, and nothing happened last autumn; it happened last “fall”. Fair enough. But I started to get a floaty, out-of-body sensation when he said that he had made a change to a sentence about donations of US overseas aid to key members of the UN Security Council. I had said something to the effect that you don’t make international law by giving new squash courts to the President of Guinea. This now read “the President of Chile”. Come again? I said. Que?
“Uh, Boris,” said Tobin, “it’s just easier in principle if we don’t say anything deprecatory about a black African country, and since Guinea and Chile are both members of the UN Security Council, and since it doesn’t affect your point, we would like to say Chile.” In the end, I gave way on this, since it was getting cold and I was worried about the battery of my mobile. But my views of the NY Times were starting to evolve. ”
This was only the beginning. Worthwhile read.

Link from Mobylives.

Salam had no entries this weekend, and I think we all thought of the worst. But he’s back online today. Keep checking, he might have news from Baghdad.