Month: July 2002

Israeli Arabs turn to rap music:
“MWR’s hit “Because I’m an Arab” includes the words: “A policeman sees me, immediately arrests me, asks me some racist questions, and why? Because I’m an Arab. Let me live. I’m just trying to live.” The song topped the charts for two weeks on a Haifa radio station. A rap festival in Nazareth last year drew thousands of people. Even some Jews are listening. MWR performed last month in Tel Aviv, where about 1,000 people, almost all of them Jews, bobbed their heads to the beat and cheered. “It was powerful to sing Arabic in front of them,” said Charley Shaby, 25, the group’s DJ. “They listened. I don’t care if they understand it or not … they understand the message.””
Arabs Voice Protest in Rap Music

The King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, or M6 as he is affectionately called by Moroccans, is getting married today in the capital of Rabat to a computer engineer. In a break with tradition, the bride is not from the Moroccan aristocracy. She was educated in Morocco (in contrast with much of the elite, which still prefers to do post-grad work abroad.) Lastly, the wedding is a public event, a marked difference from other Moroccan royal weddings, which were kept private. Here are some pictures of the wedding preps.

Oh, look, MOCA is having an Andy Warhol retrospective.

I took my first yoga class last Tuesday and loved it. Granted, I did feel it a bit funny, when, index fingers and thumbs joined, palms facing the floor, we chanted “Om” and “Shanti,” but it was a relaxing session. Except now my abs are sore and I feel so sleepy I’m on my second espresso. I wonder if that’s to be expected.

This is a few days old already, but worth reading: An interview with Gore Vidal in the L.A. Weekly. The interview deals with Vidal’s book, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, in which he argues that much of what has befallen America of late was caused by the government’s actions in foreign countries. Vidal tends to ramble a little but Marc Cooper, the interviewer, does not let him off easy. Vidal does make a couple of important points (e.g. the fact that finding Bin Laden is not a mission on the U.S. military’s agenda in Afghanistan, the whole myth of “us” vs. “them” originating in Washington and echoed by the media, etc.)
And Vidal is not the only writer upset with the government’s actions of late. Take a look at the Statement of Conscience signed by people like Russell Banks and Barbara Kingsolver.

Just got back from Mammoth Lakes–I drove to meet up with Alex who had just finished the John Muir trail. It was a quiet Fourth of July, and when we got back we heard about the shooting at LAX, smallpox vaccination plans, and other assorted horrors. The President is trying to appear tough on shady corporate accounting practices though it is hard to take him seriously given the $848,560 of Harken stock he dumped in 1990, a few weeks before the company on which he served as director reported losses. It’s enough to make you want to go back to the mountains.