Month: July 2005

“I strongly recommend the book Every War Has Two Losers: William Stafford on Peace and War,” Shihab Nye says. “It’s edited by his son Kim Stafford, who also provides the introduction. Poetry and prose by a dedicated, articulate conscientious objector, one of the most beloved poets of the 20th century. Mandatory reading, I think, for anyone troubled by the “news” and deeply helpful for thought processes in a time when “patriotism” has been maligned and misinterpreted in all sorts of dubious ways.”

Naomi Shihab Nye’s books of poetry and prose include Going Going, A Maze Me, Habibi, Sitti’s Secrets, among many others. She lives in San Antonia, Texas.

Here’s an Op-Ed piece in the Times by Courtney Angela Brkic, on the revisionist trends still current in Serbia:

For years Belgrade has denied involvement by its citizens in Srebrenica and other massacres of the 1990s. The recent broadcast of a graphic video that showed Serbian paramilitary police executing six young men from Srebrenica should have made it very hard to sustain that revisionism. Amazing as it seems, however, the video was not enough to shatter what Serbian human rights activist Sonja Biserko has described as the country’s “state of collective denial.”

Fewer than half of Serbs polled last spring believed the Srebrenica massacre took place. And while much has been made of the video’s effects on a shocked Serbian public, it remains to be seen where that public will stand once the furor recedes. The Radical Party, which won 27 percent of the popular vote in the last national elections, making it the largest party in Parliament, has already criticized what it sees as the anti-Serb hysteria that “wishes at all costs to put the burden of all crimes on Serbia.” Graffiti has appeared in several cities praising the “liberation” of Srebrenica. Rumors circulate that the video was doctored, or that the men committing the crimes were acting independently.

She argues that the arrests of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic will not be enough, that all the people who contributed to the massacre should be turned over to The Hague. “The West should ask for no less than this when it considers Serbian requests for aid,” she says. Brkic is the author of Stillness: And Other Stories and The Stone Fields.

Here’s a very interesting development in the religio-political landscape in Morocco: an official council will be tasked with issuing fatwa proposals in the kingdom. The council will be composed of religious scholars, men and women, and the proposals will be put to the king (who also acts as the ‘commander of the faithful’.) Ordinarily, any cleric can issue his own fatwa, and it’s quite possible that competing and contradictory fatwas can circulate at any given time. With the creation of this new body, fatwas will be based on a collective opinion and will have more of a government oversight. It sounds like an effort to curtail the influence of the Islamists, though the Party for Justice and Development claims they’re quite happy with the development and commend it. Yeah, right.

Over at the SF Chronicle, novelist Tom Dolby wonders whether writers should blog and whether blogging affects writing. Dolby guest-blogged at The Elegant Variation earlier this year.

Iraqi-born Israeli author Eli Amir gave a reading of his new novel, Yasmin, in Cairo.

Amir came to Cairo as a representative of Western culture and as an Israeli writer with all that this entails. “Arab culture’s invasion of Israel,” he said, “began the day after the peace with Egypt, and I am not afraid of it. And to you I say, `Don’t be afraid of exposure to Hebrew culture.’ If we can live in peace, then we should read and get to know each other’s culture.”

Thanks to Jonathan for the link.

On a similar note: Palestinian and Israeli meet at checkpoint, start business together. (Link swiped from Dove’s Eye View.)

The first Amazigh-language comic book is to be launched in Morocco in September, the Morocco Times reports. It tells the story of Queen Dihya, better known as the Kahina, who led her people against the Arab invaders in the 7th century. Cool.