Archive for January, 2008
Friday, January 18th, 2008
Et tu Malaysia?
In Ziauddin Sardar’s excellent book Desperately Seeking Paradise, he remarks that South East Asia’s more tolerant version of Islam is exemplified by the fact that they are incapable of growing full, thick, beards.
So it’s slightly disappointing that there are some, bizarro stories coming out of Malaysia, suggesting that they might be becoming more hardline.
http://indiauncut.com/iublog/article/topless-in-malaysia/ (This is actually quite funny, but still)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7163391.stm
Friday, January 18th, 2008
Havana style
Interesting poster indeed - very art deco.
Cuba seems to quite a powerhouse of great product / graphic design. Case in point, the phenominal branding of its cigars. Incidently, all of which are produced by a single company (Habanos), and yet they manage to be very distinctly branded - for instance very classical for Romeo y Julieta, whilst its very modernist for Cohiba (which was created in the 60s).
I suspect the almost holy veneration adored on Havana cigars must have more than a little to do with the aura Habanos manages to wrap with its cigars. Having been dabbling with cigars lately, I’m quite struck by how seriously most cigar afficinadoes take their passion, tending to endlessly fuss over seemingly completely trivial details.
Little known in the real world, but incidently, its considered decidedly plebian to smoke a cigar with its (name) band still on…
Friday, January 18th, 2008
the taliban are coming!
the past few days have seen militants launch frontal attacks on forts in south waziristan agency. on late tuesday/early wednesday, a fort fell in sararogha. it’s since been regained by the pakistani army. there were also reports that a fort in siplatoi fell to militants on wednesday night. the army confirmed the attack, but denied that the fort fell.
various taliban factions in pakistan are now presenting a united front as the tehreek-i-taliban, under the leadership of baitullah mehsud, allegedly the mind behind benazir bhutto’s murder.
put this all together with this extremely saddening review of the situation in peshawar, and what we have is clearly no longer a case of creeping talibanisation.
this, ladies and gentlemen, is civil war.
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
Political Murals
Very interesting poster al-tahafut.
Reminded me a bit of the political murals in Northern Ireland. I’ve never been, but some of the photos are amazing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Irish_murals
http://flickr.com/groups/nimurals/pool/
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
noisemakers
this is a replica cuban poster i bought on ebay, and received this monday. it’s by ospaaal - organization of solidarity of the people of asia, africa & latin america. cuban posters are fantastically designed, and the replica i bought is quite good too. there are a variety of others out there, and not just political ones.
speaking of racism, implicit and otherwise, just today i read this post on the karachi metroblog about the vast inequalities growing greater and more entrenched in karachi - i think it’s also a feature of urban pakistan more generally. the post itself makes good use of a found photo, but the comments are atrocious.
and, i agree with atomsmasher - we should try to make frandship with fatima bhutto, and other figures of influence.
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
ghalib, iqbal, kiernan
do you mean to say “hit me baby one more time” was lifted from ghalib? if so, i’ll have much greater respect for him now. what a classic lyric it is.
funny you should mention ghalib - i picked up a book of his poetry, and another of iqbal’s - at the library last weekend. english translations usually fail to impress, so i was lucky to find books with parallel urdu and english text.
the iqbal book is translated by v. g. kiernan, a marxist historian who also translated faiz, as atomsmasher pointed out to me once many months ago. it seems he’s disappeared off the face of the internet, and i don’t even know if he’s still alive, though he did have a book, "america: the new imperialism", published in 2005.
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
Britney Ghalib
Well, the name certainly has a nice ring to it, and befitting too - if you know anything about Ghalib, and “come on baby, hit me one more time”
So what does this do for women’s lib in pak? I bet the phatan is ready and waiting for her to ride into itwaar bazaar, in a tshirt and ‘a jeans’; that will make his day certainly.
The Times of India sounds more than a little irritated :
What is it about Pakistani men that glamorous women from the West find so irresistible
Btw. while on the topic, I think the jb needs to live up to its responibility to the world and write to people of influence…to, well, influence them.
Fatima Bhutto stalks jumabazaar
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
[the burqa riffs]
this eyeseeachoaar is ridiculous. britney spears, on the other hand, will prove to be pakistan’s saviour, i think.
i had an internet outage for around three hours last night after i got home. it gave me the opportunity to go through roughly 1000 (yes, 1000) scanned photos from old family albums on a cd-r i just received in the mail from my brother. i’d post one up here, but i wouldn’t want to give us away.
also, i finished reading the taqwacores, a novel by michael muhammad knight published in 2005. it tells the story of muslim punk rockers, and a fictional [at the time] music scene called ‘taqwacore’. since the novel was published, real ‘taqwacore’ bands have formed. it’s an interesting idea, if only because i’m not aware of many other radical interpretations of islam.
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
pathans and xenophobia
Nicely picked up on the implicit xenophobia in eyseeeachoor’s post. The boy clearly had lots of characteristics - he was a boy, worker, pathan, but eyeseeachoor kept emphasisng the pathan element.
It’s interesting how Pathan’s are generally discriminated against even though they have fair skin, an attribute usually worshipped subcontinental culture. Its a useful reminder that race is only one of several means you can use to exclude others from your social set.
In other words you can employ racism even though you aren’t ‘racist’ per se. In fact you could make an argument that using race cynically is worse than being a racist simpleton.
Btw, as an aside the post was written in 2005 so he probably wasn’t looking for a Britney book. I do have feeling though that Adnan Ghalib will be the source of much fun!
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
the bottom-feeder
(no pun intended)
Clearly, nobody but eyeseeachoaar’s. I am inclined to think (and clearly he wishes us to be introspective) he was perhaps the only one who came out of the incident with a surge of xenophobic anger.
Any views on what books he was out hunting for in the first place?
http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_272618219.shtml
In the words of a modern day poet-philosopher:
Whose fault is it ? Pathan’s [sic] , right ? Partly ! Think about it !