It’s almost 4am, I should be going to sleep but all I want to do is …

Hosni Mubarak resigns as Egypt prez: Video of Tahrir square first reaction

The Egyptian people have toppled Mubarak, an extraordinary moment, but the regime has not been toppled, not yet.
‘This Is Who Egyptians Are’
Iran: Hope, Joy, Envy as Egypt Breaks Free
Egypt: The Vlog before the Revolution
Egypt: The World Rejoices as Mubarak Resigns
Mubarak steps down. Egypt Uprising wins the first round…
Triumph as Mubarak quits
What next for Egypt?
Where does Mubarak go now? [Updated]
Timeline: Egypt unrest
Egypt: The Moment of Triumph
Twitter: #egypt, #jan25

reza negarestani – cyclonopedia

‘BURKABONDAGE’ VON HELENA WALDMANN

mit Vania Rovisco, Dasniya Sommer, Acci Baba und Mohammad Reza Mortazavi

Infos unter: www.burkabondage.de

Indientournee Dezember 2010
06.12. – Chennai
10.12. – Colombo
12.12. – Bangalore
16.12. – Mumbai
19.12. – Delhi

— Burka Bondage

I think perhaps I’ve been reading more science-fiction than I should in the past few months though; somewhat akin to my previous chocolate indulgence, put paid to by immanent risk of gaping holes in teeth. Charles Stross is, as in the last year, well-represented, though slogging through all six volumes of The Family Trade series doesn’t exactly count. With three other books devoured this year, he nonetheless pads out the numbers.

Perhaps to start with disappointments. William Gibson and Zero History. It’s curious to find a writer of near-future speculative (science-)fiction (hence my remark about the ambiguity of a fiction/non-fiction division) feeling dated and behind the times even on the day of publication. I’m sure I’ll read him again, but this was unexceptional, in no way saved by the pseudo-MacGuffin. Charles Stross’ Family Trade series also wallowed adrift for the second trio, and many intriguing ideas hinted at in the earlier ones (and outlined on his blog) remained undeveloped or abandoned; instead veering off on an un-engaging Bush-era terrorist spiel.

On the non-fiction side, Christopher I. Beckwith, who is indisputably a formidable scholar on Central Asia and Tibet frustrated me in twice. First in Empires of the Silk Road for his ceaseless tirades agains post-modernism and other failings of scholarship, which is especially jarring when I’m trying to concentrate on the lineage of Mongolian barbarians. The second is for confusing said lineages with history. I was deeply thrilled to receive The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia, anticipating much excitement (and winter fashion) with the Goloks. Instead I was beaten into submission by the feudal slaughter equivalent of biblical begatting. History is not an ad nauseum which man with an army ground which other underfoot.

Lucky The Tibetans, while not so much an an in-depth academic text, manages to avoid this monotony and thus far is the best generalist volume I’ve read on the region. Still, I am searching for more substantial books, be it eastern Tibet, Amdo and the Goloks, or western and the mountain passes into the -stans. I haven’t really begun reading The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan, which I hope might bring a little more enlightenment… I’ll have to wait for next year’s anniversary to discover that.

Many other books I’m very happy to have at least attempted this year. Edward Said’s Orientalism falls into this category. I expect I’ll slowly absorb it by sleeping near than by overthrowing it in a week-long siege. Some out of China also, Voices from the Whirlwind, Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China and The Age of Openness: China Before Mao filling out my sino-reading – something I’ll need to do more of in the next year if I wish to get through even a portion of my reading list.

Surprisingly, the non-fiction book of the year isn’t some Sino-Tibetan / Central Asian monograph on horse sport, but one which many people I know have read: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals. That it made me question and change my already infrequent meat-eating, as well as dispose of much dairy product consumption through reminding me why I became vegetarian and vegan in the first place is only part of the reason. That it is causing in my friends similar responses is perhaps the greatest achievement. And to think I read it out of boredom in an evening lying on a sofa in Vienna.

To say a little more. It is beholden upon us and our generation to instigate change. The governments, politicians and businesses who nominally are our seniors and act in our interests have categorically failed to act in any meaningful or decisive way on what is unequivocally a great catastrophe facing the planet. To reduce this catastrophe to the term, ‘global warming’, while certainly affording attention to one aspect, fails to include myriad interconnected impending disasters which are the singular result of our lifestyles. When confronted with the reality of the ecological vandalism and destruction eating meat involves – even before raising the issue of the suffering it causes and our complicity therein – it becomes unarguable that the single biggest, immediate difference a person – we – can make to bring about change, to attempt to avert or at least partially ameliorate this coming ruin, is to comprehensively and permanently change how we eat.

On, then, to science-fiction.

Charles Stross has provided many hours enjoyment this last year; The Fuller Memorandum was consumed twice in quick succession, but it was Saturn’s Children that came closest to fiction book of the year. He, like Iain Banks attracts my attention because he writes strong female characters (even if the females are sexbots from after the demise of humans) and like Banks and Miéville has an obvious social and political agenda in his work that I find an affinity for.

Iain (M.) Banks provided similar pleasure with re-readings of many old favourites and the new Transitions and (just finished) Surface Detail. Both are very good but don’t quite get up to the level of wild brilliance of earlier novels. Yet, they do seem to – along with The Algebraist and Matter – point to a new period in his writing and I’m already looking forward to his next.

Further on the unambiguously fiction side, by which I mean science-fiction or science-bloody-horror-no-near-future-speculative-fiction-here-fiction, the book of the year though is the quite brilliant, verging on genius for the two most terrifying thugs in London – far better than The City and The City which won a Hugo this year – China Miéville’s Kraken. If I’ve managed to persuade you to read Iain (M.) Banks, this isn’t quite Feersum Endjinn, my book to take if I can only take one book, but it’s close.

Finally adding a Reading category, almost all the books I’ve read in the last couple of years can be found there. Otherwise, some of the many books I’ve enjoyed this year…

(Oh, I started the ‘Reading … ” thing here in October, 2007 (with William Gibson’s Spook Country), which is why ‘Book of the Year’ arrives in October (the 16th or so) instead of on some other temporarily significant yet nonetheless arbitrary date such as the end of the year.)

peter hopkins – the great game

Many of my friends seem to have read “Eating Animals” in the past weeks and months – myself included in Vienna. Reminding me why I became vegetarian in the first place, and specifically putting the onus on me to be responsible in my eating, the immediate impact has been to cut my already minimal meat and dairy eating to almost none.

With some provisos, eating meat or dairy in Europe – when these delicacies come from organic farms – is a substantially different thing to eating McDonalds or other fast food either here or in America. Nonetheless, being reminded once again of the suffering such a predilection causes – to animals, the environment, to ourselves – means I have found myself without a trace of desire for any casual eating of flesh.

Organic lamb meat is not cheap here, more than twice the price it was in Australia, some €26 a kilo. As to how the animals are treated in their lives and deaths, I’m not sure, though the German guidelines for organic farming are fairly strict. I pay then, for some salving of my conscience, though maybe it’s not enough.

Figs then. A safe topic of discussion and eating. It is fig season here, and the prices are in direct opposition to lamb and Australia. Ten ripe, fat and purple-skinned fruits for a mere €3. And spices. I have had an idea for a fresh fig and lamb curry for more than a year, though mostly finding only Tajine recipes; admittedly not so distant from a curry. I discover the name of a mixed spice called Ras el Hanout, which I don’t find in any Turkish supermarket. Maybe it has a different name. Having a long history of love with Chinese and northern Pakistan curries, I came up with this from various recipes and self-enjoyment.

Cooking with Michael and Dasniya; bottles of wine, my favourite spices an aromatic haze in the apartment, figs seared and then braised in honey and lemon juice with an avalanche of walnuts. Stewing for hours until we eat. (I should have taken photos.)

1kg organic lamb
garlic
ginger
2 red onions

saffron
tumeric
cinnamon stick
cumin
cardamom pods
mustard seeds
ras el hanout (if you can find it or make it yourself)
cayenne or paprika
salt

lamb or chicken stock

8-10 fresh figs
honey
walnuts
lemon juice

3-4 tomatoes
fresh corriander

brown basmati rice (or couscous or flatbread)

Notice the lack of measurements. I cook by throwing in as much as I think might work and then a little more. I like spices and chillies and can’t understand why anyone would want to eat such a divine thing as a curry only half-spiced.

Mash the garlic and ginger, thick slice the onions and fry on low-ish heat while cubing the lamb (leave the fat on; it’s yummy). Add lamb and turn the heat up to sear it.

Mix all the spices together – I used around a half to full tablespoon for each – crumble the cinnamon stick, throw it on top of the lamb and keep stirring till it becomes aromatic and sweats.

Add the stock, put a lid on and simmer on a looooow heat (barely bubbling) for two hours.

Meanwhile…

Sear the figs in a pan. I cut them into sixths first but it might be better to sear them whole then cut them and sear a bit more. Add the honey – a couple of big tablespoons – and let it caramelise, careful not to turn the figs to mush. Add the walnuts and lemon (juice of one) and try to avoid eating this in the next two hours.

Brown rice takes 40-50 minutes. Put it on about an hour after finishing the figs. Other things that would go well are Couscous or warm flatbread.

Two hours or so later…

Remove the lamb from the sauce, turn up the heat and reduce it till it’s fairly thick. Add the tomatoes and continue until they have become one, maybe 15-20 minutes.

Return the lamb, till it’s warmed up again, then add the figs, carefully stirring through. Throw on a good handful of fresh corriander leaves and take it off the heat.

Have some fresh figs, corriander, walnuts, lemon, other spices around for garnishes and mmm… bottles of red wine… happiness for three greedy people (or four if Gala comes along).

Hannah Arendt And The Challenge Of Modernity: A Phenomenology Of Human Rights http://bit.ly/al0fTY

Publishing Bigotry: What Obligations Do We Have? http://bit.ly/ap8JfM

The Banksoniain #16 http://www.banksoniain.netfirms.com/banksoniain_16.pdf

From the Feuilletons (10/09/2010) http://www.signandsight.com/intodaysfeuilletons/2067.html

Insights From The Afghan Field http://www.currentintelligence.net/reviews/2010/9/6/insights-from-the-afghan-field.html

What Books on Afghanistan? http://easterncampaign.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/what-books-on-afghanistan/

Can we really say Wen is insincere? http://cmp.hku.hk/2010/09/10/7524/

You have failed us, Mr. Wen http://cmp.hku.hk/2010/09/09/7483/

William S. Burroughs’ Lost Graphic Novel Ah Pook Is Here Gets Exhumed http://bit.ly/99IVYd

Corruption in Afghanistan, Part DLXXII: Kabul Bank in Crisis http://bit.ly/bzJYzu

On Clean Energy, China Skirts Rules http://nyti.ms/crIV9P

If We Only Had Twelve Fingers http://cabinet-of-wonders.blogspot.com/2010/09/if-we-only-had-twelve-fingers.html

Obama: I mean it — tax the rich http://bit.ly/d8mJZR

China’s Other Billion: Mud Houses in China’s Powerhouse http://bit.ly/aghJ9U

Being Jewish in Shanghai http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/09/being-jewish-in-shanghai-photos/62574/

Racist patriarchy in Israel, updated http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/09/racist-patriarchy-in-israel-updated.html

‘Livelihood Issues’ http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/mirsky_09_10.html

Shenzhen Special Economic Zone celebrates 30 years
http://www.danwei.org/front_page_of_the_day/shenzhen_special_economic_zone.php

Hungary: Heterosexual Pride March http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/09/06/hungary-heterosexual-pride-march/

Thesis: That’s why they go to war http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/2010/war

Book review: Goodbye to London – Radical Art and Politics in the Seventies http://bit.ly/9fBkhH

Awesome death spiral of a bizarre star http://bit.ly/crFrQH

Readin: GYP. http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003982.php

Thoughts on Inner Mongolia (內蒙古回顧) http://www.portraitofanlbx.com/2010/09/thoughts-on-inner-mongolia-內蒙古回顧/

Hu’s Shenzhen speech: the numbers http://cmp.hku.hk/2010/09/06/7383/

Israel: “Rape by deception” turns out to be brutal rape of a vulnerable and abused woman http://bit.ly/9tYI9q

Assigning a gender to be appealed
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/06/3004047.htm

Restrepo http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/09/05/restrepo/

There is though a problem across europe with nationalism and racism, which manifests in anti-immigration, anti-Roma, stigmatising of Muslims that collectively needs to be addressed. My personal preference of course is for more immigration, especially now that Australia has shown itself over fifteen years to be unapologetically right wing, and someone like Tony Abbott could end up Prime Minister.

Thilo Sarrazin, SPD politician, former finance senator in Berlin and board member of the German central bank, the Bundesbank, has published a book that has scandalised Germany. “Deutschland schafft sich ab” or Germany is abolishing itself, looks at the effects of immigration, the shrinking birthrate and a growing social “underclass”. Above all, Sarrazin, who is famous for his tactless and abrasive comments, accuses the Muslims in particular of being unwilling to integrate. And German integration authorities, academics and politicians of refusing to discuss the problem.

Two of his statements in particular have driven politicians and press to the barricades:

From his book: “We have to assume that for demographic reasons the underclass section of the population is growing steadily. Among migrants we have seen that the birthrate is highest among those groups of migrants with the lowest levels of education, in other words those from Turkey, the Middle East and Africa. Studies on the workforce have come to similar conclusions. These show that women who are poorly or not integrated into the labour market at all are more likely to have children or increase the size of their flock. But intelligence is 50 to 80 percent hereditary and thanks to the class-related reproductive rate, this unfortunately means that the hereditary intellectual potential of the population is continually shrinking.”

And when asked in an interview with Die Welt on 29.08, whether such thing as a “genetic identity” existed, Sarrazin replied: “All Jews have a certain gene in common.Basques have a certain gene which differentiates them from others.”

(Sarrazin later apologised for this remark. He said he had read an article in theTagesspiegel about two studies – carried out by Harry Ostrer of New York University (more in English) and Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa (more in English) that suggest that many Jews today have shared genetic roots.)

That effectively sealed the fate of the book. Journalists, politicians and academics united in a choir of disapproval for his ideas. Even Chancellor Angela Merkeldescribed them as “nonsense”. Sarrazin’s statements were “marginalising” and “contemptuous of entire groups of society… His language is socially divisive,” shesaid on 28th August on TV. She also outlined the consequences the book’s publication would have for the Bundesbank. This institution, she said is “an advertisement for our entire country.” Yesterday the chairman of the Bundesbankasked the German President Christian Wulff for permission to remove Sarazzin from the board. Only a few hours later the SPD filed for his expulsion from the party.

In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Christian Geyer is despairing: “‘Deutschland schafft sich ab’ tells the tale of a nation’s decline. And the Muslims who make up a mere six percent of the population are being held responsible. It begs the question as to what the remaining 94 percent have spent the past decades doing to secure the future of their country. Sarrazin’s book is the attempt of a disoriented elite to exonerate itself. No wonder it is such a success.”

With reluctance and a mix of pathological fascination and disgust Arno Widmann read the book for the Frankfurter Rundschau. It is the work of the madman, he concludes: “This is Sarrazin’s second book which attempts to connect his statistically-grounded contempt for the overweight, welfare-grabbing underclass couch potato with his racist theories on cultural mentalities. His conclusion is unequivocal: The underclass – even the Germans among its ranks are not real Germans. What is unclear though is where he intends to go with this theory. And explains why he is calling for end to immigration from Turkey, Africa and the Middle East. Indian engineers don’t bother him as long as the Germans are more likely to become social workers than technicians.”

For Frank Schirrmacher in the Frankfurter Allgemeine on Sunday, this is a clear attempt “to establish a very different understanding of culture. One that links genetics with culture, and on the basis of a word that Sarrazin (citing Darwin) drops as casually as Gottfried Benn once did: ‘selective breeding‘. Sarrazin is not talking about Goethe and Schiller, though his book does mention poetry. For him, culture is the reflex of a biological process. The fact that in Germany ever more children are being born to families from the underclass milieu, automatically results in the dumbing down of society, and those who succeed in making career for themselves in spite of their background do nothing to influence his findings. There is nothing new about this theory. On the contrary, it is based on the Enlightenment idea of education, school and upbringing. But Sarrazin’s message is another one: education, which he refers to contemptuously as a ‘mantra’, is powerless as a vehicle for intellectual advancement. Individuals and entire nations are limited by their genetic and ethnic dispositions.”

In the Tagesspiegel, writers, Islam scholars, education and immigration expertsspoke out more or less in unison. The writer Feridun Zaimoglu explained: “People like him are fire starters. He is handing over the Muslim as the boogie man to a frightened middle class, with the implication that the Muslim is also responsible for the bank crisis and for the collapse of the welfare system.” The publicist Hilal Sezginwrites: “From the USA we have started to hear discussions about whether black people are less intelligent than whites. This is very obviously racism talking. In Germany too we need to develop a sensibility for the kind of debates which upset the underlying moral consensus. It is pure negligence to define groups and stir up bad blood between them.” The publicist Mark Terkessidis explains: “It might be an insult to the intelligence that Sarrazin so swears by, to have to dwell for any length of time on the long passages of utter nonsense in his book, but the debate it has triggered has clearly demonstrated that certain opinions are no longer tolerated in the political spectrum of the German republic.”

These are just a very few of the voices who spoke out almost in unison against Sarrazin. There were however one or two individuals who said that this criticism was missing the point:

Sociologist Necla Kelek asks in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung why Sarrazin has simply been demonised when a proper discussion about his book was what was needed. “All this fuss strikes me as somewhat staged and the racism argument smacks of red herring. So he doesn’t want to live in a Muslim Germany because he is suspicious of that sort of society. What’s wrong with this? The economist in Sarrazin has calculated that the 750,000 Turkish immigrant workers now number almost 3 million and of the able bodied among them, 40 percent live off the state instead of working. This makes no economic sense for him and leads him to ask whether immigration, in its current form, is not a mistake. This is no reason to get upset at Sarrazin. Instead we should be asking the politicians who are responsible for this state for affairs whether or not they have really served the interests of the country.”

For the writer Monika Maron in an interview in Die Welt, the public debate has missed the point: “Why can’t we leave aside Sarrazin”s obviously potty ideas about genetic theory and start talking about something much more worrying: the growing confessionalisation of our society, the millions of euros we are shelling out in welfare cheques, the deficits in education and the criminality of Muslim youth? Government schemes and vast sums of money have done little or nothing to change a situation that has been well-known for many years. What has to happen?”

In the Frankfurter Rundschau, Markus Tiedemann, a professor of educational philosophy, dismisses Thilo Sarrazin’s nonsensical hereditary theories in two paragraphs before turning on some of Sarrazin’s critics who, he says, are no better. “In 2007 Pascal Bruckner, a representative of the French nouvelle philosophie, tried to rock the self-satisfied boat of political correctness. His concept of the ‘racism of the anti-racists‘ exposes the negative dialectic of multicultural tolerance. … Anyone today who claims that it is too much to expect ‘the Muslims’ to embrace the achievements of the modern age such as emancipation and freedom of opinion, are no better that the voices who used to say that the blacks lacked the maturity to vote.”

— signandsight

reading: hanna arendt – eichmann in jerusalem

juan cole – engaging the muslim world