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Today, Christmas Eve, marks the 70th anniversary of an assassination in Algiers in 1942 that still is veiled in mystery, speculation, and conspiracy theories: though there has never been any dispute about who pulled the trigger. And though set in an Arab country, these conspiracy theories are not the product of Arab coffeehouse gossip at all. All the players are European or American.
Christmas Eve, 1942: only a few weeks after the Allied Operation Torch landings in French North Africa in November, the Allies have consolidated their hold on Morocco and Algeria, and are gearing up to battle the Germans for Tunisia. They had gained control of Vichy-controlled Morocco and Algeria in part by cutting deals with the local Vichy leadership and with Admiral Jean Louis Xavier François Darlan, ...
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Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopian ambassador to China, says his country prefers the non-intervention policy that Chinese investors follow when doing business there. Zhao Yanrong / China DailyEthiopia welcomes Chinese manufacturers to take on a larger presence...
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Tablet as teacher: Poor Ethiopian kids learn ABCs By By JASON STRAZIUSO WENCHI, Ethiopia (AP) -- The kids in this volcano-rim village wear filthy, ragged clothes. They sleep beside cows and sheep in huts made of sticks and mud. They don't go to scho...
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On December 12, 2012, the family of shooting victim Jitka Vesel sued the online gun market Armslist.com for the wrongful death of their loved one, who had been shot about 12 times in a parking lot in Illinois, by a gunman who had illegally obtained his weapon on the website. Vesel's brother hopes that lawmakers [...]
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With the new year approaching, Republicans are not feeling as enthusiastic about 2013 as their Democratic counterparts, a new Washington Post-ABC poll finds. Perhaps due to the sweeping Democratic and progressive victories across the country in November, only 25 percent of Republicans feel personally hopeful for what the new year will bring; just 18 percent [...]
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The 1000 or so Jews who live in Beijing often get asked about how much money they make, why they are so smart, and how Jews such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet (incidentally, both gentiles) have made so much money. For this episode of Bloggingheads, I spoke with Dror Poleg, an Israeli businessman and 8-year veteran of Beijing (and friend of mine), about Chinese people studying the Talmud to discover its business secrets, Asia's strange brand of philo-semtisim, and the story behind Jews' yuletide culinary choices.
The full video can be found here. Enjoy!
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Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed Elbaradei is hopeful forthcoming parliamentary elections will give secular and liberal opposition groups greater voice in rewriting a Muslim Brotherhood-backed constitution he said was "intrinsically illegitimate".
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Palestinian students disrupted the blogger Maikel Nabil's address to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Sunday.
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The Webster, New York man who fired on firefighters responding to a blaze, killing two, is a felon convicted of manslaughter, according to local police. Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering told a press conference this morning that the suspect was William Spengler, who served roughly 18 years on manslaughter charges for killing his 92 year [...]
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This will likely be my last post for the day. It's Christmas Eve suckas! Although it's certainly quite possible that you might see posts from Sergio, Courtney, Emmanuel, etc... so it doesn't mean there won't be anything after this. As we've done every year, for the last 2, here's an S&A year-end video complitation created by our very own Ms Vanessa Martinez (a hat-tip to her for putting in the time, as always), which wraps up the year in cinema of the African Diaspora, as we saw it! The video includes only those films that were released commercially, theatrically, here in the USA (maybe someday, when there's more money and manpower, we'll create...
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Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed Elbaradei is hopeful forthcoming parliamentary elections will give secular and liberal opposition groups greater voice in rewriting a Muslim Brotherhood-backed constitution he said was "intrinsically illegitimate".
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Following a much disputed referendum on Egypt's new constitution, Alexander Turnbull talks with Nobel peace prize winner Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, one of the country's main opposition figures. At the head of the largest opposition coalition, he explains why he believes the law-writing process and the vote were hijacked by the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.
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In 2004, the British press reported that the album cover Damien Hirst had designed for Band Aid 20's re-recording of the 1984 single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" had been rejected by the organizers, for fear it would frighten small children. "The record, that's the important part," explained Midge Ure. "The cover doesn't really matter. [...]
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As always, end of year lists are met with anticipation; either by those eager to see the year in review, or by critics ready to decry what has been left off. No list is definitive, so please do add your suggestions and comments below. For me, it has been an explosive year of African cinema; [...]
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A Vilcek prize winner profile:
"Literature," says Dinaw Mengestu, "has always provided me with a space to feel both intellectually and emotionally alive." In his own fiction, he extends an invitation to his readers to do the same, "to enter personal and physical landscapes that while perhaps wholly imagined, nonetheless have a vitality and truth to them." He raises questions of identity, and in answering them, sets his characters on personal journeys through memory and of discovery.
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The Os Kuduristas brand arrives in New York on the back of a wave of international attention given to the Kuduro genre, with little credit given to the Angolan originators of the sound. The tour is an attempt to rectify that lack of recognition by promoting Kuduro as a distinctly Angolan phenomenon that incorporates elements [...]
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