eatbees blog

Far from sugar-coating our differences as politicians tend to do, Barack Obama proclaimed that black anger and white anger are both real, and have a legitimate source. Both blacks and whites have seen their dreams evaporate over the past generation.

As a followup to doga’s post about the “dirty game” of “corrupt, interest-based politics” being played in Gaza, and the way we are all being sucked into it “voluntarily or involunarily,” here is a roundup of Gaza news that has appeared over the last few days.

Barack Obama has been getting a lot of grief from right-wing bigots for no better reason than because his middle name is Hussein.

The last thing Christians should do is condemn other religions for intolerance, when there is so much evidence of it in their own faith.

In our increasingly porous world, the real struggle isn’t between East and West, as chauvanists on both sides would have us believe, but between people who fear those who are different from them and those who embrace diversity as a strength.

By eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, we became aware of the fact that acts have consequences, and that we are responsible for those consequences. We became aware of “disobedience” or innovation as a possibility.

While I wasn’t paying attention, conservative blogger Jon Swift nominated me for the 2007 Weblog Awards in the “Best Middle East or Africa Blog” category. In celebration, here are a few of my articles from the past year that I am proudest of.

I’m an innocent, I guess, because I wonder honestly, would it be so bad to live in a Europe full of Arabs, Turks and Pakistanis? to blend in marketplace or on the metro with people wearing the traditional clothing of those lands, or hear the Islamic call to prayer in European streets?

“We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply with those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe. We need myths that help us to realize the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as sufficiently productive or efficient in our pragmatic, rational world.”

I observed the Ramadan fast during my first year in Morocco, to better understand what it was about, though I was surrounded that year by Moroccan atheists who kept begging me, as a foreigner, to buy them wine. I haven’t fasted since, but have enjoyed Ramadan “in my own way” as a time to soak in the tranquility and spiritual feeling.