the a la menthe

Peace Corps Morocco Stage 1988 held its 20th reunion.

I was looking for music by Marcel Khalife and came across this video, which I found charming even if the video quality is a little uneven.

For some reason, I found myself today reading a column by a Washington Times columnist who was furious that former CIA Director James Woolsey had suggested that profiling Muslims might not be the answer to airline security. Granted, I am not an expert on security or counterterrorism, although in light of the fact that our experts do things like posting their security procedures manual on the Internet, perhaps anyone is qualified to bring a little common sense to the issue. For the sake of argument, let's leave aside the quaint notion that Muslims are fellow human beings who deserve the same dignity and respect as anyone else, and focus purely pragmatic reasons why a policy of profiling might not be a good idea:

1. Bigotry does not equal security. Stereotyping all Muslims because a tiny fraction have been involved in acts of terror against the United States is both a lazy and ignorant way to cope with the problem of terrorism. Lazy because it relieves one of the necessity for analyzing the problem. Ignorant because it makes an assumption that in the vast majority of cases is untrue and unwarranted. We've been here before: we made the same mistake with the Nisei in World War II.
2. Humiliating people does not make us safer. Treating Muslims like cattle, particularly in countries like Iraq that we are trying to "help," has been proven to undermine our counter-terrorism efforts. There is nothing like an Abu Ghraib to recruit people to Al Qaeda. So why should we adopt a policy that humiliates and discriminates against Muslims generally?
3. Profiling all Muslims is radically overinclusive. When approximately one in six people on earth is a Muslim, and a de minimis number of them pose a threat, then it is highly inefficient to try to screen all Muslims in order to uncover the few who may be terrorists.
4. Profiling all Muslims is radically underinclusive. Two words: Oklahoma City. Profiling Muslims does nothing to catch the Timothy McVeigh's of the world. There are lots of people who hate us who are not Muslims.
5. It's impractical and inefficient. Much as we like to think we have infinite resources in the United States, in point of fact there is no way we are going to be able to keep track of a billion people.
6. It misjudges the threat. If Flight 93 had reached its destination, I might well have died in my office a couple of blocks from the White House on September 11, 2001. As it was, I left the office shortly after Flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon across the river. My brother in law watched the twin towers fall in New York. Despite the unprecedented carnage and the shocking effect of an assault on American soil, however, there was never an existential threat to the United States. Unlike Japan or Germany in the Second World War, Al Qaeda had no ability to follow up. Before we turned the tide in the Pacific, Japan had not only bombed our main naval base but asserted control over a good part of the Pacific and invaded China. Germany, meanwhile, reigned supreme over the rubble of Europe, where England was a beleaguered holdout. While I agree we should treat the threat from Al Qaeda seriously and pursue it relentlessly, lest it develop the capability to do us greater harm, I do not think that our values, our liberty, and our privacy should all be mindlessly sacrificed in pursuit of the terrorist menace. Frankly, at present the average American is far more likely to die in an automobile accident than to be a victim of airline terrorism. And yet our cynical and cowardly public officials harp on our irrational fears and prejudices to the benefit of their own power and position.
7. It's not the most effective use of our resources. Where is Osama bin Laden and why is he at large? A more effective pursuit of Al Qaeda (rather than the sideshows in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Yemen?) and a reexamination of the brutal Realpolitik that drives American foreign policy would, in my opinion, do more to reduce the terrorists threat than profiling every last Muslim could ever accomplish.

In every endeavor, there are certain people who achieve a level of excellence that clearly separates them from the ordinary participant. Such people need not be a world champion -- a Lance Armstrong, Mohammed Ali, or Michael Phelps -- but nevertheless they demonstrate a grace and proficiency that sets them apart.

For me, a handful of blogs that I read integrate words, pictures and presentation in such a skilful manner that they are truly set apart -- and, of those, one is written by an acclaimed Moroccan-American novelist. Among the rest, My Marrakesh stands out for elegant design, exquisite taste, gorgeous photography, and crisp, whimsical prose.

Part of what makes My Marrakesh so attractive is its thematic unity. The author, an expatriate American building an elegant guesthouse in cosmopolitan Marrakesh, couples a deep love of Moroccan artistry with an engaging sense of humor over the incessant minor obstacles that repeatedly arise to frustrate her would-be avocation as a hotelier. Occasionally, as in her recent photo montage of Afghan men, she permits a glimpse of the grittier life she leads professionally as an international consultant.

Mostly, however, My Marrakesh is a celebration of simple pleasure and daily beauty -- snapshots of family life, interviews with both Marrakeshis and visitors, accounts of shopping trips in Marrakesh's rich and varied markets. It presents a picture of a life varied and fulfilled, in which one can escape, though not forget, the world's troubles through an appreciation of beauty as seen by the eye of a connoisseur.

For all these reasons, it is easy to see why My Marrakesh again has my vote for Best African Blog in the 2010 Weblog Awards, and I urge anyone who visits the 2010 "Bloggies" to cast a vote for My Marrakesh.

I used Yahoo Pipes to create a mash up of English language blogs about Morocco listed on Morocco Blogs. Subscriptions are available either though the page or the RSS feed.

Marrakesh hotelier and aesthete blogs live from the turmoil in Afghanistan at My Marrakesh. (Twitter feed @mymarrakesh)

Should I join the Peace Corps? - make thousands more decisions on Hunch.com

I started playing with websites from the moment my (now defunct) dial up provider offered me 5 megabytes of web space, and I dived into blogging at about the time that Dave Winer first decided Frontier 5 could be more than an alternative script for Apple Computers and positioned it as a blog publishing tool. (I moved to Movable Type in 2003 and have never looked back). I have consistently, if intermittently, written a blog (or two) ever since, but the thing that nearly killed off my blogging habit was Facebook.

Facebook has a number of inherent advantages over a blog. First of all, it is designed primarily as a means to keep in touch with people one already knows and likes, so it have an important function apart from the kind of exchange of information for which a blog exists. Secondly, people actually read and comment upon and sometimes care about what you write on Facebook, and because they are already your friends, they are generally supportive. The blogosphere, by contrast, unless one is on the so-called "A-list" or even on the "D-list", can be kind of a cold and lonely place, one in which one is essentially shouting in the vacuum with no one to hear. This is not all a bad thing, and can actually be quite therapeutic, but it is a different experience from Facebook.

Another thing that Facebook does well is it pulls people together, at least superficially, into groups of common interest. One of the most encouraging Facebook groups I have joined is entitled "On est Juifs et on est Musulmans et on s'aime. (OJMA)." In one sense, such a group may reflect no more than a naive one-worldism that overlooks the serious rifts that exist among adherents of the three Abrahamic religions. I prefer, however, to think of the group as an expression of hope that hatred can be overcome, particular in a region -- the so-called Holy Land -- that is rife with hatred even as it purports to be a center of peace and love. This group, to which I was referred by Tunisian blogger Massir Destin, appears to be comprised largely of francophone North Africans, who have a remarkable tradition of religious tolerance stretching back even before the establishment of the legendary kingdoms of El Andalus in what is now southern Spain. This not to say that the region is without bigotry, but it has a remarkable historical record of largely not eviscerating people over religious differences. So-called Christian Europe, with its shameful record of persecution, pogroms, and ultimately the Holocaust, should take note. Suffice it to say that with number of close Muslim friends and a Jewish family, this cause comes close to home.

Finally, however, I come full circle. Because for all the virtues that have led to its explosive growth, there are a number of areas where Facebook falls short of the blogosphere. First, Facebook may be liberal, but it is not free. In the benevolent dictatorship of Facebook, the company can always shut you down. Breastfeeding mothers found that out in a hurry. True, the various companies that host blogs are also able to impose some restrictions, but one can always move, and, even, in a pinch host one's blog onself, so long as one has a computer and a high speed connection. Facebook, in contrast, has far more control over both content and its distribution than anyone has over a blog. Second, Facebook is geared toward people one knows already, functioning more sometimes as an echo chamber than a true exchange of information. Third, Facebook takes only limited advantage of the possibilities for linking information offered by the full web and the blogosphere. Finally, Facebook has an audience limited to one's "friends"; the audience in the blogosphere is potentially limited only by the number of users on the web and the efficiency of Google.

Michael Toler reports in Random Thoughts that Morocco is increasing investment in its educational system even as Paul Krugman decries in the New York Times the fact that the United States is reducing its investment in its crumbling educational system.