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31030.1743
This revealing, staccato biography of the sometimes mythic retaker of Jerusalem and uniter at times of the Eastern, Arabic and Persian worlds, Anne-Marie Eddé tackles the subject in several phases: dry history, military strategies, religious aspects, myths of both the demonizing and lionizing kind. Oblique at times, Saladin cannot be perceived as a complete narrative biography (events like the siege of Acre are only partly described, stories of places like Tyre are left unfinished) but it searches for deeper meaning with a variety of views. For a time, Saladin's realpolitik empire spanned deep Egypt to beyond Syria and Beirut, and it required an as yet unseen mastery of both diplomacy and risk. Many gestures divided enemies and allies, deftly. Aspects of duty, taxation, customs, even seasonal challenges like winter storms halting sea-trade are laced with personality and conflicts. Poetry, diaries, contracts are all cited to great effect. Several oft repeated tales drive the effects home, including the determinism to die poor: at death he had only a few dinars left. Nuances like short histories of the sultan/Seljuk title, interspersed, are amazing. At times a travelogue tragedy. An ocean of desert at night for a knife at throat bedouin raid, the march of entire cities leaving every valuable behind while others are left untouched. In between slaughter is chivalry, common good will, suicidal assasin sects, wholesale ransoming, pilgrimages, somehow proof humans achieve their sense of greatness only on a vast scale. And in human cost. Extensive quotes from William of Tyre. The cover above is from the french original. Translated. Harvard-Belknap Press.
Saladin's Palace, Syria
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311330.2117
In August 2011, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, potential challenger in the next French elections, was at JFK airport, en route to Germany for a key meeting regarding Greek debt and the saving of the Euro. After his plane was sealed and taxiing for departure, Port Authority Police were requested to stop and detain him by the NYPD. Believing the police had found his missing IMF Blackberry, he was instead accused of rape and returned to NY to face a grand jury. Quickly the case fell apart and now it appears the accuser and the Manhattan D.A.'s office were used in an elaborate trap set by Accor, the French corporation owning the site of the crime, The Sofitel, whose security is managed by one of Nicholas Sarkozy's best friends.
DSK thought that by staying in a French-run establishment it'd be culturally apt to get a blow job from the staff. Now it seems he was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Read the hidden time-frame and the strange surveillance decrypt what happened between housekeeper Diallo (5' 10") and Strauss-Kahn (5' 7"). Who was in room 2820? Where is DSK's IMF Blackberry? The beginning of the unravelling...
Edward Jay Epstein's brilliant forensic work in the NYRB.
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311324.1112
Two views of the Earth from the moon:
Lyman-alpha glow of the geocorona.
Extreme UV airglow.
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311295.1603
More clearly annunciated journalism of the Americas, written by
Alma Guillermoprieto published from the United States's New York Review of Books. Should be preceded by Joan Didion's best work of all, Salvador, also published first in NYRB. Didion observes the secret war from license plates and weird dinners in the Holiday Inn. It's Hemingway territory all the way merged with post-Watergate language.
Obama's second term will be dominated by this key problem in his local hemisphere, the criminal network that controls large sections of the continents. Don't forget, the U.S. Dollar is the official currency of El Salvador and unofficial currency of many others.
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311282.2145
An example in original language (and Spanish subtitles), Episode 35. Anime's full flucuation is in effect here, follow the battle to the Aztec plaza.
