Ahmadinejah, at Columbia, Parries and Puzzles

Yesterday, there was an article in the New York Times headlined "U.S. Focus on Ahmadinejah Puzzles Iranians," and it was written by Michael Slackman. I was going to blog about that, but then I decided to wait until today's front page news, which is about President Ahmadinejah's speech at Columbia. However, yesterday's article was interesting in that it basically said that Iranians do not understand why Americans wish to focus on Ahmadinejah when it is not he who has the final say on many of the political and social issues in the country; it is the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is considered the commander-in-chief. However, the article admits that Ahmadinejah's actions and provocative speeches are probably the reason why he is the first thing we Americans think of when the topic of Iran comes up.

Another interesting thing that I read about yesterday actually discounted the parallels being made between Hitler and Ahmadinejah. I believe it was on Slate.com, and it said that the comparisons between Ahmadinejah and Hitler was inaccurate because Hitler did not care about what other people other than the German thought about him. Every single appearance he made was carefully staged and prepared so that there was always a sense of power associated with everything he said. However, for Ahmadinejah to thrust himself into an environment where the critics are violently opposed to him would be, in fact, stupid of him, and his image.

Which brings me to the front page of today's New York TImes. Before I read this article, the only thing I heard about his speech was that "There are no gays in Iran. That phenomenon does not exist in our country." It seemed that the constant repetition of just that one quote of his enforces our belief that he is ignorant or in denial.

Anyway, according to the article, which is by Helene Cooper, the president of Columbia, Lee Bollinger, opened the event with a "10-minute verbal assualt." Bollinger had been receiving an immense amount of pressure from the academic and public community about his invitation to Ahmadinejah, and I guess he felt the need to wave his flag patriotically to prove to his detractors that he was not, in fact, supporting the President.

I thought it was apt for Ahmadinejah to respond the way he did: "In Iran, tradition requires when you invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students enough to allow them to make their own judgment, and don't think it's necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of complaints to provide vaccination to the students and faculty." That was definitely a zap at Bollinger's armor.

One thing that Cooper seemed to illustrate in the article, which I thought was fantastic, was how Columbia was pushing Ahmadinejah to answer questions about Israel's sovereignty, and Ahmadinejah was responding by switching the side of the arguments over to the Palestinians' point of view. He is right; it is a major contradictation that I feel that the public sometimes forgets to explore. We focus on the Jewish plight, and their return to their homeland. But we forget that by displacing a major ethnic group, Israel has come about in the same way that Hitler once envisioned his new Germany. Just that whole thing has always made me very uneasy, and I know this opinion is not particularly popular, especially in the very fraught relations between the Islamic and international community.

Ahmadinejah said, "I ask you, is the Palestinians issue not a question of international importance? Please tell me yes or no." This was in response to the question about Iran seeking the destruction of the state of Israel, and the moderator had wished for a yes or no answer. This is a loaded question and it does not serve to illustrated the complicated nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict!

At the end, Cooper wrote about how the event at Columbia is about academic freedom, and how in some ways, we are fortunate to be able to even have that choice available to us. Such a notion would not even entertain Ahmadinejah for his country.

Just an ending note: I guess Bollinger got what he wanted, because the American Israel Public Affairs Committee indirectly praised him for his attacks in the beginning of the event by sending out his speech and calling it a "Must-Read." I guess it's appropriate that the committee would forget to also include everything that the president said. It is this sort of one-sided information that could really affect people's point of views, allowing them to form opinions that are not as fair as they could be.

Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/world/middleeast/25iran.html?ref=todayspaper
Link to yesterday's article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/middleeast/24iran.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin
Link to Slate article: http://www.slate.com/id/2174602/nav/tap2/

Voices Rise in Egypt to Shield Girls from an Old Tradition

It has been a while since my reaction to an article has been as visceral as to this story that appeared in the New York Times today. The lede was certainly eye-catching and compelling. "A 13-year-old girl was brought to a doctor's office to have her clitoris removed, a surgery considered necessary here to preserve chastity and honor."

"Here" referred to Egypt, which I have always thought was very modern and urban when it came to their living situation and habits. Unfortunately, according to Michael Slackman, despite the modernization of Egypt, this surgery has been performed on girls between the ages seven and thirteen for many centuries. Even though Egypt had issued a nationwide ban in 1996, it allowed a loophole that have caused critics to believe that it countered the ban, allowing for this practice to nevertheless continue.

However, it is only recently that the voices against genital mutilation have risen to a necessary roar. Slackman credits it to the country's growing ability to talk frankly about sex. The issue is now receiving attention at a national level through television advertisements, news shows, and newspaper coverage. Religious leaders are also stepping forward to say that the Koran (as the majority in Egypt is Islamic) does not condone this act. The government also shut down a clinic that performed this "circumcision," as many of the men of older generations called it, after the 13-year-old girl died from the complications of the surgery. It is a rare moment when the government, media, and religious advocates are all trying to promote the same message.



The statistics for the wide-spread acceptance of genital mutilation in Egypt is astounding. In 2005, a health survey showed that 96 percent of married, divorced, or widowed women have gone through the surgery. In the article, Slackman had obtained quotes from some men that are extremely against the eradication of this surgery. Their words expressed so much anger- which I can understand since it is their values that are being challenged. Yet I wish they could see that sometimes, people get their values wrong. One clear, go-to example is the slavery of African-Americans that existed in American society for so long.

An obstacle to stopping the surgeries permanently in Egyptian society, that Slackman very astutely raised in the article, was the fear that women who do not undergo the surgery will not be able to find a man to marry, and that because of the circumcision and their landing of a husband, their family's honor will be preserved. I feel that these two factors may prove to be the most challenging to widespread social change. It is easy to abhor the action, the cutting, that is performed, but it is hard to discount the belief that men and women have held for so long. What if the men decide that they don't want to marry a women who hasn't had her clitoris cut off? Then I'm afraid that the practice might be done secretly and worse, in unsanitary conditions.

It is fantastic, though, that they have been able to get the message out, since the first step to acknowledgment is knowledge. The first pop culture reference that came to my mind was an Angel episode where Bai Ling played a female in a species where when the females came of age, they had little spikes that jutted out from their backs. These spikes gave the females their emotions and their powers, and it frightened the males, so they always cut it off just as the females hit puberty. Also, as Buffy said in the fourth comic book of the Season Eight BtVS installment, it's not about the power, or the demons; it's about women. And I feel that the angered reactions of the patriarchal society of Egypt is not about traditions, but about losing their hold over the women.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/world/africa/20girls.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1190301778-luALifvQfKXEI7Ai62+ELA

2007 Democratic Debate hosted by Anderson Cooper

Did anyone catch the 2007 Democratic Debate tonight? It was hosted by Anderson Cooper and held in North Carolina. I was pleasantly surprised to see that CNN had decided to allow people to submit questions to the candidates through Youtube, but I think it definitely helps to capture a wider range of opinions and concerns.

I don't know any of the candidates very well- at least, not in the way I think is sufficient for me to judge them. All the information I really get about them are the headlines from the New York Times and CNN, and occasionally the New York Post. It's important, I feel, to get to know a candidate not just from his/her head-turning actions ("So-and-so raised that much money from those sources? So-and-so does not support gay marriage?"), but also from the things they did as governor or senator- the things that doesn't necessarily catch the media's attention, but it definitely helps the public.

Anyway, this debate really was a good way for me to get a feel for the Democratic candidates, and Gov. Bill Richardson really is standing out to me. I think that says a lot, especially since he has such flashy competitors, like Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Joe Biden. Plus, I really appreciate that he has a great deal of experience in foreign policy and UN relations- which is really what this country needs right now: some coherent sense of direction in foreign diplomacy.

Some of the questions were extremely intelligent and well-thought-out. One that sticks out is a reverend saying that back when slavery was still present, politicians used the Bible as a justification for the oppression of black people. He goes on to ask how that is any different from the Bible-touting politicians who oppose gay marriage and civil unions. That question was directed to Sen. John Edwards, because he is from the South and has strong Catholic beliefs, and he also opposes gay marriage.

I was very impressed when Sen. Edwards said that the Reverend is right- that politicians should not use their faith as a justification on why there ought not to be gay marriage- even though he has indeed been guilty of doing so. He also said that his opposition to gay marriage is deeply personal to him. I saw that statement translate into layman terms: "I don't like gay marriage because I am not used to the idea of two men or two women having sex, and that action being legal and accepted in our present society." There were just ways that Sen. Edwards could have dodged that bullet, but he chose to just admit outright that it was wrong of him to quote the Bible for such an issue.

The final questions was by someone who said it was to lighten the mood. The Youtube user wanted each candidate to tell the person to the left of him/her one thing that they admire in the candidate, and one thing that they dislike. I thought that it was completely revelatory of each candidate and the way they answered. A good example would be Sen. Hillary Clinton saying that she admired Sen. Obama, just like she admires all the other candidates, and she ended there- to which Anderson Cooper says, "I take it that you're not going to answer the question." My favorite response was (if you can guess) Sen. Richardson's, where he went into great detail about Sen. Biden's contributions to America ("This man has devoted his whole life to public service...") His reply was good-humored and honest, unlike Sen. Biden's response to Sen. Dennis Kicinich ("I don't like a damn thing about this man- I'm only kidding.")

Finally, Youtube has also posted all the questions that aired on the Debate. I will include the link below.

I think that Anderson Cooper did a phenomenal job dogging the candidates to answer the question instead of veering off into a whole tangent of self-promotion. I clapped my hands every time he said, "So was that a yes or a no?" It's no secret that these responses that the candidates have are well-rehearsed verbal vomit that sometimes have no definite meaning behind the pretty words.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/debates

You should also surf around Youtube to find broken-up segments of the democratic debate.

A Funeral For A Young Police Officer Draws 10,000 Mourners

I literally gasped when I saw the cover page of the New York Times this morning. At first I thought I was seeing some sort of parade or commemoration for some important event, possibly happening in another country- but then I saw the bright store fronts that was so distinctively Brooklyn, and I realized that today was the funeral for the officer who got shot on July 9th by car thieves.

I have unintentionally caught the head and the tail end of this story. When it first happened, I remember the New York Times running a large article about how the officer, Russel Timoshenko, and his partner, Herman Yan, were shot by three men in a stolen car. That article stuck out in particular because there was an accompanying piece about how the majority of the NYPD is now made up of immigrants (Timoshenko is Belorussian; Yan is from Hong Kong) and I thought about the boy who was an NYU student who got killed a couple months back- he was Russian, I believe. The New York Times had an article about how he and his family had immigrated from Russia, and they live in Green Point now, and what a great kid this boy was.

I really didn't read much about it again (maybe once in the Post) until today when the above picture caught my attention.

It is great that the New York Times bothered to tie the two police shootings together, to remind people that it is a dangerous profession that men and women are voluntarily choosing. It humanizes the NYPD, turning them into real people with real faces- they are not just a cloudy blob of blue that help to promote vague abstracts like "justice" and "law."

I actually encountered some people today who were at the funeral. They had just came from the funeral and were slightly drunk.

Today's article was written by Andy Newman. I shall also include the original article in the links below.

Links: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/nyregion/20cop.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Link to the first article on July 10: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/nyregion/10cops.html?ex=1185163200&en=e192231783ece338&ei=5070
Link for article about immigrants in NYPD: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/nyregion/10partners.html?ex=1185163200&en=00a9a35563d18c15&ei=5070

Truck Bomb Hits Baghdad Mosque, And 61 Are Dead

The New York Times reported that a suicide bombing took place in Baghdad yesterday when a truck filled with explosive crashed into a Shiite mosque just as people were finishing their midday prayers. At least 61 people were killed and 130 were wounded.

Just like every article lately that's been centered around suicide bombing and sectarian strife in Baghdad, the writer, Alissa J. Rubin, mentioned that this bombing was preceded by the Strong U.S. military presence that does not seem to put much of a dent in the violence that goes on there.

As terrible as it is for me to say this, I think it is stupid for journalists and writers of the New York Times to keep reinterating that thought- i think the people and the administration get it: the security measures increase did hardly anything to help better control the situation in Baghdad (at least that's what NYT thinks.) And if they didn't get it, taking a paragraph (that's about 80 words) to repeat that day after day is not going to convince them; it just takes up front page space.

That aside, this was a pretty revealing article in terms of what the people in Baghdad think about America's inability to stop this senseless bloodshed.

"The Americans know everything, they can do everything... why do they let these things happen here in Iraq?" said Abu Muhammad, who is one of the custodians of the bombed mosque.

It's such a simple concept that a person doesn't have to be a political analyst or an anthropologist to wonder: Why is the strong military and political American presence allowing this to happen? Why are they unable to control it?

Then there is another thought that perhaps the Americans do want these terrible things to happen in Iraq. Iraqis are angry by their inaccessibility to normal lives, because they have to be constantly on their toes about any unknown vehicle or suspicious character- it's understandable for people to blame and point fingers when they are in an unceasing state of panic.

Not that the Americans don't warrant suspicion.

Anyway, reading this, I thought of an interview a while back that Jon Stewart from the Daily show had with a Middle East analyst named Reza Aslan. One of the thing he said was the Al-Qaeda is tolerated in Iraq by the American presence there. They are only about seven percent of the population (I believe the number is seven, though this would require some fact-checking on my part.) and if the U.S. got out of Iraq, the other 93 percent would immediatly slaughter them. When Aslan said that, Stewart's eyebrows went up, and he said, "Hey, I've got an idea!"

The reason why I thought of it was because one of our government's main reasons for staying in Iraq is to squash Al-Qaeda, and yet by their leaving it, they would have successfully squashed it, because there is just no way that tiny seven percent of crazy lunatics could control that country, especially since our own government failed and we had a large presence there (This is according to Aslan, by the way.) I know there are other reasons for not leaving, such as sectarian strife between the Sunnis and the Shiites- which has little to do with Al-Qaeda (though that organization completely exploit these people's distrust and fear for each other for it's uncomprehensible purposes).

One more thing about this article- Rubin mentioned that the bombing of this mosque was especially significant (Other than the 61 people dying) because it was one of the places where there were a mix of Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds who worshipped together. This shows that these terrorists are of neither sects (is that the right word?) even if they claim to be so.

Here's the video of the interview of Jon Stewart with Reza Aslan:



Link of the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/world/middleeast/20iraq.html?ref=todayspaper

Israel Seizes 33 Palestinians in Crackdown in West Bank

This is somewhat of a continuation of the last post. Same topic, different day. Though the article was not on the front page of the New York Times, the picture that went with it was, and the thing that stuck out to me (besides the gaping chasm of rubble surrounded by people) was the pointing finger to the left of the photo. There's blame being shifted around by the agitated government officials.

This article was written by Isabel Kershner and she leds with the news that Israel arrested 33 important West Bank Palestinians (read: officials) in a raid as their stance against Hamas bristles. A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister of Israel said that they have conclusive evidence that links those government officials to the recent terrorist activities.

One of the most senior officials that Israel arrested was the Palestinian education minister, Nasser Eddin al-Shaer. He had been previously arrested in August, but was released in September because there was no evidence to hold him. According to Rabia al-Barghouti, spokesman for the Palestinian Legislative Council, al-Shaer is not a member of Hamas and has a clean security record.

Something else that Kershner mentioned was that there were forty-one Palestinian legislators being held by Israle, and they keep having the detention extended for two more months every time they appear in front of a judge. They are mostly being held for being a part of Hamas, which they consider a terrorist organization (According to Wikipedia, U.S.A. agrees.)

The spokeswoman of the Israeli Prime Minister said that Israel was going after Hamas "in all its aspects." So since the Hamas broke the truce about ten days ago, Israel has been firing rockets back and launching airstrikes. There have been 38 Palestinians killed, 156 wounded in 35 airstrkes since May 17 (Jeebus).

"Among the dead were seven Palestinians under the age of 16," said a spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

On the other side, there have been one Israeli woman killed and two seriously injured. Many others have been treated for lighter injuries.

Kershner is not subtle in her placement of these numbers: first, the Palestinians casualties, then the Israeli casualties. Basically, I think the Palestinian government wants all this fighting to stop (from what I garner from the article) but the Hamas is a group of people who refuse to agree since a breaking of the truce has now set things to be unclear and unassured- not to mention also that each side's word is completely unreliable. The Israeli government seem pretty gung-ho about clearing out the Hamas, saying, "The Palestinians have made a mockery of the so-called cease-fire in the Gaza Strip."

I'm sure the arrest of important government officials will lessen the tensions between the two nations and help foster a trusting environment for favorable negotiations. I'm also sure that the lumping of the Palestinians high officials with a declared terrorists organization will help to alleviate the mistrust and corruption in the Palestinian government itself. What happened to Israel saying that they will not be manipulated into full-out dischord with Palestine over terrorist acts that both sides agree is uncalled for? They said that they will enter this on their own terms- but look! they just got all trampled over by their pesky emotions and their anger, and now both Israelis and Palestinians are dead.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/world/middleeast/25mideast.html

Unity Fractures as Palestinians Battle in Gaza

This was on the front page of the New York Times today, and it was written by Steven Erlanger. It's a feature story updating us on the Hamas-Fatah conflict and how it is starting to drag in the Israeli army, because there are people being wounded and hurt in Israeli towns as a result of the fighting in the Gaza strip.

I was captivated by this article because of Erlanger's excessive use of numbers. "Excessive" is the wrong word, because that would mean that I was turned off by it, but really, I was just so in shock by how many people had been killed in that short amount of time.

This was my first time reading about the Hamas-Fatah conflict and so I had to Wikipedia it to find out more about it. I could already guess most of what it said about Hamas by the article, that it is considered a terrorist group by many countries, and the Hamas-Fatah conflict is a factional conflict between Palestinians. Hamas is currently the majority ruling party in Palestine, after the early 2006 elections. Because of that, the U.S. has been on strained terms with Palestine (though that's not the only reason.)

Anyway, there have been recently an increase of Hamas attacks on the Fatah, and also on Israeli towns (Wikipedia said that the Hamas are known for suicide bombings outside of Palestine, and also for attacks on Israeli civilians and military) and Erlanger writes that it is perhaps to prompt retaliation from the Israeli government so as to reunify Palestinians. These attacks have included rocket fire fired from Gaza that have wounded two Israeli women.

Erlanger goes into how if Israel retaliated strongly against Hamas, they could end up unifying the Palestinian factions against them. He gives the example of how last summer, when Israel faced a similar situation with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, that instead of stopping the attacks from Hezbollah and strengthing the Lebanese government (that Israel wanted to strengthen), they got the opposite result: Hezbollah did not stop attacking and was thoroughly unified against Israel, and the Lebanese government was severly weakened.

I guess the Israel government learned its lesson, because it decided to think twice before responding harshly to the Hamas attacks.

"Israel is not going to be dragged into the Gaza Strip the way that Hamas wants," said Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "We will choose the time and place to respond. The price of any operation must be measured in terms of how effective it would be in stopping rocket fire, and the cost in life on both sides..."

The rest of the article is devoted to the violence that both sides have recieved, and honestly, it is so heartbreaking to read all these numbers, and about all these families that are being uprooted because they fear that they may be caught in the fire of the factional violence.


It really got to me when I read Abdel Hakim Awad, a Fatah spokesman said that Hamas leaders "want to turn Gaza into a new Somalia or Dafur." That's incredibly foreboding and it does not help that both sides are just so full of hate and anger. It's easy to dismiss Hamas as being in the wrong and being overly agressive (what with Wikipedia saying what it said- no, serious, look it up) but at the same time, Erlanger writes about certain Hamas who are in power who have stayed out of the fighting, like Islam Shahwan, and only decided to deploy against the Fatah because of the increased attacks towards the Hamas government. Really, it takes both sides to create this much problems and strife.

Towards the middle of the article, Erlanger writers about 200 Gaza residents who were marching in the center of Gaza City with Palestinian flags, trying to show peace. However, gunmen started to move around the group, and following gunfire, the demonstrators were scared off, and one was wounded.

I just went to the Times website to get pictures, and as it turns up, Erlanger has just posted another article. Judging from the headline ("8 Israeli Airstrikes in Gaza Kill At Least 7") it seems that the Israeli government has decided to take up the offensive. Damn it.

Links: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/world/middleeast/17mideast.html?fta=y

For some odd reason, Blogger is not letting me put up pictures. Well, if you got to the link above to the Times website, you will see the pictures I was going to put up. Also, if you do that, be sure to read the article. Erlanger does a good job conveying the helplessness of the civilians who don't seem to be angry or hateful, just frightened for their lives and children.