pin the islam on obama
You have probably heard the rumors circulating in the media of Barack Obama’s Muslim training in a madrasa in Indonesia as a child. According to this article Washington Post, it has been alleged that Obama did not hold his hand to his heart during the playing of the national anthem. Therefore he is Muslim, an Indonesian-trained terrorist, and will destroy the United States “from the inside out.” In fact, his middle name is Hussein, which is added proof that he is Muslim. His father is from Kenya, which is in Africa (map), and there are some Muslims in Africa, too. Obama might as well just change his name to Yusuf Islam because his Islamicity is just that obvious.
The only good source the article had was Ibrahim Hooper of the Council for American-Islamic Relations, who said:
“The underlying point is that if you can somehow pin Islam on [Obama], that would be a fatal blow,” Hooper said. “It’s offensive. It speaks to the rising level of anti-Muslim feeling in our society.”
Unfortunately for Hooper, though, only few individuals have ever been able to pin Islam on somebody; it is very heavy and unwieldy. We will keep trying.
Meanwhile, at Annapolis, nobody was trying to pin Islam on anybody. In fact, Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal would not even touch people, refusing to shake the hand of any Israeli. The kind of attitude in which one does not shake the hand of one’s…what? enemy? is prolongs angry feelings among diplomats. Now, Tzipi Livni resents him and is not going to be open to talking about Israel/Palestine with him. Nobody ever said the Saudi government had people skills, much less manners. Dutch prime minister Frans Timmermans is quoted as saying that “[the Arab diplomats] shun her like she is Count Dracula’s younger sister.” Alas, his humour is not going to bring peace in the middle east to the middle east.
Then Condoleeza Rice got sentimental and told people she knew what it felt like to be both an Israeli and a Palestinian. Her comments seemed to reflect comparisons made in the media about Israeli apartheid, especially comparisons made by Ehud Olmert in an interview with Ha’aretz (quoted from the Guardian):
If the two-state solution collapsed, he said, Israel would “face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished”.
Olmert and Nelson Mandela should get together and talk about what apartheid really means (where is Ian Smith when you need him?). And then Olmert should think about whether Palestinians are struggling for just voting rights.
battles: bush, sarkozy for peace
According to an article in Le Monde, the Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel smells funny: “Ca sent le gaz lacrymogène, le plastique brûlé et la rage.” I was not aware that rage had an odor. The mayor of the suburb, Didier Vaillant, unaffected, helped to mediate the riots by stating the obvious:
Didier Vaillant, maire de Villiers-le-Bel, a pour sa part affirmé que “les bâtiments publics seront allumés” dans la soirée.
Which is not obvious at all. It does seem that violence in that area is escalating, though. Take a look at the collection of headlines from Le Monde: “Nuit de violences dans le Val-d’Oise,” “Nouvelle nuit d’émeutes à Villiers-le-Bel, and “Banlieues : scènes de guérilla urbaine à Villiers-le-Bel.” And the reason for the violence? Summed up nicely in this statement of a French youth: “On nous traite comme des chiens.” I am reminded of the film La Haine – some of the pictures appearing on various news sources are distinctly reminiscent of scenes from that movie (I recommend you view it immediately).
French Prime Minister François Fillon stated in an address to firefighters that “We will not let go. We will fight with all the force the nation is capable of.” Never mind Parisian suburbs, he really should be talking that way about peace in the middle east….
Because the people working on it sure need the help. Nothing was accomplished, as was expected:
Annapolis is where the US congress formally ratified the Treaty of Paris in 1783, ending the American revolutionary war with England, but expectations for the outcome of this event were distinctly lower.
The head of the United States, George Bush, went on to “mangle Mahmoud Abbas’s first name and fumble a handshake between the Palestinian president and Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, that didn’t quite live up to the occasion’s historic billing.” If expectations for the event were low anyway, the occasion’s billing could not have been that historic. This is, after all, Middle East Peace Conference No.17 or something like that. It is getting old. And Bush/Abbas/Olmert should have recruited Sarkozy to assist in their “conference”; he might as well do something with his time while not managing the “urban crisis.”
peace: teddy bears and bridges
After her class named the class teddy bear “Muhammad,” a British schoolteacher in Khartoum (again with the map) was convicted of “insulting the faith [of Islam].” Her sentence could include forty lashes, six months in prison, or a fine (according to the Guardian). The article makes her punishment seem to be a result of the religion-crazed Sudanese government’s religion-craziness, which is exactly the type of writing that makes people think that Muslims are all about punishing people who “insult” their faith. Note that she has not even been sentenced yet.
The article mentions that the teacher would be charged under “Sharia Law.” Not only is the word transliterated from Arabic incorrectly (as it is everywhere), but readers should be aware that “Sharia Law” is highly regionally-dependent, so Sharia Law is one thing in Sudan, another thing in Egypt, another thing in Saudi Arabia. Then the article curiously mentions that the event had been blown out of proportion…
Meanwhile, back in the US…everybody is gearing up for the Annapolis summit, in which leaders of many countries will say things, declare their desire for “peace in the Middle East,” and applaud various leaders for “working towards peace.” After several days of accomplishing nothing, the summit will join the ranks of the various other Middle East peace conferences that accomplished nothing.
According to this article, there is a “Frantic bid to bridge Middle East divide;” the implication being that if the divide (which is wide) is not bridged soon, overland trade, nomads, camel herders, cars, and trains will not be able to cross it. We all hope that the Annapolis summit will build a bridge over this divide and enable people to cross the gaping chasm that is the Middle East….
Bush will say in his opening speech that Middle East peace will be a high priority until he leaves office in January 2009. Critics say he has neglected it fatefully since 2001 and has been utterly discredited in the region by the war in Iraq and bias towards Israel.
“Middle East peace” will happen only when he leaves office; unfortunately, that is over a year away.
Maybe a bridge could also be built to Sudan, so that civilization and whatnot can be brought over and save the schoolteacher from her dire fate.
ian smith goes the way of cecil rhodes
Well, Rhodesia is no more, having become Zimbabwe as its “white” minority-led government has been disbanded. I put the wikipedia link because there is no way you have any clue as to which continent either of those were/are.
Oh, looks like I’m about 28 years behind the news. Actually, what happened is the death of Ian Smith (a good article is at The Guardian – but you can find it on every news site now), who used to be (28 years ago) the Prime Minister of Rhodesia, a weird little country that declared independence from Britain in 1965. What I do not understand is that, with the government being overthrown and “Rhodesia” becoming “Zimbabwe” like a quarter century ago, why the media is making a big deal out of this guy dying. So he was racist, severed a colony’s connection to the United Kingdom, and supported apartheid. Well, as soon as his government was overthrown, his political power went with it. Who cares what he thought? How many racist people are still alive today? How many supporters of South African apartheid are still alive today?
He wrote a book, The Great Betrayal. Lots of people write books, many with more interesting titles. So now that he is dead…what? Nothing. Zimbabwe is still in Africa. The important event was the end of Rhodesia. And now that nobody has even heard of it (see second sentence), that tells you a bit about its relevance to today.
If he really wanted to be cool he would have renamed the colony to Smithland, and endowed a Smith scholarship to Oxford. Mostly why he is un-important is that he did not.
normal life decided to return to Iraq, after being in hiding for 4 years
From a post over at Angry Arab(source):
Al-Arabiya TV news today is beginning with this headline: “Normal life is returning to Baghdad.” This must be an exclusive scoop for this Saudi station.
This is marvelous news. At last the Iraqi people will be able to sleep, drink tea, talk to each other, and breathe air. They have not been able to do these things for several years now. What made normal life want to return to Baghdad after this time? Where did he go in the meantime? We are all glad that the trends of violence, “insurgency,” and etcetera have reversed. As of Summer 2006, one finds headlines like “Normal Life Impossible in Iraq” (source). But now, a year later, according to MSNBC,
[We] actually saw Iraqis on the streets, families eating out at roadside cafes, students hanging out by the university campus entrance.
Thank the god(s). I did not know that there were universities in Iraq, much less ones with entrances.
Sadly, somewhere else in that area of the world (well, not really in that area of the world, but between the Nile and Oxus rivers, longitudinally speaking), lots (read: 500,000) of people have fled from Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu as a result of fighting between Abyssinians (…Ethiopians), African Union peacekeepers, and Islamist groups. They have left the capital in the past year. This news comes from The Guardian (source). Read the article for yourself and think about the numbers. It’s about one third of the entire population of Mogadishu.
Apparently, the military wing of the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC) is known as the “Shabaab.” This means “young men” in Arabic. The Somali have more youth taking action in politics than do Americans.
i have hope for the next president…
Watched the Democratic presidential candidate’s “debate” the other day. It was lively – although I could tell right away that certain candidates are not going to elected just based on how they look and their names. Good thing that the “quality” candidates did a decent job. But all of the participants managed to not answer every direct question posed by Wolf Blitzer. And the best question of all was “Is Senator Clinton making an unfair issue out of her gender in her presidential campaign?” to which none of the candidates responded “yes,” even though one could tell that is what they were thinking.
Some of them have good ideas, though. Kucinich is a bit of a hippy (especially with his “we need a healer in the White House” proclamation), but as we have never had a hippy for President, it would be new….if nothing else. Richardson was the Secretary of Energy in the late 90s, so he has no idea what is going on. Biden looks like an alien, and aliens do not get elected President, sadly, although an alien would definitely be an improvement on the current state of the office. What about Clinton, Obama, and Edwards? What about them.
Of note is that none of the candidates, and this probably holds true for the Republicans as well, speak a second language (I actually could not verify that for Obama, who lived in Indonesia for four years…you can check this article, which raises the question but does not answer it). Pick a European prime minister/president/chancellor/monarch, and he/she speaks more than two languages, and probably English. Have we ever had a President who can converse in a foreign language? Did you know that they teach many foreign languages at Yale?
I found, after some fun wikipedia-ing, this: Alan Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. This position is named after none other than…Felix Frankfurter…who graduated from Harvard Law School having achieved the highest marks since…Louis Brandeis. Both were early, and prominent American Zionists, with leading judicial positions. What does that say about Dershowitz, who is notably very anti-whatever Norman Finkelstein is for. Does that mean he is a Zionist….?
UN attention on just the right things…
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released a report today (its 4th). From BBC’s Richard Black (the full article can be found here, and thanks to Asymptotia for the link),
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has challenged governments to act on the findings of a major new report on climate change.
While I realize that “climate change” is important, and climatic events such as the various cyclones that are currently devastating South Asia can be… devastating, I think that there must be human events which require the Secretary-General’s attention. There must be.
update: there is an article over at CNN (link) from which I obtained these quotes:
the U.N. head said the world was “on the verge of a catastrophe if we do not act.”
Ban Ki-moon said he had “high expectations” that both countries would play a “constructive role” at the upcoming talks. “Both countries I think can and should lead each in its own way,” he said.
You would think he was talking about Israel/Palestine, or maybe some communist country with nukes….
In fact, he was referring to the IPCC’s report on “climate change,” and how urgent action is needed by many countries.
hometown baghdad
Forgot to mention that also on Thursday was a screening of some episodes from Fady Hadid’s documentary series ‘Hometown Baghdad’, followed by a discussion on the American invasion of Iraq by several Middle Eastern international students. They all had nice insights on Iraqi refugees to other Arab countries, for example, or Iranian student sentiment about the invasion. Except for one Turkish girl, who just read a statement which seemed to be written by the Turkish government – calling all Kurds terrorists and stating that Turkey just wants peace within its borders and will not negotiate with ‘terrorists.’ It kind of spoiled the tone of the event, actually.
But I highly recommend Hadid’s series. One can find them on YouTube, here. They are short episodes showing how normal Iraqi human beings have lived during the invasion. I found them quite powerful, well-made, and informative. They ring a little close to home, actually.
middle east week…
This week was “Middle East Week” on campus. Monday featured two great events – an annual lecture entitled “Palestine 101″ by Laurie Brand (who happens to be on David Horowitz’ list of one hundred most dangerous academics), and a talk on the American media and the Middle East conflicts by the Angry Arab, As’ad Abu Khalil (who runs the Angry Arab news blog). Then on Thursday evening was a talk by Norman Finkelstein, former professor of political science at DePaul. There were other events throughout the week, but I only made it to those three. Although I am most excited to talk about what Norman Finkelstein said, I will just go in chronological order. Thanks, by the way, to the USC Students for Justice in Palestine group for putting on these great events, at which there was free food (for the starving college students, of which there are very few at this campus).
Palestine 101 was a good informative talk on the historical background of the Israel-Palestine conflict, up until about 1948. Apparently Prof. Brand continues the lecture in ‘Palestine 201,’ which I hope she does sometime soon. She also made the comment that people who talk about the territorial conflict over the West Band and Gaza going back for thousands of years are not only incorrect, but are trying to introduce confusion into the discussion. That was what seemed to be the theme of the three talks which I attended – the Israel-Palestine conflict really is not so complicated, and that people who refuse to discuss the issue due to its complexity are really just trying to prevent the issue from being discussed.
As’ad Abu Khalil’s talk was great, too, although lamentably poorly attended. He has a great sense of humor, very “off the wall” as one of my professors, who notably did not attend the talk, put it. And he criticized those Middle East scholars who do not speak or read Arabic (complimenting Laurie Brand as one of the few with whom he can converse in Arabic). I discovered that he and Iskandar Mansour, the only Arabic instructor here, are good friends.
But Norman Finkelstein’s talk was the most stimulating. I forget what it was titled, but he talked about many things – the ‘conflict,’ the use of the Holocaust to exempt Israelis, and Jews, from moral responsibility, American foreign policy, Jews, international law. The most striking thing about his talk, though, was its logical and rational structure, based in facts. He quoted at length (from memory!) from several UN resolutions and international treaties in discussing the violation of human rights by Israel (such as the occupation of Palestinian territories, and intentional killing of civilians). He also emphasized the un-complexity of the conflict, that it’s not confusing. He talked for about three hours, and answered questions for about another hour after that.
I am surprised and rather ashamed of myself that I had not read any of his works, much less even wikipedia’ed him prior to the talk. I forgot to mention that he quoted Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations from memory, too. I had thought that no one had actually read that book. Now I have a nice reading list, headed by Finkelstein’s work The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitations of Jewish Suffering, which I just checked out from the library. My friends and I will hopefully get together later and discuss it, and last night.
I really could go on at length about him, and I am really not doing his great lecture any justice by only summarizing here. There were, however, some young Jewish students who got ‘riled up’ when asking him questions at the end (he has a habit of opening up the floor first to dissenters). One of the Hillel Rabbis here also questioned Finkelstein’s Jewish background (his parents were both concentration camp survivors) and wondered aloud how Finkelstein could go around being a) anti-Zionist, and b) not supporting Israel. It was a rather dirty questions, but I figured someone would ask it eventually – part of Finkelstein’s answer was that he did not ‘not’ support Israel or the concept of Israel – that was not his purpose – rather, that Israel’s violations of human rights and war codes had to be addressed.
More later, I guess. Saturday will feature the Palestinian Hip-Hop group DAM, whose song “Meen Erhabi” (Who’s a terrorist) is an apparently big hit. Check it out on YouTube.
