Month: June 2009
Would you like a cup of urine with your anal rape? #torture
The hits just keep coming. h/t noufel The next time I hear some idiot refer to Jack Bauer in defense of torture, I want to ask him what he thinks of Jack Bauer rogering terrorists with a broomstick. You’ve never seen that in the hours of not-so-subtle pro-torture TV drama we’ve seen since 2001, have you? Never saw Andy Sipowicz cornhole a skell on NYPD blue? Or Michael Chiklis on The Shield making a suspect drink his pee? Me neither. Something tells me that might have hurt their ratings.
Muslim Women are People too
Nura Sediqe has a great article up on Muslim women. Read it. Ironically, the same religion that is demonized for oppressing women is the one that has historically produced great examples of women who have been empowered by Islam to serve as role models for communities globally, from Betty Shabazz to contemporary leaders such as Dr. Ingrid Mattson, president of ISNA, the largest Muslim organization in North America. Or my own personal role model, my mother, Salmenna Sediqe, who was recently elected President of the Islamic community in Toledo, Ohio. She is a survivor of war who managed not only…
Tikkun Love
Tikkun blog likes me. It really, really likes me. More importantly, it puts me in some great company, I’m not sure I’m worthy of, but as long as those guys don’t complain, I won’t either.
The finger in #IranElection
The photo is doctored, but it’s too good not to share. Original photo.
Persepolis 2.0
Envisioning the Iran Election through the work of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.
It was easier to hate Iran before we say their faces in #IranElection
[Apologies for the hashtags in the titles recently. However, my RSS feed goes straight to Twitter, so I need to keep track there.] David Bromwich writes: If you want to kill with a clean conscience, the faces of the enemy had better be blank. Start to see them as human beings and it becomes harder to blockade and bomb them, to mine, and pollute, and “destabilize.” President Clinton had no imagining of the disease he would bring to the innocent in Sudan by the “surgical” missile attack on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in 1998. George W. Bush had a happy…
Missing the Point
Indeed. I don’t know anyone who wanted to close the detention facility at Gitmo because of where it was — but rather because of what it was. It’s not merely a symbol, but is the embodiment of the implementation of a bad policy. If you close Gitmo but carry on the same bad policy elsewhere, you’re playing a shell game, Mr. President. [From Missing the Point]
Michael Jackson is Dead, so is Neda [update]
Yesterday, June 25, 2009. Michael Jackson died; God rest his soul. I was not going to blog about his passing. He is an artist, a celebrity, why is his death more important than any other? He was an artistic genius, of that there can be no doubt. What he did for music and dance in pop is unparalleled. However, he was still a human being. He had an impact on my childhood, but I did not know him. In many respects, because of his fame, he was unreal. He was no closer to me than Rumi, whose poetry speaks to…
Television Documentaries and the #IranElection
Recently PBS ran a Frontline documentary from 2002 on Iran. While I applaud the effort to give some necessary background to the situation in Iran, there were some problems. Jordan Robinson wrote a letter offering some critique to the piece. I quote it below with permission: Subject: Rebroadcast of 2002 “A Clash That’s Centuries Old” a disservice to US public Dear Frontline Senior Editorial Team, I just finished watching your 2002 broadcast of “A Clash That’s Centuries Old,” part of your “Terror and Tehran” series. While I appreciate your effort to inform the American public life about life in Iran…