Baithak World Apr 14: US & Iran, Doha Forum, Bial Hussein, Fady Joudah, Kinsley, Real Islam, Woman Today, Firefox, Allah vs. God, RealNews
Iran and the United States have been engaged in secret "back channel" discussions for the past five years on Iran's nuclear programme and the broader relationship between the two sworn enemies, The Independent can reveal.
One of the participants, former senior US diplomat Thomas Pickering, explained that a group of former American diplomats and experts had been meeting with Iranian academics and policy advisers "in a lot of different places, although not in the US or Iran". "Some of the Iranians were connected to official institutions inside Iran," he said in a telephone interview from Washington. The group was organised by the UN Association of the USA, a pro-UN organisation. Its work was facilitated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a government-funded think-tank chaired by the former chief UN weapons inspector for Iraq, Rolf Ekeus. While the nuclear issue was "prominent", Mr Pickering said, "we discussed what's going on domestically in both countries and wide-ranging issues" affecting the US-Iran relationship. Although none of the group members was from the US or Iranian governments, he said that "each side kept their officials informed". The Bush administration "did not discourage us," he added. US and Iran holding 'secret' talks on nuclear programme
Lebanon and Iran's boycott of the Doha Forum is playing into Israel's hands.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni arrived on Sunday for a first visit in Qatar, where she is scheduled to deliver a keynote address on international dialogue and peace before the Doha Forum on Democracy, Development and Free Trade. Foreign Ministry sources said that senior officials from Iran and Lebanon have decided to boycott participation in the forum due to Livni's participation. Those officials include Lebanon's parliament speaker, Nabi Berri, former Lebanese foreign minister Fauzi Saluh and former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. While in Qatar, Livni hopes to convince Arab states to bolster their support for the Palestinian Authority to enable effective negotiations for a peace settlement. Livni also hopes to use the three-day visit to build a consensus among Arab nations against Iran's nuclear ambitions and to promote a "gradual" normalization of ties between Israel and Gulf states in order to facilitate the peace process. Iranian, Lebanese officials to skip Doha Forum over Livni's participation
BAGHDAD — An Iraqi judicial panel dismissed the last remaining criminal allegation against Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein on Sunday and ordered him released from custody, two years and one day after he was detained by the U.S. military. The committee of three judges and a prosecutor of the Federal Appeals Court granted amnesty to Hussein, 36, saying there should be no further action on allegations that he may have had improper contacts with insurgents who had killed an Italian citizen, Salvatore Santoro. Board Grants Amnesty to AP Photographer
There's that crack about poetry that, unless you work for Hallmark, you can't make a living at it. Which is why poets have day jobs, mostly teaching in colleges and universities. The classroom can certainly be a site of pain, but poet Fady Joudah's day job involves contact with suffering of a more elemental sort. He's an emergency-room physician at Houston's Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center. He's also done two stints as a volunteer for Doctors Without Borders, in refugee camps in Africa. As a Palestinian-American, the son of refugees himself, there's a certain irony in that, not lost on the author. Joudah, in his poetry, writes about those who are stateless and those who suffer, and tries desperately to do it without condescension or false simplification. He seems to be doing something right. He's the 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Started in 1919 and open to poets younger than 40 who haven't published a book, it's the oldest annual literary award in the United States, and in the rarefied world of poetry it's a big deal — previous winners include such iconic figures as John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich, John Hollander and W.S. Merwin. Healing verse - Palestinian-American doctor turns suffering into song, wins top U.S. prize - Fritz Lanham
Like the detectives and the prosecutors on law & Order, two very different groups of people are responsible for the words that fill the world's magazines and newspapers. There are the writers, who produce the prose, and the editors, who do their best to wreck it. Writers are sensitive souls--generally intelligent and hardworking but easily bruised. Treat them right, though, and you will be rewarded. Writers shape words into luminous sentences and the sentences into exquisitely crafted paragraphs. They weave the paragraphs together into a near perfect article, essay or review. Then their writing--their baby--is ripped untimely from their computers (well, maybe only a couple of weeks overdue) and turned over to editors. These are idiots, most of them, and brutes, with tin ears, the aesthetic sensitivity of insects, deeply held erroneous beliefs about your topic and a maddening conviction that any article, no matter how eloquent or profound or already cut to the bone, can be improved by losing an additional 100 words.
If you're lucky, your editor will have lost all interest in your article by the time you produce it, and on the way to a fancy expense-account lunch, he will pass it along unmolested to the copy editors (apprentice fiends, with intense views about semicolons). If you are not lucky, your editor will take a few minutes to ruin the piece with moronic changes and cloddish cuts before disappearing out the door.
I didn't always feel this way. (And even now, nothing here should be construed to apply to the editors of TIME, who edit with the care of surgeons, the sensitivity of angels and the wisdom of the better class of Supreme Court Justices.) I have spent most of my professional life as an editor. When editors get together, they complain about writers with the same passion that writers bring to complaining about editors.
Editors are selfless, editors believe. They labor in anonymity and take their satisfaction vicariously. The writer gets all the glory. He gets the big bucks. He gets invited to the parties, the openings, the symposia, while the editors toil at their desks turning the writer's random jottings and pretentious stylistic quirks into something resembling English prose. But that's O.K. Editors don't mind. They say, "Have a lovely time at that writers' conference, and we'll have the rewrite done when you get back." ("And your laundry too, you unappreciative bastard," they mumble under their breath.) Writers Vs. Editors: A Battle for the Ages - Michael Kinsley
[thanks YA]
Yet only a short distance from the shrine towered a very different Islamic institution, one that embodied a quite different face of Islam. The merkaz is a modern, gray, concrete structure seven stories tall that houses the world headquarters of an austere Islamic movement called Tablighism, to which Amin belongs. The Tablighis advocate a return to the basic fundamentals of the Koran, and greatly dislike the mystical Islam of Sufism, which they believe encourages such un-Koranic practices as idolatry, music, dancing and the veneration of dead saints. This was certainly the view of Amin, who, when I met him, had been busy trying to persuade passing pilgrims to turn away from their destination. "I invite these people who come to Nizamuddin to return to the true path of the Koran," he said. "Do not pray to a corpse, I tell them. Go to the mosque, not a grave. Superstition leads to jahannam—hell. True Islam leads to jannah—paradise."
***Here, it seemed to me, lay some sort of crux—a clash of civilizations, not between East and West but within Islam itself. Between the strictly regulated ways of the orthodox Tablighis and the customs of the heterodox Sufis lay not just two different understandings of Islam but two entirely different conceptions of how to live, how to die, and how to make the final and most important, and difficult, journey of all—to paradise.
***
From the very beginning of Sufism, music, dance, poetry and meditation have been seen as crucial spiritual strides on the path of love, an invaluable aid toward attaining unity with God—true paradise. Music, in particular, enables devotees to focus their whole being on the divine so intensely that the soul is both destroyed and resurrected. At Sufi shrines, devotees are lifted by the music into a state of spiritual ecstasy.
Yet these heterodox methods of worship have divided Sufis from many of their Muslim brethren. Throughout Islamic history, more puritanical Muslims have claimed that Sufi practices were infections from Christianity and Hinduism, quite alien to the original principles of Islam. As Najaf Haider, professor of medieval history at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, tells it, such conflicts were inevitable: "In orthodox Islam the object of creation is the worship of God; God is the master and the devotee is the slave. The Sufis argue that God should be worshipped not because he has commanded us to but because he's such a lovable being. The cornerstone of Sufi ideology is love, and all traditions are tolerated because anyone is capable of expressing love for God.
***The tablighis in Nizamuddin are not Wahhabi, but their beliefs are derived from similar theological traditions. They share the Wahhabis' suspicion of the Sufis, and their effect on the Nizamuddin shrine is the same, as they slowly attempt to undermine Islam's most tolerant and syncretic incarnation just when that face of Islam is most needed in healing the growing breach between Islam and other religions. After leaving Amin at the doors of his Tablighi headquarters, I headed on down into the alleys of Nizamuddin. Taking off my sandals at the entrance of the shrine, I spoke with Hussein, the old man who looks after the shoes of the pilgrims. I asked what he thought of the Tablighis. Hussein's response was passionate: "These people are so extreme and intolerant. Look around you. Everyone in Delhi knows about the power of Nizamuddin. Everyone knows that if your heart is pure and you ask him something, that he cannot refuse you. I have felt his power in my own life. I lost my hut in a slum clearance 10 years ago. I was hungry and I had nothing. But I prayed to the saint, and through him I found a place to stay and a way of supporting my family. I tell you: if anybody abuses Nizamuddin Auliya, I will be the first to defend him—with my knife if need be." The Real Islam - By William Dalrymple
[thanks YA]
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De Beauvoir and Sartre lived their lives according to the existentialist belief of man's capacity to transcend the limitations of his being. They met in 1929, when they were both studying for the aggregation in philosophy. At 21, she was the youngest person ever to pass, although she had to content herself with coming second to Sartre, a feeling that persisted, says Seymour-Jones, for the rest of her life. For five decades, they pursued an open partnership that allowed them to engage in 'contingent' relationships with others. It was their radical answer to the outworn convention of marriage: in achieving total transparency with each other, they hoped to experience the true freedom of essential love. 'To have such freedom, we had to suppress or overcome any possessiveness, any tendency to be jealous,' said Sartre. 'In other words, passion. To be free, you cannot be passionate.'De Beauvoir became a glorified procuress, exploiting her profession as a teacher to seduce impressionable female pupils and then passing them on to Sartre, who had a taste for virgins. One of them, Olga Kosakiewicz, was so unbalanced by the experience that she started to self-harm. In 1938, the 30-year-old de Beauvoir seduced her student Bianca Bienenfeld. A few months later, Sartre slept with the 16-year-old Bianca in a hotel room, telling her that the chambermaid would be surprised as he had already taken another girl's virginity the same day. A Dangerous Liaison by Carole Seymour-Jones - The odd couple's special relationship
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There were other examples. At school, the Teachers Room was filled with all-powerful women. Since my mother was a teacher, I was witness to their camaraderie. I saw women sharing jokes, laughing over school politics, and debating what the annual day program should showcase. How much more interesting than housewifely discussions of rasam and sambaar at the local temple!
Clearly, those who wanted to be anything at all, had to forsake the kitchen. They had to study. They had to go to college, and make a place for themselves in the world of career women. My mum dreamt this dream for us, and kept us out of the kitchen. While other girls my age were chopping vegetables and learning to tell tuar dal from lal moong, I grew up with my head buried in books. I drew and painted and played marbles and flew kites. I got my MBA. I travelled. I earned money. But somewhere along the way, I also learnt to cook. The Choices Women Make by Deepa Krishnan
1: Automatically complete .org and .net addresses
Yes, we know that if we type ‘google’ in the address bar and press Ctrl+Enter it directly goes to www.google.com . But what about .org and .net addresses? . In Firefox, Shift+Enter takes you to .net and Ctrl+Shift+Enter takes you to .org addresses automatically . So if you wanna go to Problogger , just type the word in firefox address bar and press Shift+Enter .
2: Alt + D
You can use this to navigate directly to the browser address bar of firefox. Very useful.
3: Ctrl+T and Ctrl+Shift+T
Ctrl+T helps you to open a new tab and Ctrl+Shift+T reopens the last closed tab.
This comes quite handy in case you accidently close a tab. Another way to do this would be go to History -> Recently closed tabs.
Not just any movie, but “Standard Operating Procedure,” the new investigatory documentary by Errol Morris, one of our most original filmmakers. It asks the audience not just to revisit the crimes in graphic detail but to confront in tight close-up those who both perpetrated and photographed them. Because Mr. Morris has a complex view of human nature, he arouses a certain sympathy for his subjects, much as he did at times for Robert McNamara, the former defense secretary, in his Vietnam film, “Fog of War.”
More sympathy, actually. Only a few bad apples at the bottom of the chain of command took the fall for Abu Ghraib. No one above the level of staff sergeant went to jail, and no one remotely in proximity to a secretary of defense has been held officially accountable. John Yoo, the author of the notorious 2003 Justice Department memo rationalizing torture, has happily returned to his tenured position as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. So when Mr. Morris brings you face to face with Lynndie England — now a worn, dead-eyed semblance of the exuberant, almost pixie-ish miscreant in the Abu Ghraib snapshots — you’re torn.
The simple explanation for why we shun the war is that it has gone so badly. But another answer was provided in the hearings by Senator George Voinovich of Ohio, one of the growing number of Republican lawmakers who no longer bothers to hide his exasperation. He put his finger on the collective sense of shame (not to be confused with collective guilt) that has attended America’s Iraq project. “The truth of the matter,” Mr. Voinovich said, is that “we haven’t sacrificed one darn bit in this war, not one. Never been asked to pay for a dime, except for the people that we lost.”This war has lasted so long that Americans, even the bad apples of Abu Ghraib interviewed by Mr. Morris, have had the time to pass through all five of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief over its implosion. Though dead-enders like Mr. McCain may have only gone from denial to anger to bargaining, most others have moved on to depression and acceptance. Unable to even look at the fiasco anymore, the nation is now just waiting for someone to administer the last rites. Why Americans Are Tuning out the Disaster in Iraq By Frank Rich,
I hate accent training. The American accent is so confusing. You mightthink the Americans and their language are straightforward, but each letter can be pronounced several different ways.
I'll give you just one example: T. With this letter Americans have four different sounds. T can be silent, so "internet" becomes "innernet" and "advantage" becomes "advannage." Another way is when T and N merge-- "written" becomes "writn" and "certain" is "certn." The third sound is when T falls in the middle. There, it sounds like a D--"daughter" is "daughder" and "water" is "wauder." The last category, if you still care, is when Americans say T like a T. This happens, obviously, when T is at the beginning of the word like "table" or "stumble." And this is just one consonant. The vowels are another story. Amardeep quoting from One Night @ The Call Center
If we take away the familiar food pilferages ("hummus," "falafel"), words recently adopted from Arabic are all troublesome: "hijab," "intifada," "fatwa" and "jihad." For an English speaker, the first suggest humiliation, the last three violence. I bring all this up, however, to get to the word whose connotation I would love to see changed -- "Allah."
Allah means God.
In Arabic, Muslims, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians all pray to Allah. In English, however, Christians and Jews pray to God, and Allah is the Muslim deity. No one would think of using the word "Allah" to talk about any other religion. The two words, "God" and "Allah," do not mean the same thing in English. They should.
In these troubled times, creating more differences, further parsing so to speak, is troubling, even dangerous. I suggest we either not use the word Allah or, better yet, use it in a non-Muslim context.
Otherwise, the terrorists win.
One nation under Allah?
'Allah' vs. 'God' - Rabih Alameddine
[thanks YA]
Late-Night Jokes Of The Week
Paul Jay presents RealNews
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posted by temporal at 4/15/2008
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