Reporter Alessandra Rizzo of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that on January 10, 2005, a law will take effect banning smoking in bars and restaurants in Italy. As expected, smokers and establishment owners are staging fierce protests.

Although smoking will be permissible in separate smoking areas which have a ventilation system and continuous floor-to-ceiling walls, Director General of Confcommercio Edi Sommariva reports that most establishment owners have complained that the costs of creating such a smoking area are too much to be worthwhile (roughly 300 Euro per square meter). As a result, an expected 90 percent of restaurants will prevent smoking. Confcommercio represents the interests of bar and restaurant owners in Italy. They plan to go to court if the law takes effect as anticipated.

Rizzo notes that restaurant owners are equally concerned about their relations with their customers. “We are being asked to become informers, but we don’t want to give up our relations with our customers,” Rizzo quotes Sommariva in her article Monday.

A national Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, ran an editorial on the front page, which protested that reporting violations is “the job of the state and of its public officials. A bartender and a restaurateur are not guards.”

Claudio Ferrari, a 27-year-old archaeologist, reflects the feelings of a significant part of the Italian population:

“The law is exaggerated, and it’s based on a terrorist approach I don’t agree with. I don’t share the idea that it’s up to the state to educate citizens. A little common sense is all it takes.”

“ ‘So what’s your name,’ she said indifferently, taking off her black panties and tossing them with her toe to the cobwebby corner of the motel room just off the Turnpike in Iselin. He had a cowed look, watery eyes that wouldn’t settle on hers forthrightly, and office worker hands. She bet he worked in a cubicle.”

This is how the current installment of “Sex and the Umma,” opens, and this is part of what has sparked such controversy. “Sex and the Umma,” is the Islamic sex column portion of Muslim WakeUp!, a site and online publication that “seeks to bring together Muslims and non-Muslims in America and around the globe in efforts that celebrate cultural and spiritual diversity, tolerance, and understanding.” It is also now under attack from individuals who call themselves the Islamic Challenge Brigades and who claim that the web site is a “vile attack on Islam.” The Islamic Challenge Brigades also allege that the magazine’s publishers are “murtad,” or apostates, a term that can imply impending physical violence.

Muslim WakeUp! Editor-in-Chief Ahmed Nassef is in contact with the FBI about the situation, and Lloyd Grove, who covered the story for the shamelessly and unrelentingly gossipy New York Daily News, quoted FBI Special Agent Jim Margolin as stating: “Even if this were merely a denial-of-service attack, it would be a federal crime.”

Mimi Hanaoka

“Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It’s not a secret, okay? And I’m not afraid to say it. That’s why they hate this movie. It’s about Jesus Christ.”

— William Donohue, President of the Catholic League, speaking recently on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country.

Donohue indulged in this spectacular piece of anti-Semitic demagoguery in the context of a discussion about Mel Gibson’s controversial film, The Passion of the Christ. Donohue also added: “Hollywood likes anal sex.”

Mimi Hanaoka

On Tuesday, Egypt and the United States signed a trade agreement to establish the creation of Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZs) within Egypt.  These zones will allow for Egyptian factories within the QIZs to export their products to the United States, duty-free. The agreement is seen as a reward for Egypt’s recent attempts to reestablish a positive relationship with Israel, and possibly shift the tide of anti-Israel popular opinion in Egypt — but as Orly Halpern reports in The Christian Science Monitor, a similar agreement in Jordan is having unexpected results.

Jordan’s QIZs increased their exports to the United States from two million dollars in 1994, to one billion dollars in 2004; the materials used in the QIZ factories come in part from Israel.  There isn’t any evidence that Jordanians have changed their feelings about their neighboring country, but the factories have functioned as a catalyst for increasing female independence. Jordan’s QIZ employs tens of thousands of workers, who are predominantly female. The jobs provide newfound economic independence for Jordanian women, who were previously solely dependent on males for sustenance, and removes them from the seclusion of their homes by providing dormitory housing for workers.

United States’ support of the Egyptian economy is nothing new, but in a country where school children understand the Holocaust as a positive historical event and draw swatstikas on their notebooks, it will take more than linking economic aid to support of Israel to alter popular opinion. However, by providing economic empowerment to Egyptian women, the trade agreement may have even more insidious results — women with economic power.

llouison

TO DO: Spend Time with your draft-age child or grandchild.

“Would you sacrifice your child to secure Fallujah?”

This brilliant question was posed by Michael Moore on numerous TV appearances before the election, but seems to be getting a lot of airplay on the rerun circuit. The most recent of which was a couple nights ago on Conan O’Brian. For a moment, hundreds must have been waiting for Conan to do his trademark hair flip and blurt out “HUUUH!” But instead he shook his head like Moore made all the sense in the world.

Apparently, Conan wouldn’t sacrifice his son.

It is interesting though, that despite being informed by Bill O’Reilly that the days of parents sacrificing their children are over in America, Moore stuck to his perverted logic. In fact, I can’t recall an instance since Vietnam (a Democrat war) where parents were required to offer up their children to either Rumplestiltskin or the United States government.

The United States Army is an all-volunteer Army, and there’s a reason for it. They don’t want whiny boys gumming up the works in the middle of a war zone. The battlefield is for men and now also for courageous women, and they weren’t sacrificed by their parents on an altar; they signed up. Many people, including Moore, argue that the Reserves and the National Guard didn’t sign up for this. What did they think they were signing up for, knitting classes? Marching lessons? You can’t be “sent without consent” when you join the military; consent is implied. When you say the oath and give your first salute and put pen to paper for a tour, you are saying, “Wherever I am needed by my country, I will go.”

Before the election and even now, the media and certain members of Congress are keeping up the gambit on the draft. Congressman Charles Wrangle, a New York Democrat, thought it would be a great idea to have a draft and produced a bill that would’ve had little Johnny trading in his short pants for fatigues right out of high school. But with the old Democrat stick-to-it-iveness and dedication to national defense, he voted against his own brainchild (H.R.163), which he wrote back in 2003.

Apparently, he was unwilling to sacrifice his son to secure Fallujah too.

Yet, amazingly while all these people seem unwilling to sacrifice their own children, many continue to demand more troops in Iraq. The thinking seems to be thus: I don’t want to send my son to Iraq, but Donald Rumsfeld should be fired for not putting more troops in Iraq. (Remember when Kerry promised two new divisions and 40,000 new special forces soldiers? I don’t recall seeing Vanessa trying on green berets.)

A more brilliant strategem cannot be conceived. Democrats, who secretly profess their anti-war beliefs, but who were quick to record their votes in favor of the war, have a great way out … blame it all on Rumsfeld! The war would’ve been over in a week if Rumsfeld had put enough boots on the ground! Our boys wouldn’t be getting killed if Rumsfeld would’ve armored the Humvees! We’re in this mess because of Rummy’s theory of a light and fast army!

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times had this to say recently: “The dreams of Rummy and the neocons were bound to collide. But it’s immoral to trap our troops in a guerrilla war without essential, lifesaving support and matériel just so a bunch of officials who have never been in a war can test their theories.”

However, while everyone is calling for Rumsfeld’s head, it might be nice to know who actually decides military budgets to pay for things like armored humvees and bullet-proof flack jackets. Any guesses, anyone? CONGRESS! The Secretary of Defense, along with the President of the United States each submits a budget to Congress, both of which usually go straight down the garbage-hole. Many of the politicians now crying about the war effort were precisely the ones voting down the military spending during the Clinton years. John Kerry nearly got away with voting to go to war without backing up his vote with the bucks. We should be examining the records of other “nay-sayers” in the same way. So the next time someone says “Whoa is us, it’s all Rummy’s fault,” tell them this isn’t Rummy’s war, Rummy wasn’t around to vote all the equipment spending down. Tell them this is Congress’ War.  

“The detention system in Afghanistan continues to operate outside the rule of law. The United States continues to hold Afghan detainees in legal limbo and in many cases incommunicado, in violation of U.S. obligations under the laws of armed conflict and applicable Afghan law.”

— Brad Adams, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, in an open letter written today to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The letter was also carbon copied to Porter Goss, Director of the CIA.  

Adams accuses the American government of neglecting to sufficiently investigate the allegations of criminal abuse and murder reported to have been perpetrated by American forces in Afghanistan, and states: “Six detainees are now known to have died in U.S. custody in Afghanistan—including four known cases of murder or manslaughter — and former detainees have made scores of other claims of torture and other mistreatment. Some of the cases took place over two years ago. Yet to our knowledge, the U.S. government has conducted only a handful of criminal investigations, and has charged only two people with any crime in these cases.”  

Mimi Hanaoka

The newest demographic that American Democrats should court for political support is the “heartland Arab,” or so it would seem if we are to believe an American teacher in Syria. Tyler Golson, who teaches English in Damascus, wrote the following in a recent edition of The Daily Star, the Lebanese news daily:

Having a truly even-handed and practical approach to peace in the Arab world means realizing that not everyone, and certainly not all of the elites in Arab society, sympathize with the anti-American movements taking place within their own ranks, and that these heartland Arabs could prove a valuable ally in future U.S.-Arab relations.

The heartland Arabs that Golson refers to are hardly what would pass for someone from the traditional “heartland” on this side of the Atlantic; they populate the upper and upper middle class, they hail from prestigious families and backgrounds, and they are highly educated. They are, however, Christian. Golson notes that it is President Bush’s religious zeal, captured in what he touts as his moral values, coupled with these Arabs’ distaste for centrist Democratic policy — specifically on issues of abortion, gay rights, capital punishment, and gun control — that makes Bush so appealing to this elite.

It is certainly important for the Democrats, if they are to wrestle power and influence away from Bush and the Republicans, to take into account this pro-Bush Arab minority in Syria. It is, however, important to remember that it is the minority Alawite Shias who have proved themselves incredibly influential in Syria. The Alawite Shias have historically controlled the pan-Arab Baath party, which has been in control of the Syrian government since 1963.

In calling attention to this pro-American segment of Syrian society, Tyler Golson cautions the Democrats to not fixate on rigid dichotomies, such as the divide between the “red” and the “blue,” Arab and non-Arab, and rightly so. I would add that Americans — indeed everyone — should extend this attention to nuance not only to the Arab and non-Arab, Muslim and non-Muslim, but also to the various other minorities and groups that exist in Syria, such as the complex subdivisions that exist within the broader distinctions between Sunni and Shia Muslims, in additional to the Druze Kurds, Armenians, and Assyrians who live in Syria. To fail to do so is simply to replace the “red” and the “blue,” with yet another simplistic, albeit different, understanding of the Middle East.    

Mimi Hanaoka

Sixteen-year-old Ateqeh Rajabi was accused of engaging in premarital sex, and was subsequently hanged in Neka, Iran, last August. Her story remains unknown to most and is passively handled by those who seem reluctant to choose between universal “rules” of human rights and the exceedingly permissive standards of cultural relativism.  

According to court sources, Ateqeh, who was denied access to a lawyer, told the religious judge who presided over her case that he should punish the perpetrators of moral corruption rather than the victims. She then removed her headscarf, and declared that she was the victim of an older man’s advances. Immediately after her testimony, Ateqeh became the tenth child “offender” to receive a death sentence since 1990 in Iran.  

Following her execution, the presiding judge publicly announced that he had endorsed and pushed for the death warrant because Ateqeh possessed a “sharp tongue and had undressed [removed her headscarf] in court.” Ateqeh’s co-defendant, an older male, was sentenced to 100 lashes and was released once his punishment was completed.  

While numerous human rights organizations including Amnesty International have decried the tragic fate of Ateqeh, the story has largely been cast aside, placed on the fringes of mainstream media.  

It is an outrage, a worldwide shame, that our selective interests in keeping our words and positions neutral can render the murder of a female child not quite newsworthy enough.  

Toyin