http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/arti ... article.do
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( 3 / 46 )Anyone who listened to Morning Edition on NPR this morning heard them read a letter received from a listener who said they should not report on campaign fundraising like they have been doing. Listen Here
I agree with the letter writer, so I submitted the following comment on the NPR website:
I strongly agree with the listener who wrote in to complain about your coverage of campaign fundraising. Your response, that fundraising is seen as indication of the candidates' viability, just proves the point. We do not want to know who is considered "viable" and who is not. We want to know what the candidates stand for.
If you must cover campaign fundraising, then make a real story out of it by telling us what sectors of business are making the contributions, or if the money is coming in small donations from real people. That will tell us who these candidates will answer to once elected: big business or the American people.
If you agree, I hope you will contact them too.
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( 3 / 41 )Navid and I attended the MoveOn Virtual Town Hall Meeting on Iraq on Tuesday. All of the Democratic candidates presented their views and plans on getting us out of Iraq. They all seemed to be saying the right things--I guess the Democrats at least have finally understood that we need to start pulling back our troops and ramping up the diplomacy. Interestingly, John McCain was also invited (invitations were based on MoveOn members' votes on who they wanted to hear from), but did not accept.
After the Town Hall, we had a chance to vote on who would do the best job dealing with the Iraq mess. Here are the results:
Sen. Barack Obama 28% www.BarackObama.com
Sen. John Edwards 25% www.JohnEdwards.com
Rep. Dennis Kucinich 17% www.Kucinich.us
Gov. Bill Richardson 12% www.RichardsonForPresident.com
Sen. Hillary Clinton 11% www.HillaryClinton.com
Sen. Joe Biden 6% www.JoeBiden.com
Sen. Chris Dodd 1% www.ChrisDodd.com
I voted for Kucinich, since I still think he has the best vision toward bringing the United States into the world community on a peaceful basis, and I am pleased to see that he took third place, beating out four other candidates.
As for Obama and Edwards, so far I like Edwards better, but maybe Obama has the political outsider persona to win.
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( 3.3 / 29 )I haven't seen the movie 300 , but I've heard that it portrays the Persian empire in a very unflattering light. What a coincidence that a movie that shows Iranians as barbarians would be coming out in this time of tension with Iran!
But in the meanwhile I have been reading my Bible and discovered some very interesting history about the Persian king Cyrus. The Old Testament has very little positive to say about any other nation besides the Israelites: foreign nations are either oppressing the Israelites or being held up as examples of backwards people following false religions. But in the book of Ezra, we hear how the Persian king Cyrus allows the Israelites to return to their homeland and practice their religion, and he even provides a lot of help for them to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem.
Ezra 1, 2-4: "Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia: 'All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord, the God of heaven, has given to me, and he has also charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever, therefore, among you belongs to any part of his people, let him go up, and may his God be with him! Let everyone who has survived, in whatever place he may have dwelt, be asisted by the people of that place with silver, gold, goods, and cattle, together with free will offerings for the house of God in Jerusalem.'" Cyrus returned all of the precious articles which had previously been taken from the temple, and his decree continued in effect during the reign of King Darius, who protected the Israelites' right to finish rebuilding the temple ( Ezra 6 , 1-15).
The Bible is not the only ancient text that demonstrates the tolerance of the Persian rulers. King Cyrus also issued what is considered to be the first declaration of human rights. More info.
I hope this provides some balance for all the negative publicity about Iran and the Persian empire right now.
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( 3.1 / 15 )Another interesting article:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ali ... ahmed.html
Also:
http://www.sisteraishah.com/americanmus ... rabia.html
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( 3.3 / 12 )My friend Carl has graciously allowed me to post his email correspondence with Starbucks regarding their segregated locations in Saudi Arabia.
Following the generic response he got from them before , he wrote the following:
"Nancy,
I have been waiting to hear from you in regards to my earlier comments regarding the discriminatory practices of your Saudi Arabian franchises. To be clear, I'm looking for something more than the vague form letters your customer service representatives are directed to send out, and I was hoping you would be able to actually address the issues I have brought up in my earlier correspondence. The rights of Saudi women are not merely unequal to world standards, or even low by US standards alone, they are in retrograde, and the Starbucks needs to do more than turn a blind eye while lining its pockets. I look forward to your response.
Thank you,
Carl Lorenzen"
Nancy's response:
From: nancy@alshaya.com
Sent: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 12:05 AM
Subject: Re: International Store Comments
Hi Carl,
Thanks so much for getting in touch with us and for the concern you raise.
Starbucks believes in embracing diversity and being part of the community we operate in, respecting each country and community's tradition. And I would have to not agree with you that we are treating our Saudi customers differently. We are trying to ensure that all our customers receive that same quality and unique service they would receive if they travel anywhere and visit a Starbucks outlet.
Out of our respect for the local traditions, we do tend to allocate sections for families where most of female customers find it more comfortable to mingle to ensure we please all our customer base. Over the years we have actually been receiving many customer comments thanking us for providing that Starbucks experience and being part of the tradition and culture and their loyalty to us is growing day by day, and evident by the continued success we witness day by day.
Thanks so much for your feedback and we hope to have answered your query.
Best Regards,
Nancy.
Carl's Response [with expanded citations]:
"Nancy,
Why would Starbucks embrace a tradition of gender segregation? Would you also support racial segregation in another country, or does the Starbucks unique quality brand of segregation only under value the equality of women? Of course you're treating Saudi customers differently, you've got separate seating areas with different levels of accommodation. It is my understanding that single individuals cannot sit in the 'family' section, so how is it that women can mingle there, unless you mean 'women only' which would then not be a 'family' section. Here is part of an article referencing reports in the Washington Post, in which I've highlighted a few key points. Do you believe the reporter from the Washington Post is being misleading, or do you think she happened to go into the only Starbucks in Riyadh that treats women unfairly?
'One section is for women and families, and the other is for males. The male section is typically well kept, comfortable, and up to Western standards, while the family sections are often run-down and neglected. In Starbucks, there are not even seats in the family sections (Colbert King, “Saudi Arabia's Apartheid" 12/22/2001). In a 2002 issue of The Washington Post, Margaret Lindsey writes, "The Starbucks I tried to patronize in Riyadh last spring had a family section that was one-third the size of the men's section and had no chairs or tables. When I asked about this, the employee behind the counter told my husband to tell me -- I was apparently invisible to him -- that I was expected to drink my coffee while sitting in our car." (Margaret Lindsey, "'Apartheid' in Saudi Arabia" 1/27/2002)'
In regards to the positive comments you've received over the years, exactly who is doing the commenting? Are we to believe there are comment cards in the women's section, even through there might not be chairs? Assuming the women aren't afraid to voice a negative opinion, are you sure anything negative isn't being filtered out by the Mutawwa? I'm not saying you're not being financially successful in Saudi Arabia, it's clear that American's capitalism and greed exports just fine, I'm just questioning Starbucks lack of morality in its international operations. I want to better understand your corporate policies in Saudi Arabia, how they're being applied, not simply be told of 'respect for local traditions'. That's a very vague statement. Can you provide any literature or other documents to refute the claims of the Washington Post and others? Maybe you don't know what's happening in your Saudi franchises, or maybe you don't care to know as long as the money keeps coming in, but you can be sure I'll never set foot inside one of your US locations if you continue to operate this way, and I'll be sure no one else I know does either.
Regards,
Carl"
We shall see if Nancy can rise to the challenge of defending Starbucks' discriminatory practices. In the meanwhile, I strongly encourage everyone to read the Colbert King editorial cited above. When I first thought of writing something about the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia, I wanted to call it apartheid and suggest that we start a divestment campaign similar to the one brought to bear against South Africa, but I didn't realize others like Mr. King were already thinking the same thing. It is our moral obligation to withdraw our support for American companies who cooperate with the Saudi Arabian government to suppress women.
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( 4.8 / 4 )Did you know that ExxonMobil still hasn't paid what they owe the victims of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill? It's true. Below is one effort to shame them:
http://www.oilwatchdog.org/articles/?storyId=4095
And you can take action with this link from SaveOurEnvironment.org:
Click here now to send a fax to ExxonMobil's CEO and Board Chair and tell them to stop appealing the guilty verdicts and pay the damages they owe.
Here are some pictures from the spill:
http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/Gallery/gallery-spill.cfm
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( 2.9 / 13 )In case anyone else is as fascinated as I currently am with learning more about Saudi Arabia, here are a few more blogs I found today:
http://alienmemoirs.typepad.com/my_weblog/
http://maa7ib-rasmiyaat.blogspot.com/ (This one is from Kuwait, not Saudi Arabia.)
http://classic-diva.blogspot.com/
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( 3.2 / 16 )Here is another article on the situation of women in Saudi Arabia:
http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/1730.cfm
I hope you find these interesting, but be forewarned they will probably make you very sad for the plight of women in Saudi Arabia.
And here is a blog by a Saudi man. There is a posting on the treatment of women second on this page: http://muttawa.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_ ... chive.html
Some of the other postings look interesting too but I haven't had a chance to read too much. There is another one about women's rights from May 30, 2006. Unfortunately he stopped blogging in June 2006.
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( 3.2 / 23 )Hey Everyone,
It appears that Senator Webb's amendment requiring the President to get the permission of Congress before attacking Iran was not included in the Iraq war funding bill passed by the Senate today. The amendment was introduced but I was not able to find a vote taken on it. But Webb also introduced a stand-alone bill for the same purpose, so I'm sure that will come up again later. In the meantime check out this adorable cartoon:
http://www.iranian.com/Satire/Cartoon/2 ... y/kit.html
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