I subscribe to the White House Blog RSS feed via Google Reader, but most of the time I only skim through the posts. However, today there was a post that really caught my eye.
“A New Year, A New Beginning” is a post with a video message from President Obama marking Nowruz which is the Iranian celebration of the vernal equinox (which for those of you who like precision istoday at 11:44 UTC, 7:44EDT), which also serves as the Iranian New Year.
Apparently, it wasn’t only a Brazilian archbishop who thought that saving a raped nine year-old’s life by aborting two embryos that she was too small to carry to term was a reprehensible act:
A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after being raped.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Catholic church’s Congregation for Bishops, told the daily La Stampa on Saturday that the twins the girl had been carrying had a right to live.
"It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated," he said.
While this is an excellent opportunity to expose the stupidity of the pro-life position that the Church backs, it is yet a painfully stupid position, and is still a ridiculously powerful organization, that may be institutionally insane.
But the high clergy of the Catholic Church there are not. Apparently, they are upset over a recent abortion performed on a nine-year old girl who was allegedly raped by her stepfather. In fact, they were so upset that they excommunicated all involved except for the girl.
Now, I’m not sure what sort of lack of self-reflection is necessary to actually hold the position that the Archbishop of Olinda e Recife, but it is a bit beyond my ability to comprehend. This pregnancy was not only the result of a rape, carrying the two embryos to term would be life threatening to the girl who is, as stated above, nine years old, not to mention the additional trauma it would inflict.
Anyway, President Lula condemned the idiocy of the Archbishop, which suggests that indeed insanity is not endemic in Brazilian society and in fact may be limited to a few conservative members of the Catholic Church who happen to hold high positions.
One of President Obama’s campaign promises was to make a speech in “an Islamic capital” some time during his first 100 days in office. Given the course of events, I strongly suspect that the intended capital is Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, which is the largest majority Muslim nation.
Of course, Indonesia isn’t an Islamic state legally, so it may stretch the parameter of being in an Islamic capital. However, there are several signs that he has it under consideration.
Now the linked December NYT article dismisses it as “too easy”, being that he once lived there. However, there is simply no ideal place for such a speech. Cairo, the location suggested, is the seat of power of the unpopular dictator Hosni Mubarak, who was made less popular by the events in Gaza which, to be fair, occurred after the New York Times published the article.
There are similar image problems with other Arab capitals, where our affiliation is based on perhaps less than savory reasons. If for instance, he spoke in Riyadh, it may highlight our country’s dependence on Saudi oil. Baghdad is of course associated with our war in Iraq. Countries where our footprint isn’t seen as a corrupt bargain tend not to be our allies.
So, Jarkarta being “too easy” isn’t necessarily the worst defect. And given this exchange with a state department official on the second day of his Presidency and the fact that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Jakarta right now as part of her first major tour outside the U.S., I think a speech in Jakarta is very likely.
And while Jakarta is easy, that could be used as a benefit. Obama has a connection there and could use that as a platform to reach out further, if he uses is as an opening act rather than an attempt to fulfill a promise in letter but not in spirit.
Certainly an adventurous speech in Damascus or Tehran or East Jerusalem would be nice from an idealistic standpoint of peace in the region and an easing of tensions, but I think that Obama is the type to use stepping stones rather than great leaps in his diplomacy during the first 100 days.
We shall see.
It appears that Mohammed Khatami, a reformist and former President of Iran has thrown his name into the ring for Iran’s Presidential election on June 12. I am hoping that he succeeds because a Khatami Presidency may be an opening for a more robust dialogue between Washington and Tehran, as pointed out by Juan Cole.
Iran’s current President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has so far not reciprocated our President’s apparent openness to dialogue.
Jóhanna Siguðardóttir is likely to become Prime Minister of Iceland, heading up a left wing minority government. Iceland’s governing coalition collapsed on Monday. While Iceland isn’t usually paid much heed as it is a rather small country, this would be the first time that any country has had an openly gay prime minister.
Also, take into consideration that her last name, Siguðardóttir means “daughter of Siguðar”. As a side note, if you are weirded out by some of the strange letters in the Icelandic alphabet, take into account that Icelanders have had to good sense to differentiate between the sound of the th in the (Ð majiscule and ð miniscule) and the th in death (Þ majiscule þ miniscule).
Well, it’s good to see that there is some sanity at the high levels in Israel.
I posted an idea to the Obama Transition’s Citizen’s Briefing Book at Change.gov: Encourage the Teaching of Foreign Language in Elementary School.
This is an idea that I feel has gotten too little play in the national discourse. We are a country of immigrants and the biggest global power, but we find ourselves lacking in our ability to understand and reach out to those beyond our borders because we don’t teach enough foreign language in our schools and we tend to teach it high school and college, when it is far more difficult to pick up a new language and speak it well.
So, vote it up.
The latest diavlog at Bloggingheads.tv is one between David Frum and Amjad Atallah on what United States and International policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be going forward.
Frum approaches the issue largely with a focus on Hamas and desires to remove the group on the grounds that it is a terrorist organization. I found myself siding more with Amjad, who had a much more ecological approach.
I’m not sure if his proposals would gain any traction in the current environment, but I think that it’s important that more of those with an ecological approach shape the policy going into the future. This is a complicated situation where you can’t easily designate a group as worthy of destruction without considering the fact that the group doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
And I think that Amjad is absolutely right to point out that the goal should be a peaceful coexistence between the Israelis and Palestinians and that the fate of Hamas, while perhaps relevant, is a secondary issue. I think that this is a point that’s been lost in much of the discussion of this topic.
In light of the conflict in Gaza, I decided to make this wallpaper, derived from this photograph of an Israeli flair over Gaza city:
For those who are not familiar with Arabic, غزة is how “Gaza” is spelled, or غ-ز-ة if you isolate the letters. The flair is the dot on the غ, and a tail is added to allow it to double as a G for English spelling. So the text could be read as غزةaza or زةGaza, depending on how you look at it. Keep in mind that Arabic reads right-to-left, so the غ and the G are actually analogous, thought they technically have slightly different pronunciations.
The 1280×800px version is available via the Flickr link (click the image above).
I am a senior at Grinnell College working on a Biochemistry major and taking Chinese. The name of this blog is derived from the name I use in Chinese class, 孟柏民 (Mèng Bómín)
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