Barack Obama has long thought about nuclear disarmament
A recent
New York Times piece highlights how President Barack Obama thought about nuclear disarmament even in his youth, you know when he was a college student, the same age as those ASU students interviewed for
The Daily Show. It's just nice to discover that a president has given long-term thought to these things, that he wrote about them in 1983 as a senior in college, that he even wrote a seminar paper on how to negotiate nuclear disarmament with Russia while a college student.
Fighting for Democracy
I have been intensely interested in the Iranian protests this past weekend. While I cannot know the truth about the election, such an uprising suggests that while President Ahmadinejad still has strong support, it cannot be as strong as the official numbers purported. What is amazing to me, having lived through the U.S.A.'s 2000 election, is how much votes matter to people. Here are millions of people rising up and demanding their votes be counted; when 5 Supreme Court justices decided an election here, all we did was grumble. Ahmadinejad has compared the protesters to angry soccer fans and to dirt on the street. Well, it would seem these protesters are taking their vote a little bit more seriously than a soccer match (not to belittle soccer), but they are now risking their lives to have their votes counted, and I doubt millions of people would do so, for several days, after a bad referee's call at a soccer game. I think the problem is that people in the U.S. treat our politics like they are nothing more than football games, like they don't really matter that much. We could all learn a lesson from Iranians this time around; sometimes politics do matter.
Of perhaps even greater interest to me, though, is the way that Iran shows itself to share some of the significant statistical divides one sees in the U.S., that the more urban and the better educated tend to support Mousavi in Iran, just as the more urban and better educated tend to support the Democrats here. I do not mean to ove simplify the issues at stake in Iran (or the ones in the U.S. too; there is crossover and division within each conglomeration, even here); they are a complex society, with an even more complex political system that is not directly parallel to ours. But I am fascinated and disturbed, given the recent dramatic increase in gun and ammunition sales in the U.S., that we are staring down the mouth of our own potential civil war, one between urban and rural cultures (more people now live in cities than in the country now, globally, which is a dramatic cultural shift in the history of human civilization) and that Iran may be facing such an internal struggle right now too.
One other note of concern I need to sound though, despite my simplistic comparison there, is that we need to think complexly. Roger Cohen of the
New York Times has done such a striking job with that. Disappointingly, most of the comments on Cohen's editorial, "
Iran's Day of Anguish," missed his complexity entirely. Many of the people seemed incapable of perceiving that members of the Iranian establishment, which Mousavi was a definite member of, are divided among themselves, that the brutality is one wing of an establishment against another. That what is going on is enormously complex, that Iranians are complex and reflect a range of opinions on the world, on life, on the best course for their own future. To some extent I also think a global culture war now exists between those capable of seeing shades of gray and those who see things in black and white (not to cast the world into too many camps of two; I think we all exist in several competing camps at the same time, but at certain nexus points in history some views seem to predominate and divide us; we may be approaching such a moment).
Another excellent piece was posted today on
The Public Sphere.
Mohammad Razi points to both the promise and the potentially horrific failures of revolution.
Finally, I need to express my shock at discovering that Twitter is not just a self-indulgent narcissistic personality disorder self-publicity invention. It has actually played a critical role in the Iranian protests this weekend. Apparently the revolution will not be televised, but it might be tweeted.
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Image from an Iranian American graphic designer, popularly circulating around the web right now.
Obama's Latina/o Outreach Week
President Barack Obama not only named the first Latina nominee to the Supreme Court this week. He also
just named Latino Catholic theologian,
Miguel Díaz, as
Ambassador to Vatican City. Díaz will be the first Latino to serve in that post since Ronald Reagan first started sending an ambassador there.
More Stupid Catholic Tricks for the Easter Season
So yes, after my last blog post, the Catholic church continued to produce confusing spectacles of itself, like the Pope weaving together a tricky explanation for how condemns worsen the spread of AIDS by protecting the sinful consciousness responsible. A Vatican official did come out in defense of the poor Brazilian mother who saved her daughter's life by taking her to get an abortion.
In the U.S., some conservative Catholics decided to make a political farce over Barack Obama and Notre Dame. The University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, once home to a great NCAA football legend, but always known as a Catholic university, has invited President Obama to speak at commencement and receive an honorary degree. As Notre Dame has done this to several presidents, including Ronald Reagan, surely there would be nothing odd about inviting Obama to Notre Dame and giving him an honorary degree?
Well apparently there is, if you think Notre Dame should act more like an arm of the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops than a university. Never mind that Notre Dame as a university should have some freedom from the stranglehold of Vatican teachings that do not mesh with academic discourse in non-Catholic institutions. Never mind that Notre Dame has a complex history and complex cast of alumnae, many of whom aren't even Catholic, and many of whom are pro-choice. Notre Dame alum and Reagan staffer, Richard Allen,
sought a compromise in today's
New York Times by saying that Obama should still serve as a commencement speaker while being denied an honorary degree.
I appreciate Allen's Reaganesque approach at a compromise emptied of all meaning or recognition. Allen even attempts to use the example of President Ronald Reagan, whom Notre Dame honored with a commencement address and honorary degree, supposedly in part because of his brave stance on Roe v. Wade. Why wasn't anyone up in arms about letting a remarried divorcee speak at Notre Dame's commencement? The Catholic Church has institutionally opposed divorce for a lot longer than it has opposed abortion (for your information: the institutional church has taught that divorce was a bad idea since the Gospel of Matthew was written some time in the late first century; Catholics have debated whether abortion was murder and at which point one could have an abortion until the late 19th century; St. Augustine did not belief a human soul could reside in an unformed body, and thus abortion was not murder if done in roughly the first trimester). So it would seem to me divorce should be a bigger issue. Just as I queried in my last post, what is so damn special about abortion, that the institutional church feels the need to fight against it over all other sins (like say repeated raping a girl between ages 6 and 9)? My only guess is that abortion prevents white Catholics from reproducing at the rate they would like, and that all birth control prevents women from getting pregnant thus allowing them to pursue other careers, like becoming an Episcopalian priest since the Catholics won't ordain them. My other guess is that Catholic bishops think they gain something from focusing on this one issue, but as far as I can tell, all they look like are automated tools for right-wing politics and pundits, many of whom aren't even Catholic. Try being independent for once and go protest capital punishment, something Catholicism has equally strong opposition to.
If Obama is receiving an honorary degree in Catholic ethics, then perhaps there would be some basis for denying him this degree or for denying him a speaking engagement at Notre Dame's commencement. But that's not the case. Notre Dame graduates many students whose ethical views diverge from that of the established church, and they support many speakers on campus with different views. That is how it should be. First of all, neither is Obama, nor are many of the other degree recipients or speakers, a Catholic, and no 21st century Catholic educational institution should have a theological litmus test for someone who is not Catholic (it would be better for them not to have them at all, but let's compromise for the moment). Second, the Catholic church would do well to remember that university institutions are spaces of free inquiry, and that such free inquiry is essential for the survival of religious minorities, as Catholics are in the U.S. Perhaps the bishops should think about one other thing. Their opposition to free inquiry may also explain why there has only ever been one Catholic president of the U.S.A., and he got there by promising he did not really listen to the Vatican.
Too bad we can't duct tape the Vatican's mouth shut
I can't take it any more. If the Vatican manages to enunciate one more stupid thing in the month of March, I may have to duct tape an effigy of the papal mouth. It's like they haven't read a book since 1852 (or earlier) and they don't speak to anyone who isn't an unmarried male patriarch (oh wait, that's probably true). I have previously commented on some profoundly stupid statements from the current Bishop of Rome, Joseph Ratzinger, and his team of crazy fries. There was the time he said the indigenous peoples of the Americas
secretly longed for imperialism (er, uh, Christianity I guess) because it saved their souls. There was the time the
Vatican opposed gender theory while wearing a dress (well in fairness, a lot of priests wear dresses, and I think that's cool, so long as they get gender theory). Then there was the
kerfuffle of un-excommunicating and re-excommunicating the Holocaust denying bishop. Of course this denial of gender theory was followed up by an aging Vatican scholar contending that
women and men sin differently based on the confessions he's heard (it, naturally, never occurred to him that maybe gender theory might help him rethink his methodology for assessing how people sin; as far as I can tell, he just assessed what women and men are more likely to perceive and confess). And then last week, the
Vatican supported a truly heinous act by the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife. A 9-year-old girl had been repeatedly raped from the age of 6 by her step-father. Pregnant with twins and her life in peril, her mother took her to have an abortion, which is only legal in Brazil in exactly her situation - cases of rape or where the mother's life is in in danger - and the girl's situation fit both cases. The archbishop then proceeded to excommunicate the mother and the doctors for doing what they did. Of course, what is the bigger and more unforgivable sin here? Is it, as the Vatican seems to think (since they didn't excommunicate the abusive step-father), saving a 9-year-old girl's life at the cost of unborn fetuses who probably would have died and taken the girl with them; or is the bigger sin (as I believe) raping a 6-year-old-girl for three years until she was 9 and could get pregnant? This is why I appreciated the responses of both
Mary Hunt and
Frances Kissling.
The Vatican, though, not satisfied with its recent tragic misdiagnosis of sin, thought that it should throw a statement out there just for laughs. Since the Vatican hates birth control and women working, (really girls, if you don't want 10 kids and to be a stay at home mom, become a nun so we can continually undervalue your labor and place in our church), a semi-official Vatican newspaper wanted to make sure everyone knew that
the washing machine was the most liberating invention of the 20th century for women. Yep, being able to throw the clothes in the laundromat and sip lattes while gossiping with girlfriends, that's liberation for you.
Seriously, it's like the Ratzinger administration is trying to prove that the hierarchy is idiotic, offensive, and irrelevant. I mean why aren't they out there pounding the pavement with the same enthusiasm about the dire state of the world economy? Or trying to fix poverty, end wars, fight hunger, provide universal healthcare access with the same attentive efforts? Well, I wish those fellows the best of luck at saving whatever they think they're saving.
Labels: catholicism, inanity, insanity, ratzinger, vatican
President Obama - Please save the Persepolis Fortification Archive
Where is UNESCO when you need them? In the complex landscape surrounding the trade and museum storage of antiquities, another bizarre case has added its name. While scholars strive every where to fight black market dealings that sell global antiquities making it that much more difficult to study the past, while countries fight to have valuable national treasures like the Elgin Marbles returned to their homelands, a judge in Washington D.C. decides to distribute priceless Persian antiquities to survivors of a suicide-bombing in Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall.
Don't get me wrong. I am sure that surviving a suicide bombing is horrible and traumatic, especially when one has sustained lifelong and debilitating injuries, so traumatic that no price tag can be placed on recuperation. Yet a U.S. court has decided a pricetag can be placed on their suffering, and they have chosen a path (after the attorney for the victims, David Strachman, suggested it) that comes at great cost to world heritage, to scholars, and cultural critics, none of whom can be held responsible for the original victims' suffering. Because Hamas claimed responsibility, and the survivors believe Hamas did this with financial support from Iran, the survivors have sued Iran for reparations. Oddly enough to begin with, they were awarded, in Washington D.C. (thousands of miles from Jerusalem, Iran, or Hamas as far as I can tell, but that's another issue), a sum of $412 million. Since there is no way of collecting such money, their lawyer convinced a judge that antiquities on loan to the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute is how they will collect the money.
The tablets of the Persepolis Fortification Archive are just bureaucratic information, but they still require years of study in order to understand the Persian empire prior to Alexander the Great. Legally, the Persepolis Fortification Archive belongs to Iran, but the collection has been on loan to the University of Chicago for study since the 1930s. Technically, the Archive belongs to the government of Iran, a government under a shah in the 1930s, not even the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nonetheless, it is Iran's heritage specifically, but more than that, these tablets are world heritage and do not belong to anyone. They cannot and should not be sold to the highest bidder. It sets a dangerous precedent in already murky waters when it comes to antiquities dealings.
More than that, the people who feel punished are European and North American scholars, as well as Iranian scholars no doubt, but you know who doesn't feel punished by such actions? The Islamic Republic of Iran. So, while the victims have indeed suffered, how can their suffering be alleviated by profiting off tremendous sacrifices to the study of world heritage? Imagine if we had found newly discovered manuscripts from the Mayflower voyage, manuscripts for which there were no other copies, and we sent them for study at a school in Austria. Imagine that while there, Austrian citizens who had been victims of Pinochet's regime in Chile sued the U.S. government for the CIA's role in Pinochet's ascendancy to power, and they won reparations in an Austrian court that our government refused to pay. Would we find it acceptable that these victims, who no doubt suffered and survived horribly painful disfiguring torture, were allowed to sell off individual pages of these manuscripts to the highest bidder? Imagine how much worse it is when we are talking about the documents of an ancient nation who no longer exists, and when understanding that nation's history is about world heritage not just the heritage of the nation only tangentially responsible.
So please President Obama, keep the Archive in the hands of the Oriental Institute because Iran has no real rights to them; the scholarly world community does. World cultural heritage cannot and must not be sold piecemeal to the highest bidder.
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The European Iranologists' Society has a
petition for President Obama requesting that he stop this crazy act, that Obama must not allow the U.S. to become involved in the sale of world cultural heritage. If you are an archaeologist, even remotely, please go to this
link and sign.
The
National Iranian American Council also is sending form letters to President Obama, which you can sign.
Information for this post was taken from the recent Associated Press piece published in the
International Herald Tribune.
Pope Rehabilitates Holocaust Denier
Okay, so again Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, has managed to botch the historically significant works of Pope John Paul II toward interfaith dialogue. My list of complaints about Ratzinger's narrow view of the world certainly doesn't begin here (I have a previous post complaining about his views on the Christianizing of indigenous peoples). What most of this list have in common was correctly identified today by another blog with Religiondispatches.com. On that
blog Professor Louis Ruprecht correctly, in my estimation, notes that the former member of the Nazi Youth has not in fact been roaming the world seeking to alienate Jewish, Muslim, and Amerindian populations. The papal axe to grind is about modernity.
Years ago, I heard Israeli scholar Emmanuel Sivan speak about fundamentalisms. He said the one thing they all had in common was that they were a response to modernity. At their core, they were a response to the possibility that people could live in their midst as atheists. Fundamentalisms express a fundamental insecurity in the heart and mind of a religious believer. They cannot handle the rational challenge to the very foundation of their faith and identity. Ratzinger/Benedict would do well to recognize that his anti-modernity and religious fundamentalisms share a common thread. That common thread suggests it is no mere coincidence that a rehabilitated (or no longer ex-communicated, just in case you're unfamiliar with oddities of Vatican law here) anti-modern bishop would also be a Holocaust-denier. Anti-modernity (as opposed to post-modernity and the others who exist along a modern spectrum) has as its core a fundamental rejection of others in their midst, others who threaten carefully constructed, dare I say "modern" identities. Perhaps the Pope would be well-advised to visit his own anti-modernity for the ways in which it is constrained by peculiarly modern limitations, like all strains of fundamentalist anti-modernity.
