Tuesday, July 2, 2002

PROFILING: BBC World aired a report today on the so-called "racial profiling" of Arabs and Muslims in the US.  The point was that this was a terrible and counterproductive way of treating people who are in fact loyal Americans. 

Yet the disjunct between the report's narration and its actual content was striking.  One interviewee said cheerfully that he was Irish (i.e. Irish American) and that if suspicions were focused right now on the IRA the way they are on Al-Qaeda, he would thoroughly understand being "profiled" on account of his Irishness. 

The report concluded with an interview with a college student (first name Jennifer) who sounded American, was apparently of Arab and/or Muslim background, and was described as fluent in Arabic.  The BBC reporter asked if she would use her linguistic skills to spy for the FBI on Al-Qaeda if requested to do so.  She said that she had discussed this question with some friends who had rejected the idea vehemently, saying that it would be horrible for her to spy on her "own people."  She had apparently decided that she agreed.

The reporter's intended point was that US racial profiling had turned such people as Jennifer - who might otherwise be useful in the war on terrorism - against the idea of serving the cause.  The actual content of the report made it clear that Jennifer was not turned against service to her country by racial profiling; she had decided against it because she considered Al-Qaeda, not Americans, to be her "own people."

The BBC report, in short, managed to accomplish the exact opposite of its apparent goal: that is, it showed that for many Arab and Muslim Americans, the first loyalty is to other Arabs and/or Muslims, not to the US.  Which of course makes "racial profiling" seem more, not less, reasonable.

CRASH: At first the blame for the crash of those two planes over southern Germany was placed on the Russian pilot, who reportedly hadn't responded to air-traffic control orders to descend.   Then today Anton Maag, chief of air traffic control for the Zurich area, acknowledged in a telephone interview with BBC (I happened to be watching at the time) that his controllers had waited to warn the planes that they were on collision course until a minute, or even less, before they converged - even though the controllers had noticed the problem some time earlier. 

This news was staggering enough.  But what was perhaps even more staggering was Maag's terrible English!  The interviewer spoke clearly and slowly, but Maag still had to ask him to repeat a sentence.  He couldn't get out ten words without making multiple errors.  And this is a guy in charge of air traffic control, the international language of which is English!  Why do, say, bars in Amsterdam seem to have higher standards for English fluency than European air traffic control centers?  Though this problem may or may not have anything to do with this particular crash (but doesn't it make you wonder?), it can't help increasing your anxiety about flying.  
 

Monday, June 24, 2002

[item separately archived here]

GAY IRANIAN TO BE DEPORTED?  One of the big news events last week here in Norway was that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had decided to grant asylum to a couple of Iranians who in 1993 hijacked an Aeroflot flight and ordered it flown here. The reasoning: the Ministry feared that these criminals risked execution if sent back home to Iran. As an Aftenposten article pointed out, it somehow didn’t seem to matter to the Ministry that at the time of the hijacking, the men already had secured permission to live in Azerbaijan.

Now comes the news, buried at the bottom of page 6 of last Friday’s Dagbladet, that this same Ministry wants to throw a gay Iranian out of Norway.

The brief story, written by Reidar Mide Solberg and headlined "Gay Iranian Thrown Out of Norway" - and apparently deemed too unimportant to be featured on the newspaper's Internet site - reads, in its entirety, as follows:

"The reason given by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for denying the gay Iranian, 'Carlos' (24), residency in Norway is that he can go back to Iran without practicing his orientation.

"'I will be killed if I'm openly gay in Iran,' says the 24-year-old.

"‘Carlos’ sought asylum in Norway on January 20, 2001. Dagbladet met with the Iranian in the room at the asylum center where he has lived for the past 15 months. Because of his homosexual orientation he was imprisoned in his homeland, where he was tortured and harrassed. After fleeing a hospital, he managed to come to Norway by way of Dubai. But he will not be allowed to stay.

"After having first denied that ‘Carlos’ could be gay, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs accepted the 24-year-old’s orientation in its second rejection of his application for asylum. Nonetheless he will not be allowed to stay in Norway. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs believes that ‘Carlos’ can travel back and live in hiding:

"‘The limitation on his ability to live openly that the complainant must endure owing to the fact that he cannot manifest his homosexual orientation in his homeland in the same manner and in the same environments as in Norway, is not a circumstance that can form the basis for a claim of asylum,’ writes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in its decision.

"The case will now be heard by the foreign committee. If ‘Carlos’ doesn’t receive support here, he must go back to Iran."

This is the same Ministry of Foreign Affairs, note well, that routinely grants Norwegian residency rights to fundamentalist Muslims who despise Norway's democratic pluralism, who think that Norwegian women are whores and that homosexuals are deserving of death, and who, when interviewed by reporters, refuse to criticize fellow Muslims for committing so-called "honor killings."

That the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs can grant residency to Iranian hatemongers and hijackers, but will not extend its protections to a person from the same country whose life is in danger there on account of his sexual orientation, makes no sense.  Isn't this precisely the kind of person for whom the concept of asylum exists, and whom a Western democracy should feel morally obligated - and proud - to provide with a refuge, a haven, a home?  Why is it, one must ask, that asylum is so often granted to people from other countries who are philosophically indistinguishable from their supposed persecutors in those countries, while someone like "Carlos" is thrown back to the wolves?

 

Friday, May 24, 2002

[item separately archived here]

Tuesday, May 14, 2002

A thinking gay person may well feel that dark days lie ahead. The political right continues to be controlled largely by Protestant fundamentalists and Catholic traditionalists who are hostile to the cause of gay equality.  As for the political left, the case of Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands has shown that when gay rights are in conflict with other leftist causes, the other causes will win out every time.  So it is that when fundamentalist Moslem immigrants in the West – whose numbers are steadily rising – openly vent their hatred for gay people, the organized left, perceiving those Moslems as members of an oppressed minority with whom it is in solidarity, keeps silent; and when a gay person like Fortuyn dares to speak up against that hatred, the left brands him as a fascist, a racist, an extremist, a right-wing fanatic.

The message to gay people is clear: we are expendable. To the right, we are anathema; to the left, our freedom matters less than the need to maintain an illusion of "solidarity" with non-homosexuals who officially fall under the category of "powerless and oppressed" – even if the first thing those "powerless" people want to do when they gain power is to drop a wall on us.

Another point. For people like Pim Fortuyn to raise concerns about fundamentalist Moslems’ prejudices is at least to pay them the respect of taking their religious beliefs seriously.  Bien pensant leftists who refuse to confront the profound illiberalism of fundamentalist Moslems in order to preserve an illusion of solidarity are acting out of sheer condescension. They’re using those Moslems to reinforce their images of themselves as progressive, unprejudiced, virtuous; and this obliges them to view those Moslems as symbols rather than as full, complex human beings whose ideas, values, and beliefs are held seriously and should be taken seriously.  Damn seriously.

 

Monday, May 13, 2002

[item separately archived here]
 

Saturday, April 20, 2002

A pro-Israel rally was held today outside the Norwegian parliament in Oslo.  By the time we got there, however, that rally was over and the pro-Palestinian rally was underway.  While speakers droned on about the evils of America and Israel, the crowd held aloft scores of signs and flags. There wasn't a single Norwegian flag in sight, but there were plenty of Palestinian flags, and a Cuban flag with a silhouette of Che Guevara superimposed over it, and a version of the Israeli flag with a skull and crossbones superimposed over the Star of David.  Here it is - taken, alas, with a crummy engangskamera (what is it in English, "single-use camera"?) that I went across the street and bought just so I could record these sights. 

There were also at least two small children waving signs on which a swastika and a Star of David were depicted with an equal sign between them.  I didn't manage to get pictures of those signs, but I did take this picture of a little girl with a sign reading "Sharon Terrorist Number 1."

There were also plenty of copies of a mass-produced sign featuring pictures of Bush and Sharon above the words "World's Worst Terrorists."  Here's one that someone left on a windowsill of the Parliament after the rally.

Finally, there were several large banners, among them this one, reading "Israel Is Apartheid - Free Palestine."  That building in the background is the Norwegian Parliament, where Ingmar Tveitt was required to hang up his jacket a couple of weeks ago because the Star of David on his chest pocket was considered provocative.

[Sunday, April 21: Turns out Bjørn Stærk was there too, with a much better camera.]

[Monday, April 22: My friend Norman Spencer reminds me that an engangskamera is, of course, called a "disposable camera" in English.]
 

Tuesday, April 9, 2002

In a story today, the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet reports that Ingmar Tveitt, a friend of Norwegian Parliament member Jan Simonsen, was ordered yesterday by Parliament security guards to remove his jacket because a Star of David was displayed on the chest pocket.

Dagbladet reporter Cato Vogt-Kielland writes that "Tveitt went into the Parliament building dressed in a thin summer jacket with the Star of David on the chest pocket. But after he had talked in the Parliament restaurant with Parliament members from the Progress, Conservative, and Labor parties, he was sought out by two security guards who asked him to come with them 'because they had received reactions' to Tveitt’s flag symbol.

"'I asked who had reacted, and what they had reacted to, but got no answer,' said Tveitt. 'I didn’t think that showing solidarity with Israel would create reactions in Parliament – especially not in Parliament.'"

The two guards escorted him to the wardrobe. After he had hung up his jacket, they followed him back to his table.

As Tveitt points out, "People walk around [in Parliament] with Palestinian scarves and other pro-Palestinian symbols without any reaction."

This story comes only a few days after the news that several Nobel Peace Prize committee members here in Norway now regret giving the prize in 1994 to Shimon Peres - though none of them has publicly regretted giving it to Arafat.

Sunday, March 17, 2002

"I don't ever recall having those feelings about any group, especially the Jews," says Billy Graham in his latest apology for anti-Semitic comments made in the Nixon White House and now available on tape, "and I certainly do not have them now."

That’s when you know you’re getting old: when you can’t even remember that you’re an anti-Semite.

(If one didn’t know better, one might almost think Graham was making a witty Watergate reference – alluding, that is, to all the memory-challenged Nixon aides who, when called to testify before Congress, had so much trouble recalling things.)

Seriously, it may be that Graham is telling the truth, strictly speaking, when he says that he has never actually felt that way about Jews.   Look, after all, at the miracle he's accomplished over the course of his career. First, he managed to herd into his tent pretty much all of American Protestant evangelicalism – that broad, theologically fractious midriff of Protestant America that lies between the pure, uncompromising fundamentalists and the liberal mainline types. Second, he managed to retain that querulous constituency even as he welcomed Catholics into his tent – without trying to turn them into Protestants! – and even as he refused to evangelize Jews.