I saw this great little video on GritTV today. When I visited Kurdistan, I saw that the women were strong and independent. Banaz, the female half of the couple who hosted me there, was a business woman who handled most of the business end of the schools. She received an award as Business Woman of the Year in Suleimaniya during the year before I met her.
This film tells a little of the tragic past and something about their way into the future. In Iran as well, Architecture is a popular career for women.
Some background: In the late 80s, and especially, 1988, Saddam Hussein accelerated what was already an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kurds to Genocide. The Barzanis were specifically targeted because Mustafa Barzani was a significant leader in the Kurdish struggle for independence. He was, and is, a great hero to most Kurds in Iraq, and some in Iran. His son, Masoud Barzani, is now President of the Kurdistan Region Government of Iraq.
I don’t often listen to conservative news talk such as that aired on FOX News and some shows on CNN. However, outtakes I heard yesterday, were truly disturbing. Newscasters and pundits were making offensive comments about Nancy Pelosi. They called her an ‘old hag’, and ‘ugly’, made a series of rude remarks about botox and plastic surgery. Personally, I’m not real happy with Congress Woman Pelosi at the moment. However, the kind of personal remarks being aired, and the vicious attacks on her appearance were not just an insult to Nancy Pelosi, but an offense to all women.
I’m on a business trip in Boston. I don’t have a lot of time to do things, but I took off this afternoon. After first spending some time at the Christian Science Plaza, I went on a DUCK Tour. Since it is just a block from my hotel, I started with a stroll through the Christian Science plaza. The Christian Science Buildings, and the plaza are very beautiful. There are fountains at one end of the plaza and a large pool in the center, with water that is constantly in motion. As I approached, there is a tower in front of the fountains, on the far side a half moon shaped building, and to my my right, across the pool is the old church. Behind it it the Mary Baker Eddy Library, and the press where the Christian Science Monitor is published. On a nice day, the plaza would be a wonderful place to sit. Today was cold and windy, so I contented myself with walking around the Plaza, snapping numerous photos, and touring the old church, built in 1906 and the Mary Baker Eddy Library.
I don’t know enough about the Christian Science religion to say much, however, the inside of both the original chapel and a larger chapel built more recently in an extension are beautifully architected and exquisitely decorated. Read the rest of this entry »
I got these stories from the Mosaic show of 10/07. For those who don’t regularly listen to Mosaic News on Link TV, you can find a link to a page where I have the show embedded on the left hand sidebar of my website. You can also find the show’s homepage here. Mosaic provides glimpses of the news from various National and Satellite TV Stations in the Middle East. It is a half hour show that airs on LinkTV, Monday through Friday at 10:30 pm. All their shows are available on their website. They provide a very interesting insight into what people are thinking about in the Middle East.
So, two stories about Saudi women caught my eye yesterday. The first is a clip from New TV in Beirut Lebanon, listing some recent, bizarre fatwas pronounced by powerful clerics in Saudi Arabia. They sound like jokes from late night TV, but apparently, they are real and enforceable legal assertions. Read the rest of this entry »