International – Page 4

Traveling While Female

This article has some pretty good tips. Especially this:

“First, strike a balance between trusting and foolish — most adventures happen when you say yes. But weigh out the options first. Does someone know where you are? Do you have cellphone reception? Do you know exactly where you’re going? Do you know the people you’re going with — even a first and last name is something.

“Second, be really comfortable with yourself. Some people can make friends easily anywhere they are, and that’s amazing. But even the friendliest of people need some down time, and when you’re all alone you can become lonely really fast. So make sure you can be okay with your own thoughts.

“And third, take a tampon everywhere. It’s not just good for your own period, it’s a bonding experience. If you’re in a crowded train, or a hostel room, or a bus ride, and someone doesn’t have one, you just made a new friend by giving yours away. They also work well to stop blood if you scrape your knee or get a nosebleed. Really, tampons are awesome.”

Also, sometimes airport security in places where tampons aren’t commonplace won’t know what your tampon is, and you can have a great uncomfortable moment where a dude pulls your tampon out of your bag, touches it, smells it, and then looks at you quizzically while you attempt to stammer out an explanation in a language you don’t really speak.

I travel a lot, and I am a lady, and I often travel alone. There are some major perks — waiters and waitresses assume you’re sad or lonely, so free wine is often involved in any dinner out. And if you are a big eater like me and you sit down alone and order half the menu and don’t bother anyone, the waitstaff also likes you and can give you good tips as to where to go out afterward.

It’s also a great way to meet people. Traveling with friends is lovely and fun, but traveling alone requires you to interact with others — and you might be pleasantly surprised at how wonderful other human beings can be. I spent my 22nd birthday in Belgrade, as part of a solo three-week trip through Turkey and the former Yugoslavia; I checked into a hostel, walked around the city, and when I came back everyone was gathered in the main room with a cake, ready to sing me Happy Birthday and take me out to the clubs — the hostel-owner saw my birthday on my passport and coordinated the whole thing. I met a girl a few days later who I traveled with for the next three days, and after she left I never saw her again; I met a boy who I talked to for five minutes on the walls around Dubrovnik and who I saw on and off, whenever he would come through New York, for years after. In Egypt, I met a group of girls who spent a whole day with me and showed me around their city, and a man who grabbed my hand and ran me across the impossible intersections on Tahrir Square; in Buenos Aires, I spent a lovely evening trapped in a restaurant with a Swiss journalist while the streets flooded outside; there are at least 10 Frenchmen in Paris who helped me navigate the subway, and as many waiters who helped me pronounce “chevre.” People have cut me slack and given me directions and taken me on rides on their motorbikes and refilled my wine glass and brought me free dessert.

People can be pretty cool, is my point, and while I’m sure men are also approached and talked to by strangers, solo women are less threatening and I suspect more likely to be invited out or chatted up or helped out by strangers — which can be a blessing and an annoyance.

The biggest downside to traveling while female is access: There are some places where women simply are not allowed, and it can be frustrating to have to go to the second-rate version of wherever the boys are (if there even is a second-rate version at all; sometimes you just don’t get to go). And of course there are people who will target you because you’re female and alone — I’ve had more than a few of those experiences, from the old naked man with a boner on a Greek beach to the pack of teenage boys in Cairo who followed me around for two hours before one of them handed me a note asking, “Do you have sex?” to the stoned hotel proprietor in Amsterdam who I almost stabbed in the neck with a pen after he followed me into my room and asked me to kiss him goodnight. Creeps, they are everywhere! But they are also in New York and probably in your home town too, so you know, you do a creep-scan anywhere and follow your gut and don’t be afraid to tell a man what’s what and don’t place being nice ahead of your own safety and realize that Bad Things actually happen fairly rarely and then hope for the best. The fear of creeps or uncomfortable situations keeps too many women from stepping outside of their comfort zones, so figure out how to stab someone in the neck with a pen and then get out there.

And always bring tampons. Always bring a scarf.

UNITAID in Cameroon

Last week, I was in Cameroon with Cheryl Contee, Baratunde Thurston and Mark Goldberg, as part of a press group following UNITAID Chairman Dr. Philippe Douste-Blazy as he visited hospitals and clinics that served patients via UNITAID-funded programs. It was an incredible trip, and I have a much more detailed post in the works, but Cheryl has a piece up at Jack & Jill Politics that’s worth a read — it’s a great summary of UNITAID’s work, and our time in Cameroon.

In Cameroon with UNITAID

I’ve been MIA from the blog for the past few days because I’m in Cameroon with a crack team of bloggers — Cheryl Contee, Baratunde Thurston and Mark Goldberg — to cover the work being done here to prevent and treat tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and mother-to-baby HIV transmission, funded by UNITAID. We’re on a tight schedule so I’ll post more detail when I’m back home (hurricane willing…), but for now check out this post by Mark about UNITAID’s mission:

The main way that UNITAID raises its funds is through a small levy on airline tickets in a few countries: France, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Mali, Niger and Cameroon. The “tax” ranges from 1 euro per ticket to as much as 40 euros per ticket (for a first class international ticket to France.) Over $2 billion has been raised through this ticket levy since 2006.

With those funds UNITAID does a few things. They are able to buy AIDS, TB, and Malaria medicines in bulk, which helps drive down the cost. They also help to create markets for medicines in which the market would otherwise not exist.

Pediatric HIV/AIDS medicines is a good example of how this works. In the western world the transmission of HIV from pregnant mother to child has virtually been eliminated. This means that in rich countries there is almost no demand for specialized pediatric HIV/AIDS treatment so no drug companies much bothered to develop affordable anti-retro viral medicines for children.

There’s more over at UN Dispatch.

Protesting =/= Rioting =/= Looting

This is a guest post by Hannah, a writer and activist in sunny London town.
No one seems willing to separate out the different strands involved: various motivations were in play, from the righteous to the selfish; various tactics were used, from the peaceful to the murderous. And the events themselves can be clearly separated into at least three different categories which must be considered separately.

It’s Ramadan. How ’bout those Muslim feminists?

In honor of Ramadan (which began this week), and the fact that I have but a little time left with the lovely folks of Feministe, I thought I would aim once again for the overlap in my life’s Venn Diagram.

To your right! The circle labelled “reads a lot of books.” To your left! The circle labelled “academic and professional obsession with matters Middle Eastern.” Up above! The circle labelled “thinks a lot about women’s issues.”

Boom! Right there in the middle, where you would find the book I blogged about on Tuesday, Teta, Mother and Me, you will also find this: Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women Are Transforming the Middle East, by Isobel Coleman, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Affairs (which I first reviewed when it came out in 2009).

The public discourse among non-Muslims regarding the Muslim community tends to be shaped by stereotypes, possibly most powerfully when the conversation turns to Muslim women — they are hounded, we tend to think, and quite possibly cowering. The very real problems with which Muslim women grapple appear rooted in the nature of the religion, and, we assume, are thus powerfully immune to real change.

By way of counterargument, Paradise Beneath Her Feet presents an engrossing, seemingly counter-intuitive take on the question of women’s advancement in the Muslim world, showing that Islamic feminists are successfully arguing – from within the texts and traditions of their faith – that gross gender inequality flies in the face not just of the spirit of Islam, but also its laws.

Opening with a global examination of the dilatory consequences of gender discrimination – higher infant mortality, lower incomes, even lower agricultural output – Coleman then takes an exhaustive look at the “gender jihad” under way across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Indonesia (an indication, in fact, of the inaccuracy of the title — this is not so much “how women are transforming the Middle East” as it is “how women are transforming the Muslim world”). Over the years, the shape of the effort has changed, as Muslim feminists learn from the mistakes of the 20th century — efforts to impose change from above (anti-veiling laws, for instance) are now understood to have “sow[ed] the seeds for decades worth of Islamic backlash,” ultimately setting women back as they struggle to move forward.

Today, Coleman argues, those engaged in the jihad for Muslim women’s rights are trying to work “with the culture, rather than against it,” frequently succeeding where few thought it possible, as they attempt to build “a legitimate Islamic alternative to the current repressive system.” Her findings reflect the countless interviews she’s conducted, with activists who’ve been fighting for decades alongside those born in the meantime, as well as years of comprehensive research. She doesn’t attempt to paint a rosy picture — the challenges are real, and they are immense — but Coleman does present a convincing argument that Muslim feminists have the potential to shape the future of Islam.

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A few links for anyone looking for more on Islam:

1. The BBC has great background information on Islam (and all kinds of things, really!) on their website, covering all the bases in brief articles — here’s the one about veiling (hijab).

2. Muslims respond to extremism – a brief compendium that I put together, with links to more information if you want to go deeper.

3. A Gallup poll finds that Muslim Americans “are by far the least likely among all religious groups to justify targeting civilians, whether done by the military or by ‘an individual person or a small group of persons’.”

4. A short list of Muslim American heroes that I compiled in response to the wave of Islamophobia that has swept the US in recent years.

5. To learn more about Ramadan, click on the links at the top of the post. They’ll bring you to the BBC & a great, brief video by The Guardian (check out the Indonesian drummers!).

I’ll take any good news you got.

In the Sometimes Good News Comes in Tiny Increments But It’s Still Good News Department (aka: The Department of SGNCITIBISGN):

1) Judge blocks Kan. law stripping Planned Parenthood of fed. funding, says law unlikely to last

An incredulous federal judge on Monday rejected the state’s claim that a new Kansas statute that denied Planned Parenthood federal funding did not target the group, ruling that the law unconstitutionally intended to punish Planned Parenthood for advocating for abortion rights and would likely be overturned.

(My favorite word here is mos def “incredulous.”)

2) Insurers must cover birth control with no copays

Health insurance plans must cover birth control as preventive care for women, with no copays, the Obama administration said Monday in a decision with far-reaching implications for health care as well as social mores.

The requirement is part of a broad expansion of coverage for women’s preventive care under President Barack Obama’s health care law. Also to be covered without copays are breast pumps for nursing mothers, an annual “well-woman” physical, screening for the virus that causes cervical cancer and for diabetes during pregnancy, counseling on domestic violence, and other services.

3) New Law [in State of New York] Ensures Domestic Batterers Can’t Legally Buy Guns

“We have seen too often the tragic consequences of domestic violence. This new law provides further safeguards to keep firearms away from those with violent records,” [Gov.] Cuomo said.

“New York state must stand strong against domestic violence by protecting victims and making sure those convicted of such crimes cannot inflict further damage.”

4) Married lesbian couple rescues 40 kids during Norway shooting rampage

“We were eating. Then shooting and then the awful screaming. We saw how the young people ran in panic into the lake,” says Dale to HS in an interview.

The couple immediately took action and pushed the boat into Lake Tyrifjorden.

Dalen and Hansen drove the boat to the island, picked up from the water victims in shock in, the young and wounded, and transported them to the opposite shore to the mainland. Between runs they saw that the bullets had hit the right side of the boat.

Since there were so many and not all fit at once aboard, they returned to the island four times.

They were able to rescue 40 young people from the clutches of the killer.

Kickass lesbian heroes. ‘Nuff said.

Teta, Mother and Me: Three Generations of Arab Women

I’ve had the Feministe audience at the back of my mind (even when working on material that hasn’t seemed an easy fit for a blog devoted to discussions of feminism) since starting my guest gig here last week — which is to say, even when I wrote my Israel/Palestine-I-was-on-Russian-TV! post, as well as yesterday’s “Norway and terrorism as a daily event.” My professional life has only rarely overlapped with my advocacy for women, and sometimes it’s hard to hit both sweet spots.

But last night, I suddenly remembered a lovely book I reviewed a few years back, one which fits really nicely into the overlap in the Venn Diagram of my life: Teta, Mother and Me: Three Generations of Arab Women, by Jean Said Makdisi.

This is a beautiful memoir, written with great love and deep respect for the matriarchs who came before, as well as examining the author’s own life and choices. Born in 1940, Makdisi’s life has been shaped by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the very beginning (“my birth occurred at a particularly unromantic time: the anxiety of the war and the events in Palestine and Egypt weighed heavily on my parents”), but in going back two generations (“Teta” means “grandma”), she is able to sketch the lived reality of the Middle East’s contemporary tumult — not just the facts of dying empire (the Ottoman, as well as the British), competing nationalisms, and social unrest, but the impact of each on individual lives: What are the limits of ideology, how does it intersect with social development, and what is the role of memory?

Combining oral history with strict textual research, Makdisi does work here that we rarely see, providing cold hard facts alongside their emotional valence, often touching on events that have been largely forgotten though they continue to echo down through history — the massive famine which struck the formerly Ottoman lands, for instance, immediately following the destruction of World War I. The struggle in Israel/Palestine plays a big role, as does the Lebanese civil war, but so does the daily experience of a life in exile — the outcome of the violence no less importance than the violence itself.

Perhaps most unusual, however, is Makdisi’s willingness to take on tropes that have assumed the mantel of conventional wisdom when discussing women’s lives: “traditional” vs. “modern,” and what the discussion of the two might mean for the future — a conversation made particularly pressing by the advent of the “Arab Spring,” the revolutions currently roiling much of the Arab world*.

Over the largest fork in the road ahead… like a gigantic neon sign on a highway… flashes the dichotomy: “traditional” and “modern.” So pervasive is the discussion of this set of alternatives, so ubiquitous is it in all debates over women’s issues, and particularly Arab women’s issues, that its truth seems inevitable and absolute.

It is my growing conviction, however, that this dichotomy is not only misleading and confusing, if not downright false, but that is is also, and above all, divisive. It is, I am convinced, a red herring, flashing at us, making us chase down a road leading nowhere, missing, as we frantically sprint in the wrong direction, more subtle and truer directions….

What does it mean to be “traditional”? I am not at all sure. The word “tradition” is used much more than it is explained. There has simply not been enough scholarship, enough clearly thought-out discussion over this mysterious quantity as it relates to the Arab world for us to be able to answer this question clearly.

Over-used words and habitual labels, it turns out, are not always genuinely reflective of the lives they’re meant to describe.

Teta, Mother and Me is a lovingly written account, one which Western readers will find at turns to be warmly familiar, and entirely new, and it deserves to be widely read, by women and men, MidEast geeks and non-.

And finally, in the spirit of this blog, my own opinions, and indeed, Makdisi’s own writing, I will only now mention the fact with which I had to lead my original review of this book: Jean Said Makdisi is the sister of better-known scholar Edward Said. For my money, she’s the better writer.

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*Here are a few starting points for background on women in the Arab Spring:

1. An Arab Spring for Women, Juan Cole and Shahin Cole, The Nation, April 26: “The ‘Arab Spring’ has received copious attention in the American media, but one of its crucial elements has been largely overlooked: the striking role of women in the protests sweeping the Arab world. Despite inadequate media coverage of their role, women have been and often remain at the forefront of those protests.”
2. Women and the Arab Spring, Mary Hope Schwoebel, United States Institute for Peace, May 5: “Women’s participation in the Arab Spring has been significant, but it remains to be seen, however, if their participation will result in increased opportunities for women in the public sphere when the dust settles. USIP’s Mary Hope Schwoebel discusses the opportunities and challenges for women in the Arab Spring.”
3. The women of the Arab spring: from protesters to parliamentarians?, Natana J. Delong-Bas, Common Ground News Service, June 14: “In stark contrast to the image of Arab women in charge of nothing but their homes, these women are picketing outside supermarkets, staging sit-ins with their children, organising demonstrations, networking with each other, teaching workshops on the tactics of nonviolence, tearing down security fences and marching through checkpoints to connect with people on the other side.”
4. Women in the Arab Spring: The other side of the story, Elizabeth Flock, Washington Post BlogPost, June 21: “Much has been written about the women who have protested, organized, blogged and conducted hunger strikes throughout the Arab Spring…. But the other piece of the story is the anguish countless women have had to endure, in the form of rape, detention, or simply a lack of appreciation of their role in the protests.”
5. Arab Spring takes a chill turn for women, Sheera Frenkel, The Australian, August 1: ” ‘Before we were asking for normal rights – now we are trying to preserve the rights we already have,’ says Lina Ben Mhenni, a popular blogger in Tunisia. Sitting at a cafe on one of Tunis’s leafy boulevards, she draws stares at her pierced nose and black nail polish.”

Norway and terrorism as a daily event.

In the West, we seem to have at least a double standard when it comes to violence and mayhem.

When violence and mayhem involves People Who Look Like Us (“us” in this case generally translating to: ethnically European/white, not-poor, citizens of a Western-style democracy) — we experience society-wide woe. When it involves People Who Don’t Look Like Us? Often, not so much.

We see this in the semi-annual “OMG heroin has reached the suburbs” stories, we see it in the stories of missing mothers or schoolyard shootings that take place somewhere outside our inner cities or meth-riddled mountains — and I think we saw it again in the wake of the terrorist attack in Norway.

I am not, in any way, suggesting a sliding scale of pain. Pain is pain, loss is loss — if your child, partner, friend, parent, loved one was killed, in Oslo, on her way home from work, or in some random Columbine-like horror, your grief is no less because your skin is pale or your bank account full.

But as someone who follows the news out of the Middle East and Southwest Asia, as someone who once-upon-a-time covered terrorism’s aftermath as a reporter, as someone who has seen up close and personal the damage that bombs can do, I couldn’t help but feel the vast difference between America’s response to the terrorism in Norway, and our response that with which the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan live on a nearly daily basis.

Part of this is, of course, because in Norway, the line between good and evil was clear, shining and bright. One terrorist, 77 innocents. We know, in a heartbeat, how to direct our horror and revulsion, and to whom to offer our prayers and support.

This is not the case in the Af-Pak region. First of all, the West isn’t even sure of its own role anymore, if it ever was. Are we good guys or bad guys? When children are killed as our soldiers aim for the Taliban — who are we? Should we even be there? Are we imperialists, or did we fail to go after the Taliban hard enough in the first place?

But beyond the complexities of the war and a porous border — Western soldiers are not the ones purposely blowing people up in the middle of busy cities. Surely the people doing that are the bad guys, right? But what if their fight is just? And wait — who gets to decide what “just” means? Throw in the endlessly complex cultural and political realities of the two societies, the fact that Westerners tend to expect Muslims to be violent (though Muslims might disagree) — we throw up our hands. Another 27 dead. Another 22. An 8 year old boy. Those people.

One need only scroll through the Twitter feed of Foreign Policy’s Af-Pak Channel to see that a good deal more than 77 Afghans and Pakistanis were killed in the month of July alone, not on a battlefield, but while trying to live their lives. Hell, nearly 100 were killed in the Pakistani city of Karachi in the first week of July.

Some of these were combatants. Some were violent misogynists. Some were trying to go to the market. Some were children. Some of the “innocents” probably deserved to die, and some of the fighters had probably been involved in trying to bring peace. The lines are neither clear, nor shining, nor bright.

But I do know this: Dead is dead. The tears of a Pakistani mother are no less excruciating than those of a Norwegian father. The pain in these faces is as human and as raw as the pain in these.

I don’t have any grand conclusion to draw or act of advocacy to recommend. I know that no human being can carry all the world’s pain without buckling under the weight, and if a geek like me can’t always keep all the warring parties straight in Af-Pak, I surely don’t expect anyone else to manage it.

I just think that as we mourn the losses in Oslo, as we send our prayers and our white light and our best wishes to our Norwegian sisters and brothers, it matters that we also remember those for whom the Norway attacks look horrifyingly familiar. We need to find a way to manage to bear witness to the humanity of those living and dying in Afghanistan and Pakistan, too. As the holy month of Ramadan begins, perhaps we owe the living and the dead at least that much.

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If you want to learn more about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the violence that has marked the history of both, here are two great books to get you started: Invisible History by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, and Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven (both of which I reviewed for the Dallas Morning News).

Palestine, the UN, Israel, the Oslo Accords – & me, on Russian TV.

UPDATE: I’ve added a link with some basic background on the conflict in the comments.

When I introduced myself earlier in the week, I said that I write a lot about Israel/Palestine, but that I also write about a lot of other stuff as well. Given the nature of this blog, I led with some of that other stuff. On Tuesday, though, I had a chance to appear on Russia Today, the Russian English-language news channel (I know – I didn’t know either) to discuss the latest goings on in Israel/Palestine — so here we go, leaping into my somewhat more regular gig.

To anyone wondering what my background in this is, I’ll say briefly: I lived in Tel Aviv for 14 years, and have studied, reported on and written about the topic for 25 years. I’ve been an advocate for a two-state solution since the 1980s, and my area of academic and professional expertise is the contemporary Middle East. More details can be found at the top of this post and you can get a good feeling for the approach I take, my personal attachment and personal heartbreak, in this post, and this one. Beyond that, there’s a lot of material to be found poking around here.

As it is my contention that one of the biggest problems in this conflict is the failure on the parts of so many people to genuinely listen to and respect the humanity of those on the other side, I’m going to ask that if you respond here — even if with great disagreement and passion — that you try to succeed where the diplomats have failed, and show genuine respect for each other.

So the other day, something of a stink was made about the fact that Israel is talking about “canceling” the Oslo Accords if the Palestinians insist on going to the UN in September to ask for recognition as a state.

Only it doesn’t really seem that Israel is necessarily considering such a move with any seriousness — they’re just kicking around a few reeaally stupid, self-defeatist, panicky ideas. You know, like they do.

Anyhoo, after appearing on Russia Today in May to discuss the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama’s two speeches, I was asked back yesterday to talk about the new mess! And so, of course, I said yes. (Last time, I was worried I looked like a moron; this time, I’m more worried about looking like a cadaver. [LIGHTING! MAKEUP!] Whatevs. I manged to slip in the word “Jedi,” in a totally appropriate context, so I’m good).

After the jump you can see me on the teevee (and, I’m certain, you’ll notice that my focus and attention were really rather impressive, given all the stuff going on around me). After the clip (transcript at the bottom of the post), you’ll find a little compendium of links to the articles I scoured in a state of high tizz to make sure I sounded smart in the segment. Very little of it came into play in my 4+ minutes — for instance, I didn’t get a chance to mention that just this past Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said, and I quote, “Our first, second and third choice is to return to negotiations [over going to the UN]” — but hey! It’s all good. Smarter is better.

Tag: International