Today is National Student Day in Iran, with protests taking place around that country. The police are cracking down. The Student Movement Coordination Committe for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI) claims that the tear-gas and electric batons the police use to silence the protesters are purchased from the EU. The most comprehensive coverage of the protests is on the SMCCDI news page
In case you missed it when it first appeared (as I did), I highly recommend this November 2001 New Yorker article by Bernard Lewis: The Revolt of Islam, on the long history of Islam's conflict with the West. If you read only one article this week, make sure it's this one. (thanks to Haggai for the tip)
The unionized dancers at San Francisco's Lusty Lady strip club are renegotiating their contract and picketing for higher wages. My sources tell me that before the dancers formed the union in 1995, the club was "quite a fun place". But since the Bolshies moved in, the Lusty Lady is "about as erotic as a Siberian post office"
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 07, 2002 09:53 AMThis is another great and pretty famous Lewis article from 1990, "The Roots of Muslim Rage":
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/90sep/rage.htm
It's a lot shorter than the New Yorker article, in which he makes many of the same points. I think this 1990 article introduced the term "clash of civilizations." My favorite part is this bit about racism:
"Is racism, then, the main grievance? Certainly the word figures prominently in publicity addressed to Western, Eastern European, and some Third World audiences. It figures less prominently in what is written and published for home consumption, and has become a generalized and meaningless term of abuse -- rather like "fascism," which is nowadays imputed to opponents even by spokesmen for one-party, nationalist dictatorships of various complexions and shirt colors."
Posted by: Haggai Elitzur on December 7, 2002 03:34 PM