Another perspective on Ahmadinejad in New York
Mark LeVine, author and professor at UC Irvine (not to be confused with either of the talk radio hosts with the same name), wrote an analysis article for al Jazeera about Ahmadinejad's visit to the Americas and the US press coverage of it.LeVine's article offers an opportunity for students to compare perspectives. In the process it might be a good idea to ask them to compare LeVine's analysis with some of the U.S. press coverage of Ahmadinejad's speech to the UN.
- A transcript of Hannity and Colmes from Fox News
- a Boston Globe article
- New York Times coverage
- Kansas City Star article
Ahmadinejad's message to the world
"It was quite a week for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president...
"Local papers, such as the Daily News and The New York Post, featured headlines announcing that "The Evil has Landed" and lambasting the "Mad Iran Prez" for his past denials of the Holocaust, refusal to unequivocally renounce a quest for nuclear weapons, and call to have Israel "wiped off the map"...
"In its critiques of Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia, the mainstream US press focused most of its attention on Ahmadinejad's tendentious claim that "there are no homosexuals in Iran" (belied by an evening stroll through Tehran's famous Daneshjoo Park), and his attempt to redefine his position on the Holocaust (it happened, but more research is needed to know its true extent)...
"Timothy Rutton of the LA Times, focused purely on the reaction in the Muslim world, arguing that, as a 'totalitarian demagogue', Ahmadinejad gained legitimacy because of the discourteous treatment by Columbia's president.
"Rutton wrote: '[Columbia President] Bollinger's denunciation was icing on the cake, because the constituency the Iranian leader cares about is scattered across an Islamic world that values hospitality and its courtesies as core social virtues.'
"'To that audience, Bollinger looked stunningly ill-mannered; Ahmadinejad dignified and restrained.'
"Underlying Rutton's argument is the still-widespread belief... that Muslims and the other formerly colonised peoples value 'honour', 'pride' and 'hospitality' far more than they do issues of substance...
"It's no wonder, then, that almost no one in the American media focused on the substantive claims of Ahmadinejad's speech at the UN...
"[Ahmadinejad] mentioned the continued disgraceful figures for infant mortality, schooling and related human development indicators in the developing world.
"Perhaps wanting to be courteous, Ahmadinejad blamed 'certain big powers' for the plight of a large share of humanity...
"But he didn't need to name names; most of the developing world, including the Muslim world, share his belief that their plight is linked to a world economic system whose goal, for more than half a millennium, has been to exploit the peoples and resources of the rest of the world for the benefit of the more advanced countries of the West.
"That is precisely why so many people in the developing world remain opposed to Western-sponsored globalisation, which for most critics, including in the Arab/Muslim world, is little more than imperialism dressed up in the rhetoric of 'free markets' and 'liberal democracy'.
"It is this much wider audience, from the favelas of Rio De Janeiro and the shanty towns of Lagos as much as the slums of Casablanca, Sadr City or Cairo, to whom Ahmadinejad was speaking...
"The West advises Africa to 'get over' colonialism, but the pain of colonial rule is still felt by those suffering under the policies imposed by the IMF and/or the World Bank, or from the continued subsidisation of American and European agribusiness while their countries are flooded with below-market wheat, soy or corn.
"It is to those people whom Ahmadinejad promised - in language that strikingly mirrors US President Bush's often religiously-hued speeches - that 'the era of darkness will end'...
"Americans may not like Ahmadinejad's... internal politics, ideological orientations, or foreign policies.
"But for most of the third world, which is tired of centuries of domination by the West, [it is] a breath of fresh air... free of the condescending 'civilising mission' that, from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt to the US invasion of Iraq, always seem to include war, occupation, and the appropriation of strategic natural resources under foreign control as part of their mandate..."
Labels: globalization, Iran, pedagogy
posted by Ken Wedding @ 10:34 AM
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