Obama meets Dalai Lama at White House, China sees U.S. interference
China accused the United States on Sunday of “grossly” interfering in its internal affairs and seriously damaging relations after President Barack Obama met exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at the White House. Obama met the Nobel Prize laureate for 45 minutes, praising him for embracing non-violence while reiterating that the United States did not support independence for Tibet.
China, which accuses the Dalai Lama of being a separatist who supports the use of violence to set up an independent Tibet, reacted swiftly, saying Obama’s meeting had had a “baneful” impact, and summoning a senior U.S. diplomat in Beijing.
“This action is a gross interference in China’s internal affairs, hurts the feelings of the Chinese people and damages Sino-U.S. relations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement released in the early hours of Sunday. “The Dalai Lama has for a long time used the banner of religion to engage in anti-China splittist activities,” he added.
Obama stressed the “importance he attaches to building a U.S.-China cooperative partnership,” the White House said. “The president reiterated his strong support for the preservation of the unique religious, cultural and linguistic traditions of Tibet and the Tibetan people throughout the world,” spokesman Jay Carney said after the meeting. “He underscored the importance of the protection of human rights of Tibetans in China. The president commended the Dalai Lama’s commitment to nonviolence and dialogue with China.”
Read the full story by Ben Blanchard and Jeff Mason here. See also the following previous Reuters stories:
Hillary Clinton seeks to smooth Islamic defamation row with OIC
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agreed with a major global Islamic organization on Friday to pursue new ways of resolving debates over religion without resorting to legal steps against defamation. Clinton met Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the head of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), in Istanbul to help set up new international mechanisms both protect free speech and combat religious discrimination around the world.
“Together we have begun to overcome the false divide that pits religious sensitivities against freedom of religion. We are pursuing a new approach based on concrete steps to fight intolerance wherever it occurs,” Clinton said.
Under heavy U.S. pressure, the OIC agreed in March to set aside its 12-year campaign to have religions protected from defamation, a step which allowed the U.N. Human Rights Council to approve a broader plan on religious tolerance. Western countries and their Latin American allies, strong opponents of the defamation concept, joined Muslim and African states in backing without vote the new approach that switches focus from protecting beliefs to protecting believers.
Ihsanoglu underscored that the OIC’s aim was not to limit free expression, but to combat religious intolerance which he said was spreading dangerously around the world. “Our cause, which stems from our general concern, should not be interpreted as calls for restriction of freedom,” he said. “We believe that mutual understanding, tolerance, respect and empathy should also be accompanying components when we advocate supremacy of freedom of expression.”
Both Ihsanoglu and Clinton outlined steps they would take to cultivate religious and cultural diversity along guidelines set by the U.N. Human Rights Commission, part of a process that will be overseen by the United Nations. “These are fundamental freedoms that belong to all people in all places and they are certainly essential to democracy,” Clinton said. “We now need to move to implementation.”
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Any “religion” that hands its apostates a death sentence, such as Islam does, is no religion at all.
It is a vile, fascistic, intolerant system of repression and abuse that yokes its followers like oxen to its bilge-filled bullock cart.
“The Ledge” equals “God for Dummies” – film review
Can’t wait until Thanksgiving dinner to witness a pointless conversation between a pompous fundamentalist Christian and a sneering atheist? Then “The Ledge” is the movie for you.
This shrill and pedantic exercise in speechifying gives us “deep” conversations about religion and the afterlife that wouldn’t pass muster in a freshman Philosophy 101 study group, delivered with all the earnestness and lack of subtlety of the old “Davey and Goliath” show. (If that Christian cartoon had featured Liv Tyler’s breasts, that is.)
Tyler, fresh off playing a former drug addict who married Rainn Wilson as a way to get a grip on her life in “Super,” broadens her range by playing a former drug addict who married Patrick Wilson to get a grip on her life in “The Ledge.” When these two move in down the hall from committed atheist Charlie Hunnam, who becomes Tyler’s boss when she gets a job working at the hotel he manages, things start spiraling out of control.
The movie opens, in fact, with Hunnam standing on the roof of a tall building, with policeman Terrence Howard trying to talk him down. Howard’s character, a devoted Catholic, is having his own problems, having just learned that he’s sterile. Since he and his wife have two children, this news comes as some surprise.
Hunnam (who after years of working Stateside, still occasionally lets his British accent surface) tells Howard all about how he and Tyler grew close together, despite the fact that he and Wilson had lots of arguments about whether or not there’s a God or if gay people will burn in hell. These issues could make for interesting drama, but director Matthew Chapman’s heavy-handed script gives us pat back-stories to prop up and “explain” his two-dimensional characters.
Wilson, you see, used to be a hedonist before he discovered the Lord, while Hunnam’s faith was shattered when his daughter died. Because heaven forbid these two would have arrived at their conclusions via, oh, reflection or philosophical inquiry.
The four leads are such cut-outs that you really don’t care if Hunnam jumps or not. And Hunnam’s character is so flimsy that you figure that even if he does leap, he’ll float down to the street like a page from this terrible screenplay.
U.S. shifts to closer contact with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood
The United States will resume limited contacts with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed on Thursday, saying it was in Washington’s interests to deal with parties committed to non-violent politics. While Clinton portrayed the administration’s decision as a continuation of an earlier policy, it reflects a subtle shift in that U.S. officials will be able to deal directly with officials of the Islamist movement who are not members of parliament.
The move, first reported by Reuters on Wednesday, is likely to upset Israel and its U.S. supporters who have deep misgivings about the Brotherhood, a group founded in 1928 that seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society. Under president Hosni Mubarak, a key U.S. ally, the Brotherhood was formally banned, but since the ousting of the secular former general by a popular uprising in February, the Islamists are seen as a major force in forthcoming elections.
“We believe, given the changing political landscape in Egypt, that it is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful, and committed to non-violence, that intend to compete for the parliament and the presidency,” Clinton told reporters at a news conference in Budapest.
“Now in any of those contacts, prior or future, we will continue to emphasize the importance of and support for democratic principles and especially a commitment to non-violence, respect for minority rights, and the full inclusion of women in any democracy,” she added.
Clinton would not say whether the Obama administration had already begun such contacts or at what level it planned to deal with the group.
In Cairo, a spokesman for the Islamist group said it would welcome any formal contacts with the United States as a way to clarify its vision, but no such contacts have yet been made.
U.S. to resume formal Muslim Brotherhood contacts, official says
The United States has decided to resume formal contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a senior U.S. official said, in a step that reflects the Islamist group’s growing political weight but that is almost certain to upset Israel and its U.S. backers. “The political landscape in Egypt has changed, and is changing,” said the senior official, who spokeon Wednesday on condition of anonymity. “It is in our interests to engage with all of the parties that are competing for parliament or the presidency.”
The official sought to portray the shift as a subtle evolution rather than a dramatic change in Washington’s stance toward the Brotherhood, a group founded in 1928 that seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society. Under the previous policy, U.S. diplomats were allowed to deal with Brotherhood members of parliament who had won seats as independents — a diplomatic fiction that allowed them to keep lines of communication open.
Where U.S. diplomats previously dealt only with group members in their role as parliamentarians, a policy the official said had been in place since 2006, they will now deal directly with low-level Brotherhood party officials.
There is no U.S. legal prohibition against dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood itself, which long ago renounced violence as a means to achieve political change in Egypt and which is not regarded by Washington as a foreign terrorist organization. But other sympathetic groups, such as Hamas, which identifies the Brotherhood as its spiritual guide, have not disavowed violence against the state of Israel.
The result has been a dilemma for the Obama administration. Former officials and analysts said it has little choice but to engage the Brotherhood directly, given its political prominence after the February 11 downfall of former President Hosni Mubarak.
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National impact expected from New York gay marriage law: experts
When New York became the sixth and by far the largest state to legalize same-sex marriage, following a grueling overtime session in the state legislature, it immediately transformed the national debate over the issue, legal experts said.
With a population over 19 million — more than the combined population of the five states that currently allow gay marriage, plus the District of Columbia, where it is also legal — New York is poised to provide the most complete picture yet of the legal, social and economic consequences of gay marriage.
“I think that having same-sex marriage in New York will have tremendous moral and political force for the rest of the country — in part because New York is a large state, and in part because it hasn’t come easily,” said Suzanne Goldberg, a professor at Columbia Law School.
The New York Assembly passed same-sex marriage legislation twice before, in 2007 and 2009, but in both cases it stalled in the state Senate, as it nearly did again this week. The bill passed late on Friday after legislators agreed on language allowing religious organizations to refuse to perform services or lend space for same-sex weddings.
The new law’s impact can be measured in part by the numbers at play: New York is home to more than 42,000 same-sex couples, according to an analysis of U.S. census data conducted by the Williams Institute. This means, among other things, that the number of same-sex couples living in states allowing same-sex marriage has more than doubled overnight.
Read the full story by Jessica Dye here.
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@Stephen1949,
Please don’t be ignorant and patronizing.
This may come as a shock to “progressive” circles in America, but all those “backwards” and “ethnic” immigrants actually couldn’t care less about same-sex marriage.
The vast majority of immigrants don’t give a damn about same-sex marriage -neither for nor against. Many may have an opinion on the matter, but the vast majority never vote on this issue (IF they even have the legal ability to vote), because it doesn’t affect them.
Of the Latinos in California that *did* vote (the vast majority of whom are American-born, not naturalized immigrants), their voting patterns on California’s prop 8 was equally divided.
If you’re looking for someone to blame for the fact that gay Americans cannot marry in California and most of the US, then look at your own nationality: native-born Americans are far more likely to vote based on social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Immigrants (like my parents) just don’t care about social issues (and my parents, BTW, are loyal Democrats, as are MOST IMMIGRANTS).
It was the African-American and WASP-Evangelical demographics that were most in favor or Proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage, and the Prop 8 campaign received a massive amount of campaign money from native-born red-state WASP Americans through the Mormon Church.
So please stop scapegoating those “backwards” immigrants. They’re not as backwards as you think, and they don’t fall for the “God bless…” “I pray to God” “faith in God” rhetoric that AMERICAN politicians constantly spew.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania turns to God for fiscal relief
Pennsylvania’s debt-ridden capital of Harrisburg has tried every form of fiscal belt-tightening, from layoffs to furloughs to filing for bankruptcy. Now, it is turning to God.
Mayor Linda Thompson said on Friday she will join religious leaders in three days of fasting and prayer to encourage “a cooperative spirit among government leaders, the business community and citizens.”
“I am open about my faith and will be participating in the voluntary prayer and fast,” Thompson said in a statement. The city is now weighing a financial rescue plan presented by the state.
The fast and prayers, which will be facilitated by about a dozen Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religious leaders, will begin at midnight on June 21 and end on June 24.
On Monday, a team of state-appointed advisors recommended the city sell a deeply indebted incinerator at the root of its fiscal problems, renegotiate its labor agreements, cut jobs, sell other assets and assume $26 million in new borrowing.
The city council has until July 23 to adopt the plan.
Ayman al-Zawahri: Suburban doctor who became chief of al Qaeda
The Egyptian who has taken the helm of al Qaeda after Osama bin Laden did not emerge from the crowded slums of Egypt’s sprawling capital a militant or develop his ideas in any religious college or seminary. Instead, Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahri was raised in Cairo’s leafy Maadi suburb where comfortable villas are a favourite among expatriates from the Western nations he rails against. He studied at Cairo University and qualified as a doctor.
The son of a pharmacology professor was not unique in his generation. Many educated youngsters were outraged at the treatment of Islamists in the 1960s when Egypt veered towards a Soviet-style one-party state under socialist Gamal Abdel Nasser. Thousands of people suspected of subversion were thrown into prison after show trials. “Zawahri is one of the many victims of the Nasser regime who had deep political grievances and a feeling of shame at Egypt’s defeat by Israel in 1967. He grew up a radical,” said Khalil al-Anani, an expert in Islamist movements at Durham University.
He rose to be al Qaeda’s No. 2 before taking over as leader after bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces at his Pakistan hideout on May 2, almost 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Born in 1951 to a prominent Cairo family, Zawahri was a grandson of the grand imam of Al Azhar, one of the most important mosques in the Muslim world. As he studied for a masters in surgery in the 1970s, Zawahri was active in a movement that later became Islamic Jihad, which aimed to expel the government and establish an Islamic state.
Taking over the leadership of Jihad in Egypt in 1993, Zawahri was a main figure in a violent campaign in the mid-1990s to set up a purist Islamic state, when more than 1,200 Egyptians were killed. In 1999, an Egyptian military court sentenced Zawahri to death in absentia. By then he had swapped his comfortable suburban background for the spartan life of a holy warrior in Afghanistan.
Read the full NEWSMAKER profile by Tom Pfeiffer and Marwa Awad here. For more, see:
U.S. working dads’ top priority is giving family love – survey
Many fathers these days want it all — time with kids, promotions at work and a spouse who shares the parenting duties. But some say they would trade in their commute and office gig for a stay-at-home role.
With Father’s Day just around the corner, a new study surveying nearly 1,000 fathers in the United States working at Fortune 500 firms takes a look at just how hard it is for dads to balance their work and life goals. The study titled “The New Dad: Caring, Committed and Conflicted” was unveiled on Wednesday by the Boston College Center for Work & Family.
Dads have long been celebrated for their role as breadwinner in the family. Now the top priority of men with children under the age of 18 still living at home is the softer side of being a father — providing love and support.
More than half of all fathers surveyed said they would consider not working outside the home if the family was able to live comfortably on one salary, a surprising change in perception, said Brad Harrington, executive director of the center. “There’s a lot of new thinking,” said Harrington.
Q+A: Women’s rights in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban
Women have won hard-fought rights in Afghanistan since the austere rule of the Taliban was ended by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001. But gains made in areas such as education, work and even dress code look shaky as the government plans peace talks that include negotiating with the Taliban.
Reuters Kabul has produced a Q+A to accompany the feature How will Afghan women fare in Taliban reconciliation? by Amie Ferris-Rotman. Click here to read it in full.
Below are the headings for the questions and answers about women’s rights in Afghanistan today.
HOW BAD WAS IT FOR WOMEN UNDER TALIBAN RULE?
Rights groups and Western governments described the situation as one of the worst that the world had encountered for women at that time.
HAVE WOMEN’S RIGHTS REALLY IMPROVED IN AFGHANISTAN?
Yes. With the fall of the Taliban, women regained many of the basic rights that had been denied them.
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