Laila Lalami

From the Washington Post:

The Justice Department this afternoon will propose a regulation requiring a new “special registration” of people visiting the United States from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Sudan, according to congressional officials.Visa holders temporarily entering the United States from the five countries would be required to be fingerprinted and photographed and to provide contacts in the United States and in their home countries. After 30 days, the visa holders would have to report to the Immigration and Naturalization Service about their activities, and again after each year in the United States and when leaving. Violators would be barred from re-entering the United States.
The officials said a similar arrangement already exists for all of the five countries except for Syria. Notably, the new list excluded Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen, North Korea and Cuba. However, those entering the United States from virtually any country could be directed to meet the same requirements if the INS determines them to be of a “higher security risk.” The Justice officials who briefed lawmakers today did not say what the criteria would be to label a visitor a higher security risk.

Justice Department to Propose Visa Regulations

This is such nonsense, I don’t even know where to begin. The measure would not have stopped Richard Reid (the shoe-bomber, a native-born British citizen), nor Zacarias Moussaoui (the alleged 20th hijacker, a French citizen). I don’t believe that racial profiling works, and I think we’ve seen evidence that it doesn’t. The other thing that I find amusing is the exclusion of Saudi Arabia. If this was a question of scrutinizing people whose profile fit that of the WTC hijackers, Saudis would have to be on the list, considering that several of the hijackers were from the Kingdom. And if the purpose is to exclude citizens of countries already on the “axis of evil” list, then where are the North Koreans? It’s like saying that we think terrorists are likely to be from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, and Lybia, but not from Saudi, Pakistan, Yemen, North Korea, or Cuba. It all seems arbitrary and misguided. And the irony of it? Bush II won the vast majority of the Arab American and American Muslim voters (whose vote helped win Florida) by promising, among other things, an end to racial profiling.

Today marks the 35th anniversary of the Six-Day War. Few people seem to know, or remember, that Israel started the conflict, by attacking Egyptian planes on the ground. With Egypt under fire, Syria and Jordan entered the conflict as well. A few days later, the war ended, with Israel seizing the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Sinai from Egypt (making Israel four times as big in the process).

The Palestinian population, which did not participate in the war, found itself its victim. Jordan gave up claims to the West Bank (it was grappling with its own large Palestinian refugee problem), but Syria never gave up claims to the Heights. After the 1979 Camp David accords, Egypt recovered the Sinai in 1982 (though it cost Anwar Sadat his life), but that same year, Israel invaded Lebanon, a move that cost nearly 20,000 lives and the massacres of Sabra and Chatila.

And what do we have today? Another awful suicide bombing in a town named Megiddo, in which 16 people (civilians) have died. And of course this was followed by an incursion into Jenin (the IDF forces never having left the Palestinian areas since the March re-occupation anyway). What a mess.

In the “Oddly Enough” category:

In a feat of literary sleuth work, Ms. Heifetz, the mother of a high school senior and a weaver from Brooklyn, inspected 10 high school English exams from the past three years and discovered that the vast majority of the passages – drawn from the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anton Chekhov and William Maxwell, among others – had been sanitized of virtually any reference to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol, even the mildest profanity and just about anything that might offend someone for some reason. Students had to write essays and answer questions based on these doctored versions – versions that were clearly marked as the work of the widely known authors.
In an excerpt from the work of Mr. Singer, for instance, all mention of Judaism is eliminated, even though it is so much the essence of his writing. His reference to “Most Jewish women” becomes “Most women” on the Regents, and “even the Polish schools were closed” becomes “even the schools were closed.” Out entirely goes the line “Jews are Jews and Gentiles are Gentiles.” In a passage from Annie Dillard’s memoir, “An American Childhood,” racial references are edited out of a description of her childhood trips to a library in the black section of town where she is almost the only white visitor, even though the point of the passage is to emphasize race and the insights she learned about blacks.
The State Education Department, which prepares the exams, acknowledged modifying excerpts to satisfy elaborate “sensitivity review guidelines” that have been in use for decades, but are periodically revised. It said it did not want any student to feel ill at ease while taking the test.

Nor, it may be added, did the Education Department want to risk actually teaching students about any view, race, gender, or sexual orientation other than their own.

The Elderly Man and the Sea? Test Sanitizes Literary Texts (requires registration)