Veiled Threat: Iranian women protest the government

By ?
Issue: Oct. 5, 2009

The first thing I noticed about this article was the lack of byline. I flipped to the end of the article, then to the TOC to see if it was just missing, and then it dawned on me that this article about illegal protests and beating of women in Iran is anonymous on purpose and would likely put the author and the author's friends at risk.

The article gives us a little back story about the comparative liberation of women under Reza Shah, when they were accepted to universities, rejected veils, and had more options; and the gradual elimination of these privileges to the point we're at now, where women must be covered and have almost no rights outside their homes.

The current protests against Ahmadinejad include the highest proportion of female participants, despite the severe beatings and inhumane prison treatment that they know they will suffer if arrested.
It's pretty bleak, but inspiring that people are willing to protest given the known consequences of doing so. Our Million Man marches seem like featherbeds in comparison.

My favorite line was about a woman who saves young men from beatings at protests: "She doesn't intervene in the normal way, which is to scream "Don't hit him!" and try to physically restrain the Basiji [militia man]....Instead, she strides over to the protester and admonishes him "Fereydun! I told you not to come out today and make mischeif! Come home immediately" then she hustles him away from the startled Basiji."

Gangland: Who controls the streets of Rio de janeiro?

by Jon Lee Anderson
Issue: Oct.5, 2009

This article delves into the world of favelas, makeshift Brazilian slums that have sprung up all over the hills of the country. There are now about 1,000 of them, including Cidade de Deus (City of God, where that awesome movie took place).

We focus on one favela, Morro do Dende, where Fernandinho reigns as a mafia-style boss; trafficking drugs, managing his generals, collecting security bribes from local businesses, you know, all the things most senior managers deal with. At his command, entering cars are stopped, raids are conducted, and people are killed or spared.

One interesting note is that despite his limitless power within the favela, he cannot step outside of it since without the protection of his guards, he is a huge target for civil police, military police, rival gangs, and revenge-seekers. He hasn't left his Morro do Dende for 2 years, and "and had been out only twice before that since 2003."

Many of the descriptions of the stacked architecture, open sewers, and "dreadlocked" tangle of stolen electrical wires rang true with my experience visiting a favela in 2003.

The last thing that struck me about the article was that the violence between police and favela lords is relatively recent, and coincides with the shift in perception that the police are just more players in teh same game; taking bribes, offering protection money, and out to make a buck and settle scores.

New Yorker Audio Slide Show

Seymour Hersh Uncovers New Thing Too Sad To Think About

The Onion talks of the New Yorker:

NEW YORK—Sources at The New Yorker said a new article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh "blows the lid completely off" a subject matter far too soul-crushing for the human brain to process. Hersh, renowned for breaking stories on events such as the My Lai Massacre and Abu Ghraib, is said to have plumbed every last, depressing detail of the newly uncovered topic, which likely involves an inconceivable combination of violence, drunken abuses of power, wanton disregard for the sanctity of human life, and a chain of deceit and corruption leading all the way to the top. According to a recent poll, none of The New Yorker's nearly 1 million subscribers had summoned the strength to crack the story's first paragraph, instead turning to the new Roz Chast cartoon on the next page.*

* Although I appreciate the Onion's attempt to close with a Roz Chast joke, anyone who has ever read a Seymour Hersh piece for the New Yorker knows that it is highly unlikely that a cartoon would be found on the next page...Those things are long.**

** Oh, the New Yorker intersperses cartoons to break up the text of the articles. Hmm. Forget I said anything.

Opening Night: The scene from the airport slums

by: Katherine Boo
Issue: Feb. 23

This article examines the dynamic between India's rich and poor by telling the story of Sunil, a thirteen-year-old garbage thief who lives in Gautam Nagar, an airport slum. Gautam Nagar is surrounded by fancy hotels and as a result, "[m]usic from weddings and poolside parties drifts over. Ash from cowdung and wood fires drifts back." Close quarters all around, according to Boo.

In his off-time, Sunil can be found at a local game room/snack stand playing Metal Slug 3. Come nighttime, however, he heads to the airport parking garage in search of scraps of aluminum and the like. Boo sets the piece on Jan. 22, the night of the Indian premiere of "Slumdog Millionaire."

Boo describes his nightly missions with such precise detail that one imagines she must have shadowed him in each and every crawl space and stairwell. Toward the end of the piece, she marvels that Mumbai doesn't look more like Metal Slug 3, but is instead held together by "ingenious social constructions" such as "democracy, charity, subtle and blatant articulations of caste, hope, electrified fences." She ventures that the thefts - Mumbai has more than any other Indian metropolitan area - are another piece of the puzzle, what she calls "small leaks that kept the whole contraption from exploding."

The piece's final sentence - "At home, unlike at the airport, he was still afraid of the dark" - reminds the reader of Sunil's innocence. For me, this last line called to mind the title, "Opening Night." Boo is opening night for the reader who presumably has no idea that this goes on in Mumbai. Of course, it's also opening night of "Slumdog Millionaire."

Now, I didn't see the film, but if "Slumdog Millionaire" comes up in conversation, it can't hurt to say you read the New Yorker piece on an airport slums, and it's nothing like in the movie. Jai Ho! I did see the Oscars.

Start Contributing To Conversation Today!

We abandoned you after the election. We left you to make small talk on your own and we apologize.

We took our break, confident that the majority of your conversations would concentrate on one of two topics - Obama's victory or the economy - and you could get by with either smiling or teeth sucking, depending.

But now that it's 2009, we're back, and more determined than ever to provide you with all the tools you'll need to become a genuine New Yacker.

Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity?

by: Malcolm Gladwell
Issue: Oct. 20

Everyone's reading Gladwell's new book, "Outliers: The Story of Success." But not everyone has read his piece in the New Yorker about the nature of genius. Fortunately, I have and now you can talk like you have too. Here's the basic idea: Gladwell outlines the various kinds of "genius" by comparing two writers who produced great works, but in very different ways.

Ben Fountain left his law firm to become a writer. He eventually found inspiration in Haiti. He went again and again, supported financially by his attorney wife. He was 48 when his collection of short stories, “Brief Encounters with Che Guevara,” received critical acclaim.

Jonathan Safran Foer, on the other hand, took his first creative writing class as a freshman at Princeton. Joyce Carol Oates encouraged him to keep writing. The summer after his sophomore year he took a trip to Europe, returned to the states and ten weeks later had produced "Everything is Illuminated."

"Both are works of art," Gladwell says of "Brief Encounters" and "Everything." "It’s just that, as artists, Fountain and Foer could not be less alike. Fountain went to Haiti thirty times. Foer went to Trachimbrod just once."

Foer describes his creative process as "explosive."

“Why does a dam with a crack in it leak so much?” Foer said. “There was just something in me, there was like a pressure.”

But for Fountain, fulfilling his creative potential required an entirely different set of circumstances.

“Sharie never once brought up money, not once—never,” Fountain, referring to his wife. “I never felt any pressure from her...Not even covert, not even implied.”

Biden's Brief

by Ryan Lizza
Issue: Oct. 20

Before Biden accepted the VP nomination, he seriously considered whether he might rather serve as secretary of state in an Obama administration. He consulted with some consultants.

"They convinced me that I could have more influence on policy as a Vice-President with Barack,” Biden said.

One has to wonder how Biden must feel now that former rival Hillary Clinton (and by extension Bill) has received the secretary of state nomination. Will a Biden VP feel threatened by a Clinton team at the state department?

According to the article you read in the New Yorker, Biden is close with the couple. In fact, Hillary once told him, “I think you and Bill were separated at birth."