October 17th, 2006
- A Proposed Small Step For Womenkind — Buttercup @ Buttercup & Bean writes about the problem of unwanted attention from men and how the real problem is not that women are putting themselves in situations where they could become targets but that men feel that they are entitled to any “piece of female ass that shows up in their vicinity.” Excellent post.
- To iPod or not to iPod (or, See the Person!) — Colleen @ For All the World to See wonders if technology isn’t creating a society of isolation and anti-social individuals.
We pass people in the grocery, on the street, at school, at work, in the car and they’re just people. The plural, the generic, the masses.
But they aren’t. Each person is a person.
And what a difference we would make if we saw each one of those people as a person , not as one of a mass.
As an individual, who maybe had a bad day, woke up on the wrong side of the bed, their coffee maker didn’t work this morning, they got in a fight with their kid, they got some unexpected money, they passed a test, they finished a big project, have a headache, found out their mom has cancer, found out their wife was pregnant….
You get the idea.
What if we each did that, maybe not to every person we came in contact with, but made an effort to really see the person we pass on the grocery aisle or who serves us our coffee, or who takes the parking place we had our eye on? What if?
What if we didn’t wear our iPods so as to be lost in our own little world, but instead had the earphones out of our ears, so we heard the little old lady behind us in the grocery ask for help getting something down…or we actually talked to the server who takes our order, instead of talking to them in short, one-word comments while our cell phone is pressed to our face?
More
Tags: Women's Rights, iPod, technology, anti-social, outsourcing, India, IT, AIDS, JonBenet Ramsey, Bob Herbert, violence against women
August 7th, 2006
Aug. 4 - BCN - Members of an Iranian university’s international alumni association are expressing frustration that more than 100 visa holders traveling to the United States to attend the group’s fourth reunion in Santa Clara have had their visas revoked.
Elahe Enssani, a spokeswoman for the Sharif University of Technology Alumni Association conference, which began today at the Santa Clara Hyatt Regency, said all 12 of the conference registrants who were arriving at San Francisco International Airport were denied entry and that only 15 of 105 visa applicants who had hoped to come to the conference have been allowed entry into the U.S. [“Visas Revoked For Iranians Attending Conference” (ABC7News)]
Mind you, all of the 100+ Iranians whose visas were revoked had made it through the background checks previously. They’d gone through all of the proper channels and filled out all of the proper paperwork. They were all educated professionals and their family members. The U.S. allowed them to board planes and make the 30-hour journey to the United States and then at their own financial expense were turned around and sent home or, worse, were held for days for questioning due to “national security” concerns.
“I really look forward to the reunion,” she said. The conference draws together people who remember an era — when Iran was governed by the shah — to which no one can return, she explained.
The Sharif University of Technology Alumni Association conference draws professionals from around the world and the U.S.
[…]
Information about the individuals denied visas is unavailable for confidentiality reasons, according to Laura Tischler, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Consular Affairs in the U.S. State Department.<
Tischler said only that her understanding was that the Iranian visitors were denied entry because their visas were revoked.
The revocations are not connected to current hostilities in the Middle East, she said. Visitors can be denied visas at any time and for a range of reasons, she said.
"Iranians are subject to special processing because Iran is a state that has been designated a state sponsor of terrorism," she said. "That's been the case for a few years." [“Visas Revoked For Iranians Attending Conference” (ABC7News)]
Related Articles:
Iranian Professionals’ U.S. Visas Revoked (L.A. Times)
Visa fray prompts worry, anger (The Mercury News)
15 Iranians turned away from Calif. airports after visas revoked (The Mercury News)
Tags: Iran, Sharif University of Technology Alumni Association
