[LCM Articles] We love you Robert Fisk!

[Randa]

 Rania and Bassam,

My initial email meant to explain that Robert Fisk indeed "intended to expose the irony of racism in light of current events", as Mohamad El-Husseini put it. Remember that Fisk was being interviewed by a western jewish reporter, who almost certainly thinks that the Arabs are jarab and whose audience marinates at that same level.

It's a fact that Robert Fisk has been in love with a woman from Lebanon and with Lebanon for the past few decades, but saying that HE thinks that the country and its people aren't Arabs is just an unwarranted extrapolation which is only yours.

Our MIT's Eric Lander (the mathematician who mapped the human genome for a breakthrough in Biology) teaches the new generations of scientists that  the current global population comes from the original tribe of 10,000 people who lived in Africa in the beginning of human history. Do you feel better now knowing that you're actually African?

Lander also teaches that every single human being carries a little less than 20,000 genes, 95% of which are common with all other human beings, and that we differ from each other by only the remaining 5%. So the diversity that you see in 6 billion people living on this planet comes from variations in 1,000 genes. Is that what the fuss is all about? 

Aren't the current events prompting you to think about the definition of "civilized"? 
 --Randa
 

rmekary at aol.com wrote:  Randa,
  
  Thank you for the precious words... Finally someone spoke up defending Robert Fisk.
  I am really disappointed how sometimes we stab the person who defends us and speaks
  for our right in the back.... 
  
  Best wishes,
  
  Rania.
  
   
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Rania Mekary, Ph.D.
 Harvard School of Public Health
 Nutrition Department
 655 Huntington Avenue, Building 2
 Boston, Ma  02115
 Voice mail: 617-432-6343 
 Fax: 617-432-2435
 http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/researchers/rmekary.html
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   
  
 -----Original Message-----
 From: rhartm1 at yahoo.com
 To: philippesaad at gmail.com
 Cc: lebanon-articles at mit.edu
 Sent: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 1:16 AM
 Subject: [LCM Articles] We love you Robert Fisk!
 
           
 I believe that you've misinterpreted Robert Fisk's sarcasm in the way he phrased his comments. 
 I can be almost certain of that, because I've attended 
 2 talks he'd given at MIT and one in New York City, 
 and I can see that his writing and verbal styles aren't much different. But when he talks, his body language and variations in his voice make the message unequivocal.
 
 For one thing, he is NOT a racist; this is a man who publicly talked about his father (who was with the British Army all his adult life) as being --disgracefully-- racist. 
 And in general, his opinions (as expressed in his new book) on how the British Empire handled affairs in its colonies would leave you without a doubt that he's not 
 a racist.
 
 So this is what I think he meant to convey: He talked as if he was one typical racist westerner who thinks that the Arabs are primitive, stupid illiterate, with ugly and spooky physiques... so different from his superior self..., 
 and who now sees that lebanese people don't fit this stereotype, 
 so he wonders how come so little is being done to help them, although they aren't any different from the superiors of the world. 
 In other words, that the Lebanese shouldn't trigger racism in the westerners (as they're not "different" from them), yet that they're being treated by the westerners  in a racist-like way. Which he finds nonsensical and unacceptable of course!
  --Randa
 
 



 			
---------------------------------
See the all-new, redesigned Yahoo.com.  Check it out.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/lebanon-articles/attachments/20060725/8c313c0a/attachment.htm