Iran's 'Marathon to Unite Humanity' excludes women
Iran is to hold its first ever Marathon in April under the banner 'Marathon to Unite Humanity.' It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that in Iran, 'humanity' does not include women.
Dutch entrepreneur and former travel enthusiast
and backpacker Sebastian Straten, 42, wanted to create the “I Run Iran
Marathon,” which will be held April 9, after he fell in love with Iran
during a backpacking trip in 2005, to help in “building bridges between
nations and people,” he told Iran media outlet Mehr News Agency.
“I wanted to see the country for myself, not by the stereotype images I often saw on Western television,” Straten said.
“I expect it to have a positive impact on the
image the West has of Iran. It is more than a marathon. It is opening
the Persian gates to tourism, to show the real beauty and treasures of
Iran.”
Straten has stated that women will not be
allowed to participate in this first “limited edition” marathon which
will start in the historic city of Shiraz and end in the well-known and
legendary city of Persepolis, the Persian Empire’s ancient capital city.
That little bit of discrimination isn't stopping Western men from signing up:
Of the 400 spaces available in the marathon, 23 Americans, fifteen
Britons, 15 Frenchmen, and two Canadians have already signed up
according to the "I run Iran" website registration page.
Two takeaway questions: First, if a transgender woman signs up, will s/he be considered a man or a woman?
And second, are Jews and Israelis welcome? I would guess not, but why would anyone want to run there anyway?
PS Remember the late lamentedGaza Marathon? It was canceled by its sponsor - UNRWA - for not allowing women.
The same week that Libya was finally suspended from the UN 'Human Rights' Council, Iran took its position as a member of that body's women's rights commission.
Most of you think this is why Hillary Clinton went to Geneva to speak at the UN 'Human Rights Council' on Monday.
Let's go to the videotape.
But Anne Bayefsky explains that Clinton did not come to Geneva to call for Libyan President Muammar Gadhafi's resignation. She came to Geneva for something else: To save the Obama administration's investment in the 'Human Rights Council.'
The explicit reason that the administration joined the Council was to engage “from the inside” in a reform process. When the Council was created in 2006 by the General Assembly, it was given five years to review its progress and reform anything found lacking. On Thursday, that review process came to its conclusion – and today Clinton tried to do everything possible to hide its abysmal failure.
The Council has two obvious flaws. Number one it has a standing agenda that governs all of its operations, with ten items on it. One is dedicated to condemning the state of Israel and one is for the remaining 191 UN countries that it might be interested in should it ever decide there was another “human rights situations that require[d] the Council’s attention.” The singular effort to use its so-called human rights system to demonize the Jewish state has been a roaring success. Half of its special sessions on specific countries and half of all its resolutions and decisions critical of any state condemn Israel alone.
When the President Obama joined the Council it promised that changing the discriminatory agenda would be their first priority. On Thursday, we discovered, it was a hoax. The review process has been going on in the context of a working group of all interested members of the U.N. The working group adopted its report on Thursday by consensus – with the U.S. present. And in the usual opaque U.N. language, the consensus report states: “The Council’s agenda and framework for programme of work are as is specified in the annex to Council resolution 5/1.” In plain English, that means business as usual, resolution 5/1 being the discriminatory agenda adopted in June 2007.
The loss can be measured by the administration’s own words. On October 27 of last year the U.S. delegation placed on the table its demands for reform – duly transmitted to an American audience. Agenda reform was top of the list. “The most entrenched and indefensible manifestation of structural bias in this Council comes in the form of…the only agenda item devoted to one country…The United States believes strongly that…as a group charged with examining what must be done to improve the credibility and efficacy of this Council it is incumbent upon us to….to do what is right to help the Council become more evenhanded and depoliticized.”
Secretary Clinton today repeated the mantra. But what she did not say is that when the business-as-usual U.N. “reform” report was approved late Thursday, the only thing the U.S. delegation did was to make a short statement that it “did not support” the permanent Israel-bashing item. In the world of U.N. diplomacy that is backstabbing at its finest.
If the Obama administration had really wanted to stand on principle they could have said “we do not join consensus on this document.” They could have demanded that there be a vote in the Council on the document before sending it to the General Assembly for formal approval, and then voted against it for the world to see. And most importantly, they could have made it very clear that the absence of a change would result in the U.S. departure from the Council. They did none of the above.
Instead, Obama caved. Saving the Council was most important and the U.S. was going down with the ship. The “reform” process will now proceed merrily through the U.N. system without a glitch. The President of the General Assembly said this morning: “I congratulate the Working Group on adopting the Human Rights Council review by consensus.” The U.S. delegation was all present. Nobody peeped.
The second obvious flaw with the Human Rights Council that Hillary is trying her hardest to paper over is its membership. How did Libya get on the Council in the first place? U.S. Ambassador John Bolton pointed out – when the U.S. voted against the General Assembly resolution that adopted the Council – that it had no membership criteria. The only requirement is this: “when electing members of the Council, Member States [of the U.N. General Assembly] shall take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights and their voluntary pledges and commitments made thereto.”
The U.N. set up a lovely website where candidates can deposit their “pledges.” Here is what Libya pledged last May, which was just fine by the vast majority of members of the General Assembly. “The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya is fully committed to the promotion and protection of human rights principles…including the right to direct participation in public life…The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya has paid great attention to human rights over the past 30 years.” That statement was good enough to garner the votes of 155 of 188 UN members and to send Libya to the Council.
But Libya was not alone. Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba and company are all members of this morally bankrupt institution which Secretary Clinton is doing her damnedest to save.
And then there’s this: On Friday, March 4, Iran – the country that buries women naked to their waist and then stones them to death for “adultery” – is going to take its seat as a full-fledged member of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.
What the US should do - but won't - is to admit that its attempt to reform the Council from the inside is an abject failure, and resign. Instead, it is left to the likes of Anne Bayefsky, Fox News, and yours truly to point out the administration's epic failure to anyone who will listen.
Anyone who has traveled by plane over the last few years has seen ads like this one, usually in the jetways as you board and disembark from the plane.
But sometimes, that kind of multicultural view of the world can go too far. With HSBC, which also used the ad above, multiculturalism has gone overboard with the ad below.
Just like that, the banking behemoth reveals the danger of bubble-gum corporate cosmopolitanism: Every now and then, you might suggest that a murderous theocracy is actually a progressive place.
One wonders what Jafar Panahi would make of the suggestion that Iran's filmmaking environment compares favorably to America's. We can't know, however, because the acclaimed director and his colleague Mahmoud Rasoulof were just sentenced to six years in prison. There they'll join, among others, the filmmaker Mohammad Nourizad, who news reports say is on a hunger strike in Tehran's Evin Prison.
"The assassination of ideas and sterilizing artists of a society has only one result: killing the roots of art and creativity," Mr. Panahi said at his trial. "You are putting on trial not just me, but Iranian social, humanist and artistic cinema."
A theme of Mr. Panahi's movies is the Iranian regime's subjugation of women. Whereas the HSBC ad implies that women in Iran are particularly empowered or liberated, Mr. Panahi's works—including "The Circle" (2000), about female prisoners, and "Offside" (2006), about young women detained for trying to attend a soccer match—demonstrate otherwise.
So do news reports about Sakineh Ashtiani and other Iranian women sentenced to death by stoning for alleged adultery. In Iran, girls can be married at age 13 (it was age nine in the first years after the 1979 Islamic revolution), women don't have the right to divorce their husbands or to seek custody of their children in the event of divorce, and a woman's court testimony is accorded half the weight of a man's.
In an environment like this, is it possible that 25% of movies are made by women? Perhaps, although when I asked HSBC spokesman Robert Sherman, he wouldn't say where the bank got its information (either about Iran or Hollywood). Iran does have an active domestic film industry, with women among its major players. One is Tahmineh Milani, a feminist who still works in the country despite having been imprisoned in 2001 on charges—"supporting factions waging war against God"—that could have warranted the death penalty.
In any case, the numbers in the ad are not what matters. Let's say that HSBC's factoids are true. They still convey a hollow, misleading message about the Islamic Republic. Imagine a 1939 ad pointing to Leni Riefenstahl—Hitler's court filmmaker and a pioneering female artist—as evidence of the Third Reich's unexpected "potential." The company behind any such ad would have immediately impugned its perceptiveness and reliability—even its worldview.
Read the whole thing. HSBC has lost its moral compass and ought to try to find it in a hurry. Shutting down its Iran operations, whether or not they are permitted under any sanctions regime, would be one way to start.
UPDATE 8:19 PM
HSBC has apparently gone dhimmi altogether. This picture was taken on the New York City subways this morning (Hat Tip: Jeremy K).
Multiculturalism run rampant? Or just plain foolishness?
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
