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Like the Khitan and the Uyghurs, many of them were Nestorian Christians and Buddhists. When last Tayan Khan was killed after a battle with Genghis Khan in 1203, his son Kuchlug with his remaining Naiman troops fled to the Kara-Khitai. Kuchlug was well received there and the Khitan King gave him his daughter in marriage. Kuchlug soon began plotting against his new father-in-law, and after executing him and taking his place, he began to persecute Muslims in the Hami Oases. But his action was opposed by local people and he was later defeated by the Mongols under Jebe and the land of the Kara-Khitai empire incorporated into Mongol Empire.
Although, the Naiman Khanlig was crushed by the Mongols, they were seen in every parts of Mongol Empire. Ogedei's great khatun Töregene might be from this tribe. Hulegu had a Naiman general, Ketbuqa, who died in the battle of Ain Jalut in 1260.
More than 400,000 of the Kazakh population are Naimans (see Modern Kazakh tribes or Middle Juz). They originate from eastern Kazakhstan. Some Naimans dissimilated with the Kyrgyz and Uzbek ethnicities and are still found among them. There is a small population of Naimans in Afghanistan. They belong to the Hazara tribe and reside in Shaikh Ali valley . They are Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims. The clan Naiman is rarely found in Northern Mongolia.
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Robert J. Naiman (born 31 July 1947) is a professor in both the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and the College of Forest Resources at the University of Washington in Seattle. He also holds the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Rivers at the University of Washington.
Dr. Naiman is best known for his work on the ecology of rivers and riparian areas. His work to understand the biogeochemical cycling and role of animals in altering river and riparian systems have been particularly influential. Dr. Naiman started researching the Queets River in Washington State in 1992 and has since been nicknamed "Dr. Queets" by the Seattle press from his continuing research on that river.
DIVERSITAS International (Paris, France)
UNESCO International Hydrology Programme (Paris, France)
Robert W. Woodruff Foundation - J.W. Jones Ecological Research Center
Global Water System Project (GWSP; Bonn, Germany)
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Webster Griffin Tarpley is an author, journalist, lecturer, and critic of US foreign and domestic policy. Tarpley maintains that the September 11 attacks were engineered by a rogue network of the military industrial complex and intelligence agencies. His writings and speeches describe a model of false flag terror operations by a rogue network in the military/intelligence sector working with moles in the private sector and in corporate media, and locates such contemporary false flag operations in a historical context stretching back in the English speaking world to at least the "gunpowder plot" in England in 1605. He also maintains that "The notion of anthropogenic global warming is a fraud."
As a journalist living in Europe in the 1980s, Tarpley wrote a study commissioned by a committee of the Italian Parliament on the assassination of Prime Minister Aldo Moro. The study claimed that the assassination was a false flag operation orchestrated by the masonic lodge Propaganda Due with the cooperation of senior members of Italian government secret services but blamed on the Red Brigades.
Tarpley was president of the Schiller Institute of the United States in the 1980s and in 1993. In 1986 Tarpley attempted to run on Lyndon LaRouche's U.S. Labor Party platform in the New York State Democratic Party primary for the U.S. Senate, but was ruled off the ballot because of a defect in his nominating petitions. He was a frequent host of "The LaRouche Connection" which its producer LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review News Service describes as "a news and information cable television program."
Tarpley first gained attention for co-authoring, with Anton Chaitkin, ("history editor of Executive Intelligence Review") a 1992 book on George H. W. Bush, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, which was published by Executive Intelligence Review, run by Lyndon LaRouche. He has expounded the "Versailles Thesis" laying the blame for the great wars of the 20th century on intrigues by Britain to retain her dominance. He gained experience as a political operative during his years with the LaRouche movement but broke away sometime after 1995.
In 2005, Tarpley published 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA. He speaks at length about the themes in the book during an interview in the film Oil, Smoke, Mirrors.
Since March, 2006, Tarpley has had a weekly online talk radio show called World Crisis Radio, currently hosted on GCNLive.com. Tarpley is a member of the "world anti-imperialist conference" Axis for Peace, of Scholars for 9/11 Truth and of a research Netzwerk of German 9/11 authors founded in September 2006. He is featured in the film, Zero: an investigation into 9/11 (2007–2008).
Tarpley is a critic of the Dalai Lama; in 2010 he told the state-funded Russia Today that "pre-1959 Tibet ... was probably the closest thing to hell on earth that you had ... social reform was impossible." In the interview he criticizes US funding of pro-Dalai Lama organizations, which he says amounts to US$2 million per year, saying "this is a bad deal for the American taxpayers."
Category:LaRouche movement Category:Conspiracy theorists Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:U.S. Labor Party politicians
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Name | Nas |
---|---|
Background | solo_singer |
Birth name | Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones |
Alias | Nasty Nas |
Born | September 14, 1973Brooklyn, New York, United States |
Origin | Queensbridge, Queens, New York |
Instrument | sampler, Keyboards |
Genre | Hip hop |
Occupation | Rapper, actor |
Years active | 1991–present |
Label | Columbia, Def Jam, Ill Will, The Jones Experience |
Associated acts | Olu Dara, The Firm, Bravehearts, Kelis, Mobb Deep, Damian Marley, Large Professor, Game, Wu-Tang Clan |
Url |
Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones (; born September 14, 1973), who performs under the name Nas (), formerly Nasty Nas, is an American rapper and actor. The son of jazz musician Olu Dara, he was born and raised in the Queensbridge housing projects in New York City. His debut album Illmatic, released in 1994 by Columbia Records, was critically acclaimed and would go on to be widely hailed a classic in the genre. Nas was part of hip-hop supergroup The Firm, which released one album.
From 2001 to 2005, Nas was involved in a widely publicized feud with rapper Jay-Z; both rappers verbally attacked each other in their songs. The two formally ended their rivalry through duet performances at concerts sponsored by New York City-area hip-hop radio stations. In 2006, he signed to Def Jam, releasing his albums Hip Hop Is Dead in 2006 and an untitled album in 2008. In 2010 he released a collaboration album with Damian Marley and he plans to release a tenth solo studio album before the summer of 2011.
In 1991, Nas performed on Main Source's "Live at the Barbeque". In mid-1992, Nas was approached by MC Serch of 3rd Bass, who became his manager and secured Nas a record deal with Columbia Records the same year. Nas made his solo debut under the name of "Nasty Nas" on the single "Halftime" from Serch's soundtrack for the film Zebrahead. his rhyming skills attracted a significant amount of attention within the hip-hop community.
Steve Huey of Allmusic described the lyrics in Illmatic as "highly literate" and "his raps superbly fluid regardless of the size of his vocabulary". Lyrically, Nas is perceived as "able to evoke the bleak reality of ghetto life without losing hope or forgetting the good times". Huey describes the Illmatic track "One Love" as "a detailed report to a close friend in prison about how allegiances within their group have shifted". Reviewing Nas's second album It Was Written, Leo Stanley of allmusic believed the rhymes to be not as complex as those in Illmatic but still "not only flow, but manage to tell coherent stories as well". About.com ranked Illmatic as the greatest hip hop album of all time, and Prefix magazine praised it as "the best hip-hop record ever made".
Signed to Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment label, The Firm began working on their debut album. Halfway through the production of the album, Cormega was fired from the group by Steve Stoute, who had unsuccessfully attempted to force Cormega to sign a deal with his management company. In addition to the firing of Cormega, Alex Trojano was featured as a start up producer in The Firm. Cormega subsequently became one of Nas's most vocal opponents and released a number of underground hip hop singles "" Nas, Stoute, and Nature, who replaced Cormega as the fourth member of The Firm. Nas, Foxy Brown, AZ, and Nature Present The Firm: The Album was finally released in 1997 to mixed reviews. The album failed to live up to its expected sales, despite being certified platinum, and the members of the group disbanded to go their separate ways.
During this period, Nas was one of five rappers (the others being B-Real, Dr. Dre, KRS-One and RBX) in the hip hop super-group Group Therapy, who appeared on the song "East Coast/West Coast Killas" from Dr. Dre Presents the Aftermath. In 1998, Nas co-wrote and starred in Hype Williams' 1998 feature film Belly. Much of the LP was leaked into MP3 format onto the Internet and Nas and Stoute quickly recorded enough substitute material to constitute a single-disc release.
The second single for I Am... was "Hate Me Now", featuring Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, which was used as an example by Nas's critics of him moving towards commercial themes. The video featured Nas and Combs being crucified in a manner similar to Jesus; after the video was completed, Combs requested his crucifixion scene be edited out of the video. However, the unedited copy of the "Hate Me Now" video made its way to MTV. Within minutes of the broadcast, Combs and his bodyguards allegedly made their way into Steve Stoute's office and assaulted him, at one point apparently hitting Stoute over the head with a champagne bottle. Stoute pressed charges, but he and Combs settled out-of-court that June.
In 2000, QB's Finest was released on Nas's Ill Will Records.
After trading subliminal criticisms on various songs, freestyles and mixtape appearances, the highly publicized feud rivalry between Nas and Jay-Z became widely known to the public in 2001. Nas responded with "Ether", in which he compared Jay-Z to such characters as J.J. Evans from the sitcom Good Times and cigarette company mascot Joe Camel. The song was included on Nas's fifth studio album, Stillmatic, released in December 2001. Stillmatic debuted at number five on the Billboard album charts and featured the singles "Got Ur Self A..." and "One Mic".
In response to "Ether", Jay-Z released the song "Supa Ugly", which Hot 97 radio host Angie Martinez premiered on December 11, 2001. New York City hip-hop radio station Hot 97 issued a poll asking listeners which rapper made the better diss song; Nas won with 52% while Jay-Z got 48% of the votes.
By October 2005, the two rappers had eventually ended their feud without violence or animosity. During Jay-Z's I Declare War — Power House concert, Jay-Z announced to the crowd, "It's bigger than 'I Declare War'. Let's go, Esco!" Nas then joined Jay-Z onstage, and the two then performed "Dead Presidents" together, which Jay-Z had sampled from Nas's song "The World Is Yours". The two also collaborated on a song called, "Black Republican" which can be found on Nas's album, Hip Hop Is Dead. They then collaborated again on a song called, "Success" from Jay-Z's album American Gangster.
After Nas released God's Son in 2002, he began helping The Bravehearts, made up of his younger brother Jungle and friend Wiz (Wizard), put together their debut album, Bravehearted. The album features guest appearances from Nas, Nashawn (Millennium Thug), Lil Jon, and Mya.
Nas released his seventh studio album, the critically acclaimed double-disc Street's Disciple, on November 30, 2004. The album's first singles were "Thief's Theme" and "Bridging the Gap", which features his father Olu Dara on vocals. The album also includes "These Are Our Heroes", which accuses prominent sports stars and actors such as Kobe Bryant and O. J. Simpson of not setting good examples for the children who look up to them and neglecting their heritage and background. The videos for "Bridging the Gap" and "Just A Moment" received moderate airplay on MTV and BET. Although the album went platinum, its commercial profile was relatively low compared to the rapper's previous releases. (shortened to Hip Hop Is Dead), though the UK release features a bonus track at the end called "The N." The album featured production from will.i.am, Kanye West, Dr. Dre, Scott Storch, and NBA All Star Chris Webber, as well as longtime Nas collaborators L.E.S. and Salaam Remi and newcomer Wyldfyer. A street single named "Where Y'all At" was released in June 2006. It was produced by Salaam Remi, and contained a sample from Nas "Made You Look", but it did not make the final cut for Hip Hop Is Dead.
The title record and first single was produced by will.i.am, and contains the same melodic sample ("In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida") as Nas's 2004 single "Thief's Theme". The album debuted on Def Jam and Nas new imprint at that label, The Jones Experience, at number one on the Billboard 200 charts, selling 355,000 copies—Nas's third number one album, along with It Was Written and I Am.... A music video for "Can't Forget About You" premiered on February 5, 2007, the song featuring Chrisette Michele and sampling Nat King Cole's song "Unforgettable". Another video, Hustlers, featuring The Game, would follow. Also, Nas has stated in an interview with MTV that a video for "Black Republican" featuring Jay-Z is also underway. A reality series on MTV entitled Me and Mrs. Jones will feature the lives of Nas and Kelis, with Vibe magazine has reported that the show will premiere in 2008.
The title of the album generated controversy, as many fans and artists (particularly those of Southern origin) began to debate over the actual state of rap music's vitality. With this album, Nas became an unofficial leader of the "Hip Hop Is Dead" movement. Ghostface Killah, on his album Fishscale seemed to agree with Nas and cited Southern crunk and snap music as the primary reasons for why hip-hop was "dead". Many Southern acts, such as rappers Big Boi from Outkast, Lil Boosie, T.I., Young Jeezy, Dem Franchize Boyz, and D4L took offense to the title, taking it to be directed at their region in particular. However, southern rapper André 3000 from Outkast said in a interview that hip-hop is "dying". After the controversy died down, some of the mentioned rappers would go on and collaborate with Nas on several songs, such as T.I. on Dr. Dre's "Topless" and, more notably, Young Jeezy on his song "My President" off his 2008 album The Recession.
Nas worked on a song called "Shine On 'Em" for the film Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou, which opened in US theaters on December 8, 2006. His song "Thief's Theme" was featured in one of the scenes in the Academy Award-winning movie The Departed directed by Martin Scorsese.
On September 6, 2007, during his set at "A Concert for Virginia Tech," Nas twice referred to Bill O'Reilly as "a chump," prompting loud cheers by members of the crowd. About two weeks later, Nas was interviewed by Shaheem Reid of MTV News, where he criticized O'Reilly, calling him uncivilized and willing to go to extremes for publicity.
Responding to O'Reilly, Nas, in an interview with MTV News, said:
He repeated this stance again in July 2008, when a dispute between Nas and O'Reilly led to Nas taking a petition to Fox News, and appearing on both Fox News, and The Colbert Report. Also in 2008, Nas challenged Bill O'Reilly to a public debate, to which O'Reilly did not accept.
Nas's former label, Columbia Records, released his Greatest Hits album in November. This compilation features 14 songs: 12 from his seven first studio LPs under the label and two newly recorded songs. One of the new tracks, "Less Than an Hour", features Cee-Lo of Goodie Mob and Gnarls Barkley. The track is a new take on the theme of the hugely successful Rush Hour film trilogy starring Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan, and appears on the Rush Hour 3 soundtrack as well. The other new track, "Surviving the Times", contains auto-biographical lyrics about Nas's career and features production by Chris Webber.
Nas's management worried that the album would not be sold by chain stores such as Wal-Mart, thus limiting its distribution. On May 19, 2008, Nas decided to forgo an album title. He went on to say in a statement:
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"Hero", the lead single from the album, was released on June 6, 2008, featuring R&B; singer Keri Hilson and produced by Polow da Don. In the US, "Hero" reached number 97 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 87 on the Hot R&B;/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart, and it peaked at number 39 on the Hot Canadian Digital Singles chart. It was also sampled for a Hustler production erotic video Barely Legal 96 Released on July 15, 2008, Untitled is Nas's second album with Def Jam, in conjunction with his own imprint, The Jones Experience. It features production from Polow da Don, stic.man of Dead Prez, Sons of Light - Dustin Moore & J. Myers, Mark Ronson, Cool and Dre, DJ Green Lantern, Salaam Remi, DJ Toomp and more. Guest appearances include The Game, Chris Brown, Keri Hilson, The Last Poets, and Busta Rhymes.
On July 2, 2008, Fila announced that Nas had signed a shoe deal, his second to date. Nas will promote the sneakers in magazines and wear them at concerts. Fila also plans on having Nas release a second sneaker with 1980s-oriented style during the 2008 holiday season.
Responding to Jesse Jackson's remarks and use of the word "nigger" on July 6, 2008 regarding President Barack Obama, Nas, in an interview with MTV News, said:
In an interview with MTV News in July 2008, Nas speculated that he might release two albums—one produced by DJ Premier and another by Dr. Dre—simultaneously the same day. Nas will also be featured Dr. Dre's long awaited upcoming album Detox.
On July 16, 2008, Nas performed "Hero" with Keri Hilson on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The following week, on July 23, he appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss his opinion of Bill O'Reilly and the Fox News Channel. Nas accused the latter of bias against the African-American community and re-challenged O'Reilly to a debate. During the appearance Nas sat on boxes of more than 625,000 signatures gathered by online advocacy organization Color of Change in support of a petition accusing Fox of race-baiting and fear-mongering. At the end of the show Nas performed the song "Sly Fox" off his new album, to affirm his criticism of Fox News. On August 28, 2008, Nas performed "Sly Fox" on Late Show with David Letterman. On August 4, 2008 Nas performed "Hero" on The Wendy Williams Show. Nas is currently touring in "Rock The Bells." Nas was also awarded 'Emcee of the Year' in the HipHopDX 2008 Awards for his latest solo effort, the quality of his appearances on other albums and was described as having "become an artist who thrives off of reinvention and going against the system." On March 4, 2009 the second annual Smirnoff Signature Mix Series released Nas "If I Ruled the World 09" (feat.) Marsha Ambrosius and Produced by the Sons of Light - Dustin Moore & J. Myers.
O.C. of D.I.T.C. comments in the book How to Rap: “Nas did the song backwards [‘Rewind’]... that was a brilliant idea”. Also in How to Rap, 2Mex of The Visionaries describes Nas’s flow as “effervescent”, Rah Digga says Nas’s lyrics have “intricacy”, Bootie Brown of The Pharcyde explains that Nas doesn’t always have to make words rhyme as he is “charismatic”, and Nas is also described as having a “densely packed” flow, with compound rhymes that “run over from one beat into the next or even into another bar”.
In 2006, Nas was ranked fifth on MTV's "10 Greatest MCs of All Time" list. Nas also briefly dated Mary J. Blige. On April 30, 2009, a spokesperson confirmed that Kelis filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Kelis gave birth to his first son on July 21, 2009, although the event was soured by a disagreement which ended in Nas announcing the birth of his son, Knight, at a gig in Queens, NY, against Kelis' wishes. The birth was announced by Nas via an online video. On July 23, a judge in New York City ordered Nas to pay Kelis $55,000 per month in child and spousal support after Kelis tried to collect $100,000 a month in child support. The couple's divorce was finalized May 21, 2010.
Nas is a spokesperson and mentor for P'Tones Records a non-profit after school music program that's mission is "to create constructive opportunities for urban youth through no-cost music programs" Nas is also an adherent to the Nation of Gods and Earths, otherwise called five percenters.
; Collaboration albums
; Compilation albums
Category:1973 births Category:Living people Category:1990s rappers Category:2000s rappers Category:2010s rappers Category:African American film actors Category:African American rappers Category:American dance musicians Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Def Jam Recordings artists Category:Hip hop activists Category:Ill Will Records artists Category:Members of the Nation of Gods and Earths Category:People from Queens Category:Rappers from New York City
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Region | Critical Theory |
---|---|
Era | 20th / 21st-century philosophy |
Color | #B0C4DE |
Image name | Hamid-Dabashi.png |
Name | Hamid Dabashi |
Birth date | June 15, 1951 |
School tradition | Postcolonialism, critical theory |
Main interests | Liberation theory, Literary theory, Aesthetics, Cultural theory, Sociology of Culture |
Influences | Nietzsche, Weber, Heidegger, Levinas, Foucault, Fanon, Adorno, Said, Shamlou |
Notable ideas | Trans-Aesthetics, Radical Hermeneutics, Anti-colonial Modernity, Will to Resist Power, Dialectics of National Traumas and National Art Forms, Phantom Liberties |
Hamid Dabashi () born 1951 in Ahvaz is an Iranian-American Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York City.
He is the author of over twenty books. Among them are his Theology of Discontent; several books on Iranian cinema; Staging a Revolution; an edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema; and his one-volume analysis of Iranian history .
His book Theology of Discontent, is a study of the global rise of Islamism as a form of liberation theology. In this book Dabashi coined the term “colonial modernity," which refers to the paradoxical reception of the European project of Enlightenment modernity by the rest of the world, whereby non-Europeans are assigned subjectness precisely at the moment of the denial of their historical agency.
His other book is the founding text on modern Iranian cinema and the phenomenon of (Iranian) national cinema as a form of cultural modernity – featured even in the Lonely Planet travel guide for Iran. In his essay "For the Last Time: Civilizations", he has also posited the binary opposition between “Islam and the West” as a major narrative strategy of raising a fictive centre for European modernity and lowering the rest of the world as peripheral to that centre.
In Truth and Narrative, he has deconstructed the essentialist conception of Islam projected by Orientalists and Islamists alike. Instead he has posited, in what he calls a “polyfocal” conception of Islam, three competing discourses and institutions of authority – which he terms “nomocentric” (law-based), “logocentric” (reason-based) and “homocentric” (human-based) – vying for power and competing for legitimacy. The historical dynamics among these three readings of “Islam”, he concludes, constitutes the moral, political and intellectual history of Muslims.
Among his other work — which has been translated into many languages — are his essays Artist without Borders (2005), Women without Headache (2005), For the Last Time Civilization (2001) and "The End of Islamic Ideology" (2000).
Hamid Dabashi is also the author of numerous articles and public speeches, ranging in their subject matters from Islamism, feminism, globalised empire and ideologies and strategies of resistance, to visual and performing arts in a global context.
In an essay on Qur’anic hermeneutics, “In the Absence of the Face” (2000), Dabashi has also taken the Derridian correspondence between the signifier and the signified and expanded it from what he considers its “Christian Christological” context and read it through a Judeo-Islamic frame of reference in which, Dabashi proposes, there is a fundamental difference between a sign and a signifier, a difference that points to a metaphysical system of signification that violently force-feed meaning into otherwise resistant and unruly signs. It is from this radical questioning of the legislated semantics of signs incarcerated as signifiers that Dabashi has subsequently developed a notion of non-Aristotelian mimesis, as best articulated in his essay on Persian Passion Play, "Ta’ziyeh: A Theater of Protest" (2005). Here he proposes that in Persian Passion Play, we witness an instantaneous, non-metaphysical and above all transitory, correspondence between the signifier and the signified and thus the modus operandi of the mimesis is not predicated on a permanent correspondence in any act of representation. There are serious philosophical implications to this particular mode of non-representational representation that Dabashi has extensively examined in his essays on the work of the prominent artist Shirin Neshat. Dabashi’s political dedication to the Palestinian cause, and his work on Palestinian cinema, has an added aesthetic dimension in which he is exploring the crisis of mimesis in national traumas that defy any act of visual, literary, or performative representation.
Dabashi’s primarily feminist concerns are articulated in a series of essays that he has written on contemporary literary, visual and performing arts. There his major philosophical preoccupation is with the emergence of a mode of transaesthetics (“art without border”) that remains politically relevant, socially engaged and above all gender conscious. In his philosophical reflections, he is in continuous conversation with Jean Baudrillard, the distinguished French philosopher, and his notion of “transaesthetics of indifference”. Contrary to Baudrillard, Dabashi argues that art must and continues to make a difference and empower the disenfranchised.
In a critical conversation with Immanuel Kant, the founding father of European philosophical modernity, Dabashi has articulated the range of social and aesthetic parameters now defining the terms of a global reconfiguration of the sublime and the beautiful—in terms radically distanced from their inaugural articulation by Kant. His essays on transaesthetics, where these ideas are articulated, have been published in many languages by major European museums.
So far in his political thought, Dabashi has been concerned with the emerging patterns of global domination and strategies of regional resistance to them. Equally important to Dabashi’s thinking is the global geopolitics of labour and capital migration migration.
Dabashi was the chief consultant to Hany Abu-Assad's “Paradise Now” (2005), awarded the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and an Academy Award nominee in the same category, and Shirin Neshat’s “Women without Men” (2006).
Professor Dabashi has also served as jury member on many international art and film festivals, most recently the Locarno International Festival in Switzerland. In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, he is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. For his contributions to Iranian cinema, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the Iranian film-maker called Dabashi "a rare cultural critic".
In 2002, Dabashi sharply criticized Rabbi Charles Sheer (who was the university's Jewish chaplain between 1969 and 2004) after he sharply criticized several professors for cancelling their classes to attend pro-Palestinian rallies. Dabashi wrote in the Columbia Spectator that Rabbi Sheer "has taken upon himself the task of mobilizing and spearheading a crusade of fear and intimidation against members of the Columbia faculty and students who have dared to speak against the slaughter of innocent Palestinians."
In an interview with the Electronic Intifada in September 2002, Dabashi referred to the pro-Israel lobby as "Gestapo apparatchiks" and that "The so-called "pro-Israeli lobby" is an integral component of the imperial designs of the Bush administration for savage and predatory globalization." He also criticized "fanatic zealots from Brooklyn" who have settled on Palestinian lands. Dabashi has also harshly criticized the New York Times for what he describes as a bias towards Israel, stating that he paper is "the single most nauseating propaganda paper on planet."
Responding to Dabashi’s Al-Ahram essay, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger said, “I want to completely disassociate myself from those ideas. They’re outrageous things to say, in my view.” Jonathan Rosenblum, director of Jewish Media Resources, later wrote that "Dabashi apparently subscribes to Lamarkian genetics [that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring]. Not only have the alleged actions of Israeli Jews effected changes in their very bone structure, but those changes are transmitted to subsequent generations. Dabashi’s depiction of the debased Jewish physiognomy is racism pure and simple." In The Bulletin, Herb Denenberg wrote that Dabashi's article "is not borderline racism. It’s as gross and obvious as racism can get."
In a sworn statement submitted to the US Commission on Civil Rights, Dabashi stated that he has not expressed, nor ever harbored, any anti-Semitic sentiments and that the 2004 Al-Ahram essay was being misconstrued. He has also criticized pro-Israel groups in the United States, saying that the "pro-Israeli Zionist lobby in the US banked and invested heavily in infiltrating, buying, and paying for all the major and minor corridors of power." In the same article, Dabashi endorsed cultural and academic boycotts of Israel.
Judith Jackson, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia who is the co-coordinator of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, criticized Dabashi for his remarks, stating that Dabashi's article was "sheer demagoguery" and that "attributing President Bollinger's remarks or behavior to racism is absurd." In a 2006 essay, Dabashi referred to the World Trade Center towers (which were destroyed by the attacks of September 11, 2001) as "two totem poles of U.S. empire in New York.".
Dabashi has also sharply criticized Iranians living in the United States who support a US policy of regime change in Iran. In August 2008, Dabashi wrote that:
"A band of useless expatriate Iranians are now swarming Washington D.C. hotel lobbies and the White House and State Department offices, seeking a pathetic role and a lucrative salary for regime change in Iran, doing nothing but wasting our tax money, while registering their ignoble names in the annals of a maligned nation. History is now recording their shameful names and will deal with them in proper time -- Abbas Milani, Mohsen Sazegara, Amir Taheri, Azar Nafisi, Ramin Ahmadi, Roya Hakakian, and an ilk of reprehensible names next to them."
In 2006, Dabashi sharply criticized Azar Nafisi for her book Reading Lolita in Tehran, stating that "By seeking to recycle a kaffeeklatsch version of English literature as the ideological foregrounding of American empire, Reading Lolita in Tehran is reminiscent of the most pestiferous colonial projects" and accusing her of being a "native informer and colonial agent."
Nafisi responded to Dabashi's criticism by stating that she is not, as Dabashi claims, a neoconservative, that she opposed the Iraq war, and that she is more interested in literature than in politics. In an interview, Nafisi stated that she's never argued for an attack on Iran and that democracy, when it comes, should come from the Iranian people (and not from US military or political intervention). She added that while she is willing to engage in "serious argument...Debate that is polarized isn't worth my time." She stated that she did not respond directly to Dabashi because "You don't want to debase yourself and start calling names."
Category:American sociologists Category:American literary critics Category:American art critics Category:American film critics Category:American historians Category:American anti-war activists Category:Iranian democracy activists Category:Columbia University faculty Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Iranian historians Category:Iranian academics Category:American people of Iranian descent Category:Iranian literary critics Category:Iranologists Category:Islamic studies scholars Category:Literary historians Category:People from Ahvaz Category:Persian writers Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni Category:1951 births Category:Living people Category:Critical theorists
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