CAIRO — Late last month, Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared that anyone killed defending Palestinians in the Gaza Strip would be rewarded in heaven as a martyr. Young men began lining up — 70,000 in all — to go off and die.
A week later, however, Ayatollah Khamenei announced without explanation that no one was going anywhere to fight. “I thank the pious and devoted youth who have asked to go to Gaza,” he said in a televised address. “But it must be noted that our hands are tied in this arena.”
While the fighting continues in Gaza and negotiations for a cease-fire take place in Egypt, officials in Iran are treading carefully because they, too, have a great deal at stake. Iran is trying to position itself as the regional superpower, while also trying to generate maximum leverage before expected talks with the incoming Obama administration.
To achieve those goals, though, Iran needs Hamas to declare at least a moral victory in its war with Israel.
ISMAILIA, Egypt, Jan 11 (Reuters) – Two Egyptian children and two police officers were wounded by shrapnel from Israeli bombs near a crossing point at Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip on Sunday, security sources said.
I talked to Glen about the post I made yesterday and his response, and came up with a response of my own. Since I can’t think of anything better to post today, here it is, however, Glen and I have agreed…a rare occurrence…to stop arguing about the É. The only thing we’ll ever agree on is that the two of us have two radically different ideas of what the É should be. But anyway, this is what I told Glen earlier.
1) “News isn’t really your thing”, and the É, manifesto, whatever would be much better if you stopped pretending it is. As for throwing my past contributions out the window, you’ve shown to have no problem with doing just that. What happened to Darfur and Myanmar? This Week in É? Those were “my things”, and “my vision” wouldn’t have died had someone continued them. It’s not hard to bullshit a blog post.
2) Haven’t begged me? Election night? Asking for my thoughts on November’s No Age concert? And as for what the site’s audience should be, we’ve already had that discussion.
3) I loved websites that look like É2.0…and then WEB 2.0 HAPPENED. This is the age of simple, blog layouts. People don’t navigate with graphic menus anymore…that’s what tags are for.
4) Choosing and loving to make enemies instead of friends has nothing to do with bad business? When my friends ask me how the É’s been lately, I go on the same rant I did on my blog, and they can understand the businessman connection.
5) If the É is more opinion than news, then just call it a damn “Independent journal of opinion”. As much as I would have liked my original vision for the website to continue, that’s far from likely. So the next best thing…in my opinion, is that you stop listening to whatever I have to say, since I’M NO LONGER PART OF THE É…and just do your own thing. If Chris really wants to turn it into the Student Manifesto, and you like that idea, go ahead and do it!
And as for the side note, I always saved images to my hard drive, then uploaded them, instead of what apparently gets the É most its hits…hot linking. My criticism has to do entirely with the quality of the site, and nothing to do with its numbers. Not to mention, I have absolutely no care about how many hits my new blog gets. I’ve given up trying to reach the broad audience that I was trying to get with the É, and if the only readers are you, my sister, my mom, and my journalism teacher…that’s good enough for me.
