Nina Burleigh

A Hate Crime Against Women?

2012-05-14T13:33:00Z

New information in the Shaima Alawadi murder case in El Cajon, Calif., suggests that the family was cracking over a forced marriage for daughter Fatima, 17, and that Alawadi herself was preparing to divorce her husband. If female freedom turns out to be at the heart of the murder, it will highlight not so much the intolerance of Muslim immigrants by Americans, but the cultural restrictions on women in those communities and what happens when those restrictions clash with the relatively permissive rules of Western society.
Alawadi was beaten to death with a tire iron inside her home in El Cajon (home to 40,000 Iraqis) last month. For weeks the case has been regarded as a possible hate crime because someone left a note beside her unconscious body that read, "Go back to your own country. You're a terrorist." But Alawadi, 32, belonged to a culture in which families choose husbands for their daughters at a young age, and the daughters have no say in it. She was married by the age of 15. She had produced five children with her husband Kassim Alhimidi, who moved his family to the U.S. 17 years ago. Police executing search warrants on the family's house, cars and phones found documents in Alawadi's car indicating she was planning to get divorced. According to the New York Times, a family friend told police that Alawadi wanted to leave her husband and move to Texas. Her sister, however, denied that.

Read the whole essay at Time.com.

Israel's Huge Rward

2012-05-14T13:29:18Z

As progressives total up the ways Obama dashed their hopes for the elusive change we can believe in, there is one big, broken change-promise that no one mentions these days.

Three years ago this month, Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and told him that the West Bank settlements had to cease. "The settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward," said Barack Obama, at his first presidential meeting with the Israeli leader. A month later, the new president reiterated the criticism, in a Cairo speech that was supposed to herald a re-boot of U.S.-Muslim relations. "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," Obama said from a podium at Al Azhar. "This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop."

But the settlements have not stopped and, rather than rebuking Israel, the U.S. government is preparing to reward it more than ever before. This week, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Appropriations passed a bill handing over the most money ever in one year to Israeli defense: just shy of a billion dollars toward three Israeli missile defense projects, called Iron Dome, David's Shield and Arrow. Last year's appropriation for the same projects was $235 million. "I don't know of any joint defense programs in the last 10 years -- probably no program with any other country - that has approached a billion," said a staffer who works with the subcommittee.
Read the whole story at Salon.

Will The Clients Get Off?

2012-04-29T19:11:39Z

All of NYC was trying to guess what high-rollers were in the black book of Anna Gristina, the Scottish madam with a soft spot in her heart of pot-bellied pigs who ran an escort service with prostituted women from Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, NYPD has a new program underway to arrest the johns.

Just before Christmas last year, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly hosted a small, cosmopolitan group of pretty young women in his office at 1 Police Plaza. Most were immigrants to the city, having come from Asia, Central America, Eastern Europe and around the United States. Because of the sensitive nature of what they would discuss, only two other officials were present--the NYPD's chief counsel and the commanding officer in charge of vice.

The women spoke different languages but had at least one thing in common: they had all been brought to the city to labor in the sex industry. The non-natives' first English words were "blow job" and "fuck."

They told harrowing stories of being kidnapped, imprisoned and forced to sell their bodies. One immigrant without legal status in the U.S. described being shuttled around in a livery car, the driver delivering her to various "customers" one after another. "She was basically a prisoner," said one participant at the meeting.

Read the article here at the NY Observer.

Faith and Forgery Update

2012-04-29T19:08:08Z

photo of James ossuary (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On March 14, a Jerusalem judge acquitted a man accused of forging an inscription on a small stone coffin. The writing, on what's known as the James Ossuary, reads "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus." Its promoters claim that it's the first archaeological evidence of Jesus Christ's existence and that the box once held the bones of Jesus' brother James. Its detractors, including most scholars, say the last two words of the inscription are faked, modern additions to a genuinely ancient limestone casket.
The box was first brought to public attention in 2002. Tens of thousands lined up in freezing Canadian weather to see it go on exhibit -- with a sly caveat about its authenticity -- at the Royal Ontario Museum in January 2003.

The box was seized on by believers as proof of the Bible. But Israeli authorities, who eventually found what appeared to be a forgery workshop in the apartment of the box's owner, Tel Aviv industrial designer and antiquities collector Oded Golan, called it a fraud. The workshop contained half-made "antiquities," plans for others and even labeled baggies of silt from different archaeological sites around the Holy Land. The state would later assert that the silt was used to create a paste to coat the objects and fool scholars.

A trial commenced in 2005 against Golan, accused of "the fraud of the century" for creating objects meant to both make money and headlines. In effect, the lengthy trial put science in the dock. Science lost.

Read the full article at the LA Times here.

Sex Death Spies and The Bombshell: Mary Meyer Revisited.

2012-04-05T15:56:56Z

There's a new book out further elaborating on the conspiracy theory that Mary Meyer, the original "dangerous blonde" of the Cold War and subject of my first book, was murdered over war, peace and JFK's assassination. Peter Janney (who optioned my book for years before writing his) proposes that she had to die because she knew too much. It's a good read, although I disagree with some of Peter's conclusions. The truth is that the Mad Men of the A-Bomb, entitled arrogant alcoholics, were capable of more than we probably know. My Daily Beast story here.

More Likely to See a Unicorn than Saudi Woman Kicking a Ball

2012-03-03T21:27:24Z

Fans of the Olympics have seen unusual athletes engaging in some odd sports over the years. In 1912, there was the Glima competition -- a form of Icelandic wrestling in which competitors wore leather straps around their waists and thighs which opponents grabbed to score takedowns. Other Olympians have engaged in fishing, ballooning, "skijoring" (races with animals pulling humans on skis) and bandy -- a hybrid of ice hockey and soccer.

But spectators watching London's 2012 Olympics this summer will not see that extremely rare creature: the Saudi woman athlete. In fact, they are more likely to see camels racing in Piccadilly Circus than a single Saudi women kicking a ball around a London soccer field.
Full article here.

Ink-Stained Wretch Dept., Profile of Jill Abramson

2012-03-03T21:13:58Z

I profiled Jill Abramson for More Magazine this month. A newswoman and a smart fighter, also a dog-lover, her appointment as the first female editor in chief of the nation's paper of record is of course, encouraging to me and any woman in the business.
However, lest we celebrate a "trend" prematurely, I note that there is only ONE other major newspaper with a woman at the top, and it's in Ohio.
Men still run everything at all the high-culture publications, and they pick their own gender to write, and review other people's writing whenever possible. Actually, when I told one of these entitled lads that I was writing this profile for More he sniffed condescendingly: 'Uhh, does 'More" even exist anymore?"
Yes, apparently it's doing pretty well, thanks.
That's why I read the Lives of the Saints for style tips before writing about Jill.
She also talked about her regrets regarding the Judy Miller/Iraq war p.r. campaign, the full story is linked here.

The Ghost Haunting the MOMA

2012-02-26T16:08:18Z

On a fall day in 1935, a broke and broken Jewish émigré from Nazi Germany named Alfred Flechtheim sat down and wrote a pleading letter to a New York art world potentate. Before the Nazis ran him out of Germany and turned his visage into the caricature of the "degenerate ArtJew," Flechtheim had been Weimar Germany's pre-eminent dealer, representing dozens of modern masters from Picasso to Klee. Now, he had a single modernist piece left in his possession, he said, and he desperately needed money. How much, he wanted to know, would donors to the new Museum of Modern Art pay?

Not too much, it turned out.

Read the full story here.

Sexual Violence and Women in Revolution

2012-01-26T13:57:43Z

For the Daily Beast, here, a story about how sexual violence has been a tool to keep women silent, and how the greatest step forward for women in Egypt has been taken by a few brave souls who have stood up and talked about it, publicly.

Talking Italian Justice on The Digital Age

2012-01-26T13:49:17Z

I talked with NY attorney Jim Zirin for half an hour about Italian justice and Amanda Knox. View it here.

The Bioethicist

2012-01-25T22:35:12Z

I profiled lawyer Lori Andrews, the leading expert on bioethics and new technology. She's been hard at work fighting big Pharma on the patenting of DNA, a case that probably heads to the Supreme Court next year. The story here.

Sitting with a Salafi

2012-01-25T22:31:08Z

Here, for Time.com, an interview with Egypt's Nour Party spokesman, in which we debate the veil, and I get to ruminate on how the common ideal of covered, not to say, erased women, could be the path to peace between the religious parties in Israel and the newly democratic Arab neighbors.

An Interview with One of the Muslim Brotherhood's Sisters

2012-01-25T22:26:55Z

I talked with a number of the sisters of the Brotherhood while I was in Egypt.
Here, a story for Slate on one of them.

A Christmas Story, 2011

2011-12-29T00:21:53Z

Out on the Corniche, beyond the ruined art deco beachfront high-rises -- lodging rats now, not VIPs -- you can rent a bike. No one seemed to have a map, but the mid-December sun was warm and it seemed a shame not to pedal along the seashore on my free afternoon.

A Christmas story for the LATimes, here it is.

First, let's abort all the Females

2011-12-16T16:28:33Z