Here is a transcript and video of the Democracy Now report for Sept. 25th
AMY GOODMAN: World leaders are gathering in New York this week for the annual opening session of the UN General Assembly. With the ongoing speculation of a possible US military strike on Iran, no guests are attracting as much attention as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He opened his visit a public forum at Columbia University. A mixed crowd of protesters turned out to greet him. One sign read “We refuse to choose between Bush and Ahmadinejad.”
Democracy Now! spoke to some of the hundreds gathered outside the lecture hall, both those protesting the Iranian president’s visit and those curious to hear him for themselves.
— [inaudible] side of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University, we will play in a minute. He was invited to speak as part of Columbia’s World Leaders series. Before Ahmadinejad took the podium, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger used his introductory remarks to make clear the Iranian president was not a welcome guest.
LEE BOLLINGER: Frankly — I close with this comment — frankly and in all candor, Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions. But your avoiding them will, in itself, be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do.
Fortunately, I am told by experts on your country that this only further undermines your position in Iran, with all the many goodhearted intelligent citizens there. A year ago, I am reliably told, your preposterous and belligerent statements in this country — was at one of the meetings of the Council on Foreign Relations — so embarrassed sensible Iranian citizens that this led to your party’s defeat in the December mayoral elections. May this do that and more.
I am only a professor — I am only a professor who is also a university president. And today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Bollinger challenged Ahmadinejad on his support for Iraqi insurgents targeting US troops, his government’s nuclear ambitions and his inflammatory statements on Israel. He also chided Ahmadinejad for his comments questioning whether the Nazi Holocaust occurred.
LEE BOLLINGER: — the failures of our own government to live by our values, and we won’t be shy about criticizing yours. Let’s then be clear at the beginning. Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator. And so, I ask you — and so, I ask you, why have women, members of the Baha’i Faith, homosexuals, and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country? Why, in a letter last week to the Secretary General of the UN, did Akbar Ganji, Iran’s leading political dissident, and over 300 public intellectuals, writers and Nobel laureates express such grave concern that your inflamed dispute with the West is distracting the world’s attention from the intolerable conditions in your regime within Iran — in particular, the use of the press law to ban writers for criticizing the ruling system? Why are you so afraid of Iranian citizens expressing their opinions for change?
AMY GOODMAN: Columbia President Lee Bollinger. After Bollinger spoke, it was the Iranian president’s turn. He began by accusing the Columbia president of insulting him and the audience. Later, he partly addressed some of the Columbia president’s questions.
MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: [translated] Why don’t we encourage more research on a historical event that has become the root, the cause, of many heavy catastrophes in the region in this time and age? Why shouldn’t there be more research about the root causes? That was my first question.
And my second question: well, given this historical event, if it is a reality, we need to still question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it or not. After all, it happened in Europe. The Palestinian people had no role to play in it. So why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price of an event they had nothing to do with?
The Palestinian people didn’t commit any crime. They had no role to play in the World War II. They were living with the Jewish communities and the Christian communities in peace at the time. They didn’t have any problems. And today, too, Jews, Christians and Muslims live in brotherhood all over the world in many parts of the world. They don’t have any serious problems.
But why is it that the Palestinians should pay a price, innocent Palestinians, for five million people to remain displaced or refugees abroad for sixty years? Or is this not a crime? Is asking about these crimes a crime in and by itself? Why should an academic, myself, face insults when asking questions like this? Is this what you call freedom and upholding the freedom of thought?
And as for the second topic, Iran’s nuclear issue, I know there’s time limits, but I need time. I mean, a lot of time was taken from me. We are a country. We are a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency. For over thirty-three years we have been member state of the agency. The bylaw of the agency explicitly states that all member states have the right to the peaceful nuclear fuel technology. This is an explicit statement made in the bylaw. And the bylaw says that there is no pretext or excuse, even the inspections carried by the IAEA itself, that can prevent member states’ right to have that right.
Of course, the IAEA is responsible to carry out inspections. We are one of the countries that’s carried out the most amount of level of cooperation with the IAEA. They’ve had hours and weeks and days of inspections in our country. And over and over again, the agency’s reports indicate that Iran’s activities are peaceful, that they have not detected a deviation, and that Iran — they have received positive cooperation from Iran. But regretfully, two or three monopolistic powers, selfish powers, want to force their word on the Iranian people and deny them their right.
AMY GOODMAN: President Ahmadinejad went on to defend his government on human rights, nuclear activities, alleged involvement in backing Iraqi insurgents. He also appeared to question whether al-Qaeda was, in fact, responsible for the 9/11 attacks and suggested a hidden motive. And in a statement that drew wide ridicule, Ahmadinejad replied to a question on suppression of homosexuals by claiming there were no homosexuals in Iran.
For more on Ahmadinejad’s visit, we will be joined by two guests. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran expert at CUNY, City University of New York, and Trita Parsi. Treacherous Alliance is his new book. But first, we will go to break. This is Democracy Now! Stay with us.
AMY GOODMAN: We go to people outside of the Columbia University lecture hall. Hundreds gathered, both protesting the Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s visit and those curious to hear for themselves.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 1: I’m proud to be an American, and I’m here because I wish to witness history.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 2: I’m here because I don’t think a college campus is the place for a bigot and a terrorist to come speak to people.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 3: Inviting him here to their private institution is a way of honoring a dictator who wants to build a nuclear weapon to use against Israel, to use against the United States.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 4: My diploma is for sale at this price because its value is diminished by the actions of the university.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 5: To say that he is a terrorist is just — just doesn’t make any sense. He’s a free elected leader. He has his own aims. He has his own principles, which, just because the US don’t agree with him, doesn’t mean that they can just shut him off completely.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 6: Absolutely, I would like to hear what he has to say. I would like to hear if what he has to say is the same as what has been reported in the press.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 7: Ahmadinejad is bad, but Bush is much worse, and humanity needs a third way. We need to stop the attack, the war in Iraq, and we need to prevent a war against Iran. Nothing that is going on in Iran justifies an attack against Iran. And the US is using all this hullabaloo about Ahmadinejad to whip up public opinion for an attack against Iran.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 8: This is making hate more than it’s doing good. I think people need to open their eyes and their minds, and don’t put a whole country in the toilet because of what one man says. You know, Bush has a 20% approval rating in America. Ahmadinejad has less than that in Iran. So don’t say “Let’s kill all Iranians” and “Iranians are bad,” when it’s not fair to say that about America.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: It’s not a question of siding with either Islamic fundamentalism — that is, the Islamic Republic of Iran — or US imperialism. But rather, we have to stand with the people of the world who are fighting against oppression and repression and against US efforts to dominate the world.
AMY GOODMAN: People who were protesting for and against the visit of the Iranian president at Columbia University yesterday.
AMY GOODMAN: For more on Ahmadinejad’s visit, we’re joined by two guests. Ervand Abrahamian is an Iran expert and CUNY Distinguished Professor of History at Baruch College here at the City University of New York. He’s the author of several books on Iran, co-author of a new book from City Lights called Targeting Iran. And joining me from Washington, D.C. is Trita Parsi. He’s the president of the National Iranian American Council, the largest Iranian American organization in the United States, author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States.
First, Ervand Abrahamian, can you talk about the president’s visit? Did anything he said — this is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — surprise you?
ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Well, I was surprised because he didn’t really use the opportunity to try to lower the tempo, the serious problem we have now, which is we’re at the abyss of war, basically. And there are people pushing for war in the next few months. And this would have been a very good opportunity to try to smooth things over, try to calm the tempo down.
And it’s not just he who missed the opportunity. I think Bollinger missed the opportunity. In fact, Bollinger’s speech was like a drumbeat for war. And most of the questions from the audience missed the opportunity. They dealt basically with important identity questions, but they didn’t really deal with the issue that we are really on the abyss of war. And this is a far more serious issue than, you know, either ethnic or gender issues.
And he, actually, I think — although he made some statements about Iran is not interested in nuclear weapons, he could have been more forthright and more categorical about the policies of Iran in terms of the nuclear project.
AMY GOODMAN: Does this remind you of Saddam Hussein before the war?
ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: It does. In fact, Ahmadinejad didn’t say it last night — yesterday, but his policy is that there is no likelihood of war, because no one in their right senses would think of invading or attacking Iran. And that’s the premise he works on, which is, I think, a completely wrong premise, because he doesn’t seem to understand American politics, the same people who gave us the war on Iraq, the same people who are running foreign policy now. But he begins from the premise that no one in their right senses would think of attacking Iran.
AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi, you have written a very interesting book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States. Can you take us back in time and talk about the relationship, the secret dealings, between these three countries?
TRITA PARSI: Israel has for a very long time been a critical factor in America’s formulation of a policy vis-à-vis Iran. But what’s really interesting is that the influence of Israel has gone in completely different directions, if we just go back fifteen years. During the 1980s, in spite of the Iranian Revolution, in spite of Ayatollah Khomeini’s many, many harsh remarks about Israel, far, far worse than what anything Ahmadinejad has said so far, Israel at the time was the country that was lobbying the United States to open up talks with Iran to try to rebuild the US-Iran relations, because of strategic imperatives that Israel had. Israel needed Iran, because it was fearing the Arab world and a potential war with the Arabs.
After 1991, ’92, that’s when you see the real shift in Israeli-Iranian relations, because that’s when the entire geopolitical map of the Middle East is redrawn. The Soviet Union collapses. The last standing army of the Arabs, that of Saddam Hussein, is defeated in the Persian Gulf War. And you have an entirely new security environment in the Middle East, in which the two factors, the Soviets and the Arabs, that had pushed Iran and Israel closer together suddenly evaporate. But as their security environment improves, they also start to realize that they may be ending up in a situation in which they can become potential threats to each other. And that’s when you see how the Israelis shift 180 degrees. Now the Israeli argument was that the United States should not talk to Iran, because there is no such thing as Iranian moderates.
And ever since, the Israelis and the pro-Israel interest in the United States have lobbied to make sure that there is no dialogue or there’s no rapprochement between the United States and Iran. And the Iranians have done similar things. They have undermined every US foreign policy initiative in the Middle East that they feared would be beneficial to Israel. So the real shift in Israeli-Iranian relations come after the Cold War, not with the revolution in 1979.
AMY GOODMAN: But I also do want you to go right back to 1948 and talk about that period up to 1991. What were the secret relationships?
TRITA PARSI: Well, immediately after Israel was founded, Iran was actually one of the states on the committee at the UN who was preparing a plan, and they were against the partition. They were against the idea of creating two states. And Iran, at the time, said that this would lead to several decades of crisis. But once Israel was a fact, the Iranian government felt that because it was facing a hostile Arab world, as well as a very hostile Arab ideology, Pan-Arabism, Israel was a potential ally for the Iranians, particularly as Israel started to shift closer and closer to the Western camp and the United States. So throughout the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the Iranians and the Israelis were working very, very closely together, had a very robust alliance.
They tried to keep it secret. It wasn’t necessarily very secret, but Iran never recognized Israel de jure. They recognized it de facto. They had an Israeli mission in Tehran, but they never permitted it to be called an embassy. They had an Israeli envoy to Tehran, but they never called him an ambassador. When the Israeli planes were landing at the Tehran airport, they created — they built a specific tarmac off the airport for Israeli planes to land, so that no one would really see that there are so many El Al planes flying to Tehran. And the reason why the Iranians were doing this is because, on the one hand, they needed Israel as an ally because they were fearful of the Arab world, and, on the other hand, they felt that if they got too close to Israel, they would only fuel Arab anger towards Iran.
AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi, you have a number of revelations in your book. One of them is that the Iranian prime minister asked Israel permission to assassinate Khomeini. Describe the circumstance.
TRITA PARSI: Circumstances was right before the revolution, in which the Israelis were very, very concerned. They were fearful that the new regime would be very hostile to Israel, and they weren’t certain that they would be able to build the same type of secret relations with Iran as they had during the time of the Shah. It later on turned out that they actually did have that ability, not to the same extent, but they still could do it.
But the Iranian prime minister was eager to be able to get rid of Khomeini, fearing — thinking that by Khomeini being eliminated, the revolution would be able to move in a different direction. And he asked the Israelis if they could do it, because Khomeini at the time was in Paris; the Iranians did not have the ability to do anything, but they thought that perhaps the Israelis would. The Israeli answer was apparently that this is not Israel’s job and that Israel is not the policemen of the world.
AMY GOODMAN: What about Israel reaching out to Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War?
TRITA PARSI: After the first Persian Gulf War, there was a thinking in Israel at the time that Saddam had now been weakened, he was no longer a real threat, and at the end of the day the real potential threat in the future, the rising power, was Iran. So the Israelis were trying to find different ways of being able to find some sort of a modus vivendi with Saddam Hussein.
This significantly angered the Clinton administration, that was pursuing a policy of isolating both Iran and Iraq at the same time, and they were very annoyed that the Israelis were trying to find some sort of a relationship with Saddam in the midst of all of that.
Now, the Israeli initiative didn’t go anywhere, but it was guided by the thinking that Iran was going to be the major threat. And even though Iran at the time really was not a threat to Israel, Israel already at that time treated it as an actual threat.
AMY GOODMAN: The United States foiling Iran’s plan to withdraw support from Hamas and Hezbollah.
TRITA PARSI: We talked about that before, that there was a 2003 proposal that the Iranians sent over to the United States trying to find a larger accommodation between the United States and Iran, in which they basically put all the different issues on the table, including an offer, within the framework of the negotiations, to disarm Hezbollah and turn it into a mere political organization — had that happened, there would probably not have been a war last year between Israel and Lebanon — secondly, to end all support for Islamic jihad and Hamas and encourage the Palestinians to go a political route, rather than military route, in their dealings with Israel.
But what’s revealed in the book, as well, that has not been out in the media a lot is that prior to giving this proposal to the United States, the Iranians were fishing it around in Europe, trying to create some support for it. And, most importantly, they went to places that they knew Israelis were going to be. And they were presenting the framework, the concept of this grand bargain, and they wanted to make sure that the Israelis felt that this would not be something that would come at their expense, because they were concerned that the Israelis would try to undermine it. So they were basically sending a signal: Look, if we can have this accommodation with the United States, we will disentangle and basically not be so involved in the Israeli-Palestinian issue anymore.
AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi is author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States. Our guest also, Ervand Abrahamian, Iran expert, Distinguished Professor at Baruch College. I wanted, Professor Abrahamian, to read from Juan Cole’s piece, who says, talking about Ahmadinejad, “He has been depicted as a Hitler figure intent on killing Israeli Jews, even though he is not commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces, has never invaded any other country, denies he is an anti-Semite, has never called for any Israeli civilians to be killed, and allows Iran’s 20,000 Jews to have representation in Parliament,” that Khamenei is the one with the real power.
ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: He is right on target, yes. I think Juan Cole sums it up. And the question is, then, why is basically in American politics so much focused on Ahmadinejad? I think he serves the function that Saddam Hussein played. He’s an easy person to demonize. And yesterday’s Bollinger’s introduction, when he described him as a dictator, I think, shows how little people like Bollinger really know about the Iranian political system. One can call Ahmadinejad many things, but a dictator he is by no means. He can’t even — he doesn’t even have the power to appoint his own cabinet ministers. It’s a presidency with very limited power. And to claim that he is in a position to threaten the United States or Israel is just bizarre, frankly. I think someone like Bollinger should know more about Iran before they sling around smears like terms such as “dictator.”
AMY GOODMAN: Well, talk about Khamenei, then, if he is the one with real power.
ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Here, again, he is, you can say, the Supreme Leader, but the Iranian system is actually very sort of a collective leadership. The foreign policy is made in a council, where the Supreme Leader appoints those members, but there are very different views there. And Ahmadinejad does not run that committee. Someone like Rafsanjani has a great deal of influence. The former President Khatami has a great deal of influence. And they are much more willing to negotiate.
In fact, they were, I think, the people who offered this grand bargain in 2003 to settle all the issues with the United States. And for reasons that are not clear, the White House just basically brushed it aside. They were not interested in pursuing this. And this is why it leads me to think that this administration is adamant in resolving the nuclear problem by military force, because if it was interested in resolving it through diplomacy, there were offers made to them to follow that route, and they have very consciously decided not follow the diplomatic routes. So if you don’t follow the diplomatic route, the only other route there is is the military route. And, of course, it’s only a question of time when they decide on air strikes.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Trita Parsi, about this Newsweek magazine report that says that Vice President Cheney considered provoking an exchange of military strikes between Iran and Israel in order to give the US a pretext to attack Iran. A few months before he quit, the Middle East Adviser to Cheney, David Wurmser, told a small group of people that Cheney had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz and perhaps other sites, in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out. Citing two knowledgeable sources, Newsweek put out this report. Your response?
TRITA PARSI: I think it’s definitely a plausible scenario, because one thing that we know for certain, with great certainty, is that the Israelis lack the military capability to take out Iran’s nuclear program. They can attack it, but they cannot destroy it. And the only thing that it would result to is some sort of Iranian retaliation, which would then suck the United States right into the conflict, because the United States would not be able to stand without it — outside of it, and obviously many elements in the White House would probably prefer to immediately get into it.
One of the things that I describe in the book that I think is extremely important is that when you take a look at how Iran has made its decisions vis-à-vis Israel, it’s actually been geopolitical and strategic factors that have been driving their decisions. It’s not been ideology. And I think this is a critical point, because right now you have a metaphor being presented by Bibi Netanyahu, the leader of the Likud Party, in which he’s saying that it’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And then he goes on to imply that Ahmadinejad is Hitler. If we accept that premise, that it is 1938, that Iran is Germany and Ahmadinejad is Hitler, then who, which leader, in his or her right mind, would want to play the role of Neville Chamberlain? It’s a metaphor whose premise basically puts us in a situation in which conflict is completely inevitable. And there’s no other way, because negotiations and diplomacy simply cannot be pursued.
Fortunately, this is a false premise. Iran and Israel and the United States and Israel are not engaged in an ideological zero-sum game battle. This is a strategic rivalry. It is solvable, but it requires a tremendous amount of diplomacy to be able to find a way out of it. And unfortunately, right now, diplomacy is the last thing that one can describe the foreign policies of these countries, particularly the Bush administration.
AMY GOODMAN: I interviewed exiled Iranian activist Azar Derakhshan earlier this summer. She’s the editor of the Women of March 8 magazine and helped organize the 2006 European march against anti-women laws in Iran. I just want to play an excerpt from my conversation with her. This is Azar Derakhshan.
AZAR DERAKHSHAN: I have seen a portrait in the media, Western media. In the media, there is two sides. There is the United States and government of Iran. There are clashes. And the people, the voice of people is absent completely. And the opinion of — foreigner opinion, they think that this thing, the future of Iran is going to be decided by these two powers.
I try to tell to the people in foreigner countries, in European countries, it’s not true, this portrait. There is another fact, very important. The people of Iran, the movement, they are going to take the future. They are not forced to choose between neither the United States, neither the government of Iran. There is another force in Iran. If really somebody wants to prevent the war, the clashes, should be support this movement, this movement for equality, for freedom.
We don’t need United States to liberate us. First of all, we are here, and this is our legitimate to liberate ourselves. We want to decide about our future ourselves. We want to fight our native enemy by ourselves. We don’t need — that’s first. Second one, we already have seen, because Afghanistan and Iraq, they are neighbor of Iran. And the women of Iran, they can see it. Maybe before, not, but right now it’s really — it’s enough to know what kind of program they have for the people of Iran.
AMY GOODMAN: Iranian dissident, Azar Derakhshan. Professor Abrahamian, your response?
ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Well, I think she’s right in that there are — Iran is a very complicated society. There are very different political movements. And the idea that somehow it’s a frozen system, that it’s not going to change, already precludes any type of possibility of negotiations and changes. In fact, the Iranian system has an electoral system — is and electoral system. We are going to come up with elections very soon. There is no guarantee that Ahmadinejad would be re-elected again. It’s very possible that reformers, liberals, would get in into power again.
AMY GOODMAN: When is the election?
ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: In less than two years’ time. And the base, in fact, of Ahmadinejad’s — I would say the core base — is very similar to Bush’s core base. It’s about 25%. For him to get re-elected, he has to stretch out and find independents and others, and this is going to be very hard. If the reformers can actually rally around one candidate, as they did in the 1990s, they could have landslide victories, in which over 70% of the electorate was voting for liberals and reformers.
AMY GOODMAN: And what direction would a US attack on Iran push the election?
ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Oh, it would play right into the hands of Ahmadinejad, because you would have a national emergency. He would declare, basically, the country’s in danger. Everyone would have to rally around the flag. People who disliked him would keep their mouth shut. At a time of when the existence of the state is in question, you don’t mess around with the leaders. He would basically be able to act as a much more of a strongman national leader.
AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi, you’ve had unusual access to US decision makers, Israeli decision makers, Iranian leaders. What is your sense of a strike, the US or Israel, on Iran? Is it imminent?
TRITA PARSI: Well, I don’t think an Israeli strike is imminent, unless there is some sort of coordination with the United States with the aim of being able to draw the US into the conflict. I do believe that some sort of a conflict between the United States and Iran is quite probable right now, mindful of the lack of diplomacy that is taking place.
And I also do believe that this is not necessarily something that will go away automatically just because there’s going to be a change of government in the United States within the next two years. Many of the decisions that are made right now have the impact of limiting the maneuverability of future administrations. We’re making it more and more difficult, not only for this administration, but also for future administrations, to pursue diplomacy.
And what we’re seeing in the Middle East right now is not necessarily just a conflict over what’s going on in Iraq or about Iran’s nuclear program. This is a conflict that, at the end of the day, is about two powerhouses in the region, and it’s a conflict about hegemony, for lack of a better word.
And these type of shifts, with the United States currently declining and finding itself in a more and more difficult situation in Iraq and with Iran finding itself in a stronger position and acting very, very confidently, these type of shifts historically do not take place peacefully, unless there is a tremendous amount of diplomacy. And again, we’re not seeing that right now.
And I’m very concerned that even if we manage to avoid war for the next two years, the next US administration may find itself in a position in which its maneuverability is so limited that the military option once again becomes a very viable one for them.
AMY GOODMAN: Could Ahmadinejad be playing a game like Saddam Hussein, where if it is clear he doesn’t have nuclear weapons, he’s weaker, the US would be more likely to attack? He looks at the example of North Korea, where they do have nuclear weapons, and now the US is just pursuing a diplomatic option?
TRITA PARSI: I think there’s a combination of two. On the one hand, I think a lot of his statements and his behavior is aimed to be a deterrent against the United States. He’s acting confident, and he’s talking about the United States not being able to attack. This is a way of saying that the US can’t do it, and if you do it, you will face a tremendously difficult situation. So he’s doing this partly, too, as a deterrence. It has the negative impact of scaring the daylights out of a lot of people, including a lot of Iran’s neighbors that are now gravitating towards the United States’s position, because they are very fearful of what Ahmadinejad may be capable of doing.
At the same time, I do believe that, to a certain extent, but not fully, he has actually convinced himself that Iran is in such a strong position, the United States is in such a weak position, that it can’t do it. But I think it’s a combination of these two. And I think it’s important to keep in mind that most of the belligerence that he’s doing is probably for the purpose of deterrence, not necessarily as an offensive strategy.
AMY GOODMAN: Iran’s role in Iraq?
TRITA PARSI: Sorry?
AMY GOODMAN: Iran’s role in Iraq?
TRITA PARSI: I think the Iranians have played a game in Iraq in which they basically have invested in every potential faction in Iraq, making sure that whoever comes up on top is going to be a player who has strong relations with Iran, because it’s in Iran’s hardcore national interest to make sure that Iraq never again becomes a hostile state, so they never have to experience the eight-year war that they had with Iraq in the 1980s. So, again, I think we’re seeing a policy by the Iranian government there that is quite independent of whether Ahmadinejad is in power or not. It’s probably something that another Iranian government would be pursuing, as well, at least under this regime that we’re having in Iran right now.
And I think the only way for the United States to be able to find a way out of Iraq is not only to talk to the Iranians, but really include all of the other neighbors of Iraq into the process, giving these neighbors not only a stake in the outcome, but also a stake in the process itself. We have a tremendous amount of problems with what the Saudis are doing in Iraq and also what the Jordanians are doing. We’re not talking about that at all. On the contrary, we’re just focusing on Iran’s role.
AMY GOODMAN: Saudi’s role, very briefly?
TRITA PARSI: Saudi’s role — well, a military report just came out about two months ago — it was leaked in the LA Times — that showed that about 45% of all the suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudi nationals. We’ve known for quite some time that there’s a lot of money flowing into Iraq from Saudi Arabia that is going to the Sunni insurgents, because their belief is that they’re fighting a war against Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. We’re not talking about that.
On the contrary, Saudi Arabia got praised by Ambassador Crocker during his testimony. And I think it’s a very one-sided way of looking at the problems we’re facing in Iraq. And as long as we pursue a very political perspective on the Iraqi situation, then I fear that we will continue to be in a rather difficult mess over there.
AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi, I want to thank you very much for being with us.
TRITA PARSI: Thank you so much for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: Your book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States. And a final question for Professor Abrahamian: Are you afraid for your people? Are you afraid for the people of Iran?
ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yes. I’m very much concerned that in the next few months there will be air strikes. I think what we saw before with Iraq, we are having a rerun of that, very much the same rhetoric. Tthe same type of people are pushing for war and using even the same sort of arguments that often — unsubstantiated arguments blown out of proportion. For instance, the constant drumbeat that Iran is actually supplying weaponry to the insurgents that are killing Americans, this is basically saying that Iran has already declared war on the United States. When you try to actually pin down what is the evidence for that, it boils down to the yellowcake stories and the stuff about Saddam Hussein being behind al-Qaeda. Until the United States actually gets real evidence that Iran is providing lethal weapons to the insurgents, I would not accept any of those arguments at face value.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Abrahamian, thank you, as well, for being with us. Ervand Abrahamian is author of the book Targeting Iran.


PART 1 – In the first half of this week’s BEARcast – WrestleCast Fred and I discuss the results of Payback, RAW and we touch on the HUGE twist at the end of RAW involving The Shield and Evolution. Check out part two for our main discussion on RAW’s shocking ending and the current state of wrestling storytelling.
Thank You and enjoy,
Tweet me at @wkbear or Fred at @FreddyD15
If you’d like to contribute or have any ideas for the show, email the show at WorldOfBearBC@gmail.com or click on CONTACT US.


text:
Chocolate Turtle Cupcakes topped with Caramel Buttercream Frosting, drizzled with Caramel Topping and Hot Fudge, then sprinkled with mini chocolate chips and chopped pecans! Stop drooling! Pin to your Recipe Board!
Stress Baking Jack and Coke Cupcakes: Need an alcoholic dessert? Of course you do. An improved version of my most pinned recipe of all time! Rich chocolate cola cupcakes filled with a whiskey chocolate ganache and topped with a creamy whiskey buttercrea

domain: food


text:
Currently most franchises are located in downtown Shanghai.
by Barnaby Lofton, 14 May 2020
The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) raided the coffee company’s Xiamen headquarters on April 26
by Ryan Gandolfo, 28 April 2020
Starbucks announced heightened protection measures for all its Guangzhou locations.
by Barnaby Lofton, 20 April 2020
Be sure to take advantage of free and discounted mocha in case Luckin locations start to disappear.
by Ryan Gandolfo, 10 April 2020
Grab your Ugg boots and call Becky, because the drink of basics has officially landed in the Middle Kingdom!
by That's, 03 September 2019

domain: news


text: Edgar McFadden was a scientist who made breakthroughs in wheat genetics in South Dakota and Texas. He conducted an aggressive breeding program in wheat, oats, corn and barley. From a single seed he developed a spring wheat variety that was immune to stem rust. Aptly, he named it ‘Hope’. Hope wheat was the first successful mating between common wheat and an ancestral wheat species, an accomplishment that most scientists of the time believed was impossible. This accomplishment set the stage for greater wheat production during World War II, the recovery years afterward, and the Green Revolution. After graduating in 1918 from South Dakota State with a B.S. degree in Agriculture, McFadden began a career with the USDA Bureau of Plant Industry and later became an enabling colleague with Norman Borlaug during the Rockefeller Foundation wheat improvement program in Mexico from 1944 to 1955.

domain: agronomy


text:
Pretty darned close to Brooklyn's best............
I grew up eating NYC's finest pizzas and this comes very, very close..............the toppings, though, enhance the experience. Raddicio and gorganzola!!! Ricotta and asparagus!!!
Will, the owner, is a Brooklyn boy and even without the water (they always credit the water-those New Yorkers), this is yummy stuff!
If you're looking for the flavors (the bubbles in the crust - the runny olive oil) you miss from ole New York - this is the best you'll find in Northern California!
Better than "real" New York pizza.
Props to Arinell, but I truly believe this is the best pizza-by-the-slice I've ever had. (There is plenty of gourmet pizza to be had in restaurants, but slice-able pizza in the Bay Area is almost uniformly terrible. Gioia takes the best of New York - thin crust, bright, not too sweet tomato sauce - and combines it with Berkeley - impeccably sourced ingredients , beautifully balanced toppings (silvery anchovies and strips of chili) organic everything, Chez Panisse blah blah blah....and gets it just right. I wish he'd open a store in the city.
The Best Pizza.
Gioia's opened only a short time ago and became an instant hit in the neighborhood. Why? Because it's the best, the only one with real sauce and the right proportion of cheese to sauce. And thin crispy crust.
For those of you raised on fake California pizza with sauce sweet from the can, maybe this will show you what pizza can be like.
Unfortunately, only a few stools at a counter and a bench outside--not a great eat-in experience.


The retail industry is a growing part of the big data revolution, but exactly how should retail organizations start integrating data analytics into their business models? The question doesn’t have a straightforward answer, but it helps to understand the role of data for modern retail companies. You might be tempted to hire your own data analyst or data scientist, or even a team of them for large-scale operations, but is that really your most efficient use of resources?
Let’s start by breaking down some of the ways that data is important for retail companies:
- Profitability analysis: Store owners can study any retail key performance indicator to get a better understanding of how their business works. They can quickly forecast revenue, determine profitability, and ultimately pinpoint areas where the business might be underperforming. KPIs like average transaction size, average units per customer and rate of return can tell you everything you need to know about the health of your business.
- Customer understanding: Data is also indispensable in getting to know your customers better. With the right market research and suitably sophisticated levels of analysis, it’s possible to get a glimpse into how your customers tick, understanding their wants, needs, beliefs and values. Retailers can then use that information to create or sell better products.
- Competitive analysis: With enough resources, it’s possible for retail companies to look into their competition and understand how they operate. They can analyze competitors’ profitability, and study the variables that make them different. With enough information, it’s possible to improve your business in a way that exploits your competitors’ weaknesses.
- Predictive analytics: Predictive analytics are another key area for the retail industry, with practically unlimited applications. Retail companies can project things like the ebb and flow of trends, the transformation of customer demand, and the optimal pricing for products. With the right equations, they can change their investments, employees and even their annual goals to compensate for these predictions.
- Inventory and supply chain management: Data is valuable for keeping tabs on inventory levels, which retailers need to keep in careful balance in order to keep profits high. Through insights rooted in big data, companies can analyze weaknesses in the supply chain and hammer them out to improve efficiency.
- Marketing and advertising: Retail companies active in marketing and advertising can also find applications for data analysis. Understanding customers and target markets is a good start, but with the right equations and data platforms, it’s easy to analyze how and why your advertisements work, using that information to improve future campaigns.


text:
The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming teaching & learning
Linda Buturian, University of Minnesota
Pub Date: 2016
Publisher: University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing
Conditions of Use
I teach composition courses at a community college, and one of the big assignments that both the students and I grapple with every year is the read more
I teach composition courses at a community college, and one of the big assignments that both the students and I grapple with every year is the research paper. This text gave me a lot of new ideas about how I might incorporate digital storytelling into my composition courses. The author of this text does an incredibly thorough job explaining her own experiences with teaching digital storytelling in the context of a class about water. Even though this is a text designed for educators, she gives many different scaffolding exercises in the glossary to help other instructors start to incorporate technology and visual imagery into their classes. The book itself is thorough and organized quite well. There are many links and sample digital stories to peruse. Each chapter begins with a quote, which is a very welcoming way to transition from one topic to the next.
The author has done a meticulous job in creating a very beautiful book. Even though I read this on my laptop, I had the experience of reading an actual print copy. There was a lot of thought put into layout and arrangement here. No errors that I noted!
This text felt very new and fresh--the author discusses ways to utilize technology in the classroom as well as how to make technology a component in research assignments for a variety of subjects. It's interesting to think about how these methods could be used in a wide range of classes--science, humanities, English, math, sociology, among others. However, in one activity, she mentions encouraging students to use regular digital cameras rather than only their smartphones. If anything, she could be a little more open to letting students use what is available to them (i.e. smartphones) since many might attend a school that doesn't have a library of recording equipment or other technology to check out.
Very clear, easy-to-follow prose. The author of this text walks the reader through her own journey with digital storytelling, and she also shares her tips on making these types of assignments accessible and less daunting for students who might be afraid of making short films. The organization and layout of this text made it very easy to read from beginning to end. She featured student examples to help explain her concepts. One of the best features of this book was how adaptable it could be for all teaching styles and subjects.
The material is given here in five chapters. Each builds on the previous chapter. There's also an epilogue where the author shares her students' digital storytelling projects to illustrate the concepts covered in the text. During each chapter, if she references a scaffolding activity, there is a link to the appendix where the full text of the scaffolding activities are linked. The book is quite consistent throughout, and the author is an encouraging and helpful guide.
This book is well-organized. Each chapter builds nicely on the next. It's not a guide for students, but it provides good support to guide instructors into incorporating digital storytelling methods into the classroom. The activities referenced in each chapter are spelled out in the appendix. This makes for a very streamlined narrative. The author anticipates the reader's questions, too, and these are addressed in each chapter. There's also a helpful summary at the end of each chapter.
This textbook is structured very logically. It moves through a definition of digital storytelling into an explanation of how to include it in the classroom. The activities given in the appendix are extremely helpful. Without those, it might have made the presentation of this material a little harder to interpret. As mentioned above, the author seems to know where the reader might have questions, and she addresses those questions in the text.
Beautiful layout and organization. I was able to view this text on my phone and laptop without disruption. It's very clear that this author had aesthetics in mind as well as organization. This made for a very pleasant and easy read.
Nothing to note, error-wise!
The author includes a chapter that discusses some of the oft-forgotten realities of tablets and other modern media: the means used to gather metals and other elements from locations like the Democratic Republic of Congo. She alerts us to the ethics of using this technology--we must be aware of how we obtain these materials or risk further harm to the people whose lives are at risk for our technological pursuits. She also mentions that a good way to combat this is by using smart technology like tablets and iPhones as educational and storytelling tools, not just a means for texting or visiting Facebook.
There are a lot of exercises and activities in this book I'd like to use in my composition courses! I have a lot of ideas about how to re-structure my research paper assignment! Thank you!
The progression of the material is intuitive. The book is clearly set up, but I do think that a more detailed Table of Contents, with links to read more
The progression of the material is intuitive. The book is clearly set up, but I do think that a more detailed Table of Contents, with links to specific parts of chapters, would be useful.
This text is accurate and timely. It is unbiased and the attention to storytelling implies that all experiences and backgrounds are valuable and worth preserving in this manner.
This book is up-to-date, but the nature of the subject is such that it will likely need updating--I do not consider this a flaw of the book, but the nature of its subject.
The text is quite clear--while the book seems most appropriate for instructors and perhaps upper level students, college freshmen could use the text with little help.
The text never deviates from the structure outlined in the Table of Contents and Introduction. Each chapter is similarly organized, and this makes the book easy to navigate.
The text is easy to read, but I do think that the colors used in the book need more contrast--the black text is sometimes difficult to distinguish from the blue headers. It is easy to navigate each chapter.
It is a book that would be useful to instructors more than students, as I think it encourages the design of assignments that writing students would find interesting. The topics discussed are timely and appropriate, and the assignments and rubrics provided are very helpful.
The interface is easy to navigate--the introduction explains the layout of the book, and the text does not deviate from that. Internal links in the text are quick to open.
I found no grammatical errors.
The text is culturally sensitive. By placing value on digital storytelling, the text values technologically savvy students and the skill set the bring to classroom. Rather than shaming them for their use of technology, it gives the tools they necessary to harness their voices in a way that would be helpful in many types of classroom settings.
This is an interesting and useful text. I am thinking of adding this to the reading materials for a creative writing class that I am teaching on hybrid forms in poetry and prose. It may also be relevant for a class in which students discuss and design digital humanities assignments for undergrads. Digital story telling could also be something to introduce in a composition class working on personal narratives.
This text covers each step in developing and implementing a digital storytelling assignment, with one glaring exception. The author can't assume that read more
This text covers each step in developing and implementing a digital storytelling assignment, with one glaring exception. The author can't assume that readers have any experience with video or audio editing, and some of the first questions readers will raise will involve the basic nuts and bolts of collecting assets (a term I believe is useful to describe the "parts" of a digital story: photos, video clips, music, sound effects, etc.) The author should have devoted one chapter to the rudiments of importing assets and arranging them on a timeline. She could have made suggestions for simple editing platforms, many that are free to use. Even though the technology changes, those recommendations could be easily updated in the ebook. Suggestions for editing platforms include Adobe Spark, iMovie, WeVideo, Windows Movie Maker, among others.
I felt the author did a good job of describing the most common types of digital stories, the types of learning that they inculcate, how to assess student learning. I noticed that she referred to "Royalty Free" music as equivalent to legally available. That is a common misconception. Royalty Free assets are copyrighted and usually require a fee to use. Ther Royalty Free simply means that the user does not have to pay a royalty fee every time the asset appears online. The fee can be anywhere from $4 for a one-time use to several hundred dollars for an asset that will appear on a commercial website.
The text is very relevant and will be useful for the foreseeable future. It is applicable for a wide range of ages and abilities.
The text was a very quick read. I found the quotes at the beginning of each chapter cumbersome and often quoted out of context. Chapter 5 seemed out of step with the overall focus of the text. It is devoted to a fuzzy discussion of the environmental impacts of using digital devices. I didn't see that it added any information to the topic of using digital storytelling in the classroom.
I didn't notice any issues with consistency.
The text is well-organized. The smaller assignments are easy to access via links to the appendix.
Except for the Chapter 5 outlier that I've described before, I felt that the text flowed very well. The topic is introduced, the many types of stories are described, then the author outlines the process of leading students through a digital story assignment. She culminates with a brief discussion of assessing the stories, mainly by providing sample rubrics.
The text performed without difficulty. The typeface is easy to read. The text is formatted so that it is easy to read onscreen. I had no difficulty reading the text and following the links.
There are a few punctuation flaws, but I didn't make note of them. I did see that on page 115 the author uses a pull-quote that appears in a block. Because she quotes so often from other writers, I assumed that it was from an outside source, but was not properly attributed. But then, in the very next paragraph, she repeats the quote verbatim. It's repetitions and cumbersome. I guess the quote is her own words, but I don't see why they were repeated in the main text. The block quote really should be deleted for ease of reading and to avoid distraction and confusion.
Excellent. She gives great examples of using digital stories with a variety of students, on a great variety of topics. It felt very inclusive.
As a trained digital storytelling facilitator and an instructor of a university course called "Digital Storytelling" I was excited to see this text. I feel that it will be an excellent resource for teachers who want to learn how to use digital storytelling in the classroom. It is not a stand-alone text. Teachers will have to find other sources of information to learn how to teach students to edit photos, video, and music, and to assemble them into engaging, impactful digital stories.
I found the text to be very comprehensive for working in higher education and/or secondary school educators wanting to provide new learning read more
I found the text to be very comprehensive for working in higher education and/or secondary school educators wanting to provide new learning opportunities for their students. Digital storytelling opens doors for students and faculty to present projects and assignments in an innovative way with appropriate use of technology. The text can be used in a variety of courses, is easily adaptable, specific and user friendly. The examples, assignments and resource links are practical and useful. An index would be helpful.
The text is accurate in providing information for implementation of digital storytelling. As the text is not written in the manner of a textbook it covers all key elements needed for those who are new to digital storytelling. The process and methods are clear while no errors were found. Students favor the use of learning using multi-media approaches in any aspect of the curriculum, this is a benefit to both students and teachers.
The text is relevant in that it meets the needs of students as they learn through the use of digital storytelling. Technology is here to stay. Students would prefer to be creative active learners rather than passive. The links, videos and examples can be easily updated as the need arises.
The text is easy to read, clear and consistent in its format. The examples help to connect the written information to the visual.
The text is consistent in its format and focus.
The text is organized, visually appealing and provides the right balance of text with examples, resources and links. Educators would find this text easy to use. Additional texts, reading and relevant information regarding digital storytelling could be a fine compliment for those seeking further knowledge.
I found the chapters to be arranged in a logical manner. I would suggest including resources at the end of each chapter as it would seem to be a better fit.
The text is easy to read and clear. I did not have any difficulty opening the links however in a few instances it was not easy to get back to the text page where I left off.
The text contains no grammatical errors.
The text provided relevant and culturally sensitive examples that were inclusive of language as well as samples from a diverse student population. I can easily see this approach used in higher education courses such as (but not limited to) Cultural Diversity, Sociology, Language Psychology etc.
I found the book to be a practical guide that would be useful for adding digital storytelling as a teaching tool. The rubrics and exercises can be adapted for individual use. It would be interesting to include a sample syllabus and course requirement for the reader to examine the application to digital storytelling.
Linda successfully provided her wonderful ideas of how to integrate stories with the advanced technology with appropriate index and glossary. read more
Linda successfully provided her wonderful ideas of how to integrate stories with the advanced technology with appropriate index and glossary.
Linda clearly explained her stories with the accurate, the error-free, and unbiased writing. The student artifacts, exercises, and the evaluation rubrics, appropriate to the contents of the book, helped the readers understand better the contents.
Story-telling is the classical teaching method that most of parents and teachers have liked to used. But Linda approached the classical story-telling differently with the most advanced technology. Her direction of how to combine was easy and straightforward to be implemented in the classical teaching methods.
Linda wrote the book in lucid, accessible prose, and provided adequate context for any terminology used.
Linda consistently talked about story-telling all through the book.
Each of the chapters can be easily and readily divided into smaller reading sections.
All the topics in the chapters except Chapter 5 are presented in a logical and clear fashion. I think Chapter 5 needs to move to the introduction or the end.
The navigation was excellent with the technology! All the student examples in the middle of chapters and the exercises in the appendix were easy to be checked and gotten back to the original place.
No grammar errors.
Linda wrote this book in Minnesota providing with the artifacts of her students. The artifacts naturally reflected the culture of Minnesota. By using the culture in daily lives, Linda was telling about her story. I like the idea of using the culture. When people are within and related to their culture, they generally feel comfortable and understand things better.
I will introduce this book to my students who will be the future elementary science teachers. This book brought brilliant ideas of how to integrate literacy, social studies, and technology with science. In the past, I had the “water project” with my students to save the world water. As part of the project, my students created and posted campaign posters on campus. For our next “water project,” I will add developing their digital story-telling.
This text is geared toward educators, rather than students. It is therefore not a book for use in the classroom, but a text to use to prepare read more
This text is geared toward educators, rather than students. It is therefore not a book for use in the classroom, but a text to use to prepare assignments for a course. Its goal is to demonstrate the value of using digital storytelling in the classroom, to encourage educators to create digital storytelling assignments, and to provide examples and insights into how to develop these assignments. The book provides a thorough discussion of digital storytelling as well as an appendix that includes a variety of assignments. It also provides links to a range of useful examples on youtube. The book does not include an index or a glossary.
While I am not a specialist in digital storytelling, the content seems accurate. I did not discover any errors. The author is direct about her perspective: Buturian clearly views digital storytelling as an effective teaching tool and seeks to convince educators to try using this method. The author provides compelling arguments and reflections from students and educators on the benefits of digital storytelling assignments.
The content of the book appears up to date. A guide to developing digital storytelling in the classroom is an important topic and the book provides relevant points and examples. Depending on changes to technology, the youtube examples might need to be updated at some point in the future. It appears as though new examples would be relatively easy to input into the text.
The text is written in a clear manner. It is accessible to a variety of audiences and disciplines and well explains terms and concepts.
The text uses terminology consistently.
As mentioned above, the text is not geared toward use in the classroom, but rather is aimed for use by educators for classroom preparation. The text is organized in a coherent manner that is easily usable and accessible by educators.
The text is overall organized in a clear and coherent fashion. Chapter 5 contains reflections that might fit better in the epilogue.
The youtube links are helpful and appreciated. When I clicked on other links, such as to the mandala example or to examples in the appendix, I was not able to easily return to the original location in the text. This is an interface matter that could be improved to make the text more user friendly.
The text does not contain grammatical errors.
The text incorporates inclusive language as well as examples from different topics and cultures.
This book contains several important and helpful elements describing how to develop digital storytelling assignments. At times, it seemed repetitive in terms of its continued justification of the use of digital storytelling in the classroom, and some editing would thus have been useful. In addition, while it is helpful to see a broad range of examples, it would also be useful to directly follow a few specific courses in a more linear fashion by including the syllabus and the assignments leading up to the final digital storytelling project alongside the educator and student reflections of these assignments and courses, all in one place. While some of this material is currently located in either the text or appendix, it would also be helpful to have it organized and presented together according to syllabus and course. This could be added in this format into the appendix.
Aimed at educators, not students, this is not comprehensive in the sense of providing background to digital storytelling and the trend toward using read more
Aimed at educators, not students, this is not comprehensive in the sense of providing background to digital storytelling and the trend toward using multimedia to teach various "literacies" - digital, media, information, visual in secondary and higher education. The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming teaching & learning is a how-to manual for instructors unfamiliar with using digital and multimedia assignments. It is a very fine, quick-start guide for incorporating digital storytelling into curriculum. The text is largely philosophical in tone, with a bent toward advocating for the methodology/practice of using digital storytelling exercises in addition to or in the place of traditional essays and tests. The Changing Story is not a scholarly examination of the practice, and most of the literature to which the author links is illustrative in nature, rather than used to support claims of effectiveness of method as would occur with a more scholarly source. Readers should be cognizant that this is not intended as a source book with deep scholarly support and evidence to back up its pedagogical claims, despite the previous and emerging literature available on the topic in a variety of disciplines. The text provides very useful links to resources for developing exercises and curriculum. I found the links to the DreamWorks tips for storyboarding, copyright resources and the VALUE Rubric Development Project especially useful. Embedded links to multimedia resources related to book material is interesting and the author acknowledges that these multimedia resources are meant to be a "long tail" tool educators to use and re-use as they return to the textbook and develop their own strategies for the use of digital stories in the classroom. This model also allows for updates to the book with newer materials as needed, a well-designed innovation. Examples of student work and faculty interviews are useful for orienting newcomers to the practice of digital storytelling. Scaffolded assignments are well-explained and can be easily adapted to individual instructor needs. The grading rubrics provided in Chapter 4 are good models on which to build or adapt for individual course purposes. A solid, quick-start guide to incorporating digital storytelling into course curricula. It does not contain any background or history on the use of digital media in classrooms, so cannot be said to be "comprehensive." The scope is appropriate for its intended purpose.
Accuracy is not an issue for this text, as it is a manual for implementing digital storytelling assignments in curriculum and not a traditional textbook. It does provide sound advice and solid examples of assignments for instructors unfamiliar with the processes and methods of digital storytelling. No inaccuracies were present, though it is a work that advocates for the use of digital storytelling, and is not at all unbiased. This is not a detriment in my opinion, though readers should be aware of it.
Digital storytelling is a methodology for pedagogy that has been emerging for the last few years. It will continue to be relevant with the implementation of standards such as the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy to incorporate critical thinking and various digital and research skills into curricula across the country. Edits and updates should be easy to implement as strategies and standards change.
Meant as a manual for instructors, the text is easy to read and provides excellent examples. The author defines digital storytelling well in the introductions, but many terms of art, such as "visual literacy" and "close reading" are utilized without formal definitions to help readers unfamiliar with them navigate and understand these terms.
The content of the book is generally consistent, with conceptual linkages between the more philosophical chapters (1, 2, 5, Epilogue) and the more concrete, procedural chapters (3 and 4).
Modules are set out logically. This book could be easily remixed with other sources to create a customized text.
Content in chapters 1 and 2 are thorough, but uneven in their treatment of topics and would benefit from reorganization. Chapters 3 and 4 are extremely well organized and flow logically. The whole book would have benefited from having resources listed at the end of each chapter, in addition to being individual links on which the reader must click to examine.
Epub: Anchor links in the text work as expected, though the links in the grading rubrics do not provide the user a way to get back to the chapter text to which they correlate. The Illustrated versions of stories in the Epilogue do not work in an ePub reader (Adobe Digital Editions). Web-based interface: Anchor links within the text need a serious overhaul. When trying to return to the text from an example of student work, the reader gets bumped to the end of the book, rather than returning to the relevant section of the chapter from which they linked. Links to specific scaffolding exercises take the reader to the beginning of the appendix, rather than to the specific exercise mentioned. "Returning to chapter3" takes the reader to the beginning of the chapter, rather than to the section of the chapter of the relevant scaffolded exercise. The illustrated stories in the Epilogue work well in hte online interface.
Text is well-written and free of grammatical errors.
As scholarship, especially in higher education, moves forward, methodologies like digital storytelling will take precedence over more traditional forms of scholarly publishing. This resource is extremely timely and will have relevance far into the future.
As someone who has been planning my own digital storytelling curriculum for a digital humanities lab attached to a literature lecture course, the advice contained here mirrored my own thinking the in the realm of scaffolded assignments to address issues of the "digital divide," as well as utilizing transparent rubrics for assessing assignments. Many of the suggested exercises and rubrics were innovative and I discovered useful ideas to incorporate into my own course.
The book would be a good choice for educators considering exploring or committed to introducing digital storytelling into their pedagogy. It serves read more
The book would be a good choice for educators considering exploring or committed to introducing digital storytelling into their pedagogy. It serves as a comprehensive introduction and overview to digital storytelling as a teaching and learning tool, as well as providing examples, assignments and assessment approaches. The table of contents and the linking within the chapters to videos, appendices and exercises are very useful. The book lacks an index, which would be an additional useful tool.
The content is accurate, no errors were found. The author's commitment to and passion for digital storytelling is clearly conveyed -- this is not an "unbiased" examination but a persuasive argument.
The overall concepts, exercises and assessment rubrics will remain relevant. Links to external media (YouTube) videos may become obsolete or need to be updated.
The prose is very well-written, clear and accessible, with very little if any jargon or technology terminology used.
The layout, language and content seem very consistent.
This is not a textbook for use by students. The purpose is to inspire and inform educators and provide specific methods for integrating digital storytelling into coursework of all subjects. For that purpose, it is well organized in terms of modularity.
Overall the book is well organized - topics are presented in a logical fashion and very helpful links are provided between chapters that have related materials. Chapter 5 "We are the Battery Human" and Epilogue "Essays" could be considered supplemental - they do not quite flow as informational tools but instead function as essays and food-for-thought.
The layout is pleasing and easy to read. The linking between chapters and external media is quite useful and well executed.
I did not find any grammatical errors.
The text is very culturally sensitive and relevant.
This book is very persuasive in its advocacy of digital storytelling as a teaching and learning tool and would be very useful for any educator considering introducing digital storytelling.
I am new to digital storytelling. I teach a lot of freshman composition at Rochester Community and Technical College. I've been teaching for a long read more
I am new to digital storytelling. I teach a lot of freshman composition at Rochester Community and Technical College. I've been teaching for a long time. I'm looking for new ways to approach my course. This book provided me with lots of online examples of digital stories. It also provided me with lots of scaffolded course assignments and exercises I can use. It has a very specific table of contents, but it doesn't have an index or glossary.
The book seems to be error-free. Obviously, Linda is a big fan of digital story-telling. If there is a bias, it's her assumption that digital story-telling is going to be the new paradigm for composition and rhetoric. I think, though, that she might be right. I watch my freshman students and my own children. They live in a digital world, so building digital stories is an important literacy skill for them.
This book is very relevant. I also think it will have longevity. Digital storytelling, in one fashion or another, is here to stay. I have a junior high daughter. I can attest that she would much rather create digital stories than write a five-page typed paper. Updates will be easy to make. There are lots of hyperlinks and connections to actual examples of student digital story assignments that can be updated as needed.
This book is written for teachers, not for students. As a teaching guide, it is very clear. I feel like I could use these techniques and implement them, at least partially, in my community college freshman composition class next year.
The book is consistent in the way that it assumes the digital storytellers will be college freshmen and busy teachers. It keeps the assignments at a straightforward level throughout the book.
The book is very modular. It's a combination of straightforward exercises, careful explanation of how to implement those exercises in the classroom, and inspiration for doing digital storytelling assignments. Each chapter does build upon the next, but each chapter could also be read separately.
The chapters are arranged in logical sequence. Linda explains what digital storytelling is, and provides some examples. She then discusses how to build assignments and how to assess those assignments. Finally, throughout the text she provides lots of student examples.
The text is clear, relatively large, and easy to read. All of the links to videos, digital stories, podcasts, etc., open easily.
The book is lucid and well-written.
The book provides examples from students from a wide variety of geographical regions and backgrounds. Linda also makes a strong argument that digital storytelling is a way to break down barriers.
Freshman composition teachers should read this book. I'm going to start incorporating elements of her assignments, one by one, into my course. I'm not going to change my entire course overnight. Over the span of a few semesters, though, I intend to transform my course with this book as a guide.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: What is Digital Storytelling?
Chapter 2: Types of Digital Stories
Chapter 3: Scaffolding Exercises
Chapter 4: Assessment and Evaluation
Chapter 5: “We are the Battery Human”
Epilogue: Essays and Illustrated Stories
Appendix: Scaffolding Exercises
About the Creative Team
About the Book
The Changing Story gives you assignments, resources, and examples to use in your teaching and learning. It will also help you think of ways digital stories can be used in your teaching, and help students harness the power of visual storytelling.
About the Contributors
Linda Buturian has taught in the humanities at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for eight years. She has also taught writing intensive courses shaped around themes of sustainability. In 2006, Buturian was awarded a leave from the university to develop curriculum around the resource of water, and received funding to travel to New Zealand to research water resource protection and sustainability models. In 2007, Linda created a freshman seminar on water that integrates both the sciences and the humanities, and gives students the opportunity to create digital stories about water resource topics. The water seminar is in its third year.
Prior to receiving her masters of arts in literature and writing from the University of Cincinnati, Buturian was the director of a community environmental organization in the Oregon Cascades, which addressed citizen-based solutions to watershed and ecosystem issues. Buturian has published essays, poetry, short stories, interviews, and articles in publications including Shouts and Whispers (Eerdmans 2006), Life in Body (Cathedral Hill Press 2006), and Utne Reader.

domain: library


text:
Welcome to AuthorDustinWeber!
This is the official blog of Dustin M. Weber, one of 2012’s newest authors. Presently the author of Kyle Summers, Booker, UWWX: The Underground Women’s Wrestling Xperiment, and Best of Luck, Jeff Babbage! as well as The Sun Shan’t Set on Me! Poems from My Younger Days (Ages 16 to 23), I’ve been writing novel after novel in hopes of achieving my dream career and becoming a published novelist. For the most part, that dream has come true, and my works can currently be found as e-books on iTunes and on the following websites:
As a writer, my primary interest is coming up with the kind of story that would catch readers’ attention and appeal to their sense of imagination. However, I don’t subscribe strictly to one subgenre of fiction and am willing to try my hand at writing any kind of story based on any kind of topic that might come to mind, be it an author’s struggle to become published or a fan of professional wrestling offering to help out a struggling wrestling promotion or even an apprehensive twelve-year-old boy venturing into the realm of dreams in search of his lost self-esteem. At the moment, I have at least half a dozen novels written in my personal archive that are either complete works or works in progress that I hope to showcase to the world, although I can’t promise anyone just yet as to whether or not all of these novels will be able to see the light of day. What I will do here, though, is give everyone a basic idea of which books I have out now, including the premise of and inspiration behind each of them, and invite you all to click on the links above so that you can see these books for yourselves. Also, be sure to check up with me either here at my blog, my author page at Smashwords.com, or either or my two Author Central paged at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk whenever you can for news about future publications of mine that I am currently working on.
In addition to being a novelist, I am also a long-time poet who occasionally ventures back to his roots every once in a while. In fact, I have an entire segment entitled “Poem of the Week” where I publish one (sometimes two) of my more recent poems right here on this blog for my readers to enjoy. As is the case with my novels, my poetry is varied not only in style (haiku chain, limerick chain, freestyle, villanelle, sestina, ghazal, etc.), but also in topic matter, and so far, I’ve covered such topics as letting go of the past, dealing with writer’s issues, celebrity gossip, bullying, and even feminine beauty. It’s just a little something to keep my readers interested in between publication updates on my novels, but it’s a nonetheless popular segment amongst my subscribers.
That’s basically the premise of this blog in a nut shell, and if you’re by chance interested in keeping up with me and my work, please don’t hesitate to either subscribe directly to this blog via email or your own WordPress account. In the meantime, I’ll be sure to keep you and the rest of my readers intrigued and involved throughout the course of this blog’s existence. Aside from that, though, happy reading!
Dustin M. Weber

domain: artistic


Singer Kelly Rowland has debuted the her new music video. Rowland who teamed up with Bacardi to record new track 'Summer Dreaming', which will feature in the alcohol brand's upcoming campaign.
The video shot, which took place in Barcelona in the Sant Andreu de Llavaneres area, shows the star performing the track on a pier overlooking the Mediterranean sea.
Speaking about the song, Rowland explained: "The song and its history enthralled me right away. My aim was to record a joyful, colourful, sexy song and give it a bit of soul quality."
Meanwhile, the former Destiny's Child member teased details about her upcoming fourth studio album.
"It's a very urban, R&B, sexy, unexpected record. It's gonna make you think. It's gonna make you wonder," she revealed.
Watch the official music video below and peep out footage of the sexy singer talking about her new music: