Thursday September 27, 2001

Finley column irresponsible, maudlin

Ryan Finley's column, "The Sound of Silence" (Sept. 24), made reference to "the sound of Palestinian children celebrating America's tragedy." This is a poor choice of words. We don't understand the entire Palestinian situation, just as they might not have understood the entire terrorist attack. Maybe their information was incomplete; maybe they were led to celebrate by other factors. We don't know, but the cumulative impact of America's media dropping little unseen or invisible references to celebrating Palestinians only further whets the country's appetite for war.

I don't think the country needs more inducements to increase its war fever. Please be more responsible and less maudlin.

Brian Sager

landscape architecture graduate student

Nasim wrong, footage of celebration real

Concerning Ahmad Saad Nasim's Sept. 25 letter, "Footage of Palestinian Celebration is Fake," the writer claims that the footage showing celebrating Palestinians was actually stock footage filmed in 1991- a claim also made by the BBC and other news organizations.

The writer claims that, "If it is daytime in the Western Hemisphere, the entire eastern hemisphere of our earth is observing nighttime." The disputed celebrations took place shortly after 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, which was shortly after 3 p.m. (hardly nighttime) in the Palestinian territories. This can be checked by going to any Internet website that enables conversion from one time zone to another.

In addition, the claim that stock footage from 1991 was used has been refuted by www.snopes.com, a well-known Web site devoted to exposing urban legends. The originator of the claim, a Brazilian student, has since retracted his statement. The teacher who told his class that she had seen the disputed footage in 1991 later denied having access to those images.

I agree with the writer that the attacks on those of Middle Eastern or south Asian descent are wrong and should be condemned. However, given that it took only five minutes to investigate the claim of false footage, I think that the lack of fact checking should also be condemned.

Alexander Weiss

psychology graduate student

Kudos to Winksy column

Laura, I loved your commentary on jazz and "Trane." Was this an assignment, or is this of personal interest to you? I ask because it's very rare for young people like myself to be into jazz music. Most of the people I get my musical inspiration from are 20-30 years older than me. How refreshing it is to find an intelligent person from my generation that doesn't follow the pack of lemmings. Kudos to you, Laura. You are truly a jazz angel. Keep up the outstanding work.

Tony Frank

KUAZ