Mailbag: Thoughts on the burqini ban

Re: “Burqini bans raise questions of motive,” In Theory, Aug. 24. There is more to this issue than the column discusses. In a perfect world no one would tell women how to dress. This includes the Iranians who force both native and foreign women in their country to conform to a rigid dress code every bit as much as the French who are currently banning burqinis on beaches and headscarves in many public places.

Not too long ago when Air France resumed flights to Iran after a long hiatus, the Iranian government gave notice that it would require female flight attendants to wear long tunics over long pants and headscarves. Air France’s response, as least as of last spring, was to allow the flight attendants who objected to the strictures to opt out of the Paris-Tehran route. One news article reported that Air France said its employees are “obliged like other foreign visitors to respect the law of the countries to which they travelled [sic].”

So why is the French Burqini ban getting more publicity and more negative publicity than the Iranian strictures for flight attendants? Not feeling able to go to the beach isn’t fun, but the flight attendants’ livelihoods and careers are threatened. At least the French position is consistent — conform to the dress of the country you’re in.

Another point that eludes those who criticize the French ban is that while other religious sects choose to wear concealing and/or old-fashioned clothing, it is only Muslims that prescribe extremely cumbersome clothing for women that immediately identifies them as Muslim while allowing men to dress as they choose and blend in with their environment. Orthodox Jewish males are more readily identifiable by their clothes, hats and beards than are Orthodox Jewish women, who dress modestly and wear wigs. Amish men and women both dress as if they live in the 18th century. But some Muslim women feel constrained to wear burkinis to the beach while their male co-religionists are free to wear Speedos. It is Muslim men who have made women’s bodies a battleground.

If Iran didn’t impose its clothing dictates on French women flight attendants and if Muslim men on French beaches dressed like Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia, then France’s ban could be viewed as anti-Muslim. In the present circumstances it should be seen as the embodiment of French principles of secularism in public life and equality between the sexes.

Mary-Lynne Fisher
La Crescenta

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Development affects rates

I am a landlord. Whenever an apartment comes vacant I always raise the rent to market rates.

Unfortunately Glendale has a new standard for setting market rates and those are the 4,000 new apartments located up and down Central Avenue, Brand Boulevard and San Fernando Road.

When an average two-bedroom, two-bath apartment rents for $3,000 per month in these new buildings you can rest assured that I would raise rents for comparable apartments to this new market rate as soon as possible.

The Glendale City Council (not this current council but the council in general) created this current glut of new high-priced apartments with their Downtown Specific Plan and is now trying to extricate itself from the unattended consequences of rising rents throughout the city. Amazing how the group that got us into this mess is charged with getting us out of the mess. I guess that is how government works (or doesn’t work).

I would love to hear exactly what the council thinks “affordable housing” is. I guess it is safe to say that none of the 4,000 new apartments qualify as “affordable housing” so we have to build “affordable housing” even if it means increasing density in already dense neighborhoods.

You can’t have it both ways. New, high-priced apartments drag rents up in the entire city and no amount of moaning, groaning and hand-wringing can change that.

Jim Kussman
Glendale

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Readers get a double downer

Re: the reduction in the Glendale News-Press daily editions and the impending closure of the Central Library for the projected last six months of its renovation. What a hard-to-swallow, double-downer of tough-to-take news for Central Library regulars, patrons and employees alike, plus regular News-Press print-edition readers!

Gosh, it seems like one advancement in technology invariably begets off-setting drawbacks. What a shame.

Regarding the library’s imminent, renovation-connected aspects of its long closure, I, for one at least, can only sadly speculate. In the interim though, one might have to wonder something like, “Hey, what happened?”

Harvey Pearson
Los Feliz

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Democracy and drawbacks

Democracy is hypocrisy, yet it is essential to understand its antonym, dictatorship. It is not run by the people, for the people, or of the people if it sheds innocent bloodshed and dismantles a civilization every time democracy is uttered. Protect Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria, for what began as peaceful protests turned into calamity.

Now this “democracy” is being exported by force to Armenia, where protesters demanded Armenia’s president, Serz Sargsyan, resign immediately after Pope Francis’ Apostolic visit to Armenia, during which he prayed for world peace and released two peace doves toward Mount Ararat.

“Democracy means government by discussion,” said Clement Attlee, the UK’s prime minister, “but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.”

Democracy promises peace. When masses raise their hateful voices, they claim dictatorship in their protests, war, revolution, corruption, and cry for “death to the regime.” In modern times, the death penalty is considered inhumane, yet when people shout democracy they want to hang their leader in barbaric acts of execution.

Socrates was executed and Jesus was crucified by democratic votes. Plato hated democracy yet prized freedom of speech.

White doves will not return where ruthless voices are raised. World politics should be ashamed! They are after “oil” peace! The future pipeline running through Artsakh and Armenia runs deep to their interest. Some demand territorial concessions to discuss peace. Reject “Madrid Principles” to safeguard Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Independence. Let the pipeline run through the “First Christian Nation” to resonate our faith, effecting the return of peace doves.

Rachel Melikian
Glendale

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Not a sound complaint

I read the article regarding neighbor’s complaining about Hoover’s marching band “disturbing them” during practice. Are they kidding? These kids are making an effort to do something positive and worthwhile with their time and also benefit Hoover, and listening to their practice a couple of mornings and afternoons a week is a hardship for some neighbors?

The parents of these band members must be very proud of their kids and support them wholeheartedly and these neighbors should do the same. I suggest the neighbors go to a football game and hear the end result of all the practice. If the complaining neighbors really can’t do that, then they can close their windows while they practice.

Judy Taylor
Glendale