IN: Edward Wadie Said (Arabic: dwrd wdy` s`yd [waedi:? sae?i:d], Idward Wadi' Sa'id; 1 November 1935 - 25 September 2003) was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. A Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.

In the revised edition of Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (1997), Said criticized the Orientalist bias of the Western news media's reportage about the Middle East and Islam, especially the tendency to editorialize "speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings, sabotage commercial airliners, and poison water supplies." He criticized the American military involvement in the Kosovo War (1998-99) as an imperial action; and described the Iraq Liberation Act (1998), promulgated during the Clinton Administration, as the political license that predisposed the U.S. to invade Iraq in 2003, which was authorised with the Iraq Resolution (2 October 2002); and the continual support of Israel by successive U.S. presidential governments, as actions meant to perpetuate regional political instability in the Middle East.  In the event, despite being sick with leukemia, as a public intellectual, Said continued criticising the U.S. Invasion of Iraq in mid-2003; and, in the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly newspaper, in the article "Resources of Hope" (2 April 2003), Said said that the U.S. war against Iraq was a politically ill-conceived military enterprise:  My strong opinion, though I don't have any proof, in the classical sense of the word, is that they want to change the entire Middle East, and the Arab world, perhaps terminate some countries, destroy the so-called terrorist groups they dislike, and install regimes friendly to the United States. I think this is a dream that has very little basis in reality. The knowledge they have of the Middle East, to judge from the people who advise them, is, to say the least, out of date and widely speculative. . . .  I don't think the planning for the post-Saddam, post-war period in Iraq is very sophisticated, and there's very little of it. U.S. Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman and U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith testified in Congress, about a month ago, and seemed to have no figures, and no ideas [about] what structures they were going to deploy; they had no idea about the use of [the Iraqi] institutions that exist, although they want to de-Ba'thise the higher echelons, and keep the rest.  The same is true about their views of the [Iraqi] army. They certainly have no use for the Iraqi opposition that they've been spending many millions of dollars on; and, to the best of my ability to judge, they are going to improvise; of course, the model is Afghanistan. I think they hope that the U.N. will come in and do something, but, given the recent French and Russian positions, I doubt that that will happen with such simplicity.

What other criticisms did he make of American foreign policy?

OUT: Said criticized the Orientalist bias of the Western news media's reportage about the Middle East and Islam,


IN: Kwon Bo-ah (Korean: gweonboa, born November 5, 1986), known professionally as BoA, is a South Korean singer, dancer, composer and actress active in South Korea and Japan. She is referred to as the Queen of Korean Pop. Born and raised in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, she was discovered by SM Entertainment talent agents when she accompanied her older brother to a talent search.

BoA's second Japanese studio album, Valenti (2003), became her best-selling album, with over 1,249,000 copies sold. In support of the album, BoA launched BoA 1st Live Tour Valenti, her first Japanese concert tour. Later that year, she released two Korean albums, Atlantis Princess and the mini-album Shine We Are!. The former was the fifth-best-selling South Korean record of the year with around 345,000 units sold; the latter sold around 58,000 units.  Her third Japanese studio album, Love & Honesty (2004) was a musical "change in direction": it contained a rock-dance song ("Rock with You") and "harder" R&B. Though the album failed to match Valenti in sales, it topped the Oricon chart for two weeks and became RIAJ-certified triple-platinum. In support of the album, BoA held a tour, Live Concert Tour 2004: Love & Honesty. In contrast with 1st Live Tour, which "emphasized exotic Asian design", the Love & Honesty tour had an "outer-space, sci-fi" theme; among the props were a three-story-high space ship and the robot Asimo. The tour, which started in Saitama and ended in Yokohama, spanned nine performances and attracted approximately 105,000 attendants. Her first compilation album, Best of Soul (2005), however, sold over a million copies, making BoA the first non-Japanese Asian singer to have two million-selling albums in Japan.  BoA reinvented her image on her fourth Korean album, My Name (2004); she left the "cute" and "youthful" style that had characterized previous years and presented herself as "sexy" and "sultry". The album was the beginning of a foray into the Chinese market and contained two songs sung in Mandarin Chinese. The sales of BoA's Korean albums began to decline: the album sold 191,000 units and became the eleventh-best-selling South Korean album of the year. In September 2004, BoA instigated controversy in Japan when she donated W50 million to a memorial project for Korean independence activist and nationalist An Jung-geun.  Her fifth Korean album, Girls on Top (2005), continued her image change. The album portrayed the singer as more "mature and self-confident" and was a "declaration of war on male chauvinism"; the "bohemian" look of the cover photograph represented "freedom and depth", while music videos and album photographs that portrayed BoA in traditional Korean dress brought the "idea of Korean womanhood" into her music. The album also continued BoA's foray into the Chinese market and, like the previous album, contained Mandarin Chinese songs. The album sold less than the previous album; it was the fourteenth-best-selling record of the year in South Korea with 113,000 units sold.

Was the tour very successful?

OUT:
Later that year, she released two Korean albums, Atlantis Princess and the mini-album Shine We Are!.