Hypothetical conversations about food and inequality

‘This falafel tastes great! Could you tell me why your government is actively trying to rid Jerusalem of its non-Jewish residents?’

Not content with systematically robbing Palestinians of humus (Latin for earth), the Israeli PR apparatus robs them of hummus as well.

Every year so-called ‘pro-Israeli’ groups (sometimes called ‘friends of Israel,’ which doesn’t sound right when you adapt it to ‘friends of France’ or ‘friends of Polynesia’) on North American universities and colleges sponsor IsraelFest. It’s important to give a ‘friendly’ face to occupation by serving Levantine food dressed with a decorative Israeli flag toothpick.

Inspired by one student’s hypothetical conversation starter, here are some prompts the next time a pro-occupation and pro-inequality public relations campaign makes you choke on your shawarma.

This Mediterranean fruit salad tastes fresh and delicious. Can we have a conversation about the ‘diet‘ the Israeli government is imposing on the people of Gaza? What about the restrictions placed on fishermen to fish past 3 nautical miles? And do you agree with the Israeli Offense Forces’ Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) prohibitions of ‘delicacies’ like cherries, kiwi, green almonds, pomegranates and chocolate?

Organically produced olives? Wow! Do you have any statement regarding the Israeli Occupation Forces’ routine destruction of thousands of olive trees for what it calls the building of ’sterile’ roads that Palestinians are barred from using? What do you think about your government’s systematic destruction of olive trees in villages like Ni’ilin?
Creamy hummus! What do you think of the fact that Israel forces Palestinians to live on less than 70 liters of water a day? Or that the ‘restriction of luxury products‘ for Palestinians (like paper, shoes and rice) has economic benefits for Israeli farmers?

[Nota bene: Sabra is a subsidiary of an Israeli company that 'adopted' the Golani Brigade, which has a history of severe human rights abuses.]

 

Of thanatology (or how to prevent sexual assault)

Even though I’ve mostly weened myself off the interwebs these past few weeks out of professional necessity, reading the morning’s news offerings remains as ritualistic as A.M. coffee. After a while, observing the destruction of human life becomes a morose daily expectation. (How many times does one awake to so-called good news, politically speaking? Tom DeLay leaving Dancing with the Stars doesn’t really cut it.)

Usually, the everyday pouring over the so-called bad news makes the part of my brain that stores facts, names, dates, figures and other records of importance take over. The emotional attrition of reading vivid accounts of death gets diffused. The imprint of these events on one’s person continues onward the next day, and the next day, and the next. It’s the virtual version of grave-digging: death is certain, a place is made to contain it, a plaque keeps the memory alive, death is certain, a place is made to contain it…

The Greeks personified the demon god of death as Thanatos, the son of Nyx (Night) and Erebos (Darkness). Death even has a twin, Hypnos (Sleep), perhaps explaining why soldiers and checkpoints regularly make appearances in my REM cycle with M16s and other death devices. The poet Hesiod imagines the twins of darkness dystopically and inalterably conjoined: ‘And there the children of dark Night have their dwellings, Sleep and Death, awful gods.’

Yesterday’s report about a 15-year old girl in Northern California who was brutally gang-raped outside of her high school’s homecoming dance was exceptional. Beyond the chills or despair that settles in from reading such things (i.e. ‘death’ things), then moving on to other accounts of gross abuse, this was a narrative that I couldn’t escape. The victim is alive, but the wreckage done to her body and psyche can only be described as a thanatological will to destroy. At least 10 males stood around and watched the girl get raped, beaten and photographed for over two and a half hours. The list of assailants keeps growing, with at least one 19-year old and one 21-year old suspect. But no matter how many individuals get caught, the crux of the matter is that there was a collective act with double-digit participants and witnesses (two categories collapse at some level, don’t they?). She was furiously abused and raped and no one—not a single person—came to her aid. Only when a female heard the offhand rumor of a gang-rape taking place was law enforcement called.

The Greeks and their descendents, whether in sincerity or infinite perversion, always imagined Thanatos and Eros as counterparts. In pictorial representations such as the painting above, Death and Life (for Eros is both the deity of sexual love and life) are always contrasted. Even though Eros is the son of Aphrodite, s/he personifies a woman. This woman is dominated, passified, or in ordinary language, raped. The twins Sleep/Death became contrapuntal with Eros, and the sexual drive (as Freud re-imagined it) became part and parcel of the thanatological one.

It’s heinous acts like this, in light of a mythological imagination, that makes Catherine Bréillat’s statement, ‘All men want to kill all women’ not crazy.

To that effect, here’s a handy sexual assault guide (not written by me) that turns the regular ‘prevention’ tips on their head.

How to Prevent Sexual Assault

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone ‘on accident’ you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are committing a crime- no matter how ‘into it’ others appear to be.

Grim Reaper and scythe visit North American college

Death knocked on Georgia College and State University’s door recently, and a conversation with a Marine recruiter ensued. Here’s an excerpt:

GRIM REAPER: Good morning.
MARINE RECRUITER: I wish my buddies were here.
GR: I do not question your heroism. You have made a great sacrifice for our nation, you have given yourself for a purpose greater than yourself. You are an American hero.
MR: Mm hm.
GR: The architects of this illegal and immoral war in Iraq are responsible for the rapes, mutilations, dehumanization and deaths of tens of thousands of men, women and children… Iraqis, coalition forces, and American servicemen and servicewomen. The Administration in Washington has summoned me. That is why I am here today. That is who I am here for.
MR: OK.
GR: Thank you. [hand shake]

GoD’s monorail

Even though only 6% of the population uses public transportation, car-worshipping Dubai unveiled its metro on 09/09/09. However, it may literally go nowhere.

‘Halfway along the route between the city center and the Jebel Ali container port stands a monument to delusions of grandeur that does not bode well for the future of the metro line: The Palm Jumeirah Monorail, which whisks passengers to the man-made island resort of the same name. The monorail also impresses passengers with its air-conditioned stations and fantastic views. It’s just that nobody rides it. The planners forgot to connect it to the rest of the public transport system.’

The last sentence warrants a second reading. The planners forgot to connect it to the rest of the public transport system. So one could say that the land connection to the Palm Jumeirah is as fictive as its destination.

Remember The Simpsons’s Monorail?

Their doomed monorail was even fashioned with an Escalator to Nowhere. In the background, a magnifying glass sets a skyscraper ablaze. Crash. Tumble. Poof.

Some people envision the metro train as the only public space in which ‘no one is better than anyone else.’ Fair enough. It is indeed possible that outside of the recreational habit known as the mall, people of all classes will most likely rub shoulders on the train.

But GoD’s CEO Sheikh Rashid al-Maktoum, in his usual modesty, calls it an ‘achievement for all Arabs.’ Proof that he’s never watched The Simpsons?

(Images from griffindor.org.uk and Wikipedia.)

Palestine alive in Bogotá

This is the year of celebrating Jerusalem as ‘Capital of Arab Culture.’ In Colombia, which has a Palestinian population of 12,000 (nearly all 1948 refugees), the city of Bogotá is participating:

‘The attempts to Judiaze Jerusalem and change its Arab character, the excavations carried out by the occupation at the most important historical sites, and the policies against the Arab population including depriving them of freedom of worship, military checkpoints, home demolitions and forced evictions, and the dismembering taking place by the building of the apartheid wall is the worse kind of racial discrimination.’ (from Darryl)

Stateless in the U.A.E.

More men in the sun: Kanafani was right all along about the Gulf: the U.A.E. is comfortable with Palestinians only as charity cases. In the past few months, Palestinian workers have been getting expelled from the Emirates. It is likely that the U.A.E. is exploiting the stateless (and by default, passport-less) who may have travel and work documents, but no official nationality.

‘(This is) an operation of mass displacement of Palestinians in the U.A.E., especially those of Gaza origins, without known reasons other than security pretexts.’

[Related] (No) return to Haifa

Public norms in the North/South

Things have been slow here lately because they have sped up considerably in the incarnate life: I have traded my southern base for a northern one. Though a total presence in my professional and personal life, the geographic reality of Rio has trailed off like a smear of clouds under airplane jet wheels.

It’s time to make some generalizations while the static shock of U.S. re-entry still has a hold on me, and everything is still fresh and ablaze with difference.

The shock mostly happens in brief reflections on differences in public behavior. To start, I am astonished by how driving ‘up North’ seems terribly polite and patient, with none of the usual attempts to kill pedestrians. If I jaywalk, which I engage in fairly often, drivers not only slow down but sometimes even smile and shoo me by with their hands. You get the distinct feeling you’re not being marked for the kill, which is always an encouraging feeling on public pavements.

I have stopped slinging my purse across my chest. Though fully aware that thievery often occurs when one’s sense of security is high, and there is thievery everywhere, bla bla bla, it’s just not something I think about often. Whatever actual or perceptual feelings of assault or robbery I experienced in Rio have been replaced with a sense of public calm, even neutrality, to items or potential valuables on my person.

There is little or no exposed dog feces everywhere. There is little or no exposed dog feces to step on.

The clean scentless sterility that some immigrants often describe as a contrast to their ’south’ countries is pervasive and always under my nose.

Talking aloud on one’s cell phone during, say, a classroom lecture, is publicly frowned up on, unlike certain audacious scenes of in-class cell phone use I’ve witnessed in Brazil.

Young women who dress ‘loosely’ in daytime hours, or as though they are about to enter a nightclub, are judged as unintelligent or non-serious or both, whereas in Rio their clothing would make little or no overall impression on their moral character.

Young and old men leer less often or with more discretion.

And suddenly it seems like the atmosphere sped up and conspired and deprived me of time, ‘there’s never enough time’-like, although time is the same for people everywhere.

Dubailand on the never-never

Dubailand, GoD’s projected dreamland theme park twice the size of Disney World, is being described as a ‘wind-swept desert,’ ‘a hard sell,’ and ‘not feasible currently.’ The company website (the project is funded by the state-owned Tatweer, unlike a private corporation like the Walt Disney Company) shows a disingenuous interactive map of project statuses. It’s disingenuous because projects like Beauty Land, Great Dubai Wheel and Dubai Lifestyle City* will likely never see the light of day.

That’s fair to assume, I think, when your own consulting firm describes your ambitions this way…

‘What Dubai thought they’d done was create this everlasting growth market. The world was booming. Whatever crazy idea you came up with, people said “yeah I’ll buy it.” The fundamental issue is Dubai had far too grandiose ideas for far too short a time. It was a bit like a toddler trying to do a 100-meter sprint rather than trying to just walk around the furniture a bit.’

(Photo from Wikipedia Commons.)

*actual names.

Overheard conversation on an airplane

[6.25 a.m., aboard a Brazil-U.S. flight, heard between a Brazilian mother and her 5-year old son.]

CHILD: [yawning] Where are we? Where have we landed?
MOTHER: We are in D.C. now. Remember what I told you about D.C.?
CHILD: No. I’m not sure where we are.
MOTHER: We’re in the city where Obama lives. President Obama? This is where he lives.
CHILD: I thought we were visiting Grandma.

IRI justice

For some people, especially those who lurk anonymously behind their hateful comments, it is a shock to the system to consider that one can be critical of the Iranian government, the U.S. media as well as social media outlets as the manufacturer of spin and falsity. ‘Drewery Dyke, an Amnesty International Iran researcher, said that Reza’s case was “consistent with other reports we have received in terms of the severity of disregard for human dignity, the unrestricted abuse without any recourse to justice, the involvement even of judicial persons in rape abuse and the denial of the basic right to healthcare.”

South-south alternatives

‘The formation of Banco del Sur (Bank of the South) in Latin America, according to all participants from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Mexico and Peru, offered development assistance with conditionalities suited to countries in this region better than those set out by the World Bank and IMF. It helped them in solving the recent crisis.’

Back-to-school, occupation style

The Israeli blockade on civilian life (what Saree Makdisi calls ’slow terrorism’) officially started in 2007: it continues in full force.

‘Israel rejected a Palestinian request to allow new goods and commodities the people in Gaza Strip need ahead of Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, an official said on Wednesday. [...] Israel is also still withholding textbooks and stationery shipments to Gaza ahead of the new school year starting in September.’

A comment about comments

I truly welcome commentary on this site and have so far opted to leave the comments section open. Disagreement and differences of opinion are an important part of discourse, especially discourse that is based on critical thought and a desire to provide accurate (even if unpopular) information. I don’t display a blog policy banner at the top of this page, figuring there is an unwritten code of ethics about common discourse, i.e. no hostile or belligerent attacks, no ad hominem vile pointed at writers or their sources, an ability to disagree with actual (or counterfactual) evidence or ideas instead of spewing hateful speech. The comments by the single commenter who uses different display names, but alas, the same IP address, to make ad hominem cracks have been removed, though I don’t want to inflate this. So many others have commented (whether in agreement or disagreement) in civil, constructive ways.

Animated in Gaza

A new discovery: a wonderful (and slightly mysterious) blog called In Gaza. In today’s post, the author marvels at the ‘little things’ in Gaza, including the work of an animator, father of the author’s friend Samir:

‘I work as a cartoonist. I make posters, stories, and animation films for children. I’m employed at a company in Gaza, like a small Walt Disney (but without the insidious side).’

A visit to the animation studio witnesses ‘a handful of young artists sat sketching and designing, is an airy, well-lit room, walls plastered with drawings and cartoons: some seem to be whatever has come into the artist’s head, mixtures of Palestinian and Western culture, and others are blatant copies of cartoons loved around the world: Tom and Jerry; the Simpsons; South Park; and Japanese animation style images.’

The post is bittersweet on my end: the pictures evoke primarily a reaction of sheer nostalgia for the animated cartoons of my childhood, the very delicious high color contrast imports from Japan, the UK and the Arab world that starred female heroines, dashing squirrels and brotherhoods of monkeys getting in and out of trouble. Watching them compulsively relieved the need to stay focused (along with the adults) on whatever latest bomb falling on Tehran via Iraq and its U.S. sponsor. I didn’t know who Henry Kissinger was as a five-year old, but I knew that terrible and malicious cats plotted to dominate the mice in a popular Iranian stop-action cartoon, and that was enough to make a kid root for the underdog.

And in deoxygenated Gaza—deliberately starved of food, medicine, children’s books, crayons—the sight of a colorful wall (even if it is filled with Mickey Mouse drawings) must be an important relief from the daily, subhuman slab of life. (from Darryl)

The revolution will not be digitized

As a research experiment a friend in Iran (who wished a withheld name) asked: what do Iranians like to download via the web these days? The research methodology was as follows: Type the word دانلود (download) into the Google search bar, see what search suggestions are generated.

Here’s a translation of the top 10 most popular web searches:

-download sexy clip
-download filter-breaker
-download sexy film
-download music
-download film
-download iranian sexy clip
-download iranian sexy film
-download super film [e.g. adult film]
-download software
-download sex film

Whole Foods might give you herpes

I’m not normally in complete adoration of consumer boycott campaigns: they seem to put all their organic eggs in the same basket, so to speak, by discounting the daily grind of civil rights or solidarity work in favor of passive shopping criteria. However, one subtopic of the focus on the lack of universal health care in the U.S. is the phenomenon of major ‘healthy’ corporations such as Whole Foods and their battle against the public good. Its verbose CEO John Mackey is not only an anti on sane public health care policy, he is also anti-union in ‘an industry that is largely unionized.’ Here are his erotically-charged thoughts on unions:

‘The union is like having herpes. It doesn’t kill you, but it’s unpleasant and inconvenient, and it stops a lot of people from becoming your lover.’

Blogger J.R. Boyd is a Whole Foods employee. I quote with his permission:

‘I work for Whole Foods. They supplement their anti-union stance with various “empowerment” policies and other incentives that seem to be popular among the employees. It’s like a reverse Wal-Mart strategy where they claim everything we like about working for Whole Foods will end if we vote union. Mackey likes to play the benevolent patriarch just so long as he’s never asked to surrender any of his power.’

White collar v. no collar in GoD

This article in a Korean English daily focuses exclusively on white collar workers in Dubai (including a former French spy). Not a single mention of the daily humiliation and degradation on temporary ‘guest’ workers, carted from camp site to work site like industrial animals.

‘Investigations and prosecutions of foreigners in Dubai have increased sharply over the recent years. Testimonies reveal a series of arrests for petty crimes and minor legal infringements — thought trivial during boom time — usually followed by harsh treatment and threats. Dubai, which once proudly advertised its economic prosperity brought on by foreign investments and labor, is now looking to foreigners as potential scapegoats.’

Puppet regime standards for women

Tearing out a page from medieval standards of wifely coercion, a new law has apparently been passed in Afghanistan allowing men to deny their wives food if they deny their husbands sexual access. This comes months after Karzai was internationally roasted for the passage of the so-called Afghan rape law which diminished the notion of consent in marital sex, effectively making Afghan women their husbands’ prisoners and victims.

It is helpful to remember that Karzai (who has supposedly come out ahead in polls today in occupied Afghanistan at 44%) is the U.S. ‘liberal’ puppet of choice under not only Bush the Second but also Operation Khanjar’s Obama.

‘”The rights of Afghan women are being ripped up by powerful men who are using women as pawns in manoeuvres to gain power. These kinds of barbaric laws were supposed to have been relegated to the past with the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, yet Karzai has revived them and given them his official stamp of approval.”‘

[Related] Operation Khanjar, over my covered body

Uribe’s inflated popularity

The OAS and Bankers United crowd won’t like this: ‘If we look at the polls that rate Uribe so highly, grave questions must be asked about the reliability of the public opinion industry in Colombia. For a poll result to be accurate it needs to be drawn from a random and representative sample. Yet Invamer-Gallup, Colombia’s leading polling agency, only conducts interviews in the nation’s four largest cities! While the citizens of Bogotá, Medellín, Barranquilla, and Cali are without doubt entitled to their opinions, and may even strongly support their president, by no stretch of the imagination can the views of people who make up less than a third of Colombia’s population be considered representative. Even worse, the views of the more than ten million Colombians who live in rural areas are totally ignored.’

The dirty bag

SHEPARD FAIREY: The murals you did in Palestine, I would assume, involved personal risk. You’re there, and you could definitely get some people pissed off and put yourself in jeopardy.

BANKSY: Every graffiti writer should go there. They’re building the biggest wall in the world. I painted on the Palestinian side, and a lot of them weren’t sure about what I was doing. They didn’t understand why I wasn’t just writing “down with Israel” in big letters and painting pictures of the Israeli prime minister hanging from a rope. And maybe they had a point. The guy that I stayed with got five days with the “dirty bag” for waving a Palestinian flag out a window. The dirty bag is when Israeli security services get a sack, wipe their shit on it, and put the bag over your head while your hands are tied behind your back. I spat out my falafel as he was explaining that to me, but he just goes, “That’s nothing. My cousin got it for two weeks without a break.” It’s difficult to come home and hear people complaining about reruns on TV after that.*

* Banksy might be radical for some people, but his work philosophy is positively Aristotelian: ‘I want to make the right piece at the right time in the right place.’