(He turned out to have been right under our allies’ nose, actually, but thanks, Pakistan, we can always count on you when  we need a frontline state.)

 As the news became clearer, we started thinking about the wisdom of venturing out for the day. The past week had been unusually tense even by Kabul’s standards, and the city has been on high alert since the Taliban thoughtfully sent out a memo announcing the launch of its spring offensive. To decode the  situation, we did what we usually do and consulted our housemate, a  veteran of the jihad and a learned professor of economics. Was it safe  to go to work now that OBL had been killed, we asked?  “Sure,” he  said, as he shrugged on his own backpack and prepared to leave for office. “Nobody in this city remembered that he was alive anyway.”

According to Steve Coll’s ‘Ghost Wars’, US president George HW Bush (the senior) was surprised into giving the following response when an official tried to brief him about the war (the other war, the one on the 90′s) in Afghanistan. “Is that thing still going on,” he asked. Yesterday, Kabul residents reacted in much the same way to America’s chest thumping yee-haws. ‘Was that guy still around?’  As most international organizations ‘locked down’ and expats retreated  behind the high walls of their secure compounds, Kabul residents got out of the house and went to work. The message they sent forth, from their thin trickle of buses and bicycles on the usually Landcruiser-choked streets, was a big, fat ‘Whatever’.  Calling ahead to a friend to check if he was in office, we got his best perversely Afghan side. “The man was an Arab who died in Pakistan, why would I skip work in Kabul for him,” he ribbed mercilessly on the phone

That doesn’t mean there is no emotion attached to the news of binLaden’s death here. After all, this is the place where he cut his jihadi teeth, and where the first bombs fell almost a decade ago in direct response to his presence.  Depending on whom you ask, there is both relief and sadness at his death. But everywhere, it comes tempered with a strong feeling of how irrelevant the guy had become, not just for Afghanistan, but for the world. It hasn’t been about one guy in a cave (or as it turned out, mansion in leafy Pakistani city) for a long time, and ‘getting him’ doesn’t mean a whole lot when the war continues to pound down on both sides of the Afghan-Pak border. “Great,” drawls one friend in her mock-American accent, when I call her with the news. “Now call me when the war’s over.”

By lunchtime, the absence of a body has caused a swirl of conspiracy theories on the road. “They pulled him out of the freezer and  threw him in Pakistan to help Obama’s re election,” says one taxi driver. “Pakistanis sold him for money,” says another, with satisfaction.“They are not true warriors for Islam.” The fact that he was found not in a cave but a mansion in Pakistan surprises no one. Even president Karzai couldnt resist the tone of “we-told-you-so-but-did-you-believe-us-huh” in his address to the nation, where he helpfully pointed out that ‘we told you so.’ (Keeping him company were the Indian news channels, which went into gleeful overdrive and beamed pictures of  Zardari cheek by jowl with OBL. Same diff, dude.)

In offices, Facebook status messages pop up all over screens, all  about OBL. In one room, a Panjshiri argues with a Pashtun over the  relative evil of Osama and Obama. The latter may be a ‘secret Zionist’  and ‘Muslim killer’, says the Panjshiri, but the other killed (Ahmad Shah) Massoud.

 People crowd around TVs, watching the images of young, white Americans, laughing and cheering for their incredible country, celebrating their triumph. Initially, there is laughter here too, the disbelieving kind. A few cracks at how even Karzai would not show off about getting an enemy ten years too late. But as the cheers of “USA USA” ring louder, and the chest thumping crowd swells larger, the silence in the room deepens and turns chill. The faces around us are like dark mirrors of the others on TV, the cheers a dreadful echo of that plaintive and bewildered question from a decade ago, “Why do they hate us.”

The camera stops on the image of a young man in star spangled hat and boxer shorts, holding a sign that says ‘We Got Him.’ “Whats going on?” whispers one young woman, a late comer in the room. “They are  celebrating the death of their friend,” says another, wryly. ‘Karzai  will go the same way’, comes one prediction. ‘Will that make him a  hero?’ That one launches a long debate (But ‘no, not really,’ is the final verdict).

“America feels strong again, the dollar is rising, they have forgotten their problems of recession, which is what their president needed,” explains one armchair analyst, tucking into his lunch. ‘God bless America, but God help us,” he laughs, gallows humour ever at the ready.  But the TV is eventually turned off, the laughter and loud hoots of young America silenced as something profane. Perhaps it takes decades of war to understand it, but in that room, the idea of cheering over one more death seemed simply futile.

 As we leave for home, we ask our driver what he thinks will happen to the war in Afghanistan. “Nothing, he says, surprised. “Our enemies are different, they won’t stop because Osama is dead.” But will America leave now that they’ve got what they wanted, we persist. “Of course  not,” he laughs. “One project is over, another one will start.”

The Big Society

The BBC reports on new research that shows that over half of donations to the UK Conservative Party, the present party of government, came from the firms or individuals from the City of London, the financial heart of the country.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which is a not-for-profit organisation, examined records of donations held by the Electoral Commission and Companies House.

It concluded that last year, City donations totalled 50.8% of all money given – up from just under 25% in 2005, the year in which Mr Cameron became Tory leader.

Fortunately a Conservative Party spokesman quickly stepped in to remove any misconceptions that this suggests that the Party is somehow representative of the interests of the rich and richer.

On the very day that the chancellor raised another £800m in tax from bankers – having already introduced the toughest rules on bankers’ pay anywhere in the developed world – it beggars belief that anyone could claim that donors to the Conservative Party are influencing policy.

Beggars belief, dammit!! Oh but, wait they’re not actually bankers?

The research indicated that the majority of big City donors were hedge fund managers and brokers rather than bankers.

Dr Stuart Wilks-Heeg, a lecturer on social policy at Liverpool University, said the findings “raise issues about how influenced and impartial the Conservatives are”.

We're all in this together!

Hmm… Doctor Wilks-Heeg, I wonder. I mean the Conservatives are the party of One Nation, the Big Society now right?David Cameron is nice guy… his forehead is slightly too big, but then Labour Party leader David Milliband’s head is so disproportionately large it looks like at any moment it might bring him toppling to the ground… and compared to the average UK politician he appears relatively, well, nice and normal. Perhaps these people are simply donating because they approve of the Conservative parties foreign policy, or plans for the future of the NHS, or schools? After all, people that work in hedge funds are humancitizens too!

Oh, wait what now? The Conservatives are planning an obscure change to UK tax law? Tell me more George Monbiot of the Guardian…

If you’ve heard nothing of it, you’re in good company. The obscure adjustments the government is planning to the tax acts of 1988 and 2009 have been missed by almost everyone – and are, anyway, almost impossible to understand without expert help.

At the moment tax law ensures that companies based here, with branches in other countries, don’t get taxed twice on the same money. They have to pay only the difference between our rate and that of the other country. If, for example, Dirty Oil plc pays 10% corporation tax on its profits in Oblivia, then shifts the money over here, it should pay a further 18% in the UK, to match our rate of 28%. But under the new proposals, companies will pay nothing at all in this country on money made by their foreign branches.

Foreign means anywhere. If these proposals go ahead, the UK will be only the second country in the world to allow money that has passed through tax havens to remain untaxed when it gets here. The other is Switzerland. The exemption applies solely to “large and medium companies”: it is not available for smaller firms. The government says it expects “large financial services companies to make the greatest use of the exemption regime”.

But that’s not the end of it. While big business will be exempt from tax on its foreign branch earnings, it will, amazingly, still be able to claim the expense of funding its foreign branches against tax it pays in the UK. No other country does this. The new measures will, as we already know, accompany a rapid reduction in the official rate of corporation tax: from 28% to 24% by 2014. This, a Treasury minister has boasted, will be the lowest rate “of any major western economy”.

Oh.

There are of course other ways that these myths get exposed, such as recent events in Egypt. When western interests conflict with liberal ideology and its rhetoric, the results are spectacular dance of twisted logic. The story as it is playing out with regards to Egypt goes something like this…

The West is (of course) a BIG fan of democracy. We did afterall invent that shit in Greece – or was it Britain with the Magna Carta, or France with the revolution, or the Americans with the declaration of independence? – well the point is it was white people. And whats more white people have had a lot of practice and we’ve got pretty good at it. So good at it in fact that we know that sometimes ‘democratic values’ and ‘democracy’ don’t always go together. This is why, despite the massive demonstration of ‘people power’ in Egypt, the West has to ensure a ‘managed transition’ so that the values of democracy win out, not just plain old democracy in the sense of will of the people or some shit. Still with me?

Democracy

You see what the Egyptian people don’t get is, as Tony Blair put it, Hosni Mubarak is “immensely courageous and a force for good”. Tony Blair understands democracy, because he made one in Iraq. Silvio Berlusconi, who clearly understands democracy better than anyone as he still manages to get Italians to vote for him despite treating government as an extended swingers party, noted the US and Europe consider Mubarak the “wisest of men”. The US administration of Barak Obama, predominantly through the mouth of Hillary Clinton, hero of Tuzla, has stressed that protesters just need to give their unelected, repressive rulers time to reform in the general direction of democracy, so they should probably just chill and go find Osama Bin Laden or something. You see if you don’t understand this kind of nuance, then you totally won’t get that when Obama said he wanted to ‘reset’ relations with the Muslim and Arab world, by ‘reset’ he actually meant ‘don’t change anything at all’.

Chicken

Mubarak has of course been a friend to the West. He understood that selling his country’s foreign policy in exchange for several billion dollars would lead to a better world. This is called being ‘allies’. He also opened Egypt up to western capital (which is why the two biggest mobile phone companies in Egypt, Britain’s Vodafone and France’s France Telecom had the privilege of being the vehicles for pro-regime propaganda they broadcast by text messages). This is a good thing because it is free markets, and free markets are a good thing because they are globalisation, and globalisation is a good thing because it made the internet, and the internet made twitter, and without twitter there would be no uprising in Egypt (except there would). Geddit? Mubarak has also been such a good friend to the West that he lets Tony Blair stay in his Red Sea villa for free, and that the Clinton’s refer to the Mubarak’s as ‘family’. But this in no way affects their opinions in case you were wondering.

The big fear of course is somehow that ‘Islamists’ (gasp!) stand ready to seize power given the slightest hint of a vacuum into which they can step. Specifically the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization who long ago renounced violence and has instead has fought its battles with the regime by providing social services (ISLAMIC RADICAL SOCIAL SERVICES), is the bogey-man. A very smart lady called Pamella Geller is aware that the Muslim Brotherhood have plans in the west for “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within”. This is really a parenthesis because she is just crazy. On the other hand in an article in the Washington Post, a very open-minded man named Richard Cohen basically set out what the Tony Blair’s and the rest really want to say:

The dream of a democratic Egypt is sure to produce a nightmare … The next Egyptian government – or the one after – might well be composed of Islamists. In that case, the peace with Israel will be abrogated and the mob currently in the streets will roar its approval … I care about democratic values, but they are worse than useless in societies that have no tradition or respect for minority rights. What we want for Egypt is what we have ourselves. This, though, is an identity crisis. We are not them.

Richard Cohen: These people don't deserve happiness

Egyptians go to your room – you don’t deserve nice things like freedom, democracy, or dessert. What is important here is to ignore key facts, like the way in which Egyptian Christians stood side by side with Egyptian Muslims in these protests, indeed circled them in a protective ring during prayers. ‘The mob’ of course, is the Egyptian people who gathered in their millions for peaceful, secular protest, and who spontaeously organized into neighbourhood watch groups to protect their neighborhoods from looting (much of it possibly coming from people connected to the regime, or at the very least a consequence of the regime decision to completely remove all police and release prisoners in an attempt to sow disorder and fear). Being an intellectual is hard.

So therefore the regime has to remain in power through a western-backed silent coup which has already been more or less completed installing Vice President Omar Suleiman as replacement for Mubarak. Since the West likes Mubarak, this must mean he is even better! He until recently controlled the intelligence service who served Israel and the West, while torturing both Egyptians (for their own good I guess) and, kindly, whoever else the US ‘rendered’ into Egyptian hands. So this is without doubt the man to lead an honest, open and transparent transition to democracy which will exclude undesirable elements that would compromise democratic values (which to reiterate is the Islamists, not members of a dictatorial regime). If in this time we witness the torture of more Egptians, such as the leaders of the secular, youth, driven protest movement, then this is because democracy isn’t easy, and anyway the Arabs respect hard leaders. Or the world demands hard choices. Or really we’re just totally full of shit? I lose track so easily.

The difference between the religious fundamentalists that exist en masse in America, where 50% of the population do not believe in evolution, and someone like Sarah Palin, a poster-child for all sorts of fundamentalisms (religious, political, something involving female grizzly bears) is considered a semi-serious candidate for the presidency of the country, is that they are Christians support Israel well, I don’t know. But Egypt is also closer on a map to Iran, where religious fundamentalists feed babies to other larger babies (or is that Saudi Arabia? in which case shhhh) and also may want to make nuclear weapons (this doesn’t involve any babies per se).

Ultimately it isn’t always the rabid conservatives who ordinarily give us so much reason to hate them that end up looking like idiots, for they at least have the space here to be honest like Mr. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. It is the western liberals, the Tony Blairs and the Obamas and Clintons, who shame themselves. Like with Wikileaks, it isn’t even that events in Egypt have exposed a lie at the heart of foreign policy in the traditional sense of a concealed truth. We have known this truth for some time. The question is when will we take responsibility to act on it, and what action would that be?

Today as a million people gather on the streets of Cairo in a show of power that surely must bring down their oppressor of almost 3 decades, Hosni Mubarak,  the eight years that have passed since George W. Bush, Tony Blair and a small “coalition of the willing” removed Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq by military might seem a strange, almost anomalous period. Perhaps more pertinent still it was five years ago that Condoleeza Rice declared Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”, as unsuccessful attempts were made to bomb Hezbollah into the past, the same Hezbollah that now essentially governs Lebanon in all but name.

At this very moment an alternative history of regime change in the Middle East is being written on Arab streets, one that stands as the greatest rejection possible of a largely failed decade of ‘western’ interventionism, far more significant than that made by a handful of murderous Mujahideen with anachronistic agendas. This is Change not in the form of bombs from above, but from below, ordinary people who had the courage and the will to create their reality. This is Change that doesn’t need US or European involvement, but rather has been hindered by it over years of selfish and blind foreign policy.

As we have already noted here, it is by no means clear where recent events in Egypt and Tunisia will lead, but peversely – and this may be easy to say as an armchair observer – dare I say there is perhaps something wonderful about that? It means that, as is all too rare, all options remain on the table. For this briefest of moments all things are possible. And in the wider sense, suddenly so much more is possible. Even pharaohs can, and surely will, fall.

Dear Palestinians, Honorary Palestinians, and Friends of Palestine,

I am writing you from Al Quds, where there is very little mobility or action on the streets in response to the recently published documents, which prove the extent of the Palestinian Authority’s collaboration with the Israeli government, and by default the Zionist movement in reducing Palestine into a statelette of Bantustans and ghettos. Not withstanding the proof of its willingness to dismiss the right of return, to sell off Al Quds (Jerusalem), to take part in undermining our rights (Goldstone), and to police the Palestinians on behalf of Israel. Many, too many in fact, dismissed the revelations as “Nothing New,” and that they serve no end but to undermine the PA, strengthen Hamas, and bla bla bla…the hogwash carries on. What those documents constitute is a proof that all which we knew or thought we knew or accused the PA of doing cannot be refuted. Regardless of how much Saeb Erekat and Mahmoud Abbas and their cronies, thugs and henchmen bray and bellow, the fact of the matter remains unchallenged and unchanged. They have compromised beyond their license, they have gotten us nothing in return, and they are simply and most certainly mediocre and incompetent to lead the Palestinians.

Add to incompetence corruption, duplicity, bureaucracy, nepotism, torture, totalitarianism and misrepresentation. That is what for the past 20 years, since the Madrid conference, a small clique of under-qualified men, hungry for power, managed the fate of the Palestinian people. Every competent negotiator, arbitrator and politician from Edward Said to Hanan Ashrawi were pushed aside, ignored, misinformed so that Arafat and his men could strike the deal that would rather best serve own personal interest than those of the Palestinians. What we have seen in the Palestine Papers and the ensuing result of their publication and analysis is but a mere glimpse into the extent of how indifferent and corrupt the Palestinian leadership has been since it’s illegitimate assumption of power.

Hamas; the beloved arch nemesis of the PA, the grand fear of Israel, and the rabid terrorist organisation which America’s heroic expedition of World Liberation will one day vanquish. Hamas was created, promoted, and nourished to become the religiously-tainted-fanatic antitheses of the Palestinians’ secular struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Israel made sure Hamas in its early stages, as a sprout from the Muslim Brotherhood (Al Ikhwan) in Egypt took root in the Palestinian struggle and social arena. Not a few years ago did Hamas publicly declare that it did not recognise the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. For Israel this was a mission accomplished. However, as unsettling as it might be I would agree once with Hamas. The PLO, which has been practically reduced to a fan club of the Oslo accords and serves only as a banner, all to easily, brandished by the PA whenever a shit-hitting-fan situation occurs (such as now) which seems to question the decisions of the PA. The PLO does not anymore in any way or form represent a minimum majority of the Palestinians in the Occupied Terretories, let alone the Palestinian people throughout the world.

The strength that so many fear has been granted to Hamas on a silver platter with the publication of such documents is not only an exaggeration, it is unnecessary. Hamas was more popular and more successful in the last elections more than four years ago. The fact that it was usurped by the Fateh and the PA, banished to Gaza or to PA jails in the West bank has done nothing more than bolster its ranks, increase its support and undermine all others. The Palestine Papers have indeed raised Hamas’ moral and kudos amongst the Palestinians. NOT because they are any better, but because the average hungry and wounded Palestinian in Gaza, the squalor-dwelling Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, and the threatened Palestinian in Al Quds, sees no other alternative. A religious leadership is as odious as a corrupt one. I am not in the least keen on a Hamas leadership, nor would I endorse it. After all, Hamas is a tool of the Zionist movement, and at heart regardless of their integrity they are a different form of suppression. All in all, Hamas has, nonetheless, played its part impeccably in winning over Palestinians. One is almost forced to respect them for their stance. I still cannot.

The alternatives, with the signing of the Oslo accords were either crushed or undermined. The grass roots organisations, which managed Palestinian society under total Israeli occupation and acted as the civil infrastructure that mobalised the Palestinians to revolt in the first Intifada were dismissed with the creation of the PA ministries and the importing of American and European NGOs (more accurately mercenaries trained to tame and break the Palestinians). Palestinian middle class soon after 1993 started to disappear. This happened in two forms; the first through Israeli systematic targeting of Palestinian economy and welfare that sustained a middle class, particularly in Jerusalem where Israel had direct control of Palestinian Jerusalemites, also through the control of goods, nature of businesses, work permits etc. Also by making life as unbearable as possible through the various means of subjugation, oppression and apartheid.

The other form of middle class destruction was carried out by the PA, perhaps unwittingly, but all the same effectively. That was indirectly when Arafat re-established the tribe/clan system, where an individual would rely more upon the collective physical strength of his family and their influence rather than a police force, which would, in turn, guarantee his rights as a civilian. Before Oslo, the Hamuleh (clan, or extended family) had no bearing upon the individuals life except for a few ceremonial and traditional aspects, Israel occupied the 1967 territories and it’s treatment of Palestinians was more or less uniformly oppressive and the Hamuleh had no bearing whatsoever except as mentioned above. Once Arafat took seat in his newly formed principality, in order to maintain himself as the ultimate figure and father of the nation, he re-instated the outdated family system that was well and truly dead before his arrival. If a man got into a brawl with another, the families would sort the trouble amongst themselves. The more rowdy, thuggish, criminal and violent your family, the stronger and safer you are. This not only created a hierarchy of incompetent tribal lords within the PA, it gave rise to nepotism, corruption and skewed justice. Further it drastically undermined the individual in terms of creativity, development, independence and productivity. Senile family members, illiterate patriarchs with no qualifications or merit took the forefront of each family and stunted the already ailing Palestinian society. Individuals capable of contributing to the welfare of the nation were completely undermined, not to mention the reversal of the role of women in society. Coupled with the Iranian revolution and the system Arafat developed, women, who occupied a substantial role in the struggle against the occupation and in the civil and social Palestinian sphere saw their position crumble into virtual nothingness.

In addition to this, almost all forms of economic or business endeavors set up by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were targeted by the PA. The PA had a finger in every pie, and often the pie went sour because of that finger. The PA did not act as a totalitarian government, ironically that would have been easy to topple. No they functioned like the mob, intimidating through administrative penalisation, physical threats, accusations of collaborating with the Israelis-which eventually lead to mob killings, etc. On the other hand, Hamas, who were not yet elected, operated a welfare system that took care of refugees and the under privileged, and those not affiliated with the PA. Of course that had its own religious taint and political agenda. All other factions, from the communist to the liberal were too minute or weak to inspire change. Those who saw no hopes or chances of prosperity and were able to leave, indeed left, the mass of those who remained either crumbled into poverty or turned to religion. The few sane that remained are too few to make a substantial change for lack of leadership and motivation.

Along came the second Intifada and doubled the direness of the situation. Nothing came out of the second Intifada except the Wall, more Colonies, More military Checkpoints and a stronger Hamas and a more ruthless and right leaning Israel. The PA, under the leadership of Arafat, who was now promenading into the realm of senility, did nothing to make use of the situation. Instead the revolt fizzled out, Israel expanded its realities on the ground and Arafat-all too late-was finally out of the picture. Now we are left with his disciples, as cunning and corrupt as he was, but not as charismatic or charming.

As I stand now on the precipice of a new era of politics and discourse heralded by the publications of the Palestine Papers and the social and political change taking place in the Arab world, I struggle to see hope for Palestinians, with Israel from one corner brandishing its weapons, Hamas refusing the realities, Fateh maintaining it’s duplicitous lies, and the people utterly exhausted. But there is hope. If the Palestine Papers is what it takes to mobalise the Palestinians, then so be it. Be it a small group of young students in London demanding representation, or a gathering of friends in Gaza demanding change; the message is clear ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. We the third, and now fourth, generation of The Nakba are nauseated from the dull slogans, the boring talk and the inevitable concessions. We are horrified by the slaughter of our people, their expulsion, and continuous ethnic cleansing. No more can we stand and watch power-hungry politicians, religious zealots, and a criminal Israel turn our future into an aimless field game that the American and British practice their military and espionage tactics on!

We DEMAND full representation, unequivocal rights and unwavering justice. We see our future in a one state: the Historical Palestine. The unquestionable right of return, and equality for all citizens. The Mechanisms may vary, the methods may differ, but that is what we want, that is what we need, but most importantly that is what we deserve as human beings worthy of justice and entitled to their rights to exist freely.

Yours truly,
OmarJoseph Nasser-Khoury

Egypt’s on fire, and it’s going to get much worse before it gets better. The Mubarak regime has cut off telephone and internet access, and the US National Guard has deployed forces to Sinai. In some places electricity and water has also been cut off, and one would deduce that the Egyptian regime thinks it can create a media black out to ‘deal’ with the protests as they please. Unfortunately, the barrier of fear has been broken, and there’s no turning back. Egypt is ours now.

What I’ve been trying to explain to people who ask me about the consequences of this, is that right now, consequences don’t matter. What is happening in Egypt, and the anger on the streets, represents decades of continuous repression on all aspects of social, political and economic life experienced by Egyptians of all stripes: young people struggling to find jobs, lawyers, journalists, Islamists and liberal activists suppressed, beaten and brutalised by the thugs that make up Mubarak’s regime.

The demands of the protesters are clear: much needed political and economic reforms, Mubarak to step down after thirty years of rule. These demands are shared by all in Egypt from various political and social backgrounds. Once these legitimate (and quite frankly, about damn time) demands are met, then we can discuss what will follow.

We will analyze what all of this means in due course, but for now these Egyptians desperately need our support. Change, any change, is better than returning to the status quo, and right now there’s simply no turning back to events before January 25th. Tunisia has turned on the lights and the Arab world, from Egypt to Jordan to Yemen to Tunisia, have finally looked around and realised that, yes, we’re all in this together. And change has to come.

To help Egypt, you can do the following:

- Monitor the situation closely via Twitter (through the search function ‘#Jan25‘) and Facebook (‘We are all Khaled Said‘ is the most updated page);

- Write to your embassy urging them to help in any way they can. One way they can do this is by helping create a communication triangle. If all the foreign embassies in Cairo now throw open their secure satellite communication-systems, they will create a strong enough communications triangle to allow Egyptian citizens mobile phone and internet access;

- Join a protest at the Egyptian embassy in your area: protests are being held at Egyptian embassies throughout the world. Find out where and when yours is happening, in order to send a strong signal of solidarity with the brave protesters in Egypt.

"If the people will to live, providence is destined to favorably respond; and night is destined to fold, and the chains are certain to be broken; and he who has not embraced by the love of life, will evaporate in its atmosphere and disappear."

What we all have witnessed in Tunisia over the past week was the First West Asian/North African Revolution since 1979. But, I feel, the term “revolution” may not fit perfectly…yet.

“Revolution” is predicated on the fundamental change of power structures. What happened in Tunisia was the removal, ultimately, of the Face of the Power Structure. Ben Ali was the head of a corrupt and repressive regime that governments, particularly in Europe and North America, where all too pleased to glorify and support. All the studies by the World Bank, IMF, and others highlighted Tunisia as a shining beacon for the rest of the region – never mind the torture, the brutality, and the pain of the Tunisian people. Like we are all too fond of saying here at ewz, so long as retired Europeans have a place to frollick in the sun, err…whateverz.

While Mohammed Bouazizi may have ‘sparked’ the revolution, literally, by burning himself after police confiscated his license as a street fruit vendor, the seeds for this were already planted decades ago. The countdown to the end of a dictator always begins when he sits on his throne. In Tunisia, a lot of things had to come together over long periods of time to allow these recent events to move so quickly: for over two decades, the Tunisian people had to bear the brunt of a police state physically, but also socio-economically; years of brutality, economic hardships, the growth of Al-Jazeera and Arab satellite news (which beamed footage everywhere), the Internet and social networking (which allowed people to plan, share information, and mobilize), and WikiLeaks (which added fuel to the fire, by disclosing US Diplomatic Cable documents regarding corruption in the country).

These seemingly independent entities flourished, played with each other, and shot out into different directions. They were all political butterflies flapping their wings, which set off the Jasmine hurricane (ah, the media and its infatuation with colour-coding every political movement that has happened over the last 10 years).

This is the experience of many citizens in North Africa and West Asia – who, mind you, are young and don’t have much to look forward to in the system. Ben Ali, and his blood ties, may be gone, but the infrastructure of control and power are still the same – his friends, his partners, and his allies still remain, the army currently in control and are still the same, and things are still volatile.

It is a change, but it is not a fundamental change. Ergo, it is not a revolution…yet.

This does not mean it was not important. The change in Tunisia is evident: the power of the ‘people’ tore apart an invisible barrier for the rest of the people in the region. Many Arab Leaders and their “Western” friends are quietly watching this and they are probably reassessing things – this means things can get better, or worse. For a fleeting moment, the Arab public are electrified, and small shock waves are happening in Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan. Will this grow? Most likely not, but there is that possibility, ever so slight, which in itself has so much meaning and power for the rest of us in the West Asian region.

It is a powerful lesson in illustrating how the world has become exceedingly tied tightly together, and how this monstrosity, known as the Internet, played a roll in accelerating the situation. It also shows how completely isolated Arab regimes are from their people, the continuing idiocy of the American Administration, and the changing power-dynamics of the 21^st century.

Tunisia, for now, has awoke a notion that’s been slumbering for a long, long time. We can’t keep living like this.

The question remains: What’s next?

“You know when it came to that situation, it was actually based on espionage, and when it comes to the security of our nation, we have to focus on security first and then people’s right to know, because it’s so important that everybody who’s in our borders is safe and so we can’t let things like that happen, and they must be handled properly.”

And then Ms. Nebraska became Ms. America 2011 (with a little help from a black bikini, white evening gown, and a “White Water Chop Sticks” piano recital).

What I hate about pageants is they manage to make me hate on beautiful people, and that my friends is really sad.

(via BoingBoing)

Between 12 months and 1 year ago, we at ewz literally predicted the future, or at least the future  we would like to see… lets see how many of our dreams came true (some of them were even serious!).

1. International law enforcement (Claude Van Inkens)

I would like to see the arrest and successful ICC prosecution of the political leaders responsible for organizing, inciting and permitting  the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008. If the LRA’s Joe Kony could also be captured/eliminated that would be an added bonus. Oh and while we’re dreaming let’s throw George Bush, the Israeli government, and Tony Blair in there too.

Claude on Claude: OK, so no arrests (not even arrest warrants) or prosecution, but the slow wheels of international justice have indeed rolled into Kenya with the naming of six suspects by the ICC prosecutor. The LRA  seem to have dropped of the media radar even though they are appear to be planning their own Christmas party. But I suppose there are more pressing things going on in the world (that’s right: they wrote books).

Verdict: 3/10 (meh).

2. Fewer celebrity deaths (snugglebus)

Sure, sure…there are thousands of far more tragic deaths that happen every day, but the thing with anonymous deaths is, well, that they are fairly anonymous and therefore subject only to the usually dignified private grief of the few who knew and loved them. The celebrity deaths however unleashes a sensationalist orgy of mourning that I could kind of do without for a while. If we could see 2010 out without losing Amy Winehouse, Lindsey Lohan or more than one Olsen twin then that would be great. Thanks in advance, winds of fate.

Snuggles on Snuggles: I haven’t got any ‘evidence’, but since “opinions” are WAY better than “facts”, I am going to state with categorical certainty I got what I wished for and you are going to believe me. Sure we still lost a few of our bettersfamous people, but frankly I don’t remember anyone except the recently departed Leslie Nielsen, and he was hardly an MJ. Yay me!

Verdict: 9/10 (there is a god)

3. The further rise of international cinema and the demise of Hollywood (theflithyviewer)

Come on Bollywood, Nollywood, Korean cinema! Over the past couple of years there has been a strong showing by “the other” in producing, filming and writing extraordinarily powerful works. It is about time that the monopoly that Hollywood has had on cinema comes to a close.

Filthy on Filthy: In the face of growing dominance by international cinema, Hollywood decided to put up a fight. Their secret weapon…another Toy Story movie3D. Action movies in 3D, Horror movies in 3D, animated movies in 3D, romantic comedies in 3-D, crappy movies in 3-*$%#-D. Thanks Avatar, you billion $ making over-hyped colorful piece of crap. Thanks for ensuring that, not only does Hollywood makes sequels, or remakes older or foreign films…but now they are all going to be in 3D. I weep for cinema.

Verdict: Erm…

4. Mark Zuckerberg’s email address, bbm pin, or even just his phone number (petitenemesis)

The guy created the most popular social networking platform in the world. With over 200 million users, the college-kid-come-business-mogul is all about ‘access’ and ‘sharing’, and claims that he is simply “trying to make the world a more open place.” Ironic then that his team hides behind veiled email addresses and avoid direct relationships.

5.  More Sarah Palin (ontheborder)

Preferably a behind the scenes look at the Bristol-Levi Johnston situation (ala Britney/K-Fed stylez); more public appearances and speeches (with full transcripts, obv); more coverage of Todd Palin (the former ‘first dude’ is ripe for some kind of sex scandal); and definitely more rogue-ness ploise!

8. More objects thrown at famous people (theflithyviewer)

Cos it’s funny. Nuff said.

Filthy on Filthy: Unfortunately, not many physical objects were thrown around this year. However, the stellar rise of WikiLeaks gave us something better. The hidden laundry of the powers-at-be unveiled to the eyes of the global audience. A metaphoric pie to the face of those in power…And watching them try to deal with it was hilarious.

Verdict: 1/10 (bonus point for Wikileaks reference)

9. The Rise of Hoodie Counter-Culture and the Demise of Hipsterdom (Claude Van Inkens)

2010 should see more threatening working-class kids with some aggresive and apolitical car burning revolt, less whimpish bourgie yuppies with i-phones and insuffarblely indulgent apolitically ironic fashion statements.

Claude on Claude: We saw angry kids and while I am not convinced they were all hoodies, working class or at all apolitical (quite the opposite unfortunately), there were burning cars and attacks on whimpish bourgie yuppies with insuffarblely indulgent apolitically ironic fashion statements. Hipsterism did however indeed demise and we got this wonderful catchy song to confirm that everyone hates hipsters, including hipsters. Anyway I still await the Hoodie Counter Culture. If you’re a self-hating hipster in denial and need to stay ahead of the trend, get yourself one of these.  You knob.

Verdict: 7/10 (solid but unspectacular)

Kewls on Kewls: If 2009 was the desert of celebrity meltdowns, 2010 was a fucking rainforest. We were spoiled with multi-platform falls from grace that showered our glistening, pulsating, needy bodies. Mel Gibson warmed us up early in the year with his leaked phone calls, which revealed him to be racist, sexist, and a little bit of a genius (for introducing the word ‘sugartits’ into mainstream pop culture). This was quickly followed by Jesse James and his you-can’t-make-this-up mistress, Bombshell McGee, a true Hollywood story that even had a silver lining in the form of Sandra Bullock becoming America’s newest sweetheart. Paris Hilton gave us an unforgettable summer through her hilarious ordeal in which she tried convincing police her cocaine was chewing gum, before tweeting evidence against herself. Fan favorite Lindsay once again came to our rescue, landing behind bars and giving us the trial of a lifetime that saw live streaming video footage of her freaking out as she received her sentence, the now infamous fuck-you nail polish, and the snappy, side-eyeing judge that was the single-person incarnation of the worlds attitude towards Ms. Lohan. Disney proved that dreams really do come true when Demi Lovato closed up the year by punching a backup dancer in the face – for no reason – before checking herself into rehab for “personal issues” (which include anger management and an alleged affinity for Paris Hilton’s favorite brand of chewing gum). Thank you, baby Jesus.

Verdict: 10/10 (BOOM)

Image sourced from People Tree

It really hasn’t been a great year for Indian democracy. For a long time, the Indian public got along by telling itself that it had a ‘functioning democracy’. “The bureaucracy may be screwed”, went the reasoning, “and our politicians sure as hell are corrupt, but at least our judiciary and our press is still decent and fair.” The Radia Tapes took care of the latter part of that dream. And a recent order by a lower court in Chhattisgarh, the state at the heart of the Naxal (Maoist) insurgency, has seriously shaken the former.

The sentence in question regards Dr Binayak Sen, a 60-year old paediatrician with a long and impressive record of public service, which won him the prestigious Jonathan Mann award in 2008. At the heart of the affair is the accusation that Dr Sen was passing messages for a jailed Naxal leader and supporting the Maoist insurgency in the state. He was arrested in 2007, and released on bail in 2009 after a lengthy legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court. On Dec 24th, the lower court sentenced him to life imprisonment. The good doctor has been convicted, amongst other things, of sedition, under an act dating back to the days of the British Raj. It could have been worse. He was acquitted on the charge of waging war against the nation.

Here’s something funny about sedition. MK Gandhi was tried under the same charge, by the British government, in 1922. So was another freedom fighter, Bal Gangadhar Tilak. More recently, a metropolitan magistrate in Delhi ordered the police to register a complaint against writer Arundhati Roy and others on charges of sedition. Roy had criticized government policies in Kashmir and demanded independence for the state while speaking at a public seminar. 2010, it seems, was the year of living seditiously.

Inured as Indians are to gross miscarriages of justice, the sentence against Dr Sen has come as a blow to the gut. The image of the soft spoken doctor being taken into custody is at the heart of a howl of protest that is echoing across the country, against all that is rotten in our ‘functional’ democracy. In part, its about the timing. The sentence came at the fag end of a year that has been marked by scams and scandals. There was a $40billion swindle pulled recently by the telecom minister, embezzlement in cricket’s Indian Premier League, and houses for war widows in plush Mumbai localities were allotted to top defence brass and a minister’s mother in law. It was a year that didn’t lack for villains. But the only guy in prison is a barefoot doctor who worked with India’s poorest. Suddenly, sweet, democratic India is sounding a whole lot like the neighbours that it loves to hate. (Incidentally, can India still act uppity when China jails its writers, or should it reconsider gleefully attending Nobel ceremonies designed as snubs to dictatorships?)

So outrageous is the sentence that even a staid newspaper like The Hindu commented that it “calls into question the fundamentals of the Indian justice system.” The trial has been conducted on evidence that is so flimsy that it can barely bear repetition, let alone stand scrutiny. This includes an email sent by Sen’s wife Ilina to the Indian Social Institute, which shares an acronym with the Pakistani intelligence agency, and the fact that she used the term Comrade to address her colleague. (Apparently that’s top secret Maoist code, known only to the highest cadres of the Naxal movement.) Of course, the truth behind the ridiculous judgement is far simpler and far more chilling.

Chhattisgarh is the heart of the red corridor, territory that is being hard fought over by the Maoist insurgents and the government of India. It is also a crucial reservoir of natural and mineral wealth that the state is desperate to sell off. Any attempt by activists or civil society organizations to argue with these agendas is brutally repressed. This is precisely what has happened in the case of Dr Binayak Sen. In the years preceding his arrest, Dr Sen, in his capacity as general secretary of the state unit of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) was instrumental in documenting and exposing the atrocities committed by the Salwa Judum, the state armed militia that was meant to be a foil to the Naxalite forces.

As journalist Jyoti Punwani points out, Sen’s reputation as a dangerous Naxal supporter grew in direct proportion to the noise he made about the atrocities committed by the Salwa Judum. It also corresponded to PUCL protests against draconian laws in the state, and exposing fake encounters of tribals killed as Maoists by the police. Binayak Sen was sent to jail to get him to shut up.

The attempt to gag troublemakers hasn’t ended with Dr Sen. Fact finding missions and independent journalists venturing into the interiors of the state are routinely harassed. It has become virtually impossible to report freely from this part of India.

But stuff like this is hardly unusual in India, where whistleblowers who live to tell the tale are rare. So why does the case of Binayak Sen suddenly matter to so many people? The fact is that for an absurdly large number of Indians, the hope remains that truth will triumph. In a sane and just world, Dr Sen would be getting a medal for his work. In a sensible system, he’d be part of the mechanism for making decisions and policies for development. Instead, he is in prison. Even for our well developed powers of denial, this is atrocious.

Binayak Sen has already spent 2 years of his life in jail, before his bail application was finally granted by the Supreme Court. Yet he is advised to put his faith in the judicial process, to get out of the state and move up the judicial ladder for justice. Perhaps keeping this persistent illusion alive is a good idea. Perhaps the alternative is too scary to be contemplated—that like the rest of our rotten systems, our judiciary is also an elaborate farce; that we are indeed, at the mercy of kangaroo courts that the government can manipulate whenever they like. Dr Sen’s friend and associate, Himanshu Kumar, has been in exile from Chhattisgarh for nearly two years. His Gandhian ashram in the area of Dantewada, which worked for the development of tribal groups, was bulldozed by the police. Himanshu had raised his voice against the handover the state’s rich mineral resources to private interests, and against the hounding out of tribals from their villages by the Salwa Judum. How long until he is arrested?

The case of Dr Sen is also a testimony to how well the nationalism card works in our times. Kashmir, the north-eastern states, Maoists and Gujarat-all are fertile ground for ‘terrorists’ to be found. This is nothing short of a war on dissent, and an attempt to silence the voices of conscience that a real (‘functional’) democracy would nourish. The only upside to this story is the groundswell of support that has spread after news of Dr Sen’s arrest came in. There have been protests and meetings in cities across the country, and Indians from across social class and political persuasion have joined in demanding justice for Binayak Sen. If only if were enough.

As the good doctor brings in the new year in prison, we have to ask ourselves, why him? Why not the politician who stole public money, the corporates who poisoned Bhopal, the police officers who murdered Muslims in Gujarat? It is likely that Binayak Sen knew the answer. Before being arrested, he made a statement that ended with these words, “I submit that my prosecution is malafide; in fact it is a persecution. I am being made an example of by the state government of Chhattisgarh as a warning to others not to expose the patent trampling of human rights taking place in the state.” To kind of quote Arundhati Roy’s response to being charged with sedition, pity the nation that jails its heroes.

You were saner than most, Joshua

Some folks ask, How do I get people to take me seriously?

Here is one answer:

He was a self-proclaimed aristocrat, even going so far as to declare himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, indulging in the sort of monarchy nonsense that the country had spilled blood over less than a hundred years before. Yet in spite of it, when this Emperor finally died in 1880, almost thirty thousand people jammed the streets of San Francisco to attend his funeral. And in 1880, thirty thousand people represented over ten percent of the city’s population.

Exactly when Joshua Abraham Norton was born is a subject of some dispute. Various records and testimonies place his year of birth anywhere between 1814 and 1819, and his obituary cited his age as “about sixty-five.” Regardless of when he was born, it is known that Norton was born in London but spent most of his early life in South Africa.

Thats Right…

Declaring yourself emperor will get you places.

For Barlow, the most fascinating feature of this generation is its attitude towards work and the sacrifices that Barlow believes this generation is willing to make for their career. Work “should not be just a means to an end a way to make money, support a family, or gain social prestige but should provide a rich and fulfilling experience in and of itself. Jobs are no longer just jobs; they are lifestyle options.”  Furthermore, this generation taught to strive for all that it possibly can, to learn and amass as much knowledge as possible and to always put itself first, “nothing is valued so highly as accumulated experience. Nothing is neglected so much as commitment.”

“At what point, though, does the experience-seeking end?” Barlow asks, suggesting that it is time to grow up and assume a life grounded in personal commitment and not lofty endless searching that will leave a person lonely, if not bored.

And it certainly seems to have struck a chord. After I read the article, a quick search on Google found a great number of blogs hailing it as the article of our generation; it appears to sum us up and so succinctly states our issues.

But at what point does too much freedom completely miss the point?

I myself will be moving in the very near future for a job/ ‘lifestyle choice’ and the happy simultaneous goal of making a long-distance relationship a non-long-distance one. My partner and mine’s work and lives are a reflection of what Barlow describes, much like everyone else I know that read this article. When making my decisions to move, it was absolutely imperative to be certain that it was for me above all else, and that though my partner is a great ‘incentive’ to move that I would have gone elsewhere if the offer I received wasn’t so great. It seemed like a great betrayal to contemplate doing something only for someone else. Worse, I perceived it as needy and clingy. While discussing this with a friend, he asked me what my biggest fear regarding the move was. I answered, without a doubt, concerns related to starting a new job aside, that my partner and I plateau, that we reach that sibling-like comfort, “and then what?”

Those three words, I realised sum up the fears of our generation. We do not want the experience seeking to end, because then what? We do not want to stay in the same place, in the same job, see the same friends over and over, because then what? Have our expectations been raised so, that we are no longer able or need to tolerate the routine and mundane encapsulated in the question “then what?”

But is Barlow right that we are making mistakes, by not settling and compromising (‘growing up’?) or are we the new and improved generation, doing it our way and gonna have it all our way? If so are new models of adulthood rising from this? Will the families we raise be different?

The crazy thing is Barlow’s article was written in the 90s. At first I thought “people were like this back in the 90s?” thinking that this post-9 to 5 lifestyle is a much more recent phenomena. Then it occurred to be that that group must now be in their late 30s and early 40s and surely they must have surpassed their so-called “professional development / searching phase”. So where are they now? What have been the rewards of living and working on three different continents? Of changing jobs at least once every 2 to 3 years? Of partners and lovers left behind for a ‘too good to pass on’ experience in another country? Of botched long-distance relationships that that expired? Do they regret they choices they made? Have they settled? Are they happy? Are they single? Are they lonely?

The theme for next year’s commemoration {of World Press Freedom Day} will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age.

I come from there and remember,
I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother
and a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends and a prison.
I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away.
I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass.
I have a moon past the peak of words.
I have the godsent food of birds and an olive tree beyond the kent of time.
I have traversed the land before swords turned bodies into banquets.
I come from there, I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the sky cries, and I weep for a returning cloud to know me.
I have learned the words of blood-stained courts in order to break the rules.
I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one:
Home

—Mahmoud Darwish

Within the mighty wilderness of the Internet, there are a number of social network/news sites that web-surfers use. Sites like Reddit, Digg, and 4chan, where people come together and post information (from links to pics, songs to videos, or share their own mundane views) and people proceed to comment – whether anonymously or not – and vote on the value of the content (both comments and posts) presented with no tangible punishment or prize.

But unlike say, Facebook, each of these sites can be conceived as “virtual nations” with their own culture, reflected by their respective unique customs, symbols, styles, and rules. For example, Reddit has its “reddiquette”: rules and norms that loosely hold and govern the nation together.

Within these virtual nations pitched battles occur, in the form of mockery and insults in most cases, to the extremes of hacking and bullying in rarer moments, as well as between these proud cyber-nations or against those beyond their borders. (There are cases of positive actions too, lest we forget and draw their wrath.)

In the everlasting chronicles of these groups, there is one question that recently reared its head:

What happens when a virtual nation collapses?

In August/September 2010, Digg, the poster child of Web 2.0, attempted to transform its infrastructure into the newer, brighter Digg 4.0. People didn’t like it and vocalized their dissent, Digg management responded by censoring such attitudes. The result: a fantastical implosion and the “Digg 4.0 refugees” emerged.  Many users, loathing the new look of the site and many hating what had become of their nation, sought refugee elsewhere.

As a grovelling and valiant member of the Reddit Nation (a ‘redditor’), I watched during this fascinating time the trials and tribulations of the Digg refugee, and was struck by the parallels of the “real” experiences of non-virtual refugess, as they struggled to deal with dispossession and adapting to a new “home”.

The patterns were the same: I saw conflicts and repression as some among the “hivemind” were less than welcoming to any whiff of the refugee’s “otherness” (i.e. their former Digg-identity), though the majority, like in reality, are usually welcoming and helpful. And despite these bouts of cyber-racism, I witnessed numerous statements of loyalty and appreciation to their new home. Even stranger still, some have even created their own memorial of pride and remembrance of their former home (the sub-reddit: Digg) within the strong, stable, and large nation of Reddit. As time has passed and things settle down back home, some have returned to the new Digg 4.1, while others remain and assimilated completely to their new home.

This moment of Internet history is, frankly, hilarious. Naturally, in this case, the attachment to a website is nothing in comparison to that of a real material home. Yet, at the fuzzy edges, there exists a stark reminder and feel of reality, with all its troubling weight. It might be a stretch to expect the average cyber-refugee to stop and think about what can be learned by feeling some limited sense of dispossession, and the weird and imperfect connection to how a refugee would feel and experience. The identities we craft and the communities we join within the Internet are alluring and powerful; it is humbling to be reminded of that at times and notice how its reflects the life beyond the computer screen.

The real refugee stumbles and struggles between and into the cracks of the world, vulnerable as the laws and mechanisms of “the international” demands statehood for literal existence and identity.

But perhaps it is not to early to call for a new UN entity for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Forum Users (UNIFORUM), a grassroots Freedom of Movement campaign, an intervention from Brangelina, or a ‘day of activism’ on Facebook and Twitter to raise awareness for the plight of those who now, and in the future, may face displacement from the place they call their online home.

God bless them all.

UPDATE: There is a comic depicting the turbulent affair, it’s perfect.

It seems that everyone has the names Julian Assange and Wikileaks on their lips (or at their fingertips) these days. The most recent Wikileaks have certainly proved to be their most controversial leak to date, revealing a treasure trove of information that was never meant to see the light of public scrutiny. However crucially, though undeniably interesting, this latest leak comes without the ‘smoking guns’ of previous materials related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, such as the  now infamous video of an American helicopter crew gunning down Reuters journalists and civilians with a troubling disregard for human life.  As a result, though as I’ve noted already, in my view some of the criticism is undoubtedly disingenuous and reactionary (I’m looking at you Ms. Clinton), there appears to be a growing feeling that Wikileaks (often personified in such critiques by its public face Jualian Assange) has overstepped the mark of legitimate ‘whistleblowing’, defined as the exposure of hidden wrong-doing by powerful actors. But what to make of it all?

According to this critical consensus there was little among this latest tranche of documents that that really pointed to action by the US or its diplomats that stood outside of established international norms. Instead it contained a mix of catty gossip, or previously unconfirmed but nonetheless broadly acknowledged action and opinion of  the US and other governments. This then was just an attack on the legitimate internal, and justifiably secret, recording of the diplomatic process. Worse still it was an attack that came from a actor that was itself unaccountable and secretive, indeed far more so than those it wished to expose, justified in the name of a radical transparency designed to weaken the capacity of state actors to conduct ‘business as usual’, or perhaps even any business at all.

More specifically some critics argue, what Wikileaks actions endanger most, is not the worst acts of elected governments in liberal democracies, but some of their more laudable qualities. Their attempts to work with forces of moderation in more volatile political climates, to negotiate the complex realities of a varied and interconnected world, and to document and effect human rights abuses by repressive regimes (see for example the hostile question which Julian Assange pointedly fails to answer about halfway through this Q&A from the Guardian, or this and this article on the consequences for international aid and human rights respectively). The actual fundamental interests of a powerful state such as the US are not greatly threatened because, as US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates put it (via in turn via):

Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time… Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think — I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets… some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us… Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.

The attempts at a ‘progressive critique’ of the Wikileaks cables strike me as empty and speculative at best, and disingenuous at worst.  That Wikileaks “just made the world more repressive” for example, as Scott Gilmore argued, in the way it has undermined the expectations of  the secrecy of information sources on human rights abuses, is hard to square with the fact that in the specific case of East Timor that he cites, the zenith of western cooperation with the military regime was correlated with the high point of repression. However if Robert Gates is right, and I think broadly speaking he is, the question is perhaps more pertinently why leak these cables – not least since Julian Assange has himself boasted of the backlog of data that Wikileaks has at its disposal and is struggling to process?

The answer to this question is perhaps to be found in these writings (via via), in which Julian Assange lays out the intellectual framework that presumably motivates his own engagement, and perhaps the engagement of many others, with the Wikileaks project. In it is found a conceptualisation of the state as an inherently authoritarian structure whose bureaucracies operate as cognitive networks which must solve a fundamental tension between their need to maintain secrecy to minimise potential resistance to its actions, and the need to plan, organize, and adapt to challenges to actualise its goals. The key bridge used to cross this gap is in his view the control of information flows. The effects of leaks are therefore not linear, i.e. in direct proportion to their substantial content, but have a disproportionate affect on the ability of the state to function effectively. The value then lies in the action of leaking itself. And the value in leaking information about the United States government, the most powerful international actor, is therefore of greater impact than other less decisive global actors.

His is of course a highly speculative theory, and it must overcome the challenge of all utopian theory that the reality of the world does not lend itself easily to simplification. And whether the result of this process, even if it is to be to some extent successful, would be a definitively better world, as Julian Assange would clearly have us believe, is not clear. If history has taught us anything, it is that actions are defined far more by their unintended consequences than their author’s design. But what his writings also show is that in many ways the critics of Assange and Wikileaks are not unfounded in their belief that his motivations in this latest leak clearly demonstrate something more than the revelation of specific cases of wrong-doing. This is not whistleblowing, it is sabotage; but in whose name?

The reality of non-state actors that seek global change is that they inevitably suffer from their own inescapable crisis: a crisis of legitimacy. And given the already acknowleged tendency of Wikileaks’ actions to endanger specific individuals lives in the name of a greater good, we must ask ourselves to what extent Wikileaks itself instrumentalises people in the same way as the governments and corporations so many struggle against. Without doubt, the state system, in which a President, Senate or Congress in the US on a daily basis takes decisions that affect people in far away places to whom they will never be accountable, is itself bankrupt of legitimacy. But the role of Wikileaks in creating a better world must not go unquestioned, even if, it cannot also be easily dismissed.

Vir Sanghvi will NOT call you back, Niira

One of the most remarkable things about ‘new’ India is its ability to believe in its newness, and to distance itself from the messy realities that exist outside its charmed circle. The new media is-or was-one such shining star in this constellation of glories—including a 9 percent growth rate, luxury malls and a regular supply of celebrities getting hitched in heritage hotels. The ‘new’ media was for the most part considered free, fair, and fearless. Maybe it was a little too given to sensationalism. But when some corruption crazed official reportedly tried to bill the public Rs4000 ($87) for a roll of toilet paper, like in the recently concluded Commonwealth Games, for instance, the media was there, acting as watchdog for the public. Except when it wasn’t. Over the past few days, the chummy connections between journalists, politicians and questionable corporate lobbies have been pushed into the open, with the release of phone conversations between a high-profile PR professional and every power list in town. But for an inordinately long time, the media response to these tapes was a stunning silence.

At the heart of the controversy is A Raja, minister for telecommunications, implicated in a scandal for selling off telecom licenses in the worlds fastest growing mobile phone market for a song. The cost to the state from this is estimated to be around $35 billion. Even for a country inured to epic swindles, this is big news. The tapes are part of evidence against him, submitted to the Supreme Court of India, taken from phone taps made by the Income Tax department on Niira Radia, a PR professional who is very, very good at her job. In the tapes, Radia is heard talking to many people, including her corporate clients, politicians and several journalistic eminences.

Here’s a sample, where Radia is talking to media honcho Vir Sanghvi, editorial director of the venerable Hindustan Times newspaper, about a TV show he hosts.

VIR: But Mukesh has to be on board. He has to sort of realise. It has to be fully scripted.

RADIA: No, that’s what I mean. I think that’s what he’s asking me.

VIR: Yes, it has to be fully scripted.

RADIA: He is saying is that, ‘Look Niira’, that ‘I don’t want anything extempore.’

VIR: No, it has to be fully scripted. I have to come in and do a run through with him before.

RADIA: Yeah, yeah.

VIR: We have to rehearse it before the cameras come in.

‘Mukesh’ here is Mukesh Ambani, one of the worlds biggest industrialists and Radia’s client. ‘Vir’ is a soft and cuddly side of Sanghvi that is hard to believe, let alone explain. But despite being pretty hot stuff, the Radia transcripts were carried by only two magazines. Two. In a democracy with a free and fair press… Or forget about that. In an aggressive market with TV channels hyperventilating in breaking news battles, and with influential English dailies and magazines engaged in bloody turf battles, somehow two magazines had the field all to themselves with this story. Both magazines- ‘Open’ and ‘Outlook’- admitted that they couldn’t authenticate the content of the tapes. But since they were already in the public domain, they were placing them on record. Meanwhile, the rest of the ‘free and fair press’ wrung their hands and made noises about the New York Times taking three months to verify the Pentagon Papers. Only after a gap of several incredible days did others pick it up-that too mostly on the editorial pages rather than as news. As media critic Sevanti Ninan points out, the list of those who sat this one out is long and illustrious.

It took a whole lot of Internet chatter, plus stories in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Huffington Post, to break the impasse. This is the biggest crisis in the Indian media since the dark years of censorship during the Emergency in the 70’s. The names involved are stalwarts-besides Sanghvi, there is Barkha Dutt, managing editor of New Delhi Television (NDTV), one of India’s oldest and most respected television news networks, variously described as India’s Oprah and Katie Couric. Besides setting the standards for ‘alpha male’ reporting, Dutt is someone bloggers love to hate, after NDTV served legal notice to a blogger for being uncomplimentary about her reporting on the Mumbai terror strikes. Prabhu Chawla is associated with India Today magazine. Several other journalists feature on the 140 tapes, which have been uploaded by ‘Outlook’ magazine on its website. The leaks are only part of the complete conversations tapped by the IT department, and each of the journalists has presented their own defense. (Dutt even appeared on her own channel to defend herself before a panel of eminent colleagues, but ended up spending most of the time scrapping with ‘Open’ magazine editor Manu Joseph). But the initial response of the media has established one salient fact: when it comes to the crunch, in India, journalists protect their own.

Despite the virtual blackout, the tapes have reached around a million people. They’ve blown the lid off the chummy networks that shape journalism in general, and business journalism in particular. Listening to them is disturbingly like eavesdropping on a cocktail party. One can almost hear the delicate clink of glasses in the background. But the part that’s truly gut-churning is the cynical way in which Radia and Sanghvi talk about spinning his column, Counterpoint (“most-most read.”) in favour of Mukesh Ambani, using the language of national interest. Background: They’re talking about the legal battle between Mukesh and his brother Anil on gas pricing and allocation.

VIR: What kind of story do you want? Because this will go as Counterpoint, so it will be like most-most read, but it can’t seem too slanted, yet it is an ideal opportunity to get all the points across.

RADIA: But basically, the point is what has happened as far as the High Court is concerned is a very painful thing for the country because what is done is against national interest.

VIR: Okay.

RADIA: I think that’s the underlying message.

VIR: Okay. That message we will do. That allocation of resources which are scarce national resources of a poor country cannot be done in this arbitrary fashion to benefit a few rich people.

RADIA: That’s right.

VIR: Yeah. That message we will get across, but what other points do we need to make?

RADIA: I think we need to say that you know it’s a lesson for the corporate world that, you know, they need to think through whenever they want to look at this, whether they really seriously do give back to society.

VIR: So I will link it to the election verdict. The fact that there has been so much Narega ( a rural employment guarantee scheme), that Sonia (Gandhi, president of the Congress party)has committed to including everybody, that it should be inclusive growth. It shouldn’t just benefit the few fat cats.

Just when you thought the idea of journalism as public service was dead.

Besides the media silence on the tapes, this kind of cynical twisting of the language of public good is the scary heart of the matter. The irony of talking about protecting public resources from ‘fat cats’ with a PR agent lobbying for the country’s most powerful industrialist clearly eludes Sanghvi.

For those unfamiliar with Brand Sanghvi, he’s the dapper gent who samples caviar and truffles at fancy restaurants and inspects the linen at the world’s finest hotels. One of his recent columns advised readers, in the manner of Head Boys everywhere, that the best way to deal with Arundhati Roy talking about Kashmir was to ignore her, otherwise we would be as bad as her. (It is often suggested that Roy should leave off talking about ‘real’ issues since she lives in a nice house in a nice part of Delhi. By that measure, Sanghvi should’ve been gagged with a silk handkerchief years ago.)

The tapes have also solved the little mystery about why the Indian media is so aggressive on reporting political scams, but is happy to play dead on corporate wrongdoing. As Manu Joseph, editor of ‘Open’ magazine, puts it, its because the government is now a minor advertiser. The whole thing makes you nostalgic for Walter Mathieu in ‘Front Page’.

The defenses trotted out mostly involved the old chestnut of ‘balance’, the need to avoid ‘hysteria’ in terming legitimate talk between source and reporter as lobbying (the irony of that phrase used in relation to Barkha Dutt, known to Indian viewers as the queen of tonal variations, is delicious enough to be savoured). But as Hartosh Singh Bal, political editor of ‘Open’ magazine, showed in his column, Sanghvi’s Counterpoint was clearly shaped by his talk with Radia. This is not journalism. This is stenography.

Sanghvi’s last column titled “Setting the Record Straight” is a defense of his chat with Radia. He claims the tapes are doctored, and that in any case he didn’t do what he told Radia he would do. Then, because all this shit hitting the fan has left him feeling “battered”, he’s not going to write Counterpoint any more, until we all think about what we’ve done. Boo hoo?

Sure, no money changed hands. But then, that’s what the tapes establish. Its not just money that carries currency in this finely honed system. It’s just as important to trade in information, and influence. The widespread nature of this malaise is evident in the fact that nearly every media house ignored the story after it broke. This means, quite simply, that nearly every media house in India has something to hide.

Part of the reason for this is the baggage our press shed along the journey from reporting India to being part of the ‘India Shining’ story. Journalists lost rage, and the idea of moral responsibility. Both these terms make reporters too isolated in India’s shiny TV offices-too unemployable and naïve. The tapes have shown the pliability behind the headlines, the phoniness of the hour-long special on corruption, the silence behind the crowing voices delivering another scam at the audience’s bloodied feet. To paraphrase that other astute observer of public moods, “l’scam, c’est moi.”

But despite that, our hypnotized gazes are sure to return to the spectacle on prime time TV. Perhaps in time we will learn to appreciate the high wattage drama on shows with aspirational titles like ‘The Buck Stops Here’, or ‘We, the People’ for what they are—well scripted farce. For the facts, there’s always fakingnews.com.

First and foremost, I’d like to point out to everyone that’s hated on her efforts: It’s a good thing she bothered putting something out for you ungrateful assholes. Lest us forget, only a few months ago, she was making “50K for a verse, no album out!” Hats off to her for putting in the effort to create a complete album and not just rely on her notoriety for success. Joking aside, I can see why some people may have been disappointed. Nicki has, in under a year, created such a strong, consistently high quality, multifaceted persona for herself that anything she put out on her own was going to be a disappointment to people. It’s the same expectation with first-time sex. After all that porn, how is it ever going to compare? What people forget is that, when featuring on a track, Nicki is given the freedom to be as crazy as she’d like – it’s a 45-second feature, tops, and then it’s over. She could pull out her tough-guy, straight out of Queens Nicki alter-ego, go with the sweet and innocent Onika, the outrageous, politically incorrect, tourrettes-inflicted Roman Zolanski, or even the highbrow, nameless British person living inside of her. Or, as evident in her Monster verse, all of them at once. With Pink Friday, there was the challenge of creating a fun but cohesive album, while still showcasing what, under all the zany voices and weird faces, Nicki actually is; a fantastic rapper.

That rapper is alive and well throughout the album. The record’s stand-out track, the so-good-it’s-tear-inducing duet with Kanye West, Blazin’, features Nicki rapping so fast that the beat drops out and allows her to spit a verse – allow me to quote her here – tighter than a dick in the butt. Her personas, contrary to popular belief, are also heavily featured on the album. Her original character, Nicki, makes even a track featuring Drake (Moment 4 Life) enjoyable – a feat only matched by Rihanna on What’s My Name? (seriously though, who keeps endorsing Drake?). Roman Zolanski, the out-of-control alter ego conceived out of rage makes appearances on both Did It On ‘Em and Roman’s Revenge, the latter which is so violent it leaves you feeling violated (…in a good way). The album seems to fall short, however, when the Onika character takes over songs – both Your Love and Dear Old Nicki are just too sweet and emotional. What Nicki does best, however, is simply focus on writing and rapping fantastic verses while allowing seasoned singers to take care of the chorus (Rihanna on Fly and Natasha Bedingfield on Last Chance).

My main gripe with the album is the track-listing. In what is probably the biggest injustice in all of musical history, four of the strongest songs were left as bonus tracks on the deluxe edition. Girls Fall Like Dominoes features a fantastic sample backing Nicki packing a million pop-culture references into less than 4 minutes. Blow Ya Mind and Super Bass are both deliciously reminiscent of Minaj’s mixtapes, while on Muny Nicki manages to do M.I.A. better than M.I.A. does M.I.A.

Overall, Nicki Minaj, in the unfortunate situation of having about a million expectations placed upon her, has produced an album that stays true to herself while giving sly nods to everything that people love about her, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Pink Friday isn’t an album of gimmicks, nor is it a people-pleasing album; it’s a record that features fantastic rapping, some of the best rap lyrics of recent memory, and top-notch tracks. It also managed to sell over 350,000 copies in it’s first week, so haters you can kill yourselves.

Mis-speaking again?

Dear Mrs. Clinton,

We can understand, of course, that your position requires you to be against the Wikileaks. We can even understand that having spent the best part of a couple of decades or more at centre of ‘power’, you might instinctively hate what they stand for and everything they are trying to do.

But for you to call the latest Wikileaks ‘Megaleak’ an “attack on the international community”… I mean srsly? SERIOUSLY? We know of course that you have a selective memory (or a tendency in your own words to ‘mis-speak‘) when it comes to verifiable facts, but this is a bit like Mel Gibson speaking out on Julian Assange’s questionable attitudes to women, or perhaps the Germans criticizing Iranian antisemitism (too much..?).

According to a secretJuly 31, 2009 instruction signed by Clinton, and now available (via Wikileaks of course) on the NYT web site,  she asked all US government staff at the UN to spy on everyone else at the UN (via). As the note pointed out:

Important information often is available to non-State members of the Country Team whose agencies participated in the review of this National HUMINT Collection Directive…The intelligence community relies on State reporting officers for much of the biographical information collected worldwide.

US diplomatic staff should collect things like…

internet and intranet “handles,” internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs; {SO MUCH FOR ANONYMOUS BLOGGING AND TWITTER!}, credit card account numbers; frequent flyer account numbers;

You know just the usual run of the mill personal information that is of the utmost importance to national security. Her priorities in terms of information to collect was split into two categories, “A. Key Near-Term Issues”:

1) Darfur/Sudan (FPOL-1)
2) Afghanistan/Pakistan (FPOL-1)
3) Somalia (FPOL-1)
4) Iran (FPOL-1)
5) North Korea (FPOL-1)

and “B. Key Continuing Issues”:

1) UN Security Council Reform (FPOL-1)
2) Iraq (FPOL-1)
3) Middle East Peace Process (FPOL-1)
4) Human Rights and War Crimes (HRWC-3)
5) UN Humanitarian and Complex Emergency Response
(HREL-3)
6) Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction
(WMDN-5H)
7) Terrorist Threat to UN Operations (TERR-5H)
8) Burma (FPOL-1)

You know, don’t you kind of think just to ask?

So Mrs Clinton, exactly who is it that is wronging the “international community” (by which you presumably mean the small number of actors, like you who represent ‘power’)… is it Wikileaks or is it you, ordering ordinary US diplomats to spy on, well… the international community?

But of course you wouldn’t appreciate this basic equivalence. You (and so many other governments around the world whose most obvious beef should be with you and your government) complain instead about the crimes of Wikileaks, because you believe that you have an exclusive right to power, and are willing to conflate any threat to that exclusivity with the vaguest threats of how Wikileaks will damage the world. In your world it is Wikileaks (not you) that threaten lives by revealing sensitive information about the wars you began and continue to prosecute; it is Wikileaks (not you) that are a threat to the ‘national security’ of the United States and others; and of course it is Wikileaks (not you) that wrongs the ‘international community’.

Well Mrs. Clinton, on behalf of the international EWZ community, fuck you. Fuck the things that you believe in, fuck the things that you do, and fuck the version of the international community that you represent.

I look forward to reading your reply sometime in the future on the Wikileaks site.

Yours with hugs

Snuggles and the EWZ team

You’ve been Halaled, Vlad.

Some folks ask, What have Muslims done for society and human history?

Here is one answer:

Born in the Ottoman Principality of Wallachia, Romania in 1435 AD, he was known as Radu al III-lea cel Frumos to his Romanian countrymen, Yaksikl RaduBey to the Turks, Radu al-Wasim to the Arabs, and Radu the Handsome in English. This ally and childhood friend of Sultan Mehmet II was instrumental in the conquest of Constantinople for Islam. Radu’s participation in that conquest ensured that Mehmet II would go down in history as “Fatih,” or “Conqueror.” Radu was the Ottomans’ secret weapon against the Safavids to the East and the Serbs, Romanians and Hungarians to the West. The Muslim world owes much to this hero of Islam, yet they recorded little other than cursory references to him, perhaps for fear of taking away from Fatih Sultan Mehmet’s limelight. The Byzantines recorded Radu as a reviled despot due to their hatred for his conversion to Islam and instrumental role in ending the Byzantine Empire.

Yet, this Ottoman general had a greater war, a war against darkness. He hunted the very progenitor of the vampire legend who impaled his enemies and drank their blood – Vlad al III-lea Tepes, also known as Vlad Draculea, who would go down in infamy as, simply, Dracula. (click on Dracula for more info!)

That’s right…

Buffy fans owe Muslims big.

I once made the mistake of saying that I thought acts like Katy Perry, Rihanna, and Nicki Minaj were positively defining a generation and doing more for youth (women in particular) than anyone else has in recent memory. This was quickly followed by Katy Perry wailing “I wanna see your peacock, cock cock cock. Don’t be a chicken, stop acting like such a biatch” at us through my car stereo. Everyone in the vehicle ripped me to shreds, but I stood by my statement, and still do.

I can see why people are quick to dismiss these women as the latest marketing trick or, in extreme situations, nothing more than today’s politically correct answer to whores. Scrap that. I can’t. That thought process only demeans women and makes everything these girls are fighting for (actively or passively) inconsequential. What I’m saying, pretty much, is that criticizing Ke$ha is downright OPPRESSIVE. Through her grease and glitter, she has managed in one self-written album to capture the voice of a generation. Who hasn’t taken their clothes off at a club or gotten a pedicure on their toes, toes while trying on all their clothes, clothes? Exactly. Furthermore, her lyrics pose a refreshingly stark contrast to those that were on the radio only five years ago. In 2005, the biggest songs featured Britney Spears writhing around in her underwear telling her lover she was his slave, or Usher recounting his many sexual conquests. Back then, Christina Aguilera was given props for pushing the barrier by empowering women and giving them a voice. But let’s face it – she did it in assless chaps while talking about getting Dirrty.  Destiny’s Child – up until that point considered modern soldiers of female empowerment – released their latest hit, Cater 2 U. CATER. TO. YOU. Let’s just take a minute.

Okay.

These days, turn on any current music channel and you will be greeted by Ke$ha (who in particular seems to exist solely as a big fuck-you to the societal expectations of females) rolling her eyes at creeps in the club, or yelling at a guy to “quit your chit chat and just show me where you’re dick’s at”. Meanwhile, acts like Bruno Mars and Mike Posner whine about how they are not worthy of their girlfriends. These women have successfully managed to turn the tables and put themselves in the position of power, objectifying men, and giving themselves self-esteem and self worth.

On a more serious note, Rihanna has also given a grim and prevalent cause an important and positive face. After being the victim of violence and abuse at the hands of He Who Shall Not Be Named, she publicly dealt with it in a very real way. I won’t go into details about it, because they’ve been exhausted over the past few years, but it’s the music she has produced since that is relevant to me. Her post-incident album was unapologetically tough and real, both visually and sonically; not once on her ‘Rated R’ album did she feel sorry for herself. Instead, she sang about “lick[ing] the gun when I’m done because revenge is so sweet. Any motherfucker wanna disrespect? Playing with fire gonna get you wet. How does it feel down there on your knees?” Her current album has spawned two Top 5 singles; the first demanding she be treated like the only girl in the world, while the other (the current Billboard  #1 What’s My Name?) playfully challenges men to see if they can “go downtown with a girl like me” and “put in work” – again: positive, empowering songs. Meanwhile, Chris Brown remains pressed and is still complaining and bitching anywhere he can- Twitter, interviews, and through his failing so called ‘redemption music’.

It’s easy to belittle fun and catchy music as nothing more than the flavor of the month, but the most powerful changes are the ones that are subversive, subtle, and accessible. While it may be easy to criticize these women for being obnoxious and worry about the color of this one’s hair or that one’s costumes, the message seems to be lost on the general public. People just don’t seem to understand the power of a pussy on a sideburn.

Okay, so this is not a preachy song circa 1990s about community response to violence (props to Baby Face, Stevie Wonder, Tracy Chapman among others).

And this is not a story telling project about women who eventually escape violence to a shelter and over time manage to find housing, employment and independence and live to present about it at a Non-profit’s Show & Tell to funders. (not to de-value the power or impact of such initiatives, only the limited public outlets available. Plus, Rhianna is probably saving this for pt.3)

This is just one experience of violence, that does not represent all experiences of violence, yet is epidemic across our societies. In Canada, 51% of women have experienced physical or sexual violence since the age of 16. 39% of women have experienced sexual assault since the age of 16. These numbers may be even higher because these stories are often unreported. Only 6% of sexual assaults are reported to police.

All this to say, it is no surprise that this song relates to the experiences of so many youth. Good or bad, this is just the start of a discussion we the public need to have. I leave it up to you to listen to it from your own point of view and share your thoughts!

Rihanna Feat. Eminem – Love the way you lie pt. 2 (MP3)

* Statistics are from Statistics Canada,  1993 Violence Against Women Survey

“Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis.”

World,

You are infected with intellectual mass hysteria and popular delusions of perceived purity.

Purity in race, culture, religion, and especially purity in historical narrative. It is the latter that has interested me recently. The control of what and how the past was, is, essentially, the control of what and how the present is (to paraphrase that Orwellian mantra). History was/is, usually, how we measure our present, whether by trying to convince ourselves that we are progressing materially and morally (with the latter one still in doubt) or allowing us to contemplate on what our slithery identity really is.

In Europe, an example of this  mass hysteria manifests in regards to the continent’s relationship with Muslims (from theology to fashion).  This latest, brilliant piece on the increase in popularity of Mohammed as a name for boys in London is a symptom of this continual convulsion. The underlining emotion of the news story is the fear that Islam is conquering the “free and liberal” European continent with demon babies.

Muslims are daring to build minarets, wearing the hijab/burka, and are overtaking the rest in the naming baby boys…which means, they are having lots of babies! (OMG! Armageddon! Terror!)

People assume that there is a coherent and comprehensive European identity and value system so uniquely European that people of the Islamic faith do not share in (or people in general who aren’t European…like savage Africans, shifty Orientals, slippery Latinos).

History paints a strikingly different portrait. So let’s lurch up on some of that trail…

First, and foremost, and I can’t believe I have to write this…but the name Mohammed existed prior to the inception of Islam, and became popular after the religion grew (consider how the name David became popular for Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Atheists). To go as far as to say, or even assume,that a person who is named Mohammed at birth will automatically grow into a religious individual (and here people assume as well that religious means fundamentalist, or something so vile) is absurd, and says much about a person’s own inherent issues…(Bill Maher, who I loath, has recently been nominated for Idiot of the Month for committing such an act). If we are determined to judge a person by the name, there are much more sillier names to get worked up about (Personally, I vote for  those named Toby to be hunted down like the scum that they are).

If one is gonna get worked up about a minaret, one should at least be aware that Gothic architecture is a homage and remixing of Mosques.If your gonna ban minarets or mosques, shouldn’t Gothic architecture get the boot too? Seriously, its so grotesque and its been contaminated by that Islamic touch.

There are so many chronicled examples to note: The Renaissance was sparked by the experiences of Europeans who travelled to West Asia and were shocked on how cool it was (those were the days, eh).  Public hospitals, libraries, and research institutions were adopted by the Europeans from the West Asian region. Even the word, alcohol, treasured by many, is a distorted Arabic term al-khol. The examples litter our present world. And it’s almost, always a two-way street.

Consider this, cyber-voyeurs…

Alexander the Great is one of Europe’s colossal historical figures. The creator of one of the largest empires during the ancient era, spanning from the Adriatic sea to the Indus river. Through him, the Hellenization process occurred, and his legacy has left its mark on proceeding empires in Europe (from the Romans and beyond). What makes this Macedonian even more appealing is the intermixing of societies, whether in his royal courts or on the streets of the societies he had conquered.

The effect was so great, that it left a lasting impression on Islam, centuries later.

The story of the Dhul-Qarnayn (The Two Horned One, and because Arabic is so complex, it can mean the Two Aged One) for Muslims, the laymen and the scholars, had a high appreciation for this historical figure. The respect so lavish, that some scholars, in the past, have gone so far as to argue that Alexander may have been a prophet sent by God. Some, not all, mind you- for many, he was at least defined as a “friend to God” (Refer to the parallels of how Europeans Christian viewed Salah El-Din, centuries later, with admiration; the few arguing adamantly that he was a closeted Christian).

One poet wrote:

Dhu’l-Qarnayn before me was a Muslim
Conquered kings thronged his court,
East and west he ruled, yet he sought
Knowledge true from a learned sage.
He saw where the sun sinks from view
In a pool of mud and fetid slime
Before him Bilqis [Queen of Sheba] my father’s sister
Ruled them until the hoopoe came to her.

This small example of the time-spanning ongoing relationship between the West Asian region and the European continent gives us much to ponder.

The most obvious point, for me, is that there has always been an active relationship. It has been bloody, for sure, but underneath the blood, there has always been the exchange of ideas, philosophies, and more that to actually argue an on-going existence of purity in culture or history is no longer possible. This is true for the rest of the world today.

There are marks left on these two societies that goes both ways. Aristotelian logic and other allegedly-exclusively European values are entrenched within West Asian philosophy and science, just like Europe uses Arabic numerals to crunch numbers, Islamic and Arabic science to further their own knowledge, and so it goes back and forth. “We” can not deny our history, neither should (the proverbial) “they”. Spain, and southern Europe, were under Muslim control for over 500 years; something is bound to stick and spread, don’t you think?

And Muslims, these days, do get all defensive about their own purity…granted this is some-what understandable with how the political climate is (a growing perfect shit-storm), but they should be honest about the influences on their history (I’m particularly looking at you, wacky Wahhabis with your wacky ways). Shari’a law and Islamic philosophy was influenced by Roman, Babylonian, Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian roots – e.g. where do you think the controversial punishment of stoning came from ? (hint: it ain’t in the Quran).  The region itself has been home to numerous empires and societies, rising and falling with the tides of time, so something was bound to leave its stench as well.

The essential problem (at least one of many) with humanity today is our present-centricity. We are biased against the past because we are arrogant enough to think we’ve developed so far (O! Now, we have the Internet! Satellites! Magnificent war machines! Medical marvels ! 3D Television! A Bidet! Oh, so much more!).  But in the long trail of history, half sunk shattered visages do lie, and that should caution our arrogance…

A comprehensive awareness of history is a cure. However, it should be an awareness that history itself is forcefully fixed to fit into the present’s socio-political context and sentiments. We see this all the time within nation-states that are trying to crave out a distinct identity against their neighbours and competitors. Aristotle once wrote: “If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.”

In this fast age and limited capacity of memory – we need to understand the foundations and what encompasses the foundation of how we got to “here”".

If we don’t, we get violent stupidity; like this.

(B) A White woman speaking out against a society that silences and criminalises “other”  women in her community. She uses a problematic, exotified and orientalised nickname but everybody could use more anti-oppression training from time to time.

(C) A white man with a lot of access to time, money and social support systems.

“The spiritual interests me, but that’s personal, I don’t think it bears on my work. Religion interests me, Muslims interest me and the impact they can have, artistically, aesthetically, in the codes that are all around us, particularly in fashion” – Princess Hijab

Mikhail Hoffman, Head of the humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres in Afghanistan makes some very important points about the need to separate humanitarian aid from military goals. The further blurring of the lines between humanitarian assistance and assistance that is given as part of the hearts and minds approach is not only endangering the lives of aid workers on the ground, but also endangers the lives of the people seeking aid.

Watch this if you have a spare 20 minutes today; it’s straight to the point, interesting, and sheds an important light on complexities and dynamics of aid delivery and conflict not just in Afghanistan, but in other countries where military action has co-opted humanitarian aid, such as Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen.

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

Ladies and gentlemen…The American public have voted in the mid-term elections and they re-voted a political party that played a major role in creating the various challenges facing the country today,whether domestically or externally. The same damn political party that Johnny Q. Public complained about when it was in power less than a five years ago…and now its back, energized by sipping highly caffeinated tea.

How plebeian, droll, and utterly ho-hum…

I’ve finally become totally bored of the American political scene. It’s filled to the brim with silly hype about “change” and self-delusions of grandeur regarding its God-blessed democracy. To me, it’s become more of a farce, year by year, with a heavy sense of the “will they, won’t they” (do the right thing) straight out of your typical sit-com/drama series. The really cheesy kind that crawls on for eternity.

The United State is not really that progressive about issues; from race to religion, welfare to arms-control, it’s slipping behind so many other countries.

It’s got a two-party system, where both parties basically say the same thing, remixed with their not-so-distinct rhetoric. I don’t even want to touch on their foreign policy because, frankly, its disastrous, violent, and perpetuates conflict in so many areas. And they don’t really change that much, no matter how loudly they proclaim they do.

I understand why it is necessary to pay attention. It’s mainly because their military budget overshadows most countries (combined), and, well, they were important during the Cold War (Because the Soviets were evil, soulless God-haters that ingests freedom and defecates horrors beyond our earthly comprehension)…

The Americans do have a powerful PR machine. That evolving powerful pop-culture, which gives them a boost in the global gossip and admiration. If it weren’t for the good movies and tunes (and big war-machines), a lot of people would be hatin’ the US more, I guarantee.

But honestly, I’m bored with it all. I’m especially bored with the spectacle and pomp surrounding their political environment. I’m bored with their flowery rhetoric of ”democracy” and how “they have it all together”, while telling other countries to shape up or be ashamed or whatever…Particularly, when they’ve got a long, long way to go.

I mean take the current hot-news on Iran. Today, a woman, who was suppose to be stoned, will be hanged, for the crime of committing adultery and killing her husband. Just to get it out-of-the-way: stoning is dumb, I don’t have to explain why (do I?), and executing her is wrong in so many ways…

But the Iranian Ambassador to Italy did say something interesting…How can the West, especially the US, speak about the horror of executing this woman when they did the same thing to a mentally disabled woman in September of this year? Her name was  Teresa Lewis. (There is no Facebook group condemning this, was there?)

This is a light example, in an ongoing (and long list) of continual hypocrisy coming out from the American political climate.

Even their style of domestic democracy bears questioning: Issues of vote rigging/stealing, massive corporate-political corruption, heavy lobby influence, the biasness of the electoral college, never-ending race issues, immigrant bashing, enviornmental outrages, and so on and so forth and etc…

Compare US political representatives with those south of the border.

Brazil’s Lula de Silva and his successor Dilma Roussef can honestly teach American politicians a thing or two, if US politicians and “experts” were not so arrogant enough to simply ignore this…Brazil is fascinating. As the article, if you dared to click, mentioned, over the course of Lula de Silva’s term (ending with an approval rating of a whopping 80%), he has been able to do much:

• winning two elections in a row (2002-2006)
• having the per capita income grow by 23% from 2002 to 2010
• having unemployment at a record low of 6.2%
• allowing the minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, to grow by 65% – not to mention more than 20 million people lifted from poverty and becoming middle class
• aggressively entering the international scene by negotiating (with Turkey as a partner) a solution to the Iranian nuclear development….and not using the threat of war or sanctions to do so…that’s freaking genius, that is!

Brazil is just one democratic country, among numerous others, outside the typical European and Neo-European geography that has been doing exciting and progressive things in their journey to develop and grow.

Sure, constant political and media attention on American elections are important in the grander scheme of things, because, its the US and they still have the influence in international relations. Yet, I feel like the American model is filled with hype, and should be scaled down to its actual size.

It reminds me of reality shows. They (both the reality shows and American politics) are awful expressions of human relationships, overblown, over-dramatized, and has too much self-importance. There are the few rare gems within the American political world (like Survivor for reality tv), but when looking at it in its entirety it is hyper-commerical, noisy, and audacious (there’s a book about it…its called the Audacity of Hope). And it is overbearing.  Oh man, is it so overbearing. Frankly, the politics has become more like pop culture (a mish-mash of sorts, a pop-politics perhaps), and that is not a good thing.

We, and here I mean whoever cares about the sociopolitical nature of their societies, must not solely look at the United States as a blueprint for our respective societies.

Iceland has fascinating takes on freedom of speech. Numerous countries are going further than the US on same-sex marriages. Iran is in the forefront of stem cell research. Cambodia gives the right to women to choose if they want an abortion (as do Vietnam and Lebanon, among others). The US is the only country, with Somalia, that has not signed the Convention of the Rights of the Child (well…Somalia at least said it will, soon.). India can teach us more on how to balance multiculturalism, its not perfect but far more superior than other places (something the Germans should heed). I can go on and on, but I gather that you get the gist.

Now, I don’t mean to say there aren’t good things that the US system can teach us.  Of course there is.

What I am urging is to take our attention down a notch, broaden our understandings of how government and social structures are formed and work, and to learn from all possible styles.

This world is much more dynamic than the American model. Let’s not let all the pretty colors and loud music distract us. It may be entertaining, but if we do, this democracy will seriously, and eventually, bore all of us…to death.

Like pretty much everyone else with a brain and a blog, we at ewz have been getting finger cramps over the rise of the Tea Party from afar for some time now (see here and here). Cultural trends in an information age are kinda democratising, but the flipside is the very very very mistaken impulse in a lot of people that they do indeed know best, the very flames of self-delusion that could burn us all to the ground and which super-awesome people from Fox like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly (i.e. Glenn Beck on Valium) and political celebretard Sarah Palin are more than happy to fan.  In a viral culture, populism is necessarily back big time (sorry John Stewart)… lets be honest it got BHO elected, but this time round it might be worth asking if we might just be witnessing the slow death of a little something called “qualifications”? I couldn’t put it any better than this guy, so I won’t even try…

[UPDATE #1] According a Rasmussen poll, apparently most voters think that House Republicans will have disappointed by 2012… that’s change you can believe in.

[UPDATE #2] And just for good measure this election saw the FIRST EVER REALITY TV SHOW CONTESTANT ELECTED TO CONGRESS!!!! It was gonna happen sooner or later, so let’s here it for Sean “The Lumperjack” Duffy, winner of Real World Bosten in 1997. I’m already getting money down on Snooki’s senate run before the decade is out.

He is a man you probably haven’t heard of and dont recognise… probably you are already in your internet-standard ADD getting ready to click on another of your thirteen open tabs… and probably, if you are anything like me – and there are at least seventeen million of us every month – one of those tabs will be making him money.

Nick Denton is the man behind Gawker Media, probably the biggest, snarkiest collection of blogs on the internet, a media empire that devours dimensions of culture and shits them out as porn… car porn, tech porn, video-clip porn, good old fashioned porn porn, and my personal favorite, gossip porn at the flagship site that gives the group its name. He is probably responsible for more work delinquency than anyone but Mark Zuckerberg. Between those two men it is frankly remarkable I still have a salary. I highly recommend you read the whole New Yorker profile on him here.

I think what struck me was how simultaneously he is both surprising and yet exactly what you would expect. Whereas the surprise is grounded in where he came from – a middle class Oxford-educated British man, a former journalist at both the Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph who spent (largely by choice) the early part of his professional life covering the transition from Communism to Capitalism in Eastern Europe, a man who had political ambitions before realising he wasn’t “politically viable” – the latter is grounded in what in time he has become.

Nick Denton radiates the tone of the internet age on every line, a sort of threadbare philosophy of not-quite-but-almost-nihilism. In his core belief, that the only index of quality worth considering is popularity, he understands something perhaps only a handful of people have really understood on a visceral level, that the point, at this point, is exposure. We have entered into a viral culture – in music, in marketing, in media, even in a sense perhaps politics. Obama was America’s first viral president, and the yang that brought the yin of the Tea Party, its first viral reactionary movement.

So perhaps what I’m trying to say is that Nick Denton matters, which from reading the piece, I’m sure would be something he might agree with more than anyone. “There are no titans” he says at one point. Perhaps, but there will always be icons. Nick Denton, whether you realise it or not, whether you want it or not, is one of ours.

This Friday ewz is wanting to escape from the cynical, ironic and hipster-saturated cultures of advanced capitalist and Western European societies in order to indulge our modern day Far Eastern Orientalist fantasies of better, simpler lives. And who better to do it for us than the Wonder Girls, with their gorgeous voices, sexy dance moves, and brilliant lyrics. Watch this, it’s actually really really good.

The right wing group, Citizens Against Government Waste (read “corporate interests against government spending except in the form of subsidies, protectionism or bail outs”)  has released this new advert as part of its ‘non-partisan’ civil soceity participation in the November elections in the US:

Besides some obvious idiotedness in the advert (e.g. China spent far more on its stimulus package, and can hardly be equated with non-state ownership of business), it raises some interesting questions.

Are Americans at large now comfortable seeing American overseas power as both a function and a reflection of empire? The makers clearly refer to America as a great nation rather than a great empire, but then its equated to Greeks, Romans and British.

Clearly, the ad appeals to popular fears held by American voters that are about more than American jobs going to China and an undervalued currency. Its about fears that America is losing its rightful place as the sole superpower.

What does a perceived American demise mean for the future? China is becoming a big issue in the mid-term elections. Does the appeal to such fears point to a tempting reversion to populist nationalism? Is China being set up to as the next adversity to American exceptionalism and so the next justification for continued military spending and a more aggressive foreign policy?

The wonderful Ginny Hill, via Chatham House, just released another excellent paper on Western involvement in Yemen and Somalia called “Yemen and Somalia: Terrorism, Shadow Networks and the Limitations of State-building“, alternatively titled “Leave Yemen Alone: You’re Lucky it Even Exists for you BASTARDS”. In the paper they argue that Western-led ‘stabilisation’ policies and the ‘war on terror’ in Yemen and Somalia are only contributing to worsening an already pretty effing bad situation. International donors, especially donor governments, are interacting (or trying to interact) with state institutions that are either completely non-existent (Somalia) or mere skeleton institutions that don’t work and haven’t worked properly for decades (Yemen).

From now on, people should just send Western governments this video, inserting ‘Yemen’, ‘Pakistan’, ‘Somalia’ or ‘Afghanistan’ instead of ‘Britney’. And how fucking dare ANYONE out there interfere with Yemen and Somalia, after all they’ve been through, etc. You get the picture.

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."

Didn’t I tell ya, o so long ago…

The Battle Over Secrecy has shifted towards a very tantalizing phase.

Let’s take a moment and inspect the pieces peppered on the board.

We have WikiLeaks, personified by Julian Assange (the “lightening rod”), taking very bold manoeuvres. In the summer they released the Afghanistan War Logs , which, in the foggy realms of the past, was considered the “largest military leak” ever: 91,000 documents, and 200,000 pages, in total.

The Pentagon, US politicians, and US military figures were quick to lunge against the organization, saying that it “has blood on its hands” for the leak.  Their entire premise relied solely on the point that  uncensored names within the files could be ”threatened” by the Evil Folks (Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or some United Alliance of Evil; I doubt they even know who they are crossing swords with anymore).

That’s right. The super-power with a levianthian-sized military-industrial complex, which has invaded Iraq (still waiting on those WMDs…) and Afghanistan,and has increased drone attacks on Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia (to name a few), and also supports dictatorships and colonialism in a number of places(you-know-who, you adorable bastards),  is actually charging WikiLeaks, an organization composed of an international union of hackers, slackers, and activists, of committing outright murder by releasing secret military files that depicted acts of murder.

Irony has not died post-9/11. I don’t care if anyone swears otherwise.

Thus we must ask: Was there blood spilled because of the Afghan leak?

Well…no. The Department of Defense and Pentagon admitted as much…There is “no evidence”  of anyone coming to harm over the leak. We also found out the embarrassing point that WikiLeaks even asked the Pentagon for help in filtering some of the names, which the Pentagon refused to do so (whoops)….

Suddenly, while the world was busy digging through all that paper and military jargon, something else happened.

The Swedish rape…er…molestation…er…”undefined” charge came about against the man representing the photogenic face of the organization: Julian Assange.

The US mainstream media, usually so brave and competent, were gobbling that whole scandal up.  Without any hesitation or journalistic scrutiny they inhaled the whole affair and vomited it out to the American public. It was pathetic to watch, really.

It was like watching a really fat person attack a free Chinese buffet – noodles and prawns flying dangerously everywhere, with no concern for hygiene nor public decency, only getting to the Kung Pao Chicken mattered.

Don’t get me wrong. If Assange committed a crime, he must be charged. But his personal crimes, if proven, does not bare any influence on the criminality of others found within the leaks.

and even more stories leaked out (a meta-moment, if you will):

Scandal at WikiLeaks! Internal ruptures of doom! Sources say Assange is a megalomaniac douchebag!

Oh yes, the American media were on a roll chipping away at the man representing the organization. They worked with such intensity and vigour (making up for 2001-2009, are we?) as if every scandal, ever greasy rumour tarnished the validity of the leak. As if the possibility of a weird sexual act (one of the worst and favourite of indiscretions one can make to feed the pop-news machine) made the numbers of civilian deaths in Afghanistan somehow less important or worthwhile to consider…

The old “shoot the messenger to get to the message” tactic, the classic character assassination, eh?

And now, in October of 2010, we have the Iraq War Leaks…nearly 400,000 secret military files. It is the largest military leak in modern human history, eclipsing the previous Afghanistan leak by a wide, wide margin. And the leak is stark, bleak, and full to the brim of filthy details.

We find that US forces deliberately turning a blind eye to torture by Iraqi forces (and even threatening their own detainees of the threat of torture). We find more information on the gun-tottin’ mercenaries (private military/security firms/corporations). We find an increase of the numbers of Iraqi civilian deaths than what the US figures are (surprise, surprise…). And we find more coming soon, as better and more patient people comb through the dark stinking pile.

As the world media analyzes the leak and what it means (such as the potentiality of war crime cases against the US and Iraqi forces), the US media is busy with the defaming game.

This is the New York Times coverage of Assange, written by John “I-supported-the-case-for-the-Iraq War-unquestioningly” Burns.

What we have here is a caricature of Assange. A paranoid, delusional, egotistical and self-indulgent man who just wants to basically fuck everything up. Here, we have hearsay and rumor passed off as truth, and we have complexity squeezed into a crude simple image (Notice, especially, what we do not have:  We have no mention of the leak itself, and how damning it is for the US, nor musings on the number of civilians dead in checkpoint killings by US military personnel, for instance).

Good old NYT…dripping with integrity as always.

And over here we have an “exclusive” CNN interview, where the reporter was more concerned with the scandals surrounding Assange, rather than on what the whole point of the interview was about. But that’s CNN, they are an embarrassed these days (Post CNN-Effect blues, I guess). It ends with Assange, after warnings, walking out. The reporter miserably calling out behind him, “I had to ask…”

Nevertheless, certain circles beyond the traditional spheres of American media, lies better, sharper journalists.

Take Glenn Greenwald, over at the nifty Salon.com, for example. Go ahead, read some of his work. He has two recent excellent articles specifically on the New York Times reportage of the leak and attempted smear of Assange. His words are far better than mine  in conveying the sheer blatant spin (a la Israeli-style) by the NYT (and other members of the American media establishment) of the whole issue (even, shockingly, to go as far as imply that Iraqi torture was worse than the torture done by Americans in Abu Gharib…Gee,  what a delightful proposition).

I quote from the last bit of his latest article, titled NYT v. the World: WikiLeaks :

The notion that the Obama administration not only should — but must — investigate the role its military played in enabling this widespread, stomach-turning torture and abuse in Iraq is simply suppressed in American political discourse, most of all by the newspaper which played the leading role in enabling the attack on that country in the first place.  It’s not hard to see why.  The last thing American political and media elites in general want is a discussion of the legal obligations to investigate torture and bring the torturers to legal account, and the last thing which enablers of the Iraq War specifically want is a focus on how we not only allowed but participated in the very human rights abuses which we claimed (and still claim) our invasion would stop.

I couldn’t have written it better, Glenn.

Much has been written about the Tea Party… their lack of diversity, the batshit crazy views found, not just among their rank and file, but among their leading lights as well, and of course the fact that our anti-establishment tea partiers have some pretty well-established friends who help pay the bills. And yet… and yet… somehow for all truth of all of this, the fact remains that this is an incredibly successful mass movement. It has mobilised large numbers of people over a sustained period of time, and not only that, it has succeeded it getting them not just to complain, or even march, but to act, which has led for example to the nomination of Tea Party candidates on Republican tickets in the face of substantial opposition.

The Tea Partiers of course like to present themselves as the airs to the mantle of the civil rights movement. But the civil rights movement mobilised such large numbers of people because those people shared a common, and very profound, experience – the day-to-day reality of discrimination against people of colour, the segregation of layer upon layer of American life. It was in short something not only substantial, but, well, real. Now contrast that to the Tea Party: the ills they identify, the ideas they present, the things they argue for, are either simply incoherent, or just plain, objectively, wrong. How do, for example, a large collection of people come to the belief that they as white people are somehow victims of ‘inverse’ racial discrimination, that their government is beholden to socialism, or that there is a creeping campaign to impose Sharia law on their country which they need to fear? And how does erroneous belief reach the point where it can sustain a movement that has risen to become an important political force?

Well I think I have an answer. It’s pop-culture’s fault, or more specifically the forms popular culture takes.

First the development of widespread cable television in the US allowed a proliferation of channels into their homes, and in time with it came the emergence of Fox News. For a broadcaster with a few competitors for a national audience, the model is very different to a cable channel that instead finds itself competing against a large number of other channels for a relatively smaller audience share. It pays then to target a highly specific audience, and therefore it can narrow the number of opinions it gives a platform to.

Then there is the effect of internet sub-cultures which allow individuals to increase their interactions with people who agree with them, and therefore in relative terms minimising their overall interactions with people they disagree with. Through them frequently people share information that confirms rather than challenges their views. Both of these phenomena therefore reduce the number of transformative interactions people have, where we interact with some information or person or group that does not confirm our world view, and therefore has the potential to alter it in some way.

Mzungu Kichaa, the crazy white man, is Danish man Espen from Tanzania. Jay is Professor of bongflava. Youtube this by him.

Awesome. Love it. But go figure.

I also like this, from The Very Best mixed album. It has Architecture in Helsinki in it. Its in Malawi. They’re actually from Australia. Go figure.

Dear U.S.of A.,

Thank you for the gracious liberty and happiness wonderfully bestowed on us lowly savages. We, who are the misguided, the raging prudes, constantly abusing our women, indoctrinating our children with hate and evil, who lack the ability to fathom the concept of comedy, culture, and civility.

Cancer, leukaemia and infant mortality are all increasing in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, which saw fierce fighting between US forces and Sunni insurgents, a new survey says.

Still one of the most dangerous places in Iraq, doctors have been reporting a large number of birth defects since the 2004 offensive.

Thank you America.

Thank you for freeing us from a dictator that you have supported, armed, and funded for ages by humbly bombing a whole society to dust through shock and awe (but first starving us for nearly a decade because said dictator dared to invade Kuwait after you gave him the green light to do so). Thank you for using napalm and depleted uranium shells in your combat missions. Thank you for infecting our wombs, disfiguring our children and then orphaning them, and blessing us with your delightful torture.

Children in Fallujah are being born with limb, head, heart and nervous system defects. There is even a claim that a baby was born with three heads.

The number of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than the rate in Europe.

Under international law it is illegal if used as an offensive weapon. America has never given a clear response to claims it also used depleted uranium weapons against the insurgents, such as ‘bunkerbuster’ bombs. Both types of weapons can contaminate crops and water supplies.

Thanks America.

Thanks for coming along and utterly decimating an entire nation. Thanks for standing idly by as our ancient culture and heritiage were looted . Thanks for lounging around in your pools and A/C’d permanent bases while the native population sweats thirstily away in the heat and the dark. Thanks for raping us, justifying it (so it was all stress, eh!  Oh well, carry on then), and, courageously,  humanizing the rape. This is for our own good, after all, and we fully understand that.

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Thank you America.

Thank you for guiding us to a shallow democracy, where the violence and the chaos re-enforces the legitimacy of neighboring dictators.

“It’s either us, or that,” they say, pointing at the state of Iraq with half a smile and a wink.

Thanks for weakening our home-grown movements for change and self-determination. Thanks for supporting dictatorships in the region as long as the oil flows and the Zionists roam free. Thanks for protecting us from terrorists by assassinating people through a shadowy secret awesome kill squad, villifying a religion, a culture, and a people. A big thanks for asking us to financially pay for it all.

After denying it at first, the Pentagon admitted in November 2005 that white phosphorous, a restricted incendiary weapon, was used a year earlier in Fallujah.

In addition, depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were used heavily in Fallujah. The Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tonnes of DU in Iraq thus far.

Many doctors believe DU to be the cause of a severe increase in the incidence of cancer in Iraq, as well as among U.S. veterans who served in the 1991 Gulf War and through the current occupation.

“We saw all the colours of the rainbow coming out of the exploding American shells and missiles,” Ali Sarhan, a 50-year-old teacher who lived through the two U.S. sieges of 2004 told IPS. “I saw bodies that turned into bones and coal right after they were exposed to bombs that we learned later to be phosphorus.

“The most worrying is that many of our women have suffered loss of their babies, and some had babies born with deformations.”

“I had two children who had brain damage from birth,” 28-year-old Hayfa’ Shukur told IPS. “My husband has been detained by the Americans since November 2004 and so I had to take the children around by myself to hospitals and private clinics. They died. I spent all our savings and borrowed a considerable amount of money.”

Thanks for being you.

Now please…FUCK OFF  with you alleged “withdrawal” and leave already.

You have over stayed your welcome a long time ago.

Wuv,

Fallujah (the rest of Iraq, the West Asian region, and perhaps a large number of other places)

I still don’t understand what’s wrong,” Abergil told Army Radio on Thursday, saying that the “pictures were taken in good will, there was no statement in them.

Goddamn Girl! You are so, like, totally sexy.

Oh, Israel.

That was incredibly fast in creating another outrageous scandal (scandal #97498325396589687396 and counting).

Seriously,  it feels like one week hasn’t gone by in which an Israeli has not gone about without stealing, shooting, molesting, humiliating, or degrading someone (mainly Palestinians) and then defended these actions with large quivering innocent eyes (Sorry, but that 13-year-old child was threatening our security and we had to shoot her…multiple times ).

And true as blue, the hasbarah is out on the prowl.   After all…there was no torture involved in these pictures, she was discharged from the army a year ago, and this does not represent the entire IDF Army…oh, where did I hear that before:

Update: Here  is the lovely, sexy Eden Abergil’s Facebook Profile. Comment away.

Oh, before I forget. According to the Rights group Breaking the Silence, IDF soldiers posing with bounded Palestinians “are the norm.”

It is interesting how Easterly insists on capitalisation of:  “BEFORE slavery and colonialism”, as if defending the entire western world against unwarranted claims that slavery and colonialism are linked to Africa’s presently “poor” condition.

I don’t have the data to disclaim his research which in his own words is based on “crude” information but I hardly think Easterly is an authority on African history.

In any case, regardless of whether his findings are accurate or not, I personally feel there is far more relevant, engaging and ultimately fruitful research on the matter that seeks to create solutions to rather than invest in costly academic finger-pointing.

Here’s an excerpt, and then I’ll go on to unpack his weak argument:

A paper by Diego Comin, Erick Gong, and myself was just published in the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. We collected crude but informative data on the state of technology in various parts of the world in 1000 BC, 0 AD, and 1500 AD.

1500 AD technology is a particularly powerful predictor of per capita income today. 78 percent of the difference in income today between sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe is explained by technology differences that already existed in 1500 AD – even BEFORE the slave trade and colonialism.

Moreover, these technological differences had already appeared by 1000 BC. The state of technology in 1000 BC has a strong correlation with technology 2500 years later, in 1500 AD.

Why do technological differences persist for so long? The ability to invent new technologies is much greater when you have more advanced technology already. James Watt had acquired a lot of tech experience in the mining industry which he used to invent the steam engine. Other people with the ability to make steel could then slap his steam engine on a vehicle running along steel rails and give us railroads.

Past technology alters probabilities of future success, but does not completely determine it. The most famous counter-example: China was historically technologically advanced and did NOT have the industrial revolution.

A large role for history is still likely to sit uncomfortably with modern development practitioners, because you can’t change your history. But we have to face the world as it is, not as we would like it to be: deal with it. Perhaps when you acknowledge the importance of your own history, you are then more likely to transcend it.

I wholeheartedly agree that Africans are ultimately the source of any of their own fortunes or misfortunes. However I cannot accept that all present-day conditions boil down to poor technology according to Easterly’s “crude” historical research.

And finally, were any of you development practitioners not a bit insulted by this one:

A large role for history is still likely to sit uncomfortably with modern development practitioners, because you can’t change your history. But we have to face the world as it is, not as we would like it to be: deal with it. Perhaps when you acknowledge the importance of your own history, you are then more likely to transcend it.

Hahaha… post-colonial jack-ass… Expecting ”us” to ”deal with” a history according to him and his “crude” research methodologies ?

Imagine the situation reversed. 3 African writers (non-historians, not archeologists or anthropologists) a Malawian, a Somali and a Congolese dude get a grant, do some makeshift (crude by their own admission) research on technology of the Entire European Continent around 1000BC . Notwithstanding the fact that they are completely unqualified, these three men then proceed to boldly accuse the public of being unwilling or incapable of accepting the truth according to their own inexpert interpretations.

oh bugger off…

Zionism is just so adorable, isn't it.

“I thought about it, about our ‘hasbara’, and nothing is working because our story is complicated and the world is used to a sound bite,” she explained.

“I have reached the conclusion that we must use these tactics in courts worldwide, just like the Nazis – with all distinctions – used the courts to spread their message.”

Wise words from Retired Israeli Judge Hadassa Ben-Itto made during a conference to discuss improvement to Israel’s PR.

As you may or may not know, Israel is currently losing in the combat of image making. After all, shooting a 19-year old American Turkish civilian in the back of the head on a boat that is heading to Gaza to break an illegal blockade that is strangling and slowly killing the population…well, that doesn’t make for great branding. Not to mention themassive expansion of colonies in the West Bank (nearly 42% at the moment is under Israeli control) and having nearly 200 nuclear weapons (CIA count, 20 years ago), building an illegal wall through homes, farmers, and cities, and expelling Palestinians from their homes does not make for an affectionate and welcoming illustration.

So, in their utter brilliance, their “hasbara” involves the continuous dropping of the anti-Semitism card, even towards other Zionists, constant vilification of “the other” and the emphasis of ones own “victim hood” (while, of course, clearly and openly occupying and dominating “the other”), and de-legitimizing international law, even in the face of experienced international lawyers and organizations that say otherwise.

Watching them completely miss the point is now borderline cringe-worthy and pitiful. These people just don’t get it. Therefore I have taken it upon myself to give them some advice if they want to lose the PR war in a more dignified manner. I just can’t stand idly by anymore…it’s utterly heart wrenching:

1)  Stop and think before looking towards the Nazis as inspiration for anything.  That should be obvious…

2) Being liberal with the anti-Semitism card actually degrades and insults the whole memory of the experience of European Jews, who have historically faced oppression. It also weakens the card for when real anti-Jewish actions does occur. People are not angry at Israel because it is a “Jewish State”. People are angry because this state is occupying, degrading, and continuously oppressing a large group of people according to internationally-signed laws and treaties. Jus’ sayin’.

3) Mocking the dead and calling everyone a “terrorist” just doesn’t work in the information age.

4) Saying you want “peace”, while reports are coming out of how your actions go directly against “peace” (i.e. increase colonial building and funding; joking about starving the people of Gaza; building and enforcing a wall within the West Bank; and stating that the Palestinian state will be half-state; and etc.) just does not offer any confidence in what you say. It makes you out to be a pathological liar. Similarly, denying there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza when everyone else admits there is a humanitarian crisis does not work. Seriously.

5) Claiming to be a victim. When you are the colonial entity with a technologically sophisticated military machine  armed with 200 nuclear weapons and a history of bombing and attacking more than 5 nations in the span of 60 years, while being supported financially and militarily by super powers kinda misunderstands the definition of “victim”.

6) Trying to manipulate or censoring recorded history never works. Save your energy.

7) Saying you are a democratic state does not automatically mean you are a democratic state; chiefly, when there are major issues of discrimination towards non-Jews and non-European Jews. Also, being a democratic state does not mean that automatically you have transformed into a pacifist and peaceful state (refer to colonialism and other acts of violence on “the other” by democratic states).

P.S. Good Luck, can’t wait for the next fuck up.

In an article on Slate, a former aid worker asks “Should Westerners help needy Africans?”, but instead of answering this (quite condescending) question (for the record, ewz says ‘yes you should’), she goes on to tell a very long story that concludes with her deciding that all Congolese people shouldn’t be trusted.

Wait what?

Here’s what happens in a nutshell: she is working in the Congo, meets a boy who asks for money to go to school and then, out of nowhere, begins judging the 14 year old boy for having a ‘defeatist’ and ‘victimised’ attitude which is the reason he always fails in life, tries to mentor him, sometimes fails but overall succeeds, and in the meantime pays for his tuition, and watches him do better and better in school and even start up his own business. In the end, when she gives him the final payment before leaving the Congo, we are led to believe by her conclusions (because he smiled and said he lost the money) that he used the money for personal gain. Therefore, erm, all Congolese people can’t be trusted.

Ultimately, the author of this article manages to be both incredibly condescending and incredibly naive, which is quite a feat, considering aid workers tend to only manage to be one of those at a time. There is certainly an element of truth in her claims that all Congolese can’t be trusted: when people grow up in fucked up environments like the Congo, where conflict is systematic, long-term and has effectively destroyed people’s normal livelihoods, people are going to develop pretty fucked up worldviews and survival strategies. And not surprisingly, these strategies and worldviews will differ from the sheltered, privileged worldviews of societies and people who aren’t suffering in places of conflict.

Where this author has got it completely wrong is that she stands ‘above’ this worldview which she calls defeatist and lazy, and expects people to emerge from this worldview simply out of nowhere. It is quite naive to assume that this boy, who for all intensive purposes has never experienced life outside of a conflict zone, is capable of having a ‘healthy’ worldview that isn’t defeated or victimised. This guy was born a refugee for God’s sake, he is a fucking victim! What did you expect him to do, go through and put the money towards an education when he knows chances are this education will be of absolutely no use to his survival?

Her judgements on the boy, and the wider Congolese society, are also incredibly condescending and naive it’s borderline ridiculous, but unfortunately, not that uncommon in the Western-dominated humanitarian aid world. Yes, Congolese society is kind of fucked up, but if you grew up in the Congo leading the same shitty life this boy has led, you’d have a pretty ‘defeatist’, ‘lazy’ and ‘victimised’ view of the world yourself.

We can’t keep absolving aid recipients of their agency, or expecting them to lay down and live their lives according to how Westerners (or, for that matter, ‘privileged’ people who tend to control aid resources) would live. There’s a schism that needs to be addressed and the Slate article manages to completely fuck it up.

Do you want to know how to solve the humanitarian’s dilemma, here’s my lesson: stop being so f***ing naive.

As with everyone else, the people who dress your feet are out to make a buck off the world cup through associating their products with the wonderfulness which is this festival of football.

Nike, with an amazing line up of football stars, someone with some imagination and a gigantic pot of money have come up with this. It gets points for being epic. They also have some clever add-on adverts, as you can see after the jump.

Adidas has decided to go for some actual imagination and a star line up including not only footballers, but some completely non football stars like Oasis’s Gallagher brothers, Daft Punk and Snoop (and some random people I don’t know). However if you’ve never seen the original Star Wars I’m not sure how much sense it will make. Actually even if you have I’m still not sure if it makes sense. But its absurdity only makes it better, which is what it gets its points for in my view. That and Snoop with a light sabre.

Puma (which is itself the product of an Adidas family feud) has gone for something a little more Pan-African and a little more classy (like their awesome Africa unity football shirt). I like how its been shot, and it gets points for not being brash like Nike.

What’s your take on the winner?

"I mean look at this guy, sincerely Bishop!"

Last week the YouTube clip ‘Eat Da Poo Poo‘, showing a Ugandan preacher’s, erm, colorful explanations of gay sex, went viral, leading to a number of parodies and remixes. The recent upsurge of homophobia in sub-Saharan Africa has its own interesting historical aspects and parallels with contemporary European society, but what is interesting about this video is that it puts a face to this homophobia: Pastor Martin Ssempa.

With his own official website, and other YouTube clips to his name, Pastor Martin Ssempa’s online presence raises some interesting questions about his funding sources, his audience, and his PR tactics. He certainly has some very bizarre views, but there’s one question that isn’t very obvious at first glance: just who is Pastor Martin Ssempa marketing himself to?

The impression one gets from his website is that his ministry is either seeking, and probably getting, support from outside the region. The content of the website is presented like that of a local NGO– talking about responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis and the ‘good’ work of the organisation. He’s not so much communicating to his Ugandan constituency as he is promoting his work to outside donors, possibly for fundraising purposes.

Politicians  and social advocates in East Africa rarely communicate to the public through online platforms, particularly ones that look like this website. First off his constituents are generally not regular internet users; only about 4.5% of the population of Uganda regularly use the internet- So off the bat a website like this would be a weak advocacy tool.

But it’s also the aesthetic and language on the website that reads like it’s being directed to a foreign audience. The photos of Ssema, as well as the style of writing, is generally inconsistent with his public image on the ground, as the now infamous YouTube video has shown. And then, the icing on the cake, there’s contact information for the U.S. Hmmm…

It’s no surprise that gay porn obsessed US faith-based organisations have promoted anti-gay attitudes in sub-Saharan Africa, you don’t need ewz to tell you that. So a quick Google or two on Pastor Ssempa and this is what we’ve found:

….Pastor Martin Ssempa, leader of the Makerere University Community Church and spokesman for the Interfaith Family Culture Coalition Against Homosexuality in Uganda.

Ssempa has called homosexuality, “a criminal act against the laws of nature,” and has said that, “there should be no rights granted to homosexuals in this country.”

According to the U.S. Embassy in Uganda’s website, Makerere University Community Church received a grant under a program designed to provide funds for AIDS prevention, treatment and care programs in Africa. Ssempa and his coalition, which includes Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, and Evangelicals, have threatened the safety of Ugandan LGBT rights activists by posting their names, photos and addresses on a website.

With support from conservative organizations such as Family Watch International in the United States, Ssempa has launched attacks not only on homosexuals but on Uganda’s women’s rights and HIV activists as well, the IGLHRC said.

Source: 365Gay.com

Martin Ssempa — pastor of Makerere Community Church, has received funding from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief – on Aug. 21 organized a rally to protest the press conference, during which he called for continued action against MSM and WSW (HRW statement, 8/23).

His website lists Wait Training (US Faith based org) as the organisation to book speaking engagements for Ssempa and receives donations on behalf of Ssempa’s ministry. Ssempa’s US contact is Wait Training. Apparently he is also supported by Canyon Ridge Christian Church in Las Vegas.

It’s interesting that this fraternity of homophobic bigotry has chosen Ssempa as a kind of prodigal clown of the anti-homosexuality movement. It’s also very sad.

Have a good week. Don’t eat da poo poo.

Context?! WTF do you mean you want some context?!

Israel’s recent attack on a humanitarian ship, carrying food and medical supplies to Gaza, has sparked international outrage, and the usual gross distortions, half truths, and outright lies from Israel’s apologists. However, while the international media (with a few honorable exceptions) has an easy time convincing viewers and readers that most, if not all, of the Palestinian and Lebanese people killed by Israel are crazed, sadistic, bloodthirsty terrorists beyond redemption, it is not that easy to portray a humanitarian convoy, made up of peace activists, as a group of lunatics and killers. Other authors, more eloquent and furious than I, will discuss in greater detail what happened, revealing the absurdity of Israel’s claims (such as the claims that the activists attacked the commandos with knives and guns, the commandos were only acting in self defense, and the most egregious of all, that these peace activists had intentions to harm Israeli civilians, or had weapons on their boat, destined for some nasty terrorist group).

I’ll leave it to others to dissect what happened that morning, to expose Israel’s nonsense, to reveal the truth. I’ll also leave it to others to expose the hypocrisy of various governments regarding this incident (if China, North Korea, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Bolivia, or Venezuela killed innocent people trying to deliver food and medicine to an area that desperately needed it, one need not ponder for long to figure out how the global community would have reacted). Instead, what I wish to do is to bring context, and history, to this debate. Simply put, even those harshly critical of the slaughter will consider it a once-in-a-lifetime event, an aberration, an exception to the rule. However, placing this incident in context, in history, reveals that this is far from an aberration; Israel has committed similar crimes repeatedly throughout the decades. I would like to emphasize that this action is far from the exception, far from an aberration. For example, the following was written in 1989:

Outrage over hijacking does not extend to Israeli hijackings, that have been carried out in international waters for many years, including civilian ferries travelling from Cyprus to Lebanon, with large numbers of people kidnapped, over 100 kept in Israeli prisons without trial, and many killed.

Noam Chomsky, 1989, “Necessary Illusions,” Pluto Press, page 118

Plenty of state and non-state actors have used hostage taking to further their demands, throughout the ages; Israel is obviously not alone in this. However, Israel does commit hostage taking with remarkable frequency, and with the even more remarkable feat of getting the global media to look the other way when it does so. What proof do I have for this claim, that Israel does it rather often, you ask? Well, let me just say, Israel is a country of laws; it cannot go on doing things which are clearly illegal. So Israel simply decided to legalize hostage taking (for a brief time, to be sure).

In 1997, when Israel was still occupying South Lebanon, 21 Lebanese individuals were in Israeli jails, some for up to a decade, deprived of due process and tortured by the South Lebanese Army (Israel’s puppet thugs in Lebanon), with an Israeli officer supervising the torture.

These men were, by the accounts of Human Rights Watch, hostages, to be returned once Israel saw the release of its own Missing in Action soldiers, still in Lebanon. In November 1997, the Supreme Court approved of the use of these 21 individuals as ‘bargaining chips.’ In the words of the President of the Court at the time:

A detention is legal if it is designed to promote state security, even if the danger to state security does not emanate from the detainees themselves.

Norman Finkelstein, 2005, “Beyond Chutzpah,” University of California Press, pages 214-216

Note: in 2000, the decision was reversed, although purely on pragmatic grounds.

Let me pose a mental exercise for our dear readers: a country, or a group in a country, takes another country’s soldiers, denies them due process, treats them cruelly, and will only release these soldiers in a swap for prisoners in the other country. Does this sound familiar? If it does, who does it remind you of? Afghanistan? Iraq? Sure, maybe, but also: Israel.

The first airplane hijacking in the Middle East… was carried out by Israel, in December 1954, when a Syrian Airways civilian jet was intercepted by Israeli fighters and forced to land at Lydda airport.

Noam Chomsky, 2002, “Pirates and Emperors, Old and New, International Terrorism in the Real World,” South End Press, pages 66-67

Mr. Chomsky (as always) provides irrefutable proof, straight from the diaries of Moshe Sharett (the Israeli Prime Minister at the time): “We had no justification whatsoever to seize the plane,” and also the fact that the US State Department kindly informed him that, “Our action was without precedent in the history of international practice.” Source, Ibid.

Perhaps you will excuse me if I have forgotten this point up till now, but let us not forget one of the most ghastly examples of Israeli hostage taking there is. In 2006, the people of Palestine voted for a group the Americans and Israelis did not like, Hamas. When this group took power in Gaza, after a bloody fight with its rivals, Fatah, the international community simply cut off Gaza’s ties to the outside world, allowing less than a trickle of food and supplies in, and preventing its people from leaving the Strip (effectively turning it into the largest prison on Earth).

True, Hamas had killed 1,000 innocent people in horrific suicide bombings, blowing up discos, pizza parlors, buses, and other civilian targets. Let us be clear, Hamas may have claimed these bombings as acts of resistance, but in the harsh lights of reality, they are nothing more than acts of murder. However, when Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister of Israel, a man who was by all accounts a war criminal who was responsible for the deaths of almost 20 times as many innocent people, did the USA put sanctions on Israel?

After Israel (partially) retreated from Lebanon in 1982/83 (still occupying South Lebanon until 2000), Israel decided to take a parting gift: 1,200 Lebanese people (mostly Shi’a Muslims), to be held in Israeli jails until Israel saw fit to release them, based on South Lebanon’s ‘good behavior’ (that is, obedience). As one reporter put it:

They were not criminals; they were scooped up as insurance against attack, when the Israelis were finally quitting Lebanon.

Noam Chomsky, 2002, “Pirates and Emperors, Old and New, International Terrorism in the Real World,” South End Press, pages 70-73

The same reporter referred to them as, “Hostages in Israeli jails.” By 1985, 766 remained in Israeli jails; 400 for ‘terrorism’ and the remainder for political activities. Another fun fact: when Israel refused to release these remaining hostages on (what else?) security grounds, some family members took an American airliner (TWA flight 847) hostage. The taking of the American airliner hostage is (rightly) remembered, the taking of the Lebanese civilians hostage, by Israel, was forgotten soon after it was reported. The reaction of the American press was (naturally) to deny the Lebanese had any real grievances, that the hostages would have been released by Israel, with just a little more time. Source, Ibid.

In conclusion, while it is absolutely essential to examine the brutal attack on the Freedom Flotilla, to expose Israel’s half-truths, lies and apologetic, one must not forget that this incident is far from the exception. Israel has a long history of piracy and hostage taking, and this attack on the Freedom Flotilla is just the latest chapter in this brutal history. We must place this attack in context, in order to better understand the nature of these crimes. Only by obtaining an accurate picture of Israeli military policy, can we organize to bring about meaningful change.

"But a man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated."

The term flotilla was originally a Spanish word for a formation of small warships that may be part of a larger fleet.

Recently this relatively obscure maritime term is suddenly everywhere (a trending topic on twitter no less!) thanks to the now infamous incident in which Israeli commandos boarded six ships carrying 700 private individuals and a cargo of much needed basic humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza (now in year 3 of an ongoing blockade). Nasty stuff ensued resulting in between 10-20 dead, and more than 60 hurt. The rest of the passengers were herded into interrogation rooms and holding cells in Israel.

And so it begins. ‘Oh, the inhumanity! The horror!’  Lo and behold, the dance of the outraged… only these days the dance is getting increasingly larger and more intense with each Israeli atrocity.

You see, what is most striking for me, in my lewd lair of leisure and convenience, is the question so many people are suddenly asking themselves: “How could Israel be so stupid??”

Striking, because when you read history, Israel has not been acting any differently since its inception. I mean seriously, they’ve done some mean ass shit. Assassinations of Palestinians in and outside the region, dropping napalm on refugees, shooting down a Libyan commercial airliner, bombing and occupying nations, aiding dictatorships in Latin America and West Asia, sharing nukes with Apartheid South Africa, and outright piracy against ferries shifting between Cyprus and Lebanon, to name a few glorious moments in the Zionist State’s history.  Israel’s massive destruction on Gaza in 2008 was not worse than Israel’s carnage in Beirut 1982. The Freedom Flotilla massacre was not worse than the (two) Qana massacres, if we are looking strictly at the numbers dead and hurt.

So what is it that’s changing in the public perception of Israeli action that led one New York Jew to tweet “Israel is like a close family member hooked on heroin and you just don’t know what to do with them anymore”?

For many years Israel has appeared to have a near international monopoly on the narrative of the Zionist-Palestinian struggle.  But it was, and still is, perceived as a European colonial project born out of a European guilt on a European crime. Not a case to build a legitimate state for many.

The myths break down of course, under closer observation, but that takes up too much brain power so we don’t usual do that sort of thing; as wise men ask, which is the most universal human characteristic: fear, or laziness?  The answer, at least to me, is clearly the latter.

In this case the Israeli spin has already begun. Their brave commandos were trying to prevent themselves from being lynched by jihadists, apparently. For the Israelis, everything else, from the fate of 1.5 million people on 360 squared kilometres of densely populated land to the destiny of international law, is placed aside in that tale.
However, technological change has made information available to even the least inquiring of minds and it is changing people’s viewpoint. Now they face a public that has grown weary and suspicious of the easy use of the word “terrorist,” which can see and hear for themselves multiple views of what happened.

The “Public” are watching the video clips, hearing the alternative news sources, and immediate up-to-the-second reaction. Some even debate online and share competing wide-ranging sources and images, scouring and scrutinizing in their own journey for the “truth”. Viewpoints, photos, podcasts, blogs, Youtube, and all the endless list of softwares and sporkets were produced and consumed.

A monopoly on narrative becomes tricky in that prickly jungle. Someone’s always bound to watch you do something dirty.

So…What’s next?

Well, 1.5 million Palestinians are still blockaded (Egypt sneakily opened the Rafah crossing, so they can tip toe away from being held accountable to the siege too; a small respite to the misery of the people in Gaza). Obama is twiddling his thumbs, a bit worried about the fate of his push for sanctions against Iran. The Arab League is still a lousy organization. The UN whined. The Rachel Corrie, a second aid vessel, aiming to land in Gaza next Monday is on its way. This time, the Turks say they are going to guard these ships with their navy (as much as the Turkish political sphere is becoming anti-Israel, Turkish-Israeli military relations is still business as usual).

And the Sea of Time keeps on flowing.

Unless you’ve been living in a big (totally non-gay) hole, you will probably have heard recently about the fact that Malawi hates gay marriage more than (G W Bush + Rick Warren) x Sarah Palin, which for those who couldn’t be bothered to do the math is quite a lot.  28 combined years in prison worth of hate in fact (I think that’s like 20% more in gay years).

As we all know Europe did not spend all that time colonizing Africa only for Africans to use laws we wrote for them outlawing homosexuality to lock up gay people. Naturally then Malawi was forced incentivised to do (the new) right thing by threats to withhold substantial amounts from their aid-dependant budget, and just as soon as you could say “presidential pardon” they were free men again.  It’s our own fault anyway for pushing that story of the magic jew and his special rules onto them I guess.  Who knew it would stick?

We’ve moved on of course…now we mainly hate Muslims. We all do, but naturally it’s the French  that do it with the greatest flair.  It stands to reason of course. When they’re not getting their surrender on French do have a certain style.  And so it is that they are at the vanguard of the clash of civilizations, standing on the brink of ‘liberating’ muslim women within their borders from the niqab. Not content with waiting for the legislation to pass into law, recently a French lawyer and her daughter attacked a woman in shop for wearing the veil.  Why am I suddenly shifting focus to this of all subjects? Because Malawian homophobia and French Islamaphobia need to be seen as two sides of the same coin.

In both cases we have case of a national identity crisis in the 21^st Century.  A cultural force, in the Malawian case ‘homosexuality’, in the French Islam, being constructed as something alien, something outside, in opposition to which a sense of what it is to be Malawian and French is defined.  But yet in both cases the Other, is decidedly non-Other.  The veiled woman shopping in Paris was a French-born Muslim convert; homosexuality penetrated Malawian culture long before Steven Monjeza probably ever penetrated Tiwonge Chimbalanga (or the other way around, I’m just guessing).   The difference of course is that to the European eye, one is more easily understood as form of liberation, the other as oppression.

The civilising impulse of the European is alive and well, just dressed (pun intended) now in different garb.

Queen Rania in the Media: Culture is Not a Zero-Sum Game

Reading the articles in this blog, I came across an excellent article titled “How to Write About the Middle East“. It was a half tongue-in-cheek, half factual article on how the West portrays and perceives the Middle East. And, quite frankly, the outlook is rather bleak: a collection of Big Brother states where children’s TV revolves around advanced chemistry with fertilizers, engineering geared towards bomb-making and the latest fashion in suicide belts. Oh, and let’s not forget that it’s all shrouded in mystery…and camels.

Having grown up in the Middle East and having lived and worked abroad, I can testify to how distorted the views of the West are towards the Arab world. The saddest thing about this is that we in the Arab world have allowed the West to dominate the debate and have even internalized them to some extent, then we grumble when they don’t present the nuances and differences and variety one can find in the Middle East, under the broad banners of either “they don’t understand us” or “they’re ignorant”.

And so I thought to myself, thank God that there are people like Queen Rania and Sheikha Mozah who can connect in a meaningful way with Western audiences and show them that the Arab and Muslims worlds are vast and varied. That actual people live there: people with dreams and aspirations for themselves and their children, aspirations such as providing a better education than the one they received, which is one of the Queen’s main messages. People who want prosperity, stability, peace, health, happiness. You know, ‘normal’ people.

What Queen Rania has portrayed should not be underestimated. She has portrayed the growing number of Arab women who are better educated, more ambitious, more independent and striving to gain greater acceptance in all fields of life, while still retaining the essence of Arab culture. Queen Rania does represent a section of society that is already advanced in terms of education and, but she also speaks on behalf of those she sees struggling to advance themselves and want a better future for their families.

The idea that she represents an elite Arabs’ worldview, and as such is disqualified from trying to present a more positive view of the Arab world, is false and self-defeating. For example, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was a leading activist for women’s suffrage in the USA also came from a wealthy and influential background. Should that have disqualified her from pursuing her cause?

There seems to be this stigma in the Arab world where progress is associated with Western values and is as such foreign, alien and harmful to the national character. This stigma has been largely responsible for the lack of progress that Arab world has seen. The Queen shows that there is a way to progress without losing one’s culture or traditions; one can have the best of both worlds – it is not, and it should never be, a zero-sum (cultural) game!

The reason Queen Rania speaks mainly to western media, and directed to the western world, is because she’s doing much needed outreach to the west to help them understand that the Arab world is not some monolithic Islamic bloc that has Jihad on its mind, night and day.

Would we rather have a burqa-wearing spokeswoman on the virtues and freedoms Islam grants women? Or perhaps her husband, since she shouldn’t speak publicly in front of men? The Queen of Jordan represents a way forward for women in the Arab world: modern, educated, intelligent, yet faithful to her beliefs and culture. Sure clothes can signify a person’s cultural leaning, but on the other hand, does wearing pyjamas at night mean you are culturally Persian?

Reaching out to the youth of the Arab world, who are mostly connected to the Internet through such sites as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter is quite ingenious, as the Queen has directly appealed to Arab youth. Her online presence has allowed people to comment on her work, where she can receive direct feedback from the people without it being filtered through official channels (like state-controlled newspapers for example, or pundits with an agenda). She can really test the pulse of the youth and show that she is forward thinking and not some patronizing monarch out to score brownie points. In a world that is fast becoming known as the Knowledge Economy, it would be foolish of her not try and connect through such social networking sites, and purely rely on such traditional media as radio, newspapers and television.

Finally, we should not beat down every Arab representative that tries to show a positive side to the Arab world. Yes, there is much that is wrong with the Arab world, but whining about it and fuming against others who try to improve it are not going to solve the problems we face. Unlike what the Western world often portrays, there is no magic lamp in the Middle East that, with a rub, will fix all the problems in this beleaguered region: instead we should be encouraging those who work for change, whether they are commoners or royalty.

And hell, does it hurt to have some good publicity?

What do people in the ‘post-colonial third world’ think of their leaders? In an age of increasing inequality between rich and poor, colonial and post-colonial, the dimensions of what it means to be ‘modern’ versus ‘authentic’ is not an easy line to draw, and many leaders are having trouble finding a way to represent and identify their societies and people.

Queen Rania is an interesting character to explore. There has already been criticism about her image and portrayal of what it means to be Arab on other blogs. We asked two Jordanians to talk about their perceptions of Queen Rania’s media image, and we got two very different responses. Below is the first response from a Jordanian who is not too happy with the way Queen Rania has chosen to present herself. In another post, found here, another Jordanian argues that Queen Rania in fact is making a positive contribution to ‘cross-cultural dialogue’.  Decide for yourself who you think is right.

Queen Rania as the Post-Colonial Arab: When Public Persona Backfires

Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan has been touring the United States doing book readings and media interviews to promote her children’s book “The Sandwich Swap”.  The book, supposedly inspired by Her Majesty’s own experience, tells the story of best friends Lily and Salma, dispute over their culturally specific sandwiches.

As part of her promotional tour Her Majesty appeared on the Oprah show to talk about her book, and how it represents a metaphor for the acceptance of cultural differences. There, she spoke about how she saw herself as a ‘normal’ woman and mother rather than a Queen, assuring Oprah and her viewers that she makes her kids’ sandwiches in the morning, gets them ready for school, and even carpools. She also spoke about her heavy online presence: how she uses Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and blogs to communicate with the world.

Now here’s the thing: I’m an Arab, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, just like the Queen herself. Yet, instead of being proud of what she has accomplished, I found myself getting really upset. I felt the Queen was on the show to encourage cultural acceptance and understanding, yet she ended up representing and encouraging the exact opposite.

It is no coincidence that the Queen almost exclusively appears only on Western media (she rarely speaks with Arabic media and never about daily personal issues), where she stresses on how ‘normal’ her life is. The Queen does this in an attempt to communicate the message to Oprah’s audience, which is predominantly made up of western women, that she is in fact like them; which theoretically snowballs to ‘if this Arab woman is like me then other Arabs must be like me too’, and by extension ‘Arabs and Westerners are similar is some way’, which mean the cultural divide is bridged thanks to Queen Rania of Jordan.

This extends to her online presence, which in her words help make her ‘accessible to the public’. The thing is, which ‘public’ is she speaking about? Let’s face it, Tweeting and YouTubing in English are not the best way to communicate with your average Arab. Nor do these activities represent a normality for the Arabs the Queen says she represents. What they do represent is a Western understanding of what it means to be ‘modern’ and ‘integrated’.

Through her claims, her online presence, even her chosen fashion aesthetic, it becomes clear that the Queen ensures that she is relatable to western audiences because her image is actually constructed around their notion of ‘modern’, their notion of ‘acceptable’, of ‘normal’. The Queen’s performance of modern women, which makes her ‘normal’ in western eyes, is very different from the ‘norm’ for your average Arab woman.

The Queen actually articulates this idea by sharing with Oprah that she strongly believes in the importance of cross-cultural dialogue because she sees herself as “a bridge between both cultures, a combination of both!”

The fact is, Queen Rania is in no way a combination of both cultures since she is in fact very culturally Arab, upper-class post-colonial Arab, in such a way that this specific Arab culture is built on mimicking western mannerisms and lifestyle, since it views modernity and westernization as signifiers of forwardness and success.

This cultural performance in fact makes the Queen a very ‘normal’ post-colonial Arab. Yet according to the statement above she sees herself as something beyond her own culture, she declares that she possesses an ‘added value’ over your average Arab. By uttering that statement the Queen declares a hierarchy within Arab society, placing westernized Arabs like herself as superior to all others.  The woman who has been preaching acceptance and tolerance of other cultures ends up communicating this prejudice and this hierarchy to the western audience, essentially making it acceptable for them to also judge Arabs with the same prejudice the Queen herself has made.

Through this interview the audience of the Oprah Winfrey show is presented with the ‘right’ kind of Arab, a ‘modern’ Arab that they relate to, making them believe that by identifying with this person’s performance of western culture they are actually becoming culturally accepting! Queen Rania fails to communicate how accepting cultural difference, not sameness, is the basis of real cultural dialogue.

It would be a lot more productive if the Queen points her energies to engaging with her own people, addressed there concerns and issues, viewing herself as their representative and passing along their actual concerns while embracing and celebrating cultural differences, instead of attempting to cover them up. It is then that she really can become a spokesperson for cultural dialogue.

For part II of this post, go here.

I find the whole drone thing, as used today in Pakistan, sort of bizarre. And it just happened without anyone noticing.

Are the strikes legal? Does it mean the US is at war in Pakistan? Are they useful? How accurate are they? Who dies and who reports on the deaths? What does it mean – for a society – to wage war through machine, without the possibility of fatalities? What does it mean for an individual to kill, outside of the context of war, where he is with comrades and his life is in danger – in real war, to kill is often to save oneself and one’s fellow soldiers.

How do people perceive drone strikes on the ground? When I think of this I think of a huddled group of young men up in the barren mountains, far from the metropole of New York who live in a village on the far periphery of globalisation, and talk into the night about these things that continuously circle in the sky, bombing anything. To them it must seem bizarre. Which it is, because the logic behind each strike is only in the eye and the mind of an operative sitting in Nevada, USA – and he goes home at 17.30, probably to laugh at a Simpson’s episode or to recoil in shock from graphic scenes of violence in an episode of The Wire.

Is it all not a sort of a crazy dystopian and post modern madness? Is it not god like, to have omnipresent control of the air and the power to destroy anything that you see?

And most importantly perhaps, how do you fight against this? How does one respond? Are they angry? Defiant? Hopeless? How do those young men rally themselves, as they talk into the night, pausing in silence only to listen to the droning sound that saturates through the air?

This photo was taken in a shopping mall in China. Its depicts Mickey Mouse, the symbol of American capitalist consumerism, being crucified as Jesus Christ. Given China’s slowly emerging  culture of consumerism, the growth of Christianity and the tenacity of the communist party… no.

Actually…

I don’t even know where to start with this.

Hat tip Shanghaiist