09.13.08
Beirut to Beijing and Beyond
Hi everyone,
I’m leaving today to start my big Beirut to Beijing oveland trip. To mark the occasion, I have started another blog on which i will be writing as often as possible, keeping an online diary so to speak of the journey.
If you are interested, please visit:
beirut2beijingandbeyond.wordpress.com
Also, don’t hesitate to circulate to anyone you think may be interested.
Thanks for your support,
lilith
08.21.08
classic
“Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century.”
-President G. W. Bush, in a speech to Russia regarding the current conflict in Georgia.
08.13.08
Mahmoud Darwish: rest in peace
It is for you to be, or not to be,
It is for you to create, or not to create.
All existential questions, behind your shadow, are a farce,
And the universe is your small notebook, and you are its creator.
So write in it the paradise of genesis,
Or do not write it,
You, you are the question.
What do you want?
As you march from a legend, to a legend?
A flag?
What good have flags ever done?
Have they ever protected a city from the shrapnel of a bomb?
What do you want?
A newspaper?
Would the papers ever hatch a bird, or weave a grain?
What do you want?
Police?
Do the police know where the small earth will get impregnated from the coming winds?
What do you want?
Sovereignty over ashes?
While you are the master of our soul; the master of our ever-changing existence?
So leave,
For the place is not yours, nor are the garbage thrones.
You are the freedom of creation,
You are the creator of the roads,
And you are the anti-thesis of this era.
And leave,
Poor, like a prayer,
Barefoot, like a river in the path of rocks,
And delayed, like a clove.You, you are the question.
So leave to yourself,
For you are larger than people’s countries,
Larger than the space of the guillotine.
So leave to yourself,
Resigned to the wisdom of your heart,
Shrugging off the big cities, and the drawn sky,
And building an earth under your hand’s palm — a tent, an idea, or a grain.
So head to Golgotha,
And climb with me,
To return to the homeless soul its beginning.
What do you want?
For you are the master of our soul,
The master of our ever-changing existence.
You are the master of the ember,
The master of the flame.
How large the revolution,
How narrow the journey,
How grand the idea,
How small the state!
08.06.08
gendered homelessness
“While the popular image of a homeless person is still a man with a dog and a can of lager, that perception hides a much more varied and complex reality. In fact, a report, which was published at the weekend, based on an analysis of figures from 248 councils in England and Wales, found that the number of homeless women has soared by nearly 80% in the past five years [...]
“women are still much more of a sexual object on the streets than men. Sure, there are young boys begging and prostituting themselves. They go into the public toilets and it’s never, ever talked about. But sadly, it’s all about drugs.”
“[i was] raped, beaten and burned just because I had nowhere to go and wouldn’t do what someone wanted me to. Homeless women are especially bullied.”
“If you are a woman, one of the worst experiences of being homeless is when your period comes. The lack of hygiene and the humiliation is hard to describe. Simple things are suddenly so complicated. You have to go and find some place to clean up and it’s not always easy. A man does not have these problems.” “
07.29.08
What’s driving the Jerusalem attacks
Excerpts from Uri Avnery’s latest perceptive article, which explains the recent incidents/attacks in Jerusalem by situating them within the systematic mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs in this historic city:“In practice, the Jerusalem municipality is a city government by Jews for Jews. Its leaders are chosen by Jews only, and see their main purpose in Judaizing the city. Years ago, Haolam Hazeh magazine disclosed a secret directive to all government and city institutions to make sure that the number of Arabs in the city did not exceed 27.5%, the exact percentage that existed at the time of the annexation.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the elected democratic mayor of West Jerusalem is also the military governor of East Jerusalem.
Since 1967, all mayors have seen their job in this light. Together with all the arms of government, they see to it that Arabs living outside the city do not return to it, and that Arabs living in the city move out of it. A thousand and one tricks, large and small, are employed to this end, from the almost total refusal of building permits for rapidly growing Arab families, to the cancellation of residency rights for people who spend some time abroad or in the West Bank [...]
A young man from Sur Baher recently shot pupils of a religious seminary in West Jerusalem. A young man from Jabal Mukaber drove a bulldozer and ran over everything that crossed his path. This week, another youngster from Umm Touba repeated exactly the same act. All three of them were shot dead on the spot.
The attackers were ordinary young men, not particularly religious. It seems than none of them was a member of any organization. Apparently, a young man just gets up one fine morning and decides that he has enough. He then carries out an attack all by himself, with any instrument at hand – a pistol bought with his own money, in the first instance, or a bulldozer he drives at work, in the two others.
If this is indeed the case, a question presents itself: why is this being done by Jerusalemites? First, because they have the opportunity. A person who drives a bulldozer at a building site in West Jerusalem can just crash into a passing bus in the next street. The driver of a heavy truck can run over people. It is relatively easy to carry out a shooting attack, like the recent event at the Lion’s Gate, the perpetrators of which were not caught. No intelligence service can prevent this, if the attacker has no partners and is not a member of any organization.
From the utterances of the commentators this week, one can gather that they cannot even imagine the anger that accumulates in the mind of a young Arab in Jerusalem throughout the years of humiliation, harassment, discrimination and helplessness. It is easier and more amusing to go into pornographic descriptions of the 72 virgins waiting for the martyrs in the Muslim paradise – what they do with them, how they do it to them, who has enough energy for them all.
One of the main contributing factors for the stirring up of hatred is the demolition of “illegal” homes of Arab residents, who are quite unable to build “legally”. The dimension of official stupidity is attested to by the demand of the Shin-Bet chief, voiced this week again, to destroy the homes of the attackers’ families, for the sake of “deterrence”. Apparently he has not heard about the dozens of studies and the accumulated experience, which prove that every destroyed home becomes an incubator for new hate-driven avengers.
This week’s attack is especially instructive. It is quite unclear what actually happened: did Ghassan Abu-Tir plan the attack in advance? Or was this a spontaneous decision in a moment of excitement? Was this an attack at all – or did the bulldozer driver run into a bus by accident and try, in a state of panic, to escape – running over his pursuers, becoming a target for a shooting spree by passersby and soldiers? In the atmosphere of suspicion and fear that pervades Jerusalem now, every road accident involving an Arab becomes an attack, and every Arab driver involved in an accident will in all probability be executed on the spot, without a trial. (It should be remembered that the first intifada broke out because of a road accident, in which a Jewish driver ran over some Arabs.)”
07.21.08
US forces kill Iraqi governor’s son
To echo some the reaction of some commentators to this AlJazeera article: why isn’t this being reported in the Western press?“US troops have shot dead the son and nephew of Hamid Hummud al-Shakti, the governor of Iraq’s northern Salaheddin province.
The deaths of Husam, the 17-year-old son, and Uday, the nephew, occurred during a raid on Sunday in the town of Baiji, police said.
Lieutenant-Colonel Saad al-Qaisi, al-Shakti’s brother, said American troops stormed a family house in the town of Beiji, where the governor’s son Husam and his cousin were staying.
He said: “They shot dead Husam and wounded three others. This is barbaric and inhuman.”"
07.01.08
Backlash against feminism
From anti-abortion laws and the proliferation of lapdancing clubs, from the media’s obsession with bodily imprefections, sexualised motherhood and crazed, out-of-control women, Kira Cochrane looks at the many facets of the backlash against women in Britain today. Below are some of the most shocking/revealing excerpts:
Then there are all the signs about attitudes to women and work. Flicking through the newspapers one day, I came across an interview with Theo Paphitis, who appears on the TV show, Dragon’s Den, as well as on the country’s Rich List each year; he is easily one of the UK’s most prominent business people. “All this feminist stuff,” he said, “are we seriously saying that 50% of all jobs should go to women?” Paphitis went on to note that women “get themselves bloody pregnant and … they always argue that they’ll be working until the day before, have the baby, go down to the river, wash it off, give it to the nanny and be back at work the following day, but sure enough, their brains turn to mush, and then after the birth the maternal instincts kick in, they take three months off, get it out of their system and are back to normal”. On the subject of paternity leave he suggested that he thinks “it’s a bit soppy”[...]
Today, with rapes at an unprecedented high (the tally of recorded rapes rose by 247% between 1991 and 2004), the number of Rape Crisis centres has almost halved – there are now only 38. This massive shortfall in services is less surprising when you consider that three of the most important women’s charities in the UK – Refuge, Women’s Aid and Eaves Housing for Women – all of which support female victims of violence, have a combined income considerably lower than that of The Donkey Sanctuary, a charity that supports ageing donkeys [...]
The rise of the sex industry is one indication of how women’s bodies are considered public property; in the wider culture, we’ve seen scrutiny of women reach unprecedented levels. In gossip magazines, women’s bodies are pored over – a pound gained provoking headlines that they’re fat, a pound lost leading to headlines that they’re too thin. Circles are drawn around a spot on their ankle where they’ve failed to apply fake tan, around a bitten nail or a tiny, incipient wrinkle beside their eye – which could just be a stray lash.
The constant message is that women’s bodies are not our own. They belong to everyone but us, and are there to be picked apart. Women can try to curry favour, come up to snuff, spend hours like, say, Madonna, working out, perfecting themselves. But there’s then every chance that they will be derided for the veins on their hands. There’s something essentially depressing about women being derided for their veins.”
06.27.08
Moonage Daydream
This is pretty much my ideal vision of my future: chillin on a bench at a summer music festival with my fuzzy white-bearded hubby, matching his socks with my shoe-laces and just soakin up the vice of youths in Napoleon suits strolling by….
Reading over this year’s Glastonbury line-up has made me nostalgic for the sheer chaotic hedonism that are British summer music fesitvals. Because even when you’re literally stuck and sinking in mud puddles one-metre deep, even when your bladder is bursting and the queues for the toilets seem to strech all the way to Lost Vagueness (an area which has, unfortunately, been removed from this years’ festival), while the bog stench threatens to send your organic lentil burger back to the ground it sprung up from; even when you wake up at the foot of the acoustic stage with a pillow of empty cider cans and a half-full one still miraculously propped up in your hand after untold hours of unconsciousness, and your head feels like a vodka-infused watermelon slow-roasted on an open campfire; FESTIVALS ARE FABULOUS.
And although 21st century festival-going is meanstream and can no longer be conceived of as ‘counter-culture’, such gatherings, despite their scale, griminess and over-indulgence, do still contain elements of that classic bygone age of beatniks and dead-heads and the unbridled passion and nonchalant optimism that they embodied… i feel that they must still offer some sort of that utopic escape from quotidien banality, that they offer some hope for creativity, for a non-homogenized, non-institutionalized community, or why else would those blessed with wrinkles and grey hair brave the unabating tides of intoxicated youths?
Accuse me of romanticisation; I’ll accept that charge a hundred times over before i renounce my desire to partake in such moonage daydreams…
“Keep your electric eye on me baby
Put your ray-gun to my head
Press your space-face close to mine, love
Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah”
-David Bowie
06.26.08
Domestic violence and multiculturalism
‘I can’t tell people what is happening at home”, a new report by the NSPCC, draws long overdue attention to the plight of south Asian children, not just as victims of violence but as witnesses. It highlights the cultural context – isolation, fear of racism, language barriers, uncertain immigration status, cultural and religious pressures to keep the marriage going – which means that Asian women on average take 10 years to leave a violent relationship, thus exposing their children to substantial psychological and physical damage [...]
Tolerance of “cultural practices” by state agencies has been going on since at least the 1980s. Black feminists have campaigned hard against this aspect of multiculturalism, which has given unelected community leaders autonomy in the domestic, cultural and religious affairs of the community [...]
[The NSPCC] calls for the engagement of faith and community leaders in the fight against domestic violence. It is precisely these leaders – who act as gatekeepers to the community and cry racist when the state intervenes – who account for the nervousness of state agencies [...]
In this new political climate, minority girls’ rights are again being sold down the river. The political correctness the NSPCC highlights is about to get worse. Commander Steve Allen of the Metropolitan police, at a recent conference on domestic violence, said the government’s agenda on terror is hampering police work on issues such as forced marriage because the government is keen not to alienate those same leaders in the fight against extremism.”
This piece raises some very interesting points about the discourses of multiculturalism and cultural authenticity and how they function to minimalize state intervention in minority group affairs in the UK. It also reveals how the UK government’s fixation on not alienating certain minority groups as part of its anti-terror campaign is conducted at the expense of turning a blind eye to abuses therein.
I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of cultural relativism, the notion that cultural practices are justified within their own paradigm, and that to judge or denounce them based on some broad liberal framework is a sort of imperial epistemic violence, used to dehumanize our cultural ‘others’ and hence legitimize our own brand of culture, which we define as non-contextual, neutral and universal.
Thanks to critical writings by “third world”, “postcolonial” and “black” feminists, alot of self-proclaimed feminists have given serious consideration to Chandra Talpede Mohanty’s formulation of colonialism (and Western feminism) as “white men/women saving brown women from brown men”; but nevertheless analyses of the pragmatic intersections between gender and ethnicity, especially in the context of migrants, are still far from clear cut. Obviously, as the article above hints, no intellectual formulation can ever be simply applied to a ‘reality’, and interpersonal relationships and individual emotions cannot be forcibly fit into some preconceived theory…
The author of the article, Rahila Gupta, and the group she works with, Southall Black Sisters, should be commended for their work in trying to give a voice to the most disenfranshized of the marginalized: women migrants. It is important for them to raise awareness about how fighting against certain British state policies should not be equated with blindly defending certain cultural practices.
Moreover, it is important to illusrate the tangible ways in which the claim to cultural authenticity is itself a dominant narrative that commits its own epistemic violences. We should ask who is claiming to represent whom and be aware of the vested interests therein (ie leaders of minority communities claiming that interference in family matters is against their principles or a form of oppression etc).
I also firmly belive that this is the sort of debate that contemporary feminists need to be having, because it highlights the core notions of solidarity and otherness that effective struggles for justice for women need to continuously engage in.
06.24.08
Who’s afraid of Robert Mugabe?
“We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X. How can a ballpoint pen fight with a gun?” -Robert Mugabe
“[The Southern African Development Community] talk of political violence as if it were an extreme weather event, but avoid the issue of agency [...]
His blood-soaked government should be treated by Africa as a pariah regime. And then Mr Mugabe will be master of a currency that halves in value every week, a country with no food on its shelves and no medicine in its hospitals. He will be master of nothing.”
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| Zimbabwe denies government forces are involved in any form of violence [AP] |
