Nothing like slavery to make your currency stronger

i'd say this has been a hellish week for me (thus little time to do more than pour out some drafts :-0() but compared to what's going down with the Athenians?? Clearly my own travails seem unworthy of the name. It was wonderful to see my old friend Lisa Fithian on the streets of Athens sporting a Gaza flotilla tee, speaking to folks in Syntagma Square about evil IMF and the conspiracy that's not really a conspiracy, just troika (US-EU-Israel) politics as usual.

Have been following the strikes on ContraInfo, apparently a derivative of IMC-Athens; they were running a live stream and have an excellent photo montage of the demonstrations. As far as more mainstream reporting goes, this report/interview on RT is particularly on the mark - embedded here to increase the chances you'll watch it. Notice how he sections off 'anarchist and provocatuers,' an understated reminder of how the state's demonstration propoganda works. Two statements are particularly worth quoting: 'They [the government] seem to be completely indifferent to this reality [situation's volatility]', and 'We’ve seen this before…. the IMF has come in and plundered the nation for corporate consolidation.' In essence, they are turning the populace into debt slaves for big banks and investors. If Papandreou loses control of the country, what are these invisible euro-moghuls going to do next, send in NATO? Blackwater (Xe)? i'd be willing to bet money that there are Greeks who would rather pack the Parthenon with C4 than see it become the private property of some unnamed Kuwaiti oil baron.... and that would be absolutely tragic, since robber barons come and go but there will only ever be one, irreplaceable Parthenon.

This morning i was thinking about how, when i studied development economics in the late 1970s and early 80s, it was all about GDP and GNP, infrastructure carrying capacity and reducing underemployment, comparing Five Year Plans, e.g. in India, to free market development, and yes, debt ratios as well, but not in the way they are formulated now. Apparently i took too long to blink and missed the reordering of key indicators for successful economic policy. Nowadays, the important things are investor confidence, currency stability, healthy bond markets and [non]restrictions on the privatization of national wealth. What has changed about us that has changed our societal values so drastically, that we now believe multinational bank liquidity is paramount to the majority of people earning a decent wage and having a decent life? Especially since it's clear that we're not really talking about the banks so much as the bankERS - do we need that class of super rich to set the standards for what living a good life means? Are people who mostly produce print-outs better role models than people who produce the actual paper those derivative models are printed on? It's ironic, indeed, that in the same breath the state-media propoganda machine wants us to drool over the luxuries of royalty, they also want to make us believe that austerity is the responsible way to go. Slaves with dreams... i suppose that's where the term spartan comes from?

Viva Grafitti!

One thing i haven't liked much about Baku is the near total absence of graffiti; what little exists are website addresses and an occasional love note, 'Ershad + Sevinc forever' scrawled inside an imbalanced heart. One night some rebellious types managed to ‘decorate’ a couple walls in the upscale shopping district with ‘Fuck Aliyev’ (in English), other not-so-random words like SOCIALISM and FREEDOM – trying to photograph this the next morning as it was being quickly painted over, i got into a verbal tussle with a fur-hatted policeman, ended with me shouting ‘Freedom!?’ at him as i finally put the camera away. (That’s what living in a media dictatorship means: people aren’t supposed to know these things happen, might give them IDEAS.) After much hiking about town, i did eventually find some decent graffiti covering the walls of a crumbling, semi-underground Soviet-era theatre. Dark place, out of public view, guess the thought police decided to let this site slip under their radar.

Yes, i'm well aware governments and many individuals (especially business owners) consider it a form of vandalism and yes, i understand that, but... cities with too many blank walls are simply begging for flash commentary or premeditated (sketched or stenciled) designs - for COLOR at the very least. Compare the typical Baku graffiti site to this very non-gray work in Bangalore:

San Francisco, where i’m from, is among other things renown as a city of exquisite public murals, going back to the 1930s when the US government put artists to work painting them (government sponsoring rank and file artists – what a concept!) The line between mural painting and the finer, e.g. Banksy, graffiti seems to exist only in its sanctity. Outdoor murals like the great works by Diego Rivera are understood to be sanctioned, permanent paintings (themselves often the targets of spray paint freestylers), whereas graffiti is impermanent, artists fully aware that what they lay down may not be visible for very long. How many layers of graffiti once covered the Berlin Wall? How many layers have accumulated on urban underground/metro trains? Ultimately, what makes graffiti graffiti is its illegality. Having participated in many late night SF stencil brigades, i guarantee that the this certainly makes it FUN – though in fact, it’s not illegal everywhere.

Graffiti and murals are also no-admission-ticket-required public domain art. As Banksy said, “I don’t think you should have to pay to look at graffiti. You should only pay if you want to get rid of it.” I’ve put together a small slideshow of some graffiti and mural work i’ve seen over the past few years and sure to be added to when i get to Thessaloniki :-) Nothing extraordinary really, but nice to see what’s out there in difference locales. Also found a good link illustrating the difference styles used by modern graffiti artists. Enjoy! Then go out and make some of your own :-)

For Pedants and Freedom Fighters Alike

Snagging this off Jadaliyya. A lot of people were interested in the other kinetic typography link i posted, this one acutely relevant to what's happening NOW in Syria. After everything i've seen in Palestine, watched from afar in Lebanon, really wondering what Hezbollah is going to do. Come down on the side of the madness shown at the end of this clip... or point their rockets eastward and tell Assad to BACK OFF?



Day later addendum: perspectives on Syrian intifada from the Lebanese left.

Alice Walker: The new face of terrorism

In the history of client states, nothing comes close to the US' bended knee for Israel. The US State Department (Foreign Ministry) is now threatening to prosecute US citizens on behalf of Israel. WOW i am actually speechless. Here's part of the statement from DoS as reported by Reuters:

"We underscore that delivering or attempting or conspiring to deliver material support or other resources to or for the benefit of a designated foreign terrorist organization, such as Hamas, could violate U.S. civil and criminal statutes and could lead to fines and incarceration."

Are we talking American Taliban here? Benedict Arnold? Luis Posada Cariles? No, we're talking about Alice Walker. Here's an extended interview she did with Electronic Intifada and a video clip in which she discusses her motivation for getting so involved in this effort. This is the same Alice Walker whose writing Michelle Obama publicly quotes, who was honored last year by the Congressional Black Causus and (talk about short memory syndrome) was herself selected by the Change We Can Believe In campaign to introduce then-candidate Obama at a large rally in San Francisco. Ah, how far the mighty have fallen and yes, Barak, i'm referring to you.

As a rule, i refrain from actually quoting racist, right wing speech because i just don't want to further empower those who use it. However, have to make an exception here and offer up this bit from an essay in ultra-AIPAC zionist publication Commentary Magazine (06/03/2011).

Whatever negative attention Israel receives, the main thing is to maintain the blockade, as it is what makes it difficult for Hamas to arm itself though the recent opening of the border between Egypt and Gaza may render the whole point moot. Nevertheless, there will always be haters of Israel, who will provide no shortage of useful-idiots like Walker to help further the aims of genocidal terrorist movements. That in itself is no small reason for the existence of the Jewish state: to provide the Jewish people with the necessary means of self-defense in the face of ineradicable hatred.

Drawing upon deep trends in Zionist thinking, there is some truth to this dismissal. Mao famously said that power comes from the end of a gun. The fate of the Zionist project has also long been and largely will be determined by the ability of Israel’s citizens to defend themselves physically.

Not going to waste my energy unravelling such absurd propaganda; i'm sure the contortion of reality comes through without translation. The AIPAC-ites are now calling these ships (which are already en route to Gaza) the Alice Walker Flotilla, so we can expect plenty more invective against her in the coming days. On the bright side, if they have to resort to calling someone as thoughtful as her a 'useful idiot' and quote Chairman Mao to justify their extreme and all-pervasive militarism, either we accept that the Israelis will one day rule over all of us, or celebrate the inevitable historical reality that their days as arrogant aggressors are definitely numbered. The great zionist project long ago surpassed the extent of sacrifice and destruction to which any radical movement should be entitled. It has evolved into the Sick Man of the Middle East - we all know how well that turned out.

It's All There

Old habits die hard. i'm still on the Multikulti Amnesty International-Hungary mailing list and yesterday received this: Two Protests! Against Reagan Statue & for Iranian Democracy! Ah, the irony of it all, n'est-ce pas? Evidently the de-republicanized nationalist government now wants to look out the windows of parliament and see Ronald Reagan, standing tall, gazing out over the Danube over an inscription that reads There's nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse. As Molly Ivins put it: 'This is the man who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency." Such are the iconic values of the current Hungarian government.

On the topic of nationalist cajones, tomorrow is Army Day in Azerbaijan and Baku has been awash in camoflaged-clad men all week, setting up for the big display, apparently to be a classic 'we will protect ourselves against all forms of aggression' parade (in lieu of other parade themes seen throughout the world this month). It will be interesting to see who from the US government is in attendance, since they've just concluded talks on the 'importance of ensuring security of energy infrastructure in the Caspian Sea and ... the readiness to continue joint efforts to prevent the threats to it.' Considering that no progress was made in this week's Russian-sponsored summit to come up with a peace process for Nagorno-Karabakh, i suppose some Azeris may want reassurance that their military is ready and willing to prevent further national tragedy. Some here believe that if Azerbaijan is forced to go to war again with Armenia, Turkey will have to fight alongside them - or maybe for them - but right now, the Turks are busy doing this, and have more pressing, internal issues to worry about.

Personally, i'm with Ronald Reagan when it comes to wasteful government spending, though there's a bit of divergence in what we each would delete from the national budget. In that spirit, the hope that the entire Caspian region may one day evolve into a conflict-free zone, i give you this from the late great John Lennon. 'All we are saying' blahblahblah but you know, if we don't at least think it, we can be relatively certain it will never come to pass. Happy Nuclear Abolition Day!

Confidence in what, exactly?

Papandreou got what he was after, a vote of support strong enough to keep him securely in power for a while longer. Nice headline in Der Spiegel though, and Al-Jazeera reports:

'The mood in financial markets was calm after the confidence vote, especially when compared to the firestorm last week when Papandreou's government was teetering on the brink following violent protests against the new austerity measures.'

Good news - i will stop worrying about my own miniscule bank account succumbing to death by euro collapse. Whew! Thank you Mr. Sarkozy! Congratulations Frau Merkel! Unfortunately, this puts me at odds with a large number of Greeks, who probably share the sentiments of this engineering student: "It is completely unfair that the money of the poor is used to save the banks." Fairness? What's that got to do with banking and investor confidence? These ungrateful people should retire to their libraries and spend their copious free time (afforded them by strikes and unemployment) reciting Socrates to each other. 'Could I climb to the highest place in Athens, I would lift my voice and proclaim, "Fellow citizens, why do you turn and scrape every stone to gather wealth, and take so little care of your children to whom one day you must relinquish it all?"'

Dismantling the Bil'in Wall

Further proof that the Palestinian Authority has become a meaningless insitution in the struggle for freedom. While children are being openly abducted by Shin Bet, the faux 'unity government' suits in Ramallah sink deeper into the abyss of their own self-effacing flattery. The Bil'in Popular Committee is the only group in the West Bank to have achieved substantive success - however imperfect - in getting the Israeli "security barrier" moved back from illegally confiscated territory. The news today is good and reflects the power of sustained civil disobedience as the last resort.

On Tuesday morning this week, army bulldozers began work to dismantle the Wall in Bil'in. As early as 2007, after two years of weekly protests in the village and following a petition filed by the residents, Israeli high court declared the path of the Barrier illegal. The court ruled that the route was not devised according to security standards, but rather for the purpose of settlement expansion. Despite the high court's ruling four more years of struggle had to elapse for the army to begin dismantlement. During these years two people were killed in the course of the weekly protests and many others injured.

Granted, it was ultimately an Israeli court that caused this to happen, but that's actually the point of civil disobedience campaigns: get the courts involved and hope that somehow legality will transect morality. The only time i recall the PA leadership showing up in Bil'in was the Friday following the initial court ruling; a convoy of tinted glass mercedes joined by the requisite PR enablers, there to extend plattitudes to 'the resistance' and then zoom back to Ramallah, DC, Riyadh or wherever to play more charades with their Israel and American handlers. One word, two syllables. Second syllable rhymes with 'nap'.

The Bil'in Committee essentially created the first Palestinian flash mob, gathering every Friday to engage in creative nonviolent direct action. They never sanctioned the used of weaponry against those building the wall or guarding it, which among other things made it possible for them to work in strong coalition with Israeli anarchists against the wall and for a sustained stream of internationals to participate. Other villages have followed their lead, or perhaps it's more accurate to say that Bil'in inspired them to reconnect with those dormant, First Intifada civil resistance roots.

In any event, i think it's fair to conclude these are the folks who are making the untelevized revolution happen and i congratulate them on today's achievement. Must feel great to see Israeli bulldozers used on something other than a generations-old family home. Yet Bil'in has not been totally vindicated: 435 acres of village land still remain on the Israeli side of the barrier, appropriated by a settlement there. No rest for the weary, no need for those ineffectual politicos.

Things i would put my energy into if i didn't have to work for a living

Surfing on a sunny afternoon, came across the Borgen Project and this nice project they are involved in in South Sudan: hippo water rollers. Brilliant, really. i would've loved one of these when i was living in my Wadi Arabia mountaintop cave, but of course i was able to leave that mountain whenever i chose to, and return to a world of hot running water and luxurious tub suds. Any chance these little 'hippos' are made from recycled plastics?

What motivates people to find a way to do this kind of stuff in far-flung places they may never actually visit? A hungarian friend asked once why i cared so much about environmental justice and human rights, but all i could think of was to ask why she didn't care. Reminded me of my 'formative years' growing up in a small New England town, people constantly admonitioning me for being 'too political' and then laughing when our force-to-be-reckoned-with history teacher would stare me down after questioning the rectitude of zionism. Some of us are simply born with this condition? i mean, who knows where the motivation comes from? Sometimes i think if i were a better, smarter person, i would've figured out a way to make lots of money so i could spend the rest of my life doing this kind of work and not worry about affording to get my teeth cleaned. Bargain with the devil and never know where you'll end up. Could've been the proverbial 'there', but at least 'here' i'm still steering clear of mall town.

Groovy video from Borgen for all you hipsters -

World Refugee Conundrums

A day late on this unless you want to be picky about time zones... it's still the night of the 20th where i'm situated, and in the sad saga of Azerbaijan vs. Armenia vs. Nagorno-Karabakh vs. ineffective third party negotiators, it's sort of always world refugee day. i still haven't been able to figure out what UNHCR's involvement in the Nogorno-Karabakh refugee situation is - possibly nil - but i'm not going to get into that now for various reasons.

i was surpised to read in this article from the UN News Center that "Pakistan, Iran, and Syria have the largest refugee populations at 1.9 million, 1.07 million, and 1.005 million respectively." America's and Israel's big terrorist bulldogs are also more willing than any other country to take in the people being displaced by, uh, yeah, American-Israeli aggression. Of course, Syria at this point is also generating an onslaught of refugees into Turkey (10,000 have reportedly crossed the border, another 10,000 are within fleeing distance on the Syrian side) and who can say how many of these people were already refugees who have now been displaced a second time? a third? Babylon redux for any Palestinians and Iraqis among them. At this point, we have to hope Bashir Assad gets a grip on his humanity (i know it's there somewhere in his opthalmologist's bag of tricks) before Turkey pushes back and 20,000+ refugees get caught in the crossfire.

World Refugee Day: an opportunity to look at photographic exhibitions of people forcibly displaced by violence and lament man's inhumanity to man, to read about those displaced by economic meltdowns or natural catastrophes and lament the unbridled power of disaster capitalists to profit from that misery. At this point in our planetary history, we can't keep expecting people to park themselves somewhere else, because there are no more empty spaces available. Sadly, the trend in European countries and many of their former colonies, e.g. Australia, the US, Canada, to (1) prevent more 'aliens' from entering, and (2) push out as many immigrants as possible, would indicate that SHARING is not high on the collective list of moral imperatives these days.


i firmly believe people have an innate right to live and slave away wherever our ambitions, daring and/or needs take us. Likewise, refugees' Right of Return should never be comprised in the interests of political expediency or profit margins. How we're supposed to balance those two often conflicting values is something i certainly don't have the answer for. i'm not even sure where exactly i belong, but hopefully the universe can still cough up the patience to let me figure that out in my waning years (a small house on an Andalucian hillside, not far from the sea sounds just about right). The questions Peter Eszterhazy (in an entirely different context) posed about space really resonated with me, but when we talk about refugees, they suddenly seem to create a serious conundrum. World Refugee Day. World Refuge Day. World Free Space Day. The potential overlap i sense between these concepts still eludes absolute clarity, but i'm sure it's there if we can just find the yellow brick road.

EL futuro es espacio,

espacio color de tierra,
color de nube,
color de agua, de aire,
espacio negro para muchos sueños,
espacio blanco para toda la nieve,
para toda la música.

Atrás quedó el amor desesperado
que no tenía sitio para un beso,
hay lugar para todos en el bosque,
en la calle, en la casa,
hay sitio subterráneo y submarino,
qué placer es hallar por fin,
subiendo
un planeta vacío,
grandes estrellas claras como el vodka
tan transparentes y deshabitadas,
y allí llegar con el primer teléfono
para que hablen más tarde tantos hombres
de sus enfermedades.

Lo importante es apenas divisarse,
gritar desde una dura cordillera
y ver en la otra punta
los pies de una mujer recién llegada.

Adelante, salgamos
del río sofocante
en que con otros peces navegamos
desde el alba a la noche migratoria
y ahora en este espacio descubierto
volemos a la pura soledad.

PABLO NERUDA

The Gaza Flotilla II

Organizers in Istanbul, Dublin and undoubtedly dozens of other places are preparing to launch the next major flotilla intended to break the Israeli siege of Gaza. I had to laugh to myself when after watching this succinct statement by Dr. Fintan Lane of Irish Ship to Gaza, 'up next' on the youtube screen came 'The power of Israeli naval forces'. Always eager to be well-informed about Israeli naval power, imagine my disappointment to get this: an error has occurred for which there is no solution please try again later. A clever anonymous sabotage message or just karmic payback?

Though i don't normally like the bleeding heart 'poor people of Gaza' videos, this one from the Flotilla resonated strongly. i couldn't help but be reminded of the day i left the West Bank in 2007, headed for the airport in Tel Aviv. A trip which should have taken a little over an hour ended up taking over3, but that wasn't unusual and not exactly the issue. We could not find a way out, even my university's normally super cool driver was showing signs of panic. Soldiers at two wall crossings wouldn't let us pass (NB: i was in an Israeli registered taxi); soldiers at checkpoints inside the West Bank wouldn't let us through.... i have to say that for a final send-off (i'd been working there for 2 years), the psychological impact was powerful: Want to live with our enemies? Fine. Stay there. No one gets out of the cage.

Whether this next flotilla will make it in remains to be seen. i certainly wish them safe passage and serenity of spirit once the Israelis nab them, which is sure to happen. Even if they are allowed to sail into Gaza City, the IDF is never going to let those boats sail back out. All those flotilla folks will find themselves stuck in one cage or another - a small detention cell in Haifa or the big cell that is Gaza.

John Sayles interview

Just want to encourage anyone interested in film and its social relevance to check out this interview with John Sayles, who has been my favorite american filmmaker ever since Matewan came out in the early 1980s.... up through Lone Star and Silver City (i looked for Sarah Palin's review of that one but nowhere to be found, though it's gotta be somewhere on her anti-american DVD shelf). Amy Goodman rightfully spent an entire show talking with him about his work, past and present, and he offers many valuable insights into culture and history. Definitely worth the watch!

Pop! goes the weasel

Coming up with a title for what is mostly going to be a series of quotes from other articles on the Greek financial crisis, what i could recall from a children's rhyme came into my head:

A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Not wanting to be totally off the free association wall, i looked into the original meaning and found this: 'Pop was slang for "pawn". Weasel is derived from "weasel and stoat" meaning coat. It was traditional for even poor people to own a suit, which they wore as their "Sunday Best". When times were hard they would pawn their suit, or coat, on a Monday and claim it back before Sunday. Hence the term "Pop goes the Weasel".' Trekking down to the pawn shop to exchange one necessary possession (a coat) for another (let's say, bread) doesn't seem too far afield from what their government is now instructing the Greek people to do: hand our economy over to European bankers and when they've sorted out their own mess, they'll give it back. Is that stretching things too far into simplistic fantasy land? Unfortunately, i think not.

Here come the quoted excerpts. First, Michael Hudson, author of Super Imperialism, writing in April 2011 about Iceland's financial meltdown:

The reality was an enormous banking fraud, an orgy of insider dealing as bank managers lent the money to themselves, leaving an empty shell – and then saying that this was all how “free markets” operate. Running into debt was commended as the way to get rich.

The eruption started in Greece. One legacy of the colonels’ regime [ruling junta 1967-1974] was tax evasion by the rich. This led to budget deficits, and Wall Street banks helped the government conceal its public debt in “free enterprise” junk accounting. German and French creditors then made a fortune jacking up the interest rate that Greece had to pay for its increasing credit risk.

Next, from an article yesterday in the EU Observer that puts the German and French credit picture into sharper focus:

Germany's exposure to Greek debt, at 26.3 billion in government bonds and 10 billion in private loans, including to banks, is a little over half that of that of France, and has argued that private creditors bear more of the burden of resolving the solution.

France, for it part, is owed €19 billion in government bonds and a full €42.1 billion in private loans. Three of its biggest banks this week saw their credit rating placed on review for a downgrade by Moody's as a result of this exposure.

The ECB [European Central Bank], for its part, is exposed to the tune of €40 billion in government bonds and €110 billion to Greek banks.

As i wrote yesterday, there doesn't seem to be a huge difference between what's going on here and what went on in the US when subprime lending excesses collided with totally unregulated derivatives markets. As Henry Paulson, then-US Treasury Secretary, wrote at the time, ''[T]he purpose of the financial rescue legislation was to stabilize our financial system and to strengthen it. It is not a panacea for all our economic difficulties." In other words, save the bankers' asses and hope the little people will find ways to sort out their little individual problems, like holding onto their homes, jobs and life insurance policies. One can't help but ask, 'Who are the real cowards in this equation?'

Writing in Al-Jazeera about public response to the current situation - 'Grassroot Politics Flourish in Greek Turmoil' - Hara Kouki and Antonia Vradis (presumably both Greek) report:

For the people gathered in Syntagma, the intense political manoeuvring in the corridors of parliament seems to matter little. Theirs is a mass mobilisation that draws a distinction between representational and grassroots politics. Political parties seem unlikely to come to a halt over developments in the upper echelons of power. For them, the Memorandum is not just a sum of persons or abhorrent policies, but a system of power that has misruled the country for 30 years, bringing it to the edge of collapse. It is a system of beliefs, values, expectations and political roles and identities that cannot be abolished simply by replacing the head or members of the government.

At the roots of society, people are looking for substantive structural change, not bailouts and rollovers which, by meager threads, keep the current order of business (barely) afloat. Sounds like Buenos Aires. Sounds like modern day Carthage, Tahrir Square, Pearl Square. Sounds like Wisconsin.

Politicians and corporate media pundits never seem to hesitate when it comes to telling working people that they need to tighten those belts, make sacrifices for the greater good, while they and their banking buddies jet around from one 5-star conference center to another. If these bankers are so worried about going broke, what are they hanging out in Davos for? Papandreou's political nemesis and newly appointed Finance Minister, Evangelos Venizelos, is quoted as saying "I am leaving defence today to go to the real war." Might i suggest that his first battle be dragging the PM to a local pawn shop and forcing him to trade in some of his non-essential trinkets, maybe a tailored 'Sunday best' or two (or three, four)? Toss in the Rolex, too... unlike bailouts, revolution is a timeless affair.

Dance Kavkaz

Out taking photos of people enjoying the Nowruz Bayiram, i came across this dashing young man in the Old City sporting a traditional piece of headwear. Azeris do seem to love items from their traditional cultures, even if today they prefer to embrace knock-off's of modern, upscale chic. i've had a couple of souvenir sellers try to get me to buy one of these, but my hunch that they were not made for women turns out to be correct. Always eager to assure me that doesn't matter, they are suddenly less immune to gender expectations if i do something radical like accidentally flash a pack of cigs or add to confirmation of my single status that i'm not at all interested in finding a husband, Azeri or otherwise. Yet i digress.

Last week one of my students showed me a fantastic video he'd taken of dancers at a wedding (on his blackberry! god, my life is so technologically deprived) but since the file was far too big to email, i started checking out what youtube has to offer in the way of Lezgi dance. This ended up being a relatively long indulgence, as i found the array of commentary threads more interesting than the dance clips, themselves. Many of the comments are in Russian, Azeri and who knows what other languages (Armenian? transliterated Georgian?) but here are a couple examples, just to give my readers an idea of where/how dance and national identities mix (or don't) in regional minds..

Actually Lezginka is a national dance of many people from the Caucasus. It's name comes from the Lezgin people; nevertheless, Chechens, Lezghins, Ossetians, Circassians, Karachays, Balkars, Abkhazians, Kabardins, Ingush, Georgians, Ingilos, Azerbaijanis, Iranian Azerbaijan the Russian Kuban and Terek Cossacks and the various ethnicities of Dagestan have their own versions of Lezginka.

Another comment:

I'm sorry to disappoint all those thinking it's Dagestani dance, costumes and music. They were altered (for the worse) with significant Russified elements, which true Dagestani dance, constumes and music do NOT have. Dagestan has a very distinct from Russia culture. This "concert" was obvioulsy targeting some Russian Russians and foreigners liking/familiar with Russian culture. In sum, this circus is misrepresenting of truly Dagestani culture (dance constumes, music). What a circus!

This time, snippets from a discussion thread:

(1) This is not sukashvili, I have most of sukashvili's DVDs. This is from Dagestan. Of course georgians as usual make every good thing that comes out of caucas look as if it was theirs. Sukashvili is an amazing ensemble too but this one for sure isn't sukashvili. Dagistanis do it well Georgians take the credit for.

(2) what? this is not Georgian dance? are you out of your mind? haha this is an outrage man somebody on the youtube must make policy and stop graud like this it is fuckin desgusting..... change the title (its real name is Parikaoba) or I am reporting this video and reporting your profile both

(3) This is not georgian dance. It is chechen lezginka. Shame on you!

At this point, i don't know which dance truly and unadulteratedly represents which culture; even if i wanted to put the time in to sort out the differences in costumes (easiest) and associated music (doable but time-consuming), being able to distinguish dance styles, which many seem to believe have infinite overlap, is quite honestly beyond my terpsichorean capabilities. Originally planning to call this post 'Lesginka', i humbly bow to my own confusion, only able to say for sure that the following clips and links are from the Caucasus region.

This one has a great opening, with the knife dancing and is an 'official' dance company, so i want to trust that the cultural representation is accurate (trust is all i've got here, sorry). Check this out to seem some knife throwing.



Here we've got men in the sheepskin hats, filmed at a wedding, which captures a certain in situ atmosphere.



Lastly, i just love this frenetic video from southern Azerbaijan, which focuses a bit more on the musicians and is called Shalaxo.



In a couple weeks i'll have left this country, so trying my best to introduce my far flung readership to some of the more interesting and unique features of Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, i've hardly been able to get out of Baku (6 day work weeks have that effect) but i follow hints from people i meet as much as possible... this whole dance world sent my into a spin. Hope you enjoy!

Trojan Debt

Watching RT's latest report from Greece, i have to wonder where a bankrupt state is getting the money to pay for such massive police actions - the European Central Bank? Do they offer emergency loans for jack boot efforts to 'maintain public order'? Does the IMF grant an exception to its austerity requirements in the interest of keeping those who agree to economic restructuring in power? i don't know where all those gas canisters and urban warfare helicopters came from, but somebody's footing the bill.

Germany has been insisting that private investors be brought into the loan package for Greece; Germany, of course, wants to do everything possible to save the euro. An article in Der Spiegel explains, 'The worry is that any appearance of forcing private investors to come on board, could lead the ratings agencies to give Greece a default rating -- a move that could lead to an incalculable chain reaction on the financial markets. The ECB is also concerned about losses on its own books, given that the central bank owns Greek government bonds valued in the billions.' As journalist Stylianos Chrysostomidis points out, 'The money from all those loans - they don't go to the real economy.' Americans should be able to understand this easily enough, as they continue to look under their floorboards for the $740 billion in TARP funds handed out to US banks in 2007/8. It's the same old Trojan horse, built to save bankers and other investors, most of whom probably don't even live in Greece, though i suspect many have luxury yachts moored there. Unfortunately, border controls on investment bankers are moot in a world where cash is moved electronically from one hemisphere to another, so there's little the Greek people can do to prevent those folks from entering and then running off with deeds to the Parthenon and Lesbos.

i had to laugh when i read that 'endemic tax evasion' is part of the structural problem in the Greek economy, since chronic corporate tax filings of $0 have been endemic in the US economy for decades. Still, the EU-conscious editors of The Independent warn that, 'Greece is heading for a level of debt – 160 per cent of its total annual output – that it cannot reasonably be expected to repay, and certainly not while its national growth prospects are so weak. Yet instead of working with European private banks to ease Greece's debt burden, the European Central Bank and the IMF are demanding that Athens repays in full, no matter the short-term impact on the Greek economy.' Whether or not Papandreou succeeds in forming a new coalition government, it seems clear to me that the only viable solution for Greece is not to completely restructure its REAL economy, rather to stop letting the derivatives market, et al. run rampant. The eurozone may not be happy with that (obviously not) but in the long run, an EU that prioritizes needs from the ground up - not the boardroom, down - will be better for everyone.

What type of boss is bad for your heart?

The good thing about working with someone who doesn't give a damn about you is that at least it's a surety they'll never bother to read your blog. As i've noted before, stress has a serious effect on my ability to formulate coherent sentences.... hence the short break in posts here. Current source of my problem is a boss who, for reasons not entirely understood, has taken to throwing tantrums at me or alternately, applying the 'you are invisible' mode of employee management. i'll be leaving this job in less than 3 weeks, so at least there's consolation in end date. Thank you Dr. Stork for letting me know that i haven't imagined this whole situation can be tied to a form of heart disease. i do feel sick at heart. Bad bosses suck!

Ready, set, drink!

For reasons that always baffled me, Hungarians have an apparent obsession with getting themselves into the Guinness Book of World Records. While i was living there, it seemed like efforts to perform remarkable, often ridiculous feats, were undertaken with regularity. Among their 44 listings are 'fastest car window opened by a dog' (i kid you not), 'largest garlic string' (take that, Gilroy!), 'most people belly dancing simultaneously', and a number of Rubik's cube titles, probably due to the fact that last year's championship was held in Budapest. Considering that by population Hungary ranks 83rd, 44 listings is actually quite small. Norway ranks 117th but holds 78 world records, many related to the North Pole (take that, Denmark!) and one split four ways, 'most sword swallowers to swallow the same object simultaneously' (who comes up with these categories?). This month, Magyars are making another play for global best, though i'm not entirely sure the title, if won, would be totally legitimate.

Demotix - 8 June 2011: A crowd calculated at 4717 gathered in Bekescsaba, Hungary in an attempt to set the world record for the most people drinking tap water in the same place at the same time.

Wouldn't large events like Woodstock, held in the pre-bottled water era, or any normal workday circa 1960 in the Empire State Building have surpassed this effort? How about a GM plant before the company started moving its operations to other countries (often where potable tap water is still a dream)? It all goes to show that self-awareness is everything; any Grateful Dead concert could surely have gotten into the Guinness book for 'most joints smoked simultaneously' if only Deadheads Synonymous had taken that little extra effort needed to fill out the application form. At any rate, i wish the group in Békescsaba the best of luck and congratulate them on having tap water so many people feel comfortable drinking - sadly, this may well be the more significant facet of the big group drink.

Peakwater.org has a counter on their website for waterbourne disease deaths this year and the current number is approaching 1.6 million. According to UNICEF, over 450 million children lack access to safe drinking water, by which i assume they are not referring to Evian, Slavyanka, et al, but rather tap water delivered from local wells. An article about tugging icebergs to places like the Canary Islands to make up for freshwater shortages indicates the extent to which more extreme (aka insane) measures for supplying water to humans are being pursued. Campaigns to reduce bottled water consumption, ergo plastic waste, are spreading globally, but these will only work if tap water supplies are a viable substitute.

Since i left the US 10 years ago, i can think of only one restaurant/bar which was willing to give me a glass of water from the tap - a moderately upscale place in Krakow - i assure you, the request was treated with no small amount of wonder: not in a bottle? why on earth would someone ever prefer that? In Baku, i boil tap water only because i haven't found anyone else here who drinks it straight from the faucet; who knows for sure whether it would make me sick, some risks are simply not worth taking. i know people here who've installed filters on their taps, but they still buy bottled water for their refrigerated supply.

W.H. Auden wrote, 'Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.' My friend and teacher Corbin Harney never stopped reminding us that we all drink the same water, just as we all breathe the same air. Fresh, potable water supplies are both essential and increasingly fragile. It's good to celebrate them, even if the overt purpose is self-congratulatory :-) As much as some might like to posit otherwise, natural resources are really all about us humans now, so i say drink up and hope that in the next town or country you visit, you'll be able to do the same.

The perfect 'exam as metaphor for life' experience

Another crisis in Britain:

Sixth-formers have been left struggling with a second "impossible" question in this year's exams. Students sitting an AS-level business paper were faced with a question that did not include the information needed to give an answer...

A business teacher from Leicestershire told BBC News online that there were concerns among students that they had wasted so much time trying to answer the question that they had not left enough time to finish the paper...

An AQA spokesman said: "We are very sorry about the error in the paper. However, we do have a robust process for ensuring that none of our students will be disadvantaged as a result our mistake."

A great metaphor for life, which has no board of examiners to set things right. How many of us have tried and tried again to make something work which we eventually... painfully... reluctantly later admit was 'just not meant to be'? I can think of several personal relationships that would easily fall into this category, along with no small number of other undertakings which i was sure, at the time, were things i needed to be doing. Turns out there are some puzzles without solutions, some goals lacking all the requisite tools for success. Kudos to the UK educational system for trying to indoctrinate their students to believe otherwise, but in retrospect, the students may have ended up learning something much more important.

Behind the scenes look at my new favorite modern art form

WHAT IS UP? | a site-specific virtual theatre | documentation from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

Remembering Robert Kennedy

In 1992-93, i dressed up every day as a conservative version of Scarlett O'Hara to give tours and expound on american history at Arlington House, located atop the national military cemetery of that same name. Often before the stiff bike ride up the hill, i would stop at the Kennedy brothers' graves to read the text inscribed there from Robert Kennedy's famous 1966 speech in South Africa. Looking at the whole text of that speech now, here is the part that i want to share, for the words strike me as especially relevant both personally and globally (relevancy being a key motivator in my personal search for meaning).

For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger, my friends, is comfort, the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says, "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged, will ultimately judge himself, on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

Today is the anniversary of then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in 1968. As a rule disinclined to wax prosaic about mainstream politic figures from any country, i nevertheless find it easy to respect and important to remember RFK as a man increasingly driven by his conscious; given the outcome of that 1968 election, it's hard not to imagine that if he had moved into the oval office in 1969, a lot of things in both the US and Southeast Asia would have turned out differently. As much as anyone in his position could, he walked the talk and was a source of inspiration for many people, my younger pre-cynical self included.

Political radicals' and professional politicians' circles rarely, if ever overlap (Mandela being an obvious exception). i tend to discover my personal heros/heroines from among the former, but i'm willing to accept that dealing with a population scale of billions, politicians who are real leaders are what we still need to hope for, especially from the perspective of global climate and resource management. RFK was most certainly one of them, my inner anarchist has no problem acknowledging this.

He is also quoted as having said, "What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists, is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.' Lately, i've found myself trying to convey this exact message to those Muslim students and acquaintances who passionately want to convert me to their belief system, though my own words are much less eloquent ('i respect your right to believe whatever you want, and i hope one day you'll understand this is much more important than respecting your specific beliefs'). i strive to live on the right side of the tolerance/intolerance equation - not always so easy, given my feminist framework - we would all be better off if the more rigidly indoctrinated among us attempted to do the same. RFK stood by his allies and empowered people to tap deeper into their humanity. How many people were killed by electronically controlled drones today? Whatever the number, it's good cause for remembering Bobby Kennedy.

What i won't be seeing in Turkey next month

So i'm planning next month's Mediterranean/Baltic travel escapade and hoped to spend a couple days in the Turkish border city of Edirne, one of those ancient places known by a multitude of names depending on the historical period (i've always known it as Adrianople, which completely skipped over the Greeks - oops!). Since i don't have a Rough Guide or other reference book, have been using online resources to check out places to stay and for the days i'm entering the whole town appears to be booked. At one point, there was a flash of some travel magazine with a picture of what looked like two sumo-sized mud wrestlers and i caught "Festival" in the fleeting headline. Hmmm, should that make me more or less determined to keep this in my itinerary? It probably won't come as a surprise to anyone who reads this blog that i'm not a big wrestling fan.

However, i am a Leo, a brazenly curious cat. Turns out that Edirne has been the site of not mud, but oil wrestling for a long, long time at a site named Kirkpinar. Dates back to the Achaemenids (ancient Persians), who preceded the Greeks in Thrace - we're talking 6th century BCE. Found a great article about the subject here, and a site dedicated to the sport here (intriguing photos) which succeeded in getting me all excited about seeing something so culturally obscure. Unfortunately, the tournament is held at the end of June, so i will miss it and quite possibly the city as well. On the flip side, a few more days combing Greek beaches on a sparse diet of olives, feta and occasional glass of ouzo seems a more than acceptable consolation.

Sepals to Salvation: Springtime in Baku

Yesterday i had to pass by Government House, one of Baku's more imposing yet impressive public structures, and couldn't avoid noticing that preparations are underway for a major public event. Trivia alert: 'Designed by architects L. Rudnev and V. Munz, it was completed in 1952. Like many other post-war buildings in Baku, German prisoners took part in its construction.' The crenelated towers are so very archeo-Azeri, but my favorite features of this building are its Soviet era insignias. You can't tell me this isn't historically rich, almost reverential, in its design and probably encapsulates the core nature of the relationship between Kremlin and this combustible fuels Wunderland.

Back to what were either viewing stands or a stage being assembled, i remembered that there's a public holiday 15 June (nationalist section of my brain always slow on the uptake), obviously one in which high-ranking officials will take part. Proceeded to ask students in my afternoon classes what National Salvation Day (once we remember, we really remember) commemorates, but not one could tell me (impromptu homework assignment!) and thus, off to Google i went.

On one of former President Heydar Aliyev's fansites - oddly authored by a Mexican, primary narrative entitled He Brought Salvation to His People - i see the date 15 June and immediately the pieces fall into place:

En mayo-junio del año 1993, cuando en relación a la agudización extrema del crisis de go­bier­no, en el país surgió un pe­lig­ro del comienzo de la guerra civil y la pérdida de la independencia, el pueblo azerbayáno se levantó y exi­gió de subir a Heydar Aliyev al poder. Los dirigentes de entonces se vieron obligados a invitar oficialmente a Heydar Aliyev a Bakú. El 15 de junio del año 1993 Heydar Aliyev fue elegido el presidente del Soviet Supremo de Azerbayán.

In a nutshell: Aliyev saved the country from potential civil war, reoccupation by Russia, loss of even more territory to Armenia, overall disintegration into ethnic and economic chaos. The BBC provides this timeline, starting with the Turkmanchay treaty of 1828 and continuing to Ilham Aliyev's (son of Heydar) New Azerbaijan Party's stunning electoral victory in 2010 (my tongue is stuck in my cheek but hopefully yours isn't). More detailed background on post-Soviet history is available here. Heydar had run the Autonomous Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan in the final years of the CCCP and headed its security forces following independence. He was a stalwart KGB figure and i've yet to meet an Azeri who doesn't credit him with keeping the country together and setting it on 'the right road for improvement in national character', to quote one of my students. As a major player in the world's oil and gas industry, it would probably be hypocritical for anyone who's not off the grid, totally car free, etc. to criticize him for using whatever tactics were employed to create stability. Let's just leave it that for now.

The flat granite surfaces of Baku's public works are everywhere inscribed with Heydar Aliyev's 'wise admonitions', more or less what one would expect from any political leader of significant - nearly mythic - stature. As a foreigner, they offer great speculative insight into the country's ideals and self-image, its values and veneer: what could be, compared to what's been. Here's a small, provocative selection; readers of this blog are free to draw your own conclusions.

Patriotism is an inner feeling of the person. If he is missing that, he is immoral.

To make a hero of the thief and bribe taker is to betray the country.

Great intellect is not common. A scientist, a poet, a composer, an artist, a writer, an actor - all these are rare, gifted people.

One cannot relate great policy to tiny senses and little profits.

To conduct peace negotiations from a firm base one must possess a strong army.

It is necessary that the history should be accepted as it is in reality, realized and valued.

If leaders oppress a people with a great national spirit, this is the greatest tragedy for a nation.

Last month, the country combined celebration of its Flower Holiday with that of the Aliyev's birthday on 10 May (he died in 2003). The week of creative floral works was kicked off by the national oil company, SOCAR, providing a day of cultural activities and performances in one park (caught off guard, i had to resort to poor resolution phone camera), while major floral art was being prepared over the course of the week in another (Heydar Aliyev Park, naturally) for the big presidential commemoration on May 10. Here are a few photos. The flower sculptures are really lovely - so lovely, in fact, that they were protected by a small army of police and the line to gain entry into the park was longer than i was ever able to stand in it. Still, scouting round the periphery fencing was worth it. i'm told that on 15 June there will be a grand military parade, so i'll try to do better next week, though rifles and RPGs are not nearly as attractive as butterflies and fairytale characters.

Here's the main stage, with Heydar Aliyev presented in grande floral design. The portrait isn't blurry; what your seeing is the overlapping sepal effect typical of flower art on this scale (do i sound like an expert floral critic? Ha!!). Baku is full of billboards sporting Aliyev's photo, and i must say i like what i saw here better. People told me this whole spectacle - flowers, evening concert, requisite security details - cost the government upwards of 60 million manats, which is no small sum. Already too warm for icing to hold its shape, why not let them eat flowers?!

Let's get our war criminals straight

Seeing his name in the headlines again makes me cringe. Anecdotes about his childhood, subtly exalted recitations of his 'accomplishments' and forgiving glimpses into his psyche leave me aghast. The only thing i want to hear about this man is that he's finally going to prison for his crimes; the only photo i want to see of him is not a grinning, Armani-clad snapshot taken in some exclusive men's club, but rather, a sullen, orange jumpsuit-clad mugshot taken behind a throw-away-the-keys prison wall. i am not talking about Ratko Mladic, though it's a relief to see him finally on the dock in Den Hague. The man i'm referring to here is the war criminal who never was, the man who turned diplomacy into a killing game, the greatest mocker of international justice in my lifetime: Henry Kissinger.

Shame on The Independent for running this article on how Kissinger "is the perfect person for the job" of cleaning up FIFA's dirty laundry. To suggest that any international body should trust this man, give him even a modicum of decision-making power, is absolutely ludicrous. That the paper does so on the same day it runs a story on Mladic's first ICC appearance and puts his use of 'monstrous' to describe the charges against him in quotes shows a willingness to engage in double standards which is disheartening from this otherwise fairly responsible publication.

i like The Independent and will still continue to read it, but what were the editors thinking when they approved a sympathetic profile of Kissinger? It is insulting to readers and especially victims of known war crimes to present the perpetrators as anything other than exactly that. Just because America's Voldemort was able to slither around that country's potholed legal system does not make him innocent or his crimes forgivable, if not forgettable. The man fled Germany to escape nazism and we all know what the zionist holocaust industry constantly tell us when it comes to that gang of war criminals: 'Never forget!' Right. When dealing with Kissinger, that works for me.

All that remains of her is a garlic press

If, like myself, you've contemplated the possibility of having more than one turn as a creature on Mother Earth, the options of what you'll come back as have probably been limited to biological organisms, from the corpulent to the minute. Most people i've met who believe in reincarnation actually limit their options to human, and i have more than a few friends who are certain they've already lived other human lives. Detractors of this multiple lives theory often use the argument that the ever-burgeoning human population makes it impossible for everyone to have had a previous existence. This reasoning only works if rabbits, cannabis plants or masochistic polar bears (a species whose days are clearly numbered) are excluded from the reincarnation catalogue, but what if the form we take in our next life could be extended to include beloved household objects? What anal personality wouldn't enjoy being a dirt devil, sucking up every last bit of dust and detritus from a home's magnificent Persian carpets?

Don't Panic has posted an interview this week with a Dutch designer who has been exploring this very concept. Wieki Somers' show Consumer or Conserve poses the questions, "How can human ashes be reused by means of rapid prototyping or 3D printing, so that we may afford someone a 'second life' as a rocking chair, vacuum cleaner, perhaps even a toaster? Would we become more attached to these objects if this was the case?" i encourage you to take a look at her work, it's quite compelling - serene in a way that only the non-committal nature of gray can be. Personally, i'm not all that adverse to the idea of spending 30 years as an espresso maker, so long as my would-be owner is diligent about cleaning out the grounds. Alternately, one can easily imagine a columbarium filled with these sculptures, offering our cremated loved ones the option of coming back as art, each individual rendered into a unique and distinctive, albeit familiar, form.

Granted, the intrinsic, functional value of an art piece compared to that of, let's say, a cockroach, is debatable. i suppose it's partly a numbers game, since we tend to place greater value on things/organisms not readily multipliable by the millions in even the most contaminated terrestrial environments. Something Somers' work immediately brought to mind was the shadow children project someone did many years ago at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, inspired by images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Art as a response to tragedy serves as an emotional function for many of us, so why not as a response to consumerism, as well? It might make people think more deeply about the material legacies of our time. There's no question that cockroaches are going to survive no matter what we do to the planet, whereas lava lamps and garlic presses are sure to keep 25th century archaeologists guessing.

The joy of being a pedant

In researching my next article, came across this very creative piece of kinetic topography that animates Stephen Fry's brilliante repartee on the use of language today. Enjoy!

Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography - Language from Matthew Rogers on Vimeo.

Damming the Xingu: More electricity no matter what the cost

Word has just come down that the Belo Monte dam complex on the Xingu River has been approved by Brasilian authorities. So much for environmental values from the new country's new 'radical' leadership - production of electricity always takes precedent! A statement from Atossa Soltani, Executive Director at Amazon Watch, notes that "President Dilma Rouseff is undermining the positive environmental and social advances Brazil has made in recent years, and miring its image on the global stage just as it prepares to host the UN Rio+20 Earth Summit next year." Maybe that is the ultimate goal, to produce enough electricity to run a permanent, fully wired Earth Summit Center where important people can meet year round to discuss tree planting quotas and CO2 reduction goals, et al. Who was is that pointed out human beings are the only species on earth that consciously destroys the environment upon which its survival depends?

Well, the peoples in the Amazon basin have been fighting this project for years, and it's fair to assume this decision will push them to apply more aggressive tactics to protect the environmental integrity of their territory. It will be like the Niger Delta rebellion against big oil, with the native people are labeled as terrorists and the government cohorts with big industry to fight them. The projected population displacement from Belo Monte is 16,000, but if experience with other dams of this scale has taught us anything, it's that the initial forced removal numbers can be as low as 25% of the final head count. Three Gorges is a prime example of this trickery. In 1998, the project was going to require relocation of 1.2 million people; in 2007, the number was 4 million. The Narmada Project in India works under similar lies (or illusions? you decide).

Lost in Transliteration

One of my students recently asked about the origins of 'OK' and whether it had started out as an actual word before becoming the easily-texted acronym used by speakers and non-speakers of English, alike. The answer turns out to be much more americana than i would have guessed. It started with an 1838-39 New England slang fad which was then appropriated by the re-election campaign of the 8^th US president, Martin van Buren, known by supporters as 'Old Kinderhook,' a man who supported forced removal of the Cherokee’s in spite of having written ‘The government should not be guided by Temporary Excitement, but by Sober Second Thought.’ According to etymology online:

Van Buren lost [the election], the word stuck, in part because it filled a need for a quick way to write an approval on a document, bill, etc. The noun is first attested 1841; the verb 1888. Spelled out as okeh, 1919, by Woodrow Wilson, on assumption that it represented Choctaw okeh "it is so" (a theory which lacks historical documentation); this was ousted quickly by okay after the appearance of that form in 1929. Okey-doke is student slang first attested 1932.

Woodrow Wilson probably needed an innocuous term like 'okeh' after getting re-elected in 1916 under the banner He Kept Us Out of War and then asking the US Congress in 1917 for a declaration of war. 'The world must be made safe for democracy.' Indeed, to this day the inhabitant of the Oval Office believes 'it is so'. Another source adds Teddy Roosevelt to the presidential mix:

"O.K." (aka "okay") originated with US President Teddy Roosevelt, when his staff would inquire to him "How's everything today?", he would reply "Just like at Old Kinderhook." Old Kinderhook was a camp that he had attended during his childhood with great memories. [ed. Both Van Buren and Roosevelt came from the same area in New York State.]

while yet a third source tacks on this bit of proletarian trivia: 'Greek immigrants to America who returned home early 20c. having picked up U.S. speech mannerisms were known in Greece as okay-boys.' One small piece of slang, one expansive foray into American history. At least we can say this is one word from their rebel colonies that the Brits don't seem to have had much trouble assimilating into their more pristine anglais.

In college, i had a Medieval Chinese History professor who was passionate about the way Chinese philosophical history was embedded in the stroke patterns of the language's characters. The concept of orthography as a carrier of cultural development was at that time somewhat new to me, but as a would be writer and avid (painfully verbose) talker, i've since been attempting to do a respectable dilettante's job of catching up, academically. There are so many ways to communicate and absorb ideas - i often perceive concepts as manifestations of Flatland-like, geometrical relationships; some people understand things clearly through color, or sound - if language is going to convey interpretive, cultural meaning and to assign values to things both objectified and abstract, then the words we use to construct them need to consist of more than just phoneme tags. CUL8R is cute and all - i certainly enjoy letter-digit symbology - but it's important to me that people remember this is symbology, that the meaning is based on actual words which have linguistic histories, that those histories are far from random even if the phonetics are not.

Living in Azerbaijan these past few months, i've constantly found myself caught in a tug of war between orthography and meaning. The Azeri language, a member of the Turkik (Altaic) language family, is a fascinating amalgam of tongues that together reflect the full gamut of historical experience: invasion, conquest, expansion, integration - back and forth, on and on - such that we find today significant overlap with Turkish (Turks insist they can speak and understand Azeri perfectly; Azeris insist it's the other way around; neither are completely at ease using the term Azeri Turk as a modern identitfier for the people now called Azerbaijani); there are French words acquired through Russian, Russian acquired through years of CCCP integration (and probably, cyrillization of the Azeri script), Arabic words that came through Persian and some modern Farsi appropriations, as well (Azeris tell me these words are Turkish, but then where did the original Muslim-conquered Turks get them from?). Add to this the variety of local tribal idioms (see Dance Kavkaz) and you get a modern language that contains about 1500 years' worth of linguistic influences. Is it any wonder the national lexicographers have apparently taken the attitude that if they spell it Azeri, they make it Azeri? (Anyone reading this who takes offense, i'd be happy to discuss it with you over a nice biznez lunc, will even bring my ofis manejar along as backup translator.)

There is an acute difference between making language fun and making language funny. For me personally, orthography - like emoticon/texting symbology - mostly falls into the latter category, though sometimes i see transliterations that make my inner indo-europeanite cringe. Take, for example, this theatre poster for an Azeri adaptation of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens.

According to wikipedia, the Old German is Wilhelm and Old Norse, Vilhjálmr, bringing us as close to the Azeri spelling as Anglo-Norman Williame, but for someone who wrote with the sharpest of pens, this transliteration of Shakespeare strikes me as - i don't know, silly, i guess. Way too far afield. However, the thing about proper names is that if you want people to say them more or less correctly in their own language, you've got to make allowances for extremely different letterings. Sekspir. Fair enough.... whatever.

Next up, the sign over a home furnishings store. Aksesuarlari? Hungarian speakers will immediately relate to the ler/lar plural form, which leaves us with aksesuar as the base noun. From the French accessoir, originating from Latin accessōrius: moving to adapt, towards accepting subordination, etc. etc. starting with the initial prefix, ac-. i really don't want to come across as being totally anal about word derivations, but as any fashion queens knows, it's all about making the little pieces come together. For Azeris out to accessorize their home furnishings, what significance could this word possibly have? i'm sure they got it from the Russians, but given the different alphabet, how would a non-russophile know that? The word thus takes on an objectified meaning based on - well, nothing beyond what's available in the showroom. Put this together with mebel, akin to Spanish mueble, and we immediately sense the profundity of res mobilis, res vilis.

Lastly and my personal favorite: kseroks. Any guesses? Having lived outside the US for nearly a decade now, i rarely hear this word used anymore and once i learned what it meant, have kept my eyes peeled for an actual Xerox-made copy machine. Sightings? Zero. Assuming the vast majority of Azeris don't know that Xerox was the original photocopy king of kings, i'm left wondering what they think about the source of this word for 'photocopy'. KƏNIN would have made a lot more sense, if we're thinking along the lines of Hoovering, Ajaxing and having kleenex on hand for those sentimental Kodak moments.

For me, this is something of a double whammy: i've always thought it absurd to use a machine maker's name for the thing the machine produces and now i've got to use the name with a spelling that has no relation to it, whatsoever. The orthography here is totally screwing with the etymology and i just don't like it, not one bit.

There's an Australian aboriginal character in one of Herzog's films who confesses that the reason he stopped speaking was because the slow genocide of his tribe left him with no one who spoke his language. Honestly, there are moments when i feel that way, a slow descent into a globalized transliteratory and mis-translational hell. In Hungary, hello is now part of the everyday language, which sounds graciously anglophilic until you realize they use it at the end of a conversation, not the beginning. i'll never get used to that, anymore than i will looking for a place to kseroks some documents. i'm all for diversity and mashing things up, world music and intergallactic web servers, etc. etc. but the words still have to mean something! Otherwise, our thoughts become temporally exclusive and watered down across cultural boundaries to the point where we're all negating our identities in order to communicate basically nothing. What would Homer say? Okay? OK? Okeh?