Foot-in-Mouth Footprints

There’s been down time recently, my mind’s been scattered, looking for a holdfast. If you read Spanish, then you know i’ve just come out of crisis mode over acquiring a Hungarian visa. The good news is that they did bestow one upon me, so finally getting the Magyar Lite experience: pay into the system and have an insurance card, but not be expected to eat fish soup on Christmas eve. The bad news is that the delay generated a fair amount of panic. If you’ve ever been in an about-to-be-deported situation you’ll understand immediately the madness it generated: impossible to make any plans for the here and now (emphasis on HERE), and even more difficult devising a contingency plan for some other country in which i have neither home nor job, possibly no friends. i found myself stuck in a conundrum of not being able to treat anything too rigorously, yet knowing full well that a pending deportation requires great seriousness, presence of mind. A period of unrelenting self-management schizophrenia which i probably would have dealt with better under a therapist’s nose, but it’s over now and i’m again listening to something besides Blues. Following 2 years of total border insecurity working in the West Bank, my energy for coping with impermanence has been completely expended, and i really do mean completely.

Circumventing absolute self-absorption – or maybe just trying to keep things in morbid perspective - as Arlo Guthrie said, when you see someone who’s got it worse than you, it makes you feel better - ??? - i’ve been reading about fuel poverty in Europe and food scarcity around the globe. For the past while, i’ve been on a mission to rid my diet of carbohydrates and suddenly, in at least 30 countries, people are rioting or at least starting to freak out over dwindling wheat and rice stocks. (There’s material for an adbusters graphic in there somewhere: diet-crazed gringo snobbishly passing over what the starving world depends on for calories.) That this is all happening in the framework of meeting energy needs only makes it more difficult to digest (that idiom too offensive?). A sound understanding of how the food scarcity problem could be dealt with also means understanding the energy industry, how best to meet the world's ever-increasing energy needs.

i’ve been finding this impossible to write about. Food is so personal and cultural and preferential - by which i mean that some people have access to lots of it while others nearly none. Not long ago, but before the “food crisis” hit the mainstream headlines, i was standing in line at my little neighborhood delicatessen, which is a bit pricy because they carry a lot of organic produce and what Hungarians tend to call specialty foods: chutneys, Thai sauces, 30 kinds of French mustard and all those delicioso Italian spreads that are 30% olive oil. Ahead of me in line was an American-Israeli woman holding a wad of 10.000 forint bills, buying nearly one of everything, and asking about the little square designer sausages in the counter case. She spoke no Hungarian, so i offered to help translate: are the sausages spicy? Then she asked about the price and mentioned that they were for her dog. “You’re buying those sausages for your DOG?” Of course, she wasn’t prepared for that, and nervously explained that she was training him and wanted something really special to reward good behavior. Immediately i apologized, saying it was out of line for me to pass judgment. What came out was simply my immediate, uncensored gut response to someone spending so much on something for a pet that i would only get for a special occasion and even then, only if i was feeling flush. Was my reaction thus borne out of jealousy that some dog has easier access to good food than i do? i don’t think so, but….

This is what i mean about it being difficult to talk or write about food. For myself, very aware of the many homeless and underfed people in this beautiful, rich capital city, just as i was in San Francisco, CA, and coming recently from Palestine, where food availability fluctuates and prices are relatively high for basic staples, the idea of a wealthy person buying a specialty food item for a pet seemed wrong somehow. Not exactly selfish, but unthinking. Yet, i also understand that someone who has the money to buy whatever she wants for whatever purpose she has in mind has the right to get fancy foods for her dog. i’m not against dogs being well-fed and i knew that she was looking at me and thinking if i really cared about unequal food distribution, i should start by streamlining my own diet - fair enough. So, in this one impromptu, ridiculous interaction, all or at least some of the hypocritical aspects of me or someone like me writing about food were crystallized.

Whatever one person says about another’s dietary choices, eating habits, restaurant preferences, etc. is immediately going to have to be self-reflective, and who among us is above reproach? i like a good bottle of vino as much as anyone, i’m willing to pay for it and if you come to my house, i’ll gladly share it with you so we can engage in bad scarcity-era behavior together. Or is that really bad behavior? Arguably, it is better to have fewer high quality foods than a lot of low quality (and often high calorie) stuff on the kitchen shelf. So i walk out of the wine shop and pass a dirty homeless woman ogling me with that gaunt seriously deprived look the homeless tend to have, i say i can’t give her any money but she knows very well what’s in the slim paper bag i’m holding… yes, guilty as charged.

i’ll end this by pointing readers to a new interactive feature at Global Footprint (open "Your Footprint" link), in which you enter information about your lifestyle and obtain an assessment of how many earths are required to provide you with the resources needed to sustain it. My own results were 1.9 Earths, but of course that’s based on how i’m living now and doesn’t include all the resources i’ve expended driving all over the US, or flying all over the world. Still, it’s an effective awareness-raising tool and left me committed to being less lazy when it comes to carting my plastic to the nearest recycling depot, about a kilometer away. The reduction in resources from vegetarian diets was also substantial, so i’m going to finish up the prociutto now in my fridge and try to steer clear of meat in the future. Or maybe i’ll get a dog before the year’s over, and feed it tasty food meant for humans so that i can just say i’m sharing my dog’s food, rather than buying meat for myself. Certainly nobody cares about the canine footprint.

No más ilegal

Amigas y amigos, por fin tengo una entidad legal! Los húngaros me dieron la visada, aunque ya trabaja ilegalmente y me he quedado aquí por tantos meses (claro, muy ilegal). Las reglas han cambiado bastante entre el tiempo cuando presenté mis papeles y el día de decisión. Ahora, mucho mas difícil, me dijeron que estuve la ultíma persona permitida quedarse con este visa de trabajo sobre las reglas antiguas. Que suerte, no? Parezco que acabo de surgir de una canción de Manu Chao. En poco tiempo, tendré un numero de seguridad social, lo cual se usa tambien para el seguro médico. Increíble contemplar... seguro médico.... aaiiiyyyyeeee!!!! Quien pensaba que la residencia en Centro Europa sea más comodable que la de EEUU en el siglo 21?

Bueno, habian muchas personas ayudandome con la burocracía "detrás de la cortina" y aunque no sé exactamente lo que han hecho ellas, estoy seguro que eso fue responsable para el resulto positivo.... quizás mi kharma subió otra vez, pero eso.... pues, no lo creo, a menos que me dices fue el kharma de mis queridos amigos húngaros.

Earth Day Critical Mass

A few photos from Sunday's Critical Mass ride in Budapest. No telling how many thousands of people participated... they were still pouring up Andrassy into the park when i left, so i'm guessing around 50.000. The message, as they say, is in the medium. In the bridge span shot , you can see (a little) that the entire bridge is full of bikers, as was the bridge that i was on when taking the photo. Lots of kids, lots of rollerbladers and a respectable contingent of unicyclists. At the appointed time - even though so many were still on their way in or hadn't even reached the park - the traditional 'wheels in the air' group hug. Nice event, too bad it doesn't happen every month. As one rider explained to me, 'then it wouldn't be as big,' which in magyar terms i suppose means not as significant (somehow) although coming from the city where the critical mass movement originated, i tend to think otherwise. In case your wondering why so many people were dressed in green, the British Council had an Earth Day event in the park that afternoon and were giving out t-shirts.... what i really wanted was a Critical Mass shirt, evidently you have to be a traffic cop or just a really kool guy to get one of those.

Revised data: Just read in a newspaper the official count was 80.000 - wow! Hopefully this will lead to more bike lanes in the city :-)

Bruno Manser's 10.000 photos of the Sarawak (in Borneo) are going up on the web tomorrow. Here's the link!

Escape From Stepford

Check out this photo montage and answer truthfully: which of the three candidates looks like a grounded human being? Hillary appears about to topple over she's smiling so hard, and Colonel McCain clearly has never adjusted to being out of uniform, no wonder he wants to stay in Iraq forever. Easily imagined pacing the oval office in army fatigues. i don't want anyone calling either of them at 03:00 to ask, "Up for pushing an encrypted button?" Saw a clip of HRC speaking in Pennsylvania and she really seemed to be losing it, desperate to discredit Obama.

He's not ideal but i think the world doesn't need ideal so much as we need competence. i'll still recommend voting for Cynthia McKinney/Greens because building a viable 3rd party is part of the process that needs to happen, plus the greens in the US have a pretty good platform and some great -key word: competent - people. Cynthia is an awesome woman! That said, Obama's looking rather presidential here and seems to be having a real conversation. i'd encourage Mrs. Clinton to go back to Stepford, while John McCain maybe needs to be caged and isolated.

Ninguna pequeña ironía, al mismo tiempo en el cual escribía ayer sobre la destruccíon de casas en Palestina, recibí una llamada que me informó hoy sea el día de decisión: los húngaros van a estampar mi pasaporte con un visado de trabajo o van a deportarme. (Si la decisión sea buena, todavía tendré que moverme del piso en mayo, porque van a destruir el edificio en que vivo para construír un hotel!) Ahora, bastante temprano, eschuco a Wandering Star (de Portishead) y me pregunto, ´si ellos me deporten, a donde voy?´ Ninguna ídea. Parezco que acabo de llegar (bueno, ya es más que medio año, sino para relocarse de nuevo, en otro lugar, se necesita tiempo). Posiblemente mañana voy a salir. ¿A los EEUU? Espero que no...no sé si me darán opciones. Y que voy a hacer con mis pocas cajas? Cuales zapatos traigo conmigo a la vida siguiente? Cuales libros? Por cuanto tiempo hay que quedarme afuera del país, hasta que pueda regresar para recojer mis posesiones? Como ya dije, ninguna pequeña ironía con todo esto. A los menos, puedo consolarme recordano que ante todo que ha pasado a los palestinos, todavía sobreviven...

A Place Not Called Hope

Here's a splice of the latest update from Palestine Solidarity network:

Al-Aqaba is a very small village in the Jordan Valley, southeast of Jenin, that, from 1967 until 2003 served as military training grounds for the Israeli Army. Israeli soldiers used to conduct their trainings using the villagers (for example, practicing detaining people, invading homes in the middle of the night, etc.) In 2002, the Village of Aqaba won an important legal victory, obtaining an Israeli Supreme Court decision calling on the Israeli military to close its training grounds in Al-Aqaba. In June of 2003, the army finally pulled back and some villagers, who had previously left the village because of the unbearable living situation (since 1967, al-Aqaba's population decreased by 85%, dropping from around 2000 individuals to approximately 300), started coming back. With the help of international supporters, the village built a kindergarten (130 kindergarteners and 70 elementary school students currently attend school there) and other structures, including a small sewing factory to employ local village women. Now the Israeli government seeks to destroy this village, issuing demolition orders for 35 structures, including the kindergarten, sewing factory, the mosque, medical center, and homes built by returning villagers, claiming that they were built illegally.

For all the Clinton supporters out there who might possibly read this, and i suppose the Obama fans as well, this is precisely the kind of act on the part of an occupier that drives people to extremes. Coincidentally, i want to note that this is likely the same mosque an israeli soldier committed suicide in a year or so ago: the demoralized foot soldier also depleted of dignity, hope. i lived not far from al-Aqaaba for two years, and know well that the majority of its inhabitants are farmers or have small businesses. What purpose do these demolitions serve? i'll ask it again: what is the purpose??? Either the democratic candidates do not understand what Israel is doing - and thus, they continue to support it unconditionally - or they understand well and are comfortable with the program. Remember back when Bill and Hillary carried on about Hope and hope? Welcome to Palestine, where we deal with the illogical and immoral counterpoint to hope as either physical or theosophical concept.

Picture A ................................................................... Picture B

A or B? Imagine that you were going to change the world. Which image would you choose to illustrate your vision?

Story in this morning's Guardian about an exhibit at the British Museum that is to detail the destruction of Babylon by US coalition forces. In the world inhabited by archaeologists, every bucketful of sand is of potential historical value and therefore should never be used to fill sandbags (!) or in any other way be disturbed. Along come some guys from Kentucky or wherever in their tanks, tearing up ancient processional avenues and knocking down mud brick walls. This is an ongoing tragedy that began with the wholesale looting of the Iraqi National Archaeological Museum in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion and sadly, continues all over the country. Too depressing to contemplate on a Monday morning... i'd rather hear about Charlton Heston's star-studded cremation, which has got to mean that he's not going to be interred holding a gun. What betrayal of historical import is that?

More Gloss

See what i meant about China and the terrorist label?

A separate report on Reuters said the crackdown was on two East Turkestan "terrorist" groups. A government spokesman told Reuters: "At the end of last year an overseas East Turkestan terrorist group issued an order requesting its members to enter the country to be ready to launch terrorist attacks at the Beijing Olympics. (Guardian)

The story goes on to note:

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International say Beijing often uses alleged terrorism as an excuse to violently repress any activism for independence in the region, whether violent or peaceful.

i can't be the only person who sees this as both a diversion from the Tibet torch relay protests and a justification for preparing everyone - including and perhaps especially, journalists - for high security summer fun in Beijing.

A student asked this morning what i thought about the protests - i support them, absolutely - and we had a brief discussion about politics and sports. It's nice to think that politics can be kept out of sports, but as far as i can tell, this argument is usually made by those who don't want their own bad political positions and/or systems to be questioned, e.g. the Israeli govt, the USSR, the apartheid South African govt. My father is a huge basketball fan, and even back in the 60s i can remember him talking about racial discrimination on the court (Dr. J was his big hero, so i'm glad to say the tenor of his rants was always pro integration). Politically-embroiled olympic games are hardly new. Hungarians, in fact, will be among the first to declare this an ineluctable reality, referring to the famous Hungarian-Russian water polo match at the 1956 Olympiad in Melbourne. All i can say to complaining Chinese at this juncture is "get over it" and think about why this global resurgence of Tibetans' human rights support is happening. Suppressing the voices of our Tibetan brothers and sisters, as well as their supporters, is not the right solution to this equation.

One of the strange things about logging into the net from here is that the majority of ads on many sites are strictly in Hungarian - except when they're in Spanish; skype usually opens up in Romanian; google does this random thing where i sometimes get a French search engine, sometimes German, most often Hungarian; and youtube once offered me the most viewed videos in Japan - go figure. Nothing like an eclectic experience to start one's day, eh? (for those who appreciate Canadian question tags). In those moments - and they do occur - when i feel nostalgic for some homegrown american culture and deadnet doesn't want to load, i have to look elsewhere, though sometimes net offerings just cough things up somewhat randomly.... or a friend will offer advice. Here's a truly astonishing clip by Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir covering Sweet Home Alabama.

Transit strike in Budapest today, as well as on metropolitan commuter trains. What happens? More people drive. This is already a really stupid choice for all kinds of non-strike-related reasons; if someone wants to support transit workers having fair, sane working conditions as part of supporting a better public transit system OVERALL, riding a bike during the strike is a much better option.

The More Things Change....

On devine les arguments: «le monde a changé»; «nous ne sommes plus comme de Gaulle au temps de la guerre froide entre les deux blocs américain et soviétique». Raison de plus! Dans un monde unipolaire, il est plus urgent que jamais de garder ses distances. Le caractère obsessionnel de la peur de l’Iran n’est pas moins stupide que l’anticommunisme des années 1950-1970. Denis Sieffert, on Sarkozy’s collusions with Brown/Bush in Bucharest

Coming at this a few days late, so be it…. a small token of after-the-fact solidarity from a veteran of the anti-NATO continuum (graphic from Prague 2002). Once again, a story the international media neglected to cover was the high level of policing in Bucharest, raid of the anti-NATO convergence center, and turning potentially disruptive people back at the Romanian border. There are accounts of what went down here and here, where there are also some pics and rather curious videos. One thing i found particularly interesting – if not surprising - was the state-media collaboration prior to the NATO summit:

“The local corporate media has also been in a frenzy about "dangerous anarchists" who are going to descend on the city and break store windows. One TV news report on Realitatea TV yesterday morning encouraged viewers to throw rocks at any demonstrators that they see on the streets.”

Really, what is there to say about this? It’s a strange equation: stop civil unrest by encouraging civil unrest. Isn’t state-sanctioned stoning of people who aren’t with the program the precise lack of freedom the West is wasting so much oil and so many lives to protect us against? The sad thing is that in Romania, more than a few individuals likely considered such advice to be prudent. i’m reminded of a wonderful book by Mircea Eliade, The Old Man and the Bureaucrats, in which he draws out the gross self-contradictions of the Romanian surveillance systems under communism: the only way the old man can subvert the political machine is by telling them stories that are equally nonlinear and nonsensical.

Yet the dictatorial history is a past ideally left behind. Now reincarnated into a democratic state and member of the EU, this is what we get:

“Gandul [a Romanian newspaper] focuses on the 30,000 intelligence officers from everywhere in the world who arrived in Bucharest in order to ensure the security during the summit. "Eyes in the skies", underground monitoring and ground checks take place everywhere.”

Elsewhere i found the number of so-called security personnel to be only 27,000, and ok, the robocops aren’t all Romanian and Genoa back in 2001 was worse (there were also 1000s more demonstrators), but no matter. People in Eastern Europe who have long-term memories and discuss life in the region during the communist era tend to concur that Romania’s Securitat shared the anti-honor of being most ubiquitous and unwieldy with East Germany’s Stasi (for those unfamiliar with all this: the Stasi were hardcore iron curtain bad guys). i’ve read that 1 in 3 people were informers and nobody trusted anybody else, understandably. So, when you think about it, throwing rocks at dissidents and having hoards of police around to back you up is maybe a familiar, easily re-accessed drill for the average Romanian of 40+ years. It’s not my intent to disparage the Romanian people here; rather, i’m just wondering how much they realize that hosting these summits brings long-term upgrades to their own state security apparatus which might come back to bite them? Personally, i don’t believe there’s any coincidence between the historical legacy of “shut up or we’ll shoot you” and the newly formed “security” relationships the US has been pursuing with any of the former Warsaw Pact states – or the eagerness with which these new NATO members revitalize their old habits of command and control.

Romania, let’s remember, has been playing host to extraordinarily renditioned prisoners and is now the CEE HQ for Northrup Grumman. They also just signed a contract with Lockheed Martin for 17 Multi-Mission Surveillance Radar systems, which “can easily be transported by air, sea, truck or rail and can be deployed in less than 60 minutes.” That’s a far amount of mobile hardware for a country that currently has no threatening enemies, nor any wars on its borders. Of course, these kinds of deals are promoted as job creators, but that’s standard fare and anyway, we all know what it really means. The US has been using their Black Sea ports for refueling and troop transport, and has a commanding presence at Romanian military bases. Romania was promised enormous amounts of Iraq reconstruction money (although it’s hard to unearth how much of that actually became a reality) and all sorts of propaganda was generated to explain to “they, the people” why working with the US on Project Iraqi Freedom made so much sense. The point i want to make here is that the US is using this country big time to manage its military activities in the Middle East, and it’s certainly in US interests to make sure that Romania is secure in every aspect that term can encompass.

As something of an aside, it seems to me that the tension between Russia and NATO now is not because one or the other feels particularly threatened in standard “let’s have another Great War in Europe” fashion. There’s far too much interdependency now between the EU and Russian Federation for that, and it’s just hard to imagine either party initiating such a war. What is much more likely, imho, is that Russia sees a serious conflict unfolding between itself and the US in the Middle East/Central Asia, and US military bases in Romania, Czech Republic, Poland, et al. thus present a significant, combined problem. It’s impossible to get closer to the Mideast battleground without getting closer to the Russian bear, and naturally the bear is going to growl at you when you threaten its territorial domain. What i'm seeing in all this is that the US is using the newest NATO bloc, the countries that are easily manipulated by a combination of dollars and fear (tho one wonders how anyone can drool over dollars these days), to back up American presence in the world's main oil & gas belt.

After W left Bucharest he went on to Croatia, where more of his freedom and security blather was spewed onto the feet of Balkan leaders. There, protesters were not so actively contained: "Croatian television reported protesters had tried to hand Bush a huge postcard with pictures of Croatian towns and resorts reading 'Please, don't come back.' " Unfortunately for the Balkans, it seems likely that whomever moves into the White House in 2009 is going to continue the current policy of subjugating real freedom and security on the peninsula in the cause of US strategic imperatives. Welcome to NATO: please remember to check your independence in at the door.

The Terror Gloss

There are times when social constructs have to attain the level of absolutely absurd extreme before we can see that the absurdity actually exists at a much lower level of the idiocracy chain, and the latest swipe of the terrorist wand is definitely one of those times. When the Dalai Lama is declared a terrorist – Dharamsala Nancy the new Hanoi Jane? – even those people who accept the axis of Islamic evil concept have got to be experiencing lexical dissonance. The Dalai Lama orchestrating a terrorist plot? What spin doctor came up with that notion? Ah yes, the ever-ameobic Chinese government, always embracing the best of what works in the West. But i’m not blaming the Chinese. This is what the W Dick junta has done to the world - their lasting impact, cause célèbre, Chernobylesque meltdown in the sphere of global syllogisms. As it now stands, anyone anywhere who uses violence in charged political atmospheres – or is affiliated with those who do - is branded a terrorist; all acts of dissent that the state (or a corporate entity) doesn’t like become acts of terrorism. China is merely following the US lead, and it becomes harder for the US to publicly criticize them without drawing further attention to its unabashed hypocrisy.

In the old days we had terms like insurrection – revolt – war – occasionally, the crazed rantings of a recent widower or war veteran. Then guerilla wars became “low intensity conflicts,” regionalized with huge imparities, evolving finally into privatized occupation and militarily weeding out evil-doers (itself a twist of “enemy;” is it obvious, the extent to which the West is also highly theocratized?) This is a new New World Order, and woe especially to those whose acts remain somewhat unpredictable, making the state look weak and feel weak. Instilling fear is a mandatory counter measure, leading people to want their big strong uncle to keep them safe: whatever it takes, just do it. This is all about spin at a gross Orwellian magnitude, but it has far more serious consequences than generating middle class suburban paranoia. Countries are being destroyed, cultures are being exterminated, increasingly far and wide as part of a “global war on terror.” War seems to be what globalization is ultimately all about, or at least where its strands are most strongly knotted together. As the safe havens between war zones shrink, arms deals are cut which would have been unlikely or unpermitted a decade ago. Slap a “war on terror” tag on the package and it’s a go. War has always been big business, and terror is proving to be bigger business – the shock doctrine is just part of it.

On any given day that i can tolerate a few minutes of seeing what Little Bush is up to, or Ehud Olmert, or (at the more pathetic end) Musharraf, i am struck again and again by the use of “terror” to justify any level of violence the state apparatus chooses to employ. US soldiers from Iraq speak about how rules of engagement essentially devolved to the point where anything moving was a valid target. Indiscriminate killing – is that not murder? (Is that not terrorism?) In Palestine, same situation. The IDF doesn’t even bother with the whole collateral damage label since all Palestinians are current or future terrorists. The arbitrariness of harassment is maddening, and the soldiers as well as vigilantes operate with total immunity. The US wants to bomb targets in Pakistan, they bomb Pakistan. Israel wants to bomb civilians in Lebanon, they bomb civilians in Lebanon. Columbia wants to eliminate the FARC, they ignore borders and shoot to kill. You can do whatever you want, or pay someone else to do it, with one very crucial provision: do not, under any circumstances, allow the enemy to organize a real army, with colonels and uniforms, marching into battle under a unifying banner, because then you’ll be forced to drop ‘terrrorism’ from the slogan, it will just be war and there will have to be limits, and maybe conscription (in the US, at least), and the whole presentation would have to change.

At the heart of the current public relations campaign is the premise that suicide bombers, RPG-toters, and their various counterparts worldwide are in the fight for the mere existential thrill of killing people and wreaking general havoc. While the latter is in fact probably true, the over-arching problem is that by focusing on terrorism, states are able to ignore the political issues that underlie the resistance movements. Israel mastered this tactic early on, leading the world to assume that once Palestinians ditched the suicide bombings and stone throwing, they might get their independence, or at least Israel wouldn’t have to constantly be punishing them. Putin used the same tactic with Chechnya, Bush continues to slog it out on this premise in Iraq and, along with the rest of NATO, in Afghanistan. Now China has attempted to justify its violence against Tibetans by construing monks as suicide terrorists, shifting the question away from why they are persecuted to why they must be even more aggressively occupied and controlled. It’s effective spin in this age of fear and retribution. In the “have your say” comment boards about Tibet, Chinese contributors say over and over that terrorism is not the way for Tibetans to put forward their cause. The ultimate irony is that the longer legitimate political and cultural rights are repressed or ignored, the closer people move towards taking unpredictable, violent action. To paraphrase Sartre, we don’t get a war without wanting a war, and people get the war they want.

Which brings us back to the absurdity of Jiabao’s government labeling the Dalai Lama a terrorist. Whatever his political shortcomings, the Tibetan leader-in-exile has repeatedly offered to negotiate the establishment of a culturally autonomous region within China, under which Tibetans would control selecting their leaders and basically managing their territory according to their own traditions, while China would be able to continue exploiting the natural resources, secure the borders, et al. One assumes this would allow Han Chinese who’ve moved into Tibet to continue living there, so long as the PLA is not around enforcing cultural genocide. However, since nearly all governments tow the line that there is no negotiating with terrorists, this new classification of Tibetan resisters as suicide attackers serves to undermine negotiations, with public support for doing so. China – like Israel, Russia and the US – has huge military resources and theoretically doesn’t have to put up with anybody who burns their flag. Yet, it’s one thing to not negotiate with a bunch of kuffiya-wearing desperados who’ve hijacked a plane, another entirely to not negotiate with an entire people. The options that leaves us are exactly two: extermination or perpetual war.

This is the essence of why the terminology is so blatantly idiotic and corrupt: political conflict is not about methodology; it’s about greed and sometimes, ideology. Just today, Bush in Bucharest told his NATO comrades that they must “fight to the finish” against Afghani extremists. This was in the context of pushing missile defense systems in South Asia and expanding NATO. The rest of the EU leaders joined in at the refrain: death to the Taliban or bust. On other words, we’ll just annihilate the farmers, herders and religious illiterates in Afghanistan and then all will be well with the world. Guess again. That Bush is trying to get NATO to commit more resources, and intensify the fight, has only got to mean that from their standpoint, the situation is going backwards not forward. Stronger methods are required. In other words, the terrorists in Afghanistan are calling the shots? If that’s the case, the only way to resolve it is to fight terror with terror, and therein lies the rub.

There is no moral high ground here, as any Iraqi exile will tell you – terror, by definition, is determined as such by those at the receiving end of it. i’m no fan of Osama bin Laden, but let’s be real about what these Afghan “extremists” want and why they haven’t put down their toys yet: i guarantee they are not fighting to protect Osama or whichever crazed mullah is in command at the moment. The US/NATO position that in the war against terror there are no constraints is a license for everyone involved to use whatever means of battle they choose. That US forces cannot succeed in a guerrilla war is not the guerrillas’ fault. Nor is it the Tibetans’ fault that the Chinese cannot get the world to forget about their violent occupation of Tibet. Painting these resistance movements over with lacquers of terrorist fanaticism ultimately lays bare the inability of governments to deal effectively with the political conflicts they, themselves, have initiated and subsequently perpetuated. (To be clear, i do not use “effectively” here to mean success of the invaders; effective ending of a conflict means negotiating conditions that are just, and respect the aggrieved parties, i.e. the unsuccessfully conquered.) It also keeps the battle going, the war profiteering on track, likewise the endless death and destruction. We can call this a fight against terrorism, but really it’s a fight against fighting back, and to pretend anything else is to side with the well-manicured terrorist spin doctors, those people who appreciate the finer aspects of gloss.

US Role in Tibetan Resistance

There's a very interesting article up on Asia Times right now: Tibet, the 'Great Game' and the CIA. While the last few paragraphs present a grim diagnosis on China's ability to control Tibet militarily, the analysis of the US again using Tibet as a way to pressure China on other issues is worth reading.

My Own Private UN

Tomorrow night i start another 8-week segment of Hungarian language classes, so i figured it was time to finally write about the last one. This has been one of the most interactive multi-cultural experiences i’ve had in BP – interactive because of the nature of the situation (obviously), but also on a very personal level, as everyone has been fairly interested in everyone else’s national or ethnic orientation to living and working here. We were ten people from ten different countries, four different continents. After English, which everyone spoke to some degree, the second most common language was Arabic; the two Hungarian teachers – Agi on Mondays, Ildiko on Wednesdays – were sometimes driven to tell us “Stop speaking Arabic!” at times of vocabulary crises, which i found rather hilarious. We also had two Russian speakers, and two of us spoke French.

Left>Right: Ahmed (Palestinian Jordanian), Dave (Belgium), Richard (UK), myself (CA), Mohammed (Egypt), Tatyana (Russia), Sasha (Ukraine), Reza (Iran), and Kursat (Turkey). Missing: Omar (Somalia).

Imagine the UN without headsets - that’s pretty much what this was like. The teacher writes something on the board and it’s immediately recorded in 7 or 8 different languages. Together we formed a giant web of alphabets, diacritical marks and phonetic near-equivalents. What we most had in common is that everyone is figuring out how Hungarians put their ideas together, which is at times non-translatable (depending on your language) even while being culturally comprehensible, since we’re all living here and see it in action every day. Mohammed and Omar, who come from cultures with strong oral traditions, definitely picked things up faster than the rest of us; a gentle reminder to me that academic educational levels can have little importance when it comes to communicative abilities (particularly vocabulary retention).

On the last day of the last session we had, two weeks ago, Reza gave everyone holiday cards on the occasion of the Iranian New Year, Nourouz, along with print-outs about the holiday in Hungarian and Arabic (for half of us). When people ask me whether i ever plan to return to the US to live, this is one of the reasons at the heart of my resounding NO. There is something about translating from one second language into another second language, on a regular basis, that makes me feel plugged into the multicultural transmigrations of the modern era like little else can. It’s such an integral part of life in Europe; Hungarians may be cynical about any of us reaching a fluency level in their language, but nearly all of them are engaged in learning a 2^nd or 3^rd language as well. Sure, it’s economically driven, people want to be able to word abroad, or work here, and so you’ve got to be able to communicate. About a week ago, i was at a friend’s flat and among 6 people, there were 4 different native tongues (Hungarian, English, Spanish and Italian). In my European experience, this is normal; reflecting back on my years in the US, it was far from the norm.

Tomorrow, it’s back to the Hungarian post-position grind: post-positions are little tags that give prepositional meanings to words and they are quite difficult to master (as prepositions in every language tend to be). i don't know how many of these individuals will be in my next class, hopefully all of them, but it'd be great to add people from eastern Asia and South America, just to grow the web a bit. We may not be able to solve the world's problems, but it's the flipside of the cultural clashes motif, which has got to be good for something.

Congratulations Zimbabwe

The news from Africa this morning is apparently good news. Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF has been heavily defeated in the election and the new president will likely be Morgan Tsvangirai, of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). In several countries, mock elections were staged outside Zimbabwean embassies, since one of the government's edicts was that people in the diaspora were not allowed to cast votes. The MDC and other opposition parties worked hard for a victory over dictator Mugabe, under repressive conditions and a climate of both state and opposition violence for months leading up to the elections. Tsvangirai himself was beat up by the police last fall, which predictably just served to inflate his determination. There's a short interview with him on the Guardian site, worth taking a look at just to get an idea of who he is (at least compared to Mugabe, who certainly does not have files on human rights violations scattered around his office).

After what happened in Kenya earlier this year, and given conditions in Zimbabwe itself, the concern about the country collapsing into post-electoral violence is substantial, especially if Mugabe declares himself the winner. The guy's campaign slogan was Get Behind the Fist, which succinctly characterizes his own political evolution over the past 30 years. i remember when the Zanu-Zapu coalition put Mugabe in power in 1980, in the first elections following independence from Britain, and the future of the country looked pretty good then. When i was there in 1989, Zimbabwe was full of refugees from apartheid South Africa, and i spoke with groups of them in Harare and elsewhere who all asserted they wanted their future to be free, as the Zimbabweans' was. The forests on the border with Mozambique were in flames, and SWAPO was still fighting to the east. Yeah, at that time, Zimbabwe was relatively safe and peaceful. Yet, like so many of the post-independence rulers in sub-saharan Africa, Mugabe became increasingly invested in his own omnipotency, driving the country's economy and political system into the ground. So today, there are Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa in a kind of reverse twist of history.

Well, let's hope for the best following this elections and that Tsvangirai will succeed in bringing some tranquility by initiating programs and projects that reverse the country's tragic decline. Zimbabwe is a stunningly beautiful country, the people are gracious and warm, and the music is outstanding. Leaving off here with a video clip from one of my favorite Zimbabwean musicians, Leonard Dembo. who sadly died of AIDS earlier this decade. i had the opportunity to see him play with Jonah Moyo at a football field outside some little town near the Great Zimbabwe ruins, and it was a spirited night, to say the least. Zimbabweans drink a sorghum beer that can have the color of a strawberry shake - it's cheap and gets you drunk pretty fast, though not to the point of forgetting how to dance :-) At that time, back in the days of cassettes, both Dembo and Moyo had only recorded in small local studios and tapes were everywhere for about ZW$1-2 each. As Ziggy Marley says, "If you don't have good music, you don't stand a chance." So here's to the future of Zimbabwe, where the music won't let you stand still - hopefully better days ahead.

There is a rumor that Marcus Aurelius wrote part of his Meditations on the banks of the Váh river during the Marcommanic Wars, perhaps even in modern day Trenčín. This may or may not be true; from what i could deduce using internet resources, there seems to be general agreement he at least wrote them in the general area of Pannonia, which theoretically could include the Váh basin. What is apparently true is that Trenčín was the northernmost site the Roman legions ever occupied, though the single lasting indication of this is an inscription now only visible from inside the local Tatra Hotel, which is built in front of the cliff it was carved into. The Marcommanic tribes were led by Ballomar, who formed a Germanic coalition against the Empire and created quite a bit of havoc. However, they eventually succumbed to the greater military power of Rome, though not without a fight that lasted at least a decade. More than a millenium later, the area became enmeshed in Mitteleuropa's constant flux of kingdoms, princedoms, and defense against foreign invaders (most notably, the Turks).

As mentioned couple of weeks ago, I finally made the trip up to see the castle, which as far as medieval castles go, is fairly impressive. Unfortunately, the tours are given only in Slovak - a language i cannot follow even on the most primitive level - and pictures aren't allowed inside the buildings without an additional picture-taking ticket, so i can't show you any of the neolithic artifacts, roman skeletons (complete!) or cool medieval warrior garb on display. There are also many rooms of family portraits, mostly from the Illesházy line, which held the place for several generations. This was a Hungarian-Slovak family, though my temperamental guide was not too keen on acknowledging the first part of that combination. It's strange this animosity against Hungarians in Slovakia, since they never invaded the territory in the same ruthless way many others did. (Perhaps now that racism is no longer going to be in issue in the US, some of the American sociologists who don't want to look for jobs in history departments will come over here and sort it all out.)

The old town of Trenčín is still rather charming. The domed structure i'd immediately assumed was a Turkish bath, but in fact, it's an old synagogue. And the creature? You are looking at a taxidermic exhibit of Zubor Európsky, otherwise known as Bison bonasus. Yes, indeed, there once were bisons in Europe. Admitting my ignorance on that one, it was quite a surprise to see this in the town museum, where nobody was around to admonish me for using a camera.

Thom Yorke of Radiohead has a piece in today's Guardian about changing habits in the interest of slowing down climate change/reducing greenhouse gases. As i often notice in the British blogosphere (much more than in its American counterpart), readers' comments prove to be equally if not more insightful than the article being commented on. And of course, you can't put anything out there anymore that doesn't get scrutinized for contradictions (a good thing). Yorke structures his commentary around how to dodge the wicked witch's "I'm melting... melting" gloom and doom mindset. The fact that so many people can wax knowledgeable on this issue is perhaps the most uplifting aspect of it all.

And I Feel Fine

Osama, Osama, are you really devising threats of massive devastation over a cartoon???!!! Ya habibi, what are they putting in your dialysis machine?

Resolved: No More US Elections News

The other night i was watching Robert Greenwald’s Stop the FOX Virus series and realized that i have had enough. The War for the White House, Indecision 2008, Once Upon a Clinton – pick your poisoned appellation – has become a cultish operation of such immense proportions that the major campaigns have become virtually meaningless… and perhaps the candidates too, though i’m willing to admit they are serious individuals on serious personal crusades…. to wield more power than any of them individually deserve. Greenwald’s work is good, impeccable even, when it comes to illuminating gross and fanatical media manipulation. His hate for FAUX News is commendable. For non-americans who keep asking me – yes, even in 2008 - “Why was Bush re-elected in 2004??”, they explain a lot. However, i can’t take any more of the meaningless chatter, constantly replicated in the international media, about non-issues that are turned into issues because people at the highest levels of spin are afraid to disturb the status quo and talk about something meaningful.

Maybe even more discomfiting than what’s going on in mainstream media is the extent to which the (primarily but not solely) US progressive left media feels (apparently) compelled to refute and deconstruct. i don’t want to go to The Nation or Salon.com and read about what Obama’s REAL relationship with his minister is. i don’t care. People are putting these candidates under levels of scrutiny that they wouldn’t consider using with someone they have a one-night stand or even long term relationship with. “What’s your name again and have you ever said anything that was racist, or been close to someone whom i might possibly consider racist?” It’s important to know that before you start pulling off clothes in the heat of passion - NOT!

So yes, we don’t ask this of our friends and the argument that we should ask these things about political candidates is absurd. Not because i think leaders should be morally vacant, but let’s be real about the fact that anyone who makes it to the US Senate is going to (1) have dealt with constituents whose ideas they don’t agree with, (2) probably have had shady business associates, and (3) contradicted themselves at one time or another. People in other countries understand this, it is not an american phenomenon, it’s part of the human condition.

The question on everyone’s mind should be whether someone is capable and clear-thinking enough to run the executive branch of the US government. The current person in that position clearly does not meet these basic qualifications, so why go overboard about extraneous personal judgments when even John McCain fits the minimum job requirements? When candidates attack each other over this kind of stuff, it mostly shows how much they want to AVOID talking about things that concretely matter in terms of how the government is operating.

This evening i noticed a headline on one news site that claims Bill had Monica over when Hillary was in the house. Goddamn, the press just can’t let that one go, can they? i don’t think i have the stamina to see what HRC’s response to this is going to be, followed by endless media commentary on how she’s always been her own person or WHATEVER. Enough is enough. i come from the US and recognize the role it plays in the world. i acknowledge that my cultural roots are in many ways definitely american, or at least a particular american subculture. But at this point, there are some things i simply do not want to know about and the democratic circus is numero uno on the list.

Baltic Sea Snuff Conflict

Ever heard of the Aland Islands? No? Me, neither. Yet an interesting quagmire to the EU Lisbon Treaty ratification process has emerged up in the Baltic region where these semi-autonomous Finnish islands are located. Der Speigel has a story today about how the traffic in snuff based in the Alands - selling it off their boats to both Finnish and Swedish customers -has led to an uproar over supporting the EU treaty, because snuff is banned by the EU. According to Der Speigel, the snuff trade provides 40% of the islands' economy. The really interesting issue here is not whether snuff presents a serious health risk to citizens of the EU, but how Finland - as well as the EU - chooses to deal with historically autonomous regions within its borders. Whenever national leaders say things like "he would not allow the autonomous Aland Islands to threaten the European Union's treaty," the entire premise of consensual union starts to seem more than a little shaky.

Winter Soldier

Iraq Veterans Against the War are holding hearings this weekend in Washington, DC. to present testimonies about individual experiences of soldiers fighting the so-called war against terror. If you aren't familiar with the Winter Soldier concept, check out the terrific documentary film Sir! No Sir! which includes scenes from the first winter soldier hearings, held in 1971, by vets of the Vietnam war.

It's disturbing, yes, but also fascinating to hear from people inside the military what exactly they have been doing on the streets, in the prisons, and on combat missions. KPFA from Berkeley, California, has been broadcasting the hearings live, and archiving individual testimonies. There's more info, on-site blogs, etc. at the Iraq vets site. The sessions also included some testimony from journalists and Iraqis who have lived through the invasion nightmare and survived to tell about it.

I would like to share with you how one becomes a concentration camp guard without ever having really made any decisions. Christopher Ardent, speaking about his time as a Guantanamo guard

I'm thinking to myself, how tough does a question have to be in order to kill? Domingo Rosas, on the death of an Iraqi who died during interrogation

When you follow the crumb trail with respect to Iraqi corruption, it leads to American corruption, and investigating American corruption leads to the negligence, mismanagement, incompetence and dereliction of duty, of quite a few generals and colonels. Captain Luis Montalvan

So much of what's going on in Iraq is really being driven by a profit motive, and the actual human costs of the occupation is totally overlooked and totally insignificant for these corporations and the government, who is totally supporting this policy of corporate corruption and profiting off the backs and blood of Americans and the Iraqi people. Kelly Dougherty

i've been reading Patrick Cockburn's excellent book, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, in which he confirms from a journalistic perspective the arrogance and incompetence of the US military at the highest levels. What Cockburn makes absolutely clear is that just about every major decision about how to conduct this occupation has been done so inside concentric circles of surreal fantasy worlds: from the White House, to the State Department, to the Green Zone, to the embedded journalists and various groups of Iraqi exiles honing in for the pillage. He shares the story of meeting with some US diplomat inside the Green Zone, who tells him that according to the latest reports, the petrol shortages have been worked out. Cockburn decides it's not worth mentioning that he was late for the interview because of the traffic jams caused by the long lines of cars trying to get gas. When he gets into the countless stories of death and destruction, the divergence between doublespeak and reality is more stark, despicable and horrifying.

The Winter Soldier testimonies bring this out repeatedly. The soldiers say over and over that they were unable to reconcile what they were being told to do with what they understood the overall mission to be. Then another level of cognitive dissonance emerges when they come home and are threatened with deportation (if not US citizens) and/or try to get medical assistance from the Veterans Health Administration. An endless helix of nightmares intertwining. If ever one needed proof that nothing good can come from war, this is it.

Polling on Polling

The other night i was discussing my blog poll with a friend from Malaysia, and she was adamant that expats should vote in their national elections. As a Malaysian, she is denied this right, which readily reminded me that i too often take for granted rights which seem obvious, by which i mean naturally endowed, but in fact, are not so. If you're reading this and haven't voted in my blog, please do so, as i'm really interested in getting more input on this issue across the international spectrum!

Re Malaysia, the election just held there was a total upset to the ruling coalition party. Asia Times has a good article about the results. Four states were won by opposition parties, which means business as usual is potentially about to experience a radical change. Obviously the critique of neo-liberal, race-based elitism was stronger than the government anticipated:

Malaysian voters had until now tolerated corruption and authoritarianism among its leaders in exchange for relative social and economic stability....

And, in a message that should be taken to heart by their american counterparts this coming november:

It [the ruling party] had until now maintained political support by instilling fears, reiterated in the run-up to Saturday's polls, that a vote for the opposition would divide and weaken the nation....That significant numbers of Malays, Chinese and Indians voted for the opposition, despite the UMNO's fearmongering claims, will lessen the likelihood that discord will play out along racial lines.

So, it can be done. And Sze, i know you're angry that you couldn't vote, but at least these results should give you a little bit of vindication. Perhaps by the next election, the law that disallows your participation will have fallen by the wayside?

Fugies 'R US

It’s possible that a few people have been checking to see if i’m still among the non-renditioned, and to them i apologize for the delay in getting this onto the blog. Am presently on a swank german train – bar car clearly designed by the set production team of Gattaca - returning from Slovakia, where i had to dash off to for the weekend due to the newest wave of hungarian immigration rules coming in the wake of Schengen border enlargement… basically, spend money across the border and return with a receipt that has my name on it to prove i’ve only recently entered the country. So i’ve finally gotten my butt up to Trenčin, but i’m perhaps starting to digress, so more on that later (with photos).

The big news: i have a new passport!!! Valid till 2018, seemingly further into the future than i’m actually going to live. (Sorry if that seems too morbid for an otherwise upbeat news item, but if 2018 feels just around the corner to you, well then congratulations, you get to make the Hunter S. Thompson Celestial Immortality Wish for 2008.) The reason this p’port business has been such a major, stress-inducing – scratch that – utterly panic-stricken ordeal and i do mean some serious moments of intense hyperventilating, etc. is because i haven’t filed tax returns since 1999, plus some other stuff that i don’t want to elaborate on, except to say that the way the govt reps handled it was so mean-spirited - like everything’s been under the W Dick junta - it was the final straw for me in deciding to leave my country of origin fuck you and good riddance. Since i left (2001) i’ve sort of made of point of having nothing to do with the US govt: as the saying goes, Big Brother Is Watching, when you come from a country that puts hoods over children’s heads and flies them to barges or barracks beyond the bounds of google maps, being a financial fugitive (essentially) and having to ask the State Dept. for a favor isn’t the most comforting position to find oneself in. But i did it, the ordeal’s over and from micro to macro levels, i can finally get on with my life.

As my buddy Mike also discovered last month, they’ve changed the size of the photos to 5x5 cm, about a half-cm short on each side of what comes out of those automatic photo machines. Why the dimensions have changed i don’t know, but now the photo is no longer on the inside of the cover; instead, it’s kind of watermarked-hologrammed into the first page of the passport. With the “Road Map” reaching so many dead ends and Condi clearly at increasingly loose ends in her quest for a legacy (well, she’s got one but it’s definitely not one to brag about), those folks over at the State Dept have surely been desperately depressed and must’ve decided arts and crafts was just the thing to rekindle their creative energies. The inside back cover now looks like this: (One of my coworkers asks, “Does this mean we now have to get US visas to go to the moon?”)

while each 2-page spread has a different photo and quote. Here’s my cynical favorite:

Talk about misrepresenting someone’s words! (It reads: We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream.) It’s enough to make me wonder whether Hillary and Bubba choose them as a way to show respect for…. the buffalo reintroduction programs on the plains of Arkansas???

Honestly, whenever some US govt PR person comes up with what they believe to be proudly patriotic, i just feel my connection to the country wither away at an accelerating pace. This particular page of propaganda first embarrassed and then angered me. i can already see the cynical glances it’s sure to engender from immigration officials just about everywhere, except maybe Estonia where we’re still given preferential parking.

Jumping back to my state of paranoia about the p’port business, i did a bit of research to see whether anyone else has ever been in my position and if so, what’s happened to them. Exact matches came up nil, but i did find some curious stuff. For example, on the FBI’s WANTED page, they present a featured fugitive of the week. Kinda cool, eh? (Another digression: they’ve got a really stylish headshot of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Caught on there; i’m starting to wonder whether terrorist numero uno has a photo agent somewhere) The fugie capital of the US is apparently Las Vegas which surprised me - i actually have always assumed it to be Miami. Spain has some 400.000 people on its fugitives list, with some highly dramatic captures and almost-captures. Interpol describes fugitives as being mobile and opportunistic, so it’s no wonder the list in Spain hasn’t diminished much over approx. 30 yrs.

It seems that AWOL american soldiers end up on the national fugitives list in the US as a matter of course, which i had not realized possible, though it would make sense that breaking one’s military contract would be considered a federal crime. Or, as in this case, they are running from both the army and criminal charges. It was quite interesting to learn that the vast majority of foreign nationals the US has been extraordinarily renditioning to Guantanamo, et al. come from countries with which it doesn’t have extradition treaties. Maybe someone reading this knows whether that means the country of origin has no legal means of complaint when one of their nationals disappears into Uncle Sam’s armpit?? Interpol has devised a color-coded alert system (where else have we seen that clever idea?) with a special insignia for members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. If you check this link, you’ll notice that they have put a disclaimer on there saying all wanted persons are innocent until proven guilty, in spite of the fact that every fugitive on their list is described in unqualified criminal terms. i know there are bad people in the world, it just seems ridiculous to pretend you're giving them the benefit of a doubt.

The last thing i’ll mention here is that there is currently a backlog of over 600.000 fugitive cases listed in the United States. This should come as a relief to anyone thinking about robbing a BofA and then hopping a boat to Barbados. No matter how much cash the government dumps into its numerous ‘Smoke ‘em Out’ agencies, they just can’t keep up. If i’d known that before, i would never have been so worried about my own situation. So let’s pop the cork and toast the bureaucrats of the 21^st century, making the world save for subversives from sea to shining sea.

Al-Jazeera Covering Native Rights Momements

Just came upon these two films from al-Jazeera's english language site, and they are worth watching. The first is about Native Americans and loosely revolves around the question of the Lakota and Navaho relationship with the US political system. There's a telling moment in the "limo lobby", when a grassroots activist and rep from the Navaho president's office are discussing the lack of accountability around massive coal projects and the reporter tells the pro-coal govt rep that he should be making his argument to his fellow citizen, not the camera. Telling because he's caught in the historically standard approach of presenting these seriously destructive projects as being in the best interests of the tribe, end of story.



The second video is from a demonstration of native peoples in Malaysia, a bit dated at 3 months but no matter. The interesting aspect of al-Jazeera doing this is that it's a no holes barred expose on the authoritarian nature of a Muslim state. The police come down quite hard on the demonstrators, no justification at all for it. You can read more about the struggle between native rights and the Muslim government's stealing of their resources here and here. If you check the links, you'll see that this is the same battle found in all tropical forests, where illegal logging is going on for extensive profit with either govt complicity or total lack of oversight, OR, where indigenous people are being stripped of their rights to life, livelihood and peaceful resistance in the name of progress, national development (for the few) and open markets (for the foreign-based companies). The people of Sarawak have been defending their lands for a long, long time now. Kudos to al-Jazeera for some excellent media coverage that the rest of the corporate media continues to ignore or misrepresent.

Nuked Sushi & Creative Impulse

A couple weeks ago, passed this bit of impulse graffiti on one of Budapest’s tram stops. For the non-hungarian-speaking minority of people reading this (haha) it translates: In the morning, I was more creative. Am i the only person who’d concur?

Probably not. Drifting through the dream mist, in those minutes before the coffee’s poured and you’re stretching sleep-stiffened limbs, eyes not entirely focused on surroundings, mind trying to pull together remembered threads of last night’s reveries or whatever’s floating out there surreal on the brain skim, not required to mesh with mundane realities soon to flood one’s wakefulness. Before i get it together to look at the news, read the email, organize the day’s work, i pass through an unspoken, subtly acknowledged exit from that space in which sentences don’t need verbs and images don’t need reasons. The content of the creative impulse is all Zen meant-to-be-ish, things fit together by choosing their own entries into the frame and whatever enters is accepted as somehow appropriate.

Creativity at other times of day is a challenge for me. Ideas that do emerge seem boring, derivative, disconnected from anything another person would be at all interested in. Blogging is a helluva lot easier if you just throw tantrums at other people’s endless outpourings. The other day i was cruising around the net, still working on rebuilding the 2 years of bookmarks inadvertently left behind when i left Palestine, came upon this great little film on Boing Boing TV. Brilliant piece of satire, and even though i’m jealous that someone else came up with the idea, i’m embedding it here in the spirit of supporting his creative impulse. Enjoy!

You can go to Stefan Nadelman’s site for the cuisinary legend, in case some of the actors were unclear.

One of the very few books i left the US with is The Creativity Book, by Eric Maisel, who’s actually a psychologist. It’s a great little “how to” course on stimulating ideas and converting them mostly into written form. Curiously, the first assignment is to write some thousands of words autobiography; i say curiously, because it a person either has led a creative life and they just need to be reminded of it, or s/he’s led a totally boring life and what could be a bigger and more discouraging task than to take your boring little existence and try to turn it into something that would mesmerize Bollywood? As you might has guessed, i skip this first task whenever i decide to start jumping through his self-help hoops again.

One of the things Maisel says that absolutely rings true for me: Self-consciousness kills creativity. However: it seems much easier to subvert the internal censors, whatever their temperament, when dealing with two- or even three-dimensional media than with words. Language, for me, is a whole different bulb of wax, never so smoothly shaped or manipulated. Write without self-consciousness? This is a conundrum, since the whole point of writing is to convey your ideas, wherever they come from, in a way other people can digest. How is that done without being conscious of whether what you’re saying makes any kind of sense??

These are musings, merely, and i haven’t gotten to the question of whether words that emerge from creative impulse are per force more meaningful, or potent, than those coming out of raw experiences in which creativity seemingly has no role to play. True enough, the writing of them is itself a creative act. Thus this blog. Thus this ridiculous blog entry. i noticed the other day that on the blogger dashboard, there’s a running ticker of blogs that have just had things added to them. The names change faster than i can read them, which means faster than i can click on them to see what’s going up on all these cyberbahn billboards. i wonder: what were all these nameless bloggers doing with their creative impulses before the internet? Did it take the medium to open the floodgates? i do cruise the virtual highway just to see what’s out there, throw of the dice, and there’s this huge feeding frenzy of people blogging about blogging… medium creates the outlet, outlet becomes the focus, focus becomes somehow transcendent as in: i met this girl in a bar who asked me if i blogged, to which i said ‘yes’, to which she said, ‘cool, it’s totally the thing to be doing’ and so i asked what she wrote about and the answer, ‘ya know, just stuff’. And i had to ask myself whether, if she had continued this exchange and asked me the same thing, i would say, ‘oh, ya know, just Chomsky’ because maybe that wouldn’t fall into the STUFF category as she understands it and then even though i was doing the hip thing, it would turn out to not be part of what matters in the run of all that’s raging.

My good friend K may be on the verge of signing a book deal, which is so terrific and i’m really proud of her for getting her words out. What she says is that she’s just relieved to think they might see the light of day, meaning the light that distinguishes black-inked words from the white of paper… how very 20^th century, n’est-ce pas? Yet i get this. It’s tangible. Like a piece of clay that’s moved from the wheel to the kiln and is now awaiting placement on someone’s crockery shelf. Nothing unself-conscious about that. None of that misty stuff-i-ness that permeates this other world. Still, i have to salute the multitude of bloggers for acting on their impulses, and i hope whomever among them who's taken the time to read this will find something to spark them anew, then send that flash of light back to me, cuz i'm sitting here in the dark now, waiting for morning to come and my own lapsed creative forces to reveal themselves, however briefly.