Arab Spring

The so-called "Domino Effect" that I thought was a figment of the imagination of all political scientists has started to topple the most deeply entrenched regimes of the Middle East.

And while America (albeit somewhat hesitantly seeing as how we are chummy with some of these fellows) supported these mini-revolutions, I honestly do not care either way.

To me, the stagnant and oppressive states of these countries is owed only to a fatal flaw in their mentality, be it Arab, Persian, Kurdish, Berber and so on.

No matter the country or specific culture, the way they think is so collectively entrenched that their behavior, how they view themselves and the world and most importantly how they relate to other people will never change, no matter how many Egyptian youths show up at Tahrir square clammoring for revolution.

The spread of technology and Western culture did not make the area any more liberal or open, instead the actions they condem us for have become much easier to commit but driven much deeper into the shadows. Their streets are tense and oppressive, and none of that has to do with their head of state.

But Mubarak did become the focus of their pent-up anger, of a deep bitterness at the state of their lives and their inexistent prospects for the future.

I am no Mubarak expert but I am well aware of his human rights record, and had to simply meander around Cairo to see how much the Musr quality of life has suffered under his rule.

The high rate of unemployment is evident in the countless numbers of men lazing about and homeless wandering the streets.

The city's infrastructure is dilapidated and enormous heaps of trash in the middle of bustling avenues are commonplace.

Ousting him is the most logical action I have seen any Egyptian take, yet why did it take so long?

And what comes next?

love is all you need

It's been so so long.

What have I learned in the past year? What is my current state of mind?

I learned what love truly is.

Despite what our culture says, it's quite common, irrational and holds a desperate grip on ones emotions and judgement, completely distorting the thinking process.

Indeed brain scans of individuals in love have been shown to be similar to those of patients suffering from mental illness. Other studies have shown how those in love exhibit extreme behaviors and fixations like sufferers of obsessive compulsive disorder.

Thus, the core of who you are is so buried underneath all of this lunacy that living in this love becomes your only avenue for "happiness."

Yet I struggle to imagine any other means of safely and efficiently raising a family other than love and monogamy.

Perhaps procreation in the setting of love and marriage serves a deeper need in the human besides the continuation of their genes.

This person, living with you sharing your most intimate moments, and those which are most ugly to oneself, serving as a means of exposing things which you keep hidden from yourself.

They are a reflection of images you don’t accept are your own.

Perhaps this is where the breakdown in these linkages occur, when you are shown something that you refuse to accept or stubbornly wish to hold on to, in some odd way feeling that it is a part of you. Then you begin to shift blame, to project dark feelings onto this person, as the cause for their existence instead of the catalyst of their unearthing.

Of course baser needs are always at the root of such things, but maybe our brain, endlessly adaptable and always useful and efficient employs the same mechanism to fill our Darwinian needs and our spiritual needs- these occupy a very intricate place in our existence giving a sense of purpose to our actions, driving the search for meaning in our lives something that again could circle back to giving us enough stability to survive while raising offspring.

He bad, you know it

What is this madness?

The same media that mercilessly hounded Michael Jackson, that ridiculed him and contributed to all of the stress and mania in his life is now absolutely “torn apart” by his death
With 24/7 coverage of everything surrounding his untimely demise
Or maybe it’s just that they know the general public is heartbroken, and capitalizing on Jackson’s death is ratings gold

Such class

I really don’t understand why people are so interested in learning every detail of the man's death, his state of health at the time including his weight and the dosages of which prescription drugs he took and tons of other things in this area
I have refused to give any of this coverage my attention so I can’t really elaborate anymore

(and this memorial going on at the staples center is just weird to me, and a little awkward just a bunch of randos standing on stage and singing his songs....they should have just all shut the fuck up and played his music and videos)

Why can’t people just reflect on his talent? Focusing only on the art that he was so devoted to and respectfully leaving his children alone even if they weren’t biologically his
It ain’t yo business sucka so stay out of it

A couple months ago while in Egypt, I listened to some of his older stuff (my bf had tons of his music) and I remember thinking to myself: wow dude, this guy truly is amazing (adding that he just went a little nutso as of late, you can safely say that fame does that to people, and he more than anyone else had to deal with this insane super-intense fame)
But anyway,
No one can touch Michael Jackson at his peak, he was genius and mad cool
Even in Jackson 5 tracks you could hear this blaring voice coming from this tiny little thing, he just had so much soul
And I think his death touched a nerve with people just because he was this milestone in a lot of people’s lives
I think he was one of the first black men that the white community really embraced
White Americans wanted to BE him, they wanted to sing and dance like him, dress like him and do everything he did (except maybe chill with Madonna…blecch)
Everybody wanted to be like Mike
I can’t think of any black man before that time that you could say that about
Of course, after that it was pretty common for white teenagers to run around and pretend to be black

I can’t truly say I feel sad at his passing, it is tragic that his children are now father-less, and that he didn’t get to tour one last time, I think it would have done him a lot of good to get back into performing
But really he was troubled, and he led a difficult existence even as a child


So rest in peace baby, your unquestionable talent will truly be missed

MJ 58-09

being "spiritual" vs. being "religious"

"i'm not religious but i'm spiritual"

What does that mean exactly? To me “religious” implies dogma. Adherence to a list of rules supposedly set by an invisible hovering thing responsible for creation Living according to this set of rules: Submission. In this case hope is simply the expectation of regaining control of our lives But if religion is truly about surrendering oneself to the almighty, god has a plan, then why the free will? I think this is why the ideas of heaven and hell arose, for people to be able to choose god’s path, in exchange for rewards, or more so for the avoidance of punishment.

Religion arose as a way creating group cohesion.

It wasn’t until Christianity that it was no longer tied to the tribe…the family, it became power-hungry, it became about influence and expansion and of course other belief systems followed suit (what is islam if not an ever-expanding empire? what exactly do you think the great conqueror mohammed did upon returning to mecca? he definitely didn't high-five his previous naysayers he took over that bitch, quite violently at that) Basically, religion is making a claim that no man on earth can ever make, be he priest or a scientist and that is an explanation of our existence.

Why we are here, what purpose we serve, and what exactly happens to us once our physical bodies stop functioning? maybe you have some misgivings about this aspect, maybe you can't keep denying evolution but for you religion isn't about these details, it's about loving one another, turning the other cheek blah blah blah

Even in this effort, it fails miserably. There's a lot of pretty morbid useless bullshit in the old testament, and even your homeboy jesus used several metaphors for striking down the unbelievers. Human beings can do incredibly selfless things without being told to do so by "god" and really, the 10 commandments are not the most intelligent discourse on morality.

As his first order of business, god, in all of his wisdom, basically claimed dibs "you shall have no other god besides me" or something to that affect.

His second act was even more ridiculous. In the grand scheme of things, in a world with people dying of disease and starvation, a world with child soldiers, sex trafficking, cancer, mutilation and death in the name of a “holy cause” the alpha and the omega saw it fit to include a commandment about not using the word “god” in a less than flattering way but what can you expect, after all the bible was written by ignorant men, it's the best they could do on such short "divinely inspired" notice.

How about ONE commandment: do not harm another living being in any way, shape or form. This would cover everything from emotional abuse to deforestation How efficient is that? But I guess a mere mortal like myself will never understand god’s wisdom.

Ok so, you still will never forsake your precious jesus. That’s cool, as absurd as your belief system is I can accept your freedom to think whatever you damn well please. Even though to me, it’d be like an ancient greek trying to preach to me about zeus. Regardless, just as I am not going to allow someone to tell me what to believe, I will not impose this on another. But that’s just the thing, christians DO this.

Instead of just disagreeing with people’s choices and going on their own merry way they try to push their own beliefs onto others, and condemn those who choose to formulate their own conclusions on life.

Plus, how can you possibly tell another person how to live or what to feel? The diversity of experience is so different for each person a parent can’t even get in the head of their own child, let alone some catholic guy is going to tell me I can’t be with someone of my same sex.

Who are you to choose who I can love? Or to tell me I can’t use birth control? Or not to eat meat on a Friday or to dunk my baby in a bowl of water to cleanse him of some imaginary sin.

Absolutely ridiculous.

And frankly I can’t believe there are people who still fervently believe in all of this stuff. People who use this religion divisively, to discriminate and judge others Which is why I don’t even consider religion to be in the realm of spirituality To me being spiritual is about trying to discover one’s essence To acquire a diversity of knowledge from great thinkers of all races and cultures in order to better understand the human condition. The ultimate goal to attain a state of peace and harmony within existence.

Religion is like political ideology, selling loyal followers on the illusion of control Claiming to have all the answers, setting forth an explanation for all of life’s mysteries with no room for expansion. Religion is closed and rigid.

Spirituality is completely the opposite of this, it’s fluid and open, it’s an exploration it’s inquisitive. It’s the evolution of consciousness.

And what is with religion demonizing the human form? When did a naked body become something shameful? Obviously in this day in age it isn’t wise for everyone to be naked all the time. It’s common knowledge that especially in the business world for women to be respected and treated as equals they can’t be putting their boobs on display. It’s better to be more neutral in certain situations But either way, we are creatures like all others, at core concerned with surviving long enough to pass on our DNA. Thus sex is completely natural, it’s organic, we are born with this urge. Neitzsche agrees that religion's "morality" is detrimental to the development of higher men, and this was one element he indicates. Sex is a natural drive, why make it shameful? And while it’s not a bad thing. But it shouldn’t dictate every action in our lives I like to think we’ve evolved to a level of sophistication that rises above these primal urges.

But if we did, I guess things like the burqa or re-virginization surgeries wouldn’t exist

I'll let Freud take it from here:

"In my Future of an Illusion I was concerned much less with the deepest sources of the religious feeling than with what the common man understand by his religion-- with the system of doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him the riddles of the world with enviable completeness and on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here. The common man cannot imagine this Providence otherwise than in the figure of an enormously exalted father. Only such a being can understand the needs of the children of men and be softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of their remorse. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life."

Ultimately, humanity as a whole is not ready for the next level. We’re still tied down to unsubstantiated belief systems.

Today, President Obama makes his highly anticipated speech in Cairo. Why is this important? Because he is engaging the Middle East and the Muslim world in a way that we never have before. Diplomacy in the region had been intensely focused on Israel, while any attention brought on the Arab nations was military and strategic in nature.
Traditionally friendly relations with countries like Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and the Gulf nations need to be strengthened and expanded
Say what you will about him quoting the Koran but let’s be real here, there are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, it definitely wouldn’t hurt for him to garner some of their support.

Anyway, in honor of such a momentous occasion I will write a little bit about what I learned from Egypt. I have visited three times, and spent a total of three months and a week.
The first time I went I didn’t enjoy being barraged by sketchballs trying to sell me their crappy, unimaginative wares. But for the most part I enjoyed myself.
When I returned, however, I felt like I had my eyes closed that first visit. There can be a pretty sullen atmosphere in the streets, despite all the movement. And everywhere you go there are scanning gazes, almost overbearing at times.

Egypt is chaos loosely strung together in a society; culture formed out of the tension of living in survival mode.
Cairo is at the center of this milieu, and the spot most visitors choose to launch their explorations. There is trash and people everywhere, some lounging, others darting through traffic, others shuffling about on disorienting routes.
This is what a country becomes when the government neglects its people, its infrastructure, and the educational system and locks up anyone speaking out about it.

Perhaps most disparaging is that Egyptians unwisely mistreat whatever tourism it attracts through the exploitation of its historical sites.
The pyramids are being encroached upon in all directions. One can walk 10 feet out of the entrance and sit in a Pizza Hut with Khufu’s magnificent tomb as a backdrop.
It doesn’t take much time for the foreigner to realize he is a walking dollar sign to most of the populace. Entrance fees are one example. An Egyptian ticket into Al-Ahram is 2LE while everyone else pays 100LE.
For me, the tourism industry is about facilitating the sharing of a host country’s wonders with visitors. Egypt makes this concept ridiculous.
Its people have succumbed to desperation in the face of debilitating poverty, unemployment and overpopulation. For this reason the “take the tourist for everything he’s worth” attitude is understandable, and certainly not a new concept in the developing world.

And really, what we spend on our vacation can be easily re-earned in a few months if not weeks.
Try working 11+ hour days 6 or 7 days a week and getting paid $180 a month.

Try imagining a life where your only aspiration is to save money to buy and furnish an apartment and then marry a woman of your same religion.

Family and society dictate your decisions. While in secret, Egyptians partake of all the usual sinful pleasures- drugs, alcohol, sex.
They all have cell phones, use the internet, download shit illegally, watch porn (featuring an all-American cast no less).
And most, if not all, young Egyptian men wish they could come to America. They long for a steady job and to be able to date aimlessly, no pressure.

They watch our movies and listen to our music, they wear imitations of our clothes. They love practicing their English (mostly men can speak it). They think we are promiscuous, fun-loving, incredibly privileged and happy people. This is true, except the happy part. For some reason Americans find it so fucking difficult to be happy. You have it good here buddy, really and truly.

We are free in ways that millions of people in this world only dream of being.

Egyptian society is incredibly invasive. Random people in the street feel they have the right to tell you how to dress and what is considered appropriate contact with your significant other. Case in point, I leaned my head on my boyfriend’s shoulder at a café, and the owner came over and told me to sit properly. If you travel from one city to the next by bus or car, you will hit at least 4 checkpoints an hour.

But ruins are magnificent and most are in pristine condition, the museum has the coolest shit I’ve ever seen, even 3000 year old mummies with teeth, hair and nails still in tact. The beach towns are pretty laid back and there are a lot of foreigners chillin there and having a good time. These sites have some of the best diving the world has to offer.
Smokin shisha is very nice, Sakkara beer is fantastic and the food is cheap and tasty. And Arabic is by far the coolest looking language ever, and it sounds lovely.

I would definitely recommend spending some time in Egypt. I hope to go back, I have some unfinished business with Siwa Oasis (yes real oases do exist) and I want to get my PADI certification.

Ultimately what I learned is that one cannot truly be a free-thinker until one is able to isolate culture from identity.
I was allowed this objectivity in Egypt. Who I am is not tied to my likes and dislikes, what I wear, listen to, eat or do. Even what language I speak and my physical appearance have no bearing on this person that is “Fatima.” Egyptians easily mistook my facial features for theirs.
What I’m saying is that, one places too much emphasis on the box that their respective society has built around them. But this is not who you are, one can easily adopt a different way a living and realize that their true being rises beyond a certain set of human behaviors.

Who would you be if you were not American?
Who would you be if you were not white? Or black? Asian or Hispanic?
Who would you be if you were born elsewhere?

This is why I think travel is so important. It exposes you to yourself.

BE THE CHANGE

Being on hiatus from my travels I’ve come to see just how sick I am of some aspects of the West

We live comfortable lives in our rich countries that most of us aren’t really thankful for

As much as I love the freedoms we are blessed with (there are sooooo many, some we don’t even realize are freedoms until we go somewhere else) I am just completely fed up with America and its focus on such trivial garbage as celebrity culture and reality tv

Is the show The Hills really such a great testament to man’s intelligence and creativity?
We all know this shit is scripted (quite badly actually) so why the hell has it been on for so many seasons?
Our lives are so empty that we sit and watch banal conversations between strangers for 30 minutes
These shallow, uninteresting people that offer nothing to the advancement of the human race

And why should we be concerned with what that dude from Twilight is doing every second of the day? Honestly people, that guy is such a bad actor and that movie was way too awkward to be a love story
But just the same we find these strangers so enthralling, so much so that we even wanted to see the picture of a famous woman after she was brutalized by her boyfriend
Lord knows how much TMZ paid for that picture, it was so in demand it was probably enough to build a 20 story, 5 star halfway house for victims of spousal abuse

Even the news is propaganda
Yellow journalism stirring up false passions for the sake of ratings
Even CNN puffs up stories that should have never been given 2 seconds of our attention

Who cares what some beauty pageant contestant thinks anyway?
If we really valued their opinions we wouldn’t parade them around in bikinis and grade them on how good they looked in them

One flips through channels only to find myriad newscasters dramatizing everything while pundits rant and argue.

And all of this takes our attention away from what is really happening in the world, away from the people that truly need us to care about them

We don’t realize that there are people who think we can save them, but how? How when we are so busy worrying about ourselves?

Right now the situation isn’t that great for Americans, a lot of people lost their jobs and are struggling to keep their houses
Our happy little bubble burst
Now, throw in starvation, violence, lack of basic medial care and education, deep-seated and completely justified mistrust of police and government and you have real suffering

We are resilient enough to get through this, we’ve done it before
But there are countries that are stuck in this never-ending cycle of destruction

I watched some of chris rock’s most recent stand-up and he was talking about how fucked up it is that Americans buy bottled water
A child in some remote part of the world has to walk however many miles (more than 20 feet is too much if you ask me) to get clean drinking water, while we don’t deign to drink from our faucets

As chris rock calls it: “ass water”
we drink bottled water and we wash our asses with tap

I’m completely guilty of this too, I’ve been to places where bottled water could be considered a necessity for health reasons but I’m in new jersey for fuck’s sake, I really need to spend 2 bucks on water from Fiji? (all of this while the indigenous inhabitants of Fiji, subjected to the rule of a military junta who is chummy with the water corp. do not have clean drinking water)

Anyway that’s not my point

My point is that while we are so embroiled in our so-called “problems” (in quotations because I think they are really quite small compared to those of places where women get brutally raped if they go to gather firewood to cook and feed their families) we lose perspective
We are in a privileged position to do a lot of good in the world
To alleviate suffering, even if it’s only one person
Saving one life is enough to not feel hopeless in this strange world

Do your part

Idealist.org
Globalgiving.com

Genocide Olympics

I understand the imperatives of developing nations, noting that the U.S. did undertake horrific measures to ensure its prosperity- slavery, deals and instigating coups in shady countries
America’s hands are by no means clean nor its history sinless

But the fact is, at the time no one was in a position to remedy these situations
And I like to think that human beings learn from their mistakes, that they vow to never allow these things to occur
They know better now
The U.S. is not the same country it was 7 years ago, let alone a decade or century ago.
Our rhetoric is informed by generations of trial and error
We are in a continuous state of self-improvement

And within this context of “knowing better” we are allowing injustices to continue
Short of advocating any kind of military approach, we need to do something
Our leverage does not lie in our weapons
Our political system is stable, our institutions fair and effective, we are prosperous and our culture cloaks the world- art, literature, movies, music, even our slang
It is our presence that makes the Olympics legitimate
Victory would be hollow, knowing that they did not compete with the best in the world, that they didn’t really prove themselves

But this isn’t a statement we’re willing to make
Given how dependent we are on our polluted Asian friend

So at this point all that we can do, is honor the victims enough to educate ourselves
To know what lies at the root of all of this hoopla
I leave you with these facts

-China sold arms to Sudan
bullets that pierced innocent men, women and children were supplied by China

I understand neutrality man, but the difference between you and Sweden is that you enabled this destruction, you put the weapons in the hands of the janjeweed
You shook hands with Bashir as he stood idly by, counting his money while 400,000 people were brutally murdered, and 2 million raped and mutilated refugees fled in terror

Actively selling arms to international pariah states doesn’t exactly qualify as “non-interference”

It would be equal to America selling giant furnaces, building railroads and giving billions of dollars in unconditional aid to Germany during the Holocaust

And we’d actually have to take it a step further, as up until 2007 China barred the deployment of peacekeepers and the levying of tangible sanctions
But don’t take it from me, let the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong explain their view on the mutilation and death of innocent Sudanese
“Business is business…the internal situation in Sudan is an internal affair, and we are not in a position to impose upon them”

So during the Holocaust, we would not only not have become involved but done everything in our power to prevent others from intervening

Maybe to China it’s just a matter of supply and demand
But when the demand is coming from one of the most conflicted areas in the world, wouldn’t you hesitate to add more fuel to the fire?
“Africa today has become, in the popular media, synonymous with poverty, a blot on the conscience of the world, the last place where absolute poverty is not yet on the way to eradication. It is also the place where the nation-state is said to have utterly failed in delivering the promises made at the time of its birth” (Chatterjee, 2005).

-China is also forging tight relationships with other unstable African countries
Currently drilling or exploring for oil in Sudan, Angola, Algeria, Chad, Gabon, Nigeria, Namibia, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Ethiopia (Amosu, 2007). It is extracting copper and cobalt from Zambia and Congo, purchasing timber from Cameroon, Mozambique, Gabon, Guinea and Liberia, and obtaining platinum and chrome from Zimbabwe

Say it with me people: “zim-bob-wey” also known as “moo-gah-bee”
Do yourself a favor and wikipedia Robert Mugabe: a brutal, authoritarian senior citizen who is still in the process of rigging this year’s presidential election

Chinese and Zimbabwean military ties are among the closest on the African continent, with Zimbabwe receiving jet aircrafts, vehicles, and a Chinese radar system.
In June 2004, Zimbabwe purchased $240 million worth of Chinese military equipment (Foerstel, 2008)
China even built President Mugabe’s $9 million mansion

China is financing corrupt regimes; enabling them to continue their destructive reigns at the expense of their people’s welfare

Now wikipedia Angola and marvel at the injustice
One of those most corrupt regimes in the world, is China’s bro

Angola is rolling in the petro-dough, its growth rate has been projected at 20.8% for 2007, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing economies (Shinn, 2007).

“And yet this is the same country where one out of three children dies before reaching the age of 5, where average life expectancy is 38, where cholera, polio and hemorrhagic fevers like the Marburg virus flourish — a country that ranks 160th out of the 177 countries on the United Nations' Human Development Index. How, and when, will the cataract of oil money flow down the hill from Luanda Sul to improve the lives of Angola’s impoverished, war-weary citizens?” (Traub, 2006)

If our lack of intervention in Africa (Sudan, Rwanda, Congo, Liberia) can be seen as complicity, then what does that make China? A country actively engaged in funding and protecting corrupt and volatile regimes
Providing asses like Mugabe and Bashir with lucrative resources
Our foreign aid may suck compared to oil revenues but at least we aren’t eagerly perpetuating Africa’s debilitating instability



The sources cited in this post:

Amosu, Akwe. (2007). China in Africa: It’s (still) the governance stupid. Foreign Policy in Focus. Retrieved from http://www.fpif.org/

Chatterjee, Partha. (2005). Empire and Nation Revisited: 50 Years after Bandung. Inter Asia Cultural Studies, 6 (4)

Foerstel, Karen. (2008). China in Africa. The CQ Researcher, 2 (1) 1—26

Shinn, David H. (2007). Africa, China, the United States and Oil. Center for Strategic and International Studies Online Africa Policy Forum. Retrieved from: http://forums.csis.org/africa/index.php?s=Shinn&searchbutton=Go%21

Traub, James. (2006). China’s African Adventure. The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/magazine/19china.html?ei=5088&en=92b91 6a872aa4d3&ex=1321592400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all


(This is a good one--->) Friedman, L. Thomas. (2006). The First Law of Petropolitics. Foreign Policy, May/June, 31–2.