Declaration from a Beirut Citizen, who is not a paid member in any party May 9, 2008
The escalation of violence in Beirut Happened too quickly to make sound analysis or conclusions. But there are specific situations that did not happen:
There is no real surprise in the On-going armed clashes in the streets of Beirut (Please check your memory of Events concerning Lebanon in the last three years). There is no occupation of Hamra neighborhood or others by Hizbullah forces. There is no occupation, but street violence. There are no check points that ask for ID and sect/religion. There is no Sectarian Violence, only political Violence. There is no theft/looting of broken spaces, places. There is no attacking of homes and raping of women and young kids. There is no WAR on the streets.
Now, as far as what is happening on the streets, last day & night, we were stuck at home, watching TV, surfing the net, reading the papers, writing a little... We arrived at home under bullets raining in the upper direction above our heads... The loud sound doesn't provide you with accurate directions, so you feel it is coming from everywhere and going to everywhere including yourself... After that, We continued to hear of bullets in the air, breaking the rhythm of usual night sounds in Beirut...
The night was pretty intense, the fighting did not stop very much... then Heavy Rain & thunder added Music to the Atmosphere... and it was hard while sleeping to distinguish the sound of a rocket propeller from that of Thunder, as if God and his party (Hizbullah) were musicians in the same Lebanese Orchestra... The morning was much calmer, with few shooting moments... It seems that the gun fights have stopped in Beirut, we will see tonight...
We went out today in Hamra, the streets were empty, rare civilians out there, shopping or looking for an open store, throwing garbage...
(SIDE NOTE, Barbar Snack was Open, This place never closes!!!!!!! During the July 2006 war, Barbar was Open all the time... at that time, no fuel, no electricity, but Barbar had the Ovens hot and running bringing out Manakeech at a high rate 5 per minute... I Remember going to Barbar 10 years ago at 4 in the morning, Open again... I really think, that during Judgment day, and the billion of billions of people from different centuries and Archeological backgrounds will be waiting in line to be judged by GOD... well while waiting you can have a sandwich at Barbar, at any Lunar-Eternal Clock time... of course next to Barbar, will be aligned Religious stands providing forgiveness passes to Heaven on the condition to vote for their prophets in the next Heaven Munipal Committee Elections...)
Back to Beirut Streets, a lot of ''armed civilians/citizens'' were controling the streets, these people belong to The Opposition Forces, they were not actually Hizbullah but Syrian National Party Members who happen to have a ''cultural center'' in Hamra... Two streets above us, the Army was in control... Some streets looked roughed up from fighitng... Building with Broken Glass, Broken walls...
What really happened in the big picture?
The opposition, lead by Hizbullah, decided to spread its control over the streets as a response to the political maneuvring and provocations of the Non United Government who is also trying to spread its control over the country thru state institutions, more specifically in light of official steps towards controlling Resistance Infrastructures...
It is a new phase in the on going conflict between the Legitimacy of the Government lead by March 14 parties versus the Legitimacy of the Resistance backed by Opposition Parties.
The Half-Government now in place controls the state, the Opposition controls the streets... Each party tries to gain more power in its field as a part of changing the rules of the game to its own interests... There is no real constant status quo in Lebanon, the situation is so fluid that it will remain dynamic...
The Surgical Operations were well prepared, targetting Future armed Forces... Yes Future has a militia just like the Opposition is operated by militias... the Operations were very intense but quick. It is clear that the Future Party has a poor presence on the streets... its fighters are poorly trained, no experience in such action... So the fights did not last long... now, the streets are in control by the Opposition to a very big degree... and the next step is to move back the conflict to the Politicians and not to keep it in the hands of fighters... This transition phase is very precise and delicate and it needs to happen quickly... Of course, the Opposition has gained some leverage in the negotiations for a Big Settlement in Lebanon...
Peace Everybody! So May is the month of my birth, the biological clock that is life blessed me with the Gemini status, so not only am I two people, I always try to find two solutions, in case things don't work out the first time. That being said, music is my passion and has been a way of reaching out to the masses on our experience as Arabs in the Americas (that's Canada Too). That was my second option in life to what I was doing in school; always thinking of ways to counter the trends against and for our by or towards our people.
I am in San Francisco right now, with some family to perform at the Nakba 60 Show at the Civic Center in San Francisco Tomorrow. I'm here with the brothers from Arab Summit, alongside many groups such as Rebel Diaz and the Palestinian movement that is DAM. I will be writing to you guys over the weekend to tell you how we all linked up, share pictures and experiences with the entire Arab Hip-Hop Community.
Alongside with personal anxiety and growth in the month of May, I've noticed a trend. As the leaves regrow in Montreal and the sun scorches our Earth better than it ever has yearly; the Middle East is on Fire again. I urge everyone to go out and speak out, stand outside with a billboard, write a blog, write a verse/poem, send a letter, make a phone call...do something for our people this week. Let's show the world that the humanity in our people is as rich as our culture and as thirsty as our roots.
Peace to Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. Justice Over Misrule. Peace Out Of Truth.
Make your voice be heard. It's what it's there for.
The started to shoot each other on the streets.. not a civil war.. violent clashes between political forces.. but sound of bullets is disturbing.. going to sleep..dont call.. salam
This was sent before news reports this morning that Hizbollah is controlling West Beirut.
I have not heard from him again, and I am alarmed. The BBC is publishing reports from people there, and most of them are scared and holed up in their homes -- an increasingly exceptionally-Lebanese experience. Clashes have left more than a dozen dead the last I checked.
The confrontation between Hizbollah and government-supporting militias is coming to a head. The ostensible reasons are over a secure telephone network Hizbollah operated and accusations from politicians that the party of God has set up surveillance cameras at the airport to look for prime kidnapping victims -- an unsubstantiated allegation.
CNN's reporter on location attributed the tensions to the 2006 war with Israel, in which Hizbollah fought back and the Lebanese government watched and silently hoped for Hizbollah's doom. It is being described as a western-backed government, which means it is accountable to other, more powerful countries and a portion of its own population.
Lebanon's troubles, in my eyes, are linked to the unresolved problems of the civil war -- it concluded with no structural changes, leaving a politically untenable consociational, sectarian system in place -- one based on the myth of Maronite Christian numerical superiority. It is based on the fantasy of Shia' minority status. Lebanon cannot last with such fragmenting premises.
When the Lebanese government becomes based on a system representing everyone equally, and Lebanese groups see Lebanese as their brethren, rather than area powers and superpowers, the country will be stable. Until then, Hizbollah will take over where official neglect leaves off, and look to Iran and Syria for support. And the wannabe western Sunnis and Christians will lean on whoever they are aligned with that given week -- the US, France, Syria, Israel, Saudi, etc.
It is a political system built on the instability of minority rule and now we see it reaping what it sows.
Thousands of people converged Thursday on the land of Safuria to mark the anniversary of the Nakba and to demonstrate for the right of return of the refugees. The crowd included mainly Palestinian citizens of Israel, and some Jewish citizens. Chants included "Long live Palestine," "Gaza is Palestinian and Golan is Syrian," and "We are all one people" invoking the West Bank, Gaza and Arab countries along with the people of the Galilee, and "The White House is the biggest terrorist." Some people released hundreds of black balloons into the sky to fly over the 60th Birthday of Israel celebrations and barbecues to remind them of those who were forced out 60 years ago.
Safuria was a town that was cleared of its residents and destroyed in 1948. It was larger than Nazareth at the time of its destruction. Many of the descendants of the former residents of Safuria now live in nearby Nazareth, while others fled to refugee camps in the West Bank and surrounding countries. The Jewish community that now lives on the land of Safuria is called Tsippuri. Each year for the last ten years, these Nakba commemoration demonstrations in the Galilee have been at the site of a different destroyed village.
When I left the demo, I saw riot police waiting across the street. However they seemed relaxed and simply there to make sure no confrontations took place with the Jewish people celebrating in the field on the other side. Then, the next morning, I saw this image of Member of Knesset Wasel Taha: I learned that after a couple hours of the demonstration, the police moved in, some on horseback, and attacked people with tear gas and sound bombs, brilliantly setting the fields on fire. My coworker was there with her small girls still at the time the police and army came into the crowd.
My older daughter was so afraid. She never wants to go again, though I told her no, the police are just trying to make us afraid. There were people with blood, and smoke and bombs and gas. We are not used to this and we didn't expect anything like it. There had been no problem- the police and the army came in and made the problem.
Six youth were arrested, and more were injured at the close of what was an otherwise peaceful demonstration attended by whole families with small children:
Poor Yemen... as if a simmering Shia insurgency in the North and abducted Japanese tourists ain't bad enough, Yemen is facing the prospect of a screw worm epidemic. How is this for gross?
The menacing fly lays its eggs in a cut or open wound of a warm-blooded animal. The maggots then feast off the living flesh, and can kill the animal if it´s not treated in time.The outbreak hit the country´s coast late last year. Veterinarian, Mansoor AlQadasi, General Director of the Central Veterinarian Laboratory, says it´s the first official outbreak of ´old world´ screw worm in Yemen."There are about 20,000 cases of livestock affected. Most of these are sheep and goats. We have also found some human cases -- mainly in children and older people,"
Although I hope Yemen gets this under control, my "geek brain" (not to be confused with my "reptillian brain" or my "big baller for realz 2012 stylez brain" ) immediately realized I had heard this story line before....desert country with worms, you know where I am going with this:
How Yemen is Like Frank Herbert's Dune*: 1) In the Dune the economy of the universe is controlled by the mysterious drug "spice," it gives some users the ability to navigate space. In Yemen the economy is being ruined by a mysterious drug, Qāt, which is gives many users the ability to stare into space for hours 2) Yemen has been infected by a crazy looking worm that has a strange life cycle and sometimes eats humans. The planet Arrakis is filled with lots of massive worms that sometimes east people. 3) Yemen is a desert country, with fertile valleys high up in the mountains. Arrakis is a desert planet with delicate ecosystems in the mountains. 4) In Yemen several groups including desert nomads wage an insurgency against the central government, which they call a jihad. In Arrakis the Fremen, a desert civilization, wage an insurgency against the government, which they call a jihad. *Yeah, i know this is a bit ironic because Frank Herbert based the Fremen civilization on the Bedouin.
They indirectly intervened to cancel the events of Nakba week, and interestingly enough the event at Townhouse gallery (which I live very close to) was ignored by them because it doesn't have much of a popular Egyptian crowd that frequents it. This is the same Egyptian state that likes to delude itself that it achieved a glorious victory over Israel in 1973 (and then went promptly and made "peace" in 1978). AUC professor Jalal Amin the other day said that in his daughter's junior high school exam around that time, all the questions in the Arabic comprehension section had sentences about the gloriousness of peace in it.
Israel is today celebrating it's 60th anniversary. I was surprised and pleased to see this article on the front page of the International Herald Tribune yesterday: After 60 Years, Arabs in Israel Are Outsiders, complete with pictures and video.
Then I read the first paragraph. The author feels the needs to qualify from the start the Palestinian discontent inside of Israel:
As Israel toasts its 60th anniversary in the coming weeks, rejoicing in Jewish national rebirth and democratic values, the Arabs who make up 20 percent of its citizens will not be celebrating. Better off and better integrated than ever in their history, freer than a vast majority of other Arabs, Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens are still far less well off than Israeli Jews and feel increasingly unwanted.
Why? The first thing the author points out is to the effect of, 'You should thank your lucky stars that you're living here in a westernized civilized society, and not with those backwards barbarians we're surrounded by.' And does he really believe that they are freer than other Arabs? If he's talking about ability to get a visa to the US, ok. If he's talking about freedom from harassment by intelligence and police, freedom from state oppression, freedom from discrimination, the right to hold property without anyone taking it from you arbitrarily, or freedom of the press, he's got some research to do.
The article also curiously ignores the Bedouin, who have the worst living situation and rights abuses inside of Israel's self-chosen borders not including Jerusalem. The article ignores the situation of Jerusalem residents, who have lived under Israeli governance since 1967 yet who do not have Israeli citizenship and hence have a different, lesser set of rights. While I understand the purpose of focusing on Palestinian citizens of Israel, which does not include the Golan or Jerusalem, I find that simply mentioning their plight in the consideration of Israel's treatment of the native population within what it considers its borders demonstrates the nature of the colonial settlement and ethnic cleansing that has been ongoing for 60 years. It gives some context to the 'freedoms' the author cites, that these apparently civilized barbarians should be thankful that they've been enlightened with.
Despite my criticisms, however, the Nakba on the front page is a positive step.
Foreign Policy Magazine is holding a poll to declare the top public intellectuals in the world.
KABOBfest is bitter its own Chaim Sugarman was excluded from the ballot and is asking its readers to write-in vote "Chaim Sugarman." We suspect anti-Semitism was at play or perhaps, anti-self-hating-Semitism.
So, Last night I went to peep The Roots and Ms. Erykah Badu live in Montreal. All I can say is that that is one of the best shows I have seen in my city EVER. The Roots came out mad early (7 pm) and rocked for about an hour and a half. Black Thought never dissapoints. As an MC, his delivery, presence, breath control and overall ability to say ANYTHING at ANY SPEED is something I look up to and hope to be able to achieve. The band is next level, segway-ing from song to song to song without interruption or break, making the Roots experience an expanding and growing relationship between the crowd and themselves. I've seen them three times so far in my life and each time it felt like a new chapter. ?uestlove then gave a talk about how Erykah is late and they aren't supposed to play this long, but they will anyway. After doing tracks from their new record for the first hour, the Roots did a medley of all the latest tracks you and yours know ("This is why I'm hot" or "Hot Thing", "Hip-Hop is dead" and a slew of classic tracks around some jiggy joints.)
As the Roots slowly filed off stage, the MTL crowd was anxious for Erykah to hit us with the light like the powerhouse that she is. I had never seen her in person or on stage in my life, and her last album (or all her albums) are on LP on my Ipod. For those of you who haven't bought New Amerykah Part 1, I suggest you step out of your crib and go purchase it asap. The spiritual, lyrical, personal and political on this album are so on-point for our generation of Arab. We can learn and grow from her words and the depth of her experience as an African-American Woman in babylon.
Erykah was late. She hit the stage about an hour after the Roots so people started getting antsy. As she started, she hit us with the first four tracks off her new record and then went into a bunch of old joints like "On and On" and "Tyrone". Far from being the worst show-woman, she never stopped between tracks either. Her band in her fingertips, Badu would stop and pull on the drummers rhythm, have the keys come in where she wanted to wail out and orchestrated her back-up singers like they were her own voice. She had to finish at 11, so I felt like the set was short (probably due to the fact that her bus driver hit the wrong city). She ended her set with TELEPHONE, a song she wrote for the late great J Dilla (James Yancey). It is one of the best songs I have heard come out of this queen and the one i relate to the most. Losing a brother is always hard to deal with. She of course came back for an encore. She did SOLDIER, the next single off her record. This is the one that addresses the more inconsistencies in North America, where she has lines like "To my folks in Iraqi fields, this ain't no time to kill". I love her.
If this tour is rolling through to your town, go check it out. I promise you it is something you will remember infinitely. From the lights, to her ever-expanding voice, to the soul and love in the room, Erykah and the Roots is my show of the year. And her album is album of the last three years. GO COPP THAT.
A class of madrassahs (called a "pesantren") in Indonesia uses Islamic principles to teach environmental conservationism. Sure, you must be thinking, this is some glitzy, new age PR by Jihadists hoping to win over Greenpeace types.
One such institution, however, is Pesantren Guluk-Guluk, also called Al Nuqayah, which was established in 1887 -- more than a century before the invention of powerpoint presentations, let alone the greening of Al Gore. Its founders recognized that many social problems came from the island's poor ecology.
Respect for the environment arose both out of ethics and necessity. Indonesian Muslims, like the Muslims of the prophet's times, lived in environs where the state of nature was close to people's lives, an essential part of survival and important spiritually.
Saleem Ali, associate dean of graduate studies at the Rubenstein School for the Environment at the University of Vermont, said "There is a reverence of nature that stems from essential pragmatism within the faith."
In this month's LeMonde Diplomatique, Dahr Jamail wrote that in the perpetual press frenzy that is the US Presidential elections, critical coverage of the American mess in Iraq has withered.
He argues that not only have the candidates taken softer positions on Iraq, with less talk of withdrawal, but that US media have not taken them to task on it. Despite Obama's solid position on Iraq and lobbying against the invasion, his campaign has been less forthright. Still, Crazy Ol' Man McCain and Billary Clinton offer much worse prospects, he writes.
Jamail notes that most Americans and an even higher percentage of Iraqis seek a quick end to the American occupation. You wouldn't know that from watching CNN.
Blackwater disclosed that it engaged in 195 shootings since 2005, wherein its personnel shot first 84% of the time.
The security contractor Blackwater has been running loose in Iraq above the law and to the detriment of ordinary Iraqis. Amnesty International is calling for greater accountability in the contracting of such entities.
On September 16, 2007, private contractors working for the U.S.-based company Blackwater Worldwide shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in streets near Nisour Square, Baghdad. The shootings occurred while Blackwater was under a contract with the U.S. State Department.
So pleased the government is with this excellent track record, it renewed Blackwater's contract.
It probably sounds like I am being a bit hyperbolic. The government takes no pride in such slaughter, right?
The State Department did conduct "investigations" -- probably so it could say it did -- but it also gave Blackwater contractors immunity for providing information about the shootings. "Just admit you did it, and we won't punish you... we'll even renew your contract."
...the London Bookfair just passed last month and a number of interesting comments were made by attending Arab writers on what's up with Arabic literature these days. Although I don't fully appreciate the prominence given to Alaa al-Aswany, especially amongst the few translated into English and other European languages, just because he is suave, well-dressed and speaks English, French and Spanish. While I do agree with his point that a lot of modern Arabic literature has to be written in a way that is more accessible to the wider public (read "the masses") in the Arab world, which is not reading literature much in the past few years - I liked the quote of his where he said "Too many [Arabic] novels that start with lines like ‘I came home to find my wife having sex with a cockroach" - I think there are other examples of litterateurs who have done it better than him. Nizar Qabbani comes across as a prime example, as are Najuib Mahfouz's novels from his realist/bildungsroman phase (Cairo Trilogy, etc.). Umm Kalthoum is a great example of a cultural icon that is claimed as both "high" and "popular" culture at the same time. It's just annoying that the West has obsessed with "Muslims" and "Arabs" for so long now without ever appreciating the depth and variety of literary production in the modern period alone.
Guess what! Fayyad's village has electricity 24 hours a day now! His family gave me a birthday party a year and a half ago in darkness. While the lack of electric lighting creates a romantic atmosphere for candle-blowing, and kerosene lamps may seem like a creative throwback, it gets old very quickly. Try washing dishes by kerosene lantern. Try studying. Try washing the clothes of your whole family by hand- it makes your fingers bleed. Using the bathroom in the pitch-blackness, I accidentally once discovered that my longjohns made light when you rub two parts together!! "Lack of electricity makes everyone a discoverer," said my host. If you look out from the upper story windows, or go for a walk, you get a distinct and revealing view of the differential between the villages and the settlements, the West Bank and Israel. The settlement lights are ordered in rows, are bright yellow and light up the night, and have clear perimeters. The village lights, if they have lights, are dim, whiter, and scattered. The Apartheid Wall actually is visible in the darkness: there is bright light on one side from the bordering villages (also Palestinian Arab), and darkness on the other. You can actually see it follow a line.
Even when they had electricity for a few hours a day in the village, they paid several times more for it than I do to enjoy 24 hours of service inside Israel. Now, the solution that has brought back the convenience we take for granted, and the absorbing lure of the TV as well as the global gateway of internet, is an agreement with Israel to bring the Israeli lines to the village. In this arrangement, the electricity-controlling station, for lack of the correct word, is a little hut near the wall where the Israelis hold the key to one half of the hut, which is divided by a wall down the middle, and the Palestinians hold the key to the other half. Talk about a tiny analogy.
Apart from the romantically dim candle-blowing ceremony, on that visit I had the pleasure of witnessing Oslo-era maintenance of public order. One afternoon, it was announced from the mosque that something had happened in the next village over involving an argument between residents, and the accidental shooting of a woman. From the roof, we watched private car after private car carrying anyone who had anything to do with anything in the next village over there, in case there was anything they could do to help. Fifteen minutes after that, unmarked Palestinian police cars went by, on their way to do their duty. Then a full half hour AFTER that, and perhaps nearly an hour after everyone with any relation whatsoever had certainly made it to the scene of the event, the marked Palestinian police cars went by.
The police need to take permission from the Israelis before they can go to another village, traveling through Areas B and C (shared and Israeli control). Note that in this case, the police were going from Palestinian area to Palestinian area, through Palestinian areas. But they still needed to wait for radioed permission to move in their official capacity.
I can only imagine the scene when they actually got there. What do you do as a citizen in a situation like that? Wait for the police? They may never come and tensions may rise out of any control before that. So you can see that, in the absence of an effective police response outside of the major cities, justice has resorted to traditional ways of resolving conflicts like this- meaning exile of the perpetrator until the family of the victim agrees to blood money or retribution. This isn't something people should have to do! These aren't people in a midieval village we're talking about, this is 2008 in a place surrounded by people living in modernity (or post-modernity perhaps, except that it has many aspects of colonialism still- whats correct oh humanities gradschoolers?). They're just cut off by the Wall and in addition, and purposefully, from all of the aspects of life that the rest of the world takes for granted.
And yet, in the villages in all the areas surrounding the major cities, the Israeli army polices. In the village of Azzoun near Qalqilya, the army surrounded a high school after a few attendees were accused of stonethrowing. (Can you imagine? Try for just a second to imagine yourself sitting in ninth grade English, while a foreign ARMY surrounds the perimeter of your school. Imagine being a parent of those kids.)
What is the point of having a police force, if they aren't allowed to police? The Israeli army maintains all control over the West Bank, except for that little bit of Jenin, the little bit of Nablus that you can only enter from two places that the Israelis control anyway, that little bit of Ramallah... And then they seem to be used mainly as traffic directors, finders of stolen vehicles, and Abbas henchmen/arresters of Hamsawis. (also crushers of general public demonstrations) The Israeli army enters these towns and tears them up with their tanks regularly. With the Palestinian police deployments, the Israeli army seems able to simply save themselves the cost of regular day-to-day policing.
Unfortunately I am unable to find an uploaded version of the story I saw on Al Jazeera about the policemen in Gaza making themselves useful to the citizenry, using their cars to transport people around, as they're the only ones with any fuel. However I did find this:
And here's another consequence of blockade and no fuel: burning chicks...
Is any body really buying this scam? Even though you would be hard pressed to find a single rational voice in the media who thinks the suspension of the federal gas tax has merit, the proposal still seems to find traction with voters so hard-hit with the economy, if I didn't know any better I would say they are so bitter, they are clinging on to god, guns, and 30 cents a day of economic relief.
Not only is this proposal pandering at its best, the economics of it don't make sense. You can't even justify it with Reaganomics. Many economists have criticized it and made the simple case for why it won't work, but since I'm a Middle Eastern, I'm always expected to weigh in on matters concerning the price of oil. So here it is:
1) Hillary, even if she won the elections, would not be a president this summer. So you'd have to wait until next summer, and hope your pocket book is still hurting enough so that you would care about the 30 cents a day.
2) Hillary, next summer, should she win, will have to go through congress to make such a proposal happen, and even though capitol hill is full of hypocrites and other jerks, they have enough common sense to say no to such a stupid idea.
3) Should this thing pass, gas companies will be able to raise the price to fill that gap, since they have been able to successful squeeze every drop of the consumers' blood so far. They'll raise the price to at lease make up for the charge Hillary would make them pay to offset the lost tax revenue, which by the way is supposed to fix bridges and create construction jobs.
4) No body is asking Hillary how she would prevent the oil companies from raising the price to make up for the gap. And if Hillary does have a way to do so, then why doesn't she just employ her super powers to lower the gas price in the first place, instead of suspending the tax.
In any case, if 30 cents a day for three months is enough to buy your vote, then you have a hell of a deal here. You don't even have to make the 15-minute phone call.
[Tarboush Tip: Keith Olbermann for the Gecko inspiration]
If you're like me and had to look up Myanmar to find out that it is also called Burma, and that it is where Ang San Suu Kyi is from and lives under house arrest, now's your chance to learn about it. Kind of like learning about the Ninth Ward.
The Burmese government has refused emergency disaster aid from the US (which is stupid-- people are dying. kind of like how new york refusing money from the gulf was stupid.) I'm curious as to the reason they give for the refusal, and whether it's related more to the US's sanctions on Burma and interference in Burmese affairs, or whether it's because of the havoc we tend to cause in the world. I'm inclined to think it is most likely due to the previously existing strained relationship.
Eventually I hope that we are able to help, and I wish we actually had money to help with and that it wasn't all dumped into destroying Iraq. Check out this site: how fast can you spend 3 trillion dollars, which is the amount spent on the Iraq War. It takes a long time! 3 trillion dollars would be health care for us and disaster aid for New Orleans AND Burma, and much more.
The same day Maytha posted about the heart-wrenching story of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Sami Al-Hajj, the Al-Jazeera cameraman detained by the American government in Guantanamo Bay for 7 years, a group of us went to go see Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.
I am one of those annoying people who do not let movies just be movies. Even pop culturish bubble gum flicks mean something, reflect the societies they are produced and consumed in. Just as KABOBfest stands for a certain time, place, and political culture, so do Harold and Kumar. In fact, they do more so since far more people know Harold and Kumar than read us... duh.
In this sense, I enjoy blockbuster American films such as this more than I do foreign and indie films. They provide me a window into the American media diet and the range of popular discourses, even if they tend to be simpler plots with uninteresting characters.
This movie was in many ways about stereotypes, both smashing some and bolstering others. It also, in a direct way, was about the war on terror.
There are two currents within the film: the ideas that stereotypes are inadequate ways of seeing the world and that everyone is subject to them runs throughout. Harold and Kumar are taken for terrorists, Kumar, "the Arab," and Harold, "the North Korean," are caught with a bomb-resembling bong on a flight.
This happens after Kumar is "randomly" selected by airport security. He questions just how random the selection was. That won a progressive point.
When they get to the island prison, they are placed in cells next to angry Arab/Muslims who praise the attacks on America. Kumar and Harold reject their views, saying they are nothing like them. It was probably scripted to offer a disclaiming condemnation of terrorism. I saw this is analogous to Sikh groups saying basically "we're not Muslims, do not attack us" after the spate of 9/11 hate crimes.
However, the stereotypically-redneck prison guards "torture" the prisoners by feeding them "cockmeat" sandwiches. When Kumar calls that gay -- reinforcing homophobia -- the guard retreats, saying on those doing the sucking are gay. This speaks to the latent homosexuality in homophobia. The movie is written to show both the stereotype and its opposite -- a postmodern technique.
Clearly, stories such as Sami Al-Hajj's and the testimonies of human rights organizations show that Guantanamo Bay was far from a laughable place.
The terrorist-fighting government agent out to get them, played by Rob Cordroy, uses every weapon and stereotype to get them -- offering a black man grape soda, throwing a bag of coins at Jews, and using a translator to communicate to Harold's English-speaking parents. His character is a stereotype of the gung ho American conservative. His opposite is the brainy liberal government agent who challenges him. Both are white.
President Bush is portrayed not as a malicious warmonger, but as a cool dope-smoking dude who lives in fear of Dick Cheney and under the oppressive thumb of his father.
Its formula is thus to both offend and please simultaneously, which allows them the greatest audience. It takes no hard stances, but furthers a general postmodern multicultural sentiment that does acknowledge that white does not make right.
Thus, the war on terror is an annoying agenda -- for breeding right-wing dickheads like the guy who wants to marry Kumar's ex-girlfriend -- but is not one without merit. Guantanamo Bay is bad in so far as it punishes the innocent, but the film leaves the impression that it contains America's enemies. The movie is a wishy washy moderate Democrat, uncomfortable with the American place in the world, but unable to offer any ideas for change.
Harold and Kumar remind me of a new American multiculturalism, one largely shaped by college experience and thus occurring with a certain class. Where else but at college would social relations between a Korean-American, Jew, Indian-American, and Iranian-American (Reza), develop?
Still, its a movie that could only be made in the era of Tiger Woods, Crash and Obama. While the faces are different shades, the values are the same. In Harold and Kumar, we all want love, respect and to get high.
This movie is more than niche marketing, as the box office numbers indicate a bigger draw. The face of multicultural America resonates with far more, even though it alienates the same forces this film lampoons the most -- conservative Americans uncomfortable with multiculturalism.
Samuel Huntington, the academic who wrote 'The Clash of Civilizations,' warned that America cannot be made to resemble the globe. He considered this a threat to American identity. Harold and Kumar, however, show that America can keep its identity while resembling the world phenotypically.
Reporters Without Borders reported the release last week of blogger Fouad al Farhan. He was imprisoned in Saudi Arabia since December, 2007 for posting an article on his blog discussing the “advantages” and “disadvantages” of being a Muslim.
Fouad al Farhan, 32, was one of the first Saudi bloggers to dispense with a pseudonym on his site. He was also the first cyber-dissident to be jailed in Saudi.
Slate magazine, whose Mideast coverage I often quibble with, has an interesting sideshow, "Darfur Rebellion from the Margins," about the Sudan Liberation Army in Darfur. The coverage details the crisis well and calls out the inhumane practices of the Khartoum government without any silly armature eugenics. Perhaps most importantly, the audio is mainly the voices of people from Darfur (and some wicked pentatonic singing at the end).
Seriously though, there are people taking up arms in the West, South and even the East of the country against the government in Khartoum...maybe they should get the message that they are not doing a very good job.
