Category Archives: persona non grata

new labor and new journalism

Posted on March 11, 2013 by | 2 comments

A fascinating find is going around on tumblr as a response to Nate Thayer’s justified takedown of the exploitative and exclusionary world of journalism. My mother quit journalism when she started to sense it was turning into something less of a public service and vital part of civil life and more of a money-making venture. For sure, someone has always made good money off of journalism, whether it’s a state run or a private venture, but journalists were paid as well. Now that the great labor squeeze has hit the papers, seasoned journalists like Nate Thayer, who does great work and has for many years, are suddenly competing with young upstarts who are willing to do the work for free, or perhaps re-purpose someone else’s. While the pros might accuse the new kids of engaging in scab behavior – they are in a way – both are exploited and both end up losing out in the end. Even the publications that come out in support for Nate admit they publish work they got for free and employ part-time temps (like myself).

As more professional journalists find their living in new concepts like “content marketing” (the magazine I temp for has recently added three to the roster) and more are willing to write for less, the quality of journalism degrades and the democratizing promises of the internet instead further pools the power and income at the top – where it has always gone – while culling smaller and more diverse magazines and newspapers.  The message gets more reverberation, and the origin of the content becomes more obfuscated. Mix that around with some pay-for-play schemes at already established papers, and our version of truth becomes more watered down, more unknowable.

Meanwhile, labor is further fractured and sent scrambling for crumbs. Few who are not endowed with a trust fund paycheck can afford to go do the legwork needed to really dig into a story. What is journalistic integrity? Even the piece that Nate Thayer was arguing about with The Atlantic was originally sold to NKNews, a news site on North Korea that is incredibly opaque itself (the editor board is not listed, nor their source of income) and has possible links to LiNK, a non profit dedicated to introducing “Liberty” to North Korea, among other organizations based in Washington D.C.

It seems I got a little sidetracked. The link I quoted at the beginning is a story from 1999 exploring the new labor economy based on the internet, of which journalism is now part and parcel. Entitled “Why Your Fabulous Job Sucks” it sort of illustrates how this generation got duped into low paying jobs that have little to no chance of unionization for the promise of a “pick your own hours” kind of lifestyle. Of course, no one told us that if we don’t “pick” to work all of them, we get none of them. The promise of freelance – “be your own boss!” – becomes a struggle to undercut the unseen competition, even if that means writing for free.

I was offered journalism jobs when I was living in Palestine – all of them were for no pay and all of them promised me a great opportunity to get exposure and build a portfolio. I never took one of them, something I sometimes regret as I sit where I am. Yet – what would I have been buying into? It’s nice to think of yourself as the next Seymour Hersh, but if you ever want to make money by writing, you’re better off going into content marketing or shilling for the big boys more directly over twitter.

I write what I do for free because I feel I have to. Oh, and the “feed me” button is located here.

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Posted in capitalism, conspiracies, labor, persona non grata, public relations, the future, Uncategorized

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on open borders

Posted on March 10, 2013 by | 1 comment

A new piece by   for the Jacobin advocates:

It is for the Left to square the circle the other way, by globalizing labor; that is, eliminating borders… No penalties, no electric fences, no drone surveillance, no papers, no fear. Instead, universal human rights, consecrated in struggle, enforced by solidarity.

Paul Romer’s concept of “charter cities”, too, advocate multinational and highly mobile labor:

The world needn’t choose between forcing migration on countries that do not want it and shutting out those who want to escape inefficient rules. Charter cities offer a third option. By copying rules that work, new cities can quickly give millions of people the chance to move to places that start with better rules.

from Charter Cities dot org 

What is problematic about open borders, so much so that certain sectors of both the left and right clamor for it? For sure, the idea here is not to enhance or give any credence to the cruel and inhumane ICE system in the United States, with countless risking their lives to make runs for the border and the possibility of jobs. Yet there is very little in common between the world’s workers at this point in time; we are intentionally shut off from one another. An influx of more exploitable labor is not going to draw the hotel cleaners closer to the bourgeoise. If anything, it will destabilize and fragment labor markets in favor of capital. This argument also puts aside the implication that all workers will have equal opportunities to be mobile – case studies from all sorts of sourcing countries, including South Asia and SE Asia show this to be false.

The UAE is a fairly good example of a labor economy that is incredibly diverse. Over 90% of workers who are in the UAE originate elsewhere. Yet on arrival, their situation is largely determined by their race, language abilities, and place of origin. A white worker from England working in a bank in Dubai has a different situation than a man from India working on a construction site – and you will rarely find a British man working on a construction site in any capacity other than a managerial or oversight position. For sure, the state still holds a lot of power in this situation – workers are there at the pleasure of their employers, as they would likely be in a borderless situation where relocation costs are mainly absorbed by the employer and then held over the heads of the workers, who often have to surrender their passports to their managers.

In a borderless situation for labor, capital would also have the ability to move workers to areas they see fit – for example, a place where labor laws are less regulated or perhaps a place where they have near-perfect legal control over their workforce, such as Dubai. For instance, moving workers in South East Asia over a border or two could drop the price of labor significantly, as well as promise more control of a vulnerable labor force to capital.

Then there is the issue of brain drain, as doctors, engineers, scientists and other professionals will find incentive in practicing their craft elsewhere, disrupting labor markets both at their point of origin and at their destination. In some locations even today, the social investment that goes into training doctors is lost entirely as the doctors decide to emigrate elsewhere for higher wages.

I agree that deportations should halt and that surveillance of undocumented communities should cease. However, I don’t think it is so simple to assume that a borderless labor force is the answer to everyone’s problems. It seems too much like an argument that markets can equalize themselves given less barriers to access and less regulation, which any leftist should question immediately.

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Posted in globalization, labor, mobility, neoliberalism, persona non grata

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postfeminism

Posted on March 7, 2013 by | 7 comments

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What is postfeminism? Allegedly it is the space where we can move past feminism, where feminism no longer holds appeal to women and where it can even be harmful to women. As Melissa Gira Grant writes: 

The patriarchy’s figured out a way to outsource hatred of prostitution. They’re just going to have women do it for them.

Grant, who  is a former sex worker (to be specific: not a pimp/madam) claims that patriarchy, an amorphous “they” not rooted in material reality, has outsourced the oppression of women to women themselves. This is an argument made by many who claim that women are the ones who cut other women in other parts of the world, who participate in forcing early marriage or abuse other women in the family. Then Grant gets more specific:

I wouldn’t advocate for a feminism that’s buttoned-up and divorced of the messiness of our real lives. Your feelings are your feelings, but you’re not going to litigate your feelings about my body. The feminist ethics that I signed up for were respect for my bodily autonomy, that my experience is my experience, and that I’m an expert in my own life.

What is postfeminism? It is a desire for control over one’s destiny. It is the hope that someday, no one will call you any names or discriminate against you based on your sex. Yet, when this individual oppression ends – the oppression against prostitutes, against trans women, against my right to choose, against me, will this have achieved female liberation?

The postfeminism of today is deeply rooted in neoliberal atomization. A single female’s experiences are just as valid as any other female’s experience. A wealthy white woman who “makes the choice” to become a prostitute – her choice is equally valid as the poor woman of color who “makes the choice” to become a prostitute. Postfeminism promises the liberation of individual women, but not females. These individuals are fighting against “patriarchy”, a concept that is not individualized or even rooted in material manifestations. Rather, it is as amorphous as its own concept: a male slapping a woman, a man cat-calling a woman, or a man who makes a sexist remark at work is patriarchy rearing its ugly head from the aether. Yet a culture of objectification, where women are plastered up like slabs of meat for sale in phone booths, where women dance for money, where women continue to make $.70 on the dollar; this is not considered a war against women. After all – a woman may now make the individual “choice” to engage in these acts, in these careers, may make the individual “choice” not to bear children to get ahead in business. Acts of violence against my body are crimes against women – but larger systems of oppression suddenly become more complex, more bogged down in uncertainty as we must learn to understand that these systems are made up of individuals who have the capacity to make “choices”. 

It astounds me that leftists who might otherwise deride the idea of free choice under a capitalist system make all sorts of room for women like Grant to write privileged accounts of the system of oppression called the “sex trade”. Broader women’s movements such as the Aboriginal Women’s Action Network  might feel as though an abolitionist stance on prostitution is right and good, but, as Grant would say, they are “privileged” in that their voices are louder than hers – the voice that enjoys prostitution believes that sex work is feminist work. Indeed, the other voices aren’t heard as loudly as the abolitionists “because they’re working”. This amorphous group of women who are pleased as punch to be working as sexual objects for sale are quiet, a silent majority cowed into silence by angry groups of feminist women who claim that 90% of women want out of prostitution.

If the voice of a “queer woman who dates women in her non-sex-work life and has sex with men for work” is not heard as much as the loud majority of feminists who want an end to prostitution, this is because women who “choose” sex work, who come at it from a political perspective of “empowerment” are in the extreme minority. But the individual reigns supreme over the masses in postfeminism just as it does in neoliberalism. When a woman demands her “right to choose”, she is demanding her right. She is situating feminism in a sphere where she does not feel fettered by her sex, where she personally has the ability to pursue whatever she wants. If she is a stripper and a man touches her inappropriately, this is a battle in the war against male domination – but the very institution that shapes his thinking is not in and of itself oppressive. Male domination is boiled down to the individual, becomes a question of one human exerting his will over another’s in an unfair way. It is no longer about systems of oppression, cultures of abuse, or industries of suffering. We are boiled down once again to our individual experiences.

A single person cannot change the world because change is the prerogative of the people. There is no such thing as a mass movement of individuals – they might all be walking in the same direction, but they are checking their smartphones and turning off onto a side street the moment they are required to check their egos at the door.

Melissa Gira Grant’s views are not just dangerous because they blame women themselves for their own oppression –  either as angry sex-negative feminists or individuals who just make “bad choices”. They are dangerous because they shift the blame away from male violence and domination and continue to trump the experiences of a privileged few over the many. Why won’t these leftist blogs and magazines run a counter article to this kind of perspective? Anything else would be hypocritical. Perhaps it is simply not what leftist men want to hear: that their individual enjoyment is not the purpose of female liberation.

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Posted in Feminism, human rights, neoliberalism, persona non grata, Uncategorized, Western perspective, women

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Reviewing “The Wives” by A. Popoff: The Russian Woman and Other Stories

Posted on December 26, 2012 by | Leave a comment

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I picked up The Wives for free and read it in two days. As a feminist, I’ve always adored women’s histories, and as a fan of Russian literature, I looked forward to reading about the conditions in which some great works were made. Unfortunately, while Alexandra Popoff’s new book “The Wives” started off strong, by the end of the book I felt as though the biographies were too tainted by a nostalgia for patriarchial Russia to take seriously as a work of history. Popoff reviews the lives of Mrs. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Mandelstam, Bulgakov, Nabokov and Solzhenitsyn. While the women start off strong, by the end of the book, figues like Vera Nabokov and Natalya Solzhenitsyn disappear almost completely behind their husbands and a very distracting political bias.

For example, Popoff suggests that Bulgakov, Nabokov and Solzhenitsyn all longed to escape to “the free world” – i.e. America, where at the time lunch counters were still segregated by race and women were not admitted to most universities. She describes the conditions in the Soviet Union as dire indeed, while life in Tsarist Russia seem to be sheltered in a relaxing aristocratic dream haze.

Perhaps most disappointing about this book is the message driven home by Mrs. Solzhenitsyn near the end. Solzhenitsyn was himself a famous defender of the patriarchial Orthodox church, and his wife echoes this nostalgia by saying that “Russian women are more dedicated to their families than in the West” (285).  This dedication extends to living in extreme poverty, emotional abuse, tolerating affairs and even Mandelstam forcing his wife to wear a pacifier in her mouth so as to not “interrupt him” (122). These wives are not focused on for surviving these difficult times; indeed, their accomplishments are only celebrated through those of their husbands. Their dedication to their husbands is what makes them inspirational, and not much else. A woman who types drafts and suggests words is seen as contributor more than one who was keeping the fires burning during difficult times. The greater the writer’s wife, the more slavish her love for him.

It was worth reading for insight into the lives of famous Russian writers, but unfortunately, not so much for insight on their wives. Rather, the woman become one more lens through which we can adore the great men in their lives. This seems to be revisionist, nostalgic nonsense, completely in contradiction with the Russian woman as portrayed by Soviet and even Russian history, a woman who is independent, strong and worth writing about on her own right. The wives portrayed by Ms. Popoff surely have their own stories to tell… unfortunately, they are only revealed in relation to their husbands.

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Posted in Feminism, persona non grata, public relations, women

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left that way is a dead end: a case study in palestine

Posted on August 10, 2011 by | 4 comments

If history is the alchemy of theory, then communists turned gold into lead in Palestine. When I first arrived in 2009, I was one of those hand-wringing well-meaning comrades who shed tears over the absence of a progressive political left in Palestine. No doubt, there exists in Palestine some of the strongest and bravest leftists in the region, but their work is for naught and their books (printed with French, German, and Canadian money) get used to warm hovels in Askar refugee camp. They are at best tolerated and called in from time to time to answer questions on economy. When the Soviet money dried up, the network of civil supporters did as well, until all that was left were empty storefronts and the staff had moved on to NGOs and ideologies that would catch the foreign dollar, euro, or dinar.

Like most other ideas – democracy, liberal rights fantasies, Wahhabism, western civic models, and open markets – communism was thrown into the trash heap in Palestine because it was presented in an unrealistic and condescending way. Leftists crouched around telefaxes worrying “No, you’re doing it wrong! You need to… There needs to be… This theory is really…” while Israel continued to pummel their neighborhoods. Such disregard was given to the situation on the ground, to the realities of the society, that after the militant wing died down the people themselves shrugged off the theories and put all their efforts into courting money and robbing the donors blind. A handful remained to churn out honest work, but their romance with how “they” did it seemed to only further alienate their efforts.

After all, what does the left really have to offer Palestine save money and a few PFLP t-shirts? Obviously not their unwavering support. The condescending insistence on ideological purity puts leftist organizations in the same boat as USAID. There’s nothing wrong, I suppose, in offering money with ideological strings attached – a business transaction obviously! – but don’t for a second try and fool yourself into assuming you’re helping. Own up to the fact you’re settling the hearts and minds as much as Israelis are.

A prominent leftist organization recently cut funding to civil society NGOs, insisting that their strategy had changed from promoting a “culture of dependence” through NGOs to funding political parties directly, thereby cutting out the middle man (the citizen) I assume! It is, of course, much easier to inject a political program directly into a certain class of people rather than to everyone. And how late the left is to this game! After all, the cafes and imported cars already promote a kind of politik and the imams living the high life in Masyoon can promote yet another. Now, 10 years too late, is when the left decides to try and resuscitate the leftist parties – at least, the ones that are allowed to exist by the powers that be.

Indeed, the left has spent so much time cozying up to the powers that be that no one takes them seriously anymore. With the dissolution of the Soviet paycheck, those left in the cold were simply begging to be invited to summits and dinners and willing to throw just about anything away for inclusion.

So where does this mentality come from? Look no further than the left of today, whether it be Kadima and its JStreet front, the progressives left holding the bag after the election of Obama, or the ineffectual and laughable socialist/communist parties of Europe.

24. While communists have no truck with Zionism and condemn the colonial-settler origins of Israel, we recognise that over the last 50 or 60 years a definite Israeli Jewish nation has come into existence. To call for its abolition is unMarxist. Such a programme is either naive utopianism or genocidal. Both are reactionary. The Israeli Jewish nation is historically constituted. The Israeli Jews speak the same language, inhabit the same territory, have the same culture and sense of identity.

25. The Palestinian national movement has been sustained only because of the existence of and its relationship with the wider Arab nation. Solving the Israel-Palestine question requires a combined Arab and proletarian solution. Communism and nationalism are antithetical. Nevertheless we champion the right of all oppressed nations to self-determination. In the conditions of Israel/Palestine that means supporting the right of the Palestinians where they form a clear majority to form their own state. Such a state is only realistic with a working class-led Arab revolution.

from CPGB Theses on “The Arab Awakening and Israel-Palestine“

What fiery words to galvanize the youth of Palestine into direct unified action!

27. The immediate call for a single Palestinian state, within which the Jewish Israeli nationality is given citizenship and religious, but not national rights, is in present circumstances to perpetuate division. Israeli Jews will not accept such a solution – the whole of the 20th century since 1933 militates against that. There is moreover the distinct danger that the poles of oppression would be reversed if such a programme were ever to be put into practice. In all likelihood it would have to involve military conquest. The call for a single-state solution is therefore impractical – Israel is the strong nation – and, more than that, reactionary, anti-working class and profoundly anti-socialist. Liberation and socialism must come from below. It cannot be imposed from the outside.

The thrust of this position is that only a unified working class revolution can solve the problems in the Middle East, and that until then the Palestinians will be left sitting in bulldozed houses. And God forbid they actually achieve a single state solution wherein their Jewish settler neighbors suddenly face a dearth of privilege, where they may in fact be tossed to the curb by the living, rightful inhabitants of the homes they have settled in!

Really, arguing this kind of thing is tedious and only engages those arguing, while those who are left in prison and at checkpoints tap their feet. When the people’s revolution fails to materialize, the leftists snap: “Weren’t you listening? Weren’t you reading your Marx?” Those gross intellectuals abroad typing up policy papers and party positions were the vanguard, why weren’t you jumping to attention? Where are the actual homegrown progressives? Well, if it doesn’t smell like a communist or walk like a communist, I’m not gonna call it a communist!

Beware to those who moan about the rise of “Islamic fundamentalism” in such places! When your books and papers and groups can’t provide the soup, childcare, medical attention, and social services that those caught up in the “barbarity” of Islam can provide, you have a problem. Is there no one to work with, no one to attend your meetings? A Western leftist (centrist! rightist!) is not going to find the “partner” he wants in Palestine – the partner that looks, acts, and talks like he does – unless he molds a group to his pleasure. Rather than work within the parameters offered, rather than ask the Palestinians what they need, or worse – ask them how they think liberation should be achieved, the Westerner wants to dress up a few students and put money in their hands. They perch on a party and gain privilege over the party’s constituents by pumping money into party leaders.

I spoke with aid workers who lamented the state of things – how they had to pay for supporters, offer food or transportation to people in return for participation in their programs. Why would no one take initiative and make sacrifices? A somber walk through the old city of Nablus looking at martyr posters shows such people exist.. or at least once did. They did not die for foreign money, not for the pleasure of foreign political parties, not for a unified Arab proletariat and not for Karl Marx. They died for the people, their land, their memories, and their pride. Forcing people into contortions to fit your mold of “leftist progressive worth supporting” insults this.

I’m not Palestinian nor am I personally affected by this conflict past my experiences, but I have some suggestions for Western leftists who want to call themselves supporters of Palestine:

1. Stay close to the core truths of the conflict. There already is a one-state entity in Palestine and Israel and it is called al-Ihtilel (the occupation). It is racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, imperialist, and reactionary. Do not deviate from this core truth and do not delude yourselves. Visit if you can, and if you cannot, take it from someone who’s been there or who is from there.

2. Support the people. Do leftists really need this lecture? Support the people. Support the people. If the people pray, support them. If the people throw rocks, support them. If the people oppress one another due to colonialism, do not think it is out of “barbarity” or inherent fault with the people and their traditions. It is more possible to fix the ills of social society by supporting the society rather than by shoving your morals down their throats with a spoonful of money to help it go down easier.

3. They do not trust you. You are not their comrade unless you are taking orders from the people. They are not your partners and you will never be on equal footing with them. You do not know the situation. You do not know Arabic. You do not have the right to pretend you know anything more more than the faces on the martyr posters. They are the ones to make the sacrifices, so let them decide what is worth making sacrifices for.

If leftists passionate about the Palestinian cause were as passionate about their own situations in their home countries, there might be change faster than you think. The I/P conflict does not exist in a bubble, it is the result of policies and attitudes worldwide that have nothing to do with the Palestinians… and if you call yourself a leftist this should be clear as day. Accepting that you have little to nothing to do with the Palestinian solution to the occupation (and it is coming) will give you leave to address the attitudes and policies in your own society that contribute to the occupation of Palestine and elsewhere. Involving yourself with what Arabs or Palestinians or Israelis “should do” is a misdirection of your efforts and borderline chauvinistic.

Just as the Palestinians are the winners and inheritors of their own liberation, so too are we responsible for what happens in our own communities. Your position should be to support the liberation and self-determination of oppressed people worldwide, but you should start with what you know best and among people you are affiliated with. Stop planning and criticizing action or positions abroad when you first need to take the log out of your own eye to see anything clearly.

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Posted in america, capitalism, choice, communism, conspiracies, culture shock, Discussion, gaza, Great Thinkers, history, human rights, imperialism, Islam, israel, neo-colonialism, occupation, orientalism, palestine, persona non grata, public relations, the future, Western perspective

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what’s changed since then?

Posted on August 9, 2011 by | 1 comment

As’ad AbuKhalil faces off against a liberal actor, a white woman who proclaims herself as a “voice for Middle Eastern Women”, a huffing anticommunist Cuban ex-pat polemicist, and the very personification of smug white male privilege himself – Bill Maher. What’s surprising about this “discussion” is that so little of the discourse has actually changed since November 2001. The panel makeup remains the same and Bill Maher (and by extension his constituency) continues to know more about Islam than Muslims:

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Posted in america, globalization, human rights, imperialism, iraq, Islam, israel, neo-colonialism, occupation, orientalism, persona non grata, public relations, the future, western lifestyle, Western perspective

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it’s getting hotter in palestine

Posted on July 29, 2011 by | Leave a comment

A friend of mine confided that an intifada is coming in September. While I value his analysis over any ink the New York Times decides to spill on the issue, I’ve heard such things from him before. He’ll tell me to keep an eye on the frog in the pan, that he’ll jump soon enough, that the water can’t get much hotter. For what it’s worth, the steam is rising and the frog is shifting noticeably, but we can hardly tell which way he’ll jump if he decides it’s a good idea.

I gave my first university lecture to some students yesterday on the topic of Gaza and its treatment in the media. I felt hope that so many of them expressed real and serious outrage over what was going on and rode the feeling all the way back to the office and to the computer. I don’t read the New York Times, but a friend  pointed out an article published regarding the financial situation in the West Bank and my heart fell 10,000 feet:

“This is, without doubt, the worst financial crisis the Palestinian Authority has ever faced,” said Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, generally known for a can-do, upbeat attitude. “This could not have come at a worse time. I don’t know how this ends. I don’t have an answer.”

The immediate cause of the crisis is the failure of foreign — especially Arab — donors to fulfill promises of aid. But the budget crisis is intertwined with a diplomatic one as the Palestinians and Israelis maneuver ahead of an expected push to recognize Palestinian statehood at the United Nations in September. Different donors have opposing agendas, so the Palestinian Authority’s decisions in the coming weeks will anger one set of donors or another.

Without enough money to pay salaries, a big concern is the loyalty of the Palestinian security forces, which have brought law and order and created conditions for stability and economic growth in the past three years.

Palestine depends on foreign aid. Scrambling for dollars lowers Palestine more than the Israeli occupation, drones, strip-searches, and sniper’s nests all together.  Let’s do everything Thomas Friedman’s way, hand everything to this guy named Fayyad, and watch the market lift Palestine out of occupation! they told us. Friedman himself even gushed this year over the progress that Palestine has made in terms of markets. The IMF and World Bank stood by with proud smiles as billions of aid was funneled into housing schemes, convention centers, and let’s not forget into the deep pockets of elite Ramallawis!

In the past year, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United Nations have issued reports saying that the Palestinian Authority under Mr. Fayyad was fully prepared for statehood because of institution building and fiscal discipline.

That view is coming under scrutiny. Last month, in the journal Foreign Policy [ed: Cheney’s rag], Nathan J. Brown of George Washington University wrote: “Fayyad’s main achievement has not been to build the structures of a Palestinian state, but to stave off the collapse of those structures that did exist. An equally important achievement was his ability to persuade Western observers that he was doing much more. In the process, however, he raised expectations far beyond his ability to deliver.”

Now that Palestine is doing it the way the West wanted – wearing suits and jetting around raising money for sweatshops in Betunia – why, they think they’re one of us now! Adorable, really, coming hat in hand to the United Nations in September and begging a state of their own. Rather than humiliate the United States by forcing it to veto the rest of the world on such a tender issue, Uncle Sam will bring his Arab dogs to heel and threaten to cut the purse strings to Baba Fayyad’s Great Ramallah Experiment.

What results? A populace who was forbidden to rally in support of their Egyptian brothers and sisters as they were cut down by Mubarak’s bullets now is asked to halve their salaries in the interest of foreign donors, in the interest of solvency and in boosting the confidence of foreign investors/donors. I have friends who work for as-Sulta and they are owed thousands already. They know the person who made the decisions that put them into this situation makes 20 times what they do, they understand that elections will probably be postponed yet again, and they understand the Israelis continue to dine on land that belongs to someone else.

If this sounds polemical, it is. My comrades in Palestine – and it is presumptuous for me to call them that, as they fight harder and face more than I ever will – are dignified in their resistance and they deserve a government that reflects and protects that dignity. Foreign money is yet another shackle around the neck of Palestine, and threatening bankruptcy or a coup less they do what Israeli interests say is best is yet another way to humiliate her.

Maybe there is something coming in September after all.

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Posted in addicts, america, capitalism, gaza, globalization, imperialism, israel, neo-colonialism, occupation, palestine, persona non grata, Ramallah, the future

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the strange case of amina abdallah and gay girls in damascus: colonizing identities

Posted on June 20, 2011 by | 4 comments

The web blog of thirty-something “gay girl” Amina Arraf/Abdallah has been removed from public view. The touching story of a half-American lesbian democracy activist living in Damascus was especially tantalizing during the recent media explosion of interest in the Syrian revolution. Discussions arose over LGBT prospects in the new “Arab Spring” , suggesting that Muslim Democracy would be far different than Jewish Democracy in that it would spurn and oppress LGBT individuals in more serious ways than Muslim autocratic dictatorships have. Of course, this makes the assumption that LGBT-identified individuals in the Middle East have never been hassled for writing a pamphlet, saying something uncouth about the government at a bus station, or have had a family member imprisoned for fighting against occupation or despotic government. It draws a shaky line from there to making LGBT-identified individuals natural allies of Mubarak-style regimes, when they could live in peace as long as they were simply Lesbian, not Lesbian-freedom lovers.

This line of thinking is dangerous, and puts innocent people in danger. Like the backlash against “Westoxification” in Iran, where Feminists were rounded up as being enemies of the Islamic state thanks to the nominal support they had enjoyed under the Shah, it puts activists at increased risk in a new society by simply suggesting their natural allies are Western values and West-supported governments. By appropriating identities (or identity politics) as a way to further political agendas, the West is indirectly fostering feelings of resentment towards these identities as hostile political classes.

Yet hasn’t this always been a problem? By assuming the West can speak for minority groups better than they can speak for themselves, all sorts of atrocities have been sold to well-intentioned people. Israel continues to publicize its treatment of LGBT groups as evidence of its civilized nature – despite critical challenges these groups still face. Yet Israel has no problem speaking for the LGBT Palestinians who surely suffer greatly under the heel of Muslim-ness.

However, there is no need to take an imperialist’s word as truth. Thanks to traditional grassroots efforts married to online communities, there are actual indigenous groups (such as Al-Fatiha or RAWA) which work towards just treatment within their own societies. It is best this way because they understand the intricacies and complex structures of their communities far better than ham-fisted imperial interests. So of course voices like Amina’s were welcome in Syrian discourse. This well-written, sexually attractive writer seemed to hit all the happy mediums – including the desire to study Hebrew and work at a Syrian embassy in Israel. This was no Shahbanu speaking. The anonymous nature and the basic format of a blogspot page led us to believe that Amina was an Arab bourgeois English speaker, quite a step up from Youtube queens and Betty Friedan.

The story goes deeper, however, when the world discovered that Amina was actually a middle-aged heterosexual white American male, who claimed rather ironically that he felt he had no available audience for his views unless he presented them as coming from a drastically different identity. Another victim of “PC Culture”, Tom MacMaster decided to wear the skin of a lesbian Muslim Arab woman in order to be heard on issues he strangely felt very connected to. This was no simple hoax, either. MacMaster had been posing as Amina for four years, leading one to speculate over his mental and emotional health.

He had started the blog, he said, because he believed online posts about the Syrian and Israel-Palestinian situations would earn “some deference from obnoxious men” if written under an Arab woman’s name rather than under his own, where “someone would immediately ask: why do you hate America? why do you hate freedom? This sort of thing.”

He had made her a lesbian, he said, in an attempt “to develop my writing conversation skills … It’s a challenge. I liked the challenge.

“I also had the thing that I like to write, and my own vanity is … if you want to compliment me, tell you like my writing … That’s how to make me happy.”

But why had he exchanged many hundreds of emails with a woman in Canada, Sandra Bagaria, who believed herself to be having a romantic relationship with the blogger?

“I feel really guilty about that … I got caught up in the moment and it seemed … fun. And I feel a little like shit about that.” He denied having been sexually excited by the interaction: “I don’t want to go into that aspect particularly of it.”

The Guardian

Whatever the personal reasons behind MacMaster’s identity fraud, further criticism must be leveled at the liberal media apparatus that skyrocketed him to fame, the online medium that can enable such streamlined appropriation of identities, but perhaps most importantly, the criteria by which one is afforded a voice in today’s political culture. Why is it that Amina’s perfect storm of attributes earns her press space and Facebook support pages over any other Arab activist arrested and tortured by the Syrian regime? Why are certain voices held higher in esteem than the collective voice of the people? Not to say some shouldn’t, but what are the criteria for our choices of who to listen to? There are numerous reasons to criticize governments and revolutions – for instance, the continued crackdowns and endemic corruption of the Egyptian Military government or tanks rolling through villages in northern Syria – without resorting to identity niche standards of “civilization”.

Perhaps this is a new dog-whistle politic, a kind of wink thrown over the shoulder to progressive movements. Sure we can harp on and on about the invasion of Afghanistan, but can we really fault the United States for bringing a “better” standard to Afghani women? And even if we don’t, would we want to bring back the Taliban to cut noses and ears again? Here the imperialist right digs the left into a mud pit of confusion and debate while it continues its merciless onslaught against the communities we are wringing our hands over. We might not be running sorties against the Afghan women in specific, but they are just as affected by the bombs and drugs as the Taliban. Say we are running  sorties for them, and watch how patriarchal attitudes on the ground entrench themselves. If these minority groups refuse to become vocal tools of imperialism, simply skin them alive and pose as one of them.

The combination of her sexual identity, her good looks, her impeccable English, her “moderate” muslimness, and her fantastical (and often sexual) autobiographical posts proved too potent a mix. Amina was a “honeytrap for Western liberals”, as one twitterer put it. Something palatable that they could identify with, the perfect half-white poster child of a brown revolution.

from Jadaliyya

Identify with, or – perhaps more truthfully in this case – identify as.

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Posted in afghanistan, america, choice, conspiracies, culture, Feminism, globalization, human rights, imperialism, iraq, Islam, israel, neo-colonialism, occupation, palestine, persona non grata, public relations, the future

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j30strike dot org and social media as a way to foment and inspire social change

Posted on June 20, 2011 by | 2 comments

Why would Facebook be blocking attempts to link the website www.j30strike.org, claiming that this link has been identified as spammy or abusive? Perhaps it is a technical error or perhaps a user-orchestrated attempt at preventing publicity (see campaign funding if you don’t understand how this works), but it is also just as likely at this time that Facebook itself is blocking attempts at organization due to political motivations.

This is not completely new, as attempts have been made in the past to stifle Palestinian organization and protest using the same feature. Hasbara, the informal Israeli corps of internet thugs who badger discussion on issues relating to Palestine, are known for engaging in tactics that will have a discussion or article censored.

Yet the J30 strike is not something that focuses on a protest in Ramallah, it is a movement to organize a national public strike in one of the richest and most powerful countries on earth.

What is needed at this time is as follows:

1. Facebook should announce whether it has made an administrative decision to block certain politically-motivated pages or links or whether there is a feature available that is being utilized to let users engage in mass-censorship. Of course, it has no obligation to do this and I suspect that even if it does respond, it will not provide a clear and transparent answer.

2. There needs to be a serious re-assessment of social media and its part in fomenting social change. If the company can be utilized to censor political activity, serious efforts need to be made to evaluate the kinds of criteria that will allow it to be “social media-friendly”. Egypt, Syria, Tunisia = Good, UK = Bad? Is social media being used to lend legitimacy to political trends?

In addition, recent revelations of “identity forgeries” on the internet (see: Amina Abdallah and “her” blog, Gay Girl in Damascus) must make us re-evaluate the idea of actual human representation online. If humans can have their identities “hacked” to push a social or political agenda through blogs, is it so much to assume they could also be hijacked and used to cast votes or “likes” online, to report “abusive” material?

While social media can undoubtedly provide inspiration and tactical strategy, it is still something that is privately owned and traded. Facebook itself is valued at incredible numbers – anywhere from $100 billion to 500 billion dollars – and few ask if the people Facebook bases its value on are even real people with real opinions. Perhaps the most important question is one we must ask ourselves: can private companies really be trusted as reliable stewards of our political development? Does the medium of online discourse really assure you freedom, democracy, or individuality?

Edit: I was recently passed along this link to a BBC article, showing that Facebook has offered to “support … in any way we can” the UK government’s efforts to cut domestic spending. Sort of strange to engage the help of a 26 year old American billionaire in selling off the future of UK youth?

Downing Street has released footage of a video conference between David Cameron and Mark Zuckerberg as it emerged that the government will seek ideas on spending cuts through a tie-up with Facebook.

The prime minister thanked Mr Zuckerberg for his involvement, while the Facebook founder said he felt it was a great way to “engage the public to create social change”.

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Posted in capitalism, choice, conspiracies, globalization, human rights, persona non grata, public relations, the future

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yad vashem

Posted on February 24, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I never liked being tickled as a child. Someone was eliciting a response from me that was not 100% genuine and was completely beyond my control. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized this happened all the time. When you walk out of a movie crying, you’re feeling something completely manufactured and often cheap. I didn’t like horror movies because it seemed so manipulative. I enjoy film and music that makes me feel something, but I prefer to have control over my emotion. A song might make me feel happy and think of a loved one, or a film might fill me with a kind of dread that I can reflect on in my own life. I hated Passion of the Christ because it took a story so integral to the Western experience – the story of Jesus of Nazareth being crucified – and turned it into a cheap kind of horror film. Without exploring the messages behind Jesus’s life or feeling the impact of the sacrifice (according to Christianity) we were simply disgusted and horrified by CGI chunks of flesh flying off the Roman’s cat-o-nine tails and the seemingly endless rivers of blood pouring down the face of Jesus. It’s like pornography, I thought. I’m just supposed to be feeling something… not for any reason, not to change my mind about something, but just to feel something. I felt like using Jesus as the vehicle for this kind of elicitation was cheap. After all, the Christian story of Jesus is so deep, so laden in mystery and humanity, that to boil it down to weeping audience members, vomiting children… it all seemed so besides the point.

Likewise, when I visited Yad Vashem yesterday I felt that since the presentation of the Holocaust was so manipulated, I should be as critical as possible to do honor to the subject. Nevermind the fact I was aware of the political situation outside of the walls and had just come from a checkpoint with automatic weapons, barbed wire, and endless swaths of concrete. Nothing can compare to the horrifying nature of the Holocaust, as man’s technology finally advanced to the point where we could make killing factories and machines, an entire mechanized industry out of eradicating human life mirroring some sort of industrialized assembly line. Yet what am I supposed to feel when I am walking through Yad Vashem?

The building itself is remarkable – poured concrete and little light – and the exhibits are created so one is forced to step back and look up. Your first introduction to the story is antisemitism. Christianity is blamed for its spiritual creation – complete with quotes from St. Augustine – and its biological and racial roots are traced to the 19th century. We are then told in brief and in passing that Nazi antisemitism was somewhat of an economic thing, that the Europeans were jealous of the Jewish people’s accumulated wealth in a time of poverty. This is the end of explanation and by the time you exit the first room of the museum there is no more explanation necessary and you are instead launched into an orgy of emotion.

When we look at locks of a little girl’s hair, of toothbrushes, family heirlooms, tefillin, and shoes in the floor, what is it we are supposed to feel? Miniature pewter models of death camps Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek… plaster models of the gas chambers at Auschwitz complete with writhing bodies suffocating in agony. Here: stand next to a bunk or walk on cobblestones from the Warsaw ghetto. How does this make you feel? Is it not enough? Perhaps photographs of naked women huddled before a pit of bodies, a wide eyed man sitting on the edge of a pit with a gun to his head. The video display of an old woman describing in broken Hebrew her experience clawing through dead bodies after the bullet missed her. The culmination is a red-cheeked fat American woman sitting down and shouting to her companions that she is going to be sick.

So you’ve elicited the response, now what? Besides the lack of the word “Palestine” anywhere in the Museum, the only outwardly Zionist gesture comes at the end, when you are standing before the placid hills of West Jerusalem, the sun setting behind them in a wonderful way. Perhaps the motive is in the glorification of Jewish resistance fighters near the end, the rehabilitation of the “sheep to the slaughter” image you might have cultivated until this point. Who knows what it is? I walked through taking notes as photography was not allowed, but even I had to put away my notebook eventually as the bile rose in my throat and my cheeks burned pink.

Yet I felt silly. After all, little of this had anything to do with me. That American woman feeling faint and needing to sit down – chances are it had little to nothing to do with her either. Guides took through their American charges, whispering in low tones, “You know, I heard this one story about a man in America who realized he was living next to a Nazi.. did you know Europe and America took in Nazis?”

No one can deny the scale. No one can deny the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Yet the stated cause behind it – the racial motivations of the Nazi party as opposed to capital, war, etc… the thinking part is shelved and the emotional part is coaxed out instead. If the goal is to “never forget” – well, who would be in Israel and forget the Holocaust? If it is a memorial to the victims and their humanity, why the photographs of naked children in medical experiments? So then why Yad Vashem, why in Jerusalem, why such a presentation and display? It was a strange museum to human evil and yet offered little in the way of solutions or even reconciliation. The only real emotions to be felt there were anger and burning shame.

The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as a spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death’s a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try ‘n’ grab a piece of that Pie while they’re still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets.

– Thomas Pynchon

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Posted in america, capitalism, culture shock, death toll, Discussion, fascism, history, human rights, occupation, palestine, persona non grata, public relations, war, warfare, western lifestyle

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