"Shoter tov tzhe shoter met!שוטר טוב זה שוטר מת" said a good pale friend of mine with several degrees and full ownership of a nice apartment. He was making an angry statement about both Israeli racism and police brutality because he was playing with an unfortunate saying of racists about Arabs (Arav tov hu arav met). I used to live in Hadar, Haifa where some fairly genteel folks (along with the rest of us ) had a serious beef with the police. But as my friend went on to describe his opinion on the police he paradoxically revealed why we must search for solidarity with these people.
"I am some majority guy who is a lowlife unemployed and has no money and no hope and can not find a normal job, I have no education at all....I know I'll become a police officer. I'm good at being violent." said my friend mockingly in his broken English. He drew the obvious tie between who the police are in Israel, and who they are in the USA. Unfortunately this cruel stereotype comes from somewhere. Joining the police is one of the few ways a working class guy can make a living nowadays. And, yes, we the working class are violent. We aren't the only violent ones, but our community bleeds violence in a way wealthy ones do not. Take child abuse. Rich people can abuse their kids. Child abuse is happening in Beverly Hills and the Upper East side. But statistically, in spite of the system's underservice of the poor, we see their kids as abused children more often. Poverty leads to crises, and poor people can not cope in the ways rich people can. Destressing through a weekend at a resort-spa may not be available to the borderline homeless.
The real revolution will happen when we -those who live in ghettoes- begin to understand how difficult it is to be a good cop. When our compassion takes into account how miserable it is to interact with us. As a doctor I saw my share of prisoners, and thugs. They are not an easy crowd. To this day I talk about one gangbanger so proud to have killed multiple people that he got commemorative tatooes for each murder who complained to the hospital staff that I lacked compassionate bedside manner with him. We must understand not every cop is a killer; and they must understand not every black person is gangbanger like my whiney mass murdering patient. We must understand how the system is working to break our natural solidarity as working class people. We must honor those lawkeepers who walk into dangerous situations to protect us. We must not forget that at the scene of accidents, including shoot outs it is them that are tasked with not only catching criminals, but administering life saving CPR sometimes before any more specifically trained personel show up. The media almost never highlights the everyday heroism of law enforcers who happen to use their basic life support skills and save someone. The media seems caught in some kind of imaginary soccer match between blacks and the police. On the most illogical side is Fox news. Shortly after a recent decision they put up an article about how the police live in fear. Seriously? They are rolling into our communities with guns and now tanks; and they should be the ones afraid? What about me and my family?...we don't have any guns or tanks let alone a state legal apparatus behind us. Obviously the outpouring of protests are because people like myself, unarmed black people are both scared and fed up. Only in the distorted reality of the mainstream American media does this situation get turned on it's head. But this is a bit of a distraction from the underlying problems and questions. Why don't police come from communities they police? Why are police not trained better to diminish violence in confrontations as opposed to escalating it? How can we come to reasonable police community partnerships where law enforcement has serious buy-in from the community? How can we get out law enforcers better training? To what extent can we give communities autonomy in policing themselves and yet avoid more Zimmermans?
And finally, who will dare extend the red roses of solidarity to our brothers in blue?
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Common Sense from the Ayatollah?
His Ayatollaness apparently uses social media to call for an end to my spiritual homeland...so he is no wise man; but he also famously stated "Anyone who will say that religion is separate from politics is a fool ; he does not know Islam or politics. Islam is politics or it is nothing" Touche, c'est vrai....unfortunately.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Abortion, AIDS and Feminism
All over the inside of third class trains in south Africa are signs and stickers for abortion. They outnumber every other kind of sign, although signs for penis enlargement are a close second. There are huge numbers of babies aborted, and babies born and abandoned. Obviously the reasons for this are complex. People generally know where babies come from in the modern world, so this probably is less about condum availability than anyone would guess. After all in South Africa you can get free condums all over the main cities. I would venture to guess that what this is partly about is the economy and how it effects genders differently.
Many men here would get a woman pregnant and run. Paradoxically, that seems to make women all the more eager to engage with them. These women want these men not because they are 'bad boys' (a pereinnial turn on for a certain percentage of the population, pun intended) but because they are even boys. The lack of decent men seems to turn some women into push-over sluts willing to do anything to accommodate one. Sadly I was reminded of African-American women. I remember years ago, in medical school, I asked my little sister an epidemiology student why black women were the new epicenter of the HIV epidemic. She replied quite simply "Less condum usage. If you wanted to get a man in those communities you would probably have to sleep with him without a condum." The idea being of course, if you would not, there is some other woman who will, and then pay for her own abortion on top of that.
Issues like this make a mockery of the idiotic debate ongoing about whether feminism is anti-male. The world would be a lot better place if we had more condum usage because it would mean less HIV , unwanted AIDS babies and abortions for starters. Even after everything my calloused eyes have seen, looking at hospital ward after hospital ward of abandoned AIDS babies in Africa was overwhelming. Is this the world either sex wants to live in? Empowering one sex or gender isn't about disempowering the other one.
Many men here would get a woman pregnant and run. Paradoxically, that seems to make women all the more eager to engage with them. These women want these men not because they are 'bad boys' (a pereinnial turn on for a certain percentage of the population, pun intended) but because they are even boys. The lack of decent men seems to turn some women into push-over sluts willing to do anything to accommodate one. Sadly I was reminded of African-American women. I remember years ago, in medical school, I asked my little sister an epidemiology student why black women were the new epicenter of the HIV epidemic. She replied quite simply "Less condum usage. If you wanted to get a man in those communities you would probably have to sleep with him without a condum." The idea being of course, if you would not, there is some other woman who will, and then pay for her own abortion on top of that.
Issues like this make a mockery of the idiotic debate ongoing about whether feminism is anti-male. The world would be a lot better place if we had more condum usage because it would mean less HIV , unwanted AIDS babies and abortions for starters. Even after everything my calloused eyes have seen, looking at hospital ward after hospital ward of abandoned AIDS babies in Africa was overwhelming. Is this the world either sex wants to live in? Empowering one sex or gender isn't about disempowering the other one.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
The African Minstrel Show: Kaapse Klopse 2015
Kaapse Klopse or Coon Carnival, as it used to be called is one of the most interesting examples of the global reach of African-American culture I have seen. The carnival's roots draw on both the performances of real African-Americans who came to the Cape, and of white folks in blackface doing minstrel shows. Truth be told I only saw colored folks doing white-face, and even white -head yesterday ; not the other way around. Whatever the case, masks seem to help people reveal hidden sides of themselves.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Market Crash 2015
No one really knows when and how the financial system will crash. But I suspect it will be soon. If you look around you, you will see a lot of signs that those on top are preparing for a crash. The most interesting indicator, in my opinion, is their behavior. Everyone is stealing. They are getting everything they can while they can. The law has become a sad joke. Everywhere on the globe, the laws only punishes people from my social class and below. Our main problem was that we did not steal in sums large enough to escape justice or we don't think up devious enough ways to steal. We have been too busy trying to feed ourselves to come up with fresh new variations of pyramid schemes and scams. Slowly but surely due to the amnesty given to the tyrant criminals at the top, bad behavior has been working it's way down the class structure. Who can blame us? When everyone else is a dishonest criminal, and you act in good faith, you end up the poorest of all. There are a few glaring problems with the democratization of fraud and theft. One is that when no one respects the law, there is chaos; and it is very hard to do business in a chaotic environment. No one trusts anyone. There is no objective source of information. Economic growth becomes very stunted. No one knows the real value of assets anymore. And I think at some point, the house of cards falls....the only question is when.
Will the stock market crash today, tomorrow , next year? I don't know, and I don't care. In all statistical probability neither should you. We will have to be more concerned with the markets for real goods and labor that everyday people deal with. Unfortunately, the price of goods has fallen prey to the manipulation of people who trade in commodities, or in financial newspeak made to accomodate the idea of equities indexes and other hyperfinancial products that never should have been commodities, futures/options. And the price of labor...what a mess. At this point some people are effectively paying to work. In South Africa I was shocked to see bars crowd at 6 pm. The deal about happy hour is still on there thanks to a bizarre confluence of disparate interests from those of black trade unionists to wealthy whites annoyed that they have to work at all. In the past if you were an office worker in the USA, you got happy hour too. After eight hours of mind numbing, soul killing boredom, you got an hour of fun for you before you headed home to manage your family. American employers ate all of that...not only is there no happy hour, there will be no managing your family either. Note how many prominent employers are adding egg freezing to their benefits in a misguided manipulation of their female employees. But it isn't only the office ladies who lost the hope of family. There are many other silent deals that have been cancelled. In the past female doctors were allowed to take home abandoned babies. Trying that today will land you in jail. What has emerged in place of the old silent deals about work is a culture of serfs and lords. Employers are downright abusive because there are so many unemployed people desperate for a job that they will make you do anything they dream up just to hang on to yours. If you won't take a 2% pay cut while management gives themselves bonuses, someone else will. Next time it will be a 5% cut, and a 5% increase in your hours. But how far can this go before people start fighting back? We may find out. A political upheaval is as likely as a financial one. People who think a working class intifada is an impossibility in the US would do well to go to a totally economically depressed area; and note the levels of violence. The only real question is whether a political upheaval or financial upheaval will come first. And the rich know it. So no one should be surprised if the art markets and antiquities markets are doing well. The rich are busy burying as many precious real goods and bars of gold as they can, and waiting to see what will happen. In doing so they will invariably distort a few markets. I write this not as investment advice, but as a warning. Normal people now understand they have no hope of getting ahead, or even getting by, by working for other people. I only hope they will not clamor onto the sinking ship of financial product ownership in an attempt to reach salvation...because it looks like that boat sooner or later may be going down too. Copper is down. Which tells you people are not putting buildings up. Not here, and not in China. If investors flee to bonds you can expect dismal returns that won't beat inflation. Ah well...Soon we may all be trying to figure out how to grow some food out of that would have been built on land anyways...
Will the stock market crash today, tomorrow , next year? I don't know, and I don't care. In all statistical probability neither should you. We will have to be more concerned with the markets for real goods and labor that everyday people deal with. Unfortunately, the price of goods has fallen prey to the manipulation of people who trade in commodities, or in financial newspeak made to accomodate the idea of equities indexes and other hyperfinancial products that never should have been commodities, futures/options. And the price of labor...what a mess. At this point some people are effectively paying to work. In South Africa I was shocked to see bars crowd at 6 pm. The deal about happy hour is still on there thanks to a bizarre confluence of disparate interests from those of black trade unionists to wealthy whites annoyed that they have to work at all. In the past if you were an office worker in the USA, you got happy hour too. After eight hours of mind numbing, soul killing boredom, you got an hour of fun for you before you headed home to manage your family. American employers ate all of that...not only is there no happy hour, there will be no managing your family either. Note how many prominent employers are adding egg freezing to their benefits in a misguided manipulation of their female employees. But it isn't only the office ladies who lost the hope of family. There are many other silent deals that have been cancelled. In the past female doctors were allowed to take home abandoned babies. Trying that today will land you in jail. What has emerged in place of the old silent deals about work is a culture of serfs and lords. Employers are downright abusive because there are so many unemployed people desperate for a job that they will make you do anything they dream up just to hang on to yours. If you won't take a 2% pay cut while management gives themselves bonuses, someone else will. Next time it will be a 5% cut, and a 5% increase in your hours. But how far can this go before people start fighting back? We may find out. A political upheaval is as likely as a financial one. People who think a working class intifada is an impossibility in the US would do well to go to a totally economically depressed area; and note the levels of violence. The only real question is whether a political upheaval or financial upheaval will come first. And the rich know it. So no one should be surprised if the art markets and antiquities markets are doing well. The rich are busy burying as many precious real goods and bars of gold as they can, and waiting to see what will happen. In doing so they will invariably distort a few markets. I write this not as investment advice, but as a warning. Normal people now understand they have no hope of getting ahead, or even getting by, by working for other people. I only hope they will not clamor onto the sinking ship of financial product ownership in an attempt to reach salvation...because it looks like that boat sooner or later may be going down too. Copper is down. Which tells you people are not putting buildings up. Not here, and not in China. If investors flee to bonds you can expect dismal returns that won't beat inflation. Ah well...Soon we may all be trying to figure out how to grow some food out of that would have been built on land anyways...
Monday, January 12, 2015
Islam Apologists are Racists
For a few days I couldn't seem to stop hearing about the Charlie Hebdo events. Even as I went shopping updates were on the radio. This constant coverage angered me. As far as some news I skimmed on the same day there was a terrorist attack in Yemen that killed more people. And of course there is the ever simmering "conflict" of the middle east; by which I mean mostly the continual slaughter of innocent Iraqis due to an American led axis of incompetence. The world takes notice when white people die. When brown and black people die, it's just another day.
Instead of pointing this out, liberal writers are busy worrying about Islamophobia. They are busy apologizing for Islam. What these, at best misled, humanists need to do is make a distinction between people of Muslim heritage, and people committed to evil extremism. I hope that in two hundred years bombings are associated with Islam to the extent that Christianity is associated with the crusades, and the medieval methods of murder they invoked against anyone not following Jesus. But we are unfortunately living in 2015, and if you think there is currently no association between Islam and terrorism then you must have been in a coma for the last three decades. On the other hand if you think Muslims are the only terrorists, then you may have never opened a book. The state of Israel exists in part due to some of the most horrifying acts of terrorism in history. The terrorism of the Irgun may have not killed many people, but these acts of "Jewish" terrorism were utterly nihilistic in a way even many terrorists today are not. The bombing of the King David hotel killed Muslims, Christians and Jews of many nationalities; but not the bombers, who ran away before the bombs went off. These terrorists were the very definition of anti-heroes, not even caring enough about their cause to personally join those blown to bits of bloody flesh in it's name. HaTsofeh, a local Jewish newspaper of then Palestine, labelled the Irgun bombers "fascists," yet there are those who see them as heroes to this day.
The clearest hero of the recent chain of events in Paris was a young black Muslim man named Lassana Bathily. He saved several people shopping at a Kosher market directly by hiding them from terrorists, and saved more indirectly when even after the police handcuffed him, mistaking him for a terrorist himself, he patiently explained the layout of the place. He was quick enough under gunfire and the threat of imminent death to cut off the power to the freezer, and hide people there. He was mentally clear enough after witnessing the slaughter and literally having to crawl out alive only to be handcuffed by the police, to help save even more people. The fact that this happened in a Kosher supermarket means that almost certainly many of the people he saved were Jews. When interviewed he stated "We are brothers. It's not a question of Jews, of Christians or of Muslims. We're all in the same boat, we have to help each other to get out of this crisis." And in truth, if you look at our foundational myths in all of these religions, we believe all humans are brothers and sisters, as we are all irrespective of religion, descended from Adam. That is why it is so troubling to read liberal writers create endless paragraphs of apologetics for the extremist death cult that seems to have taken over parts of the Muslim world. If we are all equal, then we must all be held to the same standards. But liberals are deeply racist people. They don't want to have peace with Muslims as equals. At most many liberals want to give peace to Muslims as a sign of the magnanimous mentality they imagine themselves to have.
Years ago I realized how utterly racist a lot of leftists are because I became interested in the issue of female genital mutilation for purely practical professional reasons. But even this issue does not fully expose what hypocritical racists a lot of leftists are. Not only do they want to let some people cut up their daughters genitals in the name of multiculturalism; they want them to outright kill them. It is racist and cruel to have different standards for different people because it essentially denies some rights to some portions of the population. For example if I get shot by a family member in Israel, justice will be done. If an Arab woman gets shot by her family in an honor killing ...and before you call me an Islamophobe for bringing up honor killing, I will mention this did actually happen in my old neighborhood in Haifa to an Arab woman who dared go on dates with men.... well, don't hold your breath for justice because of "freedom of religion" and "minority rights" and a bunch of other fake liberal slogans that really mean 'I value your life less than my own.' We are all people, we should all be held to the same standards...anything less is usually just racism disguised as political correctness.
héros
Instead of pointing this out, liberal writers are busy worrying about Islamophobia. They are busy apologizing for Islam. What these, at best misled, humanists need to do is make a distinction between people of Muslim heritage, and people committed to evil extremism. I hope that in two hundred years bombings are associated with Islam to the extent that Christianity is associated with the crusades, and the medieval methods of murder they invoked against anyone not following Jesus. But we are unfortunately living in 2015, and if you think there is currently no association between Islam and terrorism then you must have been in a coma for the last three decades. On the other hand if you think Muslims are the only terrorists, then you may have never opened a book. The state of Israel exists in part due to some of the most horrifying acts of terrorism in history. The terrorism of the Irgun may have not killed many people, but these acts of "Jewish" terrorism were utterly nihilistic in a way even many terrorists today are not. The bombing of the King David hotel killed Muslims, Christians and Jews of many nationalities; but not the bombers, who ran away before the bombs went off. These terrorists were the very definition of anti-heroes, not even caring enough about their cause to personally join those blown to bits of bloody flesh in it's name. HaTsofeh, a local Jewish newspaper of then Palestine, labelled the Irgun bombers "fascists," yet there are those who see them as heroes to this day.
The clearest hero of the recent chain of events in Paris was a young black Muslim man named Lassana Bathily. He saved several people shopping at a Kosher market directly by hiding them from terrorists, and saved more indirectly when even after the police handcuffed him, mistaking him for a terrorist himself, he patiently explained the layout of the place. He was quick enough under gunfire and the threat of imminent death to cut off the power to the freezer, and hide people there. He was mentally clear enough after witnessing the slaughter and literally having to crawl out alive only to be handcuffed by the police, to help save even more people. The fact that this happened in a Kosher supermarket means that almost certainly many of the people he saved were Jews. When interviewed he stated "We are brothers. It's not a question of Jews, of Christians or of Muslims. We're all in the same boat, we have to help each other to get out of this crisis." And in truth, if you look at our foundational myths in all of these religions, we believe all humans are brothers and sisters, as we are all irrespective of religion, descended from Adam. That is why it is so troubling to read liberal writers create endless paragraphs of apologetics for the extremist death cult that seems to have taken over parts of the Muslim world. If we are all equal, then we must all be held to the same standards. But liberals are deeply racist people. They don't want to have peace with Muslims as equals. At most many liberals want to give peace to Muslims as a sign of the magnanimous mentality they imagine themselves to have.
Years ago I realized how utterly racist a lot of leftists are because I became interested in the issue of female genital mutilation for purely practical professional reasons. But even this issue does not fully expose what hypocritical racists a lot of leftists are. Not only do they want to let some people cut up their daughters genitals in the name of multiculturalism; they want them to outright kill them. It is racist and cruel to have different standards for different people because it essentially denies some rights to some portions of the population. For example if I get shot by a family member in Israel, justice will be done. If an Arab woman gets shot by her family in an honor killing ...and before you call me an Islamophobe for bringing up honor killing, I will mention this did actually happen in my old neighborhood in Haifa to an Arab woman who dared go on dates with men.... well, don't hold your breath for justice because of "freedom of religion" and "minority rights" and a bunch of other fake liberal slogans that really mean 'I value your life less than my own.' We are all people, we should all be held to the same standards...anything less is usually just racism disguised as political correctness.
héros
hero
גיבור
גיבור
بطل
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Sorry Rabbi, This Parsha is About Other Kinds of Women....
This Friday night I attended a progressive synagogue. This is the week for discussing a portion of our holy book called Shemot. The rabbi lectured on and on about motherhood. This portion of Torah in his eyes promoted the heroism of motherhood. According to him we just don't hold up mothers high enough. We should be doing more for mothers, recognizing how saintly they are and so on and so on...Maybe, maybe not.....but I get a completely different message from this section of our holy book.
Let me give a quick recap of part of what this section of our book says for those unfamiliar. The Hebrews were growing in number in Egypt. Threatened by their growing numbers, Pharaoh, the autocratic dictator, enslaves the Hebrews and orders the Hebrew midwives to kill all male Hebrew babies at birth. These midwives don't do it. They instead claim that Hebrew women give birth so quickly that they can't catch the babies in time to kill them.
If the story were true it would be the first time in the recorded history of the entire Western world that people engaged in civil disobedience. Interestingly in this tale the first civilly disobedient people int the world were neither bored men of money suddenly struck by ennui, nor angry slaves trampled underfoot. They were working women with skills. Midwives. As the rabbi yammered on about the hardship endured by the mothers I couldn't help but wonder, what about those midwives? They risked their lives to save the Hebrew nation- Don't they at least get a mention? No such luck...the Rabbi specifically began addressing a visiting woman with many children. He doled on her praise for showing up to schul while managing children,( in spite of the fact it seemed to be her husband dealing with the issues like diapering.) Everyone seems to have praise for mothers...but when was the last time anyone praised women who never had kids? If you look around, much like those Hebrew midwives, we tend to be the ones quietly saving humanity. We disproportionately volunteer with the elderly and the children. We help orphans and change laws. We tend to be a positive force to be reckoned with.... but no one ever really points us out for praise. As the rabbi goes on about motherhood I get very bored- almost everyone has a mother, and so what? It's moments like these when I actually start reading and thinking about what is in our holy book. Boredom is a great motivator.
And let's face it, aren't we all a little bored with this motherhood is everything holy and sacred in the universe story? I can't tell if it is getting worse and worse in the Jewish community, or my ears are just more tuned to it. Whatever the case, Jewish women have been unfortunately placed as one of the groups at the front of this motherhood-in-modernity battle by some quirks of demographics and culture. Unfortunately, even as motherhood has become more and more rare, it has paradoxically occupied a more and more praised place. Birth rates have fallen. The number of women with no children at all is exploding...and all anyone can seem to do is praise women as mothers, as if it were the only great thing we women are all doing for the world. A similar phenomenon seems to happen around weddings. Divorce is up. Never marrying is a growing trend. Yet women today seem more obsessed with marriage than ever. Women used to get married in their best dress and stay stuck in marriage as a fact of life. My mother married at nineteen in her nicest suit at the court house. Documents signed, marriage done. Hardly the three ringed circus that goes on nowadays. Now women marry later but spend half a years salary on a dress, and even crown themselves in diamond tiaras for the day. Then maybe half of us divorce within three years as if marriage were nothing more than a bad STD from which we have thankfully been cured. Why all the ever growing hoopla for something that is less and less relevant to our lives?
As the rabbi blared on about the greatness of motherhood, I found something fascinating the ancient text. The Hebrew midwives who arguably saved the nation were given such an important place in the story they got houses...an honor usually reserved for men. If this ancient text honors women as professionals and ethical heroes, why can't we? Why are we, supposedly modern people, stuck in a mentality where a woman is most honored for literally giving birth?
The Torah story goes on, and at one point Pharaoh's daughter discovers Moses floating down a river , and raises him as her own. I'm not sure, but this may be the first story of trans ethnic adoption in Western history. And the on to the parts of the story everyone over seven in the West knows about. Burning bush, Sinai and 'Let my people go!' But it's important to consider this all happens, the central character is only alive, because of some highly intelligent and skilled women, and how they handled their work.
Usually religious people of all types are those who obey. They obey the laws of their religion, and then the law of the land on top of that. It's the way to survive in general. Everyone wants to be a good lawful citizen. Generally Imams, Rabbis and Priests all call for that. But what about the moments when we realize the law is an affront to human life? What about the moments when the law is but a mere extension of the unjust rule of the powerful over the weak? Perhaps not so coincidentally the section contains another example of this. Moses witnesses an Egyptian beating up a Hebrew slave. He sticks up for the slave, and ends up being forced to flee. Hmm...so, as it turns out the greatest mythological Jewish leader of all time was a political refugee...from Africa. (Take that Eli Yeshai!)
So in a nutshell, as the rabbi implied this Parshah covers timeless issues... I only differ with him about which ones. I've had it with trite truisms. Motherhood is kind. Motherhood is apple pie. Motherhood is slogans every human can get behind...but motherhood is not the ONLY story. There are also even ancient stories about women as genius professionals, women adopting transethnicaly, women as disgruntled health care workers opposing the government and women beginning the tradition of civil disobedience.... Ultimately in many different ways this particular story was a story about laws and lawbreakers. Congratulate mothers all you want, the people who haven't gotten enough praise are the criminals.
Let me give a quick recap of part of what this section of our book says for those unfamiliar. The Hebrews were growing in number in Egypt. Threatened by their growing numbers, Pharaoh, the autocratic dictator, enslaves the Hebrews and orders the Hebrew midwives to kill all male Hebrew babies at birth. These midwives don't do it. They instead claim that Hebrew women give birth so quickly that they can't catch the babies in time to kill them.
If the story were true it would be the first time in the recorded history of the entire Western world that people engaged in civil disobedience. Interestingly in this tale the first civilly disobedient people int the world were neither bored men of money suddenly struck by ennui, nor angry slaves trampled underfoot. They were working women with skills. Midwives. As the rabbi yammered on about the hardship endured by the mothers I couldn't help but wonder, what about those midwives? They risked their lives to save the Hebrew nation- Don't they at least get a mention? No such luck...the Rabbi specifically began addressing a visiting woman with many children. He doled on her praise for showing up to schul while managing children,( in spite of the fact it seemed to be her husband dealing with the issues like diapering.) Everyone seems to have praise for mothers...but when was the last time anyone praised women who never had kids? If you look around, much like those Hebrew midwives, we tend to be the ones quietly saving humanity. We disproportionately volunteer with the elderly and the children. We help orphans and change laws. We tend to be a positive force to be reckoned with.... but no one ever really points us out for praise. As the rabbi goes on about motherhood I get very bored- almost everyone has a mother, and so what? It's moments like these when I actually start reading and thinking about what is in our holy book. Boredom is a great motivator.
And let's face it, aren't we all a little bored with this motherhood is everything holy and sacred in the universe story? I can't tell if it is getting worse and worse in the Jewish community, or my ears are just more tuned to it. Whatever the case, Jewish women have been unfortunately placed as one of the groups at the front of this motherhood-in-modernity battle by some quirks of demographics and culture. Unfortunately, even as motherhood has become more and more rare, it has paradoxically occupied a more and more praised place. Birth rates have fallen. The number of women with no children at all is exploding...and all anyone can seem to do is praise women as mothers, as if it were the only great thing we women are all doing for the world. A similar phenomenon seems to happen around weddings. Divorce is up. Never marrying is a growing trend. Yet women today seem more obsessed with marriage than ever. Women used to get married in their best dress and stay stuck in marriage as a fact of life. My mother married at nineteen in her nicest suit at the court house. Documents signed, marriage done. Hardly the three ringed circus that goes on nowadays. Now women marry later but spend half a years salary on a dress, and even crown themselves in diamond tiaras for the day. Then maybe half of us divorce within three years as if marriage were nothing more than a bad STD from which we have thankfully been cured. Why all the ever growing hoopla for something that is less and less relevant to our lives?
As the rabbi blared on about the greatness of motherhood, I found something fascinating the ancient text. The Hebrew midwives who arguably saved the nation were given such an important place in the story they got houses...an honor usually reserved for men. If this ancient text honors women as professionals and ethical heroes, why can't we? Why are we, supposedly modern people, stuck in a mentality where a woman is most honored for literally giving birth?
The Torah story goes on, and at one point Pharaoh's daughter discovers Moses floating down a river , and raises him as her own. I'm not sure, but this may be the first story of trans ethnic adoption in Western history. And the on to the parts of the story everyone over seven in the West knows about. Burning bush, Sinai and 'Let my people go!' But it's important to consider this all happens, the central character is only alive, because of some highly intelligent and skilled women, and how they handled their work.
Usually religious people of all types are those who obey. They obey the laws of their religion, and then the law of the land on top of that. It's the way to survive in general. Everyone wants to be a good lawful citizen. Generally Imams, Rabbis and Priests all call for that. But what about the moments when we realize the law is an affront to human life? What about the moments when the law is but a mere extension of the unjust rule of the powerful over the weak? Perhaps not so coincidentally the section contains another example of this. Moses witnesses an Egyptian beating up a Hebrew slave. He sticks up for the slave, and ends up being forced to flee. Hmm...so, as it turns out the greatest mythological Jewish leader of all time was a political refugee...from Africa. (Take that Eli Yeshai!)
So in a nutshell, as the rabbi implied this Parshah covers timeless issues... I only differ with him about which ones. I've had it with trite truisms. Motherhood is kind. Motherhood is apple pie. Motherhood is slogans every human can get behind...but motherhood is not the ONLY story. There are also even ancient stories about women as genius professionals, women adopting transethnicaly, women as disgruntled health care workers opposing the government and women beginning the tradition of civil disobedience.... Ultimately in many different ways this particular story was a story about laws and lawbreakers. Congratulate mothers all you want, the people who haven't gotten enough praise are the criminals.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Chris Hedges: Do you have B12 dementia?
Chris Hedges has a new article out proclaiming all forms of life are sacred. I wonder what he will do when he gets a bad case of MRSA (methicillin resistant stap. aureus). He might suddenly realize some forms of life are more sacred than others, or perhaps he can talk democracy with the bacteria. Perhaps he can persuade himself that Imipenim isn't so much a drug to kill them, as a humane birth control suggestion. Or perhaps he can simply try to stagger along with a boil.
I hope he reads this and pictures himself with a big MRSA boil on his head....because here I come with my scalpel of common sense, and an itch to incise and drain it. My occult reference of my medical professional status is not insignificant to some of my arguments against Hedges'. Anemia is a VERY serious problem that strikes a significant portion of the population: mostly women and children.
But first things first, let's think about this philosophically and psychoanalitically...to Chris Hedges credit he does seem to make the distinction between sentient beings, and life in general. I've met vegan lunatics who unironically agreed with my snide statements about how carrots cry when you pull them from the ground, the holy mother earth. Unfortunately, Chris Hedges painfully puts his ignorance in terms of what actually happens in the world on display. I can't say I am surprised. I met him at a protest march about the Gaza war. When I asked him some pointed questions, he mansplained me a bunch of opinionated nonsense he seemed certain was fact. I was pretty surprised. He had lived in Israel, and should have know better. If he actually listened to my questions, which he seemed almost unable to do, at the very least he should have picked up that I also had lived there, and not fallen into trite rhetoric combined with dogmatic distortions wouldn't cut it with someone who understood the situation from a daily perspective.
I shouldn't have been surprised by his lapse into leftist paradigms without reality checking them. Hedges is a theologian in 2015. He is almost by definition less interested in reality than tales of morality. Hundreds of years after the age of enlightenment , this man uses the word sacred as if it were going to justify much. He is in reality a powerful preacher of the left wing. Unfortunately, unlike many of his colleagues he hasn't even bother pretending to be secular.
Hedges draws on sources as diverse as biblical morality and modern feminism to justify one big thesis: using animal products is immoral. I hope for his sake this isn't the first clinical sign of the lack of B12 that comes from a vegan diet. As a vegan Hedges is at risk for the effects of this B12-free way of eating including permanent irreversible dementia. Maybe he's already there. He certainly seems to have had some convenient memory lapses since he has been accused of plagiarism. He also fundamentally misunderstands both biblical and feminist thought.
Chris's first assertions- that if you murder animal you will murder humans- have an eerie religious ring. "What you do to the least of them, you do to me!" of so said that Jesus guy in the movie I saw when I was a kid before some really bad specially effects of a glowing halo. But what you see in the movies ain't necessarily real. Jesus was an Arab-Jew from somewhere near Bethlehem if we take the myth literally. He would definitely have eaten meat. The meat would have been slaughtered according to the laws of Kashrut. But let's say, for the sake of argument it was slaughtered by some local Bedouins. There would barely be a difference in the fundamental tribal understanding of meat slaughter. Respect. Hedges lived in the middle east for years. He knows full well that the barbaric practices against animals he speaks of are almost entirely Western inventions. Whether he speaks of pulling baby calves from their mother's teats of killing baby chickens, he must know in reality outside of the West many people just don't operate that way. Seriously, Chris, when was the last time you saw a nomadic group of people factory farming...never! A nomad almost by definition must raise her livestock to live and multiply while moving over scarce grazing land. Killing baby animals? That might kill the whole damn tribe.
Such a brazen attitude towards the truth as Hedges displays may reveal ulterior motives for his navel gazing need to share his veganism with all of us, especially at a time that many of us occasionally eat from the trash and can't afford organic let alone vegan lifestyles. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I wonder if his real motivation isn't love of money more than love of meat, uh excuse me sentient beings with whom we share out sacred planet. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I wonder if veganism is being promoted as some hip new trend by the CIA to convince world populations to ignore the obvious: we are all getting so damn poor we can't afford meat anymore, not even the cruelly factory farmed antibiotic coated unhealthy stuff I'll be hoping to eat soon. I haven't met a good steak my feminist mouth didn't want to kiss, bite and devour. And as it turns out that is a pretty good idea ever now and then given that as a woman I bleed. On a monthly basis. If Chris Hedges had a heavy period from menstruating inducing iron deficiency anemia as I do I doubt he's be extolling the feminism of veganism. He's instead be caught up between two competing nonfactual leftist dogmas: natural medicines are best, and meat is always cruelty. His head might explode.
Lucky for him he's some rich man who can afford to eat meat or not. He needs to go down to the known food dumps outside his local area and observe the behaviour of the less fashionable freegans. By whom I mean the homeless. The last time I was dumpser diving a local homeless man was managing the scene. He carefully sorted out everything from sandwiches to sushi by not only condition and contents but the sell by/spoil by date as printed on the packages. I dumpster dive extremely high priced places in the hopes of scoring some good stuff I would otherwise never eat, so as expected this man had catalogued a treasure trove of everything from pate to sushi on the pavement. He saw my delight when he explained to me that the sushi was dated for today and had come out 2 hours ago. "You like sushi, don't you?" The man unselfishly picked out some sealed fresh packages of really nice sushi, and handed them to me. He just as easily could have mugged me for my valuables. Maybe even justifiably considering his obvious total poverty and the fact that I was dumpster diving while vacationing in London. Maybe meat is murder, but at that moment fish was unspeakable kindness. Carefully sorting packaged meat and cheese sandwiches in the trash was also about that homeless man living with a certain kind of dignity that comes from maintaining one's usefullness to society even if the society was literally throwing him onto the pavement.
What disturbs me the most about Hedges peice is the total tone deafness to normal people. This charecteristic is all too common among leftists. When I say normal people I mean the kind of people, admittedly many of whom reside outside the USA, who can barely afford meat, but scrap up money to serve it to their guests as an honor. Veganism is a fine trend for rich upper east siders who can check their B12 every 3 months, but if he thinks he's going to convince the Massai tribe of Kenya, the Bedouins of the Negev, or even American food stamp recipients to give up meat, or that they should give up meat, he has another thing coming. If he spent even a bit of his time being Christ-like and healing the poor he would immediately see why. Even in the wealthy US, a significant percentage of women and children have iron deficiency anemia. In our teenage girls the number is around 10% according to the CDC. Possible symptoms include loss of energy and difficulty concentrating. Think about how anemia plays into gender stereotyping the next time you claim veganism is feminism. In very young children whose brains are still developing, and iron is extremely crucial for the numbers are even higher than that. But Hedges was never really concerned with the intellectual development of the poor now was he. Intelligent poor people would be leaving his precious sacred church in droves. And no, sorry Chis, meat is not the same thing as the American war against Iraq or the holocaust. The fact that Hedges even compares these seriously shows some seriously faulty logic. Hedges claims he witnessed dismemberment of humans, and it was impossible not to make the link with animals. Well have you ever been to a surgery? It's also pretty easy to see the link with animals; but this stuff saves lives. Hunks of meat look like hunks of humans? Well duh. We are all mammals here. Now like I lioness, I'm off to hunt a steak.
I hope he reads this and pictures himself with a big MRSA boil on his head....because here I come with my scalpel of common sense, and an itch to incise and drain it. My occult reference of my medical professional status is not insignificant to some of my arguments against Hedges'. Anemia is a VERY serious problem that strikes a significant portion of the population: mostly women and children.
But first things first, let's think about this philosophically and psychoanalitically...to Chris Hedges credit he does seem to make the distinction between sentient beings, and life in general. I've met vegan lunatics who unironically agreed with my snide statements about how carrots cry when you pull them from the ground, the holy mother earth. Unfortunately, Chris Hedges painfully puts his ignorance in terms of what actually happens in the world on display. I can't say I am surprised. I met him at a protest march about the Gaza war. When I asked him some pointed questions, he mansplained me a bunch of opinionated nonsense he seemed certain was fact. I was pretty surprised. He had lived in Israel, and should have know better. If he actually listened to my questions, which he seemed almost unable to do, at the very least he should have picked up that I also had lived there, and not fallen into trite rhetoric combined with dogmatic distortions wouldn't cut it with someone who understood the situation from a daily perspective.
I shouldn't have been surprised by his lapse into leftist paradigms without reality checking them. Hedges is a theologian in 2015. He is almost by definition less interested in reality than tales of morality. Hundreds of years after the age of enlightenment , this man uses the word sacred as if it were going to justify much. He is in reality a powerful preacher of the left wing. Unfortunately, unlike many of his colleagues he hasn't even bother pretending to be secular.
Hedges draws on sources as diverse as biblical morality and modern feminism to justify one big thesis: using animal products is immoral. I hope for his sake this isn't the first clinical sign of the lack of B12 that comes from a vegan diet. As a vegan Hedges is at risk for the effects of this B12-free way of eating including permanent irreversible dementia. Maybe he's already there. He certainly seems to have had some convenient memory lapses since he has been accused of plagiarism. He also fundamentally misunderstands both biblical and feminist thought.
Chris's first assertions- that if you murder animal you will murder humans- have an eerie religious ring. "What you do to the least of them, you do to me!" of so said that Jesus guy in the movie I saw when I was a kid before some really bad specially effects of a glowing halo. But what you see in the movies ain't necessarily real. Jesus was an Arab-Jew from somewhere near Bethlehem if we take the myth literally. He would definitely have eaten meat. The meat would have been slaughtered according to the laws of Kashrut. But let's say, for the sake of argument it was slaughtered by some local Bedouins. There would barely be a difference in the fundamental tribal understanding of meat slaughter. Respect. Hedges lived in the middle east for years. He knows full well that the barbaric practices against animals he speaks of are almost entirely Western inventions. Whether he speaks of pulling baby calves from their mother's teats of killing baby chickens, he must know in reality outside of the West many people just don't operate that way. Seriously, Chris, when was the last time you saw a nomadic group of people factory farming...never! A nomad almost by definition must raise her livestock to live and multiply while moving over scarce grazing land. Killing baby animals? That might kill the whole damn tribe.
Such a brazen attitude towards the truth as Hedges displays may reveal ulterior motives for his navel gazing need to share his veganism with all of us, especially at a time that many of us occasionally eat from the trash and can't afford organic let alone vegan lifestyles. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I wonder if his real motivation isn't love of money more than love of meat, uh excuse me sentient beings with whom we share out sacred planet. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I wonder if veganism is being promoted as some hip new trend by the CIA to convince world populations to ignore the obvious: we are all getting so damn poor we can't afford meat anymore, not even the cruelly factory farmed antibiotic coated unhealthy stuff I'll be hoping to eat soon. I haven't met a good steak my feminist mouth didn't want to kiss, bite and devour. And as it turns out that is a pretty good idea ever now and then given that as a woman I bleed. On a monthly basis. If Chris Hedges had a heavy period from menstruating inducing iron deficiency anemia as I do I doubt he's be extolling the feminism of veganism. He's instead be caught up between two competing nonfactual leftist dogmas: natural medicines are best, and meat is always cruelty. His head might explode.
Lucky for him he's some rich man who can afford to eat meat or not. He needs to go down to the known food dumps outside his local area and observe the behaviour of the less fashionable freegans. By whom I mean the homeless. The last time I was dumpser diving a local homeless man was managing the scene. He carefully sorted out everything from sandwiches to sushi by not only condition and contents but the sell by/spoil by date as printed on the packages. I dumpster dive extremely high priced places in the hopes of scoring some good stuff I would otherwise never eat, so as expected this man had catalogued a treasure trove of everything from pate to sushi on the pavement. He saw my delight when he explained to me that the sushi was dated for today and had come out 2 hours ago. "You like sushi, don't you?" The man unselfishly picked out some sealed fresh packages of really nice sushi, and handed them to me. He just as easily could have mugged me for my valuables. Maybe even justifiably considering his obvious total poverty and the fact that I was dumpster diving while vacationing in London. Maybe meat is murder, but at that moment fish was unspeakable kindness. Carefully sorting packaged meat and cheese sandwiches in the trash was also about that homeless man living with a certain kind of dignity that comes from maintaining one's usefullness to society even if the society was literally throwing him onto the pavement.
What disturbs me the most about Hedges peice is the total tone deafness to normal people. This charecteristic is all too common among leftists. When I say normal people I mean the kind of people, admittedly many of whom reside outside the USA, who can barely afford meat, but scrap up money to serve it to their guests as an honor. Veganism is a fine trend for rich upper east siders who can check their B12 every 3 months, but if he thinks he's going to convince the Massai tribe of Kenya, the Bedouins of the Negev, or even American food stamp recipients to give up meat, or that they should give up meat, he has another thing coming. If he spent even a bit of his time being Christ-like and healing the poor he would immediately see why. Even in the wealthy US, a significant percentage of women and children have iron deficiency anemia. In our teenage girls the number is around 10% according to the CDC. Possible symptoms include loss of energy and difficulty concentrating. Think about how anemia plays into gender stereotyping the next time you claim veganism is feminism. In very young children whose brains are still developing, and iron is extremely crucial for the numbers are even higher than that. But Hedges was never really concerned with the intellectual development of the poor now was he. Intelligent poor people would be leaving his precious sacred church in droves. And no, sorry Chis, meat is not the same thing as the American war against Iraq or the holocaust. The fact that Hedges even compares these seriously shows some seriously faulty logic. Hedges claims he witnessed dismemberment of humans, and it was impossible not to make the link with animals. Well have you ever been to a surgery? It's also pretty easy to see the link with animals; but this stuff saves lives. Hunks of meat look like hunks of humans? Well duh. We are all mammals here. Now like I lioness, I'm off to hunt a steak.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Science Porn: What I get excited about
I made a conscience decision when opening a blog that I would not write about science of medicine. There are several reasons for that. One of the most important is that I am a bit over the top about science. My best friend has pointed out that what fundamentalist Christian nutcases are for religion, I am for science. I love the stuff. Just can not get enough.
Yesterday I was in a bookstore and discovered Ben Goldacre has a new book out. I got really excited. I started reading. I wanted that book so bad. I didn't have room to carry it, and it cost a LOT of money for stuff most of which I could have gotten online for free...but...I HAD TO HAVE IT. I got the bookstore to put the book in a brown bag. That way I could savor opening the bag later...my special guilty treat of about 25$.
Later that night I had the book and started discussing what I planned to do with it to a new, and rather attractive acquaintance. Normally I would have been interested by this man to put it mildly. He was a fit well built 30something mechanical engineer from Western Europe who had all his hair. He had the body of a male model. Unless he is a sociopath these qualities make him at least a solid 7.5/10 already...but I did not care. I couldn't shut up about what I planned to do with my book. Would I read it a few pages every night savoring it slowly, drawing out the pleasure for months; or would I just not be able to stop? Would I drop out of the world on my next weekend off and read every page.
"The clarity with which he explains concepts in epidemiology makes him accessible to the broader public..." might sound like a mundane thing to say...but I made statements like this with such interest and enthusiasm, my new buddy picked up the book, and started smelling and caressing it. I think he may have been making fun of me. He just doesn't understand how brilliant Ben Goldacre is.
My new buddy decided to go out with some other guys to a restaurant. He seemed very interested by what I would do. I proudly announced how I planned to lie in bed and read my book. I secretly thought of how funny it might be if they overheard me saying "Yes, yes, yes!" because this is what I expect from reading someone who actually understands science well enough to see through the hype of badly done research.
But maybe this over the top excitement about a single book is some really sad commentary on the state of modern society. Most children are born intuitive pre-scientists. They observe the world, form hypotheses and test them. With the slightest of nurturing a scientist grows (much like the plants I kept in my parents basement when I was 8 for experiments on the effects of different types of water on plant growth). Yet, in lots of average people something happens that crushes their inner scientist. They then intellectually marry themselves to dogma about how the world works. Eventually they start to hate and resent science and medicine. I can't count the number of times I have been told doctors are arrogant and our science (medicine) is convoluted. I think the opposite is true. Science inspires humility on many grounds. The universe is vast and we don't understand what goes on inside most of it on many levels. None of us can keep up with all the research. As to our science being complicated...perhaps medicine requires a certain knowledge base, but not an insurmountably large one. Science itself is a remarkably simple process. If you will, the science six step:
1. Observe stuff
2. Make some ideas about why things work the way they do
3. Refine these ideas into stuff you can actually test (hypotheses)
4. Examine the existing evidence for your hypotheses
5. If there is not enough evidence to draw firm conclusions, do some experiments
6. Evaluate the data already existing and possibly data from your experiments
OK, so that didn't get into the nitty gritty of how you calculate sample sizes to make your work sufficiently powered, or p values or some esoteric idea from quantum mechanics I can't understand...but barely anyone has to. A little straightforward common sense, and a computer have the potential to make anyone with half a brain a scientist. For this reason, I am constantly amazed at how utterly anti-scientific the general public is. You would have an easier time convincing people that prayer and consuming large quantities sugar cause rapid weight loss than getting them to apply scientific principles to even what they put in their mouth. Thus in spite of overwhelming evidence that most diets don't work that well- if you want to LOSE weight in the long run, as opposed to eventually gain weight- masses of people go on fad diets every year. Hope and delusion are stronger than science. Oh well, I can still cling to the fact that in terms of predicting reality, science is stronger than hope and delusion. As I savor my new book, I can also take comfort in the fact that I am not alone in my rather unhopeful, undeluded and downright unsexy thoughts.
Yesterday I was in a bookstore and discovered Ben Goldacre has a new book out. I got really excited. I started reading. I wanted that book so bad. I didn't have room to carry it, and it cost a LOT of money for stuff most of which I could have gotten online for free...but...I HAD TO HAVE IT. I got the bookstore to put the book in a brown bag. That way I could savor opening the bag later...my special guilty treat of about 25$.
Later that night I had the book and started discussing what I planned to do with it to a new, and rather attractive acquaintance. Normally I would have been interested by this man to put it mildly. He was a fit well built 30something mechanical engineer from Western Europe who had all his hair. He had the body of a male model. Unless he is a sociopath these qualities make him at least a solid 7.5/10 already...but I did not care. I couldn't shut up about what I planned to do with my book. Would I read it a few pages every night savoring it slowly, drawing out the pleasure for months; or would I just not be able to stop? Would I drop out of the world on my next weekend off and read every page.
"The clarity with which he explains concepts in epidemiology makes him accessible to the broader public..." might sound like a mundane thing to say...but I made statements like this with such interest and enthusiasm, my new buddy picked up the book, and started smelling and caressing it. I think he may have been making fun of me. He just doesn't understand how brilliant Ben Goldacre is.
My new buddy decided to go out with some other guys to a restaurant. He seemed very interested by what I would do. I proudly announced how I planned to lie in bed and read my book. I secretly thought of how funny it might be if they overheard me saying "Yes, yes, yes!" because this is what I expect from reading someone who actually understands science well enough to see through the hype of badly done research.
But maybe this over the top excitement about a single book is some really sad commentary on the state of modern society. Most children are born intuitive pre-scientists. They observe the world, form hypotheses and test them. With the slightest of nurturing a scientist grows (much like the plants I kept in my parents basement when I was 8 for experiments on the effects of different types of water on plant growth). Yet, in lots of average people something happens that crushes their inner scientist. They then intellectually marry themselves to dogma about how the world works. Eventually they start to hate and resent science and medicine. I can't count the number of times I have been told doctors are arrogant and our science (medicine) is convoluted. I think the opposite is true. Science inspires humility on many grounds. The universe is vast and we don't understand what goes on inside most of it on many levels. None of us can keep up with all the research. As to our science being complicated...perhaps medicine requires a certain knowledge base, but not an insurmountably large one. Science itself is a remarkably simple process. If you will, the science six step:
1. Observe stuff
2. Make some ideas about why things work the way they do
3. Refine these ideas into stuff you can actually test (hypotheses)
4. Examine the existing evidence for your hypotheses
5. If there is not enough evidence to draw firm conclusions, do some experiments
6. Evaluate the data already existing and possibly data from your experiments
OK, so that didn't get into the nitty gritty of how you calculate sample sizes to make your work sufficiently powered, or p values or some esoteric idea from quantum mechanics I can't understand...but barely anyone has to. A little straightforward common sense, and a computer have the potential to make anyone with half a brain a scientist. For this reason, I am constantly amazed at how utterly anti-scientific the general public is. You would have an easier time convincing people that prayer and consuming large quantities sugar cause rapid weight loss than getting them to apply scientific principles to even what they put in their mouth. Thus in spite of overwhelming evidence that most diets don't work that well- if you want to LOSE weight in the long run, as opposed to eventually gain weight- masses of people go on fad diets every year. Hope and delusion are stronger than science. Oh well, I can still cling to the fact that in terms of predicting reality, science is stronger than hope and delusion. As I savor my new book, I can also take comfort in the fact that I am not alone in my rather unhopeful, undeluded and downright unsexy thoughts.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
My New Years Blogging Resolution: Letters
Some of the most heroic figures of 2014 showed that in an utterly depressing world one can tell the truth and still live, albeit with constant persecution. I would point out the three awesome people below:
1. Yassin Bey aka Mos Def....when commercial artists with less talent were making millions for their ludicrous lifestyles rapping about nothing this man correctly drew attention of the otherwise distracted to what went on in Guantanamo bay.
2. Arnold Abbot. You go Zadie! No, he is not my literal grandfather; but I think everyone hopes their days of old age will be as important as his. He could have been napping all day at the old folks center but instead he was actively defying the police to expose the inhumanity of policies against the homeless.
3. Chelsea Manning, who has continued to hold up with dignity under what is probably untold stress with a certain amount of dignity her nasty critics lack.
I think at this point in history many of us identify with being an individual having their soul crushed by an overpowering machinery that is the larger society. And nobody cares.
I'll be trying to write some open letters to prisoners of conscience as apparently in some cases their governments monitor how they look in the court of global public opinion. Fortunately for me they do it through some really imprecise methods, such that this blog may tick off a counter in some global public opinion surveillance algorithm. I hope my first letter "hits" home to make a bit of a nerdish pun- as in my home by birth- the USA.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Chelsea Manning,
Thank you for showing the world about what modern war can feel and look like. I'm convinced many people passively support wars only because they have no personal experience in them so it can become about abstractions and slogans.
The first time I was in a bombing was September 11th 2001. I lived in Brooklyn but worked in Manhattan in the laboratory of a medical school. My train stopped, so I got out and walked. Someone had left an abandoned car open and the radio was playing. They urged everyone who worked in a hospital to report to the hospital. I figured I should go into my lab. I walked through the chaos for many blocks until at some point I think I caught a bus. There is a blank in my memories from seeing all this stuff swirling in the air until I was sitting in my laboratory talking to my boss on the phone. My boss had smartly run to a bomb shelter when the first plane hit. Apparently lab members mocked him as paranoid, right until the second plane hit, at which point they all started freaking out. I can't tell you how saddened I am that what I and many others went through turned into an excuse for what is apparently an endless war against people who for the most part had nothing to do with this.
I share your belief that life is precious. In fact shortly after 2001 I left my lab job and went to medical school. In the beginning was not particularly a natural talent at learning medicine to put it mildly. At one point I tried to drop out of medical school, and took a job as a dishwasher. Then I realized I hated washing dishes as a profession much more than I ever imagined. Long story short in spite of a pretty bizarre path, I became a doctor. Once I taught myself how to memorize large quantities of material, I was fine. I was able to pass my licensing exams pretty easily. I want to tell you that my experiences taught me the value of never giving up. I am not at all comparing studying to prison; I'm just saying don't give up and don't despair even if you are facing of 35 years in prison. Sometimes things turn out in ways we never ever expected.
I read some things you wrote. You seem to be holding up very well mentally considering the circumstances. I thought your commentary on how to combat ISIS was interesting. I hope you can continue to use the publicity around yourself to get publicity towards the mess we Americans are creating in the middle east. I hope you continue to hold up in spite of the many small miseries of prison I can only imagine. I hope you know that many people do not see you as criminal. I think a lot of people know, secretly, that the biggest criminals in our country are not in jail but rather in our government.
I wrote the white house several times about you because I think you are a patriot who deserves freedom. I know no one there really cares about what I think, but many people are writing these types of letters for you. Our hope is that at some point there will be so many letters they can no longer ignore us. Please continue to write. I'm sorry you have to suffer so much. As they say "freedom isn't free."
I and many other people are very grateful to you.
Love,
Makeda
1. Yassin Bey aka Mos Def....when commercial artists with less talent were making millions for their ludicrous lifestyles rapping about nothing this man correctly drew attention of the otherwise distracted to what went on in Guantanamo bay.
2. Arnold Abbot. You go Zadie! No, he is not my literal grandfather; but I think everyone hopes their days of old age will be as important as his. He could have been napping all day at the old folks center but instead he was actively defying the police to expose the inhumanity of policies against the homeless.
3. Chelsea Manning, who has continued to hold up with dignity under what is probably untold stress with a certain amount of dignity her nasty critics lack.
I think at this point in history many of us identify with being an individual having their soul crushed by an overpowering machinery that is the larger society. And nobody cares.
I'll be trying to write some open letters to prisoners of conscience as apparently in some cases their governments monitor how they look in the court of global public opinion. Fortunately for me they do it through some really imprecise methods, such that this blog may tick off a counter in some global public opinion surveillance algorithm. I hope my first letter "hits" home to make a bit of a nerdish pun- as in my home by birth- the USA.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Chelsea Manning,
Thank you for showing the world about what modern war can feel and look like. I'm convinced many people passively support wars only because they have no personal experience in them so it can become about abstractions and slogans.
The first time I was in a bombing was September 11th 2001. I lived in Brooklyn but worked in Manhattan in the laboratory of a medical school. My train stopped, so I got out and walked. Someone had left an abandoned car open and the radio was playing. They urged everyone who worked in a hospital to report to the hospital. I figured I should go into my lab. I walked through the chaos for many blocks until at some point I think I caught a bus. There is a blank in my memories from seeing all this stuff swirling in the air until I was sitting in my laboratory talking to my boss on the phone. My boss had smartly run to a bomb shelter when the first plane hit. Apparently lab members mocked him as paranoid, right until the second plane hit, at which point they all started freaking out. I can't tell you how saddened I am that what I and many others went through turned into an excuse for what is apparently an endless war against people who for the most part had nothing to do with this.
I share your belief that life is precious. In fact shortly after 2001 I left my lab job and went to medical school. In the beginning was not particularly a natural talent at learning medicine to put it mildly. At one point I tried to drop out of medical school, and took a job as a dishwasher. Then I realized I hated washing dishes as a profession much more than I ever imagined. Long story short in spite of a pretty bizarre path, I became a doctor. Once I taught myself how to memorize large quantities of material, I was fine. I was able to pass my licensing exams pretty easily. I want to tell you that my experiences taught me the value of never giving up. I am not at all comparing studying to prison; I'm just saying don't give up and don't despair even if you are facing of 35 years in prison. Sometimes things turn out in ways we never ever expected.
I read some things you wrote. You seem to be holding up very well mentally considering the circumstances. I thought your commentary on how to combat ISIS was interesting. I hope you can continue to use the publicity around yourself to get publicity towards the mess we Americans are creating in the middle east. I hope you continue to hold up in spite of the many small miseries of prison I can only imagine. I hope you know that many people do not see you as criminal. I think a lot of people know, secretly, that the biggest criminals in our country are not in jail but rather in our government.
I wrote the white house several times about you because I think you are a patriot who deserves freedom. I know no one there really cares about what I think, but many people are writing these types of letters for you. Our hope is that at some point there will be so many letters they can no longer ignore us. Please continue to write. I'm sorry you have to suffer so much. As they say "freedom isn't free."
I and many other people are very grateful to you.
Love,
Makeda
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Leftist Leaders Explaining My Situation to Me
Rebbeca Solnit's now famous "Men Explain Things to Me" struck a distant chord when I first read bits of it. Stuck in the world of science where discovery is key, and my own knowledge was limited, I did not experience condescension as often as appropriate teaching. Then after some time angry at the capitalist distortion of American health care, I decided to become involved in leftist politics. I'm not sure I could have met such a group of arrogant classist condescending sexists had I joined the fascist right wing. Obviously, I'm not the color of person who could find out...But I have come to believe the academic left is actually often an impediment to progress. I sat down to write a blog about this topic only to discover Solnit beat me to some of my conclusions...
Fortunately for her she probably hadn't had the same number of leftists explaining her political situation to her, or at least she didn't let on if she had. Solnit criticizes the radical left's extreme rhetoric as pointless. She quotes Micahel Eric Dyson who astutely notices that "What is not good are ideals and rhetorics that don’t have the possibility of changing the condition that you analyze. Otherwise, you’re engaging in a form of rhetorical narcissism and ideological self-preoccupation that has no consequence on the material conditions of actually existing poor people.”
I would add that what is also not good is condescendingly explaining people's condition to them. People who have never experienced certain levels of oppressive political conditions bizarrely seem entitled to sacrifice those that do in the name of their own political self aggrandizing. A large part of the problem is straight up ignorance about how the real world works. People from entitled backgrounds are so used to the world bending to their will they forget that other powerful people also have strong wills, and often armies to back them up. Hence the university educated professor can call for methods of class revolution without any consciousness of all the consequences of his methods: many of which might be negative for the very people he purports to lead a revolution for. Because they have never personally confronted people with real power- often their own relatives- they are unaware of the extent to which powerful people will abuse their power. Sustainable victories against the ruling classes will most often be incremental if they ever come. Those of us who live in the lower half of the power equation are often concerned with scrapping by: making our own existence survivable in a world utterly indifferent to us at best. We aren't all interested in sacrificing ourselves to prove a political point.
On the other hand, talking back to our self appointed leaders results in rigid thought policing that could only be described as ironically humorous if it were not tragic. A perfect example of this nonsense is my the rhetoric ex-husband. I don't use his name, or tell identifying story after story of his laughable "feminism" in order to avoid the legal ramifications of doing so, not because it isn't hysterically funny. A feminist academic type, he used to lecture me about my lack of feminism. I spent lots spent my spare time volunteering with female war refugees. In my experience as a volunteer doctor with female war refugees this population is the frontline of every kind of violence against women and all it's ramifications even after they move away from conflict zones. In spite of my dedication to these women, my ex-husband constantly chastized me . My utter lack of concern over upper middle class white women was alarming to him. He once chastised me for looking down on women who take advantage of the global classed/gendered labor divide to elevate themselves. Apparently I should have been looking up at women who abuse migrant laborers taking care of their children, because they were "career" women. According to him I also should have been looking up to women who had no children at all...because they were more successful, according to him. I had to politely and patiently explain to him over and over that not everyone in the world measures success in dollars. "Marx said the primary thing is the job, the work" He would say as if Marx were the source of all truth in the universe. Just for the sake of historical irony, I will point out that Karl Marx had seven children.
If you don't notice the sad trend of "successful"women living empty lives you are either in a coma or a leftist committed to some imaginary world of leftist ideas. In reality men and women have not achieved anything close to equality. We aren't even held to the same standards. Try imagining a woman even as creepy as womanizing oversexed heroes like Martin Luther King or Ghandi, and you will immediately see my point. No such nonsense exists. That may actually be a good thing, but it proves how far apart we are. The real breaking point is no longer sex though, it's children. Yes, some women are allergic to children; but by and large due to the psychotic demands of the American style workplace, women who want what men have: the chance at rewarding work and family are tremendously disadvantaged. Many women therefore make some compromises in terms of achieving what they want. Only men and wealthy women are arrogant enough to assume that they know which compromises would have been better for most women take. Not so coincidentally, these privileged classes (men and women with money) are often interested women making in the compromises that benefit men and the wealthy classes the most. In the leftist male fantasy world first wives should preoccupy themselves with supporting these men financially, then step aside when men are successful, as they can now be traded in for younger prettier versions that produce children. It sounds like the anti-feminist fantasy; but every man I know trying to achieve this female nightmare tells me he is a feminist. If he is really feminist he won't have a first wife, because "marriage is patriarchy" or some vapid slogan like that...marriage of course implies shared responsibility between a man and a woman over their actions together, and what feminist wouldn't want women to be given with ALL the responsibility for everything? I know such men must be feminists because they explain feminism to me.
Of course by explaining, I only mean attempting to dictate. I thought of typing out a tirade on my latest run in with the leftists thought police; but I have decided it is counterproductive. What I have come to realize is that many organizations of leftists aren't as problematic as I imagine them to be. They are in fact nearly irrelevant; even if they don't realize it.
Fortunately for her she probably hadn't had the same number of leftists explaining her political situation to her, or at least she didn't let on if she had. Solnit criticizes the radical left's extreme rhetoric as pointless. She quotes Micahel Eric Dyson who astutely notices that "What is not good are ideals and rhetorics that don’t have the possibility of changing the condition that you analyze. Otherwise, you’re engaging in a form of rhetorical narcissism and ideological self-preoccupation that has no consequence on the material conditions of actually existing poor people.”
I would add that what is also not good is condescendingly explaining people's condition to them. People who have never experienced certain levels of oppressive political conditions bizarrely seem entitled to sacrifice those that do in the name of their own political self aggrandizing. A large part of the problem is straight up ignorance about how the real world works. People from entitled backgrounds are so used to the world bending to their will they forget that other powerful people also have strong wills, and often armies to back them up. Hence the university educated professor can call for methods of class revolution without any consciousness of all the consequences of his methods: many of which might be negative for the very people he purports to lead a revolution for. Because they have never personally confronted people with real power- often their own relatives- they are unaware of the extent to which powerful people will abuse their power. Sustainable victories against the ruling classes will most often be incremental if they ever come. Those of us who live in the lower half of the power equation are often concerned with scrapping by: making our own existence survivable in a world utterly indifferent to us at best. We aren't all interested in sacrificing ourselves to prove a political point.
On the other hand, talking back to our self appointed leaders results in rigid thought policing that could only be described as ironically humorous if it were not tragic. A perfect example of this nonsense is my the rhetoric ex-husband. I don't use his name, or tell identifying story after story of his laughable "feminism" in order to avoid the legal ramifications of doing so, not because it isn't hysterically funny. A feminist academic type, he used to lecture me about my lack of feminism. I spent lots spent my spare time volunteering with female war refugees. In my experience as a volunteer doctor with female war refugees this population is the frontline of every kind of violence against women and all it's ramifications even after they move away from conflict zones. In spite of my dedication to these women, my ex-husband constantly chastized me . My utter lack of concern over upper middle class white women was alarming to him. He once chastised me for looking down on women who take advantage of the global classed/gendered labor divide to elevate themselves. Apparently I should have been looking up at women who abuse migrant laborers taking care of their children, because they were "career" women. According to him I also should have been looking up to women who had no children at all...because they were more successful, according to him. I had to politely and patiently explain to him over and over that not everyone in the world measures success in dollars. "Marx said the primary thing is the job, the work" He would say as if Marx were the source of all truth in the universe. Just for the sake of historical irony, I will point out that Karl Marx had seven children.
If you don't notice the sad trend of "successful"women living empty lives you are either in a coma or a leftist committed to some imaginary world of leftist ideas. In reality men and women have not achieved anything close to equality. We aren't even held to the same standards. Try imagining a woman even as creepy as womanizing oversexed heroes like Martin Luther King or Ghandi, and you will immediately see my point. No such nonsense exists. That may actually be a good thing, but it proves how far apart we are. The real breaking point is no longer sex though, it's children. Yes, some women are allergic to children; but by and large due to the psychotic demands of the American style workplace, women who want what men have: the chance at rewarding work and family are tremendously disadvantaged. Many women therefore make some compromises in terms of achieving what they want. Only men and wealthy women are arrogant enough to assume that they know which compromises would have been better for most women take. Not so coincidentally, these privileged classes (men and women with money) are often interested women making in the compromises that benefit men and the wealthy classes the most. In the leftist male fantasy world first wives should preoccupy themselves with supporting these men financially, then step aside when men are successful, as they can now be traded in for younger prettier versions that produce children. It sounds like the anti-feminist fantasy; but every man I know trying to achieve this female nightmare tells me he is a feminist. If he is really feminist he won't have a first wife, because "marriage is patriarchy" or some vapid slogan like that...marriage of course implies shared responsibility between a man and a woman over their actions together, and what feminist wouldn't want women to be given with ALL the responsibility for everything? I know such men must be feminists because they explain feminism to me.
Of course by explaining, I only mean attempting to dictate. I thought of typing out a tirade on my latest run in with the leftists thought police; but I have decided it is counterproductive. What I have come to realize is that many organizations of leftists aren't as problematic as I imagine them to be. They are in fact nearly irrelevant; even if they don't realize it.
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