Gay Marraige and Inequality

    So now we have gay marriage. Yeah for all those people who can get married. Except let's be honest: I'm not sure this won't increase inequality. Already the press has asked the question of whether civil partner benefits will remain. If they don't, we are headed towards increasing inequality. What upper middle class white people rarely realize, unless they work in a social profession, is that marriage is increasingly a class marker...a class marker not everyone can afford.
   If marriage were simply a luxury vehicle, there wouldn't be much of a problem. The real problem is that marriage is an institution tied up with money and social capital. It takes capital to get into it, and it returns capital both social and financial. So much so that on average kids raised by a single parent or cohabitating parents are statistically on average very different than kids raised by married parents. But does anyone really have a choice about which lifestyle they are choosing? Yes, of course, the people with enough capital to make the choice. On the other side of the problem are millions of people sunk in student loans or other usurious arrangements that make them much less capable of marriage. In the case of student loan holders there is a statistical gender split. Men with student loans are statistically marriageable; women are on average much less so. I doubt this surprises anyone. It confirms the unfortunate reality based stereotype that men are commitment-phobic selfish bums who have the upper hand in the dating market. This doesn't even stop in marriage. Anyone who works in medicine who sees the realities of organ donation can tell you there is a very real statistical difference between wifes willing to throw their husbands a kidney, and the reverse. As a culture we seem to be producing a bunch of selfish men. In this regards gay marriage seems on the surface like a perfect solution...now women can just marry each other and bypass gender inequality right?
 Wrong, by the numbers, marriage, gay or straight, by the numbers seems to be exacerbating economic  inequality in our society. In fact it won't surprise me if when it's all said and done lesbian households fall towards the bottom of the economic ladder just above single women households. We are usually talking about two WOMEN and their "chick jobs," right? For every lesbian couple I know where one is a high earning chemist, I know a pair where both have taken socially responsible but poorly paid employment like social work, education or activism. If anyone is going to undo the conservative plot for gay marriage (and I think there was such a thing if you look at it in a certain way) where these newlyweds all move to suburbia and start complaining about their taxes just like rich straight people- it's probably going to be these women.
  I don't think anyone is delusional enough to think we can just throw out a tradition this deeply entrenched into our cultures. As many people are too poor to involve themselves in marriage- or at least marriage in their reproductive years, apparently, by the numbers; the real question is what institutions can they use to even the game, especially when raising children.

Al Jazeera's Muslims

So apparently Al Jazeera can't cover the middle east of all places. The paper claims the Druze are Muslims. To be precise this article calls them an "Islamic sect." Even Israelis like myself know the Druze are not Muslims, the Muslims are not Druze. In Israel all Druze and most Muslims here are Arabs...according to most but not all Druze. Some even don't want to be called Arabs. So where does a major paper like Al Jazeera get off not fact checking anything? Are there people stupid enough to believe that residence in me middle east makes you Muslim? Am I Muslim? Is everyone Muslim?

Well actually, if you listen to the latest in news from the region, the real issue is that ISIS is a very Jewish organization....which just goes to show, the media is full of lies.

The Druze have their own holy book and customs entirely different from Muslims. Some scholars posit they began as a sext of Shia about 1000 years ago.  But Christianity began as a sects of Judaism. These things happen. Further it isn't entirely clear that the Druze were Shia; some Druze think they originally came from India. Whatever the case, they don't marry foreigners- meaning anyone not Druze including Muslims. Even the most cursory fact checking could have pulled up this stuff.

The real question is if Al-Jazeera can't cover the middle east, what can it cover?

Male Delusion/Capitalist Delusion: An archtypical case

 A female friend who works as a sex worker tells me clients have often asked her questions like "What part of the experience do you love the most?" to which she honestly answers "getting paid." What seems fairly obvious to me, is apparently not to men. They apparently actually believe sex workers are not stuck in their miserable jobs, but rather LOVE the work....Maybe it's true for like 0.01% of sex workers, but I would guess most people would rather just spent time working on something a bit more meaningful whether it is raising their children or volunteering for a better world or writing a novel.
This particular male delusion is really several delusions. The broader one is that everyone in this capitalist system is in some kind of romantic relationship with their job. I was sold this nonsense for years by the education system- which was supposed to empower me to do work that I loved. Yes, I love some aspects of being a doctor, but let's be real. If I fill in any more paperwork I'm going to just start calling myself a secretary. If I had stayed in the US, I could call myself transport and nursing as well, as hospitals have discovered doctors can make cheap labor given that their salary doesn't necessarily have to change based on the amount you work them...A job is a job, and calling it a career or profession is sometimes a way to sell you on the idea that you need to work harder for less money. I've never met a research professional in the health sciences who makes overtime. Not once. This supposedly blue collar benefit might help with what are pressing issues for people like childcare- or would be if such high end professions actually used a workforce no made up of rich people and desperate immigrants willing to put up with nonsense.
Another side of believing sex workers love their work is an oversimplification and really distortion of the complex relation of women and sex. Or anyone and sex for that matter...no one can admit that we live in a world where survival sex is probably at least as common as romantic sex; and a lot of what people think of as romantic sex actually is not. I was reminded of that when I watched the miserable movie "Shes Pamim" recently. I have no idea why the movie won so many awards. After I saw it I was worried that as a secular Israeli I'm going to be raising a child in a culture almost as destructively misogynistic  as ISIS. The main character of the movie is an insecure teenage girl who walks around dressed like a hooker, and acting like she has lost her mind. She fucks anything male, or rather, let's it fuck her. Endless sex scenes involve absolutely no pleasure for her, rather her manipulation, humiliation and degradation. I felt like I might as well have been on a trip either backwards in time to the 14th century, or northward in space above the Golan heights to a place where women were ultimately only some kind of currency because they were there to be used as a sexual outlet. The main character claims she likes it; but she never has an orgasm, and looks absolutely miserable in the sex scenes. I wonder if the film was made to scare the hell out of people like me...scare us until we sign our daughters up for religious school- because frankly even 16th century Jewish values start to look feminist next to this nonsense....and they also look feminist next to secular "modern" men asking my sex worker friend what she "loves" about her job.  
But maybe that is the delusion that keeps men visiting prostitutes. Maybe if they understood that this is just backbreaking, annoying degrading work; less different than say being an exploited migrant laborer, they might rethink how they spend on sex.

The Story They Won't Cover: Al-Midan

     I google-searched to see who has covered the new controversy over the Al Midan theatre outside of the Levant...and predictably it only appears in papers focused on Jewry like The Time of Israel. I can't say I'm surprised. Although it does make a nice story about how the state of Israel is evil, which leftists can never get enough of, it also makes exactly the opposite story. The fact that it exists flies in the face of the crude uninformed narratives of Western Leftists, not unlike it's and my home Haifa. Haifa has been an "Arab-Jewish" coexistance city since for over a hundred years, although really calling it a Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Druze co-existance city would be more accurate. Even during the 1948 war a lot of the LOCAL Jewish population tried to convince their Muslim and Christian neighbors to just stay put in contrast with national leadership of either Arabs or Jews. I was surprised recently to see even a Palestinian author, the grandchild of a family that fled in spite of the neighbor's advice, writing about this phenomenon.
    Haifa almost never features in ANY story about Israel in spite of being the third largest city in the country. I suspect it is never on the news outside of Israel because it breaks open and contradicts just about every single narrative anyone on the political right or left wants to spin about Israel. Haifa did finally start making the news recently over the Ethiopian protests....a story I definitely think has more edge in the center of the country. In the center of the country is frankly where all the action on this happened. Parts of the center of the country are also the whitest places I've ever been in Israel. I actually find it quite creepy having lived most of my Israeli life in Haifa. One train, plus one bus, and boom- where did all the Arabs go? Why is everyone Ashkenazi? I don't see many Russians....these people look like they have lots of money. I think I want to go back to Haifa. I feel like a dirty peasant because everyone around me is wearing new clothes, and seems, well, rich. This feeling highlights another reality no one wants to talk about in regards to Haifa. In spite of being home to Tech giants and one of the world's greatest universities, it is somehow resolutely blue collar. And actually a blue collar co-existance is even more of an accomplishment than a white collar one or one of the destitute in my opinion.
  So I expect few in the Anglo media to cover the Al-Midan Theatre Culture War. The attempt by a right wing government to crush Arab theatre because it puts on shows not to the liking of the regime. I'll try and cover events as I support them. I have the day off, and I'll be meeting with who I can at Al-Midan. I have taken a job in a hospital outside of Haifa; but I won't give up on my city. Al Midan is an important institution not just for Haifa, but for all of Israel and the whole Levant. Haifa is the shining example, and hope for all of us, that some kind of fragile, if imperfect coexistance is possible.

Live updates on Al Midan: I'm just back from part of the meeting. I ran into a friend of mine who is a Palestinian/Israeli Arab film-maker. He warned me the whole meeting would be in Arabic. No more simultaneous translation headphone like at the communist party meeting. Bummer. If it isn't about pain, disease or dizziness, I can't really follow... what a shame. This is something I feel is important...but language has locked me out of understanding the whole story. But what the excuse for news outlets is, where they should have Arabic speakers, I don't know. I saw Ynetnews...but what can one expect from them in terms of coverage? More stories on the inexplicably important issue of fatty bourekas, as recently graced their cover? I have no hope of good media coverage...oh well.

Rachel Dolezal and the Delusions of White Academics

  "Race is just a social construction..." white academic types opine; as if it would matter if it was. Race is not only a social construction. I can not wipe the blackness off my face as Dolezal presumably could tissue off her dark make-up. Even when I wear my hair straightened, and have been stuck inside long enough to look racially ambiguous, in the USA, most people will identify me as black, or at least not white. This is a double edged sword in medicine, precisely because race IS very real.
   Race is about genetics. Genetics matter immensely in medicine. Race matters not only in terms of exotic diseases like familial Mediterranean fever which effect only certain ethnic groups. Race matters not only in terms of very common diseases like breast cancer, where the genetics of certain groups can predict whether they will get the disease, but only within that group due to very specific genetic mutations (here in Israel breast cancer is caused by different mutations in Iraqui Jews versus Ashkenzi Jews). To be very real about it, race matters every time you want to even analyze basic labs. AST/ ALT? The Chem 7 panel? Yes, that basic...and I should know being black in Israel. Years ago, on checking, my liver enzyme values were so far off the population norms I looked like an raging alcoholic...but thankfully in Israel, most of the social construct around race - the one which would decree me an ignorant idiot- doesn't exist in my very specific case. I was able to explain to my doctor that the lab values were done by population norms, and I'm outside the population norms. Soon I'll be off to a nephrologist over a new abnormal lab value I have based on my creatinine levels. No one wants to talk about this, but African Americans really have a triple-whammy when it comes to kidney issues. Genetically blacks seem to have on average fewer nephrons than whites to begin with. Add to that in the case of African-Americans some very un-natural selection in terms of the conditions of slavery which I would guess began right on the slave ships when some people died of dehydration...and top it all of with blood pressure raising stress.
   What stress? I'll give an example. About a year ago, I noticed my pule was high and I was sweating. I felt accelerated. Being a doctor, I saw the symptoms of thyroid disease. I knew given my particular personal medical background the chances I had such a disease were much higher than any general population. I feared a thyroid storm, and headed to the one emergency department in New York City where I knew no one. They subsequently began testing me for drugs in spite of my patient explanations. Their assessment of me as a younger black women with elevated blood pressure and pulse, was that I must be on drugs. When the tests came back negative, they decided I had anxiety and called psychiatry. I do have anxiety- especially when I'm fighting for my health in a racist system that seems designed to cause my early death. I believe the anxiety is appropriate.
    What happened to me when I was treated, or more accurately not treated, for what was later diagnosed as thyroid disease (exactly what I told the personnel I suspected) is an example of race as social construction. The social construction is the idea of my inherent supposed stupidity, and imaginary status as a drug fiend. The results were of course very real, in that my diagnosis was delayed for days putting my life at risk. Yet, I would never want doctors to not know that I am black, and African-American in particular...genetics matter.
   On both counts, the reality of race, and the social constructions around it, white academic types, reveal a sort of tragic cluelessness....and I can't say I am surprised. Academia is a place of so much in terms of time and resources dedicated to learning, but so little about reality is learned outside of the sciences. Most people in academia come from immense privledge..so for many of them perhaps race is just an issue of identity and social construction. Their opinions show just how far apart they have drifted not only from some of the populations they are opining on, but from reality itself...

Is the NYTimes taking bribes?

One more article on how student loans are not a crisis, and I may start a campaign of terror against the New York Times. I'm not violent- so it would have to be a campaign of symbolic terror, but still.
What passes for journalism today is laughable. The latest report is mind boggling in it's stupidity. Pulling on numbers from 2003 (before the financial crisis and a over a decade's worth of growth in tuition which outpaced inflation) the author makes an argument irrelevant to anyone today.

Had this been an isolated incident I would have just assumed that Susan Dynarski was a low level crack addict in rehab financing her dalliances by writing articles for the NYTimes...but the trend goes beyond this author. I have watched this issue be continually distorted by the NYtimes for quite a while. Respectable reporters opine to the public that there is no real issue. All of them draw on selective outdated data. Whatever parts of the public are convinced clearly suffered from the lack of education enhanced by this pyramid scheme funding deal we call the current American educational system. If one peruses the talk-backs one will notice however that no one really seems to fall for this nonsense. Everyone knows that we are being ripped off by institutions who have gone out of control. Administrators who earn millions while sinking students into ever deeper debt before they enter a workforce they are poorly trained for...but perhaps well trained for in the sense that if nothing else they will understand that a powerful elite will make their lives miserable, and if they won't conform, even more miserable than that. One only need peruse current statistics about labor to realize that many new grads are headed into well, hell. I would like to see one of these pretentious reporters try to raise a family on the wages available to a low level hospital worker or any of the other jobs with any nuance of stability in our new economy while paying off student loans. Given the new arrangements around labor, in which so many formerly decent jobs are slowly being turned into independent contractor positions, perhaps being suckered and abused is good training.

The only real question left is how precisely such distorted views continually make the pages of the NYTimes. Does the editorial board have a number of people with financial interests in Navient? Do financial lobbies continually pay off the editorial board? Are the writers on the staff of banks as consultants? If this sounds outlandish, consider that I recently ghostwrote a "news" article for a mid-sized paper, which was directly funded by a couple private companies. That what I wrote will never be understood as the marketing copy it was is outrageous; but not quite as outrageous as the student loans I am servicing.....

The Left Lies: now it's Africa

I suppose I should feel relieved. Here I was thinking all the left lies about in terms of journalism is Israel. That they sort of accidentally often participated in a new form of antisemitism because they couldn't be bothered with fact checking...

But then a while back Russian Times ran an editorial about how hunkey dorey Eritrea was, and now The Real News has done the same. I have worked with Eritrean refugees.  The idea that Eritrea is an African Cuba is laughable: try North Korea...

Because I myself treated refugees from Eritrea as a doctor, and their characterization as deliberately mislabeled beneficiaries of US foreign policy who are really draft dodgers is so gratingly offensive I am moved to write... whatever the US has deemed these people it hasn't helped them much. I found myself giving patients tips on how to avoid indefinite detention in Israel- a fate which happens to many such people- so it's hardly like whatever the US said has made these people in VIPs, OK? 

I consider myself a reluctant leftist. I'm affiliated with Hadash, the Israeli communist party (one of the few Israeli parties in which Arabs and Jews have made a real attempt at equality withing the party), because I truly believe in the goal of equality. Obviously, given my political affiliation, even more than I believe in being logical, or conformist, I believe in striving for equality everywhere. But I could write books on the delusions of most leftists...and the press isn't helping shake these delusions. It's creating them.

Really distorting reality: the Real News

I'm giving up writing commentary on TRNN's coverage of Israel. To continually point out how they distort reality is tiring. I'm for human rights and for the rights of the Palestinians; and yet, the more I read and watch, the more I get tired of the delusions of the left.

If you were to pay attention to the leftist press you would believe that the one and only cause of Palestinian misery is Israel...and 100% of Israelis are actively oppressing Palestinians (never mind that 20% of the population IS Palestinian Arab...why let reality get in the way of fashionable political stances?). In reality the list of those screwing up the lives of Palestinians is very long it includes the PA and Hamas to the governments of Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Syria to even the US regime...doesn't it seem odd that 100% of the attention and blame for this travesty is focused on one state when so many are playing a part? Honestly if we were to try to weight who has caused the most misery for the Palestinians, I'm not sure their own leadership class wouldn't come out as number one; although this in no way justifies anyone else's cruelty and bad policies.

But let's examine some of these policies...let's compare some details of Lebanon and Israel's treatment of Palestinian '48 refugees and their descendants. In Lebanon these refugees usually do not get citizenship (unless they were upper middle class Christians and/or married locals generally), don't even get work permits (although there seem to be plenty of work permits around for foreign workers from Africa and Asia) and are legally barred from prestigious professions. They can not register property they may own. And in a most disgusting affront to human rights, they can be barred from Hospitals...don't take my word for it...go read the Palestinian and Arab press. Palestinians who fled to Lebanon have been subject to everything from day to day discrimination to out and out bombing. So much for Arab solidarity. The world turns a blind eye to these problems not just in Lebanon but all over the Levant, except for one single country. All over the Levant the '1948 displaced Arabs have suffered; and continue to suffer. Ironically Israel is one of the few countries some of such people can receive medical treatment in or from...if they can pay off the correct bribes to the Hamas or PA officials holding them hostage that is. There are UNRWA and Hamas and PA supported medical facilities, but when it comes to tertiary level care or specific care for certain diseases, Israel is probably the best hope some of these people have...but together with a budget large enough to put a doctor in every village UNRWA, the PA and Hamas have taken on a sometimes conflicted but often symbiotic corruption scheme gauranteed to fail the healthcare needs of actual normal people- but enhance the conflict causing some of those very needs. 

A question I often ask pro-Palestinian activists from the US, is why Israel ONLY? If you want to target the biggest cause of armed conflict- target the USA. Most weapons in the world roll right out of or are at least sold by the USA. If you want to stop injustice, why not start at home? And if you really cared about the human rights of Palestinian people wouldn't the first target be Hamas? It's a much more defensible position to say we must fight injustice everywhere than we must fight injustice only if it's related to Jewish nationalism, and everyone everywhere else gets a pass. That attitude is precisely why plenty of otherwise reasonable Jews have just decided the world hates us, and let's just not bother explaining our side of the story. A quite reasonable line of thinking might go: If it's unjust that Palestians were displaced from The Galil or Jaffa, then how is it less unjust that Jews were displaced from Baghdad or Cairo? Why does one side get all the love of leftists?

Having known some Iraqui Jewish families, I've noticed their stories vary just like those of the Palestinians. Some may have moved somewhat "willfully"- but how much does will play a part in a time of war and chaos?  One of my good female friend's families only fled after her grandfather was shot in the head. That kind of violence blurs the line between willful and forced relocation. The deeper you go into the actual personal accounts the of history of the Levant from any side, the more confusing the issue becomes in some ways. Not every story conforms to any simple narrative.

But simple narratives are precisely what the news seems to think people want. Therefore stories from co-existence cities like Haifa, which defy well worked out narratives, will never air in the Anglo world. If we sit back we will be brainwashed into the same tired narratives: ones which conveniently remove all responsibility from most people for the misery of anyone. Viewers can happily say 'I'm just an American or Brit--- I didn't do anything..it's all because of Israel, or Jews, or whoever the scapegoat is today' ( but in most cases the age-old scapegoats will do just fine. )

Ironically, almost no one seems focused on the most salient question of all: what can we do to make things better right now? How can we alleviate the unjust suffering and misery? What programs have actually been successful; why and how? One thing is for certain the world's program- mostly the sum total of UNRWA + governments in the Levant + US and UK actions- of keeping Palestinians mired in misery perhaps with the hope that the deeper this misery, the more likely it will cause a dramatic solution, has failed. Misery has only led to more misery, and some misery on top of that...so let's all try and think about how we can realistically fix this now...

I for one, in solidarity with all people like myself living under the threat of rockets (it's been only two days since Israel was last bombed...and the rate never seems to hit zero); am for boycotting the USA. At very least the world's biggest arms exporter should not be sitting on the UN security council...and anyone who can't see that is probably not living in reality...or living in a reality where they and their relatives have nothing to fear but a fall in their asset portfolios presumably well lined with arms manufacturers.