Democratize the USA now!

As I posted on facebook to my fellow Americans! Just had a conversation with my best friend back there who is depressed about Trump's election. I pointed out that Hilary was pretty despicable as well. 
I'm sad that the Klu Klux Klan held a victory rally for Trump in the state I was born in, but I'm also really disappointed with the protests of Trump- now hear me out as to why: 
I wish everyone considering protesting the man would protest the specific conditions that brought him about instead. The most obvious of which is the electoral college. Seriously- the electoral college was established when only property holding white men could vote in order to make sure that EVEN THEY did not get an egalitarian democratic system- rather one controlled by the elite of property holding white men...just go read article two of the constitution in light of Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Papers. No one was hiding what the point of this was back then...Now people would be wise, in my humble opinion, to move past the 14th amendment and just fight to abolish this anachronistic mess altogether. And while they are fighting for democracy, they should get the FEC to fund a few more parties, and put them on the ticket in all states, to break the two party monopoly.
These struggles are infinitely winnable. At present it would take 5% of an election to get a third party on the ballot in the next election...or about 1 million signatures...what the heck are you people waiting for? Go round up the signatures and start filing the paperwork now...with the advent of the internet it could be done with a few dozen people in each state working together.
And people in the territories i.e. Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S.V.A, frankly, I'm not sure why you aren't in open revolt already... this whole PROMESA thing laid bare you are being made into subservient colonial subjects. The problem is the average mainlander doesn't know you exist. Really. I promise to wave your flag when you revolt. 

I tend to disdain politics, but things have gotten so bad, I'm going to put forth a modest proposal of what we might do to save the world. Because we should be building the future better than the past. 
Here are the five things Americans should do in order to democratize the country:

1. Get rid of the electoral college. 

Plenty of ideas in the original constitution had to go in the move towards democracy. Like that whole more representation based on color thing. Thats where the whole infamous blacks as three fifths of a person thing came from. From the original constitution  

Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 :

Representatives... shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Keep the dream of democracy in the USA alive- ban the electoral college!

2. Start voting for all citizens of voting age regardless of geography!

Perhaps you weren't aware, but millions and millions of your fellow citizens can not vote because they are considered to be of "alien race" by virtue of living in a US territory.  Puerto Ricans, Guamanians, U.S.Virgin Islanders, American Samoans...any of these people living in the US territories but not residing in a state can not vote in the national election... what is interesting is that these people tend to serve in the US military in disproportionally high numbers. On the other hand thousands of US citizens living abroad can and do vote. Perhaps because I live in Israel I kept getting messages reminding me to vote - because I could vote from "anywhere". Apparently while anywhere includes the outer reaches of the Golan heights, it does not include Puerto Rico,  an hour plane ride away from Miami full of 3.5 millions of US citizens.

3. Let criminals vote!

Admit it, your government is run by criminals anyways...in many cases much worse than some of the people behind bars. I mean seriously, Hillary probably should be in jail. If I were getting millions from shady Saudis over arms deals, wouldn't I be in jail? Of course it sounds absurd...because poor black people like me tend to commit much less profitable crimes, then get slammed out of normal citizenship for them. Why should people lose their right to vote based on crimes like smoking weed, when Hillary walks free?

4. Overturn Citizens United!

Corporations are not people. Large stacks of money are not people. People are people....have you all gone mad?! You live in a country where the bottom half of people have approximately no money- or less than that because they are in debt- and a few families and wealthy individuals own nearly everything. Think I'm kidding? The Walton family has 149 billion. You- if your are like most Americans- have a credit card, and  maybe an old computer. If money buys political speech your voices will not be heard.

5. Fight for third parties!

Most functional democracies have more than two parties. With the advent of the Clintonocrats you have less. Do you find it curious how Obamacare was Romneycare...or how welfare reforms slashing benefits came in under Bill Clinton? It's because nearly every politician is really a variation of the same right winger in US politics. Both major parties are for endless war in the middle east, militarism, and money. Big money. Wall street money. Time for a party that is more than window dressing for militarized corporate rule. Any day now...


Good luck with that from your American dissident in exile Dr. Moore.

Essure America

Reading about Essure only reinforces my knowledge that the USA is a medical disaster zone and NOTHING only approved there should be trusted. This is no tin foil hat babble, check out the BMJ: Safety and efficacy of hysteroscopic sterilization compared with laparoscopic sterilization: an observational cohort study - November 19, 2015

What frightens me is that Essure has nickel in it. Anyone who even went to medical school knows that nickel is the world's most common allergy. Nickel sensitivity is veery well studied and in some populations the sensitivity to nickel is over 10%! (Menne T, Borgan O, Green A. Nickel allergy and hand dermatitis in a stratified sample of the Danish female population: an epidemio-logical study including a statistic appendix. Acta Derm Venereol 1982;62:35-41.)What were these people thinking? This device is about as well thought out as telling women to stuff their vaginas with anything on-hand to prevent pregnancy...and just like that would do, this has also killed people from toxic shock syndrome.

Dear Amira Hess, it's not so simple....

So Amira,
Surprisingly we have never met. Given how small the Israeli left is, you would think we would have at least seen each other. I am a card carrying member of the lunatic left. My one and only publication in the Hebrew press is in Zo Ha Derech - amcommunist leaflet which is probably read only by Israels remaining 200 or so extreme leftists, and 200 members of the state security apparatus.  I was at lots of protests against the wars, active in Physicians for Human Rights and so on...but, on the other hand, I have not lived in Israel for that long.
In fact, I only made Aliya last year. Like you I had questions about why people would exercise this right that wasn't universal, and more importantly seemed mixed up with the oppression of another people. But you would never guess what precisely changed my mind...
I had attended the Technion. There I met many wonderful and complicated intellectuals including one Muslim colleague who happened to be related to a staunchly anti-Zionist politician. This guy was brilliant and kind. Years ago like every other girl in my neighborhood, I had a crush on him. As it turned out he refused to date me because I am Jewish or Jewish by association with a part of my family at least. Once he even told me "I hate Jews" to my face. I didn't think much of it, because frankly, as a black American, I've had a few "I hate white people" moments in my head.
A couple years ago I was back in the holy land, and ran into him. We caught up. I shyly mentioned that I was trying to immigrate. "I know what you think...it's wrong" I began, and rattled off a list of issues from the philisophical to the practical about Aliya. He interrupted me somewhere right around a tangent about how the legal system was designed to favor certain people..."What are you crazy?" he asked. "Come home. Just ten minutes ago you admitted you have to work so hard over there as a doctor you literally nearly died in a car crash driving home after a long shift. Come home. This is your life we are talking about! Come home!" he said, and then in a few seconds he realized the political implications of telling me it was my home and added "I mean, get a work permit so you can work in my country." And there you have it-the ultimate realization of a dream of labor Zionism. People, politically Palestinian or not, respect people who work.
I did come home, and my life- especially as a leftist- got better. Let me point out two ways. 1. My paycheck includes overtime regardless of who I work on. In the USA many of my extra hours would simply not be counted due to extreme capitalism. Here I'm a proud union member, able to provide by work as a doctor to anyone regardless of their ability to pay. In the USA, I might lose my medical license for such liberal socialist action. 2. My opinions can actually be expressed through elections. Unlike the USA, there is an extreme left involved in the government instead of hidden by a two party system featuring two corrupt parties. Outsiders may not have realized it, but the US is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Here in Israel taking money as a government official to influence you is usually illegal and called for what it is- corruption. In the US we call such actions many names: campaign contributions, lobbying and so on, and it's all part of the system.
So in sum, I found myself a place where I can labor with respect, and be part of the democratic process. I'll be using my labor and democratic rights to support many of the same causes as you do Amira...so ultimately, am I decreasing or increasing the problems of other people? Who knows, and frankly, who cares. After all, no one is paying that much attention to one crazy person. On the other hand if enough crazy people like me start showing up, we may eventually start some new confederated state with freedom, labor rights and democracy for everyone. Is that so bad?

Finally a boycott I can believe in...

Together let's work to end the evil empire:

http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa_boycott.html

Education and Inequality...

So there is new data out to the press confirming something I know painfully and personally. Education is not a an equalizer stronger than racism, rather a source of inequality. An example is an article that ran in the Washington Post. 

The mainstream press just keeps skying away from stating that last bit. But I'm here as an example to say that financially a great education can make you far worst off than your local 8th grade drop out. What I find most appalling is the response from academia. Not only have they trotted out myths about the invaluable assets an education gives one...they have trotted out individual achievers. This is the classic myth of capitalism itself. All this supposed emphasis on critical thinking, and these people can't even get past a tired old myth of the rugged American individual who works his way up alone through effort? Really! Horatio Alger? Johny Appleseed? It's all that packaged as a black woman successful...and it's ridiculous.

I happened to watch a lecture given at the University of California given partly by diversity deans and such...and someone self made and really rich woman came out and talked about how generational wealth was a new things for blacks and we lack mentors. Of all the problems of the black community, I must admit this one never crossed my mind...perhaps I was too worried we were all going to die from violence, horrible health care rationed out by racists and poverty to think that far ahead..
The myths of the brilliant individual have a dangerous flip side. Because one black woman can make it, then apparently they all can, right? So something must be defective with 99% of blacks...Well, this is the myth of capitalism anyways. That somehow the success of one will lead others to follow. But how many people can be in the elite when the elite is by definition the few?

I knew all about this stuff in the 9th grade thanks to my local public library, but apparently today's college kids are so miseducated that Universities can actually pull the wool over their eyes...which makes sense. As to the invaluable assets a college education brings, mental enrichment probably is not one of them. Few things are as damaging to minds as the kind of education dispensed in many places. Killing all interest in anything by presenting bone dry boring lectures and shutting down the natural curiosity of students seem to be the real area of exceptional excellence for some professors I had. I actually loved subjects like Organic Chemistry and Calculus even as I sat watching as many decent and intelligent people in my class had their dreams of going into medicine evaporate like some of our lab experiments. Instead of addressing what a farce instruction has become from all I hear today instruction has become even worse. Now adjuncts read from Power points for about 9$ an hour with predictable results. In science by the nature of the subject we have to try to discover reality in the laboratory...people in other areas only have to discover where to copy and paste essays from...plagiarism is apparently the shortcut that keeps college kids able to work enough hours to eat. I was incredibly lucky to be able to find science related jobs, but if you study literature I suppose foaming coffee drinks may be a good prelude to your future anyways. Sadly, without analytical- quantitative skills, you will be quite slow to figure out what is going on around you. If universities really wanted to promote an educated populace they would force everyone to take a course in mathematical logic and statistics. Clearly just the student loan debacle they have cooked us into could provide endless subject matter.

I do think getting an education is especially worth it if you are a black American mainly for one reason...it makes it easier to leave for a socialist Western country. If you have a technical education as an engineer, medical doctor, or high level scientist there is the possibility to leave.  That's right, I, a card carrying Hadash (Israeli communist party) member, am going to ironically suggest a very capitalistic and individualistic solution to this problem for those who can afford it. Screw society. Don't bother trying to improve it, heroes often get shot. And if you are a woman, you only have so much time on your hands to form a family. Taking a leadership role in a revolution might leave you very alone and childless, a price your male counterparts will not pay. Of course, someone has to lead the revolution....but start looking critically at how leftist organizations are run. Typically these groups have some older people who already have homes and children around. If they truly cared about you they would put themselves front and center in terms of martyrdom. Instead most of these groups include some wealthier old white men too eager to turn young vulnerable students into cannon fodder for causes that not so coincidentally increase their celebrity and power, albeit the imaginary power most leftists hold. Younger men are often too stupid to understand the issue with this. I'll never forget when I met Luke Rudkowski, and we happened to discuss how annoyed I was when I came very close to going to being imprisoned in a detention center due to helping refugees. I wasn't exactly part of a radical movement, rather just doling out medical care to children who for bureaucratic reasons had no country. These kids were the ultimate refugees. And most were not the relatively glamarous Syrian refugees in which case I might have been able to get the press on my side...but poor black African refugees who no one seemed to care about. Rudkowski seemed puzzled. "The more governments persecute you the more you will become a folk hero!" Someone needs to tell younger men like him that life is not a video game we are playing for coolness points...and some of us want everything such a young white guy would take for their birthright. We also deserve the right to live withing the framework of a society that helps us nurture families if we choose. It's amazing how many "leftists" particularly if they are Americans never think this through. These people will make all kinds of political noise about your right to kill your unborn children, but when it comes to you having a right to what they are born into...not so much....

Clearly, in reality, American society does not care about us . Do not forget that you can pack your bags, and go somewhere where people make sense. If you haven't joined the 11 black billionaires and are therefore part of the other 99.99% of black people...you might want to go somewhere where things like maternity leave, education or health care are rights not unaffordable goods on a market that always seems to be priced to exclude us. The truth is that if you leave the USA, you will suddenly realize that the democratic party- the electable left- is actually run by people who would be considered extreme right wingers almost anywhere else.  Democracy is dead in the USA, and you have been made into collateral damage. I do not write this as a hypocrite. I dealt with immigration issues for years while I was completely broke to be able to get out of the USA.

If leaving America sounds crazy consider the following: Many African Americans risked their lives for the dream of getting to Canada...you might only to have to fill out some paperwork.

Police Riots Are Back!

The world seems to be cracking open with violence and unrest not just in places like Syria. Swell spots like Cape Town  and Seattle are explosive. But there seems to be an unfortunate pattern behind all of this few will speak openly about. It appears in many cases police are instigating riots undercover. There does seem to be a pattern.
I suspect that this is not actually a global conspiracy in the way people might imagine, rather similar circumstances playing out around the globe. Financialization and the crises of capitalism have eaten from almost all public budgets, except military and security budgets. Not every cop is a moron, or unaware that their buddies in the firefighters, public hospitals, and so forth are looking at shrinking budgets. Sadly the "proof" that security forces are necessary may often be a pre-planned riot made at the expense of peaceful protesters.
This violence against people masquerading as violence from within people is yet another part of the despicable upside down post-modern world we live in like the new paradigm of the boss who pretends to be your friend; but inverted and armed.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=356343461181561


I suspect not only are the security forces instigating violence, they are making sure they are the only ones doing it. I have been involved in many leftists protests, and annoyed at how ridiculously unanimously pacifist they are. When the state is violent and dishonest, it's surely not a coincidence that leaders continuously preach nonviolence. Granted, I would never act violently due to the personal moral convictions I hold...but I wonder if this is always the right tactic. Nonviolence would seem appropriate when you can garner lots of media attention and sympathy. On the other hand, when your story is decidedly a non-story in the eyes of everyone, like the homeless families in America being increasinly harassed by the police...maybe strategic limited violence is called for a la francaise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY6NlGGe6GI

And now for real equality....

I'm getting kind of annoyed by all the rainbow flags on facebook. My 'yeah' for marriage equality is cynical and sarcastic..because I know full well gay marriage isn't really about equality at all. Of course I believe any two individuals should be able to marry. I also believe any three or four individuals should be able to marry. But let's be clear, gay marriage or plural marriage are about giving rights to people who are different from normative couples.

If we ever want equality, it's incredibly obvious if politically avaunt guard, that we actually need to start taking rights away from people. It may not sound kind or even democratic, but it is the only way towards a true equality for all Americans, married or not. In a world where everyone is respected equally, everyone could define their own relations as they see fit. If people see fit to sign up for sacred rights thousands of years old no one should stop them. Nor should anyone stop me from noticing that many wedding contracts are essentially the sale of a woman or in an even grimmer twist some families pay to get women off their hands. But giving extra rights to people for having some sort of religious and/or legal contract seems strange. No one even denies it is discriminatory, although few use the language of discrimination. Instead proponents trot out all kind of nonsense words like sacred, consecrate and so on which lack specificity not to mention reality. What marriage really does, as gay activists have spent over a decade pointing out, is give couples rights they would not get otherwise. These rights span from banal financial issues like taxation and retirement rights, to family issues like rights to visiting ones children when a partnership splits to just as important fuzzy rights like social respect. Over the course of a couple's lifetime this fuzzy issue of social respect has all kinds of implications on them and the children they produce. To this day it is not uncommon for people to refer to children conceived outside of marriage as illegitimate, or to discourage unmarried women from having children. The social stigma of singleness has a profound real negative effect on the lives of single people, although at it's base marriage is a legal agreement. As far as an actual argument for marriage, the most important one would seem that without it everyone would have to hire lawyers to negotiate the terms of their relationships...and hiring lawyers is almost never a good thing. Theoretically marriage harnesses traditions so old they won't go away, and bundles them with a bunch of benefits thereby encouraging marriage. If marriage is assumed to make people happy, then this is supposed to help everyone. Except it doesn't work that way. By bundling all these things together marriage is actually being discouraged in a larger and larger part of the population.

As society becomes more unequal, the real marriage equality issue is rapidly becoming who can afford to get married at all. While anyone can go to city hall and sign paperwork, the poor have some pretty strong disincentives from marriage. Just ask a recent university graduate. Women, in particular, have found that student loans, the price of education for almost anyone below the upper middle class function as an anti-dowry. But if those below the upper middle class fail to get a college degree or specific vocational training many of them are looking at a lifetime of precarious low paid work. Historically poverty has been almost defined by miserable working conditions: low level agricultural peonage leading the typical occupations of the poor. Now a growing number of the poor in the Western world do not actually work at all. As the sexual revolutions has slowly led many  to equate marriage with family formation; the poor face an increasing issue. If their wages are so low and so insecure they could never afford a family, why marry at all? And in fact, many do not. So many do not that in American women in their twenties most babies are born to unmarried women. As one enlightened trophy wife told me "Marriage is about money and property and inheritance and if you don't have any money, well..." Marriage has become a tool through which upper middle class people cement their status in society and pass advantages on to their children. Marriage has also become a tool of certain kinds of women who want to duck out of actually pulling their own weight in society. Who in their right mind, if they actually belong to the progressive left, can stand for this? It doesn't take a sociologist to look around and realize how unfair this is. But then again, I'm probably overestimating the ability of observation among average people. A well educated man I know, a PhD in Physics no less, recently remarked to me "How do they do it?!" When I described a religious Israeli woman I knew with five children and no job. "No." I replied "The question isn't how they can do it, the question is how I the working single taxpayer can do it, because in some sense it's my job to support these kids because chances are, neither of their parents work." Seriously, how do we hard working single women drudge between our tiny apartments and long hours in usually rather joyless lives while not resenting married women, much more socially approved, who play with Popsicle sticks all day. The answer lies in the illusion of choice. But increasingly marriage is not a choice available to everyone. For the truly poor marriage is often an unfortunate  choice to pin yourself to someone who might tip you over the edge financially. For truly poor men, even that might be a luxury. I am unfamiliar with the statistics, but if I had to guess, a truly impoverished man is probably many times more likely to end up in jail in the USA than a stable marriage.

People who really believe in social equality need to realize which fight is winnable. One potential fight would be creating a society in which people have anywhere nearly equal very good chances of marriage - a near impossibility considering some people are disabled in certain ways that make marriage unlikely. The winnable fight, is just taking the rights around marriage away. Everyone will have to grow up, fin for themselves, and come to personalized agreements over their property and life. Does that sound so awful? Why hasn't anyone encouraged this before?

UN Schmoon...

When I first read that the Saudis were heading a UN body on human rights, I thought I was reading a parody. Saudi Arabia, isn't it the country where women can't even drive, and are just now being granted the right to vote in 2015? Saudi Arabia where people don't even bother registering female births so they can more easily kill them later if they get out of line? Saudi Arabia where they execute people by beheadings even for nonviolent crimes? Where they have a brand of Islam so extremists they gave us 9/11? Yes...
So it turns out all the Jewish conspiracy theorists are right? The UN is basically a big corrupt body bizarrely biased towards the Arab world...
I actually just feel sorry for anyone who had any faith in this sorry body of nonsense anymore. They can't handle refugees. They can't stop miserable wars. They can't fight for human rights...and they just sit around hating Israel all day long. Oh, but how could I forget 'him for her' a supposedly feminist campaign spearheaded by an actress and underwear model. Excuse me while I vomit.
Can someone please come up with an alternative body to help the world? This is a rather sad mess.

What to think of luck

In a world this sad

Does art even have a place

But in a world this sad

Is art the only hope?

In a world this sad

Does any thought matter anyways?

Slavery, murder, oppression

2015 brought back 1014

Child brides

Poverty

ISIS

American Capitalism

State sponsored murder

The failure of everything

But insanity and smiling

Smiling a little, ignoring the reality

Are we cruel? Are we crazy?

Are we colonists

Us in the candy box

Us in the white frothy crest of the world

We fought our way in, we think

Until something reminds us

It was all luck of birth

The Jerusalem Paradox

I'm a bit sad that the recent surge in refugees has been seen as a monumental and exceptional crisis. Africa and Asia have had more refugees for far longer; yet this was never a "crisis." Once again the world media and governing bodies are showing us that something only counts as a real problem if it affects white people. One truly aware of history would not be surprised. The savagery of the Western world has been on full display for centuries. Should anyone be surprised that the people who brought the world global colonialism are indifferent to the plight of supposedly lesser people?

The problems of the world seem eternally stuck. Equality, of the type dreamed of in the Haitian revolution or the French revolution, seems to be some pipe dream only a few pot smokers will cling to. The real question is how would equality even be enacted between very unequal populations. Are we, the non-Western, inherently savage, as savage as those who stomp on us? Has our lack of education and resources made us so idiotic that a psuedo-colonial rule is inevitable, if only to maintain some level of decency? Forgetting how we got into this situation, in which those above us are almost completely to blame, we should ask if we are better off running ourselves as a matter of practical survival.

Several of my acquintances are whimsically hopeful for the day the British will march back into the Levant and take over Israel again. For them as Israel born Jews, decades of liberation and self-rule have been somewhat disappointing. Yet they are sure there is one possibility even worse. They are deeply racist against Arabs...

From the Palestinian Arab perspective the original Zionists were a new sort of colonialist, even if in fact they were throwing off a type of colonialist opression themselves. And yet paradoxically, the more the supposedly colonial entity controls, the better the situation on the ground for many people. Haifa, a city of relative peace and near equality, is under full civil control of Israel. The polar opposite would be Gaza, where due to a combination of the Oslo accords and withdrawal, there is a fair amount of autonomy. There is also now a near total vacuum of human rights and dignity. Forgetting the question of blame- which lies with several parties including Israel- there is a more important question of how the madness will stop, how things can get better.

Paradoxically every "correct" move towards the autonomy and freedom of the people there seems to result in less freedom and autonomy. I am sure that if tomorrow Israel were to withdraw all interference from Gaza and grant it autonomy, we would welcome the world's 23rd or 24th Islamic dictatorship, with the requisite total death of hope for human rights, within less than two weeks.  What moves towards democracy and autonomy did, most notably the Oslo accords, was unfortunately to increase the misery of those supposedly being liberated. No one seemed to notice that in a practical sense the Oslo accords cut millions of people of from getting decent education and health care because of their ethnicity. A few decades later, a radical turn for the worst, towards fundamentalist, shouldn't surprise anyone.

The question of the future of Jerusalem is in some sense a miniature question of the issues in the entire world right now. As radicalized religious militants are allowed to turn the area into a religious conflict zone, sadly few will remember that underlying this mess were cold political calculations about populations. Such calculations happened for the population of Jerusalem, and they happened in terms of entire national populations in the middle East. Not all variables were taken into account by anyone.

In 2015 some cynicism about the future is required in any calculation. Gone are the days when the world could look upon brave new ideologies for salvation. Every revolutionary who did not become a tyrant became sad. Simon Bolivar said he had plowed into the sea. Emma Goldman admitted she was just plain wrong. All that is left for it's great trial and subsequent failure is anarchism. And yet inherent in mass rule, is us the savage masses...and the question of whether we are capable of anything good. The stage for the trial of anarchism will probably not be Jerusalem. Under the eyes of the UN, the international media, the PA, the Israeli government, the global interest, and so on, Jerusalem will be anything but a throwing off of rules. The first failures of anarchy will happen unnoticed on the very edge of empire in places like Kurdistan...but the failure will probably come larger for those at the very center of civilization. Yet slowly the failures may bring a certain limited kind of progress in some cases. Hope, like savagery and injustice, springs eternal.

Parallel Time

Was actually a pretty awesome play. I just saw it with Hebrew translation. So glad I did. The play really made me think about the brutality of certain regimes, and prisoners in general.

The Wisdom the Klu Klux Klansmen

Sometimes, even people you hate say something remarkably true. I was recently watching a video of some white nationalists in the USA. Some sort of amalgamation of klansmen and neo-nazis that listen to metal rock music with fascist lyrics. They argued that while they seem fringe, lots of people agree with them. Well on that, I couldn't agree more. The young facists nailed it: lots of people are racists.

America is at a moment where it will have to face reality. We are a country that elected Obama; but we are also a country where whites in Louisiana voted for an avowed Klansmen by a sizeable majority less than two decades before.

As I sat in a government office in Israel, a news banner ran on the bottom of the screen. It mentioned burnings of black churches. It took over a day for major US newspapers to run headlines on the issue. What was really sad was to see news outlets like FOX news try to twist the recent church burnings into some biblical religious nonsense i.e. the people are persecuting Christians...when everyone knows exactly what is going on, because the same thing has been going on for about 500 years. When Juan Ponce de Leon hit what is now Florida it took only a few years for a slave society to follow and take root. In 1522 the first massive slave revolt in the new hemisphere took place, and the man has been trying to keep us down while living in constant fear of revolting blacks ever since. Liberal Massachusets was the first colony (later to be a state) to officialize and legalize slavery...which only illustrates a point entirely lost on so many people: that the only "North" and "South" that truly deeply matters in terms of racism is being south of Canada and north of Mexico.

Racism is many troubling things. The worst side of racism is how it shortens lives. How average lifespans for persecuted groups inevitably average lower due to everything from state sponsored killing to medical neglect. But racism is also a media that fails to bring insight into domestic terrorism. That fails to state the obvious about burning black churches. That can't connect the dots for younger generations unaware of the connection between black churches and civil rights. Racism is also a media that has decided our stories do not matter.

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.