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...