I think that it is the duty of all of us, as citizens of the 21st century, to find points of exchange and understanding between our own traditions and Islam.  It is my understanding that this is exactly the project being pursued by the builders of this “cultural center;” to provide resources and community for Muslims in New York to feel more part of the city.  This is the opposite impulse of the fundamentalists responsible for 9/11, who clearly felt alienated by America (and our actions abroad).  Any attempt to create an inclusive cultural discourse is opposed to terrorism; much much more so than the bigotry of those who protest the building of mosques, which is fundamentally the same impulse as the terrorists.  The problem isn’t Islam, the problem is intolerance and bigotry.  Don’t let the terrorists win.

I’m busy now, but I hope to have time to go back and expand and refine this entry.

Although the blog below was published by Huffington Post, it was never linked to off of the main Huffinton Post Politics page.  There could be any number of editorial reasons for this.  One of them is that I went a bit over the HuffPo’s really quite mainstream line, though of course I stand by what I said.  Another possible reason is that my post didn’t involve Kim Kardashian topless. (Now I’m being too hard on HP.  Apologies.)

I mentioned in my article that illegal border crossings have fallen recently.  The New Yorker, of all publications, got the statistics together to address this.  Illegal border crossings have fallen because of the economy (who would come to America, of all places, to look for a job?), which is surely also the underlying reason for the recent flair-ups in nativist feelings.

I refrained from making the point that burns a hole in my mind whenever I think about immigration across Mexico’s border: all that land, including Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California, is historically part of Mexico, and was stolen from Mexico during the Mexican-American war.  The Mexican-American war was an unjust war.  It was so unjust that our hero Henry David Thoreau protested it by getting himself arrested; the event that prompted him to pen the essay “Civil Disobedience.“  Therefore, the territory that we are working so hard to keep Mexicans out of is, by rights, their own land.  White people are the ones trespassing.  In this historical context, of course there’re going to be Mexicans trying to come over the border.

In America, we have an instintaneous historical memory–its as if anything that happened more than thirty years ago didn’t happen at all, and that the universe was born fully formed as it was in the 1980’s, so my point seems radical because the injustice I name happened in 1848.  Of course, this is nonsense.  We will pay for the injustices and oppressions we have been responsible for in the past.  Let’s start a movement to give that territory back to Mexico (the Experialism of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest?).  Maybe they’ll be better off.

TUCSON, AZ — Although Judge Susan Bolton’s ruling last week to halt the enactment of certain provisions of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s harsh new immigration law, was an important step, it does not provide resolution to the bitter controversy surrounding the law, nor does it change the atmosphere of fear and hatred that undermines the democratic process and enables legislation like this to be passed in the first place.

Arizona is not the first local government in America to attempt the policies outlined by 1070, it is merely the first state to do so. Legislation that requires police officers to check the immigration status on the basis of ‘probable cause’ was first adopted on the local level by Prince William County, Virginia in 2007 and revoked a year and a half later. The legislation in both Arizona and in Virginia was written and supported by the national group FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), which was categorized as a hate group in 2007 by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Michael M. Hethmon of FAIR proudly says, “I am the drafter of this ordinance. To the extent that there is some kind of mad scientist behind this, we’ll be happy to take credit for it,” and then proceeds to explain how the immigration issue became politically useful to local Republicans, regardless of the real impacts of immigration. “The idea that because we lack certain facts is a reason not to act is something of a self fulfilling prophecy,” he justified.

The Virginia law had disastrous effects on the local economy — effects that clearly have not been accounted for by Arizona’s lawmakers. As the law forced a significant population of legal but frightened Hispanic families out of town, the town found itself without its economic base of labor, especially in the construction industry — houses began to fall into disrepair, the houses left behind by fleeing families were left vacant. The rate of foreclosure in the county skyrocketed; it was the highest in the region during the thick of the housing crisis in 2008. The law itself proved to be inordinately expensive; taxes had to be increased to pay for police oversight and enforcement of the law, and businesses began to leave to other counties. There has been no indication that the framers of the Arizona law have gathered any evidence about the economic impact of their legislation, nor has there been a wide discussion of this impact.

The entire story of the events in Prince William County were documented by filmmakers Eric Byler and Annabel Park in their film 9500 Liberty. I had an opportunity to speak with Eric Byler in Tucson, Arizona this weekend. He emphasized the extent of the destructive rhetoric of fear and hate that undermines the democratic process and clouds the debate around this issue. This rhetoric of fear is built on economic anxiety and jingoism. The laws in both Arizona and in Virginia were passed quickly on a wave of emotion, rather than considered carefully and debated rationally.

The debate around the anti-immigration law in Virginia tore the previously peaceful town apart politically and economically. Citizens were polarized and set against each other. Civic leaders, including the highly respected police chief, were slandered and careers put on the line. In city council debates that lasted all night, anti-immigration citizens tapped into the tremendous current of fear that runs beneath this issue; 9/11 was invoked repeatedly as the reason to be suspicious of all immigrants. “Remember 9/11″ is a mantra of the anti-immigration right. But how could any of us? And when we remember, 9/11 has almost nothing to do with this issue: the terrorists were far from Latino, did not need to cross the boarder to get into this country, and had entered America as tourists, not immigrants. To invoke the pain and loss of 9/11 in this context destroys our capacity for rational debate; we must not be frightened of being cast as unpatriotic for discussing policy rather than fear.

Advocates of the anti-immigration legislation have fanned the flames of the debate by invoking images of violence perpetrated by Mexicans (specifically the drug cartels) including murders and beheadings in the desert, arguments which are empirically false but politically effective. Drug smuggling and illegal immigration are two distinct issues that effect two distinct populations.

In Virginia, the legislation was advocated by local bloggers, who claimed that Zapatista rebels were infiltrating their small town. On the comment sections of the blog, angry citizens advocated bringing guns to immigrant-rights rallies and picking some of them off. Mexican children were referred to as “parasites.”

In Arizona, the debate over SB 1070 has empowered a huge rise in hate groups and violence, like J.T. Redy, a man with neo-Nazi ties who has declared a war on the “Narco-terrorists and illegal immigrants and patrols the Arizona border armed with automatic weapons. In June, Juan Variela was shot dead in Pheonix by a neighbor after an argument over 1070.

The Pheonix New Times has documented the rising tide of hate groups hate crime in Arizona that has accompanied the passing of SB 1070. The way the political debate is framed around immigration enables this type of hate on the ground. Without bloggers, politicians, and media who regularly imply or state that Mexicans take away American jobs or are responsible for crime open the door for hate crimes against immigrants to be seen as retaliation. In Arizona, the reality is that violent crime and undocumented crossings are way down. But, as Celeste González de Bustamante, a professor of journalism at The University of Arizona, notes:

…today’s news media often posit problems such as immigration in a bipolar way, ignoring the complexity of the issue, as well as the majority of perspectives that fall between two extremes. Presenting immigration as a simple two-sided issue fuels divisiveness, contributes to hatemongering and hinders possibilities for reform.

Extreme language and directed hate are insurgency tactics calculated to destroy the democratic process and end rational debate — similar to blowing up a polling place on election day. People who believe in justice become afraid to speak.

Although the legal challenge to S.B. 1070 in Arizona looks promising now that Susan Bolton halted the enactment certain provisions of the legislation — including the police checks of immigration papers based on probable cause — the battle is far from over. Judge Bolton left a provision that would make it a crime to “harbor” or “transport” an illegal immigrant, a provision which can be mobilized to break apart mixed-status families. And the battle will continue: FAIR and its local allies across the country will continue to push through legislation like this for political gains. Immigrant families will be threatened both with deportation and with persecution from hate groups and hateful individuals.

The law itself will persecute and break apart hard working families that love America. But politics of fear that surround the law threaten to undermine the democratic process that America is built upon. We should not be afraid to challenge intolerance. We should not need to depend on the courts to overturn illegitimate laws after they are passed, we should be empowered to stop such legislation in the public sphere without fear of slander and violence. Let us not allow hate and fear to undermine our beloved democracy.

To be able to speak concretely, let me reference one pathology of this Self among many many that I could choose, brought to mind by this article on Rampant Racism in the Criminal Justice System on Counterpunch today.  This is nothing new, but must be constantly revisited and reminded, because this is a massive and brutal injustice being perpetrated IN OUR NAME, as citizens, whether law abiding or not.  And yet, I can do almost nothing except point to it.  Understand it.  It is our history and our legacy:

Professor Michelle Alexander concludes that it is no coincidence that the  criminal justice system ramped up its processing of African Americans just as  the Jim Crow laws enforced since the age of slavery ended.  Her book, The New  Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness sees these facts as  evidence of the new way the US has decided to control African Americans – a  racialized system of social control.   The stigma of criminality functions in  much the same way as Jim Crow – creating legal boundaries between them and us,  allowing legal discrimination against them, removing the right to vote from  millions, and essentially warehousing a disposable population of unwanted  people.  She calls it a new caste system.

Or, say this issue doesn’t bother you like it does me: choose another: coorporate control of our environment, human trafficking, war war war, poverty and inequity, and so on and on.  What of Afghanistan?  How can we ignore the documents leaked today of misery, coversion, incompetence, and collusion?  And yet, how can we act on them? we cannot.

How is a civilized individual supposed to pursue self betterment, artistic creation, spirituality and purity, when s/he recognizes his/her attachment to this political Self?  Must we intentionally and powerfully continue to cleave ourselves into Individuals and simply ignore the incredibly strong ties that bind us together–the bindings of economy, culture, government, labor? Oh, Guruji, please explain and enlighten: my mind is clouded by confusions!

All this long-term stuff aside, I now just love the act of folding pages and gluing covers.  I love my bone-folder: a piece of bone used to fold pages and make creases.  My teacher told me that it needs oil, so now I carry it around as a bookmark and rub it on my neck while I’m reading.  I’m like a little boy with a favorite new toy.

I admit that my interest in hand bookmaking is reactionary; the world of publishing is supposed to be obsessed with the e-book.  I am excited and optimistic about e-books: I think that with some technological improvement (which I am, of course, unable to participate in), they could really bring about a renissaince in reading and writing, and, in the best case, could create a more open and participatory literary environment.  The challenge is to make e-books literary, to make sure they’re edited, and to get people to pay for them.

But I wonder where my place will be as an aspiring publisher in the e-book world.  I forsee a near-future where the e-book market is easy to enter; like iTunes, publishers (or just authors!) will simply submit a book to the apple bookstore, and it’ll get uploaded and subsequently downloaded.  Which is good, but doesn’t constitute a real vocation.

That’s why I’m interested in raising the aesthetic and material value of paper books.  In the publishing company I envision, e-books will be an available afterthought, but customers will be more excited to have access to beautiful, unique textual objects that manifest the personal values that they place on text.  When I show someone a hand-bound and gold-stamped book from, say, Writers Workshop, I like to watch the way they hold them: gently, carefully, caressing the cover, or putting their hand on top of it as if it were a bible on which they were swearing an oath. Placed in such a setting, words gain more authority and beauty (assuming the content is there–that’s the important part, but a whole other game than what I’m talking about: I’m lucky to be working with breathtaking translations of ancient holy texts).  These books aren’t for everyone, or almost anyone–that’s why they come in limited editions–but those who do end up posessing them will treasure them.  And, anyone who wants to simply read the text can get the e-book (or, we can always consider doing a traditional mass print run if e-books fail to manifest their potential in the next few years).

I think that as a culture, we need to conciously and mindfully re-create and re-think the place of literature in our culture.  It’s not as easy or as gratifying as TV or movies, but it is vital to our health and development.  Part of that might be to raise the aesthetic and personal value of books.  These books will help show younger generations the importance of writing, illustrate why literature ought to occupy a more sacred position in culture than TV.  They can be valued as a legacy and a tradition, constantly being added to and improved upon.

Jai, Jai Saraswati!

http://sociologicalimagination.org/posts/prakashkona/iron-man-and-the-%E2%80%9Cbigger-dick%E2%80%9D-us-foreign-policy-in-the-third-world/

Iron Man is an arrogant, patronizing, racist prick who stands for everything that makes the United States such a crazy drunk ape of a regime. He just belongs to the long line of James Bonds and Supermans and Rambos and other dickheads who are out there to save white Americans and their families from the wretched others. There’s a point Baldwin makes over and again: what is missing or rather repressed in white American consciousness is blackness. This blackness takes myriad forms from the “blacks” themselves to communists, Arabs and gays. The stupidest American movie gives you an idea of what this hidden face of blackness is all about.

I have to agree.

But the traditional notion of elements still seems to have relevance overlooked by science–this shift of theory of elements seems different to me than other scientific advances where an erroneous notion of reality was replaced by a more accurate one, like the Ptolemaic cosmos or creationism.  Because ecologists, geographers, and geologists will still tell you that the four fundamental forces that shape and comprise the natural world can be grouped into Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.  The ancients recognized that there were different types of “earth”; they didn’t think that the one word described the most fundamental component that could be discovered, but they did recognize that “earth” was material that had a distinct set of properties.  It seems that in this case science has wrested a word away from traditional knowledge, which is a natural and laudable development as our language becomes more specific and useful to scientific advancement.  But we must not forget to restore Earth, Air, Fire, and Water to their rightful places of respect.

Rather than elements, Earth Air Fire and Water are natural presences and forces; they are at once energy levels (temperature) and aspects; they are forces of transformation and change.  They are not the most basic components of physical existence (elements), but they are the dominant aspects of natural existence.  Each carries its own uses and associations, its own energies–water can cool, fire can cook, earth can build. I also think that each one carries a subtle set of associations that we respond to as humans, a relationship of deep signification built over the evolution of our species, ingrained deeply in our collective unconscious.  If you have a camp fire or a bonfire and manage to pull yourself away from staring into the flames for a moment to watch your friends around the fire, you’ll see the obvious and powerful pull that the element has on the core of their beings.  When I am in the presence of water, my mind is set at ease.  Yesterday, me and two of my friends sat by a creek to meditate.  I sat on a rock down by the water, he sat on a boulder high above me, and he sat on a sun-drenched rock directly in the sun.  I am a water sign, he is an air sign, and he is a fire sign.

I think it’s important to reclaim the category of natural elements because I would like us, as a western culture, to be able to open up dialogues between traditional sciences and our potent and inspiring scientific advances.  Many traditional systems of medicine are built around these four natural forces.  Astrology depends on them.  A dialogue like that would go no-where if it amounted to a squabble over the definition of the word “element,” but it would be fruitful if Western science could become more sensitive to subtle and natural energies and if traditional knowledge could become more rigorous and able to justify itself.

–

THE PLATFORM OF THE SATISFACTIONIST PARTY INTERNATIONAL (DRAFT)

What is is all that is, and so it must satiate.

Since what is is all that is, any economy predicated on growth and dependent upon expansion for its health is inherently a lie.

We have been lied to by expansionist policy: humans are enveloped in finity.  We cannot escape our own skin.  And yet, we must eat.

The past has put too much energy and investment into expansion: we will turn the movement inwards, to provide sustenance for our own bellies first.

Therefore, all capital relegated into abstraction by history must be liquefied into usable material.  What is, must be made available to consumption; what was always only hypothetical must be rendered as a lie.

i e, all capital must be liquedated.

Capital that exists as human potential must be either liberated or more fully utilized.  Labor is not the only human potential.

All assets owend by previously incorporated national entities must be liquefied and fed back to the bodies politic, including all back stores of grain, inks, papers, oils, and other commodities.

In the case that assets owned by a particular national entity are human in nature, i e of an emotional or creative value, or expressed in terms of potential instilled by a process of over- and elite- education, these assets must be brought under liquified scientific scruitiny and re-administered to the intellecutal elite who will re-create value to be fed back to the Taxpayer in aspirational morale.

And so on, ad nauseum.

–

The mind has become obscured.  It can no longer differentiate passion from desire, dharma from vocation.  I am controlled, manhandled by the anxieties of desire.  I am not my situation: my days run through me as a river in the desert; I waste myself unwisely, expend myself in diversions, offer myself to those who are unworthy.  I spend energy trying to ignore myself.  I cannot sustain creation and balance.  I ebb and flow rapidly, I find myself unpredictable and unreliable; I surrender myself to myself; I bow before the ferment; I am too ready to accept faliure as fate.

Again I will try; today again I will remake myself.  I will become…

–

What truths can economies manufacture?

What productivity does anxiety wreck?

Why am I so determined to obey?  Why do I so virulently seek my own powerlessness?  What am I doing to my lungs, my body, my voice?  Oh, great risi,  advise me, I know not my dharma.  AM I to function, to languish, or to revolt?  I am comfortable with any of these, my path is not yet formed.  I get no directions from community or environs.  Individualism has taken me too far off any recognizable road.  I have something to offer any who is not myself, but I do not know who or what.  Like a child lost in a forest, I watch capitalism but cannot participate; like a child in a forest, I can walk through streets lined with mighty buildings and cannot enter any; what I call my home is a temporary shelter, a camp.  Will I reach home in this life?  Is this my desire?  Is desire what ought to guide me?  I am mighty.  This, I have never doubted.  But the nature of my expression, the manifestation of inner power in the form of a life’s work, I do not know.  I have long believed that when I am old, it will become clear what my life’s work has been.  I have never thought that I would know beforehand. I thought perhaps that it would only be a soft touch that was required from myself to enter the chute of karmic works, to begin to truly create, to feel desiring products to spin daily out from my fingertips.  Effort is worthwhile, and yet I am lazy: I have been lazy; I must soon reposition myself, delve into some rich atmosphere of intention, intention that most valuable of treasures, which brings significance to every action.

–

drive, drive that beast along.  That unyielding desire, drive it to wealth justified by art that does not lie; the forum that is a lie.  White space is expensive in this land, white walls do not come easy.  Through riches and on to death.  Through fame and on to failure.  Through love and on to war, we drive, holding drinks and passing out printed cards, we try to thrive through mimosas and martinis, barely balancing on the edge of sobriety, we drive, through convention centers of hungry eyes, through failure we drive.

Jai Jai Navia

Zed

I just got distracted watching videos, which I like to do.

The group I train with is here:

http://www.lampreiacapoeira.com/ (click on Videos if it pleases)

I’ll start going in to City Center when I’m better…

This one, among many videos, is good–there are faster games of Capoeira, but slow games like this demonstrate the artistry and are much more demanding in terms of form and the communication between players.  Notice the shaker in the middle which never gets disturbed, then tell me about control and discipline…