Immodest Proposal

Posted on 6th February 2014 in Peace, Reflections, Self Determination

Due to the longevity of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and the obvious lack of political will mixed with sheer political ineptitude – on a global scale, really – to properly transform the situation (at least to enforce international law) I’ve come up with a somewhat absurd partial solution towards transforming and transcending the conflict. The idea itself is nothing new – I’m not that creative or knowledgeable about the shituation: the boundaries of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories will be combined into a bi-national state. There are many reasons why this is favorable for Israelis, Palestinians and Peace (the rest of us) and that complex of simple reasons emerges as the answer to the following question: what would a Palestinian state of scattered and segregated lands look like as a result of settlements, the wall, and the harsh economic, political and military sanctions driving the Palestinians into a fragmented and isolated society?

In any case, my level, or style if you will, of creativity is in the naming of this new nation; a new name that will satisfy both cultures: PalIstein/stien. Its construction is obvious taking the first three letters of the word Palestine, the first two letters of Israel, and then changing the “stine” of Palestine into “stein/stien” so that it resonates with the suffix of many Jewish peoples names,  yet the pronunciation could be in dispute as to whether there is a hard “e” vowel sound or a hard “i” vowel sound (which, no doubt, would make Palestinians smile, even though it was at the sacrifice of switching the “e” in the English spelling of their countries name with the “i”, capitalized, from the English spelling of Israel). One country, one name with two pronunciations and still something to fight about.

As one nation, there will be a shared economy, a shared political system, shared roadways, shared schools, and above all and encompassing all, equality as citizens and all of the benefits that come with getting to know and love your neighbor. No doubt it will take a generation or two (or seven) to work things out, but under the current circumstances there is such a limited cultural exchange because of the inability of Palestinians and Israelis to freely move from the OPTs to the NonOPTs as well as the taboo of normalization for Pals to engage with Izzies in any way that legitimizes the regime of inequality. Since the respective and collective governments who are stakeholders in this process have proven incapable of establishing equality this task will have to be accomplished by Israeli and Palestinian civil societies who will, themselves, have to transcend the walls of normalization and the convolution of victim and perpetrator.

In addition to a new name, one other important piece of propaganda is essential to forging a new common narrative: a banner. At first thought it would be interesting to have a two faced flag with the Israeli flag on one side and the Palestinian flag on the other but after some immodest consideration I’m thinking the flag should be  a screen playing pixelated permutations of both flags along with other randomly generated visualizations. Let’s leave it at that.

For now, changing the name and flying the first kaleidobanner is enough. When people get use to seeing and hearing these new implants, civil society will begin to change and, again, in a generation or two when all of the old school dogmaticians die off, peace will begin to flourish. Let freedom reign. Pass the felafel, please.

On the Right to Legal Vegetable-hood(edness)

Posted on 24th January 2014 in Reflections, Self Determination, Theory

I have debated such things with some of my vegan friends: should vegetables be given legal person-hood? Of course, an affirmative is founded in vegetable sentience. If vegetables are sentient, then they, according to the UN charter, have the right to self-determine. I ask myself then, should Palestinians not have the right to legal vegetable-hood. Yes, it sounds stupid to even think of at first bite, but if you peel of the skin and pith you begin to realize that the whole idea of legal person-hood is speciesist and we would serve the unambiguous idiology of justice to question the language we bow to.

 

“But vegetables don’t have neurons” is a common argument for why its ok to eat vegetables and not ok to eat animals. For me, survival is a good reason to eat, period. It’s not what you eat, its why you eat it and where it comes from. That’s my parable paradigm. What is yours? Because plants don’t have the same structures humans do to conduct information is no good cause to assume they don’t have some apparatus to conduct information from one place to another, register it, respond to it – in some cases to engage or avoid things we associate with pleasure or pain.

 

I know humans are still struggling with legal person-hood for any other-than human species. To ask people to accept monkeys and turtles as people is asking a lot. It is a big stretch of the moral imagination arc somewhere over the rainbow outside of the comfort zone of an identity that exists on its better-ness because of other-ness. Yet, within this context we can see that when it comes time to compare ourselves to wombats and groove billed anis, all of a sudden we are all one as a species and can stand together in solidarity (perhaps as a species belligerent occupant to the earth). This speciesist perspective is then a unifying cause to champion racism, nationalism and, in some very strange sense, is the cause celebre for championing human rights and equality under the law to all those currently under a belligerent occupancy or under and kind of enslavement be it physical or mental.

 

In any case, what I’m getting at here is that it is way beyond anyone’s intellectual capacity at this point to realize that we might well just apply rights universally to all living beings – make it a part of our common culture and enshrine it in international law. We can think of the right to self determine as universal – and I don’t mean just universal on the tiny universe of earth. I mean, since the universe is vast (don’t hurt yourself trying to think about it too much) and it is a commonly accepted belief (yes, so common that you believe it too, now) that life exists everywhere where it can and that requires two things: a percolating solution (in our case, water), and a thermal threshold for certain reactions to take place that are not inherent to the environment (solution). These conditions exist all over the place and so life exists all over the place. To think otherwise is foolish because it would set your beliefs outside of the norm of indigenous beliefs (which is, by definition, just one small part of being a fool).

 

Good, Now that we’re all on the same page page we can agree that the words are somewhat interchangeable. I now can claim I have the self evident right to legal kangaroo-hood. You, dear soul, can get down with your vegetables in a state of pure existential existence-hoodedness and, yes, the Palestinian people most certainly have the right to declare themselves as possessing the right to legal vegetable-hood. Why not?

 

Since corporations have such rights, too, they must have some homologous structure to a nervous system and, I suppose, a set of organs and systems complimenting all those structures necessary for survival. I can see it now, there will be fortune 500 companies filing for the right to legal asshole-hood.

Pass the hummus, please.

DWB, LGM, and Olive Trees

Posted on 22nd January 2014 in Reflections, Self Determination

Racism may be partly natural and partly nurtural. There is probably something coded in our genes that makes cells undergo meiosis every time we see “other” such that we need to reproduce within our tribe – but not with out siblings (cousins are OK in most places). There is definitely something encoded in our brains about “other” from the racist propaganda (read: education) that most people get.

 

I don’t remember being taught in non or secular school that we’all humans have a relatively broad and meaty common set of biological, logical, moral, ethical, religious, spiritual, chemical and physical properties. I don’t recall too many people who actually embrace universal love – in principle or in practice. I’m not suggesting we should.

 

An acquaintance of mine got a DWB. I understood what he meant before I could stop my mouth from asking. It was obvious; though I’ve never gotten a Driving While Black myself since I am heterozygous black recessive. It’s amazing to me, probably because I’m still only in someone else’s late 20′s, and not in my own 400′s, that I can’t relate to the fact that racism is still strong and proud in the United States. Another generation or two will have to die off before things get much better. They are better than they were, but we got a long way to go people. We have to start remembering ourselves from the future, after we’re dead and gone, to get a better perspective on who we are today. See you there.

 

Perhaps the aliens, not the illegal one’s who come here to steal jobs from Americans (that is, the South or Central Americans that come here to steal ‘our’ jobs (the ones that don’t exist anyway)), are Little Green Men. That could mean numerous things in terms of size. Size is relative. Size matters. Two things are clear. The aliens are men and they are green. They are mono-gendered, which is fine with me. We – as a species – are tending towards something similar here anyway. The numbers are increasing (the percentages are staying the same).We don’t know how they reproduce or if they reproduce. It is not implicit in the label (read: name). These men are green. There is nothing ambiguous about green. It is a range of frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum which, when viewed in one’s own inertial frame, are well defined. Of course you could be looking at someone else’s green and see red. Little for me is about waise height – below the belt: illegal.

 

An approximate acquaintance of mine was shot in the leg by an Israeli Security Forcerer while planting Olive Trees in Gaza. He asked, rhetorically I presume, “What was I doing wrong?” The answer, of course, is that he was Planting While Palestinian. While he is protected under international law, the racism runs so deep that injustice is rampant and accountability slim to none. Salam. Shalom. Pass the hummus, please.

Interview on WVKR’s Activist Radio about Peace Studies, the Arts in Transforming Conflict and the Arts in Palestine

Posted on 10th January 2014 in Interviews, Peace, Self Determination, Theory

Fred and Gary of Activist Radio, a primetime program on WVKR, had me as their guest to discuss my academic studies in Peace and Conflict Transformation and my interests and intentions working in and with the performing, literary, display and culinary arts as a common ground for dialogue in healing trauma, transforming conflicts, rebuilding personal and collective identities and creating a new common narrative for building a future of reconciliation and engagement on the playground of our commonalities.

Listen to the interview >>

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Listen to the entire program >> 

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Here are some links to important articles and interviews:

Interviews: Youth, Art & Levante – Dance in Palestine: Spotlight on the Differently Abled

Posted on 26th December 2013 in Interviews, Self Determination

I hosted Activist Radio on WVKR on Thursday December 26th, 2013 to feature the work of Yante – Youth, Art & Levante  and the remarkable work they do. Yante is a Palestine based dance troupe and teaching center whose work fouses on transforming personal and social trauma into personal and social growth. I spoke with  Yante’s founder, Nadia Arouri, and program manager Nora Markt, as well as DanceAbility Internacional México’s director and choreographer Lulú Arroyo Menéndez and Palestinian/American Composer Tareq Abboushi to discuss the upcoming collaboration with Yante, Lulu and Tarq in April. Please take a look at the indiegogo campaign to learn more about the upcoming performance >>

Interview with Nadia and Nora: 

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Interview with Lulu: 

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Interview with Tareq: 

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A reading of an excerpt from “Rethinking the Palestinian Future” by Richard Falk from a lecture delivered at the The Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, Lebanon on 25, April 2013 (reproduced with permission from the author) >> 

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Again, check out the Indiegogo campaign here >>

Delivery at the Mercury Cafe, Denver – 100,000[,000 Dead] Poets for [Spare] Change

Posted on 30th September 2013 in Poetry, Self Determination

Good afternoon friends

I was asked to come here by my comrade in words to discuss conflict resolution since I just finished a formal discipline in the course of peace studies and conflict resolution at what is essentially the opposite of a military academy.

 

What I learned there reinforced what I already knew – that there is a preponderance of peace in the world and their has been a radical, revolutionary shift in both action and consciousness of the entire human race in a very short amount of time. These do seem like troubled times – and they are – but that is only because this solution is teeming with energy and seeking resolve, there is a lot of chemistry going on so the solution is hot, but let us not be confused or deterred by what is really taking place here – in an historical, moral, philosophical, spiritual, intellectual, legal, practical and realistic sense.

 

What is going on here is that the awareness of the struggle for liberation of the individual, the liberation of the species, the liberation of all species, and an awareness of the interconnectedness of all life and the systems upon which life relies, are all coming to a head. The signs of seeming chaos teeming in social, political, moral, philosophical, artistic, scientific and environmental endeavors is a clear indication of the voluminous amounts of activity going on in the world. It has been said that “all creation comes from sub – lethal trauma” and we can take this trauma induced by change to be a sign of a creative process as well as a sign of the destructive process.

 

However, we have to differentiate the two. We have to sort out what is destruction and what is creation. In situation we can observe that there are a great number of conflicts going on in the world. The nature of these conflicts is complex and the origin of these conflicts is often dubious and generated by external forces seeking to manipulate and gain control of “American interests abroad” for military strategic hegemony, economic hegemony and all the other wonderful things that the scumbags of the world are trying to manipulate. And, of course, the media broadcasts a strong message of conflict and the ensuing global disaster. And, please, don’t get me wrong, I am not about to suggest that globall climate change is not a pending disaster on the threshold waiting to take us all down, that the neocons and liberal hawks are not blood thirsty sorcerers who thrive, somehow, in the sick and sadisticdestructionn of innocent lives, children, their mothers, and the extant flora and fauna of the beautiful web of life. No, I don’t intend to suggest that at all.

 

Yet, it is very important for those of us who are trying to turn this mother ship around – to steer clear of the impending cataclysm, the apocalypse now – to note that there is a simultaneous event going on where we can draw our energy from, where we can find solidarity so that we can harness and cultivate the energy we need to stay strong, organized and vigilant in our cause of change for a world of virtues rather than a world in which we have to fight for what is inherent and inalienable to our very existence.

 

The alternative facts to the fear, conflict and trauma that we are all so well endowed with is that the long, disturbing, struggle for equality justice and a lasting peace have made incredible gains in the last century. All of the struggles for self-determination, all of the wars, all of the conflicts, have so rapidly advanced the establishment of an international order, a new world order, to elucidate and protect, at least in intention, all persons rights to self-determine.

 

Think about it, for a few thousand years since the agricultural revolution, people were dispossessed of their land and subjugated to patriarchs, oligarchs, dictators, and essentially criminal oppressors at the highest levels of authority in government, religious and educational institutions and only in the last hundred or so years did a preponderance of philosophical inquiry and discourse into history, morality, and the nature of existence take place so that, since the end of the 19th century did an international body form to prevent war, to protect civil society, to construct a system of order to protect and defend inalienable rights and codes of conduct between countries to settle disputes. Of course, by mentioning this I am not intending to imply that this international system of order for goodliness is effective. It is far from effective, but that is not the issue of our inquiry. We are simply noting that there has been an incredible and, what I consider to be beautiful and overwhelming acknowledgment and manifestation that we all have the inherent inalienable right to self -determine. These rights are enshrined in the charters, conventions, declarations, protocols and the like on human rights, womens rights, childrens rights, indigenous rights, environmental rights and so on. So while we can clearly see things are a bit fucked up in Africa, the middle east, south America, north America, Europe and the entire fucking mother ship, we can also see that there is a global convergence of heart, mind, and spirit and a recognition that we all are equal in the eyes of a common morality developed in a state of seeming dormancy and flowering, magnificently in the last century. So the principles are in place. Now we have to master the practices of peace so that we can align our actions with the outcome we seek… with our intentions.

 

The other aspect that is critical to understand and from which we can draw strength and solidarity is that while it is clear and certain that there are quite a number of severe conflicts going on on the mother ship, there is also a preponderance of peace. If you were to map out the conflicts in the world you would note that they are scattered and few compared to the zones of peace and relative tranquility. Most of the world is in a state of relative peace.

 

Further, in the last say 40 years, 20 years, 10 years and yesterday, most of the struggles for liberation from oppression took place peacefully: the orange revolution, the crimson revolution, the rose revolution, the bulldozer revolution, the velvet revolution, the cedar revolution, the carnation revolution, the Arab spring, and so on. There is in fact a long list of non-violent revolutions that have occurred that we are not informed of, lest we should realize the power in organizing according to the principles of non-violent revolution so that we might implement these powerful techniques. Needless to say, there have been many bloody and violent revolutions and oppressive military incursions which tend to get more media attention and tend to find there way into history books that find their way into our educational prison systems. So we do have to do a little searching and, on occasion, go to school at a peace academy to learn about the real struggles, the real heroes, the real conquests of head heart and spirit that brought us to this critical juncture in history where, in fact, everything is in place for a global revolution to once and for all finally dismantle the pillars of injustice and construct the pillars of peace. To this end I highly recommend people get a hold of any work by Gene Sharp – a great starting point to lead you to all of histories heroes – and there are many, and we can count ourselves among them, who have pushed, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, but always paving the way for the grand unification and the grand liberation towards self – determination and then, as a species we can deal with the more impending tasks such as climate change and equality of resource acquisition and distribution.

 

So, and again, when you’re looking at how fucked up the world might seem, remember how far we have come in the past century and look at how much relative peace there is in the world. There you may find your strength so that we can all continue the struggle for a one-ness of spirit and intention as stewards of this entire planet of life and the environment.

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