(Bx)

Der Niederländer Geert Wilders und seine rechtspopulistische PVV haben in der Europawahl 17% der Stimmen erhalten. Zentrales Thema:  Ausländer, Muslime gefährden uns von innen und von außen.

Wilders hat 10 Programmpunkte bezüglich der “Gefahr von innen” aufgestellt. Der zweite lautet:

2. Lasst uns die politisch korrekte, aber falsche Vorstellung aufgeben, dass der Islam eine Religion sei. Islam ist keine Religion, sondern eine totalitäre Ideologie. Mit anderen Worten: Das Recht auf Religionsfreiheit sollte nicht mehr auf den Islam angewendet werden.

Die 1,5 Mrd Muslime in der Welt sind also keine Gläubigen, die einer Religionsgemeinschaft angehören, sondern “totalitäre Ideologen”?

Sagt mir nicht, das kommt doch bloß vom politischen Rand: Es hallt wider in der Mitte. Der Rechtspopulismus hat das Potential – hinreichend politisch-sozialen Stress in der Gesellschaft vorausgesetzt -, die Mitte zu erobern.

Was für praktische Konsequenz schlägt Geert Wilders vor? Er formuliert sie so:

4. Lasst uns für eine freiwillige Rückführung von Muslimen in ihre Heimatländer einsetzen.

Man lasse sich nicht von dem Adjektiv täuschen. Wie bekommt man denn das “freiwillige” Einverständnis der Migranten zur Rückführung? Dadurch, dass man sie hier bei uns massiv diskriminiert und terrorisiert. Und eben nicht integriert – um ihnen keinen Anreiz zum Bleiben zu geben.

Auch bei Sarrazin läuft die Argumentation ja auf Deportation hinaus (was er selber, als anständiger Mensch, wohl nicht befürwortet). Denn was er konkret vorschägt – weniger wohlfahrtsstaatliche Gefälligkeiten, Rausdrängen aus Berlin – würde die Mauern um das beklagte “Ghetto” herum nur noch höher wachsen lassen, es würde die Entfremdung steigern bis zu dem Punkt, an dem eine Mehrheit rabiat feststellt: “Die gehören nicht zu uns, die müssen raus, und wir schmeißen sie jetzt raus.”

Unter welchen Bedingungen dürften Einwanderer bleiben? Dazu Punkt

7. Alle, die einer nicht-westlichen Minorität angehören, sollten einen rechtlich bindenden Vertrag unterschreiben müssen, der sie zur vollständigen Integration im Sinne von Assimilation (kultureller Anpassung) verpflichtet.

Das ist die Strategie von rechts außen mit Stoßrichtung Mitte. Wir beobachten ihren wachsenden Erfolg in Österreich, in der Schweiz (dazu morgen mehr), in England , in Italien (Lega Nord), in Dänemark.

Was haben wir in der InitiativGruppe dem entgegenzusetzen?

Unsere praktische Integrationsarbeit.
Und dass wir über diese Arbeit sprechen.
Und möglichst bei Debatten in die Offensive gehen.

Was sonst?

—

Nachtrag:

Die drei zitierten Punkte lassen eine gewisse Verwandtschaft erkennen:

Punkt 2: Die Juden wurden damals nicht als Angehörige einer Religion genommen, sondern als Angehörige einer Rasse. Und hier bei Wilders & Co die Muslime nicht als Gläubige, sondern als Anhänger einer “totalitären Ideologie”.

Punkt 4: Ausgrenzung, letztlich Deportation – Befreiung vom Fremden durch konsequente Exklusion.

Punkt 7: Dem völkischen Reinheitsgebot entspricht hier das kulturelle.

F. Spanky and I were driving in his car, doing our usual Saturday errands. We begin talking about the assimilation of native people.

F. Spanky: I mean, the argument is that assimilation would be the best. Wipe out the entire culture and it would fix things…I don’t know what to really think but..

Audge: Hm. Maybe.. I dunno. Uh-

F. Spanky: I mean look at you. your completely 100% assimilated besides your job.

(*I’m adopted and transitioned out of the aboriginal culture that way.)

Audge: Ya’ but I think we have more options then assimilating an entire race. I mean..

F. Spanky: Well, what else is there? Throwing money at them doesn’t work.

Audge: Alright, true. Maybe we need to stop throwing money at them then, right?

F. Spanky, thoughtfully pauses a moment.

Then says: “…. Because then, they get really really mad.”

Audge basically pisses herself in laughter. Funniest moment of my life.

China’s Golden Shield Project has several US corporations such as IBM, General Electric, and Honeywell working closely with the Chinese government to install millions of surveillance cameras throughout the country, along with advanced video analysis and facial recognition software, which will identify and track individuals everywhere they go. They will be connected to a centralised database and monitoring station, which will, upon completion of the project, contain a picture of the face of every person in China – over 1.3 billion people.

Law enforcement and intelligence services in the UK and the US possess technology to remotely activate the microphones in cellphones, by accessing the phone’s diagnostic/maintenance features, in order to listen to conversations that take place nearby the person who holds the phone. Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location data.

In the US, for instance, under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, all phone calls, VoIP and broadband internet traffic (emails, web traffic, instant messaging, etc) are required to be available for unimpeded real-time monitoring by federal law enforcement agencies. Computers are also a surveillance target because of the personal data stored on them. If someone is able to install software (either physically or remotely), such as the FBI’s “Magic Lantern” and Computer and IP verification (CIPAV), on a computer system, they can easily gain unauthorised access to this data. Another form of computer surveillance, known as TEMPEST, involves reading electromagnetic emanations from computing devices in order to extract data from them at distances of hundreds of meters.

Surveillance cameras are often connected to a recording device, IP network, and/or watched by a security guard/law enforcement officer. In the UK, for instance, there are about 4.2 million surveillance cameras — one camera for every 14 people. (via How other countries fare).

The Red Rage

There is a increasing chorus in India that such a ‘surveillance’ regime is needed in India also. A undermanned police managed a low crime society in India till now. The excuse of terrorism is being used to advance the case for a police state in India also – like the UK, USA, China etc.

Lalgarh has proved one thing – purusharth in India is still alive and well. Moksh मोक्ष is the ultimate aim of all humans – and the meaning of moksh is freedom, emancipation, deliverance. Moksh is one of the four objectives (धर्म अर्थ, काम, मोक्ष)in the Indian ethical code of पुरुषार्थ.

Santhals and the British

In Lalgarh, middle aged Santhal women, armed with spears, axes and knives came out to battle a repressive state which sold out to Big Business. For nearly a 100 years, a 100 years ago, the same Santhals had fought the British Raj earlier. When so many women come out in the open, with bows and arrows, one thing is clear.

There are more where they come from.

The excuse for extending power

So, whether it is Red Rage or Green Jihad, the State just needs an excuse to extend its power – and this ‘surveillance’ raj is one part of it.

At first impression, the story is very familiar: two American-born sisters of Vietnamese American immigrants  – one the high-achieving ‘good’ daughter with her law degree, the other the ‘lost’ daughter with fast friends and temporary jobs that never last long.

But in Bich Minh Nguyen’s heart-string-pulling first novel, Van and Linny Luong are anything but stereotypes, living complicated inner lives filled with searching and rarely enough understanding. Their distant father, camped out in the basement of their childhood home, considers himself an inventor. His Luong Arm is a promising tool for short people trying to reach too-high places … a metaphor that fits all four members of the petite Luong family. Because of their short stature, he constantly tells his girls they must work that much harder to achieve success, often quoting a mistaken version of Randy Newman’s 1970s pop hit: “short people are no reason to live.”

The girls’ no-nonsense mother who managed to keep the family together, has been gone for nine years, reduced to an Olan Mills portrait and a box of ashes. Both could use some maternal guidance. Van’s near-perfect life disappears overnight when her husband walks out without explanation. Ironically, Linny’s playing the ‘other woman’ with a married man she met delivering ready-made meals to wealthy Chicago families with no time to cook – but plenty of time to step out.

As young girls, the sisters thought of themselves as the invincible Trung Sisters from first-century Vietnam. But as they grew up and their priorities took vastly divergent turns, their communication devolved into barbs and sarcasm. With Mom gone, and Dad buried in his basement, Van and Linny have no other family left except each other … and cautiously, they begin to rebuild their neglected sisterhood, shedding long-hidden secrets one by one to finally reveal their true selves.

Following the success of her delicious debut memoir, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, Nguyen’s first foray into fiction is a quiet, resonating portrait of family lost and found …

Readers: Adult

Published: 2009

More than three-quarters of young black men aged between 18 and 35 are on the system, the report said. Set up in 1995, the database contains the DNA profiles of five million citizens, eight percent of the population, making it the world’s biggest in proportion to population size. “Parliament has never formally debated the establishment of the National DNA Database and safeguards around it,” commission chairman Professor Jonathan Montgomery said in a statement.

“It has developed through amendments to laws designed to regulate the taking of fingerprints and physical evidence before DNA profiling was developed.

“It is not clear how far holding DNA profiles on a central database improves police investigations.” (via U.K. cops arrest people ‘just for the DNA’ – Europe- msnbc.com).

Big brother is definitely here

As post-WW2 European society was taking shape, one man warned the world – Big Brother Is Watching You! George Orwell’s 1984, a simple, dark and melancholic book warned the world of the spectre of a police state looming over the world.

The book was portrayed as warning against the ‘impending’ threat of Communism. George Orwell himself joined the British Government in its propaganda effort during WW2.

Would George Orwell have imagined that Britain, the citadel of freedom, itself would becoming the Mother Of Big Brother societies – with the largest number surveillance cameras and DNA data bank and a back-breaking prison population.

I wonder!

In the land of the free

The US prison population at more than 20 lakhs (2 million) is travesty of justice and humanity. The US competes with China and the erstwhile USSR, (the largest totalitarian regimes) in the world, with its rate of incarceration.

USA, with a population of 30 crores (300 million), has a criminal population of 70 lakhs (7 million) – behind bars, on probation or on parole. US Government estimates a figure of 20 lakhs (2 million) people serving prison sentences.

A concerned editorial in New York Times newspaper summed up the situation.

More than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars. One in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, are serving time, as are 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men. Nationwide, the prison population … (of the US) surpasses all other countries for which there are reliable figures. The 50 states last year spent about $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections, up from nearly $11 billion in 1987. Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon devote as much money or more to corrections as they do to higher education.

Persuading public officials to adopt a more rational, cost-effective approach to prison policy is a daunting prospect, however, not least because building and running jailhouses has become a major industry.

… the relationship between imprisonment and crime control is murky. States that lagged behind the national average in rising incarceration rates during the 1990’s actually experienced a steeper decline in crime rates than states above the national average … (ellipsis and bracketed text mine).

Across the pond

Some time back there was another report, on the state of prisons in UK.

There are almost 10,000 Muslims in Britain’s jails— with 90 of them serving time for terror offences … they fear more and more young lags are being converted and radicalised in prison. A … source said: “You are talking about rootless young men at the bottom of society. They’re in jail and someone gives them some purpose. ”

In top-security jails such as Whitemoor, Cambs, 35 per cent of inmates are Muslim—and they have converted numerous other prisoners to Islam. (via MI5 spy chiefs are putting undercover officers into Britain’s jails | News Of The World).

Slice and dice …

Britain has an estimated 1.6 million Muslims – a 2.8% of the British population. Of this a 10,000 are in prison – which means about 0.6% of the British Muslim population is in prison. India has 16 crore Muslims – which a 100 times higher population.

What if …

The British policy of imprisonment, if India were to follow, Indian Muslims inside prisons would be in 10 lakhs (or 1 million). India’s total prison population ranges between 2.5 lakhs to 3.5 lakhs – of all peoples, of all religions, races, crimes etc.

Of course, Indian society handles crime vastly differently. Technically, India could create a legal system which would ease the ability of the police to imprison people, or better still hang them – and hide its social problems.

Freedom, imprisonment, racism, development, genocide

What is the difference between a ‘banana republic’ where people disappear – and in the Anglo-Saxon Bloc which has the world largest prison population? Maybe, my being from a backward country, stops me from understanding this great ‘progress’ that these countries seemed to have made!

The sight of the West, strutting as a protector of freedom on the global stage is a hoax. How can the West have a problem with Native American tribes (aka Red Indians) and the Aborigines – if there are none left. The West which has the highest levels of prison populations in the world – raucously reminds the world of lessons in freedom.

What is assimilation and integration

The West speaks of protecting individual freedom, whereas the calls for ‘assimilation’ integration are nothing but refurbished implementation of the ’settled’ principle in the Desert Bloc of Cuius regio, eius religio’ (meaning whose land, his religion; CRER) – the ruler decided his people’s religion.

The West can speak from both sides of the mouth. Nicholas Sarkozy can tell Indians (i.e.Manmohan Singh) to respect foreign missionaries, who want to convert Indians to their religion – while the West can continue with this demonization of Islam. Would Sarkozy like to mention any other country where such a large minority Muslim population, has greater freedom and opportunity, than in India? Would you like to suggest France instead?

This is freedom – from both sides. For the West.

The Neocon Republican Terrorist vision of a divided and segregated America, where everybody that is not a white Anglo-saxon Christian is considered cannon fodder and trash, is coming to fruition. It is reminiscent of the reaction to the new population of freed slaves that the white former slave masters had after they were soundly defeated in the Civil War by the Union army.

This is the period in our history called Reconstruction where,for a decade after the Civil War,blacks gained political power, and some attained financial wealth as well.

During Reconstruction, southern whites turned violent when they saw blacks making major gains.

 Reconstruction was followed in the South by domination by the Democratic Party and the enactment of Jim Crow laws, grandfather clauses and similar measures. The bitterness and repercussions from the heated conflicts of the era lasted well into the twentieth century.

Read more about the Reconstruction era here… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era_of_the_United_States 

Southern state governments quickly enacted the restrictive “black codes“. However, they were abolished in 1866 and seldom had effect, because the Freedman’s Bureau (not the local courts) handled the legal affairs of freedmen.

The Black Codes indicated the plans of the southern whites for the former slaves.^[24] The freedmen would have more rights than did free blacks before the war, but they still had only a limited set of second-class civil rights, no voting rights, and, since they were not citizens, they could not own firearms, serve on a jury in a lawsuit involving whites or move about without employment.^[25] The Black Codes would limit blacks’ ability to control their own employment. The Black Codes outraged northern opinion. They were overthrown by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that gave the Freedmen full legal equality (except for the right to vote).^[26

 There were many reported murders of blacks in the south during reconstruction, but many killings of blacks went unreported, and by all accounts, millions upon millions of African-Americans were killed by the hands of bitter southerners, as reported in this account taken from Wikipedia by a soldier visiting from the North...

The number of murders and assaults perpetrated upon Negroes is very great; we can form only an approximate estimate of what is going on in those parts of the South which are not closely garrisoned, and from which no regular reports are received, by what occurs under the very eyes of our military authorities. As to my personal experience, I will only mention that during my two days sojourn at Atlanta, one Negro was stabbed with fatal effect on the street, and three were poisoned, one of whom died.

In todays modern post-racial world, we have organizations and groups that have a mission to keep track of, and to investigate the existence of, the number of racially motivated,or bias motivated crimes against minorities,religious groups, gay Americans.

Currently, America is going through another Reconstruction like era,as we are experiencing the racial backlash of hatred based on the election of our first black president,Barack Obama.

The election of Barack has caused a rise in all forms of hate crimes, as well as the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan as a force to stoke the flames of hatred and encouraging physical action of violence against blacks, Gays, and all other religious groups that are not Christian.

What is most distressing is that the tide of racial violence is being egged on and financed by the foreigner Rupert Murdoch, and the entire Republican party,that at one time represented the opposite of what they believe in now.

For a group that, centuries ago, used to be the main supporter of civil rights, they currently are the main driving force behind this increasing tide of racism and bigotry that is the rage in most of the states in America.

The racist are moving from the south, and invading the once liberal California, in order to spread their southern tradition of hatred and illiteracy. Hate crimes based on sexual orientation shot up 21 percent in Los Angeles County last year, while religious crimes increased 14 percent, because the southern bigots have moved in.

The Daily News in Los Angeles reports that...in 2008  in the Valley,James Shamp, an African-American man who worked as a janitor at a bowling alley in Canoga Park, was shot to death as he was throwing out trash. According to the report, three members of the Canoga Park Alabama gang, which has a long history of violent anti-black crimes, were arrested and charged with murder and hate crime enhancements.

The San Fernando Valley had the most amount of hate crimes in the Los Angeles area.

"Whenever I look at a map of hate crimes, I find there is a great diversity of hate crimes that occur in the San Fernando Valley," said Robin Toma, executive director of the commission. "You have anti-Semitic hate crimes, homophobic hate crimes and racially motivated hate crimes. There is also the phenomena of racialized gang violence."

Sexual orientation hate crimes rose the most last year, with more than 80 percent targeting gay men and at least nine crimes traced to Proposition 8.

A report on a sexually motivated hate crime from the Daily News... A white lesbian couple walking hand-in-hand on the beach in Malibu. The mother of a white tourist family from Arkansas told them, "You are going to burn in hell!" and dumped her water bottle on one of them and punched one in the face...

Please keep that level of ignorance in Arkansas,...and my family is from Arkansas.

The election of the first black president and hot-button issues such as abortion and gay marriage contributed to the spikes, anti-bias groups say. Public figures like Sarah Palin and Glen Beck have done a lot to cause the current racial hatred that whites are visiting on all others.

The two of them have been quite effective when it come to rallying sympathy for groups like the KKK and the Nazis.

USA TODAY is reporting that the number of attacks on blacks increased 8% to 2,876, accounting for seven of every 10 race-motivated crimes.

"There is this kind of extremism going on," says Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington bureau. He says Obama's election and the recession led to a backlash against blacks as some people look for someone to blame for hard economic times. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-11-23-hate-crimes_N.htm

I say to the world, this is a good look at the so-called ''Post-Racial'' America, a country where race relations and the unity of the races has been usurped by the in vogue traditional American practice of racial bias,hatred and division.

Our country has been going through this cycle for well over a Hundred and 8o years, and by the looks of things, that sad tradition will continue.

What do we do to end this....will we come together, or will we have to resort to our primal instinct, where only the strong survive.

I think that based on 200 years of data and statistics, the tradition of racism is alive, well, and thriving in the United States, and that we are guilty of the same atrocities against humanity...our own people, that we so blatantly accuse our so-called enemies of doing to their minority populations.

We are all truly hypocrites.

Read more on this story from these trusted sources…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/23/hate-crime-on-rise-gay-re_n_368276.html

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_13829526

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2009/11/20/LA-sees-hike-in-certain-hate-crimes/UPI-95381258737529/

During the 2nd ODI, there was an ever so brief moment where England’s two South African natives — Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott — combined at the pitch for a partnership. Sure, Pietersen got out for 4, but it was quite a sight to behold in front of the South African crowd.

Taken in with Mahmood and Rashid and Morgan, England’s colonial transformation is near-complete. Eat it, Norman Tebbit.

It’s tough times for our little Selina, whose gambler father was killed by a stray bullet fired by a jealous wife, as she heads off into the prairies at the age of nineteen to teach in a one-room schoolhouse and live with a Dutch immigrant family.  Well, “tough times” is a bit of an exaggeration.  Selina, whose imagination always runs away with her (“It was after reading Pride and Prejudice that she decided to be the Jane Austen of her time.“), had envisioned a life as a sort of transplanted Katrina von Tassel in a Midwestern version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  As it turns out, life among Dutch farmers has a lot more to do with dried blood fertilizer and cabbages than it does Gothic horror/romance (at least for now).

It’s a fun little book…we’re still light-years away from the title character, Dirk “So Big” De Jong, who is as yet not even a twinkle in Selina’s eye.  Still, I’m happy following her around in this light little story.  I can’t pretend that Ferber is breaking new ground with the plot—naive young schoolteacher from the big city comes to the farmland to find that there is much her sophisticated education hasn’t taught her…gee, do you think these simple rural folk will grow to love and accept her, and that one of their strapping young lads will sweep her off her feet in rugged yet sentimental fashion?  But Ferber is good at other things, particularly creating believable and interesting characters, and writing decent dialogue.  She manages to write fractured English for these Dutch immigrants that sounds very believable (not like the faux Scottish brogues that Margaret Wilson slathered all over her novel….which I have to stop talking about, or my blood pressure will never drop back down to normal), and makes them quaintly amusing without (quite) turning them into caricatures.

It’s another book whose real point is obscure at the outset.  I’d suspect the simplistic plot I mentioned above, but that’s clearly only going to be enough to get her married off.  How does she end up a washerwoman back in Chicago, raising a ten year old boy (apparently alone)?  Ferber’s given me just enough to pique my interest, and not enough yet that I can connect the dots.

What’s odd to me is that the family doesn’t speak much Dutch at home, as far as I can tell.  I’ve heard that immigrant parents were pretty militant about enforcing English on their children to hasten assimilation, which makes sense in a diverse urban environment, but was it really also the practice out in a rural community where seemingly most of the inhabitants share a common ancestry?  Perhaps I need to read a bit more about this prairie society before jumping to any conclusions.

So I’m reading a book which wants to tell me why people don’t come back to church after the first visit, and how churches can make it more likely that people return.  And I come across this little snippet,

Seven minutes is all you get to make a positive first impression.  In the first seven minutes of contact with your church, your first-time guests will know whether or not they are coming back.  That’s before a single worship song is sung and before a single word of the message is uttered.

Obviously your guests aren’t making a logical decision based on the integrity of the preaching, the character of the church staff or the clarity of your doctrine.  They are not weighing pros and cons of worship styles and theological viewpoints…. Instead, they are taking clues about your church’s atmosphere and the peopl’es friendliness on a much more rudimentary level.  Their subconscious minds are working overtime to evaluate their compatibility with this new environment.

Fusion by Nelson Searcy (2007), p49-50

As the quote says, this isn’t a biblical observation, it’s a lesson drawn from studies of human behaviour and decision making.  So what’s your experience?

• When you visit a church how long does it take you to form an opinion?
  
• How does the experience of getting from the street to your seat colour your expectations of the worship experience and teaching?
  
• Have you ever decided within 7 minutes not to return to a church?
• Have you experienced a church make a strong first impression on you within 7 minutes?
  

I certainly relate to this “7 Minute Principle”.  I enjoy visiting other churches, but when I do I’m on pins and needles constantly scanning my environment trying to make intelligent judgments.  What publications do they have in their foyer?  Do they have a powerpoint projector?  What songbook do they use?  What Bible version do they have in their pews?  Do they have pews or chairs?  How are the worship leaders dressed?  How many members carry Bibles?  Does anyone talk to me or notice I’m a visitor?  What are the demographics of the congregation?  Does it look like it’s involved in the community, or is it still living in the 50’s?

Je n’arrive pas à choisir entre un écran de fumée et les fumigènes
(Thierry Henry 0 – l’identité nationale 1)

I asked that question during a week of live #litchat on Twitter when I guest hosted this spring. Here are highlights from three hours of conversation with 40 readers, writers, travelers, expats, Third Culture Kids and emigrees weighing in from around the globe. The unattributed comments are my own.

WHAT’S EXPAT LIT?

The interpretation of another culture by someone of our own. — M. Dominique Benoit

An expat writer draws on a collective cultural consciousness to talk about a different locale. An outsider’s view from the inside: when it’s good, it’s the best of both worlds.

A thoughtful expat will question and analyze his own cultural biases. The reader can do this vicariously. — Deborah Davidson

EXPAT LIT COMES OF AGE

So many globetrotters, so many identity issues when home keeps changing. — Jennifer Eaton Gokmen

EXPAT LIT VS. TRAVELOGUE

Travel may open your eyes but does not change your identity. Expatriation sure does! — Emmanuelle Archer

Expat lit is not travel literature since writing about life from outside a homeland does not mean writing from a state of travel. We’re coping with extended life in a foreign culture, navigating subtleties, adapting to find harmony. Personal assimilation/identity issues dominate expat writing, and filter their world. If travel writing is a chance to travel vicariously, expat lit is a chance to live abroad vicariously.

FEMALE VS. MALE WRITERS

Female expat writers do more with identity and assimilation, I find. — Nassim Assefi

EMIGREE/IMMIGRANT VS. EXPAT

If the subject is primarily your homeland and you live abroad as an emigree, that’s emigree lit. If you’re living outside your home culture writing about where you are, and even the rest of the world, that’s expat lit. 

THIRD CULTURE KID VS. EXPAT

Third Culture Kid lit has more multi-faceted identity issues versus the writer who becomes an expat as an adult. The adult expat writer already has an established identity that gets challenged as adult. TCK has been challenged with identity all his life. — J. Gokmen

TCK often means not knowing where home is. Citizenship or nationality become irrelevant. TCK lit can be the epitome of expat lit, a “twice-removed” look at the culture. — E. Archer

AUTHORS, TITLES MENTIONED (travel, expat, TCK, emigree literature, historical and contemporary)

Adam Gopnik – Paris to the Moon//Anthony Burgess – Malay Trilogy//Bill Bryson//Carla Grissman – Dinner of Herbs//Chris Stewart – Driving Over Lemons//Christopher Isherwood//David Sedaris – Nuit of the Living Dead//Ernest Hemingway – Death in the Afternoon//Firoozeh Dumas – Funny in Farsi//Freya Stark//Gertrude Stein and the Lost Generation//Henry Miller//Isabella Bird//Jamie Zeppa – Beyond the Sky and Earth: A Journey into Bhutan//Karen Blixen//Lawrence Durrell – Alexandria Quartet//A. J. Leibling – Between Meals: An Appetite For Paris//Malcolm Lowry//Marlena De Blasi – A Thousand Days in Tuscany//Mary Blume – A French Affair//Mary Lee Settle – Turkish Reflections//Milan Kundera//Peter Mayles – French Lessons//Pico Iyer//Sarah McDonald – Holy Cow//Sarah Turnbull – Almost French//Somerset Maugham – Far Eastern Tales//Stanley Karnow – Paris in the Fifties//Tahir Shah – The Caliph’s House//Tales from the Expat Harem//Three Cups of Tea//Vladimir Nabokov//William Dalrymple

Does expat lit deserve its own genre? Which writers and titles do you consider expat lit, or why not?

we’d had enough to drink.

we were faceplanted on the lawn. grass

stole the contact lens from my right eye

and the streetlights became glowy planets.

we crawled in the road, boozy

rocket ship babies colonizing and

assimilating and genociding every

last one of those poor bastards.

after conquering the known

universe, we crash-landed

into each other on the porch,

giggling in the dark, sweating

through our t-shirts. we

subdued the earth, our bellies

gurgled,  and we passed out, happy.

Stereotypes and humor go back like spinal cords and car seats.

Last week G-Lo opened his foray into late-night comedy with an impressive 3.2 million viewers. However, some didn’t find George Lopez all that funny. The use of comedy to play up or disarm stereotypes is a double edged sword that “Lopez Tonight” wields voraciously.

The ability to laugh at oneself is an admirable trait, especially if you’re bi-cultural and enduring the struggle of assimilating and/or acculturating into the mainstream. But is there a line between reinforcing the same stereotypes that seem to perpetuate negativity and using them simply for laughs?

For many, comedy is just what it is – entertainment. People have to realize that no matter what a comedian says, one has to undoubtedly always maintain respect for all races, cultures and viewpoints. This is a basic trait that many are taught by our elders…and it should never be compromised.

Honestly, comedy can be used for many different purposes but it shouldn’t be used as the main vehicle for changing stereotypes. We should never be too quick to take entertainers so seriously.  The ones that do most likely take themselves too seriously and my only advice to this uncomfortable group of individuals is a quote by Woody Allen: “Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.”

Tja! Japp mkt bra söndag igår jag blev vän med ytterligare en gammal klasskamrat på samma forum där jag hänger, snackades vid lite snabbt. Sade inte så mkt dock kanske beror på att vi inte haft kontakt på 5år ? samt att jag sände iväg 5 “vänförfrågningar” till några andra som jag hittade av en slump .. 

Fick beröm igår av chefredaktören för Nationell Idag Vavra Suk för att jag skrivit mkt under gårdagen ..

Fan vilken bra morgon två av mina gamla klasskamrater jag sände “vänförfrågningar” till har blivit vän med mig O en av dem svarade till o med i ett pm .. Wooho ! xP

Lade även upp en krönika om integration här ovan! För den som är intresserad!

Fashion isn’t supposed to be politically correct. If it was it wouldn’t be so fun and so daring. And we know that the French especially don’t give a fuck. Which is why I love them. Just last month, my dear friend Jean, creator of the fabulous fashion blog Ledefile, alerted me to a previous issue of French Vogue with pregnant models wearing strappy high heels and smoking cigarettes.

loving the baby stuffed in the handbag

That obviously wouldn’t fly in American Vogue mostly because Americans have sticks up their ass. But I actually enjoyed the pregnancy photo spread. Sans the cigarettes , the photos alleviate the insecure feeling most women have about what pregnancy will do their bodies and how unattractive they may become because those models were HOT.

However, in the October issue of Vogue, in a photo spread, is Dutch supermodel Lara Stone,…wait for it….wait for it…in Blackface.

And a bunch of questions popped in my mind. Is this blackface or is this art? Why not just have a beautiful black supermodel on the cover? Should the French and more specifically other countries who don’t have the same kind of sadistic historical treatment of Blacks like in America, have to tiptoe around racial issues that wouldn’t offend the majority in their country? Do they have to pay for crimes that racist Americans committed? And if they should, should Americans as well be extra-sensitive to seemingly harmless stereotypical portrayals of race when that race does not have a prevalent history of victimization in our own country?

First of all, blackface itself aggrandized negative characteristics associated with blacks. It arose in the 19^th century in the US and Britian, and the characters belonged to the plantation genre. There was the mammy, the mistress, the pickaninnies, the house slave, and they were coons to be laughed at by whites at minstrel shows. The skin color was accentuated, the lips were made more red, the whites of the eyes were emphasized, and the Negro dialect was imitated.

once he puts on the black paint, he becomes an irrational buffoon

But looking at these images in French Vogue, I don’t necessarily see it in the same way I would see blackface propaganda. While even thinking about a white person covering herself in black make-up is shocking, these photos don’t have the same agenda as blackface performance. It is more artistic and beautiful than funny and coon-like. Primarily, in blackface the “ugliness” of blacks is amplified, and in this picture, the woman is beautiful. Beauty and Blackness were not correlations made to buttress racially hegemonic ideals.

But, why do we need a white woman to be in blackface for the image to be beautiful? Vogue already has a history of not putting black models on the covers, or only in the summer issues because the majority of their customers wouldn’t buy them. And in many letters to the Editor after Michelle Obama was featured on the cover, even though it was for politics, many readers were pissed that Vogue would put someone so unmodel-like and fashionless on the cover, e.g. black woman on the cover. Is the photographer saying something about art, or about masks? Is blackness only beautiful when it is false, or is blackness only beautiful when we see there is some underlying white characteristic? Hmmmmm.

Most of the reaction to these images have been shock by the fashion world and its readers. Especially in the wake of the recent reality show in Australia in which white performers sang Jackson Five songs in blackface and called themselves the Jackson Jive. Harry Connick Jr. was so pissed he gave them a zero.

Jackson Jive, just look over your shoulders honey... Oooooh!

But like Australia, France hasn’t had the same intricacies with racism towards African-Americans. France’s hegemonic power was largely enforced in North Africa, sometimes in the Caribbean, and the majority of their racism was geared toward Arabs. Additionally, America is one of the few countries that premised its’ mission of colonization on the assertion that African-Americans were sub-human. However, countries like France and Britian entertained the idea that through education and culture, the “inferior races” could be assimilated and acculturated into their society. In Macualay’s Famous Minute on Education he stated that the British wanted to have “Indians in blood and colour but European in thought and intellect.” Additionally, during the Harlem Renaissance many black writers and activists such as Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Jessie Fauset, Josephine Baker, and James Baldwin, ex-patriates if you will, left the States for France specifically because it wasn’t racist and they felt free.

are we gonna get in a huff because the french put josephine baker in a banana skirt? is this minstrelcy or art?

So do the French and any other country without a perverse history of racism towards African-Americans really have to be held to the same politically correct standard as the racist Americans who started the whole damn thing anyway? Are we limiting freedom of speech (blackface) because the Americans fucked up?

And if you agree that no country should endorse the use of blackface for art, humour, etc. is it because it is a badge of victimization for blacks or is it because no one should be imitating a different race for humor? A couple years ago when I was teaching a class on Television and Literary Genres which focused on humor, we watched a few Dave Chappelle episodes from “Chappelle’s Show.” We specifically watched the episodes in which he performed comedy in Whiteface.

"since reparations have been paid to blacks the crime rate has fallen to zero, wait that can't be true, did the Mexicans get paid too? Ooops am i still on the air?"

When Dave is in whiteface he speaks in a stereotypically white way, is mildly racist, and is sexually repressed and impotent. After watching the episodes I asked my students if they were offended (they were all white) and they said no. And then I asked why is it that blackface is offensive and whiteface isn’t? They came up with the conclusion that it has to do with the history of victimization of blacks. When people are in blackface it connotes black inferiority, yet whiteface does not do the same because it would be historically inaccurate, because whiteness is seen as superior in America. I was even thinking about racial slurs, and even the one for whiteness, “cracker,” isn’t a term of inferiority per se because it alludes to a slavemaster who cracks the whip on the back of slave. So even the term itself is laden with dominance and power. Hmmmmm.

i am ashamed i did see the movie, but i do love my wayans! -white chicks

Why isn’t it offensive to make fun of a race, and you could even extend this to class or gender, when that race, class, or gender, in respect to its counterparts, is the most dominant, powerful, or not had a history of victimization? Thoughts?

It has taken me a while to realise that it’s important to allow an extra 5-10 minutes after a session ends to really make the most of what has just happened.

Usually I enjoy AVS lying down in a dimly lit room. Often I lay a sleep mask over the glasses to minimise ambient light. Darkness hugely improves the brilliance of the lightshow, and makes the greens and blues much more intense. The mask also eliminates distracting peripheral details – equipment LEDs, monitors, stray light, etc. This matters with eyes closed? Yes – the eyes closed state that I usually adopt is a very fragile thing, and my eyelids frequently flutter just open enough for the outside world to make itself known, yet not enough to make the LEDs directly visible, or to even significantly affect the brightness of the lightshow.

Set up like this I find it very easy to shift my thinking into the pattern suggested by the session. A good proportion of the sessions I use include an exit ramp to bring brain activity back to a range suitable for getting up and on with ordinary things. Such sessions don’t really benefit much from post-session stillness, but there is one thing that does make it worthwhile anyway – I have found that maybe 30 seconds after a session ends, if I keep my eyes closed and remain still, a wonderful series of visual images, in colors complimentary to the last seen, will begin to form. Quite beautiful, usually intense violets after a predominantly red lightshow.

It is sessions that end at frequencies other than high alpha/low beta that really benefit from the quiet period. While the session is playing, the brain has a constant reminder of what it’s meant to be doing. When the session stops, and you leap straight into taking headphones and glasses off and leaping up to get on with things, brain activity is instantly switched into alpha/beta. By remaining still for a while, you can enjoy feeling and using your brain while it is in the less usual states of conscious activity. You’ll get the inverse lightshow too.

A lot of emphasis is placed on AVS as a shortcut to advanced mental states. It isn’t. AVS/entrainment can provide a taste of mental states that are rarely accessible to the typical Westerner. Confusing a state of mental activity with a state of mind, however, can be misleading. There’s a lot of ways to nudge the brain into certain types of activity – practice, ritual, psychoactive substances, AVS. Of these, AVS is the quickest and safest, however its accessibility can diminish the recognition and value of what is experienced under its influence.

To a huge extent it is only by cross-referencing my experiences between techniques that I have made real headway. AVS has a bling factor that can mask its real value. Every approach has its pitfalls. Balance and discipline maintain progress while diminishing the risk of self-deception. Many of the things that happen with AVS are nothing more than phenomena – fascinating on many levels, but quite distinct from mental state.

10 minutes of quiet time before moving onto the next thing can provide an invaluable period of assimilation and integration without the immediate distraction of the stimulus. Highly recommended!

Cheers,
Craig

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Canada seeks to unconstitutionally abolish Algonquin’s customary government to avoid honouring agreements and recognizing legitimate leadership

Kitiganik/Rapid Lake, Algonquin Territory:– On Friday, October 30, 2009, Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl sent notice to the Algonquins of Barriere Lake that he will not recognize their legitimate leadership, but instead impose elections on the community in April, 2010 by invoking a section of the Indian Act that would abolish the customary method they use to select their leaders.

The attempt at assimilation would be a violation of Barriere Lake’s constitutionally-protected Aboriginal right to their customary system of government.

“The Canadian government doesn’t want to deal with our Customary Chief and Council because we are demanding that the federal and Quebec governments implement agreements they signed with us regarding the exploitation of our lands and resources. So rather than recognize me, they want to do away with our customary system of government by which I was selected,” says Jean Maurice Matchewan, Customary Chief of Barriere Lake. “And while they are not recognizing our community’s legitimate leadership, Quebec has been taking advantage by illegally allowing forestry companies to clear-cut our forests in violation of our Trilateral agreement.”

Documents released under court-order indicate the Government of Canada was invested in quashing the precedent-setting Trilateral agreement, signed with Barriere Lake in 1991, and undermining Barriere Lake’s legitimate Customary Chief and Council.[1]

Jean Maurice Matchewan was reselected as Customary Chief on June 24, 2009, but the Government of Canada has refused to answer six consecutive letters sent by Barriere Lake’s lawyers, the last on Thursday, October 29, requesting that the Government recognize this result. The June leadership selection process was facilitated by Keith Penner, a former Member of Parliament who chaired the Special Parliamentary Committee on Indian Self-Government in 1983 that culminated in the historic Penner Report on Indian First Nations Self-Government. Penner concluded that Matchewan and his Council “followed and adhered to in each and every respect” Barriere Lake’s Customary Governance Code and are the “the legitimate and properly constituted leaders,” a result which should clear up confusion about the identity of Barriere Lake’s legitimate Customary Chief and Council.[2]

At a Federal Court hearing on September 24, 2009, Prothontary Tabib urged the Minister, in light of the new leadership selection, to withdraw his recognition of Casey Ratt, whom the Minister has been dealing with as Chief since March 2008.  This could allow the claims to leadership to be resolved through the Courts. Rather than recognize the June leadership selection or take direction from the Courts. Minister Strahl has decided to impose elections on Barriere Lake, alleging the community is “lacking the political will and the governance tools to resolve this matter” of their leadership selection.

“We already have a Customary Governance Code, which would work well if it were not for the internal interference of the Government of Canada. First the Government of Canada recognized and worked with a minority faction which didn’t respect our Customary Governance Code, in order to derail our signed agreements. Now that we have the Government backed into a corner because of our legal challenges and the recent leadership selection process, which was documented by credible witnesses, they are trying to win some more time by attacking our customs,” says Customary Chief Matchewan.

Section 74 of the Indian Act states that the Minister of Indian Affairs can impose an electoral system on First Nations with customary leadership selection processes. But Barriere Lake’s Customary governance code is recognized and affirmed by Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution, and the Minister is therefore prevented from changing their customary system of government.

Barriere Lake wants Canada and Quebec to uphold signed agreements dating back to the 1991 Trilateral Agreement, a landmark sustainable development and resource co-management agreement praised by the United Nations and the Royal Commission since 2001. Quebec signed a complementary Bilateral Agreement in 1998, but has stalled implementation despite the 2006 recommendations of two former Quebec Cabinet Ministers, Quebec special representative John Ciaccia and Barriere Lake special representative Clifford Lincoln, that the agreement be implemented. The 2006 recommendations include forest plans to harmonize logging operations with the Algonquin’s land use and revenue-sharing to give the Algonquins a $1.5 million share of the $100 million in resource revenue that comes out of their territory every year.

The Algonquin Nation Secretariat, a Tribal Council representing three Algonquin communities including Barriere Lake, continues to support Chief Matchewan.

- 30 -

Media contacts:
Jean Maurice Matchewan, Customary Chief of Barriere Lake: 819-435-2136

Notes
[1] http://barrierelakesolidarity.blogspot.com/2009/08/another-smoking-gun-top-diplomats.html
[2] http://ia341334.us.archive.org/0/items/2009-06-24AblPennerLeadershipReport_695/2009-06-24AblLeadershipReport.pdf

hierunter versteht man die Absorption einer Minderheit durch die Mehrheitsbevölkerung. Die Minderheitengruppe übernimmt dabei die Werte und Normen der dominanten Kultur.

The picture that emerges of Major Nidal Hasan is of an obnoxious, provocative, and disloyal gadfly.  He showed little respect for the uniform, his peers, or the rights and wrongs of the war on terrorism after the 9/11 attacks.  His deranged criticisms were absorbed by the politically correct and risk-adverse culture of today’s military.  Consider this nonsense from the Army Chief of Staff, General Casey:  “Our diversity not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

Worse?  Worse than 15 dead and 28 wounded?  Worse than an institution whose deracinated soldiers were well trained to know that raising an objection to someone like Hasan could be “racist” and thus the end of one’s career?

People outside the military don’t realize quite how much the h.r. nonsense we’re all accustomed to in academic and civilian life has become the lingua franca of the military since the Clinton’s administration, the Tailhook scandal, and the unnatural integration of women into combat-like roles.

We are fighting a war against radical Muslims, but no one is allowed to notice this inconvenient fact, even inside the military.  Today’s p.c. soldiers are supposed to train indifferent Iraqis and Afghanis, police these crummy countries’ sectarian elections, brook their proteges’ constant whining about civilian casualties (even though their own internecine struggles are positively Satanic in comparison), and ignore the fifth columnists in their midst like Sgt. John Muhammad (DC Sniper), Sgt. Akbar (who fragged his fellow soldiers), and now Major Nidal Hasan.

Neither Bush, nor Obama, nor most of the leadership at Ft. Hood takes note of the fact we have a self-professed Islamic enemy.  And that some of these enemies were born here, wear our army’s uniform, and have conflicted views about the country the rest of us love.  Instead, these manifest facts are dutifully suppressed by the ideology of diversity.

I think the media’s and other elites’ refusal to look at the content of Islamic beliefs, the relative lack of patriotism of the American Muslim community, and the way this community and the broader American community talk past each other is a problem. Non-Muslim Americans wrongly assume Muslims want to be treated fairly as equals.  Some do and would be content with that.  But Muslims on the whole see themselves as an elect, a superior community that needs to be treated deferentially.  This is the meaning of the Danish cartoon riots, the pushy suppression of dissent under the rubric of “hate speech,” and the double standards on accidental civilian deaths by western forces on the one hand (unintentional but worse in their eyes because committed by infidels) and the nearly daily and far more deadly bombings and killings of Muslims by other Muslims in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  Their idea of “due respect” is anathema to a democratic society built on tolerance and Christian ideas of freedom and conscience, whether in Europe or the United States.

Channeling Aleander Kojeve, Francis Fukuyama in the End of History noted that the animating principle of democratic societies is the abandonment of the earlier “warrior aristocracy” ethic, whereby one group in the community demanded recognition as superior because of its physical courage, in favor of the more limited respect between each stratum of society merely as an equal to the others.  This practical equality of self-perception and social demand by different cohorts in our own society has a lot to do with our vital and relatively strong traditions of self government and peaceful social life.

Fukuyama to his credit more recently noted that, “Democracy’s only real competitor in the realm of ideas today is radical Islamism. . . . Some disenfranchised Muslims thrill to the rantings of Osama bin Laden or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the appeal of this kind of medieval Islamism is strictly limited.”

This is all to say that the Nidal Hasans of the world are not an existential threat, particularly to the United States.  At the same time, they–and by “they” I mean Muslims in America in general–should not be considered presumptively loyal.  They should prove themselves.  Every other immigrant group has done so, usually in the uniform and with the sacrifice of blood.  But unlike the Japanese and immigrant Italian and German Americans in World War II, Muslims have largely been MIA from the War on Terror and have shown a lack of moral clarity regarding the same.

Is it too much to ask a little expression of anger that anyone anywhere thinks like this bastard, Hasan?  Can we not say, roughly, “Love it or leave it.”  If they insult us, show discomfort with the uniform, express sympathy for Islamic terrorists, or otherwise threaten the military and its need for uniformity, Muslims and anyone else who thinks like this should be shown the door.  In other words, while we should not abuse loyal and peaceful citizens, we should be profiling.  We should be demanding displays of loyalty.  And we should be kicking out bad guys like this from the military and from the country before they do us any harm.  Diversity is hardly important and its loss is not a greater tragedy than the loss of life from some of our best Americans at the hands of someone who was only here because of a misguided and reversible immigration policy.

My father is a son of a bitch. Is this news, or is this the most generic statement ever uttered? Especially from the lips of a queer, genderqueer, thoroughly subversive, feminist sex worker.
A small part of my consciousness has long pitied myself as an adult; not for having the family I have had, but for the gratuitous waste of a resource my father has been to me- at least from a superficial once over understanding. His accrued list of skills brings pain to my heart and tears to my eyes knowing they are so close yet just out of reach. He is an artisan, hobbyist wood worker. As a trained captain and yachtsman, his skill for knot and rope work is unsurpassed by myself, or any of my feverishly talented acquaintances. He is a trained engineer, with the wiring skills of an electrician, and spends his divided spare time in his work room, maybe welding. Is this not a Domme blood line if you have ever heard of one?
Yet, he also taught me most of what I know about being cruel, which over time has fostered my appreciative, gracious, and loving approach to those whose service and submission I have accepted.

I came to my first few months of sessions as a Pro Domme on the North East coast oh so very green, young, and fiery eyed- I cannot deny my body, psyche, and approach held so much of that burdensome, relentless anger and cruelty. Taken under the wing of an established Pro Domme and all around delightfully powerful, courageous, loving woman, I was nearly given a creative license to make older, cisgender assigned men suffer in retribution. At first this bulk demographic all seemed to be the same, their identity as mass produced and as socialized as their titles, jobs, genders, and presentations. I used to have a saying about suburbia, where most of my white collar clients nested, “Suburbia, where dreams go to die, and Dommes go to pay rent (or tuition)”. During these first exchanges I was merely going through the motions, yet as time passed I became deeply cognizant of the unique suffering of some of my older, class-privileged, cisgendered male clients. Realizing how hyper aware each was to their personal trappings of banality, of gender, of their own masculinity, changed my approach. I developed forgiveness, sensitivity, and understanding in realizing their weakness. The realized culprit of safety, security, freedom from violence, trespass without professed consent, of feminized identity? Well, it was traditional masculinity, not men. My understanding and technique were undone and revolutionized from that period on. From this new vantage point, I understood that in breaking cisgender men, by giving them a reason to break, to fall apart enough to share that weakness, fear, vulnerability, and loss of a unique or chance at a chosen identity as another causality of the socialized gender dichotomy I was undoing traditional masculinity with them. And that’s enough to make myself, if not the legions of fathers who have been helplessly bound by prescriptive masculinity proud.