The Hermeneutics of Shoes lol

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/12/14-1
"This is a farewell kiss, you dog!"

"All i can report is it is a size 10" - Bush on thrown shoes

See the comment section :D

"This was an early christmas present."

"Poetic justice."

"Finally an example of honest journalism."

"Somebody make a T-shirt commemorating this incident. I'll buy a dozen."

...
i'm sure there'll be a lot more to come, this is way too exciting haha

And in all seriousness, they are starting to analyze the "symbolic significances" in "Arab" culture of throwing shoes at Bush and calling him a dog lol
"Now people at home might be wondering what's the importance of the shoe... well, in Arab culture the sole of the shoes is considered an insult..." (watch the video)

Ghosh on xenophilia.....

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081222&fname=Amitav&sid=1

"If I am to think of what drew me to Egypt in 1980, it was, at bottom, the very impulse that I have been describing here – a kind of xenophilia, a desire to reclaim the globe in my own fashion, a wish to eavesdrop on an ancient civilizational conversation. Admittedly, this impulse could have taken me to many other places, but the opportunity presented itself at a time when I was just becoming aware of the ties that had once linked Yemen and China, Indonesia and East Africa – and most significantly for me, India and the Middle East."

The play of meanings....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/magazine/07teasing-t.html?scp=1&sq=teasing&st=cse

"...teasing is a mode of play, no doubt with a sharp edge, in which we provoke to negotiate life’s ambiguities and conflicts. And it is essential to making us fully human..."

Masks and Silences

I just read one of the zapatista speeches, and i love how they put things:

"It would seem evident that masks conceal and silence quiets.
But the truth is that masks also reveal and that silences speak.
...

Yes, this is a country of masks and silences, I tell this to the sea, and she answers me, from behind her ski mask, with a silent gesture of paradox, which is more than eloquent, as she rolls up and guards the great plans.

But I tell you, and I tell myself, that there are masks and masks, and silences and silences."

and then he went on to talk about Masks and the Silence from above and the masks and the silences of those from below... and kopi kampung, this is what i was stutteringly trying to retell to you the other day:

"In order to supplant its lack of legitimacy with legality, the Mexican State (and not just the government) must carry out a complex surgical operation on the entire social order. That is, to eradicate the historical memory from the governed. And they try to do this by substituting the true history (in lower case), with the Official History (in upper case). And this Official History is not learned in books, rather it was created in the mental laboratories of postgraduates in foreign universities. Harvard, Oxford, yale, and the MIT are the modern "Founding Fathers" of the current Mexican leaders. And so the Official History comes from as far away as the indicators of economic growth, these have the constancy of a weather vane in the middle of a storm. (...) If constancy and pain and hard work are characteristic of the history of those from below, the ephemeral is the preferred place for the Official History. (...) This Official History has its mask."

uhm... i wonder why he didnt say the histories of those from below instead of "the history" (singular form despite in lower case)...

"Their" "choice" of "violence"

"... Y, al mismo tiempo, las enfermedades empezaron a acabar con los niños y con las niñas. De 1990 a 1992, no había niño, en la Selva Lacandona, que llegara a los cinco años. Antes de los cinco años, morían de enfermedades curables. No era el cáncer, no era el SIDA, no eran enfermedades del corazón, eran enfermedades curables: tifoidea, tuberculosis, y, a veces, una simple calentura era la que mataba a niños y a niñas menores de cinco años.

Yo sé que en la ciudad esto puede ser hasta una ventaja: mientras menos burros, más olotes, dicen. Pero en el caso de un pueblo indígena, la muerte de su niñez significa su desaparición como pueblo. O sea, en el proceso natural, los adultos crecen, se hacen ancianos y mueren. Si no hay niños, esa cultura desaparece.

La mortandad de los indígenas, de los niños y de las niñas indígenas, agudizó todavía el problema. Pero la diferencia que había aquí al resto de otros pueblos indios, es que aquí había un ejército rebelde, armado. Fueron las mujeres las que empezaron a empujar esto. No fueron los hombres. Yo sé que la tradición en México —los mariachis, Pedro Infante y todo eso— es que los hombres somos muy machos. Pero no fue así. Quienes empezaron a empujar: hay que hacer algo, ya no, y ya basta, fueron las mujeres, que veían morir a sus hijos y a sus hijas.

Empezó a haber una especie de rumor en todas las comunidades: hay que hacer algo, ya basta, ya basta, en todas las lenguas. Para entonces, ya estábamos también en la zona de los Altos. Y ahí teníamos dos compañeras que habían sido, y son todavía, la columna vertebral en ese trabajo: la finada Comandanta Ramona y la Comandanta Susana.

Por diversas partes empezó a surgir esta inquietud, esta molestia… Vamos a decirlo por su nombre: esta rebeldía en las mujeres zapatistas, que había que hacer algo. Nosotros hicimos lo que teníamos que hacer, entonces, que era preguntarle a todos qué íbamos a hacer. Hubo, entonces, en 1992, una consulta —sin televisión, sin gobierno del Distrito Federal, sin nada de lo que hay ahora—, y pueblo por pueblo se pasó y se realizaron asambleas —como ésta en la que estamos ahorita—. Se planteaba el problema. La disyuntiva era muy sencilla: si nos alzamos en armas, nos van a derrotar, pero va a llamar la atención y van a mejorar las condiciones de los indígenas. Si no nos alzamos en armas, vamos a sobrevivir, pero vamos a desaparecer como pueblos indios.

La lógica de muerte es cuando nosotros decimos: no nos dejaron otra opción. Ahora, después de catorce, casi quince años, nosotros —los que llevamos más tiempo aquí— decimos: qué bueno que no teníamos otra opción.

...."

(From recent speeches in August http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/comision-sexta/978)

Please bear with my best attempt to combine Google translator and my own :-)

"... And at the same time, the diseases started to break out on the boys and the girls. From 1990 to 1992, there was no child, in the Lacandon Jungle, that reached 5 years old. Before the age of five, they died of curable diseases. It was not cancer, not AIDS, not heart diseases, they were curable diseases: typhoid, tuberculosis, and sometimes it was a simple fever that was killing boys and girls under five.

(...) But in the case of an indigenous people, the death of their children means their disappearance as a people. That is, in the natural process, the adults grow older, they become elderly and die. If there are no children, this culture will disappear.

The mortality of indigenous peoples, of indigenous boys and girls, heightened the problem still. But the difference between here and the rest of other Indian peoples, is that here there was a rebel army, armed. They were the women who began to push this. They were not men. I know that the tradition in Mexico - mariachi, Pedro Infante and all that - is that men are very macho. But it was not so. Those who began to push: something must be done, and no, and enough, no more, were women, who watched their sons and daughters die.

There began to have some kind of rumor in all of the communities: something must be done, enough is enough, enough is enough, in all languages. By then, we were also in the area of the Highlands. And there were two companions who had been, and still are, the backbone in this work: the deceased Comandanta Ramona and Comandanta Susana.

(...) There was, then, in 1992, a consultation - without television, without government of the Federal District, with nothing of what is now -, and people by people came and assembled - the same way we are doing right now-. They posed the problem. The dilemma was very simple: if we raise in arms, we are going to defeat, but it will draw attention and will improve conditions for indigenous people. If we do not raise arms, we are going to survive, but we are going to disappear as Indian peoples.

The logic of death is when we say: they did not leave us another option. Now, after fourteen, nearly fifteen years, which took us more time here, we say: what good that we had no other choice..."

These words were echoing in my head when somebody in last Thursday's class commented that the Zapatistas chose violence to draw people's attention before using other means of communication (books, lectures, internet, etc.), the same comment i heard in my Latin American Politics class a year and a half ago,... If I was shocked and upset then, I am enraged and find it impossible to stay quiet now... but before I could respond, Khwaja was taking over, and he's pushing the same point a lot more eloquently, but somehow i haven't since been able to let that comment go.

They "chose" to take up arms? do we even have the slightest awareness of what they were going through before that? did we even see them, hear them, know that they existed??? They were "using" "violence"? What about the crushing violence that los pueblos indigenas have endured for centuries from imperial as well as state forces? What about the brutal violence that keeps sucking "natural resources" out of people's lands, bleeding Mother Earth? What about the kind of turning-blind-eyes-and-deaf-ears violence that let curable diseases kill children before they could live even five years?

"They chose to exercise violence..." Just casual like that. Care-less like that. Thoughtless like that. I'm not blaming the person who made the comment per se, but i certainly condemn the conditions in which some people not only have the luxury to entertain illusions of choice for themselves but also have the extravagant audacity to cast everyone else into their delusional/bogus morals of choice, i certainly want to knock down the structures that hides in the dark massive violences and brings to light all (and only) the counter-violences, the structures that celebrate and celebritize some lives while burying other lives into nonexistence, the structures that honor and memorialize some deaths while trampling over other deaths in ignorance and oblivion, the structures that perform all sorts of sacred rituals on some bodies while disposing other bodies as mere dirt and trash, the structures that shield and shelter some human beings at all costs... from other/their fellow human beings... :-((((

I know i shouldn't've been that surprised to hear sth like "they chose violence, they could've chosen to be peaceful"... after all, i am at a place where liberal comments like such are thrown around as often as campaigns to save the world are waged... maybe i'd get used to it or grow immune to it after being here long enough, after hearing all this nonsense frequent enough? i wish so... but until that immunity kicks in, i can only feel sad, and shocked, and hurt, and enraged, and wanting to fight back, como los pueblos dijeron: pelea, pelea con nosotros,
compañero/a
hermano/a
de la vida que vendrá.