a little while …

When it comes to the relationship between the USA and Af-Pak (I’m co-opting Tariq Ali’s abbreviation for Afghanistan-Pakistan here), almost all the dialogue centres around military solutions and problems.
Granted, there have been some whispers about the role of domestic aid organizations, with legitimate funding requirements, who have voiced a dissatisfaction with the US military funding model and the collusion between domestic and military policies:

A number of aid organisations have told Al Jazeera they have turned down funding from the US government as the money has strings attached to military operations.

But the military seems to be the main source of this funding.

A few days ago, though, I saw this article in Al-Jazeera dated October 16, 2009, discussing a $7.5 billion aid package to Pakistan. Admittedly, the allotment of funds and the distribution have yet to be decided, but it is strictly a domestic aid package (to differentiate from a militarily sourced package as discussed above):

The US aid package to Pakistan is designed to fund projects in Pakistan that include schools and roads, agricultural development, energy generation, water resource management and the judicial system.

The part that stands out the most, or perhaps on par with judicial system I think, especially given the conflicts between the Musharraf regime and the Supreme Court of Pakistan, is education.
Why?
Well, I’m not sure if it’s due to an Adam Curtis bender I’ve been on lately, but I think this kind of news is meaningless without taking a really short trip back in time. Pervez Hoodbhoy – as far as English speaking/writing commentators on Pakistani domestic policy is concerned – presents a very well thought out and level headed perspective on the influence of the Pakistani education system, and seems pretty qualified to guide such a trip into its recent history:

During the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, madrassas provided the US-Saudi-Pakistani alliance the cannon fodder they needed to fight a holy war. The Americans and Saudis, helped by a more-than-willing General Zia, funded new madrassas across the length and breadth of Pakistan.

The “Saudi-ification” of Pakistan, as Hoodbhoy calls it, is directly correlated with the need, by the US, for mujahideen fighters to bolster the proxy against the Soviets. And the madrassas, in their current form, owe their success and influence entirely to the subsidies the US and Saudia Arabia provided, and continues to provide – a massive campaign that actively sheared Pakistan in a completely unexpected direction.
What I wonder now, however, is what shape will the new domestic influence in Pakistan have under the auspices of a new American administration? It seems that the domestic policy taken by American administrations has at its root the issue of defense and military need. And the situation, since the proxy wars of the ’80s, hasn’t really changed that much – war as an incubator of domestic policy remains the status quo. In 20-30 years’ time, unless something really different begins to inform American foreign policy as it pertains to domestic support, there doesn’t seem to be much to suggest that this same story won’t repeat itself.

This post is for those of you who are fans of Adam Curtis’ blog on the BBC website, but happen not to live in areas the BBC allows its online content to be aired.

A while ago, Marissa brought up an interesting idea regarding the obsolescence of storage and reproductive media, and the increasingly accelerated pace of that obsolescence. Lithography, for instance, was replaced by photography within decades at the turn of the 20th century; likewise, now, there is a generation of young people whose exposure to the cassette tape has become a source of parody – a generation unfamiliar and unequipped to mine the oceans of cultural ephemera captured on photographic undigitized film.

This leads to a corollary of Marissa’s thoughts; accelerating obsolescence seems to be directly proportional to accelerating storage capacity. Ownership of that storage has interesting implications regarding the narratives that can be created, ideas addressed by David Joselit in an essay titled Citizen Cursor, citing Bill Gates’ consolidation of stock film footage in his home and the relations between ownership and a “fantasy of possession” and the enslavement of the image.

Anyway, Adam Curtis, being intimately connected to BBC’s, does not own, but has seemingly unfettered access to tell really engaging mind-bending historical tales with supporting filmic evidence – his contextualization of Kabul being one of the most incredible examples of that.
That the BBC should restrict access to his work presents that dichotomy of “fantasy of possession” and the democratization of storage content in the commons.
So I thought I’d go ahead and make his “It Felt Like a Kiss”, which is one of the most enchanting experimental films I’ve ever watched, available here. Enjoy:

Whether Obama deserves a Nobel Peace Prize only really matters as long as the belief that high-profile, well-capitalized awarding bodies actually represent reality persists. More accurately, what they truly represent is the self-absorption and self-flagellation the West uses to legitimize what it perceives as its overwhelming desire for tolerance and peace throughout the world. If there were any doubts about that, one only need point out that Henry Kissinger once won it.

What this does illuminate, however, is what Barack Obama epitomizes in the eyes of the secular world outside the USA: that he is NotGeorgeBush. In that respect, Barack Obama and Hamas have a lot more in common than one would expect or even care to anticipate.

As Saree Makdisi recently pointed out:

The corruption of the PA and the narrow circle of Fateh party officials running it, clinging to it, and benefiting from it, is one of the main reasons why Fateh was swept from office in the 2006 Palestinian elections in favor of Hamas: most people then were voting against Fateh and its corruption and general hopelessness, rather than for Hamas (which had, and has, little to offer other than simply not being Fateh: a credit which goes only so far).

As far as the world is concerned, Obama is NotGeorgeBush.
As far as Palestinians are concerned, Hamas is NotFateh.

Those are both characteristics that may deserve recognition in the short term, I suppose, but will certainly fade in relevance and importance in the long term.

This is not about art.
This is about lining up to see it.
Two main types of indoor venues for exhibition were contrasted at Toronto’s 4th annual Nuit Blanche yesterday.
The first, as seen at Dance Dance Evolution is, by design, 100% participatory, even for non-participants! No lining up required. The setting is such that people arrange concentrically around the spectacle, as in a concert, where your proximity to the source is proportional to your level of participation.
The second, exhibited by As Could Be by Paulette Phillips required one to queue in a straight line away from the spectacle. After waiting 10 minutes and progressing only a few feet, my impatience overwhelmed my desire to see the piece.

My deficiencies as an art critic aside, I can recognize the differences between the two pieces in that the former’s existence requires the participation of its audience, whereas the latter requests participation in a different, more orthodox context.

Fascinatingly though, the act of viewing, and in a sense, interacting with art has the same expectations of its audience regardless the content – expectations that need to be tempered by how an installation sets its audience up to fulfill them. A queue, for instance, exploits the influence of human curiousity of collective choice through its insatiable urge to grow longer – to become more popular. Waiting in line shares this with social networking vehicles like Twitter. Whether the participants in the queue are aware of the installation’s contents as spectacle or not is secondary to the fact that in participating in the queue, the queue becomes the spectacle people are drawn to. This immediately reminded me of a scene from the film Laila’s Birthday screened at the most recent Toronto Palestine Film Festival. A couple hop in a taxi driven by the protagonist in the film (played by Mohammed Bakri) and instruct him to stop upon seeing a queue, which they surmise to be for social handouts. Upon inquiring about the nature of the line, the woman in front of them replies that she was in the line because there was a line.

From a social/political point of view, a well designed queue is a quintessential component of orderliness.
Waiting in line at an art festival in a fortunate Metropolitan city in the West versus lining up in front of armed soldiers are remotely distant realities.
In a world where lineups are a product of basic necessity, the orderliness can be justified, I suppose – as the desire for orderliness is a desire for control. And a disorderly occupied oppressed and humiliated people can wreak havoc on the status quo. However, in a world where an all night art festival can exist in a violence free calm, there is a certain clever civility about how Dance Dance Evolution has leveraged the crowd’s participation without treating its individuals like cattle. It is that cleverness that is lacking in most of what Nuit Blanche is about. It is exactly what all mass creative outlets (and in this, I include peaceful resistance and protest) in the West seem to lack.

There is a fine line that divides the cultural relevance a work of art has in the context of an obedient audience.
Practically applied, however, a small installation at an event like Nuit Blanche seems to be served better by being in an closed-off space invisible to the throngs save for its flagella-like queue. As contrary as that may sound.

Anyway, here’s what – to borrow from Marissa (who I thank for finding this) – I regret missing, but what I don’t regret not lining up for:
As Could Be

American Veto power, apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing. Add to it a spineless and corrupt leadership, and what you’re left with is an overwhelming struggle.

November 5, 2008 should have been the day the world paid attention. On November 5, 2008, Israel did three things that suggest motive unwavering in its intent for the carnage of the past week: 1) they actively ENDED the cease fire with Hamas by killing 6 hamas (gun)men in the gaza strip, 2) they sealed the northern gaza border and prohibited goods and all but the most essential of supplies from entering the open-air prison, and 3) they prohibited journalists from entering the gaza strip.

Running through the myriad english headlines on not just mainstream sites, but community blogs and online communities dominated by predominantly north american users, the rhetoric rarely stretches beyond the “both sides are culpable” fare. (A post like Marissa’s being a rare exception). Any other conflict in the world and the balance shifts; the rhetoric allows blame to be lop-sided. Not this though. Never this.
As a palestinian, I’m not so sure I want to know why.

Despite all the suggestions that Israel is responding to terrorism, to a dismantling of the security its citizens are entitled to, or about Hamas “recognizing” the state of Israel; the truth is the Israeli leadership is and has been cognizant about its tasks going forward regarding Gaza ever since it “unilaterally disengaged” from the occupied territory in August 2005. Ever since Hamas solidified its domination over the pliant Fatah supporters in the Gaza strip in May 2007, an Israeli ground invasion has been an inevitability – preparations for which have culminated in today’s incursion. An incursion which, like the US operations in Fallujah and Samara in 2004 and 2006, respectively, will by design NOT be covered by journalists. To paint this as a forced action on the part of an otherwise peace-loving Israel to protect humanity in the face of barbarism would be a desecration of the 400+ people killed in Gaza in the past week.

As Jonathan Cook lucidly points out, Israeli policy since the early 90’s Oslo process has never been about regime change or about brokering a lasting peace with Palestinians. And, as this ground invasion begins, the dismantling of Hamas, a task long understood by senior Israeli officials to be impossible, is clearly not the goal. The intent is to align Hamas, as it once did with Arafat and the PLO, with the goals of the occupation at large, to pummel its underground infrastructure – the tunnels which serve as arteries supplying the Hamas leadership with the blood it needs to maintain its popularity in Gaza streets – to capitulate its resolve, to once and for all, force Hamas to abandon the goals which have made the Islamic front the democratically elected choice of leadership among a majority of Palestinians.

As deluded as the corporate media may be in pointing at the even handedness shared by Hamas and the Israeli Occupation Forces in this conflict, they are right to point out that Hamas controls their own destiny. Abandon the struggle now and the plan Israel enacted on November 5, 2008 will succeed.

Encouraging events have been popping up everywhere in recent months deep in the trenches of Toronto’s burgeoning grassroots organizations – labour unions, student unions, community-sponsored events – whose support for the Palestinian struggle against occupation has finally arrived. Examples range from Susan Nathan’s lecture at the Steelworkers Hall (whose facade, interestingly, bears a striking similarity to Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, in Star City, Russia) to the regularly scheduled but seldom reported coordinated rallies in Queens Park. Better late than never.

Israel, of course, has taken notice. Their recently announced ‘image re-branding’ campaign, blitzing Canada in the month of September, is far from coincidental. Academia too, as far as Canadian Universities are concerned, has had a history of rigid support structures for pro-Israel support groups. The ‘Netanyahu Riot’ in Concordia being the most covered instance of that; coverage of which was owed fully to Izzy Asper’s sponsorship of the event.

I address these issues by being reminded of the sentiment I share with Susan Nathan, that the problem facing major developed international hubs is immigration’s exigency; how to manage the cultural collusion resulting from the massive in-flux of ethnically diverse citizens. Zionism, and the Israeli model in general, does not offer itself as a viable solution to that problem, and as a consequence of that is destined to fail.

Nevertheless, my attention swings to the uplifting these days, and my spirits piggy-back on the 1st annual Toronto Palestine Film Festival. A description of it is implicit in its title, but here’s an official description I’ve snagged from the media release:

The Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) evolved from a series of successful
screenings held over the past year in Toronto. This year also marks the 60th
anniversary of the Nakba, which refers to the 1948 expulsion of the indigenous
population of Palestine. The anniversary has been marked through a series of events
over the year, and Palestine House felt the best way to share Palestinians’ stories from
the time of the Nakba until present day was through film.
This film festival will introduce Torontonians to Palestinian cultural, historical and
personal narratives told through the rich variety of Palestinian films.

Having capitalized on their limited time offer of 10 tickets for 50$, skipping Hallowe’en night is clearly an afterthought. Here are the screenings I’m looking forward to the most (I hijacked the descriptions from the TPFF site):

Salt of This Sea

Annemarie Jacir
2008
105:00
Fiction
Palestine/France
Canadian Premiere

Synopsis:
Soraya, born in Brooklyn in a working class community of Palestinian refugees, discovers that her grandfather’s savings were frozen in a bank account in Jaffa when he was exiled in 1948. Stubborn, passionate and determined to reclaim what is hers, she fulfills her life-long dream of “returning” to Palestine. Slowly she is taken apart by the reality around her and is forced to confront her own anger. She meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever. Tired of the constraints that dictate their lives, they know in order to be free, they must take things into their own hands, even if it’s illegal. In Palestine’s first feature by a female director, we follow two refugees in search of their own freedom through the traces of a lost Palestine.
Official Selection, Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival 2008

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(This is the 2nd part of a six part documentary. I’d really like to see all six parts.)
Chronicles of a Refugee – Episode II: The Daily Nakbas

Perla Issa, Aseel Mansour, Adam Shapiro
2008
89:00
Documentary
USA/Lebanon
Canadian Premiere
Co-presented by International Diaspora Film Festival

Synopsis:
Episode II: The Daily Nakbas documents the repeated expulsions of Palestinians from refugee camps and countries around the world since 1967. It explores the impact of displacement on a community under constant threat of becoming refugees a second, third or fourth time. (Chronicles of a Refugee is a 6-part documentary series examining the global Palestinian refugee experience over the last 60 years.)

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Memory of the Cactus

Hanna Musleh
2008
42:00
Documentary
Palestine
Canadian Premiere
Co-Presented by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association

Synopsis:
This documentary reveals the true story behind Israel’s “Canada Park” – a story of dispossession, destruction and continuing displacement. Forty-one years ago, the three Palestinian villages of Imwas, Yalo and Beit Nouba in the Latroun enclave of the West Bank were razed to the ground after Israel occupied the territory in 1967. Today, the residents of those villages remain displaced and barred from returning, while Israeli citizens enjoy picnics in the Jewish National Fund’s “Canada Park”, much of it funded by Canadians, oblivious to the crimes perpetrated in their names.
Discussion with guest speaker from Al-Haq, a Palestinian Human Rights Organization, will follow the screening.

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The Mountain
Hanna Elias
2003
36:00
Fiction
Palestine
Canadian Premiere

Synopsis:
The Mountain is a poignant story of the bond between generations, and explores Palestinian community life apart from the shadow of Israeli occupation. When an attractive young woman from Galilee catches the eye of a young farmer from Gaza on market day, love may be an inevitable consequence. But in this film, the course of true love is complicated by tradition. For many centuries elopement in the Middle East has been the only alternative for women who object to pre-arranged marriage.

Winner of 13 international awards including: Grand Prix, Du Monde, Arab Film Festival, Paris, France; Best Short Film GrandPrix, Henri Longlois Film Festival, Tours, France; President Prize, UINESCO International Film Festival, Hiroshima, Japan; Cine Eagle Film Award, Washington DC, USA

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USA vs Al-Arian
Line Halvorsen
2007
99:00
Feature
Documentary
Norway
Co-presented by Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival

Synopsis
USA vs Al-Arian is a portrait of an Arab-American family facing terrorism charges leveled by the U.S. Government. The film shows the personal story of a family living in a society where fear of terrorism has resulted in increasing stigmatization and discrimination against Muslims. For years, Nahla Al-Arain and her children have been fighting to prove the innocence of their husband and father Sami, a Palestinian refugee, university professor and civil rights activist, who has lived in the USA for more than thirty years.
Best Documentary, Norwegian Documentary Film Festival, Oslo 2007; Best Film, New Orleans Human Rights Film Festival, USA 2007; Grand Prix, International Festival of Muslim Cinema, Kazan, Russia 2007

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Slingshot Hip Hop

Jackie Reem Salloum
2008
80:00
Feature
Documentary
Palestine
Canadian Premiere – Director in Attendance

Synopsis
Slingshot Hip Hop braids together the stories of young Palestinians living in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank as they discover Hip Hop and employ it as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. From internal checkpoints and “Separation Walls”, to gender norms and generational differences, this is the story of young people crossing the borders that separate them.

Nominee, Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival 2008.

What’s most difficult to fathom about the demise of global capital markets is how dependent it is on the mass legitimization of fraud. Not just individual fraud, but a calculated system meant to promote fraudulence. One built on rules and regulations and the standardization of practices designed to counter accountability.

Abuse of mark-to-market accounting principles, a technique dating back to the 19h century, is one of the main factors that has guided the failure of the housing market and its subsequent impact on the economy at large. The collapse of AIG for instance, depends very heavily on fraudulent use of mark-to-market accounting principles in concert with unregulated credit default swaps. Brokers were allowed to insure bad loans (under the pretense that they were good) against default, book hundreds of millions of dollars at present-day value without putting up the collateral, and collect hefty personal yearly bonuses as a result. As the value of homes declined, the bad loans went into default and AIG was unable to back up the insurance they sold. They just didn’t have the money. (Not that any of this is new, of course).

A few years ago – back when “Peak Oil” dominated topicality (I just realized how futile it is linking to the Peak Oil wiki…) – I came across an article (which I haven’t been able to find) which decried OPEC nations for their obfuscation of the true nature of the quantities of oil-reserves they declared. I found a 2004 article in Asia Times that discusses the same issues, albeit with much fewer details. In the 1980s, OPEC implemented a production quota system that permitted member nations to produce as much oil as they declared, irrespective of having to present any proof that their declarations were backed by new sources, thus casting a shadow on the main driver of oil production and future revenue: oil discovery. By all accounts, discovery of new conventional oil supplies began drying up a long time ago as nation-states belonging to OPEC have seldom been acquiring new geographical real estate, but, due to a lack of accountability, are still allowed to maintain their production quotas.

From this point of view, the connection between credit default swaps and oil production quotas as mechanisms of maximizing capital returns by blurring the means which generate that capital isn’t so far-fetched. Brokers at AIG and energy ministers in Kuwait knowingly stifle accountability. By legitimizing fraud on global scales for the stated purpose of accruing wealth, and developing standards and practices meant to further those aims, the consequences typically seem to include gargantuan disaster.
Even in the face of catastrophe, there are still calls championing opportunism. I don’t have to look beyond the concluding statements of the dailywealth.com and the Asia Times’ OPEC articles for proof of that:

How Porter Stansberry concludes his lambasting of AIG:

How can you take advantage? First, make sure you have at least 10% of your net worth in precious metals. I prefer gold bullion. World governments’ gigantic liabilities will vastly decrease the value of paper currencies … Keep the fraud of AIG in mind when you form your investment plan for the coming years. By following these three strategies, you’ll survive and prosper while most investors sit back and wonder what the hell is going on.

How Bill Power caps off his piece on Peak Oil:

Clearly the scenario laid out by Campbell is not a pretty one. However, in every crisis lies opportunity. Astute investors should recognize the implications of declining worldwide oil production and adjust their portfolios accordingly.

i’ve found four completed sides of a rubik’s cube

hopefully imminent.