An African-American associate professor at a liberal arts college in the 1960s points to his own appointment as an example of progress. Malcolm X asks him:

“Do you know what white racists call black Ph.D’s?”

He said something like, “I believe that I happen not to be aware of that”—you know, one of those ultra-proper-talking Negroes.

And I laid the word down on him, loud: “Nigger!”

– The Autobiography of Malcolm X, p. 290.

By explaining that white racists (and if we loosen the definition of racist, we can assume that’s the majority of Americans) still consider him a nigger, Malcolm brings into sharp relief the fact that such “progress” is literally skin deep. As long as you have white racists, as long as the system that creates disparities and allows racists to continue to be racist exists, there is no real progress; all there is is window dressing.

We have to consider, then, how far such “progress” has come.

Eating Apes is a book by Dale Peterson, a journalist (or writer or something) about how people in certain parts of Africa eat apes. (I’m reading the book for a History course on how people in the West view subjectivity in sub-Saharan Africa.) For Peterson, this is unconscionable and — because (among other things) it is so much like eating humans — even immoral:

In the big cities of Central Africa, middle-class people pay a premium for bushmeat, including the meat of apes. […] Thus, we see that the problem [of eating apes] is deeper than material history and that cultural values are clearly as much a root cause as poverty.

– Dale Peterson, Eating Apes, pp. 200-201.

Here, I see Peterson saying the same thing Malcolm pointed out white racists say: It doesn’t matter how rich black people get, they’re still niggers. (In this case, because eating apes is part of their “cultural values”.)

When Peterson refers to material history, it appears that his scope quite narrowly refers to the history of poverty in Africa (or parts of Africa). It doesn’t refer to the material conditions through which many of the people in Africa live — the material conditions that give birth to cultural values. (Where else do cultural values come from? Primordial backwardness?) One of these material conditions is, or was, the kinds of animal meat available for consumption. This differs remarkably from the kind of meat available to those in the West.

But wait, Peterson goes on to explain that:

Recent advances in Western scientific disciplines tell us that the great apes are far closer to human than anyone had previously imagined. […] Killing and eating [apes] amounts to killing and eating animals shockingly close to human. Such is the thinking, one of the several reasons for deep concern about the extent of the slaughter of apes in Central Africa [….]

Peterson, p. 205.

So the reason people in the West don’t eat apes is because they are shockingly close to humans. That’s it. This brilliant logic also explains why most people in the West don’t eat frogs, horses, donkeys, rats, grasshoppers, cockroaches and beluga whales. They are all shockingly close to humans — as revealed by advances in Western science.

Peterson also refers to hunted animal meat as “bushmeat”. But is that what he calls deer? or quail? No, he doesn’t even bring those things up. If we disregard conservation statuses, what’s the moral difference between someone in Canada shooting a deer for consumption and someone in Africa shooting an elephant for consumption? The very use of that term, bushmeat, is remarkably patronizing and contributes to the process of othering in which Peterson indulges.

Not that I advocate eating apes. I just don’t really see the problem with eating apes if there’s no problem with, say, eating chickens (whose DNA is shockingly close to that of humans).

Mere sarkash taraane sun ke duniya ye samajhti hai
Ke shaayad mere dil ko ishq ke naghmon se nafrat hai
Mujhe hungaama-e-jang-o-jadal se kaif milta hai
Meri fitrat ko khoon-rezi ke afsaanon se raghbat hai

Magar ai kaash dekhen voh meri pursoz raaton ko
Main jab taaron pe nazrein gaad kar aansoo bahaata hoon
Tasavvur ban ke bhooli vaardaatein yaad aati hain
To soz-o-dard ki shuddat se pahron tilmilaata hoon

Main shaayar hoon, mujhe fitrat ke nazaaron se ulfat hai
Mera dil dushman-e-naghma saraai ho nahin sakta
Javaan hoon main, javaani naazishon ka ek toofan hai
Meri baaton mein rang-e-paarsaai ho nahin sakta

Mere sarkash taraanon ki haqeeqat hai to itni hai
Ke jab main dekta hoon bhook ke maare kisaanon ko
Ghareebon ko, muflison ko, bekason ko, besahaaron ko
To dil taab-e-nishaat-e-bazm-e-ishrat nahin sakta
Main chaahon bhi to khwaabaavar taraane ga nahin sakta

– Sahir Ludhianvi

Sahir was one of the greats of modern Urdu poetry; a Leftist, he made his comfortable living writing songs for Hindi films (e.g., Pal do pal ka shaayar).

When the world hears my angry songs, it assumes
That perhaps my heart abhors songs of love
That I derive pleasure from the turmoil of war and conflict
That by nature, I get pleasure from stories of bloodshed

Would that they could witness those anguished nights
When I cast my eyes on the stars and weep
When forgotten encounters become remembered imaginations
When for hours, I tremble with the intensity of my grief

I am a poet, I have great love for the sights of nature
My heart can never be the enemy of song writing
I am young, youth is a storm of passion
My words can never be coloured by temperance

If there is a reason for my angry songs, it is this
That when I see the farmers dying of hunger
The poor, the oppressed, the helpless
My heart cannot bear the celebration of high culture
Even if I wish, I cannot give voice to dreamy songs

– Translated by Ali Husain Mir & Raza Mir*

* But I made some modifications.

For anyone who cares, I switched the blog to WordPress. I’ll be updating and tinkering around with the design for the next few days.

They found a whole lot of ossuaries with inscriptions in 1980. Yeshua bar Yosef and Mariamne Mar do not have the same mitochondrial DNA. Big wow! Begs the most obvious question: why not test the mitochondrial DNA found in all ossuaries to establish unequivocal relationships? If, indeed, Maria is the mother of Yeshua bar Yosef — immaculate conception or not — the two would share mitochondrial DNA, as would Yose and James. Assuming that Yeshua married or consorted with Mariamne, and Yehuda is their son, he would share the same mitochondrial DNA as Mariamne. And it’s that easy. But for whatever reason, the producers of the show didn’t go that far (or did they?).

I am thoroughly burnt out and unmotivated. I just don’t feel like doing anything, especially if it’s related to some of the classes I am taking.

I posted this earlier, but the server went down and took this with it. Here it is again. In the meanwhile it has also been reproduced in the newspaper.

This is part of what’s wrong with you: you do too much singing. Today, it’s time to stop singing and start swinging. You can’t sing up on freedom, but you can swing up on some freedom.
– Malcolm X

I have serious reservations with the entire idea of February 7 being a singular day of action to reduce tuition fees. Before I begin with the wider criticisms, let me explain that I will be participating in many of the events. I believe it is vitally important to express dissatisfaction about tuition. I also appreciate the work being done by everyone involved, including many bona fide activists. It takes a great deal of effort to organize and coordinate events like this. However, there are problems that we need to address.

Let me start off by focusing on a particular aspect of this campaign. That is, the concept of activism promoted by the organizers at the University of Toronto on the web site: http://www.feb7.ca/activis
t.html. It invites students to “be an activist,” and indeed, in this day and age who would not want to be an activist?

But activism is NOT about getting rewards. Changing your facebook display picture is NOT activism. Inviting seven friends to a web site is NOT activism. Call it something else, don’t call it activism. And please, don’t pretend it’s “all out.”

Activism is not a brand name in a certain brand font in certain brand colours, on a toque or a t-shirt. Activism is not about the bombast and shameless self-promotion of the Canadian Federation of Students. Activism is not about mass-produced signs printed with vegetable oil ink on 100% post-consumer recycled paper board.

Activism involves a critical awareness. It requires a specific, critical, reflective consciousness. It requires action and challenging authority — it requires praxis.
It requires rigour, intellectual and practical rigour.

Activism is not buying a product. Activism is not putting money in a box. Activism is certainly not superimposing a web site address on a picture of George Clooney or Paris Hilton to put in your facebook profile.

I say this, not because I consider myself to be an activist. Nor do I believe the label of an activist belongs to select people, who fight for select causes. I say it because activism is too significant a position — for whatever purpose it’s intended — to be reduced to such inanity. And this is what these kinds of statements are, they’re inane.

This is what this campaign is sorely missing — a critical self-reflexiveness and a reflection on the broader social context. I understand that, in trying to appeal to as many students as possible, the organizers of this campaign may be trying to focus specifically on tuition.

But tuition does not exist in a vacuum. Tuition is AN issue, but it is an issue that is related to everything else in this society. From this particularity, one can, and indeed, must create a broader cognitive map of many other societal problems. Tuition is related to healthcare, tuition is related to welfare, tuition is most certainly related to the commoditization of education.

The atrocious price tag on tuition is directly related to what we are taught. Where is the critical reflection on that? What use is a lower tuition fee if all we get is to become white-washed, socially ignorant products of a system that values human beings only in so far as they are able to produce more money?

It’s not that tuiton is not a cause worth focusing on and fighting for. But the entire campaign is utterly devoid of any context, academic or social. Movements in the past have focused on tuition as AN aspect of society, not THE aspect of society. The focus on tuition was part of a broader critique of society. And until the campaign is doing that, it is NOT “all out.” It is the furthest thing from “all out.” It is “all in” a cognitive bubble.

Where is the wider critique now? Where is this critique, as an integral part of the movement? Where is the movement?

All too caught up in shiny flyers and shiny buttons and shiny logos and shiny facebook profile pictures. And no. That’s not activism.

In my thinking, if the students in this country forgot the analysis that has been presented to them, and they went into a huddle and began to research this problem … for themselves, independent of politicians and independent of all the foundations (which are a part of the power structure), and did it themselves, then some of their findings would be shocking, but they would see that they would never be able to bring about a solution … as long as they’re relying on the government to do it.
– Malcolm X

A shortened version of this interview was published in The Varsity on January 23, 2007, and I didn’t manage to get it ready for publicaton in the newspaper.

As’ad AbuKhalil is professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus and University of California, Berkeley. He is widely known as the Angry Arab, after his blog of the same name where he comments on politics in the Middle East and beyond. He was in Toronto Tuesday, January 16, to speak at Ryerson University about the causes and consequences of Israel’s war on Lebanon in July 2006. He spoke at the University of Toronto on the question of Palestine in February 2006 as part of the Arab Student Collective’s “Israeli Apartheid Week”.

N: Hizbullah walked into Israel and kidnapped two soliders and killed several soldiers – is this not a clear cause and provocation for a just war?

AA: If it is then the Lebanese have 11,782 pretexts because Israel, since 2000, has crossed the Blue Line [the border between Israel and Lebanon] 11,782 times. So if we want to use that logic, those who support Israel’s right to launch a war on Lebanon based on that pretext, should, logically speaking, follow the conclusion … that Lebanon should have fought 11,782 wars on Israel.

N: But do the Israelis kill and kidnap?

AA: Absolutely, they do. Not only, worse … I’m from the city of Tyre in South Lebanon – last year alone they kidnapped a fisherman from the city of Tyre, he still hasn’t been returned, and they also killed a shepherd. And these things are very regular. Not to mention all the children who are regularly killed or maimed from the land mines and recently from the cluster bombs – 1,200,000 dropped on Lebanon in 33 days of war alone.

N: So what is the cause of the war?

AA: There is a very long history, and it is very clear that the Israelis have been wanting to take a large-scale operation in Lebanon at their own behest, and at the behest of the Americans in order to hopefully achieve for Bush a victory that has long eluded him in Iraq. There is also a long history of violence by Israel on Lebanon – this is not the first time.

N: Then why did Hizbullah give them a provocation?

AA: Lebanon is in state of war with Israel and Israel still occupies Lebanese territory, and under international law the Lebanese are entitled, Hizbullah and others—

N: According to international law the Shebaa Farms are not part of Lebanon.

AA: That’s not true. International law doesn’t take a stand as much as the US State Department and Western press and the Secretary-General of the United Nations try to claim otherwise. Countries come to bilateral agreements to borders and then deposit them at the United Nations. It does not take a stand and has absolutely no valid juridical opinion on where borders should reside. Now let’s say it is not Lebanese [and that] it is Syrian, it is still occupied by the same state that is Israel.

N: Hizbullah is a non-state actor—

AA: Hizbullah is a non-state actor; however, it has the legitimacy of state because the Lebanese Council of Ministers, the highest executive power of the government of Lebanon, included in its official cabinet statement endorsement and support for what is called the Resistance Movement in Lebanon, in reference to Hizbullah.

N: But Israel has to defend itself, it is surrounded by Arab states that want to “drive the Jews into the sea.”

AA: That phrase, one has to point out, has never been uttered by Arabs. It was invented by Israeli propaganda, then widely circulated until it became believed and attributed to Arabs who never said it – it doesn’t even exist in Arabic!

In Arab political and popular discourse there are manifestations of anti-Jewish statements, I would never deny that – as much as I also oppose them, fiercely, condemn them and so on. However, it has to be pointed out that, as a very militant Zionist, Bernard Lewis, said in his book Semites and anti-Semites, there is a very big difference between manifestations of anti-Semitism among Arabs and that of Europeans. He said that in Europe it’s cultural, racialist anti-Semitism, [whereas] in the Arab world it’s political. You can trace it to 1948 and 1967. I was circumcised by a Jewish rabbi. By 1967 people became aware of who’s Jewish and who’s not.

Those [kinds of] things are said by the Israelis. If you read the official statement that was issued on the eve of the Six Day War by the Israeli chief of the air force, he said drive [the Palestinians] into the desert, push them into the desert. These words have been poisonously uttered by the Israelis repeatedly. Drive them away, kick them out, the comparison of Palestinians to cockroaches, two-legged animals, have been uttered by prime ministers – not some non-existent Arab to whom is attributed the statement, “we want to throw the Jews into the sea.”

N: Hizbullah hides among civilians, whereas Israel warns the population before it bombs them.

AA: I lived through various stages of Israeli wars on Lebanon, and I absolutely never once in my life have heard warnings by Israeli forces before they bombed us. In 1982, for example, when they invaded Lebanon, they destroyed through concussion bombs – leveled to the ground – a building next to where we lived. There were no warnings whatsoever, and the civilians inside that building were squeezed beyond recognition. Sometimes they send symbolic leaflets, but the leaflets say basically, “you have to leave within two hours an area where half a million people live.” This is not supposed to in any way adhere to the rules of war. This is only intended [for] propaganda purposes. In reality the Israelis adhere to absolutely no rules of war, and they have a very long pattern of targeting civilians deliberately in order to terrorize the population.

Hizbullah is part of the population. The people are Hizbullah, they are part of the village. When they say “hide behind civilians”, what do they mean by that? These are their houses. These are their streets, their alleys, their villages, their towns, their cities.

N: How is Israel supposed to conduct a fair war if Hizbullah is interspersed throughout civilians?

AA: At some point during the war most of the civilians were driven out of south Lebanon and yet the Israelis were not fighting the fighters. They, in fact, went all the way to North Lebanon and they were bombing civilians. This is a state that bombed a convoy of evacuees under international supervision. For that reason I think the Israeli conduct of war has been way too clear.

Human rights organizations have talked about [Hizbullah’s conduct]. But let’s measure it by the effect: something like 70% of people killed in Israel [by Hizbullah] were Israeli soldiers. [Israel] killed something like 1300 people in Lebanon, those that were Hizbullah fighters were something like 145. The ratio of civilians killed at the hand of Israel is far higher than at the hand of Hizbullah. So if terrorism is harm to civilians and if Hizbullah is a terrorist organization – and even if you want to agree that it is – then Israel is, what, four, five-fold more terrorist than Hizbullah.

N: Is Hizbullah a terrorist organization?

AA: I don’t want to become like Arab-American or Arab-Canadian organizations having to answer to the terminology and the parameters of debate set by the American government and media. But I have no problem saying that, to the same extent that American warfare uses methods to target civilians, yes, Hizbullah have used methods of warfare in the 1980s that resulted in the harm and death of civilians – and this in my dictionary can amount to terrorism – just as America’s warfare in Iraq has been terroristic. But if you want to measure terrorism in terms of the amount of damage done to civilians – life, as we all as infrastructure – if Hizbullah is a terrorist organization, then Israel must be ten times more terrorist than Hizbullah.

N: What are the consequences of the war on Lebanon?

AA: The consequences are very significant. The Lebanese political system has been shattered to its foundations, the government has all but collapsed. We can also expect in the long term of the Arab-Israel question some significant consequences. The vulnerability of Israel has been exposed to all. I think many Arabs are now going to be much more firm believers of the righteousness of resistance against Israel – not in the form of the bombast of Arab regimes and Yasser Arafat – but in the form of a very sustained, well-calculated, calibrated resistance the way Hizbullah has fought in south Lebanon. A large measure of the admiration for Hizbullah is not based on admiration of its ideology – you have many leftists and secularists who have good things to say about Hizbullah – but because of the way they have managed their resistance against Israeli occupation.

N: You point out that Israelis stole Arab land, and are now stealing Arab culture.

AA: I was making a crack. When I first came to this country, I used to be horrified by the extent to which Israeli embassy festivals and Zionist organizations claimed some food of the Middle East as their own. In reality, to speak seriously without any irony, none of us in the Middle East can claim that this food is purely Arab or purely Lebanese or purely this or that. There is such a mélange of culture and civilizations that what we today think is purely Lebanese or purely Arab is basically a mixture from Arab culture, Armenian culture, ancient Jewish culture, Assyrian culture, Turkish culture, Iranian-Persian, Mediterranean. So let us go beyond these claims of ethnic purity.

With every claim of nationalism, there are bogus claims of racial ethnic purity. In reality, genetically the Arabs and the Israelis are quite similar. I’m not saying that in order to do one of those new-agey-peace-let’s-all-hold-hands kinds of message. But I’m saying that this doesn’t matter, this issue is not about whose blood is more pure. It is about a fight over a piece of land and the depopulation of Palestine by force at the hand of Israel.

N: Certain people say that the Palestinians were never a nation, never a people.

AA: Tell that to the people who were living there for hundreds of years. I think the best refutation of that claim is substantiated by the existence over centuries of people, entire families who can trace their genealogy all the way back before Theodor Herzl [founder of Zionism] was eating his baby food. The Zionist project had to claim there were no Palestinians because they wanted to justify the depopulation.

N: Many organizations in Canada are boycotting Israel or are condemning Israel’s conduct. Is Israel a racist, apartheid state?

AA: Without a doubt. I say that without any equivocation. Absolutely. Of course, unlike Jimmy Carter, I don’t make any distinction between the West Bank and Gaza and what is inside Israel. The apartheid nature of the state of Israel was clear, not even before there was a state of Israel, but with the very conception of Zionism which is based on Jewish supremacy – the idea that there is one sort of people who are superior in their genetic make up to the inferior native population of Palestine. And I think this has been translated into the laws and practices of the state of Israel and certainly the occupation in West Bank and Gaza.

Article in Star calls for national strategy to fight poverty. Flawed from outset, there can never be a national strategy to fight poverty. It has to be an international strategy. Just fury is admirable, but results in a relatively ignorant and unsophisticated article. Which I couldn’t read beyond a certain point.

Angry Arab in Toronto on Tuesday. I will be interviewing him before his lecture, probably, for the newspaper. Will publish it here, and possibly audio as well, since the newspaper‘s web site can’t be bothered to be updated frequently enough.

Here is an analysis of Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina, both ongoing comics series by writer Brian K. Vaughan. My criticisms deal with his portrayal of Arabs and Muslims. I am focusing specifically on Y: The Last Man #48 (hereon referred to as “Y”) and Ex Machina #19 and #20. If you haven’t read those, you will have no idea what’s going on. And I’m too lazy to cut and paste images. I might tighten this up into a proper essay sometime in the future.

The problem in Y #48 — and Y in general is that the Israelis speak for the Arabs. Literally no Arabs speak in the entire series, except at one point early on where two assassins communicate with each other in Arabic (“qaf” — i.e., stop) — and I don’t even know if they were actually Arabs. While I agree that Vaughan’s presentation is more sophisticated than a lot of other portrayals and media sources, it’s still lacking, sorely. Can the Palestinians speak? Not for Vaughan, they don’t. Palestine is a place for Alter to prove her tenacity, intelligence, bravery and just fury — and to explain her subsequent obsessions. It’s not a place for the Palestinians to speak, not a place for Palestinians to live and to be Palestinian (maybe this is a reproduction of the occupation itself?).

I believe Vaughan reflects the widely distributed view, “Yes, Israelis engage in some oppression of Palestinians, but if only the Palestinians would stop their terrorism, then the Israelis wouldn’t have to do this.” Here, we’ve got Alter blaming the Palestinians for the death of her sister, Rachel (definitely an allusion to Rachel Corrie) who dies standing in front of an IDF bulldozer. When Sadie questions her about this, Alter responds, and ends at how the IDF is forced to take such action because Egyptians and Palestinians build arms-smuggling tunnels beneath houses.

Again, two things, first Rachel is the peaceful defender of Palestinians — Palestinians, whenever shown as resisting, are violent (whether they shoot, bomb or throw stones). Second, none of them engage in any kind of rational explanation for why they do what they do, Rachel explains it, and then takes the “rational” ( i.e., nonviolent) step in their defense.

We can see this view (“if only the Palestinians would stop with their mindless terrorism”), again, in Ex Machina #19. Mayor Hundred calls for a meeting of religious leaders to inform them about something. We have a relatively belligerent (and African-American) imam talking about racial and ethnic profiling. Rabbi Levy interrupts to say “I’m sorry to interrupt the obligatory reminder about Islam being synonymous with peace, but I find it difficult to listen to speeches on morality from a man whose organization provides material support to Hamas.”

Hundred pulls Levy out of the meeting, and Levy then says, “Forgive me, Mr. Mayor, but my nephew was killed in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, and I have very little patience for–” before Hundred interrupts him and tells him that that’s not why he pulled him out of the meeting.

But let’s see what’s happening here. Neither in Y nor Ex Machina do any Israelis kill any Palestinians — we don’t see or hear it (even when we first see Alter in Y #1, she’s shooting rubber bullets above the heads of the Palestinians) — but Palestinians do kill (or engage in violence) against Israelis. And then we’ve got this allegation left floating in the air, that this imam, who ostensibly represents all the Muslims in New York City and by extension all Muslims in America (and I’m assuming that’s a lot of Muslims), materially funds Hamas. (Who materially funds the IDF?)

Let’s move on, Hundred asks Levy for some kind of favour. Levy asks if he’ll boost security around synagogues the way it is around mosques, Hundred says that there are actual bomb threats to mosques, and besides, the Jewish community will do it because it’s the right thing to do. The negative here is what concerns me, Jews do things because it’s the right thing to do. Muslims … ? They materially fund Hamas. (Who materially funds the IDF?)

addendum: Moreover, Vaughan’s summary dismissal (via Rabbi Levy) of the imam’s statement that he will condemn terrorist Muslims, if so proven, reflects another widely distributed view, “Muslims talk a good game about how their religion means peace, but why can’t they control/act against all these terrorists?” This view, of course, is quite racist and ignores historical and social realities, as if a Muslim in North America is responsible for the actions or politics of Muslims in some other part of the world. But that’s precisely what Vaughan thinks — because apparently this imam’s organizaton materially funds Hamas. (Who materially funds the IDF?) /addendum

In Ex Machina #20, Hundred and the police commissioner find and arrest the culprit (of the recent terrorist attack at an anti-war rally). Yes, it is an Arab (his name is Samir Hallouda), complete with mole and unibrow. However, he’s an atheist. While he identifies himself as an “American citizen … like you”, he also points out that “Believing that this is about religion is why you people are going to lose your ‘War on Terror.'”

Vaughan is trying to have his cake and eat it, too. Not only is this man a rational, scientist, atheist Arab, he’s also an American citizen. Yet, he’s just as easily one of “them” (whoever “they” are), who define themselves in opposition to “you people” (whoever “you people” are – ostensibly Americans, with whom he identified earlier). Are you confused? Yeah, so am I.

We never do find out why the man did what he did. Here, at least, the man refuses to speak (as opposed to being spoken for). But he still doesn’t speak. He refuses to explain why he supports the attacks of 9/11 or why he attacked and killed several people at the anti-war rally. Something to do with the “War on Terror” – about which, we can tell, Vaughan feels very ambiguously.

Aside from these depictions, Vaughan’s works (in Y and Ex Machina) are virtually devoid of Muslims or Arabs. Certainly devoid of any positive representations of them (that is, when they’re not being feisty black men, or violent Arabs). I haven’t included his use of the burqa as a disguise both for Yorick and for assassins, nor his shallow recap of Saudi Arabian society in my analysis. Nor am I referring to his latest work, Pride of Baghdad, which is a whole other ballgame (the lions are Africans, and there’s a lot to read into that).

My point is not that Vaughan is blatantly anti-Arab or anti-Muslim, or that he deliberately engages in that kind of imagery. However, curious aspects, as noted above, abound in his work.