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How to Tell a Shattered Story

Cover image: Penguin.

For the past two months, the thousand-year-old city of Delhi has been under a shroud of toxic smog. About ten times more polluted than Beijing, Delhi’s air is so poisonous that schools are often shut down. On the roads, car headlights twinkle behind the smoke like distant stars. If you step out wearing an air filter mask (“Useless,” the doctors say) you will glimpse—piecemeal—the facades of Delhi’s age-old tombs levitating in the haze.

Like Delhi mausoleums appearing like pieces of a jigsaw in the haze, graves form the framework of Arundhati Roy’s latest novel. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is an elegy to graveyards and the disenfranchised they have been home to for millennia; to the unknown dead, the dying alive, and those so dispossessed that they might as well be nonexistent. The book is a dirge. Once this becomes apparent, burials show their faces everywhere in its pages.

It’s not a surprise, then, that a large part of the novel is set in Delhi. A seat of power for almost a thousand years, the city is riddled with mausoleums, some over eight hundred years old. In Delhi, the past and the present encroach upon each other, and one can see centuries coexisting in the ancient tombs towering over crowded red lights or wedged between shiny malls. The face of death is always public.

These tombs—grand tombs, with poetry inscribed on their faces—are obviously of the ancient elite. The Archeological Survey of India has a list of one hundred and seventy-six “officially recognized” Delhi tombs. But the city’s old gullies are home to innumerable unmarked graves and tiny tombs, often built over with homes and shops. It’s this sedimented, unrecorded history of the city—that of the forgotten, of outcasts—that Roy is interested in.

We find Anjum in one such graveyard at the beginning of the book. Anjum was born with both a penis and a vagina in the labyrinths of Chandni Chowk. Her family names her Aftab (Urdu for “sun”) and raises her as a boy.  Later, she runs away to the Khwabgah to live with the hallowed eunuchs of Old Delhi, whose traditions are as old as the crypts littered throughout the city. She changes her name to Anjum (Urdu for “star”), pierces her nose, and starts wearing “disco saris” with bangles and anklets, enchanting filmmakers, foreign journalists, and businessmen.

Anjum’s binary star is Tilo, a Malayali who came to Delhi to study architecture. If Anjum is from the Khwabgah—The House of Dreams—Tilo belongs to the Duniya, the real world. What the book makes clear from the beginning is how political tragedy in Duniya causes devastating personal anguish in all parallel worlds. And that, if disaster is political, then so are death and its discontents, locked inside the burial chambers that are invoked again and again in the story.

As Tilo and her college boyfriend Musa rekindle their romance on a boathouse on the Dal Lake, the tales of Kashmiri people’s abduction, torture and extrajudicial killings smolder like the kangri firepots they carried under their clothes in winter. As if in premonition, before Musa becomes a militant, he draws watercolors of the ruins of Delhi. These paintings, too, are evocations of graves—dead cities, preserved like fossils.

Describing the Kashmiri freedom movement, Roy writes, “Graveyards sprang up in parks and meadows… Tombstones grew out of the ground like young children’s teeth.” These days, Kashmir’s valleys are funerary grounds, their famed apple orchards soaked with blood. Livelihoods and tourism have dried up because of the violence, but “for gravediggers there was no rest. It was just workworkwork.”

In Delhi, woods that were once emperors’ summer retreats are now home to luxury boutiques selling high-end designer clothing. Tellingly, Tilo calls one such mall, complete with multi-tiered parking lots, “the world’s mazar [mausoleum]. Maybe the mannequin-shoppers are ghosts trying to buy what no longer exists.” Compare this with the goings-on far north in Kashmir: “As the war progressed, graveyards became as common as the multi-story parking lots that were springing up in the burgeoning cities in the plains.”

While Tilo bears witness to the graveyards of Kashmir, Anjum gets embroiled in the Gujarat riots of 2002, a genocide in which over a thousand Muslims were murdered by Hindu mobs, “infants impaled on their saffron tridents.” Although the group Anjum is traveling with is slaughtered, she is spared because the murderers believe killing a eunuch brings bad luck. In the thick of this violence, the mob’s chants about graveyards are especially dire: “Mussalman ka ek hi stan! Qabaristan ya Pakistan!” (“Muslims belong either in Pakistan or in a graveyard.”)

Anjum is a changed person when she returns to the Khwabgah, haunted by her murdered companions. She leaves the House of Dreams, “unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet in a city graveyard” next to a hospital morgue, and starts constructing a home where, slowly, people who live on the fringes of society—the poor, the homeless, Dalits and Muslims, eunuchs and prostitutes, illegitimate children—come to gather. Unwanted animals find shelter here, too, and the graveyard becomes “a Noah’s ark of injured animals.” Anjum christens the graveyard Jannat Guest House. Jannat means paradise, and by locating it in Delhi, Roy turns the necropolis into a parallel government, “the graveyard Politburo.” The utopia is complete with biryani and kebab feasts, English and science lessons at subsidized fees, and a vegetable garden thriving on the nutrients of long-festering bodies.

Against the backdrop of countless national tragedies, Roy writes, “for ordinary people the consolidation of their dead became, in itself, an act of defiance.” In Jannat, in the absence of bodies, letters and shirts are buried as symbolic acts. For the residents, life becomes “a little easier to bear.” Roy tries to resuscitate these buried ghosts—to give them a voice, a face, some agency.

Those who tend to categorize literatures from the third world in specific boxes might explain the analogy with those dreaded words: magical realism. But in India, people who have nowhere to go make real homes in unreal places. Living in a graveyard is not a metaphor but a fact of life in that country. In Roy’s graveyard, the dispossessed find un-loneliness, bonhomie, even solace.

In Hindi, the word for “ghost” and “past” is the same: bhoot. Jannat Guesthouse is not only the perfect analogy for Delhi, a city littered with crypts, but for all of India—a young postcolonial nation with a long history and one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Like in Jannat Guesthouse, in India, too, “the souls of the present and the departed mingle, like guests at the same party.” One only has to peek inside the perfumed closets to find a cache of skeletons hiding behind the sequined shararas.

It seems fitting that in a novel bubbling with religious strife, the most lovingly described places of worship are the mausoleums of Delhi where Muslims and Hindus offer supplications together. Graves pervade not only prayers but daily pleasures. Before smoking hashish on a mosquito-ridden Delhi rooftop under the moon, Tilo and Dasgupta hang out at the mausoleum of Mirza Ghalib, a beloved Urdu poet who died three centuries ago. They listen to qawwalis at the burial quarters of the thirteenth century Sufi sage Nizamuddin.

Despite the pall of death, the book is frequently funny, interspersed with Urdu shers that are more bawdy than beautiful. While the oddball residents of Jannat are from different castes, classes, religions, and genders, and speak distinct languages, they have their unorthodoxy in common. Together, they are situated at the fringes of society: outside of the Duniya, inside Anjum’s graveyard. Roy breathes life into them by providing the microscopic, eccentric details of their personalities.

A few kinks in the narrative emerge when the numerous characters start coming together. The meeting of The Valley of Death with Delhi’s graveyards—while ideologically and spiritually in sync—sometimes feels labored in terms of the story. Skimming the detailed descriptions of Kejriwal, Modi and Anna Hazare, I uncharitably wondered whether Roy’s editors had been too star-struck to suggest a tighter edit. But as the story progressed, I remembered that the root of the word “grave” yields cognates that mean both “to dig” as well as “to bury.” In invoking India’s recent history, from the Emergency to the 2014 national election, Roy shows how the grand cartography of political history has had profoundly tragic personal repercussions for people like Jannat’s residents. She not only excavates but also enshrines India’s marginalized and their unheard stories.

The cover of the book shows a photograph of an anonymous Delhi tomb. On the marble tomb lie a red rose and a dead fly. In writing The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Roy has given life to smoggy subcontinental grief that doesn’t want to be edited or have its dead flies Photoshopped away. The back cover has these lines: “How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By solely becoming everything.” For a book so bounteous with graves, let these lines serve as an epitaph and the shattered stories will fall into place.

The post How to Tell a Shattered Story appeared first on Guernica.

Bullies Of A Feather Play Together

From UN: “Today’s resolution demanded that “all States comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the Holy City of Jerusalem, and not recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.”

The General Assembly further affirmed that “any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council.”

In that regard the Assembly also called upon all States to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem, pursuant to Security Council resolution 478 adopted in 1980.

Reiterating its call for the reversal of the negative trends that endanger the two-State solution, the Assembly urged greater international and regional efforts and support aimed at achieving, without delay, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East. ”

I see that our clueless ambassador to the UN has taken a page from the bullying manual written by her ruler, Trump.

Recently the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on the the situation of Jerusalem…..Amb. Haley has threatened the world…..

Consider it a not-so-veiled threat. The UN General Assembly votes Thursday on whether to reject President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and US Ambassador Nikki Haley is warning that the US will be paying very close attention. “When we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don’t expect those we’ve helped to target us,” she tweeted. “On Thurs there’ll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names.” In a letter circulated to other countries, Haley reiterates the point, reports the Guardian. “As you consider your vote, I encourage you to know the president and the US take this vote personally,” she writes, adding that she’ll be reporting back to Trump on the nay votes.

It’s unclear whether the US pressure will work. When the Security Council voted on a similar measure Monday, the other 14 members of the council voted against the US. However, because the US has veto power on the council, the measure failed anyway. No such vetoes are in play during the General Assembly vote, which is being held at the request of Arab and Muslim states, reports the BBC. A draft of the non-binding resolution asks the General Assembly to declare the American move “null and void,” and Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour predicts victory: “The General Assembly will say, without the fear of the veto, that the international community is refusing to accept the unilateral position of the United States.”

The American Conservative has touched on this attempt at a Trumpian bully……

Haley’s petty, threatening remarks compound the embarrassment of the U.S. veto she cast earlier this week. Having lost the Security Council vote 14-1, an effective diplomat would at least be seeking to conciliate and appeal to governments that might be willing to abstain instead of voting against the U.S. position. A smart one would be recommending that the president rethink his position. Instead, Haley directly challenges every member of the U.N. and makes an implicit threat that they will pay a penalty if they don’t vote as the U.S. wants. That will make it very easy for Haley to keep track of the names of all governments that vote against the administration’s position, since it will be almost every single member state.

http://ift.tt/2kMOZTi

This person, Haley, is a clueless diplomat, if you can use that term to describe her, this arrogance will do NOTHING but make her look foolish and a dumb-ass like her employer.

If she makes good on these threats then she will open the door for China and Russia to step into the void where the US use to occupy to gain more influence around the world.

None of this will “Make America Great Again”…another promise broke but who’s counting?

Coup From The Top?

All the dangerous rhetoric by the babbling Right is getting dangerous.  The hatchet job that Trump, some mindless Congresspeople and the Right wing news is doing on the very foundation of this republic is just screaming pathetic.

Seven months ago there was an article on the Alternet site about the chances of Trump trying a coup……

American democracy is in crisis. The election of Donald Trump feels like a state of emergency made normal.

Trump has threatened violence against his political enemies. He has made clear he does not believe in the norms and traditions of American democracy — unless they serve his interests. Trump and his advisers consider a free press to be enemies of his regime. Trump repeatedly lies and has a profoundly estranged relationship with empirical reality. He uses obvious and naked racism, nativism and bigotry to mobilize his voters and to disparage entire groups of people such as Latinos and Muslims

http://ift.tt/2BAWwfJ

I found the article interesting and included in a post that I was writing…..but the author did not foresee the whole picture…..the real story is so much more fascinating…….

Tensions between the White House and Robert Mueller’s investigative team appear to be on the rise, so much so that reporters asked President Trump on Sunday night whether he’s considering firing the special counsel. “No, I’m not,” he said, per CNN. But Trump added that his legal team is “very upset” with how Mueller obtained thousands of emails from the Trump transition team—the president’s lawyers think it was unlawful, but Mueller says it was all above-board. Either way, Trump says the emails will show nothing damning because there was “no collusion whatsoever” with Russia. Details and developments:

  • Cooperation wanes: The New York Times has a front-page look at the situation, observing that the “image of cooperation has begun to fracture” between Trump’s lawyers and Mueller as the inquiry digs ever deeper into Trump’s circle. The story notes that GOP Sen. John Cornyn over the weekend became the latest prominent Republican to suggest that Mueller’s team might be biased, thanks to now-public text messages.
  • Allegations of a ‘coup’: Fox News host Jesse Watters drew attention over the weekend by suggesting that those texts may be “proof the investigation was weaponized to destroy (Trump’s) presidency,” adding, “Now, if that’s true, we have a coup on our hands in America,” per Mediaite. Guest Kellyanne Conway, appearing with a chyron of “A Coup in America?” declared that “the fix was in against Donald Trump from the beginning.”
  • Charged language: The Washington Post looks at how Fox News hosts and guests have been leading the charge against Mueller with similar language. Another common theme is to compare his tactics to those of the KGB. The story also notes that GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said on the House floor that “we are at risk of a coup d’etat in this country.”
  • It might be working: At Axios, Mike Allen suggests that the “rising conservative drumbeat” against Mueller is gaining more and more converts. As one source close to the White House puts it, “You’re starting to win over mainstream conservatives to the backlash over overreach.”
  • ‘Feedback loop’: An analysis at CNN by media writer Brian Stelter sees a “vicious circle” at play. “The TV hosts encourage Trump, then Trump supplies sound bites for their shows, and then the hosts are even more emboldened.”
  • Risky Mueller move? Mueller’s office has defended how it obtained the Trump transition emails from the General Services Administration, but Georgetown law professor Jonathan Turley argues in the Hill that it was “legally unprecedented and strategically reckless.” Turley warns that the move could come back to haunt Mueller in any later trial, if the investigation is found to have relied on contaminated evidence. (In the Times story cited earlier, legal experts disagree with the assertion that Mueller, who has wide leeway to obtain documents, did anything improper.)
  • Feeling confident: Trump is privately telling people that he expects to be exonerated relatively soon, reports CNN. The story, based on interviews with three dozen mostly anonymous sources, says Trump predicts he will have a letter from Mueller in a matter of weeks clearing him of any collusion. One person warned of a Trump “meltdown” if that doesn’t happen, which could lead to him firing Mueller.
  • Holder warning: Former Attorney General Eric Holder warned over the weekend that the president would be crossing an “ABSOLUTE RED LINE” by firing the special counsel. He called for mass protests if that happens, per the Hill.

Comparing the FBI to the KGB is ridiculous and insulting and Trump minions are playing a dangerous game……this all sounds like the groundwork being laid for martial law by Trump lackeys.

تأملات في أحداث القدس

لا أريد ان اقوم بدور المحلل ولا المنظر بشأن ما يجري من أحداث بالقدس وحول القدس منذ اعلان ترامب عن القدس كعاصمة للشعب اليهودي. ولكن هناك بعض التأملات التي لا بد من التوقف امامها ومراجعتها على الصعيد الداخلي الفلسطيني ، بشقيه المقدسي والاخر (الضفة-ـ غزةـ الداخل ) ،والصعيد الخارجي الدولي ( العالمي والعربي) . ومن ناحية اخرى يجب التوقف امام كيفية تعامل اسرائيل مع الموقف .

هذه المرة لم يتسابق المتفرج الفلسطيني وغير الفلسطيني على اعطاء تسمية لما يحدث : انتفاضة ثالثة او رابعة، هبة… وقد يكون هذا مفاده الى حالة من الحباط المؤكد ، فلقد تعب المتفرة الناشط كما الخامل من بذل الجهد في تحليل موقف سينتهي كما سبقه من مواقف الى اخماد، وسيترت عليه ككل مرة خسارات اكثر في الارواح والمستحقات الوطنية. فلقد وصل حال الوطن في خيباته الى الحضيض. فلم يعد لدى المرء امل يرجي ولا عشم بأحد. وقد يكون الغيب كذلك هو تساؤل الاكثرية في عدم احماء وتيرة التصعيدات كما حصل ايام التصدي لقرار وضع البوابات على الاقصى .

هل يمكن ان تكون قيادات الاحتلال وحلفائه قد راهنوا ان ما يعني ابناء القدس والفلسطينيين هو الاقصى بحد ذاته لا المدينة. فما يغلب على حراك الناس هو حراك عقائدي ديني خالص. والا فكيف تباطأت الجموع الدفاع عن تسريب اراضي الكنيسة ؟ اعترف انني لا اريد تصديق هكذا تحليل . ولا اريد  الخضوع لهكذا حراك عقائدي لا وطني. فسيكون الوضع بجد مؤلم ، لو ان الجموع التي احتشدت اسابيع التصدي للبوابات على مداخل الاقصى ، لا ترى ان الخطر الذي حدق حينها على الاقصى هو نفسه بل اعظم عندما يطال التهويد الرسمي للمدينة تفعيله الدولي.

الا ان المشهد بالقدس على الرغم من بساطته يؤرق الاحتلال وينغصه ويجعله يقف متأهبا . ما الذي يزعجهم جلوس الناس على ساحة باب العامود ؟ هل تحولت الساحة الى مدخل الانتصار وعنوان السطوة على المدينة ؟ قد تكون كذلك . ولكن ، بينما ينشغل الاحتلال في قمع التجمهر واغلاق المنطقة ومنع الجلوس. لماذا لا يفكر الفلسطينيون بتغيير وجهة وقفتهم الى مكان اخر؟ لماذا لا نقف امام مدخل باب الخليل ؟ او باب الجديد؟ الحقيقة ، ان الوقفة هناك قد تكون اكثر تعبيرا في ظل الانتهاك المعلن عن يهودية المدينة . لماذا لا نستغل نحن الفلسطينيون بالقدس تحديدا مناسبة الاعياد المجيدة ونحول الانظار الى ابواب القدس ، كباب الجديد الذي اضيأت منه شجرة العيد . لقد كان المشهد مبكيا اقرب الى المخزي ، عندما اضيأت الشجرة وتجمهر المحتفلون بينما كان الناس يضربون على بعد مئات قليلة من الامتار بباب العامود. الصور المتداولة من الحتفلين بنفس اللحظات التي كان يتم تداول فيها مشهد ضرب الجالسات على درجات باب العامود كان مشهدا محزنا ومجحفا ، بحق اولئك الذين عانوا البرد وجلسوا وتلقوا الضربات والحبس ، واولئك الذين اكملوا مشوارهم الى ماميلا لشرب الكابتشينو بمقاهي اسرائيلية.

حالة تغييب الوعي هذه ، هي المأساة الحقيقية . والمشهد يتكرر في كل مكان اخر. بينما يتلقى الشبان الضرب والقتل والاعتقال على مشارف البيرة ، تعيش وسط رام الله وكأنك في مدينة اخرى . تتداول المواقع نفسها حتى احتفال رام الله بمبدعي الغربة او لا اعرف ماذا. نعيش وكأننا في اقطاب متنافرة ، ثم نجلس امام شاشات الكمبيوتر ونلعن الاحتلال ونبكي كذبا على الشهداء.

شهيد الامس الذي عكس مدى الاعاقة التي نعيش بها نحن الشعب . كم القوة والعزيمة التي خرجت من جسد ذاك الرجل القعيد ، اكد ويؤكد ان بتر الارجل اقل ضررا من بتر الوعي واعاقة العقل.

بينما يصرخ ذاك الطل بكلماته في لقاءات تلفزيونية ، يقول بوجه امريكا لا … نكتشف ان الفيلم المسجل له كان بدعم امريكي. انحراف حقيقي حتى في نقلنا للخبر او صناعته. هل توقفت المشاريع الممولة من امريكا حتى ولو بالظاهر منذ اعلان ترامب ؟

لن تتوقف لأن ترامب يراهن، كما يراهن حليفه السعودي ، اننا شعوب تشترى بالاموال القليلة.

نسب ونلعن السعودية ، نروج لمنتجاتها. لا نزال نشاهد شبكات ال ام بي سي والعربية وغيرها صاحبة التمويل الذي يكرس شاشاته للسب علينا . لن افكر حتى بالرهان على ان الناس ستقاطع الحج في العام القادم احتجاجا على الاقل على سفك السعودية للدم العربي وهدرها للحق الفلسطيني بالقدس.

وعلى الارض، لكل اولئك الناشطون بالساحات من وقفات ومظاهرات .عندما حصل حراك الداخل بعد اسبوع من اعلان ترامب ، كان المشهد اقرب الى الخزي كذلك ، بأن ترى العربي الفلسطيني يقف احتجاجا امام سفارة امريكا باسرائيل ، أي مغترب او اسرائيلي محتج. كم تبعد القدس عن طريقكم لتأتوا وتتضامنوا مع اهلها .

مظاهرة في سخنين حاشدة هو اكثر ما يمكن للعرب بالداخل ان يقدموه بعد اسبوعين من اعلان ترامب؟

اقول كلماتي هذه ، اتذكر ان هناك جلسة لمنظمة التحرير والمجلس الوطني لا تزال في طور التحضير للانعقاد…..

بينما تبقى اساليبنا في ردود الافعال هي نفسها .لا تتغير ولا تتبدل ولا تتجدد. نرى الاحتلال يتفاعل ويتطور ويتجدد. استخدام العنف المفرط والاعتقال بدل القتل هو احد التغييرات الملفتة بتعامل قوات الاحتلال المختلفة بالقدس. تصوير المتظاهرين والاحداث، هناك جندي يقنص واخر يأخذ الصور الى جانبه. استفحال التواجد من قبل المستعربين ضمن صفوف المتظاهرين على مداخل البيرة ، والقتل بلا تردد للمتظاهرين يشكل تغييرا مهما في اساليبهم. هم يخشون القتل في القدس واثارة ردود الفعل كأثر، ولكنهم يعرفون ان القتل بالضفة لن يرتب عليهم اي التزام او اكثر ، لن يترتب عليه ردة فعل تتعدى محيط المكان . وفي غزة ، حدث وا حرج ، فقتل الغزي هو عمل بطولي للمتدربين من هؤلاء القتلة.

وعودة الى القدس ، وبعد حصر الاحتجاجات في محيط باب العامود وشارع صلاح الدين ، واستخدام الجنود والشرطة من العرب ليكونوا بالواجهة ، ربما لتقليل القتل وزيادة الاحتقان . فتري الجندي المدجج بالسلاح على اطراف باب العامود يتكلم بالعربية محاولا استقطاب المارة للتسلية. فلكم تخيل هذا الشعور ، شعور قاسي ومجحف ، لا تكاد تميز  من هو عدوك .

من الجيد ان نبقي التواجد بالقدس . من المهم ان لا نوقف حراكنا نحو المدينة . ولكن ، اليس من الاجدى تصعيب الحياة علي المحتل المستكين وراء ثكنته بينما يمنع الجلوس على باب العامود؟ لماذا لا نتوجه الى باب الخليل ، باب الجديد؟

متي سيكون الوقت لنشهد حراكا شبابيا قياديا بالقدس؟ لماذا لا نخرج الى مستوى الحراك الشعبي الممنهج بقيادات شبابية من تلك الشابات الباسلات واولئك الشبان المتصدين للجنود بصدور عارية؟ هؤلاء هم من يفهمون معنى وطن يسلب من وجدانهم . لا نزال ننتظر القائد المخلص. لن يأتي قائد، ولن يكون خير في اي وجه عرفناه والفناه منذ اوسلو او حتي من مخلفات الانتفاضة الاولى . نحن اليوم نقف على عتبات تغيير حقيقي. تغيير لوجه المدينة وهويتها ، ولم يبق الا من لا يزال ينتصر لحقه ولوجوده بهذه المدينة.

للحق قوة …. والقوة بلا جماعة تسحق.

Israel and ‘The Right to Maim’

Screen Shot 2017-12-16 at 11.11.23Ibrahim Abu Thorayya,29, whose both legs were amputated during the 2008 war on Gaza, was killed yesterday by Israeli occupation sniper fire. Photo taken on 19 May (AFP) during a protest against the occupation.

Quite recently, a colleague of mine kindly brought to my attention a book called ‘The Right to Maim’, written by Jaspir Paur, published only last month by Duke University Press. I have ordered the book and read a couple of reviews about it. It seems fascinating. However, before reading anything about the book, I immediately started speculating what its thesis could be. The right to maim, I wondered. Of course, this must be another argument about coloniality, violence and human life. It surely must have some affinity with Judith Butler’s work on the un-liveability, and subsequent un-grievability, of those human lives which are out there, in places too far away, in the periphery.

The book, which I have not read yet, throws into question our common liberal understanding of disability and its associated rights. It makes a distinction between disability and what it calls debility. Debility disrupts the concept of disability understood as merely an individual state or identity that can be socially included and accommodated within liberal frameworks through disability rights (access, recognition, empowerment, pride etc.) Debility however refers to a concept central to biopolitical control (the control of bodies and populations) at the heart of colonial regimes; it refers to the racializing of an entire collectivity (population) through their designation as available for debilitation (the ‘right to maim’ which is linked to ‘the right to kill’), so it is part of a war tactic central to settler colonial regimes and to imperialism more broadly.

Of course, the book’s argument is much more complicated and nuanced that this, and the above is an extremely lame attempt at summarizing it. However, what makes the book interesting for me is that Paur carefully examines Israel’s practices in Gaza and its practice of deliberate maiming, otherwise referred to as the ‘shoot to cripple’ phenomenon. Having previously worked as a human rights NGO worker in Gaza, this is something that I have always thought about and, occasionally, discussed during informal conversations in Gaza during wars and in their aftermath. In particular, there is always a glaring disparity between the number of deaths and that of injuries, and while the former was the subject of ample commentary and coverage, the latter was only assigned secondary importance and discussed only in passe (for example, this Reuters news story, published just a few hours ago, carries the title: Israeli forces kill four Palestinians, wound 160 in protests over Jerusalem)

Paur explains, “The might of Israel’s military—one of the most powerful in the world—is built upon the claim of an unchanging ontological vulnerability and precarity, driven by history, geopolitics, and geography. Alongside the “right to kill,” I noted a complementary logic long present in Israeli tactical calculations of settler colonial rule—that of creating injury and maintaining Palestinian populations as perpetually debilitated, and yet alive, in order to control them. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have shown a demonstrable pattern over decades of sparing life, of shooting to maim rather than to kill. This is ostensibly a humanitarian practice, leaving many civilians “permanently disabled” in an occupied territory of destroyed hospitals, rationed medical supplies, and scarce resources. This pattern appeared again during Operation Protective Edge; the number of civilian casualties was reported daily and justified through the logic of collateral damage, while the number of injuries was rarely commented upon and never included in reflections of the daily toll of the siege.”

Why I am writing this now is not only to emphasize an all too urgent need to highlight Israel’s deliberate colonial strategy of maiming and controlling Gazans but also because, only yesterday, we witnessed the murder of one wheelchair-bound, or debilitated, Palestinian protester Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, 29 years, who was waving a Palestinian flag and speaking out, in front of cameras, against Israel’s colonial regime. During an Israeli airstrike some nine years ago in Gaza, Abu Thuraya lost both his legs. Paur’s thesis is crystallized in the figure of Abu Thuraya, who embodies the ultimate object of this biopolitical control central to the colonial practices of the Israel state. Abu Thuraya is the object of Israel’s two most cherished rights, the right to kill, and prior to it, the right to maim. It is hardly a matter of speculation that Abu Thurayah was deliberately shot dead by Israeli troops. In its direct encounter with Abu Thuraya, and having already exercised its right to maim, Israel had only one choice at its disposal, to exercise its other right, to kill him. The regular presence of Abu Thurayah at protests, despite his debility, ostensibly demonstrated that Israel’s maiming of his body had utterly failed of bodily controlling him, stopping him from protesting physically. Finally, Abu Thurayyah’s murder is a manifestation of a powerful and rather long-established form of anti-colonial resistance, mass protest at points of friction with the Israeli army. Abu Thurayyah lived in dignity and died in dignity– dignity being a concept which, contrary to what many seem to think, is far from being merely sentimental, but is of paramount political significance for people who lack it.

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Filed under: Politics & Society

3 myths about the poor that Republicans are using to support slashing US safety net

By Michele Gilman
The Conversation

Republicans continue to use long-debunked myths about the poor as they defend lower taxes for the rich and deep cuts to the social safety netto pay for them. In so doing, they are essentially expressing scorn for working class and low-income Americans.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, for example, recently justified reducing the number of wealthy families exposed to the estate tax as a way to recognize “the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

Similarly, Sen. Orrin Hatch raised concerns about funding certain entitlement programs. “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything,” he said.

These statements, the likes of which I expect we’ll all hear more of in coming months, reinforce three harmful narratives about low-income Americans: People who receive benefits don’t work, they don’t deserve help and the money spent on the social safety net is a waste of money.

Based on my research and 20 years of experience as a clinical law professor representing low-income clients, I know that these statements are false and only serve to reinforce misconceptions about working class and poor Americans.

Food participants get an average of $125 a month, hardly enough to feed a family without earning money as well. AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty

Most welfare recipients are makers not takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are “takers” rather than “makers,” is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

Consider Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which currently serve about 42 million Americans. At least one adult in more than half of SNAP-recipient households are working. And the average SNAP subsidy is $125 per month, or $1.40 per meal – hardly enough to justify quitting a job.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, “We have a welfare system that’s trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.”

Not true. Welfare – officially called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families – has required work as a condition of eligibility since then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996. And the earned income tax credit, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers, by definition, supports only people who work.

Workers apply for public benefits because they need assistance to make ends meet. American workers are among the most productive in the world, but over the last 40 years the bottom half of income earners have seen no income growth. As a result, since 1973, worker productivity has grown almost six times faster than wages.

In addition to wage stagnation, most Americans are spending more than one-third of their income on housing, which is increasingly unaffordable. There are 11 million renter households paying more than half their income on housing. And there is no county in America where a minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom home. Still, only 1 in 4eligible households receive any form of government housing assistance.

To be sure, there are recipients of public benefits who do not work. They are primarily children, the disabled and the elderly – in other words, people who cannot or should not work. These groups constitute the majority of public benefits recipients.

Society should support these people out of basic decency, but there are self-interested reasons as well. To begin with, all working adults have been children, will someday be old and, at any time, might face calamities that take them out of the workforce. The safety net exists to rescue people during these vulnerable periods. Indeed, most people who receive public benefits leave the programs within three years.

Moreover, many public benefits pay for themselves over time, as healthier and financially secure people are more productive and contribute to the overall economy. For example, every dollar in SNAP spending is estimated to generate more than $1.70 in economic activity.

Similarly, Medicaid benefits are associated with enhancing work opportunities. The earned income tax credit contributes to work rates, improves the health of recipient families and has long-term educational and earnings benefits for children.

The current federal minimum wage is hardly enough to feed a family. AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato

What the needy deserve

The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.

This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.

Indeed, America is not nearly as socially mobile as we like to think. Forty percent of Americans born into the bottom-income quintile – the poorest 20 percent – will stay there. And the same “stickiness” exists in the top quintile.

As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.

The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesn’t accomplish its goals.

In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.

The facts of welfare

In trotting out these myths, Republican lawmakers are also tapping into long-standing racist stereotypes about who receives support. For instance, the “welfare queen” – a code word for an African-American woman with too many children who refuses to work – is a fiction.

The facts of welfare are that most recipients are white, families that receive aid are smaller on average than other families and the program requires recipients to work and is tiny in relation to the overall federal budget – about half a percent. Yet, the welfare queen is an archetype invoked to generate public antagonism against the safety net. Expect her to make frequent appearances in the months to come.

Americans should demand fact-based justifications for tax and entitlement reforms. It is time to retire the welfare queen and related tropes that paint needy Americans as undeserving.

Featured Photo Credit: Politico

Michele Gilman is Venable Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Jerusalem needs protection from the brutality of Israel

I am not sure how to put my feelings towards what is happening in Palestine and in Jerusalem in order. It seems all too frustrating. A state of injustice continues to overrule. However, that country of killing is becoming more visible to be seen. Four five, six are the victims of today. The martyrs that were killed in cold blood by the Israeli war soldiers. More than three hundred are wounded. And God knows how many are being arrested.

In Jerusalem the brutality takes a different form of oppression. Horses, beating, hitting violently, lynching and harassing passerbys. We can no longer sit on the stairs of the Damascus gate. These people are just scared to hell from our presence. Or I would say they are full of hatred and rage for our existence.

Practicing the simple acts of life is becoming the most impossible. Worse, is that increasing scene of having oppressing soldiers who are Arabs. It is so conflicting. I really cannot imagine what the heart or mind that exist in those people is. how do they expect it, and how can they really stand with a weapon facing their own people. Yes… maybe they are not our people. Zionism is no longer about Jewish people. Those Arabs have been in the loop of Zionism since many decades, it is only time that they pop up in forms of soldiers.

israel continue to prove that occupation can never have a human side. a state of occupation can only be state of terror. Terror is not only wearing explosive belts and a beard killing innocents. Terror is wearing a military uniform brutally abusing, breaching, killing unarmend people.

We in Jerusalem need to be protected from the brutality of this terror state of oppression.

“In 2012, Louis C.K. appeared on “The Daily Show” and said that “comedians and feminists are natural…”

“In 2012, Louis C.K. appeared on “The Daily Show” and said that “comedians and feminists are natural enemies” because “feminists can’t take a joke.” Jon Stewart nodded vigorously and agreed. Today, Stewart is being fawned over for acknowledging, in response to Louis C.K.’s fall, that “comedy on its best day is not a great environment for women.” A friend, the comedian Zahra Noorbakhsh, texted me: Ten years from now a man will win awards for his documentary about all this.

If you believe us now only because your peers are facing professional ruin, that deserves its own reckoning. I’ll wait.”

Why Men Aren’t Funny – The New York Times (via brutereason)