The Chris Brown Of The Cosmos

If God is love He has a strange way of showing it.

Displaced Geography Lessons

Albania, the Africa of Europe:

We had been told that Albania is the “Africa of Europe”, meaning that it is wild, third-world and perhaps “Just a little bit dangerous” (one of the tracks on the 3-CD set of music – “Cape to Cape: the Official Soundtrack” – compiled by our Finnish friends Jani and Hanna). Well, in my opinion, that statement is rather unfair on Africa, since nowhere in any of our African travels have we encountered such extreme levels of litter or a capital city with such bad roads as we did in Albania.

Bogotá, the Athens of South America:

Bogotá as the Athens of South America is the emblem of a hierarchical sociery barricaded against the experience of the political and social change of modernity. Its ideal is an organic social system, a unified complex of religion, metaphysics and politics that effectively destroys the remnants of political life. . . . After the discourse that would make Paris the capital of the 19th century, Victor Hugo began to make Paris the new Memphis, the new Babylon, the new Athens and the new Rome; while Maxime Ducamp, the intimate friend of Gustav Flaubert, made Paris the city that would replace Thebes, Assyria, Babylon, Athens, Rome and Constantinople. It is against modernity that Bogotá is proclaimed, toward the end of the century, the Athens of South America. For Bogotá, Paris is the capital of immorality, vire and impiety.

Eritrea, the Prussia of Africa:

Ethiopia already lost its other potential coastline to Eritrea, the Prussia of Africa, and they're damned if they're going to watch the last bit of ocean-view property fall into the hands of some sleazy worry-bead fingering Mullah-slash-condo developer.

Soviet Union, Upper Volta with Rockets:

The Soviet Union was famously described as "Upper Volta with rockets", a catchphrase that was updated by the geographically precise to become "Burkina Faso with rockets". It was a powerfully succinct description. The United States was rich and space-age powerful; the Soviet Union was poor and space-age powerful. The contradictions and paradoxes that stemmed from that could never fully be resolved - least of all by the citizens of the Soviet Union themselves.

Rwanda, the Israel of Africa:

In some ways, Rwanda is the "Israel" of Africa. The conflagration there set the entire region on fire - witness the two Congo wars, which were largely the outcome of the events in Rwanda. The two peoples - Tutsis and Hutus - had been at each other's throats for decades, and foreign powers had not desisted from meddling in their conflict.

Thessaloniki, the Jerusalem of the Balkans:

Thus, in the 16th-18th centuries, Thessaloniki housed one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, and a solid rabbinical tradition. The city had become the Jewish centre of Europe, the Jerusalem of the Balkans - the “city and mother of Israel," according to the Jewish poet Samuel Usque. During the 16th century, there were numerous important rabbis whose influence spread beyond the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Although Thessaloniki suffered from plagues and fires in the course of the 17th century, the city remained a centre of religious studies and Halakhah (Jewish Law), as well as an international centre of Jewish Printing, as the city’s approximately 30.000 Jews constituted nearly half of its total population.

Uruguay, the Switzerland of South America:

Banks across Uruguay were shut down for a week yesterday as the government of "the Switzerland of South America" attempted to contain a spiralling economic crisis which has spread from neighbouring Argentina.

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Song Of The Day

"I am Koheleth; I was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my heart to inquire and to search with wisdom all that was done under the heaven. It is a sore task that God has given to the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. I saw all the deeds that were done under the sun, and behold, everything is vanity and frustration. What is crooked will not be able to be straightened, and what is missing will not be able to be counted. I spoke to myself, saying, 'I acquired and increased great wisdom, more than all who were before me over Jerusalem'; and my heart saw much wisdom and knowledge. And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I know that this too is a frustration. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge, increases pain."
- Solomon, Ecclesiastes 1:12-18

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"Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces."
- Julius Caesar, The Civil War, Book III, 68

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"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die and you to live. Which is the better, only God knows."
- Socrates, Apology

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"Whosoever shall not fall by the sword or by famine, shall fall by pestilence so why bother shaving?"
- Woody Allen, Without Feathers

Dead Can Dance - How Fortunate the Man with None [Lyrics by Bertolt Brecht]

You saw sagacious Solomon
You know what came of him,
To him complexities seemed plain.
He cursed the hour that gave birth to him
And saw that everything was vain.
How great and wise was Solomon.
The world however did not wait
But soon observed what followed on.
It's wisdom that had brought him to this state.
How fortunate the man with none.

You saw courageous Caesar next
You know what he became.
They deified him in his life
Then had him murdered just the same.
And as they raised the fatal knife
How loud he cried: you too my son!
The world however did not wait
But soon observed what followed on.
It's courage that had brought him to that state.
How fortunate the man with none.

You heard of honest Socrates
The man who never lied:
They weren't so grateful as you'd think
Instead the rulers fixed to have him tried
And handed him the poisoned drink.
How honest was the people's noble son.
The world however did not wait
But soon observed what followed on.
It's honesty that brought him to that state.
How fortunate the man with none.

Here you can see respectable folk
Keeping to God's own laws.
So far he hasn't taken heed.
You who sit safe and warm indoors
Help to relieve our bitter need.
How virtuously we had begun.
The world however did not wait
But soon observed what followed on.
It's fear of god that brought us to that state.
How fortunate the man with none.

Bonus Verse:
You saw the lovely Cleopatra;
You know what she became;
Two emperors slaved to serve her lust,
She whored herself to dirt and fame,
Then rotted down and turned to dust.
How beautiful was Babylon!
But think about her case, alas!
It's beauty that brought her to this pass:
How fortunate the girl with none.

Ten Causes Of Misogyny

10. Fear of the Other
9. Breast envy
8. The primordial Sky God/Earth Mother rivalry
7. Sublimated homosexuality
6. The Hills
5. Nightlife
4. Patriarchal power structures
3. Frustrated desire
2. Adolescent rejection
1. Women

Rhyming Couplet Of The Day

Such sexy dances does she innovate
That purity itself must masturbate.
- Martial, translation by Gary Willis

A Modest Proposal For The Elimination Of A Geopolitical Blight

In the late 1940s, partition of a former British colony resulted in the creation of a state to serve as homeland for a religious group at the behest of a small political elite. The land on which this state was based has seen repeated invasions by many historical empires, and its creation resulted in the displacement of another religious group with roots in the land despite a previous history of peaceful co-existence. Less than two-thirds of that other religious group's population remains in the country, and is subject to marginalization in a state that defines itself by the majority religion to the point of having that religion's symbol on its flag. Throughout this state's existence it has been involved in numerous wars with its neighbours, and its possession of nuclear weapons poses an ongoing threat to peace.

Due to the instability this state's creation has brought to the region and its role in inflaming extremism and terrorism worldwide, I call for its abolition.

This state, of course, is Pakistan.

Sans Umbrella, Le Déluge

Many readers have been asking, demanding even, my thoughts on the Rihanna-Chris Brown imbroglio. They are as follows: Rihanna made an oath, and she, in the tradition of the Essenes at Qumran and the Führerbunker inner circle, must stick it out till the end. When someone claims they will stand by you when it's "raining more than ever," that must include physical abuse if the statement is to be of any worth. If Russians can still love Stalin after he killed over ten million of them in senseless purges and orchestrated famines, shouldn't Rihanna be able to still love Chris Brown after a few bruises and bite-marks? Let me quote a few of the nimble songstress's own words: "You're part of my entity / Here for infinity." Here for infinity, she says. She doesn't say, "Here for infinity unless you choke me while shouting 'I'ma kill you!'" True love and true religion must be unconditional. Since Rihanna and more broadly, youth the world over have found their orgiastic love-god in Chris Brown, to be worthy of the name their worship of him must be unto death. Did Rihanna not say she'll always be a friend? Did Peter Murphy not sing "the passion of lovers is for death"? Did Madame de Pompadour not proclaim après nous, le déluge? That is what real rain is: revolution, war, rape, murder, it's just a kiss away, it's just a kiss away. I salute Rihanna's Teutonic-like fealty to her chosen man-god, and wish her all the best in her anointed role as generational spokesperson and human sacrifice to Disturbia's altar.

The Peculiar Dialectic

Identity works in rungs. Consider Adolf Hitler. First rung: antisemite; second rung: "great man" (in style of Napoleon); third rung: German. Most Germans did not perceive, or did not care to perceive, that Hitler's Germanness was third-rung: that he was willing to sacrifice them, and Germany itself, to his greater goals of annihilation and empire. Thus in his final days he remarked: "If the German people are incapable of victory, they are unworthy to live." The survival of the German people mattered less to Hitler than their ability to catapult him to "great man" status. That his hatred of the Jews was even greater than his love of victory (and ergo, two rungs greater than his love of Germany) is proven by his insistence that resources and manpower still be devoted to the extermination of the Jews even when they could have been diverted to the failing Eastern front.

As for the pre-World War II German Jews, the most acculturated in Europe, their Jewish identity was generally second-rung or below. Many called themselves "Germans of the Mosaic faith," indicating they put their German identity before their Jewish identity. As for Hitler's "Jewish subversives," if they were communists they put their ideological identity first; if intellectuals, their identity as members of the Republic of Letters first, etc. This is not to say that no German Jews valued their Jewish identity, but that for most it was secondary or tertiary to their self-conception (or even further down the ladder if they were converts or communists). This is in contrast to the Ostjuden of Eastern Europe, who still maintained territorial contiguity (historian Howard Sachar referred to the shtetls as a "Semitic archipelago") and a shared language (Yiddish) that gave them the characteristics of a nationality.

In a great irony, the accusation of antisemites was that the German Jews put their Jewish identity first, when most were in the process of losing it. (Famously, of eighteenth-century German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn's six children, only two retained the faith.) In his essay "Anti-Semite and Jew" Jean Paul Sartre concluded that without the antisemite the Jew would not exist. While exaggerated, there is some truth to the claim. If a Jew was not accepted by Gentile society despite his best intentions, he would naturally turn to a strengthened Jewish identity as recourse. This is exactly what transpired with Theodor Herzl, who created modern Zionism in the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair, in which an assimilated French Jewish officer was accused of treason (in the service of Germany!) for being a Jew. In all likelihood Jews would still exist without antisemitism, but not a Jewish nation.

I have been focusing on the German-Jewish example of "identity rungs" because it is most ripe with historical pathos and tragic irony. But by no means are Germans or Jews that unique, despite what either group thinks. Compare American mulattoes to German Jews. The mulattoes identify as black largely because American society identifies them as black. The white identity is closed to them, as the Aryan identity was closed to German Jews. Yet the civic American identity is open to mulattoes, while the civic German identity was ultimately closed to the Jews. Thus America has a mulatto president and no coloured people have any desire to move to Liberia (basically created as an African-American Zion). Meanwhile halfway around the world European nationalism inspired Jewish nationalism as a reaction, which in turned inspired Palestinian nationalism as a reaction to a reaction.

Gershom Scholem, a product of the German Jewish intellectual ferment, observed: "You see, we educated the Arabs about nationalism. It was our very existence that created Arab national consciousness. That is the peculiar dialectic of history and I'm not sure that there is any escape from it." Here is something that scares both Jews and antisemites. Jews do not control history, God does not control history: history is a dialectic from which there is no escape. Irish-Americans were once accused of taking their orders from the Pope; yet such accusations only served to reinforce their strong Catholic identity. When anti-Irish prejudice died in America, so did the conception of Irishness as a rung of identity above, and rival to, American identity. America's tradition of ethnic absorption has mitigated the problems of assimilation. Not so the rest of the world.

I despair of my people. Each time Israel bombs Gaza, it is strengthening Palestinian identity and, more broadly, Muslim identity throughout the world. The peculiar dialectic of history continues even among those who should know better. Who among us can stride onto the tracks of history and scream "Stop!" without getting run over by a freight train? Or by the tanks of every eternally returning Tiananmen square? Wouldn't it be nice if we could all have "human being" as the first rung of our identity? But that would never happen, because "humanity" does not have an enemy to rally against. 9/11 was a unifying moment for America because all colours and creeds were united in recognition of a common enemy. When that common enemy became yesterday's news the same old rivalries reemerged. We are what we are because you are what you are: and you are what you are because we are what we are.

Why Bethany Never Loved Me

Because I am ugly. Not physically. Well, besides physically. You see, this girl "Bethany" claimed love for me through my writings. But she was disillusioned. I feel things that are ugly. I cannot simply "Love thy neighbour." What people found reassuring about the Nazis is: they told you who you are. Bethany thought like a Nazi; she thought I was an Aryan. Again, not physically. She thought I was pure. No human being is pure. She could not understand the hatred and, more to the point, the gravitas of the hatred that people with nothing to complain about feel. I cannot mouth platitudes. I am not a member of any volleyball team. I fantasize about beheading people with scimitars. I would never do it, but I fantasize. And Bethany would deny me my fantasies. My fantasies are my humanity! My ugliness is my humanity! I demand the right to vituperate. I demand the right to spit. Shakespeare paid the Jews the highest compliment when he made Shylock, hero of the human spirit, a Semite. "Love thy neighbour" would deny me my pound of flesh. If this gets me only the occasional support of Brazilian misanthropes, so be it! We are not misanthropes! We are anthropes! We do not fit on diversity posters! I do not deny love. I pay tribute to love through the extremities I feel toward the hypocrites who lust under that name. Give me a love worthy of that name and I will love! Who were you Bethany, beneath the makeup where were your scars? I showed you my scars and you showed me your true colours. The false orange of false Aryans. If our miscegenation went unconsummated, it is because of your shallow skin.

Art Class Geopolitics

In grade 8 art class, Neil made fun of Igor's Russian accent. Igor threw a paintbrush at Neil's face, nearly taking out his eye.

No one made fun of Igor's accent again.