RED(iculous) responds!

simply because my humble blog mentioned bono and his deceptive advertising campaign as bloated and inefficient, i got this carefully written response/advertisement/propaganda from their PR department:

I saw your post and wanted to correct a comment you made about (RED).

In just three years, (RED) has generated more than $135 million for the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. 100% of this money is put to work in Global Fund-financed AIDS grants in Africa — no overhead is taken out. This is actually the opposite of ‘bloated and inefficient’. (RED) is the largest private sector contributor to the Global Fund and ranks above many countries in annual contributions to this organization.

While you may not agree with the idea of ‘social entrepreneurship’, the fact is that this initiative works and has already helped fund programs that have reached more than 4 million people affected by HIV/AIDS in Ghana, Rwanda, Swaziland and Lesotho.

For more information on the real results of this effort, visit www.joinred.com

Julie
(RED)

FOUR REASONS WHY (RED) IS RIDICULOUS FOR ISSUING THIS RESPONSE:

!1. nobody reads this blog. even if you type the title of this blog into yahoo, i don't make the top 80 listings (i stopped looking after that- for all i know i'm not in the top 1,000). i've had 65 hits this month, and that is probably the same 3 readers (thanks mom) refreshing the page. god only knows how many pages Julie had to sift through to find my post. it probably took her all day. thanks for the confidence booster, but yr wasting yr time.

!2. the fact that Julie spent all day sifting through blogs that refrence pesky facts about (RED) is more than enought proof that the company is bloated and inefficient when it comes to raising money for AIDS or to fight poverty. considering the readership number, this is obviously ineffiencent PR, and now I'm just judging the company by business standards, not against the agent for social change (RED) poses as.

!3. only a business that spends an absurd 100 million dollars in marketing for every 15 million dollars given in aide could dream of having enough wasted overhead to target a blog with 3 readers.

!4. it seems beside the point now, but i don't like being told that i'm corrected when Julie hasn't even answered to my critique. i'm not disputing that (RED) donates lots of money to AIDS and poverty. i was suggesting that it is bloated and inefficient to spice up crap white tee-shirts with the illusion that you are solving the world's problems. ("Buy RED, Save Lives" reads their website. A Gap billboard advertising (RED) asked "can a tank top change the world?") Bono could just send his money directly to the Global Fund if he wanted to be helpful, but then he wouldn't get to hire worthless PR representatives to litter my blog with advertisements. Bill Gates gave 650 million dollars straight to the Global Fund. he didn't waste hundreds of millions on billboards and models and packs of PR reps to patrol the blogosphere. he's so much cooler than Bono.

TOMS

i had a friend in Turkey working in social entrepreneurship. and i didn't and still don't know much about it, but i nonetheless found the phrase repulsive. entrepreneurship- that's the way McDonalds and Boeing and Microsoft started. investment bankers and insurance companies use that word. entrepreneurship is the start of fashionable consumption, that big waste bin of generated desire through advertising. social entrepreneurship is a glamed up version of the same model. instead of selling clothing linked to the arbitrary criteria of fashionable consumption, social entrepreneurs make products socially fashionable. selling products with guilt-free cards. in an age when we are aware of our limited world resources and of the dire poverty of 2/3 of the world's population, social entrepreneurs spin consumption as social justice.

Bono's product red is the best example of social entrepreneurship done wrong- his advertising dollars spent on the project far outmatch his contributions to fighting AIDS and poverty, making the project bloated and inefficient.

but Bono's company has been well critiqued. i haven't read much about TOMS or about the movement of social entrepreneurship itself (although, admittedly, i've only started looking into it). instead of continuing to flog Bono (and he does deserve a good floggin), i want to give 4 reasons to dislike TOMS. we'll start by checking out their "Movement" official philosophy:

OUR MOVEMENT

One for One

TOMS Shoes was founded on a simple premise: With every pair you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for One. Using the purchasing power of individuals to benefit the greater good is what we're all about.
Our Story

In 2006 an American traveler, Blake Mycoskie, befriended children in Argentina and found they had no shoes to protect their feet. Wanting to help, he created TOMS Shoes, a company that would match every pair of shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes given to a child in need. One for One. Blake returned to Argentina with a group of family, friends and staff later that year with 10,000 pairs of shoes made possible by caring TOMS customers.

Since our beginning, TOMS has given over 140,000* pairs of shoes to children in need through the One for One model. Because of your support, TOMS plans to give over 300,000 pairs of shoes to children in need around the world in 2009.

Our ongoing community events and Shoe Drop Tours allow TOMS supporters and enthusiasts to be part of our One for One movement. Join us.
Why shoes?

Most children in developing countries grow up barefoot. Whether at play, doing chores or just getting around, these children are at risk.

Walking is often the primary mode of transportation in developing countries. Children can walk for miles to get food, water, shelter and medical help. Wearing shoes literally enables them to walk distances that aren't possible barefoot.

Wearing shoes prevents feet from getting cuts and sores on unsafe roads and from contaminated soil. Not only are these injuries painful, they also are dangerous when wounds become infected. The leading cause of disease in developing countries is soil-transmitted parasites which penetrate the skin through open sores. Wearing shoes can prevent this and the risk of amputation.

Many times children can't attend school barefoot because shoes are a required part of their uniform. If they don't have shoes, they don't go to school. If they don't receive an education, they don't have the opportunity to realize their potential.

There is one simple solution...SHOES.

Of the planet's six billion people, four billion live in conditions inconceivable to many. Lets take a step towards a better tomorrow.

Reasons to Dislike TOMS from an ethical perspective:
!1. The model is inefficient in achieving the "movement's" mission goals. These cheaply made shoes can cost around 60 dollars. what can you do with 60 dollars to aide children in Argentina, Ethiopia, and South Africa? a lot. a lot more than give one pair of cheap canvas shoes. if consumers really wanted to help starving children, they should realize immediately that they could do more with 60 dollars then buy themselves another pair of shoes. A dated business weekly article says TOMS earned 4.6 million since its launch and has donated 115,000 shoes. (the math: 40 per shoe, 80 per pair). that looks like lots of waste and lots of profit for TOMS. "Using the purchasing power of individuals to benefit the greater good is what we're all about." that's good business and really bad activism.

!2. There is no reflection on the root causes of poverty and suffering in the countries TOMS is supposed to be helping. The only problems mentioned above in the mission statement are the ones directly related to the product: "There is one simple solution... SHOES." No question not leading to shoes is asked. Why are those children in poverty in the first place? Why is their soil contaminated and their roads unsafe as the mission statement claims? The answers to those questions are not because the population lacks TOMS shoes, and so they are not asked. And so, the "movement" is clearly about selling shoes first, not about solving problems.

!3. Deception! Deception! what is TOMS and similar social entrepreneurial companies if not a more deceptive way to sell products then the standard advertising schemes?

!4. Capitalism is the base of TOMS and all for-profit social entrepreneurs (the for profit, non-profit distinction seems extremely important and i think it should always be made, but, then again, if it is non-profit then why use the unsexy term "entrepreneur" and all the filth associated with it in the first place?). if the root problems of Argentina, South Africa, and Ethiopia (the places where TOMS has been giving shoes to great fanfare and photo-ops) were examined then slavery, racism, colonialism, and capitalism would top the list. when you do your social activism via TOMS or other social entrepreneurs, any thought leading to these root causes is cut off by more capitalism (capitalism which, via some social critics, is the root cause for slavery, racism, and colonialism). the message is buy and be happy that you're solving all the world's problems. that's a deal for 60 bucks. pretty convenient, 100% deception.

footnote: i don't hate TOMS, the idea, anyone that buys them, or people that support this sort of thing. the founder says he puts into charity what others put into advertising. the charity becomes his advertising, getting him free representation in forbes, business week, with president clinton, and so on. that's fine and fine to buy the shoes if you know what you're doing. you aren't taking part in a social movement. you're buying fashionable philanthropy, but maybe that's better than plain fashion. i've listed my problems with the idea above and argue that these problems might outweigh the social good of a few thousand donated shoes. i fear that people buy the shoes and their interaction with struggling populations stops. i fear that we are coming to an age when consumption is the only viable reaction we have to injustice, and i know that that is a dead end.

the long tour, the last tour

information:
he is back from a long trip, emotional, beautiful, moving a distance, wheels on road and rail, now he may be home.

status of flow:
this blog may be closing, once musings are recollected, the long haul properly archived.

status of recollection:
resting, check back in a week.

newest and possibly last zaman article

here

i haven't really liked the travel writing, but it's an excuse to get into the newspaper.

bank robbery

my savings are 0's and 1's on a computer server somewhere in New York at JP Morgan Chase.

i have a few thousand dollars in Iş Bank of Turkey, paid to me by the U.S. State Department for my work as a teacher. some of it reimbursement for the two months i financed on my own while attempting to set up a bank account in Turkey for the US govt. to transfer money to.

to transfer that money back to the United States, where it started, i just paid 188 lira ($122). a few sheets of paper, 15 minutes of labor time, numbers rolling on servers in Istanbul and NYC.

"fee" is a self justifying linguistic nugget.

what are you going to do?

this was my third time in the bank, my third attempt to provide the right stream of numbers for the transfer to take place and only just before the transfer did that self justifying nugget appear.

the bank has the power in the situation. i'm given a few seconds to decide, customers rubbing close behind me, my gracious translator's time ticking away, the rolling eyes and exhalations of a frustrated bank clerk for whom "fee" is a magic and efficient explanation. don't hold up the teller. next customer.

what exactly am i buying with that $122? i would like someone to answer. the security of not having to transfer my bills physically. the ability to keep them in 0's and 1's, transferring through space-time as bits of heat precisely contained. how that is more comforting, i don't know.

what else are you going to do? that's all the bank has to count on when determining the fee of any transfer, hidden or otherwise. are you going to deal with customer service for an hour over a 5 dollar hidden fee? are you going to decide to take your wad of hundred dollar bills through 4 international airports with no insurance if something happens?

when the bank robs me my frustration is a crack in an otherwise seamless reality. on the other side are options full of creative justice.


no wonder we're so depressed.
no wonder we want to unleash by tossing bricks.

Today's Zaman

New Article here

georgia trip journal June 2-7

i am in Hopa, Turkey. out the window is the Black Sea. before that a row of semi-trucks. in the bathroom is Amca (uncle) T. i wonder if there are blood stains on my mattress from bed bugs.

the hotel lobby is painted pink. the hotel restaurant, just down the hall, plays Turkish rhythms on a keyboard, a man in a purple tie singing the notes, his adam's apple vibrating. a Turkish friend told me it would be difficult to find a hotel in Hopa without prostitutes.

in the restaurant there is a 200 gallon fish tank with nine fish. next to it, front and center, shining in the pale yellow walls and burgundy carpet are six women smoking and eating fruit. they look asian, georgian, russian, armenian, and turkish.

at tables next to the surrounding walls sit Turkish truck drivers. drinking enough so they can flirt or ask to dance or buy a drink.

i'm guessing the waiter serves as a pimp. I ask for a menu but there isn't one. i ask for a beer. Amca wants tea. we laugh at the situation, at the women, at the men, at the fish dying slowly with everything around it. some of the women get up to sit with the men who call them over or buy them a drink. one woman walks around the room shaking hands with everyone. i look at my hand and then at Amca, wondering if it will fall off before morning.

Amca and i drink without making eye contact and go back to our room. the bed sheet looks clean. i'll sleep well with the sound of trucks and engines turning, the smell of the Black Sea, the bass bumping from the restaurant.

----

in the morning we eat breakfast next to where the whores sat. talking on the phone to S while looking out on the Sea. internet cafe to finish my article. no woman no cry jamming from another computer. mildew smell in the cafe just like in the hotel, just like in the basement of my Grandpa's house when i was growing up. Marley can make you forget about anything. i'll get killed for one of these articles someday.

bus to Sarp. border town split with the formation of the Turkish Republic. the iron curtain/Kemalism. first taste of Georgian beer. first thing I notice is that the children are what i think of children here. 11 and 12, shaggy hair, long shorts and big colorful t-shirts. laughing and eating ice cream with friends. no parents in sight. turkish kids of the same age are working on the bus, selling something on the street, or in their school uniform smoking a cigarette, sitting under a tree in a circle, or being dragged around by their mothers.

our biggest problem will be finding a good exchange rate for our Turkish Lira. read Debord on the ride. a bus to Batumi. a mini van to Tiblisi. drunk 30 yr old next to me, sleeping face stuck between the seats in front of him, waking up and hollering at the driver to pull over so he can piss or puke (i wasn't watching). cracking open beers at our bus stops.

a woman who spoke Turkish helped us find a cab driver who helped us find a cheap hotel. i'm here after a cheap dinner from the supermarket: bread, cheese, salami. this is a hotel for boxers. there are two full-size rings in the middle of the hotel. georgian men look pretty built. i think the woman at the front desk could take me down in 3 rounds if she wanted. i'm keeping the gloves off.

----

Georgia is a poorer country than Turkey but it wears it's poverty w/out shame or self-consciousness. the dilapidated buildings are lit up and thriving. on streets in the poorest areas of town, where our boxing hotel is, women walk the streets alone at night. the streets are relatively clean. the people are friendly and we found someone to speak our language whenever we needed it. taxi drivers wear t-shirts.

the place falls apart beautifully. I want to live in that dilapidated apartment to prove that appearances are nothing. save on rent, buy more paint. they do stencil graffiti. they tie shreds of clothes and trash to the trees as decorations. in the side streets we hear opera singers and pianos. poking my head in windows i see easels and students with sketch pads.

----

we walked the street and found a bakery for breakfast. I accidentally deleted Amca's pictures trying to capture the art and feel of the street. an errant touch and those moments are gone. you didn't remember them because you had a picture. i literally erased his memory. he'll never forget it in that cafe when i told him i deleted his pictures though. just after he finished his coffee and that fried stuffed potato thing. better to break the news after he ate.

at the Marriott we took maps. found the old city and the bath houses, lots of churches, an Irish pub with a waitress who spoke English and explained the alphabet to us. she picked us a place to eat a real Georgian dinner. at the pub I had a bacon cheeseburger and a beer. pork on a menu again. I don't care that i'm eating at an Irish pub in Georgia.

more churches. they cross themselves when they walk by. I like the smell of incense. some of them chant. women drape a veil over their heads before entering. everyone lights candles.

we drank a beer and a coffee in the park. people watching. found the Georgian restaurant suggested to us. the sign and menu in Georgian letters. three university students helped us order, we asked them to sit down and eat with us. they told us the fear and uncertainty in Georgia last summer when Russia invaded. we ate fat dumplings and i finished half a bottle of wine.

----

i'm in a train car, in a sleeper room with Amca and two forty-year-old women, both teachers.

we are on a train from Gori, a town occupied by the Russian army in August '08. the machine gun spray still visible on all the buildings downtown. all the windows look new. they're rebuilding a destroyed bridge. they're removing mines from the surrounding areas.

Gori is the home town of Stalin. in the main square there is a twenty foot statue. outside the boarded up library is Stalin reading a book. in the main park you come out of the trees and see a reconstruction of his house. behind that is the Stalin museum (closed by the time we found it) and another statue. in the train station there is a Stalin statue too. if we looked harder we might have found more.

we are headed eight hours to Batumi. it is just past midnight. our train looks like it's from the 1940's. chugging slow and rough down the countryside.

in Turkey they would separate the men and women. no doubt. but here we're tossed in with two women in a sleeper car. there is a great trust of people in this culture. one of the women is listening to My Morning Jacket at the moment. she wasn't a fan of Dylan. she does like Stalin. Putin and Bush and Saakashvili are dogs, she says. she likes Obama.

they lifted their crosses and kissed them. they asked us if we were Christians. i don't like this topic. Amca said he was baptized and they think we're Baptists. i'm fine with that. the university students mentioned national polls showing religion as the most important thing in Georgian's lives.

----

awake, hungry, sweaty, stinking. i'm as far east as eastern Europe goes. i'd snap a picture out the window if i could. fog, rain, lightning, trees, the rushing water out a drainage canal under the tracks. early sunlight coming through it all.

it takes an acrobat to get up and down from the bunk, a miracle to open the door w/out waking anyone. the Georgian woman helped unlock the door, mumbling half asleep. I closed it behind me and found the toilet. i stood in the hall and watched the sky before the sun, the rain in the headlights of a vehicle that seemed always approaching, it's speed so close to ours. i determined i'd watch the sky light so slowly i wouldn't realize it. a romantic thought. interrupted by the train slamming to a stop, the cracked door sliding open hard and the Georgian woman cursing me out. i came back, closed the door, took my socks off and woke up an hour later. now. in the light. i think those are cornfields out the window.

----

i just boarded a bus from Trabzon to Erzurum. Society of the Spectacle and Snow in front of me. listening to The Sea and Cake. plenty of leg room. the women don't sit next to men in Turkey and certainly not the ones wearing scarves and long trench coats.

a boy behind me wears a “smoke it” shirt- on it a white boy w/ Jamaican cap on, joint hanging out his mouth. drug culture in Turkey is so hidden that I wonder if he thinks it's a cigarette.

the boy just sat down next to me. doesn't smell much like smoke of any kind.

coming back after a long trip, looking forward to a stretch and a shower. today breakfast at Hagia Sofia. a walk by the karadeniz. speed scrabble (pimple, laymen).

100 lira at the bar. 5 drinks. when is it okay to throw a brick? i asked a Spanish anarchist on the walk back.

i don't think i'll ever wear a man purse, no matter how much they look like holsters. i like pockets though. how much do i want a family to wave to me as i leave?

thought about death for the last half of this trip. in churches i didn't feel anything heavenly. i felt the work of dedicated communities focusing on immaculate construction. the purpose of life is to make something that doesn't die. the only just death is whatever you dream it to be. mine has always been warm and dark, w/out sadness or time.

i want to be a bud flowering a thousand years later without consciousness. i want to be trampled on by a tank and come back as particles in a potato. cooked and eaten by a refugee. a nutritious life force. we should eat only from the lands of the most egalitarian societies.

(footnote: i didn't take any of these pictures. in a half an hour i found stencil graffiti in Tbilisi, Stalin's statue in Gori, a train leaving Gori, a "wishing tree," hundreds of shots of the old town in Tbilisi, a Tbilisi church i think i was in, a shot of the border and sea in Sarp, and the website for the boxing hotel complete with pictoral evidence. Amca's memories are maybe not so important with this wealth of replacement memories online.)

new zaman article

just got back from Georgia. more on that later.

for now, an article published yesterday in Today's Zaman: here.

i got a deal to publish one a week for 4 straight. 

Today's Zaman

new article today in Today's Zaman.

, originally uploaded by tupbebek.

pieces of Doğubeyazıt

smells like shoe polish men
hacking and coughing. hacking and coughing

Fırat, 13, shine boy for four years- great English, stained hands, kind, could be a diplomat, a BMW salesmen, human rights lawyer.

boys standing by the fountain with their scales. my weight- 75 kilograms.
my sinuses keep the tissue boys employed.

iranian border- pic of us with Kohmeini in the background.
who would have thought

dolmuş ride back- Turkish guards pat down and search everyone with an iranian passport. us with u.s. passports- a puzzled look and a pat on the back, climbing back into the van.
if they would have let us in, would we have gone?
perception of iranian on bus next to me- really nice guy.
uninformed translation of billboard-
"welcome to iran. death to america"
-
Amca T's 4 theses on why Turkey is the U.S. in the 1950's (he should know, he was there)-
1. converse all-stars on every teenager
2. everyone smokes everywhere
3. machismo
4. nuclear family and womens' roles

touts. lots of touts. climbing the ruins. picking up a cow molar.

may day

some wild pics of may day in Istanbul, scroll down to see:
zaman

the article says it was less violent than years past. i think the molotov throwers were small in number, at the fringes of the demonstration. no action in Erzurum.

pigs don't ruminate

and so i don't have to worry about this:



in this god-fearing country. Allah hu akbar.

, originally uploaded by tupbebek.

, originally uploaded by tupbebek.

when speaking english turns you into a celebrity/freak

.
where are you from?
what is your name?
where are you from?


Diyarbakır, April 11th

seemed timely for me to pick up and turn to this page

In Plum Village in France, we receive many letters from the refugee camps in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, hundreds each week. It is very painful to read them, but we have to do it , we have to be in contact. We try our best to help, but the suffering is enormous, and sometimes we are discouraged. It is said that half the boat people die in the ocean; only half arrive at the shores in Southeast Asia.

There are many young girls, boat people, who are raped by sea pirates. Even though the United Nations and many countries try to help the government of Thailand prevent that kind of piracy, sea pirates continue to inflict much suffering on the refugees. One day we received a letter telling us about a young girl on a small boat who war raped by a Thai pirate. She was only twelve, and she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself.

When you first learn of something like that, you get angry at the pirate. You naturally take the side of the girl. As you look more deeply you will see it differently. If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy. You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate. But we cannot do that. In my meditation I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, I am now the pirate. There is a great likelihood that I would become the pirate I cannot condemn myself so easily. In my meditation, I saw that many babies are born along the Gulf of Siam, hundreds every day, and if we educators, social workers, politicians and others do not do something about the situations, in 25 years a number of them will become sea pirates. That is certain. If you or I were born today in those fishing villages, we might become sea pirates in 25 years. If you take a gun and shoot the pirate, you shoot all of us, because all of us are to some extent responsible for this state of affairs.

-Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

---
the passage above speaks to another time, in the mid-eighties, and the Thai village would necessarily be different from those in Somalia today, and it is not girls on boats being raped but hostages made out of sailors of international corporations, oil companies, and so on. but when looking at this money-maker story of the entertainment press (CNN, FOX, MSNBC), one in a more thoughtful world could speak of the conditions in Somalia without being scoffed at. the poverty, lawlessness, and violence there competes with Sudan, although forgotten by the press and university student aide groups. the fishing trade has been pirated by unlicensed international fishermen (the UN reports 300 million dollars worth of fish each year), and the corporate shipping industry has destroyed the ecosystem with toxic dumping. none of this justifies violence or hostages, but certainly the answer is not to invade Somalia, as wack-job John Bolton suggested last week. cooler heads certainly will prevail, but probably not to the extent of looking at Somali pirates as a cultural phenomenon, in a context, a product of their situation, one deserving much more than a military solution that "shoots us all."

in the life: teaching the war on terror

i haven't thought about 9/11 for a long time. but today the topic of my american cultural studies class was the war on terror, and i had to spend some time rethinking the events, fumbling with the definitions of terrorism and the strange metaphorical war the U.S.A has been involved in. the U.S. at war with an emotional state.

i had a guest in the class and after discussing definitions of terrorism and the war on terror, we discussed our experience of 9/11. i was sitting in a high school classroom, a senior, waiting to take a bus to work on cars all morning. after my guest told her experience we watched a clip of reactions to the attacks- no scenes of the flying planes, only the faces on the street looking up in teary eyed disbelief. i talked about how everyone knew someone who knew someone who died that day. the trauma was local. and i talked about the saturation of the image. the fact that the act--the plane crashing--was repeated while the country had it's eye on the building--that we watched as two towers crumbled--that this defined terrorism for us because it was so perfectly effective and run on a loop for weeks. the scenario for trauma could not have been greater.

i looked out at my class and saw students with tears in their eyes. i haven't felt emotional about the event since shock and awe, and it dawned on me that the vulgarity of that war, of our military response, the hubris of the Bush admin, the manipulation, has forever erased the feeling of tragedy and trauma i felt that day.

if i had played the events in reverse chronology, like i do when thinking of them normally, the disgust i feel for torture, ongoing secret prison camps abroad, and the self-righteous notion that we can bend history and culture with military force overshadows any of the pain i could feel about 9/11. looking both ways today makes me question how human beings can live through pain and trauma only to multiply it in the following months, even on people who felt sympathy for the attacks and mourned with the United States (as Afghanistan did).

as we moved on the students wiped their eyes and focused on the war, the deceit, the tactics that no one can honestly defend, and they quickly forgot about the faces on the New York street- the tack boards full of missing people signs, the businessmen covered in soot, the firemen looking up astonished. new scenes of tragedy- starving Iraqi children, babies dead on the side of a Bagdhad street, and brain-washed GIs plugging into "let the bodies hit the floor" replace what came before, anti-Americanism peaks, empathy and sadness replaced by hatred.

and i tried my best to explain: a traumatic event like none other witnessed in the U.S.- a vice president paranoid, carrying around a bio-medical suit and living secluded months under the mountains of Vermont, reading the daily security report and convincing himself that the U.S. might not see another day.

explaining the mentality of the Bush administration and how someone could carry out such clearly unethical actions is the same explanation i would use for students in the U.S. except in reverse. in the U.S. i might try to show Bin Laden not as devil incarnate but as a man living in a context, like many others, trampled on by foreign powers, trying to forge his religious, ethnic, and social identity and finding violence as the only outlet. there is no justification for the actions of either. but i want to identify the basis of there actions. what are the conditions that lead to such barbaric violence?

"Violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence."
Marshall McLuhan
(thanks stef)

a few students went on to discuss their beliefs that the U.S. plotted, planned, or knew about the attacks and let them happen. i hear the question a lot: did Bush plan the 9/11 attacks? part of the question is specific to Turkey where their Islamic belief is almost always moderate and peaceful. they denounce this violence as not Islamic because the concept is so far from their personal beliefs. but it also enforces a perception of the U.S. as evil. again, a similar stance only in reverse: while i might have to argue with U.S. students to convince them that Islam teaches peace and that maybe poverty and the will to create one's own society (concrete, rational motives) have as much to do with terrorism as religious fundamentalism (or perversion), here i have to explain openness in American government- the leaks no president can stop- the instability of the 9/11 conspiracy claims (not to mention the enormity of such a risk). --my mind slips and i hear both classes at once-- and it all fits a sort of polarization that Robert Fisk talks about:

"It's a strange thing that is happening now. The Americans want the world to know that the killers were Arabs. But they don't want to discuss the tragedy of the region they came from. The Arabs, on the other hand, do want to discuss their tragedy – but wish to deny the Arab identity of the killers. The Americans have created a totally false image of the Arab world, peopling it with beasts and tyrants. The Arabs have adopted an almost equally absurd view of the US."

we might be long past 9/11 now. and anything that will be said probably has been, but the foundations of these problems haven't gone anywhere.

flickr

pics are easier to load and handle on flickr, and while i'll keep posting some here, i'm going to add more there. right now i have some edited pics from Van and some new pics from Diyarbakır should be there soon.

here

Van- March 7&8

.
Van (pronounced sort of like "Wan") is a city in southeastern Turkey. it's known for a majority Kurdish population, an Armenian history, a famous castle, a lake monster, and white cats with one blue and one green eye that howl like little dogs.

our little soldier and tour guide for Van Castle:





a shot of Lake Van from an island (we came over on that boat on the far left):



some of the birds down by the shore on Lake Van:




a parade on International Women's Day:



.

yea

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in the life: bottles

.
so i've got bottles up the wazoo. i'm socialized, like most of us, to never throw a plastic bottle away. where i come from you learn the recycle rap in 4th grade and you can't get it out of your head anymore than you can stop the reoccurring nightmare where your music teacher grins her butter-yellow teeth at you, pounding on a piano with her fists, and you wake up screaming in horror in a cold sweat and complete darkness, turning on the light to brush your teeth once more and vowing to stop drinking so much tea and coffee.

strange. here are some pics of what this has become, seven months of bottled water because the tap water here makes me sick. come on green Erzurum, give these bottles another chance at life. how bout some recycling?

obstructing a pretty view (or improving, depending on your style):



in the office, stashed in a once empty cabinet:



neatly stacked next to the window behind my bed:



crowding my living room windowsill:



overflowing from behind the refrigerator:





footnote: i didn't buy the coke. it was given to me by a friend after a party where no one could finish such a large bottle and it was going to go flat. yes i had some of it. yes i felt guilty. coke kills, we know.

dirty

"So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity."

"...the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream"

Ani trip 4-14-09

.
2 weekends ago i visited Kars and from there an abandoned Armenian city named Ani. Ani has been built and occupied by Uratians, early Arabs, Armenians, Byzantines, Seljuk Turks, Kurds, Georgians, and Mongols. it has been captured, modified, respiritualized, subject to enormous building projects, and ultimately left in a state of decay. up until 2006, the site was difficult to visit and photographs were forbidden, mainly because of its proximity to the Armenian border.

the first buildings in this area were built sometime before the 5th century by the Uruatians and include what most believe to be a Zoroastrian Fire Temple. by the 11th century, there were over 100,000 people in the Armenian city, and it rivaled Cairo, Baghdad, and Constantinople in population and influence as a major trading route.

the ride from Kars takes about 45 minutes. four americans and an australian resembling dwight from the office packed into a small taxi. it was cloudy and after 2 hours it poured, but the trip was worth it and the weather added to the atmosphere of this mysterious city. we explored, climbed, and took a ton of pictures.

overhead view of Ani from the Armenian side of the border. the open square of land surrounded by walls at the bottom of the picture is Ani. to the right is a small Turkish town outside the walls of the ancient city:

above pic from the internet. below, my own.

looking up at the main dome in the church of Saint Gregory, 1215 AD:



church of the Redeemer, 1035 AD:



king Gagik's church of St. Gregory and surrounding rubble, 1001 AD:



the cathedral of Ani and the church of the Redeemer as seen from atop the minaret at minuchihir mosque (it was forbidden to climb up the minaret, making it irresistible to do so):



church of the Redeemer as seen from a second story window inside Ani cathedral.

Ani from tüpbebek on Vimeo.

a new thought on an age-old theme

.
the word for chicken in Turkish is tavuk.

strapped for food choices, i picked up a package of breaded patties, with a small chicken-like logo on them. i've seen the word piliç before. i cooked the patties, and ate. they had the consistency of tofu.

curious, i looked up piliç. chicken came up, but more specifically, chick, and pullet. i was eating very little chickens. genç tavuk. and it made me sad. i have a sympathy for animals, and small animals even more. already i'm eating lots of lamb and now i just digested a baby chicken.

strange and sad meats. the saga continues.

Trabzon- January Trip- Sümela Monastery

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posting something from January in March is just one of many signs that this blog is behind, struggling to catch up, stay relevant, stay interesting. well, here goes:

wandering in the deep wilderness of North-Eastern Anatolia sometime in the late 4th century two Athenian priests thought they saw the Virgin Mary in a cave. that cave happened to stand on a cliff looking over the Altındere Valley. through conquests, emperors, and sultans, Sümela monastery grew and was abandoned, and now it stands as an inspiring historical site. after 40 minutes of driving uphill alongside pine trees and mountains, this greets you on the road:


in the falling snow, we climbed from the summit up a slick path and the monastery appeared out of the snow and fog:



climbing further still, we reached the top and had a look inside. i began thinking about what life was like here, in the 4th century, and in the 5th, in the 12th and the 19th, each year of life here building or destroying the monastery, painting biblical frescos after one re-conquest and ripping the figures eyes out with the next. like most sites in Turkey, Sümela monastery is physical proof of the tradition and perseverance of mystic struggle.

...

zombies

"the zombie ideas have won"

hear the 2008 noble prize winning economist explain how were all doomed: Democracy Now!

Today's Zaman

here's another article published in the Turkish daily newspaper: article

currency XXXchange

1.80 lira-dollar, march 9th. record.
september- 1.26 lira-dollar

the ecstasy of economic communication

grab a translator (thanks!)
to the bank, grab a number, 3938, wait 23 minutes. 20 100 dollar bills.

to the car, to the street. they don't have enuf lira. ha.

let's buy suits!

let's joke about it!

to a tea house with a soccer coach-
to his knife salesmen uncle-
to another exchange
1.80, 1.79, 1.785
XXchange ticking away
knife salesmen cuts a deal!
1.80!
3600 lira
to the bank, grab a number, grab, grab grab

thismandonwantto

thisboydonwantto
turnthelightson
makespace
thinkofartisticwaystoeatpopcorn

thatmoldedchunksnowisawave
thatrustedplaygroundisaplayground
iamchasingacatandwelaugh
iambeatingatrashcan

turkish-american haiku

-----
van canavarı
van canavarı!
avcılarız!
-----
çekirge, hayat
çekirge, hayat.
sessızlık

that is:

van monster
van monster!
we are hunters!

grasshopper, life
grasshopper, life.
silence

the turkish burt reynolds?

Orhan Baba!

airport fantasy (clean edit)

5am, 1.31.08
i want to live in an airport where everyone leaves their shoes off!
i want an airport with bare feet and free davidoff cigarettes!
i want an airport where the advertised string men become eunuchs at the metal detector!
carrying their dead genitals in fanny packs, or man purses, or dwarf shopping carts!
i want an airport with abandoned luggage and genitalia everywhere!

cherry bombing GW red white and blue in every bathroom stall!
smoking colorful shirts in my airport!
if you're caught wearing a scarf in the t-shirt climate control corridor, looking but acting like you're not looking at the barefoot sailors puffing fine tobacco, if you push your duty free cart with one hand because it is too dwarfishly quaint but your duty is too ghoulishly heavy for fine perfumed hands, my airport has a bucket of fishheads in a dunking stall, and we hope you vomit!
i want an airport where the kids play soccer on the conveyor belts!
a goal up the down wins!
show off your travel stamps in my airport and we'll sodder your ass cheeks together!
no phone calls!
talk to the children and try a salad!

if kids tire of soccer then welcome automatic disco karokee floor!
you must sing satisfacation, especially if you don't know english, you can pick the next song!
there is no prayer room between hugo boss and burger king, pick between your consumption and your god already!
no you may not talk about when you're going to invest or about how things hopefully turn for us as if by us you didn't just mean you, not on the disco floor, especially not there, you'll get your knee caps pulverized with a cricket stick, snotty pine-muck!
everyone salutes to those who mop the floors, and not cause they have to!
we lose your bags and strip search you for your own good!
.

addiction

.
admitting an addiction is hard. but i was thinking i'd have at it here, since i haven't found anything else worth writing about, and i want to keep up the blog, even while i toy with the idea of ending it here, focusing on writing in other forums.

so here is where i admit that last night, walking to my office, i was arguing with Lou Pinella about his lineup. how can last year's manager of the year still put Soriano in the lead off spot? Soriano has to adapt to being where he belongs in the order--somewhere 3-5. he strikes out too much and his reocurring leg injuries limit his stolen bases. mentally he says he likes leading off, but that will change after his first first-inning grand slam and his better RBI production, no doubt. so, why can't you just get with it Lou!

and i stop myself. why can't i think of something more productive. why do i care about the acquisition of Milton Bradly, the release of Kerry Wood, and whether or not Ramirez has an adequate back-up at 3rd?

i nag my mother for reading so much people magazine and caring about Brad and Angelina and their stange-named children. but what's the difference. here i am with my own meaningless bits of knowledge, checking out Aaron Miles' OBP in my free time.

i watch basketball less often, but might justify it by saying that i participate in the sport. but i haven't played baseball since 8th grade and even then i could barely make contact. and at one time my addicition to the Chicago Cubs was much more social. i was around friends who could debate lineups and talk about yesterday's game, but why am i looking up the box score for spring training in a country where noone know the rules of the sport? i haven't had a baseball discussion since i've been here.

and that's why it's an addiction. i know it's bad for me. i might as well be checking up on individual congressional votes, learning in time more representatives than baseball players. but there has always been a consitency to my Cubs fandom. no matter what a year or day brings, i could be content with a Cubs victory. i could stay hopefull for the next year, watching for trades and free-agent signings. perhaps i'm keeping my knowledge up for the day i come back, something that, despite the different directions our lives take, i can always talk about with friends back home.

but at the end of the season, at the end of a cubs game, and when i shut down the computer after researching the Cubs, i'm always let-down, disapointed, a bit shameful. i'm disgusted by the player's huge contracts and the time and money everyday people sacrifice for the sport. i wish we had the same commitment to things that really mattered. but maybe that's the point of entertainment in our lives, an escape, a competition that has no significance.

and here i am not knowing why i wrote about it. maybe this is a call for an intervention. maybe i'm just bored. maybe i'm ashamed that i just looked up the latest spring training game online. maybe i'm reminiscent of a summer day, dozing off in the middle innings at home. or maybe it's because as soon as i can suck it up and post something stupid, i have the motivation to write something interesting on the blog.

back

.i just noticed that i haven't posted anything in over 20 days.

excuse me for that.

in the meantime i had other forms of contact with most the people this blog was originally intended for. and i thought of posting different things at home but didn't have much time or desire to be up here writing. and now, still a bit jet lagged and needing to prep for a new semester, i don't have the will to produce interesting writing.

if i was writing though, this is what it might be about:

• uncollected airport musings
• this semester's goals
• pork as strange meat
• take back nyu and liberal youth response to activism
• why John Yoo, David Addington, Alberto Gonzalez, and Dick Cheney should be in jail with life sentences
• mass participation pillow fights

final trip journal-long train home

.maybe it's fitting to post this just before leaving the country to another home, maybe an expression of my lack of home or multiple homes.


12.14.08
sunday, 6pm
-just stepped onto the train and into my seat- happy to know that my body will make its way back from where it came. i'm sitting across from 2 young men- right across- in seats facing each other- two sets of legs for each quantity of leg room- hardly developed for the comfort of international strangers on a 23hr ride. to go with it a strange and maddening frequency is present all around me and my new friends look around curiously for its source. if nothing else, the company proves that i am not the only one. i'm eyeing the seats around me. i need an upgrade in comfort.

630pm
on my way- ripped ticket, some thousand km of crawling transportation behind me. a new friend arrived in the meantime, making this a tight fitting foursome. no seatback table to write on, i'm cramped up- 2 books, a notebook, and a manuscript in my lap, my camcorder around my neck, the only thing i can't bear to lose. the young man in front of me, Mustafa, speaks some English and so our physical situation has become slightly more comfortable in conversation. something hit me in the stomach, the throat, hearing his phone call, hearing the verb for eat, thinking he is talking to his mother at home, in Sivas, some 15hrs away, talking about what he would eat after his travel. and the feeling was the memory of me doing something similar once upon a time, on trips back from Ohio or Southern Illinois. the feeling's amelioration came with a familiar face, the çay man i spent 34 hrs with on the way to Istanbul, strolling through the aisle again, seeing me and sharing a moment of confusion- you, again, you can't be serious.

645pm
w/ the lack of leg room, i'm resigned to let them lay in the aisle and being right next to the bathroom and exit, they interrupt a steady stream of passengers. passengers interrupt my recline. the possibility of sleep or comfort on this trip dims, although i might just walk back to Ray's cafe (that moving diner) throw down something and pass out in that relatively comfortable booth.

810pm
warm after soup and çay in Ray's restaurant car where i'll stay as long as i feel welcome. my nails are longer than they've been in years. my beard overgrown, my hair a mess like always, as i look at myself and the darkness beyond the window. its only been 10 days of travel, but the distance and time spent on the move make it feel like a month.

12.15.08
monday, 515am
i'm growing impatient with this terrible ride.

635am
Sivas all covered in snow, moons and stars fading. the best and worst of a country down the train line.

715am
when i was young- a boy's age- a school day snowed out- i'd think of it all and create my next monster- he carried himself from one white object to another with a small but critical ability to leap. it could lead him anywhere on a snow day- here, especially in my living room, next to the fire- all that snow on the porch, through the window, the porcelain snowman on the mantle, the whiteness of the pages lying in front of me. in me, this skin a whiter shade.

425pm
i'm not sure if that sound is the train car rubbing against the packed snow or a dog being beaten to death in the car ahead of mine. neither would surprise me. almost home.

my last class of the semester

-
the key for the computer cabinet is missing again, 5 minutes to class, an hour of presentations with power point to get to. some panicked students, i try my best to stay calm. the key finds itself, probably in a student's bag or pocket from last week. now the projector isn't working again, it flickers out and shows a blue screen, then it's back again. it looks stable, but fusses out, and then back. we start class hoping it stays up.

a student i call the spokesperson because he's a bit older and speaks for the class enters the room, clicks off the light, and presents a candle-lit cake. the class sings happy birthday to a student who sits at the back of the classroom. i can't remember if it was in english or turkish. cake and pastries are passed around. the students are taking pictures. after 5 minutes or so i quiet them down, relatively quiet, and we start.

the same presentations, some good, some could use work. i'm glad it is the last week. this class has been a student-centered experiment that failed in most ways. the 4th presentation of the night, a student brings a friend up to play McCartney's Yesterday, turning down the lights first, a slide show of hippies young and old playing in the background. the spokesperson clicks on his lighter and sways with the music. some students sing along. everyone cheers after the final line. the presentation is about 60's counterculture.

now 2 students in hippie garb come to the front of the class, and when the presenter starts talking about drug culture the spokesperson comes up with a bag of goods. some herb as fake pot, orbitz gum as fake hits of acid. he is the dealer, rolling joints and distributing. later the presenter talks about the symbolism of flower power while handing out flowers to the class. at the end of the night, we take class pictures. and i realize how much i'm going to miss these classes when i'm gone. the element of surprise each class brings, the ability for certain students to rise above the monotony and really get into a topic, and how much my mood can swing in a class.
-

MLK

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

i want to post some bits of his speech "Beyond Vietnam- Time to Break the Silence" for its relevance to our times:

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
...
This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
...
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
...
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

war scenes

--
For the last 23 days I've come home every night for more news on Israel's war on Gaza and the Palestinian people. Burnt into my memory are the white phosphorus blasts, like upside down fireworks, shot over Gaza households; children and old women, blood streaming down their faces, treated in the hallways of hospitals with no free beds or rooms; Israel's military spoke people and their mechanical chain of responses: "Hamas is a terrorist organization. Hamas fired rockets. Hamas hides under civilians."


The numbers tell part of the story. Since Dec. 27th: at least 1,300 Palestinians killed, at least 850 of them civilians (civilians are women and children in these numbers- every male over 18 is cynically labeled non-civilian), at least 400 Palestinian children killed. While the cease fire is officially called, they continue to pull more bodies from the rubble of Gaza's 4,000 destroyed buildings. In the same amount of time, 13 Israelis have been killed. 3 civilians, 10 military, and of those 10 military 4 were killed by their own tank fire. Hamas rockets accounted for only 4 deaths, 3 civilians and one soldier, meaning Israel's own tank fire has killed as many Israelis as Hamas rockets since Dec. 27th, the start of this so-called war.

Hamas rockets can't justify this death toll, which includes the bombing of hospitals, UN schools, and UN humanitarian storage facilities in Gaza (the later 2 sites both presenting clear evidence that no Palestinian combatants were using them).

The role of the United States in these events has been shameful. In the first week of Israel's campaign, the U.S. blocked security council resolutions calling for a ceasefire. Then on January 8th the U.S. was the only security council member to abstain from the vote. Afterwards, now in clear defiance of the U.N., Israel increased the intensity of its warfare, counting on U.S. approval against international opinion and international law.

On January 11th the U.S. House passed resolutions (390 to 5) supporting Israel's right to defend itself. That is, for the 4th largest military force in the world (Israel) to carry out war in one of the most densly populated areas of the world with a civilian population of 1.5 million, 55% of which is children, in search of homemade rockets. Defense indeed.

Real defense of Israel would mean calling for an immediate ceasefire, one that Hamas had been observing at least as well as Israel before the beginning of Israel's recent campaign. Before the July 2008 ceasfire, Hamas had shot 179 rockets per month into Israel. After the ceasfire, in the four months before Israel sparked agressions again, Hamas was shooting an average of 3 rockets a month.

Both Hamas and Israel deserve our condemnation, not only for their lack of regard against civilian populations (they both are and have been committing war crimes), but also for their short-sighted politics. If the goal of Israel was to weaken Hamas, they've done the opposite. If the goal of Hamas has ever been to represent or protect the Palistinian people, then their tactics have failed and continue to fail.

But the international community and the U.S. (they are distinct here because they have been more seperate than ever on this issue in particular) already agree on the condemnation of Hamas. Meanwhile the list of Israel's atrocities are covered in U.S. media and politics (this seemingly includes Obama) by the words "Hamas, terror, rockets." More than just the civilian death toll, they gloss over the barring of international journalists to the Gaza strip by Israel and Israel threatining the safety of international aide workers on multiple occasions.

Now we have a cease fire. And for peace the U.S. needs to be involved in rational humanitarian dialogue. This includes moving as far as possible from Bush's simple proclamations, like his Jan 15th farewell nod to Israel and Iraq: "Good and Evil exist in this world, and between the two, there can be no compromise."

Against that quote I want to end with Fares Akram, a Palestinain journalist whose father, an unmarked civillian, was killed on January 3rd:

"My grief carries no desire for revenge, which I know to be always in vain. But, in truth, as a grieving son, I am finding it hard to distinguish between what the Israelis call terrorists and the Israeli pilots and tank crews who are invading Gaza. What is the difference between the pilot who blew my father to pieces and the militant who fires a small rocket? I have no answers but, just as I am to become a father, I have lost my father."
--