London Beirut

So, I got arrested at the demonstration in Beit Ummar yesterday. Beit Ummar is a village between Bethlehem and Hebron where Israeli Settlers have stolen a huge portion of the Palestinians land. This was the same village where two weeks ago a soldier threw me on the ground and stepped on my face. Yesterday it started off the same: we marched from the village through the olive grove and down toward the settlement to meet a line of soldiers blocking the path. Moussa of the popular committee said a few things about how it was their land and the settlers had no right to be there, the soldiers shot sound bombs at us, and a Palestinian man near the front got arrested. It all happened so quickly, within about two minutes probably, that I had no idea a Palestinian had already been arrested until they set me down next to him at the top of the hill. All I saw was my friend Marie on the ground shouting. Apparently she’d gone up to talk to the Palestinian man and the soldiers decided to arrest her too. I approached to take pictures but quickly decided I would be more help on the ground (maybe I’ll never be a real photographer… I prefer being a part of the action.)

I just went up to talk to her. Puppy piling hadn’t really occurred to me because she’s an Israeli and wouldn’t get it so bad anyway. But then they started trying to drag me away, and they shot Marie straight in the face with pepper spray, Ron and May who where there on the ground also got shot, and we all just grabbed onto each other for dear life. Marie started screaming at that point: she got it the worst of all of us, and was shaken up for the rest of the day (10 more hours before we were released). She begged for us to let her go, hoping the soldiers would take her to a medic, but of course they didn’t. At that point May and I (though May was more indisposed) realized we had a problem because our good friend Ron was stuck there with us, but he’d already been arrested twice, and had signed a form saying he wouldn’t come to Beit Ummar. Ron was holding on to my leg and offered to let me go, but I said I wanted to stay hoping we could prevent him from being arrested somehow. The people we’ve talked to since have said that it was extremely unusual for them to use pepper spray the way they did, and that they RARELY arrest so many people as they did yesterday. I don’t think it was a bad assumption to make that we could help him by staying.

Anyway, the soldiers dragged me out from under him and I went limp so they had to get about three people to pick me up and carry me.

I started screaming that they were hurting me (I got some nasty bruises on my arms and legs), and the soldier with the pepper spray canister came up to me and offered to share some if I didn’t stand up, so I reluctantly stood up. I only got a tiny bit of the spray on me before (up my nose, incidentally) and that was quite enough. So they brought me up to the settlement, forcing my head down at the gate so I wouldn’t look at the settlers (several of them just standing around, there for the show.) They set me down next to Marie who was writhing on the ground. She’d gotten pepper spray all over her body. Her face was still bright orange. I tried to help her, but there wasn’t much I could do at that point except give her tissues and let her squeeze my hand to the breaking point. Soon they brought up Ron and May, who were also writhing and blinded. The soldiers told us “it’s ok, the pain only lasts 20 minutes.” I was the only one not blinded so I tried negotiating, asking for something like milk to neutralize the acid. They just laughed and teased us. They did dump water on their heads to help, but we found that that only made it worse. The only things that helped were tissues and the breeze. After about 10 minutes Marie was still writhing and May was beginning to hyperventilate (Ron was badass, he got a faceful too but managed to stay composed). Marie asked me to tell her a story to take her mind off it, so I told her about the Rachel Corrie trial on Thursday. Then I ran out of things to say and started reciting Howl by Allen Ginsberg (I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness; starving, hysterical, naked…)

That’s when the soldiers decided to remove me from the group. They drove me and the Palestinian man to the army base inside the settlement, and had us kneel in front of a wall. The palestinian man was handcuffed and I wasn’t. He’d been blindfolded immediately and put in the back of the army truck; they put me in the front seat. I asked what he was charged with and they said throwing rocks, which I hadn’t seen. Even at that point I thought it was extremely unlikely. They asked what I was doing there, making trouble. I asked what they were doing there, protecting illegal settlements. They said I was naive, protecting terrorists. I said I’d never met a terrorist. All the Palestinians I have met are wonderful people. I quit talking to them. When they put us down at the wall, they told me I didn’t need to kneel if I didn’t want to– I could put my back to the wall– but I decided to just sit there the way they made him sit. I didn’t want to look at the soldiers anyway.

After a few minutes they brought three shebab with their hands tied and made them kneel by the wall too. One of them got his head banged into the wall while being pushed down. They were so young looking. Later we found out they were 15, 16, and 17. They looked like babies. I just wanted to hug them. It was so sickening to see them treated that way. Finally they blindfolded me too. After a few minutes they set another person down next to me. It was Marie, still shaking but a little better looking. A few minutes later they brought Ron and May. We sat there against the wall for a long time while the soldiers behind us chatted and made jokes in Hebrew.

Eventually they dragged us into another vehicle, still blindfolded, to drive us to Tel Rumeida prison. May started screaming and crying because her blindfold was tied so tight it rubbed more pepper spray into her eyes and she wanted to get it off. She begged them to take it off, reached up to tug at it and they handcuffed her. I think that was the point when one of the soldiers shouted, “welcome to Israel!”

I was sitting next to a shebab on the way there. I asked him if he was ok, and he said, “no. My hand.” I tried to ask what he meant, and if he’d been wounded. but he didn’t understand my english and I couldn’t understand arabic. When we arrived at the prison they put us all in the same room at a table and took our blind folds off. Then we saw that two of the shebab were nearly in tears because their hands had been tied so tightly. We implored that the soldiers untie them but the soldiers didn’t want to. We kept insisting until a higher level police officer came in and told them to cut the ties. Their hands were swollen and red.

The next 8 hours we mostly spent just sitting at that table listening to the soldiers make jokes at us and tell us to shut-up. When they caught palestinian talking, they’d push him in his chair to face the corner. The man and the oldest shebab spent most of the night in corners. Of course we didn’t get such harsh treatment. A few times the soldiers tried to converse with us about how naive we were for being activists. Ron called them all arse-holes and they didn’t know what that meant. At one point while they were trying to tell us all Palestinians are terrorists again, we mentioned the one-and-a-half-year-old Palestinian baby who was killed in Silwan by tear gas last week. A soldier said, “well that is bad.” Then laughed and added, “but now he’s up in heaven with his 72 virgins!”

One by one, they took us aside and interrogated us on audio tape. The interrogation itself wasn’t hard at all. In fact it was ridiculous. We obviously hadn’t done anything. We knew there was proof in video that we hadn’t done anything. The officer told us each that at the beginning of the demonstration, a soldier had come out to show everyone a paper and map saying we were on a closed military zone and that we had to leave, and that people had taken pictures of video of it so we obviously knew. Upon comparing stories later we found that all of us had just laughed at hearing that. Ridiculous. We were arrested within 5 minutes. There wasn’t even TIME for them to tell us we were on a closed military zone. The officer asked me what I was doing in Israel, and I said taking pictures of the occupation. He said there is no occupation because the west bank is in Israel and Palestine doesn’t exist. I displayed my palestinian flag wrist band and he pulled back like I’d splashed water in his face or something. What a whack-job.

Unfortunately, the first Palestinian arrested had a mental disability, and they persuaded him to sign a confession saying he had thrown rocks at the military. This is impossible. He was arrested before any of us, and long before any rocks were thrown. As far as I know he’s still in prison, but I’ll keep you updated if I hear more about his status.

They decided to let Marie, May, and I go after we signed papers saying we wouldn’t go to the Beit Ummar demonstration for 15 days. We got off EASY. Ron had to spend the night at the prison and go to court this morning because it was his third arrest. We think he won’t be deported, but might be banned from the west bank.

They said as we left that the two youngest shebab would probably be released that night, and that the older one might have to go to jail because there was video of him throwing rocks. Again, I’ll let you know when I hear more about their status.

I’m in Palestine for the next month-and-a-half volunteering with the ISM, and I’ve been here three weeks already. I’ve written a lot down, but not blogged it yet. The amount that’s happened and that I have to write is intimidating; I’ve filled up half a moleskin already.

My location for the most part will be in Al-Khalil, or Hebron. This morning in Hebron two Palestinians were killed in a raid. One of them, a 24-year-old named Mamoun Al-Natshe, had a cousin who I met on the bus today. He was very sweet and helped us find a taxi back home (we’re a little slow and can’t seem to remember the name of our neighborhood.)

This afternoon we were in Bil’in at the weekly demo. Hamde Abu snapped a lovely photo of me looking terrified at the teargas.

That’s the second demo I’ve gotten scared at (though we go to them twice a week). In Beit Ummar 2 weeks ago we had to de-arrest a palestinian, and in the struggle a soldier threw me on the ground and stepped on my face and arms. It was creepy the way he stepped on me: not like he’d just tripped, but rather like he wanted to display his dominance. If it had been accidental I’m sure it would have hurt, but he did it so gently and slowly it felt very conscious. Anyway, I fell in a pit of ash where the Shebabs had made a fire, so I was covered in ash for the rest of the day. Someone told me they started calling me something like cinderella in arabic.

On thursday we went to the trial for Rachel Corrie. It was all in Hebrew, of course, but Cindy Corrie was very sweet and told her translator to speak so that K and I could hear.

There were about 8 other internationals there. We assumed they were there in solidarity with the Corries, like us. We told a couple of them we were ISM, and gave them some personal information we later regretted when hours later we concluded one or more of them worked for the police. First oddness: the guy who’d been flirting with K handed a note over me to an older man that said “she’s with the ISM . . .” and some more I missed. Old guy wrote some notes back and was more careful that I didn’t see them, and flirty boy crumpled them immediately. At the break flirty boy started spouting some predictable Zionist garbage. About 5 other internationals joined them and bombarded us. They were just there studying journalism; only came because it was a significant case. None of them came back after the break. On the way back in, that sketchy note passing older guy said “Hi Xxxxxxx!!!” But I hadn’t told him my real name…? And afterward K mentioned that she’d noticed him using a concealed tape recorder. She thought he was just taping the trial but maybe he was recording our conversations? Maybe we’re just being paranoid, but Israeli Security has been known to use spies before. Weird, right?

The judge ruled that all of the significant witnesses will be interrogated behind screens so that no one, not even the family can see their faces. Cindy was insulted and upset to learn this. They won’t let her look into the faces of the men who killed her daughter.

Sometimes we’d look up at Cindy’s face and see that she was working hard at not crying. I wrote down, “It’s weird how detached we can get from what’s actually going on here. Now I’m crying too.” It was incredibly upsetting sometimes. The translation difficulties at least gave us something to concentrate on.

By tomorrow night we should be able to get a transcript. It’ll be in Hebrew, but I’m sure someone will translate it promptly. I can’t give much of a summary because I only caught about every other word, but with what I heard and what Cindy wrote in her notepad I was able to piece together some things. The first witness was the man in charge of the investigation. Very cocky and apathetic. Didn’t seem to think it was a problem that they hadn’t interviewed any Palestinian witnesses, or that they didn’t have ANY witness statements on video, despite the obvious value of such video. The second witness was the commander of the second bulldozer. There were two bulldozers at the scene, and this was the one that didn’t kill Rachel. Most of the time all he had to say was that he didn’t remember or couldn’t see anything (despite the fact that his JOB as commander was to be the eyes for the vehicle.) He couldn’t remember if she was standing or sitting, but otherwise had a vivid description of what she looked like under the rubble. He said apologetically that they didn’t know she was an american until later: if it had been a Palestinian there wouldn’t have been a problem, right? They played a recording of the radio communication between the bulldozers. The witness couldn’t/wouldn’t identify the speakers. Immediately after Rachel was hit someone said in arabic, “did you kill him?” and someone replied “God rest his soul.” Does that sound like an accident to you?

More has happened since I’ve been here, and much more will happen before I leave, so I’ll try to post frequently.

Salam,
London

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

–Sartre

Atheistic existentialism, which I represent, states that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man . . .

If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing . . .

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself . . . man is responsible for what he is.

. . .when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men. . . I am responsible for myself and for everyone else. I am creating an image of man of my own choosing. . .

The man who involves himself and realizes that he is not only the person he chooses to be, but also a lawmaker who is, at the same time, choosing all mankind as well as himself, cannot escape the feeling of his total and deep responsibility. . .

For every man, everything happens as if all mankind had its eyes fixed on him and were guiding itself by what he does. . .

When a military leader takes upon himself the responsibility for an attack and sends a number of men to their death, he chooses to do it and at bottom he alone chooses. No doubt under a higher command, but its orders, which are more general, require interpretation by him and upon that interpretation depends the life of ten, fourteen or twenty men. In making the decision, he cannot but feel a certain anguish. All leaders know that anguish. It does not prevent their acting, on the contrary it is the very condition of their action, for the action presupposes that there is a plurality of possibilities, and in choosing one of these, they realize that it has value only because it is chosen. Now it is anguish of that kind which existentialism describes, and moreover, as we shall see, makes explicit through direct responsibility towards other men who are concerned. It is not a curtain separating us from action, but is part of action itself.

When we speak of “forlornness” – a term Heidegger was fond of – we mean only that God does not exist and that we have to face all of the consequences of this. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain kind of secular ethics which would like to abolish God at the least possible expense . . .

The existentialist, on the contrary, thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven disappears along with Him; there can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. . . Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. . .

There is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom. . .

man is condemned to be free. . .

man, with no support and no aid, is condemned at every moment to invent man. . .

The moment the possibilities I am considering are not rigorously involved by my action, I ought to disengage myself from them, because no God, no scheme, can adapt the world and its possibilities to my will. . .

Quietism is the attitude of people who say, “let others do what I can’t do.” The doctrine I am presenting is the very opposite of quietism, since it declares, “There is no reality except in action.” Moreover, it goes further, since it adds, “Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life.” . . .

The existentialist will never consider man as an end because he is always in the making. . .

There is no universe other than a human universe, the universe of human subjectivity. . .

That man is not closed in on himself but is always present in a human universe, is what we call “Existentialist humanism.” Humanism, because we remind man that there is no lawmaker other than himself, and that in his forlornness he will decide by himself.

Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”

This video is based on a video I made in the 7th grade with my VCR, that a friend accidently recorded over (Lauren Faith!). But here it is again! Way easier to make with a computer!

when I was an undergrad.

It was for an aesthetics class. My teacher didn’t like it.

Please suggest a caption for this image. Nothing dirty.

[Numbers 1-26 are translated to letters (a=1), letters are added together according to order of operations except where punctuated ( :=multiplication, _=subtraction, ∅=x-variable), words have assumed parenthesis around them.

Every stanza is a derivative of the stanza before it.]

5.
(we naked) : ∅^your_point
is : ∅^we_cold
(wind and) : ∅^{diction_changed}
(to new) : ∅^time_zen
(night is) : ∅
our only chance to

4.
(grow new) : (buddha_cobra) : ∅^{mother_saying}
(rapidly we_love_cinder) : ∅^cobweb_time
(mistress to blue) : ∅^{flicker_puddle}
(is not seagull) : ∅
wing or

3.
[seashells : (peeling_night) is a spoonful of fractaling] : ∅^{glances_sung_at_me}
(glitter our military thought) : ∅^what_wind
(we thought we needed our motors rushed I) : ∅
_would be the observatory on

2.
{[(dilated threading) : (we_a)]_counterfeiter_butterflying} : ∅^{stretch_out_a_bone}
(motorcyclist covering pine covering country with no sweater and) : ∅
(we forgot it for him) : (thunder_her_boast)

1.
[(legs imprisoned for the dictionary) : of thought] : ∅
(your_death_is_growing_dying_still) : there

0.
lies : (love with fever)

Steve Salerno from Skeptic Magazine has written an article on “positive thinking” and how it makes people stupid. One section discusses the self-esteem-based education movement of the 1970’s, which celebrated mediocrity by lowering grade standards and ditching honor roles. Some students were given more recognition if they were below the standards, with the thinking that, “to make at-risk kids excel, you first had to make them feel optimistic and empowered.” Instead it’s created a culture of individuals that will be satisfied regardless of their failures. “If the school system failed to imbue students with genuine self-esteem, it was more successful at fomenting narcissism.”

Right. Anyone raised under this systems knows that. The idea that you can do it is only motivating when you think other people can’t do it. If anyone can be president, why would you want to be? That is hard work!

I was wondering if I’m Narcissistic (actually, I’ve always wondered that after being raised to go into theatre), but I took USA Today’s version of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and scored way lower than average. I win at low self-esteem!

(Question 27 is weird. You choose between:

A. I have a strong will to power.
B. Power for its own sake doesn’t interest me.

Is this an intentional reference to Nietzsche?)

The Skeptic article reminded me of an article on child prodigies that I read in the Encyclopedia Britannica’s Medical and Health Annual from 1989 (I was cutting out pictures in it). One thing surprised me:

It is difficult to imagine that such a gift could possibly founder, much less deliberately be set aside. Nevertheless, this, in fact, seems to be more the rule than the exception. . . as children, prodigies never produce works of genius and, as adults, they may or may not pursue their careers.

.
Of course!

If you attain easy success as a child for being mediocre-in-the-field–but a KID– what could drive you any further?

Praise at an early age is bad for everyone. Let’s start a pessimism-based education movement.

I just want this to go on record now, in case some physicist says this and solves that whole universe problem.

I have solved the universe!

There are 3 dimensions of time. (Some guy here says there are 2 dimensions which is supposed to be really controversial, but I’m saying he’s wrong and there are 3 dimensions.)

There could be some utility to this, because it could bring together Feynman’s multiple histories theorem in Quantum Mechanics and the 2nd dimension of “imaginary time” Stephen Hawking uses to calculate around black holes. The 2nd dimension is just real time that’s imperceptible, and the third dimension goes up into alternative histories.

We only see one dimension—the x-axis, eternity—but humans weren’t ‘created’ to understand the universe, and there’s no reason to assume we have the faculties to see everything that’s out there.

The y-axis could be made up of a continuum of perceivers, or subjects that can make quantum measurements and collapse a wave-function. What sorts of subjects can do that? People? Cats? Nebulae? I don’t think that’s been defined yet. But they can form an infinite continuum during any one instant along the x-axis. Anyone that could perceive this y-axis like we can perceive the x-axis would be omniscient at a given point.

(And how could there be a continuum of perceivers? We’re used to only thinking of one mind or perceiver at a time, but you can imagine a way to get over this like calculus was able to get over Xeno’s Paradox).

The z-axis could go off into Feynman’s multiple histories. This multiple histories model is a perfect way to explain the problem of superpositions in quantum mechanics, but I don’t like the way he has all histories except ours cancel each other out. (Too convenient, like Einstein’s cosmological constant which canceled out the gravitational effects of matter to allow for a static universe).

If you imagine every possible history as a different page in a book, stabbing through the book would be like stabbing along the z-axis.

Then, when you take all three dimensions of time together, it’s easier to imagine time having a beginning and end like a sphere, as Hawking argues it does. When there are zero observers and zero alternative histories you’ve made it to the north or south pole, and it doesn’t make sense to ask what time was like before or after that.

I don’t REALLY know if this would help with any deep calculations in finding the “theory of everything” but. The point is: trippy.

[This week I listened to an audiobook of Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell about 6 times, then a 13 hour lecture on the history of science, a 12 hour lecture on St. Augustine’s confessions, and a few hours on calculus. . . and an audio book of Slaughterhouse Five.

Spring Break = new model for the universe.]

I accidentally left the door to my apartment open today, and when I came back something like a large cat or a small bear ran out past me and jumped the fence. It was too dark to see. I don’t think there are any more bears in my apartment though.

I have been sleeping on a tabletop for a month with two mattress pads like this:

Real mattresses are for stupid.

“. . . a new theory suggests that SSRI antidepressants may also subtly alter the fundamental chemistry of love and romance, snuffing the first sparks between two people otherwise destined to become lovers, and preventing couples from bonding.”

RB of Orinda asks,

I don’t want advice from you.

Good point RB. Be sure to get that checked next time you go to the hospital.

No, guys. This is a great idea.

SEA KITTEN

this is my cousin:

RUSSIAN LIVEJOURNAL stole my poem. Summary: rats are stealing his sour cream and he hopes to scare them away with a message written in English. An old poem of mine is suggested.

post:
Begin one should from the fact that I eat sour cream … Recently, I explained that the office mice trampled to my sour cream… In order to remove mice from the sour cream, [my boss] deleted on the cover all original letters with the irreversible marker and wrote “Rat poison. Do not gorge!”

The raids of mice ceased. I was gladdened. … Today rats arrived into the office. Rats disemboweled the refrigerator and threw all that they calculated as not-food into the debris tank. My sour cream, as food did not descend.

…But somewhere scientists encounter the elementary particles in the wombs of their synchrophasotrons. Unclean czars of nature.
comment: Write in the Indian language … Not all mice in English understand.

reply: Write- that I can, but chances to fall into the language of mouse is small. Mice already have very much of the languages. In the previous refrigerator, by the way, visited mice. I even found them into my soybean milk.
comment:
“That man stole my sandwich.
I had it five minutes ago,
And I know
He’s always after my sandwiches.
So
He eyes me conspicuously
As I eye him back
Knowingly.
We make eye contact.
There’s a blatant connection.
Oh yes,
I’m on to him.
Oh wait, here it is.”

Lindsey Baggette
Eastlake High School
Grade 11
comment: Lesson to you: it is necessary to eat them hot, but not to place into some sweaty packet.

The company at London Bread have decided that this blog is now an advice column. Please send your lowly or heart-rendering questions to:

you.can.read@gmail.com

The theme for this column is existential angst or how to be as cool as dice.