In honour of ALL the ladies in my life... and Specially my lady Student-friend... who emailed the following and of course, All of YOUR lady friends and ladies in your lives...
| Hello
hello :) I thought I would let you know that I'm still keeping up with your blog, even on vacation here in Florida. I was joking with my aunt yesterday that the climate here is the natural climate for my blood. My family is all from modern day Turkey, where the weather is most definitely NOT like Canada hahaha My mood is happier, my skin is happier, my mind is happier, overall this weather is perfect for me. I'm almost halfway done that book I told you about, Alice's Piano, and I'm noting some disturbing parallels between the First World War, the Second World War, and today. It terrifies me to think that history is about to repeat itself. We're on the brink of another global disaster. I've always known that I'm a very sensitive person, I feel things too deeply. As I'm watching what's going on in the world, and drawing the parallels, it's shocking me to the core. I don't know how, after 100 years, people have not learned the damage that their -isms can cause. I'm not talking about uneducated people in un-visited villages in the jungles, I'm talking about the people who were once a part of the most educated race on the planet, Arabs. Their history is so rich, so enlightened, so much education and so many new discoveries came from these people!!!! Now, it's as if all of that never happened. Architecture, textiles, mathematics, art, literature, it's all been destroyed. It breaks my heart to see how far these amazing people have fallen. They were awe inspiring people, now all they inspire is terror. This can't possibly be what they want!!!! ... And the rest of the world? They aren't helping! I'm watching as the Aryan praising, racist, faithist [I am sure she means Evangelical and Catholic extremists], Hitler is returning to power in the United States...preparing for another mass deportation (don't worry, even though you're not Aryan I'm sure Canada will take you back). I'm seeing mass exterminations happening as the Christian Nazis have now "converted" [metamorphosed] to ISIS and their overzealous pride in Islam. I'm seeing the greatest powers of the world debating whether or not to help innocent people!!!!! It's all coming back, full circle. When I was sick, my cousin lent me one of his favourite books, "The Rock of Tanios". As I was reading it, I found it very enlightening as to the role of religion and the fall of the Arab culture. I'm not sure if you've read it, but if you haven't, you should.
***
 Just a synopsis... and a bit more...
At age 15, in 1836, Tanios, the illegitimate son of a Lebanese Catholic sheikh, turns completely white-haired, an omen that he must be a ``wise fool,'' or ``old-head,'' one who appears briefly to redress injustice in troubled times.
In this seductive, exotic novel, Maalouf (author of Leo Africanus) delineates a protagonist who is an endearing mixture of precocious maturity and naivete, of remorse and resolve. Tanios's adoptive father, Gerios, the sheikh's servile majordomo, rashly murders a prelate who had lured away Tanios's girlfriend for his own nephew. Terrified, Tanios and Gerios flee to Cyprus, where the wise fool is recruited by an English spymaster in a scheme to topple the Emir, a Middle Eastern tyrant whose agents entrap Gerios and have him hanged. Tanios, who displays last-minute leniency toward the Emir, embodies the spirit of justice tempered by mercy, an alternative to the cycle of revenge and violence that holds a fractious region in its grip; and so he gives modern relevance to a leisurely tale full of intrigue, twists of fate and seedy imperialist jockeying by the French, English, Turks and Egyptians.
The Turks, just completed the genocide of Armenians, control the region and Arabs (Egyptians) rebel against them... The French and English plot together and also rival each other to grab colonies in the Middle east...
Tanios is trapped in the feudalist- colonialist web... At times he is heroic... at times naive... as the feudalist-colonialist rivalry assumes yet another facet of religion... Christian and Muslim...
Feudalism... Colonialism... Christian... Muslim... and Tanios among them...
..........................
Amin Maalouf's The Rock of Tanios is the story of a boy from the past in the Catholic mountains of Lebanon. This is a place of myth, superstition, tribalism, feudalism, and loyalty, and ritual.
Tanois, born under dubious circumstances, to an sycophantic father and a beautiful mother, fights successfully for his education, and unsuccessfully for his true love. A betrayal forces him to flee from their small village of Kfaryabda, in Lebanon to Cyprus with his father.
When it is safe to return... he does, but things are worse. The story is extremely well written, and extremely Lebanese. I enjoyed it immensely. It is often about romance, often about something a bit deeper, like the search for identity, and struggle for sense. The undertone of the story is however sadly cliche'd. You have a feudal society because history dictates that you have one. Though it is shitty, people love it because they see that the alternative is colonialism. Bad colonialists... carrying the banner of "White man's burden..." Too bad he had to ruin such a good plot with such an annoying political message. That is of course not to say colonialism was good, it was one of the worst things that ever happened to humanity - that Europe decided it needed colonies. But, to show the evils of colonialism by romanticising what colonialism replaced is naive.
***
Now Lebanon is in danger of collapsing... The multi-ethic Lebanon may be swallowed by the Middle Eastern turmoil...
The Christians are safe in Lebanon for the time being... But all of Middle east is in turmoil and the ISIS-Jihadist monsters may yet destroy more before they collapse too...
Organized religion is ruining all of the Middle East... as my student-friend writes the Cradle of Western civilization... But greed has no limits...
Ross, the chaplain at my school and my friend, agreed with me that with the globalization of the economies... Greed was globalized too... and despite the might of organized religion... Religion itself retreated... and spirituality gave way to "profit and greed without borders..."
Ross brought up that phrase in one of our happy hours... and we definitely had one at St. Patrick's... Ross had Irish blood in him... But I suspect that the Irish blood was just a pretext to have a drink or two with me...
We had the drinks at St. Patrick's and during the our chat Ross brought up the phrase "profit and greed without bordered..."
I liked it and it remained with me...
|
Ross hated the sexist norms of society too...
He
always defended the downtrodden and got angry when facing
discrimination... He often mentioned the fact that women beauty
products are very expensive...
I
told him that tampons and the like are not beauty products but
necessities... But both of us agreed that it should be tax free...
Why tax women's hygiene products and exempt men's...? It did not make
sense for him and for me... and now to many people all over the
world...
Women
in Europe and North America are protesting and ask the removal of the
tax on women's hygiene and tampons...Check below... the tax on luxury caviar is less than the tax on tampons... It's ridiculously absurd... and I hope my other male student-friend will not write and attempt to justify it...!
The respective VAT (value added tax) rates of salmon caviar and tampons in Germany...!!!! This is the shame of patriarchal society... and male diktat...
EU leaders have agreed a deal that will allow the UK to scrap the so-called "tampon tax", British officials say... But Europe still has to verify...
Women protesting in Britain... and walking without tampons...!!!
... And in North America a woman says: "I use men's deodorant. Why? Because beyond the fact that I secretly love the smell of Old Spice Pure Sport, I refuse to pay a higher price for nothing more than marketing to my 'lady senses.' Before you brush me off as cheap or overdramatic, consider this: Gender-based pricing means women pay on average $1,351 more per year for the same products than man do................................................
Still in North America...
On the other hand, Sanders, her opponent at the Democratic primaries, yells and people get passionate with him... Clinton yells and people think [she's] yelling at them or she is mad...
Males are allowed to raise their voices... It is their God given right... While women have to wrap up themselves and be subservient... that's what Organized Religion dictates...!!!This is also the shame of our patriarchal society and our male chauvinist culture...
I do not have any sympathy for Clinton's politics... She was one of the architects of the Middle Eastern turmoil... with her dream of "Arab Spring..."
Her policies are as male oriented as any of the other candidates... But I want her to win just because she is a women and I support the ladies in my life... and my lady student-friend makes lots of sense...
I think women are capable of things that men cannot even think of... women may
bring PEACE to the world... After all, Angela Merkel allowed more than a million Muslim refugees in Germany despite all the protests and the noise from the male dominated parties... of the fascist right...It may not be the best thing but bartering the future of the refugees with Turkey and hoping for the best... is not a good alternative too...
Maybe women think with their brain and heart... while man think with their muscle-penis and maybe their brain too...
I asked Ross once; "Do you think it would have made any difference if Jesus was female..." His eyes popped out and he looked at me for few minutes... and then without answering chuckled aloud... very loud... people looked at us... and then some of them began to laugh too...
I still think it would have made a tonne of difference...
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