Sermon of the Mount (Royal)

Mes chers Quebecois,

Je suis tres fiere d’etre un de vous. Mais je suis tres different. Je suis un homme qui est venue de l’avenir. Avoir vu ce qui c’est passé se soir, j’ai pris mon temp, et j’ai reflechi beaucoup sur ce qui c’est passé, et maintenant je suis prêt a vous parler. Mais je prefere l’Anglais. So, now, I can tell you exactly what has happened, and maybe we can find a further solution. I don’t know why exactly, but I have a very long attention span. So if an idea may take an hour to explain I would be capable of following the major points to the very end of that idea. I pay attention to all the important elements, and see how that idea fits in the philosophia perennial of my own thinking process. I wholly absorb ideas, words, images, and sounds. I digest them like food. It is a genetic thing that I have going on for me. I will draw your attention to the fact that I am wearing the same t-shirt as that night. The number on it is 9/12. One day after September 11th has lasted over six years. Some people stopped paying attention a long time ago. But some did not. Some continued to stare and to expend their own energies and time and money to see what I have been up to in my mind. Well the answer is a lot.

Let’s start with bread and circuses. I have sex with my mother, and I like it. That line takes care of all Oedipus complex problems and incest taboos that might have bothered the psyche of civilization. I had a 19 year old girl collapse in tears into my arms three times last night, until I was finally able to part ways with her. Every time that she would put her arms around me, I would hump her a little. Beauty is dead. And I am relieved by it. I no longer seek perfection. I no longer seek the perfect photo opportunity. All I seek is a stone. A brilliant gargantuan ruby that I have been told is in the possession of the federal reserve. That stone acts as the heart of the banking world, and by extension the whole world. Stab the stone with a soft bar of butter and you will destroy a concept. You will destroy a mechanism. The definition I found on the internet for the word somatize is a mental pain manifesting itself in bodily pain. The mind of culture is in control of the body of culture. Change the mind and you will change the culture. So let’s start by getting rid of some false notions.

Ignorance is not guilt. If you don’t know something, or if culture doesn’t know something, you or it (or both) should not feel ashamed. I know that we seek comfort in the one true superpower of God: omniscience. But it’s really just a way for us to relocate our desire to know all at once into some external figure which we submit ourselves to.

I am practicing the Sabbath, just because it makes sense to say so now. I am perfectly in lline with everything in the world just because that is the type of world that I have created for myself. I am perfectly balance. I know what I know in the moment of knowing. But I really was hoping for space ships and lasers and lots of girls and respect and power.

I was hoping more people would buy my t-shirts, and maybe those of my friends.

But what I’ve realized is that I live around a lot of people who are really slow. Everyone is like that. So by writing this, nothing magical is going to happen. It is only as magical as culture and make it for me. And what more can I expect than from Neanderthals.

The only thing left to do is to refuse to regress.

Every generation has a new series of myths. Last generation’s was “Friends” and “Seinfeld” as archetypes of behaviour. Now Youtube offers a more realistic approximation of the perfect human form: there isn’t any: beauty is dead, and that is a great thing.



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Noam Chomsky
Date: Jan 27, 2008 8:46 AM
Subject: Re: problem
To: Saeed Fotuhi


Can't really say. Have never thought about it.

----- Original Message -----
From: Saeed Fotuhi
To: Noam Chomsky
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2008 6:28 AM
Subject: problem

i have realized that i have a perfect memory. i can go to a party and remember everything that took place there. i realized this last night when i was able to direct the conversation of an entire house so much that i was able to take them all to the point of forgetfulness and carry on with my own conversation now. some disabilities are not visible but sensible.

has this ever happened to you? do you feel somewhat detached from everyone around you sometimes? what do you do, if so, to reintegrate?

thanks, Noam.

Saeed

End of Semester Work for the Daniel Richter Class at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

UN Statement

Statement by Youth Against Racism (Non-ECOSOC NGO) President Saeed Fotohinia to the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent on January 17, 2008 in Room XIX of the Palais Des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland
Saeed.Fotuhi@gmail.com

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.

Today I would like to respond to yesterday afternoon’s wish by Mr. Joe Frans to have more NGO’s present at the Working Group and share their personal stories with racism.

As Mr. Booker and Mr. Jabbour have pointed out recently, the Durban Conference and the good work that took place there in the fight against racism was “put on hold” and “overshadowed” – if I may use their phraseology – by what transpired in the US soon afterwards. Yet, in view of the revolution that has taken place in the world in its treatment, institutionalization, and acceptance of racism as a redundancy, a matter of fact, a standardized security check, I would contend that these phraseologies are rather euphemistic. What happened on 9/11 was a series of hijackings.

Our good work was hijacked, our ideas were hijacked, our conviction was hijacked, and most of all our sense of what normal is was hijacked. I think that an author such as the Canadian Naomi Klein in her recently-released book Shock Doctrine can offer some theories as to why and how this might have happened. Shock was treated as an opportunity for a clean slate, and the patient etherized upon a table in this case, was the entire world. In twenty-four little hours September 11th 2001 changed the subject.

My story can and must perforce stand for that of many. After 9/11 I silently observed the stoning of mosques, I patiently waited for moderation to return, I spoke genteel words, in the hope that the army of young people I had so recently shared the dream of a world without racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance would echo them, and our united voice would resound in the mighty valley of equality. But there was only a whimper. So, I did what any good social actor and promoter of human rights and democratic values would do: I enlisted to become a Peace Keeper.

In my time as a Muslim officer in the Canadian Forces I experienced the best and the worst in the September 12th debate over racism. I was successful in starting the first Centre for Muslim and Middle Eastern Relations in the history of that army. Under the argument of reducing casualty rates, I was able to give Korans and speeches about the value and richness of the Muslim and Middle Eastern World to some of the same members in uniform who had accused me of working for Al-Jazeera or even worse for Al-Qaeda, or jeered at me, or condescended upon me as though I was both the elephant in the room no one talked about and the guy no one talked to. I was also the victim of hate crime and had horrible things done to my face. Disfigured but not disillusioned I moved the fight back out into civil society with the realization that it is the public that will most change the mind of G.I. Joe.

Now I am in search of my true comrades-in-arms. Those 700 young people who, better than anyone else in the world today, know the distinct ideological difference between Durban 2001 and Durban 2009, and possess enough confidence and conviction to meet frenzy with moderation in the decades to come. I call on this Working Group, Mr. Chairperson, to recommend the immediate organization of regional, national, and International Youth Summits as a keystone to the Durban Review Process

I can't smell the internet

I can’t smell the internet.
The man selling roses at the nightclub
The stink of saliva: my own and hers.
Odorous honours.
The colour of liquid rubies.
Alcoholic vapours that crystallize my thoughts.
The young girl touched my penis; the old one depressed me.
I am a tourist in the flames of the sun.
But I will never reach the source of heat…of the odour.
I will always be chained by a daily life.
I lose myself in the trash of my memories.
There was a time – ah yes, nostalgia – when I thought I was rich;
But now I am only inundated by the horror of the moment.
There were things that I read – to help with digestion;
There were things that I drank, but I wasted too much.
Now I am just tired and fed up.
Being a being who can’t see anymore.
Blind and afraid.
And we go around in circles – never arriving, no longer stopping.
There was a time – of course, nostalgia – when I could smell the universe in a moment.
Where she existed in my life – singularly, a fixed point.
No need for swimming, I had my direction on every side.