The Balls Deep Art Factory

Meeting with Chomsky

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:27:00 +0000

Okay,

so this is an invitation to everyone who reads this to offer some advice about what to talk about with Noam Chomsky on Oct. 29, 2008.

Hope you've found this blog entertaining at best.

The artist,

Speed
Speed
Saeed

Do NOT Trust Military People

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Fri, 23 May 2008 04:15:00 +0000

It’s four in the morning. I used to get up this time of day to go for runs and begin a new day of moronic drilling and filling forms with my last three a thousand and one times. I used to salute the bastards above me and the bastards below me. Bastards – all. Now, I am free. Free finally of the pain of post-traumatic stress disorder. Free of constant angst and pangs of terror. Utter terror of that door opening at three in the morning and the men taking me away. Those bastards would have made it look like a training incident or a fucking suicide (as if that Cadet took his own life at RMC, as if!). Oh buddy! You have no idea what goes on over there. Buddy, you’re out in the public. The only face of the military you see is the public related one. I once did an interview with a paper while I was on the inside. They attached a Public Relations Officer to me for the entire time – silently listening to every single word that came out of my mouth. Making sure nothing escaped that could not be unsaid. But I fooled that bastard too, and told the world what they needed to hear from the military for the first time in their fucking history. What happened to that article? It got taken off the internet. First time in history that a paper is censure by the military. Well, I made sure to keep a ton of printed copies and have already copied and posted the text of it on my blog and Facebook. Cuz buddy is out! Buddy can speak freely all he wants from now. After a year of shaking the Intelligence folks off my ass, I think I can finally truly relate the grim reality of the military system that is on a path to overtaking the entire country. That just society that Trudeau bought in to. That land of Peace, Order and Good Government – all threatened by, no not Afghanis, but Newfies. (The Canadian Forces is made up mostly of people from remote locations of Canada where other jobs are not as readily available to disaffected youth.) Mean Newfies too. Nothing funny about them once they get in uniforms and tanks and recruiting buses.

I HATE the military. It is NOT what it makes itself out to be. For example: there is nothing democratic about it. Nothing. It is total tyranny. Another example of how disgusting it is lies in the shabby treatment of non-Commissioned members by the elitist officer class. That which takes place inside of the Officer’s Mess is far removed from the day to day life and hopes of Joe-Private-Corporal-Master-Corporal-Seargeant-Warrant-Master-Warrant-and-Chief-Warrant-Officer. I once got saluted by a Chief Warrant Officer! It almost gave me a hard-on. I hated myself for it. It is degrading. It is base. It is primal. And beastial. In fact, that is what the military turns all: beasts. Beasts who have become masters as putting on a poker-face. The blank stare of the soulless coward.

But the four-Maple-Leaved General does have a weakness: I can say anything I want about him now that I am out, and if he should send me a single nasty email, I can have him charged with a wonderful clause in the Queens Rules and Regulations call Behaviour Unbecoming of an Officer. Or I could find a bunch of other rules to hang him with (Leninesk, I know).

But the fucking ass-holes in Public Relations will get to him before he ever says anything overly incriminating of the sham he and his ilk are continuing. Dolce e Decorum Est is BULLSHIT! Remembrance Day is only a racket for Veterans to cash in on all those little poppies they sell (as though they haven’t already been cashing in long enough)! (This while our doctors and teachers and artists continue to go starving)!

Brothers and Sisters of the world! Lend me your ears! I have come to bury the military not to praise it. For praise they can count on the huge Recruiting and Public Relations budgets. For example, a new Operation the Canadian Forces started while I was in, was called Operation Connection, which turned “every CF member into a recruiter” and promoted the organization of public functions and events that would help combat the high attritions rates the CF was suffering from at the time. More and more money is going into their coffers, and better and better pay, kit, and gear is being offered our boys and girls. Most of the military is OLD! Even the “boys and girls” are no longer young as soon as they sign that Faustian contract. Overnight they become richer, older, more cowardly (one of the mottos of the CF is: “to be a good leader, you have to be a good follower” – something you learn in the “Indoctrination Period”, which consists of a month without any contact with the outside world WHATSOEVER and tons and tons of push-ups and Powerpoint presentations).

I have military stories up the wazoo, and I intend on using each and every one of them over and over again until the full meaning of the lie of the military is truly revealed.

People think the military is their saviour, and safeguard. But they should be feared just like any other corporation as an artificial entity that feeds off the people that created it until they starve at it’s expense. Just look at the past 8 years people.

WHERE is this all going to change? It starts here: with me and you.

Lascivious Landings

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:33:00 +0000

Alone but not. Alone but naught. Alone but fraught with voices, choices, boisterous beat-boxes, foxes, vocals, vixens, and vices, dices, mices, crisis. Forgive me father, Dante can’t think tonight. But my stylo’s tight – switchblades and glides through broken thoughts and beats, vibes, and tribes. On the fly, Tupac had to die on the other side of the ruby-coloured Rubicon. Filtered bumblebees stuck to Imperial Purple cloaks with Snow Tiger trimmings. I speak of Emperors in this trice of time, dear Horatio. Good fellows and poor poppers and poppies for Remembrance of course. No choice. Sticking post-it notes on every idea that peels out of my brains like a winding accordion in the scratchy tunnels of the Underground, Subway, U-Bahn, and Metro plus whatever the Chinese call their’s. Dancing coins. Spangles of light, two chickens in every pot, too chicken so smoke pot. I wandered to the lips of the mouth of salivating hell – with blood trickling down her k9’s like an image of a buzzing face, a trace. So I bent over and tied my laces in double-time, showtime came. I wondered if the vacuum on the other side of the black hole that pinched my feet and bothered my proportion wasn’t already full of dust and the built-up inflations of a thousand exhaling sighs of disappointment. Constantine saw Christ’s sign in the sky, so I had to take him out with my nine after I kicked in the door-swingin the four-four. Bring it baby at the bat for a homer or I go home to my pregnant Lilly at the end of my career in the Big Leagues. We’re going have to sell the Ford. So, I am.

President Bush, you are my only friend.

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:33:00 +0000

President Bush, you are my only friend.
I never get tired of listening to you.
How humble you are, and charming.
Just now, I watched you greet all of Saudi Arabia in fifty seconds.
I remember the tears you shed in your oval office after 9/11 – we all saw them.
We were with you then, and we’re still with you now.
Sometimes I am unhappy with you, but then when I look into your laughing eyes I can’t help but to chuckle alongside you.
And join you for the ride. All those nameless Secret Service agents fluttering around more, cleverly disguised, Secret Service agents. Sometimes I think, even I may be a Secret Secret Service agent, somehow working for you.
You have my allegiance, Mr. President.

But you have so many problems. The road you are traveling down is putting more and more people in Blank. I don’t agree with being your only friend.
I want to live a life beyond serving you and laughing at your brand of slap-stick comedy. I want to walk away from you and make other friends. Not Ahmadinejad, I know. How about Pierre Trudeau and Winston Churchill and Caesar and Alexander the Great? At least they don’t ask so much of me.

But mother is coming home, and I must say goodbye. Until next time, Texas.

False alarm.

Everything’s under control. Everybody relax. Just RELAX okay!

My nerves are totally shot. “Any second” and the apocalypse mixed with a healthy dose of shock and awe have turned me into a drunk boxer, drooping between punches. So I turn to your smiling face, W. You’re in my corner, I know you are – along with the NYFD and the rubble of Ground Zero. You’re bullhorn made the rubble shake that day – we all heard you! Indeed, we were all there.

But mother is coming soon so I should wrap this up I guess. Keep smiling, George Bush.

video of 2008_april_15_poem

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 03:21:00 +0000

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=KzYqsnZN-Ig

2008_april_19?_poem

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 22:21:00 +0000

Pirouette, face painting, Contra II.

Montreal Canadiens, I am Canadian, slip a fiver to the bouncer at the door.

The jealous obscurity of fourth place, on second thought I do, I did.

PacMan, Jump Around, Vanilla Ice greeting the Pope at the Vanilla White House of Pain.

Look at what we did to Pluto, Neptune, you’re next!

Figure skating, form fitting, bird flipping.

Consummate gentleman, catered sweet sixteen, victory past the Rubicon.

The hazy spring blossom, a flower exploding in time-lapse, pensioners escaping homes for one last trip to Toronto.

The bad-ass cops busting crime in all ages, batons and baby-carriages.

Tying the knot, Alexander cuts to the chase, Darius flees – but not for long, no not for long.

Sixteen frames per second, thirty thieves working for a filthy emperor with no clothes, a fig.

Tron, Tut, and Khan.

Who Shot Tupac?

Indoctrination period, frozen water canteens, a breezy bivouac (“Evryboty baack tuu da biiivoouac!” – just made it).

Presidents fixing their ties, this is the big one Tiger, bad-ass cops with psycho big sunglasses.

Fuck the police, long live the Senate, Mike Tyson borrowed an ear – a true Plebian (inside the bully pulpit of red-gloved whales).

Pirouette, Nancy Reagan, Pierre Trudeau.

Raise the curtain on the evil empire with blood and iron dripping down to her ankles.

Prose before Hoes!

“What do you think of this piece of art, Thor?”, “I love it.”

Saeed repeats:

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:35:00 +0000

"The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of agriculture."

You could say there be beauty in my reality.

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 02:22:00 +0000

Futility is cool; God is great.
At 3, Motion talks through bites and punches.
At 2, Light talks through ballet and sign language.
At 1, we speak and sing.
At 0, we invent absolutes.
At something above nothing, black holes, lasers, Romeo and Juliet, and conscious beings all interact as part of Reality in a much more powerful way than a single brain: beyond absolutes. Reality does not recognize zero, just beings who think about zero. Thus Reality accepts all (terrorists, sodomites, and mathematicians). To translate for individuals: Reality loves you. Reality is God. God is not futile; God is great :)

2008_april_15_poem

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:45:00 +0000

Formulae, physics, psycho.

Chemistry, Godfather II, Algebra, and fine wine.

A yellow yo-yo with white string, some Bubblicious Watermelon Bubblegum, an axe.

Bazooka Joe comics that are never funny, doubling on a bike, sex.

Narrator’s voice: sound check. We need more peas in aisle four. More peas in aisle four please.

J.K. Rowling, Johnny Cash, Jimmy Carter, John Kennedy.

Iran, Iraq, Stan (Satan’s son), Gregoire.

Ether-drenched motel carpets, Pepto-Bismol, sunrise over water, and some Coronas on ice.

Priceless adver-poetry, hyper Black-Friday consumers, and hate.

Silver City, Cedar City, Snakes on a Plane.

Numbers, numbers, numbers.

Eternal, "Soon isn’t on the clock, Bob,” cocaine.

Rasputin and Crystal Meth.

The Environment, grass, edible flowers.

Saturday-morning cartoons, awesome, hockey, lots and lots of snow outside, maybe make an igloo in the afternoon.

"Therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee."

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:44:00 +0000

Untitled

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:43:00 +0000

Untitled

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:41:00 +0000

Untitled

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:39:00 +0000

Cheese

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:38:00 +0000

500-Pound Freedom

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:36:00 +0000

Kiss Me

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:35:00 +0000

Old "The Post Gazette" article on my work for the CF

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:18:00 +0000

Message of Muslim soldier intended to help troops see humanity

Speech prepared to remind Task Force 107 of the humanity of the Afghan people.

By Andrew McGilligan
For This Week [Saturday, October 14, 2006]

By his own admission 2Lt. Saeed Fotohinia’s appearance is a contradiction.

“Take a minute to see the image before you. First you may notice I am Middle-Eastern by appearance; then you may notice I am military by dress

“As an image I at once fit the profile of a terrorist and an anti-terrorist,” he said “A vivid oxymoron in green and brown, juxtaposed against a glorious red and white.”

Fotohinia, who was born in Iran and raised in Vancouver and Montreal, is more than a talking metaphor.

He’s an academic, a man of faith and a soldier all wrapped up into one.

He has some big ideas that flow out of a little blue office at the St. Mary’s Chapel in CFB Gagetown.

Educated at McGill University where he studied military history, he joined the Canadian Forces as an officer in January 2005.

Since coming to CFB Gagetown, Fotohinia, along with Senior Chaplain Maj. John Organ, has started the Centre for Middle Easter Relations (CMER) for the Canadian Forces in Gagetown.

“The faith tradition in the Canadian Forces seems rather homogenous up to this point and a lot of work and energy will be used to broaden that homogeneity to Muslims, Jews, and anybody of any major faith tradition,” Fotohinia said.

The idea is to first meet the demand for prayer space on base for members of the Muslim tradition and expand from there.

“Beyond that we’d like to set up some area where Muslims, and people of Middle Easter background, can feel as though there’s something of their own, a space they can connect to and have some type of ownership over it,” he said.

In addition to those of the Muslim faith, he envisions the centre beign a source of information and knowledge for soldiers seeking to expand their knowledge about the region and faiths associated with it.

However, the main goal for Fotohinia and Organ revolves around a speech, a message they want to relay to soldiers heading to Afghanistan and the population at large.

“We want to meet the portrayal of Muslims and the Middle Eastern world in the mainstream media today with a more positive portrayal that uncovers the elements that are quite valuable and inherent in the Muslim and Middle Easter world,” he said.

He hopes to deliver a prepared speech to Task Force 107 upon their deployment to Afghanistan.

Helping soldiers remember the humanity of those in the Middle East and not dehumanizing their enemy is what he hopes to accomplish if given the chance to speak with the Task Force.

“Canada has historically paved the way for peace and has been free of the idea that we have been fighting wars to extend our financial interest or conquest.

“We’re in a position to say this and to say this in front of Task Force 107 is a powerful way of doing that,” he said.

Fotohinia sees this message as important in trying to win the hearts and minds of the average Afghan living through the current conflict.

He sees the message as making the West seem like people Afghans can relate to.

The West cannot continue to view those who oppose the Canadian Forces as all powerful terrorists whose minds cannot be altered, he said.

“They’re impressionable, just like we are, to good ideas and positive goals,” he said.

Instead of antagonizing those in the region with what is typically shown in the media, the message he wants to convey will speak not only to those who oppose the West, but people in the region who are in the middle; those who are not extremists and are looking to make a living and feed their family.

“By getting this message out there we hope it will be the beginning of opening a discourse with that region that would be level and hopefully they’ll accept some of the values the West and Canadian Forces have to share,” he said.

Sharing ideas and understanding the difference and similarities between cultures has already happened for Fotohinia and Organ on a small scale.

Organ said he’s learned a lot from spending time with Fotohinia.

“There are a lot of common aspects between people and that’s what we discover once we get past our differences,” Organ said.

“It’s important to rub shoulders with people different from ourselves, but when we’re not doing that we can’t work through our difference and then discover our similarities.”

Traditionally Canada’s involvement in conflicts such as World War I, World War II and the Korean War is filled with humanity in terms of liberating people and lifting them up, Organ said.

“That’s what Saeed’s message is all about. That we understand one another sufficiently, that we see the humanity and work to honour that as much as possible,” Organ said.

It’s not just Organ and Fotohinia that see the value in this message as others have read the speech and responded positively such as world renown author and academic Noam Chomsky.

As for the grand aspirations and hopes Fotohinia has for his message, he understands it will be a difficult one to convey as widely as he would like, but in addition to all of the things he is, another way to describe him would be a dreamer.

“It’s a very small scale in terms of where it comes from, but large scale in its idea,” Fotohinia said.

“I think the world is ready and welcoming this type of positive message. We need positive ideas, not only about the Muslim and Middle Eastern world, but in general.”

A Soldier Once Spoke

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 22:52:00 +0000

An image. A thousand words worth. Take a moment to see the image before you. First you may notice I am Middle-Eastern by appearance; then you may notice I am military by dress. As an image I at once fit the profile of a terrorist and an anti-terrorist. A vivid oxymoron in green and brown, juxtaposed against a glorious red and white. As an image it says a lot about the central values of Canada: a nation that allows opposites to live in harmony, perhaps even to complement each other. A nation that brings out a distinctive tinge and hue in all that make it up in the creation of a vast mosaic that stretches far and wide. Yet a mosaic that itself portrays no image and remains a growing abstraction of coloured tiles. I am, like our country, a fragmented picture of something…something with multi-colours.

I believe that as a nation we must take a moment to close our eyes to such distracting obscurities, and realistically think about what we are and what we seek to be. We must divorce ourselves from any delusions of grandeur, or privileged access to nobleness by virtue of our immaculate track record of peace, order, and good government. Canada is not a peace-loving state; peace is a Canada-loving state. Fortune has thus far smiled very kindly upon our nation: surrounding us with three oceans and a friendly border, and filling us with ample natural resources and a comely population.

Canada! Fortune is fast proving to be a fickle friend. Our beloved oceans are no longer the vacant buffers they used to be. With rapid climate change and improvements in shipping technologies, our access to a probable "North West Passage" in the near future may become hotly contested, and our placid Hudson's Bay may become the scene of, as one author put it, the "Great Game in a cold climate." And finally, we merely have to realize the significance of the announcement by CSIS director, Jim Judd, that Canadians, fellow mosaic tiles, have joined the insurgents in Iraq in order for us to eradicate any misconception about the unshakeable virtue our citizenry.

I speak to you as a man born in Iran. My mother tongue is Farsi. When I see Afghanis interviewed on TV, I understand what they say. In fact it often reminds me of my childhood growing up around that language. When I hear a song in Farsi, a different segment of my soul turns on. Something very deep and profound is excited in my heart. A yearning the far-distant utopia of childhood overcomes me. And this from hearing a man in a turban yelling into the camera about how he can't feed his family anymore because his poppy field has been burnt. The impersonality of translation does not make me see him as a turbaned bundle of noise and banter. I hear every word for its meaning, and associate every raise of the eyebrow or tone with the appropriate emphasis. To me he is animated beyond "just another guy in a turban, yelling something I can't understand." I don't ask myself "why is he yelling?" after listening to the cool voice of the interpreter translating and summarizing the bombardment of harsh sounds coming out of the screen. I don't think, "if I were that guy, I would deport myself with a little more aplomb." But I should say, that sometimes I do think that when I am listening to a similar looking Arab guy whose language I can't understand (Farsi and Arab are only as similar and different as English and French). Language alone can divide us, and close the door the warm and friendly relations. A man whose language you don't speak is only a caricature of that same man if you could only understand.

What most of us think of the Middle East is a mere caricature of what it actually is. And in order to effectively engage that part of the world in open level discourse, we must be genuine in our desire to move beyond stock characters and fixed perceptions. I think that the best way to open that door to understanding is to translate a line of Arabic, which is the most common phrase of the Koran: "Be ismi Allahe Rahmane Raheem." This is commonly translated: "In the name of God the Almighty the Merciful." Yet even this fair translation leaves out a certain nuance in the language. "Be ismi" means in the name of. "Ism" means name, and "Be," in this context, means "In the." So "Be [In the] ism [name]." The "of" of "In the name of God the Almighty the Merciful" is actually in the "i" at the end of "ism." So, "Be [In the] ism [name] I [of]." So far we have: "Be ismi," "In the name of." Next we have "God," which in Arabic is "Allah." So from the top: "Be ismi [In the name of] Allah [God]." "Be ismi Allah," "In the name of God." But the Koran does not hesitate to describe God as "the Almighty the Merciful." The Arabic once again is: "Be ismi Allahe Rahmane Raheem." "The Almighty the Merciful" is the translation of "Rahmane Raheem." The literal translation for "Rahmane Raheem" is actually "the merciful, the most-merciful." You see, "Rahmane" and "Raheem" are two forms of the same word, mercy. In Arabic, most words are formed with only three consonant sounds. So if you want to look up the definition of a word in the dictionary, you have to look up its three-letter root, in this case "Ra-Ha-Ma," and you will find its many different forms. Like "Rahman," "the merciful," and "Raheem," "the most merciful." It is not redundant to say these two words in succession. In fact, "Rahmane Raheem," while maintaining distinct meaning, has a great sound to it. "Rahmane Raheem." It is very powerful at the end of "Be ismi Allahe Rahmane Raheem." "In the name of God the Almighty, the merciful." Now when you hear, "Be ismi Allahe Rahmane Raheem," your mind can remember how "ism" means name, and "Allah" can be "Rahman and Raheem," which makes him merciful and the most-merciful. Words fulfill functions in any language.

We as Canadians living with the legacy of multiculturalism can appreciate that more than perhaps most other countries. We appreciate how much intelligence another person can have despite not being as eloquent as they would like to be in either English or French. Too Easy? Okay let's move on. I think it would be appropriate now, to talk about the point of this discussion. You are going to be in Afghanistan soon. You are going to be fighting in a war. It will be fought against people not only whose language you can't understand, but whose ways of life and points of views are equally alien to you. This speech is to emphasize that even the most blood-thirsty heretical malicious terrorist Taliban can never help but to be human. Sometimes some of these fanatics would wish they could carry out their vengeance with the power of Satan (or Shaytan, as they would call him), but they can't. They can only blow themselves up, and maybe a dozen others. For all their fanaticism and powerful talk, the average terrorist can't kill more people than he has fingers to point at virgins in heaven. If we consider the limits to his desire to inflict suffering, than it is easier to tear away at conception that he is other than human. If his physical might is not as strong as he might have hoped or expected, than we may assume that the might of his conviction is not as potent either. If he is only human in arm, it may be safe to say he is only human in mind. Perhaps even fanatics can be caught daydreaming. Or, from the perspective of the Taliban, I might say "Shayad fekrahe een adamha be fekreh fagad pooloh nafte neest." "Perhaps then money and oil are not the only things on these peoples' minds."

Your environment, the culture that you are brought up in, and the language that you speak play a major part, I think, in forming your values, morals, judgment calls. Essentially, that there is no objective absolute towards which humanity is (or aught to be) approaching. The following is a quote from an essay by famous Oxford scholar, Sir Isaiah Berlin:

This is a relativism which kills the notion of progress in the arts, whereby later cultures are necessarily improvements on, or retrogressions from, earlier ages, each measured by its distance from some fixed, immutable ideal, in terms of which all beauty, knowledge, virtue, must be judged. The famous quarrel between the ancients and the moderns can have no sense…: every artistic tradition is intelligible only to those who grasp its own rules, the conventions are internal to it, an 'organic' part of its own changing pattern of the categories of thought and feeling…It is as if one were to suggest Shakespeare could have written his plays at the court of Genghis Khan, or Mozart composed in ancient Sparta…The idea of the cumulative growth of knowledge, a single corpus governed by single, universal criteria, so that what one generation of scientists has established, another generation need not repeat, does not fit this pattern at all.

I don't think that I would have the same thought that I do now if I were raised in the same place I was born. Who knows what thoughts my role models, my peers, my environment might have implanted me with. To say that we can form thought independent of our development as a person or as a community. But as the little-known Italian writer, Giambattista Vico, pointed out in the 18th century it is not beyond me to understand them through use of my imagination.

This was a,

…new view of men and society, which stressed vitality, movement, change, respects in which individuals or groups differed rather than resembled each other, the charm and value of diversity, uniqueness, individuality, a view which conceived of the world as a garden where each tree, each flower, grows in its own peculiar fashion and incorporates those aspirations which circumstances and its own individual nature have generated, and is not, therefore, to be judged by the patterns and goals of other organisms.

To accept that another's outlooks are completely different is one thing, to say that there is no way one could ever have adopted similar outlooks is, in the words of Burke, "the cant and gibberish of hypocrisy." While I now don't agree with what those Iranian youths are doing (or attempting to do), it nonetheless negatively disturbs me to imagine how "it could have been me."

Destination: Hezbollah, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda
The question is then, what are some of the factors that are convincing these young men and women to voluntarily leave their homes and home countries for a war-zone (not only that of Lebanon and Afghanistan, but of course this whole segment also applies in principal, if not in examples, to Iraq)? What are some reasons that are increasing Hezbollah's, the Taliban's, and Al-Qaeda's popularity?

The following Berlin quotation partially explains this occurrence:

[Y]ou must realize that if you use violent methods the result will almost invariably be totally different from what you intend. Why? Because too much is unknown – not because you are wrong. The abuses are abuses, the tyranny is a tyranny, it should be stopped, it can be stopped; but if the measures are too violent – that's to say, if you believe in the possibility of a total or even three-quarters transformation of society by organized means, if need be by violence – you will find that you've heaved up forces of whose existence you were probably not aware, which will in some way frustrate your designs and produce something maybe better than there was before, but not what you wanted.

This effectively encapsulates what is happening as a result of the large-scale violence the West has let loose on extremist groups in the Middle East. Such "blow-back" (a term commonly used for the US, and how its actions abroad have led to unexpected consequences) includes the alignment of Hezbollah, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda, with anti-imperialist, anti-aggression, anti-West sentiment in the region that is already strong due to it's long history of colonialism and conflict.

It is every person's right to believe that what they are doing is good; as it is every person's right to consider how much they have been wronged. "Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an inalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human" (Berlin) While the West may perceive the actions of Hezbollah, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other terrorists in the area to be misled, it is not in its interest to allow these ideas to be propagated and continue to be pervasive. A CNN journalist recently said there is a "War of Perceptions" going on (he also said that the West was losing at the moment); winning this war means rigorous fighting in "the battle of Ideas".

Brain Map for the Middle East
In the battle of ideas, I am Lincolnesk in thinking "a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall". But there is no shortage of gall. It's available in the US foreign policy elite; Daniel Pipes posts the articles of authors with the following views on his web-page:

It is insane that a billion people follow an insane man of the 7th century. It is insane that the rest of humanity go along with that. This insanity is bringing our world to the brink of destruction. Only when the belief in Islam is weakened, Muslims will turn towards moderation and modernization.

This is a classic example of delivering a sober message in language you would expect from the heretics, which is unfortunately increasingly common in public discourse. Saying the people of the region, the Muslims, could use to alter their outlook on the world is one thing, calling Mohammed insane betrays the author's ignorance about how to go about doing.

In his Mimesis, Eric Auerbach writes:

When people realize that epochs and societies are not to be judged in terms of a pattern concept of what is desirable absolutely speaking but rather in every case in terms of their own premises; when people reckon among such premises not only natural factors like climate and soil but also the intellectual and historical factors; when, in other words, they come to develop a sense of historical dynamics, of the incomparability of historical phenomena…so that each epoch appears as a whole whose character is reflected in each of its manifestations; when, finally, they accept the conviction that the meaning of events cannot be grasped in abstract and general forms of cognition and that the material needed to understand it must not be sought exclusively in the upper strata of society and in major political events but also in art, economy, material and intellectual culture, in the depths of the workaday world and its men and women, because it is only there that one can grasp what is unique, what is animated by inner forces, and what, in both a more concrete and a more profound sense, is universally valid…"

To sincerely empathize with the people of the region will allow us to better understand the forces that conduct their actions and their ways of thought, with which we can then discover the methods most effective in modifying those forces. Right now, the west is suffering the "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" syndrome. (footnote: In fact, the very word "terrorist" has been used so indiscriminately to describe such a wide variety of persons and groups since 9-11 that it has, quite naturally, lost a lot of its former meaning.)

In the battle of ideas in the war of perceptions it would be prudent to avoid dehumanizing the opponent, for then we can no longer relate, will cease to comprehend, and will fail to convert.

Vico's most famous passage in his New Science can be of use in this discussion:

But in the night of thick darkness enveloping the earliest antiquity, so remote from ourselves, there shines the eternal and never failing light of a truth beyond all question: that the world of civil society has certainly been made by men, and that its principles are therefore to be found within the modifications of our own human mind. Whoever reflects on this cannot but marvel that the philosophers should have bent all their energies to the study of the world of nature, which, since God made it, He alone knows; and that they should have neglected the study of the world of nations, or civil world, which, since men made it, men could come to know.

Vico was the first to point out that human institutions, culture, and history are the only things that humans can understand because they are our own products, whereas any other object or phenomenon in nature is the creation of God and therefore beyond our scope of understanding. However alien the mores and polity of the Muslim world may seem to us, since they are the products of humans, they are not incomprehensible.

It is in this scope that weapons for ideological war must be forged. The very phrase "ideological war" is an oxymoron of sorts, because it is one whose victories and defeats can have similar ramifications for both sides. Entering this battlefield one must keep the following in mind:

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance – these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.

Chomsky is Not Dumb Afterall

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:06:00 +0000

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 7:50 PM, Noam Chomsky wrote:

I don't recall receiving it. Interesting thoughts, but I have no useful comments.

----- Original Message -----
From: Saeed Fotuhi (by way of Noam Chomsky )
To: Noam Chomsky
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 1:19 PM
Subject: Re: you're dumb

the below one:

and did you not get the one entitled: "i figured it all out?" that was the one ignored by you. i'll pasted it below this csis one. please reply.

Saeed

00000000000000000000000000

000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Saeed Fotuhi
Date: Feb 3, 2008 5:30 PM
Subject: csis
To: Noam Chomsky

i am having problems with the canadian secret intelligence service. they are playing games i can't figure out. i know i'm innocent.

saeed

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Desmond Morton
Date: Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: I figured it all out.
To: Saeed Fotuhi

But what if, as you say, it IS arguable. How do I know that you have, indeed, figured it all out? What if I only discover your error after I have persuaded all my animal-hating friends to destroy them all. Then another clever person explains how vital they were for the environment. It may be a little late to resurrect them. You can turn tpo Christopher Hitchens for an outspoken and even brutal account of the evils committed in the name of beliefs. Can any educated person ignore that cluster of observations? I have now read statements from scientists arguing that refusal to accept scientific evidence should be a criminal offence. Such a law, in the hands of environmentalists, would leave no one safe.
As proponent of an idea you close, rationally enough, with a desire to be remembered,m respected and, in effect, worshipped. Could this be interpreted as arrogance or the respect due to divinity?

Desmond Morton

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Saeed Fotuhi
> To: Desmond Morton
> Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 8:48 PM
> Subject: I figured it all out.
>
> I figured it all out.
>
>
>
> There is such a thing as the body politic. Intelligence is not just something an individual does, but that all life does together. There is a higher consciousness, and that consciousness is omniscient because it is all knowledge. It is a mind, and it is a very intelligent mind.
>
>
>
> But it could be smarter.
>
>
>
> Image a brain that is clouded by some kind of drug. Let's say Heroin. It is being numbed and fooled by this useless chemical. That is what is happening with the higher consciousness in the world today. It is being numbed and fooled by non-human beings. It is being influenced by bestial currents.
>
>
>
> What this body politic has to do is to stop doing Heroin, and get rid of that chemical that is slowing it down. Put in another way, which I don't really like very much but that works great for this point and this point only, the greater brain has to submit itself to a lobotomy by killing all non-human animals.
>
>
>
> It is arguable that non-human animals serve humanity. Like for food for example. This may be solved by moving towards a totally vegetarian diet. In the meantime, for those of us who like hamburgers, we can start by reducing the "heroin" in our greater brain by killing off animals like pigeons, squirrels, foxes, rats, and other city-infesting animals; and then move on to cut our addiction to cats and dogs; and finally cut down our addiction to all animals. This may take generations or days, depending on how fast this meme of mine travels.
>
>
>
> Spread this idea like it's a virus. A human virus. Before the brain overdoses one too many times, and we blow ourselves up by accident. Do it.
>
>
>
> And I would appreciate it if you gave Saeed Navid Fotuhi (or spelled Fotohinia) some credit for it.

000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 4:35 PM, Noam Chomsky wrote:
> Sorry, but I don't know what you are referring to. I don't remember criticizing or ignoring anything, and don't know about any CSIS email.
>
> Noam Chomsky
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Saeed Fotuhi (by way of Noam Chomsky )
>> To: Noam Chomsky
>> Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:55 AM
>> Subject: you're dumb
>>
>> i never thought that there would be anything i could, or anyone could, say that would "shut you off" I guess that CSIS email must have rubbed you the wrong way.
>>
>> given our long history together, starting while i was still in the military, i had hoped for some kind of support and trust, mere words, maybe even just words, but instead there was a cowardly span of silence.
>>
>> this is what i was talking about when we spoke on the phone so many eons ago, Noam. i hope you can remember.
>>
>> well, i guess all good things tend to come to an end, old man.
>>
>> i will take from you the great powers of the whisper, and a stable heart-rate, now that i've figured it all out. you had your chance to make my message heard. but you just sat on it, like the military did, and CSIS has, and art school did.
>>
>> nostradamus fortells a persian saving the world. i can assure you that i already did. no thanks to you and nader.
>>
>> i've left you a picture of me. so that you can finally see the kid you've been putting up with for so long. i've put childish things aside.
>>
>> Saeed Navid Fotuhi
>> Content-Type: image/jpeg; name=n505917421_98487_6853.jpg
>> X-Attachment-Id: f_fcvosfm01
>> Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=n505917421_98487_6853.jpg

My Triumph

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:52:00 +0000

in one day i have gone hot air ballooning, i've listened to a child play a charming violin, i've attended many church services, i listened to a soldier sing the american national anthem, i watched a great junior league baseball game, visited a beach where they had built elaborate sand castles, rode with two kids in their car to the drive-thru pharmacy, watched many parents play with their babies, sat in with several auto and motorbike racers, flew over Vancouver island on a model airplane, watched a Bolivian parade of dancers go by, watched a parade of tractors go by, watched a beautiful news story on a woman who gave millions of people hugs, looked at kids skateboard around with their shirts off, watched a surfing competition, listened to a man talk about how happy he was to have won his 50th hot-rod race, walked through the Montreal Gay Pride parade, and watched the Dragon Boat races that took place in the same city on the same day. In fact all of the mentioned things all took place on July 29, 2007. That was the day I was supposed to have my Triumph parade, and I guess this can be considered it. But no one has called me "General" and my face was not painted red. I had waited on Triumphalis, and the only thing I got was I walk through time. All I ever wanted was a bit of cheese.

Turn your alarms off.

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:43:00 +0000

I hate being interrupted when I am doing something. Either by the sound of the phone, or, more importantly, by the sound of things like the GMAIL Notifier. I long ago stopped using that thing because I found it turned me into too much of a Pavlovian Dog. Every time I would hear the bell ring I would salivate at the idea of a new email - even while I was in the middle of reading a text or watching a video.

As a result I check my email constantly, but that is only in between pages being loaded. Saves times and ensures peace of mind in our, as my friend Dejan at the Academy calls it, "Hyperpostmodern" world.

Giant Little Girl is Really Intelligent

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:04:00 +0000

this is a handy little (maybe not) model for artificial intelligence as it is working on the internet today. that little girl has intelligence, but just like a laptop has an external harddrive kind of way. she has the sensibility of many minds, and her ability to connect them all in one is her character. more amazing insights on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBXr15K2uSc

I figured it all out.

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 01:31:00 +0000

There is such a thing as the body politic. Intelligence is not just something an individual does, but that all life does together. There is a higher consciousness, and that consciousness is omniscient because it is all knowledge. It is a mind, and it is a very intelligent mind.

But it could be smarter.

Image a brain that is clouded by some kind of drug. Let’s say Heroin. It is being numbed and fooled by this useless chemical. That is what is happening with the higher consciousness in the world today. It is being numbed and fooled by non-human beings. It is being influenced by bestial currents.

What this body politic has to do is to stop doing Heroin, and get rid of that chemical that is slowing it down. Put in another way, which I don’t really like very much but that works great for this point and this point only, the greater brain has to submit itself to a lobotomy by killing all non-human animals.

It is arguable that non-human animals serve humanity. Like for food for example. This may be solved by moving towards a totally vegetarian diet. In the meantime, for those of us who like hamburgers, we can start by reducing the “heroin” in our greater brain by killing off animals like pigeons, squirrels, foxes, rats, and other city-infesting animals; and then move on to cut our addiction to cats and dogs; and finally cut down our addiction to all animals. This may take generations or days, depending on how fast this meme of mine travels.

Spread this idea like it’s a virus. A human virus. Before the brain overdoses one too many times, and we blow ourselves up by accident. Do it.

And I would appreciate it if you gave Saeed Navid Fotuhi (or spelled Fotohinia) some credit for it.

the weirdest site in the world

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 01:16:00 +0000

www.quebecnewyork.com

Run Soldier Video

noreply@blogger.com (saeedfotuhi) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:24:00 +0000

It doesn't get any rougher than this.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3681592046366985946