THOSE WHO DENY FREEDOM TO OTHERS DESERVE IT NOT FOR THEMSELVES

It is said that only true romantics can become revolutionaries. I believe this, as one does not fight so passionately and relentlessly unless they really know what love is. Love for their land, love for their people, love for their culture and values, and the urgency to protect those things that mean very little to Western imperialists and their sycophants. I started writing a post about privileged, spiritless people last night, those who look for another flag to wave on a whim, looking for a specific, satisfactory way to live as long as it suits their wants and desires at the expense of others.

And then Fidel Castro died.

As divisive a figure as he was, much like Ernesto Guevara, or Ahmed Ben Bella, I tend to believe that severity is a stage one arrives at when they are pushed towards it. Those who don't know suffering, and not just their own, but of others, don't know truth. Nor do they know what that can trigger in a person. Here was a man who brought down Fulgencio Batista, the US puppet, who had allowed his country to be reduced to a brothel and hunting ground for Western pedophiles and criminals. Puppet leaders like Batista, and those who support them, are not romantics. They do not know true love, to see their land and their culture as sacred, and to stand up to the evil consistently imposing itself on all that is sacred in the world. Castro expelled entitled Americans and their supporters from Cuba, dodged their endless assasination attempts on him, and sent Cuban doctors to assist in South Africa, subsequently helping to end the apartheid that had been endorsed by the United States. In retaliation for protecting his country, the US imposed a vindictive embargo on Cuba, leading to a long and cruel punishment on a people who chose sovereignty over slavery.

It's another loss for the minority of true romantics left in the world. Those who fight against the status quo, know the true meaning of freedom, of love, of death, of sacredness. One by one, true romantics, true revolutionaries have left us, leaving in their wake an ongoing battle that they had fought for most of their lives. Times are different now. What these people have left behind after years of defying giants, are now left in the hands of a weak, passive, narcissistic, pro-American generation, who readily adopt capitalist values to replace their traditional ones. 

If Seneca suggested that all cruelty springs from weakness, where then, does weakness come from? Lack of self awareness? Absence of wisdom? Excessive freedom? Because one only needs to observe the state of America and its inhabitants to see the price people have paid for "freedom". And there is a difference between absolute social freedoms, and the freedom I believe in, that of which is self-determination. How does an individual or group achieve freedom in a society that bases itself on consumerist values, controlled by corporations and old white men? Endlessly speaking of freedom does not make freedom a reality. It makes it an illusion, a zealous marketing campaign that helps a country project an image of absolute power and leadership to the rest of the world, dangling this fantasy from a high horse - don't you want to be like us?

There was a meaningless article I read a few days ago, titled As a US traveller, I sported a Canadian flag patch under Bush. Time to dust it off. The title alone made me roll my eyes as I scanned the Guardian front page, and like many of the shortsighted op ed pieces on the site, it does beg the question, why is there so much unsophisticated nonsense on a serious news site? The writer, a twenty-something white female based in New York City basically shares her embarrasment of the previous Bush administration, which had compelled her to lie to others on her travels by pretending to be Canadian. She was fine with the Obama years, she wrote, but now with Trump prepared to take office, she, like many other privileged white Americans, are desperately hoping to move to Canada because, "would you like a president who boasts of “grabbing women by the pussy” or a prime minister who actively calls himself a feminist and encourages others to do the same?"

I don't get people like this. Maybe you should ask yourself how much you love America and the freedom you keep going on about when it's convenient for you, and if it's something you would fight for, regardless of who its leader is. Consider also, are you part of any of the targeted minority groups that will be feeling the actual consequences of white nationalist ideology? Those who can't just pack up and book a flight out and re-settle in a different country with more white people? In times of hardship, pack up and look for another flag to wave around, another label to stick on yourself so it can define you instead of having your values define you. When things are going great and to your liking, stay and call yourself a proud American (or any other nationality, really).

Imagine having these sort of weaklings in your society, reaping the benefits that everyone has helped establish, and then looking for another stable, developed country to move to once your own falls on hard times and needs all the help it can get. But this is the mentality of those with no strength of character - their existance is only valid if they can associate themselves with all that is powerful, white, western, mainstream, beautiful, wealthy, convenient.

Weakness resides in all of us, for different reasons, in different circumstances, and it can develop within us based on our life experiences and how we learn from them. But true romantics are not made. They just have the soul of a spirited poet, a learned individual, a devoted parent, a courageous fighter, a compassionate child, innate and unshakeable, all at once.

Here's to the few true romantics, the true fighters now gone, who defied their aggressors and occupiers, and knew what true freedom meant - that it is something in your soul and in your mind that nobody can ever take from you.

SMOOTH CRIMINALS

How free are a people, really when the only two choices they can pick between are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton? Both horrible people, both so disconnected from the marginalized, from principle, from authenticity. Both unworldly and uninteresting. Remember when American presidents tried to engage with the rest of the world? Herbert Hoover spoke fluent Mandarin. John Quincy Adams was fluent in three foreign languages. Thomas Jefferson studied Latin, Greek, French, and Spanish, and had a library filled with Arabic and Welsh dictionaries. The modern age of American presidents seem to be of the anti-intellectualism school of leadership in comparison, where the idea of the US being "the greatest nation on earth" means the rest of the world should learn America's ways, the culture, the language, the hollow values.

How free are a people when they tolerate what is possibly the most asinine election campaign in human history? Those voting for Donald Trump may be doing so for appalling reasons, but those voting for Hillary Clinton because "it's time for a woman president" are just as dense, if that's their reasoning. With a track record just as bad, and a talent for being two-faced, why not wait for the right woman instead of a woman?

This whole campaign has been completely pointless posturing so that yet another megalomaniac can have a turn at playing God in the white house.

Democrats had the option of electing Bernie Sanders and they chose to rally behind Clinton because she's a woman. They made their bed, now they must lie in it.

A WOMAN HITTING A NEO-NAZI WITH HER HANDBAG

Hans Runesson, 1985

Enraged that a neo-Nazi demonstration was taking place in her city of Växjö, Sweden, Danuta Danielsson emerged from a crowd that had gathered on the street and swung her handbag at a member of the group. Her mother being an Auschwitz survivor, Danielsson's symbolic confrontation with the Neo-Nazi illustrates the disparity of scale in terms of power, aggression, hate, and reason.

The more I think about the idea of "freeom of expression" the more I question it. If hate groups are given a platform to thrive and spout their ignorance because Western ideology stresses on the fanciful concepts of "freedom" and individualism - concepts that, as evidence shows, amounts to enslavement of all peoples, of lack of social cohesion or moral responsibility, then we are complicit in disregarding what is best for the greater good of humanity.

While the photo continues to provoke debate today, and supporters rally behind Danielsson's spontaneous attack of what is unquestionably wrong, she regretted her actions for the attention it received, and committed suicide two years later.

WHEN WORDS LOSE THEIR MEANING, PEOPLE LOSE THEIR FREEDOM

Watched The Occupation of the American Mind earlier tonight. This is an important film. It's not just another Israel-Palestine study, but it delves into the problem of extreme brainwashing that the United States enforces by using tactics that include the repetition of falsehoods, manipulation of facts, and dominating discourse through powerful PR. The entire goal of the two propaganda machines known as the United States and Israel is to portray one side as the victim, and the other the aggressor. 

The extremist methods that relationship exercises is akin to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, the meticulously crafted propaganda documentary made upon personal request by Adolf Hitler in 1934, and which is often hailed a masterpiece to this day. There is not a war raging between Israel and Palestine, because war entails combat between armed groups. And there can be no combat between a highly trained military equipped with sophisticated weaponry sponsored by the world's largest arms dealer, the United States, and a people imprisoned within their land, who defend themselves against the world's giants with sticks and stones. What is raging within the Israel-Palestine conflict is, essentially, psychological warfare. 

Since it's release, The Occupation of the American Mind has been largely ignored, and no major film festival has chosen to screen the film. Shame about all the cowardice in the world.

HOW TO NAME YOUR CHILD ACCORDING TO WESTERN STANDARDS

In an article published on the Guardian blog recently, Phoenicia Hebebe Dobson-Mouawad prescribed some advice to would-be parents in a piece titled, “How not to name your child - five golden rules”. The main purpose of the commentary stems from the writer’s own personal struggles with her given name since childhood, as a mixed race person growing up in the West. She prefaces her article with the opinion that “naming your child shouldn’t be a chance to prove how cool or creative you are.”

I immediately came under the impression that the article would discourage the celebrity trend of giving children unconventional names such as “Apple” or “Audio Science”, because as Dobson-Mouawad suggests from personal experience, an unusual name will have a long term negative effect on a child. Instead, she refers to her own name to make the case that there should be a standard of acceptable names for children. This standard should be met so that children do not grow up feeling like a misfit, and also, it is a solution that caters to the convenience of others.

In order to be good parents and people in general, according to Dobson-Mouawad, five rules should be considered when deciding on a name for a newborn child.

The first rule asks, have you heard the name before? What this suggests is that if it is not a traditional Western name, or falls into the standard of “normal”, a child will be singled out for having an odd sounding name, and face ridicule instead of being treated respectfully or equally.

The second rule questions, can you pronounce it without having to look it up? Essentially, if a name is difficult to pronounce, it is not worth the trouble, and nobody will appreciate the inconvenience of having to learn how to say or spell it.

Thirdly, it is best to avoid hyphens unless both names are easily pronounceable. Here Dobson-Mouawad uses her own hyphenated last name as an example. She claims that “Dobson”, which is a common Anglo-Saxon surname, is fine, but her Arabic surname, Mouawad, is already a challenge on its own, therefore unnecessary.

The fourth rule insists you ponder, can a child of primary school age say it? Much like what was described in the past three rules, if other children find a name confusing, opt for something easier and familiar, probably implying that other kids will want to be friends with yours if they can pronounce their name, thus saving your offspring from a life of ostracization.

Lastly, the fifth rule instructs, remember that your child’s name is for their happiness alone and not to prove to the world how cool and creative you are.

Let’s just set aside the disturbing fact that Dobson-Mouawad seems to harbor some internalized racism without even realizing it. With these five golden rules she illustrates, whether aware of it or not, how crucial it is for people to adhere to comfortable standards of normalcy in American/Western society. Having a unique name indicates an inability to conform, or assimilate into conventional American culture (I am referring to American culture specifically here, because the article was also featured on the US version of The Guardian site), which is a contradictory statement if American values really do claim to accept a vibrant mix of distinct cultural elements from people of all backgrounds. Dobson-Mouawad’s article is problematic with its advice in that she clearly propagates an idea that is popular with many white Westerners.

In response to a New York Times article last year, Professor Jerry Hough (2015) of Duke University commented on the issues within the African American community in the United States by pointing out that at the school he taught at, “every Asian student has a very simple old American first name that symbolizes their desire for integration. Virtually every black has a strange new name that symbolizes their lack of desire for integration.” The notion that having a nice “American” name plays a part in determining how well-integrated and successful a person can be is not a new one, but it definitely slants towards a prejudiced belief in seeing one type of name more favorable than another.

Dobson-Mouawad, and others like Hough promote an ethnocentric concept which insists that in order to fit in and be less different, it’s advisable to stay away from odd sounding names that clearly do not sound mainstream “white”. It is strange to regard a uniqueness of a name as being un-American simply based on the standards set by one group within America.

I am curious as to how Dobson-Mouawad’s advice would register with Americans of Latin American origin, many of whom practice the Spanish tradition of being given both their parents’ surnames, which often ends up with a child having five or six names. Furthermore, there is no consensus on what is a normal name, and what is considered odd. Is Hermione a name that children would be able to pronounce or spell? Barack Obama managed to become President of the United States. Were Saoirse Ronan’s parents trying to be cool and creative when they named her, or is Saoirse a popular Irish name that dates back to the 1920’s? Dobson-Mouawad’s advice about naming children following a Western checklist of approval set by a subgroup within a culture brings about the question of how socialization within American culture affects people’s idea of identity and self concept.

Some understanding about Dobson-Mouawad’s own upbringing and socialization could shed some light on the ethnocentric angle of her article. Perhaps interacting with a certain group of people and being exposed to a particular mindset, thus resulting in embarrassing situations, such as having to endure her name being ridiculed by others, molded her own idea of “normal” or “right”. It is also evident by my own observations that in cultures around the world, giving children mainstream Western names is on the rise, and this, in my opinion, can be attributed to wide exposure to Western standards and popular culture. In places like China or Korea, for instance, there has long been a practice of people adopting Western names as their second name so as to make it easier for Western employers or acquaintances who struggle with having to learn traditional East Asian names. This practice is sad, and I use “sad” here to mean pathetic. All it does is encourage the dismissive, entitled mentality of some Americans or Westerners to thrive unimpeded.

In an article written in the Telegraph last year, American entrepreneur Lindsey Jernigan shared her intentions of giving Chinese people looking to adopt Western names more favorable options through her website, BestEnglishName.com, which states on its front page, “We can help you find a name that is cool and unique but that won’t make Westerners feel uneasy”. Yes, your real, unique name makes Westerners uneasy as it is, so let's help you find something more pleasing to them.

The website, according to the article, sees 30,000 visits a month from mostly young women hoping to study overseas. In a more globalized world, having Western names is seen as progressive and “cool”, to use Dobson-Mouawad’s term she applies to “unique” names, and it reflects the growing influence of American culture and norms in particular which dictate the standard of uniformity and acceptance.

In conclusion, Dobson-Mouawad’s ignorant advice about naming children is more senseless than it is helpful. Her unpleasant experiences in the past are not ones shared by everyone with lengthy, different sounding names, nor those of us who are not phonetically challenged, due to a less homogeneous upbringing. To say that people should abide by certain standards that are culturally acceptable in America when thinking of baby names, yet disregard the fact that America consists of people of different ethnicities and values is quite dismissive of those who come from cultures that boast their own traditional names, and are more receptive to different kinds.

Dobson-Mouawad seems to assume that as a Westerner who belongs to a certain culture, she must be right in extending advice to everyone, irrespective of origin or cultural differences, as though she is assuming that everyone wants to, or should strive to be “white.”