Quinteto Yo

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Digital Faces & Postmodern Social Landscapes

Leaface

Chronicle of a Journey to the Dark Side of the Earth: Part 6

Habeas Corpus

A crowded bus with its suspension askew rattles by on its way to the factory, the air inside rank with sweat and cigarette smoke and garlic‑ginger farts.  Faces peer out through the fogged and dirty windows, each lost in solitude, reflecting perhaps on fickle generosity, or with anticipation for pungent, steaming dumplings dipped in vinegar for lunch, or the exuberant madness of the New Year's pyrotechnics, or sad little sister's second husband, who beats her when he drinks.

            Transcendence is no longer possible outside the privacy of the mind.  Privacy is no longer possible outside of dreams.  The process of experiencing aliveness has been anaesthetized.  Sensation is numb.  Uniqueness is anomaly.  Solitude and a sense that all is fate, anxiety, joy that lacks laughter, sorrow that lacks tears, depression, pain, despair and cruelty; these are the themes.  Every anonymous death has left a lingering echo.

            The neat lines dividing the periods of history are but an illusion.  There are ox ghosts afoot on the remote, dusty, yellow earth.  Mythical monsters incarnate, their fangs and lips are bloody from having gorged on children.  Spiritual culture is as bleak as an endless sea of dry grass that undulates and ripples under a perpetual wind that howls to the horizon in all directions.  People are adrift in a void of ignorance with nothing left to believe in.  Humiliation and degradation are the constant and inescapable facts of existence.

            In the absence of either rules or common sense, individual functionaries have been reduced to doing only what is expected by those above them in the highly centralized structure, to whom it has become absolutely clear that political power flows from the barrel of a gun.  Social justice is subject to the semi‑coherent whims of aging strongmen, who are hooked to infusions of rhinoceros horn and ginseng and little brown balls of opium, and herbal medicines that taste like a dank basement, enhanced by doses of calcium and crushed pearls, arsenic, saffron and musk, and applications of lion and bear fat, castor oil and carbolic acid, mustard oil and oil of cloves and a diet including turtle eggs and the testicles of goats, to abet the rape of illiterate village girls with pretty faces.

            In excess of thirty million people starved to death. The half‑completed, then abandoned, blocks of inadequately conceived industrial enterprises covered with soot and coal dust remain as a legacy.  The grotesque chunks of frozen masonry are like a fantasy of the post‑nuclear landscape.  Mighty rivers spring to life in the high mountains, only to reach the sea, covered in a black, oily scum, putrid with sewage and tossing up green, orange, yellow, frothy, chemical foam.

            In the grey deep‑freeze of a spiritual winter, old slogans and empty rhetoric recycle endlessly in the editorials.  The evening news announcer begins his broadcast by addressing his audience as "comrade viewers."  The current ideological task, says the television, is to convince the youth that communism is superior to capitalism.  There is only one right idea.  Superiors will dictate and inferiors will do what they are told.  Those who brought habeas corpus cases on behalf of people who had disappeared have all themselves disappeared.


To be continued...

World View

Welcome to Cana, South Lebanon

Homo Sapiens: An Illustrated Field Guide

 Nepal

Like many other animal species, Homo sapiens are said to be sexually dimorphic. Not only are male sapiens on average somewhat larger than females, but since very early in their evolutionary history, the sapiens sexes have had very distinct cultural and behavioral patterns as well. Typically, in the context of the ancient hunter-gatherer cultures from which all modern sapiens arose, the females were relegated to gathering wild plant material, maintaining the hearth, and of course, nurturing the young. In these circumstances the characteristic attributes of female sapiens - their behavioral bias to utilize social mechanisms rather than direct action, and their heightened empathy compared to males, for example - must have emerged through natural selection.

 Spain

This arrangement left sapiens males in charge of hunting other animals and providing dietary protein in the form of meat. This of course involved the development of weapons, skills and cooperative strategy. In the process, the typical male sapiens aggressiveness and tendency toward risk-taking must have been selected for as well.

Stones of a Prescribed Weight

As the plane banks for its final approach to Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport, the women aboard transform themselves.  Every trace of makeup has been carefully wiped away during visits to the toilet. Head scarves are tightened along with seat belts. While they may have boarded as Asian beauties, each and every one is a picture of Muslim modesty in the line for the passport check to enter the Islamic Republic.

            Of all the changes that have swept Iran during the more than three decades since the fall of the shah, those that have affected women are the most visible symbols of the regime that came to power. The transformation was both complete and abrupt, considering that the tradition of hejab – Islamic covering for women – had all but died out in Iran, at least for the urban majority, at the time of the revolution.

            A glance through almost any middle class family photo album reveals all the familiar snaps. There are wedding days with brides in white, girls in bathing suits at the beach and lovers holding hands.  Women appear in sun dresses, tennis shorts and the full range of female hair styles.

            Leaf further back in time and it is obvious that the ‘60s hit Iran with many of the same phenomena that Europe and North America experienced. Adolescent boys sported long hair and bell-bottoms. Girls wore mini-dresses. It is only when one gets back to the faded, yellow photographs of grandparents and great-grandparents that one begins to see head coverings on the women.

            The effects of rapid industrialization and urbanization on the country, together with a 1934 ban on the chador by Reza Shah, the last shah’s father, had removed the custom from all but the most traditional sectors of society. Indeed, through most of the ‘60s and ‘70s, particularly in the middle-class areas of Tehran, while women covered to attend the mosque, it was the prostitutes who habitually wore the chador, not for religious reasons, but to cover the skimpy costumes of their trade.

            During the final days of the monarchy, however, wearing a head scarf became a symbol of political protest. Because there was such widespread discontent and because Ayatollah Khomeini, a religious man, was able to focus this discontent, women took to wearing the scarf during the street demonstrations out of respect for the perceived spiritual aspects of the uprising.

            While a sizable minority of women embraced this return to traditional values with enthusiasm, many soon found themselves trapped unwillingly behind the veil. As radical fundamentalists hijacked what had started as essentially a middle class revolution, patrols of Revolutionary Guards appeared on the streets, meting out instant justice to those who failed to comply with the new moral order.

            Although enforcement is extremely haphazard, the penalties for transgression are severe. From time to time, newspapers publish a menu of torments – 70 lashes for lipstick, 40 lashes for eye makeup or nail polish.

            Those caught in more serious violations of the moral code, prostitutes, for example, or even just unlucky lovers, are in deep trouble. They are buried up to the neck in sand with their head covered. A hundred local people, marshaled by the religious authorities, are then gathered in a circle around them and throw stones of a prescribed weight.

Ruins of Iskandar

Located in the Kashmir Valley about 40 kms west of the Indian city of Srinagar, Iskandar (Alexandria) was built by Greek colonists in the wake of Alexander the Great's 4th century BCE conquests.  It is notable for representing the farthest eastern penetration of Hellenistic cultural influences.  Iskandar flourished only briefly.  Beginning after the death of the conqueror in 323BCE, Iskandar was slowly swamped and assimilated by the indigenous culture.

The Smart Money

How can anyone take free trade seriously? Clearly no one in any government or the global corporate world does. The parts of the world economy that are able to compete internationally are primarily the state-subsidized ones: resource extraction, capital-intensive agriculture, high-tech industry, weapons, etc. The irony is that research and development is paid for with taxes, while anything marketable is taken over by the private sector. This combination of public subsidy and private profit is called free enterprise. It’s a sad state of affairs when the best investment advice urges oil futures, and shares in weapons manufacturers and privatized water. But that’s where the smart money seems to be going.