middle east – dr cedar

We have fallen in love, especially in the West, with the rebel. We think, even after films such as ‘Rebel without a Cause’ that they are protesting against the status quo and that the status quo always needs protessting against. We have been sold the idea of change while also trying to balance conservation, and the status quo represents conservative and no change. We are deeply confused.

James Dean in ‘Rebel Without a Cause‘ was gorgeous; the jeans, white t-shrit and leather jacket, the snarl, the motorbike, all of these became the symbol of rebellion. In truth, his character was a total dick, but such a good looking cool one.

‘Bullies without a Cause’ would be the more accurate title.

Johnny Depp as a Pirate is also cool. But most pirates were total bastards and you wouldn’t want to be involved with one. Let’s be honest; the Johnny Depp character is more appealing than the goody two shoes one. But the bad boy is, in reality, a narcassistic pain.

For years, the British Foreign Offices’ Middle East policy has run on what I call, ‘the TE Lawrence Effect’. If you have ever seen the beautiful film ‘Lawrence of Arabia‘ you might fall for it too. A romantic character, dressing in local (foreign, therefore exotic) clothing, played by the gorgoeous Peter O’Toole, who dies back in the UK in a motorcycle accident, has great appeal to men in pinstrips at the Foreign Office. A man of their dreams living their fantasy life. And then imagine a Sheik, played by Omar Shariff, coming out of the desert and whisking you off to his tent for wildly fantastic sex. Dishy, rebelious, romantic. So much more foreign, exotic and dangerous then a couple of weeks in the South of France and a quick holiday romance.

These men had the same appeal that generations earlier fell for Rudolph Valentino as the dashing Sheik in the desert in many a movie. Dreaming of desirous, distant cads.

The reality is sand in your anus and grit in your genitals. Sadly, when the head gear comes off it reveals a bald patch; he has, what the Americans would call ‘a tiny wiener’, the real cause of many a protest; his own method of delivery is terrible sex and he is waiting for mummy, or wifey, or both, to make his bed and wipe his bottom for him. Real reality, really, The vicious clowns of October 7th were phoning their mummies and daddies to boast of their evil and get their approval. Big butch boys.

This is the world of the bullied, bully; not the dashing dream, more the pyschopath as leader.

Most of these rebels are not radical. Radical is seeing things in a new, creative way, not merely blasting any opponent with any weapon to hand. Abraham Joshua Heschel talked about ‘Radical Amazement’, a state we should be in when awake, truly awake, and being truly awake is the only true form of wokeness.

We have seen many insurgencies against governments. If your media is anything like that in the UK, it rushes in to uphold and defend the rebel forces in some sort of romantic movie moment without any real knowledge of what is being fought for. Few people can, for example, even tell you who the Tamil Tigers were fighting against and what the problem was. For the media the Tamil Tigers looked like the oppressed victims, regardless of where or what they were from. The Sinhales (the other side) were the indigenous people of Sri Lanka. They, therefore, represented the status quo. They never stood a chance in the media.

In the media, being first with the story is more important then being right. Only after days and weeks of digging do we find out if the insurgent group are for the good or for the bad. Sometimes, they are a totalitarian, fascist, greedy group of thugs, a mafia on ketamine or captogen, the drug of choice in the Middle East, not an oppressed people rising against an oppressive regime. The insurgents are the oppressive regime who will victimise the ‘other’. The media, and many people, have a tough time working that out. People in their teens and 20s, when rebellion is deemed cool, have a big problem working out that the rebels may, in fact, be the oppressors, the fascist bullies. Many of us have been rebels in our youths. Rebellion, like sex, is seen as a teen activity. It can be creepy when older people are the rebels, the ‘Hell Grannies’ ! But usually teen uprisings are led by some old git with an axe to grind (and a small wiener). Grooming.

These rebels are seldom radical, merely Insurgents.

Currently, we are seeing people, often young people with a few old hangers-on, being ‘radicalised’ by a totalitarian regime that is not oppressed but is run by very old, very oppressive fascists. We are being mugged by the media and bullied by the dumb who do not understand real control and are seduced by costumes and exoticising the ‘other’ who become always believable and always oppressed, not because they are, but because we need them to be, because they look different from us and we are looking to be different from the crowd. This is so wrapped up in fetishising the ‘other’ that the Westerner dresses up (cos plays) as the people they deemed oppressed.

What happens to these Westerners in years to come? Do they become sad old people never fulfilling their potential as they are still wrapped up in exotic dream fantasies or do they become embarressed by their naivity, not using their critical faculties to see past the PR? However, what is seldom realised at the time is that this naivity, this fantasy, this influencer advertisement, kills. Make no mistake about that.

Democracy is not only about the rule by the majority, but the care of the minority. If 60% of people vote for one particular leader, 40% didn’t vote for them. Don’t be bad at maths. Decent democracies are not bullies that only take care of their own. That is when a rebellion starts. Most democracies care for all, that is what taxes do in sensible countries, they pay for the poor, the orphaned, the oppressed. We should be proud if we are lucky enought to live in one. Most of these current protestors have never been oppressed and muddle up being told NO (for their own safety) with being downtrodden. Freedom is not a riot.

Being a democracy does not dumb down differences. Being a totalitarian dictatorship does; it ends differences. You may think a Mao Tse Tung outfit is cute, but when a billion people wear it the appeal dissipates. The desire to be different and rebellious goes when everybody is claiming/appearing as different or rebellious.

So before deciding on which side to take and basing it merely on appearances, in your mind’s eye, strip the ‘rebels’ back to trackies and flip flops. Even more criticaly, picture your parents in the rebels’ outfits shouting the rebels’ slogans. Still exotic? Are they, in fact, fascist totalitarian thugs that would hang you by your goolies for being yourself, or people that would really allow you to be yourself and for all of us in all our differences to be ourselves, even if stay-pressed cotton pants and button down shirts may be your exotic look (it is exotic to someone, somewhere) ? Dressed up in a cool, rebelious look, are they really rebels of the oppressed or bullies of the oppressors?

Because Totalitarian Fascists don’t care about the real oppressed, but they always have the best outfits.

So suave, so chic, so shit

Recently I watched a wonderful programme on Channel 4 TV in the UK called ‘Keeping up with the Khans’ about immigration to the UK, specifically to a town called Sheffield. It had wit and charm and made every person into a human being.

There was one man on the programme from Lebanon. He had a problem finding his country on the map and was surprised to see how small it was.

He then could not find the UK. At first he thought that the USA was the UK. He then pointed to Turkey. He thought the UK was a lot bigger than it is. That thought was shared by another immigrant from the Sudan. He said it must be large because the UK is also called Great Britain, which logically should refer to size. It seemed a good point. In fact, the UK fits into the state of Texas in the USA, not the USA, but just the state of Texas, about three times!

The blue is the USA, the black is Texas and then it is enlarged to show the yellow, which is the UK, super-imposed on it to show the size of the UK in proportion to Texas and the USA.

The man from the Lebanon did not seem to realise that the UK is an island, a very small one at that. The man from Sudan had come over from Calais and knew the UK was an island.

Having a sense of the size of countries and the size of continents is very difficult if you haven’t seen comparative maps, if you only see your place in isolation, as it appears on a Sat Nav.

This is a map of the continent of Africa with many other very large countries super-imposed on it.

But on the news earlier the Swedish foreign minister when asked about migrant numbers said that the UK should do more as it is much bigger than Sweden. So I went on Professor Google!

The UK is about 94,000 sq miles (241,000 sq km) with a population of about 100 million and Sweden is about 175,000 sq miles (449,000 sq km) with a population of about 8 million. In my humble arithmetic, Sweden is about 2 times the size of the UK. And that is a foreign minister.

What is going on in our schools worldwide? Are none of us looking at maps? Are none of us seeing maps?

The problem with using Satellite Navigators (Sat Navs) in our cars or on our phones is that there is no context. You do not know where you are!

The algorithms of computers are not knowledge. They tell you what to do next so you don’t have to look or know anything much.

But maps reveal place and context. They also show size.

This is for anybody that knows the above shapes are a map of Europe with the Gulf states superimposed on it for size comparison.

We need to look at maps to see where we are in relation to where other people are. It is a disgrace that our leaders cannot find the countries they are talking about or bombing on a map. They have no idea about where it is and what countries are next to them. Those being talked about or bombed also have little idea of where the place is that is doing that to them. Many political decisions rest on maps and we need to see them and understand ourselves in the context of others.

For instance, there is a mantra that many people repeat about a two state solution in the Middle East. But the areas they tend to talk about doing this to are not contiguous; they are not next to each other. They have no idea where anywhere is or the relation of one place to another or the size of the places and whether they are feasible because they have not looked at maps. Maps of the world. Maps of a region. Maps.

Comparison of the UK (in white) and Israel and the West Bank (in blue). The West Bank is the size of Dorset, a county (region) in the UK.

Two State Solutions

For instance: When the Muslim people living in India fought for their own (Muslim) state the British Government decided that a two state solution would prevent a civil war. There was to be a Muslim state and a Hindu state. in other words two countries based on religious belief. This process, which happened in 1947, was called Partition.

The British ceded the area now known as Pakistan, a huge, vast area, and another large, but smaller area that was meant to be East Pakistan, as one Muslim state and India as the Hindu state.

However, Pakistan and East Pakistan are not contiguous. They are separated by a vast country, India, of which both the areas of Pakistan and East Pakistan originally formed a part. So of course the two state solution was geographically ungovernable as two countries (India and Pakistan West / East).

This tragic time ended up, instead, becoming a three state solution:

India
Pakistan,
Bangladesh.

Look at the map of the region.

Eight million people died during this partition. Nobody really talks about it. Fourteen and a half million people were uprooted.

Not thousands, not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. 14.5 million moved from one state to the other and 8 million died trying to move in 1947.

The disputed territory of Kashmir between the border of India and Pakistan is huge, 222,000 sq km, the size of the UK

Of course if anybody bothered to look they would also find that Gaza and the West Bank are not contiguous.

Maps can be made showing geographical features such as valleys and mountains, oceans and lands.
Maps can be made showing political features, the borders and countries of the world.
Maps can be made showing population features, density of humans or other species of interest.
Maps can be made showing epidemiological features, the spread of diseases or traits.
Maps can be made of economic features showing the distribution of wealth or trade or tourism.
Maps can be made showing linguist features, the distribution of languages.
Maps can be made showing religious distributions or political-religious distributions as some countries are theocracies.

All countries have some theocratic history to them, when they were mainly one religion or another. Some have remained theocratic. My map, below, shows a religious distribution to the best of my colouring in abilities.

Unlike the man from Lebanon trying to find his mother’s house on a world map, you cannot see yourself on a map of the world. You are not the centre of all worlds. You are only the centre of your own selfie.

Maps give us perspective.

I think, in a world of platitudes and political decisions by people who have no idea where we are talking about, or what we are talking about, we need to look at maps.

Here is a map of the world (minus the Artic and Antarctic):

The countries in Red are predominantly Christian.

The countries in Green are predominantly Muslim.

The countries in Purple are predominantly Buddhist.

The countries in Yellow are predominantly Hindu.

The countries in Blue are predominantly Jewish.

A little perspective goes a long way.

Tag Archives: middle east

Rebel : the appeal of the bad boy

Maps : Finding ourselves and others