Church of the holy secular. Saints and prophets of the bibles of dissent.Strap-on sanctity. The purity of political sophistication. In part much can be blamed on Spinoza for this fine splitting of hairs that engrosses much of the dissent industry, the invidious predation that seems to reinforce false consciousness; Spinoza’s critical torching of the five books of Moses was so over the top that it shellacked eeven impious old goats like Thomas Hobbes, sideswiping him as well into the upstream/downstream conflict between faith and reason that dominates much of the political discourse, particularly on the left with its abundant supply of actors seeking elevation to the high divinity of dissent. A secular church defending orthodox dogma.
—Images of the West Bank and Gaza commonly shown by Western media do not usually include Gaza City’s shopping mall (opened in 2010), its middle class and current building boom, or the West Bank’s own five-star hotels and mansions owned by Palestinians.
This is not to say that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza do not also suffer restrictions, hardships and humiliations because of the Israeli occupation. This is documented and real.
But does it justify the increasingly vehement accusations from fringe groups, laser-focused on the queer community, branding Israel the the world’s lone pariah state? Why is their outrage not also directed against the aforementioned Lebanese treatment of Palestinian refugees? What about the total lack gay rights from many Arab regimes — such as Hamas in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and others?—Read More:http://scottpiro.com/2011/07/pinkwashing-whitewashing-brainwashing/
Spinoza asserted in the Theological Political Treatise that the Bible is not divine. In fact its mundane, banal, a conceptual idea much like Marcel Duchamp’s urinal as a ready-made. The Bible as human construction to be treated like any corrupt old text: burnt. So we know the power of these movements under the guise of emancipation and liberation to create their own theology of racism, extremism and violence. But that’s not okay to admit. To Spinoza, the Bible’s influence came from the imagination of the pious to collaged images onto god to control a populace prone to emotion and superstition. And no one was chosen. To Spinoza, “the conversion of the jews” ; or rather their survival at that time was the result of national arrogance and persecution. Secularism, socialism, theism, atheism, could imply an embracing as equals followed by a quick assimilation. Also, if they would ditch the Torah, they could conceivably muster enough intestinal fortitude to create a homeland and salvation could be attained as a psychological zone of calmness made more enjoyable by the notion that the soul has a given shelf life without immortality. Despite this, there is always a yearning to find secular spirituality somehow, a kind of incongruous juxtaposition in the same was as religious-zionism is, and one equally tormented in its quest for “authenticity” and the definitive in the battle for “holier than thou.”
(see link at end)…about the ongoing battle between organic purists and the increasingly powerful forces of Big Organic. The main character in the story is a man named Michael J. Potter, the head of the independent organic foods producer and wholesaler Eden Foods.
The spectre of Big Organic has been haunting the industry for most of the past decade, at least since Walmart started selling truckloads of the stuff eight years ago. The rise of industrial-scale organic is what spurred the locavore movement, just as the mass-marketing of local was the impetus for the artisanal craze….
Yemenite Jews Celebrate Passover. 1950′s. Sherry Wolf:BUT THERE remains much work to be done among the broadening layer of Americans who are coming to consciousness in an era of revolutions, occupations and mass protest. They are participating in marches against the New Jim Crow and stop-and-frisk–yet they remain unschooled or unconvinced of Israel’s racist policies and colonialist practices.
A recent article by Occupy Wall Street activist Yotam Marom in Haaretz gives advice to Israel’s social protest movement, calling for “equity” and “self-determination”–but without any mention of the Palestinians who are also ignored by the youthful social protest movement there.
Occupy activists who’ve worked alongside Marom know him to be an antiracist, and his blind spot when it comes to crimes against the Palestinians is all too common among other progressives who have read critically about the world, yet, when it comes to Israel, often defend it without the vigor of historical analysis and ideas, contradicting so much of their world view. This is a precarious racism of antiracists.—Read More:http://socialistworker.org/2012/07/12/antiracists-for-apartheid image:http://livefromjerusalem.tumblr.com/page/23
And so there’s not much new to the story — it’s pretty much the boilerplate co-optation fable, where the energetic, ambitious, DIY upstarts have their scene taken over by corporate interests, who then sell a mass-marketed version to the masses, with all the value-laden authenticity bleached out of it. In this case, the word “organic” merely takes the place of “punk”. Think of Eden Foods as Henry Rollins, while Wholesome & Hearty is more like Blink 182.
At the core of the dispute here is the setting of standards for what constitutes organic food. The big food corporations like Heinz and Kellog have come to dominate the board that approves non-organic ingredients and additives and other inputs: “At first, the list was largely made up of things like baking soda, which is nonorganic but essential to making things like organic bread. Today, more than 250 nonorganic substances are on the list, up from 77 in 2002.”…
—When contacted again today, Ibrahim refused to believe the video is perpetuating a “hoax,” a word used by Abunimah. Ibrahim sticks by his translation of the video, which shows al-Khallaf reporting that suicide bombers were allowed to ask fellow militants for anal sex because their mission overrides other religious teaching.—Read More:http://www.advocate.com/politics/military/2012/07/12/religious-exemption-sodomy-suicide-bombers image:http://livefromjerusalem.tumblr.com/page/22
…What is interesting about the debate as it plays out in this article is that the question of whether these various “synthetics” should be allowed or not is entirely political. That is, Strom goes the entire article without ever confronting what should be the central issue, which is whether any of the controversial ingredients or inputs are healthy, or good for the environment, or contribute to the taste of the product. It’s clearly seen as irrelevant to the debate: the term “sustainability” is never used in the article, which is sort of like writing about the Occupy movement without once using the term “inequality”.
Instead, the argument over what is properly “organic” is over whether some ingredient meets some mythological standard of purity, fine-graining the ideology in the manner that was perfected by Marxists, and before them, the deeply religious. Indeed, substitute “kosher” for “organic” in this article and you get a fairly healthy sense of how the debate is playin
t. The difference of course is that for orthopraxic religions like Judaism, the following of the rules for their own sake is the entire point. The rules surrounding organic are — in theory anyway — directed at a more practical end, like environmental sustainability or better health outcomes. Read More:http://authenticityhoax.squarespace.com/
In the above example, its clear that the issue of authenticity is a significant lever on the problem of commodified trangression. The authenticity of Eden foods does not provide a simple answer to the problem, and may actually reinforce it. Oppositional “cultural” production as an industry in itself. Business models like Adbusters which are fairly sophisticated or Huffington Post parlay opposition into consumption as a bottom line, by pointing to Veblen’s invidious distinction as their own basis for status and a “rational” desire for authenticity; a desire that seems most vibrant within the context of dissent industry cultural production as opposed to traditional “exchange-value culture. Adbusters selling their own version of “equitable” running shoes for a princely sum instead of some rock-bottom priced shoe from Poland or the Slovakia. The means then of contemporary cultural production trump the actual message.
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…In the report being read in the video, Ibrahim’s account says a cleric is asked, “Is it permissible for me to let one of the jihadi brothers sodomize me to widen my anus if the intention is good?” Although the cleric reminds everyone that sodomy is forbidden, he offers an exception. “Jihad comes first,” he said, according to Ibrahim’s translation, “for it is the pinnacle of Islam, and if the pinnacle of Islam can only be achieved through sodomy, then there is no wrong in it.” The supposed cleric actually makes the case that not only is sodomy allowed, it could be required. “If obligatory matters can only be achieved by performing the prohibited, then it becomes obligatory to perform the prohibited, and there is no greater duty than jihad,” the cleric reportedly says. “After he sodomizes you, you must ask Allah for forgiveness and praise him all the more.” Read More:http://www.advocate.com/politics/military/2012/07/12/religious-exemption-sodomy-suicide-bombers
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Can business help render authenticity in a world where reality itself seems socially constructed? Certainly. But it means intentionally offsetting the lost sense of objective reality thrust on us by postmodernists with an understanding of difference between what is real and what we perceive to be real. — James Gilmore & B. Joseph Pine III, What Consumers Really Want: Authenticity, 2007
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