A wrong turn in Israel

Here is a story for you.  I’m not entirely sure if it’s the best one to tell you, but it’s the  first one that comes to mind whenever I think of Halloween or Israel.

It was October 31, 2004 — Halloween — and I found myself in Lud, Israel.  Lud is a terrible, desperate place. I’ve sometimes heard Palestinians from the Gaza Strip refer to it as “hell.” There are sections of the city where the houses are constructed of stapled aluminum siding and dried mud. The more civilized sections are fortresses. Most of the residents live in giant concrete blocks. The city elite (cops, politicians, and drug dealers) live in walled mansions. Lud’s dealers pioneered “ATM drugs”: the junkie walks up to a tiny slit in the wall of his or her dealer’s mansion, deposits some shekels, and out pops their heroin.

I had just returned from the north, visiting Nazareth, Akka, and Haifa, and other places.  I saw the minarets of Qalqiyah and Tulkarem peeking out over the top edge of the notorious Separation Wall and tendrils of black smoke from burning tires licking the blue sky.  I visited a small village called Kufr Manda, a poor farming community of Palestinians that had lost two of their sons in protests and whose hearts I would later break.  And I drank coffee with Bedouins — it had been brewed for three days and had the sharp texture of fine red wine.

On the return journey by train I was aiming for Ramle, near Lud, but overshot and ended up in Beer Sheva, deep in the south.  Israel’s a small country; such things can happen.  Several hours later, deep into the night and even deeper in the Negev desert, I sat with two security guards in the railway terminal of Beer Sheva. One guard was a newly immigrated Russian; the other, a second-generation Sepharadi. They had just finished their mandatory military service. They both served in Gaza, protecting the Israeli settlements there.

“I once saw a terrorist with a rocket,” the Russian said. “I shot him.”

“I ran over an Arab with my tank,” the Sepharadi said. “I don’t know if he was a terrorist.”

They both grinned with a savage joy. The Russian was twenty-four; the Sepharadi, twenty-one.

The stars our destination: cyberdissent and the future of Turkmenistan

Exploring the question of why the normally totalitarian government of Turkmenistan has suddenly and aggressively striven to increase internet access among its population, this article is ultimately a reflection upon the impact of technology upon human society.  As a piece of what can only be described as “journalistic philosophy”, I’m particularly pleased with how it turned out; indeed, its core ideas are why I am a committed cyberjournalist.

Note: a shortened version of this editorial was published under the title, “A Pandora’s Box“, in the “Our Take” section of Transitions Online (TOL).  The expanded version, republished below, originally appeared on neweurasia under the current title (click on the image above to read it).

It’s a philosophical riddle as old as when humanity first learned to harness the power of fire: Will technology bring freedom or slavery?  Lately, observers of Turkmenistan find themselves asking this very question about the Internet.

Turkmenistan has one of the world’s lowest rates of Internet penetration: According to Internetworldstats.com, a website that measures global Internet access, a meager 1.4 percent of Turkmenistan’s population is wired, putting the country in 216th place out of 226.

However, two years ago, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, recently ascended to the Turkmen presidency, vowed to expand the Internet in his nation. Speaking at Columbia University in September 2007, he remarked, “Let me tell you frankly that the atmosphere today in Turkmenistan is just incredible. Our children feel such a strong and intense yearning for knowledge that we just can’t fail and let them down.”

At the time, neweurasia’s pseudonymous blogger Conquistador noted that the speech was accompanied by a presentation showing young students typing on new laptops. In light of the paranoia that marked the previous regime of Saparmurat Niyazov – during which Internet access was sequestered to a tiny elite – the images were a bold statement.

“Will any of this emerge?” Conquistador asked. “That remains to be seen.” Yet, remarkably, it seems that the Berdymukhammedov regime is actually intent on keeping its word.

In September Turkmenistan hosted an IT-themed exhibition called Turkmentel 2009 and a scientific conference. Berdymukhammedov personally addressed the audience, saying, “We are doing our best so that every citizen of Turkmenistan has access to the Internet and modern communication technologies.”

Subsequently, the government declared its intention to launch Turkmenistan’s first ever communications satellite.

Faithfall (poem © 2008)

From: The Transcendence, La Salle University Press © 2008 

The Mantle (poem © 2008)

From: The Transcendence, La Salle University Press © 2008 

The Garden (poem © 2008)

From: The Transcendence, La Salle University Press © 2008 

Late Ghost (poem © 2008)

From: The Transcendence, La Salle University Press © 2008

The Search for the Historical Socrates: Was Socrates a Failure? (essay © 2007)

This essay is the fruit of an independent study project I did with Dr. D. Stefan Schindler, a philosophy professor at La Salle University of many specialties and author of the forthcoming article, “The Tao of Socrates” (TBA).  As with “The Search for the Historical Confucius,” my style has gotten a lot better (or so I like to think) since 2007, and I also no longer subscribe to evolutionary historiography.  Both essays were written before I discovered John Wansbrough and the possibility of applying literary theory and criticism to historical research.  Nevertheless, I really enjoyed writing them, especially the argumentative sections.  — CS 12.07.2008

The Search for the Historical Confucius: How Knightly was Confucius? (essay © 2007)

This essay is the fruit of an independent study project I did with Dr. Charles Desnoyers, La Salle University’s resident Sinologist and author of A Journey to the East: Li Gui’s A New Account of a Trip Around the Globe (2004). As with “The Search for the Historical Socrates,” my style has gotten a lot better (or so I like to think) since 2007, and I also no longer subscribe to evolutionary historiography. Both essays were written before I discovered John Wansbrough and the possibility of applying literary theory and criticism to historical research.  Nevertheless, I really enjoyed writing them, especially the argumentative sections. — CS 12.07.2008

Verbal Tec: The Nat Turner of Hip Hop (interview © 2007)

My interview of Philadelphia’s rising political-underground Hip Hop artist Verbal Tec, which was the cover article for the February 21st, 2007 issue of Play Philly Magazine. Published in print and online here. –CS 14.06.2008

PLAY and Verbal Tec discuss the life, death and future of Hip Hop… Out of the bloody streets of Baltimore, with rhymes that sizzle in spiritual and political fury, comes Verbal Tec, shouting, “I write for those who never had a voice!” A rising prince of Philly underground rap, this cold-eyed Temple University sociology graduate is determined to massacre what he deems as the apathetic consciousnesses of the listening public — or die trying.

An Artist’s Responsibility (interview © 2006)

This is an article that I’m proud to say proved to be very popular among many of Play Philly Magazine’s readers. It’s about artists and their role in gentrification. Published in print and online here. — CS 14.06.2008

It really only takes one entrepreneurial artist opening a studio, a workshop — or as in the case of Aurora Deshauters, librarian and graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, a gallery — before more of their kind begin pouring in. It’s a common American story: starving artists, hungry for cheap housing, move into low-cost, deteriorated or blighted urban neighborhoods, and soon they attract higher-income residents who “rejuvenate” a section of the city hitherto written off as beyond middle-class salvation. It’s so ubiquitous a story that Americans even have a name for it: urban renewal. Yet, most people don’t bother to consider if there might not be serious consequences for those who called these neighborhoods home long before penniless painters with flamboyant hairstyles and funky clothes came knocking.