S.H.A.Z.A.M.!

I was moved to say, "Shazam!" today in a certain instance as it used to be one of my favorite interjections growing up in Kentucky, and what kid didn't want to be either Isis or Captain Marvel, seriously? They were the bomb. (I think that is clearly evinced by the popularity of the either real name or nickname of many women today across all races in America, that being Isis.)

Yet, like with many things, looking at things we knew in childhood can mean something quite different as adults. For me, the great challenge is to find the balance between the wonder of that little boy in Kentucky who wants to be Captain Marvel merely by shouting out "Shazam!" and the middle-aged man in Belgium who says it out of nostalgia, but had to go to Wikipedia to refresh his memory about the show, namely, what the hell does, "Shazam!" mean?

For many, it is a freakishly adept application out of an Orwell or Huxley novel that can "read" music on the radio and tell you what it is. I cannot even begin to fathom that one.

However, the original usage in the show was an acronym for S.olomon, H.ercules. Atlas. Z.eus. Achilles. and M.ercury. Whoah, now that is some power. These were the elders whom Billy Batson would invoke when he needed some extra star power to get the job done as Captain Marvel.

What got me thinking though, was, which "elders" would we call upon today? I am intrigued by the ones who were chosen then:

S.olomon, a wise and judicious lawgiver
H.ercules, a demi-God who had to prove himself through 12 Labors, (though ultimately went berserk and killed his wife,...not in the Disney version, but pretty status quo for a Greek Hero)
A.tlas, the metaphor for ultimate punishment of Duty
Z.eus, all-powerful sleaze bag
A.chilles, demi-God who begrudges his Duty in battle, til it becomes personal, then goes berserk and desecrates Hector's body, who, BTW is waaaaayyy cooler than Achilles
M.ercury, the messenger God, who lives between the Gods and Mortals, aka Hermes

Pretty interesting Rogue Gallery there, ranging from Justice to Injustice, Gods to Human, Power to Defeated, and fallen heroes.

So, whom would America pick now from the Pantheon of Gods and Demi-Gods? What qualities would we value above others? Which would we call upon in our Time of need?

More importantly, perhaps, would we use that council and experience to help others, or to help ourselves? How often do people call out to the Gods for the sake of others, without asking for something for themselves? I wonder. Does that go contrary to the very grain of who we are as Humans?

Since I am stuck in the 70s and 80s today it seems, one of my favorite LPs (Long-Playing, for you young'ins) was Rush's Hemispheres. Being a typical Rush concept album, it tells the story of the emergence of Cygnus X-1, which is the name of a massive black hole, as a New God within the Pantheon. There is a battle amongst the Gods and Goddesses, and the narrator, who becomes Cygnus X-1, watches on in horror and dismay at the dissolution of the Universe. The two main fighters are Apollo and Dionysos, which is clearly a nod to Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy.

Apollo, the God of Reason and Music, and Light battles with Dionysos, the God of Intoxication, Decadence, and Darkness, a thinly veiled metaphor of the individual soul, much like Plato's well-known allegory of the Soul as a charioteer trying to harness the power of a Light and a Dark horse to keep an even balance.

Ultimately, a new God is needed, Cygnus, who becomes "knighted" as the God of Balance, a perfect sphere of Light and Dark, much like the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang , something Light and something Dark. For Nietzsche, the clash of the titanic Gods of Apollo and Dionysos, the result was Art, forged out of a mixture of passion/intoxication and reason/restraint, Rausch und Rede.

I'll go with that. In essence, that is what Shazam! then is: a mixture of Reason, Passion, Strength, Failure, Success, Mediation, and Mitigation.

Not quite the Super Hero qualities that we see today, though paints a pretty good picture of the complexion of humanity, bringing the full spectrum of our qualities, the Good and the Bad into one, single phrase.

Shazam!

Oh Lord, Won’t you buy me an AFC Win?

Ok, I’m going to be the guy who unceremoniously farts in the Tebow rose-perfumed elevator which is currently stuck between floors. 

I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut and fingers off of the keyboards for this topic, and had hoped the beleaguered and bruised Steelers would do something to dispense of this media-induced malarkey, but alas, Big Ben and the Terrible Towel club couldn’t pull it off, so here we are with yet another week of talking heads yapping about Tebow “Magic.”

If you have been following the NFL this year, you will be well aware that this is most likely the greatest line-up of quarterbacks the League has ever seen, and that is inclusive of the fact that Peyton Manning has been sitting on the sidelines all season.

If you pick the top 6 ranked quarterbacks: Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Eli Manning, Matthew Stafford, and Philip Rivers, you will have an AVERAGE of 4,992 yards, 14 interceptions, 38 TD’s and a quarterback rating of 103. Those numbers are staggering if you have ONE quarterback with them on the stat books. If you know anything about NFL numbers, this should have made your jaw drop. Again, that is with the elder Manning sitting out for the season and Roethlisberger having a very, very bad season in comparison.

It has been quite a year for rookie Quarterbacks as well: Cam Newton, Andy Dalton, and T.J. Yates all have had outstanding years with nary the hype that previous rookies such as Matt Leinhart (who?), Vince Young (What?), and Sam Bradford (Where?) have recently had.

But, what is the story that all of the media picks up on? Tim Tebow and his “magic” and the fact that he kneels on the turf, which ludicrously beyond all possible words in my head can fathom, has become known as “Tebow-ing” as if he invented the single-bended knee prayer position. Excuse me while I existentially barf. 

I love good stories in Sports, I really do, but this is not a good sports' story, but rather a story which confirms how bankrupt America is in its ideas about religion and what is important in life. I really, and I mean really hope that an Omniscient, Omnipotent power is not busy taking sides on American Football. Seriously, people?

I know that this should not get to me, and in reality, it does not get to me, but it does make me pause long enough to sit down and write this out. What is fundamentally wrong with this picture? Many things come to mind.

Some secular, some sacred, some downright ridiculous and illogical.

On the secular front, this just stings of the American preference for spectacle over substance at times. And, this is a shame because Americans and America are not superficial, but boy, we sure do little to dispel that myth at times, this being a prime example. Why have we not heard more about  some of the other QB’s this year in relationship to the Tebow factor? Simple, his team has won several very late-in-the game close calls, and then he prays and suddenly it becomes magic, and a one-man show.

To be sure, Tim Tebow threw the final pass that won the game against the Steelers, but it was Demaryius Thomas who caught the ball and ran with it while his other teammates made the rest of the play with pass protection and blocking. Yet, to read the media reports, Tebow descended rejuvenated  from the heavens, threw the best pass ever known to man, (so it must be divinely inspired magic), and saved Denver’s pride while the stadium erupted into unbridled jubilation of the second coming of Elway, while even the great Elway himself cracked a smile.

The only truth to that hyperbole is the phrase, “the great Elway” because he was great. And, he was great over a long period of Time, and even when Denver lost, Elway was usually still great. He has come under a lot of fire for not (Te)bowing before the great, white Hope and heaping praise upon praise on him for winning six close games. Well, as in the case of this past game, if Tebow had been doing anything in the entire last HALF of the football game, Overtime most likely would not have been necessary. I just see it as, if he had not made the winning play (he is the damn Quarterback after all, it's his JOB), then he really blew the rest of the game. Fine, he “pulled the trigger,” but at that point, he and Roethlisberger had been playing Russian Roulette and they had cocked and fired five times. One of them was bound to get the shot off. One play does not win a game. The entire build-up to an Overtime is that two teams played either equally well or equally bad, or in this case, equally MEDIOCRE. This was not a good game. The Steelers literally limped into this game, so it was hardly a stunning surprise to seem them defeated. And, this was no miracle, nor magic, nor anything remotely divine.

Imagine what would have happened if Tebow had lain prostrate in the direction of Mecca, for example, after this play, before doing his victory lap (do you think Jesus did victory laps after his deeds?), praising Allah, instead of “the Lord”? We would be having quite a different discussion in the newspapers. Or, if he had busted out into an ancestral dance that he had been raised with? Or, if he thanked the great God Shiva for his all-powerful help. Or, had gone to a Santaria voodoo ceremony the night before, still having chicken blood stains on his hands.

What then, America, would you do? How would you respond?

The country I was born in claims to be based upon religious tolerance, but in cases like this, I believe that tolerance would be exhausted quite quickly.

The Dallas Cowboys, or affectionately known as God’s Team by the zealots of Interstate 30,  famously built a stadium so that God, while not organizing and running the universe, could idly watch the Cowboys....LOSE??? Oh, wait, so God doesn’t even like His/Her/Its own team?

The point is, I shouldn’t even know that Tebow is a believer, of any faith. This is Football, not the salvation of souls at hand.

But, the sadder fact is that this is what people will hold on to as religion. Is that so bad, one may ask? Well, in a word, yes. Yes, it is that bad. How can substituting a 24 year-old kid who kneels on the football field for any real look into the substance of faith, belief, or divinity be a good thing? It could only, and I mean only argued that it is a lesser of two “evils,” meaning at least people aren’t dying over this. That is about it. This is a damn football game.

Wake up. It’s not Tebow Time on my clock. 

This is not Divine Intervention, America. It's just a game. There are bigger, much bigger things in this world to be attributing such power to.

Death and the Madman, A Tragedy of Sorts

On January 3, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche broke down.

Living in Torino (Turin), Italy, while sitting on the Piazzo Carlo Alberto, he cracked. He had long been plagued by migraines, possibly from a suspected illness ranging from diagnoses of syphilis to manic-depression to full-blown psychosis. No consensus has been reached.

In my romanticized version, I believe it was a philosophical crisis that broke him. Since the medical field has yet to come up with a more plausible cause, I will go with that.

I was talking with a friend about this event the other day, regarding the various contradictions of his life, as Nietzsche indeed is a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to being misunderstood. He welcomed it as much as he shunned it.

A favorite example of mine is the phrase that Nietzsche is most famous and simultaneously infamous for, that is, “Gott ist Tot!” (God is dead!) This comes from a scene in which a madman is running into a marketplace, proclaiming this shocking news, to which he is mocked and derided for his madness. This is often picked up as “proof” that Nietzsche was indeed the Anit-Christ or that he was an atheist, or it is picked up by angry, all-too-angry young people who don’t quite get the nuance of the situation.

None of them is accurate. Nietzsche proclaimed himself to be the Anti-Christian, in much the same way that his near contemporary Kierkegaard (a staunch believer of Christ, but also Anti-Christian) was against the hypocrisy of the Christian church in Europe near the turn of the 19th Century. Nietzsche wrestled with God, but did not deny It/Him/Her. That would be too simple.

The fuller version of that familiar phase is never, like the motto of Socrates , or at least seldomly repeated, namely “Gott ist tot! Gott bleibt tot! Und wir haben ihn getötet!” (God is dead! God remains dead! And, we have murdered him!). According to Nietzsche, the God of humans was created and murdered by humans, because we can only know what it is to be human, be-ing humans, and thus create a god in our image. Nietzsche was quite aware that there was something bigger, much bigger and more powerful than we are.

However, what he introduced is the oft-maligned, highly mis-contextualized and tragically mis-appropriated by the Nazis (Nietzsche was catatonic from 1889 until his death in 1900, long before the Nazis. His sister Elizabeth is responsible for that connection...though that is for another time...) concept of the Übermensch, or the Superman, though literally the Overman.

In short, for Nietzsche, this meant that humans could be better than what we are, but only one person at a time, and the only person who could better him or herself, was, you guessed it, yourself. No one else can make you better or worse. You are responsible for your self, and you can be better. The name comes from the idea of over-coming your weakness. For Nietzsche, the human being was a work of art in progress and the artist was the individual. He had high hopes, perhaps too high, for humans, and in January of 1889, I believe that illusion had its fatal and chronic consequences.

As the story goes, Nietzsche saw a man beating a tired and sick draught horse on the square. The horse was shrieking, but was too feeble to fight. The man continued to beat the horse mercilessly. Nobody moved to help or intervene. Not my business. Nietzsche is reported to have run to the horse, and embraced it, as it died. Although Nietzsche lived for another 11 years, he never uttered an intelligible word after that incident, and relatively soon thereafter spent his remaining life in a drooling, catatonic paralysis.

I believe that Nietzsche saw man for whom he was, just a man. It was too much. This was not the man who could over-come himself. It was a creature that would beat a dying horse to death with his bare hands while the rest of humanity walked idly by.

Yesterday, just days after having this conversation about Nietzsche’s breakdown, I saw an article in the online Belgium newspaper. It was about a video, which was included and that I watched, from US troops in Afghanistan. It is only thirty seconds. It is nauseating. An infantry man bludgeons a goat to death with an aluminum bat. You can hear each metallic clang, followed by someone saying “what the fuck?” about the damn, stubborn goat who keeps getting up, staggering, twitching and going ultimately collapsing into a seizure. Cheers from young Afghan boys fill the air and “manly” guffaws and encouragement from the Troops goads the assailant on. Finally, the goat stops twitching after several more direct blows to its skull, rounded of by a chorus raucous of cheers, high-fives and hell yeahs.

That is man.

Tragedy originally means “goat song” in ancient Greek as it represented the darkest in humanity, the saturnine, the sadistic, and the satyr.

That is the message that some of our Super-men are sending to the world.  I don’t care if it is isolated. It is part of our reality, as humans, and we need to wonder at what we see.

WTF People?

No, Mind if I Fart?

Kudos to Robert Griffin III and the Baylor Bears for “their” Hesiman Trophy win, but tonight I am thinking about another Waco person, namely the comedian Steve Martin. Although Martin was raised in California, it is somewhat comforting to know that at least he was born in a town called Wac(k)o. Martin was the definition of American comedy of the late 70s and early 80s, along with Eddie Murphy, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Robin Williams, and many others of the vintage SNL era.

And, what better line to remember Martin’s wit with than the classic response to someone who asks you if he can smoke in a restaurant, “No, mind if I fart? It’s one of my habits.”

To me, that sums up quite a bit. As I get older and crustier, something that I notice quite a bit about people is that they don’t really want “to go there” even if they initiate the conversation. I have heard many times in my life, “can I ask you a personal question?” or “can I ask a frank question?” Well, my answer is simply, “Absolutely, if you can handle a frank answer.” Most people can’t, I have learned, because I can give an answer frank-er than Sinatra...wait for it...

Like Martin, we (and, yes, I include myself in that “we”) want to initiate, but when it comes to the response, when it is something that perhaps we don’t want to hear, we become uncomfortable, we hesitate, we stall. We want to smoke, but we don’t want others to fart. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men, “we can’t handle the Truth.”

I have spent the greater part of the last week having one, long, frank discussion with a very dear friend of mine whom I have recovered and re-dis-covered from the obscurity of the past. There was no mediation, no pretense, no guard. Nothing but exposure. To be frank. 

Being an American here in Belgium and recently also in India, I am somewhat exposed on a different level, whether I want to be or not. People have ideas about us and US, again, like it or not. Stereotypes exist, and we play into them, confound them, or confirm them. I also had an interview with a potential client this past week as well at a high-level international organization, in which there were certain stereotypes about being an American I felt inclined to either dispel, or at times embrace. We do have the ability to chose, to be frank, and to be honest, but most often we opt out for the softer, easier way.

That is a shame, but I’ve been there. I know the sham comfort of crawling behind platitudes of clichés and habits and hiding behind a mantle of denial and distrust, both of myself and others. But, over time, the moths eat away that mantle, exposing the frailty of the fabric we once believed to be so strong, so permanent, so real.

However, when we can release that fear of exposure, of casting off the cloaked illusion of security, we can have breakthroughs, we can learn to live again. To, in essence, be re-born, a word that my sister put into my mind, and to suggest that the word for next year be just that, a Re-naissance.

After I dropped off my friend at the airport in Brussels and had come back to Antwerp to meet my apartment, seemingly so empty and alone again, I later went to the local Buddhist “club” to listen to a guest speaker. She was to speak on “emotions” as I found out upon arrival. What she opened with, I found to be interesting is that for the most part, when we see such a title, we immediately think of our negative emotions, those that hinder, that bind, that hold us down. Instead, she wanted to talk more about those that release and free us from suffering. Although the talk went downhill from there in my eyes, that thought did stick with me. What emotions can indeed free us?

Given that I have gone through the full range of my emotional gamut in the past days, I realized that it does not really come down to the emotion at all, but rather what Martin gave us, honesty. That’s it.

Mind if I Fart?

That is about as honest as it gets, slapping us in the face with the force of one hand clapping against our skin. But, can we handle that honesty when the tables are turned? Can we hear what we have been telling ourselves, but what happens when it comes from another person?

What I have learned is that if I’m not willing to have someone fart in my general direction, then I had better not idly blow smoke in his or her eyes.

To be frank.

Entanglement

One of my “hobbies,” for lack of a better word, is to read so-called popular science books, specifically on the New Physics of String Theory and the like such as Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, whom I find to be incredibly accessible, yet gets the most difficult concepts across without being either condescending or flippant.

However, there was a book some time ago that I read about a concept that has never really left my mind, perhaps because it is somewhat beyond comprehension, even to the most sophisticated physicists and über-mathematicians, usually from Hungary for some reason. It is the concept of Entanglement (from Amir Aczel’s eponymous book), which, if it truly is a phenomenon, blows away any possible conception of the universe as we know it out of the water, not the least the concept of a constant speed of light being the limits of a transfer of energy from one point to another.

Entanglement, which as the name indicates, involves at least two entities becoming entangled, but at such a profound level that it truly defies any laws of physics known to humans, way beyond even the fantastic concepts of String Theory, which in themselves have the most astute mathematicians and physicists scrambling for a GUT, or Grand Unifying Theory, the ultimate quest of Einstein’s entire corpus of work, a quest that left him alone towards the end of his life as even his most staunch supporters began to question his quest for such a Holy Grail.

Whether String Theory becomes the GUT to end all GUT’s, or merely the Emperor’s New Clothes, remains to be seen, and what role, if any that Entanglement may play out in this quest is also unclear, yet as with all modern physics, all roads somehow end up leading to Einstein, either to prove or disprove him.

Just this week, yet another headline appears, “Was Einstein Wrong?” as it goes on to explain that 15,000 test runs have shown that the previously elusive neutrino may in fact be caught with a speeding-faster-than-light ticket on the super-conductor highway. Apparently, such particles can arrive faster than a light particle, suggesting that they can, as seen in many Feynman diagrams, theoretically go back and forth in Time, and thus arrive before they depart, or other such funky scenarios. Yikes, and once again, Truth may well be stranger than even (Science) Fiction.

In order for Entanglement to be possible, likewise, there must be the possibility of a transfer of energy, in this case, information, at a speed that exceeds that of light, but not by billionths of a second, but something even more sinister...without Time elapsing at all, thus SIMULTANEOUSLY. In other words, there is a transfer of information that does not happen over Time, irrespective of Space as well.

Here’s the skinny. When two particles become “Entangled,” then neither Time nor Space can interfere. Particles have Spin and weight. Let’s two particles are then “Entangled,” then if one changes Spin from positive to negative, then the other will also change from positive to negative Spin at the EXACT same Time. Fine, you may say, interesting enough, but show me the money. Now, the kicker is that they can be at opposite ends of the Universe (we won’t go into Finite vs. Infinite there for simplicity sake), and they will still change Spin simultaneously, if it were to be able to be recorded as such. And, for all intents and purposes, they will remain entangled, again, irrespective of either Time or Space.

So, you may be thinking, why has Robert gone off on this obscure, yet to be proven, much less explained concept?

For one, reading that article reminded me how much I love reading about this, but it also reminded me of the philosophical concept behind “Indra’s Net,” in that within the Net, every intersecting jewel infinitely reflects every other, simultaneously in Time and over infinite (not going into that...) Space. It is the concept of the Universal Atman self-containing the individual Atman that upon the surface appear to be separate, yet are ultimately merely parts of a greater whole, something that I obviously place great stock in with my own philosophy of life.

Furthermore, it made me think about the various physical “jewels” in my life, namely my friends, family, and you (yes, I’m talking to you, dear Reader), that we might very well be reading this post, or another, at the exact same moment, being somewhat entangled if you will. Or, via email and other electronic communications, that how rapidly we can communicate in comparison to just a few years ago, further making the tyranny of distance a thing of the Past to some extent.

Just this weekend, I corresponded directly in writing with a number of people in a variety of locations in Belgium, my friend in Brighton, UK, my friend in Tirunelveli, India, my Irish friend who was traveling in Spain, my sister who lives in Chicago, my mother who lives in Texas, but was traveling to New Mexico, two of my very dear friends  (having finally found one of them recently) in different places in Texas, a client who lives in Russia, and a friend who lives in Arkansas, all from the comfort of my armchair in Antwerp.

Big deal, right?

But, isn’t that amazing that we can just shrug our shoulders at that, so quickly? If I had written that 10 or 15 years ago, it would have been shocking, or at least pretty darn amazing. Today, yeah, big deal...

Do I have a point here? Not really, except to say that perhaps we should remember that it is a big deal that we are able to be virtually entangled because mediums such as Facebook have made it a commonplace, quotidian event, but like the poor high school student (and a large part of the remaining population for that matter) at the cash register who can’t add or subtract whole numbers to make change when the power goes out at the grocery store, what would happen if the lights go out on The Net? Where would you be in your means of communication? Would the “entanglement” then suddenly be just a sham, the Emperor’s New Clothes? Where would all of those dozens (or hundreds) of “friends” suddenly go if you couldn’t post your status with the click of a button and you actually had to make a physical, concerted effort to contact them? How many jewels in your Net would you have left if the system failed? 

Waves Roll

Water, Water Every where, nor any drop to drink...so laments the albatross-haunted voice of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Sitting on the bank of the Schelde the other day, I noticed an interesting phenomenon while trying to focus on the rolling waves of the river. I have noticed this often while at the ocean, most notably when I was at Kanniyakumari where three different major bodies of water come convene, causing the most amazing currents I have ever seen, but it was very apparent with the river’s coursings as well.

Try to focus on a point in a body of moving water. It is not easy. The natural tendency of our eyes is to follow the water, not remain locked in on the point of interest, especially if there is a piece of flotsam, jetsam, or sundry detritus bobbing along, much less a lazy seagull. The gaze follows the motion.

There was a cautionary buoy of sorts some fifty yards or into the middle of the river. That was a completely different experience then, to focus on a non-moving object surrounded by total movement. Both were hypnotizing to say the least, and I became engrossed and entranced by each over Time, losing myself indefinitely in the inertia and the inertia.

Being abroad, I sometimes wonder, what makes it “abroad,” and for me, the answer is simply, water. I am abroad because I am across the Atlantic Ocean from my native land. I was abroad abroad in India because I was across the Arabian Sea across the Atlantic Ocean or across the Indian Ocean across the Pacific Ocean. Six or one half dozen. I was exactly halfway around the globe in either case.

Yet, I have never made one of these trips per boat, oddly enough. I have always flown, as we live in the jet-age, so why should I? I have many times heard the story of how my mother, when she was eight and her brothers merely 2 and under traveled across the Atlantic in the dead of the deadest of deadliest winters to come join their father, traveling with my grandmother who had like many on the trip, fallen ill. My mom has described this trip, and it made me realize how impressionable that must have been. Huge, dark, ominous, unforgiving waves rolling and smashing against the hull of a transport ship lurching across a nearly frozen ocean, as the English Channel itself did freeze that winter!

That was a journey. That was a passage.

Now, we jump on an airplane and are magically transposed from point A to point B, with no real liminal space in between. Sitting by the river on Sunday, it was hard for me to imagine that just a week and a half before I was sitting in a boat, contemplating the ephemeral nature of life on the Ganges , watching bodies burn in a chain-smoking row of bonfires, and now, here I was, alone along the banks of the Schelde, contemplating...what?

I am content to be back in Antwerp, yet the disjunct between Belgium and India is so great at times, jolting, and the journey back was so sudden. I am confident that the next time I make such a journey, I will find a way to go by boat, or at least by a slower medium than the 747 that carried me from Mumbai’s Chatrapi Shivaji to London’s Heathrow.

I recently read online a list of ways to travel “differently” from the Lonely Planet publications. One of them was to “return slowly.” I believe that that is merely one half of the equation. I would like to next take a journey that I “go slowly” and where the journey itself is the destination. To roll along the waves, surrounded by water, water everywhere, desiring no-thing but the passage itself.

Not So Innocently Abroad

Here is a piece from a very good friend of mine, Professor John Pedro Schwartz at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. John Pedro is a so-called “late-bloomer” in academics and has never slowed down once he got his wings. I am constantly blown away by the verve and detail of his writing, though not losing the essential message.

JPS, as I am wont to call him, sent me this piece a couple of weeks ago while I was still in Madurai, and I was yet again blown away about what he is writing about and how. He has the ability to render a highly socially conscious piece, without being biased or didactic. A true gift. Not to mention that he is quite funny, both in person and on paper.

Two days ago, after I had returned to Antwerp and was beginning to read the various newspapers online again and seeing the events in Syria, I could not believe the real impact of JPS’s words. He then sent me an email with “Published” as the subject line and this link as the body of the mail.

So, here it is. Important stuff from Lebanon.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/04/highway_to_homs