Category Archives: Opinion

TED Film From Arrested Chinese Artist

by Cimaxion

This is a film presented at the TED conference from the famous Chinese artist who was recently kidnapped by Chinese authorities. He has completely vanished along with thousands of other artists, journalists, writers, intellectuals and human rights workers who have been taken in the past several months. This artist speaks very simply and clearly about the situation in his country where his government watches him all day long and sees nothing wrong with bulldozing his studio to the ground because he expresses some criticism of what he sees around him.

What I do not respect about this video is the simpering nitwit from TED who introduces the film by stating that the TED conference takes no position on China. He then goes on to bend over for China and mentions how many people have been lifted from poverty in China. How far up China’s ass can this guy fit his head, I wonder? How can any organization not take a position on China? I’m sure if Hitler were around today and rambling across the land on an extermination campaign, this bunch from TED would take no position on that.

Look at this little notice on TED’s YouTube page where the film is hosted:

TED is a non-partisan, nonpolitical organization and we understand the Chinese authorities concern at anything which might provoke social unrest. But for anyone who believes in the power of ideas, of human imagination, it is heartbreaking to see one of the world’s great artists shackled in this way. We will be tracking developments carefully. Here is the film.

TED ‘understands the Chinese authorities concern at anything which might provoke social unrest!’

Oh my god!  Yes indeed.  They understand this concern of a totalitarian murdering government that is more than happy to make people vanish into prison because they want to complain about being beaten by a policeman.

Hey TED, here I come with my ticket!  Gosh, I wouldn’t want you to be concerned that I might boo one of your presentations.  Wouldn’t want that, would we?

Lifting people out of poverty in China is not what we need to be doing. We need to be shutting these people out entirely. We need companies that do not fill their computers with Chinese parts. We need toys that do not come painted with Chinese lead poison. We need to treat this totalitarian country the way it deserves to be treated. A rich China doing business with every company on the planet is not going to advance freedom for anyone. China needs to be pushed into abject and brutal poverty. Only then will the conditions exist for a revolution.

I opened up my Dell computer the other day to blow some dust out. The first things I saw were multiple ‘Made in China’ stickers on various components. Screw Dell. Screw every Western company that buys a single circuit board from China. Screw China.

NOVA: An Art Documentary That Entirely Excludes Black Artists

by Cimaxion

I wanted to like this film. I tried really hard. It was filmed during the Nova Contemporary Culture which happened in July and August 2010, at the MIS-Museum of Image and Sound, and SESC Pompeia, in São Paulo, Brazil.

It put me off with a few too many artist comments about art being a business and branding. There are a few real pretentious twits running through this art documentary. There’s also a lot of very nice, clean, well-behaved, pleasant, comfortable, easygoing, precise, smooth, color-balanced art going on here. I’ll be clear and remind my hesitant readers that I’m really quite the shining example of a creep. When I walk into a gallery I’m looking for the artist who is capable of throwing dirt into my eyes and laughing at me while I wipe it off. Most of the art in this film looks like it has been pre-approved for use by IBM in their next commercial.

I’m not looking for an artist who can tape off their lines straight and make them intersect at the farthest corner of the room. Draw crooked why don’t they? There’s so much goddam masking tape in this film it could wrap the Empire State Building six times over.

But if you watch this thing all the way through you just have to notice that out of all these young up-and-comers there’s apparently not a single black artist involved. I couldn’t find one. Maybe I missed something. But I went back and checked. How do you achieve something like that in 2011? Seriously? Don’t you have to work overtime hours to purposely exclude black artists from a documentary or a major art show like this? Can it be true that there are no black artists capable of sticking masking tape to a museum wall and painting inside the lines? Don’t black artists travel to Brazil?

It may not be director Isaac Niemand’s or producer ROJO‘s fault that the cast excludes black artists, but then perhaps they should have filmed a different art show. Maybe it’s Brazil’s fault.

I feel a little bad about criticizing a documentary film on Vimeo because their service is so based on mutual support and respect between artists. But that kind of thing has severe limits in the world of grownups and serious people.

Art is not preschool. It’s not about support and encouragement of creativity. Self-help bullshit doesn’t have a place in art. Art is about beauty, ugliness and thought that gets up in front of you and is willing to knock you unconscious without apology, willing to scare you, horrify you, enrage you, enrapture you, unsettle you, save you, uplift you, insult you, smash you, whither you, confuse you, ennoble you, or destroy you. But it does not ever want to please you.

Keep the pleasant art in Brazil thank you.

NOVA the film from ROJO on Vimeo.

A Chinese Fairytale

by Cimaxion | 2 Comments

I’m going to be somewhat cryptic in this post because I’m attempting to get in underneath China’s diligent web checking people.

China has been kidnapping large numbers of artists and intellectuals who completely disappear.  They recently took the artist in this photo.  While he was being taken away he snapped the photo of his reflection inside an elevator.  He’s very famous.  He has been totally vanished by the Chinese.

Many others have too.  They are being taken and vanished because China is very afraid of something.

They are afraid of something big.  Something that was to be peaceful – the way it has been in some other countries recently.  But in China you cannot do it peacefully.  You will be murdered if you try to do it peacefully.

You must do it with an explosion.

You must do it quickly.

The Chinese can eliminate their problem.  The problem is usually to be found wearing a uniform.  It must be eliminated quickly and by any means at hand.  If you are in China, you are living in a massive slave camp that provides slave labor to Western corporations.  You might decide that you want to end your slavery.

That is my message to the people of China.

Three Big Pigs – A Middle East Revolution Animation

by Cimaxion

Egor Zhgun presents a cartoon news report on the revolutions rocking the Middle East. Some of these revolutions, though coming from noble intentions, are failing miserably. Egypt has rid itself of a dictator only to be taken over by a barbaric military that conducts organized rape and torture of men and women who seek to engage in any further protests. Egypt is now a military dictatorship. It is sheer stupidity to believe otherwise.  I won’t go visit the pyramids any time soon because I don’t want to be raped by Egyptian soldiers.

Japanese TEPCO Executives Should be Forced to Work in Fukushima Death Camp

by Cimaxion | 2 Comments

A Japanese TEPCO executive visited a temporary shelter for evacuees in the area of the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster, bowing and apologizing for causing such a ‘nuisance.’

‘Nuisance.’

If this man bows a bit lower, someone should take the opportunity to kick his head through a plate glass window.

These Japanese power company nincompoops are not only disrespectful, but they are quite possibly criminals.

The CEO of TEPCO has all but disappeared, requiring low-level employees to work in his nuclear death camp, risking their health and lives for a company that has been shown to have falsified inspections when not skipping them altogether.

The TEPCO CEO should be forced to work in his own death camp.  Then when he is done there and has suffered irreparable cellular damage, he should be tried and sent to prison.

Apparently, a Japanese government minister this week threatened firefighters with punishment unless they continued to work hard at the disintegrating nuclear plant.

It really pains me to watch highly paid executives and inert Japanese politicians kill workers, soldiers and firemen by forcing them to work in what amounts to a death camp.

The photo is from AFP.

 

Northern Japan May be Rendered Uninhabitable by Nuclear Reactors

by Cimaxion | 3 Comments

Look at that picture.  That’s a Reuters news photo of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan.  It is disintegrating.  Explosions, fires and radiation leaks are growing worse by the day and the efforts to dump water on the reactors are desperate and considered by experts to be ‘last-ditch’ efforts.

The UK’s Daily Mail has an in-depth article with photos.

This is a frightening and horrific world disaster that is quickly approaching and will likely exceed the Chernobyl disaster.  The French government is evacuating its nationals from Japan and has announced that the Japanese government is hiding the truth about the disaster.  That’s about all one should need to know at this point.  The French, one of the world’s leading nuclear nations, are evacuating from Japan.

Let’s stop and think about a Japan with a northern region that is completely uninhabitable.

Japan cannot handle this situation.  It has become an emergency requiring a massive U.S. military intervention.

It should go without saying that investigations of nuclear power plant operators worldwide is in quick order.  The criminal stupidity of building these things should lead to arrests and prosecutions in the coming months.  If someone comes to your town trying sell you a nuclear power plant… put them in a jail cell.

U.S. officials are now saying that the Japanese government has not been telling the truth about the emergency.  ‘Extremely high’ radiation levels announced by U.S.

I simply cannot overstress the absolute criminal stupidity of building nuclear reactors in an earthquake zone prone to massive tsunamis.  It is simply beyond all excuse and government and power company officials in Japan should definitely be put in jail and taken out of office.  This reactor problem is an insult to rationality itself.  You don’t build nuclear reactors on top of faults in tsunami waters.  It is suicide.

UPDATE: Great Britain is now evacuating all British citizens from Tokyo.

Michael Moore Labor Union Speech in Madison, Wisconsin

by Cimaxion

Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have as much loot, stock and property as the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can’t bring yourself to call that a financial coup d’état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

Those are the words of Michael Moore and they are very true. If you want to become a bad national joke, you do what Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has done and push through a bill that destroys the right of working Americans to organize and form labor unions.

The revolt against this criminal stupidity in Wisconsin is incredible to watch. It has national importance for the future of labor and the rights of working people everywhere.

They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day — this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart — because you — yes, you, too! — might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep you head down, your nose to the grindstone, don’t rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day.

Wikileaks is Fighting World’s First True Information War

by Cimaxion | 2 Comments

The United States government is attempting to physically destroy the Wikileaks organization.  The ‘Cablegate’ release of diplomatic communications has begun to reveal that Western democracies maintain shadow governments that are outside the reach of their electorates.  They appear to have a system in place that is not subject to the outcomes of elections.  For me, that is the main thing suggested by the leaks.

The Obama administration is fully engaged in a very serious information war that threatens to turn the public eye toward the inner workings of a government sliding very quickly toward a new form of corporate/government fascism.  The obvious connection between government, corporations, and the military is now under public scrutiny as we watch officials tell companies like Amazon and Paypal to cut off the Wikileaks operations.  A democratic superpower is influencing, through threats or friendly suggestion, the behavior of companies that are enormously powerful on the Internet.  It has become clear that we absolutely cannot expect any form of free expression to exist where Amazon or Paypal are concerned.  The fact that Amazon controls most of the book trade in the U.S. is an emergency and should ultimately result in a move toward a more open source form of book selling.  I would not want to be in the position of trying to sell a book on Amazon that contained thorough investigative reporting on U.S. government secrets or corruption.  One call from Joseph Lieberman could shut everything down for my book.

The important thing about the Wikileaks is that they change journalism.  They open a deep wound in the side of government that bleeds secrets, incompetence and corruption.  The wound will continue to bleed because there will always be someone willing to leak the information.  It’s simple human nature.  There will always be a place to send that information and there will always be journalists to sift through it and print it for us to read.  If this Wikileaks is killed, another will pop up.

Wikileaks is nothing more than a reporter sitting at a desk answering the phone and taking notes from a confidential source.  Wikileaks is a reporter.  President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have openly declared themselves to be extremely dangerous enemies of a free press.  They have already begun threatening university students who try to download or link to the Wikileaks data (the data is here, by  the way).  They will stop at nothing to end Wikileaks.  We should be prepared for this.  They will stop at absolutely nothing.  Just wait for the leak.  Then you’ll know.

Here’s an excellent article by John Naughton at the Guardian Newspaper about how governments now must either live with open access to information or try to shut down the net.

Wednesday Is The Day To Make Hell For The TSA At U.S. Airports

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

I can’t believe that I’m posting a video interview with Ron Paul about the ongoing horror show coming out of the TSA and the Obama administration. But the simple fact of the matter is that it really doesn’t matter who is attacking the President and the TSA for blatantly unconstitutional molestation and physical abuse of air passengers across the United States. It doesn’t matter if it’s Republicans or Tea Party dopes. The only thing that matters is that a free people with some hope of maintaining a democracy MUST stop a government that thinks it can go inside peoples’ clothes and touch their bodies in the name of very questionable security.

The Obama administration’s TSA must be stopped no matter what. It is an absolute imperative that they not be allowed to molest men, women or children who are simply exercising their right to travel freely. So I find myself fully in the camp of a political party that I normally want nothing to do with. When it comes to stopping the TSA and protecting the civil rights of people in this country it makes no difference who is leading the fight. It think this cause does in fact join Republicans with liberals. It’s one of the few things we can agree on.

The TSA has expressed concern about verbal and physical abuse being directed at its employees. They hope that passengers can understand the difference between the TSA employees and the officials making the policies. Except that the person you have to defend yourself from is the one standing in front of you trying to put his or her hand into your pants. You must defend yourself against that person. The policymakers will get the message and act eventually. But in the airport you must defend yourself against the person actually committing the assault.

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Wednesday, November 24, 2010 is National Opt Out of TSA Abuse Day

by Cimaxion

Mature Content

One would of course want to do more than just ‘opt out’ if a child were treated this way by the frighteningly imbecilic TSA. You know, the regular airport police really don’t much like the TSA people very much and are probably just itching for a good reason to arrest one or two.

I thought of a possible alternative to the TSA’s threat to arrest or financially penalize people who try to opt out of the full body nude scanners and the groin touching pat down. One could simply opt out of the scanner and then state that although not refusing the pat down a request for local or airport police observation of the pat down procedure is insisted upon because one has a real fear of imminent sexual assault. That would seem to me to put the TSA officers at a serious disadvantage legally and force local police to come to the scene. Just a few episodes like this will really jam up airport gates all across the country and then the hand-job President might get the message that we’re all just fine without hands in our pants.

At the very least, passengers all across the country should be filming with their cell phones just like the guy in the video above.

Obama Orders Touching of Genitals Nationwide

by Cimaxion

Mature Content – Language

When was it you realized that Americans had unwittingly elected a horrible president?  Was it when he decided to cover up photographic evidence of systematic atrocities by U.S. troops?  Was it when he took tax money to buy General Motors?  Was it when he decided to continue an illegal war of aggression against Iraq?  Was it when he decided to continue a Vietnam-like quagmire in Afghanistan?  Was it when he decided that he would let British Petroleum defecate into his mouth?  Was it when he began to falsify scientific research data about the water in the Gulf?  Was it when he decided that he could constitutionally force every American citizen to purchase health insurance from brutally self-interested corporations?  Was it when he decided to use the power of his office to forcefully defend the military’s anti-gay bigotry and discrimination?

Or was it when he ordered his Homeland Security employees to stick their fingers into your genitals if you decide not to allow the government to blast you with x-rays in a ‘full body scan?’

President Barack Obama has finally positioned himself, uniquely among modern presidents I think, so that actual physical resistance to a presidential order is not only logical but morally imperative.

The Transportation Security Administration is installing full body scan machines that use x-rays in airports across the nation.  If you refuse to be photographed naked and dosed with x-rays that many scientists are very worried about, the TSA will force you to accept a physical ‘pat down’ that involves the probing and touching of your penis, vagina, breasts, and buttocks.  In one airport, a woman’s blouse was removed in full public view to expose her bare breasts.  Nearby agents then taunted and mocked her for several minutes as she tried to regain her composure and escape the area.  This is a full-blown sexual assault that warrants a full physical response in self-defense, followed by prosecution of the TSA agents involved.

Why not just go through the full body scan machine?  Because it photographs you naked.  The TSA and the manufacturers have continually asserted that the machines cannot store images.  But they have been proven repeatedly to be lying about this and thousands of the nude photos have been stored by the machines.  Think about it.  Would you build a scanning machine that could not save the photograph showing a bomb strapped to someone’s butt?  Don’t you think you might need that photo in a courtroom trial at some point?  Of course the machines store images.  Only an idiot would think otherwise.  They also shoot radiation all over your body.  The pilots’ union is very nervous about this and wants pilots exempted from the machines.  Scientists are weighing in to say that the radiation can have long-term effects on the human body.  This is scary enough.  But stop to think about how these machines will sit in airports and be tended to by dimwits earning minimum wage.  Are we to expect these crotch-grabbing imbeciles to keep sophisticated x-ray machines in proper adjustment?  Will it take a baby getting barbecued in one of these things to wake people up?

Yet, the TSA asserts that it has the right to pursue incredible monetary damages against you if you refuse the full body scan and the genital touching procedure.  They can come after you even after they make you miss your flight and leave the airport.  Shocking.  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals actually upheld this civil penalty right.

We are far down the rabbit hole when a person, who doesn’t want to risk his or her health to x-ray radiation managed by low-level government employees, cannot reasonably refuse having their genitals and breasts touched without being turned into a criminal and put at risk of at least a ten thousand dollar penalty.

These TSA people can feel the genitals of children also.  There’s no protection.  You think this is pretty bad?  Well it gets worse.  They can also go inside your pants.  If the agent decides that your clothing is a little too loose, they can go inside to feel your private parts.  They can do it to children.

If some dude in an airport touches my special Christmas package, I’m going to put his head on the floor.  I think anyone else should do just the same.

Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, insists that the new procedures are necessary to thwart terrorist threats.  Bullshit.  These x-ray machines that they are trying to zap us with come from a company that employs the former Secretary of Homeland Security.  Sound odd?

November 24, 2010 is National Opt-Out Day.  People going through security at American airports are encouraged and expected to resist the governmental assault on freedom from unreasonable search – to resist being dosed with radiation and groped in the groin.  I frankly hope that Opt-Out Day turns into a real nightmare for the TSA and for airlines.  Thousands of people refusing to be assaulted by government goons will jam up airport lobbies very quickly.  Flights will be delayed.  Passengers will be asking for refunds.  The airlines will react with anger on Capitol Hill.

Terrorists don’t have to blow up airplanes.  Why are we allowing ourselves to be victimized at airports?  Terrorists can just as easily climb onto trains or buses and blow them up.  Will the TSA start touching our penises and vaginas at train stations and bus depots?  Why wouldn’t they?

On November 24 American air travelers need to stop pretending to be mild sheep in their own airports.  Have you ever noticed how when we set foot in an airport we suddenly become Mr. and Mrs. Proper?  We behave as if we are all the most casual of normal harmless little people without the least tendency toward even the slightest outburst.  We take it up the ass because we are all told to behave in just a certain way or we’ll be arrested.  It’s a waste of energy to worry too much about terrorists.  What air travelers should be more worried about is inattentive airline mechanics down on the tarmac.  That’s where the real damage is done.  Incompetence is far more dangerous than terrorism.

Americans have punched the idiot Obama hard in the face with the recent election results.  They can do it again by punching gropers.  ‘Touch my kid’s crotch and I’ll stick my fist down your throat.’  That’s the proper response.

One suggestion I have for our smiling President is that he should offer to demonstrate the new ‘pat down’ procedure on Secretary Napolitano.  He could reach those long slender fingers of his down into her business pants, lift a roll or two of fat out of the way, and give the Secretary a good finger job for national security.  We’d all be watching.

We all have a right to travel freely in this country without being subjected to dangerous radiation or getting groped.  We have shown our crappy politicians what our anger can do in the recent mid-term elections.  On November 24 let’s show them again.

Update 11/18: New York lawmakers are introducing legislation to prohibit the TSA from using the nude full body scanners at all airports in the state, including JFK, the largest international airport in the country.

R. Crumb and the Corporate Mono-Culture

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

Cartoonist Robert Crumb gets interviewed by a Los Angeles Times writer and talks about his living in France and his hatred for the pervasive corporate mono-culture that Americans seem unaware of.  He can’t stand it and chooses to live outside of it.

Really good perspective.

In a culture where you’ve got a Supreme Court actually giving corporate entities the rights of individual human beings, you’ve got total corporate control of every single living man, woman and child.  You can see this complete robotic control on very prominent and horrific display in the current president of the United States.  He a corporate hologram who moves only when commanded to by his boardroom overseers.  The entire country is oriented around cop/lawyer shows on television which are specifically designed to make you feel close and personal with the state/corporate stooges who work for police departments and gleefully lay disadvantaged people out on their faces on subway platforms and slaughter them with bullets fired straight into their backs from six inches away.  ‘The Mentalist’ is probably the supreme example of this attempt to make the corporate/police control mechanism seem odd and quirky and just a little cutely but intelligently eccentric.  ‘Medium’ is another.  The individual with oddball abilities or perceptions is entirely consumed and controlled by the state apparatus.  All cop shows are meant to make as many viewers as possible feel completely comfortable being visited by and talking to the police.  That is the entire truth of American television.  It’s message is simply this: when we come knocking, open the door.

That is the true subtext of every single show ever produced by American broadcasting companies.

R. Crumb is totally right.

Film: Metropolis Part 1

by Cimaxion

Having realized in a blinding flash of insight this week that the geek/tech outlook has essentially taken over most of the web world like some sort of a skin cancer and is absolute death to art, I offer an artist’s messy and incoherent view of urban life.  It is very uncool and not technically proficient.  But it is an artist speaking directly, without falsehood intervening.  This piece is by Marvin Tiberious who lives in Italy.

I’m having a huge vomit reaction to these blogs run by little gangs of cool-cats who spread themselves thinly across all domains and offer a smug smirk when photographed.  We’ve turned too much of the web over to the ugly little nerd group that wants everything to be just a tad retro.  If I see something that looks steampunk I’m going to smash it.  Steampunk is the white-supremacist version of cyberpunk which is simply a reference to any book you have read but cannot remember.

Boing Boing, Censorship, and Hypocrisy: Commenters, Watch Your Language!

by Cimaxion | 23 Comments

This article incorporates adult themes and language.

This is a flat-out attack on the hypocrisy and thin-skinned holiness of a major blog that purports to stand for freedom of expression and open ideas.  The blog is BoingBoing.net.  I’ve had my problems with the site before, having made comments that their moderators found to be excessive or too foul-mouthed for their rather puritanical tastes.  I say puritanical and I mean exactly that.

Boing Boing has a problem with genitalia.  You’ll see why in a few moments.

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Why I Think the New York Mosque Near Ground Zero is Good

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

Today, I found out, purely by accident, that I am connected to the ‘ground zero’ mosque in an unexpected way.  First of all, ‘ground zero mosque’ is a terrible name.  The building is not on ground zero.  It’s a couple of blocks away.  It’s simply a New York Islamic center.  I lived in New York for many years and I know perfectly well that lower Manhattan is tiny.  Everything is near ground zero!  For weeks, I have been reading articles about the plans for converting a building in lower Manhattan into an Islamic center and the accompanying controversy, based in large part upon the notion that an Islamic center close to ground zero somehow insults the memories of the 9/11 victims.  I have made my thoughts on the virulent anti-Muslim bigotry spreading across the United States and Europe very clear in an earlier post.  This form of bigotry is going to be seen eventually as one of the great shames of the early 21st century.

During my web travels this morning, I came across a Salon article about how all the fear-mongering surrounding this Islamic center got started.

Here’s a quote from the article:

Dec. 8, 2009: The Times publishes a lengthy front-page look at the Cordoba project. “We want to push back against the extremists,” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the lead organizer, is quoted as saying. Two Jewish leaders and two city officials, including the mayor’s office, say they support the idea, as does the mother of a man killed on 9/11. An FBI spokesman says the imam has worked with the bureau. Besides a few third-tier right-wing blogs, including Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs site, no one much notices the Times story.

Well, as chance would have it, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is the older brother of my very best friend throughout my teenage years.  I grew up in Washington, D.C. where Mr. Abdul Rauf’s father was the director of the Islamic Center.  It is a beautiful mosque located on Massachusetts Avenue in Northwest D.C.  I spent many of my days there in the seventies and early eighties because my friend’s family had their apartment inside the center.  Those were days filled with the adventure of young minds trying to explore and figure out what they were going to do in life.  I was – and still am – a non-religious liberal-minded fellow, more interested in riding bikes than attending services.  My friend was the youngest of three brothers and he was very intelligent, rather sensitive, but always an irritatingly persistent arguer on almost any topic we could find.  We’d argue on buses, in cars, walking through D.C., watching TV, going to movies, playing football – just about anywhere was a good spot for an argument.  I spent many weekends there at the Islamic Center playing soccer with my friend and the young men who worked there.  They tried to teach Backgammon to me down in the basement of the mosque where they smoked in secret because if Mr. Abdul Rauf found out about it they would have been in a little trouble with him.  The father took his work seriously.  But he was a gentle and kind man.  He treated me like his son.  I had many dinners at home with the family and Mr. Abdul Rauf never once tried to make me feel bad for not being a Muslim.  He would answer my questions with simplicity and understanding.  He would tell some little stories in order to illustrate a point.  I was always told that he spent much of his time studying the Holy Qu’ran and writing books about it.  I was amazed by his library of books.  His office was a quiet place where books were piled and papers were spilled across his desk.  I liked this man.  He was reserved and slightly imposing, but profoundly kind and he took care of everyone I ever saw him come into contact with.

My friend’s father knew that his son and I had developed a keen interest in Super 8 film cameras.  He invited us to come into the mosque for a wedding ceremony and he said we could film it.  We were to be the chroniclers of a real Muslim wedding!  We prepared for this over several weeks.  My friend taught me the ways of showing respect in a mosque.  He showed me the beauty inside a mosque.  I felt comfortable there even though I didn’t have a religious bone in my body.  Frankly, I felt more comfortable there than I’ve ever felt in a Catholic church.  Much more relaxed.  And the beauty is of a much less imposing and ostentatious nature.  The beauty is subtle and serene.  Like water.

So my best friend and I filmed his father performing an Islamic wedding.  We felt very much in charge of what we were doing and we did the best job we knew how.  I always felt proud that I had this connection to the mosque and its activities.  There were plenty of other occasions the family invited me to.  I even helped them prepare for some of the big feasts and celebrations.  I’d haul dessert trays and pile foods onto tables out in the courtyard.  I’d help clean the family apartment after some big gathering or dinner.  Then my friend and I would sneak into all the leftovers when his parents were asleep.  I believe that this was where I had my first taste of a magnificent dessert called baklava.  It was a good time then and I had experiences that are very rare for an American boy who doesn’t worship a god.

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