Silencing a culture.

How to oppress a group of people? Make the speaking of their native language a crime.

Get a load of this article in today's New York Times. I'm including a good bit of it here, with the link at the bottom if you'd care to read the rest.

Kurd’s Speech Defies Turkish Taboo

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: February 24, 2009

ISTANBUL — A prominent Kurdish lawmaker gave a speech in his native Kurdish in Turkey’s Parliament on Tuesday, breaking taboos and also the law in Turkey, a country that has long repressed its Kurdish minority for fear it would try to secede.

Turkey’s state television cut off the live broadcast of the official, Ahmet Turk, as he spoke to members of his political party, the Democratic Society Party, known by its Turkish initials, D.T.P.

It was the second time in recent history that a speech was delivered in Kurdish in Parliament. In 1991, Leyla Zana spoke in Kurdish, her native language, when she was sworn in as a deputy. She had immunity as a lawmaker, but it was later stripped and she served 10 years in prison on other charges.

Turkey has a troubled past with its Kurds, who make up at least a fifth of its population. The Turkish military fought a war with a Kurdish militant group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., in the predominantly Kurdish southeast in the 1980s and 1990s. The area was subsequently governed by martial law, and speaking Kurdish was prohibited.

The violence has decreased drastically, and Kurdish is no longer banned as a language, but its public use at events like Tuesday’s speech, or at rallies, on fliers or in advertisements, is still illegal. Kurdish officials like Mr. Turk have been trying to push the boundaries of those rules.

“Being multilingual is a richness,” Mr. Turk said in Turkish, before he switched to Kurdish. “Protecting this richness, keeping it alive, is a requirement of this era.”

He said he wanted to speak his native language in honor of a United Nations holiday celebrating world languages, and because of “meaningless oppression and prohibitions on Kurdish persist.”

For more, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/world/europe/25turkey.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Whipsaw.
A two-way battle. A tug-of-war, if you will. Two opposing forces focused on one thing.

Speaking of such, the Chinese are really mad at the French. The battle centers on some priceless works of art that disappeared in 1860, when French and British forces looted and burned the Summer Palace just outside of Beijing at the end of the second Opium War.

Highest bidder?
Two bronzes, depicting the heads of a rabbit and a rat, were among 12 animal heads depicting the Chinese zodiac that were removed from a fountain at the Summer Palace. The bronzes were purchased by the French clothing designer Yves Saint Laurent, who died last June. Saint Laurent's friend and former business partner, Pierre Berge, is putting the bronzes on the auction block at Christie's on Monday. Each could go for as much as $10M.

Cultural riches.
Berge has steadfastly maintained that Saint Laurent obtained the bronzes legally, and there seems to be no question about that. But apparently that's not the point. Chinese media outlets are reporting that the artifacts should be returned as part of a 1995 agreement stating that that "any cultural object looted or lost because of reasons of war should be returned without any limitation or time span." The Chinese were offered the bronzes five years ago, but reportedly turned them down because the asking price for the pair was $20M. Five more bronzes have been located, purchased and returned to China. The whereabouts of the other five remain a mystery.

I think I like this guy...
Pierre Berge says he'll gladly return the bronzes the moment China embraces basic human rights and gives Tibet its freedom. "If they do that, I would be very happy to go myself and bring these two Chinese heads to put them in the Summer Palace in Beijing. It's obviously blackmail but I accept that." A judge in Paris is expected to hear a motion tomorrow to block the sale of the bronzes, but according to media reports, he's unlikely to stop the proceedings. UPDATE (2-23-09): The judge gave Christie's permission to go ahead with the auction. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=abiJtfqfSreU&refer=muse

What do you think?
When my kids were little, tugging back and forth on something, I'd say to one or the other, "Honey, if it's your sister's, give it back this instant and stop yelling over it." As an adult, an art lover and a respecter of cultures, I personally think the bronzes should go back to the culture that produced them.

But that Pierre Berge... how classically French his response is! You gotta love it.

Girandole.

Beauty radiating outward.

Enlightening.

I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first realized that the most common things can be infused with beauty. I had taken up residence in a culture very different from my own. I was in Paris for a year of school. Needing some warmer clothes, and feeling very much the adult (I was a little Okie girl, all of 18), I took the metro to the Boulevard Haussmann, where the closest department store was located. Hoping my modest amount of money would be enough, I stepped inside the Galeries Lafayette store and headed through the cosmetics department toward the coats and sweaters. A towering Christmas tree had been set up, and as my gaze moved upward to the star on top, I saw the breathtaking underside of the huge stained glass dome (pictured above).

I would have expected to see that kind of beauty in a cathedral, a museum, or some important national edifice. I didn't expect to see it overarching the displays of makeup, hairbrushes, housewares, underwear and, well... stuff. Ordinary stuff that people need and use in everyday life. Many times since then, I've spotted beautiful things at unexpected times or in unexpected places. I've been given eyes to see, so to speak.

Moreover, I've known people, both American and French, whose lives convey the steadiness, the centeredness, the beauty of the girandole. Spending time with them is like getting a dose of peace.

Application.

Girandole. Bejeweled center, radiating beautiful things, good things, in unexpected (and even difficult or painful) places. No matter where we are in the world, we can approach life with a kind of reverence because, in effect, for that precise moment in time, wherever we happen to be is the center of our universe. We can be alert, responsive, connected to others, even those who are different from us in the most fundamental of ways.

Where does the self-knowledge come to an end? Nowhere. For anyone with the heart of a learner, it goes on forever.

Hear what I mean.

Gymnopedie, by Erik Satie (b. Honfleur, 1866, d. Paris 1925)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atejQh9cXWI&feature=related (RECOMMENDATION: rather than watching the video, why not just close your eyes and listen?)

Reconciliation.

We live in a violent world. Every new example of strife seems more appalling than the last. "Reconciliation" may be synonymous with "impossibility" when one considers Muslim rioting in France and the complex factors which led up to it.

Rioting.

France has experienced several massive outbreaks of violence within its Muslim communities. In 2005, riots erupted in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-bois following the apparently accidental deaths of two Muslim teens. The pair were electrocuted when they fled into an electrical power substation from police who were checking identification papers. Two years later, violence erupted in the suburb of Argenteuil when two Muslim youths riding a stolen motorbike collided with a police car and were killed. The Argenteuil unrest quickly spread to Muslim communities in other cities throughout France.

Following are excerpts from an intriguing online analysis by WorldNetDaily. You may read the complete text at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47236

"...for years, the country with the largest Islamic population in Europe has ignored rising Muslim tensions within its own borders. ...Much of the chaos... is tied to the lack of Muslim integration into European society – whether by design or by choice. In France and Denmark alike, many cities dominated by Islamic faithful have been deemed too dangerous for police and are, effectively, 'no-go zones' ... Muslim immigrant youths have even taunted authorities, saying, "This territory belongs to Islam; you don't belong here."

"The great majority of Muslims in Europe see themselves as bearers of a superior civilization and see themselves growing prodigiously," Daniel Pipes, director of Middle East Forum, commented during the 2007 riots. "Through a cultural, religious and demographic confidence they feel scorn towards European ways and conspire to take it over."

Many say the blame ought to fall sqarely on the French for allowing Muslim communities to "grow and fester in economic and social isolation." For two generations, Muslims have occupied "preplanned ghettoes" and "have no future except as second-class citizens of the nations they helped rebuild from devastation." Poverty, unemployment and discrimination are part of daily life for a large percentage of the 5 million Muslims in France.

Frame of reference?

To be honest, I am still pondering this part of the assignment. I will add more at a later time.

View it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp_abyD-FeA&feature=related

Reconciliation.

To reiterate, "reconciliation" may be synonymous with "impossible" when one considers Muslim rioting in France and the complex factors which led up to it.

To my friends in FLAN 4023:

Thank you for your willingness to provide honest feedback.