Authority, Palestine & Gabor Mate

Who owns the land? Who owns the words? Who owns the world?

This is filmed in Warm Springs, Virginia, which boasts the oldest spa in the US. It’s named for Jefferson who loved it for his rheumatism but then it gave him boils on both butt cheeks:

I do not know what may be the effect of this course of bathing, on my constitution; but I am under great threats that it will work it’s effect thro’ a system of boils. a large swelling on my seat, increasing for several days past in size and hardness disables me from sitting but on the corner of a chair. another swelling begins to manifest itself to-day on the other seat.

So a mixed yelp review. But Ben Franklin took the waters and seemed no worse for it, and so I’m following suit.

In this video I start with a discussion with a parking lot attendant about Israel’s right to self-defense and whether occupation equals possession. I ask if there’s a time limit or if yesterday’s bulldozer is today’s entitlement. The thorny issue of ‘anyone still living to make a claim’ is seen as Israel’s agenda.

I continue the stackalogue with Guy Duperreault on ownership of the meaning of words, looking at authorship and authority. Is possession in the mouth equal to invention? I ask whether the rules—nomos—supersede the purpose—logos. I wrote:

The word "Word" is defined as purpose, intent, from its etymology, as economist Susan George explains. Eco- logos means the purpose of the ecos and eco-nomos means the rules that govern it. She says that the purpose should come first. I think the same that's true for an economy is true for words, technology and everything else. What's the end that it's a means for? If the end is malevolent or egocentric, then that will control and pervert the means. But the same means can be used for a beneficial and benevolent end, we don't need to throw the use of water out just because it can be used to drown the baby.

If words have no author, doesn't that make the user into an arbitrary authority: "the question is who is to be master, that's all!" If we are to communicate, we need to understand what that person means by the word they use. To explain that we need to use other words, and then explain what we mean using other words. It seems an endless loop without a touchstone.

And then I embed a video I’d made called The Epiphany Jumpstart responding to four interviews between Gabor Mate & Russell Brand:

This far-ranging episode discusses religion, faith & spirituality, Palestine, politics, pandemics & parenting, aboriginal art, the three brains of the body & anthropologists from Mars. At Gabor's suggestion, I delve into The Globalization of Addiction by Bruce Alexander (of Rat Park fame) on the dislocation common to slavery, money & addiction, bringing in David Graeber's Debt: the First 5000 Years. Bruce's essay, “What Shakespeare Knew About Addiction and We've Forgotten,” looks at addiction as a "semantic palimpsest" and its connection to devotion. In his second existential crisis he calls for epochal social change as the only way to bring about psychological health. I find that Gabor and I share a go-to deadly sin and I analyze his marriage, with much admiration. I begin by talking about the second greatest force in the universe, which I think is a person who changes their mind, and I end with the most powerful force that I call the epiphany jumpstart.

Related links:

Russell Brand removed from Jeremy Corbyn’s poetry anthology but “Despite Brand's removal, the book's contributors include many other celebrities with antisemitic pasts.” This is filed under anti-semitism on The Jerusalem Post.

Highly recommended: 30-min video on US Presidents surrounded by Zionists, Yuval Noah Harari’s ready-made speech, a compilation of Zionist hate speech against Muslims.

This truthseeker article chronicles the 'PR disaster' of the released hostage of Hamas who talks about how nicely and considerately they were treated. It contrasts this to three Palestinian men taken in the West Bank who were stripped, beaten, handcuffed, urinated on, burned with cigarettes and attempted to sodomize with an object.

Here is Russell’s interview of Gabor Mate on Israel/ Palestine:

Gabor quotes a Palestinian woman who works with children who have been held in Israeli jails. She teaches them Sufi dancing. She says “We don’t have post-traumatic stress disorder here because the trauma is never post.” Gabor says:

It's not what you know, it's what you could would know if you wanted to find out. There are no two sides. I mean it's always a complex question but in terms of power and control, it's pretty straightforward: there was a land with a people living there and other people wanted it. They took it over and they continue to take it over and they continued to to discriminate against, oppress and dispossess that other people. That's what happened and that's what's happening.

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Here is The Epiphany Jumpstart, unembedded, and When Words Die, Worlds Die:

In this episode, I cite Paul Hawken's book, Blessed Unrest, in a chapter called Indogene that talks about the language of the Yamana people, who Darwin thought the lowest form of humanity. I dissect an FDA campaign that uses colloquialism to ridicule. A critique of Mattias Desmet on Unlimited Hangout looks at the sanitizing language that neutralizes atrocity. And Glenn Greenwald looks at how atrocity is used to ban the use of words.