I know virtually nothing about Islam apart from what is beamed into my house by CNN.

Despite its generally conservative image[1] Islam is a mystic religion. Visiting the Alhambra I was struck not only by the ornate forms of the royal buildings, but also by the esoteric nature of the arabesque detail on the buildings. Apparently the purpose of their infinite patterns[2] are to provide a form of meditative contemplation for the devotee without the idolatry that Islam so rejects. I hesitate to call them psychedelic, but jihad they’re not. Whether the modern imams like it or not, hashish has to have been sacramental in those wild days in the desert chasing camels with Dean Moriarty.

Traditional Islamic mysticism is ascribed to the Sufis with their gnostic universal-love approach to Allah[3]. And it would be easy for mainstream Islam to write off the mystic aspects of their religion as the Sufi black sheep domain of an otherwise austere and reserved family. But recently reading the story of the Buraq and Mohammed’s Harry Potter-esque flight to heaven is just too much fun to ignore – Father Christmas on a horse.

Islam’s Fire

By his own account Mohammed was a straight and narrow kinda guy but he did go for one wild midnitely ride from Mecca to Jerusalem to heaven and back – this is the story of a horse named Buraq.
This episode in Mohammed’s life is a key point in the establishment of Islam and, as such, has had a profound influence on Islamic thought. It is, in short, the story of Mohammed’s enlightenment as he was carried off to heaven by angels where he beheld the true face of Allah. Apart from the temptation-and-locusts thing it fits into Mohammed’s life in a very similar way to the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert before starting his ministry.
The consensus seems to be that this episode was originally two separate events, the first being Mohammed’s journey from Mecca to Jerusalem (the Isra) and the second his ascension to heaven (the Meraj). For better campfire retelling effect the two stories were combined into one as follows.

We meet Mohammed, by now in his forties, a pious man who has been awakened to his prophetic destiny where he is resting at the Kabaa in the holiest mosque in Mecca, presumably after a long day’s worship. He is met by the archangel Gabriel who has brought with him a winged horse/mule/donkey with the face of a woman; a gentle creature to carry him together with Gabriel, who has his own set of wings, to Jerusalem. They zoom off into the night; no mention is made of an in-flight movie or reclining seats.
Upon their arrival in Jerusalem he meets Abraham, Moses and Jesus – Allah’s prophets prior to Mohammed. Mohammed then leads the gathered prophets in prayer, thereby neatly confirming his position as god’s numero uno messenger.

The Buraq and her Unseen Passenger

After the prayers we continue on the second part of Mohammed’s journey, the Meraj, in which Buraq carries him up into the heavens where he visits hell and paradise – each of the seven heavenly cosmic dimensions. The visions of hell and heaven are combinations of the usual items: fire, blood, terror, peaceful gardens, lions lying with lambs, glorious heavenly choirs and such.
At each level he is greeted by a resident angel and one of the (by now) lesser prophets, some of whom (especially Moses) seem to take pains to indicate that god does, in fact, favour Mohammed over themselves and Mohammed’s followers over their own. Some very convenient and helpful exchanges for later rebuffing of other imam’s claims[4].
Having toured the first six levels of heaven Mohammed has to enter the seventh on his own, Gabriel can take him no further. Here Mohammed encounters god himself in the form of Allah. He sees a radiant multi-coloured tree and has his true destiny revealed to him.
From here we do not know what happened to Mohammed, but I assume that the return flight was uneventful.

Heavenly Fire

So let’s recap, Mohammed is swept away by a handsome angel on a winged horse from his slumber in Mecca to Jerusalem where they meet up with other great prophets in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. From there he is wooshed up to heaven to behold all the wonders and horrors of the afterlife and meets up with the big G-o himself. Finally he is returned home before sunrise to take on his role as glorious prophet of Allah.

This is a very cynical take on the story of Mohammed’s journey, but only because orthodox Islam insists on it being literally true[5], though there are credible interpretations of this episode as either a dream or a symbolic representation of Mohammed’s enlightenment. This is similar to the common modern Christian view that, yes, Noah did in fact load two polar bears onto his boat. And yes, there will be four actual guys on four actual horses and it’s gonna suck something horrible for non-believers.
In all three these cases the stories suffer because of it. Why does orthodox religion ridicule their own beautiful fables by insisting that its true? Oh, of course, because, as we know by now, if one part of the Koran can be interpreted as a dream or a vision or simply a folk tale woven into a people’s everyday faith, then other parts of the Koran become open to the same interpretation. Blah blah blah. The Koran, the Bible, the Torah – ‘we must fucking CONTROL the truth, we must control what is true! It must all be true!‘ – both the faith and the religion suffers as a result.

But I do find it funny, and re-assuring, that a religion that comes across as so severe(especially to non-believers) has such a cute flight of fantasy[6] at such a crucial point in its protagonist’s narrative.
Like all major religions the generations of paternalistic enforcement of social dogma cannot hide the fact that its most beautiful stories and images are drugged-out fantasies and wild party yarns. Rock on.

[1] or is it non-image?
[2] not quite fractal, but certainly fundamentally organic
[3] unity with god and so forth; in fana – ‘Praise be to me; how great is my majesty’
[4] This is starting to sound a little like a CIA-commissioned report into the conduct of their operatives
[5] one night, one horse, a bazillion miles
[6] pun unavoidable

Time to make this mother work! HA! I’ve added a word to urbandictionary! Or at least I’m trying to. But once those editors approve that sucker I’d better get ready for a dee-luge of traffic!

family-backed loan

Borrowing from your parents.

Oh yeah, don’t worry – I’ve got a family-backed loan on this one!

Source: Xxxxxx Xxxx, Cape Town[1]

Here I am! Comma get me!

If it gets rejected I’ll start a petition. If it gets ignored I’ll puke.

Update: 9 November

Family-backed Loan has been accepted into urbandictionary. Somehow the thrill of it all has worn a little thing. At least I can still sit back and await fame and fortune from my achievement.

[1] more on this later

I’ve recently been reading Scholars an Rogues for its intelligent analysis[1]. An article on the future of newspapers comments on a move within the traditional[2] US newspaper market to reduce circulation and to focus on reaching only profitable customers. The article quotes a New York Times story[3]

It’s a rational business decision of newspapers focusing on quality circulation rather than quantity, shedding the subscribers who cost more and generate less revenue.

And so, in short the trend is that

Newspapers don’t want many of us to subscribe — because we cost too much to service. [...] the fact that I live in a rural area means that newspapers I want to read won’t deliver to my door. This phenomenon [...] has been growing.

as it was	as it is	and as it will be

Here are some stats about the 2006 US newspaper market from the same article

66 percent of readers are between ages 18 and 54.
51 percent have household incomes over $50,000 (16 percent over $100,000).
53 percent have some college experience or an undergraduate or graduate degree.
63 percent are married.
89 percent are white.

What is happening is that newspapers are limiting the geographical range within which they are willing to distribute(in order to make the cost model work), preferring to concentrate on urban centers. The qualitative comment of the article on this trend is to:

Begin writing the long-term obituary of the American newspaper [as] envisioned by the Founders as a public service and a significant component of the checks and balances that once allowed American democracy to function properly and purposefully.
[...]
[If the trend is for a] transition from [providing a] public-service(and making money) to protecting the profit margin [by selling] to core advertisers a Caucasian, home-owning, upper-middle class, well-paid, college-educated, urban audience, then what can be expected of the journalism those papers produce?

And so the basic threat posed by this trend is that the focus on profitable circulation will threaten the public service that newspapers have provided as a source of information, investigation and social comment. This is undeniably true, but I do think that it is somewhat alarmist. And so, my comments on this trend and on the author’s analysis.

Firstly, we have to accept that flagship newspapers[4] are no longer news carriers in the traditional sense. The fact is that they have become high-end media products that more closely resemble magazines[5] than what they do the traditional daily. The mega-brand papers are being consumed in the same way that readers consume Vanity Fair/New Yorker/Harpers/Wallpaper/Der Spiegel. This is not a trend driven by the newspaper publishers, it is driven by those white-collar, urban, caucasian consumers to whom the newspaper publishers are responding. And in that light the newspapers will produce journalism that their readers want, whatever that might be. Commercial journalism is no longer about bringing instruction or understanding to the eager masses who sit at the feet of the master journalists to learn of the evils that their government are perpetrating. It’s about satisfying their consumers’ appetite for media[6].

Secondly, who gives a fuck about how the US Founding Fathers envisioned newspapers? The Founding Fathers of the modern Afrikaner nation in South Africa also envisioned newspapers as a public service – just a particularly skewed one. The founding fathers of any nation are no longer relevant. Democracy has changed – it’s protection can no longer be left to a caring elite of journalists. Our information demands have changed, we want access to information from a variety of sources in a variety of formats. And newspapers make up only a portion(if any) of this demand. The sanctity of the Word as spoken by The Whatever Times is irrelevant to the modern society who 10 or 20 years ago did accept that word as a daily sacrament.

Which brings me to newspapers in South Africa. There has been a similar acceleration in the decline in circulation of the traditional South African newspapers. But this has been rendered trivial by an explosive growth in the lower end daily newspaper market that does not cater to the white/caucasian market, but to the increasingly mobile, mostly black, working class. The earth shattering arrival of the Daily Sun has caused a revolution in the South African newspaper industry – its rapid rise to market dominance[7] has surprised even the most Africa-aggressive media analysts. It has become, within the last four years, the only newspaper that matters and it is now the first nationwide daily newspaper in South Africa’s history.

The Daily Sun is undeniably a tabloid, containing a hefty dose of stories on crime, revenge, witchcraft and wild parties; but there is more to it than its first two pages and I would argue that it is more relevant to the public interest than what euro-ripoff old-skool papers like Beeld, Die Burger and the Independents are.
Beyond its headline grabbers it has realised the value of addressing their readers’ upward mobility in the form of articles on everything from how to get out of micro-loan debt to applying for a mortgage for a first house.
By focusing on news that is relevant to their readers, in a language that their readers are comfortable with[8] the paper is serving its readers better than what any Pulitzer prize toting 5000-word-per-capita-per-a-day newsroom could.

To be fair, the explosion driven by the Daily Sun has resulted in a series of low-end tabloids such as the Son or *shudder* the Daily Voice that offer up some hilarious headlines and page 3 girls with their all-natural boobs out, but little in the way of investigation or comment. But this is no different than what Murdoch did to the UK with The Sun.

The Daily Sun	Kaapse Son	The Cape Sun

Another trend which is only now developing in the South African market is the rise of the free mega-daily in the form of the bet-the-company project of the Sunday Times[9] which is to deliver a free daily newspaper to their(country-wide) subscribers – The Times. At first I was extremely skeptical of The Times since I could not see how they could make the distribution model work for daily, selective, door-to-door deliveries of a newspaper whose only income is through advertising[10]. And in that sense The Times is in a similar situation as that described by the author, the cost of distribution weighing down the reach of a newspaper and thereby prompting it to reduce its circulation. But I was wrong – purely because I didn’t understand the genius distribution model of The Times; they distribute that motherfucker on foot!
This would, of course, never work in the US or Europe, but in South Africa there is no cheaper form of last-mile transport than by human carrier. The only snag in this distribution could be in getting the selective distribution right (i.e. delivering the newspaper to the right houses in a neighbourhood). The Times is already showing the potential to turn the South African middle-class newspaper market on its head by swallowing whole the markets both for traditional regional dailies and for free community(middle-class suburban) newspapers.

So where does this leave investigative journalism as a public service? Firstly, high-end newspapers are certainly not interested in the public anymore. Secondly democracy today cannot function as envisioned by the US Founders – a college of benign care-providers to the nation with a balancing college of intellectuals and journalists – that world does not exist anymore and nor does that role for the mega-daily newspapers. But the void left by the magazination of the traditional flagship newspaper will be filled by something – not because democracy requires it, but because there will be a commercial demand for it. And that something, whether it be free dailies or low cost tabloid-format, non-trash newspapers will report on the stories that their readers want, not what is good for their readers.
And is this bad? Is the loss of a daily, paternalistic schooling of the masses by revered journalists bad? I don’t think so.

The future is about the individual – the death of the public interest and the supremacy of individual interest. The future balancing of democracy, a lumbering social system in terrible health in its old age, is not in the public forum of teacher-journalists but in the individual’s freedom to access whatever information they want, be it truths about their nation’s foreign policy or the latest on Lindsay Lohan’s nasal cavity.

[1] on politics, media, corporates, social issues – a thinking blog
[2] read dominant
[3] Funny, one of America’s largest newspapers[i] writing about its own drop in ‘standards’
[i] dwarfed by USA Today whose daily circulation tops 2 million copies[ii]
[ii] though, should we even consider USA PropagandaToday a newspaper?
[4] The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, London times, Guardian and BILDs of the world
[5] In terms of its focus, content and even editorial policies
[6] Which does still include an appetite for investigation and analysis, but also for culture, travel, fashion, gossip and sex
[7] 500,000 copies sold per day, which translates to some 4 million readers per day. In a country of 46 million people that is phenomenal
[8] Not slang, but simplified English
[9] South Africa’s ‘most respectable’ gossip/trash/investigation newspaper[i]
[i] another hilarious story is the development of South Africa’s traditional newspapers. The Sunday Times has become all about the trash and the once-mighty Rapport is now relegated to being the rugby newspaper – pure comedy.
[10] If you ignore the revenue from new subscribers which supplements the cost of producing The Times

Part of the reason why I enjoy US politics so much[1] is because the power structures are _so_ intertwined and _so_ corrupt[2] that it makes for wonderful absurdity.
The current hot mega-powerdemons are the friendly, fire-first-ask-questions-later folks at Blackwater. As reported extensively Blackwater have been involved in the deaths of Iraqi civilians in several incidents in Baghdad over the last months. The most recent incident, in which it is claimed that as many as 20 Iraqi civilians died, catapulted them to the top of the worldwide mega-demon charts. Haliburton must be totally bummed out about this.

Blackwater’s contractors fired their weapons 195 times — or an average of 1.4 times a week — from the beginning of 2005 through the second week of September [...].
In over 80 percent of the cases, Blackwater reports that its forces fired first, [...].
CNN

Sons of Bitches

So just how fucked up is Blackwater? Here’s their About us

Blackwater was founded in 1997 from a clear vision developed from an understanding of the need for innovative, flexible training and operational solutions to support security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere.

When last did you hear of a company started ‘to support security and peace, and freedom and democracy’? Whose freedom and democracy are we talking about here? Your freedom to drive a big truck and hoist a red flag? Fuck you.

Home Base

You’ll also be happy to know that at Blackwater you can shop online for branded caps, t-shirts, gun accessories and inspirational posters at the Blackwater Proshop[3]. So not only are they building a private army, paid for by US taxpayers, but they’ve also seen the need to diversify into lifestyle gear[4]. Anyways, if you’re visiting Blackwater’s site to get an application form[5] to make those big bucks over in ol’ Iraqland I suppose you may as well buy something, right? Guns and branded gear from the Proshop – you’re a pro now.
Are you puking yet?

Death has never looked this good

Hell, they even have kids apparel.

Raise them right

But the absurdity of a bunch of mercenaries selling glossy visions of bringing freedom to the uncivilized world through the wearing of rugged outdoor gear aside, Blackwater is knee deep in the types of military-industrial complex relationships that make US politics such a circus. Political Friendster’s Blackwater USA entry is littered with the usual[6] collection of powerful families, Christian groups, multi-nationals and inter-marrying of the US elite.
And these types of relationships pay off in cases like the legislation passed by the US congress yesterday that makes defense contractors operating in other countries(i.e. mercenaries), such as Blackwater, subject to US criminal law. Seems like a no-brainer, right? It is, the legislation was approved by a landslide majority of 389 votes to 30. But before the vote the Bush administration released the following statement in opposition ‘The bill would have unintended and intolerable consequences for crucial and necessary national security activities and operations.’
Translation, GW will veto the fuck out of that bill, regardless of how much support it has in congress.

The world is unrecognisable from the one my parents knew, it’s unrecognisable from the one I knew as a child. But the world is no less insidious or brutal, no less meaningless – it has been broken beyond repair for thousands of years. But we live in an unprecedented state of hyper-corruption, hyper-consumerism, hyper-death. And in that world Blackwater is what thecages is about.

[1] The other, possibly even more entertaining, reason why I enjoy it is because of the bizarre pageantry. The US presidential race events are run like a rock shows/revivalist church meetings. Hillary-ious.
[2] And I don’t mean the nice kind of corrupt found in dictatorships and military junta’s all over the world. There’s a special kind of corruption that exists in the US, epitomised by the revolving door.
[3] Isn’t that name trademarked?
[4] Boing Boing reported on this in 2006
[5] There’s something special about an application form that lists the types of guns that they will teach you to shoot.
[6] Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I’m claiming that the US right wing is the only side of the coin that moves in this terrifying world of secret handshakes. The left does it to. Everyone does it! That’s what makes it so much fun.