The Heart Of The Day

Antakya is in the south of Turkey…30 miles from the Syria border. I flew here yesterday from Istanbul and Friday I will take a 3 hour bus to Adana north of here where I will stay with another Couchsurfing host.

The guy sitting next to me on the plane to Antakya was a Canadian working for the American Emergency Services Organization. He was going to Antakya for a meeting concerning the Syrian refugees at the border. Perhaps with the UN. Today I saw the proverbial white SUV with UN written in bright blue on the side. I asked him how many refugee camps there were along the border. He said “not camps.” Just solid people on both sides. This doesn’t bode well.

So I am ensconsed on the third floor of a little hotel with windows opening to the city center along the Orontes River about 14 miles from the Mediterranean coast. Click on the photos to enlarge.

Known as Antioch in ancient times, the city has historical significance for Christianity, as it was the place where the followers of Jesus Christ were called Christians for the first time. It had an important role as one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire and Byzantium, and was a key location of the early years of Christianity, the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the rise of Islam, and the Crusades because of it’s massive walls.

According to wikipedia, both Turkish and Arabic are still widely spoken in Antakya, although written Arabic is rarely used. A mixed community of faiths and denominations co-exist peacefully here. Although almost all the inhabitants are Muslim, a substantial proportion adhere to the Alevi and the Arab Nusayri traditions, in ‘Harbiye’ there is a place to honour the Nusayri saint Hızır. Numerous tombs of Muslim saints, both Sunni and Alevi, are located throughout the city. Several small Christian communities are active in the city, with the largest church being St. Peter and St. Paul on Hurriyet Caddesi. With its long history of spiritual and religious movements, Antakya is a place of pilgrimage for Christians. It also has a reputation in Turkey as a place for spells, fortune telling, miracles and spirits, the wiki writer says.

But I have to tell this story. In the breakfast room this morning I saw a guy who had a “California” sweat shirt. But he looked maybe Turkish. I felt silly asking this but I asked if he was from the U.S. Yes, he said, but I’m Syrian. He has been going to a large refugee camp 30 miles away on the border to volunteer. No toilets in this camp…one of three along the border inside Turkey. The UN is giving food but this guy says he went to several markets here in Atakya and he saw “with my very own eyes” sacks of grain with “UN” marked on them being sold on the black market.

His brother, a medical doctor has traveled from CA to this camp 3 times to volunteer with Doctor’s Without Borders. He spent 20,000 of his own money for milk for one week for the children and to build 12 toilets for men and 12 for women. He and his brother have collected money and clothes and blankets through a Syrian-American org. They sometimes don’t even have shoes or anything else because they fled so quickly.

His father is very sick in Syria. His sister is 6 months pregnant. He cannot reach them because it is so dangerous. He has been told by everyone he dare not go…even with a bullet proof vest and that he likely will be kidnapped by the opposition who hates Americans. Who is the opposition I asked. Various Al Queda groups, he said.

“Syria doesn’t care about the people. Turkey doesn’t care about the people” he said. Turkey has forbidden any more camps along the border and they won’t allow any pictures from visitors or the press. So now the camps are beginning to multiply along the border on the Syrian side. For every person who goes back 1000 will flee. So people aren’t seeing the misery. It’s just an impossible situation. And this is only one of the wars going on in the world.

I have to go back to the US to school he said. I am doing what I can.

My friend Dilek, however, says that Turkish TV reports have indicted massive problems in the camps…predictably so considering the environment. And the guy I talked to had a very hoarse voice. He said it was from yelling at a bunch of drunk Syrians the other night who were raising hell in the camps. It’s the women and children and old people he was concerned about the most. They are always the most affected victims.

Another Turkish friend wants to know, if the opposition is Al Queda…and Al Queda is our enemy…why is the U.S. supporting them against Asad. But things are never as they seem.

Update 2/28/2013: This morning in the breakfast room I met another Syrian. His brother works in the hotel, he says. I imagine the hotel is putting up these Syrians. He said he came here from Lebanon but cannot go to Syria. Two brothers in Syria are “kaput” in a bloodbath of 200 people. “Kaput?” Odd word to use? He showed me an interview on his iPhone he gave to Aljazeera. Then he showed me a photo of the head of Hesbollah. Said Hesbollah was behind the opposition. They are not good he says. He wanted to know why Obama wasn’t helping. I told him we never know what our government is doing or not doing.

Update 05/19/2013 Last weekend there were two car bombings in Reyhanli, near Antakya on the Syrian border, in which 50 people were killed. Nearly 20 people were arrested. The bombs were most likely planted by pro-Assad forces in retaliation for Turkish support of the Syrian rebels. Criticism of Prime Minister Erdegon’s response to the bombing, fearing Turkey is being dragged into the Syrian conflict, criticism of Turkey’s lack of intelligence and criticism of PM Erdogan’s relationship with the U.S. has sparked anti-government demonstrations this week in several cities across Turkey on a day that is supposed to be celebrating Ataturk’s tribute to children. My Turkish friends are posting slogans all over Facebook.

Turkish Anti-Government Demonstration

Meltdown: The Men Who Crashed The World

This is a 4 part documentary of the worldwide financial crisis and the inside story that will keep you on the edge of your seat. After watching part 1 click under Meltdown: (part 2) A Global Financial Tsunami, (part 3) Paying The Price and (part 4) After The Fall.

The men who crashed the world – Meltdown – Al Jazeera English.

And if that is not enough there is the earlier film called “Inside Job.”

In short, a comment on Facebook: America’s wealthiest one percent owns 40% of the country’s total wealth. (The bottom 80% owns just 7% — no typo) — America’s wealthiest one percent owns 51% of all of the country’s stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. (The bottom 50% owns just one-half of one percent.) — America’s wealthiest one percent takes in 24% of all the income generated each year. — Between 1923 and 1929, the concentration of wealth at the top of the country’s economic ladder was at the highest point in US history. Then came the Crash and the Depression. For decades afterward, the middle class was dealt into the game at a much greater level. As recently as 1976, America’s wealthiest one percent took in only 9% of the country’s income (again, the current figure is 24%). Time Magazine, hardly an outfit full of liberal kooks, says that the concentration of wealth has again reached 1929 levels. Something is wrong here. To quote a great man: “But if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists. We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that it signed years ago. And we are coming to engage in dramatic nonviolent action, to call attention to the gulf between promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible visible.”

In response we now have Occupy Wall Street sit-ins all over the U.S. and the world by young people who cannot find jobs in their chosen fields and, in the U.S., are saddled with education loans up the ying yang that they cannot repay. Jobs have been lost. Homes lost.

Statement published by Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Together

I have been glued to the Occupy Wall Street Livestreams worldwide where I am watching “a learning tribe that is trying to BE what it wants the world to grow into.”

What you don’t see going on in the occupations and is so difficult to communicate to the media, mainly because they don’t get it, is the TRANSFORMATION that is going on in the working groups and in the General Assemblies and in the personal interactions. It looks from the outside so diffuse because each individual is connecting into it from where they are personally in their growth and circumstances.

Comment I saw this morning to a controversial CNN YouTube video: F**k the media. Each and every one of them. They’re out there with one objective and that’s to create division between us. Everyone PLEASE stop with this Hippie, Teabagger, Republican, Democrat, Conservative, Liberal name calling classification bullshit! Don’t you fucking get it? None of it matters! All that those monickers do is provide ammo to the shit starters. Were all are in the same boat on this one and we all need to stick together as AMERICANS if were going to get anything done.” Right on! ”

A friend who is participating in Occupy Seattle says: I am trusting the nonviolence to win out.

It’s a process. Not a linear one…but an organic one. They don’t know yet how the movement will change anything. But they for sure know that nothing will change without a change of consciousness of each individual. IMO it will change when there is a critical mass of people that have changed. One by one. Each in his/her own way.

I have been hanging out with a group of young current and former Couchsurfers and volunteers here in Oaxaca (when I am not glued to the Livestreams) who are participating in the same process. Occupy Wall Street is just one manifestation of where these young folks, world-wide, are taking us. With their clear-eyed insight they are edging me out of my old paradigm…out of old categories. We spent all day saturday at a sustainability fair with representatives from 80 communities all over Mexico.

What amazes me the most is the lack of cynicism and the hope and trust they have. They are losing hope of being able to pursue their careers they studied for, so they are looking for other ways to plug into the transformative process. The exchange with them is exhilarating…and yes…they are changing me too.

Some of these young people have just come off a year traveling to 4 countries to live in and study local sustainable projects in India, Tanzania, New Zealand and now Oaxaca. They underwent life-changing experiences (and in one case a near breakdown) as they came to understand that you cannot go into a country to “show them how to do it.” That old liberal do-good paradigm is dying.

But you can empower local people in their own efforts and learn from them new ways like the one in indigenous communities here in Oaxaca called “Uses Y Costumbres” which is a consensus process they use to govern themselves and the Zapatista movement in Chiapas.

The director of the year-long program is here in Oaxaca. Here is an interview with him. He turns Paulo Friere’s educational pedagogy, that has become orthodox in US educational reform movements since the 70′s, on it’s head.

A high school and college friend on Facebook recently told me I have too much time on my hands! hahahahahaha. Can’t think of a better way to spend my retirement than encouraging and affirming all these young people!

•  That the government stop threats and harassment
•  That an independent body will undertake an investigation into recent violence.
•  That the  Abhisit ... [Continue reading this entry]