resistance is
fertile
Vol.
1 Iss. 6
Oct
2017
The Talent Arif Ahmad
3-4, 10
Douglas Polk
5
Chris Talbot-Heindl
6-8
Dana Talbot-Heindl
9
Arif Ahmad | American Afghan war surge and Pakistan bashing from the perspective of a Pakistani American | Essay The Afghan war is going nowhere. Taliban and their support groups, several thousand strong, still run parts of the country and have played the game of patience really well, where the response is measured over decades and centuries, the kind of time NATO and the Americans do not have. 9/11 happened in the year 2001. This is 2017. Look at the map of Afghanistan. Look at the ring of countries surrounding Afghanistan and then the ring surrounding those countries. In Afghanistan today we the Americans are out of time and place and with no endgame in sight. We had it good. We tried to make it better. Now we have neither. There were lessons from history ignored all along. Lessons from the Vietnam war, the fact that no foreign power has ever ruled over Afghanistan and the Pashtun mindset. Pashtuns make up the largest portion of the Afghan population, the Taliban, and their allies. My mother was a Pashtun, and I know a thing or two about the culture. The best analogy of the Pashtun psychology though not exactly is the American Rednecks. Conservative, proud of their heritage, seemingly arrogant, heavily armed per capita, warriors, hunters, resilient, stubborn, at times self-destructive with a die-hard and never quit attitude, and I am only scratching the surface. That a four to five figure army of Taliban and the Haqqani network has held off a once six-figure NATO and the American troop presence is what I am alluding to. That the modern wars run guerilla style in towns and cities, killing mainly nonparticipatory populations, are not winnable is what I am talking about. I would have bought the bashing of Pakistan if it was on a joyride in the last decade all the time while America was grinding its teeth. The reality is anything but. There was a time a few years back when Lahore, the city I grew up in, a bustling metropolis of over 11 million, where a lot of my family still lives, was getting sabotaged by regular terror attacks and bombings. I can never forget when one of my relatives told me that when they leave home in the morning, they are not sure how many would be back that evening. What we as Americans need to understand is the direct and indirect devastation our actions and these wars have brought upon a lot of this World’s population who had absolutely nothing to do with the falling of those towers on that ill-fated day in September. To blame Pakistan for the Afghan conundrum is like blaming the cornerman for the result of a boxing match, a cornerman who has himself received a lot of blows during. Pakistan has had its own love-hate relationship with these groups, has been ravaged by terrorism from
continued 3
Arif Ahmad | American Afghan war surge and Pakistan bashing from the perspective of a Pakistani American
these groups and of course and rightly so is going to watch its own interest first and find its own mechanism for dealing with these groups. It has had some success lately as evidenced by a significant decrease in the number of terror attacks there. Please understand that in the modern world of easy access and sharing of news one person’s terrorist may be another’s Robin Hood. Even our adversaries and terrorists of today were our comrades and allies in the war against the Soviet Union, a war where Pakistan helped America across the finish line. While we in America call out others for terrorism, there are those who consider us the same. Gone are the days of American moral superiority. These long, drawn-out wars and especially the Iraq war with its massive casualties and all that for what again, has ripped the topsoil off the American moral high ground. And then there is the philosophy of war. In a heavyweight vs lightweight contest there is only so much sympathy, and for so long the heavyweight is going to get even if the original reasoning for the conflict was correct. The heavyweight is more powerful, has more options and thus more responsibility and thus more blame to share and especially when the conflict keeps going on and on and on. Remember human instinct usually favors the underdog in a contest. No wonder today America is left holding the hot potato with its associated cost and consequences almost all by itself and I can see where President Trump is coming from in calling out NATO and UN on this. Let the local dynamics play and sort it out as painful as it may be in the short term. The longterm, tenable solutions have to come from within, and the best American influence is not by force but by example. Open them schools in Afghanistan and then some more. Persistently and passionately educate the children of our enemies and then some more. Leave behind loads and loads of books and pencils, blackboard and chalk. How hard can this be? Is it more expensive than 17 years of war? While we are at it, please fix the year-round potholes on my way to work in Wisconsin and give us all Americans better health care. Yes, we do need money here at home. Please. As a Physician I live by, “First do no harm” dogma every single day. I came to America not because it had the strongest army but because it was the most caring, generous and advanced society on this planet. Fight these wars with better ideas, better alternatives, better opportunities, better modernity, better sharing, better living and better of all and everything good there is. This is the America I know and live in, and this is when the city on the hill shines its best.
Douglas Polk | Daily Burden | Painting 5
Chris Talbot-Heindl | Reacting to #MeToo | Essay Wednesday was the first day I can remember that I wasn’t sexually harassed or cat-called on my way to work. But in all honesty, I can’t be sure if it wasn’t just a coincidence or if it was a direct result of the current #MeToo movement. As far as the #MeToo movement goes, I am conflicted about the whole thing. On the one hand, it is good for women/enby/femme/gender queer/gender variant people to express en masse the harassment, assault, and rape that they experienced and to have the support of others doing the same. On the other hand, women/enby/femme/gender queer/gender variant people have been telling their stories individually forever and received only double-downed misogyny and doubt in return. Don’t believe me, check out the mentions to anyone’s #MeToo on Twitter. Then bleach your brain…you’ll need it. The people stepping forward to peel back their skin and show themselves and what has happened to them don’t owe anyone their story. Neither do those who chose to be silent. And yet, some were shamed into it by well-meaning feminists who insisted that the only way to make men understand the magnitude of the problem was to lay themselves bare, only to be bombarded with the usual suspects: “What were you wearing?” “Why did you go there?” “Why were you out alone?” “Did you lead him on?” “Are you sure it was harassment? It could have been a misunderstanding.” And some LGBTIQ people who shared themselves took flak for “taking the focus away from women” somehow. Statistically, LGBTIQ people are up to two times more likely to experience sexual violence than cishet women (33% of whom will). 44% of lesbians and 61% of bisexual women, 40% of gay men and 47% of bisexual men have experienced sexual violence of some kind. 64% of trans people have been sexually assaulted or raped. Ignoring these facts helps exactly no one and being inclusive does not take anything away from women. Since the #MeToo movement started, I’ve been targeted by men on the internet in a way that I find very trying as a survivor. They are the first to point out that 2-7% of sexual assaulters are women; that 3% of
victims of sexual assault are men; and that 2-8% of reported rapes are false. They use this information to reframe the argument, to claim sexism in the discussion to shut it down, and to create disbelief on the part of survivors who come forward with their stories. At the same time, these men on the internet ignore cold hard facts like: In a 2015 paper, it was determined that 10.8% of surveyed male college students admitted to committing acts meeting the legal definition of rape or attempted rape. In a 2014 survey, 31% of surveyed men said they would force a woman to do something sexually (i.e. rape a woman), and 13% said they would rape a woman if they could be assured of not being caught. They did not realize that both questions were the same. In response to this, I’ve been accused of sexism and told that these statistics – much higher than the statistics of female assaulters and male victims which are significant to them – are not significant enough to discuss. I’m called divisive and reminded #NotAllMen. Yes, 93-98% of sexual assaulters and rapists are men, but #NotAllMen are sexual assaulters and rapists – I’m told. But in my mind, it is all men. I don’t know which ones are the third who would rape me given the chance. And if one-third of men would rape me, how many will sexually exploit or harass me? I’ve been in a situation where one man was sexually harassing me and all other men standing in the vicinity decided to let me deal with a man twice my size on my own. I’ve been in a situation where friends of my male relatives have said something sexist or problematic and I was left to deal with it on my own. I’ve been in a situation where relatives of mine have sexualized me in front of family who did and said nothing; and worse yet, encouraged the behavior by laughing. If you see it and you don’t say anything, you are complicit. You are #AllMen, and you are perpetuating a culture which is so toxic to someone like me that when I was asked the last time I was sexually harassed, it didn’t even register that the answer was “every time I go to my work.” I believed for a couple of days the last time was years ago at a different job. But, every time I go to work, I am usually sexually harassed. If I end up waiting at the bus stop alone with a man, he usually has something to say about my appearance or wants me to smile or perform for him. If I end up sitting next to a man on the bus, there’s a
continued 7
Chris Talbot-Heindl | Reacting to #MeToo
high chance that he will do an up and down look at my person. When I get off the bus and walk the five blocks to work, there’s usually a myriad of men who say something, look me up and down, cat call, or “accidentally” make contact with me. And if I manage to navigate that gauntlet unscathed, the busker across the street from my office will say something sexist, tell me to smile or dance for him, or gyrate at me while he plays the flute. And if I don’t respond in a way that he likes, he will announce it into his microphone. I’m not alone. He does this to all the women on that corner the whole time he performs there. And. The. Men. Who. Witness. This. Do. Nothing. Wednesday was the first day that I was not harassed my whole commute to work, the whole time I was at work, and my whole commute back, including by the busker. The busker was otherwise occupied playing a Disney medley for a little girl who was dancing. He wasn’t harassing anyone that day. So, thank you, men of Denver, for keeping yourselves to yourselves for the day, and for being minimally decent. It’s funny that women/enby/femme/gender queer/gender variant people are this type of decent every day without thanks, but here I am feeling like I should thank you all for being decent…but here we are. I hope this isn’t just a one and done and this will be the behavior moving forward. Of course, having 34 years of evidence to the contrary, I don’t want to get my hopes to high.
Dana Talbot-Heindl | Art for a cause | Photograph | (Pictured: Photograph by Andrea Lauritzen & crochet by Chris Talbot-Heindl) 9
Arif Ahmad | What Muslims, Ahmad Who | poetry Positive achievements by a large group of people in a broad sense yes. Christians can take credit for the Modern World, the West. Hindus have a rising India to boast of. Jews fewer in numbers hold sway over finance and media. Atheists govern the powerhouse that is China. Now show me some positives, a positive, we Muslims have on display. 1.7 billion, is only a number. Some oil-rich Gulf States, as if having oil is a measure of performance. What else, still thinking, am I missing anything? Bits and pieces people what is our mutual claim to fame? Soul searching or shifting the blame? What is our best foot forward? Not self-combustion, backstabbing, and terrorism. We total less than the sum of our parts. Thus, I’m not getting used to being called out and kicked around. When one more time we can turn out excited, brilliant and proud. Only how?
Resistance is Fertile The Talbot-Heindls, on top of being creative types, are also political animals who love the creativity and strength of the resistance movement. And we know that people have a lot to say about the current political climate. That’s why we created the compzine project Resistance is Fertile. Resistance is Fertile is a compzine for artists, poets, prose writers, or anyone else who has something to say about the current political resistance - fact or fiction.
11