含羞草 Shy grass

In Taiwan there is this plant that grows all over the place called hanxiucao (the shy plant) Mimosa pudica that folds up when you touch it. I had always thought that it was native to Taiwan, but according to Wikipedia, it actually originates from Brasil. Then I heard on the POV documentary The Tailenders (a disturbing documentary about American missionaries who have made it their mission to bring “the Word” to everyone in the world in their mother tongue – I’ll save my rant against the evangelical impulse for a later post) that during the Pacific War, the US military introduced it to the Solomon Islands as a way to visually track the movements of Japanese soldiers in the forest. Fascinating.

Gay Panic & the Middle East Conflict

Another crazy week. Tuesday was a panel discussion at the LGBT Center surrounding the execution of two youth in Iran a year ago. Yesterday I went to meeting of folks trying to organize a response to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon. Today, a protest in the pouring rain outside the US Mission. It’s all been a blur…one of those weeks when events in the world pull you along, leaving little room for reflection. Then I came across this article in the San Jose Mercury about a group of prosecutors trying to stop the use of the “Gay Panic” defense and an idea crystallized: The claim of fear by the powerful serves to justify violence against the weak.  This claim of fear transforms active violence into reactive “self-defense.” The homophobe uses “gay panic” to justify gay bashing. The Israeli government and its US and British backers use fear of terrorism to justify the invasion of Gaza and the seige of Lebanon. NYPD officers use fear to justify their killing of an unarmed African immigrant in the Bronx.

How do bury the notion that one person’s peace of mind is worth the lives of hundreds or thousands of others? How do we cut through this false logic of fear that enables Empire?

Stupid Linguist

Nicholas Ostler is the author of Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. Originally, I wanted to read this book, but I've since decided otherwise. In the latest issue of Time Asia there is a cover story about the new global rush to learn Mandarin which quotes Mr. Ostler:

"'China is like an imperial civilization, or the U.S. or Britain or France. It tends to view the world on its own terms,' says Nicholas Ostler, the British author of Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. 'In China, people talk in Chinese. More and more, they expect others to speak to them in Chinese, too.'"

Imagine that, people in China speaking Chinese?! How dare they? It must be evidence of their secret ambition to take over the world!