Tea and the wonderful effect of a calming moment
Tea. One of the oldest beverages in the world after water, beer and wine. Some say it was discovered by accident, others that it was divine inspiration. A lot in the history of tea is linked to chance and to ingenious foresight, and if such things interest you, I highly recommend Alan and Iris MacFarlane’s The Empire of Tea, the subtitle “The Remarkable History of the Plant That Took Over the World” says it best.
Not only is tea an old plant (a friend of mine is trying to find ancient plant DNA in what supposedly are tea samples from a couple of thousand years ago) and thus an old drink, but it is a fundamentally political plant and drink and thus of course philosophical. I will leave the politico-historical part to people that know what they’re doing with it and will focus on the aspect of tea where everyone can relate.
That small moment when brewing has stopped, when you set down your cup, mug, glass or goblet. Take a deep breath. Exhale. Be in the moment. Relax.
Granted, you’ll say, but that’s not something you couldn’t have with say… a cup of coffee or any kind of herbal infusion or even with a glass of water.
Yes, dear reader – I am replying – but this is tea.
Tea warms your hands and soul, it tastes of spices and tangy oak, it soothes nerves and mind and makes you slow down, gives you a moment to think before attacking whatever waits outside of your door to be dealt with. Tea is waiting at home, quickly made, quickly there to mentally hold your hand as you start lining up the pro and cons – or if you are less Jesuit than that, problems and solutions.
Of course tea represents also a several million important industry where the fight over fair trade, decent working conditions and wages is an important part of a movement of redefinition that we as consumers in the industrialised world need to start thinking about. And of course, a cup of tea issued from good, ecological planting and produced by unexploited workers will always taste better, but that is not my point here.
Tea, the act of tea drinking and the famous quote “drink tea and wait” reference a different state. They all point to a contemplative moment, a pause. And in our modern world, if there is one thing we do need, it’s more contemplation rather than action. Taking time to reflect rather than affect, or watch time slowly move by is an art that isn’t easily mastered and I fear that it will get lost completely seeing the accelerated multi-tasking social media generation that is in the makings now.
Let’s learn once more that technique at the end of our days to hold our breaths and contemplate. Let’s learn the art of a calming tea moment once more.
Read More
The Western Burka.
Between the controversy of France banning the burka and the niqab this year, and Switzerland battling between banning the tschador in schools, during basketball games or when working in the Berne county administration, the arguments for either side often get lost in the emotions linked to this discussion.
While one side prones their right to the expression of their religious feelings, the opposing masses accentuate the religious-free modern state (when the argument needs to be rationally oriented) or redefine the burka as a symbol of female submission. I favour the last argument, because wearing either the tschador or the burka is Islamic law and not the expression of the islamic religion. The difference might be small for some, but decisive for me. I – as a Catholic – wouldn’t in my right mind as for the Catholic law to be applied in my everyday life or a return to the first inquisitional trial system when the state had no jurisdiction.
But this article is not about the burka per se, and I do not wish to go deeper into this particular discussion.
No. This article is about the Western version of the burka.
The nursing cover.
Never heard of a nursing cover before? Then please take a look is now advertised as one of the latest must haves for the soon-to-be or new mother.
Usually the reasoning goes as this (please note that I am describing the specific case as you’d encounter it in the US. Things are going this same direction in the rest of the world as well, however):
- Version 1. Since people don’t like to see naked boobs, these things are great for covering up.
If then, you have the impossible idea to argue against that, follows…
- Version 2. Since you really don’t want to show your boobs in public, these are still great for covering up.
This is what I would like to call the “naked boob-fallacy” in breastfeeding in public. What it suggests is that in any case, without any choice or other possibility, if you want to breastfeed, you have to expose your breast to the rest of the world around you. And since that is the case, you really should think about covering up. Like this.
I have been breastfeeding for over 6 months now, three months of those I have done it in public at least once a day (in a busy cafeteria at noon, to be quite precise) and I can tell you that I haven’t either flashed anything at anyone that could have been considered indecent by the greatest puritan standards, nor have I ever covered up either with a blanket or a nursing cover.
There are techniques for that, there are tricks to master which make breastfeeding in public as discrete as sitting in a doctor’s waiting room and nursing your 3 month old without any of the attendance even noticing or batting a lash. Sure, it takes time, it certainly takes some practice (which with friend is easily controlled), but the main point is: it is doable. Breastfeeding in public doesn’t mean flashing boobs.
We don’t have to rediscuss the particular problem of the US and their odd legislation in some states that prohibits breastfeeding in public at all or above a certain age, their weird attitude that allows them to not even blink at breasts in any kind of sexualised context, but scream in disgust at the sight of a drinking baby on the breast, but what we need to discuss are the reasons that make nursing covers the last trend. Why ‘covering up’ is necessary. Why a lot of people think, that breastfeeding needs to be done privately.
Because the reasons behind such attitudes, are the same that kept our grandmothers out of the public eye, refused suffrage to women on account of their supidity, advocated bottle feeding because there simply was no way that a woman’s milk could be better than what science had to offer.
Breastfeeding is a very special and very tricky thing at the same time. They key to a successful relationship between baby and mother that will make breastfeeding such an important part in both their lives is trust. Trust in your baby, trust in yourself as a mother, trust that you can find ways to solve problems, trust that you are enough and that you do enough… I could continue the list for a long while here.
Critique, side looks, the atmosphere that you are doing something wrong, the pressure to not feed in public because people might find it gross or indecent or wrong and lastly the automated link that has become so obvious between sex and breasts, make for immense pressure on new mums at a time when so many things are redefined for them. Their self-image, their self-appreciation, their role in life, their role in society, their status etc. etc.
Hiding is a natural reaction to all these changes. Hiding behind a nursing cover promises calm and protection from prying eyes. This is the wrong way to gain more understanding for breastfeeding or new mothers. All it does is draw even more attention to it. With the small addition of an act of concession that breastfeeding needs to be hidden. Needs to be done privately. Needs to be something odd that nobody wants to see.
When in truth it is the largest and most important building stone of the first lovestory your baby will experience. La Leche League says that breastfeeding is as much about communication as it is about feeding. As much about emotion, as it is about sustenence.
Nursing covers on the other hand are all about submission to the standards of a twisted vision, about breaking trust instead of furthering it.
Breastfeeding is something to be proud of and any mother that has breastfeed and seen how many pounds and kilos their kid has put on only with the help of their millk, will confirm this. Breastfeeding and milk production are hard work. It makes you tired, it challenges you, it draws on you even when you think you have nothing more to give and it pushes you to the limits of your love, but at the same time it helps you through the sleepless nights, gives you the confidence you need to let your little one start exploring that great world (because after all, sooner or later, she’ll need to eat… with you!) and it puts you in the middle of every single development of your child. You are the one that will know exactly when baby girl can hold her head, know how much she can flex her muscles, know her tells and her signs of fatigue.
Breastfeeding is that and so much more. WHY would we want to limit that to the private sphere? Hide it under a blanket or a cover? Why not show it outside and to the world?
Take a precious look at the picture that opens the main article of the last issue of ‘Breastfeeding Today’ (5/2011) by LLLI. Look into the eyes of these proud Guatemalteca, these shameless mothers.
That’s what proud breastfeeding looks like. And as mothers, as women, we have a right to feel like that. In public.
Please note that this article by no means is intended to pressure any woman to breastfeed. If you decide not to, the choice is yours, as are your reasons. This is a plaidoyer for visible breastfeeding, not against bottle feeding mothers.
Read More
Guantanamo Guilt and the Swiss Shame
Amnesty International reports today that the request of three of the numerous – do we even know how many are there at this point? – detainees that have asked for asylum in Switzerland, have been denied (Bern rejects Asylum for Guantanamo Inmates – Swissinfo)
One of the widely awaited actions of US President Elect Obama once he is officially instated into his functions, is the closing of the law-free zone of the Guantanamo prison for terrorist suspects – infamously called Camp X-Ray or Camp Delta or even detention camp.
The name Guantanamo has become synonym with a number of things, fear of terrorism that leads to power abuse, unlawful imprisonment, governmentally ordered torture on prisoners, detention without trial only being a few of them. Throughout the world the name has become as evocative and shiver inspiring as Abu-Graib. The only real difference between the two is the status of soil: Abu Graib was in a far away country on the other side of the globe and on foreign ground, Guantanamo is – granted no around the corner from a European perspective – but factually American soil seeing that the Naval Base is extraterritorial in Cuba.
It takes a while even for the informed US American to understand that a a law-free zone has been created voluntarily and intentionally by their own government as to be at liberty to torture and hold people outside of any legal founding, given the current state of global fear that is maintained at a certain level to justify said injustice.
From a moral standpoint there are a few things that need to be raised as questions and that still have not been properly addressed as of yet either by the philosophical or ethical professional community, nor by the law professionals or even politicians: what is an unlawful combatant in the light of the system of clan wars and interaction as can be found in Afghanistan? Do the ends of saving and protecting the American people and military abroad really justify any means? To a point where the Constitution and Human Rights are flaunted so badly? Is the use of and redefinition of torture in order to make waterboarding not torture, really the way to promote the values of our modern world, as the US have written on their flag in this war on terrorism? (For more on the issue of governemental torture in the US and in Guantanamo, I point to the Documentary ‘Torturing Democracy Documentary’ which makes a shocking and sickening point on this issue. But beware, it is not for the faint of heart or the easily outraged. It’ll leave you shuddering and trembling.)
The problem however that will arise with a closure of the Camps in Guantanamo, is that these detainees cannot be sent home where they are likely to either be prosecuted, hunted, tortured or killed. Any country that knows of such danger is legally prohibited of sending them back. What the US have created here, is a Russian Doll of problems and solving them will entail much more than just a political decision to close Guantanamo. These prisoners need a safe haven and of course the American Government refuses to give them that. (Which is understandable due to their paranoia and reality – sic! – of domestic terrorism. If anything Guantanamo has created more people with terrorist intent than it set out of capture and… dispose of.) So now has started the scramble for other solutions. Other countries will have to step up and of course the EU and Switzerland are obvious candidates.
The three prisoners that have asked for asylum in Switzerland are from Algeria, Lybia and China. Now, I get that the Swiss Immigration Office cannot grant a Lybian citizen asylum in the current bras-de-fer with Gaddafi after the incident that had his son arrested in Geneva (take a look at the second paragraph) and that led to a complete diplomatic meltdown between the two countries.
I understand that France is a much clearer destination for an Algerian, but I do certainly not understand or condone the refusal of a Chinese. It doesn’t make any sense.
From these three, the Chinese prisoner is most likely to suffer prosecution and danger of death than any of the other two. It is safe to assume that the person in question is from the Uyghur tribe, who are Muslim Chinese of Turkic descent. They are a minority that has been persecuted for a long time and have turned to terrorist attacks to state their point. (On the Uighurs Problematic in China)
In my view Switzerland had the possibility to make a stand here and take the first step that would have permitted a lot of other countries to follow and help the US resolve the injustice that persists in the form of Guantanamo. My country has accepted over 40% of the overall number of refugees from the Bosnia war in the 90ies and has the highest percentage of refugees from former Jugoslavia (meaning from all the wars: First and Second Croatian War, Bosnia etc.) in the world, but we cannot find ways to accept a single Chinese prisoner that has been unlawfully kept for years without proof for suspicion of terrorist activity and has now been declared ‘not dangerous’ by the US authorities themselves?
I am ashamed.
Ashamed for a country that holds the chart of the United Nations and the Red Cross. Ashamed for a country that has been and continues to be the synonym for humanitarian action and speaking out against injustice and diplomacy.
Shame on all of us who stay silent.
Read More
14 Years to Purge our Sins
Rwanda – but a name. Foreign, far off and yet it should be so close to our heart.
There are no words to express, no words to describe.
It’s not the horrors of a foreign country that should humble us. Nor the thousands of dead.
But our own ignorance, disillusionment and disregard.
14 years for uncountable souls tortured, lives lost and lies of a universal brotherhood of Nations exposed.
Our Western silence and forgetfulness kills again today. The memory of the dead innocent.
NB: I find it absolutely unbelievable that French or German media can’t seem to be bothered to issue more than one article on the 14 year commemoration of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. It leaves me angry and speechless. English speaking media seem to pick it up a bit more.
Read More
Of Rhinos and other Horns
Twenty years of squatting in the city center of Geneva have been ended by a police ‘eviction’, but the general housing problems remain.
The city and the Police of Geneva cleared the oldest squat of the city. After almost twenty years of illegal use two properties on the Boulevard des Philosophes, the RHINO (“Retour des Habitants dans les Immeubles Non-Occupés” = Return of the residents into non-occupied houses) is no more. Geneva police started evicting to squat yesterday afternoon and all seemed to go well, until 6 pm. That’s when the riots started, the tear gas was launched and trash bins were burnt. The indignation of the people living in Rhino and the sympathiser that the city and the police started the eviction although a court hearing as to the status of the occupation (do the 20 years of occupation create a situation of tacit contract of rent or not?) still has not been decided and declared that it was only a matter of identity control. An identity control that excluded the pregnant women and the children. Everyone else was taken to the police station. Either way you phrase it, it was an eviction. Or don’t pregnant women need to have their identity ascertained?
While I am in no way hot for puerile anarchism, pot-induced socialist fantasies of a fairer world or the ‘free’ sub-cultural phenomenon of such places (cf. Rhino housed an independent cinema, a bar, restaurant and a concert stage), the squats in Geneva served a purpose.
Last year at the beginning of term, the University of Geneva announced that only 16% of all new students that were to begin their studies at the University would be lodged with the help of the University and the city. The remaining 84% would have to work something out on their own. The possible opportunities in Geneva are the following: shared housing, living outside of the city (Lausanne, France etc.) or live in a squat until you find an apartment.
In a city where your kitchen counts as a liveable room and where you easily pay 1000 SFR. for a dump simply because it’s a 3 room apartment (where the kitchen counts as a full room!), where the xenophobia of the natives is so harsh (if you’re a Swiss German you won’t get a place to stay easily, even if you advance one year of the rent) and where the living cost is as high as I’ve experienced it in Paris, RHINO had a purpose. And it had it’s fans. Over time Rhino had become the contrasting center of an otherwise posh, money-oriented city that sometimes does more to accommodate tourists and oil-rich investors from Russia and Arab countries than take steps towards a better integration of emigrants, and lesser fortunate citizens.
As a squat with a year long history, Rhino was favoured by a lot of people, city councils and artists alike. And Rhino served a vital function within the fragile situation of this city.
It allowed students to crash for a while starting their new university courses and looking for an apartment of their own with the help of the city and the university. I’ve rarely heard of people staying longer than a few months, a year at the most. The reason for this is simple: living with a communal bath and a communal kitchen with 5 to 10 people in a single flat, having to deal with the self proclaimed leaders of the squat that although sporting every platitude a “Anarchism for Dummies” could offer, relished in their own little power while other people (the tax payer) worked to pay for the electricity and the water the squats of the city (Rhino was an exception, since the squatters had a running contract for payment of charges for electricity and water, this is in contrast with the Squat de la Tour for instance) consumed illegally.
But Rhino had a reason here in Geneva. Even if it was to force the city and the surrounding communities to rethink their housing plans and constructions of new housing. It’s probably something that will never happen. And the announcement of the city to build several new housing complexes does nothing to settle my mind. 50% of these new apartments are luxury flats and won’t do anything to help young adults, young families or students with their eternal quest for a decent place to live here in the International Metropole Geneva. Capital of the UN and the Humanitarian Movement.
The joke would be full of sarcasm, if it wasn’t the sad truth.
Links:
Taux de vacance des logements à Genève : 0,19 % au 1 juin 2005
Nouveaux plans de logements à Genève
News Clipping (in English)
News Clipping Tribune de Geneve (in English)
Read More
Symbols of Red
Symbols have a huge meaning in our world. Most of our communication works on the basis of images and symbols. On the first look it has become so obvious to us that we might not even be aware of it, but symbols contribute a lot on how we shape our world view and on how we construct our reality. Symbolic acts can bring a nation together or destroy an opponent. But will a symbol be enough to awaken the worlds mind to one of the worst humanitarian crisis since the beginning of the modern world?
One of the best known symbols of the city of Geneva is the “Jet d’eau” a water fountain in the Lake Geneva that raises up to 140 meters into the air. As far as symbols go this is not anything of historical value. Even if the fountain has been operational since the 1890ies – which is slightly surprising – there is no mythology (think of the fountains of Versailles), no historical grand gesture (think of the train in the forest of Compiègne) to warrant such a symbol, no even an eminent death (think of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria). The “Jet d’Eau” was at its beginning a simple valve that was used to balance the system of the nearby power generator. But it somehow stuck with the city of Geneva and the lake which has a huge importance here.
Tonight however, this symbol will unite with another huge symbol here: the UN. As the ‘capital’ of the humanitarian movement, as the legal siege of the UN and all it’s humanitarian bureaus, the city of Geneva will illuminate its chief symbol – the Jet d’eau – tonight in blood red in order to waken people’s sensibility for the drama that is still being ignored: Darfur.
Like the first of the Makot Mitzrayim or the Ten Plagues of Egypt, the fountain of Geneva will seem as if it had turned into blood. The blood of over 200’000 people dead and over 2 Million cast away in abominable refugee camps in a lawless and ignored region.
The Jet d’eau, an icon made of water takes thus another meaning. That of one of the main reasons behind this one-sided conflict: water. Thus our lake, the Lake of Geneva, takes on the reason, meaning and the unnumbered voiceless cries of the victims of Darfur.
The icon of the water can be seen for miles around. And with the “Fête de Genève” around the corner, where the city attracts a lot of foreign guests, maybe there are people that will be touched this symbol. Maybe it will help us to ask some of the necessary questions that we dared not to ask up till now: Why have we let this crisis unfold unstopped for 3 years already? How can we all sing to the Life Earth tune, but will not raise our voices for those over 2 Million refugees that cannot? How many more corpses and displaced (Official Sudanese Speak for Darfur Refugees) people will it take for the West, the NATO and the UN to take real, military and humanitarian action?
The TRIAL Association here in Geneva has made a strong start with a strong symbol. And we all need to do our bit that this start will not simply stay symbolic.
Read More
Quotes:
Social Media
Recently Played
Now reading and brewing:
Attic Categories
Tag Cloud
