FAO Quotables

"But being right, even morally right, isn't everything. It is also important to be competent, to be consistent, and to be knowledgeable. It's important for your soldiers and diplomats to speak the language of the people you want to influence. It's important to understand the ethnic and tribal divisions of the place you hope to assist."
-Anne Applebaum

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Ma Maison a l'avenir


Amazigh-State Relations in Morocco and Algeria

Amazigh-State Relations in Morocco and Algeria

Finally getting around to posting my thesis.  I've posted it as PDF below.


ABSTRACT:

As some of North Africa’s original inhabitants, the indigenous Amazigh population in
Morocco and Algeria has withstood waves of invaders to retain a distinct cultural and
linguistic identity that has persisted within—and despite—nearly fourteen centuries of
Arab rule. The emergence of Morocco and Algeria as modern nation-states following
their independence marked the beginning of an ongoing tension between each state and
its ethnic Amazigh minorities. With one state (i.e., Morocco) more inclusive and
progressive and the other more repressive and exclusionary (i.e., Algeria), what are the
factors that explain the different outcomes in both states?

This study compares the two movements in Algeria and Morocco by investigating
the relative salience of two central variables—that of each state’s institutions and the
behavior of its movements—on the outcomes for the Amazigh community. The major
finding is that state institutions stand as the most potent variable due to their ability to
channel movement strategies towards either militancy or accommodation. This power is
largely illustrated through Morocco’s reliance on cooptation as an initial response to
expressions of grievance that has produced a milder form of activism. In contrast, Algeria
has defaulted to a more repressive approach (to any dissent) that has produced a strident
activism with radical offshoots. Movement behavior continues to play a secondary role
that largely hinges on its ability to use globalization as an amplifying and mobilizing
instrument for international pressure.


https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4BE1_xKfeEUTDlQc2c5UHRkVmc/edit?usp=sharing

Happy Birthday to My Love! (a new stanza)

You, My Love
I.

You inhabit me my love
Grow deep and young inside me
Like a sapling
You sink your roots
They wander
and wonderfully
entangle me my love.

You transfuse me my love
My blood is no longer my blood
For you are present even there
Flowing
Ebbing
Beating
Searching out
my innermost places my love.

You have taken up residence my love
In the furthest reaches
Of the slumber of my sleep
You run with me
Your hand in mine
In impossible places
In surreal dimensions
of my dreams my love.

You come to me my love
A smile that creases my face
An echo of your joy
Surprising me
In the midst of my day
Memories of you
Flash and burn
Images of you
flickering and searing
across my mind my love.


II.

You, like a spirit my love
Like the inside of my soul
That I never knew
Before you
Who pulses now always
Inside of me my love.

You, embodiment of answered prayers
my love
Extension of grace
Shining down upon me
Soaking into me
Seeping into my every thought
The crown upon my head my love.

III.

You are there in the morning light
my love
In my waking moments
I reach for you
I am drawn by the immeasurable gravity
Of your love my love
Against you
Amaranthine rock my love.

You infuse laughter in my life
my love
You peal
And beckon me
Your song dances
Your voice
Clarion
Notes floating
And leaping
Whirling
And washing over me my love.

You abide restlessly in my heart my love
Always increasing
Pushing me further
Multiplying passion
Never ceasing
Insatiable hunter
Of my heart my love.

Always always always my love
You will remain the lover of my youth
As we grow old and everything around us
decays and rusts
For you and I my love—nothing alters
For you my love
Are Beauty, eternally defined
Tattooed kisses accumulating
overlapping everlasting
Across the story of my life my love.

IV.

You: the radiant carrier of life my love
Your belly swollen and growing
Your face beaming and golden
You, emerging and evolving
Into an even higher form of beauty
Me, falling deeper and deeper into you
You, Possessor of generations, my love.

You: succor, nourisher and protector,
Our babies cling to you
Like vines they surround and grow to you.
Pillar of strength and zenith of grace
Your love refuses to ebb and only grows
Washing over, sustaining, and imbuing protection
You are the sun and your gravity immense
Pulling us deeper into the chasms—of your love,
Mother and lover of our children my love.

You: a beauty infinitely transcendent.
With the dawn of each day
I open my eyes to see:
Your eyes sparkling
Ever richer and deeper sapphires and emeralds.
A smile that launches my heart aloft
A kiss that arrests my very soul
Fingertips whose winding paths
Smolder and singe and ignite
My lover, my wife, my muse
for whom my love today eclipses yesterday’s
but which falls immeasurable short,
of my love with each day’s dawn.

You my love
Are me
And I
am you.
We.
my love.
We.