The African Embassies on New
Hampshire
look so Un-African
and make me wonder
if our embassies in those countries
appear Un-American.
I'm guessing not.
This might be followed
with a statement
about cultural imperialism.
Nevertheless,
Jared Diamond's geographical determinism:
We are where we are now
because of where
we were then
so it's a space
in history
that matters for development now.
Thus, tangling the question of
humanitarian aid
around a river, a malarial river.
"—It may be doubted
AMBASSADORS. It may be doubted Romans commanded the confidence of their
countrymen to the same amount as they enjoyed the respect of
foreigners..."
—NY TIMES, November 4, 1877, Page 3
27 of 559 words
Representational skepticism: doubt that the target truly represents
that the ruler is legitimate: the politics of mimesis.
It all depends on who you can speak for.
Embassy: seat of the ambassador
the representation of the sending country
in the host. What he says the state says.
A synecdoche.
Although, one that can be overridden.
A consulate issues visas,
promotes the interests of the sending country
doesn't even have a mouth
but merely carries out the orders
of the other. The decision Mexican President
Felipe Calderon made when he said,
"Wherever there is a Mexican that is Mexico"
and planned to use consulates to smuggle illegal immigrants
caused conservatives to worry,
to spew rhetoric: they could say
a parasite.
The Office of Foreign Missions issues tax exemption cards to eligible foreign missions, mission personnel and their family members consistent with international law, domestic statute, and the underlying principle of reciprocity. Tax cards provide point-of-sale exemption from sales tax throughout the United States.
Thus, Mobila is eligible.
I can picture him
flashing his card, stripping the sales tax off of sofas and cars
mugs and wine.
I can just imagine how he would misuse his card:
buying goods (perhaps televisions and iPods) sans sales tax
and reselling them with a Mobila tax included
(he needs some way of paying for food
if I am right
and he has been disowned by his government, loyal servant that he is).
Historian Jane Loeffer writes of the new embassy in Iraq
in the September/October issue of Foreign Policy
"Walled off and completely detached from Baghdad, it conveys a devastating message about America's global outlook."
Thus, normatively there is something about an embassy that needs to be within the host country, that needs to mesh with it, that needs to come to grips with its reality.
She is saying that in the construction of its new embassy America is delusional.
She writes, "There will be no need to interact with Iraqis for anything."
Self-sufficiency, an exemplary American trait, cannot be the basis of diplomacy
the entire idea of which is that
power fits together
to form the world
the world that we live within:
A
coalition's willing puzzle
breaks on the news of
[and this condition varies per era].
What is a colony after all but
an embassy
comprised of an entire country?
In this case, the sending
country
dissolves the cell of the host.
Therefore, 1800 New Hampshire
might be
thought of
as the Congo's colony in America.
Maybe they're mining inside:
drilling oil wells, taking back their uranium
digging for their lost niobium,
remining tantalum
for their own
furnaces. If the costs of extraction
are high enough, the income
obtained from said good
will inevitably be unevenly distributed. The opposite is agriculture.
Therefore, in order to reduce
the range of income distributions
I propose that we farm in all of our embassies across the world.
Heave-ho for equitable
colonialism!
Raise your rakes for democracy!
If arrested foreign nationals
must be given
notice to notify their embassy
"Any communication addressed to the
consular post
by the person arrested, in prison, custody or detention
shall be forwarded
by the said authorities
without delay."
So if a letter
if a drawing
were to fall;
if Dear America
were to slip
America would be obligated to receive
from within the receiving country
(wherever I stole the earrings from).
There is less an answer than the spreading of a question
across the ground. The ground is wet.
Except, this humidity finally offers something near an answer:
"Finally, the Property Section oversees the preservation and
maintenance of those foreign mission properties with which the United
States no longer maintains diplomatic relations."
Presumably, the State Department could sell such a building.
Still, this doesn't quite address my question, which involves the
evaporation
of one country into another. But still the Office of
Foreign Missions must
know something. I didn't think they would call me back but
a representative from the OFM rung (202-7280-0533):
"It is our understanding that it's in the process of being renovated
and we think it's really going to happen this time. We've met with
their representatives and they seem serious about it. They've selected
a contractor and it seems that things are going forward. It's been in
disrepair for far too long. If you had called two months ago I would
have had nothing to tell you but they seem really serious about it this
time; it seems that their goal is to move back into the building."
That's just as well:
condensation.
When I called the embassy (202-234-7690) to ask what its plans were for the building a man with a thick African-European accent said, "No, don't mind; don't mind sir."