From last May:
Recently, someone named BeeBee decided to publicly proclaim that the country of Iran -- a country which has not invaded a neighboring land since the 16th Century -- was the "Greatest Threat in the World to Civilization."
I found BeeBee's remark sort of strange. Isn't Iran's perhaps the most beautiful, and liveliest, culture on the planet?
This BeeBee seems to have something to do with the government of Israel. As I wrote awhile back:
It's damn sad the society which has produced many of our greatest filmmakers, poets, painters, classical composers, bloggers, sculptors, short-story writers and novelists is being seen through the prism of whether or not it poses a threat to the two dumbest and sickest cultures on the planet: America's; and the wee welfare state of Israel. One needn't bother to search for signs of poets, novelists (Dan Brown doesn't count; neither does Jonathan Franzen), sculptors, or serious musicians' impact on recent US pop culture. How ridiculous. But where is the Israeli Rahmani or Varand, Panahi or Kiarostami, Ziapour or Maryam Hashemi? No, all Israel (pushed hard by Uncle Sam) seems willing to produce and celebrate are assassins.Two years on, we're still waiting for the Israeli equivalent of the Iranian artists mentioned.
Not only has the soul of American pop culture been destoyed by the incubus of Corporatism, Corporatism also attempts to take over how we view other cultures as well. So this rich, humane, complicated, contradictory, intensely political and oh-so-feminine culture of Iran can only be judged by the standards of a filthy back alley; or a C-block in prison. For the stupid liars of the American media, Iran is all Ahmadinejad/Ayatollah/Atomic all the time. What's never mentioned is Iran's active, fertile political culture -- the most hopeful in the world. A real street politics, close to USA 1968. [Instead of a "political culture" of cowards typing into blogs and keyboards. Such as myself. 'Though I would run off to a Sierra Maestra if there were one.] Also never mentioned -- in the idiot view that Iran must be soooo politically incorrect because their women don't act like "Sex and the City" skanks -- is an intensely courageous and beautiful feminist movement: a view of feminism rejecting the definition of achievement and advance along CEO lines; instead, belief in a more basic feminization of society: something more communal and emotional, less materialistic, domineeering and ego-based, less belief in change-for-change's-sake.
And that -- along with the more traditional motives of grand strategy, racism and material theft -- may be the center of American and Zionist hysteria over a culture which hasn't invaded another land since before Plymouth Rock: Iran is the one of the last cultures remaining in the world not under the boot of post-modern, post-human Corporatism. (Compare the street demonstrations and deaths in the wake of Ahmadinejad's theft of last June's election to the "get over it already" response when Bush/Cheney did the same thing here in 2000.) The mass hatred expressed toward Iran in the Western media cannot be based on anyone actually believing Iran is some sort of military threat, some destablizing force in the world, no chance. It's the hatred of the cowardly toward the brave, the plastic toward the human, the barren toward the fertile. Two cultures of death seeking the extinction of a culture filled with messy life. Simple, yes. But it makes a lot more sense than Iran being a threat to anyone, except by the threat posed by the example of a real culture in a what is becoming every day a cultureless world.
Crickets . . . .
Crickets . . . .
Crickets . . . .
Crickets . . . .
This month is Israel's 64th birthday. While we continue to wait for its first great filmmaker, let us enjoy The Threat:
