Thursday, September 27, 2012

Repost: BB Gun


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.

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.
Two years on, we're still waiting for the Israeli equivalent of the Iranian artists mentioned.

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:

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

'Nother Cup a Jerry


The smoothest so far: Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Domination & Delusion


The great Chris Floyd on the worldwide Muslim uprising.
Sparked by a deliberate provocation put together by Christian extremists, riots by groups of Islamic extremists are spreading across the world -- a convenient symbiosis for both groups, as they use each other's actions to "justify" their hysterically constricted worldviews.

There is an added layer to the reaction in the Muslim countries, as the extremists there can draw on the seething resentments built up by the depredations and atrocities inflicted indiscriminately on Muslims by the Western powers in recent decades, particularly since the launch of Terror War.

But of course these depredations and atrocities are the work of yet another group of sectarian extremists gripped by a hysterically constricted worldview: the Western power elites, who are maniacal adherents to the Dominationist cult. This bizarre but very powerful sect holds that American domination of the world, militarily and economically, is part of the divinely ordained structure of the universe. Those who adhere to Dominationist dogma and obey the dictates of the sect's high priests in Washington are rewarded; but unbelievers, heretics and apostates are to be cast out, cursed, attacked and, when possible, destroyed.

In the last 11 years alone, state-backed Dominationist terrorists have killed far more innocent people than their counterparts among the scattered clumps of Islamic extremists around the world. More than a million people have been killed as a result of the Dominationist terrorist attack on Iraq, for example. Hundreds of innocent people in Pakistan have been murdered by the drones fired by Dominationist terrorists. Dozens are dying monthly in violent Dominationist attacks in Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines and elsewhere.

The senseless violence of the Dominationist sect is well-attested. The sect's leaders brag openly about their use of violence; indeed, in the constant factional jockeying for power within the sect (a characteristic of all religious and ideological cults, of course), would-be leaders vie to paint themselves as the one most willing to inflict massive death and destruction on all those who dare challenge the Dominationist faith. All would-be leaders trumpet their willingness -- their eagerness -- to eschew mere man-made laws as they do "whatever it takes" to defend the faith and advance Dominationist supremacy over the earth. Torture, kidnapping, assassination and mass destruction are all considered divinely justified by the Dominationist extremists -- and by the millions of people who actively support the factions within the sect.

In fact, the Dominationist extremists have far more support in their native lands than the riot-provoking Islamic extremists have in theirs. Muslims overwhelmingly reject violence, even in response to the relentless, murderous provocations of the Dominationists -- as anyone who actually lives among large numbers of Muslims (as I do) knows perfectly well. Nor are the vast majority of Muslims taken by cheap tricks like the video posted by extremist Christians. As Ghaith Abdul-Ahad notes in an excellent analysis in the Guardian, "only a few thousand" Muslims -- out of 1.6 billion -- have taken part in the protests, which, he points out, are being exploited by fundamentalist Salafi sects that have been marginalized by the Arab Spring revolutions and are now trying to claw into positions of power.

We might also note that the Dominationists have made common cause with violent Salafis time and time again over years -- e.g., in Afghanistan during the Soviet period, in Iraq during the "surge," and today in Syria. The symbiosis of violent extremists -- Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Dominationist and others -- is also a well-attested fact of history -- and of human nature. Because at bottom, all of them share one fundamental, overriding principle, the common core of their faith (whatever its outward flourishes might be): the holiness of violence, the enforced assertion and/or imposition of their worldview by the repression or destruction of others.

As I said, it is very rare to find a Muslim who actually holds such a view, or who supports any group that does. But you will find millions and millions of people in the West who believe that the Dominationist extremists are completely justified -- even divinely justified -- in their terrorist actions. In fact, we will soon see more than 100 million Americans go to the polls to vote for one of these state-terrorist factions who openly support torture, war and murder in the name of their primitive faith ... and have history's biggest war machine to back them up.

That's a bit more scary to me than a few thousand marginalized, powerless people taking the bait of foreign provocateurs and local manipulators in a spate of riots. These outbursts are reprehensible, of course -- another deadly ratcheting up in the endless, symbiotic cycle of Terror War violence that will do no one any good (except for the extremist elites, on all sides, who feast on blood and ruin). But set against the massively supported, millions-killing terrorism of the Dominationists, the riots are like a whisper in the howling of a storm.
+ + + + + + +

Meanwhile, back in the Dominion: Occupy is back. Hmmmm. Much like the peculiar timing of last year's unexpected appearance -- suddenly there when the Challenge Obama movement was gathering full steam, then not there after it was too late to challenge The Hustler -- where were the iPad Sandinistas during Obie's convention? After all, he did sell out on everything "anti-1%" he ran on in '08, did he not? And where is Occupy's involvement in the Chicago teachers' strike? No matter. iPhone 5.0 will soon grab back their shallow little attentions.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Where?