notes

If Beer had been successful it would have been temporary: at its best and worst long enough for the human population to have turned into a mass of unimaginative drones, so when the crisis hit as it would, they would be hopeless.
It continues to amaze me that the dream of some people revolves around ways of rendering their grandchildren into happy idiots.

The modern left is as touched by the enlightenment as every other aspect of modernity. We are all always both producers and produced.
The difference between Marx and Smith et al and 20th century thinkers of technocracy is that the earlier authors were great orators and writers, using every seductive trick in the literary book to create compelling total fictions. That’s why its possible to read them and to become more imaginative, more flexible and more aware. But only if you read for subtext and elision not only for intent. Marx and Smith were craftsmen.

What annoys me about Toulmin is that he defends rhetoric rather than just arguing that it’s ubiquitous. Everything we argue is touched by blind preference. The choice for generalities over specificities, for mathematics over trial law, begins as preference. We build rationality over our sensibilities. And the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

note taking

Reading Gintis and the rest all I can see is a overworked attempt to get freedom out of determinism: “rational determinism.” The mixture of moral passivity and optimism is bizarre.

And the difference between Anthropology and Sociology is that the former is concerned not only with individual societies but individual persons. Sociology is concerned with people as a mass. The preference for the latter functions as an interest in “ideas’ but also as a preference for impersonal forms of communication and knowledge. This preference itself can be described as a product of a cultural determinism.

Anthropology and sociology as practices exist as examples of two kinds of performative ethos; each are manifestations of the moral assumptions/values that precede them. One is social, one extra-social.

We want to create meaning out of the world. Some prefer crystalline forms: absolute, time independent, “immortal” designs. Others see a narrative arc: from beginning to end. Each group responds to trauma (the traumatic interruption of their pattern) differently.
Suicide: when you feel you no longer ‘should be alive’ when the narrative arc comes crashing downward after a traumatic event. But why am a still here?

It’s the formal pattern [functioning as a sense of order and of order as "meaning" and as comfort] that’s determinate for modern consciousness, not Darwinism.
But of course consciousness itself is epiphenomenal.

First study/collage. Proposal for drapery installation. Full scale @20x30 feet.

I've linked to this before
Note taking

I’m reminded reading this of the philosophy grad student who comes back to school in the fall after teaching undergrads in summer school and when asked how it went said: “It’s was strange. My students were all obsessed with sex! Not the idea of sex or the meaning of sex but sex!”
True story. I was told it by a witness.

“Difference” feminism. Puritanism vs the feminine prerogative. What you’re looking at in these women is the sexual performativity of mediterranean culture. The best casual commentary on Iran in the press over the past years has been Elaine Sciolino in the NY Times, who spends half her time covering the Parisian glamour beat...
Has no man reading this ever had a beautiful woman blow smoke in his face?
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Glamour is the performativity of the sexually intimidating woman- intimidating according to conservative gender roles: the woman not as passive but as judge.

I just won and lost a beautiful girl by assuming that our connection revolved primarily around ideas when in fact it centered on trust. Even at my age too often I’m clueless. We communicated wonderfully but I was concentrating on the surface while she was judging my behavior: my manner, my confidence, my openness, my comfort with her.
Later she’d begun to test me -her description- and I’d gotten nervous, I began to grasp. Needing someone is not the same as liking or respecting them. She pulled away; I gave chase, briefly, but you can’t chase from weakness. I stopped and waved, she waved back and laughed and kept going.
Trust isn’t what you say it’s how you say it and in the end I was saying very interesting things badly with obvious ulterior motives. There’s a very solid logic to the girl’s decision-making process. Trust and Intimacy are not ideas.

The entire weekend revolved around sex and sexuality. Not cheap sexuality but the sexuality of intimacy or the possibility of intimacy. Gender roles either in standard form or reversed give structure to performance and allow people to read and recognize behavior patterns. I’m a formalist. But there's a distinction between methodology and ideology; that’s where it gets interesting.

Gender roles, religion, law, theater. Public models as methodologies. We judge each other as variations on recognized codes. We only recognize one another as variations of types and tokens. An individual would be unrecognizable: unable to communicate and unable to receive communication.
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The geek/pedant model of communication is a model of ideas unaffected by form, subtext, or context. The geek model of intellectualism is a joke.

Balkin is not worried.
"My view of the Supreme Court is sort of like the husband in the French farce," Balkin says. "He's always the last to know."

Posner spends most of his life in public argument. He's engaged in a form of social theater on a big stage. While trying to convince others of his beliefs he's also trying to defend them. But you can believe something in silence. Why doesn't his father just shut up and judge? Because both father and son are living a political life much more complex than the definition of 'politics' they pretend to believe in.

Pablo Picasso, Man With a Sword, (1969)


Andy Warhol, Mrs. McCarthy and Mrs. Brown (Tunafish Disaster), (1963)

The Picasso went for 11.5 million. The Warhol for 6.1 million
Without going into larger questions of art and money, of the two the Picasso is the joke. Why this is so is a subject that's been taking up too much of my time recently.

ACLU

Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as “low level terrorism.” ACLU attorneys are calling the approach “an egregious insult to constitutional values” and have sent a letter to the Department of Defense demanding that the offending materials be changed and that the DoD send corrective information to all DoD employees who received the erroneous training.

“DoD employees cannot fully protect our nation and its values unless they understand that a core American value is the constitutional right to criticize our government through protest activities,” said ACLU of Northern California attorney Ann Brick. “It is fundamentally wrong to equate activism with terrorism.”

Among the multiple-choice questions included in its Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course, the DoD asks the following: “Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?” To answer correctly, the examinee must select “protests.”

According to the Department of Defense peaceful protests in Iran are low-level terrorism.

Talk is cheap

link from Hossam el-Hamalawy on twitter.

Alireza Doostdar writing from Tehran, in Al-Ahram

Western coverage of the political turmoil in Iran in the aftermath of the 12 June presidential election has for the most part presented a uniform image of the conflict: thousands of young, liberal, and defiant supporters of presidential challenger Mir-Hussein Mousavi have been protesting against what they see as massive fraud, a "coup" to re-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The government, fearful of a popular uprising, has responded with massive use of force, killing and injuring protesters, arresting activists and politicians, and imposing an information blockade.

Analysts repeatedly ask themselves and others, "Is this a revolution?" And, more expectantly, "Are we witnessing the end of the Islamic Republic?" Whatever we are to make of the question of fraud (there apparently were some irregularities, but no evidence of widespread fraud), Ahmadinejad retains a huge popular base that is not prepared to forfeit its position. Rather than viewing the events of the past 12 days as signs of a revolution-in-the-making, we should be examining them, along with the months of campaigning leading up to the election, as indicators of a deepening social and cultural rift that is dividing Iranian society, and will leave a lasting impression no matter how the current crisis is resolved.

more

And (again) Flynt Leverett.

Links from M. Monalisa Gharavi (South/South) on twitter

Iran's Election What Happened?


Watch the video here or elsewhere. It's playing at Pulse. Read the comments.

featured speakers
Ken Ballen
President, Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion
Author, "The Iranian people speak," Washington Post, June 15, 2009

Steve Clemons
Director, American Strategy Program
New America Foundation
Publisher, TheWashingtonNote.com

Flynt Leverett
Director, Geopolitics of Energy Initiative
New America Foundation
Author, "Ahmadinejad won. Get over it," Politico.com, June 15, 2009

Afshin Molavi
Fellow, New America Foundation
Author, Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys Across Iran
Nader Mousavizadeh
Consulting Senior Fellow, International Institute for Strategic Studies
Former Special Assistant to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan
Author, "Option Ignore Ahmadinejad," Washington Post, June 18,2009
moderator
Nicholas Schmidle
Fellow, New America Foundation
Former Student, University of Tehran
Author, To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan

For me these photographs mark the difference between Iran and the occupation, between a community divided against itself and one subjugating another. That's a distinction that's lost on most Americans, even those who've been very smart about the protests themselves. Roger Cohen has been good, but not good enough.

And to add to that the obvious fact, notwithstanding the sense of horrible intimacy watching the death of Neda Soltan: the level of violence in Iran bears no comparison.

Statement by Humanitarian Organisations, NGOs and UN Organisations

On the Second Anniversary of the Gaza Blockade

Jerusalem, 17 June, 2009: We, United Nations and non-governmental humanitarian organisations, express deepening concern over Israel’s continued blockade of the Gaza Strip which has now been in force for two years.

These indiscriminate sanctions are affecting the entire 1.5 million population of Gaza and ordinary women, children and the elderly are the first victims.

The amount of goods allowed into Gaza under the blockade is one quarter of the pre- blockade flow. Eight out of every ten truckloads contains food but even that is restricted to a mere 18 food items. Seedlings and calves are not allowed so Gaza's farmers cannot make up the nutritional shortfall. Even clothes and shoes, toys and school books are routinely prohibited.

Furthermore the suffocation of Gaza's economy has led to unprecedented unemployment and poverty rates and almost total aid dependency. While Gazans are being kept alive through humanitarian aid, ordinary civilians have lost all quality of life as they fight to survive.

The consequences of Israel's recent military operation remain widespread as early recovery materials have been prevented from entering Gaza. Thousands of people are living with holes in their walls, broken windows and no running water.

We call for free and uninhibited access for all humanitarian assistance in accordance with the international agreements and in accordance with universally recognised international human rights and humanitarian law standards. We also call for a return to normalized trade to enable the poverty and unemployment rates to decrease.

The blockade of the Gaza Strip is creating an atmosphere of deprivation in Gaza that can only deepen the sense of hopelessness and despair among people. The people of Gaza need to be shown an alternative of hope and dignity. Allowing human development and prosperity to take hold is an essential first step towards the establishment of lasting peace.

"Because Iran actually has a population capable of sustaining democracy; and Mousavi is as good as we'll get."

AA misses a chance here. The question to ask Sullivan, the famous defender of The Bell Curve is this: Who are "we" to decide who is capable of sustaining democracy?
Two weeks ago Obama called the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, "a force for good." Yesterday speaking about Iran he said "the world is watching."
The hypocrisy is stunning. But is it Obama's hypocrisy or the hypocrisy of the public that makes such absurd comments obligatory from the leader of the United States? So do we blame Obama or Joshua Marshall and the rest of the 'liberal' audience for his remarks; all of those who defend the dreams of an ethnic state over a democratic one?
The photographs above are from Gaza. The one below is the west bank.


Realpolitik in defense of long term goals is a practical necessity. But what are Israel's long term goals? What are the goals of its liberal defenders? After that we can ask about the long term goals of the US establishment as a whole.

I would really be happy if demonstrations break out against every single regime in the Middle East, and all of them are overthrown. However, I understand that the US and Europe would really panic if the likes of Mubarak or House of Saud or Hashemite KingStation are threatened, let alone overthrown.

Is the "Israel lobby" (and this includes Marshall and M.J. Rosenberg and J Street) really the only reason US only defending kings and dictators in the middle east? The answer to that question is obviously 'no,' but Israel is beginning to really get in the way.

Helena Cobban and Philip Weiss are now at TPM Cafe. They even had one Arab poster recently, Sam Bahour, from Ramallah. Even a year ago that would be unthinkable. Liberal zionists are beginning to feel ashamed of their own arguments. They've been comfortable using the language of liberal universalism while defending tribalism- and what's J Street but an essay in liberal tribalism? Now they're losing their audience and they know it. And if they won't yet admit it, they know why. Rosenberg's desperation in this post is almost palpable:
We Will Never See Iranians The Same Way Again
Israeli barbarism doesn't bother me as much as the whiny mediocrity of hypocrites.

South/South
and on Twitter

Pulse Media
Including a discussion Mousavi's statements to the Council. Follow the links and read the comments.

Robert Fisk via Pulse

A day earlier, an Iranian woman muttered to me in an office lift that the first fatality of the street violence was a young student. Was she sure, I asked? "Yes," she said. "I have seen the photograph of his body. It is terrible." I never saw her again. Nor the photograph. Nor had anyone seen the body. It was a fantasy. Earnest reporters check this out – in fact, I have been spending at least a third of my working days in Tehran this past week not reporting what might prove to be true but disproving what is clearly untrue.

Take the call I had five hours before the early-hour phone call, from a radio station in California. Could I describe the street fighting I was witnessing at that moment? Now, it happened that I was standing on the roof of the al-Jazeera office in north Tehran, speaking in a late-night live interview with the Qatar television station. I could indeed describe the scene to California. What I could see were teenagers on motorcycles, whooping with delight as they set light to the contents of a litter bin on the corner of the highway.

Two policemen ran up to them with night-sticks and they raced away on their bikes with shouts of derision. Then the Tehran fire brigade turned up to put out – as one of the firemen later told me with infinite exhaustion – their 79th litter-bin fire of the night. I knew how he felt. A report that Basiji militia had taken over one of Mir-Hossein Mousavi's main election campaign office was a classic. Yes, there were uniformed men in the building – belonging to Mousavi's own hired security company

more

.

Steve Clemons on monday titled a post And the Shooting in Tehran Has Begun. I called it inflammatory, he removed my comment. [I'd put it bluntly, and I'd also referred to the coup attempt in Gaza which he'd backed].
Today Jim Sleeper pens Now, the Crackdown

As if that's what they're hoping for. Makhmalbaf's interview with Foreign Policy is just more attempts to stir the pot. He's playing with other people's lives.

This is going to be resolved politically. It has to be unless martyrdom is the goal. The liberals and the conservatives have to unite now against the reactionaries or the reactionaries will regroup. Americans' support for the liberals alone, as 'revolutionaries,' is naive and shortsighted at best. At worst it's self-serving in the most cynical way; and of course it's counterproductive. Hypocrisy and narcissism are a given. The only reason Iran is getting so much attention is the nuclear issue. No attention to Egypt, Gaza, and the west bank. The dictator Hosni Mubarak is not, contra Obama's praise: "a force for good."
The people of iran are secondary either to idiot romance or Machiavellian schemes. They've been played by all sides.
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Makhmalbaf speaks again, even sleazier than the last time.

The NY Times states the obvious:
Clerics May Be Key to Outcome of Unrest

LA Times Middle East Blog Babylon and Beyond

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, an Iranian ex-pat living in Brazil who writes the popular blog South/South, told Babylon and Beyond she is frustrated by both the hypocrisy of traditional Western media, which remains silent on rigged elections that favor U.S. ally Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and the unreliable nature of citizen journalism.

"[T]here has been a saturation of rumors on Twitter and Facebook, some of them flying off the handle (e.g. Mousavi was never under house arrest, the protests did not reach 3 million over the weekend, etc.). My friends and family in Iran are still able to get through using filter proxies, so I rely on their eyes and ears as well. I've just read such outlandish stuff that I won't report it until I have some way of verifying it," she wrote in an e-mail.

Still, when asked to share her favorite websites for analysis and news on Iran, Gharavi instead offered the Twitter feed of fellow Harvard researcher Alireza Doostdar.

Mousavi states his case. It's not much.
Makhmalbaf states his case (to the english speaking audience).
It makes me think he lied about the telephone call from the Ministry, which no one else has backed up.

Either the real action is out of sight or Mousavi is an idiot. Either way Makhmalbaf is an ass.

Hooglund

Take Bagh-e Iman, for example. It is a village of 850 households in the Zagros Mountains near the southwestern Iranian city of Shiraz. According to longtime, close friends who live there, the village is seething with moral outrage because at least two-thirds of all people over 18 years of age believe that the recent presidential election was stolen by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

...Most villagers are supporters of the Islamic Republic, but they are ready for the reforms that they say are essential so that their children will have a secure economic future. They saw hope in Mousavi’s promise to implement reforms, even though he is a part of the governing elite.

But that political elite is divided over how Iran should be governed: a transparent democracy where elected representatives enact laws to benefit the people or a ‘guided democracy’ in which a select few make all decisions because they do not trust the masses to make the right ones. This astute political insight is one that is prevalent in Iran but seems to have escaped the notice of the Western reporters who are trying to explain Iran’s political crisis with resort to simplistic stereotypes.

A letter to As'ad AbuKhalil

That being said, I support the students and protesters in Iran, even the ones chanting Mousavi's name. I believe they are putting their lives on the line to fight for greater freedom, accountability, and democracy within the Islamic Republic, and they have to couch that in the language of Islam and presidential politics in order to avoid even greater repression than that which they already face. A friend who is in Iran right now confirms: "half the kids throwing rocks at the police didn't even vote." To me, that means that they are not fighting for a Mousavi presidency, but for more freedom, which they must hide under a green Mousavi banner in order to have legitimacy in the eyes of the state.

Both sides thought it would be a close election. Add both fraud and a preemptive strike by the Rafsanjani/Mousavi camp, threats and spin from both sides, (and of course heavy funding and who knows what else from the US). But the American public as always are fixated on white and black hats, and on the assumption that white hats can't play dirty. Maybe it was, or would have been, as close as people assumed or maybe not. That's academic at this point.

The Leaders of Iran’s ‘Election Coup’
It underplays Rafsanjani a lot, referring to Ahmadinejad's charges of corruption but nothing else.

update: The page is gone. Now at google cache

update #2: And now it's it's back, unchanged except for an additional paragraph

Under Mr. Ahmadinejad, the IRGC has penetrated important sectors of Iran’s economy, and is rapidly developing a monopoly on a majority of a wide range of government projects as well as the private sector. On the other hand, Mr. Rafsanjani and his associates also have extensive economic activities and interests. They also favor foreign investments in the country, whereas the IRGC opposes it because it cannot compete with modern technology and planning.

Read this one as well: Asia Times (final graph):

In respect of the economy, it was quite evident in January when I was last in Teheran, as the only non-Iranian speaker at a high-level conference, that the "reformist" Western financial approach to privatize everything and fuel the economy with debt, has taken a big hit. Here, the reformists are in exactly the same position as Obama: they don't have a Plan B.

Rural Iran and Election Fraud
Something annoys me about Tehran Bureau.
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More here
South is South

Jila B. is a civil rights activist and journalist in Iran. Her perspective is as someone from within the crowd to other like-minded people within the crowd, which is why I like it so much: it’s not one of CNN’s iReports or heated Tweets. (Photo: Tehran, by Anonymous. Persian text by Jila B. originally forward to me by Sima. My translation below).

---We were sitting in Azadi Square when all of a sudden I heard successive gunshot noises. Immediately after about 20 to 30 young people moved toward all the street corners from the square. They moved toward the crowd and started yelling, “Why are you sitting here? They have killed 7 people up there, let’s go take revenge for our brothers’ blood.”

‘Some people even had bloody cloths in their hands and said, “This is the blood of your brothers.” But these cloths did not look like actual pieces of clothes. Someone yelled, “I saw with my own eyes that the eye of one young man was taken out of its socket and fell on the ground.” On the whole their behavior and statements were strange, it seemed. Then again some people became emotional and started moving briskly toward street corners but others were gesturing, “Get back in the square!”

‘It seemed [the vanguards] could not or did not want to enter the throngs of thousands of people inside Azadi Square. My observations will become interesting to you when you know that Radio Payam constantly reported today that in the banned demonstrations yesterday [Monday] 7 people were killed. It seems that there is a strange insistence in creating the effects of fear and terror, and in the gatherings we should be cautious about not becoming emotionally trapped by those who persistently emphasize violence.---

From a letter to AA[A]

Incidentally, one of the popular (and hyperbolic) chants at the protests that are going on right now is 'mardom chera neshastin, Iran shode Felestin!" (People, why are you sitting down? Iran has become Palestine!').

But read the whole thing.
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Guardian

In the most specific allegations of rigging yet to emerge, the centrist Ayandeh website – which stayed neutral during the campaign – reported that 26 provinces across the country showed participation figures so high they were either hitherto unheard of in democratic elections or in excess of the number of registered electors.

link

FARZAD BAWANI'S LETTER TO THE EDITORS OF MONTHLY REVIEW ABOUT MOHSEN MAKHMALBAF.

Dear Editors,

In your issue of November 2001, I found an article on Afghanistan, by an Iranian filmmaker, Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Your editorial note introduced Makhmalbaf as “Iran’s most celebrated film maker and a political prisoner under the Shah.” However, to many of us (Iranian activists of the 70s and 80s), Makhmalbaf’s record is far from this strait forward presentation.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf was imprisoned under the Shah’s regime for his attempt to disarm a police officer. Based on his own account, he was a young man with extreme religious tendencies, whose opposition to the Shah was colored by his hatred of the ex-regime’s policies of secularization (albeit superficial secularization). Following the revolution, Makhmalbaf became the regime’s most active watchman in the movie industry of Iran. In his early interviews (between 1979-1983), he proudly spoke of his role in purging the cultural scene from secular thought. His discourse frequently abused Iranian secular filmmakers, and vilified Iranian Left. During the first three years of revolution, he hailed the fundamentalist oppression of women, students, minorities, and Iranian Left as an authentic Islamic campaign against counter-revolutionary forces. =46ollowing the consolidation of power in 1981 by the fundamentalists, Makhmalbaf extended his cooperation by joining their campaign of terror. When mass arrests, brutal tortures, and summary executions were the order of the day, Makhmalbaf not only supported their policy of terror and torture, but also offered his film making expertise to launch an assault on truth.
For his movie, Boycott, he was allowed inside one of Iran’s most dreadful prisons. There, amid daily atrocities of torture and interrogation, he shot his story using actual leftist political prisoners who were coerced into playing roles for Makhmalbaf’s feature film. The story of this film depicted leftist activists as rigid Stalinist villains, worthy of contempt and scorn. Ironically, Makhmalbaf and company forced these political prisoners into such self-denigrating roles as part of a =93corrective exercise.=94 Tragically, not long after the completion of this movie, a number of these young activists were executed, and their bodies were hastily buried in unmarked graves. I have personally identified and traced the fate of these victims, whom many of us used to know personally. In the history of cinema, I can think of no filmmaker who has committed so blatant an assault on helpless individuals as Makhmalbaf has done without any shame or remorse. Nor, I can believe the indifference that the world has demonstrated with regard to his actions. Appallingly, one can readily purchase this film, a product of forced labor and torture, on videocassette via Internet!
However, in the late 1980s, Makhmalbaf made a face-about in his political attitude, and became an advocate of tolerance and open society. For this, his loyalist friends, whom he had faithfully served during their attempt to consolidate power in Iran, did not spare him. He was threatened and attacked by his ex-associates in the loyalist camp. This dramatic change happened when the fundamentalist regime’s failure in maintaining popular legitimacy was becoming clear to everyone, and specially to many members of their own rank. Despite these intimidations, he has had no problem massively producing, and internationally screening a chain of feature films, unparalleled in quantity and reach, in the history of Iranian cinema. In a country, wherein dissident intellectuals are not allowed to publish something as benign as an encyclopedia of folklore (i.e. Ahmad Shamloo, our national poet), Makhmalbaf and his family (his daughter and sister-in-law) maintain a profile of consistent production and international presence that makes any conscientious observer wonder. Although I condemn any intimidation that he has suffered in the hands of his ex-associates, I detest his obvious lack of integrity that he has skillfully practiced so far.
In today’s Iran, “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.” Therefore, “there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms.” In ways similar to a morbid symptom, Makhmalbaf and the present brand of henchmen intellectuals tend to express real social afflictions as far as they can manage to compromise its essence and truth. This is what you may have sensed (but left unexplained) as you warned the readers about the political content of Makhmalbaf’s article. In fact, his article is saturated with the uncritical discourse of modernization and economic development that has malaised the aspirations of the people of the region. His pronouncements against the vices of the segmentary society (what he calls tribal society) reflect his deliberate and well disguised attacks on ethnicity and locality. What he has reproached as tribalism has to be renamed as ethnic and local forms of social life. Where he preaches the Gospel of national unity, it must be read as the eradication of ethnic diversity by an administered, homogenizing system. When he boasts of the absence of ethnic predilection among Iranian voters, he has to be reminded of the gruesome massacres of Iranian Kurds, Arabs, Turks, Turkmans, and Balooches, by the fundamentalist regime from 1979 on-ward.
In the “House of Pain” that Makhmalbaf and his associates have built for themselves and us a generation of Iranian political activists walked proudly to their death, as Makhmalbaf cheered on their bloody purge. To his disappointment, a great number of surviving activists are still resisting the fundamentalist rule, while Makhmalbaf is practicing the international fine art of mendacity and deceit. In fact, his humanity has failed repeatedly, and his abysmal failures by no means stop with militant activists. When young Iranian soldiers in Iran-Iraq war were openly named as one-time-use soldiers (a literal and exact translation) by the fundamentalist Defense Minister, and were sent as human waves to the front, Makhmalbaf endorsed the “great war effort to save Islam”.
The sorrow of those days still haunts many of us. Many suffer a silent, consuming agony, as Makhmalbaf’s voice is heard everywhere. =46rom prestigious international film festivals to the recent example in the Monthly Review, Makhmalbaf reaches an ever-growing audience, as his victims lie voiceless, in unmarked graves, and as his survivors are too hopeless to speak of their terrible tragedy. The whole world celebrates his talent, while the ghastly story of his real talent remains completely unsaid.
No one can deny that Makhmalbaf’s article reflects a rather intimate picture of the situation in Afghanistan. But, is this sufficient to include his text in the Monthly Review? No one denies that Makhmalbaf is a celebrated artist, and so does Leni Riefenstahl. Are you considering printing her works, too? No one denies that Makhmalbaf has occasionally said something worthy of hearing, and so did Ernst Junger. Are you about to give him coverage, too?
You suggest that Makhmalbaf’s article has to be read “as a deeply moral and humanitarian account of the tragic circumstances of the Afghan people and the callousness of the West.” It is a bitter irony that while you set out to remedy one example of callousness; you end up committing another one, yourself. For most part, this reveals a lack of awareness that stems from a lack of solidarity with the plight of the Left in non-western societies. Although European fascism and Islamic fundamentalism are diametrically different in content, the rise of fundamentalism for us has been as socially significant as the rise of fascism for European Left. How painful for you, would that be to see a prestigious leftist journal publish the work of the Revisionist Historians of the Third Reich, in an uncritical manner? Would you not rise with a cry of indignation and moral outrage? Would you not rush to defend the victims and to stand with the evidence? Would you not break in sorrow and rage remembering the final hopeless hours of Walter Benjamin and Marc Bloch? I believe that thus doing is the only decent and just choice.
I am aware that many members of Iranian left, today, applaud Makhmalbaf as a true convert. Perhaps, such counsel has influenced your choice, too. However, not so much unlike those among your rank who look to Carl Schmitt for inspiration, these people are invariably of the habit of getting lost in their own mystifications. Likewise, I have no doubt that there are people among us, who readily accept Makhmalbaf as a born-again social democrat, and to celebrate him as the newly baptized child of political pluralism. Ironically, those whose political imagination is raptured by these new converts of “open and civil society,” are promoting their new masters with complete secrecy about their past, lest people know what they are buying into!
Yet, if you are truly after “imparting a message desperately needed in our
times,” please consider making this note available to all your readers, in
its entirety. Perhaps, there is no better opportune time for us to be
heard. Perhaps, it is time to make the voiceless speak. Perhaps it is
time to strip human suffering of its murky obscurity. Until, we decide to
do so,


Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark,
And has the nature of eternity
William Wordsworth

Yours Truly,

Farzad Bawani.

The Revolutionary Bourgeois
I've been making that argument for a long time. The dictators' modernity of Saddam Hussein, the Shah, Sadat, the Turkish military et al. were a sham modernity. What we've been seeing in Turkey and what we're seeing now in Iran is the bourgeois revolution. I linked to this a few days ago:

"You know why so many poorer women voted for Ahmadinejad? There are three million of them who make carpets in their homes. They had no insurance. When Ahmadinejad realised this, he immediately brought in a law to give them full insurance. Ahmadinejad's supporters were very shrewd. They got the people out in huge numbers to vote – and then presented this into their vote for Ahmadinejad."

So Ahmadinejad won the Luddite vote.

This post transcribes a conversation about the vote count:

"(edited only to remove my own ‘yes’ and ‘ok’ and ‘exactly’ and ‘i cannot stand makhmalbaf’ asides)"

And all the great ironic modern Iranian films of course are bourgeois culture, and document the birth of bourgeois culture. As usual, all basic stuff.

Conversation with Grandma after Iran’s elections

From: AA[A]

The "Regime"
Josh Marshall misses the point. A few people have referred to this as an Iranian Tiananmen. I have too but in fact it's more a cross between Tiananmen and Bush vs Gore, with powerful people on both sides. It's a split within "the party" and among the populace. But if it's is resolved peaceably, even with compromise rather than outright victory for one side or the other, Iran will be stronger for it.

Khamenei vs Rafsanjani, or Rafsanjani vs Yazdi and the Republican Guards, with Khamenei in the middle playing all sides to preserve his own authority?

Pepe Escobar is too much of a romantic, but he supplies a lot of information.



Pepe Escobar vs Flynt Leverett: "Ahmadinejad Won. Get Over It"

Helena Cobban:"The whole internal struggle over these issues inside Iran is considerably complicated by the fact that the US government has, even under Obama, been continuing the Bush-initiated program of giving support to dissidents and members of national minorities. That program should stop."