Rough Rant: Tapestry of a Day, Caught in the Streams of Unconsciousness

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 02:25

Strange day, strange ways.
I got a hair cut earlier today. Was lost in the machinations of mind and conscious/conscience here is what I was able to salvage from that inner torment...
...Thought about Oklahoma in the spring a few years back while transverse-ing a portion of discarded Route 66… How strangely beautiful rural Oklahoma could (surprisingly) be. The dust and wild flowers in bloom alongside the forgotten road. Appalled at the monstrosity of drive though automotive Middle American Protestant materialistic neon Neo-Christendom of the suburban sprawling Oklahoma… This while waiting in line at the bicycle repair shop on my street – a bike shop in a automotively strangled European motor-city. Strange country of a homeland back home that discards its own physical history… I remembered I was shocked to learn about the fate of Route 66 years ago, years later, after Route 66 was made defunct (quietly in 1985). It was like we were duped as Americans by the likes of Reagan and co when this roadway was quietly dismissed. I still know the lyrics of Route 66 and still want to drive its fragmentary and forgotten remains again. From Chicago to L.A. As I write this I am watching a show on a religious sub channel of a Holland’s TV network of a strange documentary of sorts of Franciscus. San Francisco, Saint Francis of Assisi - choose your language. Thought about in that bike shop line/que how that now that the Great American Experiment in Democracy is finally dead it's just like with the awareness of Route 66 being sidelined and “decommissioned” to a nearby parallel (I-40) route on a different scale of a different reality without soul or history… Sometimes even the street signs here make me think to much. Like those old original Dutch language, the forgotten Flemish names on street signs here in Brussels exist though not much noticed on the now blue and white signs beneath the old French names. Democracy in the states was quietly sidelined to something else. But no one knows it yet except those who done the sidelining. Walked around today in forgotten corners of old Flemish bi-lingual neighborhoods that have not just gone Francophone over the long generations of time but are now completely Arabic speaking though no one will admit this... Which is probably just as well because in time they will also probably be speaking Romanian, Bulgarian and Polish and who knows what else… if you wait long enough anything can happen. Sat in a barber shop window today looking through Arabic writing on the glass – inside an imported blue and white tile tiled walls as TV Maroc played Sufi music from a beautiful mosque in Fez… watching through that Arabic framed Brussels window a new blue stone, blauwesteen, pierre blue sidewalk under foot at a passing social symphony that could have been anywhere in Brooklyn – except here it's Arab, Berber, Tuareg, Algerian, Moroccan, Black African, European, Belgian, Flemish, Francophone, Eastern European and all the costumes that go with it. Looked at forgotten pieces of vanishing old Bru-town – Old roofs and windows that though in disrepair look much more soulful than the ones modernized and sanitized by new building materials. Saw men of all ages sitting around in jallalybas and slip on shoes – those long shirt-like dressing gowns that I like so much to wear but never wear out of the house. I thought about how much more I would appreciate living in Oklahoma than Ohio if I ever went back to life in the Matrix of the states while knowing full well I will never go back because back there doesn’t exist now. Thought about Okies and more modern forms of that phenomenon in European ways (or the new Mexican “Okies” in the north of North America and the refried beans of wrath) and the prejudices that go with Okies anywhere – thought about California and its lies of self-supremacy… I thought about how many times in a TV show or Hollywood movie I see the Star of David referenced in form as if it were a calling card of sorts – the filming lenses capturing and recording light and refracting it into a six pointed star burst that in one program on TV I counted 33 times. Or how many times the structures in the set in the back ground reference this star of six points… Hollywood movie stars… Why is it six not seven or eight degrees of separation between ones self and any one else on the planet from President to “terrorist” and all the human links of six degrees in between. That mirage like star of six points that if the Israelis weren’t so bent on being so inhuman in their wiping out of the Palestinians life, culture, land, homes, trees and water…. (and yet the keys to those Palestinian homes remain if the land and the houses don't). Well, I wouldn’t get so sick of seeing the Star of David which now makes me think of soaring sky high concrete seclusion in cantonments of containment and self contentment. I don't think of King David or Solomon stories anymore with that six pointed star. I don't think those unique kings would approve of today. From that berbers barber shop window I thought about Michael Moore saying if the states would give the Palestinians the same amount of military financial aid (something like 3 billion annually) that is “given” to the Israeli’s – how this would cure the Israelis of their complaints about Palestinian suicide bombers – it certainly would if nothing else stop the suicide bombings and thus stop the justifications for the walls and the bureaucracy to control Palestinians. I could be more pro-Israeli if I weren’t from one of those post World War II generations in North America that had nine in ten boys circumcised for “medical reasons” upon birth. Which like the Canadian, with German fascinations, filmmaker of the remarkable Raspberry Reich movie, called Bruce la Bruce, who in some of his unique online essays writes about how these systematic circumcisions were hypothesized to either be for medical experiments on fresh human baby boy tissue while conveniently later hiding Jewish American boys in the society at large or at least in gym class locker room showers. Like perhaps if my cock would have been left un-mutilated then perhaps I could now easier stomach Israeli’s formula of needing suicide bombers to land grab without conscious/conscience. But since I am one of those nine out of ten circumcised genitally mutilated for (racial?) “hygienic” reasons - just to spite the game of conspiracy I’m siding with all my Muslim Arab circumcised Brothers rather than the Israelis. Can anyone in their right mind imagine if the fate of Shoshone “Indians”, or the Sioux, or Cheyenne or Apache was occurring now in the 21st century (and don't think it isn't!) so that land and homes could be stolen and paved over for the like of strip malls, expressways, parkinglots, for ticky tack housing with red roofs, fast food frying pits for low wagers and low cost food stuffs, for cinemas, for gas stations to fuel the war in Iraq. Iraqi, Iroquois, Bruxelios… Like, imagine if Israel out of its lack of modern identity started naming suburbs and strip malls with Palestinian names. Like how in the US and especially Ohio all the great names of boring places are names derived from more interesting if not annihilated indigenous north American cultures, tribes, civilizations, people and basically land, homes, religion and way of life. Names like Cuyahoga or Olentangy, Mohican "ville", Muskingum, Tuscarawas – what do these names have to do with the Ohio Territories of today much less the US of A? We Americans stole lands and names and claimed them all for our own, meanwhile the skeletons and ashes of the people of these names lay forgotten with their histories in the ground beneath our feet… Change Brussel to Bruxelles to Brussels… Just like the strange Twilight Zoned state of New Israel - Sharon’s Zone. How do you feel born on the side of the wall into privilege while others are presently born on the other side of a wall into a life defined by incarceration and control? How does one’s subconscious process the guilt and shame of the human suffering that enables the economic ecosphere of totalitarian capitalism and greed thrive? When in the states Apache tomahawks (not the missiles of today) scalped the settlers of our nostalgically remembered and revered good old Pioneers it wasn’t called a terrorist attack: I’d like to think we knew what was going on and could admit that we as people were stealing someone else's land – at least it would be honest. But it’s strange in the cantonments of capitalism you can choose to believe what you want and gleefully ignore the cost of the luxury with the currency of other peoples suffering unseen on the other side of a wall. But what right do I have to speak of such things. I’ve never been to Ramallah or Tel Aviv…but why does my spell check program recognize Tel Aviv and not Ramallah? Yeh, there is absolutely no conspiracy going on I know – wink, wink. It’s not just the circumcision conspiracy thing that has me feeling cranky over Israeli’s and their Israel… it's just that as an American funding the Israeli walled in behind concrete reality I just feel - well – taken for granted and that perhaps there is not a little ungratefulness going on. Like recently my pal here gave me a region one DVD (thus no English subtitles) of Yossi and Jagger which I can watch in Hebrew with Dutch or French subtitles even though I can read Dutch ok I can’t read it fast enough to keep up with the subtitles… I’ll watch it because the Israeli Military muscles are always rather hot as any Arab will confess. It’s that whole man in a uniform thing. But on the jacket of the DVD it says in English “This isn’t some American movie” which is annoying. Like, Hollywood and all its stars isn’t good enough for Israel. Well we all know Hollywood movies are so diluted now that bankers and lawyers make movies because they love money and not good cinema. All those test market audiences determining the saleability of a movie has killed Hollywood which is a given but to have even the Israelis bashing Hollywood is a bit rich. So it is time as Michael Moore says to give the Palestinians 3 billion US dollars annually in military funding which they will probably surprise the world with by turning around and investing that money in some much needed hospitals, maternity wards, schools, parks, recreation centers, housing, childcare centers, airports, olive trees, city centers, library’s, probably a few churches, mosques and gasp synagogues, whose being naïve here, now? Perhaps a few park benches and golf carts for the elderly at all those tedious security check points designed to strangle bit by bit the life out of the Palestinians who had zero control over where on the planet they were born. It is high time that the Israeli’s remember who their brothers and sisters are and stop whining about suicide bombers. War is war even if we aren't allowed to think it much less say it and one side has weapons and the other has only despair. God knows when the Palestinians have something to live for or fight with the suicide bombings will stop. Until then can any of us in the Matrix of the West whether in Israel or the US or elsewhere sleep in good conscience unless we are in a prison cell at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba? Given that recent beach killing of Palestinians or the hanging suicide pack in Guantanamo Bay – regardless of the technicalities of what happened and if in either case respectively it was perpetrated by Israeli’s or American’s or not – if all the worlds Muslims (and there are quite a few) believe otherwise, perhaps it is time to stop vilifying religions and cultures and work on some PR for the West. I for one don’t think any Muslim in Guantanamo Bay who probably didn’t even deserve to be there in the first place would have killed themselves without being forced into such a noose. So can’t we as Americans who support through no choice of our own the Almighty Military Industrial Complex behind the Guantanamo Bay atrocity of its very existence in a “democracy” – like – can’t we just admit we hung those guys or at least drove them to it and supplied them the means. This could be a start at PR. Maybe we could also admit all those nasty beheadings in Iraq weren’t the result of religious extremists but perhaps the result of US secret military police trying to defame and destabilize a land we shamelessly/obviously want the oil rights to. Let’s admit as American’s that the Israeli’s wall building and cultural annihilating policies are our very own American ideas of forced and coerced “democracy”. Let’s stop calling the kettle black and then try to make friends with the parts of the world we demonize. Let’s admit that we have no intention of exporting democracy in exchange for oil. We don’t want Iraq to be democratic we just want their oil. Let’s admit that we are trying to divide Iraq along Iraq’s many cultural and religious lines and most obviously between Shia and Sunni Muslims: Divide and conquer and take the oil profits. Kill as many people as possible - American, Iraqi or other to confuse the world. Make Halliburton and the Bush family as wealthy as possible while spilling the most amount of blood. Take the focus off Israel’s land grabbing and replace it with lost American young men and women’s lives in Iraq. This is the architecture of Hell and we condone it every time we fill up our gas tank and drive our car. Don't think either for a moment that the US Governement has any plans of pulling out of Iraq, ever. In one form another they will be there - just ask President Castro to explain it.
Meanwhile in EU-rope we are being encouraged by the media to unplug our electricity. Those little lights on all your appliances that stay on while the appliance is not in use are causing global warming… None of those many sodium lamps that are scattered around Europe and Britain every three meters alongside every road - to bathe the world in an intense orange glow and the electric power plants that keep them lit - are contributing to global warming just like all those little lights on the appliances in my home. Get a grip we are not all stupid people. When Belgium shows some sign in delighting in de-lite-ing Belgium – the brightest spot on the planet – then I’ll be convinced to unplug my personal life. I for one do not believe in the orange glow that is nighttime on this part of the planet makes my life any safer on the streets at night. Do you know that at night here it is often brighter than on a rainy day? It is true – with the dark night sky vilified like an Arab or a Muslim (or both) no wonder I have insomnia. No wonder I have insomnia when I lay in bed and want to sleep and I can’t stop thinking about men and women caught like flies in a spiders web just for being born a landless Palestinian. I will only be able to sleep properly in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Perhaps there I can learn some classical Arabic, ketch up on reading the Qur’an, wear some nice white clothes, learn to pray five times a day with some remarkable Brothers while learning about certain masculine pastimes from the naughty Midwestern American soldier boys working there when the lights are off – but of course we are told the lights are never turned off there in Guantanamo Bay Prison... What is this place called planet earth? What do we do to each other when we are connected from Presidents and Prime Ministers to retail laborers to freedom fighters? Why do the rich vilify the poor and scapegoat the poor for the failures of the rich. I don’t want to be among the rich on this planet – Like Saint Francis of Assisi, I don’t want the blood and suffering of the poor perpetuated by the rich on my hands that is the prerequisite for cantonment life in seclusions of luxury and privilege from those we in the west trample on over there out of sight unacknowledged on the other side of the walls we build…
…transmission end…

 

In Defense of Iran

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 00:22

I don’t know about you but it sure does seem strange in this day and age to insist that an autonomous nation like Iran be coerced by international pressure to willingly dumb itself down. Whatever happened to science and the pursuit of knowledge? Knowledge is a dangerous thing. With knowledge crimes against humanity can be made or exposed. Last I heard Iran, like Iraq was an independent nation painstakingly wrought from greedy Anglophone manipulations from a previous colonialist era. That nasty age the Anglophone world of today has pretty much forgotten and out of that forgetful haze a lot of Imperialistic attitudes still remain unwittingly to this day. I cannot say I am a fan of Iran’s present form of government but then I don’t care for what the US is up to these days either. The people of Iran ultimately are the power in Iran not the few bearded men at the top of the few chain there. The people of Iran – like the American’s are not taking to the streets in bloody protests over who has the power. When the people of Iran are ready they will decide for themselves if their governance is repressive – is it up to we in the West even to say it is repressive?

Any nation in the pursuit of knowledge, science and excellence is going to explore nuclear options and all the other curiosities in Pandora's Box. Perhaps in so doing Iran will uncover the next form of safe energy to rescue our collapsing ecosphere on this planet. Or perhaps Iran will uncover a way to make nuclear waste benign. My guess is the real reason everyone in the self called “free world” is up in arms about Iran having Nukes is only a manifestation of latent Imperialism. We should be worried when we in the free world are waging a war only for corporate interests on Iran’s doorstep.

I do not believe there is such a thing as Al Qaeda. This sounds strange I know. But it is an urban myth opportunistically invented to control the masses with fear. Well this member of the masses prefers opium to fear when it comes to being controlled. Maybe there is such a thing as Al Qaeda or a network of it - I don’t care but I choose to believe there is no such thing. In either case I believe Washington more than anyone created Al Qaeda, now that I believe. Al Qaeda fits nicely into Washington's tactical global plans. Probably Al Qaeda is a wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA. Certainly Washington profits off of this concept of Al Qaeda like the Vatican profits off the notion of the Devil and guilt.

Maybe there is a Devil but it is not Iran. Iran is in the pursuit of knowledge and power – literally and figuratively. Can the rest of the world really bully a nation into willful self ignorance? Especially when one considers what is going on in the land between Syria and Iran? Or when one considers what has transpired in the last few decades over land between Iran and Pakistan.

Perhaps Iran is really only interested in exposing some Western contradictions – Nukes these days are like a microphone. It is no secret that Iran is using the Nuke issue to harness media attention to the fact that Israel with its appalling record of human rights and land grabbing from Palestinians is in fact one of the largest Nuke holders in the region. Should a recently self appointed nation have the right to steal land in increments from its own brotherhood while imprisoning its own people and neighbors for their crime of being born with the wrong social-religious genetic makeup? Would anyone in their right mind allow Israel to develop their own Nukes at this point in history?

For what it is worth I believe the history of the remarkable Persians – the present day Iranians – is one of an intelligent well educated society with a grand ornate land, history and culture. Probably the Iranians are better educated on the whole than the Americans or the rest of the Anglophone world for that matter or at least those who claim English as their first language. So what is the problem with Iran like many other nations having a few Nukes to get the rest of the world to listen to their concerns? Iran obviously has something to say. They probably want the world to know that they will not let the US and it’s “allies” march in and turn it into present day Iraqi/Halliburton junk yard. It isn’t unreasonable to think it might just take the threat of Nukes to get the US to listen. It is about time someone on the planet had the balls to say maybe Israel should not have access to their own nuclear arsenal until Israel can improve its human rights violations with its non Jewish citizenry and neighbors. Or at least until it stops building walls of concrete on other peoples property… It might just take a nation like Iran arming itself to the teeth with Nukes to explain to Israel and the world that Israel must stop making it a crime for a soul to born Palestinian on the other side of the wall. The time has come for Israel to renounce its preoccupation with building the Hebrew Master Race.

If we in the West do not like Iran’s religious forms of self governance then we should remind ourselves that the US helped to achieve this problem by undermining Democracy in Iran in 1953. The assassination of Mussadagh was a violation (and first and foremost a crime in and of itself) of Iran’s Democratic movement. This criminal assassination was unjustifiably for the corporate interests of the west with Iran’s resources. How can Condoleezza “I have an oil tanker named after me and I’m smart” Rice talk of bringing (inflicting) Democracy on this part of the post colonial world given the track record of the US who clearly has no interest whatsoever in genuine Democracy for which the 2000 US elections are evidence of to say nothing of our post World War II foreign policies.

I say leave Iran alone. In Defense of Iran – Iran has every right to pursue life, liberty and freedom as they see fit. They have the right to pursue their religious interests and build their nation as they want. Their natural resources are theirs alone and no one else’s. Their resources are not for England or for the Family Bush. They are entitled to a voice on the world’s political stage and their opinion of the nations in their neighborhood are valid. With decades of shamelessness in Afghanistan on the one side – The US meddling in Iraq on the other side – and no one in the west listening to Iran, who can blame them for putting their smart minded scientists to good use. If we in the west don’t like it, tough. We must stop telling Iran what it can and cannot do and we must start listening to Iran even if we don’t like their justified at present cranky manner of speaking. The rest of the world is long over due in listening to Iran’s concerns.

Post Script: On a lighter note Iran must be an unbelievable travel destination for the non-terrorist type of tourist. I don't know about you but I'd love to go road-tripping across the majestic landscape of Iran.