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Friday, January 29, 2010
Barack Headroom II: Me-mix of the State of the Union address
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Posted at
22:15
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Reading List: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
- Bryson, Bill. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. London: Black Swan, 2007. ISBN 978-0-552-77254-9.
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What could be better than growing up in the United States in the
1950s? Well, perhaps being a kid with super powers
as the American dream reached its apogee and before the madness
started! In this book, humorist, travel writer, and
science populariser extraordinaire Bill Bryson
provides a memoir of his childhood (and, to a lesser extent,
coming of age) in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1950s and '60s. It is
a thoroughly engaging and charming narrative which, if you
were a kid there, then will bring back a flood of fond memories
(as well as some acutely painful ones) and if you weren't, to
appreciate, as the author closes the book, “What a wonderful
world it was. We won't see its like again, I'm afraid.”
The 1950s were the golden age of comic books, and whilst shopping
at the local supermarket, Bryson's mother would drop him in the
(unsupervised) Kiddie Corral where he and other offspring could
indulge for free to their heart's content. It's only natural
a red-blooded Iowan boy would discover himself to be a
superhero, The Thunderbolt Kid, endowed with ThunderVision, which
enabled his withering gaze to vapourise morons. Regrettably,
the power seemed to lack permanence, and the morons so dispersed
into particles of the luminiferous æther had a tedious way of
reassembling themselves and further vexing our hero and his
long-suffering schoolmates. But still, more work for
The Thunderbolt Kid!
This was a magic time in the United States—when prosperity not
only returned after depression and war, but exploded to such an extent
that mean family income more than doubled in the 1950s while most
women still remained at home raising their families. What had
been considered luxuries just a few years before: refrigerators
and freezers, cars and even second cars, single family homes, air conditioning,
television, all became commonplace (although kids would still gather
in the yard of the neighbourhood plutocrat to squint through his
window at the wonder of colour TV and chuckle at why he paid so
much for it).
Although the transformation of the U.S. from an agrarian society
to a predominantly urban and industrial nation was well underway,
most families were no more than one generation removed from the
land, and Bryson recounts his visits to his grandparents' farm
which recall what was lost and gained as that pillar of American
society went into eclipse.
There are relatively few factual errors, but from time to time Bryson's
narrative swallows counterfactual left-wing conventional
wisdom about the Fifties. For example, writing about
atomic bomb testing:
Altogether between 1946 and 1962, the United States detonated just over a thousand nuclear warheads, including some three hundred in the open air, hurling numberless tons of radioactive dust into the atmosphere. The USSR, China, Britain, and France detonated scores more.
Sigh…where do we start? Well, the obvious subtext is that U.S. started the arms race and that other nuclear powers responded in a feeble manner. In fact, the U.S. conducted a total of 1030 nuclear tests, with a total of 215 detonated in the atmosphere, including all tests up until testing was suspended in 1992, with the balance conducted underground with no release of radioactivity. The Soviet Union (USSR) did, indeed, conduct “scores” of tests, to be precise 35.75 score with a total of 715 tests, with 219 in the atmosphere—more than the U.S.—including Tsar Bomba, with a yield of 50 megatons. “Scores” indeed—surely the arms race was entirely at the instigation of the U.S. If you've grown up in he U.S. in the 1950s or wished you did, you'll want to read this book. I had totally forgotten the radioactive toilets you had to pay to use but kids could wiggle under the door to bask in their actinic glare, the glories of automobiles you could understand piece by piece and were your ticket to exploring a broad continent where every town, every city was completely different: not just another configuration of the same franchises and strip malls (and yet recall how exciting it was when they first arrived: “We're finally part of the great national adventure!”) The 1950s, when privation gave way to prosperity, yet Leviathan had not yet supplanted family, community, and civil society, it was utopia to be a kid (although, having been there, then, I'd have deemed it boring, but if I'd been confined inside as present-day embryonic taxpayers in safetyland are I'd have probably blown things up. Oh wait—Willoughby already did that, twelve hours too early!). If you grew up in the '50s, enjoy spending a few pleasant hours back there; if you're a parent of the baby boomers, exult in the childhood and opportunities you entrusted to them. And if you're a parent of a child in this constrained century? Seek to give your child the unbounded opportunities and unsupervised freedom to explore the world which Bryson and this humble scribbler experienced as we grew up. Vapourising morons with ThunderVision—we need you more than ever, Thunderbolt Kid! A U.S. edition is available.
Posted at
01:32
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Reading List: The Persian Night
- Taheri, Amir. The Persian Night. New York: Encounter Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1-59403-240-0.
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With Iran continuing its march toward nuclear weapons
and long range missiles unimpeded by an increasingly
feckless West, while simultaneously domestic discontent
over the tyranny of the mullahs, economic stagnation,
and stolen elections are erupting into bloody violence on
the streets of major cities, this book provides a timely
look at the history, institutions, personalities, and
strategy of what the author dubs the “triple
oxymoron”: the Islamic Republic of Iran which,
he argues, espouses a bizarre flavour of Islam which is not
only a heretical anathema to the Sunni majority, but also
at variance with the mainstream Shiite beliefs which
predominated in Iran prior to Khomeini's takeover; anything but a
republic in any usual sense of the word; and motivated by
a global messianic vision decoupled from the traditional
interests of Iran as a nation state.
Khomeini's success in wresting control away from the ailing
Shah without a protracted revolutionary struggle was made
possible by support from “useful idiots” mostly
on the political left, who saw Khomeini's appeal to the
rural population as essential to gaining power and planned
to shove him aside afterward. Khomeini, however, once in
power, proved far more ruthless than his coalition partners,
summarily putting to death all who opposed him, including
many mullahs who dissented from his eccentric version of
Islam.
Iran is often described as a theocracy, but apart from the
fact that the all-powerful Supreme Guide is nominally a
religious figure, the organisation of the government and
distribution of power are very much along the lines of
a fascist state. In fact, there is almost a perfect parallel
between the institutions of Nazi Germany and those of Iran.
In Germany, Hitler created duplicate party and state centres of power
throughout the government and economy
and arranged them in such a way as to ensure that decisions
could not be made without his personal adjudication of turf
battles between the two. In Iran, there are the revolutionary
institutions and those of the state, operating side by side,
often with conflicting agendas, with only the Supreme Guide
empowered to resolve disputes. Just as Hitler set up the SS
as an armed counterpoise to the Wehrmacht, Khomeini created
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as the revolution's
independent armed branch to parallel the state's armed forces.
Thus, the author stresses, in dealing with Iran, it is essential
to be sure whether you're engaging the revolution or
the nation state: over the history of the Islamic Republic,
power has shifted back and forth between the two sets of
institutions, and with it Iran's interaction with other players
on the world stage. Iran as a nation state generally strives
to become a regional superpower: in effect, re-establishing the
Persian Empire from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea through
vassal regimes. To that end it seeks weapons, allies, and
economic influence in a fairly conventional manner. Iran the
Islamic revolutionary movement, on the other hand, works to
establish global Islamic rule and the return of the Twelfth
Imam: an Islamic Second Coming which Khomeini's acolytes
fervently believe is imminent. Because they brook no deviation
from their creed, they consider Sunni Moslems, even the strict
Wahabi sect of Saudi Arabia, as enemies which must be compelled
to submit to Khomeini's brand of Islam.
Iran's troubled relationship with the United States cannot be
understood without grasping the distinction between state and
revolution. To the revolution, the U.S. is the Great Satan
spewing foul corruption around the world, which good Muslims
should curse, chanting “death to America” before
every sura of the Koran. Iran the nation state, on the other
hand, only wants Washington to stay out of its way as it
becomes a regional power which, after all, was pretty much the
state of affairs under the Shah, with the U.S. his predominant
arms supplier. But the U.S. could never adopt such a strategy
as long as the revolution has a hand in policy, nor will Iran's
neighbours, terrified of its regional ambitions, encourage
the U.S. to keep their hands off.
There is a great deal of conventional wisdom about Iran which
is dead wrong, and this book dispels much of it. The supposed
“CIA coup” against
Mosaddegh
in 1953, for which two U.S. presidents have since apologised,
proves to have been nothing of the sort (although the
CIA did, on occasion, claim credit for it as an example of a
rare success amidst
decades of blundering), with the U.S. largely supporting the
nationalisation of the Iranian oil fields against fierce opposition
from Britain. But cluelessness about Iran has never been in
short supply among U.S. politicians. Speaking at the
World Economic Forum, Bill Clinton said:
Iran today is, in a sense, the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is there that the ideas I subscribe to are defended by a majority.
Lest this be deemed a slip of the tongue due to intoxication by the heady Alpine air of Davos, a few days later on U.S. television he doubled down with:[Iran is] the only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections…. In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.
I suppose if the U.S. had such an overwhelming “progressive” majority, it too would adopt “liberal” policies such as hanging homosexuals from cranes until they suffocate and stoning rape victims to death. But perhaps Clinton was thinking of Iran's customs of polygamy and “temporary marriage”. Iran is a great nation which has been a major force on the world stage since antiquity, with a deep cultural heritage and vigorous population who, in exile from poor governance in the homeland, have risen to the top of demanding professions all around the world. Today (as well as much of the last century) Iran is saddled with a regime which squanders its patrimony on a messianic dream which runs the very real risk of igniting a catastrophic conflict in the Middle East. The author argues that the only viable option is regime change, and that all actions taken by other powers should have this as the ultimate goal. Does that mean going to war with Iran? Of course not—the very fact that the people of Iran are already pushing back against the mullahs is evidence they perceive how illegitimate and destructive the present regime is. It may even make sense to engage with institutions of the Iranian state, which will be the enduring foundation of the nation after the mullahs are sent packing, but it it essential that the Iranian people be sent the message that the forces of civilisation are on their side against those who oppress them, and to use the communication tools of this new century (Which country has the most bloggers? The U.S. Number two? Iran.) to bypass the repressive regime and directly address the people who are its victims. Hey, I spent two weeks in Iran a decade ago and didn't pick up more than a tiny fraction of the insight available here. Events in Iran are soon to become a focus of world attention to an extent they haven't been for the last three decades. Read this book to understand how Iran figures in the contemporary Great Game, and how revolutionary change may soon confront the Islamic Republic.
Posted at
00:36