Environ~Mental Mom: The Absence of Actively Listening
My mother thinks she's an overzealous mom. I know what you’re thinking: What a swell gal, How nice of her. It sure was nice for the rest of the world, but it certainly wasn’t nice for me growing up. Having said that, these are first world problems, I can't complain.
Meanwhile at home, she was an absolute dictator. Everything that wasn’t done in her efficient way was scrutinized. That’s generous of me; truthfully, everything was scrutinized by both my parents. But the philanthropic scrutiny was always the most passionate agenda & thus the most frightening premise.
Now that I have your attention, unprecedented protest & resistance has emerged in Iran this week after Mahsa Amini’s death in the custody of Iran’s “morality” police.
The level of anger & frustration in Iran today ~ on display in dozens of videos across social media ~ appears far greater than in 2009, when Iranians took to the streets to protest a stolen election & push for reform.
When George Floyd was, you know killed by police in America there was global solidarity. You saw images from inside Iran & Syria, places where they themselves are in dire straits showing solidarity. The least we can do on the west is to show solidarity to the people inside Iran.
“My main luxury in those years ~ a necessary luxury, in fact ~ was the ability to work in & out of my home-base fortress in Woody Creek. It was a very important psychic anchor for me, a crucial grounding point where I always knew I had love, friends, & good neighbors. It was like my personal Lighthouse that I could see from anywhere in the world ~ no matter where I was, or how weird & crazy & dangerous it got, everything would be okay if I could just make it home. When I made that hairpin turn up the hill onto Woody Creek Road, I knew I was safe.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson
For two decades now, attempts at reforming the system have been stymied; the regime has responded with violence, election fraud, marginalizing & imprisoning those seeking peaceful reforms. The conclusion many young Iranian women and men appear to have reached is that attempts at reform from within should be abandoned. Isn’t two decades of failure enough, they ask? They boycotted the last election; their anger is immeasurable ~ & legitimate.
So, while it took weeks before the slogans turned against the regime as a whole in 2009, the current protests called for the overthrow of the regime almost from the outset.
This is the regime’s own doing. By blocking reforms, narrowing Iran’s political spectrum & further limiting freedoms ~ all the while continuing the corruption, repression & mismanagement ~ the regime is literally pushing people to choose revolt over reform.
But I fear we haven’t seen anywhere near the repressive capacity of the regime yet. There are indications that the state “held back” due to Raisi’s presence in New York; he’ll return to Tehran today, & the expectation is that things may get very bloody in the coming days. (We may not know for a while what will happen because the regime has shut down most of Iran’s internet access.)
“I learned that some cops lie. This was a brutal and profoundly disturbing realization: Those in control are not necessarily trustworthy. More importantly, authority is not necessarily to be obeyed, and certainly not feared. There is always a way to challenge authority, either in the courtroom or in the media or in the voting booth. He has done all of them many times, and usually successfully. In other words, he believes that it is possible to change a situation for the better, even in the face of entrenched authority.” ~ Curated Excerpt From: Juan F. Thompson. “Stories I Tell Myself.” Apple Books.
Iranians learned 40 years ago that overthrowing a tyrannical regime through revolution is one thing, & establishing democracy is another matter altogether. The current protests may once again succeed with the former only to fail at the latter. Still, when millions of young women & men see no other way out, that is the path they will choose, come what may.
It didn’t have to be this way; things could have turned out very differently. Iran’s civil society is strong enough, & democratic values run deep enough, that had the regime tolerated reforms, Iran could have become increasingly democratic without bloodshed. Had Trump not left the Iran deal & reimposed sanctions, the reformist argument that compromising with the United States would bring Iran prosperity & peace would not have been utterly discredited. Nevertheless, here we are.
The next few days may prove decisive. The ball is in the Supreme Leader’s court: he can choose to shut down the “morality” police who beat & harass women, he can listen to the young women and men of Iran and allow meaningful change & avoid violence ~ or he can choose force & repression, in doing so, make the population even more angry, frustrated & desperate.
Unfortunately, his choices over the past decades do not provide much reason for hope.
The old Iran used to be a top destination for vacation in the 70's. Things changed dramatically for the worst after the revolution.
Curated via Trita Parsi. Thanks for reading, cheers! (with a glass of wine & book of course)
2020 Astrale Vino Rosato D'italia
Producer: Astrale Vino Rosato D'italia, Piemonte, Piedmont, Italy
"Light, fresh and bright, displaying aromas of raspberry, red currant and delicate wild mint notes. Good palate weight, with ripe flavours of strawberry, raspberry and red cherry. Well balanced and clean finish." ~ 94 Points ~ Luca Maroni ~ Annuario dei Migliori Vini Italiani
The Artists' Prison (French Edition)
The Artists' Prison looks askance at the workings of personality and privilege, sexuality, authority, and artifice in the art world. Imagined through the heavily redacted testimony of the prison's warden, written by Alexandra Grant, and powerfully allusive images by Eve Wood, the prison is a brutal, Kafkaesque landscape where creativity can be a criminal offence and sentences range from the allegorical to the downright absurd. In The Artists' Prison, the act of creating becomes a strangely erotic condemnation, as well as a means of punishment and transformation. It is in these very transformations ~ sometimes dubious, sometimes oddly sentimental ~ that the book's critical edge is sharpest.
In structural terms, The Artists' Prison represents a unique visual and literary intersection, in which Wood's drawings open spaces of potential meaning in Grant's text, and the text, in turn, acts as a framework in which the images can resonate and intensify in significance.
