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Monday, February 21, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Terence McKenna, the Timewave Zero Novelty Calendar, and 2012
Terence McKenna
(1946-2000)
Terence McKenna (1946-2000) was an American author and ethnobotanist. He and his younger brother Dennis (born 1950) wrote “The Invisible Landscape: Mind Hallucinogens and the I Ching”. The book was first published in 1975.
Part One of “The Invisible Landscape” deals with psychology, shamanism, and biochemistry. In Part Two, entitled “Time, Change, and Becoming”, the elder McKenna explores the King Wen sequence of the ancient Chinese divination system the I Ching [pronounced “ee - JEENG”] – or “Book of Changes” – as an astronomical calendar based on a year of thirteen lunar months, a duration of time which is just under 384 (precisely 383.8978) days.
Being that the sequence described by the I Ching is made up of 64 hexagrams (hexagrams themselves being made up of six yao (lines) each), the total number of yao in the sequence is 384, the same number of days in a year of thirteen lunar months. McKenna observed that multiplying this approximately 384-day duration of time by 64 several times produces an interesting result.
Multiplying the 384-day duration by 64 once gives a product of about 67.2 years, which is roughly (within about 5.2%) the duration of three 22.4-year major sunspot cycles. Multiplying the 67.2-year value gives a product of roughly (within 0.3%) 4,305.2 years, which is twice the duration of a single 2,153-year precession of the equinoxes.
The duration of a single precession of the equinoxes is commonly known as a Zodiacal Age, as in the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Pisces, the Age of Aries, et cetera. Twelve of these Zodiacal Ages is called the Great or Platonic Year, which is the duration of the Milankovitch Cycle - the time that it takes for the Earth to complete a single axial precession (a full revolution of the orientation of the Earth’s rotational axis).
In his self-designed “Timewave Zero” computer program, McKenna graphed a hypothesized function which he named “the Eschaton”, meaning “the end of time”, or “the climax of history”. He described the Eschaton as “a universal and fractal morphogenetic field”, its purpose “to model the unfolding predispositions of space and time”.
The function was based on the number of changes in yao from one hexagram in the sequence to the next. That function was superimposed over a reversal of itself, because the sequence runs both backwards and forwards. This is due to the quality of the 64th hexagram as a pivot point at which three (half of the six) yao differ in comparison to both the 63rd and 1st hexagrams, and all six yao are different when one compares the 62nd hexagram to the 63rd, and the 1st hexagram to the 2nd.
The graphs of each the function and its reversal were doubled, and those doublings were tripled. The reason for doubling and tripling the functions has to do with the structure of the hexagrams of the I Ching as being composed of two trigrams each. Then, all six of these functions were superimposed upon one another, and averaged out.
Due to the emphasis on cycles in Chinese culture, McKenna envisioned the pattern of time as cyclical. This is not to say, however, that time repeats itself. Due to the Chinese emphasis on resonance, especially as the fundamental idea behind the I Ching, McKenna imagined that a point in time has a symbolic relationship with other points in time.
This is why McKenna describes the Eschaton as a logarithmic fractal. A fractal is a geometric shape which is based on an equation that undergoes iteration, a form of feedback based on recursion. In terms specifically relating to the Eschaton function, this means that the wave which is mapped begins to repeat itself one sixty-fourth of its duration prior to its end point. Also, that final sixty-fourth of the duration begins to repeat itself when it reaches the final sixty-fourth of its duration, and the process repeats itself infinitely.
McKenna calls this end point “the Singularity”, and dates it to precisely the Winter’s Solstice on the morning of December 21st, 2012 C.E.. This date is the end of the Zodiacal Age of Pisces, and the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, meaning that the sun, from the perspective of those living in the Northern Hemisphere, appears to be transiting from the vicinity of the Pisces constellation in the sky towards the vicinity of the Aquarius constellation.
To demonstrate the implication of the fractal in the simplest possible terms, any date prior to this 2012 date is considered to have symbolic historical resonance with many other dates, all of which share that same resonance with one another.
For example, let us take December 21st, 2011 C.E.; one year before the 2012 Singularity. Some of the dates which share resonance with this 2011 date include the date sixty-four times closer to the Singularity than it in mid-December 2012, the date 64 years prior to the 2012 end date, the date 4,096 (64 x 64) years prior to the Singularity, and the date 262,144 (64 x 64 x 64) years prior to the Singularity.
The 2012 Singularity resonates with an infinite number of dates which immediately lead up to it. The smallest practical duration of time with which it resonates is the date just under six days prior to it (December 15th, 2012), a date thirteen lunar months prior to it (December 2nd, 2011), a date about 67.2 years prior to it (September 15th, 1945 - just over five weeks after the end of World War II), a date two Zodiacal Ages before it.
The date two Zodiacal Ages prior to the Singularity is 2,294 B.C.E.. This is the end of the Age of Taurus and the beginning of the Age of Aries. It is 11 years prior to the end of the reign of the Sixth Egyptian Dynasty Pharaoh Pepi I Meryre, and it is the approximate date of the first use of metals in Northern Europe, i.e., the beginning of the Bronze Age.
Precisely how and whether these dates have symbolic historical resonance with one another is to be determined by subjective individual interpretation. McKenna once recounted the first time he realized this resonance as a historical event was unfolding; he discovered that the period during which the Persian Gulf conflict of 1990-1991 was occurring roughly coincided with the lifetime of the 7th-century C.E. Islamic prophet Muhammad. He explains this by suggesting that both periods saw an increase in the self-expression of the people of Arabia and Mesopotamia.
McKenna also said that the end of the presidency of Ronald Reagan - whom was often described as having an imperial personality - coincides with a date about six years after the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D..
Aside from the series of dates which resonate with the Singularity itself, the series of resonating dates which appears the most consequential – judging from McKenna’s attention to it – is the series of dates September 21st, 2011; November 23rd, 1932 C.E.; August 11th, 3,114 B.C.E.; and 325,988 B.C.E..
September 21st, 2011 will be the celebration of the annual environmental awareness day known as Zero Emissions Day, and it is also ten days after the tenth anniversary of the attacks of September 11th, 2001. The date in late 1932 is just several months prior to the beginning of Adolf Hitler’s reign as Chancellor of Germany in late January 1933, and to the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt as the President of the United States in early April of that year. Both Hitler and Roosevelt died in 1945, a date which resonates with the Singularity.
The 3,114 B.C.E. date is significant because it is the approximate date of the first unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the Early Dynastic Period pharaoh Narmer (or Menes). It is also the precise date of the beginning of the 13th and current 5,125-¼-year Mayan b’ak’tun (solar cycle). This date has a central role in the tzolkin (Mayan calendar system) because, just as in the principle of the I Ching resonance calendar, when you get twenty times closer from the 3,114 B.C.E. date to 2012 C.E., or twenty times farther away, the products and multiplicands that result are the most significant dates of the tzolkin.
McKenna provided his own interpretation of the historical symbolic similarities between the periods 1933 C.E. – 1945 C.E. and 3,114 B.C.E. – 2,294 B.C.E.: “Saying that Nazi Germany is a resonance of Pharaonic Egypt may at first sound counter-intuitive until you start thinking about it… Egypt invented the idea of the god-king leader. The word ‘pharaoh’ and the word ‘führer’ are thought by some people to have a common etymological root… The Egyptians were also the first people to really commit themselves to state-supported massive projects in the domain of tasteless architecture. This was something the Nazis were hugely into, and both used slave labor to build their massive, tasteless architectural constructions, and, amazingly enough, both leaned heavily on the Jews for this labor.”
Terence McKenna believed himself to be the first modern person to realize the similarities between the Mayan and Chinese calendar systems in the respect that both systems view the Winter’s Solstice of 2012 C.E. as significant dates, and that they both operate in fractal-logarithmic paradigms.
Notes: The outside level of the chart
depicts the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching.
The black and red graph, inside of the hexagrams level, represents the
ingression of novelty, based on the Timewave Zero charts from McKenna’s book The
Invisible Landscape. The colors in the spiral chart (the calendar) represent
the approximately 2,152½-year zodiac ages.
Post-script (written in early February 2012):
If there is any truth to McKenna's ideas, then we only have another 10 1/2 more months to use this image to make predictions; after that we can only use it to explain history symbolically in hindsight, and even so, through our own personal subjective symbolic interpretations of the relationships between historical events.
Referring to the image, we can see that the period between April and June 2012 (the time-frame during which the U.S. and Israel will be conducting joint military exercises, and - according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta - Israel may attack Iran's nuclear reactor) has a symbolic historical resonance with the period between 1967 and 1982 (the Six-Day War was in 1967, the Yom Kippur War was in 1973, and Israel's war against Lebanon was in 1982), and both of those periods share resonance with the period between (roughly the 800s BCE and 1 AD (i.e., between the establishment of the Kingdom of Judea and the end of the Second Temple Period, which ended with Roman conquest).
Referring to the image, we can see that the period between April and June 2012 (the time-frame during which the U.S. and Israel will be conducting joint military exercises, and - according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta - Israel may attack Iran's nuclear reactor) has a symbolic historical resonance with the period between 1967 and 1982 (the Six-Day War was in 1967, the Yom Kippur War was in 1973, and Israel's war against Lebanon was in 1982), and both of those periods share resonance with the period between (roughly the 800s BCE and 1 AD (i.e., between the establishment of the Kingdom of Judea and the end of the Second Temple Period, which ended with Roman conquest).
Post-Script, Written in February 2012:
If there is any truth to McKenna's ideas,
then we only have another 10 ½ more months to use McKenna’s calendar to make
predictions; after that we can only use it to explain history symbolically in
hindsight, and even so, only through our own personal subjective symbolic
interpretations of the relationships between historical events.
Referring to the image, we can see that the
period between April and June 2012 – the time-frame during which the U.S. and the
State of Israel will be conducting joint military exercises, and, according to Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta, the State of Israel may attack Iran's nuclear reactor –
has a symbolic historical resonance with the period between 1967 and 1982. The
Six-Day War was in 1967, the Yom Kippur War was in 1973, and Israel's war
against Lebanon was in 1982.
Both of those periods share resonance with
the period between roughly the 800s B.C.E. and 1 A.D.; i.e., between the establishment of the Kingdom of Judea and the end
of the Second Temple Period, which ended with Roman conquest.
Post-Script, Written in May 2015:
Upon reflection, Novelty Theory – novelty
charted in red and black on the spiral calendar image – seems to be predicated
not only upon the idea that “the only constant is change”, but also that change
is literally a mathematical constant,
that can be plotted on a graph like a mathematical function.
Post-Script, Written in January 2016:
I would like to thank Eden Sky for pointing
out the possible relationship to the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, to the 64 codons
of DNA and RNA that make up genes (codons are sequences of three DNA or RNA
nucleotides, which correspond to a specific amino acid, or stop signal, during
protein synthesis).
I would also like to thank Lucas Lin for
pointing out the similarity in appearance of the spiral calendar to the
Ouroboros, the ancient image of a snake or serpent devouring its own tail. I
would also like to thank him for pointing out the relationship of the concept
of cyclical time to the idea of the “eternal return” or “eternal recurrence” –
that the universe and events recur in a self-similar form, an infinite number
of times – which has been discussed by philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche
and Arthur Schopenhauer.
Originally Written in February 2011
Post-Scripts Written in Early February 2012, May 2015, and January 2016
Edited on January 16th and 22nd, 2016
Higher-detail spiral calendar added on June 10th, 2019
Higher-detail spiral calendar added on June 10th, 2019
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Saturday, January 29, 2011
Immigration and the Minimum Wage
The U.S. (Right) - Mexico (Left) Border
Many socialists complain that the minimum wage law is a capitalist institution. The late economist Milton Friedman, who seemed oddly caught between the worlds of Austrian economics and Keynesianism, believed that the minimum wage law is an unfair, anti-capitalist trade barrier which contributes to unemployment and poverty, and that it is biased against the young, and also against under-skilled, which, under current societal conditions, means it is effectually racist.
Friedman once said, “the minimum wage law is most properly described as a law saying employers must discriminate against people who have low skills,” and, “what you are doing is to assure that people whose skills are not sufficient to justify that kind of a wage will be unemployed”. He also said that to require employment of a person at a wage rate higher than one he deserves is to force employers to engage in charity, and that the minimum wage law’s purpose is to “reduce competition for the trade unions and make it easier for them to maintain the wages of their privileged members higher than the others”.
However, it’s not only rich, dead, white Jews like Milton Friedman who oppose the minimum wage; it is also opposed by Orphe Divounguy, a black economic student from England. Divounguy says that the minimum wage is “government intervention in the marketplace for labor,” calls it a restriction on the freedom to contract, and compares it to cutting the bottom rungs off a ladder.
It should be noted that many companies which have revenue below a certain amount and / or are confined entirely within a state, are exempt from having to pay the minimum wage.
The 1950s and the last several years of the Bush administration saw sudden, drastic increases in the minimum wage. From 2006 to 2009, the federal minimum wage increased over 40 percent from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour. Divounguy claims that it “plays a key role in creating joblessness… except when the minimum wage is below the market rate for entry-level jobs”.
Fourteen U.S. states, the vast majority of which are currently majority-Democrat, have state minimum wage laws which are higher than the federal minimum wage. Four states have lower minimum wage laws, and five states, mostly majority-Republican, have no minimum wage laws at all. The other 27 states have a minimum wage which is the same as the federal wage. This begs the question: if states can pass laws which run contrary to the federal minimum wage law, what is the point of even having this ineffective federal law in the first place?
That should cover capitalist criticism of the minimum wage law. Now, on to socialist arguments.
Earlier, I said that Milton Friedman criticized the minimum wage law. In fact, he once called it “the most anti-Negro law on the books.” It is an unfortunate problem in our country today that some of the most poor, uneducated, and disadvantaged people happen to be African-Americans and Hispanics. What is perhaps equally unfortunate is that many liberals believe that the disadvantaged do not know what is in their own best interest, and so, need to be protected and advocated for, and their own wages dictated for them by the rule of law.
The minimum wage was first established in a dozen or so of the states throughout the 1910s. In 1933, the minimum wage became a federal law, until it was found unconstitutional in 1935, but then in 1938, it was re-established under the Fair Labor Standards Act, at the rate of twenty-five cents per hour.
The condition of labor in the society of those days was that certain ethnic, national, and racial groups, as well as immigrants of different generations, tended to each have their own standards when it came to the value of their labor. When white workers would strike, employers would break strikes with blacks. When black workers would strike, employers would break strikes with Chinese or with eastern European immigrants.
Under such conditions, to enact a law which would impose a wage floor would make competition in the labor market more difficult for non-whites and non-English speakers, and easier for well-established white citizens. This is crucial to understanding why any sound socialist labor theory must reject the minimum wage.
In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx wrote, quote, “let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains; they have a world to win… working men of all countries, unite.” This quote appeals to the internationalist tendencies of socialism, which advocate simultaneous worldwide communist revolution.
This runs contrary to the social-chauvinist and vanguardist tendencies, which advocate that citizens faithful to the populist revolutionary forces within their own country should seek to overthrow that single country’s government if they are able to. The point I am trying to make is that minimum wage laws undermine worker solidarity, taking advantage of and deepening the economic class divisions between the races and ethnicities.
That should cover socialist criticisms of the minimum wage. Earlier, I mentioned that I would discuss immigration, and that two of the groups most hurt by the minimum wage law in the early 20th century were Chinese and eastern European immigrants. In an earlier video, I discussed outsourcing to India and Mexico, as well as protectionism. For those not familiar, protectionism is the imposition of a tax on foreign-made goods, commonly referred to as a tariff. George W. Bush often used the phrase “bariffs and terriers,” by which he meant, “tariffs and barriers.” This is to point out that a tariff can be an impediment to trade. Some even go so far as to label the minimum wage law a barrier to trade, calling it a tariff on labor.
For as long as I can remember, rednecks have been bitching about Mexicans stealing their jobs. To paraphrase stand-up comedian and brief 2008 presidential candidate Doug Stanhope, those rednecks are only complaining because they’re humiliated that a guy with no shoes who doesn’t even speak English yet is more qualified for their job than they are themselves. While appearing as a guest on a radio show in Britain, a caller complained to Stanhope that Polish immigrants were taking Britons’ jobs. Stanhope asked the caller what he did for a living, to which the caller replied, “I pack things in boxes,” later adding, “I’m quite good at it.”
Another important issue in America today which relates to immigration is the issue of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. A significant number of these illegals include refugees from Central America. Lately, there has been increased drug violence in towns on both sides of the border.
In this year’s State of the Union, President Obama voiced a desire to deal with, once and for all, the issue of comprehensive immigration reform. U.S. Senator from Illinois Dick Durbin is a prominent advocate of the failed DREAM Act, which stands for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors. The bill, which passed the House toward the end of the 111th congress, would provide housing and education assistance for children of illegal immigrants who attended American public schools and are in good standing with the law, and it would give them the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency upon completion of either two years of military service or two years at an institution of higher learning.
U.S. Senator from Arizona John McCain said he would only support the DREAM Act if it were coupled with legislation that would increase border security. Outspoken musician and gun rights activist Ted Nugent, who happens to not do any drugs at all, once said that border security agents should shoot any armed person coming across the border on sight, because it indicates that that person is most likely involved in drug trafficking. But Ted Nugent also believes that people should be able to have guns to protect themselves.
A border agent was recently fired for expressing the opinion that the drug war is what is causing a lot of the border violence. Being that Mexican gun laws are some of the strictest in the world, anyone caught possessing either a gun with greater fire power than a .22, possessing illegal drugs, and / or crossing the border illegally, would be in big trouble with the law.
But I, of course, believe that if anti-drug and anti-gun laws were repealed, at least, for the most part, we would see a dramatic decline in violence, especially near the border. I also believe that illegal immigrants whom are not trafficking in large amounts of dangerously addictive illicit narcotics or have tendencies towards committing acts of aggressive violence should be permitted to carry weapons while venturing across the desert, because they may encounter such violent people, and have to defend themselves and / or their family. Those people should be confronted by border security agents, have their threat level assessed based on their possessions and whether they are with their families, and then they should be promptly let go… So as you can see, I agree with Senator McCain’s proposal (wink).
Back to the minimum wage for a moment. Besides the negative impact of the minimum wage law on low-skilled immigrants, there is an even more direct comparison I would like to make between the U.S.-Mexico border and the minimum wage law. Imagine for a moment, if you would, that Oaxaca is eleven dollars an hour, Mexico City is ten dollars an hour, Ciudad Valles is nine dollars an hour, Ciudad Victoria is eight dollars an hour, Matamoros is seven dollars and twenty-six cents an hour, the U.S.-Mexico border is the minimum wage, and Brownsville, Texas is seven dollars an hour.
The minimum wage is like the U.S.-Mexico border: it is an artificial barrier created by government, causing the most dismal conditions to sidle up against one edge, and when a low-skilled Hispanic emigrant attempts to cross that barrier in order to attempt to achieve the freedom and income he deserves - despite what others tell him is in his own best interest - government must return that individual to the side of the barrier on which he does not feel it appropriate, wise, or beneficial for himself to be located.
This minimum wage cannot stand. If we agree there should be a minimum wage at all, it should be just under the going market rate for entry-level labor, and adjusted as often as that value undergoes a significant change. The federal minimum wage law undermines the authority of the states, and it drives laborers apart based on ethnicity and abilities. It is a scourge to free-market capitalism, localized communal social democracy, and the strength of the labor movement, and at its current rate, it contributes to poverty and unemployment much more than it solves either of those problems.
Liberals and libertarians both believe in liberty and equality, it’s just that they want different kinds of each of those things. Liberals want liberty for the public from the tyranny of individuals and business, and they want equality of economic outcome. Libertarians want liberty for the individual and businesses from the tyranny of the masses and the government, and they want equality of economic opportunity. So, you see, true capitalists do care about the poor. It just doesn’t look that way to the untrained eye.
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Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Iran and Israel
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
American allies Israel, Pakistan, and India. Muslim-majority Middle-Eastern countries Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Western European countries and European Union members the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Italy.
Which two of these groups are comprised of countries which have all signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – the international treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons – and which two of these groups are comprised of countries which possess nuclear weapons?
The correct answer is that American allies Israel, Pakistan, and India possess nuclear weapons but have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; Muslim-majority countries Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran do not possess nuclear weapons but have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and European Union members the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Italy do possess nuclear weapons and have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Before going any further, I will mention – as an aside – several facts.
First, North Korea signed the treaty – but withdrew in 2003 – and does not currently possess nuclear weapons. Second, American ally Taiwan has not yet signed the treaty because it is not recognized as a sovereign state, and does not currently possess nuclear weapons.
Third, Turkey has signed the treaty, and does possess nuclear weapons. Turkey, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Italy – although they are considered to be non-nuclear states – have American-made nuclear weapons stationed in their military bases.
But I digress; my primary focus here is to draw attention to the facts that the Islamic Republic of Iran does not currently possess nuclear weapons, and that it has signed the N.N.P.T., while the State of Israel does currently possess nuclear weapons, and that it has not signed the N.N.P.T..
In late January 2011 in Turkey – following a fourteen-month break in negotiations between Iran and the West – nuclear negotiations with Iran broke down as Iranian representatives swore that that country’s uranium enrichment program is solely intended for peaceful purposes, such as the production of nuclear energy. Iranian representatives asserted Iran’s national sovereignty and begged for an end to harmful sanctions imposed on it by the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations.
According to claims made in January 2011 by American representatives to the nuclear talks, Iran’s nuclear development program has slowed, and there is still plenty of time for diplomacy. According to M.O.S.S.A.D. – the State of Israel’s own intelligence agency – even if Iran is currently pursuing a nuclear weapons program, they will not be able to produce a viable nuclear bomb for another three or four years.
It has appeared in recent years as if the U.S. and the State of Israel have been attempting to provoke one another into attacking Iran first. Israel – which has the smaller military, and receives about one-and-a-half billion dollars in American military aid per year – is in the more reasonable and justifiable position to attack Iran, being within the range of Iranian missiles.
Iran’s military budget is only about one-hundredth of the size of that of the United States in proportion to their total government budgets. In terms of real numbers, America’s military budget is seventy-five times larger than Iran’s, and Israel’s military budget is nearly fifty percent larger than that of Iran. Iran’s combined active and reserve military personnel numbers nearly twice that of Israel.
What this means is that – even with the American military aid given to Israel – Israel’s military alone would not be able to defeat Iran without American military backing.
However – although the State of Israel has never publicly admitted to possessing any nuclear weapons at all, Janes Weapons Quarterly alleges that Israel currently possesses approximately eight hundred nuclear weapons. If this information is true, then the State of Israel is the world’s third strongest nuclear military power in terms of the sheer number of nuclear weapons which it possesses.
This makes the prospect of a war between Iran and Israel – in which Israel would have the smaller military in terms of active troops – all the more frightening, being that without American involvement, Israel would likely feel pressured to resort to deploying its nuclear weapons in order to defeat Iran.
In 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2006, Ahmadinejad and his country hosted the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust. Also present at the conference were Dr. David Duke – a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and a member of the Louisiana State House – and the Jewish political activist group Neturei Karta – which means “the guardians of the city”; i.e., Jerusalem – which frequently protests the actions and sovereignty of the “Jewish and democratic State” of Israel. President Ahmadinejad’s having attended the Holocaust conference has been used as evidence that he is a denier of the Holocaust.
An allegedly anti-Semitic statement which Ahmadinejad made at some point during this controversy began to be repeated by Western media outlets, which translated the statement as meaning that Iran’s president desired to “wipe Israel off the map” and to “push Israel into the sea.”
When Ahmadinejad spoke at New York City’s Columbia University in September of 2007, he was introduced by Columbia President Lee Bollinger as “a cruel and petty dictator”. During the speech, Ahmadinejad said, “there are no homosexuals in Iran”, which was received by the audience with laughter.
In late September of 2009, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and alleged Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel appeared at a public gathering in New York City to try to drum up anti-Iranian sentiment in the United States.
The Islamic Republic of Iran and its president have taken quite a bit of flack from the West and its media outlets in the last four years. The Western media seems determined to paint Ahmadinejad and his country as brutally repressive of women, homosexuals, Jews and Zionists, members of the Baha’i Faith, and political dissidents. But In President Ahmadinejad’s defense – however – I have several things to say.
First – with regards to the issue of gender – Iran has a high female employment rate as compared to other countries in the region, and its reputation as particularly oppressive of women in the context of Islam is greatly exaggerated.
Second – with regards to homosexuality – Ahmadinejad stated there are no homosexuals in Iran because homosexuality is still very much a taboo there, as it would be in any country in which nearly one hundred percent of citizens belong to one of the three major Abrahamic faiths, all of which express disdain for homosexual acts. The truth is that Iran has something of a “Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell” policy with regards to homosexuality; Iranian homosexuals tend to stay closeted for fear that they will be socially ostracized and / or have violence visited upon them. Also, the execution of homosexuals is much more rare than the Western media would have us believe, and it hardly even happens anymore.
Third – in response to Ahmadinejad’s alleged anti-Semitism, Ahmadinejad himself has stated that he “respects Jews very much”. Leaders of the Jewish activist group Neturei Karta have stated that they trust Ahmadinejad to uphold the safety and autonomy of Jewish communities throughout Iran. This is not to obscure the fact – however – that some Jews whom have left Iran felt resented by the country and pressured to flee.
Fourth – in response to Ahmadinejad’s alleged call for the destruction of the State of Israel – a speaker of Farsi who actually heard the original statement translated it as meaning that the president desired that the political ideology of Zionism – which is the support for Jewish national sovereignty – be erased from the pages of history. The translation reads thus: “this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”.
It can be difficult for us in the West to distinguish Zionism from Judaism. Not all supporters of the State of Israel are Jewish, and not all Jews – such as the members of Neturei Karta – support the State of Israel. Even the late Ayatollah Khomeini was well aware of that difference.
The truth about Jewish-Muslim relations is that – according to long-standing tenets of both Ottoman law and Jewish religious law – Jews are to have communal autonomy governed by religious courts, but sovereign statehood for the Jews is not permitted unless and until Mashiach – the Jewish Messiah – has arrived on Earth and has personally built the State.
Fifth – in response to the claim that Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust – the president has stated that what he rejects and resents about the Holocaust is the dogmatic teaching of unsubstantiated facts about it. He has stated that – with respect to the Holocaust, as with any other matter of intellectual dispute – he prefers the teaching of the controversy. It would be quite preposterous to assert that a person whom had lost relatives in the Holocaust – such as Neturei Karta spokesman Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss – would ever associate with a leader who openly denies that the Holocaust ever occurred, dispute the statistics, logistics, and exploitation of the tragedy though he may.
Sixth, some have alleged that the Baha’i Faith for which Ahmadinejad has been described as having animosity is actually a spy agency for the State of Israel, like the Anti-Defamation League and the America Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Seventh and last, Ahmadinejad oppresses political dissidents, at times even violently. But what government can be said to always refrain from violently oppressing political dissidents? Certainly none that I can think of. Under the presidency of Bill Clinton, the F.B.I. labeled pro-lifers and 2nd-Amendment advocates as potential domestic terrorists.
In short, the oppression of political dissidents and other marginalized groups in Iran is much more of a question of human rights and of U.S.-Middle East diplomacy than it is a question about good versus evil, the war on terrorism, or the spread of nuclear weapons.
But regardless of these equivocations, let’s assume for a moment that the Western media are right, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is brutally oppressive of women, homosexuals, members of other faiths, and political dissidents. If the facts are so, then we must ask: Why is Iran so sexually, religiously, and politically repressive? Certainly it’s the backwards, medieval ways of Islam in general which are to blame for this, right?
In 1953, the C.I.A. overthrew a democratically-elected, socially-progressive leader who nationalized his country’s oil reserves in order to enrich his people. That leader was Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. That year, monarch Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi – also known as the Shah of Iran – gave into the C.I.A.’s plan, issued decrees against Mossadegh and in support of the C.I.A.’s choice as prime minister, Fazlollah Zahedi.
During the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Shah was ousted, and replaced by an Islamic theocratic constitutional republic with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as Supreme Leader. It was during Khomeini’s ten-year reign that Iran became increasingly oppressive of women, gays, the Baha’i, and political dissidents. For most of Khomeini’s reign, the president of Iran was Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khamenei. After Khomeini’s death, Khamenei was appointed to succeed him as Supreme Leader.
If the C.I.A. hadn’t intervened in Iran in 1953, and overthrown their popular, socially progressive prime minister, replacing him with another prime minister who was favored by the C.I.A. and the Iranian monarchy – the system of which, I might add, had existed, alongside the position of the Shah, since the days of Cyrus the Great – then perhaps there wouldn’t have been any need for the Iranian people to hate the United States so much that an oppressive theocracy would sound like a better government than one supportive of American political and economic interests.
Perhaps if the kibbutzim – the Jewish agricultural communes in the Land of Palestine – would have remained the practically anarchistic autonomous religious settlements which they, in essence, always were, rather than to solidify into the modern, secular, sovereign Zionist State of Israel which is prohibited by long-standing precedents in Jewish religious and Ottoman law which had provided for decades of peace at a time between Jews and Muslims, then Iran would have no reason whatsoever to fund and arm Hizbullah of Lebanon, which attacks Israeli Jews – other than the provision of the perfectly legitimate means of defense and protection and of public utilities which the Lebanese living near the Israeli border so sorely need.
Two things appear clear in all this.
One is that the United States’ position towards Zionism and towards the State of Israel– especially with regard to the military foreign aid going to that country and with regard to issues of transparency surrounding its nuclear weapons program – needs to be re-evaluated if there is to be consistency in international relations between the United States, the State of Israel, and the various Middle-Eastern countries (especially Iran), as well as in religious relations between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
The other is that if you’re looking for a Middle-Eastern country which has undisclosed nuclear weapons and the ability to threaten the United States, you need look no further than the prematurely-sovereign Zionist State of Israel.
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