the bongobundos

Offside(s)

"They won't let you in", said Jafar Panahi to his daughter when she asked to accompany him to a soccer game in Tehran. And they didn't let her in, as expected, though she managed to sneak in the stadium and enjoyed the game sitting side by side with her father. "Girls have their own ways", was the girl's answer when her father asked how.

This anecdote was the starting point for the movie Offside, or at least this is what Jafar Panahi said last Wednesday, when presenting his film in the 44th International Film Festival in Gijón, speaking in such a melodic Persian that Amir would have felt proud of him.

Offside is delightfully fresh, maybe even too fresh, too hopeful; one almost tends to believe things are not so terribly twisted in Iran after all. But of course one cannot be so naive so as to not read between lines.

Even though the movie tries to discuss the reasons why girls should or should not be allowed in soccer stadiums in Iran, there is an absolute -amazing- absence of religion all over; just a shy show of a girl covering herself up with a chador before the old father of a friend of hers and the picture of a sinister captain, bearded and dressed in a black suit, remind us that Iran is in fact a religious regime.

But beyond political or even filmic considerations what impressed me above all in the movie was the tender portray Panahi makes of, how to say this, the Iranian way of being, or their education; as the beyond-the-line respect that boys show to girls, almost fearful; or the very peculiar mixture of deference and disdain of youngsters towards their elder; or the Iranian almost romantic sensibility.

I also identified some characteristics that I have always thought as Arabic, or Mediterranean (but please correct me as much as you please), like the noisy and disorganized fights and discussions, the very joy of argumentation, or even that Tehrani accent of some of the girls which, to me, sounded very much like Egyptian Arab.

No matter what, it was like being with Alex and Amir once again for a little while, and I really enjoyed that. And the film is very good anyway -it won't be no surprise if it gets the prize!

Just an addenda for route-mappers: girls are taking on the fight of social change in Iran; in this, boys are far behind (and I'm not talking about centimeters...).

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LAST NEWS: PREMIO PRINCIPADO DE ASTURIAS (INTERNATIONAL JURY) FOR BEST FEATURE FILM GOES TO...

“Sehnsucht (Longing)”, a German love story that I didn't get to watch, by Valeska Grisebach (well, if it does not go to Iran, it is fair enough that it goes to Germany).

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE: YOUNG JURY PRIZE FOR BEST FEATURE FILM GOES TO...

"Offside"!!!! Oléee!!! (this jury is formed by fifty locals of ages ranging from 18 to 35 years old).

BUT THERE IS STILL MORE:

- THE PRIZE FOR BEST DIRECTOR WAS SHARED BY Mahamat Saleh Haroun for "Daratt" (a fucking beautiful piece of hard to swallow art) AND Maziar Miri for "Be Ahestegi... (Gradually)" (shame on me I couldn't see this one nor Bahman Ghobadi's "Half Moon").

- PRIZE FOR BEST ACTRESS WAS SHARED BY... the girls of "Offside"! (Shima Mobarak-Shahi, Shayesteh Irani, Ayda Sadeqi, Golnaz Farmani and Mahnat Zabihi)

Well, there were some other prizes as well (by the way, the US also got their part, receiving quite a few prizes for "Shortbus", by Jody Asnes); you can check them all out here.

Well, all in all, the Iranian presence in the festival was definitely not unnoticed...

The Stupidity Trap

Europeans tend to fall to the trap of reducing US foreign policies to stupidity. The trap is well planned though. Placing an amazingly stupid guy as president of the US is just one of those well thought of smoke-walls (or maybe just a happy-coincidence), through which the anger of any seeming stupid or nonsensical US action will be redirected towards the impersonation of leadership -as it is actually happening, all over the world; in fact it is under this scope that the victory claims of the religious Iranian leader after the defeat of Republicans in the US Senate and House elections can be understood.

But the stupidity trap hides uglier facts. The US has planned and taken into action a self-attack in order to prevail. The country has done it before. In 1898 the sinking of the USS Maine was used as a catalyst in order to (counter) attack Spain and overtake Cuba. In 1941 US allowed the attack against Pearl Harbor through the concealment of Japan's war declaration, which served US people as a catalyst with which to courageously undertake the hardships of the second world war.

The US has proved its capability to undertake whatever sacrifice necessary in order to fairly accomplish its objectives. Thus, it would be naive to accept as stupid the seeming nonsense, poor planning and lack of analysis of short term consequences after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The superficial chaos and counterproductivity of US measures (rise of anti-Americanism -specially in the Arab world-, increase of terror attacks and blind violence, increase of opium production in Afghanistan, rise of political and religious chaos in the Middle East, etc, etc...) can barely hide the middle and long term benefits of precisely such consequences; to lead a 'world war on terror'.

The benefits of such world lead are enormous; from economical to political, from strategic to philosophical. The imposition of a narrow definition of justice is just an example of superficial nonsense and basic benefit-seeking politics derived from this lead: justice is what the US and its allies do. For most Americans this is just proof of their taken-for-granted world leadership. For the Arab world, caught in the nonsense of seeing their own actions pointed out as 'terrorism' while those similar actions are defined as fair or just when committed by US allies, this is a concept that encourages the animosity against the US, thus further -circularly- justifying this 'world war', while obliging those who want to escape American animosity to align on the side -or on the back- of the US.

And of course the starting point of this advantaging position of the US is the new-Pearl-Harbor, the catalyzing 9/11 attack. Coincidence? Probably not. Such an attack could not and does not have any benefit at all for the supposed perpetrators while the fact is that the killing of American people in the Twin Towers, as well as in Afghanistan and Iraq, serves US interests (or at least it serves the US world wide economic leadership, and so, indirectly, it serves the American people as well).

But this is just cheap talk. The question, of course, is whether or not we appreciate so much our values and privileges so as to defect them... in order to protect them. Or is there any other way?

Hope so, for if not, we are fucked.

Excerpts from Jeff Wells, The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11:

On May 8, 2001, Dick Cheney took upon himself the job of co-ordinating a response to domestic terror attacks even as he was crafting the administration’s energy policy, circumventing the established infrastructure and ignoring the recommendations of the Hart-Rudman report.

The standing order which covered the shooting down of hijacked aircraft was altered on June 1, 2001, taking discretion away from field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense (the order was rapidly revoked after the attack).

That influential figures in and close to the Bush White House had expressed, just a year before the attacks, the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" before their militarist ambitions could be fulfilled or that George Bush's brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines, are probably just coincidences.

As coincidence is that State Department veteran of the Jeddah visa bureau, Michael Springman, claimed that the CIA issued visas to al-Qaeda members so that they could receive training in the US.

Just coincidences.

Buenos Aires

No Comments

(hit this for more pictures)

Argentina

Always tripping, chthonian vice.

Girondo would say:

Ay mi más mimo mío
mi bisvidita te ando
sí toda
así
te tato y topo tumbo y te arpo
y libo y libo tu halo

Buenos Aires tripping, brotherito wed.

Latin American

Hispanic vs. Latin American Identity

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Please, do read Carla’s post and Alex’ reply before going through this entry.

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Your discussion on Davis and Huntington's intromission into the definition of Latin America is very, very interesting and yet, more than falling for linguistic tricks, the main issue here is probably the identity trap towards which both writers, as well as a good part of the American society, seem to be pushing Latin Americans.

The American bunch that Huntington actually represents intend to differentiate, racially, the Caucasian U.S. citizens, treated here as the original core of the nation, from other races, explicitly or implicitly pointed out as aliens.

It is as such that the term Hispanic is coined out, precisely for the census, so as to bring a racial definition of the American-Indian/European mestizos of South America. In fact I wholeheartedly disagree with both of you if you do believe that most U.S. citizens -other than Latin Americans- would include Spaniards as Hispanics instead of as European Caucasians (well, take away those Americans who think Spain is somewhere close to Mexico...).

The Spanish speaking community might feel tempted to translate Hispanic as a linguistic description of a people but the fact is that it is not so for most English speaking Americans. Even the Spanish word Hispano does resonate as clearly American and not as European or Spanish related -no matter its etymology here. Only translating Hispanic as “Comunidad Hispana” (Spanish Speaking Community) could we be able to include Spain in the lot and yet this does not seem to be Davis’ intention.

The aim is to confound, thus using the same word with two different meanings; Hispanic meaning the “Spanish speaking community” for Latin Americans, while the same word is understood just as a racial description of Latins for those who do not speak Spanish. Latin Americans will tend to use this seeming neutral term, Hispanic, while feeling hesitant or even embarrassed to describe themselves as Latinos. Latin identity is thus tightened, menaced inadvertently by those who should protect their own heritage, while the spread of use of ‘Hispanic’ contributes to a further confusion and segregation of Latin Americans in the U.S..

Davis' problem with the term Latin American comes from this being a cultural definition; a lax, hardly describable identity with no racial or even linguistic frontiers, that grows as a shared feeling of pride and 'belonging'; as such it can hardly be used as a differentiating factor, for this identity is not exclusive, as Carla points out, and can easily be made to fit and be shared with other identities such as being a U.S. citizen for instance.

On the other hand being Hispanic is obviously more gringo-friendly for this (racial) group can immediately and easily be excluded from the privileged elite of white Caucasians and their inherited and 'well-earned' rights; while Latin Americans can -scarily enough- claim to be wholly Americans, Hispanics, as obvious aliens, cannot.

Once racial boundaries have been more clearly set, imposing the term 'Hispanic' over the wider one 'Latin American', Davis and the like accept as a matter of fact that the Hispanic race they have come to define do share the Spanish language, which is an over simplification after all (or maybe not; I wonder if Davis does include Brazilians among Hispanics). In any case this just looks like one step further towards diminishing or narrowing the Latin American original definition.

No matter what, it is fear which seems to lie at the bottom of Davis and Huntington's racial and linguistic reduction of the Latin American identity and its ever empowering influence in the U.S.; the fear of white (Protestant) Caucasians losing the privileges they have come to assume as a-matter-of-fact in North America.

It is from this point of view that the intent to marginalize the Spanish language in the U.S. can be understood as a wider attempt to do away with Latin American identity, so frightening for Davis and Huntington's gang not only within U.S. boundaries but also on the wider picture of an international ground.

World Champs!

Just too bad we couldn't blast US on this World Championship final, but well, we had to do away with Greece. We had played the real final before anyway, against Argentina; what a game!

I have kept cautiosly silent about the whole tournament this time, a bit afraid of becoming a bad luck token or something after the disastrous experience at the World Cup... and it seems to have worked out well (just in case I have decided not to write anything about the peace process in Lebanon either, and scarily enough it seems to work as well).

But for today we are the World Champs, baby!

Yes, Spain is Different... and we've got the Gold!

PS FELICIDADES BRO!!

Rocky Horror

This one is for Alf: the Bun-O-Vision parody of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at angryalien.com! (just in case you happen to fall around here -and just in case a parody of the Rocky Horror could ever be made).

Daad and the Friendly Stance

It was just days before the 9/11 attack that Amir, circling the concept of Justice, wrote and posted this article that I find, curiously enough, quite interesting to re-read right now.

Friendly Stance

By Amir
August 20, 2001
The Iranian

http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2001/August/Israel3/

What goes on along that Mediterranean coastline, is far from toping the list of Iran's most important national priorities. Israel is not a threat to the national interests of Iran. But I would even go further: a friendship with Israel could benefit the national interests of Iran in real terms.

A friendly stance towards the Israelis would not only buy lobbying power and influence for Iranian interests in Washington, but as the most advanced technological country in the region, open trade and relations with Israel might score Iran further technological know-how, such as desert irrigation and agricultural developments.

Iranian culture and history has forever been connected with the Israelites going back to ancient times. As Semitic friends, they are the better and older allies than Arabs could ever be.

The problem, however, is that whereas the relationship between the Jews and the Iranians (Mede-Persians,) has always been cordial and based on mutual respect and deference to one another's religions, the relationship we have had with their Semitic cousins, the Arabs, has been one dominated by master-servant narratives and feelings.

There are many Iranians who not only have Arab prejudices brought on in terms of blood and religion, (many Iranians for instance consider themselves direct descendents of Arab tribes of old,) but also have not been spared the general anti-Jewish propaganda that is accepted the world over (overtly or covertly).

These latter prejudices are in many instances nothing more than an intensification of xenophobia and fear of the intelligent "Other", mostly propagated by, but not limited to, the Europeans who confronted the migrating Jews as a multi-national threat to their own isolationist stances at the outset of their nation-buildings.

Having said all that, let me say the following: the Israelis by no means enjoy the moral or ethical right in terms of their conflict with their neighbors. As a matter of fact, their nation-building efforts in the past fifty years is proof that they are not in possession of any moral high ground despite the troubles Jews -- as a people -- encountered in Europe and elsewhere.

Israelis have simply repeated the cycle of abuse and have treated the "Other" in the same way they themselves were treated as the "Other". Therefore they have shown that they have no moral superiority over anyone else, and have given real force to the post-Nazi German claim: "This could happen anywhere."

However, as Iranians our most pressing national issues are not correcting the world's wrongs, by marching of our armies, or by all encompassing moral declarations. Rather, our primary objectives should be dealing with troubles in Iran. Positions should be taken as a result of dialogue, not one of active disengagement or animosity based on already-decided factors.

It is along the same logical vein that the European powers have chosen to engage the government of Iran, rather than punishing its population for its government's transgressions -- through imposition of sanctions and such.

It is through trying to learn about each other's history and personal stories that we might come close to standing under the weight of each others' problems and only then can we attempt to break the age-old cycles. No one has a monopoly on truth.

In the end, if there is to be a resolution to any conflict, it cannot come about by perpetuation of anger, hurt and violence. It is most important to give force to the Persian word "daad" not only in terms of exclaiming -- and listening to -- its "call", but also in terms of seeing the "giving" in it. Only then can we come close to its higher meaning: "justice".

Eli

Elisa is going to start studying medicine this year; she has just been accepted by Oviedo's University (poor guys, don't know what they have just done).

On my behalf I must say I did not have anything to do, whatsoever, with her decision. On her behalf... well, I don't have much to say about that. She is happy though.

Lebanon

Six days since Israel started bombing Lebanon.

Read Ghazi Baki's report at Offsides-Abseits.