In article <vFnUe.2714$Q%2.1252@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Stephen Glynn
<stephen.glynn@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes
>banana wrote:
>> In article <0xiUe.2648$Q%2.754@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Stephen Glynn
>> <stephen.glynn@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes
>>
>>>banana wrote:
>>>
>>>>You know how in the past 5 years, Islam has been increasingly
demonised
>>>>by the controllers of the West? You know how it's reached a point
where
>>>>Muslims who oppose BOTH Hollywood AND the Saudi 'royal' family are
>>>>called 'Islamists' and 'extremist Muslims'? Or in other words, they
are
>>>>called 'very Muslim', or 'Muslim to a far more than tolerable degree'?
>>>>
>>>>Well I wondered whether the following article in the 'Guardian' might
be
>>>>an early shot in a propaganda campaign focusing on the Persian empire,
>>>>as part of a cultural change sup****ting an invasion of Iran.
>>>
>>><snip>
>>>
>>>Alternatively, the article might just be a rather garbled rehearsal of
>>>the theme of Edward Said's classic work,'Orientalism', in which he
>>>traces the way 'the East' was formed in Western discourse from the
>>>Greeks onwards.
>>
>>
>> I don't think that's an 'alternatively'. Jones comes out with the kind
>> of stuff that Said laid into. 'Orientalism' is doubtless alive and well
>> in the Brit foreign service.
>>
>> There is no 'west from the Greeks onwards', but that's another point.
>I thought he was explaining that, since the Greeks onwards, the Persians
>have always been the baddies in European thought
Thanks for the précis, but when do you think 'European thought' was
invented?
As with every nationalism - and it does involve a kind of nationalism -
its purveyors love to present it as dating back donkey's years, before
the dawn of recorded time if they can get away with it. 'It was ever
thus'.
Jonathan Jones's article is as interesting for what he left out as for
what he left in. Such as the Babylonian captivity of the Jews of Judah
and its end when Persian forces overthrew Babylon. And the influence of
Persian culture on Greece.
>because we've taken our
>version of from the Greeks, who, like the Romans,
Would that be slaves or slave-owners?
>had major problems with the Persian Empire;
Note how the fairly close linguistic relation****p between Persian and
Greek is normally downplayed or ignored in western propaganda material.
Or should I call it 'westernist'?
For a useful book, see Fredy Perlman's 'Against His-Story! Against
Leviathan', which I hope someone puts onto the web some time.
ISBN 0934868255.
>this is one reason that the exhibition's
>interesting, since it's a rare op****tunity to see all these ancient
>Persian exhibits, and thus the Persian Empire's account of itself minus
>hostile Greek mediation, without having to visit Iran.
>
>He goes on to say he prefers ancient Greek art to ancient Persian, which
> I don't think is particularly surprising since most of our aesthetics
>since the Renaissance derive from Greek rather than Persian examples,
>but there you go.
The whole idea of a 'west' starting with Greek slave-owning society and
coming through all the way to, say, NATO, Oxbridge, Hollywood, Chatham
House, or the Pentagon, or tee-****rts, parliamentary cretinism, and
under-arm deodorants, without any help from south or east of the
Mediterranean, is a lie.
--
banana "The thing I hate about you, Rowntree, is the way you
give Coca-Cola to your s***, and your best teddy-bear to
Oxfam, and expect us to lick your frigid fingers for the
rest of your frigid life." (Mick Travis, 'If...', 1968)
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