4/13/2023 0 Comments Music shelf magazineFor their part, they chanted in the streets of Tehran, “ Obama, are you with us or with them ?” Bush.” If only Klein could have convinced the reform movement. meddling as the Ahmadinejad supporters are–arguably more so, because they are well-educated, sophisticated people who despise the neocolonialist condescension toward Iran that marked American presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. This was all for the good, according to Obama supporters such as Time’s Joe Klein, who wrote that, “the reform movement is every bit as outraged by the history of U.S. engagement with that leader never ceased, which made meaningless Obama statements, such as “The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government,” baffling. Two months after the election fraud, and with protests still underway, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs declared of Ahmadinejad, “He’s the elected leader.” And U.S. Over the course of the last damaging year, the response grew less impressive still. This was, give or take a few more Zen-like remarks, the White House’s response to a democratic uprising in Iran. After a week’s worth of Basij truncheons and bullets were spent on Iranian protesters, the American president got before a host of television cameras and made his pronouncement of global audienceness: “The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching.” Heavy stuff–for a rock band. But it must be acknowledged that in one area, Obama was granted unprecedented opportunity, and he squandered it with comprehensive ineptitude. There has been a lot of talk about the unprecedented challenges Barack Obama faced when he took office, and this talk is largely true. In fact, the video’s advocacy of justice via webcam comes word for word from the White House. And being that they’re a rock band, the inaction of the American leadership is hardly their fault. In an entertainment industry infatuated with people like Saddam Hussein and Hugo Chavez, a rock band that calls out the Iranian leadership is, sadly, a rare gem. The Airborne Toxic Event no doubt mean well. That stomach-churning footage makes the most airtight case against Iranian tyranny we’re ever going to see. If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were going to suffer the death of a thousand YouTube hits, it would have happened last summer, when the video of Neda’s actual slaughter went viral. The world is happy to watch a lot of awful things for a very long time. The world is filming.” Therein lies the problem: revolution by audience. The “Neda” video, which consists of a hand-drawn comic-book treatment of Neda’s murder, closes with a statement: “The world is watching. All this while Iran’s democratic Green movement is nowhere to be found. As we near the first anniversary of Neda’s street-killing, Iran is on the verge of regional-superpower status, a good deal closer to building a nuclear weapon, and enjoying new alliances with old American friends. The song is a tribute to Neda Agha-Soltan, who was shot in Tehran by Iranian Basij forces during protests over Iran’s rigged presidential election almost one year ago. So make room on your music shelf–next to your copy of Songs for Tibet: The Art of Peace–for “ Neda,” the new single by Los Angeles band the Airborne Toxic Event. The true last resort in American foreign policy is consumerism. There will be no risk of action beyond the purchasing of some music files. (In fact, there are more songs protesting that phantom phenomenon than songs opposing real dangers.) When a human-rights slogan is marketed as a three-minute rhyme set to a 4/4 beat, it means the artist has confirmed that the topic is yielding a safe degree of political inattention. Pop stars don’t get behind campaigns requiring action, especially evil, American neo-imperialist, military-industrial action of the kind they’d prefer to write protest songs about. When a revolutionary cause hits the pop charts, it’s a fair indication that the cause is sunk.
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