> Why stop there? Why not go back to when the Greeks made Darius mad and started the Greco-Persian wars?
People often ask these questions as if they're unanswerable or as if any answer would essentially be arbitrary.
What you need to do is look at contemporary global systems of inequality and consider their roots. For this it would seem British imperialism is often a sensible place to go to, in this case almost certainly.
That seems like a different kind of criticism, one that unfairly singles out the United Kingdom and ignores the global systems of inequality and injustice that were instantiated by broader colonial powers and conflict, whether that's the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, or Persian, for that matter.
We're not talking about global systems or inequality which have innumerable reasons, but talking about Iran and their specific bad behavior and how authoritarian governments point to random historical injustices to justify their own repression.
> one that unfairly singles out the United Kingdom and ignores the global systems of inequality
The UK was spoken of in the particular because of its long and violent history in Iran. We could point to any number of things like Anglo-Persian oil, the 1941 occupation or the 1953 which was previously mentioned.
Countries like Portugal and the Netherlands simply don't have that history in the Iranian context. Of course if we were speaking about somewhere like Indonesia then we would foreground other colonial powers.
There is also of course much that should be said about broader colonial history but the question above was why do we bring up British wrongdoing rather than ancient Persian history.
> but talking about Iran and their specific bad behavior
"Bad behaviour" is your terminology. We're talking about why they have sanctions imposed on them.
> and how authoritarian governments point to random historical injustices to justify their own repression.
No-one else was talking about this but you, and it feels like it was only raised in an attempt to undermine genuine concerns about legacy issues.
> The UK was spoken of in the particular because ...
> Countries like Portugal and the Netherlands simply don't have that history ...
Totally fair! But then you (or whoever made the point) can't drag in the US and Vietnam war or World War II into this and drum up some random body count and try to use that as a main point, nor can you bring up "global systems of inequality" and simultaneously try to limit additional discussion around an Iran context when we start talking about, well, global inequality and how other countries are huge contributors to that.
> "Bad behaviour" is your terminology. We're talking about why they have sanctions imposed on them.
I'm not following the distinction here. The reasons sanctions are imposed on them is because of their bad behavior. They're killing people in the region, trying to build nuclear weapons which we won't tolerate, and have been building up this capability to hold global oil supply hostage less they have some concessions that they want.
> No-one else was talking about this but you, and it feels like it was only raised in an attempt to undermine genuine concerns about legacy issues.
We're not speaking about historical facts for the sake of historical facts. You and others are speaking about why Iran is justified in some action, so it's fair to point out how those facts are weaponized.
Since you are doing that, it's fair game to also explain how those past injustices (which themselves are complicated and nuanced in ways that nobody here is discussing) are used by Iran and other authoritarian regimes to create external enemies to maintain power. This is extremely well understood.
> But I'm very prone to learn things by understanding first principles and building from there.
I'm the same but never had an issue with music theory, because I came to it backwards from just playing. I learned to play by having fun with the instrument, and then the theory I learned afterwards felt like just being given names for the things that had become obvious through playing. What I'm saying is it will click if you let the music be your first principle.
Not really a device or a service, but I'd recommend learning the names of the notes and then just tinkering around. If you notice some patterns or wonder about specific things that come up in the course of that, look it up. If your hand starts to hurt, look up what to do differently. Etc. You'll manage it quite well with that method.
Those are other benefits but the literal topic at hand--and the reason going barefoot was brought up in the first place--is to have contact with the earth.
The song lines literally are a record of what has happened to the land over these periods of times - supported by the geology itself.
The formation of islands, the kinds of animals that used to be found there, the movement of lakes, the lowering and raising of the oceans - these are all confirmed, recorded events.
The existence of "XEP-0365: Server to Server communication over STANAG 5066 ARQ" suggests military usage. Isode advertises XMPP as "The NATO Standard for instant messaging" (https://www.isode.com/secure-xmpp/) and it is one of their core offerings. I remember seeing NATO command posts using IRC long ago - makes sense because it is ultra light, and therefore usable on extremely low bitrate degraded links... XMPP seems to be the successor for that purpose.
https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/XMPP_trials says "On shortwave, you can see the military use this protocol. They are known for using MIL 188-110A Serial HF waveform (fixed 600bps/S) and 6-bit code clear text with dual bursts of STANAG 4539 and STANAG-5066 as for XMPP Multi-User Chat (MUC) messages, over a bandwidth of 34 kHz. Multi-User Chat (MUC) is a central service for military communication. [..] XMPP is widely used for military deployments, where operation over constrained and degraded networks is often essential, particularly for tactical operation"
Thanks! That was exactly the kind of "hidden usage" I was interested in as it seems to not be publicly used by a lot of people these days (As you can see by the user numbers on https://search.jabber.network/channels/1).
Reduction of modern art to abstract expressionism is the same as reduction of cinema to MCU. Acceptable for a talk over couple beers, disqualifying factor for pretend-to-be intellectuals, mainly because it is cherry-picking based on the scale of a scandal rather than genuine interest in the history of art.
No, those are not the same. You might say it's like reducing superhero movies to "superhero movies made in the last 20 years", which actually most people do, and it's mostly understandable. Maybe those people wouldn't have what you'd call a "genuine interest in the superhero genre" but who cares? They weren't trying to demonstrate that, and what they were saying didn't require it.
Most of the significant works of modern art were created before CIA was founded. The title is factually incorrect and intellectually dishonest. But "who cares" question points to something different: indeed, who cares if the knowledge acquired by the reader will be shallow and misleading? I do care. You may not. It's a matter of attitude. People are free to choose their chewing gum, right?
Yes, perhaps you're right. I think people think of "banana nailed to wall" as the outcome of modern art, and that I think is more recent. But there are works older than the CIA that look younger than it, such as Kandinski, and perhaps that is indeed misleading.
Not really absurd. That scene nearly dominated the art scene in the post war / cold war period, and for layman casual uses (and even for several critic treatments), it was almost synonymous with modern fine art in general (not "modernist" art, modern, as in contemporary).
The only thing where "American" art scene dominated was the auction space. And significant part of it was imported from Europe (no tariffs applied) and continued to feed from there later. The rest of the world lived it's own life.
It's not just about the "American art scene". Western European artists in the same "genre" also got funded in similar ways.
>The rest of the world lived it's own life.
Perhaps, but this is not about what happened in Mongolian or Indonesian art scenes, but mostly focused on the cold war theater of US and Western Europe.
First of all, what "genre"? I assume, abstract expressionism?
Second, why would anyone fund specifically abstract expressionism and for what purpose given the diversity of art movements of that time?
Third, what do you even know about contemporary art of Europe to make such bold claims?
Yes, abstract expressionism, but also other mostly US-led scenes like pop art to a degree.
>Second, why would anyone fund specifically abstract expressionism and for what purpose given the diversity of art movements of that time?
It had a US lead at the time, easier to explain US institutions promoting and do cross-continent exchanges and sponsorships, and conveniently apolitical compared to other art movements of the time.
>Third, what do you even know about contemporary art of Europe to make such bold claims?
Quite a lot, being from here, and familiar with both their history and the relevant literature.
A hardly a bold claim at all, it has been studied and reported in books such as "The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters" (The New Press), "How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War" (University of Chicago Press), "Pollock and After: The Critical Debate" (Harper Collins) and others, and of course the topic of TFA.
So, on the question about your knowledge of European contemporary art you reply with the list of books about American art history, written and published in USA for American reader. Ok.
We're discussing the role of CIA, an American organization, in the Cold War era promotion of abstract expressionism ("modern art"). The books cover that, and have references to both the US and European side, artists and institutions.
The first book, which is also the canonical one on the subject, is not "written and published in USA for American reader". It's a book by a British historian, first published in the late 90s in Britain, then republished in the US (and all over Europe, there's German, French, Spanish etc versions).
The second book explicitly concerns the transition of power in the art scene and the interplay between Europe and the US in the same cold war period.
The third is broken in different essays, including one explicitly on "Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War", and how it was used internationally.
All three are academic books, not some fringe conspiracy theories.
And these books, and others, have been translated, read, and discussed in Europe. I've read them, and hundred more on European 20th century art, which is besides the point, as most of the others are off topic, we're not discussing say Dada or Cubism or Arte Povera here, but something specific.
Anything to contribute besides being ad-hominem, wrong, and rude?
People often ask these questions as if they're unanswerable or as if any answer would essentially be arbitrary.
What you need to do is look at contemporary global systems of inequality and consider their roots. For this it would seem British imperialism is often a sensible place to go to, in this case almost certainly.