War Of The Presidents Tongue

In the first century B.C. a Palestinian fisherman and Christian preacher walked into Rome. There were no documents nor pictures recording this pivotal moment in world history. In the grand plan of the Empire, he was one more anonymous and faceless ranter and nutter. At first he would be tolerated like a squeaky wheel is tolerated. When Nero would first feel his throne shifting in the great fire, the Palestinian would be taken away by the security police and crucified upside down. Then his corpse would be thrown into a common grave in the city. Such was the deserved fate of a perpetual malcontent and suspected terrorist.

Later his followers may have exhumed his bones and buried them in a shrine for martyrs. There they stayed for centuries unworthy of a second glance by the rich and powerful of Rome.

Then one morning the world woke up in a topsy-turvy revolutionary new world. At the time most people's preoccupation were their breakfasts, and a tired sigh by some that they had a new military government. The wheel of revolution would grind slowly but inexorably. Soon the little shrine of Cephas/Petra would be transformed by imperial edict of Constantine into the basilica of Saint Peter on the Vatican hill. Over these Palestinian bones would rapidly grow a corpus of Christian legends of the foundation rock and key holder of the Christian Church in heaven and on earth.

The name of this fisherman, Peter, resounds throughout the Christian ages as the symbol of masculine power and faith.

Cephas/Petra's strange history begs the question – at least to a cynic. How did those wasted bones crawl out of their stone and metamorphose into the giant Christian legend of Saint Peter the Redeemer of the Church?

One, maybe the conclusive answer is: a warlord was converted to the world-view of a man all the respectable sensible people had considered a nutter. That is most of the people.

One morning a few weeks ago, the world woke up and read some astonishing words from the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The sun outside was no different. The pre-occupations of the day did not change. But something revolutionary did happen and every day now we experience its' fall-out. We are all already all living in a new age, the Age of Iran.

When the prophet Zarathustra around three thousand years ago sat solitary in his cave and contemplated the forces of good and evil and a final judgement, he set off revolutionary thoughts that would change his Iranian people for ever. Several centuries later a Persian, Prince Cyrus would add a universal army and world empire to Zarathustra's thoughts. His Persian empire would be greeted by the peoples of the world as the liberator and peace maker. He would restore Jerusalem. His successors would conquer Egypt. The Greeks would reject its universal message and in consequence found the Hellenistic spirit. We used to call that the origin of Europe.

The Iranian people were unique in the Christian and Islamic worlds in never abandoning and forgetting their origins. In the Middle Ages, only the Christian monkdom preserved the Classical past. Among the Islamic lands, only Iran preserved an infidel memory. The great Egyptian and Babylonian Kings moulded into dust with their great works in their native lands.

But in Iran to this day the adults and their school children have always remembered their national history in its greatest triumphs and disasters since the time of Cyrus. Every Iranian adult and child can recite portions of the medieval epic poem of their ancient national history. So I have read.

Their history, as they have always understood it, is a tale of right against wrong, truth against falsehood, piety against blasphemy. When their revered leader Ayatollah Khomeini repeatedly called America the Great Satan, he meant it literally. Their revolutionary president today causes western outrage when he airily talks about westtoxification. He is quoting an Iranian intellectual of three decades ago. Again that is not a mere insult. The Iranians of all classes perceive that all facets of contemporary western culture work together and have gone toxic. They would not use the word culture and would see its common usage in the West today as itself toxic.

How and why do they perceive this? Well‼ As in the days of Cephas/Petra a world culture with its foundations in paganism and mammonism has stultified. New thoughts – let alone movements – are ruthlessly suppressed before they have any chance of reaching out to the market place. But in hidden cracks in space, free floating thoughts are circulating. Thousands are famous today for not being famous. In Cephas/Petra's time they called the hidden language demotic. No upper-class person would dream of taking notice. Today we call it cyberspace.

The western leaders dismiss it out of hand or are too afraid to enter it because it spells their doom. But in Iran their president took note and believes it.

After he became president on a conservative ticket, Reuters has recorded he attended a secret meeting at the United Nations with the foreign ministers of the U.K., Germany and France. Reuters did not specify what the foreign ministers represented. Also, oddly, Reuters reported there were five country representatives in the United Nations room. I have a strong suspicion who was the phantom country representative.

As reported by Reuters, they told the new president straight. He must play the international politics game and cease his rhetoric. The heir of Zarathustra refused point-blank.

Then he returned to his country. Suddenly on that morning, he began to spout the words that had circulated in a raging debate only in cyberspace.

He has been doing that for several weeks now. Foreign observers say he can not stop himself at nearly every public event. In a condition of pure coincidence, the issue of nuclear power for Iran that had been lying fallow has suddenly soared to maniac proportions. The American military machine has leaked plans that it will, unless the president behaves, attack Iran in March. If the planned destruction of the nuclear plants is successful that will release a cloud of radioactivity over the region. It will also release a Muslim explosion everywhere in the world.

The movement of Cephas/Petra struck a secret chord in the hearts of the common people of the empire because it spoke words that seemed real to them. Every non-Roman dreaded the act of crucifixion. No upper-class Roman thought to make any more than vague allusions to it. The world of the gospels suddenly opens the light upon the non-slave-owning mass population of the empire.

Today in cyberspace the initiated read about a recognisable world. They can no longer find it in the corporate controlled media.

The word Iran means literally the Aryan nation. Its' people are of Indo-European descent in a Semitic sea. Until the end of World War Two, Aryanism was a fashionable and popular movement among all Indo-European descendants.

Its European form celebrated the alpha-warrior and economic freedom. It ended in the catastrophe of World War Two. In cyberspace it is making a surging come back. Any other manifestation is as yet instantly expunged by the security police and media.

In the 1920s the dynamic Shah of Persia changed his country's name to Iran to reflect his world power ambitions. He was quickly snuffed out by the allies. In 1943 the three victor leaders of World War Two met in allied occupied Tehran to shape the post world war.

That post-war world has held into the present day. It has its ideology of allied good triumphing against evil and once even had a liberal idealism.

Now in Tehran the president turns the western ranters and nutters into a basilica over their bones.

The toxic West is not afraid of the nuclear power-plants in Iran. They are no menace to anyone unless of course they are attacked. The toxic West wants to cut off the tongue of its president.

We, the inhabitants of the world, can only watch and pray. The Western war machine is out to attack and destroy the Iranian president as if this were 1946 not 2006. It is a time warp but in one way it is right.

The western leadership feels it must at all cost protect its history of World War Two. Its new name in the New World Order has been quietly propagated, "The Good War". Lose that and their last tattered majesty and legitimacy is lost.

But I frantically hope there is a wild card. The middle ranks of the "war against terror" must feel their war is going to hell. On their own timetable it should have ended in total victory in 2005, as the American war ended in 1945. If they are like their toxic culture, their value of history does not extend to last year, let alone 1945. Is a point being reached where mutterings are manifesting into subversive meetings? Unlike their masters I suspect they take American honour, or at least their military honour, seriously. At L.A. airport when I was there this year, hard-boiled Americans applauded and shook the hands of their very handsome young military officers.

In wars of political ambiguity, professional soldiers have a history of keeping their heads down and taking orders. But there are also many precedents, that soldiers will rebel if they think the alternative is national catastrophe. If the U.S. military attacks Iran, the present U.S. system will be destroyed.

We, the world, can only watch and marvel. The history of the world has gone full circle from Zarathustra meditating in his cave to the Iranian president ranting to a receptive world audience.