Weekly Approximate Knowledge Digest #2
It's week two! This is happening!
Dear Subscribers,
Welcome to week two! This week, we are focusing a little on the recent conflict in the middle east. But I won’t bore you with political analysis. Instead, I hope to go deeper, to look at history, answers to some questions you might have, and some stories of people with skin in the game, so to speak.
Finally, ending on something slightly tangential to the theme, to give you some breathing space beyond the scary conflict brewing.
1. The West vs. The Persian Empire (YouTube, 13 mins):
We start at the heart of the conflict we’ve seen unfold last week. But as usual, the heart isn’t a week or so old. It goes beyond the Iranian Revolution that dethroned the Shah in 1979, beyond the Shah placed by the 1953 CIA-backed coup on a democratic Iran with Prime Minister Mosaddegh who aimed to nationalize oil at the cost of the business of western oil companies. It goes back 2000 years back to the Persian and Greek Empires of the old.
The video comes from “uncivilized”, a channel that I can HIGHLY recommend.
2. Who made Iran a Missile Superpower (YouTube, 16 mins):
Back to the present, I think I speak for quite a few amongst you when I say that I was surprised that Iran could do so much damage. Western propaganda will generally have you believe that defense systems like the Iron Dome are invincible, and we have learnt- not quite. But how did Iran build missile technology so robust?
This is a video that presents an answer that I chanced upon via the algorithm. I do not know the channel very well, but I thought the content itself was interesting.
3. At Least We Are Many: Resisting the Drums of War by Kaveh Akbar (The Nation, 7 mins):
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/iran-israel-war-protest-manufacturing-consent/
Those who have been politically conscious at the time of the Iraq war know the term “manufacturing consent”. You may have heard Noam Chomsky speak about it, or read it in articles penned by those few people with a modicum of sense in some truly insane times. For them, the playbook is clear.
This piece by Kaveh Akbar is a beautiful dance of hope and despair. Of the contrast between how insane life has become and how normal our routines still remain. Of faith, but then again, not faith. And it has my single-most favourite descriptions of the three countries embroiled in this conflict.
I strongly encourage this read.
4. Persepolis (Graphic Novel | Animated Film, 1hr 36 mins):
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808417/
There is only so much you can glean from cold-hard political analysis. People use many terms- repressive, freedom, socialism, capitalism- but as words on pieces of paper or as soundbites, they tell us very little. You learn far more from stories of real people and their lived experience. Ofcourse, you learn the most by experiencing things yourself, but you have a short life as a human being, so what can you do? (Btw, if you are in fact an immortal being instead of a human reading this, please share with me your secrets of immortality so that I may experience more in this life).
Persepolis is the story of Marjane Strapi, set in the 1980s at first and then following the author through her years of youth and adulthood. It is an emotionally powerful, dramatically enthralling autobiographical gem, and the film's simple black-and-white images are effective and bold. I strongly recommend this as a watch.
5. Did Reagan ruin everything? A deep dive into Reaganomics (YouTube, 26mins):
Ending in a slightly different topic from the theme.
Ah, Ronald Raegan. If we accept Kaveh’s characterisation of money being the god of America, then we can say that Raegan is probably the god of the Republican Party. You’ll notice that a lot of long-time conservatives in the US glorify this president as some sort of ideal, no matter how terrible his impact on the country has been.
In the critically acclaimed animated show “The Boondocks”, the first episode starts with one of the main character claiming “Ronald Raegan was the devil”, which is an opinion you will find not at odds in leftist circles. But how true is this? Nikita Redkar, who is frankly one of my favourite content creators on the internet, goes into a deep dive into Reagan’s many crimes.