bahmani

Whether you agree with Hamid Dabashi and consider the Green movement merely an expression of the budding civil rights movement in Iran, or like everyone else it seems, think it was an outright revolution ruthlessly and unfairly put down by the government, what I think we can all agree on in general stupification is, "Uh, where the hell did everybody go?"

While the Middle East is literally in the middle of a veritable Burning Man festival of revolt, with the sheer pleasure and delight of overthrowing even the most vaguely defined "dictatorships", you'd think that the "youth" that are supposed to be so inspiring to us old folks, would be mildly inspired by this and now that literally everyone in the world is on their side for a change, once again try their hand at unseating or at least unsettling one of the worst examples of mis-applied civil governance, ever hatched by what we most surely can now all agree to very loosely call, men.

Nothing but nothing echoes from the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities, once eternally aflame and inflamed and indignant at the audacity of those Oh so faghih velayats and their crazy ways of counting Presidential votes.

Meanwhile the world watches in shock and awe as the Youth in Egypt tidy up after themselves, and pick up trash in Tahrir square, while Libyan rebels use nothing more than a Yoda-less Force and a Soviet-to-Arabic dictionary to decipher the instructions to the missile systems and tanks left behind by the Empire, to Syrian university students killed by the hundreds, fire returned in answer to hurled rocks.

And then there's Bahrain. But aside from Bahrain, which I hope by the time I'm done with this, I can say anything worthwhile about Bahrain, but won't promise, there's Yemen. Yemen, the only country that has less than a mere 14 years of oil left in her tank, before every Yemeni will have to move out. Because other than 14 years of relatively bad quality oil, there's really not much to write about Yemen. Yemen can't even fish for a living.

But strangely, no Iranian Green movement, actually no Iranian movement, actually no movement whatsoever. Maybe like LA this year Sizdah-Bedar in Iran was actually sunny for once, and maybe everyone is spent lying around with full bellies of food. NoRooz can be exhausting if you don't pace yourself. NowRuz though, is a no brainer.

Or maybe the 2009 movement which we must thank FaceBook and Twitter for creating, has stalled this time, because everyone in Iran is preparing for a really good one, just as soon as they install, upgrade, and finish decorating their profiles. Curse you Zuckerberg!

But strangest of all is the seeming muted indifference that is strangely present here, of all places! I haven't read anything about the curious absence of any Iranian protests on Iranian streets.

Did they win? Did we lose? Should I stay? Or should I go?

Not even the pre-condemned, Moussavi and Karroubi or as I like to call them, "Jesus Christ and the Holy Goat", have uttered a word of rah rah defiance.

There is that seminal favorite moment in a really really good party, with good drinks, good looking people, good music, and good food, when you look around, and suddenly realize, that every single person, including and especially you, is totally in a punch drunk love.

God how I wish we could all feel that now.

All I could find was that Bahrain is an Archipelago, and to that I say, Gesundheit!