iran
10 Nov 2009
Fight Or Flight In Iran
During travels in Iran, Gabby Haynes found many young Iranians who were struggling with the decision to stay and protest a restrictive regime, or leave Iran to pursue their dreams elsewhere
When news broke of large protests in Iran following the announcement of election results in June of this year, Western viewers anticipated a revolution to echo the deposition of the Shah in 1979. This was perhaps a logical scenario to expect from outside the country; Iranians had rebelled against oppression once, so they surely would again. Yet, within Iran's borders, a belief in neat solutions and simple divisions is difficult to maintain. Those who oppose Ahmadinejad continue to live their day-to-day life in a country about which they feel compelling passion and unending frustration. There is, particularly for young people, constant conflict between politics and everyday life, public and private, personal and collective.
The protests that accompanied last week's anniversary of the occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran illustrated the continuing fervour of two sides in Iranian politics. Until that day, the pro-Mousavi "green" movement had last shown their faces on Qods Day in September. Despite the peaks and troughs of a physical presence on the streets, restlessness persists among the greens.
During my travels through the country last month, I was approached by English speaking teachers, students and tourism operators who were eager to express their differences with the current government. Many young Iranians who come into contact with Westerners see it as a chance to show a wide audience that support for the current regime is by no means comprehensive.
In a café in Tehran, a student who had protested alongside his peers in the post-election protests spoke about the movement with a mixture of nostalgia and resignation. He confessed that recently he couldn't bring himself to check his email because the political debate was so intense and overwhelming; a result of the combination of extreme passion and fading hope as sentences were handed down to protesters and reports of violent retaliation circulated.
He had lived overseas and been lucky enough to gain citizenship in a safe Western country, yet escape had not been a simple matter of visas. Overseas, he had felt isolated, misunderstood and far away from his family. Despite having an easy option to withdraw from the political confusion, these days he prioritised his family ties in Iran and sought a sense of freedom through his activism. As he understood it, his decision to engage with Iran and all its problems would not necessarily bring benefits in his lifetime, and even at the age of 27, he seemed resigned about this. "A lot of my friends are starting to study education," he said. "Maybe change will come if we engage with the next generation."
In the 2007 film Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi remembers her life as a teenager living under the newly established Islamic regime. Despite the hope brought by the revolution, "Marji" and her family are disappointed by the increasing restrictions imposed by the regime and the young woman shows her rebellion in small but significant ways. Fearing for her safety, her parents encourage her to study in Vienna, Austria, but her migration brings loneliness, isolation and ultimately, depression. Unable to relate to the superficiality of her adopted society and made to feel ashamed of being Iranian, she returns to Iran.
On a plane between Shiraz and Tehran, I sat next to a young teacher who immediately began a light-hearted conversation about travel and where I was from. It didn't take long for the conversation to steer towards politics, and waving around her mobile phone complete with Mousavi as a background photo, she talked openly about her own struggle between fight and flight.
For her, the experience of joining the "greens" had been overwhelmingly positive and she described the Qods day march as "beautiful". "It was such a nice feeling", she said, for the political and the personal to be brought together in a way that is often not allowed in Iran. For many young Tehranis, privacy might provide the opportunity to remove the headscarf, gather with friends, and listen to music. During the protests, however, the private world had been brought out into the open and friends were able to openly declare their hopes and appear in public with like-minded people.
The teacher ventured that it was fateful we had met — she and her husband had been applying for citizenship in Australia. But despite various concerted attempts to move out of Iran to other countries without success, her involvement with the protests had nurtured conflicting feelings about leaving the country, because, as she put it, "if all of the people who think differently leave, there'll never be any change". Her point was significant in a country where the International Monetary Fund has estimated around 150,000 people leave to pursue professional and educational opportunities abroad each year.
In Persepolis, although Marji's time abroad brings isolation, her return does not provide resolution. She realises the country has become more restrictive in her absence. In a perfect metaphor for the confusing intersection of the personal and the political, her feelings of depression about the state of politics are misdiagnosed as a nervous breakdown. Unfortunately a simple diagnosis can't resolve this very complex dilemma, for Marji or for the many young Iranians still facing it.
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Just more grist to the propaganda mill. As Chomsky and Herman, and numerous others, have shown, in Western societies the range of acceptable opinion is amazingly narrow. Therefore the Rightwing media joined, as a bloc, with the campaign of hatred and disinformation aimed at Iran during its Presidential election. The attempted ‘colour revolution’ was straight from the text-book we have seen in action in China in 1989, in Georgia, Serbia and Ukraine. Yet, amazingly, the Rightwing stalwarts of the risibly misnamed ‘Free Press’ have suffered yet another of their incessant attacks of collective amnesia.
On the web it is easy enough to learn that Ahmadinejad, whatever one thinks of him, received the same percentage of the vote as was predicted by independent pre-election opinion polls. Talk of excess votes in certain districts was rubbish, as these were holiday spots with a seasonal population. The early results were because it was a single poll alone, and there are tens of thousands of polling places, with an average 800 votes to be counted in each. Counting was conducted by local teachers and the like with scrutineers from both sides, and no concrete evidence of fraud was ever produced.None of this appeared in the ‘mainstream media’, again illustrating its essentially propagandistic nature. Instead the Rightwing media relied on the same UK and US sources who lied through their teeth over Saddam’s ‘WMD’.
The so-called ‘Twitter’ revolution was simply a new tactic of the ‘regime change’ colour revolutionaries. It was early reported that the vast bulk of the so-called Iranian ‘tweets’ actually came from -can you imagine it- Israel, and the Twitter system was kept on-line instead of undergoing a routine maintenance, at US Government insistence. Once again facts suppressed by the propaganda system.
Iran is the next target in the Israeli plan to re-shape the Middle East to ensure its eternal hegemony. It is endlessly lied about, vilified and demonised. The opinions of the disaffected elite of Tehran, who wish a Western life-style, are treated as if they are the sole opinion in the country. The opinions of Ahmadinejad’s supporters, the poor and the rural dwellers, are treated with the contempt that the Right always manifests for the global ‘losers’. If Ms Haynes and her ilk have their way, there will be a counter-revolution, or a foreign attack on Iran, followed by civil strife in the fashion of Iraq, with millions of casualties and the destruction of the country and its cultural heritage. Already the US, UK and Israel are spending billions on destabilisation and support of terrorists like Jundallah and the MEK to overthrow a semi-democratic regime not to their liking. Which role model does Ms Haynes suggest for a puppet Iranian regime-the Pharaonic autocracy of Egypt, the medieval religious autocracy of Saudi Arabia, or the Quisling Fatah regime of Mohammed Abbas?
Even if the factual premises of the above comment are true, and they may well be notwithstanding the analysis, the protests are nonetheless a positive phenomenon as expressed against an autocratic regime, as Chomsky himself has pointed out:
"Well, protests against the nature of the regime… It’s a clerical, military regime. Putting aside the details of the election, about which we do not know much, the whole structure of the regime is oppressive and authoritarian and undermines basic civil and other human rights; and protesting against it is not only honorable, but courageous, because it faces extreme violence. So, yes, I have to honor what they are doing."
http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/3391.cfm
Brimstoneater, Iran is far from my ideal of a state, but that does not justify the concerted effort to subvert it by the international Right, led by Israel and the US. You may think that the West has the moral right to weigh countries in the balance and subvert those whose regimes they do not approve of. We know that that calculus always ends with the imposition of a slavishly pro-US regime ruled by compliant kleptocrats, who open their countries to Western exploitation, take their cut and remit it to some Western bank for safe-keeping. Do the names Suharto, Marcos, Mobutu, Pinochet, Videla, Batista, Thieu, Park, Vorster, Savimbi, Kagame, let alone Saddam or Noriega (puppets who forgot their place) ring any bells? Or perhaps the ‘Shah’? I disagree with Chomsky on this one. Iran must be supported in the face of a concerted campaign of destabilisation by the greatest forces for evil in history, because that subversion will lead either to civil strife, or foreign aggression, possibly invasion, and millions will die. Iran must be left to its own devices to pursue its own destiny, free from interference from Western xenophobes, racists and civilizational supremacists.
I must say, I didn’t expect your response to be so civil, notwithstanding your attribution to myself of a belief "that the West has the moral right to weigh countries in the balance" that I do not hold. I do think, however, that human beings, Western or otherwise, have the right to evaluate the moral integrity of states from an abstract position of deontological legitimacy, and if this results in ‘strife’ at the expense of a largely counter-productive apparatus of social control, so be it: the utilitarian calculus you allude to has long since been broadly discredited as a coherent underpinning of state legitimacy, although I suppose it is still applicable to an evaluation of the moral desirability of a given criticism.
I completely agree that Iran should be left to its own devices, to sort out its own problems. However, it does not logically follow that this entails any form of support from a given person for the repressive elements of Iranian state apparatus, of which there are overwhelmingly many, just as the equivalent, differently exhibited, but still overwhemlingly repressive characteristics of the governments of the United States or even Australia should not go uncriticised, by Westerners or others.
Another thing I take exception to in your argument is your use of the term ‘West’ as a blanket to describe voices of opposition to the Iranian government. Setting aside the difficult issues around identifying the dominant imperialist economic powers in the contemporary era, with which you appear to equate the term ‘Western’ (for example, does the People’s Republic of China’s vast ownership of the United States’ forces of production fit it within the paradigm of a ‘Western’ dominant economic power?) the question must be asked: when is one speaking as a voice of the ‘West’? Certainly, the term can be used if the critic is speaking in defence of the contemporary arrangement of a series of exploitative, neo-capitalist governments. However, it is unclear that the protestors (or even Ms Haynes for that matter) are speaking as a voice of the ‘West’ by virtue of their political positions- as Chomsky points out in that article, little reliable data is actually known about the composition or number of protestors. They may be purely bourgeois, they may be a mix (as is likely) of classes. One thing they are not, however, is represented by their government, and it is this characteristic that makes their protest legitimate from a perspective of self-determination.
What is known however is that, regardless of the variety of motivations underpinning the protest movements, these protestors ostensibly are acting against an obviously coercive state apparatus. Is this ‘Western?’ If so, were the anarcho-syndicalists who protested World War I acting in a ‘Western’ tradition? What about the indigenous minorities in Bolivia who protest against being included in the Bolivian state? None of these parties felt represented by their government and reacted accordingly. It does not seem to me that criticism of the Iranian government either externally or internally entails a prima facie support for ‘Western’ dominance.
If I haven’t made it clear enough, I don’t think any Western government has the right to influence the power struggle presumably occuring in Iran at the moment, and nor does the PRC, or Russia, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo for that matter. Yet I find it a disingenuous step to suggest that, because one supports the right of any person to oppose a government, elected or otherwise, on the basis that they do not consent to being ruled by that government, one is automatically in support of the amorphous and hetrogenous powers of the ‘West’.
My essential point is that I agree that Iran should be left to its own devices, but disagree fundamentally with your suggestion that, for a moment, this confers some immunity from criticism of the Iranian government from a deontological perspective. If governments are conferred with such an immunity, they are being unfairly fetishised in a manner that ultimately does more good than harm (in my opinion) and entrenches a justification for State actions that is not sustainable within a reasonable and coherent moral framework.
As such the question becomes: ‘Are the Government’s actions deontologically just?’ As Chomsky has pointed out elsewhere, the answer will invariably be no. I don’t expect you to agree with my position, nor am I interested in being perusaded by your arguments. I merely set out this alternative reading so as to provide some room for an understanding of how Iran can be legitimately criticised from a perspective that does not entail a defence of the West. This is the more coherent left-wing position, and for what it’s worth (as you disagree with him anyway), more representative of a libertarian socialist like Noam Chomsky.
I think the position of the so-called ‘freedom lovers’ was pretty clear when, on Quds Day, when the Iranian regime organises protests against Israel and the US, the dear ‘democrats’ were chanting ‘No to Gaza (ie Hamas). No to Hezbollah’. If you remember your history, Israel was closely allied to the Shah’s despotic regime, and Mossad helped establish the brutal Savak secret police. So you see, the denizens of North Tehran make no pretence of where their sympathies lie. With the rich and powerful, ie Israel and the US, with whose wealth and luxury they identify, and against the brutalised and terrorised inmates of the Gaza concentration camp, and the perennial victims of Israeli barbarism in South Lebanon. That is sufficient cause for me to despise them, I must say. Quite plainly a pro-US, pro-Israel Quisling regime in Iran would not support the resistance in Gaza and South Lebanon, and instead ally itself with the racists.The tactic of supporting the most Rightwing elements, usually the rich and avaricious, and proclaiming them to be the ‘voice of the people’, while ignoring or demonising the voices of the majority, invariably the poor, and declaring their position as ‘freedom’ and their victory as a triumph for ‘democracy’, is an old Western hypocrisy.
As you haven’t responded to my point about the general moral imperative and legitimacy regarding criticism of the Iranian regime being despotic from a non-western perspective, I’ll take it as granted.
I’m not entirely sure there is a single overriding ideology that can be attributed to the anti-government protestors as a consequence of a particular action, even if what you say about the Quds Day protest is true, which I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt about. I find it hard to believe that Khatami, who has been fairly steadfast on the Palestinian issue, and even supportive of the oppressive clerical regime, would take part in protests that aimed to utterly undermine the Islamic Republic’s position of influence in the Middle East by distancing itself from Hezbollah and Hamas. I find it extremely difficult to believe that people are participating in protests in which they are being tortured and killed if they are merely in it to maximise their own self-interest. This seems a clumsy calculation, given that the odds of their success (especially if they are in the clear minority, as you say) are extremely small. This is particularly the case if they are amongst the wealthy class in Iran, in which case they are already provided with a broad range of civil and economic freedoms that are unavailable to the working class in that country.
It’s interesting to note that for somebody who dislikes racists, you employ the reasoning that is characteristic of much racist thought when classifying groups of people as ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ Western dominance. That is to say: a generalisation developed out of a single exercise of inductive logic. Here’s an example of how that can be a problem. Refresh my memory: isn’t it true that the Iranian revolution was carried out by a diverse coalition of communists, anarchists, and various groups of clerical and secular nationalists? I suppose you would have been hard-pressed to identify a general ideological disposition through the questioning of a particular group or protest action at that point, wouldn’t you say?
I guess I’m starting to sound repetitive, but I have to ask again why NM feels there is an unfilled niche in journalism to, as Mulga put it, add more grist to the propaganda mill? Surely there is more than enough already out there in the Australian media, and the international western media?
We just don’t need more of this subtle but pervasive manipulation on the issue of Iran, not unless, of course, we’re prepared to add as much journalistic weight to our own analyses of all the votes in western countries from people who oppose our own regimes, and wonder why we’re not overthrowing our own governments yet.
The destabilisation budget of the US wasn’t put forward in secret, but rather openly not all that long ago (you know, the one in favour of internal support of dissident groups in Iran). This money, presumably, hasn’t been spent with benevolent motive in mind. You wouldn’t know it ever happened from the western press, of course.
The Hermann Petersen dissertation on Iran was much needed at the time. There was very little, even in left circles, to show anything but what western governments wanted us to hear. In that, Hermann differed, too, with his old associate Chomsky. I’d say Chomsky’s wrong there too.
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/09/090728_iran_riding_the.php/
Thanks, Mulga, for beating me to it with your comments, and more comprehensively.
cheers, Derek
So ironic that the simplistic argumentation set forward in the original article has been settled upon by two intellectual vultures. As ever they show an insatiable appetite for any political carrion to be had.
Poor Iran, and more pitiable, the people of that sorry land, of which I happen to be one such.
The so-called left will never concede that while on paper its sentiments and causes are noble, their practice is eternally doomed by humankind’s capriciousness and veniality. Rather than recognise that, what they call, the Right is merely a pragmatic reaction to their progressive pipe dreams, they remain much more deterministic in their own attitudes. Fortunately, since they lack the financial power of the realist right, they are unable to translate these [nightmares] into the control-freak states they seek.
Mumblebrain suffers from addled thinking when he/she dismisses with blithe ease the self-determinism of the Iranian people and condemns them to the crushing repression, which presumably he/she thinks they deserve for [in his view] siding with the ‘West’.
"Iran must be left to its own devices to pursue its own destiny, free from interference from Western xenophobes, racists and civilizational supremacists," Mumblebrain says.
Elsewhere just to contradict himself/herself, he she writes: "Iran must be supported in the face of a concerted campaign of destabilisation by the greatest forces for evil in history."
I assume that one cannot both leave Iran alone and support it at the same time.
Would Mumblebrain have suggested leaving the German people alone with the Nazis? Or indeed the host of corrupt regimes he/she cites: Suharto et al. with their populations?
And by what measure does he/she exclude Iran’s rulers from the kleptocratic tendency, when the Mullahs in Iran have gone from utter penury before the 1979 Revolution to being, now, the landed/moneyed bourgeoisie. North Tehran is a state within a state; an enclave of privilege inside Iran. However, these are for the greater part the apparatchiks [nice Marxist word to turn you on Mumblebonce], who have gown rich on the patronage of the Revolutionary Guard and their Basiji attack dogs. They are the sons and daughters of the regime, who flaunt their ill-gotten gains lasciviously, while Mr Ahmadinejad persists in hoodwinking the poor into thinking that he is their champion.
So far as "lies, damned lies, and statistics", are concerned, I as a journalist, who was working for Iran state broadcaster, IRIB, until very shortly before the election, was therefore privy to official figures. I’d be fascinated to learn where Mumblebrain gets his lies [sic], statistics from? Setting any prejudices, you [the reader] may have assigned to me, I assure you, that Mr Ahmadinejad did not get a plurality of votes in the first round of voting, but then neither did Mr Moussavi. What did happen, and I rely here, on official Interior Ministry figures, which were only collated much later, is that Mr Moussavi did get most votes, and that Mr Ahmadinejad was a competitive second. Who can conjecture at this distance, and with what has since occurred, what a second round of voting might have produced. Indeed the protest of the opposition is not so much that they won, but that they did not lose.
What possible justification can any regime produce for the abuses, which I witnessed inside Evin Prison, when I was arrested after the election? Why was I even arrested? How is walking home an action endangering the stability of the Islamic State of Iran? How does the caricatured nature of the opposition compare to the two-thousand or more people I saw, while incarcerated? They were not the molly-coddled, wrapped in cotton wool, ‘West-loving’ stereotype set forward by Mumblebrain, rather the kind of mixture that one finds under the ‘Big Tent’ of most political movements.
Just an aside here: Green for the uninitiated, or those that Mumblebrain might want to divert away from its cultural value to Iranian Muslims, is the colour of Shia struggle against tyranny. Indeed most of those who are fighting against the dragons in Tehran are the 1979 revolutionaries or their children, who have become disenchanted with the oppressive practices of this regime. They are concerned by the deep-seated agnosticism that pervades Iranian youth, and are looking to revitalise it with fresh thinking.
I have always been fascinated and horrified, in almost equal measure, by this unholy alliance between the fascist left [unreconstructed Marxists] and the religious right [fundamentalists]. Of course it is not surprising. Each clings to the vestiges of principles that are fundamentally flawed, and utterly in defiance of logic; each places the least value on the individual, and characterises their aspirations as whimsical self-indulgence; they discount pain as a bourgeois impulse; tears as a wasteful liquid secretion; and the blood of others as a worthy sacrifice for the defeat of their foes.
Perhaps Mumblebrain and his/her ilk need to suspend their hubris long enough to recognise that they are exponents of a politics and philosophy that are both ugly and bankrupt, and by which lack of virtue, lack popular appeal also.
Any nation, race, or culture has an innate right to define itself. Iranians are only now beginning that daunting process. It is not for the likes of Mumblebrain to assign their own diseased motives to a people looking for the road to recovery.
RobinHood:
I’m not sure whether you’re referring to me when you say ‘intellectual vultures’ but it doesn’t really matter - I agree with the vast majority of what you’ve said and in fact attempted to express a lot of the points you have made myself, albeit in a more esoteric, less confrontational and perhaps less impactful way, probably because I have not directly witnessed it, unlike yourself.
The only aspect I would qualify is that lumping a whole bunch of disparate ideologies into the term ‘left’ is as fruitless an exercise as lumping a whole bunch of disparate ideologies into the term ‘pro-West’ or ‘anti-West’. I don’t think that understanding such reactions as being due to some ‘leftism’ provides an accurate characterisation of how ‘unholy alliances’ as you put it arise from unusual geo-political relationships or relationships of oppression and control. There are plenty of strains of left-wing thought that find the idea of oppression of the individual completely unacceptable as a matter of course and have shaped their politics in response.
"They are the sons and daughters of the regime, who flaunt their ill-gotten gains lasciviously, while Mr Ahmadinejad persists in hoodwinking the poor into thinking that he is their champion."
There is your answer, right there. The poor, that is, the large group of people *outside* of North Tehran where so much of the hope for the previous election (as in the last) was formulated. Rich people, nowhere, care that much about the poor. When they do what they’re not meant to (like voting for A) the rich get angry.
It is also as likely that if the Australian, or the British, or the US population revolted in the style and manner and for the length of time that Iranians did in Tehran, you’d see similiar amounts of police brutality (maybe more), death, prison sentences. This is neither here nor there. In the last G20 summit cc protests in London, a man was murdered simply for being there. Plenty of others were admitted to hospitals with broken bones and severe bruising. Still others were charged and arrested, in what was a mainly peaceful demonstration. And, in that instance, there was not even the ghost of a chance that the state itself was under threat by the protests. I would say Iran’s reaction was measured comparative to what might arise if the British state saw itself as under threat. That of course, is an aside, but it is an aside never measured by western media pundits keen to talk about Iranian brutality without any meaningful comparisons.
But we would hope that, if in the west, the population gravitated to vote for a real or perceived ‘Robin Hood’, that other western nations would stand by such a democratic vote. Of course, that wouldn’t happen here either, because its all about whether the ‘right’ or the ‘wrong’ person gets into power. On the few examples we are able to find, wrong (ie, anti-establishment) leaders are quickly and routinely either dispensed with, or attempts made.
Standing in support of Iran, I would suspect, *should* mean supporting their democratic votes. Like, for example, supporting the democratic vote of the Palestinians which gave them a Hamas leadership, much as the west hated it, or supporting the Venezuelan poor majority for voting for Chavez, much as the west hated it.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t. The wealthy hate to be beaten by the poor, because, I guess, it reminds them of how little they know (that would stand for those N Tehranian elites). Outside of Iran, the west’s motives of support for the ‘green’ revolution are unlikely to be even as honourable as that, which, as an Iranian, you must also know.
cheers, Derek
After reading the above comments I thought perhaps a few people had mistakenly posted to the wrong article.. Was there a piece on Iranian reformist politics in New Matilda recently?
Have a read of the article and perhaps, hey, you never know, we might just get around to a discussion about the article.
The piece considers a universally monumental decision for an individual; to stay in one’s homeland and accept the risks associated with critical political ideals, or leave one’s home, family and sense of national responsibility for an alien life.
Yes, the article discusses two privileged, well educated and disaffected young Iranians. Let’s call them Northern Tehrani elites, if you like. Some of the comments above suggest that the two Iranians noted in the article; in wanting a different life to the one forced upon them at the moment, constitute a minority in Iran. Let’s say, for the purposes of this argument that they are in fact a minority in Iran.
Is there a place for these urban (minority) elite in Iran? It has been suggested here that it should be Iranians and not foreign institutions or influences that answer that question, and you will find no argument here.
The urban (minority) elite in Iran are still faced with a massive decision regardless. Whilst they wait for existing political institutions to determine if they have a place in Iran they can pursue one of three options. They can sit quietly for the sake of their safety, share their views and ideals publically and risk a violent response from the state, or leave their homeland in search of a better life elsewhere.
Of course Australian industry will happily accommodate the petrochemical and mechanical engineers flowing from Iran to Australia every year. We certainly enjoy collecting the tuition fees of a massive Iranian cohort who undertake higher research degrees in our universities. I can’t see, though, what Iran will do as domestic oil production rapidly falls away with the deterioration of field infrastructure. Some analysts predict a collapse of the industry by as early as 2015 without access to the appropriate technology.
It is clear that oil is the one piece of leverage; short of a proven nuclear weapon, that will allow Iran to maintain its insulation from the true wrath of the global economy and the hegemonic bounds of the United States. Iran can continue looking to China; the current great-power patron, but the technology there will unfortunately not be capable of saving Iran’s growing production problem.
I digress, and I apologise. Back to our urban (minority) elite. Let us assume, now, that the urban (minority) elite are in fact not the tiny minority we first imagined. Let’s say that they just might actually represent a genuine political desire for change within a substantial arm of the Iranian community.
In any case; what should the two Iranians mentioned in the article do? (Perhaps when we’re done here with our discussion it could be emailed over to them.. You know, help them along with their decision). Should they remain at home with reverence to a political system that does not think them worthy of a voice? Or should they communicate their opinions and ideals publicly, risking a violent response from the state?
Perhaps they should pursue or revisit what they discussed with the author of the article; suck up the guilt about their country and leave. These two Iranians might just then have a chance of finding a life they consider reasonable.
A photo of Moussavi on her mobile phone WTF ? Are you, NM ,seriously suggesting he is a better option than Ahmadinejad - what planet would that be on ?
well said Mulga M. I`m in agreement with you.
New Matilda: what about some coverage of people other than students and teachers; ie the majority of the population, who voted for the government ?
Personally I do not feel a great deal of sympathy for those who leave their own country, but then complain at a sense of dysjunction in the new country. That is the migrant experience, what are they expecting a red carpet and national hug ?
Let`s here about Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Colombia etc etc where bad things actually are happening.
This Iran-knocking is bullshit.
whoops that would be hear not here LOL
"Should they remain at home with reverence to a political system that does not think them worthy of a voice? Or should they communicate their opinions and ideals publicly, risking a violent response from the state? "
That’s up to them, of course. The same question can be posed of all of us (I don’t any longer live in Oz, because I have issues with the way the state is run). There’s certain contingents in Oz that if they protested in the way Iranians did during the year would be met with *at least* as much force as those in Iran were. Remember the protests on Palm Island a few years back?
The point, however, is not that these people, as middle class as they are, don’t have the right to protest, but that the western media panders to them specifically, because it suits the very western agenda to demonise Iran. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as Kissinger would no doubt tell you.
So, what we don’t need is more media outlets telling us we need to feel sympathy with the elite of Tehran (because they can no longer tell us it was the whole Iranian people jilted by the election results).
And we need to start rebelling the implied prioritisation of such things, as Beanz points out.
cheers, Derek
Suggesting that the ‘disaffected elite’ of Tehran are protesting on behalf of their Western sympathies is all very well and good (although this label of ‘elite’ would be more properly applied to the clerical establishment, as the term ‘elite’ tends to pertain specifically to the locus of political power in a given environment) but it says nothing towards the legitimacy of their criticism itself: that the government, elected or not, has engaged in repressive activity that has compromised the physical integrity of Iranian citizens, and that this is a clear abuse of State power.
I say abuse, whilst being perfectly aware that Western governments engage in similar abuse every day; but it is ridiculous to suggest that, because Western governments engage in such behaviour, that it is then in some way permissible for non-Western governments to engage in similar behaviour.
The other, more important point is this: even engaging in the pretense that the working class of Iran are politically or economically empowered in any way by the simple act of electing a given official over another, a proposition which is intellectually disingenuous given that no self-respecting leftist would suggest an equivalent standard of political empowerment for the working class within a Western government, I cannot for the life of me see why this confers some right upon the government to assault, kill and otherwise repress a certain social class.
The reasoning is analagous to the right-wing constitutionalists in Australia and the United States who argue that, because a government is representative of an electorate, they then have the constitutional right to oppress ethnic minorities, homosexuals, the poor, and indigenous people, unless the broad body of the electorate holds a referendum to amend the constitutional document or acts in an otherwise ‘democratic’ fashion.
The argument fails for a very simple reason: like most utilitarian arguments, it provides no compelling reason for the minority to abide by the repressive laws set by the majority. The result will thus inevitably turn to bloodshed, state-sanctioned abuse and killing, and other forms of unacceptable violence. It creates results like the Pacific Solution, Gaza, and the treatment of homosexuals in Iran (or are there none?).
And yes, I realise the argument is utopian in its scope, but then most ideal-type arguments that have been put forward regarding this situation are: i.e. the idea that Ahmadinejad legitimately has the long term future of the poor of his country first and foremost in his mind.
"After reading the above comments I thought perhaps a few people had mistakenly posted to the wrong article.. Was there a piece on Iranian reformist politics in New Matilda recently?"
Ha, I see your point. Let me try to tie in my meanderings with the underlying premise of the article: if a given person chooses to leave permanently, they are signifying their non-consent to being ruled by a certain government. The interesting thing in this situation of course is that they suffer from a form of alienation that comes from surrendering one’s national identity. This tends to put paid to the myth that the ‘elite’ of Tehran are simply receptacles for Western ideologies, as one would assume that a Western receptacle would be perfectly happy in a Western country.
"In a perfect metaphor for the confusing intersection of the personal and the political, her feelings of depression about the state of politics are misdiagnosed as a nervous breakdown."
I know the feeling, having lived in a country where the previous two generations made enormous sacrifices but mine was too crippled by "cold war" mentality to make the most of our opportunities. On top of our own failure we have misguided, not educated, generations X and Y to the ultimate selfishness.
The only antidote for the depression is not to flee but immerse oneself in the Third Sector.
Perhaps this is the alternative path for Iranians wanting to contrbute rather than "jump ship"
P.S.
Next year, 2010, will be tenth anniversary of setting the U.N. Millenium goals. NewMatilda should ask the Rudd Government for the national scorecard!
"The argument fails for a very simple reason: like most utilitarian arguments, it provides no compelling reason for the minority to abide by the repressive laws set by the majority."
Your safety can only be secured by taking back your constitution. Insisting on a "Bill of Rights" written into the constitution itself is the only protection against weighty interests and is the core of a "democracy"
By the way. Thanks for a very interesting article Gabby!!
"no self-respecting leftist would suggest an equivalent standard of political empowerment for the working class within a Western government, I cannot for the life of me see why this confers some right upon the government to assault, kill and otherwise repress a certain social class."
No, but a disturbing number seem to miss the point that we choose to exercise our indignance on such issues as political empowerment of the poor *only* or at least, most heartily, with official enemies of the west. Here, we maintain the notion we live in democracy and don’t tend to dwell on how the voters’ confidence is being manipulated by an oppressive regime (or indeed in the US).
The idea that it confers the right upon any government to assault or kill is a strawman, of course. I certainly haven’t said it, nor, so far as I am aware, has anyone else.
cheers, Derek
I’d like to begin by clarifying the targets of my polemic pen. Yes Brimstoneater, I did include you in that seemingly less-than-complimetary category, ‘Intellectual Vultures’. However, in your case it was more to do with the language you employ, a language that serves to exclude those large swathes of alienated and under-educated populations.
So far as Derek’s identifying my throw-away comment about North-Tehrani elites, as the nub of the argument, is concerned, I would like to suggest he considers that those privileged few are not the originators, owners, nor the arbiters of the dissent swirling around Iran today; although as the reader he is free to interpret in any way he chooses.
The reason that those of us who can, are so desperate to, defend this cause is it is the first movement in the post-revolutionary phase to be genuinely popular. It is true that it is supported by the wealth of certain moneyed power-brokers, disaffected from the main organs of power, but to caricature it as a movement of spoilt kulaks railing against the suspension of their chocolate rations, is ill-conceived and simplistic. Those who marched (peacefully until they were set upon by the fascist state apparatus), marched because they aspire to greater freedom, and self-determination for Iran. These are the same people, who are in the vanguard of resistance against American attempts at domination. Their courage stems from their isolation from and abandonment by every quarter. It may have conveniently escaped the attention of the America-bashers, but Obama’s Cavalry has not come riding to their rescue. Instead Mr Obama has been keen to stress his desire to negotiate with Iran; as witnessed by the meeting in Geneva on October 1st; thus giving no succour to the opposition.
Meanwhile, the Basiji thugs observe no rules of due process in administering beatings, - sometimes fatal - and sexual assaults upon those who would resist their narrow will.
For those on the lunatic fringes of the left, who blindly, indiscriminately look for hobby horses, Iran is not run by some much-maligned group of humanitarian philanthropists. They are in the business of power, and their method, tried-and-tested the world over by dictatorships, is the absolute monopolisation of resources, and wealth generation. For example, following the ‘re-election’ of Mr Ahmadinejad, part of the bounty the Basij militia received was the awarding of the country’s third mobile network, something which had previously been given to another group of oligarch’s connected to the ‘dissident’ Mr Rafsanjani.
Furthermore, the mass media in Iran is in the hands of pro-regime forces. Those few domestic centres of critical comment that did exist have been closed down, in the long-standing tradition of dictatorships. Therefore, the only alternative message available to Iranians comes through unofficial, ‘illegal’, and/or foreign sources. Journalists Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index places Iran 172nd out of 175 for press freedom, a nose ahead of Turkmenistan, North Korea, and Eritrea. While, Freedom House says Iran is only 185th best in its survey of 195 nations. What does the Iranian regime fear that they are more repressive than Chad, Chile or China?
It is a wearisome endeavour to argue against those who are indefinitely relativist in their approach. Even a Platonist accepts that somewhere there is objective truth. When evil (a word I use most advisedly) breathes its vile, rancid breath down your neck, a visceral sense, of what it is, descends. At some distance away, unharmed by its reek, you observe it dispassionately, and can afford the luxury of relativism. I want these cold-blooded appeasers to face up to the parents of those gunned down by plain-clothed security men, like Neda Agha-Soltan, that their children were stooges. I want these apologists to tell the 6000 people who were detained in Tehran’s Evin Prison alone, that they are ‘fair game’, that they are ‘pawns’ in a bigger game.
And where these feeble-minded relativists become absolutists is in their demand that attention is diverted away from Iran, and is instead concentrated on those countries they choose to hate, such as Columbia, etc. Why do the two have to be considered mutually exclusive? Simple: because they hate America, and Iran says it shares their hatred; The ‘My-enemy’s-enemy-is-my-friend’ syndrome.
To them I say jump on this bandwagon at your peril. You will make no friends among Iranians, and the day, when the clerical leeches are detached and dispatched is at hand, and your ridiculous arguments will collapse with them.
Iran for Iranians - Long live Iran.
The two Iranians at the heart of Gabby Haynes’ article elicit nothing but my fellow-feeling.
I myself was forced to leave Iran, after a short period spent in one of the gulags operated by the regime there.
I left with a heavy heart. I abandoned a comfortable lifestyle, because a gilded cage is nonetheless a prison.
Support Iran as you did Iran as you did South Africa. Boycott its goods; impede its sporting and culture activities; and ensure that the prison warders, hemming in the people, are themselves not free to leave Iran; and suspend the sovereign immunity of Ahmadinejad and his mafiosi, so that they cannot come to the United Nations and strut about like legitimate statesmen, the representatives of the Iranian nation.
Iran for Iranians - Long live Iran
@RobinHood you said //t is a wearisome endeavour to argue against those who are indefinitely relativist in their approach. Even a Platonist accepts that somewhere there is objective truth. When evil (a word I use most advisedly) breathes its vile, rancid breath down your neck, a visceral sense, of what it is, descends. At some distance away, unharmed by its reek, you observe it dispassionately, and can afford the luxury of relativism. I want these cold-blooded appeasers to face up to the parents of those gunned down by plain-clothed security men, like Neda Agha-Soltan,//
Christ on a crusket, are you a complete tosser, or what ? Talk about verbal diarrhoea.
Not only have you inappropriately taken a name from a bloke who was not
//supported by the wealth of certain moneyed power-brokers// but who actively and violently worked against such elites. In the archetypal tale, he did so on behalf of the poor and ignorant - such as the majority of Iranians who support Ahmadinejad. You should take a name such as the Scarlet Pimpernel - who supported the ousted Royalists after the French revolution. Maybe you could be the Green Pimpernel - show your true colours :) or perhaps the Green Parrot - having flown your `gilded cage`: (said gilding having been paid for by the labour of the peasantry, as it always is; the same peasantry that Mousavi openly despises and whose concerns for `food and jobs`he dismissed as irrelevant.)
The tragic assassination of Neda: my understanding is that she was probably not killed by Iranian security forces, but by an `unknown agent`.
Guess who is the likeliest suspect in this despicable crime ? It starts with C and ends with I and has an A in the middle.
Iran is experiencing the classic tactics of US covert war against an government targeted for replacement :- spread around lots of cash for Mousavi`s organisation, mobile phones, internet connections whatever; stir up the opposition so they are ready to hit the streets and burn buses and fight with police; mobilise the mainstream media to blast outrage about abuses/fraud/nuclear weapons; organise a twitter campaign (!); create martyrs to further undermine the government.
The US has brought down over 50 legitimate governments since the 2nd WW according to John Pilger and they want Iran`s oil, as they wanted Iraq`s and as they want Afghanistan for strategic reasons.
Iran had quite a vigorous and developing society, with every expectation of progressing further towards full democracy - the calls for the `Supreme Leader` to be elected for eg was a legitimate demand and could have been achieved and so on. Now though, Iran is a nation under siege - the US howling for UN sanctions over the nuclear issue and Israel threatening a bombing campaign, urged on by GOP loonies. Israel, India, Pakistan, S Arabia all have Nuclear weapons and are not signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty; Iran is a signatory, so you tell me which way is up.
I do not like to see political repression and freedom curtailed in Iran or anywhere else. Governments will do what they think is necessary when they are under threat, however - remember that Orwell`s 1984 was written about government oppression in Britain during the 2nd WW. `loose lips cost lives` and all that.
From what I see, those arrested in Iran are appearing in courts quite regularly, not disappearing. You speak of gulags; really ? I have read Solzhenitsyn and we all know about the killing fields of Cambodia - perhaps you would outline your experiences if it is not too painful ?
So far as being an illiterate tosser is concerned, you Beanz take the biscuit. Or is it because you are ignorant?
Or are you just dyslexic?
C-I-A…begins with C, ends with A, and has an I in the middle. You conspiracy theory twat.
As amazing as it may seem to you, people are capable of spontaneous action, independent of the Elders of Zion, or whatever other claptrap, crackpot theory you are subscribing to this week.
So far as Neda is concerned, you are not fit to utter her name, let alone conjecture on her fate. You are despicable, because like most other commentators in the West, you demand to own at least some part of the argument. You are an ‘Orientalist’ of the worst kind; an ignorant one in whose exotic machinations, the real people, caught up in the strife have no right of redress; they are merely figments of your fetid mind.
So far as my experiences in Youssefabad Police Station, in Shapour Interrogation Centre, and Evin are concerned, what is it you seek? Something to pique your morbid fascination of how we thought we were beaten, tortured, and some of us killed? What’s the point, you’d only make up your own version, and tell me that I imagined it all.
Hahaha - sweet; scratch a Right wing tosser and out it comes - the Dark Side !
Sorry I`m from the West, but then that`s where the big guns are pointing at Iran from, no ? We have soldiers over there in Iraq and Afghanistan supporting the US, and quite a lot of us don`t like it and feel obliged to protest in forums like this, and Iran is next on the hit list.
I hear your outrage about Neda, but I don`t hear you disputing what I said about her death; do you have any further information ? Do you not have a comment about `the doctor` at the shooting - who flew in from the UK 2 days before the incident and flew back the day after. I take it you are aware of the UKs long and inglorious history there ? And the US - so you were/are a supporter of the Shah, their last offering for an appropriate leader for Iran ?
Sorry you got bashed up in the police station - but that does not constitute a Gulag unless the term has been redefined and I missed it ?
Yeh got me on CAI/CIA - humble apologies for the error :)
"It is true that it is supported by the wealth of certain moneyed power-brokers, disaffected from the main organs of power, but to caricature it as a movement of spoilt kulaks railing against the suspension of their chocolate rations, is ill-conceived and simplistic."
By examining the movements against other governments which focus on the poor in their politics (though possibly with more tangible results), such as Chavez’s Venezuela, it would seem your request not to ‘caricature it as a movement of spoilt kulaks’ sounds a little like sour grapes. Why not? Why shouldn’t it be caricatured? If the people of Iran (in great number) voted for Ahmadinejad, and a movement has sprung up against him by the wealth of certain moneyed powerbrokers, which in itself is almost never (probably never) a sign of good and honest motive, then why must it be called ill conceived or simplistic? Surely you’d need to explain that rather than simply assert it isn’t?
"Those who marched (peacefully until they were set upon by the fascist state apparatus), marched because they aspire to greater freedom, and self-determination for Iran."
That is, of course, just an assertion. But it comes back to this: Who did the people vote for? If a small group of people decide that what the large group of people want is wrong, and attempt to force change, well, that’s more of an oligarchic revolution (much as what was attempted in Venezuela was plutocratic and oligarchic in nature), and not specifically ‘noble’. That’s not, therefore, to say that the people of Iran, by the power of democracy, voted for noble things either.
"Instead Mr Obama has been keen to stress his desire to negotiate with Iran; as witnessed by the meeting in Geneva on October 1st; thus giving no succour to the opposition."
You’d have to post details of what, exactly, you’re talking about here. What I read of Obama’s speech showed more baseless accusations against Iran’s civil nuclear programme, alongside insistence that Iran start doing what its told (not by the IAEA, apparently, since they seem mostly happy with proceedings, but with the US - in all its bullying and bellicose ‘negotiations’).
"Meanwhile, the Basiji thugs observe no rules of due process in administering beatings, - sometimes fatal - and sexual assaults upon those who would resist their narrow will."
Yes, sounds very much like the UK police effort at the G20 summit in London. Strange though, how the rest of the west ahemmed and swept that one under the carpet, but not the Iranian example.
"For those on the lunatic fringes of the left, who blindly, indiscriminately look for hobby horses, Iran is not run by some much-maligned group of humanitarian philanthropists. They are in the business of power, and their method, tried-and-tested the world over by dictatorships, is the absolute monopolisation of resources, and wealth generation."
Yes, like most western states in fact, although rather than saying they’re in the business of power, I’d reverse that, and say they’re in the power of [corporate] business, which is where we come back to questioning why we should be so happy about an internal power struggle between the governing, and other elites *over* the rest of the people of that state. But again, you can apply that whole last paragraph I’ve quoted to most countries of the west. So when we are asked to pay special attention to Iran, and told we should be indignant about the way this state runs, the pertinent question to ask is ‘Why Iran, and not the US, or the UK, or Australia, or Canada, etc?’
The answer, of course, is that it suits western powers to villify and demonise the state of Iran, in the manufacture of consent for crippling sanctions and/or war. I’d rather concentrate of getting the affairs and records of my own state clean first, so that I could be sure that any such indignance on the record of Iranian dealings wasn’t motivated by, and used for, the cynical motivations of the elite of my own state.
"Furthermore, the mass media in Iran is in the hands of pro-regime forces. "
Just as it is everywhere, definitely in the UK and the US, via the BBC and Murdoch, and just as it is in Australia. When Murdoch’s views change, so too does the regime. That is the MSM, and by all means, rally against that, but suggesting that it is isolated to Iran, and therefore evidence of Iranian oppression (in a way that prompts you to request boycotts, and, I suppose, sanctions) is a little simplistic. It sounds very much like the simplistic approach one might use if they were working for the regimes currently pushing for such measures against Iran. Whether this is you intention or not, I have no idea, but its worth considering again that the challenge might more conceivably be to convince the majority of your countrymen and women of the wrongness of the state, rather than exhorting the west to step in, and deciding that the thoughts and opinions of all these poor and remote Iranians is deeply irrelevant.
"Journalists Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index places Iran 172nd out of 175 for press freedom, a nose ahead of Turkmenistan, North Korea, and Eritrea. While, Freedom House says Iran is only 185th best in its survey of 195 nations. What does the Iranian regime fear that they are more repressive than Chad, Chile or China?"
http://www.spinwatch.org/-news-by-category-mainmenu-9/164-cuba/1211-repo…
I wouldn’t place stock in RWB as a final say on anything.
By the way Beanz, on 1984, according to orwell it wasn’t written about Britain, but merely set there,
"My recent novel [Nineteen Eighty-Four] is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter), but as a show-up of the perversions … which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism… . The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else, and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere."
G Orwell
Although I would say that we’ve reached it here now. If I were to guess, I’d say that British rulers are using the manuscript as a textbook on How to Rule the Country rather than a means of avoiding such dire abuses.
cheers, Derek
dereklane - well said altogether. It`s the hypocrisy about Iran that sticks in the craw, and perpetuated so enthusiastically by the mainstream media and the likes of the Green Parrot above. Our own PM, Kev, just confirmed Australia`s long-term commitment to Afghanistan and the `War on Terror`. What a difference a word makes: the War of Terror really reflects the situation more accurately.
Iran and Venezuela are both at risk from the US (and friends) because of their oil of course. The International Energy Agency(IEA) Whistleblower yesterday
http://tinyurl.com/yb2v72m
confirmed that they have been exaggerating world oil supplies, under pressure from the US `to avoid a panic`.
Read that as `to allow the US to get it`s claws into Iraq and Afghanistan - seen as a crucial staging point both for Iran and the Caspian. Afghanistan also has significant gas +/- oil, mineral and gems of its own- to name but a few !
The Colombian bases, recently expanded in the Free Trade agreement between the US and Uribe the murderous thug, can only be seen as a developing threat to Venezuela.
re Orwell - thanks for the info and I stand corrected. I thought I`d read that he said it was about the oversight and monitoring of citizens in Europe, including Britain, during WW2. (Not the Labour Party of the time. *horror*)
i`ll check out spinwatch, cheers :)