Iran: Human Revolution
I’ve been following the events in Iran as closely as I could this week amidst all of my other business. Each morning during breakfast I’d read the latest from Nico Pitney’s outstanding liveblog on the Huffington Post, and each evening I’d get some analysis from guests on Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow. My perception of the events has been shaped almost exclusively by these sources, so I can’t claim to have any special insight. Even my usual style of taking a step back and looking at an issue in the broadest, “what does this mean for humanity as a whole?” context is to a large degree undermined by my ignorance of Iranian history and of my unfamiliarity with other uprisings of this kind. All I can really do is write about my own impressions and what I think it all means.
There are three things I’d like to address, those being 1- the affect this will have on Iran and on the Middle East, 2- the reaction to these events on the part of the United States government, and 3- the unprecedented role played by new technology in this situation and how it might be a sign of the fundamental paradigm shift I’ve been waiting for in the unfolding of world history, a concept I’ve called the Human Revolution.
The last major event to have happened in Iran at the time of this writing was the speech given yesterday by Ayatollah Khamenei, in which he insisted—in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary—that the results of the election were not fraudulent and that everyone protesting in the streets must go home or risk violent reprisal. I believe this was a terrible mistake on his part, but it doesn’t surprise me. The more I hear about Khamenei’s actions in this situation, the more of a tremendous idiot he appears to be. After all, it was he who shot himself in the foot by making sure the election was rigged in the first place and going about it so carelessly that any intelligent Iranian would have no doubt that the results were fixed. He thought that by giving Ahmedenijad a 30-point margin of victory he’d be able to deny any claims of tampering—he said in his speech that you can’t switch 11 million votes—when in fact the absurd margin had quite the opposite effect. It wasn’t that they switched 11 million people’s Mousavi votes to Ahmedenijad—it was clear that they didn’t even count the votes and just announced the numbers that had already been decided on beforehand. The absolute stupidest part of the whole thing is Ahmedenijad had the same margin of victory everywhere in Iran, including Mousavi’s hometown, his strongest base of support. A third party candidate, who actually beat Ahmedenijad in his hometown four years ago, was completely crushed this time around. Because he got about 1% nationally they gave him 1% in his own district—the most blatant piece of evidence that the results weren’t based on any kind of reality at all. You’d think someone involved in this would have been smart enough to think about this beforehand, but either they were genuinely too stupid or they just fatally underestimated how much value the Iranian people actually placed on democracy.
Which is why it was so interesting, in reading the transcript of Khamenei’s speech, that he spends so much time extolling the virtues of democracy, boasting about the 85% turnout and how the people in the streets ought to accept the will of the people. When I read that all I could think was, “Is this guy serious?” He wants to spin this to say that the overwhelming majority of Iranians have spoken and they want Ahmedenijad, and it’s just a few hooligans taking to the street because they have no respect for democracy? The will of the people? What does the fact that two million Iranians are marching in the street tell you about the will of the people? Apparently he knows what the Iranian people want better than the Iranian people. And as for the idea that these 2 million “hooligans” just have no respect for democracy, that’s like saying anti-abortion protesters hold up pictures of dead fetuses because they want to encourage more killing of fetuses. The people are angry because you have no respect for democracy, Mr. Khamenei. And it turns out that if you want to be a leader of a Middle Eastern country, no matter how Holy and infallible the clerics have deemed you to be, it’s becoming increasingly necessary to abide by democratic principles.
And that’s one of the most important things we’re seeing as a result of this fiasco. Had Khamenei simply let the votes be counted and put up with Mousavi as his underling rather than Ahmedenijad, nothing really significant would have changed. The tone of relations with the West might have been slightly less hostile, but Mousavi isn’t all that different than Ahmedenijad in terms of substance, and the republic would have stayed intact. But because he didn’t want to work with Mousavi, a former colleague of his who might not have been as easy to control as Ahmedenijad, he did what he thought he had to do to keep the president he wanted, subverting the will of the majority of people to the will of one man—his own. Iranians instantly recognised that the voice they thought they had in controlling their own destiny was only an illusion, and now they’re making their voices heard more directly. They want openness in government, broader international cooperation, and a more secular politics. Now even if Khamenei manages to squash this uprising before it becomes a revolution and Ahmedenijad does indeed stay in power for the next four years, he will no longer be seen as a legitimate leader and his sabre-rattling against the West will no longer be taken seriously. The best argument they had against the West is that we’ve meddled in their affairs and undermined their democracy. Now that their own president has undermined their democracy he won’t have a shred of credibility in terms of denouncing the Western world. The era of Us vs. Them in Iran with respect to foreign governments is over. Western governments are no longer the enemy of the Iranian people—the Iranian government is the enemy of the Iranian people. Finally, this will serve as an important lesson for other hard-line leaders of Middle Eastern countries. If you want to keep your power you have to listen to the people—just blaming everything on the West will no longer work.
That is, unless those in the West continue to play right into the hands of these governments, as the Republicans in congress and even some moronic Democrats want to do. I knew from the very beginning that the right-wing would use the events in Iran to criticise Obama, because that’s all they do and the only consequences they care about are their own poll numbers. I assumed they’d blame him for the uprising itself, but apparently they took a different approach and sided firmly with the Iranian opposition, attacking Obama for not being as vocal as they are in their support. This tactic is even stupider and more reckless. Every single person who knows anything about diplomacy and about the politics of the Middle East knows that the fastest way to undermine the opposition is for the United States to express its strong support for it. As soon as Obama says, “I support the opposition,” the government of Iran has all the ammunition it needs to put a stop to it. That’s when it’s no longer an issue of the Iranian people vs. their own government, but of the Iranian government versus the people on the side of the United States. Popular support for the opposition would dry up instantly, and those still out on the streets would be arrested, beaten or murdered under the auspices of crushing a foreign-backed insurgency. This is the most obvious thing in the world.
Of course, republicans don’t give one shit about the Iranian people or even about democracy in the Middle East. They only care about winning elections, and it sounds good to the morons who keep voting for them when they get on their high horses about how America needs to support democracy and human rights everywhere and why won’t Obama come out and say so? It must be because he’s a secret Muslim terrorist sympathiser, right? That’s what their constituents will think anyway, because for the most part, their constituents don’t think. Rush Limbaugh does their thinking for them. And he’s not saying the obvious truth—that the best thing America can do for the Iranian people is to stay the fuck out of it. He and his legions of followers still live in a fantasy world where America has magical powers to make whatever it wants to happen in the world happen, and all we need to do to bring democracy to the Middle East is for the president to endorse the opposition and thus force Khamenei to bend his will in deference to the Great and Mighty America, to step down and let the people take control so that they can get to work on building those McDonalds and Starbucks.
One thing that has not been given much attention is the fact that John McCain, the republican presidential candidate, is one of those reckless idiots calling for the president to more forcefully meddle in Iran’s affairs. This, I believe, is the clearest indication we have so far that had McCain actually won the election, it would have been a complete disaster. Unless he’s just mouthing off now because he doesn’t have to worry about real-world consequences and would have done exactly what Obama’s doing were he in that position, we’re seeing the approach McCain would have taken and it’s the most blatantly wrong approach possible. Had McCain been president, the uprising would have been crushed days ago and the sabre-rattling would be going on louder than ever. Clips of the American president singing “Bomb bomb Iran” would have been broadcasted over the Iranian airwaves ad nauseum, and tension between our two countries would be at an all-time high. I think these kinds of things should be pointed out repeatedly, as most Americans still don’t seem to understand that elections have serious consequences. The most clear moment indicating that a McCain presidency would have been the worst disaster in the history of the United States is yet to come—that will happen if McCain dies within the next four years and we’ll know for sure that had he been elected we would have ended up with President Sarah Palin. She’d almost definitely take us to war with Iran just to score some political points with the hawkish base.
Now war with Iran seems more unlikely than ever, and Obama should be given some credit for how he’s handled the situation up to now. I’ve said it before and it bears repeating that Obama may be kind of a shitty president when it comes to domestic issues, but in terms of foreign affairs he’s the best possible person we could have had for the job.
The final point I want to make is much deeper, and it has to do with the way in which we’re learning about this situation as it happens. When the Iranian government saw they had a potential uprising on their hands, they went to the standard anti-uprising playbook and cut off all satellite communication and cell-phone service to prevent news from getting in or out of Iran. That kind of thing worked very well back in 1989, and it even might have worked as recently as 1999. But today, communications technology has advanced beyond the point where it can be controlled by any government, and this might just be the most encouraging thing I’ve ever witnessed in regards to the hope for a Human Revolution.
As much as I hate Twitter (I’ve been meaning to rant about it in a blog post for awhile now) it has been invaluable for the Iranians both in terms of organising their protests and getting the word out to the rest of the world about what’s been happening. Cell-phone videos and pictures can be taken and posted online. Thousands of clips of the protests and the violence against protesters have been uploaded to Youtube and seen around the world. It’s the worst possible thing for the Iranian government—they don’t want anyone to know how massive this uprising is and they certainly don’t want anyone seeing police forces beating up on citizens, particularly women. But whatever they do to try and stop the information-flow, the tech-savvy youth in Iran find a way around it. The government has put a dam in place, but the internet has poked millions of tiny holes in that dam and information is pouring out far faster than the government can plug up the holes. For the first time in the history of mankind, people around the world can follow a revolution as it’s happening—we hear the voices of the people actually out there in the street and describing what’s going on, we see the pictures and watch the videos, privileged to witness this historic event from the perspective of the people themselves—not the government or the state-controlled media. It is a revolution within a revolution, and with any luck it will lead to more revolutions by serving as an example of what can actually be accomplished when the people not only take to the streets to stand up to their oppressive government, but can actually broadcast what’s happening as it happens to people all over the world.
We have yet to see the ultimate results of this development, but some of the immediate results are already apparent. Khamenei wants to portray these protests as nothing more than a few hooligans causing trouble and violently lashing out. Instead we see clips of hundreds of thousands of people of all ages marching silently through the streets and when the police confront them, they all sit down quietly to give them no excuse to attack. Khamenei accuses the West of having incited these protests in the first place in order to undermine Iranian democracy, but we read tweets from thousands of actual Iranians expressing their genuine frustration over the outcome of the election and their deep desire for peace and for a government that honours the will of the people.
The most important effect of this is that it finally shatters the perception of the outside world that all Iranians are warmongering religious fundamentalists. Anyone who actually reads the messages coming from the people can’t avoid the basic truth that they’re not very different from us at all. A government, especially a despotic one, does not actually represent the people, and no matter how fucked up and evil a government may be, people are the same everywhere—no matter where you are in the world there will be millions who are ignorant assholes and millions who are kind and compassionate. When you bomb a country…say, Iraq for instance…you may kill a few ignorant people but you won’t be able to avoid also killing many who are not only innocent, not only genuinely good and decent people, but people that you might have been very good friends with if you actually met them face to face. That’s why I opposed the Iraq war before it even started, even when everyone believed it was a threat to the U.S. That’s why I oppose all war, all the time, unless it’s truly for self-preservation.
And if enough people can be brought to the same understanding I had, even as a relatively naïve teenage kid, if enough people understand that war leads to the death of good and innocent people not very different from you, than maybe people won’t be so quick to call for war in the future. It wasn’t too long ago that many in the U.S. wanted to bomb Iran. Now we’re hearing the voices of the Iranian people, these people they wanted to kill, and it turns out they’re not evil at all—that they in fact share the same values as we do—values of liberty, peace, and democracy.
I’ve been saying for years that the internet and modern communications technology has the potential to bring mankind together like never before, in a way that just might lead to our developing the ability to save ourselves from self-destruction and to achieve a sustainable, peaceful existence on this planet for countless generations. This is the first real indication that this might not just be a wild starry-eyed liberal fantasy, but that there actually is a chance that such a dream might be realised. The revolution I’ve been waiting for might have already begun.
ok, first off, i’ve been watching the stuff too, but from a very different source; fox news. but since there’s no journalists involved and all the footage comes directly from iranians on the street, its a little different this time. the program i watched about it was hosted by shepherd smith, who i think is the most grounded, level-headed of anyone at fox news. obviously a conservative, but probably a mild one, and seems to actually be a decent human being and has shown feeling from time to time while reporting, which i love. i only say that because i think its important to say that i’m ignoring whatever oreilly or beck or hannity have to say about it because i really just dont care.
i will say that i agree with what you say on a human level, of what a huge occasion this has a chance to be, but in my response i am going to have to take a skeptical, devil’s advocate stance, not things that i necessarily want to happen, but things that i feel are strong possibilities that i cant allow wishful thinking to brush aside. so i hope you realize i want this to all work out, want peace, want understanding, and all that other tree-hugging hippie crap.
that said, while i dont think i can disagree in any way that this is a momentous historical occasion in the way that it is being reported, which i think might have as much of an impact on news and how we perceive it as the news coverage of the vietnam war had… however, it is very important to point out something in regards to this technological breakthrough, which is something i said in my last entry, which is that iran is not a backwater third world country of a bunch of people riding on camels and living in tents, its a very developed country, as much as any western nation, at least in general terms, and thus its population has the ability to use the media in this way (or ‘personal media’, or whatever you want to call it). if this kind of thing were happening in…. well, any third world country, you’d be getting a lot of the same as always, which is a few clips from foreign correspondents that no one cares about. if a riot were going on in america or britain or france or germany or japan you’d be getting the personal videos out of it, and indeed, there have been plenty of instances since the dawn of personal media devices in which that sort of thing has happened, but yes, its been in the west. does iran deserve this much attention for it just because they’re in the middle east and everyone has assumed that they’re just camel riding nomads who hate jews and america and now they’re being shown differently? i dont personally think so. however, i do think that it will have the impact that we’re talking about because it will be *perceived* as such a major stop forward, when really, it isnt.
to be fair to the situation, the only thing that i can see that makes it a bigger deal than any other people doing it in any other country, is that the people are continuing to do it in defiance of the fact that all foreign press has been banned and that the satellites have been shut down and whatever else the government is trying to do to keep it hushed.
and on a huge downside of this breakthrough, we have to assume that any other developed or even pseudo-developed country that has domestic issues of its own has its government looking into ways to shut down personal networking sites in their country, or else severely limit the freedoms to them. we dont see this kind of shit out of china yet because china even lords over what internet sites are allowed in their country. so there could be a revolution happening in china right now and we have no clue.
that’s not to diminish the iranians by any means, i’m just saying that while this is a big deal for the media, i still hesitate to believe that this will be a big deal politically in the long run.
my reasons for doubting its lasting change are very simple; the protests have turned to riots. riots do not change governments, they get a lot of people killed and buildings destroyed and that’s about it. as much as i enjoy watching riots, and as much as i’d like to think that the youth of iran are going to win out when the smoke clears, i just have to doubt everything they’re doing and why they’re doing it. we know the reason reported, which is to call for a recount or even to get to vote again and have it done fairly. but, who the hell are they kidding? do they think that their corrupt government is going to just step aside and go “oh alright, you got me… we’ll do it your way”. hell no. never. and as a cynic i must doubt their true intentions to begin with anyway. i mean, how funny would it be if ahmedenijad actually DID win the election? yeah the original vote was rigged, so the fuck what? that’s DEMOCRACY, that’s how it works and has always worked. not how its supposed to work, but its a very easy system to manipulate and people have been doing it since its inception. 8 years ago we had a nice little publicized brush with it in our country. people pooh poohed about it and whined about it for awhile, but in the end nothing changed, the rigged election results remained, and we got a retard in office, who we then overwhelmingly re-elected. so if this is what happened in iran, i’m glad to see that their youth actually have the balls to fucking get mad and do something about it, i was hoping for the same to happen here, but lo and behold, it was finally proven that americans are nearly all castrated.
to make my point tho, what began as rallies calling for something that would never be granted in the first place, have now turned into mindless violence. that’s all riots are, they are mindless, chaotic, violent happenings that have little point other than to relieve the stress of a population. look at the LA riots in of the early 90s, there had been a tension brewing for years within the racial makeup of the city, and the verdict to a trial is what set it off, but instead of there being any kind of thought out action taking place, for a week LA had droves of violent monkeys running around looting and raping and beating people, exploiting opportunism at its worst. now we arent hearing about any looting or anything going on, but then again we arent hearing much of anything except for the frantic words and video of protesters who have been running for their lives.
what concerns me is that no one seems to be questioning the motives of the rioting or the images we’ve been seeing from it. there’s no doubt that horrible things are happening, they always do in riots, but the rioters are not ‘the good guys’ fighting for a just cause here, that’s what we want it to be, that’s what we’re imposing on it, that’s what we’re hoping it is. how inspiring is it to look out there and see a people standing up to their oppressive leaders and championing democracy? i mean that hasnt happened in half a century or more. the latter half of the 20th century was full of democracies losing out to other harsher forms of government, or at least what we label as harsher, since its not like ours. now that’s not to defend any of the theocratic psychobabble that iran’s leaders believe in and what to institute across the country, but this situation is in desperate need of an objective perspective. we have politicians and reporters over here championing the protesters and rioters, and fuck knows i’m always for people rebelling against their government no matter what, but no one is really talking about how there’s really no plan whatsoever at work here. so they riot for a few days, some people get killed, some buildings get burned…. annnnnnd then what? the government is going to grant your wish? no. the government is going to accept full responsibility and step down? no. the government is going to pardon everyone who justifiably acted out of the media-imposed strain? no. i’ll tell you what’s going to happen, its the same thing that has always happened all through history no matter what time period when groups of people, large or small, but unarmed and angry, try to vent their anger about their cause in the streets; they are going to eventually be put down with violence, and the longer they protest, the worse it will get. because rioting solves nothing, the protesters are no longer working towards a goal, they are just making the streets chaotic and dangerous. they had little to no hope at the start of the protests, but now that violence has been unleashed so ravenously, nearly all sight of the goal is lost, because its become something else now.
but i will say how they can succeed, but i believe there are only two ways this can be done; the first is the more unlikely, which is that the protesters somehow are able to swing the iranian military into backing them. if they are able to have an army, the government will give them what they want, or even submit. however they are not an army right now, they dont even have weapons, they are angry people in the street with rocks. the second way i feel is much more obvious and possible, which is that america, or possibly britain, or possibly even an alliance of countries, sticks their nose in it finally and threatens the government into action. if this were the case tho, it would stir up all kinds of other troubles, and given how obama has reacted so far, i dont even think that this is going to happen. i must also reiterate my feeling that america had something to do with this from the outset, we just dont know about it yet. but a decade from now some kind of memo or report will be leaked that talks about the whole damn operation, but by then no one will care.
but overall, the violence needs to stop, because while its shining a light on what’s going on, people are now dying for something, call it ‘a cause’ if you want, that at this point, has little to no direction, and little to no motivation other than blind rage. we are talking about a youth-led demonstration after all, and youth = little experience. and in the end, the people will be far out-violenced by the government. i doubt there is any bastille to storm in tehran that will give the mob an edge. not even their self-reporting to the outside world is having much of an effect aside from everyone talking about it. and yes, talking is important, but in this case only action is going to matter, and i just cant see any other country stepping into this hornet’s nest of trouble and calling the government out on what is essentially a private iranian matter that’s not yet effecting any other country. america is the only one that would stick their nose in, as long as there’s something to gain, and i dont think this president is going to do that. unless the violence spills over and the government uses the riots as an excuse to invade some other country and start killing their people, i cant see why anything international would happen. not to say i dont want it to, but being realistic, i dont see it. hopefully the iranian people will be able to pull it out themselves, but honestly, what hope do they have?
i think all they do have is hope. realistically, they seem quite fucked.
First of all, you need to start getting your news from the internet and not Fox News. I had no idea how accurate or innaccurate the Fox News coverage of this event would be but it sounds like you’ve got a completely different perception of what’s going on than I do based on what I’ve been reading from the liveblog and all the articles and commentary.
Most importantly, these were not “riots”. Every day the protesters went out there and marched peacefully, even SILENTLY, knowing full well that the worst thing they could do is give the government an excuse to attack them. Many of the people involved in the protests were there in 1979 and remember the lessons of that revolution well. On Saturday when they went out in defiance of the Ayatollah they had no intention of causing havoc, and indeed if you watch the videos posted online you see no indication that any of the violence was actually started by protesters. In every case it’s the Basij (the Iranian version of the SS) or the military police who are harassing the protesters, throwing tears gas at them, beating them with night-sticks, or even shooting them. One poor woman was shot dead while simply standing beside her father and quietly observing the situation, apparently targeted by a sharp-shooter who could not have possibly considered her a threat.
As far as I can tell, the violence is coming straight from the government purely to intimidate and deter the population from continuing their peaceful protests. Khamenei would like nothing more than for everyone to believe that the police forces were defending themselves and protecting the security of the state, but thanks to the new media revolution everyone can see that this isn’t the case, that the police forces are terrorizing and brutalising innocent people to try and break their will. What remains to be seen is whether or not this will work.
Secondly, you said there doesn’t seem to be any plan or any way for the movement to succeed. Fox News must be even shittier than I thought because one of the most incredible things about this situation is that it DOES have a real chance of success. It isn’t some kind of completely unorganised outburst from the people–it’s being guided and encouraged by Mousavi himself and coordinated by people who know what they’re doing based on the success of the ’79 revolution. There’s an influential cleric named Rafsanjani who completely supports the opposition and is reportedly doing everything he can to get Ahmedenijad to step down.
Most importantly, the Supreme Leader depends on the Guardian Council to stay in power, as this body of important religious leaders has the power to appoint the Supreme Leader in the first place. There are indications to suggest that the council is divided as to whether or not Khamenei is still a viable leader and if he should be removed. But the fact is, the protesters DO have a chance of success if they just maintain their resolve and refuse to be cowed into submission.
Finally, even if what you’re predicting is accurate and the people give up and go home, Iran has ALREADY changed fundamentally in terms of the relationship between the government and its people. Even if Khamenei and Ahmedenijad maintain their hold on power, they’ve made millions of enemies among the people and dozens of enemies even within the ruling class. There’s no way they’ll be able to govern effectively for the next four years, and when the next “election” rolls around (if they even decide to continue with such a pretense) the events of this week will certainly not have been forgotten.
I appreciate your comments. It’s invaluable to have a devil’s advocate position here and I hope you’ll continue. I’d just highly recommend you consult some additional sources other than a pretend news channel, particularly the liveblog linked to in the post.
first off, the first paragraph of my last posting talking about fox news was meant to tell you that i was only watching the one guy on the network that i think is fairly moderate, and that i’m ignoring all the other crazies on there. and as someone who listens to that network like ahawk to try and hear them being conservative assholes, i couldnt find anything patriotic or conservative about their reporting on iran, at least not yet. it was basically weeding through the online video, there’s nothing else to report or make up because they arent allowed to report on it in iran. also, while i dont have cnn, i do read the cnn website every single day, which, between my watching of fox news and my reading of the cnn site, i feel gives me quite a balanced view of things, and so far, they arent reporting anything any different.
which is exactly my point and which is what gives me pause about the whole thing. everyone in america, liberals and conservatives, want the protesters to succeed because we do not like the current regime. this also has to do with my ‘liking’ of ahmedenijad, which has nearly everything to do with the fact that he is not afraid to stand up to america and call america out on all its bullshit and terrorism, and far less to do with his domestic policies, which i’m sure if i knew the scope of, i would hate him too. to try and make this clear tho, as much as i am 100% against theocratic rule of any kind, against morality enforcement, against keeping women as 2nd class citizens, and all that crap that comes with it, i am also against american interests, especially when it comes to foreign relations.
meaning, as much as i want the protesters and youth of iran to overthrow their awful government, if they do, i worry that iran would once again become a western puppet. and that is something that no one is discussing in our media so far, and something that i feel is a huge, huge point of debate in iran. while i’m sure there are plenty of radical muslims who just want their god-given muslim rulers to stay in power and thus back ahmedenijad, i’m sure a large part of that want is to reject western influence. the same kind of western influence that caused the 1979 revolution to happen in the first place.
going back in time to learn valuable lessons from history that we can ignore once again, the 79 revolution did start much the same way, with muslim protests in the streets over anger about the leadership of the shah. the protesters back then were, ironically, beaten and killed by the police and government troops exactly like its happening today (when the government back then was western-supported and the protesters were our enemies), the protests turned to riots, and the revolution eventually succeeded in no small part to the fact that the revolutionaries had guerrilla troops aiding them in fighting the police and government soldiers and taking over government buildings. they fought hard, and won, and it was a seminal moment in 20th century politics that nobody saw coming.
back then nobody in iran liked the shah, they hated him and his policies and the fact that he was controlled by the west, mainly the US. as they should have, because he was a worthless bastard who had, with the help of america, overthrown mossadegh, who iran voted for fair and square.
today, mirroring that, yes, the protests are starting in much the same way, they are fueled by a people who over the past 30 years have grown to distrust and hate their government, but i would argue to say that there is much less support for change this time around than there was in 79. the 79 revolution was religiously fueled and had a clear enemy in its sights. this time around its mostly young people involved who dont remember or werent alive for the 79 revolution, who dislike their government and its clear sighted purpose (the vote) isnt very clear at all. yes, there probably was tampering or just out right lying about the results, but they have no proof, nor do i think they will ever have it. all of this was stirred up by the belief that they were lied to, which is strange to me because lying to people is most of any government’s job and i thought everyone already knew that. maybe they did, and the outcry has more to do with the fact that they are just fed up with the government and now is their chance to do something about it. but unless they are willing to continue dying for a while longer, long enough to impose a country-wide strike that may have a chance to grind iran to a halt, the fact that they dont have any military support of any kind in my mind almost completely hampers their goal. they can protest all they want, and all that’s going to accomplish is getting their heads smashed in.
you disagreed with me about my calling the protests a riot, but i have to disagree with your disagreement, altho admitting that i should have been more clear about my meaning. you are probably right (and will just go ahead and say that you are, since i’m not there and dont actually know) that the protesters are not inciting the riots or the violence, but, sadly, i dont think it matters. its good of them to not be going crazy with violence like the monkeys in LA did (and of course when i say “monkeys” what i really mean is “blacks”), and if they are able to keep their protests violence-free on their part, then good for them. however, the government militias and police are not allowing a peaceful protest, and once the violence starts, it begets itself all over the place. it doesnt matter if the protesters are keeping quiet or not, the once calm protests are now very not-calm, they are riots now, like it or not, with chaos and people running around more concerned about trying not to get killed than with the protest. and for the record, the protesters are not all keeping silent and being good little citizens, there are dozens of clips being shown of them fighting with police (which i of course fully support), of arming themselves with rocks and then using them against people, and of them capturing police or militiamen and beating them either to death or nearly to death. and again, while i always support people resisting and fighting against police and the government, the fact is that they are fighting back, it is a fight, the protests are no longer protests, they are now riots and street fights. and THAT is what i meant when i said that they had been turned into something else, and that their goal that was much easier to see, has now been clouded in the smoke of rebellion.
and my point about all that stuff is that since it has evolved the way it has (which, arguably, was probably the only place for it to go), now is the time when it will be seen if the protesters really have any idea about what they’re doing and the ability to enact the change they want (which i’m afraid i have to doubt), or if this is nothing more than a large-scale release of tension that has been slowly building over 30 years, and once enough people are beaten and killed into submission, that they will remember their place and it will return to how it was. of course it wont return exactly how it was, nothing ever is exact, yes, it will show a weakness in the government, khemeni and ahmedenijad will look a lot worse to people after this even if they do come out on top, and it doesnt mean it wont lead the way for some kind of larger, more organized revolution down the line. but as of now, the goal isnt clear enough. the fact that they are backing moussavi is all that you need to know, as he’s not exactly a liberal candidate. the differences between him and ahmedenijad arent all that great, he just might be a little harder to control and so, yeah, the government (or supreme leader) probably rigged the election to keep their guy in place. which is a totally fucking normal thing to do and happens all the time.
i think i would feel a lot differently about all this if they were behind a radical liberal who wanted to make sweeping changes to the government, or even a revolutionary who incited everything from the outset, and if they were actually revolutionaries in the streets fighting for control of the government. but that is NOT, i repeat, N-O-T what is happening right now. that is what we all WANT to be happening right now. if moussavi had led troops into tehran to oust the government that he found corrupt and lead iran into a new democratic future, then fucking good for him, i would completely support it. but this all started because of suspected voting fraud, and what they’re calling for and protesting for isnt a complete overhaul of the iranian government or for khemeni to step down or anything like that, they just want a guy who is a tad bit more moderate than the current guy as president, which doesnt make a whole lot of sense to begin with since the president has to answer to the supreme leader and the clerical guardian council.
because of all these reasons is why i am so skeptical about any of this working out for the best, or why i hesitate to call it a fully fledged revolution, or why i question the motives and purpose behind all of it. its not that i dont want to believe in it and champion it as something good and pure. but history has taught me that things are always way more complicated than they seem on the surface, and the fact that this is being reported differently (ie. the use of personal media) has little to no bearing on what the outcome may be. plenty of people and countries around the world already despise the iranian government, so i dont think khemeni will really give a shit about what it looks like to outsiders to have the government crack down on people he already told days ago to fucking go home and get off the streets, or else.
there’s no question in my mind that iran needs and deserves a change in the government, but a far bigger change than the one they are ‘fighting for’ right now. the poor country has been politically fucked over since the 20s. the 79 revolution was an actual revolution that ousted a corrupt dictator, but sadly, replaced it with religious zealots instead of somebody worth a damn. the same thing happened in iraq with the ba’th party. and speaking of iraq, we cant forget the fact that iraq, or “america’s new toy”, borders iran, and that the US presence there for the past decade cant be understated.
nor can it be forgotten that the war between iraq and iran from 80-88 isnt forgotten with the iranian people who know full well that iraq was US supported in that war, and it was waged because we wanted a hold on iranian oil again and had our buddy saddam hussein fight the war for us. which left maybe over a million people dead in the region, completely fucked up the infrastructure of both countries, and caused deep, lasting wounds in the area. a war that ahmedenijad fought in and i’m sure remembers well.
and my reason for bringing that up is to i guess point out the fact that there is no real ‘good guy’ in this mess to root for. i see very bad things happening no matter what the outcome, and i dont mean bad things as in people dying, that’s already happening, i mean that i dont see that the outcome will be worth it in the end, whether it succeeds or not. if the protesters fail, then the government stays the same and probably gets a little weaker. if they succeed then their guy gets put in as president and the government pretty much remains the same. if they succeed and somehow overthrow the whole government and start up a new democracy, then the western world will immediately 1-celebrate like mad, 2-swarm like vultures around the radical-islamic-free virgin democratic government of iran and start imposing their wants and making deals with them and threatening them into working with them until they get what they want out of them, which i can guarantee you, will not be anything beneficial for iran. unless you think a step closer to globalization and rows of starbucks and mcdonalds across the country is a really good thing.
which is why, as much as i despise what the current iranian regime stands for, i have to admit that they are among the only countries in the developed world who defiantly stand against the US, which i dont think i need to remind you, is guilty of far worse crimes against the world, and its own people, and for far longer a time than iran is. the US needs to be stopped, and a more western friendly iranian democracy isnt going to help that matter at all, its going to play right into our hands, whether we orchestrated the whole thing or not.
and if all this paranoid america bashing comes off as just an outlandish conspiracy theory and that really all i’m doing is hating america and its ideals, then first i’d say you need to read more, and second i’d say you sound like someone from fox news. and while i know that you personally agree with me about the america issue and how dastardly a country we really are and always have been, i guess i should offer up the question to you of what kind of good are you finding might come out of this? you seem to obviously be a supporter of the protesters and wanting them to pull it out, and i am too deep down, but i cant ignore the bad things that will probably happen if they do in fact succeed. it seems to me like the little party they throw after winning will soon be overshadowed by the imposing storm cloud of the west as it rolls in and settles over their country.
Okay, I’ll start by addressing your question–what kind of good to I see might come out of this? Well, you seem to be looking at this from a very practical, “what-are-the-immediate-results?” standpoint. I’m looking at it in a far more broad, abstract way. Whenever the people rise up and topple a government that doesn’t work for them, it’s a victory for humanity. I’m heavily influenced by Camus, who writes that all values are created out of rebellion. Whenever a rebellion succeeds, it’s a victory for the VALUES of liberty and justice. Whatever the practical, immediate results might be, it’s yet another historical demonstration that a people can only be pushed so far, and it’s always a lesson to future leaders that there’s a limit to what they can get away with.
I understand that from your militantly anti-American standpoint (which is perfectly justified) you’re much less sympathetic to the protesters than you would be if they were fighting against a Western-backed regime. And I agree that America has way more blood on its hands than the vast majority of people know about or are willing to admit. That doesn’t mean an Iranian government that is NOT openly hostile to the West is a bad thing. Mousavi may be less of an isolationist than Ahemdenijad, but he’s no friend to the U.S. It’s not that a whole lot of GOOD would have come out of his presidency (had he just won legitimately without the whole uprising) but there would have been a bigger absence of BAD. Any sabre-rattling leader who stirs up hatred of foreigners is far worse for humanity as a whole than a leader who is willing to cooperate in the international community. And international cooperation does NOT mean simply bowing to whatever demands the U.S. imposes–it only means a willingness to compromise and a reluctance to increase hostility.
That said, the uprising in Iran has gone far beyond the point of a simple dispute over vote fraud. That’s the spark that ignited the flames, but the country has been soaking in kerosene for quite some time now just waiting for something like this to happen. I now know it’s true that a month ago most people didn’t even know who Mousavi was. This uprising has everything to do with a hatred of the government and almost nothing to do with the potential policies of a potential Mousavi administration. Even Mousavi himself has said that the uprising is bigger than him, specifically saying he “followed them” rather than that they are following him.
Now, back to your points about the media which I think are quite good. It’s true that the government under Khamenei, already hostile to the international world, doesn’t give much of a shit if people in the West are seeing what’s going on. Again I’m thinking much more broadly: here we are at a time where we can hear about important world events live as they’re happening from the perspective of the people participating. It was a huge enough breakthrough when television allowed us to witness world events live, but until now we’ve always seen them through a filter of organized, message-proofed media. The fact that we can now get the news directly from the sources is a huge development that will undoubtedly have an enormous impact on all future events of this kind.
I’ll admit that you’re right about the riots. I wouldn’t have called them riots until Saturday but now regardless of who’s instigating the violence it’s hard to deny that these are pretty much riots, as they don’t look much different than what happened in L.A. [Incidentally, please try not to make any black 'monkey' jokes on my site--I know perfectly well that you're the farthest thing from a racist and you're just being ironic but nobody else would have any way of knowing that]
It’s amazing how much we can disagree on even though we essentially agree. The Iranian government is bad and populist uprisings are good. But the most important thing I can say is we have to avoid thinking in strict ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terms in the first place. You shouldn’t look for the ‘good guy’ in the situation or draw a line in the sand that place the Iranian government on one side and the opposition PLUS America on the other side. Just because America hates the regime and the opposition hates the regime does not make them our friends, and if they succeed it does not mean that the first thing they’ll do is start serving up Big Macs.
I am so sick of hearing people talk about america like it is some fucking super hero for the rest of the world, and always needs to butt in and save it. Why the hell can’t anyone listen to George Washington? He fucking warned against permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. He warned against sticking our noses in everyone else’s business. I think it would be a huge mistake if Obama butted in for the fucking obvious reasons. I do think that everything that is happening is a good thing. If Mousavi had won none of this would have happened. Iran needs this. The women and men need this, so they can change their own world, and not just leave it all up to the fucking government.
‘Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.’ – George Washington
Excellent quote, and it’s a good point that as much as the politicians in this country treat the Founding Fathers like infallible deities, they completely ignore their actual philosophies.
well a new day, more news out of iran. and feel free to challenge this based on the news outlets that you check up with, but based on the info that i’m getting, it really seems as tho the tide is turning now. in a bad way.
it saddens me to have to already have to report on the ‘i told you so’ front, as i didnt want any of the things i predicted to actually come true, but from what i heard reported today, mousavi has apparently been missing for days, iran’s government has come out and said that the CIA is helping to fund the rioters (whatever that means), and the violence is getting worse across the board, especially from the government and police. iranians who are still able to get online are reporting that the police are confiscating bodies of protesters before they can be identified and trucking them away to who knows where, that hospitals are being overrun with wounded and dying civilians, and even that the government is going on tv and showing pictures of protesters that they got footage of and asking for any information about them from the people of the country, and that they are matching up the faces of protesters with their national photographic records from their ID’s, and then coming in the middle of the night and taking them away.
pretty goddamn scary stuff. this is exactly what i was worried about happening and now it looks like its happening. the government is cracking down harshly. the people had their warning, they didnt heed it, and now they’re being spanked like defiant children. the only hopeful words i hear out of pundits now is that this uprising, which will probably be quelled soon, will hopefully lead to a larger, more organized uprising later on down the line, and that if it had any success it was to show that there are a large number of angry people in iran who are fed up with the way their country operates.
it was pretty shocking really to get all that information in about a ten minute time span from watching the news, as its all stuff i predicted. i’m not patting myself on the back for it, its just surreal that it does all seem to be happening that way. maybe i should become a political strategist. ha.
this has really drawn some interesting parallels with tiananmen square tho with the modern twist of we’re able to get news from the people on the ground. but tiananmen square started off as a funeral gathering, then gradually turned into a sort of protest against the government and the want to be more democratic, and was largely a youth-driven episode. when the government finally moved in and drove out the crowds, unknown numbers of civilians died (thousands), the government cracked down brutally on them for not dispersing when told to, the protesters didnt get what they wanted, and after that the chinese government became even more xenophobic and harsh when dealing with the public. no chances taken, do whatever it takes to keep the public in line, that’s what they learned that day, and for the most part china has been quiet since then. many chinese left the country, many more disappeared, but for the most part the people were spanked and learned their place. its sad, but that’s how it happens if you dont have a plan of action. tiananmen square had absolutely no planning. it was a massive gathering of people for one reason that transformed over time into another reason, then many reasons. and watching it all unfold on tv in the west, we were able to put our interpretations on it, the love of democracy and all, and its true that that was indeed a part of the gathering, but there was no plan to change the government, it was just a public show of dissatisfaction that was actually entirely peaceful. until of course the government warned them to leave, they didnt, and then they massacred whoever was still around when they got there and defended it by saying “well we WARNED them!”
there should be no shock by anyone anywhere in the world that the iranian government is cracking down brutally and violently on its people for protesting for this long and on this large a scale. and while the protesters have their camera phones and online accounts and are able to tell us their side of the ‘struggle’, even that is slightly propagandist. not that i’m in any way defending the actions of the government against them, but honestly, what in the blue fuck did they think was going to happen when they started doing this? maybe whatever they have equal to our constitution gives them the right to free assembly too, just like we have in america, but the government isnt going to let a little something like the constitution stop them from keeping their populace in line. hell, peaceful american protests are broken up violently too, but the media spins it into the valiant riot police stepping in and gaining control of a chaotic situation, when almost always its the police who stir up the problem to begin with. people gather peacefully, and legally, usually to protest some good cause, then the police show up and tell them to leave, and when they dont they get beaten and gassed and shot and arrested. and god fucking help them if they try to put up any kind of a fight! the police are already going to beat the shit out of you just for being there, that’s what they do after all, and if you dare to put up a fight against them then you are just giving them the exact reason they need to pull out their fucking cannons and tanks and whatever else retarded amount of horribly violent force they’re itching to use. how dare the public defy the system! its funny how fast a protester who’s there to shed light on an injustice can turn into a rioter, a traitor, and then a terrorist. and it needs to be pointed out iran’s government isnt special in the way they are handling this. like i said, america has reacted in the exact same way, albeit on smaller scales, from the new york draft riots of the 1860s, the bonus army march in the 1930s, the chicago DNC protests in 68, the seattle WTO protests in 99…. and many, many other examples of our government violently squashing protesters with the same amount of zeal and violence. and now america is supposed to condemn the iranian government for doing what all governments do in times like these? all governments are essentially the same despite what political affiliation they may belong to, in that they are a group of select people in control of a country, and they are going to keep their control no matter what. some countries might try a few more things before reacting violently to its own people, but in the end, they are going to bring the hammer down, no matter the cost, because the scariest thing for someone in power is to lose that power, and they will do whatever it takes to keep it.
and while this will sound like i’m defending the iranian government (again), please only interpret it as devil’s advocate, but while i hear everyone condemning their crackdown on the protesters, no one is pointing out how much *worse* they could have been about all of it. first off, there was a warning given. go home. get off the streets. stop protesting, or else. it doesnt make it right or legal, but the warning was given. when it was obvious that they weren’t leaving, they sent the police out to harass them. it wasnt cool, but it also wasnt sending out fucking tanks like the chinese did, or mowing them down with machine guns, like the british in india or as many american labor strikes have been settled. and still, many days later, while the police brutality and beatings and random shootings are still happening, and probably increasing with severity, i’m actually quite shocked about how contained the violence seems to be, compared to how huge it could have been in these modern times.
so it still goes on, but it feels like its winding down. at this point, i dont think the army is going to rebel with the protesters, i dont think that whatever few government officials may have been sympathetic to them are going to have any effect politically, and i do think that any of the protesters who might have been somehow identified by government agents are going to be in very, very bad trouble for the next few months. i would estimate that in the upcoming months there may even be a large surge of iranian refugees seeking residence elsewhere in the world. but all this depends on how hard the government cracks down and how much they isolate themselves. i really doubt that any of this madness is going to lead to any tighter sanctions on iran from the international community, i dont think that ahmedenijad is going to be ousted or deposed or step down, i dont think the supreme leader is going to change. i think the only immediate outcome of this is going to be that the iranian people are going to have even fewer rights, harsher punishments, and live in far more fear than they were for the past decade. maybe eventually it will lead to something bigger and, lets hope, more organized in the future, but i think this big mess was a very unfortunate and poorly executed happening that is going to cause a lot more problems than it ever thought it would.
i also think that the media made it into a bigger deal than it actually was. and dont get me wrong, it was a big deal, but had it not relied on personal media to report it, and most importantly, had it happened in a country not as domestically and internationally important as iran (say…. rwanda, for example), then do you really think we would have given a fuck? the politicians and news pundits and people in the know like you and me were interested in its happening and the outcome because we know how important iran is on the world stage, and about our country’s historical dealings with them. just like our relationship with iraq eventually led to two military conflicts between us. that kind of thing had the possibility of happening so we were very tuned in and aware of it. but how closely did the news report the anti-government country-wide protests in burma in 2007? in fact, were you even aware that it happened? or how about the second congo war (aka the african world war, aka the great african war) that spanned for five hellish years at the turn of the 21st century, resulting in the largest number of deaths of any conflict since world war two? how many american stations were tuned in for that little episode? none of them, hell, i didnt see ANYONE report on it until after the fucking thing was over, then time magazine ran an article about it and pointing out how ignored it was. well duh, we dont give a fuck about burma or the congo, they dont have anything we want (in iran’s case, that sweet sweet oil).
watching the coverage today i noticed how much less of it there was online and on the tv because there’s a senator from south carolina who wanted to fuck a woman other than his wife, which is of course of national importance and pushes aside all other stories because infidelity is still one of the most shocking things you can report on in this country for some reason. i suspect that unless there’s some kind of major happening in iran, like a huge bombing or the iranian army starts slaughtering the populace en masse (american style!), this story will slowly but surely fade from our view. and if some actor gets married to some actress, the story will disappear overnight! you know, since the start of the iran election nonsense, i’ve only seen one single article about the two us journalists in north korea. they were just kind of forgotten about totally (for the record, apparently the swedish ambassador is trying to get them released for us. thanks sweden). and while it can be said that this whole happening gained so much notoriety because of its showing online and on tv, just give the american populace a little while, and they will be changing the channel.
“why don’t you ask the kids at tiananmen square
was fashion the reason why they were there
they disguise it, hypnotize it
television made you buy it”
For the record, I never said that I BELIEVED all of the good things I imagined coming out of this would actually happen–I only HOPED. Of course the most likely outcome from the very beginning was a violent crackdown on the part of the Iranian government and the eventual suppression of the opposition. I only thought that because the opposition had friends within the Iranian government, and that so many of the top clerics were openly disapproving of the way the Ayatollah handled the situation, that there was a chance of success.
The only chance they have left is if they can organise massive strikes like they did in 79. If everyone stops working and the economy grinds to a halt, the government then REALLY has a problem. Of course the issue is that most Iranians are already struggling from difficult financial times and can’t afford not to go to work. A bit of irony there.
This thing will be over when Mousavi concedes defeat. As long as he’s out there and calling for people to keep protesting, people will keep protesting. Even if he’s arrested, the protests will continue. What they have to do is get him to give up and tell everyone to accept the election results.
As for everyone caring about this only because Iran has such international importance, you’re absolutely right about that as well. What the grassroots in every country and the bloggers and citizens journalists need to do is make the next uprising that happens anywhere in the world as big a deal as the mainstream media made this. If enough people out there start liveblogs and twitter feeds and a constant stream of pictures and video like we’ve seen over the past two weeks in Iran, maybe we can finally get some people to pay attention.
But to end on a positive note, I think it’s quite significant that the government crackdown was so much less brutal than it had the potential to be, which I think actually IS the result of all this new media. The government has shown a lot of restraint up to this point because they don’t want images of a giant massacre going out to the rest of the Iranian people and the world. That alone indicates some kind of progress, however small.
Change is happening. The only question is whether the change will occur fast enough to save ourselves.