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Iran Lost The Propaganda War
Der Spiegel once was a somewhat lefty German weekly magazine. Recently it turned into a propaganda tool of the right. It has quite an influence, its sold circulation is over one million each week.
The increase of such quite ridiculous but effective propaganda like the above is the direct consequence of Mousavi's challenge of the state of Iran. He declared himself the winner in the election even before the vote count began. When the results were announced he alleged massive fraud without presenting any convincing evidence.
That again triggered big demonstrations of people who believed his allegations. When these non-rebellions turned into violent youth riots the state of Iran, like any other state on this planet would have done, asserted itself and suppressed them.
This again was a real gift for anti-Iran propagandists and their work will hurt Iran's image in the 'west' for a long time. When Iran's leaders are openly associated with bin-Laden in major publications Iran has lost the propaganda war.
I will not be surprised to see Mousavi punished for the obvious damage he has done to his country. But that would again only play right into the hand of the propagandists. Maybe he should be send off to some small town in the counryside where he can learn how the people living there really think. Give him a stern advice not to talk to the media and let him paint more pictures.
I’m going to continue my discussion with china-hand2 from comment 185 in Conclusionabout capitalism et cetera because I think it actually has something to do with the splits and misunderstanding amongst ourselves in this discussion about Iran’s election.
I get a better sense of what you mean by capitalism now, and I would like to respond to it because 1) I see it differently, 2) this difference helps me see why some of our arguments look inhuman to each other, even after we’ve calmed down, 3) I’d like to understand my own definition better and hope to get something out of debating it. First, your explanation:
But that said: as i’m sure you probably know, “Capitalism” does not equal merely “money” or “buying and selling”. “Capitalism” is the modus operandi of the industrial era tycoons. While the tycoons and massive income disparities remain with us, a lot of adjustment mechanisms (and the awareness that accompanies them) have been introduced since then: socialist or social democratic measures like universal health care, social security, etc; corporations; other forms of technological and post-industrial collectivism. I’m sure there are many others.
Another big change from Marx’ era is the (too) slowly growing recognition — at least among scientists (both hard and soft), educators, and (far too few) policy makers — that an effort must be made to protect indigenous peoples, and that there is no inherent value in technological progress.
So yeah — the world we live in is now a post-capitalist society, and you hint at what i’m getting at in your own post: these days, people in modern, technological societies can’t help but acquire personal, direct understandings of things like “abstract value”, “alienation”, “commodification”, and “division of labor”. These experiences motivate them to turn to social and political mechanisms for rectification of what they perceive as wrong, or adjustment of what they perceive as merely corrupt. At the same time, people all across the world — Iran, China, Russia, the US, Europe, Brazil, Venezuela — are demanding admittance to elite markets via stock exchanges, digital trading, and systemic reforms. They are also developing collectives that operate outside the industrialized marketplace, and demanding that these be accorded safe, secure legal and social spaces where they can thrive.
The world has already long outgrown the “capitalist” label, just as what most folks in the US and Europe call “Marxism” isn’t but a tiny, stunted, and distorted version of what Marx was actually saying.
Most people equate “capitalism” with “buying and selling”, “ownership”, and “the acquirement of wealth”, while that same group equates “Marxism” with “communism”, “money-less societies”, and “enforced public entitlement for the everyman”.
Both of us care a lot about people’s subjective awareness of “the rules of the game” (let’s not call it capitalism if we don’t agree on that). Your arguments suggest that people’s awareness of the injustice allows them to leave behind capitalism by injecting new forces such as welfare systems, etc. For my part, I would like to suggest that awareness sufficient to produce safeguards against capitalist excess are not actually sufficient to escape capitalism. In my view, welfare systems are temporary successes that matter, but that will fall victim to a simple law of capitalism – that beings that think like capital (such as corporations or well ‘adjusted’ MBAs) know that they MUST regularly increase their rate of profit.
btw, the reasons for this law are complicated and may actually require a read of good political economics, preferably marxist. But the law itself can help show all of us economically oriented moderns why welfare, etc. is not going to hold back capitalism.
One example, discussed at the Moon earlier, is the conquest of the former Yugoslavia – a series of events that did one thing very effectively, eliminate the welfare programs of that country/countries. [I realize one example does not prove anything, but I am merely trying to suggest a line of thinking, not prove it.]
The problem is that the forces that help one understand how humanist rhetoric can be harnessed to capitalist warfare, are not best understood as human forces. They are rather social forces, or as the marxists say, laws of history. Like gravity (I shit you not – no one experiences gravity. Rather they experience falling, and hitting the ground et cetera, and then they theorize gravity. They could just as easily theorize angels or attraction among the elements to account for these experiences. The theory is not the experience.] laws of history or social laws CANNOT be experienced by anyone.
I think one reason we argue so harshly is that we are often talking past each other. When I hear b or r’giap wary of the entirely authentic claims of a civil rights movement getting beaten in the streets, I hear them as people looking to understand events as something that is not merely driven by human levels of experience, but as something moving to laws that operate beyond our experience but not beyond our knowledge. Like laws of gravity, social laws can also be understood and used to navigate a better course.
It may sound inhuman, but then gravity is also not particularly human, but we know we have to deal with it.
This is just a start of the discussion, but the law that I think ch2 may be ignoring when he says that we are no longer capitalist, is the very capitalist law that the rate of profit must increase, or the entity holding the capital loses the economic game. This explains a lot of destructive history, and if you take seriously what you know about history, then you know that capital and those who own/are-owned-by capital are quite capable of taking out the social welfare bulwarks that seem to make us post-capitalist.
I hear b and others watching history, and I hear Parviz grokking their approach as inhumane. Well, I think economic/historical laws are inhuman, but a concern with them is quite humane. And keeping all that straight is part of why I don’t see us as post-capitalist.
Posted by: citizen | Jun 25 2009 17:45 utc | 252
Arnold Evans @ 221
Travels into a Remote Nation of the World, in Two Parts
By Arnold Evans, First a Blog Poster, and then a Drivel Master
Part Two: A Voyage to Moon of Alabama
Here I will address every single point you make. I would expect you to have the decency to answer the questions I ask.
but still no scenario of how it could have been done.
I have quite a few scenarios ready for you. Better come up with yours so you can see mine.
Were the numbers reported out of the interior ministry changed from the numbers transmitted from the localities?
The problem with you is that you think there is only one way to rig an election. There are several concurrent ways to rig an election. So some numbers have changed, some have not, depending on how permissive the situation at each polling station and county was and how much rigging was required for the fix to work.
If so there are thousands of people responsible for local poll counts who know that the results are wrong, all over the country, and people trusted enough in their communities to be allowed to manage poll places.
Problems with your unsubstantiated assertions.
1. Thousands of people responsible for local poll counts who know that the results are wrong.
Not necessarily. Suppose they are all neutral election administrators. They are not, but suppose they were. They sign a certificate and go home in the middle of the night. Then 10 days later the MOI releases some numbers on its website. How many people read those numbers? Not too many. Even if election administrators at any polling station would read the numbers how are they required to remember the correct number even if they were impartial? Even if they did remember the numbers, what motivates them to come forward and say the number they see is different from what they signed? What is their proof? None. They cannot keep copies of the voting certificate. So you are an honest election worker — not likely to exist in this election, but suppose you are — which one would you choose? (1) Voicing your concern without proof that the data MOI has provided is wrong and book yourself constant harassment and a highly possible trip to the Iranian prison system where you will learn the joys of sodomy first-hand; (2) Keep your mouth shut and not talk about the whole thing even to your brother? I would pick (2). How about you?
2. and people trusted enough in their communities to be allowed to manage poll places.
What I described was the best case scenario. Your scenario of honest election workers. The reality was different: Election administrators and GC monitors were handpicked, vetted and trained for a year from the ranks of the Basij, the fifth force of a military organization called the IRGC. They obey orders like any good soldier does. And the orders have been explicitly that Mr. Ahmadinejad was the Leader’s favored candidate. And it is the responsibility of the Basij and the IRGC to see that the orders of the Commander in Chief the Ayatollah Khamenei be carried out. How likely is it for an ideologically-driven soldier who thinks he is fighting the enemy in this election to commit treason in battle?
Were the ballot boxes pre-stuffed?
Some could have been pre-stuffed. They could also be post-stuffed, which is a more likely outcome.
In the tens of thousands of poll locations, including with Mousavi’s 40,000 election monitors, nobody noticed a box that was 20% full or that had any pre-stuffed ballots at all.
First the myth of 40,000 Mousavi monitors:
Nominally Mousavi could have one representative at each polling station. In reality only a tiny fraction of his representatives could be found standing at a polling station at vote count. Here is how it happened:
1. Candidate representatives are supposed to be nominated by the campaign, vetted by the government, then the GC a couple of weeks before the election. Most of the applications for representatives were either lost, considered incomplete, or simply ignored by the government. Some were eternally “in process”. Alternate applications for other people were not accepted.
2. Now suppose someone has received his card. By law he was supposed to be allowed into the election planning meetings in each county. They were almost always uniformly barred from those meetings.
3. Then comes the election day. Most representatives were not admitted into the polling stations. Some had their cards confiscated as well. The route to have the representative reinstated is as follows: Successfully dispute the claim that he is not a properly identified representative by MOI at the Governor’s office; approve him once more, which means you need to get another signature by the Governor and the GC representative for the county; bring duplicate documentation required; have his card issued; send him back to the polling station. This process was rarely if ever completed for a representative that was sent home from the polling station. Now suppose the representative was among the minority who were admitted into the station. They were then told to stand aside and not mutter a word. The reason? The law allows the GC and MOI representatives to simply boot candidate representatives from the polling station with impunity. If Mr. Mousavi’s representative was a good boy or gal as he or she was supposed to, she could last until the end of voting, but not vote counting. A very tiny fraction of Mr. Mousavi’s representatives were present at vote counting. Even then they were sidelined. By law they cannot participate in counting the votes, but the MOI did not allow them to see how the votes were counted either. Interestingly, the SMS service for the whole country was cut. So they could not report what they had witnessed to the campaign. Cell phone reports prompted Mr. Mousavi to write two notes to the Ayatollah Khamenei pleading with him to intervene on the afternoon of the election day, to no avail.
And who pre-filled 10 million votes in secret? Thousands of volunteers? None of whom has had a change of conscience.
Not all the 10 million difference needs to be attributed to ballot-stuffing. The MOI can simply report wrong figures counting on the GC not to call it on that, which is exactly what the GC has done so far and will continue to do.
But suppose you need 10 million votes.
Writing Mr. Ahmadinejad’s name on a piece of paper in Persian takes 2 seconds. Suppose we give one person 8 seconds to write that. So on average one person can write 7 Ahmadinejad’s in 1 minute or 420 Ahmadinejad’s in an hour. Try it. You can do far better. But we are being conservative. Suppose each person works 8 hours, this means that one person can write 8*420=3,360 Ahmadinejad’s per day. Assuming that the MOI was getting ready for rigging the election only two weeks before the election — another very permissive assumption — we have 3,360*14=47,040 votes written for Mr. Ahmadinejad by one person. Dividing 10 million by 47,040 we arrive at about 213 people. So that is all it takes: 213 people. This number is less than the number of people who have received multi-million dollar no-payment-necessary loans from the Iranian banking system under Mr. Ahmadinejad. Do you expect any of them to have a change of mind? Mr. Ahmadinejad has a support base of around 10 million constant votes in Iran. Is it really difficult to find a couple of hundred of those committed to having him reelected at any cost?
But Mousavi now acknowledges that his election monitors were allowed to monitor the counts, but he complains they were not able to participate.
How do you know that? Another fable?
Nobody has been able to explain why after being vetted, Mousavi, a regime insider and former prime minister, victory to the office of President – one of the least powerful presidential offices in the world – poses any threat at all to Khamenei, much less a threat that would inspire a spectacular fraud. Why allow such a threat to run?
Suppose you are Ayatollah Khamenei and you know that the popular support for the government is slipping. So you need a reason for people to come back to the polling stations, especially when you know you need better legitimacy in the months ahead, given Obama’s popular mandate in the U.S.
You allow Mr. Mousavi to run. A couple of things can happen:
1. A modest increase in voting numbers. This is not that desirable, but better than having fewer votes.
2. A sharp increase in votes for Mr. Mousavi. Well now you can say that people have given a vote of confidence to the Islamic Republic. You can either accept Mr. Mousavi as President or have the MOI release rigged results. It is actually good for Mr. Ahmadinejad to think you want genuine elections too. If he loses and you let him go you can always say it was his bad economic policies that made him fall — which is true. If he loses and you save him, he will lose his momentum for more power. Remember Khamenei and Ahmadinejad did not exactly get along on some issues. The only problem is how people would react if you rig the election. This was the X factor Khamenei gambled on. His security and intelligence advisers — perhaps reading MOA — from the IRGC and MOIS simply assured him that they could quell demonstrations and that things will be rocky for a couple of weeks but return to normal.
Why wouldn’t Khamenei allow such a scenario? It is a win-win for him either way.
Posted by: Dragonfly | Jun 25 2009 22:33 utc | 270
@citizen:
Actually, i have been checking that thread regularly. But perhaps we should continue this in the last OT thread? It might be easier to follow, that way, and we wouldn’t be scattered out in distant posts across various threads, but then we may also be relegating ourselves into the backwaters of MoA, never to be seen again.
Now, to the substance: i’m not sure i can accept Marx’s ideas — or any economist’s — as “law” per se. Not in the same sense as gravity, and even gravity, as a law, does break down sometimes.
I’m not nitpicking, but simply trying to clarify my epistemological stance here at the outset, because the way i see Marx is as a guy who invented some powerfully useful terms and communicated equally valuable insights, but who was writing some 150 years ago, now, during a time that is far distant from ours in terms of human experience, scientific knowledge, and technological advancements. I consider him an extremely important thinker, but honestly my interests have only carried me a slight way into his writings — and that mainly through summaries, expositions, and others’ interpretations — but that was enough for me to verify, to my satisfaction, that i understood what he’s basically getting at, and then be done with it.
…the law that I think ch2 may be ignoring when he says that we are no longer capitalist, is the very capitalist law that the rate of profit must increase, or the entity holding the capital loses the economic game. This explains a lot of destructive history, and if you take seriously what you know about history, then you know that capital and those who own/are-owned-by capital are quite capable of taking out the social welfare bulwarks that seem to make us post-capitalist.
I agree with you completely that the concept of “economic growth” is extremely destructive (and i should point out that i never needed Marx to teach it to me, although it was nice to discover that he addressed it). And i agree completely: those who own-by-capital are capable of many obscene, inhumane acts, and eliminating community supports is well within their power.
But what i would protest is that today, we have a much, much clearer idea of what human biology consists of; in Marx’s time, comparative studies of human and monkey behavior were unthought of, and virtually any investigation along that line would have resulted in immediate ostracism of the initiator. That’s one example. Fiat money, also — and the mechanisms surrounding it, and empowering it — was something poorly understood, if at all. Things like money, the Abrahamic God, religious spirituality, and so on, were all taken as equivalent (or pre-eminent over) scientific understanding.
Similarly, social sciences like Paleontology, Anthropology, Sociology, or Psychology were also all extremely weak and corrupt. History, and the “historical dialectic”, was all the rage of the day, but here we are, 200 years post-Hegel, and historians are still coming up with profound revisions of historical “facts” that were supposedly established millenia ago.
With that said, i think there’s a strong argument that many of the laws of capitalism as described by Marx would be better attributed as laws of human society. I think this is an extremely important distinction, because in many cases where Marxist interpretation of certain behaviors is often couched in categorically pejorative terms, i feel it would be best to view them from a morally neutral, objectivist stance.
The shift could be extremely productive for people trying to develop collectivist, cooperative, or community-oriented social frameworks. Frankly, i think Marxist rhetoric and terminology has been so subjected to interpretation, re-interpretation, adaptation — each of which is then propagandized and advertised — that attempting any sort of analysis from a traditionally Marxist standpoint is more likely to be counter-productive than anything else.
Then, of course, there is the part where i categorically reject Marx’s interpretation of human development and historical progress. I find it a primitive, shallow, Eurocentric model that offers very little space for a genuinely scientific examination of human evolution and historical development.
In my view, welfare systems are temporary successes that matter…
I agree.
…but that will fall victim to a simple law of capitalism
I disagree; i perceive them as falling victim to two rather distinct laws. First, the law that, as any society increases in size and mass, corruption and desensitization to the plight of those outside ones extended community intensifies; second, that competition among human males for human females is based upon the provision of resources and privileges of comfort and status.
Those two “laws”, if you want to call them that, have nothing to do with Capitalism per se, but they do adequately explain the behavior you are labeling Capitalist, here. The first is a consequence of the relationship between human biological existence and laws of linguistics and the logistics of speech and communication. The second is simply a biological fact.
Further, these two laws interact; in the first instance, corruption and desensitization create arbitrary measures of status, and these measures become psychologically divorced from the biological costs they incur. Call it “alienation”, if you want, but this alienation is as likely to occur in people who are considered healthy, robust specimens of the society as they are in troubled and neglected folk.
…that beings that think like capital (such as corporations or well ‘adjusted’ MBAs) know that they MUST regularly increase their rate of profit.
This is really just a consequence of arbitary political maneuvering. It is not necessary for us to define economic success in terms of GDP, GNP, stock price and profit margins, but because of historical anomalies, the United States and Europe have.
Other, more ancient cultures — like India, and China, or any of a myriad of tribal cultures — have other values that subsume this European idealization. That these mores aren’t called “economics” is only historical accident, and nothing else.
…the reasons for this law are complicated and may actually require a read of good political economics, preferably marxist. But the law itself can help show all of us economically oriented moderns why welfare, etc. is not going to hold back capitalism.
Well, i’m perfectly willing to listen to your exposition on it. I haven’t had a discussion like this in, oh, a decade or so. My thoughts on this subject have changed a lot since then, and it would be nice to explore them again.
…the conquest of the former Yugoslavia….
Agree completely. At the time that invasion was taking place, i began first as a lukewarm supporter, but as time went on, and i got more information, i soon joined in vigorous opposition to it.
I have yet to meet three other Americans who agree with me on that.
The problem is that the forces that help one understand how humanist rhetoric can be harnessed to capitalist warfare, are not best understood as human forces. They are rather social forces, or as the marxists say, laws of history.
And i think you know how i feel about this one.
Also, as an aside: i haven’t really gotten upset with anyone, here, except for Antifa. A few folks have rubbed me the wrong way, here and there, but by and large i haven’t found the rhetoric here too harsh or unpleasant at all.
Even Slothrop has his wit, and style, and while O’mageddon’s leveled a few barbs my way, he’s always allowed me to beg my way out of any direct face-off. Fortunately, so far, antifa is the only one to call me a “corpse fucker”, or single me out as a “mule”. Beyond that, i have found the back-and-forth on these boards quite enjoyable, even over this last week or so.
The insults-in-verse thing had me laughing out loud. I was going to say it then, but it brought such a smile to my face, it reinvigorated my faith in you all.
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Where on earth do you get this stuff from, Parviz?
I don’t care what MoA wishes, = a continuation of the status quo. You are on the wrong side of history, both politically and morally.
I don’t know a single poster here who has been arguing for a continuation of the status quo. All — every single one — of the objections to your interpretation of the events there has been far more nuanced than that simple summation will allow, and so far as i can tell, all — again, as in every single one — has expressed hope that Iranians will be able to turn these struggles towards some good end.
Some of us believe that the protests will achieve nothing, in the short term; others have expressed scepticism that these protests will achieve anything at all, even in the long term. But saying that we are sceptical of what the ultimate results will be is a far, far cry from expressing support for the repression.
Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 26 2009 4:42 utc | 280
I have read numerous Barfly warnings that if the protesters succeed Iran will be weakened in its fight against U.S. hegemony. I’ve argued the exact opposite till I’m blue in the face, namely, that Iran is crumbling from within like the Soviet Union under the weight of unprecedented corruption and barbarity.
Well, now, that seems a bit strange — and it certainly doesn’t seem equivalent to this:
…MoA wishes…a continuation of the status quo.
Warning that US meddling and destablization may be behind the protests, and that it could result in a catastrophe for its people seems like a wise thing to mention, at times like this — especially to impassioned, frustrated, repressed young people who are preparing to charge into their first street fight against men carrying knives, guns, and clubs.
However, i can totally understand that you might see us as “supporting Ahmadinejad” by saying so, since he’s saying the exact same thing — and i can totally understand why those here who are harping upon this point would fail to sense how much they sound like the Iranian reactionaries currently, brutally silencing the crowds. With your nerves as frayed as they must be, no doubt it’s hard for you to keep in mind the fundamental difference between observers such as us, who are outside Iran and apart from the violence, and someone like you, caught up in the midst of it.
We — you and i — have categorically different responsibilities in this fight. My best place, right now, is to develop arguments and rhetoric that elevates the status of these protestors in Westerners’ eyes while emphasizing, at one and the same time, that our best course of action is to engage, negotiate, and compromise.
You, however, are trying to force an intransigent power to the bargaining table, and struggling to protect your person, family, and friends while doing so.
I can’t help you. No-one here can. You know that as well as we do, and you know just as well as we do that the best help we can provide is to keep our governments and people out of your fight.
The most positive thing we can do is exchange our hopes for your safety, prosperity, and success, and appreciate your dispatches. Which many — perhaps even most — have done.
As for Iran “crumbling from within” — i have yet to see that. I don’t see “crumbling”, although i do worry terribly for the reprisals that may be in the works. Further, i’d suggest that where Iran’s system is breaking down, a lot of the blame should be laid at the feet of the US, Israel, and Britain.
What i worry over more, however, is that MI-6 and the CIA were, indeed, behind this, as the government is currently saying. If it was — and i’m not saying anything one way or the other on that, because i don’t know (and i’m pretty sure you don’t, either) — then these deaths, protests, and confrontations will have been worse than for naught.
@DavidS:
I’ll gladly drink w/you. Thanks for the appreciative words. As we say in Taiwan:
Ganbei!
Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 26 2009 7:30 utc | 287
Prove these with links to examples, please:
1) Yes, [MoA posters have been] constantly opining that if the protesters succeed they will be playing right into the hands of the imperialists IS INDEED, in my opinion, a complete MoA cop-out,
Let me remind you that you made two assertions there: that people here worry the protestors may be taken advantage of by the imperialists, and that people here believe if they succeed then imperialist violation is the only possible end.
2) …the MAJORITY of voices I’ve heard on MoA want the uprising to fail….
Uprising?
Again, this statement makes two assertions — that people here view these protests as an uprising, and that people here want that uprising to fail.
Please show me where the majority of people here believe these two statements to be true. I, for one, don’t; lizard, r’giap, and b clearly don’t; i’m pretty sure annie, slothrop, loyal, conqueso, DoS, DavidS, dan, outsider and outraged don’t. I could go on, but i’ll be happy to be proven wrong. Just link to the places where these people have said such a thing, and show me, oh, i’d say — i can think of 17 posters off the top of my head. I’m sure there are more i’m forgetting — we’ll say an even twenty, then —
so show me 11 posts where someone has made any sort of assertion that even vaguely approaches this hyperbolic assertion of yours.
As for 3):
One Neo-Nazi (Hans) even demanded a “tougher crackdown”…
I, for one, was appalled at Hans’ remark. If i’m not mistaken, he is a newcomer, here. Perhaps he’s Amir S, returned to agitate under a different name? Either way, he also linked to the grandmother article, which made me laugh.
4) MoA has given the regime the benefit on literally everything without even having a clue of the extent to which the regime controls literally every aspect of Iran’s socio-economic and political existence…
Oh, bullshit.
We’ve been discussing this election, and the Western media account of it, with the aim of sifting the facts from the rhetoric —
nothing else.
Very little discussion has gone on here about how the regime does/does not control everyday Irani lives. If you would like to introduce some specific points, and back them up with corroborated/i> information, then i think many here would love to read about it.
I, at least, know that i would.
We can begin with this:
A) Which ministry registers residents, and which ID cards? How closely integrated into the police apparatus is it, and what sort of transgressions are required for them to release the information to police for the authorities to act on it?
B) What’s the food situation like, there — where do the foods come from, how accessible are they, and to what extent is the government involved in their regulation and transport?
C) How, exactly, does the government control who does and does not get to run for office? What is the typical experience of a career politician, there: where do the young ones get their start, how do they advance their career, and at what point does it become clear that a politician has shifted from “small time, local contact” to “well-connected candidate with potential/actual power”? How long does it usually take for this transformation to take place?
D) What are the non-violent, every-day street-level manifestations of the contests between various political juntas? How do political parties work, in Iran?
E) What are the mechanisms of censorship, how are they enforced, and what are the pathways available to people who want to appeal them?
F) What are the obstacles to doing business domestically? Internationally? What are the various agencies and bureaucracies that are involved in regulating business?
These are a few things i, personally, would love to hear about Iran, and these are, in fact, the sorts of things we would be discussing if, indeed, you were elaborating “the extent to which the regime controls literally every aspect of Iran’s socio-economic and political existence.”
But we’re not discussing that, and you, contrary to your assertions, here, haven’t even really touched on any of it. Instead, we’ve been discussing this election — which makes sense, because people here tend to discuss and dissect current, international events.
As for Copeland, i respect his opinion, but i think he, too, is way oversimplifying things. A “color revolution” need not be restricted to the West and its intelligence agencies, nor is it a given that the organizers of these protests are motivated entirely by altruism. Copeland prefers to believe they are. I have reserved my opinion, so far. Though i have been surprised by the intensity of the protests, i do think they are about to die off, and i worry for the safety and well-being of the people who have been unfortunate enough to be identified and targeted by the security apparatus.
But, as ever, i will end with a caveat:
I hope these troubles lead to some magnificent reforms in your country, Parviz, and i sincerely wish you safety and good fortune. You may count on me (and many others here, too, i am sure) to do everything i (we) can to restrain the warmongers and violators that are currently trying to force a war against you and your people.
If you think there is anything else we can do, then please — i’m all ears.
Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 26 2009 9:14 utc | 291
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