Harry's Place

There is a predictably vile thread over at “LiberalConspiracy” where the fuckers are falling over themselves (led by you-know-who) in telling the Iranian people “you’re on your own”, and where one poster is even blaming Britain for Mugabe’s repression.

Yes, its apparently all our fault again. And always will be, it seems.

A very good article, thank you!

I was at a meeting of Iranian democrats and human rights activists recently. Their anger towards George Galloway is profound and they feel deeply betrayed by the British left, who as the author rightly observes, are colluding in the repression of their friends and relatives.

The STWC left are effectively giving support to the principle of “velayat e faiqh” – the rule of the jurist- as a valid and even a progressive method of governance. This is the Left supporting over theocracy and dictatorship in the name of God.

In recent years the Left have consented to march under the banners of Hezbollah. Hezbollah are complicit in the crimes being committed against unarmed and peaceful Iranian demonstrators.

The British Left are therefore giving cover for the brutal repression of democracy -and they are, in effect, fascist apologists. They should be exposed for what they are.

What do you expect from dumb fuckers who shout “We are all Hezbollah”?

“Socialist Unity, a left-wing blog, talked of the protesters being seduced by Hollywood. ”

I liked the irony here, in that ‘Hollwood’ is full of the same leftists who would be appalled if the US were to play any part in supporting pro-democracy demonstrators.

@ Me – the trouble is the people who march with Hizbollah believe themselves to be intelligent, urban and cosmopolitan.

At a dinner several years ago I spoke with a pleasant but extremely naive American who told me that there could be no link between Islam and terrorism because “..the Qu’ran doesn’t even have any violence in it”, as he put it. I asked him if he had read the Qu’ran.
“No” he replied. Had he read any individual surah from the Qu’ran? “No”. Had he read any Hadith or Sirah? “No”. Had he read any judgments from a sharia court on homosexuals, apostates or adulterous women, I asked? No again.

I briefly informed him of some of the cases I deal with in human rights work from Iran and other states. He accepted that his assertion was EMPIRICALLY incorrect, but he felt it to be EMOTIONALLY correct.

Leftists “feel” Iran’s government to be good and just and infinitely superior to that of America, UK, Israel etc – and cling to that belief.

I wonder if all this sudden outbreak of RonPaulism on the left extends to Israel or the US?

I think we all know the answer to that.

Bravo Nora.

Suffolk Booy, I’ve had much the same experience.

I’ve had arguments with ‘Indymedia’ types who are obviously very pro-asylum seeker, as I am. But they completely unravel when you ask them what they think all these asylum-seekers are seeking asylum from!

They want to support asylum seekers on an emotional level because they feel they should. As long as you don’t get all ‘empirical’ on them and list the *reasons* why Iranians and Algerians, and Jamaicans and Zimbabweans are seeking refuge here. Make the mistake of listing the reasons, and emotionally they will feed the need to call you a racist and an imperialist and an Islamophobe…

I agree with almost all of this post, seeking to cast doubt only on this:

“They refuse to demand the same justice and equality for people living in Iran as they demand for those of us living in the west. ”

I no longer regard the mainstream left as guardians and supporters of justice and liberty here in the west either.

They do not want us to all live under the same rule of law, in a colourblind nation. They want us to live under cultural, racial, and religious apartheid. Riven with tension, suspicion, occasionally spilling over into open hostility and violence, without which the “activists” would have no justification for their government grants.

Suffolk Booy that’s the most impressive abdication of responsibility I have ever read about – I imagine that most five year olds are more mature than your friend… And yet his disorder isn’t some unusual thing, it’s everywhere, it’s the majority.

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO THIS GENERATION THAT THEY LACK THE BASIC HONESTY TO FACE REALITY?!!

Trying my hardest to fathom what makes people accept this inhuman bullshit.. I think in the end it’s unacknowledged selfishness. If they take the view that no one needs help then they don’t have to sacrifice to better humanity.

In the end it seems that people want to appear to be humanitarians, to have principles, to be pious and they would fight to their last breath to avoid actually being any of those things because being a humanitarian having principles exacts a cost.

And the one priority higher than appearing superior is to avoid even the smallest commitment.

This is the best and most challenging piece I have read on this issue. The trouble is, that with this current intellectually lazy, smug, complacent and generally reactionary generation of the “left”, putting such cogent arguments to them is, as the man said in Goodfellas “like putting a silk hat on a pig”.

The reason is painfully obvious, while Iran is killing in the dozens, the west recently killed in the millions in Iraq.

So clearly western imperialism is a tad more important beast to slay, although one could argue that the monster is currently restrained while Obama’s balls are held by the peaceful left.

Morgoth,

What action do you think the West should actually take to assist the people of Iran?

Thank-you Nora Mulready!!! You have summed up brilliantly what a lot of us think. Thsi spectacle of what you call the mainstream left and Seamus Milne of the Guardian supporting a brutal, terrorist regime is one of the most shocking things I have learned since becoming a reader of HP. This left are damaging themselves beyond repair, and ruining what might originally have been a – rightly or wrongly – a genuine desire to see changes in society.

Unfortunately Stalin and something worse thamn Stalin still lives in their breasts.

But you have said just about everything there is to say and I would like just to pick on one point in Fascists left’s arguments. They say it is essentially a middle class revolt we see in Iran. Although this argument has been questioned: so what if the dissent comes from the middle class? They have had more time to study and to think. It doesn’t really matter which class the protest comes from.

Marx and Engels came from the privileged middle-class, Rosa Luxemburg form Polish high cultuire. She recited 19th century poetry to keep herself going in prison. Lenin (son of a high ranking. I have the strong suspcion that most swperofficer) and Trostky. I have the suspicion that most SWPers are middle class. I have known many such comunists that are irredeemably middle class.

Are we going to assume that this driving force of the middle class was to be rejected in favour of Hitler?

Most communists I have known in S.A. and and some – all but Stalinists – in Italy, were decidedly middle class and snobbishly so. When I walked through the streets with a quite naturally acquired working class boy-friend and tried to introduce him, they became rigid and refused to communicate with him. They refuse re

Thank-you Nora Mulready!!! You have summed up brilliantly what a lot of us think. Thsi spectacle of what you call the mainstream left and Seamus Milne of the Guardian supporting a brutal, terrorist regime is one of the most shocking things I have learned since becoming a reader of HP. This left are damaging themselves beyond repair, and ruining what might originally have been a – rightly or wrongly – a genuine desire to see changes in society.

Unfortunately Stalin and something worse thamn Stalin still lives in their breasts.

But you have said just about everything there is to say and I would like just to pick on one point in Fascists left’s arguments. They say it is essentially a middle class revolt we see in Iran. Although this argument has been questioned: so what if the dissent comes from the middle class? They have had more time to study and to think. It doesn’t really matter which class the protest comes from.

Marx and Engels came from the privileged middle-class, Rosa Luxemburg form Polish high cultuire. She recited 19th century poetry to keep herself going in prison. Lenin (son of a high ranking. I have the strong suspcion that most swperofficer) and Trostky. I have the suspicion that most SWPers are middle class. I have known many such comunists that are irredeemably middle class.

Are we going to assume that this driving force of the middle class was to be rejected in favour of Hitler?

Most communists I have known in S.A. and and some – all but Stalinists – in Italy, were decidedly middle class and snobbishly so. When I walked through the streets with a quite naturally acquired working class boy-friend and tried to introduce him, they became rigid and refused to communicate with him. They refuse re

I for one am looking forward to his answer…

“If people were free to choose, they would choose to be free”
Unfortunately that isn’t always true. People eagerly impose mental constraints on themselves. The problem is they also want to impose the same- and more- restraints- on everyone else.

Great post.

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO THIS GENERATION THAT THEY LACK THE BASIC HONESTY TO FACE REALITY?!! — Josh

They were raised by and in the world created and dominated by the Baby Boomer New Left.

What do Mousavi’s cheerleaders think that his Iran would be like? California, but without Proposition Eight? Because it wouldn’t be, you know. It really wouldn’t be at all.

Remember the ridiculous Rose and Orange “Revolutions” in Ukraine and Georgia respectively? “Uprisings” for incorporation into the global cash-war machine by means of NATO and the EU? Well, the result in Iran certainly bears comparison with Saakashvili’s “election” by well over ninety per cent of those who “voted”. Yet now we have the Green “Revolution”. Imagine!

Frankly, if Georgia could ever become a member of either NATO or the EU, then there is no reason why Iran couldn’t. Just look at a map. Thank goodness for Russia to veto either such application (or a Ukrainian one), in the extremely unlikely event that anyone ever took such a thing seriously in the first place. But the Tehran Trendies also want into the global order of (collapsed) neoliberal economics and (collapsed) neoconservative foreign policy. Mercifully, no one else in Iran does.

Mercifully, not least because that order has no more interest in incorporating Iran, as such, than it had in incorporating Yugoslavia as such, or Iraq as such. Assuming that the demonstrations being reported are really taking place, they are now taking place in cities that are variously Arab, Kurdish, Baluchi, Turkeman (like those whose Shi’ite mosque was so savagely attacked just outside Kirkuk in the so much improved Iraq that we have created), Azeri and so on to a very large, sometimes predominant, extent.

Only about half of Iran’s population is ethnically Persian. Much of the oil is in the Arab South West. There are Kurds in the North West. Half of the Baluchis are in the East, the other half being across the border in Pakistan with long-standing secessionist tendencies. There are so many Turkemen that Tehran is actually the second-largest Turkish-speaking city on earth, even though Turkish is a minority language there. There are more Azeris than in Azerbaijan. There is a sizeable and very ancient community of Jews, complete with its own reserved seat in Parliament, like the Christian Armenian and Assyrians (also found in Kirkuk). And so on.

Iraq is being blown apart, and Iran is next. That is what global capital requires. Can you think of another multinational state that is to global capital’s inconvenience? Ahmadinejad can, even if that is not why he hates the state in question.

He is not the only one.

One of the many similarities between the Ahmadinejad tendency and the neocons is their belief in the all-pervasive, wholly negative influence of Britain. In the neocon case, this derives from the marriage of strictly academic, if highly contentious, work and a stock Irish-American saloon-bar rant against a perceived Anglophile network within the WASP élite. What are David Trimble, Paul Bew and Tim Collins doing, associating with this sort of thing through the Henry Jackson Society?

Neoconservatism takes this anti-British hysteria even further, demanding the wholesale Americanisation of Britain’s, Canada’s, Australia’s and New Zealand’s economic, social, cultural and political systems, though without the conferral of American citizenship, and thus without representation in Congress or the Electoral College. And of course, there is, as always, the American Republic’s fundamental claim to all the historically British parts of the Americas, a claim currently being pursued, entirely unchallenged by Britain, in Bermuda.

So much for the Anglosphere, from which America is in any case busily detaching herself by means of the unrestricted immigration supported by the neocons. That support is because they rightly recognise that there cannot be a “free” market in goods, services and capital but not in labour (or vice versa), there being nothing less conservative than capitalism.

This hatred of Britain and of the perceived Anglophile network, the latter seen as a global phenomenon, is as important as Zionism to the neocons. They were ethnic and regional outsiders compared to the WASP élite and its traditional base of mainline rather than Evangelical Protestants in the heartland, a base of variously English, Scots-Irish, German and Scandinavian descent. This was as true of the Irish Catholics, among others, as it was of the Jews. Neoconservatism is as much (or as little) an Irish Catholic as a Jewish movement, among other things. And Zionism also has a history, which it glorifies greatly, of quite exceptionally vicious violence against British targets.

The milleniarian hysteria, held in contempt whether at Wheaton or at Qom, may be common to the Useful Idiots on both sides. But it is in the hatred of Britain, and of all those deemed favourably inclined towards Britain, that there is the real meeting of minds. There is no reason to assume that the mind of Mousavi is any different.

After the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, now Iraq, and putatively Iran too, Belgium (a classic creation of the Anglophile network if you believe in such a thing) is next. And after that? Well, have a guess.

brilliant article Nora

@ Brett – yes, empiricism, rather like “cultural universalism” has become an object of scorn for much of the European left. The most obvious symptom of this is that when-ever they lose an argument on the basis of facts or reason they smear their opponent as “a racist”, “a neo-con” or ” a zionist”. But we should continue to expose their frail arguments for what they are.

@ Josh Scholar, I agree. It is all about the abdication of moral reponsiblity. The “socialists” in the UK are throwing away their history of solidarity for the oppressed and finding the weasel words to justify abandoning Iranian students and trade unionists to the brutality of theocratic thugs.

For the record, the guy I talked to was not a friend, he was just some-one I met, and – like a number of other leftists I have met recently – he was uncomfortable at having his world-view confronted and exposed as palpably false.

What action do you think the West should actually take to assist the people of Iran?

Hint: It would involve a lot of dead mullahs.

“the increasingly objectionable Seamus Milne”

This is unfair. Milne was always objectionable and has been remarkably consistent in his twattishness. The only thing that’s changed about him over the years is his byline photo; I miss the one that made him look like he was auditioning for the part of Renfield in a Dracula musical:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_z5hT1P0X79c/SeSh-BlxPlI/AAAAAAAAEck/Dbib_6F7RMs/s320/Seumas_milne.gif

Needless to say, my question asking him was he a Tankie was deleted from CIF.

P.

And of course, there is, as always, the American Republic’s fundamental claim to all the historically British parts of the Americas …

Wake me up when the stealth bombers are buzzing Toronto, you silly little man.

he was uncomfortable at having his world-view confronted and exposed as palpably false. === Sulfolk Buoy

Bingo! Thus the lashing out.

Furthermore, Leftists have never believed in truth as reality, but rather “revolutionary truth,” that which serves the revolutionary goals or movement or propels the revolution…..the truth part is merely propaganda, since the New Left and the Post Modernist conventions, truth has lost all objectivity and has moved into “personal truth” as truth or reality….this is to bolster the “victimized” and “oppressed”…..as long as they feel it in their hearts it is the truth(well the only truth that matters). Sowing divisiveness, greivances, and feelings of vicitimization serves to bolster support against the established order for its further deconstruction.

Anthropogenic Global Warming falls into this “revolutionary truth” category….that is why questioning it is attacked so viciously, as it is anathema to “revolutionary truth,” and speaking that “revolutionary truth” to power.

This is unfair. Milne was always objectionable and has been remarkably consistent — Paul Moloney

Bingo.

Hint: It would involve a lot of dead mullahs.

So you’re actually advocating military action?

A few questions:

What are ‘universal principles’, and what, if any, evidence do you have that they are shared by a plurality of the human race?

But now they are being presented with the evidence that huge numbers of people of Iran are no more culturally wedded to repressive theocracy than are the people of Britain.

I’ve read about the demonstrations, the violence and the appeals to democracy, but I haven’t seen any substantive evidence that even a minority of Iranians have used the manipulation of the election to voice their distaste for and rejection of clerical Usooli Twelver Shi’ism. Have you? Or is it just the ‘repressive’ aspect that you believe Iranians are objecting to?

What have you personally done to ensure that extraneous cultural practices antithetical to the British tradition of liberty and equality before the law be exposed, countered and eradicated in the UK? By ‘extraneous cultural practices’ I refer to phenomena such as cousin marriage, objection to interfaith marriage, ethnic nepotism, and anti-British racism.

Q: What action do you think the West should actually take to assist the people of Iran?

A: Mousavi and Ransfanjani may be preferable to Ahmadenijad and Khameni, but that is thinking inside the box.

The Soviets, Communists, Cubans, and KGB have provided a blueprint for the correct strategy. Fund the disgruntled Baby Boomer young people, stoke their grievances and feelings of victimization and alienation from the culture……fund their revolution, fund anti Iran, anti Iranian regime, anti Islam and anti Iranian Civilization agenda, provide the infrastructure to support their lawfare and march through the institutions. Turn their alienated children who have just been given the beat down worse than anything that happened in the 60s, and use them as the seed of Irans reform, deconstruction and ultimate distruction.

No need to reinvent the wheel.

Andrew Adams: Morgoth is an old curmudgeon. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.

Well, they’ve just walked in and taken Bermuda, Sally. All part of The War Against Terrorism (best known by its acronym), of course.

The Founding Fathers broadly presupposed that they should have everywhere from the north of Canada to Barbados. Legislation for the speedy annexation of Canada has been on the books in the US since the nineteenth century.

The Iranian nutters hate Britain. But they are not the only powerful nutters who do.

Thank-you Nora Mulready!!! You have summed up brilliantly what a lot of us think. This spectacle of what you call the mainstream left and Seamus Milne of the Guardian supporting a brutal, terrorist regime is one of the most shocking things I have learned since becoming a reader of HP. This left is damaging themselves beyond repair, and ruining what might originally have been a – rightly or wrongly – a genuine desire to see changes in society.

Unfortunately Stalin and something worse than Stalin still lives in their breasts. Galloway has stated it explicitly on his sites: I believed in the Soviet Union and wish it still existed.

But you have said just about everything there is to say and I would like just to pick on one point in Fascists left’s arguments. They say it is essentially a middle class revolt we see in Iran. Although this argument has been questioned: so what if the dissent comes from the middle class? They have had more time to study and to think. Against such ruthless barbarism It doesn’t really matter which class the protest comes from.

Marx and Engels came from the privileged middle-class, Rosa Luxemburg form Polish high culture. She recited 19th century poetry to keep herself going in prison. Lenin (son of a high ranking officer and Trostky came from atleast relatively privilged classes. I have the suspicion that most SWPers are middle class. I have known many such comunists that are irredeemably middle class.

Are we going to assume that this driving force of the middle class is to be rejected?

Most communists I have known in S.A. and and some – all but Stalinists – in Italy, were decidedly middle class and snobbishly so. When I walked through the streets with a quite naturally acquired working class boy-friend and tried to introduce him, they became rigid and refused to communicate with him. They refuse real Italian folk music, and prefer capitalist spawned pop music which turns its idols into millionaires. Most SWPers and their ilk don’t minimally realise to what extent their tastes and culture derive from capitalism. They have no capacity for critcal thinking or self-reflection unless it be to vociferate out of date ideological Marxism. It is enough to look at the homepage of their journal to see that it is smothered in sugary commercial capitalist imagery. Have they no dignity?

I played a devious Felixian trick in my Trattoria on an obviously left communist type. He was sitting with two Muslim guests. I could tell there was no natural friendship between them, but that he was doing his duty with token blacks. He looked sort of embarrased.

I went to their table on my way out and spoke so quickly that they didn’t have time to think. I told the Italian he was wonderfully good-looking but that the Nigerian opposite him was more good-looking. The Italian felt duty bound by his ‘liberalism’ to be friendly and thank me for my compliment, but then I left hm to face the music with his homophobe guests.

EV Redux:

“Anthropogenic Global Warming falls into this “revolutionary truth” category….that is why questioning it is attacked so viciously”

The twisting and distorting of reality has even percolated into our education system. Science used to be about the understanding of forces, stimuli, and reactions in the natural world, and how they can be measured, analysed and predicted.

Now science is “different things to different people”. They even promote “emotional intelligence”, over and above true comprehension. How you “feel” about wind turbines is now much more important than whether they work.

It seems to me that our national discourse, and our educational systems, were historically founded on a substrate of objective rigour. Starting with our best understanding of any system or process, we would seek to optimise it, and have our ideas challenged by the real outcomes. This objectivity is most useful when you are wrong, it drives you back to the drawing board.

But the left have decreed that nothing is right or wrong any more. And the rot is now seeping into our medical profession. There is no objective evidence that fringe medicine is effective. But the emotional committment of a few who “feel better” now commands an injection of NHS funds, and a general pretence of respectability.

I am reminded of the dire decline of the sciences in the Soviet Union under Stalin. That same denial of reality is dragging us all down today.

[Endless mad ravings] … Iraq is being blown apart, and Iran is next. That is what global capital requires. Can you think of another multinational state that is to global capital’s inconvenience? Ahmadinejad can, even if that is not why he hates the state in question… [more endless mad ravings]”

I cry for the state of the human race that sanity is rarer than you would believe.

Oh, the old Galloway and the USSR line, Felix? You’ll have to do better than that. He regrets that it fell part, that’s all.

Oops, the close italics failed. Let me try again (and please delete the previous post).

[Endless mad ravings] … Iraq is being blown apart, and Iran is next. That is what global capital requires. Can you think of another multinational state that is to global capital’s inconvenience? Ahmadinejad can, even if that is not why he hates the state in question… [more endless mad ravings]”

In David Lindsy’s mentally ill, paranoid delusion there is no room for the oppressed people of the world. They don’t even exist to him.

It’s all evil money evil money evil money. This conspiracism is structurally indistinguishable from the familiar “Jewish conspiracy covering the globe” and frankly not much more in touch with reality than the “orbital mind control satellites” which are such a popular delusion among the frankly psychotic. I once, to my surprise, found out that client of mine believe in orbital mind control satellites..

I cry for the state of the human race that sanity is rarer than you would believe.

Sorry – IT problem. He regrets that it fell part, that’s all; that so multinational and multiethnic an entity did not survive, and survive as an alternative to unbridled capitalism and as a balance to American hegemony. I’m not saying that he is entirely right. But that is his view. He is no Stalinist.

“This is unfair. Milne was always objectionable and has been remarkably consistent — Paul Moloney

Bingo. – EV Redux”

Housey Housey.

Poor, oppressed North Tehran Trendies, Josh. My heart bleeds.

Assuming that the demonstrations being reported are really taking place…

Yes David Lindsay let’s not be fooled, perhaps the reported demonstrations aren’t taking place. Thankfully, we have critical thinking minds like yours in place to safeguard us from the neocon, neoliberal world order which may very well have tricked us into thinking that the demonstrations are taking place. And as you say, “thank goodness for Russia”, I mean if not for Putin, think of all those Russian neocon and neoliberal journalists who would still be alive to report about the so-called demonstrations in Iran. And it is highly prescient of you to warn us about the imminent neoliberal, neocon, Irish Catholic and Jewish Zionist plot to dismember Belgium. You are truly on the ball David Lindsay. It’s a sad shame that you aren’t recognized as one of the leading lights of British letters.

So don’t pay any heed to those who see you as a deranged, wanking, paranoid, homophobic, ethnicity obsessed, ultranationalistic and rabidly Christocentric lunatic who is so far removed from reality that you rather than Iranian trade unionists deserve to be spending the rest of your obnoxious and detestable existence in Evian prison.

Oh and thanks David for the wonderful full body massage the other night. It was very stimulating. You have magic hands. Can’t wait till next time. Ta

‘…the west recently killed in the millions in Iraq.’

It did? Holy shit. I had no idea. Why aren’t any of the credible news agencies reporting on it? Zionist conspiracy? Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it’s something and the Zionists control everything. I bet they spirited away all of those millions of bodies and are storing them on their invisible space station. That’s why there appears to be no evidence. Yeah, that must be it.

Man, this makes me so mad. I’m off to get out my ‘Jews back to the ovens’ placard, my Hezbollah flag, put on my kaffiyeh and go on a march which I’ll conclude by throwing my shoes at something. I wonder if Annie Lennox is busy? Or that comedian (what’s his name?) who used to be big in the eighties but I never founds particularly funny. At least I can pretend to be a family member and get Tony Benn out of the home for the day. I’ll tell him Margaret Thatcher called him a ’silly little faggot’. That’ll get his blood up.

Anthropogenic Global Warming falls into this “revolutionary truth” category….that is why questioning it is attacked so viciously, as it is anathema to “revolutionary truth,” and speaking that “revolutionary truth” to power.

I think the problem with the debate over Global Warming is that the results of global warming could be the complete destruction of the planet, so in this unique case the standard of proof has to be lower than for the entire rest of science.

Suddenly the standard isn’t “probably true” the standard is “what is an acceptable risk of global destruction”…

But people aren’t used to arguing about how likely a model is to be true if the likelihood is low, so the argument is all confused. And it is probably true that arguing over low probabilities is something that’s easy to exploit and the scientists themselves aren’t good at it…

And yet, and yet it is a totally legitimate argument.

Fatuous & base comments such as yours, Mr Lindsay, are worthy of the utmost contempt. You should hang your head in disgrace for your callousness, your ignorance and your lack of basic sympathy for your fellow human beings who are suffering in ways that you cannot fathom. Shame on you.

Anthropogenic Global Warming falls into this “revolutionary truth” category….that is why questioning it is attacked so viciously, as it is anathema to “revolutionary truth,” and speaking that “revolutionary truth” to power.

Of course, after all AGW is being pushed by such leftists post modernist organisations as the US national Academy of Sciences, The Royal Society, the Royal Meteorological Society, NASA, The European Academy of Sciences and Arts etc. etc.

Excellent post, Nora.

Poor, oppressed North Tehran Trendies, Josh. My heart bleeds.

How about the women of Iran? The girls?

I once saw a news report/documentary inside a women’s prison in Iran.

Those women were all imprisoned for trying to escape their husbands – in essence it was a facility for holding run away slaves.

And some of those wives were tiny little girls.

Poor, oppressed North Tehran Trendies, Josh. My heart bleeds.

As disgusting a comment as we have seen from this poster, and that’s saying something.

Except of course, Josh, that a leftist agenda is pushed as the solution to it, so that it becomes an undeniable truth, because it advances the goals of the Leftist/Socialist/Communist/Environutter, expansion of the state and attacks on capitalism.

You could aslo die if you get on that train, so your ultimate possible death lowers the threashold of sanity, and produces people that wont leave their houses for fear of increasing risk to themselves. Which devolves into superstitious behavior and all kinds of kookiness. Like the banning of fires on beaches, not because of fire hazards or to keep the beach clean, but to prevent Global Warming. < Not a joke, happened near Seattle.

Lets take another example, the likelyhood of Earth being impacted by an extinction event foreign body is 100 percent.

Where is the impetus to change society fundamentally in order to prevent this? Why is there no push to organize society to address this not slim chance but 100 percent chance of human extinction and the destruction of the Earth bioshphere?

I no longer regard the mainstream left as guardians and supporters of justice and liberty here in the west either

Absolutely, for all the reasons you gave.

EV Redux, I find your answer a bit confused and hard to grasp..

In any case you need to face the principle that sometimes people are right for bad reasons.

For instance, Noam Chomsky was quite right that there was a lot of lying going on about the Vietnam war, and making this truthful observation built his reputation.

That fact that he is an entirely dishonest cryto-communist propagandist didn’t emerge till he started lying about everything else on the planet.

Suffolk Booy, that person at the dinner table was neither intelligent nor someone with the slightest degree of normal common sense. In fact, he was a good example of a dumb fucker.

Sigh, I kind of regret going after Chomsky. Chomsky is careful enough that you don’t catch him out unless you actually know something about the real word situations he lies about, so he still has a great reputation among people who haven’t been shocked by listening to him lie about something they actually know about.

Where is the impetus to change society fundamentally in order to prevent this? Why is there no push to organize society to address this not slim chance but 100 percent chance of human extinction and the destruction of the Earth bioshphere?

Does the possibility of earth being impacted by “an extinction event foreign body” depend of human behaviour? And over what timescale does the possibility become 100%?

So you’re actually advocating military action?

I wouldn’t rule it out. Full spectrum measures, of all sorts.

Josh Scholar @ 22 June 2009, 7:22 pm

“Noam Chomsky was quite right that there was a lot of lying going on about the Vietnam war, and making this truthful observation built his reputation.

That fact that he is an entirely dishonest cryto-communist propagandist didn’t emerge till he started lying about everything else on the planet.”

Surely it wold be more accurate to describe Noam Chomsky as an anarchist?

Pretty much exactly how I feel looking at today’s “left”, and one of the (many) reasons I have absolutely no regard for socialism any more.

Good post.

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO THIS GENERATION THAT THEY LACK THE BASIC HONESTY TO FACE REALITY?!! — Josh

They were raised by and in the world created and dominated by the Baby Boomer New Left.

And yet I’m a product of the baby boomer left.. if perhaps a little old for the “new left”

My intuition is that what is missing among these people are basic basic reasoning skills. What’s missing is the sense that decisions aren’t all easy. BASIC stuff. Things young children should be taught…

I think I got those skills through an odd route, just by having a naturally logical mind and learning electronic and software engineering – a field where you can’t bullshit. A machine either works or it doesn’t, nothing you say has any bearing on the reality. That’s a lesson the bullshit artists of the world need a big dose of.

But I have no idea how the rest of society once learned basic honesty and reasoning skills.

Surely it wold be more accurate to describe Noam Chomsky as an anarchist?

That’s what he says but look at who he whitewashes and who he attacks.

He says that, and in my opinion that is just another one of his lies.

Nora Mulready

“Over the last three years I have had hundreds of conversations with people about life in Iran. I have long believed Iran’s to be a deeply repressed society in which freedom is curtailed in the name of religion and by an assortment of ‘holy men.’ I was initially bemused when talking to people about this, good people with solid left wing principles, and having my criticisms dismissed as those of a ‘cultural imperialist,’ ‘a neo-con,’ ‘an islamaphobe,’ to name a few terms thrown my way. As time went on and I realised that these weren’t, sadly, the views of the odd person here and there on the left, but those of the left’s mainstream, I moved from bemused to shocked, to saddened and then to angry.”

You are, of course, entirely right, EXCEPT in labelling these people “mainstream left”.

As far as I’m aware Josh, Chomsky doesn’t refer to himself as an anarchist but as a left libertarian. Mind, given his investment portfolios, as reported here, he might as well refer to himself as a neoliberal left libertarian.

Poor, oppressed North Tehran Trendies, Josh. My heart bleeds.

Haha, marvellous. In David Lindsayworld even Tehran is effete and liberal and part of the hated Islington dinner party conspiracy to thwart David Lindsay and stop him from becoming Prime Minister or ever succeeding in anything.

The latest video coming out of Iran – summary execution of protestors in a garage area, following on the vile sniper shooting of Neda – show this regime will stoop to any brutality to maintain power.

I personally wouldn’t bother about the anti-imperialist left. This struggle is going to be won by the Iranian people or not won at all. No one else is going to help them, except at the margins.

Characteristically excellent views from Nora there. Now it’s onto the next phase of the neo-con plot (but don’t tell David Lindsay).

You are, of course, entirely right, EXCEPT in labelling these people “mainstream left”.

I live in San Francisco. The anti-”imperialist” left is mainstream here.

Though i suppose here isn’t mainstream.

“I bet they spirited away all of those millions of bodies and are storing them on their invisible space station. That’s why there appears to be no evidence. Yeah, that must be it.”

Nope they have been buried, Iraq is 430,000 Km2 big, meaning that there were approximately 2 people killed per square km, meaning if you were to randomly dig a hole with an area of 2 x10^-7 square km (10 inch shovel) the odds of you finding that body are 0.0000001.

“Man, this makes me so mad. I’m off to get out my ‘Jews back to the ovens’ placard, my Hezbollah flag, put on my kaffiyeh and go on a march which I’ll conclude by throwing my shoes at something”

It is notable now that you mention it that it was 1/6th the death toll of the Holocaust. I read somewhere that people here in this site still support the Iraq massacre, is this true?

“I wouldn’t rule it out. Full spectrum measures, of all sorts.”

Even if it kills one million people? let me guess you will wage this war from the comfort of your own home?

Can anyone make any sense of David Lindsay’s rants? He sounds like he has gone off his meds.

“How many times have you heard people who profess to be left-wing say such things as, ‘what right do we have to judge other cultures?’”

25 years since Foucault died and his ideas are dominant. OK, an over-simplification, but still. The idea of moral relativism is still dominant among many people. I understand it as a reaction to the old “we are good, they are bad” thinking, but there is a middle ground.

I’m not one of those goddamn ignorant rednecks who thinks that some cultures are superior to others.

“Can anyone make any sense of David Lindsay’s rants? He sounds like he has gone off his meds.”…

No, but its fascinating to read…a sort of ratatouille of conspiracy theories and general bonkersness.

Morgoth: What precisely do you mean by “full spectrum measures, of all sorts”?

Persian Paranoia
Iranian leaders will always believe Anglo-Saxons are plotting against them.
By Christopher Hitchens

http://www.slate.com/id/2221020/

Thank you Nora, this is an excellent post.

David, diplomatic, cultural, social, economical and yes, military.

Nope they have been buried, Iraq is 430,000 Km2 big, meaning that there were approximately 2 people killed per square km, meaning if you were to randomly dig a hole with an area of 2 x10^-7 square km (10 inch shovel) the odds of you finding that body are 0.0000001.

Presumably, if the bodies are even distributed as you claim, some of them are in public parks, people’s back gardens, junctions of major highways, beneath houses and offices, and so forth. That would seem pretty hard to cover up.

Furthermore, if there are a mere two bodies per square kilometre, and some 860,000 bodies to bury, that’s an awful lot of holes to dig, and a lot of moving around from grave to grave. If we assume, generously, that driving to a potential grave and digging it takes one hour, and also assume that only a few bodies are being carted around (so as to help in the cover up), I calculate it would take over 98 years to bury them all. But perhaps there are a hundred teams of covert grave-diggers roaming Iraq, evenly burying nearly 10,000 bodies per team, taking just a year in total to hide the evidence of Western imperialist massacres …

An alternative theory, of course, is that you are a mendacious idiot.

If it would distress ‘ex-Fallujahn’, then I too support military action. Anything to distress ex-Fallujahn.

And stop sniggering at the back. He is from Fallujaha. Definately.

Even if it kills one million people? let me guess you will wage this war from the comfort of your own home?

Which is worse: that, or waging the anti-colonial struggle from the comfort of your own imperialist power?

Moral relativism is attractive psychologically to self loathing westerners. In the last 50 years these idiots have been steadily brainwashed by the po-mo establishment and their time wasting rationality hating antics.

2 things to specifically blame here :

1. Too many students and too many university “intellectuals” studying and teaching po-mo non subjects including sociology.

2. The dominant intellectual world view in history and politics that attributes all the evils of the Third world to colonialism. This view has been dominant since WW2 and is only now being challenged somewhat.

Yes, its apparently all our fault again. And always will be, it seems.>>>

Nothing less than the UK becoming a state like Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, China or Afghanistan pre-invasion will satisfy them.

The easy solution for the majority of us, who don’t want to live in such a country, would be for them to fuck off one and all and live in an authoritarian hellhole. If only they could spend a couple of weeks, living as the locals do, facing daily life in a police state, they would soon change their middle-class revolutionary tunes. Passing through a totalitarian state’s border control would probably freak them out so much that it would result in an immediate walk up the escalator to the departure lounge ; where they will find it is even harder to get out than it is to get in to the country.

I would alter your fine summary of ex-Fallujahn slightly Salty Mouser:

‘An alternative theory, of course, is that you are a mendacious cunt’.

The unspoken motivation of the Islamophilliac anti imperialist left is to egg on a world war against the hegemonic powers which will provide the year-zero scenario for capitalisms replacement. They are floridly delusional psychopaths. Milne should be thrown off the Guardian. Trade unions should withdraw affiliations . Maybe the current iran crisis will result in the terminal marginalization of the hard left.

“Presumably, if the bodies are even distributed as you claim, some of them are in public parks, people’s back gardens, junctions of major highways, beneath houses and offices, and so forth. That would seem pretty hard to cover up.”

The concrete footprint is rather minimal, if you were to assume a metropolitan area is all concrete then Baghdad just removes 5000 sq km.

“Furthermore, if there are a mere two bodies per square kilometre, and some 860,000 bodies to bury, that’s an awful lot of holes to dig, and a lot of moving around from grave to grave”

In Islam the family is responsible for the burial, so unless you assume that 1 million families (though admitedly there is a set overlap) cannot bury 1 million bodies I do not follow.

“If it would distress ‘ex-Fallujahn’, then I too support military action. Anything to distress ex-Fallujahn.”

No doubt killing my family would distress me, do you support that?

I’m amazed anyone actually reads David Lindsay’s posts (they don’t read his blog) – you know it’s going to be bollocks, full of needlessly long words (I’ve never read the word “anthropogenic” outside of academia) and with a generous helping of smug superiority. I haven’t read any of his posts of late, only the replies to them, and I’m pretty sure my assessment stands correct

No ex-Fallujahn, your family are suffering enough having to listen to you blabbering on with your fetid conspiracy theories.

Anyway, why didn’t you do the decent thing and strap some TNT to yourself as the imperialist stormtroopers raped your city? I’ll tell you why. Because you were in Crawley at the time, pissed up on Peroni and watching fucking Match of the Day.

Josh Scholar posted “BASIC … Things young children should be taught…”

Oh my goodness you are REALLY off base here.

Python or Ruby perhaps. Logo certainly. But teaching young children BASIC is
treading a line dangerously close to child abuse. Force feeding them C++ or Perl
IS child abuse.

Just saying … :-}

Anon, you got that from what Dijkstra said in 1975 and your tried to update it didn’t you.
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655-S00/readings/ewd498.html

from the original

# The tools we use have a profound (and devious!) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities.
# FORTRAN –”the infantile disorder”–, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
# PL/I –”the fatal disease”– belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
# It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
# The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.
# APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.
…
Projects promoting programming in “natural language” are intrinsically doomed to fail.

I think it’s interesting that computers are just FINALLY getting fast and big enough to run Smalltalk well (invented in ‘71). If we were all running Smalltalk computers then every detail about our systems and it’s software could be easily and quickly customized (by a programmer).

Great post Nora.

It seems it’s not only the Iranian people who will be glad to see the ayatollahs go -interesting piece by Khaled Abu Toameh:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1245184891821&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

If we were all running Smalltalk computers then every detail about our systems and it’s software could be easily and quickly customized (by a programmer).

((lambda (x) (dismiss x)) josh)

@Sea Kitten/Salty Mouser

Nerede bu karma elde ettiniz? Ne zamandır Türkiye olan var mı?

Weegie:

“The easy solution for the majority of us, who don’t want to live in such a country, would be for them to fuck off one and all and live in an authoritarian hellhole.”

Nope. Won’t do at all.

They want to be the authoritarian dictators in this authoritarian hellhole, all other authoritarian hellholes being already occupied, and well defended.

Mouser, off topic for sure, but it’s not the language, but the fact that it’s not really compiled and everything in the system, code and data can be debugged, traced, inspected and altered while it’s running.

though admitedly there is a set overlap

Oh christ, now ex-Falujahn (yeah, right) is trying to impress us with his grasp of set theory.
Dunno about cunt, but defo a dipstick.

But I have no idea how the rest of society once learned basic honesty and reasoning skills.
— Josh

Its called Christianity built upon Roman and Greek cultural and intellectual foundation….aka Western Civilization.

Ill agree that my post is somewhat muddled, as is my understanding…..but Im learning all the time, trying to understand the enemy of Western Civilization, aka the Western Left.

You can see the sleight of hand that someone threw out, ah but is the likely hood of an extinction event impact, a manmade threat. The answer to that, is neither is Global Warming…..we are entirely within the known cycles of Earth as far as global temperatures are concerned….and natural causation, from what we understand.

More study, yes, completely remaking our economy, introducing artificial energy scarcity and increasing the power of the state to encroach upon individual liberty and micromanage lives, no thanks. Sell that turd to the brainwashed braindead lemmings that you are spewing out of dumbed down Leftwing indoctrination centers.

Josh, as to why you havent drank the Koolaid.

You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time(Leftist lemmings), but you cant fool all of the people all of the time.

Monty, most of our Mc Donalds / Starbucks trashing anti-imperialist psuedo lefties aren’t hard enough to be brutal dictators. They get off on psychopathic violeny thugs, they aspire to be them but know nature, and their nurture, didn’t make them that way.

I envisage our middle-class revo’s as dear leader appreciation, forced-demo organiser types. Though Geo Galloway would make a rather fine sinister secret police chief imo.

Nerede bu karma elde ettiniz? Ne zamandır Türkiye olan var mı?

On rye, hold the mustard.

it’s not the language, but the fact that it’s not really compiled and everything in the system, code and data can be debugged, traced, inspected and altered while it’s running.

#t

I think Interlisp, or perhaps the Lisp Machines, had that not long after Smalltalk blazed the trail …

ex-Fallujahn

“Nope they have been buried, Iraq is 430,000 Km2 big, meaning that there were approximately 2 people killed per square km, meaning if you were to randomly dig a hole with an area of 2 x10^-7 square km (10 inch shovel) the odds of you finding that body are 0.0000001. ”

Ah – but John Hopkins University claimed that in their survey they were ALWAYS on every occasion shown a death certificate.

So you are claiming with respect to these one million sinister mystery burials in out of the way locations nevertheless each and every one have an associated death certificate – with a cause of death given???

Now THAT is weird.

“… the west recently killed in the millions in Iraq.”

No it didn’t. The actual toll of civilian deaths 2003 – 2009 is around 100,000.* and that figure also factors in bombings, beheadings and other attacks that are not perpetrated by the Coalition forces.

*Sources:

Reuters http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LV236072.htm Amongst that number

and Iraq Body Count
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
and

The answer to that, is neither is Global Warming…..we are entirely within the known cycles of Earth as far as global temperatures are concerned….and natural causation, from what we understand.

Wrong, the variation in temperature over the last century is way outside any natural fluctuation based on evidence of past natural changes. And there is no kind of natural causation that can explain it.

diplomatic, cultural, social, economical and yes, military.

We have no virtually no diplomatic or economic leverage over Iran. I’m not sure how you think we will influence the regime culturally or socially. Calling for military action without specifying exactly what you are proposing is reckless to say the least.

Wrong, the variation in temperature over the last century is way outside any natural fluctuation based on evidence of past natural changes.

Really?

exweegie
22 June 2009, 10:46 pm

Monty, most of our Mc Donalds / Starbucks trashing anti-imperialist psuedo lefties aren’t hard enough to be brutal dictators. They get off on psychopathic violeny thugs, they aspire to be them
———–

I agree with you there. They are gutless wonders. I suspect that explains their covert support of crime and terrorism, and even vandalism against western societies. Violence, destruction, but at arms length.

Little shitheels who want to smash the place up while we aren’t looking, and slink away before anyone catches them. But when they are brought to book, they cringe and fling the guilt elsewhere, and call upon their fellow travellers to rubber stamp our foreheads with the collective blame, as if we had messed with their minds. As if we had messed in their pants.

Learn how to deal with the pathetic antisocial little bugger, and you have learned how to deal with the tyrant.

We haven’t learned anything yet though.

David Lindsey, To judge from the sketchy command you seem to have of the English language and of English grammar in particular, I imagine you are not a native English speaker? At present I have no idea what you are going on about and I imagine I am not alone.
Your views are so poorly expressed they come across as incoherent and about as clear as mud.

If you currently live in the UK, I am sure I can recommend someone who could help you improve your command of English. Whether that would make your views any more logical or substantive I cannot say, but at least everyone reading your stuff would then have some idea what you are talking about. At present it all comes across as a meaningless rant. Sorry and all that.

Andrew Adams, far be it from me to question your firmly held beliefs and personal revolutionary truths.

One of our better legislators and statesmen, although I often disagreed with him, Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said…

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Andrew Adams, far be it from me to question your firmly held beliefs and personal revolutionary truths.

One of our better legislators and statesmen, although I often disagreed with him, Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said…

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Israelinurse, thank you for linking to Khalid Abu Toameh analyis of how the Arab nations view the Iranian demonstrators.

Here is another story, specificly about reactions in Iraq to the unrest in Iran. “Iraqis back Iranian protestors’ call for change” by Mehdi Lebouachera. Check out that article and the post above it at
http://www.iraqimojo.blogspot.com
The two posts are the first two currently on the website and are dated June 21st & 22nd respectively.

With regard to the above article, I agree with the analysis and sentiment. A (not facetious) question, though: Where does an organization like AWL fit? They seem to have taken up for the masses, and with a marxian perspective. I’m in the US, and only knnow about them from their website and little snippets here and there. If they are decent (in the dictionary sense of the word) do they have any influence? Comments and explanations please.

“Sigh, I kind of regret going after Chomsky. Chomsky is careful enough that you don’t catch him out unless you actually know something about the real word situations he lies about, so he still has a great reputation among people who haven’t been shocked by listening to him lie about something they actually know about.”

This is true of many people. Chomsky is a very smart man and he knows about a few things. Knowing a few things well does not mean knowing everything. What bothers me most about Chomsky though is that while his facts are mostly right, he leaves out so much as to shape the argument in a dishonest way.

“Jon

Pretty much exactly how I feel looking at today’s “left”, and one of the (many) reasons I have absolutely no regard for socialism any more.”

Today’s “left” have absolutely no regard for socialism either.

This fake “left” is actually thoroughly reactionary, and I prefer conservatives to regressives.

Speaking of the left and it’s baleful influence:

The United States said Monday its invitations were still standing for Iranian diplomats to attend July 4 celebrations at US embassies despite the crackdown on opposition supporters.

“We have made a strategic decision to engage on a number of fronts with Iran,” Kelly said. “We tried many years of isolation, and we’re pursuing a different path now.”

Our government is nuts. The left does that to people.

Bollocks, self serving bollocks at that.

Where to start;
How about with Liberté, égalité, fraternité, quickly followed by the wholesale murder of the ‘Aristo’s’, their servants and their workers. Their beheaded bodies were connected to poles and marionette operators made them dance for the amusement of the crowd.

Or what about the murder of the Czar and his family, and the Kulaks?

Or what about ‘Stop this Imperialist War Now’ and the disruption of Britain’s and, fatally, Frances war against Nazism from August 24, 1939 to June 22, 1941 and the silence about Russia’s rape of Eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania?

Or the people who supported the invasion of Hungary in 1956?

Or Czechoslovakia in 68?

Or what about the support for Mao when he was starving tens of millions to death?

Or what about the support for Ho Chi Min and his killer comrades who destroyed Vietnam?

Or who supported, and continue to support, the PLO’s worldwide racist murders?

Or what about all those people who supported the Sandinistas, but were fucking silent when they were destroyed in free and fair election?

Or what about the people who labeled the Tories as ‘Sleezy”, and chanted ‘Things can only get better”.

Fuck the lot of you, I detest the mainstream left on their record.

Have a look at this:-

http://i41.tinypic.com/id85kj.jpg

Excellent post Nora.

With regard to Seamus Milne’s sneering despicable tripe in the gaga Guardian, I can only echo what one person posted in response at the Guardian’s website: does anyone at the Guardian actually check the horseshite he writes before they publish it? For example, the leader of the Guardian’s Guardian Council, Michael White.

Excellent and thoughtful post, thank you.

Disturbing to see how many of the usual leftist suspects (including Milne and some of the posters here) belittle or even abuse the protesters on the grounds that they may be middle class or urban dwellers, and lack the supposed authenticity (or god knows what) of the rural wirkers. I live in Cambodia, where everyone knows all too well what’s at the bottom of that slippery slope. For too many of these people, the idea of “equality” in fact means “inequality but on my terms” or, worse, the target of some kind of retribution for perceived wrongs.

And words fail me in relation to those who seem to think that the war in Iraq precludes anyone in the West supporting the right of the Iranian populace to self-determination, equality and greater freedom.

Doc Martyn, excellent post itemizing the historical crimes of the radical left. I agree with everything you say and share your detestation of the radical left. May I suggest that you re-post it over at the Lenin’s Tomb Blog? Most of what’s written over there falls within the category of self-serving bollocks.

How the left reacts is part of an anti-Zionist conspiracy.

They would like to be against the Ayatollahs, but they can’t, because the Ayatollahs are useful against the “Zionists”. And if anybody in the left were to argue that Zionists aren’t as bad as the Ayatollahs, they would be forcefully silenced and considered traitors.

It is a powerful conspiracy.

My post above, for what it’s worth, came 3 times. The first two were incomplete sketches and must have gone off accidentally. Moderators, why don’t you eliminate the first two?

I’m amazed anyone actually reads David Lindsay’s posts (they don’t read his blog)

His blog’s fantastic – both in the sense of being brilliant and being a work of fantasy. Yesterday’s highlight was:

I sometimes get angry emails from the right sorts of addresses, blaming my very persistent comments on things like Coffee House, Conservative Home, the Telegraph blog and Iain Dale’s Diary for eventually forcing David Cameron to say that he would campaign for a No vote in any referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

If you can navigate through the waffle, he’s claiming credit for changing Conservative Party policy on the Lisbon Treaty.

Remember the ridiculous Rose and Orange “Revolutions” in Ukraine and Georgia respectively?

The Rose Revolution was in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. And it goes downhill from there, I’m afraid.

Great post, Nora. And yes, Seumas Milne has always been objectionable.

Thanks for all the comments – I had initially intended to respond to people’s points, but hadn’t banked on quite how many points there would be!

I’ll just pick a few and add some of my own thoughts about random but related stuff.

In relation to this being a ‘middle class revolt,’ I would ask those who assert this pejoratively to define what they mean by middle class; do they refer to wealth or do they refer to education or do they refer to both? Personally, I think the fact that the majority of people on the protests are educated and therefore are likely to be more open minded, curious and questioning is not an indictment of the protests but an indication of their importance in creating a more enlightened society in Iran. There are trade unionists at the protests, and, due to the difficulties of organising inside Iran, the people who are active in the trade union movement in Iran today are very likely to be deeply thougthful, courageous people, who are also enlightnened in their attitude to rights.

Further, surely no-one wuold argue that education is not a tool of emancipation? Surely no-one would argue that the global efforts by NGOs, Trade Unions, (some) international governments and academic institutions to bring education to children denied it by either a lack of resources or by anti-education forces such as the Taliban is the right thing to do? Surely people realise that education frees the mind and that therefore those who are privileged enough to have received an education are more likely to be more open minded?

For those who argue that Ahmadinejad did win the election (although admitting that it was not by as much as was stated) and that we should therefore accept this as the outcome of a democratic process, I would simply point out the following: four hundred and seventy five candidates put themselves forward to stand in this election and only four were cleared to stand by the Council of Guardians. This was a democratic process so squeezed that it is barely democratic at all. The importance of these protests is not the fight between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad, but the fight for greater openness, greater democracy, greater personal freedom and greater equality in Iran in the future.

Gabriel @ 22 June 2009, 8:23 pm

“25 years since Foucault died and ……… The idea of moral relativism is still dominant among many people. ”

No. Some of us occaisionally hear of it being denounced, otherwise, it isn’t noticeable.