Iran's lonely crowd

[democratic]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/27/opinion/27farzami.html?ex=1102222800&en=10c9395f84c50b4e&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1

By FAROUZ FARZAMI

Published: November 27, 2004

Tehran — When Friday Prayer here finishes at about two o'clock in the afternoon, hundreds of worshipers parade toward waiting buses east of Tehran University, shouting canned rhetoric against America and Israel, defining themselves by their animosity toward others. Watching this ritual, one cannot help but ask a soul-searching question: "How can such a small minority of vocal people - totally orchestrated worshipers and their security guards - set the agenda for a nation of 70 million people?"

The short answer is lack of free speech - or, more accurately, the absence of freedom after speech. The state has a monopoly on public discourse, and intellectuals, whether they are religious, atheist or agnostic, are simply not heard. The mullahs in Qom, the holy city two hours drive southwest of Tehran, can dial the phone number of any revolutionary judge in Iran and order the persecution of anyone who dares to question the authorities and their divine agenda.

Learning is thus made irrelevant. The educated must rely on the government to earn their living. I have dozens of friends who hate the religious regime but, to earn a subsistence salary, work as translators of confidential bulletins that keep the ruling theocracy abreast of what the "unfriendly" foreign news media think about Iran. "It is like preparing your own cross for your own crucifixion," said a friend who works for Iranian Radio & TV, which is controlled by the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Since April 2000, some 110 dailies and periodicals have been closed by the authorities. Although the reform-minded Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance still gives moral and financial support to the managers and license-holders of the press, most independent reporters - including myself - are now barred from writing.

Such is the lot of not just journalists but also writers, artists, scholars and millions of frustrated youths in Iran. Until a real political leadership rises from the ashes of the revolution, we may have to be content with it.

The vast majority of people here cross their fingers for a sudden explosion, or pray for American successes in Iraq and Afghanistan to increase the price of suppression by the theocracy in Iran. But that is the limit. Just as minimalism is the fashion in short-story writing today, I suppose we must accept minimalist politics as well.

[Warpy]

1. "Reading Lolita in Tehran"

is a fabulous book covering the immediate postrevolutionary period on through the establishment of theocracy. It's a chilling chronicle of how some loud nonthinkers can shout down everybody around them and bully people into silence as they wreck everything that made their country great.

The author is a preofessor of English literature, in exile in the US until the Shah was deposed, who went back to Iran when it seemed the revolution would have a chance of success of transforming the country into a progressive Islamic state.

In her final years there, she was reduced to hosting a select group of students in her home for literary discussions of banned great literature.

The lesson, of course, is that this can happen anywhere the theocrats take over. It's happening more and more in the US.

[The Zanti Regent]

3. THIS is what is going on in Jesusland

America is dead. Jesusland has overthrown it.

Secession is the only way out.

http://moveoncalifornia.org/index.html

[Niccolo_Macchiavelli]

2. 2 things come in my mind...

1. Look after yer own backyard will ya?

2. Plan B if the nucular threat doesn't manifest as solid as wished?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. change the mullahs to fundy Christian preachers

and it sounds like where the US is headed.....