The Iranian

 

email us

Alefba

Farshchian

Sehaty Foreign Exchange

    Letters

Monday
January 29, 2001

Like any other king

I could not agree more with your article ["Citizen Pahlavi"]. Reza Pahlavi claims that he is not going to make the same mistakes as his father, and is looking for a referendum. I visited his website a few weeks ago and browsed through the messages he had posted.

It is clear that there must be heavy censorship. I did not find a single substantive massage that can be considered critical of his stance. It seems that all messages have been filtered to include those full of adoration and praise. Not much different from the time of his father.

Subsequently I sent a message to Mr. Pahlavi telling him why he has lost my vote, should a referendum be held today. Here is an excerpt:

"You had 20 years to win the hearts and minds of Iranians. What an opportunity, particularly with the resources that was left at your disposal. Iranian community centers you could have built with assistance centers for newcomers. Scholarships you could have offered to the needy students.

"You have done nothing to diminish the misery of hundreds of thousands of Iranian refugees stranded across the world. Many outside Iran are languishing in situations in need of legal help with no assistance in sight. Have you witnessed the Iranians in the mountains of Turkish villages gathering wood to keep themselves alive?

"I can go on for many pages but I will not bore you as I know you impatiently want to inform me of all the sporadic, unimpressive help you have given and offered.

"It is only recently that you have felt comfortable to communicate with your compatriots from behind the veil of technology. Before, we only read about you in the gossip columns elaborating excesses of you and your family, attending multimillion dollar weddings and various shady financial deals by those around you."

As expected, my message never appeared in his forum and he never responded. Mr. Pahalavi is no different than other kings looking for subjects that drawn them in flattery and blind admiration. Iranian people have arrived at the same conclusion as the great English man Thomas Paine who expressed his views in Common Sense: "The palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise."

Fereydoun Taslimi

Links


 MIS Internet Services

Web Site Design by
Multimedia Internet Services, Inc

 GPG Internet server

Internet server by
Global Publishing Group.