IRANIANS

Re: Farhad Kashani

Excellent points. We need to always look at ourselves in the mirror before blaming foreign powers.

The "yaa hosseinaa" victimization tradition of Shia does not help the matter. This is something that the IRI is doing all the time, tapping into a victim mentality.

Tolerance is another weakness we have. I think the reason behind lack of tolerance is seeing things in black and white while ignoring all the shades in between. We have to learn that almost everything falls in the shades of gray, and nothing is abosulte.

Once we learn that, then we have become a tolerant nation.

Talk about unfounded generalizations

Farhad, you can speak for yourself only. You write a lot of generalizations and make stereotypes. Iranians like all the others in the world are of different types. Your "ten" points don't apply to most people because not all Iranians are the same. As for conspiracies, I have news for you: they do happen whether someone loves them or not. If you bother to watch "Frontline" on PBS, you will find plenty of evidence that Iraq war indeed happened due to a conspiracy. Anyone who thinks they don't happen is not paying attention.
Sarzamin's point #11 is even more off-base than Farhad's. I happen to read at least one non-fiction book a month. I also read a ton of technical papers so I guess by Sarzamin's standards I am not an Iranian!! Would you please explain that to my family? Or should I just put away my books because it does not fit the stereotype? I have This is not self criticism, it is criticizing other people who you don't know. Self criticism is when one talks about oneself not about others whom one does not even know. It is shameful.

Anonymous 8: This thread is

Anonymous 8: This thread is not about the perceived looming war against Iran. No sane person would want a war with Iran. Attacking Iran will not achieve any of US goals, period. I
t will turn Iran into a N. Korea or a Taliban-run state. The neocons know this too, however, in order to bring the mullahs into the negotiation table, they have to carry a big stick; otherwise, the mullahs will not negotiate. The mullahs will like nothing more than to be attacked...

Please don't conflate the issues.

Anonymous8, I wasn't

Anonymous8, I wasn't talking about the war on Iraq in point 3. Its blaming everything that happens in our country on others, incuding the U.S, is what I was talking about. Just because U.S was involved in a war in Iraq, doesnt mean other nations are stripped from the power to make decisions or shouldn't take responsibility for their actions. We, lot of times, blame Arabs, British, Russians, Moghols, and others for things that are happening in our country today. Ofcourse in the aftermath of Moghol or Arab invasion, those were to be blamed for horrible things that happened as result of those invasions, but I'm talking about modern history, not ancient history. I'm talking 1400 years after the  Arab invasion, close to 800-900 years or so of Moghol invasion, and close to 60 years after the end of colonialism (A period were Iran was never under direct foreign occupation).I compare Iran to other countries, and I see that lot of nations made progress in short times inspite of setbacks that happened not too long ago. Examples would be Germany, Japan, India, China, Italy,,,,and tens of other examples. Why can't we be like them? The reason is they don't think like us, simple. As nation, they don't have these common conspiracy beliefs like we do. As nation, they understand the meaning of hardwork and resposibility.

#3 War is not a "conspiracy" if it happened only 5 yrs ago

I'm not sure why some people think Bush and Cheney couldn't or wouldn't want to do it. Iran has even more oil than Iraq.

That's not a conspiracy, it is a legitimate concern that over half of Americans have. If there is even a 5% chance of Iran being the next Iraq, history will not forgive any of us for sitting around fighting among ourselves.

You can't topple any mullahs from here. Only if we sell out to US and UK, can this be done. What we CAN do is stop any possible war by echoing western citizens who themselves are greatly concerned.

This is a simple and undisputable reality. But if anyone says it, they will be attacked as "Mullah agents". That is the attitude we have to overcome.

Can we do it?

Thanks

Thank you for the points that you mentioned, indeed these are the root problem that needs to be fixed regardless of any kind of government, even if we manage to throw out IR thugs and bring in good government, we must still fix some of these problems because if we don't, they again will make us problem.

Point #11,

I want to add one very important point as well which is we do not read, many of us do not know about the history or logic about our beliefs because we do not read, according to one study done in Europe, Iranian read only one minute a year in average excluding text book or related work book and this is very sad statistic. This also shows that why many of us still to this date believe in Khorafat.

By continuing to act like

By continuing to act like victims, we'll never be empowered to change our lot. Being fatalistic as a nation, we've rarely stood up to enemies, foreign or domestic. By the same token, we need to break this vicious circle and empower ourselves and not view ourselves as "victims". Once we do that, no foreign or reactionary power can rule over us.

The first step is to acknowledge responsibility for creating our situation. I am not talking about blaming. I am not saying that it is our fault for being used and abused. Nonetheless, it is important to recognise that we made the choices which brought us to this point in our history, therefore we can make the choices to get ourselves back out. What I am getting at here is that we must take responsibility in order to be empowered to realise that we do have a choice. Either we do the work necessary to save ourselves or we'll forever be victimized by those whom we allow to victimize us; be it corrupt "agents of god", fanatic religiosity, monarchy,etc.

It is true to say that no one can save us , but ourselves.

nothing wrong with being proud

We have things that we should be proud of,like our long history and the fact that we had an empire that exentended most of the world.this empire treated its citizens right,wrote the first human right laws,devised a calender that is still being used,had advances in medicine,agricuture,costruction,govenment,to name a few.We have other countries that are new compare to Iran,the people of these contries can not look back and say with pride that their ancestor accomplished this and that.

BK, thank you. I agree with

BK, thank you. I agree with you 100%.

using many words that you can not understand

In earlier times poeple kept stil, when they did not know anything about a certain subject. Nowadays they can tell it in english.

Mr. Kashani

Thanks for your thought provoking views. Regardless of whether one agrees with them or not, the points you've raised should be among the issues we Iranians should take time to reflect on, from time to time.

I'd just like to add to point no 5 from your piece. Many of us Iranians continually blame others for the predicament Iran finds itself in. It’s always somebody else’s fault. We just love conspiracy theories, but are rarely prepared to support them with credible evidence.

We see the hand of the old tried and tested bogeymen the US or (given our history) the UK behind everything that we see as posing a threat to Iran. To give an example: on one hand some of us blame the US or UK (and sometimes Israel), for the creation the Islamic Republic and on the other, some of us accuse them of trying to topple the IR. I’m not saying these views are necessarily right or wrong, but logic would dictate they can’t both be right.

Don’t get me wrong, countries like the US and UK are only interested in one thing, their own-self interest and they will do whatever that achieves that objective. But our obsession and paranoia with them is getting in the way of the recognizing and dealing with the most fundamental problem that has underpinned Iran’s woes in recent history.

The bottom line is that if we want to issue “blame” or give “praise” (as supporters of IR are very keen to do on this site) for what is happening in Iran, more than any other factor, we should look to ourselves. We have to face reality that Iran is in the state that it is primarily because of the actions (or lack of actions) of the Iranian people.

If things are to change in Iran, the Iranian people must put an end to the "blame others" mentality and look to themselves to bring about change. Sadly, decades (if not centuries) old mentality takes a long time to discard and I just don’t see this happening soon enough to halt’s Iran inexorable slide towards catastrophe.

Anonym7, the fact that you

Anonym7, the fact that you guys immediately every time someone criticizes the IRI or talks about things we can do better as a nation, connect the topic to America, is in itself a prime example of conspiracy theory belief that I mentioned in this article. I talked about some of things some of us, not all, can do better, and you immediately talked about U.S oil consumption and the Iraq war! Let me just give you on example: during the Shah reign, many of us thought that Shah is irremovable because of U.S support. We were led to this conspiracy belief that Shah will only leave when U.S wants him to. Well, back in 1979, when millions of Iranians went to street to remove the Shah, how strong was that U.S support to prevent him from being removed? What difference could’ve U.S support or no support for him would’ve been able to make in face of millions of angry Iranians? What were those U.S F 14 or American military advisers or the U.S embassy able to do to prevent Shah from being removed? Nothing. Because we took responsibility and we took action, and if a population does those, nothing can stop it.

We do need to keep ourselves

We do need to keep ourselves in check and this article is a step forward.

#11

If anything good happened in human history, it must have been initiated by Iranians. We usually like to take credit for everything that others may have come up. This is so pathetic. I guess it's a symptom of being proud of our ancient culture. This is something that was also pointed out in "My bug fat greek wedding".
An example of this anomaly is like the discussion started in a current "Turkish song" posted by Dariush Kadivar to give the credit to Faramarz Aslani for him originating the song "Age ye roozi".

10 wrong things

I have never read such nonsense before on this site or any other… It is amazing that Mr. Farhad Kashani can write without any thought behind the article and poor generalization.

laat baazi for oil

Kashani, here are two "conspiracy theories" for you:

1-Based on widely seen CNN documentary:
U.S. with ~4.5% of world population consumes 25% of the oil produced in the world, which is about 20 billion barrels of oil per day

2-Based on what Greenspan a conservative republican of the type of politics that you follow "Iraq War is largely about OIL"

Kashani, CNN is not an Iranian network and Greenspan is not Iranian, but the above "conspiracy theories" talk much, much loader than any Iranian Molla, Iranian leftist, etc to show why the politics that you support wants to get Iran at any cost. But as the writer of the article in Nation (a US paper) put it, those day that U.S. could get the oil by 'laat baazi' is over. U.S needs to bless a new paradigm ... blaming Iran is not the the way to go.

#11 We'd rather make lists and talk, than DO

Talk is cheap, actions (almost always) speak louder than words. Iranians mostly like to talk and talk and talk, and no one other than Cyrus the Great has really ever actually done anything.

Not to make light of these very nice and obvious listed observations as to our many weaknesses, but the reall issue we have refused to face as a people for over 2500 years is the one about how WE simply want to BE.

We are all too eager to allow yet another savior to emerge, promising to save us each time.

The sad cold truth is that there is no real Rostam coming. Rostam is us. And apparently Rostam is dead.

You Can't Always Get what You want

ye Irani, thank you very

ye Irani, thank you very much azeez.

Azita, The reaction you

Azita,

The reaction you had to my article illustrates the point of my article exactly. You believe if someone self criticizes, he’s not proud of his country or he doesn’t love it. So although you insulted me, but you illustrated my point exactly. The first sentence of my article is excessive pride leads to a fall. As far as India goes, India’s economy just recently surpassed England’s (Its former colonizer) and its now one of the top 10 in the world. Its part of the nuclear club, it’s a democracy, very advanced in science, well respected and has one of the highest growth rates. Based on that, it is a world power.

Varjavand jaan,

Thanks for the feedback. On 4, we use our emotions more than our thoughts and logic when making decisions, especially politically. Ofcourse that’s changing, but historically its been like that. We are very passionate people, over passionate maybe. On 5, we have a tendency to blame others for our mistakes. We sometimes, even in social life, are too proud or stubborn to admit our own mistakes. On 7, we love history. Some of us sometimes are unable to realize the changes that happen in the world scene. We analyze current complex political relations with a historical lens, where politics was simpler. On 9, I see where you’re coming from. What I meant was we do not do well in a team environment. The idea of cooperation and community interest hasn’t really rooted among us. And for number 11, I’m sensing you mean me by that! I really don’t think like that. I self criticize all the time.

Adf

Very good point. Right on the money.

Abol Danesh azeez,

We need a good dose of self criticism in order to learn from our mistakes, correct them, and build a better Iran for us and future generations.

Tahirie azeez,

Thank you. And I agree with you 100%.

Anonym7 jaan,

We’re not into laat baazi. We do not believe that our government should constantly be confronting and provoking governments and nations (i.e laat baazi), and that’s what it has been doing for the last 30 years. That’s not what Iran has done historically, we are a peaceful nation. We love people and life. We never had in our history a government that wanted to “export its revolution” (i.e laat bazzi). We do not believe that the world should be scared from our government, and I don’t mean a single figure of the government, I mean the entire regime. To tell you a little story, the head of the Komite in the very beginning of the revolution in a specific town that I know about, was a former well known laat and was in prison for stabbing someone. When the revolution happened, he was freed and joined the Komiteh. Because of his brutality, he was promoted to the head of the Komiteh . If you go Iran, you will hear thousands of the similar stories. So this regime is made of thugs and uneducated fascists, literally. And although they are Iranians just like me and you, but they are obviously not qualified, to say the least, to be in government. We’re not even gonna talk about what they did to our country. Also, as far my analysis, I am a realist, versus you guys whom are idealists, at best. The huge problem with the intellectual movement in Iran for the last 50-60 has been that it did not speak on the behalf of the average Iranian. That had catastrophic consequences for our country. Thankfully, that is changing. More and more, people who write and who speak out, speak of what’s on the everyday Iranian’s mind. That’s how you identify the real problems and find out with realistic solutions for them.

Enjoyed reading it

Some of the points are just spot on.

Mr. Kashani, I do not know

Mr. Kashani, I do not know your political stance but you are right on the nose with analyzing our dillema. Thank you for pointing out our social/cultural issues without political polarizations. We are one nation. The only way to forge ahead for a great future is to look at Iran as a whole with all it's people.

I agree with you on this ...

Kashani says: "Some of us, think “laat baazi” and thugness is cool"

yes Kashani, you and Mr. Imani that you have consistently supported are good examples of some confusing politics with "laat baazi". Your shallow analysis here is also another good example of analytics "laat baazi" style. The cowboy politics of your Mr. Bush is the best example of "laat baazi" at international level.

Mr kashani many good points.

 But from the ones I like and agree  # one is the best.I believe one of the most handicap characteristics of us is the Conspiracy theory that we all are so good at it!!

If we set aside the conspiracy theory , then we can look at our history and learn from it.Just like what Faryarm is suggesting.

Most regards,

Tahirih

Regarding Janpan's form of

Regarding Janpan's form of government. Ah, the irony:

The politics of Japan take place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic monarchy, whereby the Prime Minister of Japan is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament; the Diet with the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. In academic studies, Japan is generally considered a constitutional monarchy, based largely upon the British system with strong influences from European continental civil law countries such as the German Bundestag. For example, in 1896 the Japanese government established Minpo, the Civil Code, on the French model

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Japan

Society as a Patient

... The way this article reads is like the entire society is treated as a single patient--more specificly-- a mentally sick patient-- and here the patient laying down on the coach en route "Free Association" telling his psychoanalyst doctor what is wrong with him as he delves deep and deeper into his state of supressed and censored subconsciousness (shy) in order to bring it forth into the level of consciousness like a well of oil in erutption while he is induced deep and deeper into hypnotized state for free expression for the first time...

I another word.... I like the approach of this article for at least it high lights the importance of free speech in renewal and healing of society--

The question that remains is this: Who is the doctor what is the fee? why? Because "naneh be baabaa moftee nemeedeh"

Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?

I would add one more thing.

I would add one more thing. Iranians suffer from the disease of revenge. Forgiveness is not in our vocabulary. Japanese instead of taking revenge on the US after Hiroshima (250,000 Japanese died),they got even by becoming the biggest creditor to the Us AND BY INVESTING IN innovations and in their people instead of wasting treasure on outdated nuclear weapons. Same applies to China and other Latin and South American countries who were either US or British ex-colonies. Peru has no oil but their income per capita is the same as Iran.

Japan Unveils Cars That Runs Purely on Water

//gizmodo.com/5016343/genepax-unveils-a-car-t...

//in.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idINSP...

Iranians as a society are on a self-defeating mission of getting revenge. They will destroy Iran in the process.

  Dear Mr. Kashani Very

  Dear Mr. Kashani Very well thought out article,  I have the following suggestions:

1. be more specific about some of the points such as: # 4, 5, 7, etc.
2. I don’t quite agree with # 9. Individualism often is not a problem it is an incentive. Aren’t we motivated by our personal interest when initiating something? I mean good ideas are rewarded by personal interests which should be well respected and protected.
3. I would add # 11: We believe that we are always right. And, we want to take side on every issue no matter how much we know about it. Not only that, insist that we are correct

Some of the points you raised, I believe, are based on the fact that we think that are smarter than others. We don’t take things at their face value. We wish to get to the bottom of everything   Varjavand

Look back in history for our current troubles...

To the writer of this

To the writer of this article must say that using many words that probably you can not understand even the meanings of it to impress people and offend your country is not impressive. Stay here and shut up about Iran. If I defend my country I a proud of it. By the way you mentioned that India put aside hate towards US and no is a worls power. Go read your history and travel to India. I have traveled and lived there for years and India is not a world power. Before trying to say things go and read a little rathere than just spitting out a bunch of words that you do not understand.