Persian-American Rational Society (PARS)

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SK, chill. You missed Iranian History, but you still might qualify for Iranian Geography, Anthropology, Demography...possibilities are just endless. Only need to apply yourself!

DR, at the price sounding a bit 'reductive' me believes that "the path to having Iran gain its right place in the International Community," comes from and through local community organizing: within Iran and amongst the diaspora, in their millions.

The history of the 1979 Revolution remains a fecund source and model for community organizing with instances of neighborhood committees and workers' council in Factories and other institutions (universities, some rural areas,...). Besides our own history we always have  different American versions of community organaizing such as Saul Alinsky:

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky#Communit...

Then we have the Feminist version, and Communitarian,...

Perhaps a 'rehashing' of some of these different models of community organizing could serve as an introduction for further discussion and posterity!

Soosan Khanoom...

Greetings Soosan Khanoom:

Thanks for your response. Actually in lots of ways my life is similar to yours. I left Iran on February 1978. I was 17 years old kid. I came to United States right after I graduated from High School. Since then I have never been back to Iran. I have never been involved in any thing happened in Iran. However, I love Iran and I feel like it is my responsibility to help that country to gain its right place in the International Community. I hope I can contribute in this regard.

Sepass,

David Ramezani

And the generation like me

And then generation like me who neither did that and nor this due to the age thingy is left with no role in any part of the Iranian history .......  now I am only qualify for dancing with the star  : )

Responding to Mr. Mash Ghasem…

Greetings Mr. Mash Ghasem:

Thanks for your response sir and I agree with most of what you said! First allow me to thank everyone in here one more time, because I am learning so much from all of you in here. I respect every single opinion in here. If we had this Information Technology back in 1978, I honestly think we would have never ended up with this Islamic Republic. Back then we did not have the opportunity to discuss and research the issues. We never got a chance to analyze and ask questions. We did not scrutinize these people and as a result we ended up with these Mullahs. We can not turn the clock back now, but we can be smart and make sure the next revolution produces a better result this time.

The issues that I think played a major role on creation, formation and the direction of this revolution are:
1. Islam
2. The Power Structure in the society
3. Cold War

Somehow the combination of the above components influenced the outcome of the revolution on 1979.

The question is where do go from here?

Sepass,

David Ramezani

...

DR jan it's all abount balance of forces.

Mullahs won in 1979 because the balance of forces, internally and internationally, was in their favour, how?

Shah's "White Revolution" ,- an incredibly gargantuan project to shoot Iran into one of the top ten nations of the world-, back fired and it back fired badly. Shah's revolution: a top-down, brutal, corrupt, statist mal-development project basically took away all opposition except, guess who? Yes, them.

While no nationalist or leftist group could say a thing, or as we say in Persian: they would stick wood in their sleeves ( chob to astinesh mikardan) we had an incredible growth of all kinds of Mahdieh, Hossaineh, Masjid, and that was only the traditional Clergy.

Shah himself had the noble idea of creating a Religion Corps. Sepah Din. So when it came to a showdown in 1979 the scale was a bit distorted in favour of mullahs, intentionally and unintentionally. 

By gones are by gones. After three decades everyone can expalin everything.

What remains the same is the issue of balance of forces, and how Iranian people could maintain their positions of strenght against IR, and roll it back.

P.S. Ahmad Shamlou, amongst at least a dozen other writers, if not hundreds, have provided a most contemporary repertoire of Iranian culture. 

Responding to Mr. Daruis…

Greetings Mr. Darus:

Thanks for your response sir!
First please allow me to say that we all have made mistakes including myself. It is the nature of human being to make mistakes. If anyone tells you that they have not made mistakes, they are the biggest liars in the world. Having said that by starting this discussion, I am not trying to start finger pointing and I am not trying to play the blame game. I am simply trying to understand the roots of the problem and see how we all collectively can resolve this problem by collaborating with each other. I believe if we all put our brain together we can solve this problem. In this effort we all need each other and we are in the same boat.

Obviously the circumstances have changed from what it used to be 32 years ago. We have learned a lot and we are a lot smarter than before. How can we be effective in our commitment to solve this problem? How close are we?

We should be more imaginative. WE should be more creative and innovative. We should think outside the box. I believe in power of positive thinking. I also believe in Collective Wisdom. I believe if we become Methodical in out Thinking and approach this from all angles, we can solve this problem. Through out our history we have overcome so many problems and we do it again. I believe there are so many very smart Iranians that if we engage them in this process, they can help us out to crack this nut so to speak. We just have to motivate them and get them involved.

What do you think?

Sepass,

David Ramezani

They Were Guilty.

The problem with Iranian political opposition and  system was  lack of creativity and originality.It was all borrowed ideas  , some from France, USA,England ,  Marx , Mao, faschism and Russia  . None of  them could come up with a system of  thought tailor made for Iranian culture and background  , all it could do was to create a nation of naggers and complainers.They intentionally created an environment of baseless fear between Iranian to distrust each other.

The bravest  thing this politician did  was  to  bad mouth Shah and that was it .The only other  thing they were good at it  was first to  thumble the Shah statues and go after whatever had The Shah or Reza Shah names on it.(what a pitty). 

 They were so empty and void  of ideas that Khomeini was  able to push them aside and make them to become irrelevant when the country and Iranian needed them the most.They even let their own

late patriot Bakhtiar down, when they knew he was right and the

revolution was hijacked by khomeini , Mojahedeen and  Fadaeian.

Never dared to  come out and tell the truth ,they failed to accomplish their mission with honor, we were betrayed and let  down.

They were cowards, baseless and aimless , even after getting a piece of the pie  kept complaining and nagging ( until they got their behindbooted).

What I am sorry for is that they would rather work with Khomeini and his Vatan foroshan ,mojahedeen ,Fadaeian and tude,but could not help an dwork with  Shah to bring gradual reform.They had 40 sweet years , they  failed time and time again .They knew Shah could not change  Iran all by himself unless all Iranian could made themselves somehow accountable.Elevate themselves  to

much higher standard( so Shah had no other option but  to change).

I hold them responsible for the last 32 years of crimes being

committed  plus  40 years before  1979. 

I am sorry to say this that  those bankrupted ideas still at work

and does not let a new generation of thinker to grow . It has to be 

them or nothing.

 For those old dudes marxist, tude, Jebhe Meli or whatever else

the only good thing that might happen to Iran is them or nothing else matters.

Responding to Mr. Kadivar and Mr. Gilani

Greetings Mr. Darius Kadivar and Mr. Roozbeh_Gilani:

Thank you both for your responses. Special thanks to Mr. Kadivar for your valuable links and references that you provided. It was educational and informative. I appreciate both of your contributions on this important issue.

I am the same age as Price Reza Pahlavi. I am not sure where do we feed as far as the generation is concerned. The 1979 ubiquitous event of Islamic-Communist Revolution did not produce any positive result for us. This event took place under the watch of the Old Generation. This Islamic system is the dark stain on our history. This is the Dark Ages of our history. How do we recover from this disaster? How can we remove this dark stain from our history? So many questions and we are not sure how to answer this so far. It is embarrassing. Our country has been humiliated so much.

So how do we tackle this problem? As of early 2009 this so called Old Generation has created 223 political groups to battle Islamic Republic. I am puzzled why it does it take so many political parties to fight Islamic Republic? Why do we have so many groups?

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_parties_in_...

How do we solve this problem? What does it take to resolve this issue?

Sepass,

David Ramezani

You missed the middle Generation!

Like myself, who was 8 years old when the anti monarchist revolution happened. People like me have the privilage of knowing both the "old and new generations".

In my opinion, the "old generation" did not "give Iran the mullahs". They dismantled a 2500 year system of oppression. A great achievement! It is a great mistake , thinking of 1979 Revolution as a "mistake".

 The islamist regime as brutal as it is, but a mere faint insignifcant blip in the long history of our ancient land. They will go soon. In their place we will have a secular republic for the people. This is not my wishful thinking, this is the undeniable forces of history in action.

 Last but not least, forget about the "mullahs". The real enemy of Iran and iranians has been and remains the false sense of so called "nationalism" which enables every tin pot dictator from Shah to ahmadinezhad to use Cyrus and persepolis as excuses and covers for their corruption, treason and crimes.

"Personal business must yield to collective interest."

No comment ;0)

Just a few Links for what it is worth:

GOLDEN AGE: A Visual Tribute To The Pahlavi Dynasty (1925-1979)

A Monument of Many Faces: Waiting for her people to return to her by Morteza Baharloo

HISTORY FORUM: Nader Naderpour on Iran's Constitutional Revolution and European Rennaissance (1996)

Related pictory:

pictory: Bakhtiar Denounces Bazargan's Provisionary Government in exile (1979)

SOURCES OF FURY:Nader Naderpour on origins of IRI's "Death Slogans" towards US and Israel

SARBAZ: Fereidoun Farrokhzad helps child soldiers of Iran Iraq War

Related Blogs:

RESTORATION: Shapour Bakhtiar advocates Restoring the Monarchy

Mehdi Bazargan and the controversial legacy of Iran's Islamic intellectual movement