FG

But it is not the cost of "progress"

by Cost-of-Progress on Mon Oct 05, 2009 12:22 PM PDT

I do not see it as progress for if it were, we'd feel compelled to be in Iran and offer our services - our intellects and hard work to build our country instead of being in the west. I think, at least for us, it is the cost of going arse backward, wouldn't you agree?

Whatever it is, you are correct that our generation and more severely, with their blood, those in Iran who have finally had it (jooneshon be labeshoon resideh) with these antinationalist murderes are paying for it.

Iranian per capita is a fraction of what it was before 1979

by oktaby on Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:53 AM PDT

and the number of poor has about doubled in real terms despite elevated oil income. That speaks loder than any political slogan. The welfare state is also a necessity of transition to a tribal state.

As for you question about All Iranians, I think that is an open question and needs to be analyzed in the global context, the appetite of the islamic regime (particularly a nuclear one) for war as a means to further consolidate control and power, and whether Iran can survive the balkanization plans that may be beneficial not just to the West but to Russia and China. The requirement for salvation is a regime with say 55 or so percent support not one for ALL in absolute sense. That would take time. Spain's Franco Era and the ability of the Spaniards to rise above it and create a progressive country that happens to be a Monarchy shines a ray of hope. But then again, Franco was just a fascist not an islamic fascist.

OKtaby

Cost-of-Progress

by Abarmard on Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:17 AM PDT

Nothing is forever, not even the regime that hold the names. The Islamic Republic might remain in power but the solution that makes it what it is today might change color and flavor. As we have witnessed the growth of the regime from past twelve years.

All and all, our generation might be paying for the cost of progress.

Oktaby & Abarmard

by Cost-of-Progress on Mon Oct 05, 2009 10:05 AM PDT

I have always believed that to be the case. However, I also believe that now, there's a very little control that the "fathers of the revolution" have over the theocracy they created.

I read the entire article that Abarmard had pasted and I think it - at least partially - answers the question I asked.

Here's the entire article: //merip.org/mer/mer250/abrahamian.html

The statsistics are said to be from the government reports mostly, so one has to take them with a grain of sand. Further, I have always said that the clerics so far have shown that they are remarkably smart in the art of holding on to power and this article sort of explains that assertion.  However, one has to (again) question whether this is purely a product of their doing or is there an external element that enables them to be like the parasite in the host body.

Truth is that most of us posting and commenting on these websites are alienated from this government/regime and I do not doubt that most do not belong to the group to which the government caters as their support base. That is just fine and dandy with the regime as they have achieved the goal to get rid of "us" as the undesirable elements that not only do not add to their support base - but take away from it. We are outside the country and in fact all you have to do is watch a few minutes of Persian TV to see ads that promise you an American Visa for "only" $180K promoting further "Cleansing" of the undesired elements for the Iranian theocratic government. 

Thats still leaves one question - can there be hopes for a new regime to take over and cater to ALL Iranians? Is that even possible?

Dear Cost... Your initial assertion is correct

by oktaby on Mon Oct 05, 2009 09:11 AM PDT

The 1979 'Mutiny' was a well orchestrated global attempt, led by U.S. and supported by Europeans (Chinese were not a major playet then, and Soviet Union was knee deep in Afghanistan and internal chaos) as part of building of the Green Belt (the islamic belt) to stop spread of communism (taliban and islamic republic are both bastard children of that affair). So, this is not a theory to be proven but a reality that is well documented and supported if one is actually interested in historical accuracy and not hyperbole.

OKtaby

This may answer your questions

by Abarmard on Mon Oct 05, 2009 09:01 AM PDT

I believe this will help you realize that Iran is more of a welfare state rather than an Islamic State (Ervand Abrahamian: Why the Islamic Republic Has Survived):
_______________________________________

The real answer [to the question of why the Islamic Republic of Iran has survived] lies not in religion, but in economic and social populism. By the early 1970s, Iran had produced a generation of radical intelligentsia that was revolutionary not only in its politics -- wanting to replace the monarchy with a republic -- but in its economic and social outlook. It wanted to transform the class structure root and branch. The trailblazer was a young intellectual named Ali Shariati, who did not live to see the revolution but whose teachings fueled the revolutionary movement. Inspired by the Algerians, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, Shariati spent his short life reinterpreting Shi'ism as a revolutionary ideology and synthesizing it with Marxism. He produced what can be termed a Shi'i version of Catholic liberation theology. His teachings struck a chord not just among college and high school students, but also among younger seminary students. These budding theologians could easily accept his teachings (except his occasional anti-clericalism). One theology student went so far as to describe Imam Husayn as an early Che Guevara and Karbala' as the Sierra Madre. Most of those who organized demonstrations and confrontations in the streets and bazaars during the turbulent months of 1978 were college and high school students inspired mainly by Shariati. His catch phrases -- which had more in common with Third World populism than with conventional Shi'ism -- found their way, sometimes via Khomeini, into slogans and banners displayed throughout the revolution. . . .

This populism helps explain not only the success of the revolution but also the continued survival of the Islamic Republic. The Republic's constitution -- with 175 clauses -- transformed these general aspirations into specific inscribed promises. It pledged to eliminate poverty, illiteracy, slums and unemployment. It also vowed to provide the population with free education, accessible medical care, decent housing, pensions, disability pay and unemployment insurance. "The government," the constitution declared, "has a legal obligation to provide the aforementioned services to every individual in the country." In short, the Islamic Republic promised to create a full-fledged welfare state -- in its proper European, rather than derogatory American, sense.

In the three decades since the revolution, the Islamic Republic -- despite its poor image abroad -- has taken significant steps toward fulfilling these promises. It has done so by giving priority to social rather than military expenditures, and thus dramatically expanding the Ministries of Education, Health, Agriculture, Labor, Housing, Welfare and Social Security. The military consumed as much as 18 percent of the gross domestic product in the last years of the shah. Now it takes up as little as 4 percent. The Ministry of Industries has also grown in most part because in 1979-1980 the state took over numerous large factories whose owners had absconded abroad. The alternative would have been to close them down and create mass unemployment. Since most of these factories had functioned only because of subsidies from the old regime, the new regime had no choice but to continue subsidizing them.

In three decades the regime has come close to eliminating illiteracy among the post-revolutionary generations, reducing the overall rate from 53 percent to 15 percent. The rate among women has fallen from 65 percent to 20 percent. The state has increased the number of students enrolled in primary schools from 4,768,000 to 5,700,000, in secondary schools from 2.1 million to over 7.6 million, in technical schools from 201,000 to 509,000, and in universities from 154,000 to over 1.5 million. The percentage of women in university student populations has gone up from 30 percent to 62 percent. Thanks to medical clinics, life expectancy at birth has increased from 56 to 70, and infant mortality has decreased from 104 to 25 per 1,000. Also thanks to medical clinics, the birth rate has fallen from an all-time high of 3.2 to 2.1, and the fertility rate -- the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime -- from 7 to 3. It is expected to fall further to 2 by 2012 -- in other words, Iran in the near future will achieve near zero population growth.

The Islamic Republic has bridged the chasm between urban and rural life in part by raising the prices of agricultural goods relative to other commodities and in part by introducing schools, medical clinics, roads, electricity and piped water into the countryside. For the first time ever, villagers can afford consumer goods, even motorbikes and pickup trucks. According to one economist who, on the whole, is critical of the regime, 80 percent of rural households own refrigerators, 77 percent televisions and 76 percent gas stoves. Some 220,000 peasant families, moreover, have received 850,000 hectares of land confiscated from the old elite. They, together with the some 660,000 families who had obtained land under the earlier White Revolution, form a substantial rural class that has benefited not only from these new social services but also from state-subsidized cooperatives and protective tariff walls. This class provides the regime with a rural social base.

The regime has also tackled problems of the urban poor. It has replaced slums with low-income housing, beautified the worst districts and extended electricity, water and sewage lines to working-class districts. As an American journalist highly critical of the regime's economic policies admits, "Iran has become a modern country with few visible signs of squalor." What is more, it has supplemented the income of the underclass -- both rural and urban -- by generously subsidizing bread, fuel, gas, heat, electricity, medicines and public transport. The regime may not have eradicated poverty nor appreciatively narrowed the gap between rich and poor but it has provided the underclass with a safety net. In the words of the same independent-minded economist, "Poverty has declined to an enviable level for middle-income developing countries."

In addition to substantially expanding the central ministries, the Islamic Republic has also set up numerous semi-independent institutions, such as the Mostazafin (Oppressed), Martyrs', Housing, Alavi and Imam Khomeini Relief Foundations. Headed by clerics or other persons appointed by and loyal to the Supreme Leader, these foundations together account for as much as 15 percent of the national economy and control budgets that total as much as half that of the central government. Much of their assets are businesses confiscated from the former elite. The largest of them, the Mostazafin Foundation, administers 140 factories, 120 mines, 470 agribusinesses, 100 construction companies and innumerable rural cooperatives. It also owns the country's two leading newspapers, Ettelaat and Keyhan. According to the Guardian, in 1993 the foundation employed 65,000 and had an annual budget of over $10 billion.5 Some of these foundations also lobby effectively to protect university quotas for war veterans and together they provide hundreds of thousands with wages and benefits, including pensions, housing and health insurance. In other words, they are small welfare states within the larger welfare state. (endnotes omitted, Ervand Abrahamian, "Why the Islamic Republic Has Survived," Middle East Report 250, Spring 2009)

The Question

by Cost-of-Progress on Mon Oct 05, 2009 08:06 AM PDT

I have asked myself - and others - this question, but have not yet heard or arrived at an answer that satisfied me. If there ever was an answer, it is one I did not want to accept/admit perhaps due to it being one of the underlying causes of our problems...

I ask again:

I truly believe that the 1979 so called revolution was the work of, and orechestrated by, foriegn powers to change Iran from a country on its way to becoming a major player in the Middle East and the world .....what it is now: a hated Pariah State. Be that as it may, everything that's happened in the past 30 years with this antinationalist regime has been done BY Iranians TO Iranians.

What hopes do we have that things will be any different - not just on the surface but deep enough to allow sustainable positive change - for Iran? How can we trust our so called hamvatans not to sabotage the next future government provided it is one for the people and by the people? How can we expect the fragmented Iranian society (both inside and outsdie the country) to pull togetehr as a single entity focused on the betterment of Iran - for Iran, not Islam, not ideology --- for Iran?

NO

by oktaby on Sun Oct 04, 2009 04:11 PM PDT

Bastardization and inbreeding is the essence of the islamic republic.

OKtaby

IMHO...

by NOT_AK69 on Sun Oct 04, 2009 01:23 PM PDT

 .1. Are not most Iranians aware of the corruption I cited by now?
Yes; and have been for many years.

2. In that case would they require foreigners to make them unhappy or angry?
No; there is enough internal malfunctioning and manipulation by the murderous islamic regime to quite well bring all hate and hatred upon themselves, deservidley.

3. Could foreigners manipulate millions of nationalistic Iranians so easily and so massively in any case?
No; that unfounded assersion is an insult.

4. In an all-watchful police state, how could foreigners operate so freely enough to do so.
Covert operations are possible, but to the extend required, improbably without large scale internal Iranian support.

5. Didn't the rest of the world appear just as stunned as most Iranians when Khamenei and his security services went so far on election day and afterwards? 
I was not stunned; it was easily foreseeable and within the psychological profile of this regime and leaders thereof. But, the World in general was stunned and horrified; evidenced by the common man support they provided us in marches and demonstrations around the world.

6. Alternate hypothesis reguarding causation: Is it possible Khamenei's ultrareactionary policies during the Khatami presidency and since played a thousand times greater role than foreigners in causing popular discontent?
Yes; it is possible and it is one of many causes.

 

Questions for Any Readers

by FG on Sun Oct 04, 2009 12:45 PM PDT

1. Are not most Iranians aware of the corruption I cited by now? 

2. In that case would they require foreigners to make them unhappy or angry?

3. Could foreigners manipulate millions of nationalistic Iranians so easily and so massively in any case?

4. In an all-watchful police state, how could foreigners operate so freely enough to do so. 

5. Didn't the rest of the world appear just as stunned as most Iranians when Khamenei and his security services went so far on election day and afterwards?  

6. Alternate hypothesis reguarding causation: Is it possible Khamenei's ultrareactionary policies during the Khatami presidency and since played a thousand times greater role than foreigners in causing popular discontent?