Musings of a former chicken

will of people

The majority doesn't need a democracy to govern. Any government anywhere, with few exceptions, is running based on the least common denominator of the will of the majority.

The democracy is about the rights of minorities. Loosing that perspective looses us strategically. We have to unify the progressive forces of the society under a single banner, then Reza Pahlavi can send the message to the rest of the population in no time.

This is our challenge, unless we prefer to stay emotional and verbose in Iranian.com forever.

Mr. Fred

Any attempt to try and down play the atrocities, murders, rapes, unjust detention, beatings, raid of the private homes, intimidation, and show trials in it self is a crime against Iranian heroes and heroines.

Any attempt to portray this fraudulent election as [will of people] and any attempt to portray this election as democratic is a crime in itself against brave people of Iran.

Any call for intervention in the internal affairs of Iran is a crime of treason. This battle belong to Iranian youth, and they will win it, you can bet your bottom dollar on that.

Fred: There are very little of things you write and say that I agree with, particularly your call for air tight sanctions against people of Iran, However you have done a good job with this thread.

Respectfully

-YT 

Fred

Your facts are correct. The election was rigged. It means we will never (in foreseeable future at least) know what the real numbers was.

But I happen to believe Ahmadinejad would have won the election with real numbers. This of-course can not be proven. But I simply look at cultural and economical map of the society and deduce that Ahmadinejad would have had the upper hand.

This doesn't negate the protest. It doesn't negate the call for the end of the regime. It doesn't negate our full support for any freedom fighter inside Iran. But perhaps it does put it in a different perspective which I think is the correct one.

The blind expectation, that the real numbers would have led to the victory of so called 'reformers' blinds our strategy. Same blindness by international media covering the election has now become a perfect propaganda tool for the government to cry 'foreign interference'.

As for the 'reform within' illusion, it doesn't have to be nurtured by one fraction of the regime or the other. The whole regime is forced to constant adjustments and engineering of crisis that it's mere existence constantly creates. This is what 'reform' in Islamic regime is all about. As a result, you now see that they put a woman minister, they change the prosecutor, they pretend pursuing the responsibles of harsh treatment of protesters etc.

The real question is, do we, as the supporters of a secular Iran, define ourselves based on what Islamic regime and its fractions do, or based on what we want. 

Questions

these "questions" seem just lika tad presumptuous don't you think? One side of the story you have with strong bias. If the other side is brought up is that called "minimizing" ?

My answer to your question is for you to follow the lead of the people in Iran. The people who are themselves against Ahamdinejad and protested for that reason. This is not hard to find, just look at any newspaper story in English. They call the group who won the election "ahmadinejad faction" or sometimes "hardlines faction" or "islamist faction". You can use those titles for them.

If you stay away from disruptive and divisive labels, you will be fine. Just use what the main enchilada Mousavi and Reform leaders call Ahmadinejad's party.

chaker!

PS. I don't know what "lobbyists" but if they are actually lobbying for the hardliners, they are part of his party and can be called so.

Concise and to the point analysis

Well done.  And the fact that IRI's resident malijak "Jaleho" crawled out of her hole to challenge you with her manufactured, IRI spoon fed "facts" shows that your post hit a nerve with the evil IRI....truth always does!

Jaleho

Do you think 24 million Iranians voted for Ahmadinejad?   Do you think 24 million Iranians even voted?   I don't think you do - I think you are a good example of the type Fred is talking about.  

Yarab mabad keh geda motabar shavad.    I don't know what we can do about our new rich bacheh kilfat haye Ashrafi - but one thing you can all be certain of - it will be very hard to inject any concience into them. 

Fred, follow my lead!

You misrepresented the FACTS that I believe in, majority of Iranians are in line with what I believe in (to be more precise 24 million vs. 13 million), and by now they are considered well-established facts by most people around the world, yet you still refuse to accept them as facts.... still I called you Fred.

Similarly, you can call me Jaleh, though I have no problem with your "Islamist" lady either.

PS. The emancipation fellow was correct. Majority of protestors were the Iranian youth who had their own grievances and strated a peaceful protest. There were only few who took part in burning the buses, people's shops, and started a riot. Once a riot gets started, ugly things happens, in particular in a city where the majority of its under 30 years youth were divided in a 2.2 million pro-Mousavi vs. 1.8 million pro-Ahmadinejad conflict. Tehran could have gotten much more bloody and much more ugly because of that simple calculation. Some other university towns had a smaller but similar effect. Is that not simple enough to understand given the statistical FACTS?

Fantastic Fred!

The Islamist never give up with their twisted lies.

Lady Islamist

Thank you for your point by point demonstration of Islamists’ whitewashing that I was referring to, you did a more thorough job of it than that emancipation pretender.

 But my question was what would be the politically correct, none-hateful and civilized way to refer to people just like you.  

Dear Fred

Very good question.   There is an ORGANIZED support for IRI - shameless enough that no matter what IRI does, they try to explain.   But our challenge is not how to deal with them.   They come here only for one reason - and it is not to blur our vision of facts - they show up everywhere Iranians have a potential to ORGANIZE.  They would be the first ones to join in on any such organizations - only to try to destroy it from within.    Beware of those - but our challnge remains - To Organize.  Get 10,000 Iranians realy united for a democracy - and our future leaders (at least for Iranian Immigrants) will emerge from within that ubity.   

Fred

Thank you for developing a balanced, precise , and concise series of questions. As a comment pointed out, the only reply is that such a regime in its entirety has no legitimacy.  

-- Cost of Progress : Thank you for your insightful comment.

Simple Fred, you are

selective in what you call your "facts."

 You clearly closed your eyes to the large pro-Ahmadinejad groups who poured in the street after the first two days of the protest.

You forget that those who WIN, do not and will not come to the street to protest their win unless there's clear indication that THEIR vote is being changed.

You closed your eyes to the fact that the opposition, hard as it tried to call a strike, could not do so because those whom were called to strike have clearly voted for Ahmadinejad who DID in fact win.

There has been MILLIONS of Iranians who didn't like the outcome, yes, they were genuine Iranian youth that we saw, but that does not contradict the massive effort of foreign elements who tried (and successfully to a good part) to direct and help the demonstration in the direction THEY WANTED. Those foreign element IGNORED the fact that 94% of the people who poured in the street had IDENTICAL demands as far as Iranian desire for nuclear energy, no interference in Iran's affair, no sanctions, no military invasion.....however, the foreigners CONVERTED and INTERPRETED their protest to exactly the above few points that the demonstration in Iran never cared for. Shahis claimed them as theirs, foreigners claimed them as theirs, Mujahedin claimed them as theirs, expat claimed them as theirs....all lashkhors!!

 You have accepted with a blind eye ANY twitter or facebook video of atrocity as if committed by Iranian police, be it a video of atrocities in Iraq or Vietnam!

You have accepted from the very beginning any false document or propaganda "proving" that the election was rigged as "true," and ignored any document or argument against that allegation.

....I can go on and on, and I did PRIOR to election and its dispute, when it actually mattered. Now, it really doesn't matter, you can say whatever you want to say, and frankly it does not matter. I just answered your post because I thought you DO have a genuine curiosity to hear the "other" point of view. 

About the protests

"non-violent, peaceful nature of the demonstrations [...] people were not demanding anything but for their votes to be counted"

almost all protest activity was peaceful, but what about the videos of buses and government buildings engulfed in flames?

even though the protests were almost entirely peaceful, they were highly disruptive and supported by U.S.-funded tv stations, and involved anti-regime chants

An Open Answer

Normally, I do not make long posts. Most people won't read them, but this one hits home. I know that I will be labeled as a hater for this post by some of the Islam-friendly posters here, but hey, this is still America and I can speak my mind. Truth hurts, I know.

Let's look at a very condensed version of the history of our country from the standpoint of religion and its role in governance in the past, say 500 years. Around 1501, the Saffavids (Safavieh) came to power. They were responsible for establishing Shia Islam as the official religious sect in Iran. Shah Abbas fought the Ottomans as religious rivals throughout his rein. Then in 1795, came the Qajars. Although the Qajars succeeded in reuniting the country, they were generally weak and corrupt rulers. The economic and military gap between Iran and the West widened considerably under their reign - especially in light of the Industrial Revolution that was taking place in the West. However, the Qajar period also enjoyed a high degree of artistic excellence, producing some of Iran's finest paintings, tileworks and architectural monuments.Between 1813 & 1828, the European imperialism resulted in English and Russian penetration in Iranian affairs. The Qajars lost the Caucasus (present day Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) to the Russians in two separate treaties: the Gulistan in 1813 and the Turkmanchay in 1828. As a result of the 1828 treaty, the Qajars were forced to enact the "Capitulation" law, exempting all foreign citizens from Iranian jurisdiction. This law deeply humiliated the Iranian people.Throughout all this, the clergy – the fucking mullahs – had a powerful role and interfered with the State affairs which impacted many aspects of people’s lives specially the insistence of enforcing the barbaric Arab Sharia law.

I am not a monarchist, but have come to realize that Reza Shah was a great patriot who understood the destructive power of Islam in our motherland and tried to rectify centuries of wrong doing by this blood thirsty cult. Unfortunately, there was not enough time and his son was not as effective as he had been.

When you put all this in perspective, you begin to realize why Iran is so fucked up these past centuries. The land that produced Razi, Farabi. Roodaki, Khayyam, Ibn-e Sina, Rumi, Hafez, Saadi, and many many other great contributors to humanity has reverted back about 500 years instead of moving forward.

Until our people – and a great majority of them - realize that religion and politics MUST be kept apart by a million miles, we’ll go from one mess to another without any tangible results. It appears that Iranians are waking up to that fact now, but that remains to be seen as to the kind of results it can produce.

Our inability to see past Islam and its sick doctrine, in my mind, is our number one enemy. Will enough of us (both inside and outside the country) see the light to make a marked change, to save our ancient heritage and be great again?

Only time will tell.

Only Two Solution Is Left .

Either Iranian people get armed and fight the Basij and Revolutionary guards and the supporters of the regime or

foreigne intervention is needed to join the freedom fighthers inside Iran , there are 2 camps in Iran ,one the intellectuals looking forward to National Democratic Iran and the other ones the Fanatic S.O.Bs ; whether we like it or not the civil political war would happen sooner or later between the the ennemies of Iran and our ancient cultural values and these blood suckers Islamists who have destroyed our Persian / cultural herritage almost to extinction .

 Death to Islamic Blood Sucker Cannibal Of Iran(Arabs shall i say ) !

Viva National Democratic Republic of Iran .