Misc

khodFaramooshi

Now that you have put aside the rubbish talk about Talmud and so forth, we might be able to have a nice discussion.

I still can't buy your explanation. Foreign policy apart from public opinion does not depend on what internet news come out of political prisoners. At least not to any significant degree it does doesn't.
I definitely agree that the media in the West can and should do much more in focusing on Iranian struggles. It is unfortunate for instance how much is attention is being paid for ideological reasons to palestinians and how Iranian conditions inside their own country is not in the spotlight as it should be. However I definitely disagree that the media have been deliberately or not portrayed ordinary Iranians in a bad light. This is very hypocritical and definitely wrong. They haven't done as much as they should, but please spare me the usual accusations reminiscent of Islamist propaganda against Western free speech.
So this is what I think. Ganji trying to sell the idea that the regime in Iran is not a fascistic system, for some reason I do not comprehend, when it clearly is. In order to do so, he has to swing between two opposing extremes. In one case Western media are deliberately painting a dark picture of Iran and keeping people in the dark. In the other the regime is prevented from becoming a fascistic system because of the pressure of the world where now it seems is not in the dark but thanks to modern technology reacts to what goes on inside Iran. I personally have learned that Such inconsistencies are always red herrings that reveal an attempt to twist something. In this case, it seems to come about because we are meant to believe the system in Iran is not fascistic and to forget the real dangers it poses, to the world and to its own people. It is a pity to witness such an attempt from someone who tries to be an Iranian freedom activist, at least according to the same dark media. See why i am confused now?

General Public Pardon

~ Let's face it ~

After the islamic revolution without exception all have in one way or another gotten involved in betrayal. This revolution has not let even one Iranian to remain royal to Persia withut sin.

That is why a general pardon should be put in place to avoid the downward spiral of finger pointing at each other once the politico machinery of Pars sets in motion once again with such character in such a way that all wish to die for it in self sacrifice.

Logic - Mogic (suite)

I don’t claim what you wanna put on my mouth and have no such pretension. I just felt that your comment was a bit unfair ...


What I understood from Ghanji’s assert on this subject was:

The foreign policy has to be separated from the foreign media. Both are hostile to the mullah’s regime but as both have different impacts on the public opinion, their reactions have to be measured before being applied. Both Ghanji and Milani believe that in order to curve the regime, it has to be put under the international pressure. Milani thinks that this coercion must be something strict as a total embargo like the one imposed to the apartheid regime, while Ghanji claims that this pressure has to be firstly restricted to human rights.

In his sense, the pressure which makes mullahs release its political prisoners comes from international policies. Medias can play a complementary role, by showing what are the Iranian pain and their everyday struggle. Till now, their role was absolutely a negative image of the society and the regime, pell-mell.


Capice?

What are Ganji's democratic credentials?

No, really? Have you ever thought about it? Since he was born, Ganji has lived under non-democratic regimes. He has never experienced earning a living in a democratically administered country. So how is it that after more than twenty years of collborating with a despotic regime and six years of being imprisoned for getting tired of his collaboration and two years of living abroad as a guest, he has suddenly become a teacher and a theorist in democracy?

I am not disppointed in Ganji. He has completedo near perfection, But I am deeply disappointed in thos Iranians who having lived in America and expreinced the good and the bad side of democracy, there are still Iranians immigrants who have been born or raised in the West and are still prepared to learn from him or call him God!!

This is an unrefutable proof that the mental evolution of Iranians has still a hell of a long way to go before meeting its target!!

Then enlighten us

Perhaps we with our Talmud infested minds don't get things like you geniuses, so why don't you enlighten us?
What confuses me is not a question of internet versus other media. The point is, if the Western public opinion is kept unaware of the struggle of dissidents in Iran, as Ganji claims, then what is behind the pressure that does not allow the regime in Iran to go all the way, what is it that forces them to release their prisoners in a day or two? If there is such pressure, isn't it coming from the world public opinion? Then what is he whining about?
After all according to the other comment, he himself was released due to media coverage, including that of Bush himself.
It must be the Talmud thing. I am just not very quick in getting what hypocrites whine about. How about you clarify it? After all it takes one to know one.

ghanji and milani

Is very promising to see Mr. ghanji and Mr. milani in same stage considering their past, they can be true odd couple!But they have one common goal: to see a democratic and free Iran!

Well said Yek Irooni...

The changes we cry about 5 billion miles away from Iran and about Iran will only come from those who live there and paid a high price for it. It comes from those who supported the IRI and now are against it. The 90% iranians who were and are like Mr. Ganji. Not me...not you or anyone who visits Iranian.com.

Logic-Mogic

I don't know how it can logically be said in Tamulde but saying that foreign broadcasts give a bad image of Iran and that iranians inside use internet to communicate, or that with internet people know what's going on, is two completely different things in a normal logic..

کوروش بیدار شو که ما خوابیم

[Ghanji was] a supporter of the Islamic revolution as a youth, he became dissenchanted in the mid-1990s and served time in Tehran's Evin Prison from 2001 to 2006 after publishing a series of stories on the murder of dissident authors known as the Chain Murders of Iran. While in prison he issued a manifesto which established him as the first "prominent dissident, believing Muslim and former revolutionary" to call for a replacement of Iran's theocratic system with "a secular democracy."

Ganji was on a hunger strike for more than 80 days from 19 May 2005 until early August 2005 except for a 12-day period of leave he was granted on May 30, 2005 ahead of the ninth presidential elections on 17 June 2005. His hunger strike ended after 50 days when "doctors warned he would sustain irreparable brain damage, and he relented." Many Iranians had not heard of the hunger strike due to press censorship and heavy security and information quarantine in Milad hospital in Tehran. He is represented by a group of lawyers, including Dr. Yousef Molaei, Abdolfattah Soltani (who was arrested and put in solitary confinement in 2005 on unknown charges), and the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Shirin Ebadi. While on hunger strike Ganji wrote two letters to the free people of the world.

On 12 July 2005 the White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in a statement that President George W. Bush called on Iran to release Ganji "immediately and unconditionally... Mr. Ganji is sadly only one victim of a wave of repression and human rights violations engaged in by the Iranian regime… His calls for freedom deserve to be heard. His valiant efforts should not go in vain. The president calls on all supporters of human rights and freedom, and the United Nations, to take up Ganji's case and the overall human rights situation in Iran… Mr. Ganji, please know that as you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you," the statement went on.

That's how he flew out the country

Ganji has won several international awards for his work [not decerned by mullahs], including the World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression's International Press Freedom Award, the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, and the John Humphrey Freedom Award.

I had some respect for Ganji

I had some respect for Ganji but lost it when he showed up on the stage with Abbas Milani. If he can't see through Milani, then he has a long way to go.

Not making sense

I have heard of Mr. Ganji a lot, so I watched this with great enthusiasm. I have to say I was quite disappointed by his responses. Some were completely irrelevant, like bringing genetics into the discussion. Made no sense what so ever. He also contradicts himself a lot. He says the Media here do not voice the Iranian dissident and people are left in the dark, and then claims the regime can't do what it wants because the voice of even the prisoners is heard around the globe. hmmm... so I am confused. to say the least.

I don't understand his insistence that the Iranian regime is not fascistic. His main misconception is in what defines a fascistic system. He claims the regime is not fascistic because modern times does not allow it to create a one voice society. This is meaningless, being fascistic or not is not determined by what you can do, but by what you want to do. Even Hitler and Stalin couldn't make a truly one voice society, but what is that supposed to prove?

This is a crucial and very dangerous misconception, because the Iranian regime's pursuit of nuclear weapons is precisely to overcome those restrictions and to be able to commit all atrocities its fascistic nature and ideology demands of it.

In any case, I was quite disappointed. It's a pity.

Islamists Weapon of Choice

I believe that no one should be surprised with the Islamists, pesudo-Islamists, sympathizers and perhaps direct agents attack anyone who says anything that does not conform to the official status quo.  Adherence to the status quo is not only required, but it is rather demanded.  We have all heard it on this site: the IRI is not really that bad; we should ignore the crimes committed in the past thirty years and just accept it as the legitimate representative of Iran and its people; it has turned Iran into a powerful nation; they have "built" a lot of buildings in Iran (that's actually my favorite one) and so forth and so on... 

We have also heard the attacks on people like me, telling us that we "live in a 2500 yearl old fantasy" and Iran was never a country; it's an artificial creation; we had no culture before Arabs, etc., all directly from the IRI playbook with its goal of erasing nationalist feelings which it sees as the only credible threat to its rule. Curiously, the same people never question the establishment of a whole doctrine, culture, judicial system and social structure that is based on the 7th century Arab bedouin society, and consider that not only to be NOT out of date, but rather in perfect harmony and proper with the 21st century Iranian society.  For instance, you'll never hear these people question why women in today's Iran MUST wear Hijab, which is a pre-Islam Arab tradition (so much for living in the past thing)!

Now, we are being attacked for being "out of touch" if we question Mr. Ganji, who, apparently after a decade and a half of being a part of an organization that, in its crimes, is only rivaled by the SS and the Khmer Rouge, is all of a sudden is a "freedom advocate" who we should all praise and NOT question....we shouldn't ask about his background.  We shouldn't demand that he repent and explain to us what he did for the Pasdaaraan, even if we were victims of that brutal organization, or if we had relatives who were its victims.  To do so will be "out of touch", especially if you are a nationalist....then....you are not only out of touch, you are a "royalist" who "lives in the past"!

Has it occured to anyone why and how Mr. Ganji was all of a sudden given a passport and allowed to leave Iran and spread his message of "freedom" without any trouble?  Doesn't that seem odd in light of the fact that small dvocates for women's rights, and demonstrating students are beaten on the street and taken to Evin and held indifinitely?  or the fact that Haleh Esfandiari and the Mesha Imani are barred from leaving Iran and are and were detained?  Doesn't it raise the possibility that with a manipulative regime such as the IRI, there may be something more involved here that needs to be explored?

Also, talking about living outside of Iran and being out of touch, isn't Mr. Ganji living outside of Iran and doing the Ivy league college circuit, writing books and wining and dining with the elite?  He's not out of touch?  What's his connection to freedom activists who are imprisoned in Iran today? 

Get a grip people before you feed us IRI propoganda!  It may not actually be your fault.  You may not have the intellectual depth or curiosity to realize that you have been duped by the highly effective domestic and international IRI propoganda (like Ahmadinejad's dinner feast in NYC last month).  But please, try to have a deeper look at issues before you reflexively spew IRI's talking points.     

Persia is Eternal.

Is that true?

Are really the majority of Iranians in Iran educated and urbanised? Where can I find reliable stastical data on this? 

And excuse my ignorance, but can anybody explain the connection between urbanisation and the democratic movement?

Hello Mars here Earth.. Roger

I like to see here how people are disconnected from the reality, and how they persist on their ignorance! Iranian people (the true ones inside the country) are struggling for their freedom everyday and are threaten by the regime for every single action they undertake.


And, what you hear from iranian outside who have never really faced shortage is, "Zendebad Iran javdan", "change the language into farsi dari", "Iran harguez nemimirad",... Hahaha


Na janam, reality is something else
ترسم نرسی به کعبه ای اعرابی / اين ره که تو ميروی به ترکستان است. ( گلستان )


Weak up people. Ghanji and others paid from their freedom for that people enjoy small improvements inside the country. It's obvious that they worked for the regime, if you look to the Iranian history it's what all our ancestors done with arabs, moghols and every invaders. They didn't changed the situation by facing the invader (as some here would like to do by asking to bomb the motherland) but, they served the tyrant and tried to preserve our identity. That's how you and me can still talk Farsi. Mr. Ghanji is a courageous compatriot and


زمستان می رود و رو سیاهی به ذغال می ماند.


‫زنده باد دلیران ایرانی.

That's All Iran Needs!!!

Another Pasdaar to rule the country!!!  I just have a question:

"aya mardom-e Iran maghze-e khar khordand" to give the smallest credence to this guy?

As an Iranian, I would ask Mr. Ganji to dsiclose, in specific terms, his involvement with the Sepah Pasdaaran and set forth in detail what specific acts he committed as a member of that organization, before I allow him any credibility.  The first rule of democracy is transparency, and if Mr. Ganji is advocating democracy, he should come forward and tell us exactly what he did for, and on behalf of, the Sepah Pasdaaran organization.  Once we know ALL the details we will be in a better position to judge whether or not he is a credible advocate for democratic change in Iran.

Persia is Eternal.

His involvement in Kurdestan

Ganji particpated in Kurdestan as a pasdar leader. I like to hear him telling us exactly what he did there! He also worked closly with Hajarian in creation of notorious "information" ministry, or whatever they call it.

I don't trust this ex-pasdar a bit.

Ganji a Spy?

Before passing judgment on this opportunist, you should read his "manifestos" (I suppose it means "platform"  or  "manuscripts") which he wrote when in Iran Jails. You will know then that  he was a US spy at that time, and certainly not for Iranian's advantage to support him.

Ganji is God

My hat's off to Mr. Ganji. Someone who knows and understands Iran and Iranians.

Dear killjoy

So true. Reminds me of George Orwel's  Animal Farm.

sepaas 

Great!

I really enjoyed the speech. Great things have been said. Thank you PartyGirl for posting.

Ganji the Shrewd businessman

His initial investment for guaranteed future fame and fortune was those hunger days that got him the expected attention and publicity. That is why his awkward and contentious relationship with this war promoter guy doesn't make any sense.

Dear Ebi,

Reading the following, I think they're talking about a different person by the name, "Ajbar."

"Ganji's first book in English, demonstrates his lifelong commitment to human rights and democracy."

Being a former revolutionary guard and later holding various positions in the IR and having served the regime for many years, Akbar Ganji couldn't have been committed to human rights for a major part of his life!

This guy, "Ajbar," has to be someone else!!!

Lost respect for Ganji!

He is promothing democracy, yet he is writing books with imperialist cheerleaders like Abbas Milani... What a dissapointment. I lost a LOT of RESPECT for Ganji as a result of his ties with Milani. How can he associate with a guy who has ties with the war-mongers over at the Hoover Institute.

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