Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Arachno-capitalist]

Actual quote from protest:
Reporter: Why are you here?
Woman: We are here for the revolution.

Also, during a revolution, do you just have to call in for sick days or personal leave or what? Or all these people just angry and unemployed. Personally, I think I'd revolt during my lunch break.

[Choop]

that's revolting, a-cap

[Bobby Isosceles]

Actual quote from protest:
Reporter: Why are you here?
Woman: We are here for the revolution.

Also, during a revolution, do you just have to call in for sick days or personal leave or what? Or all these people just angry and unemployed. Personally, I think I'd revolt during my lunch break.

yes, now is definitely the time to make jokes (that link is not for the weak stomached)

[Mr Trout]

[Bobby Isosceles]

http://25khordad.wordpress.com/

good photoblog. Most of the doors being kicked in and ransacking are being done by the paramilitary basijis. think brownshirts but plainclothes

[herofix]

Bobby, among the city-dwellers and middle classes, the young and the students, the liberals, etc...Is there any desire to not only see a change in terms of who is President, is there also a desire to do away with supreme leaders and Guardian councils?  Are they secularists?  Is there any chance of the Islamic republic concept biting the dust altogether?

Is the sensitivity about foreign meddling so high across all the population that the best thing for Western leaders to do is just shut up and not give any opinion on this?  What do these young people think about Obama and Sarkozy, for example?

Sorry for all the questions....I just can't sleep knowing something like this might be happening.  I'm a 'revolution' geek, I think maybe.

[Bobby Isosceles]

Bobby, among the city-dwellers and middle classes, the young and the students, the liberals, etc...Is there any desire to not only see a change in terms of who is President, is there also a desire to do away with supreme leaders and Guardian councils?  Are they secularists?  Is there any chance of the Islamic republic concept biting the dust altogether?

Is the sensitivity about foreign meddling so high across all the population that the best thing for Western leaders to do is just shut up and not give any opinion on this?  What do these young people think about Obama and Sarkozy, for example?

Sorry for all the questions....I just can't sleep knowing something like this might be happening.  I'm a 'revolution' geek, I think maybe.

It's difficult to tell. Obviously there is a major bias against the Islamic Republic among the diaspora; but those people don't really count. From my vantage point, this is what I (biasedly) see:

• 70+% of the population is under 30.
• They want to drink, smoke, and fuck.
• They are not allowed to do this in public, but for the past decade or two have gotten away with it behind closed doors. (The opening scene of Syriana is disturbingly accurate.)
  
  So in this situation, a theocratic regime is tolerated, because in the end, the drinkin', smokin' and fuckin' is done behind closed doors.
  
  What has changed fairly recently:
  
  
• Unemployment is incredibly high, so no one can afford to get their own place and it's hard to drink, smoke and fuck when you're living with Mom and Dad.
• Inflation is off the scale.
• Utilities are not up to snuff. Most of the oil is being sold, so there are petrol lines and such internal to the country.  This, by the way, is what I posit is the real reason behind nuclear ambitions; not a weapon (after all, one bomb in the Iranians' hands will do nothing against the hundred-odd that Israel has), but because of basic Scarface rules: don't get high on your own supply.
  
• I can't stress how bad the unemployment situation is. It is roughly around 30% and a lot of people are being forced into prostitution, including a disproportionate amount of tween/young teen boys. Which, in a machismo culture, is a sign of the incredible desperation. Drug addiction is up.
  
  
  What has changed very recently:
  
  
• During the election, Ahmadinejad has tried to say unemployment was down by reclassifying "employment" to mean something like "if you work at least one hour a week, you're employed" or something equally preposterous. All governments do tricks like that, but when people are really having trouble making ends meet to the point that they're prostituting their anal virginity, that kind of statement is insult to injury.
  
• To supplement the economic troubles, Ahmadinejad's administration has been bringing in potatoes as a sort of welfare/ration. Most of these potatoes are grown in Africa, in places like Tanzania. Iranians are proud of their culture, their 3000-ish year history, their self-sufficiency and their ability to assimilate invaders to their way of life. To be seen as dependent, especially to a continent that has a track record of catastrophic failures to get their shit together, is a slap in the face. "Death to Potatoes" was one of the campaign slogans of the Moussavi campaign.*
• the paramilitary guys have been breaking into people's houses and seizing upon any  "moral violation" as an excuse to trash the place. Since all the human behavior is done behind closed doors, this is a flagrant violation of the "what happens in Vegas^H^H^H^H^your house, stays in your house" rules. If anything, this is going to be the tipping point behind moving from simply backing Mousavi to overthrowing the theocracy.
  
  
  
  * an aside on the "death to..." in Farsi, "death to X" is equivalent to English "damn X" or "fuck X". Just like when a driver cuts you off in traffic and you say "Fuck you!" or "Damn you!", this does not mean that you want coital relations or for them to burn in the lake of everlasting flame under the doleful eye of a vengeful God. Likewise, when people say "Death to potatoes," they are not actually wishing for hordes of weevils.

[Bobby Isosceles]

Is the sensitivity about foreign meddling so high across all the population that the best thing for Western leaders to do is just shut up and not give any opinion on this?  What do these young people think about Obama and Sarkozy, for example?

As for sensitivity toward Western leaders: one of the major fears of the Iranian zeitgeist is foreign meddling. The Iranians were pawns of the Great Game, to the point that the Russians assimilated the northern province of Gilan as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran between the years of 1920 and 1921; and the British essentially seized the Abadan oil fields and formed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, later BP, later BP Amoco. When PM Mossadeq decided to nationalize those selfsame oil fields, the British complained to Truman, and Truman told the British to go fuck themselves. So the British waited until Eisenhower, made the same pitch, and that's how Operation Ajax (the CIA-backed overthrow of Mossadeq) took place. Ajax went so well it was the blueprint for the 1954 overthrow of the Guatamalan regime at the behest of United Fruit.

Likewise, it was a sign of Iranian weakness one of the conferences between Stalin, FDR and Churchill  was in Tehran, with no Iranian permission for it. The Russians and British had so efficiently partitioned the country between themselves that they decided to just go for the gusto and do it. Go fgure.

So, the Iranians are very sensitive to foreign meddling. This is in fact the argument that Ahmadenijad gave to scare people away from voting for Moussavi. But the young are very open to foreign negotiation. Iran has a major inferiority complex because of its history;* most Iranians want to be treated as equals.


* extreme readers digest version: Iran was never a culturally homogenous place, incorporating at its peak under the Achaemenids various semitic, elamite, indo-european peoples, and a slew of languages and religions. Thus the style of government was always something akin to federalism; let locals practice their own quirky ways, as long as they pay taxes. Hence the Cyrus cylinder being at the UN. However, Iran has had a bad history of being invaded by people who insist on cultural homogeneity; Turks, Arabs, etc. Imposed homogeneity was a new and alien concept that the region never quite recovered from. Closest analogy is the Norman invasion of England.

[herofix]

Thanks so much for the information.  

These basiji (sp?) - they're plainclothes, but people definitely know who they are, right?  So they must be crapping themselves too and getting even more ready to go apeshit whac-a-mole than ever.  I'm guessing if you can get them to understand that they're over, then there is really nothing to fear...the official police usually fold if a real revolution is gonna happen.  

[Bobby Isosceles]

Thanks so much for the information.  

These basiji (sp?) - they're plainclothes, but people definitely know who they are, right?  So they must be crapping themselves too and getting even more ready to go apeshit whac-a-mole than ever.  I'm guessing if you can get them to understand that they're over, then there is really nothing to fear...the official police usually fold if a real revolution is gonna happen.  

that's what happened the last time!

[Doc]

But what coverage I've seen is 'here is the mob of protestors on Mousavi's side, now here's the mob of protestors on Ahmadinejad's side'. Is there reason to believe that the former mob is bigger than the latter mob?
If there is a revolution and Mousavi ends up being one of the key people then what kind of state are we looking at? Your previous quote made reference to his old socialist policies but wiki suggests most of current platforms were about relaxing government control and getting rid of the moral police.

[Doc]

This was useful to me.

[miles]

because in the end, the drinkin', smokin' and fuckin' is done behind closed doors.

I suppose this is true in just about most places I've spent time in.

[smick]

In Oregon, smoking is now done right on the curb.

You try to smoke behind closed doors, and they're going to take your birthday away.

[CortJstr]

In Oregon, smoking is now done right on the curb.

You try to smoke behind closed doors, and they're going to take your birthday away.

I don't get to eat nachos for every meal this year due to punishment.