John McCain made a surprise pick, stepping on Obama's Convention bounce, when he appointed Sarah Palin as Vice President. This decision seems to be made on the basis of the large voter turnout that Hillary Clinton, as an influential woman politician had produced during her campaign . Sarah Palin was to compensate, as an alternative competitor, for some of the apathy that had piled up against the aged and aggressive image of McCain who had developed many clashes with the media.
Even here it is the feminine archetype or the anima that comes to the rescue of the very rigid and masculine impression that Republicans carry today. Their campaign advisers have planned for immediate results but whether that would resolve the long term impressions or not remains to be seen.
Sarah Palin who clearly suffers from a lack of foregn affairs experience and insight made some brief references to international issues in her Convention speech. On the need to drill for new energy resources she said " .. to confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies.." While she is correct on the 1/5 ratio ,Mrs. Palin needs to understand that Iran is a peace loving nation that has never taken any aggressive action against any nation for the past 700 years which is 3.5 fold the history that America holds. In addition, Iran has strived to improve its relations with the world and was particularly focused on this policy during President Khatami . Therefore, Iran may only do so in direct response to any threat to her national security.
She also made a reference to Obama's position on meeting with the Iranian President without any preconditions , and by referring to Iran as a terrorist State, she tries to make a point. Palin is however, ignorant of the fact that Iran has been a victim of terrorism and has cooperated with her government in confronting terrorist activites. She has missed the point that Iran leads the region with one of the highest rates of scientific articles published in ISI Journals or that Iran has one of the largest blogger societies in the developing world.
Sarah Palin ,you have a long way to learn , that whether you like it or not, relative to its neighbours Iran has one of the most secure cities in the region and that it is a major player in global equations. You also need to learn Mrs Palin, that as an opponent of the current government I understand the weaknesses and shortcomings of our government and I find enough room to voice those concerns and criticisms without the need for any foreign intervention.
Once you learn those lessons , if your party wins the elections , you might be able to change the current arrogant tone of your government and deal with Iran on equal terms , to improve relationships for the benefit of both nations and for the benefit of peace and security in the region and in the world.
Hey :-) Dr. Ebtekar! good post!!!
ReplyDeletenow, let me offer my humble analysis of the situation here:
i used to think (quite naively and too optimistically i might add) that two-party politics of Western democracies in general, and Washington politics of the United States in particular, was basically a game of making "deals" and taking turns, whereby every 4 or 8 years, party elders and leaders of the two sides would get together in a "boys club" behind closed doors and decide that "hey, we let you guys win this time, if you promise to let us win as soon as your policies yield too much dissatisfaction in the people", and therefore, the narratives and political currents of these countries keep shifting from one side to the other every couple of decades or so! that's why i really believed that while the "deal" (between the two parties) has not reached its expiry date, the whole hoopla and the long extensive games of presidential elections every 4 years are just for show!!!!! that's why i used to believe that Al Gore must have been forced by his "elder party leaders" to nominate such a clearly toxic running-mate (who would put people to sleep or make them wanna go to bathroom as soon as he opens his mouth to speak) b/c the "deal" was that it's the Republicans' turn, we have to let them win this time! also, I thought John Kerry knew he wasn't supposed to win in the middle of a war that both parties had authorized a couple of years earlier, and that's why he allowed those smear attacks by the Right wing on his character go unanswered, and he let such despicable tactics ultimately cost him the elections, again b/c i thought he had to stick to the "deal"! and up until a few weeks ago, when McCain seemed like a total looser and the outcome of the elections seemed so obviously in favor of Barack Obama, that a "deal" must have already been made between the "party elders" to let the Democrats win this time, b/c i thought how could they not????? it's so abundantly clear that ALL their "think tanks" and "big brains" agree on the necessity of restoring their leadership in the world by doing something as big as "realizing Dr. King's Dream"! why else would they allow 200,000 people gather in Berlin in support of this candidate, if they're not sure of his eventual win??? wouldn't that be worse for their "image"? wouldn't that show to the world that USA is still not where Dr. King dreamed it would get to? that it still has more bigots and racists than progressive thinkers and moderates??? i was soooo sure of Obama's chances of winning that i made bets with everybody about it! ... but now? let me tell you why i have realized i was too naive to think that way!!!
now i see what Hillary meant when she kept saying: "it's not as if the Republicans have accepted their responsibility for the mess we're in, and are saying here you go, please take the White House and clean up our mess!" (i paraphrased her sentence here)
politics is not a game as "logical", "controlled" and "ordered" as the game of "Chess"!!!! as the Iranian saying goes "politics is a bastard"!!!
even if the party elders and leaders of both sides do care about their own people, their own country and their own national security, enough to sometimes put their ideologies aside for the good of the people (and in this case, the good of the world), but the politicians themselves are a whole other kind of animal!!!!! a politician like Lindsey Graham or Joe Lieberman or Rudy Juliani is not just one of the millions of illiterate, uneducated, fundamentalist, gullible masses that the "party elders and leaders" will take turn to play with and abuse every 4, 8, 12, 16 years!!!! they are very well aware of the damage their policies will have on their people and their country, they just don't care, b/c they are ideologs, they are bigots, they actually believe in the narrow-minded views they have, and they care more about their agendas than their people!!! that's why elections are quite unpredictable even when all the SMART people who should be running the show have decided and agreed upon one candidate for the good of their country!!! still, the fundamentalist movements of the Jerry Falwells and the Pat Robertsons and the John Hagees have foot soldiers like the Lindsey Grahams and the Joe Liebermans who'd put their EVIL intentions ahead of WORLD PEACE!
you see Dr. Ebtekar, that's why even the SMART people (=liberal, progressive, educated elites) in the West, are so worried about your theocratic regime's true intentions and agendas, b/c they know the kind!!!! they are very familiar with the EVIL mind of fundamentalism, whether it be in the form of mega-church ministers who have homosexual relations with boys while they preach the word of God and ask their dumb followers to hate the Muslims calling them anti-Christ, or whether it be in the form of ultimate-power for "velayat faghih" in a theocratic regime with no checks and balances for the clerical class, or whether it be any other form of religious fundamentalist movement like that of Pakistan and Afghanistan's illiterate "Zaalleen" astray-ones!!! SMART people know of the DANGERS of fundamentalism when it gets too powerful in a society!!!!
this is why i'm sooooooo worried about what's going to happen within the next 2 months, as far as Iran's reactions to the 5+1, and consequently the effect it can have on these EXTREMELY important elections in the US!!!!
You and your open-minded, moderate, modern, educated, true Muslim old boss (i.e., President Khatami) and all his friends, followers, cabinet members, and especially his SMARTEST, BEST, MOST VALUABLE diplomat Dr. Mohamad Javad Zarif (President Khatami's choice of Iran's ambassador to the UN) MUST, HAVE TO, NEED TO (mashmool zommeh hastin ke) make sure Iran helps the argument of the SMART ones in the West!!!! you are the only people in Iran who can help change the narrative, can credibly counter the b.s. of such idiots as Sarah Barracuda Palin (the Pit-Bull with lipstick), Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, and so on and so forth!!! don't go thinking that it's over, Obama is going to win, America is becoming more pragmatic, and we can afford to take our time with making reforms in the theocratic dictatorship of IRI, you need to speed up the reform movement right NOW, or these fellow fundamentalists of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei (i.e., Lieberman and Graham) will succeed in fooling their stupid followers (the more than 50% Americans who don't believe in the Evolution and still think the universe was created a few thousand years ago and we come from Adam and Eve!!!!!) to vote for John Bomb-Iran McCain!!!!
believe me, the intelligence level of the American people should NOT be over-estimated, these are people who make fun of Ivy-league school graduates and call them "elites" as if it's a bad thing!!!! these are people who want to make abortion illegal even in the case of rape, people who choose to bring a Down-Syndrome baby to this world, and people who are against educating their teenagers about the risks involved in sex so that they get pregnant and have to marry their partners at 17!!!!!! Obama's only hope for winning in November comes from the youth vote, from college students who have a brain, and from my fellow liberals, feminists and socialists who for decades have been treated with so much contempt, ashamed of saying with pride that they are "liberals", "socialists" and "feminists"!!!!
cont'
ReplyDeletejust to make my point more clearly, i'll add this:
even if Obama wins, he will not have the kind of patience you and President Khatami have in mind!!!!! he will only give IRI up to 3-4 years (until the end of his first term), for IRI to change its current path of supporting some terrorist elements in the greater middle-east (as President Khatami said a few months ago: "Imam Khomeini's idea of exporting the revolution did not mean it should be done through violence and terrorism"). but then, if IRI does not become a constructive force for good in the region, Obama will have to attack Iran, believe me!!!! you need to take control of the ship there NOW!!!! don't let your fundamentalists continue with their self-aggrandizing attitudes, the WORLD needs PEACE, and you can help the "Voice of Reason" prevail if and only if you start silencing the voices of fundamentalism in your own country, the same way that Obama and his supporters are trying to do exactly that in theirs! fundamentalism MUST vanish from the face of the earth, everywhere! you can't cry about the extremist words of Sarah Palin and Lindsey Graham and John McCain as long as you are still allowing Ahmadinejad and Khamenei and Jannati speak their own versions of the same words!!!!
Sara Palin is nothing but a shot in the arm of McBush campaign. Her speech was written by one of Bush’s speech writers and because at one time she was a TV sport reporter she delivered it nicely. I was a Hilary supporter not because I didn’t like Obama but because she is a very hard worker and she is an activist for Women Rights. For McCain campaign to think that I will jump with joy and vote for their ticket because she has the same pluming that I have is very stupid.
ReplyDeleteAs for her remarks on Iran, you are correct, Iranians are peaceful people and they are not looking to preempt an attack on any country like, the fool in the White House. But, that is the Iranian people not the Iranian government. Look at what Iranian government is doing to their own people especially Iranian women. What peace loving government resolves to barbaric acts such as stoning mothers?
What peace loving government hangs teenagers?
If Iranian government was a peace loving government then why wouldn’t they encourage a dialogue for peace between the state of Israel and Palestine? Instead of opposing it?
Just like average Iranian people, average American people are descent and smart. They will not make the same mistake as they did the last eight years. They will not allow Conservative Republicans to dominate all three branches of government again. I bet if the Iranian government allows a real, open and fair election to happen in Iran, The unelected Mullahs won’t have any chance to insert their puppets in the Majles election after election.
I admit that America is not a perfect Democracy but please don’t compare Iranian Islamic Republic to American Democracy because that would be a farfetched notion. What happened to USA these last eight years with NeoCons in charge should be blame on Radical Islamic groups such as Al Qaida not American people. It is a natural reaction that when your home is under attack by outsider’s family members unit , that is what American people did. They united behind someone who was in charge on 9/11. Unfortunately the person in charge at that time was a Radical Born Again Christian boozer with no curiosity or intelligent to be able to explain to Americans who was the true assailants. An average American does not know the difference between Sunni and Shia and their subdivisions’. Thus in their minds it was Muslims that killed their people and that any attack on any Muslim country is game. Therefore, the evil NeoCons saw an opening to achieve their agenda of “Spreading Democracy” in Middle East. This was a slogan only but, their real agenda was to find reasons to build army bases in ME.
Sara Palin is nothing but a Flash In The pants. She reminds me of Katherine Harris of Florida in 2000. She will be used and put away after this election is over. She is a hypocrite who believes that we should not teach kids about what will happen if you have sex without protection. She believes that kids should just take our words and not have sex without marriage but parade her 17 year old pregnant daughter on wide screen TVs and glorify teen pregnancy. She will have her 15 minutes of fame and that is all she will have.
Today on one of online newspaper I read that Majles is collection a list of questions to ask Ahmadinejad. I guess in a pretend democracy questioning president is a must. But, what would these people representatives ask Ahmadinejad? I could come up with a list of what they would ask but maybe it is better to put together a list of questions that should be asked. Here are a few that I came up with:
ReplyDelete1- Do you think an American woman is smarter than an Iranian woman?
2- Have you found any LIVE Homosexuals in Iran yet?
3- Have your four dogs foiled any kidnapping attempts lately?
4- What were your reasons to insert Item 23 and Item 25 in to Anti Family Bill?
5- You have four dogs, how many wives do you want?
6- Have you seen any halo around your head lately?
7- Do you communicate with God daily?
8- Does God communicate with you daily?
9- How often you and Bush hold meetings with God?
10- Have you or any one close to you received a PHD from Western universities in the last few months?
11- Do you have a spell checker on your computer?
12- Have you bought any Fatwas lately?
13- What is the average price for Fatwas these days?
14- Do you feed your dogs Halaal meat?
15- What are your dog names?
16- How did you take the “Najesty” out of a dog?
l"The guardian of Muslims in Tehran is cooperating with the Americans in occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and recognizes the two hireling governments there," al-Zawahri said.
ReplyDeleteHe also said:
"The "Persians" as the enemy of Arabs and complicit in the occupation of Iraq."
Yes, Iran is cooperating with the "Great Satan" in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, what Al-Zawahri doesn't know is that Persians totally agree with him, Persians are enemy of Arabs and Arabs are enemy of Persians that is why Persians call this "Islamic Republic of Iran" another invasion of their country by Arabs.
the Islamic Republic that my forefathers voted for in the referendum of 1979 after the ousting of the Shah and the victory of our revolution, was presented to the people on TV, by Dr. Beheshti, Ostad Motahhari, and other revolutionary scholars, right before the referendums. those referendums were on whether people wanted the name of the "Islamic Republic" or not, and also on the original Constitution of this new regime. the concept of "Islamic Republic" was basically a novel form of DEMOCRACY, that had many points of common with Western Democracies, but had ONE distinguishing difference, and that was the fact that in order to avoid CORRUPTION and deviation of our new republic from its sacred fundamentals, i.e. the main slogans of our revolution:
ReplyDeleteIndependence,
Freedom,
Islamic Republic,
there needs to be a religious Supreme Leader who monitors the entire system, guides it, and keeps it fair and JUST, according to the moral teachings of the dominant religion of this nation, i.e., Islam, and makes sure that POWER does not corrupt our politicians, that special interests and the business community does not end up buying our representatives (i.e., President, Parliament, Mayors, Provincial Governors, and the clerical body called Assembly of Experts whose ONLY duty is to select a new Supreme Leader)! my forefathers thought it made sense b/c we had never had a Republic in our 3000 year old history of civilization, we were weary of the fact that POWER can CORRUPT people in high positions, and no matter how many times a year we setup elections, just b/c these people are elected, it does not mean they will rule DEMOCRATICALLY! so, since the religious leader of our revolution was known to be an honest, moral and decent man of God, 98% of the people trusted him to take his responsibility as the arbiter, the over-seeing prosecutor, the guardian of our revolutionary ideals, with total humility and competence, and NOT allow our brand new form of never-before-tested Democracy to turn into a dictatorship again! We have had enough of dictatorship, for far too long!!! we had seen what can happen to good revolutions, such as the French Revolution, the Red Revolution of Russia, the Cuban revolution, and even the American revolution that seemed perfect in terms of its Founding Principles and its social infrastructure, but appeared to have become TOO vulnerable to the undemocratic influence of the BUSINESS class, who was pulling all the strings, buying the elected officials, and steering the ship of the Republic toward a COMPLETELY materialistic and money-oriented destiny! we knew that a Marxist style of republic was too dictatorial, b/c we had seen how Stalin took Lenin's beautiful revolution and turned into a prison, and we also knew Capitalism without checks and balances could take us down the wrong path, a path that is just not natural to our culture, after all, we are the children of Mowlana (Rumi), Hafez, Nizami, Sadi, Rudaki, Khayyam, Attar, Ferdowsi, and ..., we need SPIRITUALITY as if it's the air we breathe or the food we eat to survive!
anyway, that was the extent of "velayat faghih" as defined and explained to us by the "Founding Fathers" of our revolution, i.e., Ostad Motahhari, Dr. Beheshti, Prime Minister Bazargan, and other students of Dr. Shariati's school of thought! Imam Khomeini was not the theoretician behind our constitution, he was the charismatic leader of our revolution who was then entrusted by these founding fathers to steer the MORALITY ship of our new republic, that's all!
what happened after those founding fathers were ALL assassinated, and how our constitution got changed, and how fundamentalist nobodies came to be more and more powerful every year for the past 29 years, that's a whole other story!!!! and by fundamentalists, i mean the countless number of reactionary clergymen who only knew about Islamic laws for polygamy and temporary marriages and how one should wash himself in the bathroom and how one should take a shower after sex and how many lashes a boy should get if he calls a girl his sweetheart ("agar passari ba dokhtari bagooyad jagar, 50 shallaagh"), but they knew NOTHING about the TRUE teachings of Imam Ali or Prophet Mohammed, or even the Koran, not truely!!!!! how could they? they don't have the brain to understand the vast wisdom of the Koran, they only understand "mafaatih"!!!!!!
Islamic Republic of Iran could have been the first model of a pragmatic and appropriate form of Democracy in the Middle East for the Muslim World, if it had a chance to flourish according to what our theoreticians (Dr. Shariati, Ostad Motahhari, Dr. Beheshti, ...) had in mind!
maybe a President Obama can undo the damage that was done to Iran's Islamic Democracy by 30 years of covert interference by the far-right neoconservatives of the world who started to gain dominance and power throughout the world in the 80s, and maybe we can all HOPE for a more DEMOCRATIC WORLD once the intellectual elites and enlightened free-thinkers start running the world again, as opposed to fundamentalists and illiterate evil-thinkers!
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ReplyDeletepost this one please!
ReplyDeleteDr. Ebtekar, did you go to Hosseynieh-Ershad for Ayatollah Taleghani's 29th memorial?
http://www.nehzateazadi.net/bayanieh/87/87_n_0619_gozaresh.htm
God bless his soul! i absolutely loved him, and as a 9 year old kid, i probably was his youngest fan, having read all his writings!!!! who reads that much at age 9 these days???? i also went to all his Friday Prayer sermons at Tehran Univesity in 1979, and i remember the day he died i cried my eyes off, and was so angry at my elders for not taking me to Behesht-Zahra for his funeral! i loved this great revolutionary hero of ours!
btw, i hope you and your other Reformist leaders (Mr. Khatami, Karroubi, Rowhani, ...) will listen to Dr. Yazdi's recommendations and come up with ONE viable candidate, one that will have a good chance of winning in next year's presidential elections!
http://www.nehzateazadi.net/bayanieh/87/87_n_0615.htm
btw, would you please tell Dr. Yazdi to nominate himself anyway, of course the fundamentalist Council of Guardians will disqualify him, but at least he will have given some prominence to his party by just trying and getting rejected by the enemies of the PEOPLE! and then when he's disqualified, he can come out and endorse the Reformists' consensus-candidate, hence mobilizing a lot of people on the far left of Iran's political spectrum to get energized and vote for your guy!
i think you should do that too!!!! even though you will for sure be disqualified due to your "gender"!!!! but by nominating yourself and then getting disqualified by Jannati, you will become the poster-child of the Islamic feminist movement in Iran! women will ALL come out and vote for whomever you endorse later! please do it!
Wow! I'm imagining a beautiful picture! can it be Dr. Ebtekar?!!!!
ReplyDeleteplease read this:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jSQy8ei1s6XTk0ubyv-hgbsq_kCw
can it be that in a not-so-distant future, there'll be a round-table double the size of this one, say in Geneva Switzerland, where these 5 American former Secretaries of State will sit down and have a REAL talk with 5 of Iran's own??? can it be? can you imagine the same picture i'm seeing? do you wanna know who it is that i see from your side at this round-table?
Dr. Ali Akbar Velayati
Dr. Kamal Kharrazi
Prime Minister Mir Hossein Moussavi
Dr. Mohamad Javad Zarif
Dr. Massoumeh Ebtekar
all former top diplomats, all respected heavyweights in Iran's political arena, all smart, rational and pragmatic!
can it be????????!!!!!!! hallelujah! PEACE is near!