"Die fast unlösbare Aufgabe besteht darin, weder von der Macht der anderen, noch von der eigenen Ohnmacht sich dumm machen zu lassen." - Adorno
["the almost impossible task consists of this: to not allow oneself to be made stupid, neither by the power of the others, nor by one's own powerlessness."]
I think Adorno's statement is a good guiding principle for these times of our (we = friends of emancipation) own powerlessness.
Failure to come to terms with this powerlessness leads to positions taken either in support of Bush's wars or seeking anti-imperialist sparks of hope in Ahmadineschad.
Christopher Hitchens/Yoshie Furuhashi: it's the same response to this problematic situation.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> [Before she signed off this list, Yoshie Furuhashi
> was speaking
> highly of Ahmadinejad's government. Here's a
> response to a piece she
> ran on the MRZine site. She's welcome to come back
> and respond.]
>
> Via Yassamine Mather- Center for the Study of
> Socialist Theory and
> Movements- Glasgow University, UK. Concerning,
> http://
> mrzine.monthlyreview.org/pourzal180606.html
>
> Open Letter to Monthly Review Editors
>
> Dear friends,
>
> In a recent posting on your web site, Rostam Pourzal
> uses an
> anonymous email by a 'witness' in Tehran to deny the
> extent of the
> repression of women demonstrators by vigilante
> Islamic police on 12
> June 2006
> (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/pourzal180606.html
> )
>
> Pourzal tries to portray president Mahmoud
> Ahmadinejad as a
> 'popular', 'radical' figure, and tries to
> underestimate, justify and
> excuse the brutal, repressive nature of the Islamic
> regime in Iran;
> in doing so he makes various assumptions and claims
> that we will deal
> with in a another posting. However as far as the
> events of 12 June in
> Tehran are concerned, contrary to the claims of the
> anonymous
> 'observer', the extent and intensity of the brutal
> attack on the
> peaceful women's demonstration was far worse than
> that portrayed by
> the BBC and the international media.
>
> It is sufficient to refer to comments and reports by
> organisers and
> participants, most of whom have no fear of giving
> their real names,
> despite the fact that they were arrested and
> imprisoned by the
> regime's security forces. In an effort to stop the
> protest, several
> prominent women's rights activists were issued
> summonses in the
> middle of the night on Saturday and on the days
> leading up to the
> protest. Since then, others have been summoned for
> interrogation by
> phone or in writing. The women summoned include
> Noushin Ahmadi
> Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Sussan Tahmasebi, Farnz
> Seify and Fariba
> Davoodi Mohajer. Only Fariba Davoodi Mohajer
> received her summons in
> person. Others were not at home or at their offices
> when agents
> arrived to issue summons. Fariba Davoodi Mohajer was
> issued a summons
> in person at 11:00pm on Saturday, and subsequently
> spent 10 hours in
> interrogation on 12th June. On Monday morning, the
> day of the
> protest, another women's rights activist who had
> endorsed it, Shahla
> Entesari, was arrested in her place of employment.
>
> Prior to the protest, a massive campaign of
> harassment against those
> who had endorsed the protest was carried out by
> security forces.
> Scores of women were summoned to court and
> interrogated, including
> women's rights activists, student activists and
> webloggers, who had
> spread word about the protest.
>
> In refuting the superficial content of the anonymous
> email quoted by
> Pourzal, we refer you to the photographs of
> vigilante/policewomen
> attacking the demonstrators on 12 June, and to the
> testimony of
> Parvin Ardalan and Noushin Khorassani, labour
> activists from Vahed
> bus company who participated in the event. They
> wrote:
>
> The principle demands were as follows:
>
> � Abolition of polygamy
>
> � The right of divorce by women
>
> � Joint custody of children for mothers and
fathers
>
> � Equal rights in family law
>
> � Increasing the minimum legal age for girls to 18
> (currently it is 15)
>
> � Equal rights for women as witnesses in courts of
> law
>
> According to official reports including that of the
> Ministry of
> Justice 70 people (42 women and 28 men) were
> arrested by 13th June
> 2006, while several women's rights activists have
> been summoned to
> appear in front of the Revolutionary Court and
> others have been sent
> to Evin Prison in Tehran. In an interview with the
> daily 'Shargh',
> the minister for Intelligence, Mohsen Ajheii claims
> that the women's
> demonstrations for equal rights endangers'national
> security'. Police
> attacks before and during the protest were widely
> reported in dozens
> of blogs, they more or less agree on both the level
> of attacks and
> methods used by women police officers armed with
> batons:
>
> Zahra, a law student, describes the day in her blog:
>
> "When we got there it was really scary. Several
> police buses and cars
> covering the whole area. Cell phones were obviously
> monitored because
> we were receiving suspicious text messages from an
> unknown
> number...We got to the meeting point in the
> Hafte-Tir Square and saw
> the police forces already being "busy" in three
> other spots. We sat
> down and started chanting slogans..After about 5
> minutes of confused
> stares from the pedestrians at us we received the
> first surprise: the
> women police force which are scarier than men for
> two reasons...First
> they are "mahram" to women so they can kick and
> punch women without
> violating any religious code and second they are
> strangely way more
> aggressive than men! First they tried to force us by
> hand to get up
> and leave...When we resisted they started using
> their nightsticks,
> after not very long the kicks and punches and the
> nightstick beatings
> got very harsh...Right in front of my eyes one of
> them beat Mana
> right in her head so badly that I don't think I will
> ever forget the
> sound of it...All of sudden everywhere is red...The
> second surprise:
> they are using a paint spray on us. We didn't
> realize first but they
> were marking us so that they know later in the crowd
> who was sitting
> and resisting...Smart!
>
> They finally forced us to get up and pushed us to
> the center of the
> square while we were still chanting the anthem for
> Iran's women
> movement. At least people are seeing us and you can
> see the objection
> and sympathy in their eyes...The other side of the
> square is so
> crowded I can't really see anything but I hear that
> they are
> arresting people...We are scattered...This is partly
> bad because we
> are so scattered that we can not even say why we are
> here so that
> they won't call all this "a police encounter with
> women with bad
> Islamic Hijab".
>
> Azieh Amini's blog:
>
> "We said that that sitting in the park is not a
> crime. They said,
> "Get up before we proceed to using other methods!"
> ..."They kicked us
> out of the park. They beat us and kicked us out. We
> walked. Calm and
>
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