I was not talking about Iran. I was making a side query about Saudi Arabia. I do not care about Iran.
--- On Mon, 6/22/09, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
> From: shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Hamid Dabashi on Iran
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Monday, June 22, 2009, 7:20 AM
> At 12:51 AM 6/22/2009, Michael Pollak
> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 21 Jun 2009, Chris Doss wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Isn't holocaust denial taught in Saudi schools,
> along with the Protocols? Or is that just Debkaesque
> propaganda?
> >
> > Um, Saudi Arabia and Iran are different countries.
> >
> > Like I said, it was an empirical question. Do
> you have any empirical evidence you'd like to point us
> to? I'd be happy to look at it.
> >
> > Michael
>
> lol
>
> Doss's response is exactly the kind of crap that drives
> Iranians crazy. They are all one big glob of people so let's
> just compare Saudi Arabia to Iran. and if you want to know
> about the "sociology" of knowledge in Iran, it's rilly rilly
> helpful to look at educational instruction in Saudi Arabia.
> hurr hurr
>
> I don't have the results of a survey, but I did read Azadeh
> Moevani's _Lipstick Jihad_ and _Honeymoon in Tehran_.
> Everything Dabashi said in Doug's interview is illustrated
> in these two books -- only Moevani would go further and
> point to the fact that disgust with Imadickinajar extends
> far beyond the upper middle class. (I suspect Moevani would
> object to Dabashi's claims about Mousavi. She hasn't struck
> me as a supporter of ex-clerics who once ordered the death
> of radicals -- e.g., she was quite outraged that
> Imadickinajar appointed someone who'd ordered the death of a
> friend's parents.)
>
> Disgust with Imadickinajar was very obvious just after his
> election in 2005. Back then, there was a sense of the
> election being unfair, possibly rigged, since his election
> was so unexpected. In the first round, about 18% of the
> country voted for him. The clerics, hoping that
> Imadickinajar would appear like a bad cop to their
> stabilizing, balancing ways, backed Imadickinajar and
> mobilized Basiji to come out in force.
>
> Imadickinajar was mocked endlessly early on for his poor
> grooming habits. He was compared to the monkey on a bag of
> Iranian Cheetohs. This changed soon, as people began
> praising him openly -- for reasons Moevani can't fathom but
> she tries to understand. What she learns is that people were
> putting their faith in his ability to transform the economy.
> Her father-in-law initially thought Imadickinjar was less
> than useless, but was persuaded by his intense interest in
> repairing the Iranian economy. Ordinary Iranians, of course,
> hoped Imadickinajar would mitigate stagflation.
>
> But about 6 months into his disastrous policies, the tide
> started to shift again. Not only were his economic policies
> further eroding an already shaky economy, he was also
> imposing increasingly stringent restrictions on the daily
> lives of Iranians -- after several years of more lenient
> rule under Khatami.
>
> People are embarrassed in general. The dread at
> Imadickinajar's behavior isn't confined to some special
> class of people. She tells the story of standing in a deli
> as state run t.v. praised Imadickinajar for his scolding
> letter to Bush. Everyone in the deli, from clerks to patrons
> shake their head in disgust. They are mortified by the
> behavior. It doesn't make sense to their idea of honor for
> one thing, but they also think he comes off as an amateur. A
> poll in the summer of 2001 revealed that 71% of Iranians
> wants to improve ties with the u.s. That support erorded
> with the Iraq war. Under Imadickinajar, it's right back up
> there at 71% again, at least back in 2007.
>
> I'm sorry to have to relay this: but there is such a thing
> as satellite t.v (or there was until the state started
> knocking the satellite's down necessitating that people
> install very expensive mini statellites. This means that
> families like Moevani's can keep their satellite connection,
> but the apartment building's doorman and gardener cannot.
>
> According to Moevani, Iranians from all walks of life want
> things to ease up between Iran and the rest of the world
> because they suffer from the sanctions. Every time
> Imadickinajar says something provocative, every time he
> threatens the u.s., etc. people are mortified -- because
> they realize that it'll be that much more difficult to
> repair relations with the west which is something, like it
> not, a lot of Iranians *support*.
>
> The people who do not support reconciliation with the west
> are a small minority -- the core of Imadickinajar's 18% of
> supporters who are *fundamentalists* and approve of a
> theocracy. But those people are not indicative of what
> Iranians in general want: most tend to be secularists
> supporters of the separation of church and state. AS Dabashi
> says in the interview, they are sick to fucking death of
> having every aspect of their daily, mundane lives regulated
> by what clerics want: from whether their veil is too thin,
> to what color veils they can wear, to whether they can have
> mixed gender wedding receptions, to what they can eat or
> where they can eat or drink coffee.
>
> Moevani, speaking of the more lenient years of early 2000s,
> said that we, with our western eyes think it's ridiculous
> that young women see resistance in the layers of lipstick
> they wear or throwing parties where couples slowdance or
> casual sex with many partners as some kind of victory.
> (which, btw, is *again* not confined to the well-to-do) but
> as Moevani says, it is the difference between suffocating
> and being able to take long, deep breaths.
>
> She also noted that it took her a long time to shake her
> western liberal tendency to believe that she couldn't
> possibly have anything important or interesting to say
> because, being from a privileged class, her views were
> suspect. She spends a lot of time crisscrossing Iran to get
> a variety of opinion, ending up doing three times the work
> she'd normally have to do, just because she wants a way to
> offset what she thinks of as her bias. She's also pretty
> standoffish about religion, thinking that she has to be more
> understanding of the pious and their needs and desires,
> instead of imposing her secularism.
>
> what she finally realizes is that Iranians are largely a
> secularist society. Most people, even the "uneducated"
> prefer secularist sep of religion and state. And what she
> finally realizes is that, while she is astounded by the
> hypocrisy of the mullahs, everyone about her laughs at her:
> they all already know the mullahs are greedy hypocrites who
> ask people do to one thing and then refuse to do the same.
> educated? uneducated? everyone knows this, it is only stupid
> westerners with their guilt for being western, who are
> shocked to learn that not only are the clerics hypocritical
> greedy bastards, but everyone in Iran is quite aware and
> have long ago made a distinction between the everyday
> practice of their spirituality and what the fucking clerics
> say.
>
> of course, that's just one iranian journalist's view.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>