[lbo-talk] death to the IRI

Dennis Claxton ddclaxton at earthlink.net
Thu Jun 25 13:23:02 PDT 2009


I found this while looking around in a directory of blogs from Iran. This is an excerpt from an essay by Jahanshah Rashidian, who says "I am an Iranian-born German and a freelance writer in several languages (Persian, German, French, and English). I am not affiliated to any political entities. I write on democracy, Human Rights , and secularism." He has a blog here: http://jahanshahrashidian-rashidian-blog.blogspot.com/

There's a lot of photos and video of protests and responses here, where I also found the Rashidian essay: http://www.rottengods.com/

The blog directory is here: http://www.iraniansblogs.com/

Something else I glanced at said media outside the country have it wrong when they focus on the "twitter revolution." People are also using old-fashioned methods like shouting from rooftops. Rashidian's references to cries of "death to dictator" and "death to the IRI" are to be taken literally.

[....]

Most people, even those who voted for the lesser evils, are not really concerned about power struggles within the Islamic regime. They want an end of the whole Islamic regime.

Most Iranians especially the youth want a separation of religion from state; they wish a secular and democratic state. Hence, if they intensify their today's struggles, they will gradually separate their ranks of struggles from the power struggle-related rallies of "reformist" opposition. Of course these rallies may not take a long time and will extinguish as soon as an inner compromise has been acheived, but the longer these take, the more polarised and organised the real opposition to the whole regime will be, to the point that they not only cry "death to dictator"-- hinting the Supreme Leader, Khamenei, -- but also will directly target the whole regime by shouting across the whole country "death to the IRI". The polarisation of our society does not forcibly mean a class issues; it assumes above all a freedom from the plague of the IRI and consequently a transformation of the power to people's representatives.

[...]

http://jahanshahrashidian-rashidian-blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/irans-post-election.html



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