Feminist activist in Iran sentenced to 24 years in prison for removing hijab.

If you are asking if we have female police officers? The answer is yes. Even female truck drivers (a relatively small number), female cab drivers, not to mention thousands of female dentists, doctors, lawyers etc.

 

Worse, Assange is being held prisoner and according to all accounts even psychiatric ones, he is being slowly killed in the worse and most inhumane manner possible. But that's something you won't read in our 'controlled' MSM. They pick and choose what to emphasize and what to hide from the public.

 

Interesting. Im sure it seems crazy that we allow our women to wear bikinis at the beach. Just like making them wear cloth on their heads seems insane to us.

 

Western culture is the dominant culture internationally and Iran is actually, despite the regime (and for both better and worse), quite westernized. You travel to Iran and you will be shocked, as tens of thousands of people who have traveled to Iran would tell you. So, no, allowing women to wear bikinis at the beach doesn't sound 'crazy' to millions of Iranians, many of whom do just that when they travel outside of Iran!

 

Iranian Monitor - I would be interested in your views on the Holocaust seeing as how Iran denies it ever happened. Do you
agree with the government on this? The overall theme in many of your posts seems to me to be that the Iranian people are
more tolerant and Westernized than their government. I don't doubt that is true.

 

I am not a Holocaust expert or historian. I grew up in a culture (the US) that presented the Holocaust as a fact -- one which left me quite sympathetic to the plight of those who suffered such horrible deeds. I never ran into anything that persuaded me it wasn't, didn't look for such things with much interest either, but I do find it irritating that debate about a historical event by those who might want to present another perspective or challenge the existing narrative is considered a crime in some countries and in other countries (such as the US) where "holocaust denial" is technically not a crime, an accusation that has even more bite than many things that are. Especially since the label is used not just against those who deny the Holocaust, but even those who might quibble about some of its details.

 

Too bad that 'westernization' / (the socio-cultural Muslim) doesn't carry over into their theocracy, imho of course. Until the Supreme Leader's power & influence in shaping policy is marginalized & their elected president becomes the shot caller - I don't see much progress potential moving forward with Iran. I'm just not optimistic that the iron fist of 'ortodoxical' Islam can be loosened & extricated from their tenuous democratic governance...

p.s. I mean no offense to devout Muslims, I really don't identify w/ or fully comprehend Islam...

 

Are we elected by the people? Last I heard we were an oligarchy.

What makes you think having women combatting criminals makes a society more advanced and superior? Wouldn't the opposite be more true? Stop judging everything from your own societal standards. What are you a god or somethin?

WESTERN GODS
​

Take that you fools of misery.
For we are gods of lofty see.
That knowest more the way to go
than stupid folks like you below. - Jeannette



​

 

For some reason, mentioning uberman in that specific context - right after ridiculing holocaust denial accusations as an abused sacred cow - made me understand things you probably didn't even know you were meaning. I've been very careful to avoid the issue, too careful apparently. Yes, I'm aware I touched issues you didn't address in that exact post, however there are several posts whose meaning is more or less what I wrote.

Once the written words leave the mind forming a post in a forum, their meaning is not always what one intended. A discussion about subconscious and how it influences our actions is way off topic, and so is a debate about the different ways different people understand the same words depending on each individual's mindset, education, and so on. As I already told you, loaded and leading sentences make it very difficult to discuss your posts without going into details about stuff not related to the topic. I can't have a relaxed discussion about Rumi and the greatness of the Iranian people (no sarcasm here) while ignoring the constant demonizing of the other side. Your people is great regardless of how other nations are.

 

I still don't get what you are saying exactly? My interest in bringing up Nietzsche was clear to me based on what I wrote, but perhaps not as clear as someone who might look at Nietzsche through your lenses. As understandable as it might be from your perspective, I actually had no interest in Nietzsche so much as to use him as a "short hand" for saying that those Iranians who want to follow a leader, and be busy with consumerism and a comfortable, materialistically driven life (i.e., my short hand for "last man" concept), would certainly ultimately have much to look at the US as their leader. But those who don't, and aspire to something greater, don't need to look at Nietzsche's 'uberman' either. They have their own traditions that would allow them to look for it in a much more humanistic sense. Hence, me bringing up Rumi. And I asked if Rumi would be considered the most evolved "last man", an "intermediate" between the "uberman", or a rare example of the "uberman", simply because the answer I would get would tell me a lot about the person answering me! Otherwise, I have my own answers and, like Rumi, they are more about love than hating anyone.

 

Interesting how you extracted that from my post. It was a reply to a member who claims to be a cop in Germany. He said that "feminism is a cancer"

Are you also of the opinion that women are inferior? I won't judge!

 

In the 1960s, we had a Black activist in Houston, Texas, Lee Otis Johnson by name. Like many from-the-ghetto Black activists then, he was half-sincere-radical, half-hustler, and he found it easy to hustle gullible Leftists. But he was a pain in the neck to the local police force, so they got an undercover cop to buy a joint from him. He was arrested, and sentenced to .... thirty years in prison. More details here.

He was finally set free after four years in prison. The judge who made the ruling was no doubt aware that this was an embarrassing case for Texas, since it was so obviously a frame-up, and the student radicals of the day didn't let the case drop. They kept it in the public eye.

A lot of legal decisions are actually political ones. (Why was separate-but-equal racial segregation ruled Constitutional in 1892 and unConstitutional a hundred years later? Because a hundred years later the US was competing with the Soviet Union in the Third World, and legal racial segregation was a millstone around its neck.)

So that's what we have to do with respect to this unfortunate woman: don't let case leave the public eye. Wherever an Iranian government official appears, let there be demonstrations, interruptions of speeches, people chaining themselves to gates ... give them no peace.

Of course, people who want to make war on Iran, or who support the sanctions, will have no leverage. The mullahs and their supporters will just see this as another weapon of war. The people who can actually have an impact are the people who support normal relations with Iran, who oppose sanctions, who oppose abrogating the treaty -- this means liberals, and especially European liberals.

So get to it, folks. Make a summary of this case -- Amnesty International has probably already done it -- post it all over the web on every discussion forum, print up leaflets and put them up at every campus, bring her case up on talk shows, make a video for YouTube .... keep up the pressure. And it won't hurt to say, when appropriate, that it's this sort of barbarism that makes it so hard to persuade other people that Iran should be treated as a normal society. In other words, jail your liberal-minded people, and you give a gift to the people who would like to turn Iran into radioactive glass.

 

With the ink still drying on pro military industrial complex / war mongering 'Mustachios-Boton's' forced "resignation" - you must be breathing a sigh of relief.

I do just want to underscore the ideological distinction between those espousing war & those advocating for commensurately harsh (PRN) sanctions - the less carrot & more stick folks... Not exactly sure how one goes about building any kind of reciprocal trust w/ leadership that has lied, reneged, subverted at every turn. Let's be clear, Iran has put them selves in 'hostile status' w/ the US despite our bending over backwards in contortions for them. I just don't know that in our wanting a relationship w/ them so badly, some are not deceiving themselves as to the plausibility or wisdom in going down the 'nation building' / 'socio-cultural bonding' path just yet...

 

I saw both sides as well .. but, didn't want to get into it with Dobbs. He had a small point .. granted it ... let it end there.... please.

"Besides, I like your posts about American constitution and the founding fathers - an in-depth look into the intimate mechanics of the greatest democracy" My backside is truly filling up with smoke on that one ... much appreciated. Thanks - Kudo's to your posts as well - a different level of perspective.

 

Do you mean women or feminists ? - by "too many" who are not radical.

 

Did Bolton resign? I haven't been following the news. Good Lord!

 

If I honestly didn't feel that I know both Iran and the United States more intimately than anyone else here, I would really begin to question myself The comments I read don't provide even a snowball's chance in hell of the two countries finding the path that can distinguish each of them as truly worthy nations capable of helping the course of history in a better direction than it is moving. And my ambitions for both is no less than that. To have such ambitions for a superpower like the US might not be as extravagant in conception, but the stubborn forces on the way are equally more powerful than those in Iran. To have such ambitions for Iran in its current climate might seem audacious and beyond extravagant, but that is where I like to place my true faith.

To try to explain what I mean, I like to use another short-hand, this time from a Hegelian or Marxian dialect --and in fact both. The clash of the thesis and the antithesis that I see being at work between Iran and the US for me needs a new synthesis! It requires neither and both to be vanquished.

 

Far right Christians want to do the same here??!

 

And not just 'far right' people, or just 'Christians', but anyone. Who has been unjustly imprisoned in the United States?

Let us know so we can start campaigning for them!

 

Hindsight is 20/20 but ... imagine what might have happened in 1953 if the US had told the British, okay, let him nationalize your stuff there, we'll step in make up the payments you were getting. Then if we had propped up Mossadegh in whatever way we could have, without overtly interfering in Iran. Helped him sell that oil, for example. But we didn't.

I was a serious Marxist for a long time, but I never understood that thesis/anti-thesis/synthesis stuff, except as a vague metaphor for this or that episode in history. I think old Hegel was, as Bertrand Russell called him 'the arch-muddler of human thought.'.

But some Marxism would be valuable here: how does the human species progress? Basically, through the growth of the forces of production, which creates a new kind of human being, who requires a new kind of political superstructure to match the new level of the forces of production (which include the new generation): the kind of government, and customs, which fit poor peasants and a basically-agricultural economy, won't be a fit for truck drivers and teachers and website designers in a modern, and increasingly globalized, economy.

The future of Iran will be the bringing into alignment of its political superstructure with the new generations of Iranians who will be operating a modern economy. Hopefully this will occur without bloodshed.

If the Israeli/Palestinian dispute could be settled, everything would change, which is why trying to settle it must remain a key top priority for the US.

 

Yeah, I'm a god. Last time I checked the United States is a Republic. Ever read a book?

 

I don't want to come off as a contrarian smart ass, however, I got to take issue / get further clarification on a few things.

- The US hasn't been a 'truly worthy nation capable of helping the course of history' ? rather surprising assertion - past or present!
- 'stubborn forces ... ... equally more powerful than those in Iran' - your gonna have to help me grasp what's going on here...
- 'work between Iran and the US for me needs a new synthesis'. I get the notion of give & take conveyed, however, Iran is in open defiance & enmity w/ all in the P5+1. (just saying)

Sincerely, S

 

Is the stoy of this woman true or isn't it?

 

Would you rather live there or here?

 

Define "humanistic sense". I have the feeling it's quite different from what I mean by "humanistic".

The question is: do those people who aspire to something greater have the moral right to judge those who don't? How do we even define "something greater"? (no, it's not intuitive).

In my worldview, there's nothing greater than individual freedom, in all its aspects, including freedom to abandon pursuit of something greater. In this, I follow the US.

Rumi doesn't fit into any Nietzschean pattern. He wrote in several languages, for very different people. He was both following other cultures and leading in every culture. More than two strictly separated pathways are possible after all.