Re: Countering the Politics of Fear (was Tariq Ali at UCLA today)
On Oct 28, 2006, at 11:32 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Nothing in the article below is over the top, though, nor anything else by her I have read. If her work seems very persuasive to you, perhaps you might tone down your rhetoric to her level.
So you don’t object when Moghadam describes “‘Islamic democracy’ [as
a] pipe-dream or a highly managed form”; says that the choice between
Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad was “rather like the choice between a
Republican and a Democrat”; that Ahmadinejad “hijacked” legitimate
discontents; that women “are now the main losers” in Iran”; that the
constitution limits the role of women “to that of mothers - not
workers or political actors”; that Ahmadinejad is a “religious
conservative and a moralist…located squarely within the political
establishment”; and that Iran needs “holistic reform,” including the
elimination of the mandatory hejab, allowing young people to listen
to music and dance, that “political prisoners be released and civil
liberties be established” (implying that they don’t exist now), and
that the country’s wealth should be redistrbuted (implying that
that’s now not on offer)?
Doug