unrest in iran

[Darth Rock&Roll]

in all honesty, any support we offer with words in a forum are empty and meaningless.

what can we actually do?
putting a bumper sticker on our car is not action.
writing a diatribe in a forum is not action.
making a facebook group i not action.

all we hear about it is either propaganda from our own governments or it is biased and highly emotional (some of it totally justified) rants from twitter that we have no idea if it is from Iran or not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the current theocracy in Iran, or any theocracy and I believe that to be the source of all their problems. Their other problem is that their president is looking at the world through blinders. He sees Iran and it's values and way of life as threatened by the loose morals and lack of religious fortitude in the west. Not to mention he probably, like many in the region, don't care too much for the masses of western armies that have paraded and occupied the regions countries since the fall of the ottoman empire.

So, besides yammering in a forum, or tweeting your friends about how bad it is, what constitutes real action in regards to the election in Iran? The unrest?

And remember, for you christian religious types, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's..." (in this case, the theocracy is Caesar of Iran and Ahmedinejad is Praetor)

[mrtoes]

There is really not a lot we can do. Change has to come from inside. Western intervention in Iran has been devastating in the past - the CIA sponsored coup of 1953 resulted in the brutal rein of Shah Pahlavi, which lead directly to the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

I don't mind offering my sympathy and best wishes to the Iranian people, it costs nothing even if it results in nothing.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

Western intervention in the Middle East as a whole has resulted in disaster for more than 1000 years.

I personally think that this may all be pretext for war with Iran. A gradual selling to us of the idea of regime change there as well.

By hook or by crook, so to speak.

the winds of war blow too much I think.

[zenshiite]

Most people should just shut their yaps and stay the hell out of it. If you want to lend moral support to the folks on the streets... keep informed and don't listen to those portraying this whole thing as if the government is entirely to blame for the unrest. There have been those taking advantage of demonstrations for vandalism and arson that have hijacked the reformists' march. Also, keep in mind that these folks aren't trying to topple their government... they are trying to expand their civil rights within the constitution of the Islamic Republic. Most credible commentators, on the side of reformists, speaking from out of Iran or from having just come out of Iran(and here I'm talking about Iranians themselves) make certain to tell the Western media "these people are not trying for another revolution."

Also, to paint broad strokes over the entirety of the Islamic government is equally foolish and it sort of bums me out that Yusuf would say "the Ayatullahs" as if that were a valid statement at all. First of all, perhaps the most prominent reformist in the whole of Iran up until the current fame of Mousavi was ex-President Khatami who is himself a cleric. So are a good number of reformists, and many of the reformists are also from the generation of the revolution. Some of them were actually among the group of students that took the US embassy hostage.

Also, it's wise for the US and UK to keep their traps shut for the most part. There's a long, well known and much maligned, history of US and UK meddling in the affairs of Iran over the course of the last 100 years. The French are a close 3rd, in terms of foreign bad guys in Iran. I could hardly blame a government for being paranoid when you've got the world's most super superpower openly talking about how they are working towards fomenting a popular revolution in your country and threatening you with military action if that doesn't work. And in this case, having bank rolled hundreds of millions of dollars to do it just 2 years ago under the previous administration.

That said, I think Khamenei is out of touch and he needs to be reigned in by his peers. And it's looking more and more like he will be. Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic isn't going anywhere.

[yusuf]

I stand corrected, I should have said 'The Ayatollahs who are in control of the mechanisms of state'...

apologies