Graduation

Dear all,

I’m going to be a little lame in terms of posts this week. I’ve had a bit of a hectic time at the moment. I started working for the Green Party last week and have been given a 2 week project to get on with, while tomorrow (Thurs) is my birthday and day of university graduation rolled into one. So yeah, it’s a nice 6am start for me tomorrow so I make it up to Oxford in time for 9.30 (at the latest)! If you know what the M25 is, you’ll know that it’ll either be a straightforward 1 and a half hour journey, or a nightmare rush hour trip from hell!

Regular visitors will know I tend to pick out something I find interesting in news most days and take it apart (to what level of success is for you to decide). Recently, there have been a number of domestic and international news stories that wont budge from the headlines which I’ve either commented on before, or that I don’t feel wholly qualified to comment on. The most obvious example of the latter is the current ‘unrest’ (for want of a better term) in Iran. There are two things that come to mind whenever I watch/read about what’s going on over there. Firstly, I have seen no evidence regarding the veracity of the election result. The whole thing does indeed smell increasingly fishy though, and the fact that a recount isn’t being considered by the Ayatollah is probably a sign that there have been wholesale discrepancies in the vote. But again, I wouldn’t pretend to know the hard facts.

Secondly, it seems people have got so over excited about the entire affair, they’ve lost their critical faculties. I’ve had people ask me to change my Twitter time zone to Iranian time to help block the authorities from cracking down on protesters over there, as well as making my profile ‘green’ as a symbol of freedom and democracy. Firstly, I live in the UK, my Twitter time zone is remaining on UK time. Secondly, do these sudden experts in Iranian politics actually know anything about Mousavi? Of course not. If they did, they wouldn’t be throwing their hat in with him. He’s merely another section of the countries ruling class and was Prime Minister back in the 80s, overseeing the creation of Hizbollah and maintaining the general status quo. Not that I’m to judge that, but the bandwagon jumpers seem to think this his eventual coming to power will be the liberation of the Iranian people. It will not be so in my humble opinion. The general line amongst most people watching in the ‘west’ seems to be that what is taking place is a simple struggle between good and evil. Such a simple narrative makes for good tv ratings, but reality is obviously never that black and white.

What is true to say though is there are widespread protests seemingly due to people’s dissatisfaction (especially amongst the young) of the current system. Urban dwellers are the biggest supporters of Mousavi, and probably the ones with most to gain from his election. Ahmadinijad paints himself as a champion of the poor and anti-imperialist, which on first viewing I kind of accepted (inequality has come down slightly during his presidency), but he has overseen quite large scale privatisation and wages have stagnated over his term in office. He also oversaw a crackdown on socialist groups, trade unions, homosexuals and other ‘unmentionables’ of Iranian society.

I think the long and short of my argument here is that we shouldn’t support either candidate. Instead of getting behind another eastern European style ‘coloured revolution’ which would likely see an opening up of the country to neoliberal economic forces/trade liberalisation/privatisation et al while throwing a bone towards ‘democracy’ and limited social ‘reform’, we should probably be glad to see masses of people take to the streets against a hugely discriminatory and prejudice theocracy. Of course, if the rest of the Iranian people wish to see the continuation of such a system, then they should make their voice heard too (and seemingly have in a few instances). To me this all seems to be an Iranian version of Obama mania, but Mousavi is no Barack Obama, and the latter is not exactly the kind of leader to be feted anyway.

Hopefully something more progressive can come from all this, but it would be a shame if all the Iranian people are left with is a Mousavi led regime (of one kind or the other) which espouses democratic rhetoric, but maintains the most extreme neo-fascistic social values and allows neoliberal economic ‘reforms’ through the back door, merely allowing the richest sections of Iranian society (the business community mainly) to prosper. In my mind, no average Iranian has anything to gain from such a conclusion. That’s only the opinion of an outsider who doesn’t know the ins and outs of the entire affair, I don’t profess any greater understanding.

I also metaphorically salute the true bravery of young Iranians to face armed police in the streets. In general, such scenes are only witnessed in flourishing democracies such as the US and UK after major sporting events as people are generally too fat, lazy, ill-informed or distracted to make their disatisfaction (satisfaction with US gov institutions at 26% last September) known. Of course for Iranian protesters the stakes are higher than say, British protesters (who only rarely face death while protesting), which is why it’s all the more encouraging and astounding to watch.

I’ll be back in a couple of days.