The Iranians who are resisting the electoral putsch are not only being humiliated and beaten by the batons and bullets of the Pasdaran but also by the inaction of the so-called freedom-loving world: no call for a special session of the UN, no threats of sanctions, no boycott declaration, no economic embargo, not even the smallest warning—let's just not take sides or make any commitments as long as the result of the struggle in Iran remains open. The West, so the argument goes, has to be careful to avoid providing any pretext to vilify the Iranian opposition. So Obama doesn't need days but weeks to slowly pull back his outstretched hand, while the German Foreign Ministry argues all the more emphatically for a dialogue with the putsch-regime. Undauntedly, the German-Iranian Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Tehran advertises the building of a German-Iranian Business Center in Berlin, while the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce in Hamburg reported today that its upcoming seminar on "Export Certification in Iran Trade" (July 13) is already overcrowded. And haven't we gotten along somehow or other with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the past four years?
A mixture of philosophy and lyricism here. Is he suggesting that world leaders should refuse to meet with the not-elected President Ahmadinejad?
Joshua Robert Gold, Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut, died on June 3, 2009, at the age of 38.
Via BBC Farsi. Watch who wins at the end.
Remember the streets filled with demonstrators to protest the Iraq War? Or the outrage over Gaza? Today, in the face of the repression in Iran, that camp is silent: no solidarity with democrats, no enormous gatherings in London or Paris or New York. There is a terrible calculation at stake. To support the democracy movement in Iran might imply that there is something deeply wrong with the regime in Tehran—as a previous regime in Washington understood. And that line of thought would upset the applecart of appeasement. As Iran approaches its Tiananmen moment, the righteous and politically correct are silent. The rights of people are sacrificed to the logic of diplomacy, in Iran as much as in Korea (as if they were part of an axis).
