Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
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So let us get this straight. Iran is capable of throwing up a genuine grassroots democratic movement.
But supposed US populism is just a project of some corporation aimed at fleecing ordinary people.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/29/2009 01:09:00 PM
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Awards
Winner, October 5, 2007, Scott Nearing Award for Courageous Scholarship (Awarded by the Graduate Students of the Political Science Department, University of Pennsylvania).
Winner, 2005 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, Hunter College.
Winner, 2004 Koufax Award for Best Expert Blog
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5 Comments:
Dear Professor Cole :
When you write " But supposed US populism is just a project of some corporation aimed at fleecing ordinary people " , I must object .
" Ordinary people " - even Americans , are too smart to be fleeced by the likes of the teabag scam .
Sheep get fleeced , and , lemmings too - although that requires more skill !
ref : “Iran is capable of throwing up a genuine grassroots democratic movement...” That what has been happening in IRAN is a genuine grassroots movement is certainly true. That its outcome, or indeed their objective is either "democracy," as we think of it in the West or "secular humanist" government Reformation of their Theocracy is, imho, presumptuous. The demonstrators, Juan, have yet to demonstrate any common purpose to their anarchy, (either to us, or to their elected / selected régime leaders) other than their collective anger. At best from this mêlée we can distill only a hodgepodge of grievances, from electoral dis-enfranchisement to social lebensraum, from economic inequalities to the shattering of their illusion of idealism that was their "Revolution". Whether Over Here or Over There, an angry mob succeeds only in being an unruly herd, heard. Seldom does any sane citizenry wish for those who demonstrate lawlessness to become their law-makers; or support "a genuine grassroots movement" to promote such unruly people to become their rulers. All we know so far is that the most potent sanction levied against the régime in Iran has been the self-empowerment progress of the Iranian people, themselves. but We have no idea, whatsoever, what they will do with their notion of nation being manifested in a "Supreme Leader" ~ or indeed: whether They, the People of Iran have any desire to reign supreme, and by doing so realize their own manifest destiny.
The Republican Party id a fraud; it represents a very few very wealthy people who are quite actually opposed to the principles upon which the US was founded. They use phony grass roots (astro-turf) media events to further their pretense.
The Democratic Party, though flawed, is the future. It has internal divisions, conservative and liberal.
Without Murdock and Co. influencing (read perverting) our national conversation, the natural outcome would be the complete marginalization of the Republican Party and the growth and eventual division of the Democratic Party into two new political parties, namely the Liberal Democratic Party and the Conservative Democratic Party.
I think it's reasonable to figure that we see a democratic movement for the excellent reason that from the Constitutional Revolution og 1905 on up through the elected government of Muhammad Mosadegh and into the 1979 revolution, Iran has persistently demonstrated a democratic tradition. Even the Shah's dictatorship had to tolerate some democratic forms and even had to observe some limits in its election rigging. The Islamic Republic has had to allow for reasonably free and fair elections, and it's now in trouble because it rigged the presidential election in June.
Americans, by contrast, are throwing away their liberties with both hands, and tolerated massive electoral fraud in both 2000 and 2004, and even a blatant constitutional coup through the Supreme Court in 2000. And no wonder. People who persist in enslaving others around the world can expect to reap what they sow.
The Iranians haven't enslaved anyone, or even attacked anyone, in 200 years, so they're better placed to be free than a people for whom invading and occupying others is customary.
James-Speaks : “division of the Democratic Party into two new political parties, namely the Liberal Democratic Party and the Conservative Democratic Party.” good point, James. fwiw, i would not have been so kind: "apparent division of the party into Democrats and those desiring to 'hollow out' the U.S. government into a Corporate State" :)
The Democrats' Authoritarian Health "Reform" Bill and the Ascendency of Corporatism in the Democratic Party
«Under the leadership of Barack Obama, Democrats in Congress have made health care neither a right, nor a privilege -- but an obligation for individual citizens; and they have enfranchised a government-mandated profit center for private corporations.
For the first time in American history, Democrats are about to pass a bill that uses the coercive power of the federal government to force every American -- simply by virtue of being an American -- to purchase the products of a private company. At heart, the Democrats' solution to 48 million uninsured is to force them to buy inadequate private insurance -- with potentially high deductibles and co-pays and no price controls -- or be fined by the federal government.
In effect, this represents an historic defeat for the type of American idealism represented by the New Deal and the Great Society, and marks the ascendancy of a new type of corporatism. . .»
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