The Wearing of the Green

A few unoriginal thoughts before I refer to someone else's blog post about how to follow developments in Iran using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, dedicated blogs, etc:

Mir-Hossein Moussavi is not exactly the candidate that Westerners, as well as a good many expat Iranians, would love to see in terms of a -- well -- *westernized*, progressive, freedom-loving, liberty-worshipping, anti-cleric type dude. What seems to be emanating among some of the more reflexive and reactive news folk is the heavy gloss and high sheen of the Conservative Myth of Mass Protest, whereby any demonstrative undertakings resulting from stuff like voting causes Right Wing Dumb Think.

I mean, seriously, the Republican ditto-heads that have graced some of the news shows are waving the United States of America Freak Flag as if Mir Hussein Moussavi were the *point* of these protests, these protests even unto death.

If people are willing to die in protest -- manifestly* -- surely the act merits more serious consideration than application of a Party Line, an ideological agenda, yes? Or, at least, we ought to get the Party Line right.

Mousavi does have, as is repeatedly repeated, a reputation for honesty and competence (and even, in several articles, a reputation for being "soft-spoken"). This is how he has recast himself after twenty years of political truancy. A lot can change about a person and his politics in two decades. Still, it is important to always remember ("...and never forget!" -- Dwayne F. Schneider) -- what was the case before the miracle of re-invention:

As Iran’s prime minister during the Iranian Revolution’s most formative years (1981-1989) he was a hard-liner closely allied with then-president Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader, and a “firm radical,” as The Economist described him in 1988...

In [a] 1981 interview, Mousavi defended the taking and holding of American hostages by Iranian militants for 444 days as serving the revolution’s purpose. “It was the beginning of the second stage of our revolution,” following the overthrow of the shah, he said. “It was after this that we rediscovered our true Islamic identity. After this, we felt the sense that we could look Western policy in the eye and analyze it the way they had been evaluating us for many years.”

In terms of more immediate issues, Mousavi has stated his support of Iran's nuclear ambitions, adding only that he would like to make it less "costly," a word open to careful interpretation. A reference to the burden of sanctions. A reference to near worldwide disapproval.

I believe that he truly is a reform candidate -- I believe it, especially, since the massive demonstrations and worldwide scrutiny following these fraudulent election results dictate that he toe that line. "The eyes of the world," and all that.** Among Mousavi's stated goals are the privatization of some media and putting the police under the control of the President (and therefore, purportedly, under the control of the people, since the President is elected... or is supposed to be, anyway!). He accuses Ahmadinejad of economic mismanagement. He makes further gains as a reformer thanks to having served as "adviser" to Khatami.

One of the most interesting things to watch, at least here, deep deep in the Tête de Hergé, where all is well, is the stance of the clerics in all this -- where will they place their approbation, and why? Will they lose influence --have they already lost a significant amount of power? What exactly is the relationship between Mousavi and the theocrats. Like him, they are caught by circumstances that may well dictate a less severe future course; They are also trapped by the immediacy of events transmitted to the interpreting world by a new technical age. Of course, they would most like to suppress the demonstrations and the demonstrators, but Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, supreme leader, who controls everything from the judiciary to the Republican Guard, is an astute politician.

Ah well, this post has wandered far from its initial intention, which was to share some recommended means for following the events in Iran in real time. All I meant to say was that the situation calls for us observors to do our due diligence. A dear friend, The Iranian Lesbian, developed ulcers after years of explaining that there were, indeed, paved roads, traffic signs, and some guarded evidence of a civilized past back home in Tehran.

While she smiled sweetly and fielded idiot questions, her thoughts strayed -- to her uncle, once the theoretician for the Communist Party, who was imprisoned for many years, finally beheaded; to her mother, a well-known Sanskrit scholar; to her father, a well-appointed judge under the Shah, who daily expected arrest after he simply stopped showing up for work; to the many friends she left behind when her parents forced her on a flight to France at the height of the revolution; to how she and her sister would manage to send enough money home that their parents might continue to live according to their custom.

I think of her and am ashamed at how much I have never bothered to learn about her country, her family, her exile.

Ah well...

"How to follow the Iran protests: Twitter. blogs and more," over at Open Salon offers some informed choices among all the photo-blogging, noteworthy Tweeters, and video selections floating around out there.

Yep, that's all I wanted to say!
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*MANIFESTLY -- I note the usage because it is the first such adverbial usage in my long life. Tapping my brilliantly white and obsessively straight teeth with a number two pencil, spaced out, thinking of Iran -- and what very little I know about the country and her people -- I started thinking in French and quickly hit upon the word "manifestation." Hence and ergo, this:

man - i - fest  /ˈmænəˌfɛst/

–adjective 1. readily perceived by the eye or the understanding; evident; obvious; apparent; plain: a manifest error.
2. Psychoanalysis. of or pertaining to conscious feelings, ideas, and impulses that contain repressed psychic material: the manifest content of a dream as opposed to the latent content that it conceals.

–verb (used with object) 3. to make clear or evident to the eye or the understanding; show plainly: He manifested his approval with a hearty laugh.
4. to prove; put beyond doubt or question: The evidence manifests the guilt of the defendant.
5. to record in a ship's manifest.

–noun 6. a list of the cargo carried by a ship, made for the use of various agents and officials at the ports of destination.
7. a list or invoice of goods transported by truck or train.
8. a list of the cargo or passengers carried on an airplane.

Origin:
1350–1400; (adj.) ME <>


**The eyes of the world:
"Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world." -- Gen. Eisenhower, June 6, 1944