The candle needed in the home shouldn’t burn in the mosque

A few thoughts before church this morning. Naj has a spirited post up here on Neo-Resistance, regarding what (in her experience) Iranians truly value:

Democracy is just an "idea". In implementation, it is mediocre and full of fallacy!

What it produces is numbed and dumbed populace; who shy away from responsibility by casting a "free" ballot ... and then shying away from the havoc the elected politician is wreaking in the history of humanity... Democracy CANNOT come to be implemented even in its most pathetic form, when a country is under THREAT. So shed the hypocritical lamb skin--it doesn't fool anyone in Iran!

If you hear ANY Iranian condoning the sanctions, if you hear anyone rallying behind a neo-con, make sure you take a mental note of a Neo-Resistance stamp on them:

A S S H O L E !

And, to all the Americans (journalists, activists, congressdudes, spouses of some disgruntled Iranian, or career activists) who are so concerned about the violation of HUMAN RIGHTS and FREEDOM in Iran, I suggest you utilize your zeal to prevent massacres at your country, executed in the form of shooting rampage by constitutionally free men who kill in churches, cinemas, schools, and etc. Ok?

I approve of the neologism ‘congressdudes’, for one thing. But Naj is one of the most anti-regime Iranian bloggers in the ‘sphere - and because she is such a thoroughgoing opponent of Ahmedinejad, she is rightly suspicious of the liberalising power of democratic political institutions, particularly those institutions imposed by force.

Naj also recommended this post by Bill Woollam. Right now the pattern seems to be bearing itself out, and I do think profit is ultimately the end goal of such geopolitical pinball games (and perhaps silencing organised political dissent from neoliberal globalisation in sensitive regions), but it is not necessarily just the oil. In Yugoslavia, for example, it was to privatise and then buy up the remnants of the countries’ industries. Still, it is worth taking a look at his analysis of the process.

And Naj’s quote of the Iranian proverb, ‘The candle that is needed in the home shouldn’t burn in the mosque’, is quite a propos here. A bit like ‘first take the beam out of your own eye’. If we truly value the political self-sufficiency of the Iranian people, then we must have respect for Iranian institutions and rule of law; and the most valuable support we can give to those attempting valiantly to change the regime in Iran is to build horizontal relationships, and to listen to what it is that reformers in Iran actually want (and very few of them want help in the form of sanctions and bombs).