Something extraordinary is happening in #Iran:
#Women are really really not giving a fuck anymore
What started as protests over the murder of #MahsaAmini by religious morality #police in 2022 for not wearing her headscarf simmered and now is snowballing. Women and girls are not wearing the mandatory #hijab at ever increasing rates
Beyond the #hijab, there seems to be something of a massive grassroots change happening in #Iran in the last few months
And the government seems unwilling to confront it
“The young generation wants its basic freedoms, and it’s getting them through sheer perseverance” -Donya Amiri
Alcohol, dancing, women and men mingling, rave parties, musical theatre, fashion shows, concerts...
It is remarkable and extraordinary how fast it is happening
@silhouette @zakalwe @benroyce Right? Parts of Persia and Lebanon were like the Paris of the Middle East. Women wore modern fashions, went to university, held professional positions in commerce, medicine and media.
But when the Fundamentalists gain power, freedom loses. Every time. Throughout history, when religious fundamentalists control the government, bad things happen. And it’s religion agnostic, ie, all religion can be perverted.
Look at American Christian nationalists. Or the prosperity gospel megachurches. They have nothing to do with the words of a Palestinian prophet from two thousand years ago.
Help the poor? Na.
Care for the sick? Na.
Turn the other cheek? Nope
Render one’s taxes? Ha
Be kind to the imprisoned. Big ol no
Welcome the stranger? Oh fuck no
The fundamentalists are driving the US, and it behooves us to remove them as expeditiously as legally possible.
@eternaltyro @silhouette @zakalwe @benroyce Well sure, but nobody wants to read my dissertation on colonialism and the Middle East. I’m just saying, my people are still annoyed about the Romans, so..... 🤷🏻♀️But yes, the fall of Persia to the extremists was directly the result of CIA interference. Going further back, I posit that the Balfour Declaration of 1917, written by Walter Rothschild, Arthur Balfour, Leo Amery, & Lord Milner, was the beginning of the long painful extermination of my people, our identity, and our homeland.
The West has destroyed everything it touches in the Middle East, except Israel.
@eternaltyro @silhouette @zakalwe @benroyce
Well....first you have to convince me to go back for a second PhD. ;). My actual dissertation was for bioethics, on the topic of post mortem prenatal ventilation and the ethical concerns therein. And it’s woefully out of date. At the time I wrote it, back in the last century, it was not a procedure done, but only contemplated. Now, of course, in Red States, it’s become increasingly common to ventilate corpses that were pregnant before death.
For some good resources on Palestine, you might consider:
Ramzy Baroud's "My Father was a Freedom Fighter"
Gaza: A History (Comparative Politics and International Studies)
by Jean-Pierre Filiu
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
And an oldie but a goodie; Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky
@benroyce it's interesting seeing the social change like this.
on the same topic, bbc world service put out this 15 minute documentary last year. Iranian female DJs, some short interviews with Paramida (probably their most famous, played on bbc a bunch of times, fabric nightclub, berghain, etc - really good sound) and a woman called Nesa. i thought it was a really interesting short look into the culture and some of what they have to work around.
give it some more time, and there will be nothing to work around- sadistic social conservatism seems to be reducing to a muttering husk
(at least in Iran)
@benroyce Well, they're a bit busy trying to move the capital to somewhere that's got water.
Not a problem restricted to Iran but poor planning seems to afflict governments run by "social conservatives" more often than others.
Iran’s sprawling cities and irrigated agriculture, along with tight market controls, have left the country vulnerable to drought. There are steps that would help.
Tehran is grappling with a water crisis so severe the Iranian president has suggested people may need to evacuate, and the situation goes well beyond the capital. The weeks tick by, still the rains don’t arrive.
@koteisaev @benroyce The USSR failed on the cultural freedoms front. They did not succeed in providing a Western lifestyle.
China has mostly succeeded, and the pressure for political reform there has abated.
i wouldn't say abated
the deal in china between the govt and the people seems to be: no freedoms but massive economic growth
if china's economy falls in trouble, then that is the real test
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