₦airaland Forum

JJYOU:
one of the first thing i learnt in europe many moons ago was how horrible the islamic slave masters treated black people. never knew even a kanuri or a fulani cattle patrol guard tot he was higher than a black man in life's ladder.

This is why I get annoyed with Uncle Toms and those who would not mind their whole generation being ridiculed just on the grounds of self aggrandisement. . . e.g. 419 scammers and those stupid girls in Italy and Spain and Holland too.

http://www.sundayherald.com/oped/opinion/display.var.2516867.0.0.php

Demonising Iran conveniently hides uncomfortable truths for the West
Robin Yassin-Kassab

THE MAINSTREAM media narrative of events unfolding in Iran has been set out for us as clear as a fairytale: an evil dictatorship has rigged elections and now violently suppresses its country's democrats, hysterically blaming foreign saboteurs the while. But the Twitter generation is on the right side of history (in Obama's words), and could bring Iran back within the regional circle of moderation. If only Iran becomes moderate, a whole set of regional conflicts will be solved.

I don't mean to minimise the importance of the Iranian protests or the brutality of their suppression, but I take issue with the West's selective blindness when it gazes at the Middle East. The "Iran narrative" contains a dangerous set of simplicities which bode ill for Obama's promised engagement, and which will be recognised beyond the West as rotten with hypocrisy.

Iran's claims of Western incitement for the protests are roundly scorned in our media, and of course Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's scapegoating of foreigners and "terrorist groups" demonstrates an unhealthy denial of the very real polarisation within Iranian society.

Yet Iranians still have good reason to fear outside interference. It was, after all, British and American-orchestrated riots that brought down the elected Mossadeq government in 1953. And in 2007, Bush administration neocon John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US attack on Iran would be "a last option after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed".

According to veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, ongoing US special operations in Iran include funding ethnic-separatist terrorist groups such as the al-Qaeda-linked Jundallah in Baluchistan. With some honourable exceptions, this dimension has not been touched by the mainstream media.

And Mir Hossein Mousavi's vote-rigging allegations are accepted without scrutiny, despite there not yet being any hard evidence of organised cheating. The official result is similar to that in the second round of the 2005 elections, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received 61.7 % to former president Rafsanjani's 35.9%.

Iran is troublesome not because it’s any more dictatorial than its neighbours but because it’s less submissive

A few weeks before the latest elections, a poll commissioned by the BBC and ABC News predicted a nationwide advantage of two-to-one for Ahmadinejad over Mousavi. Even Israel's Mossad chief Meir Dagan reported that there were no more irregularities in the Iranian vote than in elections in liberal democracies.

I visited Iran in 2006, with a backpack and guidebook-standard Farsi. I noticed two things. First, Iran is far freer, fairer, less littered, and more literate than any of its neighbours. Second, very many Iranians are unhappy with their corrupt rulers and, unlike people in nearby Arab states, they are not afraid to say so openly. To an extent, the revolution has been a victim of its own success, having transformed a largely feudal land into a highly educated urban society, creating along the way a swollen middle class and an idealistic youth which chafes against the petty oppression of dress codes and state-enforced morality. But everyone I spoke to favoured evolution of the existing system over counter-revolution.

The Islamic Republic has been a great - if seriously flawed - experiment in economic and strategic independence, its engines oiled by class consciousness and national pride as much as by religion. Iran is at least a semi-democracy, and has held 10 presidential elections in 30 years. Iranian women are obliged to cover their hair, true, but women in US-client Saudi Arabia are obliged to cover their faces. In Saudi Arabia of course there are never any elections to dispute - but there are US military bases, so we don't dwell on the issue.

Here's the nub of it. Iran opposes the US military presence in the region, and vigorously supports resistance to Israeli expansionism. On these two points, the Iranian regime is closer than any other to the true sentiments of Middle Easterners.

And this, fundamentally, is why Iran is imagined to be such a problem in the West: because it's a Venezuela or a Cuba of a country. Iran is troublesome not because it's any more obscurantist or dictatorial than its neighbours, but because it is less submissive.

The world worries about Iran's nuclear energy programme while keeping quiet about Israel's 200 nuclear weapons. Israel occupies Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian territory. Iran has not attacked another country in its modern history.

Iran is accused of backing terrorism because it helps to arm Hizbullah and Hamas, grassroots anti-occupation groups with a legitimate, even legal, cause. Both groups have targeted civilians (rarely, in Hizbullah's case) but not on as grand a scale as Israel, which is armed and funded by the United States. And Iran doesn't export Wahhabi-nihilist terrorists of the Taliban or al-Qaeda-in-Iraq variety. Again, that would be our ally Saudi Arabia.

President Obama recently chose to address the Muslim world from Cairo, seat of a client regime which has "pre-emptively" arrested hundreds of democrats in recent months, fearing they may demonstrate.

Commenting on Iran, Obama called the "democratic process" a "universal value". But obviously not quite universal enough to cover Egypt, or the elected Hamas government, what remains of it, in besieged Palestine.

Silences can be more significant than words. Is Obama also "deeply troubled" when Israel shoots unarmed protesters or arrests children as young as 12? Does he mourn "each and every innocent life that is lost" in Gaza as well as in the plusher streets of Tehran? If so, he still hasn't told us.

At present our opinion-formers are blithely simplifying and demonising a complex culture, allowing illusions and half-truths to become shining certainties in our minds. This is how we arrived in Iraq.

Robin Yassin-Kassab was born in Britain to a Syrian father and English mother. He worked as a journalist in Pakistan before moving to Oman where he taught English. He now lives in Scotland. His novel, The Road From Damascus, is published by Penguin, £8.99

I hawked ground-nut, bread, kulu kuli, cassettes, pure water and ewa agoyin

I am most karid with serious karibility. I waka and not stumble. Howeva, if i stumble by way of wine imbibation, bacchus will make me stumble on top of ifyalways ikebe.

I will gyrate by rotation on the ikebesis of the opeke.

Sammy Jay:
Funny enough a large number of these girls are not told they are traveling 2 go and mess. All they wanted was to earn a living in Europe, where wealth circulates as told. But when they get there, they meet a different thing on ground since they are not skilled enough to join the workforce. so put ourselves in their shoes,

My friend, please speak/write according to knowledge.

@dnex, thanks for spilling the straight truth. I have known girls scrambling for sponsors to Italy in order to prositute since the nineties. I know quite a few who left at the time and they vanished when they were successful. I know some guys back then who used to be visa procurers for the agents and they girls used to almost worship these guys just for a chance to get to Europe/Italy. I still remember the guys who used the girls as play things prior to getting their visas to get and prostitute in Italy.

I'll never believe that any of those girls was co-erced into prostitution. There are more than enough of the pretty Benin girls who are desperately offering themselves. How then will any unwilling person find themselves in the position.

abeg make we quiet make we no wash our dirty linen publicly.

when shall it become that I will not jambalaya to the ikebe of the opeke.

my carriability is highly recognised by the AB lagoon woskedikally. Jembestic bembestikal.
@ifyalways, waka and gyrate into my peripheri domain for inner examination. bacchus is bembestically dafticologic.

I dont watch Fox news anyway.

Surely someone's got to be able to proffer a reason for locking the thread.

I heard that it was the culture section that was horrible. I didn't realise that it also extends to the politics section.

Leilah:
i know too many naija ladies in ireland alone that put up with constant cheating. they are always pregnant too. it makes me feel ill. i have seen their husbands with tramps behing their backs. jeeeezzz what about diseases? im telling you one of these ladies is going to get a disease, one of ther husbands got a ugandan pregnant and he visits this ugandan and phocks her in her house also behind his lvoing wife's back. its really sick. :-x

ANOTHER ONE HAD BEEN MESSING AROUND WITH A CONGOLESE NATIONAL WHO TURNED OUT TO BE HIV POSITIVE. IT WAS A MIRACLE IT WANT PASSED ON TO THE LADYS HUSBAND, THEN TO HER AND EVEN POSSIBLY TO HER UNBORN FETUS.

I know a caribbean lady who gives her husband condoms so he doesn't come home with any disease. She claims to know that its impossible to stop a man who wants to cheat and she knows that the guy is a ladies' man.

As far as I have seen, they are a very happy couple and their marriage is very healthy.

good future. . . 2 sisters married to father and son. maybe father and son should actually find twins to marry.

ifyalways:
Engage in a relationship with him/her first.Along the line,u guys might find out u have alot of things in common and love might just grow from there.
Dont reject it outrightly,dont jump in to marriage too.Give it a trial.

What if there is no attraction?

abeg make una tell me when dem start business so I go fit abandon car dey ride Okada

Why one of them never marry am since?

bingo

ifyalways:
by der fingers and kariability u shall know dem.am highly karid.
i stil remain XY pourer,ilya du Queen.

I remain kariable JK drinker ilya du myabode.

wakastical, stumbleless. May I waka and not stumble except I stumble on your serious ikebe

eruogun:
Project Nigeria is going no where. Look at the manner the leaders are playing chess with our collective destiny. It's shameful.

my thoughts exactly

It beggars belief that this happens in Nigeria. 

How can anyone allow such humiliation on order to become a member of the house of assembly

He actually allowed himself to be photographed nude for these occultic things and he is not ashamed to be a representative of the people of Ogun State. Why are Ogun state indigenes not out in numbers to demand for his removal from the assembly? Not only is he irresponsible, he has brought humiliation to every Ogun State indigene.

Are there any sane people left in Nigeria? Apologies to anyone who may feel offended.

I am still interested to find out if there are proofs of massive irregularities to warrant these well co-ordinated protests.

If all losers in elections were able to muster enough media support to motivate their followers into protesting, and that taken as proof of irregularities, there will never be said to be fair electiosn anywhere in the world.

this one is just trying to advertise in a rather covert way.

Menaingless thread that should be deleted instead of being allowed to take up storage space.

this is the last post.

where are my winnings?

What a comedy.

ladysex:
@ Beaf,
WHAT A FOOL, this person you speak of. to turn the other cheek and leave him alone to his own ignorance would be sensible. but on the other hand he is confused or just ignorant, he is just looking at the stereotypical view of rasta which so many people today think. He needs to learn the truth of rasta, so to approach him with anger may be necessary, so he knows he is wrong. teach him what rastafari is about so that he can overstand and correct him self. than see if he still feels the same way, weather he wanted to smoke ganja or starts to embrace the deeper meaning of Rastafari.

Blessing, and much respect,

To much igbo don scatter your brain.

Rasta ko, Raggamuffin ni.

see your name sef, sheeor

When will you write chapter 2?

ElRazur:
I think the actual focus is about how China actively control and have massive grip on the information highway. A breach in free trades agreements.

Do people not make porn movies in china? Or you think there isn't already a pornographic or sex trade industry there?

They still have the right to decide what they allow into their country. Google has a right to sue over it, doesn't it?

KnowAll:
Nigeria has an even bigger drug problem than Britain, or how else would you explain why anyone in his right senses will peddle drugs in some countries where the penalty for drug pushers is death. I dont think money is the only motivating factor. The pushers are either high on something greater than even drugs itself or are damn right stupid.

Its madness induced by greed. However, many British people are also involved in those things

Could the directors of The Guardian please sack Mr Abati and give his job to Banky W.

Who is this Banky W anyway?

ElRazur:
Not entirely true to say they do the SAME THING.

Finally, I am referring you back to my orginal point which I made about china. Note that my comment was focused on what this debate was about - China

A point which you initially disagree with, but then indirectly agree with later.

Actually, the thread is not about democracy in China but about America wanting to tell the Chinese government to accept its pornographic nation into her mainstream.

In terms of controlling its citizens, anyone can say what they want but for you to expect the Chinese government to govern the way the UK government does is suspect. Are Chinese people the same as British people? Why would they be ruled the same way?

Why dont we just tell America and UK to make laws for the rest of the world - they seem to be doing a lot of that now anyway.