1. 

   Edo River

   February 15, 2007 // Reply

   I always appreciate seeing a place I am forbidden to enter
   Like window shopping on New York City’s famous fashion street 5th Ave.
   regards,
2. 

   Heimo

   February 15, 2007 // Reply

   Yes – Iran is a beautiful country with a great ancient culture – politics is another story – I’ll send the link to that video to my Iranian friend G. ,who keeps telling me, that politics is a prostitute, but he also told me so often about the beauties of his home country & especially his hometown Babolzar at the Caspian Sea.
3. 

   G.

   February 16, 2007 // Reply

   Yes,indeed,Iran is a beautiful country and has good people,pity Khamenei,Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs are destroying Iran

   http://www.omedia.org/Show_Doc.asp?MenuID=825
4. 

   Jina

   February 16, 2007 // Reply

   That petition made me laugh. Replace Iran with America or Israel and most if it will apply to them also.
5. 

   Heimo

   February 16, 2007 // Reply

   & France ist beautiful too – in fact all countries in the world are too beautiful to be destroyed!
6. 

   Liora

   February 16, 2007 // Reply

   Hi Jina,

   Although the spirit of the letter/petition is a good one, in my opinion, I agree that the approach can be taken the way you did. If I were going to write an open letter to the people of Iran, I would talk about the beautiful country and the proud Persian history of arts, letters and tolerance that the world knows nothing about given the negative attention the country is getting now. I agree that the US has a history of proactively demonizing Iran, but also feel that the government of Iran has at various times over the last 30 years, stoked the fire. The important thing, as Heimo says above, is to remember that all countries are beautiful. And that War affects people more than it affects governments.
7. 

   Jina

   February 16, 2007 // Reply

   Liora, the thing that I found was that the petition is threatening the people of Iran with violence instead of pointing out the issues.

   I agree that the US has a history of proactively demonizing Iran, but also feel that the government of Iran has at various times over the last 30 years, stoked the fire.

   US just dont’ try to demonize Iran, remember the Iran-Iraq war? At least Iran didn’t make another declare war on the US. US is more confrontational with Iran than Iran with US, yet everyone blames Iran for everything. US and those who side with US supplied Iraq with weapons that destroyed that country. Stupid petitions like this will piss even the moderates off and make them support their government for the sake of unity.

   Violence breeds violence, the day the idiots realize this the day we’ll have a solution for Iran. How many times do we have to repeat the same fucking mistake to realize that what we are doing is wrong?
8. 

   Liora

   February 16, 2007 // Reply

   Jina, I agree that the approach of threatening the people with violence is not one I can get behind, as much as I wish that the Iranian people could understand that Israelis feel threatened. This approach seems conter-productive in that it threatens the Iranians right back.

   Apparently, there is a school of thought that thinks Iranians will rise up to avoid violence — my opinion, like yours, is that it will make them angry and could have the effect of turning peaceful people off completely.

   And you’re right, violence breeds violence, and there is no shortage of stories about the US defending a despot for political gain only to take him out later. Its a sad sad fact. And it ain’t helping any of us “regular” people.
9. 

   G.

   February 21, 2007 // Reply

   Btw for our Farsi-speaking friends … here is a cool radio station:
   http://www.radis.org/

   It’s estimated that it has 5 million listeners in Iran out of a total Iranian population of some 80 million.. And there’s phone-in talk show with people in Iran via a link through Europe

Leave a Comment Cancel reply