Originally written by Nanna Mercer on July 3, 2009 5:49 AM The mass hysteria relating to MJ's death is out of all proportion.

It certainly does not feel this way, in New York. People are genuinely upset and celebrate his legacy.

Which brings us back to Michael Jackson's death, an undoubted God's crime against humanity, which eclipsed what was going on in Iran.

MJ did not "eclipse" what was going on in Iran; the Iran story petered out of its own accord.  This was a failed uprising, and the regime has proven to be stronger than its opponents had hoped.

I disagree. I think that the protest movement might have lost a battle, but won the war. There is no doubt that the regime is riven with internal divisions, and I think that the status quo will never be the same. The entire world, and the so-called "Muslim world" has seen that the mullahs are not representative of the people. How do you think it played on TV in Cairo, Damascus, Tunisia, Morrocco, Malaysia, and Indonesia to see thousands of young people - the future of the country, chanting "Allah Akbar !" and being beaten down by riot police with sticks. Do you think that helped the mullahs, or hurt them ?

Originally written by John Bunch on July 3, 2009 6:52 PM How do you think it played on TV in Cairo, Damascus, Tunisia, Morrocco, Malaysia, and Indonesia to see thousands of young people - the future of the country, chanting "Allah Akbar !" and being beaten down by riot police with sticks. Do you think that helped the mullahs, or hurt them

You have a very odd view of Islam, John! You seem to be forgetting that the Iranians are Shi'ites. At an average Ashura commemorating the death of the Imam Hussein, you would see far more beatings and bloodshed than at a hundred election protests. Even little children are out there on the streets beating themselves raw with steel chains ...

... and having their scalps cut open with swords.

I bet that the Iranian election protest street scenes with a few motor tires and some garbage containers being burned in the streets would have aroused nothing much more than polite yawns in most Moslem communities.

Derek

Originally written by John Bunch on July 4, 2009 2:52 AM The entire world, and the so-called "Muslim world" has seen that the mullahs are not representative of the people. How do you think it played on TV in Cairo, Damascus, Tunisia, Morrocco, Malaysia, and Indonesia to see thousands of young people - the future of the country, chanting "Allah Akbar !" and being beaten down by riot police with sticks.

Did the military coup in Honduras against a democratically-elected president get into the average American minds? Did the much longer-running street demonstrations (with deaths too) in Thailand get much coverage in America?

Probably not. They are not considered a threat to America at all. So why would the internal situation get played up in countries that do not consider Iran to be a threat to them?

In Malaysia, the only photo of significance seemed to be the demonstrations by Iranian students at the UN office here in Malaysia which caused a traffic jam and was dispersed by riot police firing tear gas, and a warning from the authorities not to bring the conflcit into Malaysia.

Originally written by John Bunch on July 3, 2009 8:06 PM There is a huge difference between someone doing that to himself, and cop beating someone with a club.

No, there isn't, there is hardly any objective difference. If you go out onto the street knowing that riot police are waiting there to crack a few skulls, then you are effectively doing it to yourself. Stop home and watch it on the TV and it is less exciting but you are not in the front row and you won't get the bite of the tear gas in your nose.

Cops beating someone with a club is not such an unusual event in most countries, not even in the USA. You might have lived a sheltered life, of course.

In Iran it is (or was in my time) even less of an unusual event, election or no election. For example, when I was living in a house in Ahwaz in the south, one day we were awoken in the middle of the siesta by a woman shrieking outside. Eventually I got annoyed and went to the gate opening onto an alley. There what I judged to be a Somali woman was screaming her head off and gesticulating wildly. I had no idea what it was all about and I tried to quiet her but she only screamed louder. At that moment, I saw a policeman crossing at the head of the alley and he stopped to see what was going on. I made some kind of a signal to him that I was not touching her in any way and he came towards us. He listened to her for a while then he looked at me. I just stared back. He then lifted his baton, swung it around and hit her in the face with full force. I can hear the cracking sound and see the blood spurting out to this day. She fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. I can't even describe how I felt but I opened my mouth to say something and our cook pulled me back into the yard whispering that if I said anything, the policeman would hit me in the same way. We shut the gate. She was still moaning outside a good hour later but she was gone by the morning. The memory stays with me because I was personally involved but it was not such an unusual event in Iran on the whole.

Originally written by John Bunch on July 3, 2009 8:06 PM Or would you say that what the U.S. did at Abu Ghraib is o.k., because Muslims have a tradition of violence against them ?

I would not claim for a moment that what happened at Abu Ghraib was done by the "U.S.". It was done by a few hoodlums, encouraged indirectly by one Donald Rumsfeld. They could have been of any nationality, abuse of prisoners is nobody's monopoly. The only special aspect of Abu Ghraib was that some idiot took pictures and left them on a computer belonging to the US government. After that there was no way that it could be covered up otherwise it would have been, I am quite sure of that. Something like Nixon and his tapes. Most people take care not to leave any irrefutable evidence lying around.

Derek

Originally written by John Bunch I disagree. I think that the protest movement might have lost a battle, but won the war. There is no doubt that the regime is riven with internal divisions, and I think that the status quo will never be the same. The entire world, and the so-called "Muslim world" has seen that the mullahs are not representative of the people. How do you think it played on TV in Cairo, Damascus, Tunisia, Morrocco, Malaysia, and Indonesia to see thousands of young people - the future of the country, chanting "Allah Akbar !" and being beaten down by riot police with sticks. Do you think that helped the mullahs, or hurt them ?

The regime has indeed had its image damaged, but Iran's leaders are really mostly concerned about how the EU sees it - the EU being an important trading partner and one that is open to reasonable discourse with Iran, unlike, say, the US.  Iran is not particularly concerned with how Sunni Muslims - the kind in all the places you mentioned - see them.

I would agree that the status quo won't be the same, but it never is.  This incident indeed suggests that the regime faces serious problems.  For now the regime is more powerful than the forces opposed to it.  The balance of power is likely to shift.  This is not unusual, of course.  The 1917 Russian Revolution was presaged by the failed abortive uprising of 1905.

I must say that I find the suggestion that police brutality can be justified because people make self-inflicted religiously symbolic wounds to be rather strange.  A person who voluntarily decides to inflict a wound on himself for a religious person does not thereby consent to the police beating him for political purposes.  That being said, it is interesting to note that religious self-mutilation does seem to be much more common in authoritarian states than in (relatively) freer ones.

Originally written by David Kallans on July 3, 2009 9:33 PM I must say that I find the suggestion that police brutality can be justified because people make self-inflicted religiously symbolic wounds to be rather strange.  A person who voluntarily decides to inflict a wound on himself for a religious person does not thereby consent to the police beating him for political purposes.

I didn't claim that police brutality could be justified because people make self-inflicted religiously symbolic wounds. Police brutality does not have to be justified or condemned, what good does that do? Police brutality happens, in fact brutality happens generally, what point is there in trying to justify it or condemn it? None at all. And nobody is asked to consent to being beaten by the police in most jurisdictions. I was once given some totally unjustifiable heavy blows, including a bleeding nose, by bad-tempered British police trying to control the crowd coming out of a football match (Chelsea at Stamford Bridge). I don't recall being asked if I consented or not.

The question John asked concerned how we thought the coverage "played out on TV" in the places he mentioned (people chanting "Allah Akbar !" and being beaten down by riot police with sticks) and whether the audience reaction "helped the mullahs, or hurt them?" My point was that objectively there is little difference between scenes of people chanting "Allah Akbar !" and being beaten by religious fanatics or being beaten by riot police, the TV pictures of it are similar. How were they going to change people's opinions about the Iranian mullahs? Was anybody in those places under the impression that the Iranian mullahs were stout defenders of human rights and the dignity of the human spirit and had therefore been terribly disappointed and shocked by a little TV riot control footage? I very much doubt it. Somebody is being rather naive here, I fear.

Derek