Lip Glossed

From Dissident Voice:

Behind Enemy Lines
by Carl Doerner / October 9th, 2007

Fewer than a thousand Americans visit Iran each year. An informational black hole is thus created into which those who seek to harm the people and institutions of that country and diminish its resources pour disinformation and propaganda. Western politicians and media generate an image of a country as bleak and unfriendly as North Korea. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I traveled there in May as documentarian with a group of 14 “citizen diplomats,” whose purpose was to demonstrate the friendship of ordinary Americans, and to experience Iran. Beyond Tehran, we visited Yazd, Shiraz, Esfahan, and Natanz. Religion is a subject at a middle school we visited, much as it has always been in parochial schools in this country — another, dedicated to training mullahs is like seminaries in the West. The Council on Foreign Affairs dispels the myth that terrorism is taught in these places.

President Ahmadinejad’s 2006 International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust, giving a forum to both Jews hostile to Zionism and outright Holocaust deniers, was indefensible — yet is part of this fabric of defense against the West. His own two speeches about Israel and the Holocaust have been deliberately misinterpreted in the western press.

With respect to Israel, his endorsement of Ayatollah Khomenini’s phrase “wiped off the map” referred not to Jews or to the State of Israel but to the Israeli government, specifically “this regime occupying Jerusalem.”

Human rights is a very thorny issue, as is the supreme rule of the ayatollahs. At the former, the US has also been failing. “Democracy” is defined locally. At least the mullahs who select the ayatollahs are popularly elected.

Sharia law, derived from the Koran, proscribes alcohol, drugs, pork, and gambling, and covering of women is enforced, but religious observance springs from people, not the state. This is a deeply spiritual people and in the great mosques, as in our cathedrals, faith encompasses the visitor.

Iran is a place of deep cultural roots and history. Persepolis, Esfahan’s splendid mosques, and the ancient bridges of Shiraz, are world treasures, to be preserved. These and the splendid people we met must be spared the savage warfare witnessed in Iraq.

One member of our touring group, Leslie Angeline, responded to Senator Lieberman’s call for attacking Iran with a hunger strike. To date, her Gandhian effort to meet with him to describe a country he knows so little about has been rebuffed.

---------I know an Iranian female physician who has been in the States 20 years. The doctor's description of life in Iran is not quite as splendid as the above "citizen diplomats." Older Iranians, such as the doctor, tend to favor the US over the mullahs and current Iranian leaders, but as 70 percent of the Iran population is now under age 30, the pro-West Iranians are a dying breed.

Of course Iran's government is none of US business and it's up to Iranians to change or abide their rules and rulers. And as stated here many times previously I don't believe Iran is a threat, nor do I believe the US will attack Iran.

The Dissident Voice piece above is a good example of liberal stupid; common among ordinary American progressive "dissidents." They will put lipstick on a pig and French kiss it. Ms Angeline's Gandhian effort hunger strike to meet Joe Lieberman and describe Iran to him (after a week or two filming escorted by the Iranian government) ? Grow up. Sharia law proscribes a lot more than pork and liquor.

You see, although I believe the US has no right to interfere in Iran's internal affairs - I have a problem finding anything nice to say about governments who lynch citizens, especially children, or the "dissidents" who defend them using a lot of lip gloss.