A house divided can never stand. This is Masophers warning to Europe’s ambitions. Like modern China, Europe is undertaking a grand social experiment. China’s social experiments had its share of abysmal failures under Mao and Deng Xiaoping even as it has achieved monumental successes. The United States for all its bravado also has had some historic failures particularly in the area of fighting ideological battles against guerrilla forces on their home turf.
However where China and America differ from Europe is the inherent unity of these entities while Europe timelessly displays none. Divisions over Kosovo, Afghanistan, energy, farmers subsidies, banking regulations, economy, government, borders; Europe has more intellectual fissures than it has borders. Each country is deeply divided internally and nightmarishly complex externally. The right of the UK divorces itself from the right in the main body of Europe, countries flat our refusing to integrate financially despite the web of illegal and legal financial networks that bind them, no consensus on….well anything.
Militarily, economically Europe remains a vassal of the United States and a peon of Russia. Any global or regional investment or conflict must, by necessity include these two powers because without them there can be no force.
There is no use saying never or wondering ever with these things. Europe could easily fall under the influence of a charismatic regional personality and unite to some common goal but as at this moment Europe has no personalities and no goals. When the most talked about leaders are philandering Italians, impotent Englishmen, scrambling Germans and power hungry French all being threatened by ominous Russians then Europe has not advanced passed the unity seen in the early 20th or early 19th Centuries. The sundry of upstart nations, behind the scene monarchies and poor relative countries scarce deserve mention as they too have always been this way.
Forget for now Europe playing a part in the global stage, individual European countries scarcely have parts in each others actions. Except for the massive spending the countries themselves have very little hand in their own parochial affairs.
Masopher has remained rather quiet lately. Mostly because he is busy but partly due to shame. Masopher watched ancient Persia as it grew in status and declined into a comfortable but backward state of religiousness. He applauded the revolution in 1979 and watched with fascination the spiral of influence that moment induced globally. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan; these nightmares are almost a direct result of regional and global reactions to 1979.
The recent elections were an opportunity for Iran to prove 2 things, one that they did in fact have democratic processes and two, that these processes were accepted by ALL Iranians as the only method by which governmental power is transfered or retained. Somewhere along the way Iranians forgot that others were watching with a certain amount of schadenfreude. Could it have been spies and sabateurs? Spies and sabateurs were most certainly there. Israel puts them there and the US congress bankrolls it unashamedly. Among all the reporters flocking there from real to fake news (the daily show on comedy central) to just plain fake it is was inevitable that there were many there that were identifying areas of opportunity and disruption. But no amount of spies and cyber campaigns can artificially create the general feeling of disappointment and betrayal that Iranian moderates feel. Was the vote stolen? Elections get slanted regularly, in many countries. Not least of all the US in 2000 or even the 2008 “fair” elections where the winning candidate spent 10 times the amount of the loser. Iran usually “votes” at the will of the Ayatolla anyway and Khameni clearly favored Ahmedinejad. But an overwhelming amount of independent polls predicted a large Ahmedinejhad victory exactly as it turned out.
It is shameful that Iran could not excercise peaceful Muslim republicanism. The three words should not be strangers.
Stolen or not Iranians showed the world that they are still more than willing to tear down anything that they disbelieve, even themselves. They tore the Shah down in 79′ and they tore down the US Iraqi invasion in 2005-07; they tore down Teran and their fellow countrymen who voted conservatively in 2009 and they will tear down any government that fails to pacify them, secular religious or otherwise.
It is also shameful that despite all the good intentions of moderates and progressives they will still couch their words to please the extreemists and that obvious anti-Iranian smear campaigns will be used to renew schisms further delaying the peace process. Hardliners in Jerusalem Washington and Teran benefit from continued estrangement as an excuse to continue the ongoing military standoff between the three countries.
It is a shame that even when there are so many people wanting to do right the few that want to do wrong are still getting thier way even when it is to the detriment and delay of progress.
What kind of backward pretentious hypocritical farce allows unelected religious zealots to dictate the fate of a country? These archaic men in an archaic institution hold supreme power over the direction of the country and who dictate unopposed by any. Their word is law and they hold permanent tyrannical power no matter who gets elected. Despite their radical beliefs and dangerous religious ideologies they are held unopposed by democracy, unopposed by freedom, speaking as if their mouths utter the words of God. I am referring here to the United States Supreme court and the British House of Lords.
Iran’s main problems are isolation and ambition, not its politics. There are far more undemocratic systems actively supported and traded with so let’s not fool ourselves. The empire and former empire pushing for regime change are both run in essence by similar mixes of permanent (stable?) rule alongside elected officials and it is ridiculous to think that removing the Ayotollah, Imams and clerics would do anything but destabilize and weaken the Persian people. But that is perhaps exactly what is desired: To turn another country into a mix of junta, oligarchy and dictatorship; so that peacemakers and “peacekeepers” have jobs and markets to export their vile liberal socialism, or murderous capitalism to.
But Iran cannot end its isolation until its people signal that moderation and tit-for-tat will be the language that they come to the bargaining table with. Unfortunately foot in mouth, tainted Ahmedinejad will be the spokesman. His “anti-semetism” and “nuclear bomb threats” have been sewn and planted in the fertile soil of the global imagination and will not be easy to get uproot. Iran’s support for Hezbollah and reported supporting of militants in Oman and Yemen also will be permanent black marks on their record. The intelligence leading to the latter is in Masopher’s mind, questionable, but it is safe to say Iran is by no means benign in its regional and global aspirations.
There is little room at the top for Iran. The US, UK, Western Europe, Russia, China, Japan, they are jealously guarding their military might and global influence and advantages. For a “middle eastern” country with no “sponsor” to join the ranks it is unthinkable. That is why “regime change” quickly comes to peoples lips; that is why Iran is one of the usual suspects behind any orchestrated violence throughout the world: it is not Iran’s politics or religion that must be put down, it is its’ ambition.
