Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The Making of a "Resistance Parliament" and the Challenges Ahead

"A recent “Letter Against US Imperialism” by leftist intellectuals such as Angela Davis, Vijay Prashad, Robin Kelley, and Hamid Dabashi denounces the latest Iranian mass uprising and continues the old pattern. It attributes the latest protests in Iran to “Iranian native informants and cheerleaders who serve as functionaries of US imperialism.” It argues that the Iranian masses only want “stability” and “reform” but not regime change. The claims in the letter simply do not match the reality on the ground." Shameful, to say the least.  Why the latest uprising in Iran matters

Sanctions work : One day, "the revolutionary American regime" will be boasting: "we instigated a revolution in Iran to protect our interests, Israel's interests, and Saudi ones, and helped give freedom to the Iranians," the way it has helped the Venezuelans, the Hondurans, the Iraqis, the Afghanis and others.

"The melancholy songs of Pashaei represent the gloomy mood of a generation that feels it has got the blues. This “blue generation” feels cheated by a corrupt autocracy and has little faith in existing political ideologies. The main distinguishing feature of their political sensibility is the lack of any form of emotional attachment or sense of belonging to the political institutions or culture of post-revolutionary Iran. The blue generation inscribes itself in the short temporality of the last ten to fifteen years, therefore its experience of post revolutionary Iran has been of rampant corruption, lack of social freedoms, government inefficiency, religious tyranny, and curtailment of basic individual rights." A "Blue" Generation and Protests in Iran

Iran update The economic problems this creates are serious. Youth unemployment stands at about 40%, more than 3 million Iranians are jobless and the prices of some basic food items, such as poultry and eggs, have recently soared by almost half. “This has started from the bottom of the society, from the less fortunate,” Reza, a Mashhad resident, said. “This is not middle-class protesting, this is lower-class demonstrating, people of the suburbs. Many are fed up with situation. (The Guardian, 31 December 2017) It looks that, unlike 2009 movement, this one is not middle-class-based protest movement.