Iranian Dissident and Former Political Prisoner Akbar Ganji on Why He Refused to Meet Bush

Ganji et al. are hoplessly out of touch with the masses of Iran - the only people who pay any attention to these guys are here in the United States.

The reason for this is pretty simple, these guys have little or no real roots with the working class of Iran - and infact, some of them, like Shirin Ebadi - have pandered to the world bank - and Ganji to the UN (i.e. the US).

Following is a good left critique of the reformists. The idea that the secularists would win in Iran is absurd - if the reformist backed candidates can only garner a bare few % points - what makes this guy think the secularists (backed by American liberals) would win?!!! Same out of touch mentality, as the rest of the "mid-east" secularists.

But you know, what like the resistence in Lebanon, like the resistence in Palestine, and elsewhere - the Muslim masses don't need and don't want the American liberals support or approval - go vote for your Clintons and Kuciniches and and hang out with paper "movement leaders" and what not... enjoy your little democratic game.

http://almusawwir.org/2006/05/27/a-secular-left-critique-of-shirin-ebadi/

Ordinary Iranians need not be historians to know that advance of the so-called free-market “democracy” is, on the contrary, accomplished by systematic uprooting and brutality in the name of law. They experienced it during the rule of the deposed Shah and they have seen it in Indochina, Indonesia, South Africa, Chile, Nicaragua, Colombia, Yugoslavia, Palestine, Iraq, and dozens of other blood-soaked places. That awareness explains the reluctance of the vast majority of Iranians to join you in decisive action against the current government in Iran.

In 1978-79, Iranians overpowered one of the mightiest police states the world has known with bare hands, against the wishes of global powers. I challenge you to explain why you believe our people could not do the same today, if they wished to, without the foreign help that you advocate.

Iranian reformists focus exclusively on government wrongdoing, conveniently neglecting that today’s world is equally misruled by multinational corporations which lack transparency. You have asked Western investors and their partner, the World Bank, to help correct human rights abuses in Iran. I hate to burst your bubble, Ms. Ebadi, but you are in effect asking unelected entities to teach democracy to an elected government! That is hardly a healthy way to promote transparency, because now the whole world knows that the private sector has corrupted the US government to the bone.”

A leading Iranian dissident, Akbar Ganji, has snubbed the Bush administration and criticised its policy in the region by declining to meet White House officials during his visit to the United States.

Mr Ganji said he had been invited to the White House last week to talk about the current situation in his country but declined the offer because of his disapproval of US policy towards Iran, the BBC reported.

The investigative journalist, who spent more than five years in jail for writing articles linking senior Iranian officials to the murder of dissidents in the 1990s, had travelled to the US to campaign for the release of a number of political prisoners. Mr Ganji and his supporters held a symbolic three-day hunger strike outside the United Nations headquarters in New York to put pressure on Iran to release four dissidents being held without charge in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1197259.ece