Monday 8 June 2009

influencing iran

i have a couple of posts up at the hand mirror today, one on asian women's cancer screening rates and the other on a new study being carried out on pre-trial and trial processes in sexual violence cases.

going back to yesterday's topic, there was some good discussion (initially, deteriorated to some pretty nasty islamophobic ranting later on) about mr obama's speech at larvatus prodeo. i found this comment particularly interesting:

...Iran would be considered an Arabic Muslim country yes, it just happens to be Shiite rather than Sunni. And yes, he was most definitely talking to the Iranians, from the blunt speech on anti-semitism & holocaust denial & nuclear non-proliferation, to the clever but nevertheless startling admission that the USA had a hand (although Obama rather modestly described what was essentially a CIA led coup) in the 1953 overthrow of the Shah.

I’m thinking Katz [a previous commentor] would say all that was aimed at influencing Iranians towards more moderate candidates in the upcoming elections in Iran, by undermining the whole ‘great satan’ premise of the USA put forward by the current Iranian pres (or is he PM, I forget).

which is indeed a possibility, and it will be interesting to see whether or not the speech has an impact on the iranian elections.

6 comments:

DPF:TLDR said...

Wow.

Iran is most definitely -not- an Arabic country. Iranians are not of Arabic ethnicity and don't speak the Arabic language (except in a religious context)

Anonymous said...

Ummm...Iran is not "Arabic".

stargazer said...

yeah, i know that. iranians are persians & speak farsi. it's the a few of the good folk at larvatus prodeo who appear to be a little confused.

DPF:TLDR said...

Just kind of surprised you quoted something incorrect without taking the time to correct it.

stargazer said...

because i was focusing on other parts of the comment i suppose so didn't bother, and because i'd linked back to the original post (with comments), where the corrections did eventually appear. and because it was really late & i was trying to keep two blogs going at the same time (along with having a labour party meeting and a teleconference & cooking to do the same night) so was just a little worn out. is that enough excuses? :)

DPF:TLDR said...

Thanks for the explanation, and sorry if I seemed like I was taking you to task.

But the Iranians = Arabs error is quite a common one (albeit usually one made by anglo-saxons with no experience of the Middle East), so I was a bit shocked to see it reproduced here!