[Curios Meerkat]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...748973,00.html

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's hard-line constitutional watchdog has decided that women can run for president in June elections, state-run television reported Saturday.

Excellent news. Hopefully Iran will be the first Gulf state with a woman president.

[SimpleLife]

Originally posted by Curios Meerkat:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...748973,00.html



Excellent news. Hopefully Iran will be the first Gulf state with a woman president.

Not surprising. Iran has been on its way to democracy on its own for several years now.

Soon other countries of that area will do so.

Unless a some other country decides that they should intervene to show them "what's best"....

[Mister Elf]

Irrelevant...why do you feel you need to rip on the war in Iraq and Bush even out of context?

[The Oracle]

Originally posted by SimpleLife:
Not surprising. Iran has been on its way to democracy on its own for several years now.

Soon other countries of that area will do so.

Unless a some other country decides that they should intervene to show them "what's best"....

on it's way to democracy?! Hah! Iran is still a harsh, extremist, terror-supporting, Ayatollah-dictated nation. It's like saying North Korea is on its way to democracy.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally posted by The Oracle:
on it's way to democracy?! Hah! Iran is still a harsh, extremist, terror-supporting, Ayatollah-dictated nation. It's like saying North Korea is on its way to democracy.

Proof that the American propaganda machine is working correctly.

[The Oracle]

Originally posted by Wiskedjak:
Proof that the American propaganda machine is working correctly.

And your statement is proof of your brainwashing and the propaganda you swallow. You are ready to throw in with a bunch of terrorist misfits and nation-state failures if it servers your political dogma.

[Taliesin]

Originally posted by The Oracle:
on it's way to democracy?! Hah! Iran is still a harsh, extremist, terror-supporting, Ayatollah-dictated nation. It's like saying North Korea is on its way to democracy.

No, Curios Meerkat and Wiskedjack are right, you don't know anything about Iran:

1. Iran managed to free itself from a US-puppet-dictatorship in the seventies through a mass-driven revolution. That's comparable to the french revolution with which the french freed themselves from the absolutistic monarchy and paved the way for democracy, though it led also to political terrorism and Napoleon's dictatorship.

2. Since the revolution in the seventies the political might is nearly evenhandedly shared between a nationalistic, democratic and secular movement and the mullah-theocracy.

3. All the while since the seventies the national and secular movement has developed democratic institutions with which to organise, educate, strenghten and protect society from crimes, poverty, apathy and ignorance.

4. The mullah-regime seemed most of the time a-ok with it as long as it didn't contradict basic shia-doctrine. If it did the latter, the mullahs have/had a veto-right.

5. That's one of the two points of the mullah-regime, to keep an eye on the national, secular and democratic movement which does most of the work in Iran and issuing a veto from time to time when things seemed to contradict shia doctrine.

6. The second point of the mullah-regime is to uphold the sharia-law, espescialy in family-law but partly also in crime-law.

Taliesin

[Salah al-Din]

Just thought I'd add this here although I've posted it in another thread.

......

Here's a must read article for you.

http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durabl...ntl/intl.3.html

Highlight:

They(Jews) elect their own deputy to the 270-seat Parliament and enjoy certain rights of self-determination


Now compare that to the US's most favoured allies in the ME.

........

And watch the neo-con right wings heads go : SCHAAAAABOOM :

[jbartone]

Wasn't there a huge problem last year with Iran banning a whole heap of opposition candidates? Doesn't sound very democratic to me...

[Salah al-Din]

Originally posted by jbartone:
Wasn't there a huge problem last year with Iran banning a whole heap of opposition candidates? Doesn't sound very democratic to me...

Just compare that to the US's allies in the ME. Iran is lightyears ahead of your most "trusted" allies in the ME when it comes to democracy and the evolution of their society and democracy.

[Curios Meerkat]

Nobody is heralding Iran as a shining beacon of democracy. 15 years ago, things looked much as Oracle described - but in the mean time, a lot changed for the better.

Compared with every single state on the Gulf using the benchmark of women's rights, democratization, humanitarian laws, etc. Iran wins hands down. The first years of Khatamis presidency were marked by sweeping reforms that seemed unstoppable. After 9/11, Iran collaborated in stabilizing Afghanistan and actively hunted al-Qaeda fighters infiltrating trough their borders. There was talk of a referendum to normalize ties with the US. GWB' "axis of evil" speech slowed this trend tremendously; the hard-liners felt threatened and started an obstructionist policy that continues today, slowing down reforms - but not rolling them back.

A lot more ought to be discussed and analyzed about Iran, but the "evil enemy" country discourse in much of the West (especially the US) prevents an even-handed approach by the media. An "interesting" fact, for example, is that there are hundreds of thousands Afghan refugees in Iran, which are unwilling to go back and seem to prefer the Iranian "tyranny" much better than the new Afghan "democracy" .

This page contais a wealth of pointers on Iran, most notably about politics and history.