Journalists are often scorned - and probably, in many instances, rightly so.
Two journalists have shown what good journalism - and analysis of events - can be, in reporting from Iran, obviously under very difficult and dangerous circumstances.
First Roger Cohen, in The NY Times in "Life and Death in Tehran":
"Tehran, cradled in its mountainous amphitheater, is holding its breath. Sunday was quiet, Monday a little less so. Still, as night falls, the defiant cries of “Death to the dictator” and “Allah-u-Akbar” (“God is great”) reverberate between high rises.
In this pregnant lull, I keep hearing three questions: Will Mir Hussein Moussavi lead? How powerful are the internal divisions of the revolutionary establishment? And what is the ultimate goal of the uprising?
On the answers will hinge the outcome of this latest fervid expression of Iran’s centennial quest for pluralistic freedom.
After the shootings Saturday evening that took several lives, Moussavi seemed absent. The bespectacled revolutionary leader thrust now into defiance was silent. Disappointed in 1999 and 2003 by the legalistic kowtowing of the reformist former president, Mohammad Khatami, people feared resignation redux, even if Moussavi has declared the vote “null and void.”
At The Independent it is the redoubtable Robert Fisk in "Symbols are not enough to win this battle":
"You don't overthrow Islamic revolutions with car headlights. And definitely not with candles. Peaceful protest might have served Gandhi well, but the Supreme Leader's Iran is not going to worry about a few thousand demonstrators on the streets, even if they do cry "Allahu Akbar" from their rooftops every night.
This chorus to God emanated from the rooftops of Kandahar every night after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 – I heard it myself in Kandahar and I heard it last week over the rooftops of Tehran – but it no more stopped the Russians in their tracks than it is going to stop the Basiji or Revolutionary Guards. Symbols are not enough.
Yesterday, the Revolutionary Guards – as unelected as they are unrepresentative of today's massed youth of Iran – uttered their disgraceful threat to deal with "rioters" in "a revolutionary way".
Everyone in Iran, even those too young to remember the 1988 slaughter of the regime's opponents – when tens of thousands were hanged like thrushes on mass gallows – knows what this means.
Unleashing a rabble of armed government forces on to the streets and claiming that all whom they shoot are "terrorists" is an almost copy-cat perfect version of the Israeli army's public reaction to the Palestinian intifada. If stone-throwing demonstrators are shot dead, then it is their own fault, they are breaking the law and they are working for foreign powers."
Two journalists have shown what good journalism - and analysis of events - can be, in reporting from Iran, obviously under very difficult and dangerous circumstances.
First Roger Cohen, in The NY Times in "Life and Death in Tehran":
"Tehran, cradled in its mountainous amphitheater, is holding its breath. Sunday was quiet, Monday a little less so. Still, as night falls, the defiant cries of “Death to the dictator” and “Allah-u-Akbar” (“God is great”) reverberate between high rises.
In this pregnant lull, I keep hearing three questions: Will Mir Hussein Moussavi lead? How powerful are the internal divisions of the revolutionary establishment? And what is the ultimate goal of the uprising?
On the answers will hinge the outcome of this latest fervid expression of Iran’s centennial quest for pluralistic freedom.
After the shootings Saturday evening that took several lives, Moussavi seemed absent. The bespectacled revolutionary leader thrust now into defiance was silent. Disappointed in 1999 and 2003 by the legalistic kowtowing of the reformist former president, Mohammad Khatami, people feared resignation redux, even if Moussavi has declared the vote “null and void.”
At The Independent it is the redoubtable Robert Fisk in "Symbols are not enough to win this battle":
"You don't overthrow Islamic revolutions with car headlights. And definitely not with candles. Peaceful protest might have served Gandhi well, but the Supreme Leader's Iran is not going to worry about a few thousand demonstrators on the streets, even if they do cry "Allahu Akbar" from their rooftops every night.
This chorus to God emanated from the rooftops of Kandahar every night after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 – I heard it myself in Kandahar and I heard it last week over the rooftops of Tehran – but it no more stopped the Russians in their tracks than it is going to stop the Basiji or Revolutionary Guards. Symbols are not enough.
Yesterday, the Revolutionary Guards – as unelected as they are unrepresentative of today's massed youth of Iran – uttered their disgraceful threat to deal with "rioters" in "a revolutionary way".
Everyone in Iran, even those too young to remember the 1988 slaughter of the regime's opponents – when tens of thousands were hanged like thrushes on mass gallows – knows what this means.
Unleashing a rabble of armed government forces on to the streets and claiming that all whom they shoot are "terrorists" is an almost copy-cat perfect version of the Israeli army's public reaction to the Palestinian intifada. If stone-throwing demonstrators are shot dead, then it is their own fault, they are breaking the law and they are working for foreign powers."
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