Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Old and new clash in Iran - but the issues are deep.(more..) Posted here Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 2:27:42 PM     The problem of modernization is not just democracy. It involves the choice of a market view which can be seen, both in the ME and in the US, as life and culture destroying, and the making of vast economic inequalities. The polarized worlds of reform-minded and conservative Iranians clash at an upscale mall in Tehran.   By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor   TEHRAN, IRAN – As far as Hossein is concerned, his clothing shop for women, in a mall in an upscale district of Tehran, is the front line in Iran's simmering social war. Women shopping here are reprimanded or even detained by overzealous morality police for showing too much hair. Hossein has been warned for displaying "too much red" in his window - colors known as "screaming" in Iran because they are so bright and happy.   For various infractions, he was recently forced briefly to shut down.   This mall - home turf for Iran's prosperous and disillusioned social elite - is a place where two worlds collide. On one side are young free-spirited Iranians, radicalized beyond politics against Iran's Islamic revolution and hard-line rulers.   One the other: Feared enforcers of the regime's Department of Vice and Virtue, who routinely target improper garb, pop music, and the peddling of Western influence by selling men's ties.   "I feel so sorry and hateful, to see these very stupid people who are destroying their own country with their own hands," laments Hossein, who wears a silver necklace and long, slicked-back hair. "[Hard-liners] made a very small world for themselves, and have been bombarded with ideas from people above them. The ideology has penetrated their minds. They do not know what the real world is."   Conservatives are likely to gain the advantage at the ballot box on Friday, as many pro-reformists vow to boycott the vote. Iranians under 30 make up two-thirds of the population and have voted enthusiastically for change since 1997.   ********

guns and butter - By Fareed Zakaria (for more..) Posted here Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 11:00:05 AM     Supporting the last post By Fareed Zakaria   NewsweekFeb. 16 issue - In the past two years, the united states has rediscovered the world. We've seen large increases in funding for all the instruments of American policy—military, political, economic and cultural. Spending on AIDS/HIV, tuberculosis and malaria initiatives has gone from $840 million in 2001 to a projected $2 billion in 2004. Whether you like or dislike specific aspects of George Bush's foreign policy, there's no denying he has outlined an ambitious role for America in the world. Except that within a few years this policy is likely to collapse.   No, the problem isn't Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the French. The greatest threat to America's primacy in the world comes not from its overseas commitments, explains the historian Niall Ferguson in his smart forthcoming book "Colossus": "It is the result of America's chronically unbalanced domestic finances." The mounting federal budget deficits that now stretch out as far as the eye can see will mean—if history is any guide—sharp cutbacks in American military and foreign-affairs spending. We will see a forced retreat of America's foreign policy similar to the years after the Vietnam War—only the cuts this time are likely to be much, much deeper and the resulting chaos far greater.   ********