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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 17-Feb-2010
17-Feb-10 News - Clinton: Iran heads for military dictatorship

Web Log - February, 2010

17-Feb-10 News - Clinton: Iran heads for military dictatorship

Questions raised about capture of Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar

Revolutionary Guards in Iran's government - military dictatorship?

After Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday that Iran is turning into a "military dictatorship," Der Spiegel did an article analyzing the power of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, also known as the Pasdaran.

Pasdaran - Iran's Revolutionary Guards is extended into all of Iran's key power centers <font size=-2>(Source: Spiegel)</font>

Pasdaran - Iran's Revolutionary Guards is extended into all of Iran's key power centers (Source: Spiegel)

According to the article, the organization is "both powerful and clouded in secrecy: the Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Islami, or Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, which has defended the theocracy against its enemies -- including its domestic opponents -- for the past 30 years. Like an octopus, the Pasdaran, also know as the Revolutionary Guards, has its arms extended into all of Iran's key power centers. It controls important economic sectors, including the nuclear industry, and it is more effective than the regular army. Wherever it goes, it acts as the extended arm of the regime."

This raises a possibility that I hadn't considered before.

I've repeatedly said that Iran is in a generational Awakening era, pitting the young post-war generation (referring to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the 1980s Iran/Iraq war) against their parents, the hardline survivors of that war. I've frequently pointed out that the young people had to win, simply because the older generation will die off.

However, the new possibility is that the winner of this confrontation will be the Pasdaran (the Revolutionary Guards), rather that what we now call the "opposition." The new analysis, still speculative, is as follows: The young generation is associated with the "Green movement" or "opposition movement," but the people in the same generation are also increasingly in control of the Pasdaran. The ultimate battle then would not be between the Greens and the government, as I'd previously assumed, but between the Greens and Pasdaran, with the old-line government becoming increasingly irrelevant.

What Hillary Clinton is saying is that the Pasdaran are going to win that war.

However, that doesn't change another major conclusion that I've discussed many times: That when Iran is forced to choose sides in the Clash of Civilizations world war, then Iran will choose the West over China.

The young people in Iran's post-revolution generation are very deeply wedded to Western culture, and this would be true of young people in the Green movement and young people in the Pasdaran.

Cash-strapped Utah may cut 12th grade from high school

Is 12th grade a waste of time? That's the question being asked in Utah, according to the LA Times.

Parents are against the proposal, students are against it, and teachers are against it. But the state faces a $700 million budget deficit, and cutting 12th grade would chip away at it.

Stories like this always remind me of a remark by one of my school teachers in the 1950s. Her name was Miss Shepherd, and she had a wooden leg -- I assume she lost her leg in the war, but I don't know. One day out of the blue she said, "People think that if you have a job as a schoolteacher, then your job is safe, because they always need schoolteachers. But that isn't what happened in the 1930s. They would put two or three classes together in a single room, and replace three teachers with just one teacher." That's all I remember, except that she was very emotional when she said it -- a combination of anger and sadness.

I guess that would be another solution for Utah, and other states. Instead of eliminating an entire grade, make the class sizes bigger in all grades. As the financial crisis worsens, states will have to make more and more painful decisions of this kind.

Was Mullah Baradar a friend or a foe?

The capture in Karachi of Taliban's second in command, Mullah Baradar, has been worldwide news in the last couple of days.

According to the Times Online:

"Known as a brilliant military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is the second most powerful figure in the Afghan Taleban. He is thought to have spearheaded their use of roadside bombs, the cause of a steep rise in Nato casualties over the past two years, and helped rebuild them as an effective guerrilla force."

Everyone seems to agree that this is a major victory for the West, and it probably is. He's the most senior Taliban leader arrested since 9/11, and the capture proves that Pakistan is willing to capture old friends in the Taliban, which Washington has been requesting for years. The capture was a joint effort by Pakistani Intelligence in cooperation with American special forces. The Pakistanis are now interrogating him, and it's hoped that he will provide a great deal of useful information.

But there's some confusion, because there appears to be another side to this story.

It has been an objective of some elements of Afghanistan war effort to talk to the Taliban in order to effect some kind of negotiated peace. In fact, there was a meeting in Dubai in January between the United Nations and Taliban officials, as reported by The Guardian.

There are rumors that it was Baradar who was in Dubai at that meeting, (Radio Netherlands), sent as an envoy by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and that he was part of the negotiated peace effort.

This may or may not make the Pakistanis happy, as they don't get along with Karzai very well.

At any rate, it seems that there's a lot more to this story yet to come out.

Additional Links

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says in The Telegraph that "As of today, the British government must pay a higher interest rate to borrow money for ten years than either the Italian or the Spanish governments, despite the extraordinary ructions going on within the eurozone." He adds that "I have a very nasty feeling that markets are about to pounce on Britain. All they are waiting for is a trigger..." Interestingly enough, he blames the problems on both the Labour Party and the Conservatives (Tories), though the Telegraph tends to be a Tory newspaper. This is the same kind of political realignment we're seeing with America's Tea Party movement.

"The Tea Party movement defies easy definition, largely because there is no single Tea Party. At the grass-roots level, it consists of hundreds of autonomous Tea Party groups, widely varying in size and priorities, each influenced by the peculiarities of local history." This NY Times describes many of the different, often conflicting priorities, ranging from decent, genuinely concerned citizens to rightist loons. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, once the real crisis begins, all of these conflicting priorities will be synthesized into a new direction, based on national survival.

The People's Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I now live, is planning to impose new laws to respond to a "climate emergency," according to Fox News. The plans are to eliminate curbside parking, a carbon tax "of some kind," taxes on plastic and paper bags, and advocating vegetarianism and veganism, complete with "Meatless or Vegan Mondays." I can hardly wait.

Credit card issuers are again beginning to increase the number of offers that they send out to American households. NY Times. However, credit card holders are being squeezed by the highest interest rates in more than a decade, according to Times Online.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Feb-10 News - Clinton: Iran heads for military dictatorship thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (17-Feb-2010) Permanent Link
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