I condemn this petition and consider it despotism

http://www.ghandchi.com/213-condemnpetition.htm

Please look at the following petition.

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?rsobhani

1. I do not know Rob Sobhani but just have read articles by some people who claim Rob is working with RP and they claim that he is supposed to be RP's prime minister or president. Some others have told me Rob Sobhani works for the US.

2. Imagine that they are right. I think they have all the rights to expose Rob Sobhani in political arguments and prove their point to their audience.

3. But they have created the above petition about some words the man has used and are asking the university the man teaches at to fire the guy.

4. I call this a cheap shot to hurt someone at their job because we have political differences with them, when we cannot win the political dialogue.

5. I condemn those who are behind this cowardly petition. This is not for human rights. This is the mentality that thinks if despotism is done by those who call themselves opponents of monarchy, it is OK.

6. I would feel a double pain that the people behind this cowardly petition call themselves close to political and organizational identities that I may be seen as.

7. We should fight the mentality that thinks "End Justifies the Means" and we should feel worse that the one doing that is closer to us politically or organizationally. In fact, because I am getting a feeling that those behind this petition are some of the people I consider closer to myself than the monarchists, I feel the same way that I felt when some people did hostage-taking in Iran and as an Iranian I felt ashamed, and also when others in the progressive movement supported that atrocity and as a part of Iran's progressive movement I felt ashamed, although I always condemned the hostage-taking from day one and never supported that savage act even when condemning it was dangerous both because of the IRI threat and because of the IRI opposition mostly siding with it.

8. When are we going to stand up to "End Justifying the Means"??

http://www.ghandchi.com/43-End_Means.htm

9. BTW among the signatories I see a number of IRI lobbyists and IRI agents.

I am really sad to see this.

Sam Ghandchi, Publisher/Editor
IRANSCOPE
http://www.ghandchi.com
June 3, 2003

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P.S. June 9, 2003.  This petition is more than what it seems in the first look. This is what the IRI lobbyists are doing by raising the monarchy issue everywhere to justify their new stand. A big part of them are moving towards MojAhdedine EnghelAbe EslAmi, following the break up of the Khatami camp. And this way they are losing the little bit of Islamic "liberalism" of Khatami that they had and are following the likes of Aghajari who even under his own death threat, still supported Khomeini's death threat against Salman Rushdie.  The MojAhedine EnghelAbe EslAmi are driving a fascist program to replace Khatami with massive nationalizations, as the cure to fix the current crisis inside Iran. They are trying to make a new Baathist government in Iran. They also have the support of a large group of leftists who are looking for semi-socialism, which we had seen in Arab Socialism of the likes of Hafez Assad, and they are all doing these under the flag of republic, trying to use the issue of monarchy to mislead people about the Baathist republic they want to push on Iran.  It is ironic that if this Shi'a semi-Protestantism wins, these people will very possibly align with MKO. It is ironic because most of IRI lobbyists who have been supporting the IRI reformist position all these years, was in their abomination of MKO, and now with this new split of IRI reformists, they are landing where they would not expect to land.  Please be careful when these Islamists and leftists are calling the long-time anti-monarchist activists as monarchy-sympathizer to hide the real intentions of this new breed of melli-mazhabi which is another kind of Baathist program for Iran.