AL gets letters:

A friend writes from Tehran:

Here the political weather is terrible. You might know that the parliamentary election is near and the reformist nearly are not allowed to be involved. About 80 per cent of reformist candidates has been labeled as unqualified by the Government. Mr Khatami and Rafsanjani had a meeting with the Supreme Leader but it had no fruit. We are waiting for much worse days.

The Iranian film festival has been just finished with no movie by great directors of the country. All movies were about Islam, religious rites and Imams. Good for Ahmadinejad!

I love my country but i really hate it. That’s iranian life. Always dealing with dilemmas.

To which I’d like to respond:

Dear Iranian Friend:

Here the political currents are terrible. You might know that the elections are coming up and the progressives are not really allowed to be involved. About 80% of our primary process is corrupted by insider dealing, undemocratic structure, and flat out disenfranchisement of selected groups of voters. In the fall, some of us will be very lacking in confidence that our votes even got counted. Another 80% of us have no representative in the media, as our views are considered “unqualified” by Serious people. Harry and Nancy are our leaders, but it’s born no fruit in terms of ending the occupation or fixing the economy or environment. We are waiting for better days, in Hope and Change.

We had (will have? I don’t keep track) a celebration of film here, it’s hard to say if any of the movies were “great.” All our movies are about sex, white people, and comic books. It’s good for Republicans.

I love the people of my country but there are times when i despair for our gov’t. That’s American life: always waiting for people to go through all the wrong choices before they get to the right one.

Your friend,
CD

PS Some of us are doing all we can to make sure we don’t let the Saudis use us against you, in a proxy war over oil prices.