Charlie Rose

OBSERVER  06/21/2011 07:35 PM Report

Dear Haleh,

Khatami & Ahmadi-nejad are two sides of the same Coin.

What is happening during Ahmadi-Nejad is the result of

all the Evil took place during the Khatami ,under the popular Banner of Reform!! Which reform? Torbun is torbun, one Made in Hollywood another in Bollywood!! Why you still support Khatami is beyond comprehension.In the last election, we saw most prostitutes, drug-addicts....voting for you so-called Reform! Thanks!!

NeilMacCallister  06/19/2011 10:13 PM Report

Why is this episode titled "Iranian Reform"???

As if the problems that Ahmadinejad and the mullahs are throwing upon the Iranian people (..and the world) are something to do with geography? ..or the weather there???

The country of Iran, ..the people of Iran, ..don't need "to reform" (..as if they were some kind of malformed children) ..it is those government people who are in charge in Iran, who are holding their rifles upon the voting population (..and upon those people who are just walking down to the market for a loaf of bread!) who need to wake up and bring themselves into the 21st Century!

"Iran" doesn't need reform, ..it looks just fine on my world map, ..and I think it is spelled correctly as well. It is those people constituting Iran's current "thug-ocracy" of government who need to reform themselves.

May the people of Iran someday achieve the democracy that they need in order to survive!

ShalomFreedman  06/19/2011 01:50 AM Report

The human rights groups have no chance of changing anything in the near term. Perhaps in ten or fifteen or twenty years there will be another Iranian Revolution. In the meantime the real issue in regard to Iran and the world is the Iranian effort to develop nuclear weapons and become the ruling power in the Middle East and beyond. The Iranians continue to defy the world and press ahead in enriching uranium, and in taking additional steps toward becoming the world's leading Terror state with nuclear weapons. This endangers not only Iran's immediate neighbors but world peace.

In this present discussion Ervand Abrahamian seems to be an advocate of allowing the present Iranian regime to do what it wants. He is against human rights protests. Esfandiari and Gaemi are reform advocates but seem to be promoting the kind of measures which will take real effect only years from now.

vparigi  06/18/2011 12:55 PM Report

Hats off to REMant! The quote from Bolingbroke centuries

ago, summarized.."we approch the question with proper humility" adds the touch of wisdom to the topic. We are

challenged currently by a quasi-informed generation of

students eager for their 'moment of recognition' albeit

at risk , before the cameras and media swarm. Is their

zeal based on tv photos of western materialism and freedom to act without thought of consequence? Prof. Abrahamian has it right to study history and educate the next generations.

The human rights activists , with good intentions, tend only to provoke resistance, when most individuals do not

adapt well to change. Revolutions are an historical fact

and the bias displayed by the media is disturbing.

Thank you, Charlie Rose staff , for your continuing

quality programs.

REMant  06/17/2011 11:22 AM Report

I have trouble with the idea that somehow Iran is different from Syria, or Bahrain, or Saudi Arabia. I don't see either that squawking about rights does anything much except gratify the squawkers' egos. This sort will not be happy until all conservative religion is thrown out. But personally I think the religious establishment in these countries is likely more a part of the solution than the problem. You can't really argue that govt should be democratic without also arguing that truth is merely a matter of opinion, and as long as that is so, democracy will be indistinguishable from autocracy. If, as Alexander Pope wrote to Bolingbroke centuries ago, we approach the question with proper humility, it won't matter what form the govt takes. My impression is that most of these movements, at least those which are not merely tribal feuds, sectarian divisions or resource grabs, have the idea they would be better off with globalization, but from a Western perspective I have trouble seeing that as desirable as they do. I am not sure that women, for instance, need to dress provocatively in Iran anymore than in Canada, and it is surely a perfunctory observance to wear a fashionable hoodie, lipstick, sunglasses and high heels, as much as, in this country, porn stars and streetwalkers with crosses dangling from their necks.