16/reporter

style revolution – that the Bush administration has pursued towards Iran since 9/11.” If that is true, the implications seem very dire: no activism or research is possible in Iran without a danger of being hijacked by the agenda of the Bush administration. Of course, if one views that possibility minimally enough, it is both true and insignificant, or at least not significant enough to motivate cessation of activism or research. Most risks and possibilities have at least a small chance of coming true, but a tiny risk is not generally seen as a reason for paralysis. But Derakhshan seems to be arguing that the risk is more than tiny. He concludes, dishearteningly, that “Ramin admits his mistake in indirectly helping the Bush administration in its plans for regime change in Iran through fomenting internal unrest and instability…Sometimes the trigger for a person to confess to his or her mistakes is not torture by a brutal bunch of interrogators but his or her honest and courageous encounter with the larger picture to which he or she is contributing.” The editor-in-chief of openDemocracy , Anthony Barnett, makes a different argument in an article in Aljazeera, however. He cites openDemocracy ’s commitment to “the creation of spaces for dialogue in an era where neocon and bin Ladenist

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and other fundamentalisms are trying to close them down” and he points out that Jahanbegloo has expressed views at openDemocracy that are not a particularly tight fit with those of the Bush administration. “In a short, subtle, learned and radical critique of the United States, Ramin expressed his horror at the crude American vision of ‘its century’ of world leadership. He proposed that a shared global journey of exploration was needed…Such ideas are probably incomprehensible to the charlatans currently in power in Washington and Tehran and, indeed, their ‘agents’.” Barnett then says that whatever may be the circumstances of Jahanbegloo’s “supposed recantation”, the powers that want to crush independent thought and discussion, especially across borders, are becoming more powerful. “This creates greater responsibility on those who seek to uphold independent thought and argument and encourage ‘velvet revolutions’ or what we call democratic reform. In particular, it places on us a responsibility not to be intimidated or allow our advocacy of democracy and fundamental rights to be silenced because the White House, quite implausibly, claims that it likes them too.” P M T

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The Philosophers' Magazine /4th quarter 2006