Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 159, Ed. 1 Monday, January 8, 2018 Page: 4 of 14
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OPINION
4A
Monday, January 8, 2018
Denton Record-Chronicle
Denton Record-Chronicle
Frustration
drives protests
all across Iran
n( ©me
Published by Denton Media Company, Inc.
Founded from weekly newspapers,
the Denton Chronicle, established in 1882,
and the Denton Record, established in 1897.
Published daily as the Denton
Record-Chronicle since Aug. 3,1903.
C
a
f you want to understand what has pro-
voked days of protests in Iran and where
they might be heading, I have some sug-
gestions.
To truly comprehend the situation, you
need to look beyond the headlines.
Since there are very few Western corre-
spondents in Iran, you can find the richest
trove of video and fresh information on Twit-
ter. Check out the Carnegie Endowment fel-
low Karim Sadjadpour @ksadjadpour; in-
trepid Iranian-born journalists Maziar Ba-
hari @maziarbahari,
Famaz Fassihi @far
nazfassihi; and hu-
man-rights
Gissou Nia @Gissou
Nia.
I
(
EDITORIAL BOARD
Bill Patterson
Publisher and CEO
Scott K. Parks
Managing Editor
Mark Finley
City Editor
Mariel Tarn-Ray
News Editor
PAST PUBLISHERS
William C. “Will” Edwards
1903-1927
Robert J. “Bob” Edwards
1927-1945
Riley Cross
1945-1970
Vivian Cross
1970-1986
Fred Patterson
1986-1999
Editorials published in the Denton Record-Chronicle
are determined by the editorial board.
Questions and suggestions should be directed to the:
Texas primaries force
some quick deadlines
activist
Denton Record-Chronicle
3555 Duchess Drive, Denton, TX 76205
Phone: 940-387-3811
Fax: 940-566-6888
E-mail: drc@dentonrc.com
To summarize their
observations: These
protests began with
working-class youths
in eastern Iran and
have spread to Tehran
and a host of smaller
cities, including provinces inhabited by
Kurdish and Arab ethnic minorities. The un-
rest reflects the economic and social woes of
Iran’s younger generation. But the demon-
strations are leaderless and disconnected;
they won’t lead to a change of regime and if
they turn more violent (or grow bigger) the
regime will surely crush them.
There are things the West can do to warn
Tehran off a violent crackdown. But a U.S.
withdrawal from the nuclear accord with
Iran and restoration of sanctions — both of
which the president is mulling — would shift
Iranians’ blame for their economic troubles
to the United States.
To understand the frustrations driving
the young, working-class Iranians who be-
gan the protests, I recommend reading
Shahram Khosravi’s Precarious Lives: Wait-
ing and Hope in Iran, published by the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania Press.
Whereas the Iranian revolution once
claimed to champion the dispossessed, the
poor are now considered a burden. The so-
cial safety net has shrunk due to falling oil
prices, international sanctions, inflation, cor-
ruption, and reduced subsidies to the poor.
In 2015, official Iranian sources reported
that 40 percent of the population lived below
the poverty line, and unemployment among
those 20 to 24 years of age was 25 percent.
Among the working class, the rate of
short-term and irregular employment tops
90 percent, writes Khosravi. In the mean-
time, ‘luxury shopping malls have mush-
roomed all over Tehran” and “the poor man is
regarded as a failure and burden.” Many Ira-
nians who had reached middle-class stan-
dards are slipping backward.
“This poverty, unemployment, and un-
paid salaries, this anger we see today” Khos-
ravi told me by phone from Sweden, where
he is a professor of anthropology at Stock-
holm University, “this is an accumulation of
all the disappointments going on for a long
time. Many young people are disappointed
and see no future.
“Iranians were very hopeful [after the nu-
clear accord] that the economy would be im-
proved and investment would come to the
country, but Trump stopped all that, and
they are disappointed. Who pays for that?
The Iranian people.”
Of course, the cause of Iran’s economic
troubles is also systemic.
The New York Times has reported that an
initial catalyst for the public’s anger was a
leaked version of a proposed governmental
budget. It included billions of dollars ear-
marked for the military and Islamic Revolu-
tionary Guards Corps — with their costly
ventures in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. Huge
cash subsidies also go to religious founda-
tions controlled by the clerical elite; the bud-
get also proposed to slash subsidies for the
poor and increase fuel prices.
Yet, there is little sign so far that the pro-
tests will lead to political upheaval.
Ordinary Iranians have bad memories of
war and revolution. They are wary of the
chaos in neighboring Iraq and in Syria. The
government warns them that the United
States and Saudi Arabia seek regime change.
And Trump tweets underline the govern-
ment’s warnings.
So what should America do, or not do, to
support the protests — or at least, to help
avert a bloody crackdown?
I endorse Sadjadpour’s suggestions — in-
cluding careful U.S. statements of solidarity
that support peaceful demonstrations and
helping Iranians get the technology to cir-
cumvent regime internet blackouts.
I would add to this list that Trump should
drop the ban on visas for Iranians to visit
America. Nothing is more indicative of
Trump hypocrisy than cheering the demon-
strators while preventing visits from Iranian
artists, scholars, and relatives of the large Ira-
nian-American population.
What should the United States not do:
Incite protesters to revolution, as George
H.W. Bush incited Iraqis to try to oust Sad-
dam Hussein, before letting the dictator
crush them. I doubt that Trump would take
such advice. But, fortunately for them, Irani-
ans now know the U.S. track record, and are
unlikely to take Trump tweets any more seri-
ously than they deserve.
TRUDY RUBIN is a columnist and
editorial hoard member for the Philadel-
phia Inquirer.
Trudy
Rubin
he holiday break is over, and the first
leg of the 2018 election cycle — the
primary sprint — has begun.
Texas has the earliest primaries in the
country, on March 6; everybody else gets to
sleep late. (Louisiana gets to sleep the lon-
gest; that state’s all-comers primary election
coincides with its general election on Nov. 6,
with a December runoff for races where no
candidate gets a ma-
jority in the first
round.)
The early Texas pri-
maries force some
quick deadlines on
candidates and cam-
paigns. Early voting
begins on Feb. 20 —
just weeks from now
and two weeks before
election day.
If you’ve been in
and around politics, you already watched the
prelude, in the form of a flood of emails and
telephone appeals for political money that
littered the holidays ahead of an end-of-year
fundraising deadline.
State candidates have to report the re-
sults — how much they raised, borrowed
and spent, and how much cash they have on
hand — by Jan. 15.
While their accountants are getting those
reports together, the candidates are trying to
get the word out.
Their first step of filing for office passed
last month, and the lists of people who’ll be
on the Republican and Democratic primary
ballots are now complete
Ten Democrats filed for governor, for in-
stance, and none of them are particularly
well known across the state. They have just a
few weeks to remedy that.
With the exceptions of Attorney General
Ken Paxton and Comptroller Glenn Hegar,
every statewide elected official in the exec-
utive branch drew a Republican primary op-
ponent. They might or might not be threat-
ened by that, but it will keep them busy for a
couple of months.
A large number of seats in the state’s con-
gressional delegation will be open, with
eight current officeholders retiring. Those
free-for-alls, along with a few districts where
incumbents in Congress could be politically
vulnerable, attracted a herd of candidates.
An example: In the 21st Congressional
District, where Lamar Smith, R-San An-
tonio, is stepping down, 18 Republicans and
four Democrats are running to replace him.
Nearly everybody in the Texas Senate up
for re-election wants to return. Van Taylor,
R-Plano, is leaving that gig to run for Con-
gress. At least three of those incumbents —
Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, Bob Hall, R-
Edgewood, and Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo —
have serious primary challengers.
Those three races — contests between so-
cial conservatives and establishment Re-
publicans, or some variations of that GOP
duality — will be mirrored in a number of
races for the Texas House, where primaries
and the general election will run alongside a
subterranean contest for speaker of the
House.
Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, is giving up
that post and his seat in the House at the end
of the current term.
After 10 years with the same speaker,
there’s some pent-up ambition at play; any
number of members are seriously consider-
ing a run, and everyone’s political viability
depends on who is in the House when the
2019 legislative session begins a year from
now.
T
Other Voices
Air travel safety
reaches new heights
veryone gripes about air travel. The complaints are
universal: bare-it-all security checks; shoving
matches over cabin bin space; economy seats in-
creasingly reminiscent of a miniature medieval torture
cell maliciously called the “little ease.”
Oh, for those glamorous jet-set days of yesteryear,
when fliers were treated like royalty starting at airport
curbside. Can modem air travel really be called an im-
provement?
Yes, in the starkest and most critical terms: You’ll get
there in one piece. Year’s-end reports show 2017 was the
safest year for commercial travel in aviation history.
Studies by two separate safety organizations — a team
of Dutch aviation consultants and the U.S.-based Aviation
Safety Network — reported this week that, out of a record
37 million flights, there were no passenger jet crashes in
the world last year.
The handful of fatal commercial accidents that did
occur were limited to either cargo planes or regional car-
riers operating small aircraft.
This is no small achievement. Harrowing, high-fatality
plane crashes, if not routine, were for decades events that
took place every few years. If you have lived in this area
long enough, you may recall the crash of a Delta jumbo
jet at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in 1985
during a summer thunderstorm. The disaster claimed 137
lives.
E
H-® i
Ross
Ramsey
For those candidates — and for anyone
who’ll have to deal with the new speaker —
the 2018 elections are, in part, about electing
the people who’ll elect the speaker.
Control that electorate, control that elec-
tion.
It’s unlikely that the House will change
enough to swing hard in any particular di-
rection, but people will try. And enough wins
for any faction will have an influence on the
survivors, who will be looking to the 2018
election results — primary and general — for
signs of what Texas voters really want from
the state Legislature.
Statehouse politics won’t be the only sig-
nal they get; it probably won’t be the most
important one.
Voters are likely to weigh in, one way or
another, on President Trump, on the recov-
ery from Hurricane Harvey, on state and lo-
cal issues from property taxes to bathrooms,
and on whatever is grabbing public atten-
tion when the voting actually takes place.
It’ll be a short wait.
ROSS RAMSEY is executive editor and
co-founder of The Texas Tribune. The Texas
Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media
organization that informs Texans — and
engages with them — about public policy,
politics, government and statewide issues.
Experts say technology and training have steadily re-
duced the incidence of these tragedies over the years. The
D/FW crash, in fact, led directly to new standards in
windshear-detection ability in onboard and ground-based
systems.
At the same time, new safety measures in aircraft con-
struction mean that even in the event of a crash, pas-
sengers are more likely to survive. That’s due, among
other factors, to better fire suppression and evacuation
procedures.
“Cabin safety has improved by leaps and bounds since
the 1970s and ’80s,” said Adrian Young, a senior consul-
tant who participated in one of the studies released Mon-
day, in an interview with The Washington Post.
Experts caution that there remain safety challenges in
commercial aviation, and there is no room for compla-
cency in the operation of our nation’s — and our planet’s
— complex air transit system. Ongoing challenges include
risks posed by human fatigue and the fire danger posed
by batteries used in consumer electronics.
But when poker-faced aviation officials assure you the
gravest modem danger to commercial air travel is the
drive to the airport, they have the statistics to back it up.
Passenger flights operated by major carriers are far and
away the safest means of popular transportation.
What about that recent presidential Twitter claim,
during which the commander-in-chief took credit for last
year’s air safety record?
“It’s not a one-year phenomenon,” was the tactful re-
sponse to The Post from retired pilot and airline safety
consultant John Cox. “It was the work of thousands of
people over decades.”
Letters to the editor
Traditional American values
“Start where you are; use what you have;
do what you can.” — tennis star Arthur Ashe
Ashe expresses the traditional American
value of self-reliance: I can’t control what
happens to me, but I can make the best of
whatever situation I find myself in, and I can
make choices that make my life better or
worse. It’s up to me. Such a positive, optimis-
tic approach empowers and liberates.
“Optimism is the faith that leads to
achievement.” — educator Helen Keller
With enough optimism to try, people will
work to improve their lives. They may only
improve their lives a little, but they can feel
good about themselves for trying and know
that they do have some control.
Unfortunately, there’s a negative, pessi-
mistic approach that’s taking over.
More and more people are told that
they’re powerless victims, that nothing they
do can help them, that “oppressors” are to
blame for all their problems.
Such messages are self-fulfilling. By en-
couraging feelings of helplessness and
scapegoatism, they enslave people in chains
of passiveness, hopelessness, envy and anger.
SUBMISSIONS
Letters for publication must include the writer’s
name, address and telephone number.
The Record-Chronicle reserves the right to edit
letters for length. Letters should be typed or
legibly handwritten and be 250 or fewer words.
We prefer email submissions.
Send to: drc@dentonrc.com.
Otherwise, fax to 940-566-6888, or mail to:
Letters to the editor
P.0. Box 369
Denton, TX 76202
As Helen Keller also says, “Nothing can be
done without hope and confidence.”
Too often, feeling helpless, hopeless and
oppressed transforms anger into hate, and
it’s a short step from hate to unprovoked vio-
lence against supposed “oppressors” who
have really harmed no one.
Let’s return to traditional American val-
ues of self-reliance and gratitude for what we
have, rather than despair and hate because
of what we don’t have.
— The Dallas Morning News
This day in history: January 8
In 1867, the U.S. House of
Representatives joined the Sen-
ate in overriding President An-
drew Johnson’s veto of the Dis-
trict of Columbia Suffrage Bill,
giving black men in the nation’s
capital the right to vote.
In 1935, rock-and-roll leg-
end Elvis Presley was born in
Tupelo, Mississippi.
In 1959, Charles de Gaulle
was inaugurated as president of
France’s Fifth Republic.
In 1968, the Otis Redding
single “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of
the Bay” was released on the
Volt label almost a month after
the singer’s death in a plane
crash.
Today is Monday, Jan. 8,
the eighth day of 2018. There
are 357 days left in the year.
On Jan. 8,1918, President
Woodrow Wilson outlined his
Fourteen Points for lasting
peace after World War I. Missis-
sippi became the first state to
ratify the 18th Amendment to
the Constitution, which estab-
lished Prohibition.
In 1642, astronomer Galileo
Galilei died in Arcetri, Italy.
In 1790, President George
Washington delivered his first
State of the Union address to
Congress in New York.
In 1815, the last major en-
gagement of the War of 1812 came
to an end as U.S. forces defeated
the British in the Battle of New
Orleans, not having gotten word
of the signing of a peace treaty.
Lee Nahrgang,
Denton
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 159, Ed. 1 Monday, January 8, 2018, newspaper, January 8, 2018; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1138328/m1/4/?rotate=0: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .