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The Observer
Nick Cohen
 For
three weeks, there have been demonstrations across
the planet about a great injustice done to Muslims. After baton-wielding cops
inflicted dozens of injuries, the fear of death is in the air. George W
Bush's State Department has warned of 'systematic oppression', while
secularists and fundamentalists have revealed their mutually incompatible
values. Since you ask, I am not talking about the global menace of
Scandinavian cartoonists that has so terrified our fearless free press, but
mass arrests in Iran.
The media have barely mentioned
the story, even though it cuts through the nonsense about a clash of civilisations between the 'West' and the 'Muslims'. The
Muslims of Tehran are proving themselves to be anything but a monolithic bloc
happy to follow the orders of the ayatollahs and their demented President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There are
huge class divisions to begin with, and close to the
bottom of the heap are the city's bus drivers. The authorities refused to
allow them an independent trade union and ruled that an 'Islamic council' in
the offices of the Tehran
and Suburbs Bus Company would represent their interests. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, the pious have not proved the doughtiest fighters for better
pay and conditions. The bus drivers claimed that managers were stealing money
from their pay packets. They formed their own union and threatened to strike
at the end of January.
Ahmadinejad won the rigged Iranian elections last year with a promise to
stand up for the little man against the Islamic Republic's corrupt elite. Faced
with a choice between sticking to his word and carrying on with despotism, he
showed his true colours by allowing the most ferocious crackdown Tehran has
seen since the religious authorities crushed dissident journalists and
students in 1999.
The company's managers and Islamic council called in the paramilitary police
who arrested the union's six officers and beat workers until they agreed to
renounce the strike. Bravely, the majority refused. The state's thugs then
targeted their wives and children.
Mahdiye Salimi, the 12-year-old daughter of one of the strike leaders, told a
reporter that they had poured into her home in the early hours of the morning
trying to find her father. When his wife said she didn't know where he was,
the assault began. 'They kicked my mum's heart with their boots and my mum
had an enormous ache in her heart. They even wanted to spray something in my
[two-year old] sister's mouth.'
No one knows how many people the authorities arrested. The highest figure the
British TUC has heard is 1,300. International trade union federations and the
British embassy in Tehran
estimate that somewhere between 400 and 600 people are still in prison.
Owen Tudor, the TUC's international officer, went to the Iranian embassy to
protest and was knocked back by the hatred of unions he met. Probably without
realising it, Iranian officials parroted the language of Margaret Thatcher
and told him unions were 'the enemy within'. From their perspective, you can
see why they would think so. Unions instil democratic habits and encourage
solidarity with others regardless of colour and -more importantly in this
case - creed. Neither of these admirable traits is likely to appeal to your
average fanatic who believes he can read the mind of God.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the US State Department and
British Foreign Office have all protested. Trade unions, Iranian exiles and
gay groups have demonstrated. Yet the media have barely
noticed. The failure is due in part to my trade's perennial inability to walk
and chew gum at the same time: we consider stories one by one and today's
story is Muslim anger with cartoonists.
I'm not saying it isn't newsworthy, but you shouldn't forget that it was
manufactured by hard-line Danish imams who hawked the cartoons round the
Muslim world for four months (and, somewhat blasphemously, added obscene
drawings of their own). The religious right and Syrian Baathists welcomed
them and proved yet again that they need to incite frenzies to legitimise
arbitrary power.
Iran
has seen all the stunts before because it has endured Islamism longer than
any other country. Cheeringly, the old tricks no longer appear to be working.
The Associated Press's reporter said that about 400 people demonstrated
outside the Danish embassy in Tehran
last week, most of them state employees obeying orders, according to the
Iranian opposition.
Even if you take the lowest estimate, there are as many striking bus drivers
in prison in Tehran
as rioters prepared to play the worn-out game of throwing Molotov cocktails
at Western embassies. No one ever made money by being optimistic about the Middle East, but after nearly 30 years of Islamist
rule, Iranians seem sick of it.
It cannot be said often enough that this is not a clash of civilisations but
a civil war within the Islamic world between theocratic reaction and the
beleaguered forces of liberty and modernity. As I have tried to emphasise,
the best service the rich world's liberal left can render is to get on the
right side for once.
How to succeed the cut and paste way
Each year, ever more illiterate and innumerate undergraduates go to
university and demand to be spoon-fed answers, revealed the Times Higher
Education Supplement last week.
The 250 admissions tutors, who confessed to their despair at standards in
secondary schools, weren't completely without hope. They thought their
remedial courses might knock them into shape. I'm not so sure. According to
the Plagiarism Advisory Service - and, yes, such an outlandishly named body
exists - one quarter of students admit to cutting
and pasting from the net. Universities have computer programmes to detect
lifted work, but have to confront students who can't see what's wrong with
plagiarism. Many got through school exams on the strength of course work
parents and teachers 'helped' them complete. The concept of cheating is a
novel one for them.
On top of that are the pressures on the university authorities to cheat
themselves. Overseas students are a lucrative source of revenue and the
manner in which universities guaranteed cash flow by giving dim foreigners
degrees has been an open scandal for years. Lecturers are now facing similar
pressure to reward British students unjustly because of New Labour's demand
for 'inclusive' higher education.
I asked Susan Bassnett, pro-vice-chancellor of Warwick University,
if it was possible to go from nursery to university in this country without
learning anything. She replied: 'You can certainly get a 2:1 without
demonstrating the capacity for independent thought and without acquiring
basic skills.' Foreign students are now abandoning Britain for countries with
serious universities with worthwhile degrees. Perhaps, Bassnett added, the
loss of their money will force our authorities to face the disaster they've
created.
Oh, Huhne, you hypocrite
It is always disconcerting when someone you know becomes famous - or even a
candidate for the leadership of Liberal Democrats. And what is disconcerting
those of us who remember Chris Huhne when he was economics correspondent of
the Independent in the late Eighties is that he is running on an anti-car
ticket.
Can this be the same Chris Huhne who led an unseemly scramble for company
cars by Independent execs all those years ago? And picked a BMW which was
such a flash motor that Ian Jack, the most fastidious literary journalist of
the time, wrote 'This Car Is Very Vulgar' in the dust on the bonnet? If Huhne
wins, Lib Dems shouldn't be too surprised if he orders a stretch limo and
private jet.
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