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When I say that I am opposed to this budget, everyone says, Well, what do you think the United States should do? My response is, Why should the United States do anything?

Akbar Ganji

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Akbar Ganji
Age: 55
Essayist
Journalist
Writer
Ghazvin
Akbar Ganǧī
Everyone
States
Anything
Budget
Wells
Budgets
Well
Opposed
Think
Response
Thinking
Says
United

More quotes by Akbar Ganji

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[In] every revolution, there is a great divergence between what the revolutionaries expect and what the revolution actually accomplishes.
Akbar Ganji
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Khomeini obviously had many problems, but he had one clever side to him. He never made economic promises to people and as a result, he never led to dissatisfaction in this perspective. Because they need to get votes, they use misleading slogans. And this leads to rising expectations. I had a personal experience.
Akbar Ganji
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Why did the regime put me in prison in the first place? I was put in prison for six years and it has been all illegal.
Akbar Ganji
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We must struggle for creating a democratic system that is dedicated to democracy and human rights.
Akbar Ganji
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Religion is separate from the institution of the state.
Akbar Ganji
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The Revolutionary Guard was created to help defend the revolution, but it soon was diverted from its initial path.
Akbar Ganji
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Negotiation talks are the best way to solve anything. We must replace wars and weapons with negotiations and talks.
Akbar Ganji
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It was universal pressure on the regime to secure my release. International pressure was certainly helpful in my release.
Akbar Ganji
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The lower strata are suffering all kinds of oppression and the injustice that is inflicted upon them has many faces and many facets. Well-to-do classes are using all kinds of obvious and not-so-obvious benefits that this regime has created for it.
Akbar Ganji
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The Shah's regime was an incorrigible regime and after a while, when the revolution happened, the situation began to change, revolutionary conditions was created...we simply wanted to change the regime.
Akbar Ganji
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What I'm worried about is that, in case that happens [nuclear explosion], then the Iranian people are the ones who are going to pay the heaviest price. But none of the Western countries have seriously talked about this.
Akbar Ganji
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If you look at the discourse before the revolution, whether it is the left communist, whether it is the right secularist...the entirety of this discourse was such that it encouraged the kind of ascendancy for a man like Ayatollah Khomeini.
Akbar Ganji
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When I talk about secularism, I'm talking about theories today. To give you for example, one example: Those who consider themselves followers of Mosaddeq today are adamantly against federalism.
Akbar Ganji
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I have spent six years in prison, the last six years. Even if I was outside the prison, how much actual space was there for an investigative journalist to do his work in Iran? But I know one thing for sure: That we, the Iranian people, are much more in line of danger than the West.
Akbar Ganji
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It began early in the revolution. It was a process that was unfolding on a daily basis. We expected the system to be dispensing justice, but every day that passed by, we recognized that the justice we expected and hoped for was not about to be achieved.
Akbar Ganji
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Today, as a result of a miraculous set of circumstances, Iran is going to get between $50 to $55 billion in oil revenue, which is unheard of in the history of the revolution.
Akbar Ganji
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Revolutions invariably don't solve the issue of justice, and in its place, suppression and limiting freedom replaces that idea.
Akbar Ganji
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In the West, when all of these reactors, nuclear reactors, are matters...part of the public domain, there are all kinds of supervision over them. We see that the ecological movement, environmentalist movement, organizes all kinds of demonstrations against these. They lie on railroads, they tie themselves to the gates.
Akbar Ganji
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We should put away the militaristic outlook. The U.S. should start talking about disarmament, nuclear disarmament, of the region.
Akbar Ganji
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The ecological movement is concerned about this, and this is in here, where everything is public. In Iran, where everything is covert, we have no firsthand information.
Akbar Ganji