\tAu d\u00e9but f\u00e9vrier, \u00e0 T\u00e9h\u00e9ran, a eu lieu un s\u00e9minaire sur l’hollywoodisme et le cin\u00e9ma. Parmi les invit\u00e9s se trouvait l’ancien s\u00e9nateur de l’Alaska (dans les ann\u00e9es 1970) Mike Gravel, \u00e2g\u00e9 de 83 ans mais toujours alerte. Gravel, d\u00e9mocrate de tendance libertaire, fut un original au S\u00e9nat des Etats-Unis, et son portrait<\/a> vaut d’\u00eatre lu. (D’origine qu\u00e9b\u00e9coise et fran\u00e7aise, sa langue naturelle est le fran\u00e7ais. Il s’engagea trois ans dans le contre-espionnage militaire et travailla notamment \u00e0 Orl\u00e9ans, en 1954, o\u00f9, gr\u00e2ce \u00e0 ses origines et \u00e0 ses murs fran\u00e7aises, il parvint \u00e0 infiltrer le PCF comme adh\u00e9rent du Parti. S\u00e9nateur \u00e0 partir de 1969, c’est lui qui, dans la commission s\u00e9natoriale qu’il pr\u00e9sidait, appliqua la r\u00e8gle fameuse du filibuster<\/em> pour commencer \u00e0 lire pendant plusieurs heures les fameux Pentagon’s Papers<\/em> fuit\u00e9s en 1971 par Daniel Ellsberg ; il \u00e9puisa ses coll\u00e8gues qui le laiss\u00e8rent bient\u00f4t seul et il put ainsi d\u00e9cider par consentement unanime de la Commission l’insertion des 4.100 pages du document dans le Congressional Record<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tA son retour d’Iran, Gravel a donn\u00e9 une interview \u00e0 Foreign Policy<\/em>. Nous en donnons ici des extraits importants, qui \u00e9clatent d’originalit\u00e9 et d’esprit ind\u00e9pendant. Gravel y parle de nombreux aspects et nous avons choisi essentiellement les questions o\u00f9 il parle de la vie en Iran, la situation quotidienne en Iran, les effets des sanctions, l’\u00e9volution du pays \u00e0 cause de ces sanctions et la forme m\u00eame du gouvernement. Le plus grand motif d’admiration ironique de Gravel est que ces sanctions ont conduit l’Iran \u00e0 d\u00e9velopper de plus en plus d’activit\u00e9s industrielles, technologiques et infrastructurelles propres. Cela permet \u00e0 ce pays de se rapprocher d’une telle autonomie qu’on pourrait presque parler d’un pays auto-suffisant, capable de vivre en autarcie tout en entretenant des relations ext\u00e9rieures s\u00e9lectionn\u00e9es avec les pays qui sont proches de lui. Sur la structure m\u00eame du pays, Gravel consid\u00e8re l’Iran comme un mod\u00e8le : \u00abI look for models. Like Switzerland for direct democracy. They have an interesting model. They have married a theocracy and a political system, and it appears to work. Now, all I can say is that’s nothing to cause fear. What we should do is encourage models like this to see how they operate and see what contributions they can make to human governments…<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tL’interview est publi\u00e9e dans Foreign Policy<\/em>. le 22 f\u00e9vrier 2013<\/a>. (Cette intervention a \u00e9t\u00e9 reprise en r\u00e9sum\u00e9 par PressTV.com<\/em>, le 24 f\u00e9vrier 2013<\/a>.) Voici les extraits choisis.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tForeign Policy<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abWhat were your general impressions of Iran?<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMike Gravel<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abI can’t tell you how warm the people were. How giving, considerate. And, the thing that was very surprising to me. If you follow American media, you think they’re on the ropes. I gotta tell you, there’s no question the sanctions are a discomfiture, but in the long run it is the best thing that’s ever happened to Iran. It’s made them totally independent, and forcing them to internalize their economic activity, to build machines. We rode for about 10 miles right through the heart of Iran where they’re building an elevated highway. Boy, I’ll tell you, that was an impressive work area. So the city is just like a normal thriving city. It has prosperity. You could tell by the traffic jams. The architecture’s extremely attractive and imposing, and so what’s happened to the country is it’s being forced into independence. But that’s exactly what a developing country does. You force domestic wares to be produced and then you turn around and you can export your product very competitively because your money is depressed, and so that’s what’s going on in Iran. And I don’t think the United States has any inkling that what it’s doing is counterproductive to arriving at a solution in that part of the world.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tForeign Policy<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abWere you able to talk to any opponents of the regime?<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMike Gravel<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abNope. I know Trita Parsi here in the States but no, I didn’t get any feel for any opposition. You know, we were staying at the hotel and then we would just go out to forays. My wife was with me and so she likes to see things. I would just rest in the hotel. You know, I’m 83 at this point, I don’t need a whole lot of gallivanting around.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbBut, we were talking about meeting people from about 35 people from all over the world, motion picture people, writers, activists, and some were off the charts.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tForeign Policy<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abWhat do you mean \u00ab\u00a0off the charts\u00a0\u00bb?<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMike Gravel<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abOh, their attitude toward Zionism. But that wasn’t so much. They don’t talk about the Jewish lobby, they talk about the Zionist lobby, in their terminology, which is interesting. I doubt there’s any change that they’ll be able to bring forth. But what they will bring forth is an independent, powerful nation able to defend itself, and will certainly be a leader of the non-aligned, and that’s not always in the United States’ best interests. And I resent a lot of our imperial attitude that we have to, we’re the self-appointed policemen of the world. We police when it’s our interests and if not, we don’t police very well.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tForeign Policy<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abDid it seem like the officials you met with were open to opposing views? Were they tolerant of dissent?<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMike Gravel<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abOh yeah. Yeah. They’re very open. Because they know, from their public pinion, that they’re operating in the blind. And, oh, there’s one other thing I came away with that fascinates me. I, the last 25 or 30 years, I’ve focused my attention on structure of government, you know, how human beings in society attempt to govern themselves. I look for models. Like Switzerland for direct democracy. They have an interesting model. They have married a theocracy and a political system, and it appears to work. Now, all I can say is that’s nothing to cause fear. What we should do is encourage models like this to see how they operate and see what contributions they can make to human governments.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tForeign Policy<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abSo you think we can learn from the Iranian political model?<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMike Gravel<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abOh yes I think we can. Not so much for ourselves. We say we’ve got separation of church and state. Well I’ve gotta tell you Joshua, when you pay your taxes, you are supporting all the churches in the United States. That’s the nature of the beast. Since Islam is such a devotional kind of religion I mean I was in a couple of meetings where I had to sit there and meditate while they were praying this has something to tell us. They have a successful country, and make no mistake about it, they are a very successful country and are suffering as a result of our injustice.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLes autres questions portent sur des th\u00e8mes int\u00e9ressants, sur le cin\u00e9ma US (hollywoodisme) vis-\u00e0-vis de l’Iran, avec une vision assez nuanc\u00e9e de Mike Gravel. Bien s\u00fbr, il y fut aussi question des possibilit\u00e9s de guerre (\u00abFirst off, I think it’ll happen by accident. I equate what’s going on today as to what was going on in February and March of 1914. Everybody’s psyched up to the hilt, armed to the hilt. All you need is an accident, all you need is an accident to just blow the whole thing wide open. And that’s my fear.<\/em>\u00bb)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n dedefensa.org<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" L’Iran sans pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s : un mod\u00e8le ? Au d\u00e9but f\u00e9vrier, \u00e0 T\u00e9h\u00e9ran, a eu lieu un s\u00e9minaire sur l’hollywoodisme et le cin\u00e9ma. Parmi les invit\u00e9s se trouvait l’ancien s\u00e9nateur de l’Alaska (dans les ann\u00e9es 1970) Mike Gravel, \u00e2g\u00e9 de 83 ans mais toujours alerte. Gravel, d\u00e9mocrate de tendance libertaire, fut un original au S\u00e9nat des… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[5652,11973,9010,2773,5646],"class_list":["post-74857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ouverture-libre","tag-autarcie","tag-autosuffisant","tag-gravel","tag-iran","tag-sanctions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}