tagged w/ Iran Election
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No Elected President for Iran?
[ analysis ] In mid-October, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said in a speech that Iran's executive presidency could be replaced by a parliamentary government if the interests of the state required it. The president, he implied, could be replaced by a prime minister. The remark, out of the blue, initially seemed off-hand, but now appears to have been quite deliberate and premeditated.
Ten days later, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, who is close to the Supreme Leader, endorsed and elaborated on the idea. He described Khamenei's remarks as "instructions" and said the leader was not speaking of replacing the president with a prime minister but electing him by parliament rather than in a popular vote. The Assembly of Experts, Larijani said, select the leader in their role as representatives of the people; the same principle could be applied to the selection of the president.
The Majles would work better with the president if the deputies elected him, Larijani said. Changing the system would also eliminate the difficulties and differences between president and parliament that Iran has recently experienced, he remarked. Larijani described the current stand-off between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Majles as a "structural problem" and an "ailment" in the system that needs to be addressed.
Larijani's remarks suggest that Khamenei is more serious about the idea of a change in the current system than first assumed, even though both Khamenei and Larijani have been careful to say that any change might be made in the future, even "the far distant future." Others in the political class seem to sense that something is afoot as well. A week later, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who rarely disagrees with Khamenei in public, strongly opposed the election of the president by any means other than a popular vote. Such a change, he said on his website, would weaken the republican character of Iran's governmental system and "limit the power of the people."
Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/11/analysis-no-elected-president-for-iran.html#ixzz1chU7b39uNo Elected President for Iran?
[ analysis ] In mid-October, Supreme Leader Ali... more
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Of all the series of unexpected, transformative, events unfolding in the Middle East, one of the most astonishing dramas is transpiring in Iran, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is about to lose power. No, the pro-democracy forces have not suddenly reawakened to overthrow Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs.
Instead, the same Shiite clerics who so forcefully supported the president against mass opposition protesters two years ago have now turned decisively and very publicly against Ahmadinejad.Of all the series of unexpected, transformative, events unfolding in the Middle East,... more
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's-Election-set-to-go-off-with-a-WhimperTwo years ago, it threatened to trigger a wave of dissent that would reverberate around the Middle East and beyond.
Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, took to the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities to protest the reelection of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, a poll that opponents claimed was rigged.
Yet on June 12, with much of the region in a state of revolutionary ferment, the second anniversary of Iran's bitterly disputed presidential election is likely to pass off as little more than a footnote.'s-Election-set-to-go-off-with-a-WhimperTwo years ago, it threatened to trigger a... more
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In June of 2009, millions of Iranians went to the polls to select the country's next president. They went to the polling stations with high hopes regarding their future.
Within 24 hours they found out that they had been a part of the biggest voter fraud in Iran's modern history and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced the winner.
Soon after, people poured into the streets and asked “where is our vote?”, but instead of answers, government unleashed it’s Plainclothes Agents on them and they oppressed the protesters by any means necessary.
“Plainclothes Agents” introduces the audience to Ali, a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. In this documentary, Ali explains the creation of Plainclothes Agents and its direction.
www.plainclothesagents.comIn June of 2009, millions of Iranians went to the polls to select the country's... more
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In June of 2009, millions of Iranians went to the polls to select the country's next president. They went to the polling stations with high hopes regarding their future.
Within 24 hours they found out that they had been a part of the biggest voter fraud in Iran's modern history and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced the winner.
Soon after, people poured into the streets and asked “where is our vote?”, but instead of answers, government unleashed it’s Plainclothes Agents on them and they oppressed the protesters by any means necessary.
“Plainclothes Agents” introduces the audience to Ali, a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. In this documentary, Ali explains the creation of Plainclothes Agents and its direction.
www.plainclothesagents.comIn June of 2009, millions of Iranians went to the polls to select the country's... more
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Isa Saharkhiz, former Iranian official, a journalist and a political activist was arrested on June 20, 2009 in northern Iran and has been imprisoned ever since.
Mr. Saharkhiz was former head of the press department at the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Education during former President Khatami's administration. He played a great role on empowering Reformists' papers during Khatami's presidency. Reformist papers enjoyed certain level of freedom until protests over disputed presidential election in 2009. Reformists' papers and journalists have been critical of Mr. Ahmadinejad, his government and alleged that the presidential election was fraud and challengers' votes were rigged. About 52 journalists were arrested after protests and crisis over election results and Mr. Saharkhiz was one of the key organizers of reformist papers so he thought he has no choice but to go into hiding.
According to his Wikipedia page, three days before his arrest he told the German weekly, Der Spiegel:
I am on the run and change homes all the time. I turn on my mobile phone only one hour each day, because they can trace me and arrest me.
Saharkhiz believes that intelligence offices tracked his location through his limited cell phone usage and arrested him. So he and his son, Mehdi have filed a lawsuit in a U.S. Federal Court against Nokia Siemens Network that sold communications intercept technology to Iran which, according to him, was subsequently used by the government to monitor opposition activists.
In the legal case, Saharkhiz argue that Nokia Siemens Networks provided equipment with foresight of how Iranian authorities might use it to violate human rights:
Defendants knowingly, negligently and willfully provided the infamous, abusive and oppressive Iranian government with sophisticated devices for monitoring, eavesdropping, filtering, and tracking mobile phones. The devices enabled Iranian officials to access private voice conversation, text messages, user phone numbers, and other identifying information about the Plaintiffs as well as the nature and content of their use of electronic communications. This information was produced only through the use of Defendants’ provided equipment. The Defendants’ sale to and training of Iranian government officials knowingly and willfully aided and abetted the commission of arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention, torture, and other major human rights abuses violating United States and international laws, causing Plaintiffs’ severe physical and mental suffering.Isa Saharkhiz, former Iranian official, a journalist and a political activist was... more
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One harrowing year since the stolen election, the people of Iran need the world's attention to go beyond the nuclear issue.
Do not forget Iran. Remember Neda. If there are green-clad protests in Tehran this weekend, to mark the first anniversary of the election that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole, they will doubtless again be crushed with casual brutality by the thugs of the basij militia, secret police and Revolutionary Guard. Imprisonment, torture, male rape and execution are the offerings these henchmen of the Islamic Republic bring to honour Allah, the compassionate, the merciful.
Faced with such violent repression, the Green movement is a long way down – but not out. Iran will never again be the country it was before the election of 12 June 2009. In the great demonstration three days later, one of the largest in recorded history, everything was changed, changed utterly. In the subsequent repression, a terrible beauty was born. The historical process may take years, but one day, as the economy worsens and discontent spreads to more sections of society, the movement will be back in force, though perhaps in a different form. Eventually, in Iran there will be statues of Neda Agha-Sultan, the young woman shot in one of the early mass demonstrations, and memorials to the martyrs of this struggle for freedom, as there are now memorials to the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war.
We should also never forget that this is a self-generated movement from within a Muslim society, dedicated to transforming the contemporary world's longest-running and still most formidable Islamist regime into something very different.
If you want to get a sense of the agony and ecstasy of Iran over the last year, read Death to the Dictator! by Afsaneh Moqadam. It tells the story of the stolen election and attempted Green revolution through the experience of one young man, Mohsen, who is caught up in the excitement of the protests, but then detained, tortured, and repeatedly raped by his jailers. (Mohsen is too humiliated to admit this, but the horrible effects are detailed to his mother by a doctor, with appropriate medical advice.)
The larger political narrative is vividly and knowledgeably woven around this central, biographical thread. One thing that emerges very clearly is the vital role of women, which the Nobel peace prizewinner Shirin Ebadi has written about. Mohsen's mother herself joined the protests, independently of the men in her family, and we understand that this is a double emancipation. "Afsaneh Moqadam" is a pseudonym, and some names and details have been changed to protect those involved, but I have spoken to the author and am left in no doubt that this harrowing account is closely based on a true story.
Then go on YouTube to watch the American film For Neda. The film is a bit too schmaltzy for my taste, but well worth seeing, with some brave reporting by Saeed Kamali Dehghan, who returned to Iran to film interviews with Neda's family (and to report for the Guardian). Despite the regime's efforts to block it, many people in Iran have reportedly already viewed it online. Finally, look at Amnesty International's latest report on Iran, with its sober catalogue of arrests, torture and numerous executions.
Meanwhile the United States, Britain and other western powers today managed to push another round of sanctions through the UN security council. Despite being watered down at the behest of Russia and China, these do further tighten the screw on the regime, including some of the leaders and enterprises of the Revolutionary Guard. But the sanctions are related only to the nuclear issue, not to human rights.
Two questions arise: what is the best way to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb? And how will possible strategies on the nuclear issue interact with the country's tortured internal politics? I doubt very much whether any sanctions acceptable to China will be strong enough to stop Iran getting to the nuclear weapon threshold. They will, however, worsen the country's economic situation and therefore potentially increase the social discontent that feeds opposition.
Some say the west should have responded more favourably to the recent Turkish-Brazilian proposal to take a chunk of Iran's low enriched uranium outside the country. (Miffed, Turkey and Brazil voted against the latest sanctions.) I don't think that would have stopped Iran moving covertly to the nuclear weapon threshold, and many regime opponents in Iran would not welcome such readiness to shake their oppressors' bloody hands.
Bombing Iran, as advocated by hotheads in the US and Israel, would almost certainly produce a wave of patriotic solidarity with the regime. At the other extreme, ever more foreign policy sages in Washington now say privately (and a few argue publicly) that we must learn to live with – and "contain" – a nuclear Iran. But the risk of sparking a Sunni-Shia nuclear arms race in the Middle East is very grave, while such a "success" would also strengthen the Ahmadinejad regime at home. So: four alternatives, none of them good.
What remains is the hope of getting a more responsible government in Iran. To be sure, the leaders of the Green movement do not differ as much as we might like from the regime's position on the nuclear issue. But a more popular and legitimate government, re-engaging with the world, would create a very different dynamic and set of linkages around the nuclear issue.
How and when that domestic political change comes is both morally and practically a question for the Iranians themselves. The experience of other countries suggests that it will depend on the movement's ability to formulate clearer, more strategic goals, retain non-violent discipline and be inventive in finding new tactics of protest; to appeal to other social groups affected by a declining economy (workers, public service employees, bazaari merchants); and to exploit growing divisions within the regime. (A remarkable new investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Guardian Films, viewable at guardian.co.uk from Friday, documents significant defections from the Revolutionary Guard.)
Iran will be liberated by the Iranians, not by us. But at the margins there are a few things we can do from outside. First, do no harm. In a political version of the doctor's Hippocratic oath, we must examine every step we take on the nuclear issue to make sure it does not actually damage the internal movement for change. Second, keep open the lines of communication and information, so Iranians inside and outside the country can tell each other what is happening there. The BBC Persian language television service must on no account fall victim to UK public spending cuts.
Work should be redoubled on internet firewall circumvention technologies, so all Iranians have online access to films like For Neda as well as their own home-made citizen journalism. Third, our leaders should say much more clearly that the sanctions we impose are also a response to the brutal repression inside Iran. We care about their rights, not just about our security.
Last but not least, we must always remember what has happened over the last year, and help Iranians to do the same. What all tyrants want is for their own people and the outside world to forget. The Czech writer Milan Kundera once famously observed that "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting". For man, read also woman. Mohsen, and his mother.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/09/iran-tortured-green-elections-nuclearOne harrowing year since the stolen election, the people of Iran need the world's... more
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“STOLEN NUKES,” MISSING WMD’S THAT CAUSED IRAQ WAR IN ISRAEL ALL ALONG
ISRAELI “ROGUE NUKES” USED TO JUSTFY GLOBAL “CRIME SPREE”
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
In a long secret “lost nuke” scenario dating back to 1991 and involving Israel, South Africa, Britain, Oman and the U.S., Israel claims “self defense” in attacking ships in international waters today, killing 16. These secret nuclear weapons hijacked after shipment from South Africa have torn the world apart for nearly two decades. If you ever wondered why and what while watching the world tear itself apart, this is what was being kept from you, a lie within a lie.
Just after the humanitarian flotilla departed for Gaza, Israel informed the US and Britain that the convoy was ferrying stolen nuclear weapons that would be used for a terrorist attack on Israel. The “stolen nukes” have been in Israel for 18 years while the US has spent billions of dollars and thousands of lives looking for them. Today 16 more died.
Meanwhile, three Israel’s German built, “nuclear armed” submarines sit off Iran today, they believe covered by this same deception. This was also the rationale for other acts to isolate Palestinians including walling off hundreds of thousands in a virtual prison in Gaza, walls built and designed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, walls that America should have on its own southern border.
MISSING NUKES CONFIRMED, STOLEN BY ISRAEL, NOT SADDAM
The story involves real missing nuclear weapons. That has been confirmed. Built in South Africa by Israel, these 3 stolen nukes represent all that is left of the nuclear arsenal apartheid South Africa threatened the world with. Though the weapons may be “technically” missing, the massive undercurrent of secrecy and deception behind this global threat is pure fantasy, fantasy and nightmare. Hijacked from Oman in 1991, these are the nukes Israel said were shipped to Syria by Iraq to escape US forces advancing on Baghdad back in 2003. Israel knew they were never sold to Iraq, not unless Israel had done the selling themselves.
Israel’s fantasy about the transfer of these weapons to Syria by Saddam during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq was meant to push for an invasion of Syria under the guise of “chasing WMD’s.” Israel informed the US that terrorists working with Syria were planning to move these nukes, again via ambulance, into Israel and were planning to set one of them off in Haifa. This “lost nuke” claim has been repeated by Israel numerous times over the years in varied scenarios, each more false than the last. Through “back channels,” Tel Aviv will again claim “self defense” as the rationale for this latest attack, an act of piracy against the humanitarian convoy heading to Gaza.
It is also said that Israel has used the threat of these lost nukes to block inquiries into their possible role in 9/11.
OH, THE WEBS WE WEAVE WHEN AT FIRST WE DECIDE TO DECEIVE…
The story is a long scenario of plots involving the murder of British weapons specialist David Kelly along with a number of legal inquiries and maneuvers in Britain to cover the tracks of what happened to these nukes, a cover up that continues to this day. A “Bent Arrow” nuclear blunder at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana was meant to provide cover for Israel by illegally shipping 6 cruise missile-mounted nukes to Diego Garcia while reporting them for “demat” disassembly. The moment those nukes were loaded onto a B-52, still attached to cruise missiles, America went “rogue” for Israel. Some lies can live forever.
HOW IT ALL STARTED
The claim that “lost nukes” are aboard the humanitarian flotilla that was just savaged off Gaza is part of a Mossad deception that started years ago. Part of the story was broken by The Guardian when this British paper released documents showing military cooperation between South Africa and Israel with Tel Aviv agreeing to provide nuclear weapons to Pretoria while South Africa was under sanctions for its apartheid policies. By 1975, Israel had already built as many as 50 plutonium bombs at its Dimona reactor opened in 1962. In 1963, President Kennedy demanded they close what he called a “weapons facility.” He was murdered soon after. No other American president has mentioned Dimona since.
Mordechai Vanunu, a scientist there, reported this in a British newspaper. His descriptions of processes were backed by leading nuclear weapon experts, U.S. and British nuclear weapons designers Theodore Taylor and Frank Barnaby. Vanunu was kidnapped in Rome and imprisoned in Israel, 11 of 18 years in solitary confinement and is still being held under gag order. You can be convicted there of treason for spreading “rumors.” Early on, Israel decided to turn their “secret” nuclear status into a profit making business, covered from nonproliferation sanctions by their “special relationship” with the United States.
Few know this but “officially” South Africa built 6 nuclear weapons with the illegal aid of Israel. In fact Israel helped South Africa develop not only nuclear weapons but chemical and biological agents as well. Some of the “germ warfare” agents were used in Angola by SADF troops. Other weapons developed there, such as BZ “hallucinogenic gas” were sold to the US and used against the Iraqi Republican Guard. This was reported by the South African Truth Commission after the presentation of documents and scientific testimony backing the claim. Weapons resulting from this partnership were even sold to Libya and Iran.
THE BIG SECRET, 10 BOMBS BUILT, NOT 6
South Africa, really Israel, built 10 nukes, not the widely believed six. One was tested in the Indian Ocean by Israel and South Africa in September 1979. The test was spotted by US “VELA” satellites that identified the classic “double flash” of a nuclear weapons and was confirmed by acoustic sensors. The Carter administration covered this up as it was thought to be a danger to the Camp David peace accords that won for President Carter a Nobel Peace Prize.
This left 9 remaining nukes. Fearing control of nuclear weapons by “Africans,” the Whites Only South African government agreed to ship the 9 weapons to the US for disposal. Records of the UN inspection team exist along with the accords reached after inspecting the Pelindaba weapons facility in 1990. Just this month President Obama officially thanked the South African government for this act. However, three of the nukes were sidetracked by Britain, as we have been informed by high level sources. These three nukes are what everything is all about, certainly the Iraq invasion, the war on terror and the massive security measures, although catastrophically inept, taken by the United States.
More at the link:“STOLEN NUKES,” MISSING WMD’S THAT CAUSED IRAQ WAR IN ISRAEL ALL... more
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It's still vacation time for a lot of folks (not me anymore, unfortunately) and I figure you're probably lazing about on your couch planning on doing all that exercising once the New Year kicks in with its resolutions.
So I'm not going to challenge you with some big long wordy post. Instead: Video! A round-up of some of the news videos from over the break.
Things are picking back up in Iran, with Mousavi's nephew being killed in a protest in the capital.
Protestors, Police Clash in Iran: Raw Video
British authorities, worried about drinking overtaking ski culture with dangerous consequences have launched an awareness campaign. Vacationers in France seemed non-plussed.
Drinking and Skiing: Raw Video
And finally, from England itself, a beautiful and glorious annual tradition: Mud races!
Mud Races in England: Raw Video
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The passing of an Iranian cleric has led to a new surge of opposition protesting in the Iranian city of Qom. Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri was one of the top clerics of Shia Islam and has been a key voice criticizing the regime in Tehran. He died in his sleep Saturday. Tehran Bureau has a fantastic obituary tracing his involvement in the movement that brought down the Shah through his opposition to Khamenei's role as Supreme Leader.
Montazeri's burial in Qom has attracted mourners from around the country and as more and more people have gathered, the event has turned more and more into an opposition protest against the regime.
The New York Times Lede Blog has been collecting mourning videos coming out of Qom and elsewhere in the country.
Thanks to the reader who wrote to explain that the chant heard in this clip — “aza, azast emrooz, rooze azast emrooz, rahbar sabz iran pish khodast emrooz” — means, “mourning, there’s mourning, there’s mourning today; today is the day of mourning, the leader of Green Iran is with God today.” The reader explains, “While Montazeri was not considered the leader of the Green Movement, this points to him as the spiritual head of the Greens.”
Despite the best efforts of the Iranian regime to defuse opposition protests, they seem to be unstoppable. Perhaps not in the same sizes as the demonstrations in June and July, but the fact that the opposition continues to use big events like this as a platform for protest shows its stubborn tenacity in the face of violence and media clampdowns.
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Either Iran just got real aggressive in the last 24 hours or someone is out to make the Islamic Republic look bad. Real bad. First, last night, Twitter goes down. And it's replaced by this 1995-future-world "You got hacked" graphic.
Now I've never heard of the Iranian Cyber Army, but I commend them on using Gmail, which is really the superior web-based email service. The group's website did not tie them directly to the government, though a Farsi poem on the home page would point to them being supporters of the government.
Several lines of poetry in Farsi at the bottom of the “Cyber Army” page refer to the “Leader,” which is the common term used in Iran for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei, suggesting that those who were behind the message could have been loyalists to Iran's Islamic system of rule. The verses read: “If the Leader orders, we will rush forward / If he asks us, we will offer our heads / If he wants us to be patient, we will tolerate and bear it.”
Meanwhile, in Iraq, authorities claim that Iranian soldiers have seized an oil well near Amara, just across the border from Iran. Iran's government has denied the claim and I've yet to find any independent source confirming the report.
So did the Islamic Republic decide to tear it up Thursday night (it is the new Friday, I hear)? Are its supporters lashing out (government-friendly hackers and an independently acting group of soldiers?). Or is there a plot to sully Iran's image underway?
Theories?
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I know the year's not over yet, but it's close enough to call-out the top ten news stories. In this video round-up I focused on the big stories and the stories that will impact 2010 and beyond. Think I missed one? Want to get your bets in early on top stories of 2010? Hit us up in comments.
Top 10 News Headlines of 2009 (Video)
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Yesterday was National Students Day in Iran. Traditionally, the Iranian President comes to a campus and addresses its students. Yesterday Ahmadinejad made no such appearance. Instead, thousands of Iranian students took to the streets of several cities to protest the regime.
...[A]mateur videotape posted on the Internet showed thousands of anti-government students chanting slogans and gathering on various campuses around the country. Credible reports of protests emerged from campuses in the central Iranian cities of Esfahan, Shiraz and Kerman, in the eastern city of Mashhad and in the western cities of Tabriz, Kermanshah, Hamedan and Ilam as well as in Rasht on the Caspian Sea.
The New York Times Lede Blog has a great round up of coverage from yesterday, including several videos. This one is of students at Ami Kabir University pulling down its gates.
These protests seem to have shifted from the aims of the first round of protests in the summer. Instead of being focused on the disputed election, there were various reports of protesters calling out the regime itself. From Newsweek:
The first wave of dissent after the elections was explicitly focused on voter fraud, both from a genuine belief that the system would investigate the results and also so that protestors couldn't be accused of trying to overthrow the system. But as the government crackdown increased, the position of the opposition began to harden. The slogans today are the clearest indication yet that at least some elements of the opposition are not only challenging the results of the presidential election, but the regime itself. One video posted on the Internet today even showed a protestor burning pictures of both Khamenei and Ahmadinejad. This may not sit well with the moderate elements of the opposition, and the student protestors may have overplayed their hand.
The cycle of protests leading to harsher crackdowns leading to more radical protests leading to harsher crackdowns continues. What will become of Iran's opposition? Will they all end up jailed or repressed? Or are we looking at a crack in the very foundation of Iran's theocratic regime?
UPDATE: The NY Times reports that protests have continued today:
The violence continued Tuesday on the campus of Tehran University, where security forces were using tear gas and arresting students, according to reports and video clips relayed through Twitter and Internet postings. There were protests at large squares near the university as well, witnesses said.
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Newsweek reports that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei will be the last Supreme Leader of the country, ever. Khamenei is only the second Supreme Leader the country has ever had, the first being Khomeini. His successor has proven to be less successful at being the most powerful voice in the country according to the clerical leadership.
From Newsweek:
Khamenei's response to the massive election demonstrations this past summer reaffirmed a longstanding but secretive belief among a majority of Iran's religious teachers and scholars: supreme clerical rule, no matter who is at the helm, can lead only to despotism and should be abolished. There can be no absolute power because, as Khamenei showed, men are fallible. It's well enough understood outside Iran that those clerics have found common cause with the street demonstrators; what the rest of the world hasn't realized yet is that they also want Khamenei gone.
The Supreme Leader will hold the position until he dies at which point the decision to eliminate the title could be made. Whether or not the standing theocratic order will be around that long is an entirely different question. The street protests continue sporadically and Neda Agha Soltan continues to be a powerful global symbol of the Iranian regime's brutality (as we saw on the blog recently: Neda's boyfriend speaks after escaping Iran).
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Caspian Makan, a 38 year old Iranian photographer, has had a terrible few months. Amid massive street protests against Iran's government his girlfriend, Neda Agha Soltan, died a bloody and disturbing death. And the whole watched it on YouTube. Things only got worse for Makan from there. He spent months in the dreaded Evin Prison and upon release, decided to flee the country for his own safety.
The Guardian has a long interview with Caspian Makan, now having had smugglers help him escape Iran. A short excerpt:
On the day of her death, Caspian was out with his camera in another part of the city. "I was taking pictures of the protests and the protesters that day. It was hard to take pictures as the security guards were beating up protesters. I used my mobile's camera when I couldn't use my big camera. It was six to seven in the evening when I started seeing people get shot and injured. I thought of Neda a lot. I was very worried for her. I wanted to call her but the mobile phone system had been disconnected and I couldn't contact her at all. I didn't sleep that night. The terrible scenes were going through my head. I was sitting in front of my computer, looking at the photos I had taken. Around six in the morning my mobile rang. It was Neda's number. But it wasn't her. It was her sister. She said, 'Caspian, Neda is gone!' I didn't understand what she meant. I couldn't believe what she was telling me."
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The LA Times has a fantastic profile of an Iranian couple who were both members of the Basiji - the hard-line militia group that provides much of the muscle behind the governments crackdowns on the opposition. It's an incredibly personal story of transformation.
Once during a law class she took to help with her part-time job at a law office, the subject was women's rights. Under Iranian law, the professor said, a woman was worth half a man when it came to court testimony or inheritance.
"That's not fair," she burst out, reminded of the bitter child-custody battle that her sister had endured, and lost, against an abusive husband.
"You're a feminist," the professor accused her.
That night, she pulled out a dictionary and looked up "feminist."
She read the definition, and decided that she was.
The basij have long fascinated watchers of Iran, but given their enmity to the West, rarely speak with Western journalists. This profile seems to have been possible because the writer was longtime friends of the couple. Kouross Esmaeli, a journalist working with Collective Journalism for Current was able to get unprecedented access to the group a few years ago and some of its members gave him a very frank depiction of their worldview.
Basijis: Iran’s Culture Cops (VIDEO) - The militia backing up Ahmadinejad
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From mild-mannered mathlete to national opposition hero - it's been a crazy couple of weeks for Iranian math student Mahmoud Vahidnia.
At a meeting between students and the Ayatollah Khamenei, Vahidnia raised his had to ask a question and then spent twenty minutes criticizing the country's Supreme Leader to his face.
"I don't know why in this country it's not allowed to make any kind of criticism of you," said the student, wearing a long-sleeved blue polo shirt and appearing calm.
"In the past three to five years that I have been reading newspapers, I have seen no criticism of you, not even by the Assembly of Experts, whose duty is to criticize and supervise the performance of the leader," he said, referring to the clerical body that chooses the country's supreme leader.
Khamenei countered, "We welcome criticism. We never said not to criticize us. ... There's plenty of criticism that I receive," according to accounts in state media and on opposition Web sites.
Contrary to the stories of the thousands of protesters and critics of the country's election results - Mahmoud Vahidnia has faced no repercussions. In fact the incident was originally reported by the Supreme Leader's office - touting the country's tolerance for healthy debate. Initially many questioned whether the incident was staged for such a purpose - though opposition leaders are now saying the incident was the real deal.
Here's some video (albeit in Persian) of the meeting with a little bit of Vahidnia at the podium.
(h/t themajlis.org)
Posted to Current News by elsonwvu.
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From the irony files: The Daily Telegraph has investigated a photograph taken of Ahmadinejad in 2008 and determined that Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may well have a Jewish past.
A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.
The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="220" caption="From the Daily Telegraph"][/caption]
The article goes on to wonder if the Iranian President's vitriol for Jewish people is some sort of overcompensation.
This is obviously a very fascinating story if wholly accurate. It strikes me though a possibly a little too neat. While I trust that the Daily Telegraph has accurately translated the text on the identity card - I wonder about some of the other logic. Does the Jewish name mean a Jewish family? Are they certain it was his parents who held the name? Anyone who has any more insight into this, please weigh in.
Comment over here on Current.com, where it was originally clipped by WakeUpPeople.
Previously on Iran
- Iran: It’s just the fact of the talking that’s important
- Student protests and the return of nuke inspectors – An Iran update
- More sanctions for Iran?From the irony files: The Daily Telegraph has investigated a photograph taken of... more
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