Donate your kidney to fight Israel: “The ceremony will focus on designating rewards for the assassination of three Israeli top officials”. This is how the close-to-state website Farda describes an event to be held in Tehran. The three officials are Ehud Barack, Meir Dagan, and Amos Yadlin. The amount will be awarded for the “revolutionary…
Showing all posts tagged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The sham decision
A useful primer on the forthcoming Iranian election: Several reformist candidates who served Islamic Republic and some who are already MPs were banned to become candidates. Some of them including clerics were said that there is doubt about their faith in Islam!! Imagine you are a MP, a… cleric and circumcised (I guess the last…
Ships of fools
Iranian blogger Kamangir offers a tantalising piece of news: “5 in the morning”, a website close to the reformists, claims that since a month ago Iranian tankers have been travelling in the Persian Gulf under foreign flags [Persian]. Reportedly, as the American ships in the Persian Gulf increased their surveillance on Iranian vessels, tankers operated…
Rejecting tyranny
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is trying to force his people in a direction a majority reject. Iason Athanasiadis explains: Before the crackdown, the event was little more than a bothersome national institution. For a few weeks every late spring, the grim-faced guardians of public mores would venture out in their olive-green uniforms, black official chadors,…
The long memory
Iranian-American, Reed College Professor Darius Rejali, Harpers, February 13: Everyone forgets that the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979 was the revolution against torture. When the Shah criticized Khomayni as a blackrobed Islamic medieval throwback, Khomayni replied, look who is talking, the man who tortures. This was powerful rhetoric for recruiting people, then as it is now.…
Dark days ahead
A friend writes from Tehran: Here the political weather is terrible. You might know that the parliamentary election is near and the reformist nearly are not allowed to be involved. About 80 per cent of reformist candidates has been labeled as unqualified by the Government. Mr Khatami and Rafsanjani had a meeting with the Supreme…
Blogging for freedom (and torture)
The democratisation of media continues apace: Since CNN embraced the citizen journalist movement in August 2006 with the launch of its iReport initiative, the news organization has received nearly 100,000 news-related photos and videos from viewers. Yet fewer than 10% of those submissions have appeared on CNN.com or the cable channel. That’s all about to…
Talking to our “enemy”
Despite the seemingly never-ending rhetoric between Israel and Iran, bloggers in both countries are starting to communicate with each other. The internet is breaking down the barriers that politicians and commentators are so keen to erect.