Security. Democracy. Feminism. Polics. Lebanon. Western Misconceptions Meet Iranian Reality. Is Iran pre-revolutionary? Opinion polls suggest the US has got it wrong To a Kremlin analyst in 1968 America may have looked similar to the way that Iran looks to some American analysts today. Large-scale demonstrations to protest the Vietnam war and disrupt the Democratic convention in Chicago may have led to some to conclude that the long-awaited collapse of capitalism was close at hand. Indeed some demonstrators called for the overthrow of the system, some were explicitly pro-communist, and some government leaders portrayed the demonstrators as a threat to the American way of life.
But if Kremlin analysts had come to those conclusions, they would have been wrong. And if they had called for the Soviet Union to pursue a confrontational approach to the United States on the basis that this would hasten its demise they would have been misguided. Today some call for the United States to refrain from negotiating with Iran on the basis that the recent demonstrations are a sign that the Iranian system is cracking. Show trials in Iran. In the grotesque pageant of Iran’s show trials, former high officials—hollow-eyed, dressed in prison pajamas, and flanked by guards in uniform—sit in rows, listening to one another’s self-denunciations.
Since the disputed Presidential elections of June 12th, about a hundred reformist politicians, journalists, student activists, and other dissidents have been accused of colluding with Western powers to overthrow the Islamic Republic. This month, a number of the accused have made videotaped confessions. But the spectacle has found a subversive afterlife on the Internet. One image that has gone viral is a split frame showing two photographs of former Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi. Show trials have been staged before, most notably in Moscow in the nineteen-thirties. The indictments prepared by the public prosecutor are almost surreally obtuse. Forced confessions have been part of Iran’s penal system since the mid-nineteen-seventies. Revulsion was, in many ways, the point. Sarah Palin, meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | Salon. Is Sarah Palin America’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? The two differ in many key respects, of course, but it is remarkable how similar they are.
There are uncanny parallels in their biographies, their domestic politics and the way they present themselves — even in their rocky relationships with party elders. Both are former governors of a northwest frontier state with great natural beauty (in Ahmadinejad’s case, Ardabil). Both are known for saying things that produce a classic Scooby-Doo double take in their audiences. Both appeal to a sort of wounded nationalism, speaking of the sacrifice of dedicated troops for an often feckless public, and identifying themselves with the common soldier. They are vigilant against foreign designs on their countries and insist on energy and other independence. But above all, both are populists who claim to represent the little people against wily and unscrupulous elites, and against pampered upper-middle-class yuppies pretending to be the voice of democracy.
Iran's British stooges are staring right at you | Dominic Lawson - Times Online. The New York Times > Week in Review > Image > Hierarchy of Power in Iran: One Man Above All Others. Civil Society - Iran: Larijani Faction Emerges as Third Force in Iranian Power Struggle. Informed Comment: Ahmadinejad Slams Obama; <br> 70 Professors Arrested; <br> Wednesday Protest Violently Attacked. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who stands accused of stealing the recent election in Iran, lashed out at Barack Obama on Thursday.
He demanded an apology from the White House for what he termed interference in Iranian affairs, and said Obama had started talking like George W. Bush. He said that Obama’s current stance was not a promising basis for going forward with direct talks, a clumsy threat to refuse to cooperate with Washington in any way. Obama, of course, has not in fact interfered in Iranian domestic politics, for which he has been slammed by hawks who apparently want an invasion. All he did was to object to regime violence toward peaceful protesters and regime abrogation of the right to peaceable assembly. The BBC is reporting that a victory celebration by the Iranian elite to which 290 MPs were invited ended up being poorly attended, with only 105 showing up. Patrick Martin at the Globe and Mail wonders if the mass protest movement is petering out in Iran.
Iran: this is not a revolution | Arshin Adib-Moghaddam. Political power is never good or bad, never really just or unjust; political power is arbitrary, discriminatory and most of the time violent. In Iran, the ongoing demonstrations sparked by the election results in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicate that such power can never really be monopolised by the state. Iran's civil society is fighting; it is giving blood for a just cause. It is displaying its power, the power of the people. Today, Iran must be considered one of the most vibrant democracies in the world because it is the people who are speaking.
The role of the supporters of the status quo has been reduced to reaction, which is why they are lashing out violently at those who question their legitimacy. In all of this, the current civil unrest in Iran is historic, not only because it has already elicited compromises by the state, but also because it provides yet more evidence of the way societies can empower themselves against all odds. Informed Comment: Tens of Thousands Rally for Mousavi in Tehran. The damnedest thing happened in Tehran on Monday. A massive rally estimated by Farnaz Fassihi of the WSJ at tens of thousands sprang up all along Vali Asr Street, the capital’s longest thoroughfare, stretching 12 miles across the city. The scene reminded Fassihi of the enormous crowds that came out to protest the shah in 1978!
They chanted angry slogans and adapted old, banned, nationalist and communist anthems. They attacked Ahmadinejad as a dictator and a tyrant. They were encouraged to do that by Mousavi himself: ‘Returning to the question why he calls Ahmadinejad a dictator, Moussavi said, “I say so because he does not abide by the laws, so why should we not call him a dictator?” The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps declined to intervene, as it often has in the past in the face of student demonstrations. Mazier Bahari of Newsweek suggests that the IRGC itself has largely decided to back Mr. A very large crowd gathered at a stadium to cheer on Ahmadinejad on Monday, as well. The President's Message to the Iranian People. Iran goes solar in search of cheap power | Environment.
A concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Spain that uses panels to reflect light on to a central tower to produce electricity. A pilot scheme using CSP has been started in Iran. Photograph: AP Mention energy and Iran in the same sentence and you're duty-bound to express some concern about the country's ambitions for nuclear power and, as a result, raise dangerous questions about weapons. But while that are-they-aren't-they game has been going on between the country's leaders and the wider international community, renewable energy experts in Iran have been quietly working on capturing sunlight to power their country. According to officials, Iran has started 2009 by inaugurating a pilot solar plant in Shiraz, Fars province.
According to the Mehr Iran news agency, Iranian energy minister Parviz Fattah said: "The country backs the use of alternative and renewable energy sources. The solar radiation hitting the Earth contains around 10,000 times the energy needs of the world's population. Why Bush folded on Iran | Salon. Pundits and diplomats nearly got whiplash from the double take they did when George W.
Bush sent the No. 3 man in the State Department to sit at a table on July 19 across from an Iranian negotiator, without any preconditions. When Bush had addressed the Israeli Knesset in May, he made headlines by denouncing any negotiation with “terrorists and radicals” as “the false comfort of appeasement.” What drove W. to undermine John McCain by suddenly adopting Barack Obama’s foreign policy prescription on Iran?
Back in mid-July, the Geneva talks were attended by representatives of the five veto-wielding nations on the United Nations Security Council, including the U.S., along with a delegate from Germany and chief European Union negotiator Javier Solana. E.U. parleys with Tehran have been going on for years, but the presence of undersecretary of state for political affairs William Burns signaled a new seriousness to Washington’s commitment to the diplomatic track. Annals of National Security: Preparing the Battlefield: Reporting & Essays. L ate last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources.
These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.
Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. “The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.” “This is a big deal,” the person familiar with the Finding said.