Iran

‘The blogging Mullah’

by

Link via a blog at the website of the German business paper Handelsblatt:

Update: Tatyana informs me in the comments that one of Abtahi’s post I’m linking to, ‘Freedom of Holding Demonstrations against America’, alludes to an old Soviet joke about being perfectly free in the Soviet Union to protest against America.

The Ayatollah Ali Mohammad Abtahi, Vice President under former Iranian President Khatami has a blog of his own. According to Handelsblatt he is posting almost daily, his subjects mostly being ‘rumors heard in mosques, indiscretions [uttered] at official receptions and inside stories from the halls of power’. Abtahi still is a welcome guest all over the Arabic world, so he has a lot of such stories on offer. He mostly blogs in Farsi, but some stories are also translated into a quite idiosyncratic English here.

Abtahi and his former boss Khatami are quite moderate as Iranian Ayatollahs go, although the latter demonstrated this April the limits of his moderation by telling some Israeli journalists to ‘go to hell’. Furthermore, even people reporting for German public TV now and then feel compelled to point out that the Iranian government under Khatami was no less intransigent as far as their nuclear program was concerned as the present one under Ahmadenejad is right now.

Read more

An Iranian victory? I fear it is so.

by

Some people are speculating as to why the government of Iran suddenly decided to release the British sailors and Marines it was holding. There are a number of reasons that have been bandied about, and the two leading contenders are that we made some sort of terrible threat, or that we caved in and bribed them. Maybe both.

I think there’s another reason. The big game here is Iran’s program to produce weapon’s grade U-235, and what they need now is time. The big danger, as they see it, is that we’ll get nasty before they have a nuclear deterrent and start bombing.

Read more

Some Neurocognitive Implications For Nation-Building

by

Perhaps my favorite entirely apolitical blog is The Eide Neurolearning Blog run by the Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide, two physicians who specialize in brain research and its implications for educating children. With great regularity I find information there that either is of use to me professionally or has wider societal importance.

Read more

Rageh Omaar – Inside Iran

by

Rageh Omaar of the BBC takes a trip to Tehran to discover what the lives of ordinary Iranians is like.

It is a timely reminder that Iran is the home of an old and proud civilization, that just happens now, like the People’s Republic of China, to be caught up in a form of government that is behind the people’s capacity and taste for modernity and sophistication. Take the time to watch this, and to learn more about a remarkable people.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]