Iranians get convicted of waging war against God! What are we now? Real time Don Quixotes of 21st century?

Twenty rights activist including Iranian poet Simin Chaichi have been arrested.

Earlier today the Iranian regime arrested Habib Latifi's family.

Hamid Dabashi claims as an American citizen he doesn’t have any oversight and control over Congress-funded-VOA. What media outlet does he have control over? The Islamic Republic Broadcasting Corporation? He says his objection is not to people but establishments or organizations. Doesn’t he know that people make up the establishments and the organizations? Mohammad Javad Zarif's job in NYC is not to hang around with Dabashi but to watch for the interest of Islamic Republic of Iran. Friendship with Zarif means friendship with the Islamic Republic. Period.

The Sneaky Santa


Today a hot discussion had happened in my kid's class about Santa Claus. My daughter insisted Santa Claus isn’t real and one classmate had responded by saying my daughter doesn’t believe in Santa because she doesn't have a religion! On the way home my daughter said but how on earth can he fit in the chimney?!

The Islamic scholars like Tariq Ramadan or Reza Aslan speak about Islam in such a way as if they address Westerners instead of Muslims in Islamic Countries. They ask Westerners to be tolerant of Muslims. They are champion in the art of projecting Islam as the religion of peace, and expect their rights to be respected, to build mosques and Islamic centers, to be treated differently from the terrorists or militant Muslims but can’t speak out against the case of Asia Bibi!

An article by Reza Aslan was circulated on social media recently. While Aslan dismisses the possibility of Islamic regime's hand in the terrorist attacks as not founded in facts, he makes wild accusations against CIA, the intelligence agency of the country that has given him the chance to a better life.

Iran: Another execution, another woman

Shahla Jahed who was charged for the murder of a well-known Iranian football player's wife will be executed tomorrow.

The Color Purple movement : Mahmoud Ahmadinejad twenty years later. Make sure not to ask him what crimes he committed during Khamenei's golden era. It may weaken the movement!

Iranian blogger Hossein Ronaghi Maleki has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The universal rights of all People is finally addressed

CNN: U.S adds sanctions against Iran for human rights abuses. Citing "mounting evidence" of repression of the Iranian opposition, the Obama administration added more sanctions against Iranian government officials, members of the Revolutionary Guards Corps and others accused by the United States of being responsible for human rights abuses.

Subject: Sign the Petition / Canada asking for consular access
A petition site to urge for the immediate release of Hossein Derakhshan.

Your signatures will be directly and automatically sent to officials of the Federation of Canada, urging them to do whatever they can to demand the immediate release of Hossein.

Thank God for people like Jefferson who gave us an enlightened world to live in.

July 11th is the International Day Against Stoning. Fifteen people are awaiting execution by stoning in Iran, all of them on adultery charges.

"Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better." -- Albert Camus

Sanctions

While Mandela supported sanctions against the apartheid regime, there were those in the West (mostly on the right) who opposed them by arguing that sanctions would only hurt poor black people. We all know that the opponents of sanctions against the apartheid regime couldn't care less about poor South Africans but worried about their trade with that country. In the same way, many who oppose sanctions against IR worry more about their UAE - based businesses than ordinary Iranians. Now that more countries are joining the sanctions, you see folks who never said a word about the misery of the Iranians in all these years are sticking their heads out and crying bloody murder!

Iranians involved in 1988 massacres remain in public life

Geoffrey Robertson: "Those who conducted the prison massacres in 1988 are not only guilty of directing torture and murder but of implementing a plan to exterminate. That amounts to genocide and there is an international obligation on all nations under the Genocide Convention to bring them to book."

What is a 19 months prison term?

If you wanted to lose weight two pounds a week, you would have had lost a lot of it by now. If you had a new born, he or she would be 19 months old by now. If you had a candy bar left out of its wrapper, 19 months later you couldn’t recognize it. If you had bought a pair of shoes it would be worn-out by now. Right? Now imagine prisoners sitting in a cell in Iran month after month after month. Only if Juliette Binoches of the world would bring attention to at least few of those Iranian prisoners of conscience instead of talking meat broth (Abgoosht).

Bahram Tasviri Khiabani, a prisoner held in Rajaiee Shahr prison in Iran, has been raped by Revolutionary Guards.

What’s exile? My daughter’s question surfed in the air as I went to close the door behind her music teacher with the two year old toddling next to me. What’s exile I asked myself? Maybe it’s not having had tasted those crazy beautiful white mulberries of back home for over twenty years. Maybe it’s those field trips and setting up a large brezent canvas on the ground to try and catch white drops of mulberries.

Please execute Sanandaj
Decapitate Mahabad
Please don’t let our babies be born
And don’t let rain to rain and plants to grow
And earth to breath!

Sherko Bekas

Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the leader of Iran's green movement, was involved in the massacre of thousands of political prisoners.

Execution of five Iranian political prisoners. This was the headline! Farzad Kamangar, Farhad Vakili, Ali Haydarian, Mehdi Eslamian and Shirin Alam Houli were hanged at Evin prison today.

Our Male Chauvinistic Culture


Cultural campaign for women equality is a worthy cause which can be best carried out at the grass root level in a democratic society inside Iran. The virtual space or exile are not the best venues for such campaigns. That is why I think the biggest challenge of our time is political in nature. One may bring up the chicken-egg paradox and argue that these cultural issues breed the kind of backwardness, discrimination, and violence that characterizes the regime in Iran. That might be true to a certain extent in the same way as some may argue that Nazism or Fascism had their underpinnings in the European culture. The political project not only must go on but also given the first priority in my opinion because without the success of the political project, the social project for change has little chance of success.

I believe despite all our cultural deficiencies and chauvinistic males and so on we can do better than this. Some may even argue that many of the things that Shadi Sadr says about Iranian men, are things that western feminists might say about western men. Obviously most of us would trade their political system and democratic institutions for ours in a heart beat. The logical conclusion of Ms. Sadr arguments is that this regime, by virtue of representing our male chauvinistic culture, enjoys some degree of legitimacy although she may not have put it this way.

The Dual Burdens

Whilst Iranian women struggle for an affirmation of their status as equal citizens and are demanding withdrawal of discriminatory laws against them, the United Nations elects the country’s totalitarian regime to its Commission on the Status of Women. The conditions under which the Iranian women live, have enough grounding for the United Nations to call the regime in Iran on their gender apartheid; instead they have promoted IRI to a seat on CSW. When the laws of a totalitarian regime are supported and legitimized by the international community they will have a direct effect on the perpetuation of injustice, as well as continuation of segregation in the society. This in my opinion is justifying more domestic violence. Sadly what we witness first hand is that Iranian women’s suffering is underestimated by the United Nations recent act. They seem to treat this primarily as a fictionalized case. But these are not the reasons why I write this note. I am writing this because a few days ago I read an article by an Iranian women’s rights activist named Shadi Sadr. In that article Sadr makes several statements against Iranian men and compares them all with the totalitarian regime’s Imam, Ayatollah Seddighi, a man who called women the reason for earthquakes in his Friday sermon, and represents a regime that arrests, rapes, and kills.


Iranian men unfortunately are once again victims of stereotyping and this time not by the American Betty Mahmoody in a movie called “Not without My Daughter” but in Sadr’s article titled “What is Different between Tehran’s Friday Sermon Imam and the rest of Iranian Men?”. The image she has portrayed of Iranian men in her article is misleading. Without raising objection to the original comments and minimizing the Ayatollah’s statement she takes Iranian men to a kangaroo court and denies them all due process rights. Based on Sadr’s statement half the population of the country is guilty of sexual harassment as well as mischievous behavior against Iranian women. Where is the logic in such a comparison? Those men are mostly innocent of the crimes Sadr is convicting them of. After all Iranian men are not a bol de soupe that everything could go in. This is simply wrong.


But then some may say I question Sadr’s motives in writing such an article because I have not been victimized or assaulted in the streets of Iran. I assure you that will be a failing argument. Like some Iranian women I too have experienced that type of vulgarity in the streets back in Iran, i.e. age 9: a young man grabbed my bosom as I walked with my mother and brother, age 13, covered in the mandatory Hijab and walking to school a man came close to me and said: “I want to eat your pussy,” at age 14 I was harassed by a Basiji on several occasions. In his last attempt he pushed me against the wall and pressed himself against me. Whatever our personal experiences may or may not be, we can not deny men’s rights by collectively putting them all in the same camp as the Imam.


Although subjects such as women’s oppression in Iran and gender apartheid are important issues to be raised and discussed, none should admonish us to forget that most Iranian men support Iranian women in their struggle to gain equal rights. We need to acknowledge the difference between the totalitarian regime’s men and the Iranian male population. There’s no room for bias in women’s movement that is supposed to be fighting against bias!

Stereotyping Half the Population

After Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi’s comments about women causing earthquakes, an Iranian lawyer and women's rights activist Shadi Sadr wrote:  “I don’t see any difference between Ayatollah Sedighi and every Iranian man.” She went on to add: “Iranian men belong to the same camp as the [ruling regime’s] Ayatollah.”

FOXnews: "Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged "immodest."

NIAC

In my opinion this organization is trying to wield control on Iranian-American media (of which VOA is an example), represent itself as the only voice of the Iranian-American community, and even monopolize Iranian rallies held in the US. This kind of monopolistic behavior especially when it is about free exchange of information does not sit well with me.

Denmark's Saxo bank makes outrageous predictions every year to challenge markets' wisdom and assumptions in the year ahead. By putting together bits and pieces of information, especially Mousavi's and Karoubi's latest statements and the crisis in the banking system, some similarly outrageous predictions could be made about the direction of events in Iran. Ahmadinejad has apparently dissolved Iran's equivalent of federal reserve board of governors in recent days, which even in normal countries would send tsunami waves throughout the system. This is just the beginning: as the sanctions go in full gear and the subsidies end, people may end up paying many orders of magnitude for basic products and services. All this combined with the inability of the regime to crush dissent and defection among its own ranks has made many within the regime skeptical as to the ability of the Ahmadinejad administration to carry on (aka buyer remorse). But since Ahmadinejad has the backing of Khamanei, sacrificing him has to be done in such a way that Khamenei doesn't lose face. One way is for Majlis to impeach Ahmadinejad and/or his ministers over the economic crisis forcing him to resign which after thankful acceptance by Khamanei will pave the way for new elections. Reading between the lines of Karoubi statements today and Mousavi's statements a few weeks ago, one could sense some outcome like this might be in the works/promised to these gentlemen. A lot will depend on the events in the next 3-4 weeks, especially 22 Bahman and unfolding of the banking crisis. This is just an outrageous prediction but one with a pretty good chance of coming true. At a minimum it makes us think "outside the box" in the same way that Saxo banks predictions are designed to.

To those who advocate pacifism blindly. You shook hands with the devil thirty years ago and brought us this national disaster. Now you ask us to shut up, don’t rock the boat and perhaps let another thirty years go by. Have you ever wondered that the birth of Islamic Republic when seen from historical prospective could be the beginning of the end to the life of Iran as a nation? Nations have come and gone. This could be the beginning of our demise. This is when the intellectuals come in to keep us away from such national calamities. They failed miserably thirty years ago and some of those who advocate blind pacifism in my opinion are failing miserably again.

•  آقای کدیور بعد از شش صفحه استدلال و فلسفه بافی نتیجه گیری کرده است با آنکه ولایت فقیه و این نوع حکومت را قبول ندارد ولی از دید وی حرکت در چهارچوب ولایت فقیه تنها مسیر ممکن است! شکی در این نیست که جایگزینی ولایت فقیه با یک حکومت دموکرات کاریست دشوار و در موفقیت آن تضمینی نیست ولی عدم اطمینان از رسیدن به مقصود مطلوب بسیار والاتر است از مطالبه ای که نه مطلوب است و نه عملی. تجربه پانزده سال اخیر نشان داده که ولایت فقیه حتی کوچکترین قدمها در جهت گسترش جامعه مدنی را بر نمی تابد و از این رو حتی رسیدن به کف مطالباتی که از سوی موسوی مطرح شده است به گواه این تجربه پانزده ساله در قالب حکومت ولایی نا ممکن است. علاوه بر آن کسی که با ادعا و یا بدون ادعای رهبری با صدور بیانیه ده ماده ای پنج نفره به شکلی دست به تبین خواستهای جنبش سبز می زند چگونه مردم را به چیزی فرا می خواند که بگفته خود به آن اعتقاد ندارد.

• محمد خاتمی بنا به خواست ولی فقیه اش ظاهرا دست به شفاف کردن مواضع خود زده است و در این راستا افراطیون دو طرف را مورد حمله قرار داده است. حال ببینیم افراطی آن طرف کیست و افراطی این طرف کیست. افراطی ان طرف می کشد، تجاوز می کند و می گوید فتح المبین می کنیم، با ماشین از روی معترض رد می شود و به جای دستگیری قاتل، شاهد قتل را دستگیر می کند، ندا را در روز روشن در خیابان می کشد و می گوید ندا خود نقشه قتل خود را کشیده بود، خواهر زاده را ترور می کند و قتل را به گردن دایی اش می اندازد، پزشک کهریزک را مسموم می کند و با کمال وقاحت وعده سرکوب هر چه بیشتر می دهد. افراطی این طرف دستمال سبز به دهان می بندد و فریاد نه شرقی نه غربی جمهوری ایرانی سر می دهد. افراطی این طرف قاتل ندا را می گیرد ولی پس از شناسایی آزادش می کند. افراطی این طرف ... و افراطی آن طرف...

The Fierce Urgency of Now

There is a group of “veteran” Iranian politicians with a track record mostly characterized by longevity than accomplishments whose idea of nonviolent activism can be better described as some toothless pacifism. Ezatollah Sahabi is an excellent example of such veterans. The sad irony is that someone who published a circulation titled “Iran-e-farda” (Iran-of-tomorrow) is so incapable of understanding that the “tomorrow” has actually arrived and if not seized on today will be wasted as the past thirty one years have. How many opportunities did we miss in the past 31 years? At the time when the end of cold war era was about to bring renewed hope for prosperity and freedom to many nations, we began a backward search in the dungeons of the dark past. The collapse of the former Soviet created historic opportunities for Iran to form strong alliances, cultural or otherwise, with the former Soviet republics in the south and near the Caspian Sea. Instead the incompetence of the regime; its repulsive ideology and the way of life it promotes; its dumb fascination with nuclear program; and obsessive hostility towards US and Israel not only deprived us from seizing on this historic opportunity but even led to Iran’s diminished role in the Caspian Sea area as the Mullahs were desperate for Russian support. And where are we now? We have a population of 70 million, 75% of whom are under 30 years of age, many of them well-educated. The regime does not even remotely understand the desires and aspirations of this population. On the other hand the regime is facing unseen pressure by the international community on its nuclear program. It is reacting by ending subsidies, which will lead to higher prices of basic products and services, creating grounds for an effective large scale civil disobedience campaign. If we cannot seize on these opportunities and the potential offered by this vibrant populace to make political transformation and rebuild our nation now, we will be missing another historic opportunity, this time with far more catastrophic consequences than anything we have seen in the past. “Tomorrow” will be simply too late. Is there anyone who understands “the fierce urgency of now”?

On the 10 commandments of the 5 musketeers!

The more I read the 10 commandments issued by the gang of 5 (Ganji et al), the less it made sense to me. Even if there was a semblance of meaning to be extracted from this 10 point declaration - which only Robin Wright was apparently able to decipher - the follow up interview by a member of the band (Mohajerani) sent me back to square one. Never mind what this declaration is all about. Let’s consider an easier question. Who is the target audience of this declaration? Obviously not me, and most likely not you my dear reader. And absolutely not the Iranian diaspora. Oh, Mohajerani said it in his interview: it’s talking to all the good God fearing people of Iran who according to Mohajerani make up the majority of the people. So let me see if I get it now. People have been risking their lives, tortured, raped, killed because they want Khamenei to answer to the Assembly of Experts. Hmm, are we talking about the same Assembly of Experts whose speaker is Rafsanjani, whose members are tied via a circular process back to Khamanei himself, and which by the way reinstated Khamenei in his position just a few months ago? Of course! How ignorant of me! Now that the gang of 5 has spoken, the Iranian people who have been incapable of expressing their demands by now, have suddenly found a new meaning and purpose in life. Yes! It’s all clear. It all makes sense now! Never mind who this declaration is talking to. Let’s consider another question. What happened to the Ganji of the Republican Manifest? What happened to the person whose courage and intellect broke new grounds? What happened to the person who set a new discourse in the fight against religious tyranny? What happened to the person who you could not stop admiring even if you didn’t agree with a word of what he said? I want that Ganji back. We need that Ganji more than any other time.

Those Leverettes

I have made several comments under SKA here and below is my latest.

Leverettes' arguments are so void of intellectual rigor and knowledge of the Iranian history and culture that their "three questions" come across as mere rhetorical ones. As a matter of fact their "questions" are nothing more than simplistic highlighting of contrasts between this movement, and in their mind, the Islamic revolution of 79. Their argument then goes something like: the 1979 Revolution succeeded, our three questions show how different these two movements are, therefore this movement is doomed to fail! Then they look for "data" from regime's propaganda outlets and a questionable poll to back their so called "analysis". This is so embarrassing for someone who carries the titles of director of this and professor of that. Even their knowledge of the 1979 revolution seems to be embarrassingly shallow and limited. For example, contrary to what Leverettes think the only clear consensus among the political forces of the time was to depose Shah. Even the constitution that according to the Leverettes Khomeini had in hand upon return to Iran was 180 degrees different from what was passed later on (the first version was pretty much a copy of the French constitution and there is no such thing as Velayate Faghih in the French constitution the last time I checked).

Now let's be more specific about their questions. The 1979 revolution obviously enjoyed strong central leadership. Let's even give it to the Leverettes that its "demands" were crystal clear from day one. Nowhere in their piece have they shown that strong central leadership or clear demands are prerequisites to success of a movement. Josh Sharyar refuted this claim by means of an example. Another example is Iran's Constitutional Revolution of 1905- 1911 that succeeded with almost no central leadership through a loose alliance of merchants, western educated intellectuals, clerics, provincial strongmen, and tribal leaders. As a matter of fact there are other parallels between the two movements. They both started from relatively limited demands but expanded later, to some extent as a result of the brutal actions of an unyielding government (the Constitutional Revolution initial demands were establishment of the so called "house of justice"; the green movement started off with "where is my vote" slogan) . The increased communication and exchange to the rest of the world are key factors in both movements. More interestingly they both display a serious rift within Shia clergy as to the role of the religion in matters of State.

During the past few months, the protesters seem to be increasingly united around their opposition to Seyed Ali Khamanei. No one can tell exactly the circumstances by which Khamanei may be deposed or the movement may succeed in its minimal demands. One thing that is near certain is that the regime will have extremely hard time surviving events of magnitude and intensity similar to Ashura's if spread continuously over several days/weeks.

A new outlet for Leverettes' op-ed pieces

The opinions of two kinds of experts should be always viewed with deep suspicion: those who are driven by ideology and those who are driven by agenda. While the first group is blind to facts, the second group does everything to blind others from seeing the facts the way they are. Flynt Leverett is of the second kind. Everyone knows he is after a "grand bargain" with the Iranian regime. An idea that got some following in Washington on the basis of a fax sent by Iran ambassador to France at the height of Bush administration's campaign in the Middle East and Mullahs fear of being next in line.

Back to the claims of the article. First Leverettes do not have the courage to reveal their sources of "data" when assessing the size of pro and anti government demonstrations. But someone familiar with the Iranian media outlets can have a pretty good idea where these numbers may come from. The 2000 to 4000 number comes most likely from daily Kayhan, the mouthpiece of regime's security apparatus. When it comes to accuracy, fact checking, and quality of journalism, Weekly World News stories can be taken far more seriously than Kayhan's. How about Leverettes' claim of million march in support of government in Tehran which was organized by bussing people from all around the country, giving them free metro tickets, juice and cakes? Leverettes' "reliable source" seems to be tabnak.ir. Not as bad as Kayhan but not as reliable as Leverettes would like you to believe. This is a site that is close to Mohsen Rezaii, a former IRGC commander who despite his attempt to play the middle of the road game these days cannot be regarded as an independent party by any stretch of imagination. If Leverrets want to play the number game why not quoting Ghalibaf the mayor of Tehran (another former IRGC commander) as to the size of demonstrators who filled the Iranian capital in opposition to the fraudulent elections last summer? His estimate was 3,000,000. So according to Leverretes' calculus that would make it the largest gathering in the capital after Khomeini's death, right? And by the way Ghalibaf is by no means a reformer or an opposition sympathizer and is definitely no less independent than Mr Rezaii is.

The point here is that the Leverettes are using "demonstration size" data from regime's propagandists and other questionable sources to make a claim that is just as grand as their "grand bargain" idea. That the regime is here to stay. Something that even Khamanei is not too sure about these days.

I strongly recommend Levrettes to start sending their op-ed pieces to where they get their facts from, i.e. the daily Kayhan. I am sure they will be more than happy to publish them!