An Iranian revolution, of sorts, that challenges the clerical rule of the mullahs. It’s the kind of attitudes I saw and heard during my time in the country in 2007. One can only hold back greater freedom for so long before a people will explode: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about…
Showing all posts tagged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The West should stay hopeful
Robert Fisk on the weird world of Iranian politics: It is certainly odd that Ahmadinejad denies Hitler’s greatest crime and then accuses his opponents of being Hitler. If Hitler didn’t kill the Jews of Europe, which crimes, one wonders, was Iran’s weird President thinking of?
The Jews who really need an Iranian bad-man
MJ Rosenberg gets it in one: Foreign Policy’s Laura Rozen has a great piece on what might be happening in Iran. The madman could lose. It seems like almost too much to hope for. But, as I noted earlier, there is some evidence that the neocons are worried. They want Ahmadinejad in there because without…
Mahmoud may be nearly over?
Australian journalist Austin G Mackell writes from Iran a few days before the election: Tehran’s prayer grounds are so big, they have a metro station at each end. Although today’s event was ostensibly secular, there was a distinctly religious fervour among the crowds massing for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s major rally as the country prepares…
Any fear of organising
Like I report in my book, The Blogging Revolution, the Islamic Republic is a truly repressive web nation: Authorities in Iran have banned popular social-networking site Facebook until after the Islamic Republic’s presidential election in mid-June. Iranian media has reported that the ban comes as a result of the success President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opponent Mir-Hossein…
What the great and powerful have to say
Medialens, 8 May: But how much proof do we need that the United States conspired with Britain to invade Iraq on utterly false pretexts causing the virtual destruction of an entire nation? What worse crimes have Ahmadinejad and Chavez perpetrated to earn themselves membership of the “awkward squad”? What would it take before Britain and…
Room for debate in the Islamic Republic
Rasool Nafisi, who teaches the sociology of development and Middle Eastern studies at Strayer University, reminds us that some Iranian journalists were appalled at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent speech at Durban II: Some Iranian journalists and political activists questioned Ahmadinezhad’s speech. They felt Iran was humiliated by the event. A reporter asked Rahim-Moshaei, the president’s…
Using Nazism as a Zionist example
Just one of the great minds of the ruling class in 2009 Israel, revealed by Le Monde Diplomatique: David Rotem’s leitmotif is allegiance to the state, but he never spells it out. So much so that, before leaving, we put it to him: “Imagine yourself in Nazi Germany. Where would your loyalty lie?” “To the…
The Islamic Republic unpacked
Leading Iranian human rights activist, lawyer and Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi on the key issues facing the Islamic Republic: The most pressing issue facing Iran is the increasing levels of unemployment among the youth and also increased poverty in society, as well as a greater occurrence of cases of violation of human rights. For…
This won’t stop as long as Jews support it
Steve Walt, Foreign Policy, April 28: My question is this: What is Netanyahu thinking? Doesn’t he realize that time has nearly run out for the two-state solution, and that failure to achieve it is by far the most serious threat facing Israel? The prime minister and his allies keep harping about an “existential” threat from…