The Iranian blogosphere. Some facts.
Showing all posts tagged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The narrowing circle
Yet another example of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad taking his country in the wrong direction: Iran’s most important women’s magazine, Zanan, (Women) has been forced to close after 16 years of publication, after being accused of painting a “dark picture” of Iran. Zanan’s founder Shahla Sherkat is considered a prime example of Islamic Iranian feminism. She…
Irans turns a corner
George Bush, in his annual state of the union address, highlighted so-called Iranian-backed extremism in the Middle East. The reality in Iran, however, is rarely examined by the mainstream media. Noted Iranian writer Nasrin Alavi, now based in London, argues that Ahmadinejad’s regime is decreasing in popularity due to its economic failures and overblown rhetoric:…
Open letter to President Chavez from Iranian labour and student activists
January 13, 2008 Mr Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Dear Mr President: We hear the news of the release of two of the FARC’s hostages with renewed hope for the future of Colombia. The release of Clara Rojas and Consuela Gonzalez is not only a joyous event for their…
More than Mahmoud
The Guardian’s Iran correspondent, Robert Tait, was kicked out of the country last week. His final dispatch paints an appropriately complex picture of the Islamic Republic: The scenes of boisterous revelry would not have been out of place in a crowded nightclub. In time to a throbbing beat, men and women of varying ages danced…
Neo-con Ledeen praises Howard as “arguably the greatest Western leader of the past decade”
My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey: Michael Ledeen is a key figure in the neo-con firmament, a man whose ideas about the Arab world have been thoroughly proven false time and time again. It therefore makes sense that Australia’s leading Zionist lobby, AIJAC, has invited him here on a speaking tour to…
The Islamists speak
We regularly now read Iranian bloggers to gain an insight into the more moderate voices within the country. But conservative and Islamist voices are also growing in strength. Hamid Tehrani, an Iranian blogger now living in the Diaspora, has published a fascinating report into these relatively unknown forces: Iranian Islamist blogs probably provide one of…
How about us, Mahmoud?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is unhappy that many Arab nations are participating in tomorrow’s “peace”conference in Annapolis – with one leading analyst suggesting that the real agenda item will not be Israel/Palestine, but isolating Iran – though internal dissent is growing in the Islamic Republic: When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, wanted to create a…
Among the maddening traffic
Iran is constantly in the news for all the wrong reasons. As a welcome change, the following music video is from underground band, Kiosk. Filmed in Tehran, it gives viewers a taste of daily life in the Iranian capital (and sounds like Dire Straits, massively popular there):