[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf0O2BCkcBw"]YouTube - Mousavi and the Masses - 3 July 09 - Part 1[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bliY1B3_E8&feature=channel"]YouTube - Mousavi and the Masses - 3 July 09 - Part 2[/ame]
Unfortunately there was actually a lot of pollution/dust blown over in some bizarre fashion! In other news, a 19 year old student has been confirmed to have died inside the prison. But as Bush said, and as the Iranian constitution says, we do not torture. So I guess he was having such a blast, he died as a result of too much fun.
Here is a video tribute to Ahmad Bourghani, an influential reformist parliamentarian who died recently, and did not live long enough to experience the recent events. The man was a great thinker and a poet, he would have made a great leader of the Green movement. Turn CC on, to see the English subtitles. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=123uILTUhCI"]YouTube - In the Memory of Ahmad Bourghani with English CC[/ame]
http://tehranbureau.com/grand-ayatollah-montazeris-fatwa/ You have the 5 questions and their answers in the link above.
Haha...I started writing about that just after my previous post but then decided to find an English link for it and completely forgot about the whole thing... So thanks to Ali Reza. This is the background of how big this news is (what I was writing before): Also I forgot to mention a massive piece of news. Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, despite being "an outlaw", is one of only about a dozen Maraje' (most senior clerics) and even amongst those, a very heavy hitter, has announced a fatwa (religious obligation on all Muslims) basically saying ... PS Kadivar is outside Iran now, but he has big cojones to be saying all the things that he is! Anyone who can understand farsi, I mentioned how good his Columbia Uni speech was; now it is paramount that you watch his and Dr Soroush's interview on BBC Persian. Another brilliant piece; shame about the shortage of time in that programme (25 minute for those two!! Impossible!!) In summary Soroush argues that forcing religion on others cannot ensure a moral society (comparing it to love; that the second you force it on people it loses all value) and thus favours a secular society. Kadivar goes into the history of Velayate Faqih (leadership of the supreme leader) and how the theory came about and why he prefers religious governance which can work, however, the current format of the supreme leader is both against logic and against religion.
Here is the news. Officially he died nearly a month ago in the protests. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/07/12/iran.student.killed/index.html
Again, interesting stuff. Regarding the point about 'forcing religion' on people, isn't that one of the basics of Islam, anyway? That you SHOULDN'T try and force others to accept the ideology? http://www.islamtoday.com/showme2.cfm?cat_id=29&sub_cat_id=607 But I think this all goes back to what I said before... that it's perfectly possible to be a theocracy where religious leaders dictate what's done OR it can be a democracy where the people, (even non-believers), dictate what's done, but I can't see how it can be BOTH. As I said, if the majority of people in a country are Muslims and a Muslim leader says, 'I think we should be doing this', if the politicians don't do it, they'll get voted out, but to simply have religious leaders, who are unelected, telling people what to do? That just can't work in the long run as far as I can see.
Even the Conservatives are running away from Ahmadinejad. Iran defeated candidate warns of system "collapse"
This is a great speech of Dr. Ramezanzadeh, the former spokesman and secretary of the government during the presidency of Muhammad Khatami, the day before he was arrested during the recent events. He is still in jail. Turn CC on, to see the English subtitles. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sunUCvro0K0"]YouTube - Dr. Ramezanzadeh Historic Speech one Day Before his Arrest English CC[/ame]
This Friday is again being billed as an important/historic day!! (I did say Iranians will look for any excuse and the whole thing won't die!) Hashemi Rafsanjani will be doing the Friday prayers in Tehran this week (i.e. tomorrow). Mousavi has announced that he will also attend and that should be a sea of green over there. This is being considered a very important day for Hashemi too since if he doesn't say something to indicate his support for the people (for once not play it safe). All indications are that he will disappoint! The only glimmer of hope is that since Mousavi has announced that he will attend, it is likely that they would have at least discussed the matter. Mousavi in a very well written statment not actually telling people to come out hints at it. So the masses will be out in his support once again.
Did anyone catch Fisks articles from Iran? LMAO that he refuses to be interviewed by CNN because of their trash coverage
I am not a big fan of Fisk, but I have to agree with him on that point. I have decided to boycott all American media (it is the Telegraph and Guardian for me for now on!) When you consider that THE major news stories of the past two weeks is Michael Michael MICHAEL! It is good to know that Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan (where there is a major offensive started and a big spike in casualties), North Korea, the economy and the environment have been settled and we can get back to worrying about MICHAEL again.
It is interesting how the death of an entertainer can so dominate the American media. When some nefarious regime wants to commit dastardly deeds without attracting the focus of the US media they could just simultaneously whack Madonna and go about their business unnoticed. I am not implying that MJ was assassinated to distract the media but that it would have effectively gained the media focus.
Fisk laughingly wrote about CNNs hysterical coverage of police beating protestors (some accounts of which turned out not to be true), whilst ignoring the police beating protestors on the streets of london he has a point IMO
I think there is a big difference tbf. Yes a man died after being pushed down and having a heart attack - and this is being investigated. Also incidents of police brutality are being investigated. At no point did the Metropolitan Police fire on and kill G8 protesters, use tear gas, rubber bullets or baton charges. There is simply no equivalence between the two situations and none should be implied. The British Police are more restrained than any police force I can imagine. They are not perfect but claims of brutality are laughable when compared to situations in other countries.