Posts from — June 2009

There has been a decrease in the number of people involved in the latest protests, but the protesters may be shifting tactics, and some will certainly be mourning those who have died.

The BBC continues its coverage which has the government of Iran declaring that the UK is the “Greater Satan”. The BBC Persian service is finding ways around the official blocking of information.

The CBC discussed the case of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman in the bloody video that stunned people, with Amir Hassanpour, an associate professor with the University of Toronto who teaches about the modern Middle East.

He makes a telling point:

Her fiancé, Caspian Makan, told BBC the family had planned to hold a memorial service at a mosque, as is customary, but authorities forbade the public service for fear it would further fan the flames of discontent.

“This Islamic government, why if it’s so Islamic does it prevent an Islamic tradition, a very important tradition?” said Hassanpour.

This is the main issue that caused many of the Grand Ayatollahs in Qom to oppose the current form of the Iranian government. The tradition has always been, believe it or not, separation of “church and state” in Iran. Denying a memorial service in a mosque is “not Islamic”. In this case, the government has chosen politics over religion.

CNN tells us that Iran slams ‘meddling West’ over election

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Iran stepped up allegations Monday against the West of “meddling” in its disputed presidential election even as its election authority reportedly acknowledged that the number of ballots cast in dozens of cities exceeded the number of eligible voters in those areas.

Speaking to reporters, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi alleged that foreign media organizations, such as CNN and the BBC, were mouthpieces of their respective governments that were exaggerating reports of police clashes with protesters who have demonstrated daily since the June 12 race.

He also said that government-run news sites, such as the Iranian Student’s News Agency, had been hacked in recent days and implied foreign outlets were behind it.

“Isn’t it a cyber war of the media with an independent government?” Qashqavi said. “They ask people to use the DOS (denial of service) system to hack our Web sites.”

Yo, dude, major geek cred fail – a DOS is not a hack. A hack would be if the content of the site were altered by inserting LOLcat pictures for the President and Supreme Leader of Iran. Find a better hosting service.

Get real, “if it bleeds, it leads”. Stop beating and shooting people and the media will go away. “The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.”

Last year we didn’t have a single day of 100° [38° C] temperatures. We barely had a heat index [how it feels based on temperature and humidity] that high. Well, we are making up for it.

We have had Heat Advisories [heat index over 100° (38° C)] for over a week, and now we have had Excessive Heat Warnings [heat index over 110° (43° C)] for a couple of days. This is something that happens in August, not June.

This isn’t the dry heat of the desert, this is the soggy, humid, swimming-in-your-own-sweat heat of the South. The skies are hazy with the humidity, so you just know there will be second degree burns on the beach, and the Gulf will feel like warm spit, rather than refreshing.

I feel like hooking up a sprinkler for my front yard and sleeping under the spray because the ground water stays at 70° [21° C], while the tap water which is pumped into towers to supply pressure comes out lukewarm.

There are thunderstorms predicted for later in the week. I hope they show up.

In his Friday address Supreme Leader Ali Khamenie said:

People know it and some supporters of some candidates should rest assured that the Islamic Republic does not betray votes of the people. (Chants of slogan, God is great)

The legal structures for elections in our country do not leave us room for vote-rigging. Anyone who is involved in elections will know this. And they talk about a difference of 11 million votes?

Sometimes the difference is 100,000, 500,000 or even 1 million. In that case, one could say that there might have been vote-rigging, but how can they rig 11 million votes? (Chants of slogan, God is great)

It turns that people are actually working on how they did it, and have already found about 3 million votes that should not have been counted.

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The protests in Iran are continuing despite the increasingly repressive actions by the security forces.

From the BBC: ‘Ten killed’ in Iran clashes – state TV

At least 10 people were killed when police clashed with “terrorists” in Tehran on Saturday, state TV says.

The official reports, which cannot be confirmed, accuse “rioters” of setting two petrol stations and a mosque ablaze in protest at a disputed poll result.

State media also said family members of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani – a powerful opponent of the re-elected president – were arrested during the protests.

Meanwhile Iran has ordered the BBC’s Jon Leyne out of the country.

“With regret, we can confirm that Jon Leyne, the BBC’s permanent correspondent in Tehran has been asked to leave by the Iranian authorities. The BBC office remains open,” a BBC statement said.

Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV said on Sunday its Tehran office, which was closed by the Iranian authorities a week ago, had been ordered to stay shut indefinitely for “unfair reporting” of the 19 [sic] June election.
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Today at 12:45AM [CDT] is the Summer Solstice, technically considered the “first day of Summer”, but the mid Summer by much of Europe.

Many Wiccans celebrate the day as Litha, while computer programmers honor their predecessors, the druids, who build the first solid-state computing devices, the megaliths, like Stonehenge.

The Slavs celebrate St. John’s Night, Иван Купала [Ivan Kupala], the battle between the White god [Белобог – Belobog] and the Black god [Чёрнобог – Chyornobog] for control of the Sun. The Black god always wins and the night begins to expand.

The sound track to the battle is Иванова Ночь на Лысой Горе [Night on Bald Mountain ] [YouTube] by Модест Петрович Мусоргский [Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky], which everyone should play very loudly.

Via Andante from some time ago, I ran across Archaeoastronomy which tracks all of the important solar events.

CBS just commissioned a new health insurance Poll: Most Back Public Health Care Option

(CBS) A clear majority of Americans — 72 percent — support a government-sponsored health care plan to compete with private insurers, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds. Most also think the government would do a better job than private industry at keeping down costs and believe that the government should guarantee health care for all Americans.

The DC elite, if they want to stay in DC had better start listening to the people who pay their salaries, and stop acting like the only groups that matter are those that are paying them bribes campaign contributions.

If the DC elite think there is any way they can force me to give money to a health insurance company, they have another think coming, and might want to look at what is going on in the streets of Tehran. The health insurance executives have already testified that they have no intention of altering their rescission policy, and they backed away from the $2 trillion of reduction in growth of costs. They don’t intend to do anything that will affect their short-term profits.

The only way of stopping the unmanageable increases in health care costs is with a single-payer system, like the other developed nations.

While I’m on health care, I might as well cover the cost of malpractice in this county. Despite what people have been lead to believe, tort reform does not reduce the price of malpractice insurance. A number of states have done it, and it had no effect. If you want to reduce the cost of malpractice insurance, the state medical broads need to start dumping incompetent doctors, and the insurance companies need to stop gambling with the premiums. The Dow is a better predictor of the cost of malpractice insurance than any court docket.

The protesters didn’t give up and the government has raised their response: Police, protesters clash into evening in Iranian capital

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — As thousands of defiant protesters took to the streets of the Iranian capital Saturday for a seventh day to protest last week’s presidential elections, opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi reportedly said he was ready for “martyrdom.”

By evening, police were using tear gas, clubs and water cannon as they tried to disperse the demonstrators.

A stream of videos posted on social networking Web sites appeared to show demonstrators who had been shot.

It “appears” that CNN is doing its best not to endorse either side in hopes of continued access to the story.

The protesters have figured out that they have to remove their cell phone SIM cards to keep the government from tracking them, as turning off the phone isn’t enough.

The security forces are doing their best to prevent separate groups from merging into large masses. The protesters are starting to use slogans from the 1979 revolution and referring to the security forces as “Israelis”.

For those not familiar with the symbols green is the color of Islam. By adopting green the protesters are saying that this is an Islamic protest.

Valerie Whitney of the Daytona News-Journal tells us the “shoots” are wilted in Florida: State jobless rate hits record 10.2%

DAYTONA BEACH — Florida was one of eight states that set unemployment records for May, with jobless claims reaching 10.2 percent, according to figures released Friday by the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation.

Flagler County posted the highest jobless rate in the state at 14.4 percent, up from 8.7 percent a year ago. Volusia County reported 10.8 percent unemployment, compared to 5.9 percent last year.

And at least one expert says the bad news is not over.

“Florida’s labor market will be the ugly scar that is slow to fade and serves as a reminder of the economic trauma we have endured,” said economist Sean Snaith, director of the Institute for Economic Competitiveness at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

“We’re going to experience double-digit pain not just for a few months, but through the middle of 2011,” Snaith said Friday.
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Via Jams in comments, a piece by Mohsen Makhmalbaf on the Guardian‘s Comment is Free blog: I speak for Mousavi. And Iran. He says the demonstrations will continue.

Juan Cole with a post by an anonymous Iranian writing about being in the demonstration: “I’m Listening to all my Favorite Music; Maybe Tomorrow I will be Among those Killed”.

Also at Dr. Cole’s, a Jonathan Lyons piece on how Khamenei’s Past Power Play against the Clerics May Weaken him Now in Confronting the Reformers.

CNN says that Google starts translating Persian to support the protesters and get their message out.

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CNN reports that Nestle’s Toll House cookie dough recalled, linked to E. coli

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Two federal agencies warned consumers Friday not to eat raw Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough.

The company said it is recalling an estimated 300,000 cases of the dough as a precaution after reports of food-borne illness in 28 states.

There are concerns that the premade dough may be contaminated with the bacterium E. coli 0157:H7, which causes abdominal cramping, vomiting and diarrhea, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Young children and the elderly can suffer more serious symptoms.

Nestle issued a statement saying, “While the E. coli strain implicated in this investigation has not been detected in our product, the health and safety of our consumers is paramount, so we are initiating this voluntary recall.”

According to Nestle spokeswoman Laurie MacDonald, raw dough was one of the things the sick people reported eating.

Apparently it is this single product, which is overpriced and not all that good anyway. Get a grip and make them from scratch, because there aren’t near enough chips and they don’t use real ingredients like butter.

The first time I looked at the BBC’s background piece on the Iranian government I was struck by the similarity to the structure of a university.

That isn’t surprising, given that the government was the creation of Shi’ia clerics, who are really the equivalent of university professors, i.e. their title indicates their level of education, as well as their publication history. The two most important Shi’ia hawsas [theology/law schools] are at Najaf and Qom, and they can easily be compared to Oxford and Cambridge in ranking. [Most in the West have forgotten that the original purpose of their universities was to produce clerics.]

So the system of government devised by Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini incorporating the Vilayat-e Faqih [guardianship of the jurists] reflected his life, which was almost entirely within the walls of hawsas.

I would note that Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri was originally designated Ayatollah Khomeini’s successor because he was the only other “true believer” in the Iranian system. He still believes in the system, but he lost his place when he sought to moderate what he saw as repression after the revolution. He recently sided with the protesters by stating that the election was obviously fraudulent.

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The BBC covers Khamenei’s speech: Ayatollah backs election result

Iran’s supreme leader has issued a stern warning that protests against the country’s disputed presidential election results must end.

In his first public remarks after days of protests, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the outcome had to be decided at the ballot box, not on the street.

He said political leaders would be blamed for any violence.
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Responding to allegations of electoral fraud, the ayatollah insisted the Islamic Republic would not cheat.

“There is 11 million votes difference,” the ayatollah said. “How can one rig 11 million votes?”
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