The Economist: “Signs of the regime’s fading legitimacy are numerous. In December, for instance, the head of Iran’s central bank issued a stern warning that from January 8th it would no longer accept bank notes defaced by extra words. In practice, this would mean taking millions of notes out of circulation, following a quiet campaign by oppositionists to mark them with anti-regime slogans. More embarrassing still for a regime that describes itself as Islamic is the government’s treatment of dissident clerics, including some prominent ayatollahs. The most senior was Grand Ayatollah Hosein Ali Montazeri, a confidant of the Islamic Republic’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with whom he fell out of favour shortly before the old man’s death in 1989. Placed under house arrest for a decade, Mr Montazeri continued to criticise the government, siding openly with the reformists after the tainted June elections.”
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“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.”
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Document proves Khamenei and Iran regime authorities set to escape to Russia
I laughed so hard at this that my morning coffee almost shot out of my nose. I just love it when “secret documents” like this one come along. After a chummy “Salam aleykum” it states that the Iranian revolutionary guards have prepared and done a “check up” on a secret airplane to take Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei and other high ranking officials out of Iran to Russia in case the situation there “gets of out control” — all on official government letterhead, mind you! It even uses the word English word “checkup” spelled out in Farsi – apparently those Revolutionary Guards are very hip!
This reminds me so much of those bad spy movies in which the Evil Genius explains how he plans to execute a captured James Bond in an excessively elaborate manner (usually involving some sort of imaginative machine) in excrutiatingly unnecessary detail. Naturally James Bond naturally manages to somehow escape the death machine and frustrate the Evil Genius’ plans to take over the world.
http://www.iranaffairs.com/iran_affairs/2009/12/document-proves-khamenei-and-iran-regime-authorities-set-to-escape-to-russia.html
Montazeri, Gorbeh Nareh.
The western press is falling over itself lionizing Montazeri in various obits but interesting how quickly we forget that the same Montazeri was once ridiculed as “Gorbe Nareh” (literally, male cat — a cartoon character once popular in Iran) along with Rafsanjani who was labelled as “Kooseh” (shark, because he has thin facial hair)
http://www.iranaffairs.com/iran_affairs/2009/12/montazeri-gorbeh-nareh.html
http://parcham.ir/vdcc.1qpa2bqp4la82.html
http://jahannews.com/vdcjm8eo.uqemozsffu.html
Another Iranian Revolution? Not Likely
By FLYNT LEVERETT and HILLARY MANN LEVERETT
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/opinion/06leverett.html