Sunday Night News
Sorry I haven't blogged much this weekend, I've been hooked on the news out of Iran. I've updated facebook a few times (here). Christopher Hitchens has weighed in on the situation. While I'm not always in agreement on foreign policy, from what I know about the situation, he's dead on.
For a flavor of the political atmosphere in Tehran, Iran, last week, I quote from a young Iranian comrade who furnishes me with regular updates:
I went to the last major Ahmadinejad rally and got the whiff of what I imagine fascism to have been all about. Lots of splotchy boys who can't get a date are given guns and told they're special.
It's hard to better this, either as an evocation of the rancid sexual repression that lies at the nasty core of the "Islamic republic" or as a description of the reserve strength that the Iranian para-state, or state within a state, can bring to bear if it ever feels itself even slightly challenged. There is a theoretical reason why the events of the last month in Iran (I am sorry, but I resolutely decline to refer to them as elections) were a crudely stage-managed insult to those who took part in them and those who observed them. And then there is a practical reason. The theoretical reason, though less immediately dramatic and exciting, is the much more interesting and important one.
as has Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders urges the international community, especially European countries, not to recognise the results of the first round of the presidential election that Iran held on 12 June because censorship and a crackdown on journalists are preventing a democratic electoral process. Arrests of journalists and media censorship measures are growing as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s "victory" continues to be disputed.
"A democratic election is one in which the media are free to monitor the electoral process and investigate fraud allegations but neither of these two conditions has been met for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s supposed reelection," Reporters Without Borders said. "We urge European countries not to recognise the results announced by the authorities as long as the media are not free to work. An election won by means of censorship and arrests of journalists is not democratic."
