Iranian Madness

When you see police patrolling the alleys and destroying the vehicles that are parked there, it’s a clear sign that the regime has weakened big time.
Now that the street protests have largely been quieted the rough way, and anyway the foreign media cannot report them, a question looms: how will life go on in Iran?
The [...]

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It was to be expected. After the fruitless attempts of the Iranian leadership to identify a crack in the all-too-careful statements of Barack Obama, the search for an outside enemy that could distract people from Iran’s internal mess has yielded its result. We’re proud to announce that Satan version II (not as evil as Bush’s [...]

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I want eyes is one of my favourite songs, written by Level 42 back in 1983.
I dedicate it to Neda and the Iranian people.

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I have just found an excellent article from the NYT’s Roger Cohen.
Nothing to add, really. He’s right on all fronts.

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There are several theories about what is going on in Iran right now.
We’ve seen it all: mass rallies in support of the defeated presidential candidates Mirhossein Moussavi, clashes between supporters of different candidates, crackdown by the authorities (quite mild, actually, in comparison to what it could have been), and most recently, no less than [...]

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It seems that my predictions in yesterday’s post were wrong: it wasn’t a close race, and it wasn’t Mousavi who won. At least, if you look at the official numbers.
But there’s something bigger going on in Iran right now. Among widespread accusations of cheating, the people have taken to the street, and they are making [...]

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I place my bet on Mirhossein Mousavi. He’ll win by a low margin on Ahmadinejad, and there will be cross-accusations of cheating. At the end, the conservatives will keep ruling the country, but there’ll be a swift change in economic policies and an increase of freedom for the man (and mostly the woman) on the [...]

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BBC aired the review of a very interesting documentary on troubled Tehranian teens, showing the multitude of issues that the next president of Iran must (or has an option to) face.
Drug and alcohol abuse are hushed by the Islamic Republic authorities, but it’s high time that someone brought the issue up to the table and [...]

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Chiaramente, il governo iraniano ha paura di Facebook. Il motivo principale sembra essere lo stesso che causa i blocchi di internet e la censura dei giornali stranieri: l’informazione, secondo Ahmadinejad e compagnia, va controllata minuziosamente, in un modello che ricorda molto il comunismo.
E di recente, con le elezioni alle porte, le altalene sull’accesso a Facebook [...]

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