News for the internationally inclined
From the category archives:
Since Iranians have taken to the streets following the controversial June presidential election that led to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election, women have been amongst the most active segments of society in the opposition movement. They have been at the front lines of protests, braving tear gas, baton-wielding paramilitaries, and as the iconic images of Neda Agha [...]
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In December 2007, during a trip to Dubai, I explored the enormous mall-hotel-ski resort, Mall of the Emirates, with my uncle Amir. An Iranian businessman, Amir was buying construction parts in Dubai for his business back home. I remarked that I had never seen anything like it in my life. He looked stunned.
“Behnam, did [...]
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Every good political movement has a leader. South Africa had Mandela. India had Gandhi. Even 1979 Iran had Khomeini.
When protests broke out after the Iranian presidential elections this past June, that leader was supposed to be Mir Hossein Mousavi. But as time went on he was trumped by Mehdi Karroubi, who dared to speak out [...]
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“The Iranian women’s movement is not simply demanding equal rights alone. It is demanding a larger universal reality, which is democracy.” – Shirin Ebadi, October 9, 2009
A couple of weeks ago, I had the rare chance to sit down with Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi, a prominent human rights lawyer and democracy activist from Iran. [...]
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This week the United Nations Human Rights Council will debate the report of the fact-finding mission led by Judge Richard Goldstone on human rights violations in the Gaza conflict. Let us hope it is a full and fair examination based on the report’s findings and recommendations.
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In early September, Colombia’s biggest businesses surprised everyone by declaring their wholehearted support for the country’s president, Alvaro Uribe, in his deepening conflict with Venezuela. If they lost the huge export market next door, well, that would simply be too bad.
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Iran is in the process of wasting the biggest historical opportunity the country has had since the revolution of 1979, and perhaps even in the last hundred years. This opportunity is called Barack Obama.
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Once the crowds were in the streets in Tehran, one could, if one knew the script, begin the countdown: if today there are mass protests, tomorrow there will be threats of retaliation in the name of “national security.” By day three, we will see journalists imprisoned and media shut down; day four, bloody reprisals against protesters by secret police; day five, arrests of key opposition figures. Sure enough, right on schedule, each of those steps was set in motion in Iran, within the space of a week.
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LONDON – Groucho Marx has always been my favorite Marxist. One of his jokes goes to the heart of the failure of the ideology – the dogmatic religion – inflicted on our poor world by his namesake, Karl.
“Who are you going to believe,” Groucho once asked, “me, or your own eyes?” For hundreds of millions [...]
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President Barack Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons, and the recent agreement he signed with Russia aimed at cutting back the nuclear stockpiles of both countries, enhances his moral and political leadership. But how will his campaign against nuclear proliferation affect Israel, widely seen as the world’s sixth nuclear weapon state, and so far the only one in the Middle East?
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The 13 Aban demonstrations in Iran commemorating the US embassy take-over in 1979 will gain greater significance as we approach the next public demonstrations on Student day: 16 Azar (December 7).
As most analysts have pointed out, it is by now clear that the post-eletion demonstrations are not going away and that there are [...]
There is a certain buzz in Iranian papers about Ahmadinejad's trip to NYC last week. Echoing Israeli newspapers criticizing of Prime Minister Netanyahu's remarks at the UN , the Iranian media is celebrating the unseating of the state of Israel's primary justification for itself.
Archive for Kouross' Blog »Calling all news junkies! I read through many articles to pull today’s story together. Whether or no there is a real connection between the CIA and the insurgent groups on the Iran/Pakistani border is questionable, but what’s more fascinating is why are we hearing so many mixed messages from inside Iran. The article [...]
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