0555 GMT: Picture of Day. Student activist Bahareh Hedayat, serving a 9 1/2-year sentence and given a three-day furlough on Sunday, with other released or bailed political prisoners --- from left to right are Atefeh Nabavi, Nazanin Hassan-Nia (freed), Hedayat, Mahdieh Golroo (freed), and Nazanin Khosravani.
0545 GMT: The House Arrests. The eldest son of Mehdi Karroubi, the 2009 Presidential candidate held under strict house arrest since February 2011, has written “senior officials of the regime” to express concern over his father’s situation.
Mohammad Taghi Karroubi urged authorities either to transfer Karroubi to his home in Jamaran to continue his house arrest or to hold him in Evin Prison with other political prisoners. He said Karroubi should not be required to pay for his own incarceration and prison guards, nor should he be held in constant isolation, and he noted, “No government official or institution has claimed responsibility for the arrest of my father.”
Karroubi was shut away with fellow opposition figures Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard amid regime fears of resurgent protests. He was transferred to a small apartment in summer 2011 after the house arrest was lifted on his wife Fatemeh.
0530 GMT: If you want a clear sign of the seriousness of Iran's economic problems, look no farther than Sunday's speech by the Supreme Leader. In March, Ayatollah Khamenei was hailing a Year of National Production; yesterday he was effectively putting the Islamic Republic on alert by declaring a "resistance economy":
The economy of resistance is not a slogan, but a reality which should be realised.
One of the best manifestations and most effective components of the economy of resistance is knowledge-based companies which can make the economy of resistance more sustainable.
The phrase harks backs to the 1980s when Iran was locked in an eight-year war with neighbouring Iraq, as well as facing the hostility and sanctions of the "West". This time, however, there is no overt war and there was not supposed to be an economic crisis, given President Ahmadinejad's announcement that the Government was creating millions of jobs and unemployment would eventually be wiped out, given State media's daily declaration of new plants, new investment, and new projects, given the regime's assurances that the sanctions would hurt the "West" rather than Iranians.
Now those Iranians are being told --- by their Supreme Leader --- that they should expect to suffer, albeit for the good and ultimate success of the country.
Posted via email from lissping
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.