Shiraz Timelapse

Over at Juan Cole's Informed Comment, this portrait of Shiraz in Iran. What gorgeous gardens and monumental buildings!

Mahdis! Mahdis! Mahdis!

Brian Ulrich forwards this from the Economist:

Earlier this year Iran’s authorities arrested a score of men who, in separate incidents, claimed to be the Mahdi, a sacred figure of Shia Islam, who was “hidden” by God just over a millennium ago and will return some time to conquer evil on earth. A website based in Qom, Iran’s holiest city, deemed the men “deviants”, “fortune-tellers” and “petty criminals”, who were exploiting credulous Iranians for alms during the Persian new-year holiday, which fell in mid-March. Many of the fake messiahs were picked up by security men in the courtyard to the mosque in Jamkaran, a village near Qom, whose reputation as the place of the awaited Mahdi’s advent has been popularised nationwide by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...

Last year a seminary expert, Mehdi Ghafari, said that more than 3,000 fake Mahdis were in prison. Mahdi-complexes are common, says a Tehran psychiatrist. “Every month we get someone coming in, convinced he is the Mahdi,” she says. 

I've heard that Jerusalem has a similar problem with its Messiahs.

Image: The Mahdi hangout in Jamkaran.

Three pictures of rural Iran

Three striking views of Palangen village by Amos Chapple via The Big Picture. Click for the big pics.

What my students took away from History of Islamic Civilization

I just finished grading the final exams for History of Islamic Civiliztion. Half of the exam grade was based on essays my students wrote on recent events in the Middle East. They could write on Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen or Iran, and were expected to touch on some of these phenomena: nationalism, sectarianism, Islamism, democracy, secularism, and foreign intervention. Here's what they actually wrote on (in no particular order, my summaries):

           Egypt -- ready for democracy?
           Egypt -- democracy, Islamism, Western concerns
           Tunisia -- instability threatens the revolution
           Iran -- nuclear program and foreign concerns
          Egypt -- significance of the revolution
          Iran -- society on edge, politics divided
          Iran -- if war breaks out
          Egypt -- a corrupt election?
          Egypt -- challenges of democratic transition
          Syria -- why the revolution may not succeed
          Syria -- effects of Syrian crisis
          Egypt -- religion and democracy
          Tunisia -- summary of revolution
          Iran -- the sanction regime
          Iraq -- attacks on Christians
          Iran -- counter-productive Western and Iranian policies
          Turkey -- AKP success
          Tunisia -- summary of revolution
           Iran -- domestic and foreign conflicts
           Iran -- what's at stake in current confrontation

And here's to those students: Well done. You rose to the challenge.

Image: Canadian students, but not actually mine.

Feel threatened by Iran?

Here's Tom Englehardt's take on the threat:

Exclusive: New Iranian Commando Team Operating Near U.S.

(Tehran, FNA) The Fars News Agency has confirmed with the Republican Guard’s North American Operations Command that a new elite Iranian commando team is operating in the U.S.-Mexican border region. The primary day-to-day mission of the team, known as the Joint Special Operations Gulf of Mexico Task Force, or JSOG-MTF, is to mentor Mexican military units in the border areas in their war with the deadly drug cartels.  The task force provides “highly trained personnel that excel in uncertain environments,” Maj. Amir Arastoo, a spokesman for Republican Guard special operations forces in North America, tells Fars, and “seeks to confront irregular threats...”

The unit began its existence in mid-2009 -- around the time that Washington rejected the Iranian leadership’s wish for a new diplomatic dialogue. But whatever the task force does about the United States -- or might do in the future -- is a sensitive subject with the Republican Guard.  “It would be inappropriate to discuss operational plans regarding any particular nation,” Arastoo says about the U.S.

Okay, so I made that up.  Sue me.  But first admit that, a line or two in, you knew it was fiction.  After all, despite the talk about American decline, we are still on a one-way imperial planet.  Yes, there is a new U.S. special operations team known as Joint Special Operations Task Force-Gulf Cooperation Council, or JSOTF-GCC, at work near Iran and, according to Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog, we really don’t quite know what it’s tasked with doing (other than helping train the forces of such allies as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia). 

And yes, the quotes are perfectly real, just out of the mouth of a U.S. “spokesman for special-operations forces in the Mideast,” not a representative of Iran’s Republican Guard.  And yes, most Americans, if they were to read about the existence of the new special ops team, wouldn’t think it strange that U.S. forces were edging up to (if not across) the Iranian border, not when our “safety” was at stake. 

Reverse the story, though, and it immediately becomes a malign, if unimaginable, fairy tale.  Of course, no Iranian elite forces will ever operate along the U.S. border.  Not in this world.  Washington wouldn’t live with it and it remains the military giant of giants on this planet.  By comparison, Iran is, in military terms, a minor power. 

I sincerely wish the war-drum beaters would cool it.  But the chosen strategy of  American politicians to blow everything except the problems of unemployment and climate change out of all proportion really worries me.

I am no fan of the scummy Iranian regime.  But as someone else said recently, it is mainly a threat to Iran.  They have got real problems but are no closer to dealing with them than...you name it.

One estimate of the cost of the War with Iran

By Orrin Schwab via Gary Sick:

If there is near unanimity in the Congress to go to war with Iran I say lets go. Lets do it!  They are the duly elected representatives of the people of the United States and they have determined that war with Iran is in the best interests of the country.  We should initiate hostilities as soon as practicable.

Here are some parameters to consider for our war:

1. Iran is 1.6 million square kilometers and has approximately 80 million
    inhabitants (77-78 million plus).

2. That makes Iran four times the area of Iraq and three times the
    population of Iraq.

3. The Iraq War was completed very quickly, and very easily. But the
    occupation, i.e. the reduction of resistance lasted ten years and has
    produced a relatively weak state.

4.  In order to do things right this time, we need sufficient ground
    forces to secure a mountainous multiethnic country with more than two
    thousand years of national history. We may be welcomed as liberators
    but coalition forces ultimately met with armed resistance from
    numerous  groups many of whom practiced deadly suicide attacks.

5. We need a long term occupational force for Iran.  I think an effective
    occupation of 80 million people spread over 1.6 million square
    kilometers should require well over 1 million well trained troops for
    at least 5 years maybe 10 years if things go badly.

6. The only way we can provide this level of forces is through a return to
    the Draft. The Selective Service system needs to activated
    immediately.
    All military reserves needed to be recalled to active duty while we
    begin the process of training millions of young male and female
    draftees for service in Iran.  A five year occupation should require,
    ballpark, 5 million draftees.  Of course, we have the manpower.
    According to the CIA, the U.S. has 120 million males and females
    between the ages of 18 and 49 who are fit for military service.

7. The direct financial cost of the war should be a multiple of the Iraq
    War which was 800 billion from 2003 through 2011.  The cost of
    deploying troops to Afghanistan averages about one million dollars per
    troop.  If we plan on 1 million troops for five years that would mean
    5 trillion in direct costs financed by the U.S. Treasury through
    2016-2017 and then undetermined costs thereafter.

8. The economic benefits of this exercise in military Keynesian economics
    should be huge. Unemployment should disappear.  War related
    manufacturing should be a virtual renaissance for domestic industry.
    The financing of the war will significantly increase the public debt, anathema to     Republicans, but they are spoilsports. They reject military Keynesianism, which worked wonders for Japan and Germany in the 1930s and 1940s as well as the United States and the Soviet Union.

9. No whining about casualties. The U.S. could sustain hundreds of
    thousands or more total casualties, including deaths from combat,
    disabling wounds, and huge numbers of psychiatric losses related to
    combat and the effect of concussive injuries to the brain.

Source.

Canada has a warship sailing to the Middle East right now to fight terrorism, so this is us, too.

Dog sweat!

The very occasional blog IranWrites reviews the movie Dog Sweat.

 ...

Not long into the film, I felt that I had an urge to scream, “Say something for God’s sake!” when immediately the facial expression of an actress shuts me up, saying, “What is there to say. Don’t you see?”

No, I don’t see if there is no talk, no laughter, no crying, no discussions, no debates, no complaints, no questions, no answers, not a single complex sentence. But why?

“We are in strange land my dears, where language has gone through a massive transformation.  Language as the medium for communication has lost its function where communication has lost its place in the society and culture, where the efforts are made to hide rather than reveal, where one must divert rather than to direct, where one has to misguide rather than to guide; then words are better forgotten if one has to lie,” I’m whispering to myself.

Lips do not kiss, hands do not touch, gazes are afraid to connect. It is not restraint but hiding. There is no need for censorship since there is not even any desire for of any sort expression. There is still an outcry for an “empty nest,” an empty room, a dangling key to an empty apartment. It seems that finding “that key” is the ultimate goal, though I’m not so sure that there is anything but darkness behind the closed door. Even passion is absent …

‌But little by little, I learn to hear them. I learn their language. It is very simple, their facial expressions, sweet faces with bitter and sad expressions, tell us of boredom, aimlessness, hopelessness, very gently and good-naturedly.  But beneath those bitter expressions on those faces, those cold faces, those deadly silences, one can see the residue of some drive, of some hope and some faint and colorless shadow of something that might once have been a dream or fantasy. 

They narrate their own story, as if the film were a documentary and had been made spontaneously, with actors and actresses, without script, on stage thriving to tell their stories. It seems they have something to say only if they find someone to listen, if they feel safe, if they find privacy, if they know how....

Iranian absurdity: "Islamic" ban on waterfights

It appears that water fighting and water guns are becoming sensitive issues in Iran.

Earlier this month, a number of young people were arrested in Tehran after taking part in a water fight in public. They were accused of violating Islamic principles and norms.

A few days later, 17 people were reportedly arrested in Bandar Abbas for splashing water at each other. The young people in Tehran and Bandar Abbas used water guns and bottles.

Following the two incidents, General Ahmad Rouzbahani, head of Iran's morality police, warned that police "will act forcefully" against similar behavior and would not allow such events to happen in public places, or anywhere across the country."

Meanwhile, a woman in the Iranian capital who didn't want to be named told "Persian Letters" that last week in a shopping center in Shahrak Gharb, a shop owner refused to sell her a plastic water gun her 5-year-old daughter had seen in the shop window.

More at RFE/RL

The woman said the shop owner said that they had been ordered not to sell water guns. When she insisted that her daughter would not carry it in public and that no one would know she got it from his shop, the toy-shop owner said, "I don't want my shop to be closed for selling a water pistol.

He added that "the police have got the number of these pistols I have in stock and I am not allowed to take a single one for any of my relatives. They said they would check me every now and then."

"There are bikinis for your daughter and yourself, there are no bans on them but water pistols are another story," the woman quoted the shop owner as saying.

It's not clear why the shop owner had the pistol displayed in the shop window if he didn't want to sell it. It could be that he hadn't had time to remove it.

And as usual, Iranians are using humor to cope with the sometimes absurd situations they find themselves in. Here is a joke that is circulating about the recent incidents:

"A man walks into a shop and asks for a bottle of water. The shop owner wraps it in a newspaper and gives it to him. The man asks: 'Why did you wrap it in newspaper? It's only water, not alcohol or anything. (Alcohol is banned in Iran and when people buy it from dealers on the black market, it's often wrapped in newspaper and put in a dark bag.) The shop owner says: 'I know, but it's becoming very dangerous. You could end up in prison and your sentence could be heavier than for carrying alcohol."

-- Golnaz Esfandiari, Mehrdad Mirdamadi

RFE/RL

More on politics in the 21st century --gaming with Mossadegh's cat

Mossadegh was prime minister of Iran in the early 1950s, and his effort to gain control of Iran's oil led to a crucial crisis of modern Iranian history and of US-Iranian relations.

Two people at the University of Southern California thought Americans should know this crisis better -- and so they designed a game in which the player plays Mossadegh's cat.

You read it right.

This is a serious educational project, motivated in part by the desire to game conflict without focussing entirely on violence. You can find a link to the game and more on the project here.

In appreciation of my students HIST 3805 and 4505

Some weeks are better for a teacher's morale than others.

This last week or so has been one of the good ones.

The first big boost took place in my 4th-year seminar on Chivalry.  It has been going well, and my students seem to be pretty interested.   That's a big plus, but my 4th-year seminars are usually successful.

No, what caught my attention was that finally, finally not one but two students used French as though it were the most normal thing in the world.

Now given that Nipissing University is in a region with a large Francophone population, you might think this was no big deal.  However, it's been my experience over 20 years that students who might be Francophones, who have French last names, either have no French or no confidence about using it in a public space like a classroom.  It's not like we had an actual conversation in French, but the sheer undramatic normality -- ah! Maybe someday Northeastern Ontario, Ontario as a whole, might really start exploiting its potential linguistic advantages.

Now that's just crazy talk...but it's fun to dream.

The other thing was the reaction to Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Teheran in History of Islamic Civilization.  For a second term essay, I gave the class a choice of one of three books to evaluate as windows into the struggle of Middle Eastern societies with modernization.  One was Reading Lolita, about a university professor in Iran whose study of English literature affected her attitude to the Islamic Revolution and its aftermath.  Although it is beautifully and profoundly written, I thought my students might struggle with it -- especially if they weren't very familiar with the English novels discussed in the book.  But I offered it as a choice, with a warning as to its challenges, in the hopes that it might make a difference to one person.

Well, I got the papers back last week and...quite a few students got quite a bit out of the book.  I am glad that I took a little risk and that they did, too.

Made me smile. :-)

Image:  Azar Nafisi, smiling, from her website.

Fake Canadian ad agency in Tehran "advises" on "Islamic haircut" policy

A fascinating article in the Toronto Star. Someone of influence in Iran thinks that the new "Islamic haircut" policy will be easier to sell if you stick the Canadian flag on it and tell people a Toronto-based agency headed by a Canadian educated Iranian is "advising" on it.

I guess Canadians could take this as a double-backflip compliment of some sort, but I think it means that someone in Iran thinks young, fashion-conscious Iranians are suckers. Or that the people charged with selling the policy are suckers.

The whole thing is embarrassing. What's next, Islamic tuques?

Flow it, show it: paired posts on hair in Iran

I grew up in the 1960s, and though I didn't wear my hair very long, I took the contempt and coercion laid on those who did very seriously indeed.

The battleground of hair is now in Iran. one of the warriors in that battle is human rights activist Fariba Davoodi Mohajer. Here's the beginning of her story as told in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

On a cold winter day, Iranian women's rights activist and journalist Fariba Davoodi Mohajer made an about-face: Having worn the hijab for 25 years, she decided to cast her head scarf into the sea.

That was in 2006. But she still remembers every detail of that day in Ireland: how she walked along the seaport in Dublin for several hours pondering the act; how she watched as her head scarf was pulled away by the waves.

Above all, she remembers how for the first time she felt the wind blowing in her hair, a feeling she had long dreamed about.

"For a moment, I felt that there was no greater pleasure in the world than the feeling of the wind in my hair," Davoodi Mohajer says.

The article goes on to give the background to her decision:

Davoodi Mohajer grew up in a liberal family, but says she decided to wear the hijab at the time of Iran's 1979 revolution because she believed it would make her a better person and Iranian society a better place.

"I thought due to the propaganda then, and also books I used to read, that my hijab gives immunity to the society," Davoodi Mohajer says. "They kept saying men shouldn't become aroused, men shouldn't sin, and I thought preventing that [from happening] was my responsibility."

Creeping Questions

Several years later Davoodi Mohajer, who had chosen to wear the strictest form of the hijab, the head-to-toe chador, began questioning it and other Islamic laws in which she had once firmly believed.

She says her studies and her human rights activities had a key role in her reassessment of reasons for wearing the hijab in the first place.

Davoodi Mohajer says she started asking herself whether the hijab was really giving her "immunity" as claimed by Iranian leaders -- whether it elevated women's status. And, if so, then why didn't women have the same rights as men in the Islamic republic? "Why do women not enjoy equal rights with men when it comes to divorce, inheritance, and other issues?" she says she kept asking herself.

She started writing about women's rights issues and human-rights abuses in reformist publications and giving speeches at universities and other places.

Her activities and her support for dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri led in 2001 to her arrest, beatings, and 40 days' imprisonment at a security prison controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

There, she says, she realized that even the chador she'd been wearing throughout her adult life provided her no immunity.

"When I used to be a 'chadori' and religious, I was arrested and jailed in a men's prison," Davoodi Mohajer says. "They wouldn't let me shower without the door of the bathroom open. The guard would say, 'You can't close the door, I won't look.' I was being interrogated by a man for long hours."

It made her question the motives of those who advocated such strict dress for women.

"I realized then that the hijab doesn't mean anything to them either," Davoodi Mohajer says. "For those who say hijab must be respected, they don't respect you if you wear the hijab but don't share their political ideas."

At the moment, the Iranian government is also going after men with "inappropriate hairstyles." Also from RFE/RL:

Yes, coming to an Iranian barber shop near you… Ali Abedi, the secretary of the Hijab and Chastity conference held in Tehran, has said that the country's newly approved men’s hairstyles are to be named after Iranian cities and provinces.

“For example one hairstyle can be named, 'the Shiraz hairstyle,'” Abedi was quoted as saying by Iranian news websites. Apparently, naming the hairstyles will make it easier for customers to tell the barber which state-sanctioned haircut they want.

Iran’s Culture Ministry recently unveiled a number of approved hairstyles that are considered Islamic. Iranian officials have said that the move is aimed at fighting the spread of unconventional hairstyles and promoting Islamic and Iranian culture.

Women are next. The head of the conference, Zhale Khodayar, said that the Culture Ministry is also going to print pictures of approved hairstyles for women in a magazine.

But are they likely to catch on? A hairdresser in Tehran, Saeed Vedayi, is quoted by the “Jam-e Jam” website as saying that the new cuts won't be popular among Iranian youth "unless their taste changes.” As Vedayi reminded us, in recent years young people were more interested in getting “Western haircuts” with names such as “Typhus,” “Metal,” “Pineapple," and “Electric Shock."

(Although, confusingly, another barber, Moloud Emami, said that the approved haircuts are similar to those that are already popular among young people.)

We'll see. RFE/RL spoke to a 14-year-old boy in Tehran who confirmed what we might suspect: that he doesn’t think any of his friends would want a hairstyle that's named “Shiraz." ”It doesn’t sound cool and why would they want a haircut that's approved by the government," he said.

What does it say that so many of these battles are fought by teens?

One of the things that's wrong with the world today, 2

A scary guest editorial at Informed Comment by Houshang Asadi, who once shared a cell with Khamenei during the Shah's regime:

...

Since its inception, the Islamic Revolution has sought to suppress civil society by replacing civil law with sharia law as the legal basis of the Iranian society. But the long-lasting conflict between liberal-minded clergymen and their fundamentalist colleagues has only surfaced recently as Ayatollah Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, has taken drastic measures to turn the ‘Islamic Republic’ into the ‘Islamic Caliphate’.

There are now two distinct camps in Iran. The first faction is composed of Shi’a fundamentalists who support Ayatollah Khamenei. Khamenei’s views have three major influences: First, the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood, who are generally seen as the founding fathers of Islamic fundamentalism in modern times. Before the 1979 Revolution, Khamenei personally translated into Persian from the original Arabic the important works of the leading intellectual of the Brotherhood, Sayyed Qutb. Qutb’s views, especially his profound hatred of the West, are easily discernable among Iran’s ruling clergy today.

The second group that has influenced Khamenei is known as Fadā’iyān-e Islam (devotees of Islam), the first followers of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iran led by Mujtaba Navab-Safavi, who carried out some of the earliest acts of religious terrorism in modern Iran. Khamenei has repeatedly referred to Navab-Safavi as his role model in politics. That he has named his eldest son Mujtaba might be an indication of Khamenei’s admiration for this man.

The third sphere of influence is a group known as Hujjatiyeh Society, which sees as its mission to pave the way for the reappearance of the Mahdi, the 12th Shi’a Imam, who is believed to have gone into a millennium-old occultation and whose ultimate return in the End Times is expected to bring peace and justice to the world. Recently it has been revealed that each Wednesday, Khamenei visits Jamkaran, a well in the city of Qum that is regarded by many Shi’as as the hiding place of Mahdi. Eyewitnesses have reported that Khamenei has been seen in a state of deep prayer, allegedly communicating with the Hidden Imam.

The members of the second camp see themselves totally at odds with the other faction whose views and actions they regard as nothing short of catastrophic for Iran’s future. The vast majority of the country’s intellectuals, the middle class, the youth and a significant portion of those who work in “the system”, belong to this second camp, and are collectively referred to as the Green Movement. From the perspective of the Shi’a fundamentalists, the members of this movement are no better than infidels. As such, they can be imprisoned, tortured, raped etc.

The outcome of the ongoing power struggle between these two opposing factions carries great significance not just for Iran but for the international community. A victory by the Iranian “Taliban” will take Iran on a downward spiral and would place the country’s wealth and geopolitical powers entirely at the disposal of those who believe Islam’s global hegemony is possible through violent jihad, which is why they wish to secure nuclear capabilities. Bearing in mind that Iran has long served as a source of inspiration for many social and ideological movements in the region, it becomes clear how critical is the outcome of the battle between these two camps in Iran for the country, the region, and the world at large.

Somewhere, universities remain relevant and important

And that place is called... Iran.

A battle over the largest university in Iran, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, also shows the divisions within the Iranian establishment. Here is part of a long article:

By Golnaz Esfandiari

A dispute over control of one of the world's largest universities has turned into a fight between government bodies that is exposing deep fissures within the Iranian establishment.

At the center of the tug-of-war is Azad University: its leadership, board, 1.4 million students, and tens of billions of dollars in assets.

On one side are hard-liners within the Iranian establishment, most prominently President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who appears ready to punish Azad University for its alleged support for opposition candidates in the 2009 presidential election. Supporting Ahmadinejad is the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution (SCCR), whose resolution to alter the Azad University's charter, replace its current head of Azad University, and change its governing board was recently approved by the president.

On the other side are the conservatives within the same establishment, mainly former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who co-founded the university in 1982 and now the heads its board of trustees. Also supporting the conservatives are parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, and Abdollah Jasbi, the university head who is up for replacement and is a close Rafsanjani ally.

Matters came to a head on June 19 when the university's board secured a temporary injunction that prevented the SCCR from enforcing its revision of the university's charter.

The next day, a bill was rushed through the 270-member parliament that effectively circumvented the government takeover of Azad, by allowing universities to endow their properties to the public.Azad University's board had previously decided to endow the properties of the university, which has 357 branches and satellite campuses throughout the country.

The legislative move was quickly met with demonstrations outside parliament by Ahmadinejad loyalists.

In the wake of the heated protests, 100 legislators made a counter move by voting for emergency discussion of legislation that would support the SCCR's authority in the matter. This, in turn, could result in a bill that would effectively overturn the endowment bill passed on June 20. The counter move led to an uproar in parliament, with legislators exchanging insults.

Now it is up to the Guardians Council, which must approve the legislation, to decide on the matter, and for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to weigh in. The result could either strengthen Ahmadinejad and his allies or give some leverage to his rivals who are trying to curb his influence.

High Stakes

The fight has already been ugly at times. During the June 22 protesters outside parliament, which included members of the Basij militia, threatened to place the parliament "under fire" unless it backed away from its bill.

And that's just the various factions of conservatives fighting each other!

Image: picture taken from Wikimedia Commons. The photographer is named, believe it or not, Mani Parsa. Talk about your archetypal name!

Reflections on Iran, one year after

A year after the stolen election and the rise of the Green movement in Iran, Foreign Policy has a collection of articles by Iranian-American journalists: Misreading Tehran: Leading Iranian-American writers revisit a year of dreams and discouragement.

A headline from the new century: diplomacy, May 2010

From today's Globe and Mail:

Iran to ship uranium to Turkey in nuclear deal

Agreement reached in talks with Brazil and Turkey

The article continues:

Iran agreed Monday to ship most of its enriched uranium to Turkey in a nuclear fuel swap deal that could ease the international standoff over the country's disputed nuclear program, just as pressure mounts for tougher sanctions.

The deal was reached in talks with Brazil and Turkey, elevating a new group of mediators for the first time in the dispute over Iran's nuclear activities. There was no immediate comment from the United States and the other world powers that have led earlier negotiations as to whether the new deal would satisfy them...

Brazil as a key actor in resolving a Middle East/nuclear non-proliferation conflict?

Image: A more usual notion of Brazil.

News from Iran

Sitting in a London hotel I read The Fear Factor: a piece in the Independent on a profoundly divided society.

The comparative present

Thanks to Brad DeLong, from whom many good things come, I have just been alerted to the existence of the publication called Business Insider, which seems to have a real predilection for charts and lists illustrating current trends. This kind of thing can be either very useful or very deceptive, but I love it, even if a given example doesn't hold up very well under strict examination. Comparative material has a lot of potential to make people think, if they don't take the first analysis they see as the final word.

Business Insider first two lists of can which I found interesting. Some readers may remember that I am skeptical about alarmism in connection with demographic crises, especially crises of shrinking population. Business Insider offers us a list of 10 countries heading for a demographic crisis, and what is interesting here is that includes both countries with too much and too little population growth, and some detailed discussion of each. I haven't had the time to read it properly myself, but at least I think it will be worth reading.

The second list discusses 10 countries that have significant oil reserves and can be expected to pump away in the "distant future," long after places like Saudi Arabia have run dry. Of course it is hard to say what the world will be like then anyway, but the list does alert me to a couple of things. One, Iran has a lot of oil, and so will continue to be a "trouble spot" no matter what the ideology of the people in charge. Two, Canada is on that list, which I find quite alarming but not entirely surprising. I would rather not be a "trouble spot."

Coffee shops: Iran's aboveground underground

Trying to find some psychic elbowroom in Tehran's 'Islands Of Forgetfulness:'

While making an espresso Mehrdad [the shop owner] continues: “The present culture of drinking coffee came from university students wanting to stay up for exams, although drinking Turkish coffee was not uncommon in households, especially if it was followed by fortune telling.”

I hear a giggling sound from the table behind me and as I turn I realize that one of the girls has an upside-down cup in her hand, one of the rituals of reading the coffee grounds....

“The majority of customers are lovers, be it a girlfriend-boyfriend couple, a mistress or a lover, fiances, newly married couples, or just interested parties needing a place to sit, look at each other and talk over a coffee," Mehrdad says.

Music Sharing

A young man with a strange hairdo (strange that is to the norms of Iranian society) then came to sit at our table.

His name was Bahador and without hesitation he starts to promote his music. “We've produced this CD ourselves. It's a rock album that has got some air time in San Jose. It would mean a lot to us if you purchase it and support our underground production,” he says.

As I was paying for the original but illegal CD (not bootlegged but illegal because this kind of music is prohibited by the government) Mehrdad whispers, “This is the second group of coffee-shop customers: artists, musicians, writers, and intellectuals.”

“There are no ways and no places for musicians whose work is not approved by the government to promote their music," Mehrdad says as Bahador left our table.

A remarkable story about one of the United States and Iran

Every once in a while a news story shakes up your comfortable view of what the world is like. I have my cliché views of Mississippi, backward and conservative, and though I am not nearly so paranoid about Iran as most people in North America, it is a place with a repressive government, tremendous economic problems, which poses certain dangers to people in countries that its government disapproves of.

Before you read this, I would not have expected to hear that people in the state of Mississippi and the Islamic Republic of Iran were cooperating on a project to bring Iranian public health techniques to Mississippi. Since I think that a serious commitment to public health is practically synonymous with "civilization," this article in the Times Online both flabbergasted and pleased me.

An excerpt:

...with Congress acrimoniously debating the reform of healthcare, it is to Iran that one of America’s poorest communities is turning to try to resolve its own health crisis.

A US doctor and a development consultant visited Iran in May to study a primary healthcare system that has cut infant mortality by more than two-thirds since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

Then, in October, five top Iranian doctors, including a senior official at the health ministry in Tehran, were quietly brought to Mississippi to advise on how the system could be implemented there.

The Mississippi Delta has some of the worst health statistics in the country, including infant mortality rates for non-whites at Third World levels.

“It’s time to look for a new model,” said Dr Aaron Shirley, one of the state’s leading health campaigners.

“Forty years ago, when I was a resident at Jackson hospital, I was in charge of admitting sick babies and was astonished at all the children coming in from the delta with diarrhoea, meningitis, pneumonia.

“After years of health research and expenditure of millions of dollars, nothing much has changed.”
...
Facing shortages of money and trained doctors at the start of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, the new government launched a system based on community “health houses”, each serving about 1,500 people.

Locals were trained as health workers known as behvarz, who would travel their area, dispensing advice about healthy eating, sanitation and contraception as well as monitoring blood pressure and conditions such as diabetes.

It was a stunning success, reducing child mortality rates by 69% and maternal mortality in rural areas from 300 per 100,000 births to 30. There are now 17,000 health houses in Iran, covering more than 90% of its rural population of 23m.

Miller contacted Shirley, who is seen as a community health pioneer in Mississippi and had recently converted a deserted shopping centre in Jackson into a “medical mall” for the poor.

“I thought if the Iranians could do it with a fraction of resources we have, then why shouldn’t we?” said Shirley.
...
Shirley and Miller visited Iran in May and were astonished to be welcomed with open arms. When they went to remote villages to see the health houses, the Iranians were equally amazed.

“They told us this is a miracle,” said Miller. “Not only were Americans coming here, but also they were learning from us rather than telling us what to do.”

One villager exclaimed: “We always knew rain fell down but never knew it could fall up.”