The Latest from Iran (7 October): Preparing for the Next Election

1515 GMT: Your Tehran Friday Prayer Summary. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami took the podium today to say that Iran had inspired the “Islamic Awakening” throughout the Middle East and should continue this role.

Having given this assurance, Khatami condemned the “fake Zionist regime” occupying Palestinian territory as a “cancerous tumour” seeking to “remain permanently in the body of Islamic countries to threaten the nation and region”. And he was no more kinder to Saudi Arabia, which its own people and supported dictators in Bahrain and Yemen as they became “a hell of repression and looting by security people”.

Eye on Iran: Insider: Iran Will Be ‘Next Chernobyl’

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NewsCore: ”The first Iranian nuclear power station is inherently unsafe and will probably cause a ‘tragic disaster for humankind,’ according to a document apparently written by an Iranian whistleblower. There is a ‘great likelihood’ that the Bushehr reactor could generate the next nuclear catastrophe after Chernobyl or Fukushima, says the document, which has been passed to The (London) Times by a reputable source and is attributed to a former member of the legal department of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. It claims that Bushehr, which began operating last month after 35 years of intermittent construction, was built by ‘second-class engineers’ who bolted together Russian and German technologies from different eras; that it sits in one of the world’s most seismically active areas but could not withstand a major earthquake; and that it has ‘no serious training program’ for staff or a contingency plan for accidents.”http://t.uani.com/qsdghD

Todesurteil gegen Christ: Deutsche Bischöfe appellieren an Iran

Sollte das Todesurteil gegen Youcef Nadarkhani vollstreckt werden, wäre der Pastor seit 20 Jahren der erste Konvertit, der im Iran wegen seines Glaubens hingerichtet würde.

Fulda-Teheran, 07.10.2011 (KAP) Die Deutsche Bischofskonferenz (DBK) hat am Freitag vom Iran die “unverzügliche Freilassung” des evangelikalen Pfarrers Youcef Nadarkhani gefordert. Nadarkhani war am 22. September 2010 vom Revolutionsgericht in Rasht wegen “Abfalls vom Islam” und “Verbreitung nichtislamischer Lehren” zum Tod verurteilt worden. Ein anderes Gericht hatte kürzlich festgestellt, dass der Pfarrer vor seiner Konversion zum Christentum Muslim gewesen sei. Das Urteil kann jederzeit vollstreckt werden.

Iran: Rising daily executions including juveniles

Reza Fard

The number of executions reported by state-run dailies in Iran reached 62 in the month of September alone. This does not include dozens of secret executions and killings in torture chambers and secret detention centers.

The latest figure confirms previous reports that in Iran one person is executed every 8 hours and this is even higher than China considering the population.

According to media reports among the victims were at least one 17-year-old boy and two teens who were under 18 at the time of alleged crime.

Iran Blocks VPN communication on the Internet

 

 

Stop Fundamentalism – Considering the major role the internet and social media played in flaring up popular protests in the Middle East and North Africa since the rigged presidential elections in Iran back in 2009, dictators in the region are now attempting more and more to block access to open internet by their citizens.

Iran’s War On Fun

Iranian police display alcohol after breaking up illicit parties and making arrests in Tehran in October 2010

October 02, 2011

By Golnaz Esfandiari

A woman in the Iranian city of Mashhad has become the latest victim of Iran’s longest-standing and most unconventional war — the war against fun.

Reporter Without Borders: MORE ARRESTS, THREATS AND SENTENCES FOR IRAN’S JOURNALISTS

Reporters Without Borders firmly condemns a new wave of arrests of Iranian journalists in recent weeks. The following journalists were arrested between 1 August and 27 September without any official reason being given:

• Hamid Moazeni, a blogger and journalist who works for several local newspapers in the south-coast city of Bushehr;

• Ali Dini Torkamani, a writer and economist who contributes to the online magazine Alborznet;

• Hadi Ahmadi, a journalist who works for the news agency ISNA in Karaj, a city 20 km northwest of Tehran;

• Mehrdad Sarjoui, a Tehran-based journalist who writes for several English-language newspapers;

• Amir Ali Alamehzadeh, a journalist who works for the news agency ILNA in Tehran;

• Ebrahim Rashidi, a journalist with the weekly Bayram in the northwestern city of Ardabil;

• Faranak Farid, a writer and translator who contributes to the Feminist School website. She was arrested on 3 September in the northwestern city of Tabriz.

Rare Interview Surfaces With The Wife of Iran’s Supreme Leader

Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a handout photo

October 04, 2011

Several Iranian websites have posted an interview with the wife of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in which she discusses, among other things, her life with Khamenei, whom she portrays as a caring husband, and talks about her favorite form of Islamic hijab.

The  wives of most Iranian politicians are almost invisible on Iran’s political scene. Iranian leaders seem to believe that a good and honorable wife is someone who stays away as much as possible from the public sphere.

Türkei Hilfeaufruf: Mohammad Salehi benötigt dringend medizinische Hilfe

 

محمد صالحی پناهنده سیاسی ایرانی در شرایط جسمی نامناسبی به سر می برد .

 

Mohammad Salehi is a political activist and a former political prisoner. He has been arrested and jailed in Iran and beaten and tortured in the hands of Islamic thugs in Iraqi Kurdistan. He is in Turkey now and in a very bad health. His kidneys are damaged due to shotgun hit in one of Isfahan protests. He was then arrested and imprisoned without medical attention. He needs an operation and our friends in Turkey say this will cost 7000 Dollars. The money that he does not have.

Iran Warns of Facebook’s Soft Power

A computer engineer checks equipment at an internet service provider in Tehran in February 2011.

October 06, 2011

An Iranian official warned this week that the expansion of social-media networks is harming society and called the country’s 17 million Facebook users a threat to the country’s Islamic values.