dagblog - Comments for "Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery"

I find it a bit hard to

acanuck — Sat, 07 May 2011 00:18:03 +0000

In reply to It kind of looks like he's

I find it a bit hard to follow why the apparently more secular chief of staff, Mashaei, would be stirring up expectations about the return of the lost imam. But it's long been clear that there's a tug-of-war between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.

We understand a fascist

kgb999 — Fri, 06 May 2011 20:21:07 +0000

In reply to From this

We understand a fascist regime to be underpinned by an ultra nationalistic philosophy. In the words of Mussolini: "The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. [...] Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his immanent relationship with a superior law and with an objective Will that transcends the particular individual and raises him to conscious membership of a spiritual society."

In contrast, Iran is a deity-based Theocracy. In their specific formulation, the will of Allah is all-embracing and the religious hierarchy is the ultimate authority in relaying that will to the people. The basic premise of Fascism would appear to be heresy to a theocratic society. However, both Fascism and Iran's current theocracy have authoritarianism in common; which is likely a more accurate term for what you are trying to describe.

And I suppose it only matters if one is intrigued by the precise meaning of words (or spinning a regional competition between Iran and Israel).

It kind of looks like he's

kgb999 — Fri, 06 May 2011 19:34:56 +0000

In reply to Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery

It kind of looks like he's close to done. A couple days ago he ended a 10 day snit fit ... and now there is talk of him resigning.

From this

Bruce Levine — Fri, 06 May 2011 13:14:45 +0000

In reply to Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery

From this morning's Jerusalem Post and Reuters, on what is happening in Iran. With respect to next spring's parliamentary elections, we read:

The jostling for influence is happening less than one year before a parliamentary election set to be a battle among fellow conservatives. Leading reformist candidates are unlikely to be allowed to stand if they are deemed too close to the opposition "Green" movement, which the establishment considers to be part of a foreign-backed conspiracy to overthrow the Islamic system.

It is not beside the point that Iran's elections are rigged so that only the autocratic right-wing religious leaders can approve who is eligible to run. In short, democracy is more than elections. Among other thing, the right to dissent publicly, to challenge authority, and the existence of a free press and unfettered use of the internet are the pillars of freedom in the modern world.

Queries of the day: How, if at all, does Iran differ than what we understand to be a fascist regime? Does it matter?

Face-Off: What caused a

artappraiser — Fri, 06 May 2011 07:59:16 +0000

In reply to Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery

Face-Off: What caused a recent spat between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei?
By Abbas Milani, The New Republic, May 6, 2011
[.....]
While the facts of the on-going confrontation are more or less clear, the important question is why Ahmadinejad, who began his first term as president by kissing Khamenei’s hand on the day of his inauguration, is now biting the very same hand that was certainly critical in giving him his alleged victory in the contested June 2009 election. According to one theory, Ahmadinejad knows the clergy are increasingly reviled in Iran and is keen on either challenging them or at least distancing himself from them. Others attribute his defiance to the arrogance of power, his tendency to believe in his own lies, and his belief that he, in fact, did win the last election and thus need not play vassal to a weakened Khamenei. Needless to say, the conservative clergy attribute the whole crisis to an Israeli and American conspiracy and claim that “infiltrators” from the ranks of the enemy have bedeviled the gullible president.
Why Khamenei has decided to pick a public fight at this time is no less important to ponder.
It appears that, once again, he has chosen a path whose goal is nothing more than establishing and expanding his own authoritarian power—the outcome of which will likely leave the regime fractured and weakened, his power utterly dependent on the whim of the Revolutionary Guards. His rash decision has left him with no good outcome: He must either cave and allow Ahmadinejad to fire the minister—and suffer yet another major blow to his authority—or he can succeed in humiliating Ahmadinejad, creating considerable resentment amongst his base of mainly poor, rural supporters.

A third possibility, however, is that Khamenei and his allies might have chosen this public row as an excuse to offer up Ahmadinejad as a sacrifice and blame him for the country’s impending financial woes.
[....]

Previous Ahmadinejad troubles

artappraiser — Fri, 06 May 2011 07:41:38 +0000

In reply to Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery

Previous Ahmadinejad troubles noted as comments on bslev's thread here

But charging his allies with sorcery really seem to be ramping it up a bit more, eh?