Still here

Still here, thinking of a real overhaul of this page. Meanwhile, busy educating myself, at a rate almost equal to my fast growing ignorance.

Back from the ashes

I’m back here. Ironically, my last post said I will be more active here. I have been active for sure.

Not as much involved with Iran as before, lost interest in the whole process. I hear that there was a conference in Berkeley today, called bridge 2014, regarding investment in Iran.

Sounds good actually. At the end of the day, iran wants to get a piece of the capitalist cake. And if it was not because of Saudis and Israelis (for good national interest reasons perhaps ) not cock blocking iran, they would have had at least a thin slice a while back.

No title since it is optional

Have not written anything for a long time. However, I am thinking of starting to write more seriously. So, my imaginary readers, stay tuned for what to come .

Iraq-Iran War and Wikileaks (Nothing Yet?)

I have been giving Wikileaks a couple of months to publish some cables regarding the Iraq-Iran war. I think millions of others who lived through the nightmare of the last classic war of the 20’th century would like to know more about that. To my disappointment neither Wikileaks nor any other media outlets who had access to the cables did publish any cables originated between 1979-1986.

If you remember (well many prefer not to, specially in the post 9/11 era ) there was nasty war going on between Iran and Iraq , meanwhile Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan and U. S decided to train Mojahedin fighters (turned into Taliban later ) to fight back. Remember Iran-contra affair? What about that?

Ironically U.S. Is in Iraq now and Iran is again the news maker. May be knowledge of this period of the Middle East’s recent history would shed some light on what is happening now. In my opinion much of what happened after 2000 was a logical consequence of what was going on before during the 80’s and 90’s and yet no interesting cable has been released regarding this period. I wonder why is that? Is Wikileaks waiting for the right time to release those cables? Or is it simply because the priority is given to 2000 and after? (however there are cables released from the late 70’s and 80’s but none concerns the Iran-Iraq war or Soviet’s invasion of Afganistan)

An initial analysis of what that has been released so far shows that the most discussed country in the ( published ) leaks is indeed Iran, so I don’t think if Iran is not an interesting topic. So why not go further and explore one of the most defining periods of relationship between Iran and the west? i.e the early years after the Iranian revolution and Iraq-Iran war.  I wonder would we see any of those cables any time soon? At least it is of grate interest to those whose 80’s years was defined by the “hard rock” music of Iraqi/Iranian bombs raping their childhood dreams.

Who vs. What when it came to Wikileaks

According to Google insights for search, the second most popular search term over the past 90 days (as of today January 3rd 2011) has been “wikileaks”. It is interesting to notice which were the top ten countries looking for the keyword:

Search for Wikileaks on Google

As you see almost all are coming from the “Developing” countries.

Now let see the search for the search term “Assange” (the founder of the website)

Serach for Assange on Google

Oh! Now almost all are from “Developed” countries.  It is also interesting to notice that the interest over time for both keywords follows the same pattern, two peaks  (one in October when wikileaks reselad the Iraq logs and one bigger one in late November when the diplomatic cables came out).

If you compare the search for “wikileaks” between Mozambique and Australia you’ll see there are more seraches comming from Mozambique, so there is a meaningful difference here.
I don’t want to draw any conclusions, but I can not help not noticing the clear difference between how the “North” and the “South” has reacted to the same political impulse.

Which countries are most mentioned in the cables published by Wikileaks?

December 9 data

After improving the method and also release of new data (since the last post, below) , here is the updated list for the top 110 countries. Note that this data, while may have indications regarding the cables, also may reflect priorities upon which certain cables are chosen to be published by wikileaks. The data is as of December 10 2010 (the third column is the percentage)

1	Iran	6844	11.44
2	Russia	4067	6.80
3	France	3836	6.41
4	China	2732	4.57
5	Afghanistan	2538	4.24
6	Spain	2502	4.18
7	Pakistan	2422	4.05
8	Iraq	2059	3.44
9	Brazil	1772	2.96
10	Israel	1663	2.78
11	United Kingdom	1621	2.71
12	Saudi Arabia	1267	2.12
13	Venezuela	1040	1.74
14	Turkey	996	1.66
15	Syria	745	1.24
16	Palestinian territories	682	1.14
17	Georgia	662	1.11
18	Lebanon	653	1.09
19	United Arab Emirates	632	1.06
20	North Korea	603	1.01
21	Ukraine	576	0.96
22	Egypt	561	0.94
23	Germany	537	0.90
24	Bolivia	529	0.88
25	Algeria	474	0.79
26	Cuba	466	0.78
27	Yemen	424	0.71
28	India	400	0.67
29	Morocco	392	0.66
30	Italy	389	0.65
31	Libya	383	0.64
32	Mexico	381	0.64
33	Kuwait	376	0.63
34	Serbia	375	0.63
35	Colombia	374	0.62
36	Argentina	355	0.59
37	Qatar	353	0.59
38	Poland	343	0.57
39	Sweden	225	0.38
40	Tunisia	202	0.34
41	Azerbaijan	201	0.34
42	Japan	189	0.32
43	Sudan	181	0.30
44	Nigeria	177	0.30
45	South Africa	172	0.29
46	Canada	169	0.28
47	Jordan	165	0.28
48	Somalia	158	0.26
49	Haiti	154	0.26
50	Zimbabwe	152	0.25
51	Armenia	142	0.24
52	Mali	139	0.23
53	Uganda	135	0.23
54	Austria	130	0.22
55	Netherlands	127	0.21
56	Niger	126	0.21
57	Croatia	120	0.20
58	Rwanda	114	0.19
59	Bulgaria	112	0.19
60	Oman	105	0.18
61	Belgium	103	0.17
62	Paraguay	98	0.16
63	Macedonia	86	0.14
64	Bosnia and Herzegovina	84	0.14
65	Djibouti	78	0.13
66	Mauritania	78	0.13
67	Honduras	78	0.13
68	Kazakhstan	77	0.13
69	Kyrgyzstan	77	0.13
70	Burkina Faso	76	0.13
71	Tajikistan	67	0.11
72	Ireland	65	0.11
73	Senegal	65	0.11
74	Uzbekistan	64	0.11
75	Angola	64	0.11
76	Bahrain	62	0.10
77	Chile	62	0.10
78	Chad	61	0.10
79	Cyprus	61	0.10
80	Switzerland	61	0.10
81	Turkmenistan	58	0.10
82	Republic of the Congo	58	0.10
83	Portugal	57	0.10
84	Western Sahara	57	0.10
85	Sri Lanka	56	0.09
86	South Korea	56	0.09
87	Panama	55	0.09
88	Belarus	52	0.09
89	Czech Republic	50	0.08
90	Ecuador	49	0.08
91	Greece	48	0.08
92	Australia	48	0.08
93	Hungary	46	0.08
94	Romania	43	0.07
95	Mongolia	35	0.06
96	Singapore	34	0.06
97	Burundi	31	0.05
98	Uruguay	31	0.05
99	Gabon	29	0.05
100	Costa Rica	28	0.05
101	Indonesia	28	0.05
102	Luxembourg	26	0.04
103	Malaysia	26	0.04
104	Cape Verde	25	0.04
105	Gambia	24	0.04
106	Hong Kong	24	0.04
107	Slovenia	17	0.03
108	Denmark	13	0.02
109	Fiji	10	0.02

pie chart as of Dec 9 2010

 

This is a d.i.y. report  on the number of times that a country is mentioned in the diplomatic cables published by Wikilieaks as of December 3 2010. The list is based on the Wikipedia article on sovereign nations. Note that this is just a computer generated report (obviously! ), and it is just based on the number of times that a certain country name (such as Canada) is mentioned in the report. However in order to better reflect the interest in a country one should also look for the name of important cities (i.e. Toronto etc…) to find out more. I guess that would be my next attempt . Moreover this is just based on the published data so far, therefore it is perhaps subject to change as more data becomes available (or not ? who knows ?), and it might partially show Wikileak’s priorities in publishing certain cables at this time. Comments are much appreciated.

Pie Chart of the Frequency of Citations for 33 Countries

And here is the list of countries mentioned least  once  (of total 28525 )

1	Iran	4454
2	Russia	2786
3	France	2759
4	Pakistan	1859
5	Afghanistan	1706
6	Israel	1193
7	Turkey	1028
8	Iraq	834
9	China	783
10	Germany	770
11	Palestinian territories	702
12	Brazil	551
13	Syria	493
14	India	478
15	Venezuela	413
16	United Arab Emirates	411
17	North Korea	410
18	Spain	395
19	Egypt	393
20	Lebanon	386
21	Georgia	365
22	Ukraine	327
23	Italy	297
24	Argentina	277
25	United Kingdom	262
26	Saudi Arabia	256
27	Cuba	207
28	Qatar	204
29	Canada	185
30	Azerbaijan	142
31	Mexico	141
32	Japan	126
33	Morocco	122
34	Sweden	121
35	Jordan	98
36	Yemen	91
37	Kuwait	90
38	Libya	85
39	Austria	76
40	Czech Republic	75
41	Haiti	70
42	Kazakhstan	67
43	Sudan	64
44	Colombia	63
45	Belgium	60
46	Sri Lanka	56
47	Turkmenistan	55
48	Ireland	53
49	Burkina Faso	52
50	Rwanda	49
51	Bahrain	48
52	Oman	47
53	Tunisia	47
54	Uzbekistan	45
55	Chad	44
56	Paraguay	44
57	Poland	42
58	South Korea	42
59	Djibouti	41
60	Greece	39
61	Cyprus	37
62	Kyrgyzstan	37
63	Republic of the Congo	37
64	Algeria	35
65	Croatia	35
66	Somalia	35
67	Romania	34
68	Uganda	32
69	Costa Rica	27
70	Hungary	27
71	Senegal	27
72	Burundi	26
73	Mauritania	26
74	Zimbabwe	25
75	Armenia	24
76	Cape Verde	24
77	Luxembourg	24
78	Mali	24
79	Netherlands	24
80	Niger	24
81	Bolivia	23
82	South Africa	23
83	Switzerland	23
84	Gambia	21
85	Serbia	20
86	Tajikistan	20
87	Bosnia and Herzegovina	19
88	Portugal	19
89	Australia	18
90	Bulgaria	17
91	Mongolia	16
92	Singapore	16
93	Gabon	15
94	Panama	15
95	Belarus	14
96	Uruguay	14
97	Chile	13
98	Indonesia	13
99	Malaysia	13
100	Slovenia	13
101	Ecuador	12
102	Nigeria	12
103	Western Sahara	11
104	Honduras	10
105	Hong Kong	10
106	Angola	9
107	Macedonia	9
108	Denmark	8
109	Fiji	8
110	Central African Republic	7
111	Lithuania	7
112	Madagascar	7
113	Sierra Leone	7
114	Ethiopia	6
115	Guinea	6
116	Liberia	6
117	Albania	5
118	Bangladesh	5
119	Grenada	5
120	Jersey	5
121	Kenya	5
122	New Zealand	5
123	Moldova	4
124	Nicaragua	4
125	Norway	4
126	Barbados	3
127	Benin	3
128	Cambodia	3
129	Cameroon	3
130	Mauritius	3
131	Dominican Republic	2
132	Eritrea	2
133	Estonia	2
134	Finland	2
135	Guatemala	2
136	Latvia	2
137	Mozambique	2
138	Slovakia	2
139	Trinidad and Tobago	2
140	Bermuda	1
141	Equatorial Guinea	1
142	Guam	1
143	Guinea-Bissau	1
144	Laos	1
145	Macau	1
146	Togo	1

Khameneh’ie got a surprise from a Math Student at Sharif U of Tech.

‌Background: There has been a meeting between “elite” [students] and Khameneh’ie and what you read is what happened in this meeting. In the education obsessed Iranian culture, the term elite that we are hearing more these days, is usually used to refer to gifted students and highly educated people. I remember from my time being there, It was very important to be in the national team for International scientific Olympiads (such as Math and Physics) every year they choose 7 students (after multiple exams ) to participate in the international competition (after one year of fierce training), those who made it to the team, are the “geek celebrities” and they all ended up going to Sharif University of Tech (an elite science and tech university in Iran) for their undergrad studies and after that to continue their education at Ivy leage schools in the US ( and usually stay there, thanks to the “elite” firendly governmnet in Iran!) . As a pure populist government, Ahmadinejad’s government tried to show himself as a “pro-elite” administration, however ironically his interior minister got sacked for having a fake PhD from Oxford. What you read below is a quick (partial) translation from Farsi of the personal account of someone who has been in that meeting and is narrating the story of a Math student at Sharif U of Tech. (also reportedly a Medalist in the International Mathematics Olympiad) who proves that his heart is as big as his brain , I wish the best for him and hope he is safe and sound. And I want him to know that our thoughts are with him.
__________________________________________________________________________________________

At the end of the meeting, Khameneh’ie asked:” is there any other questions? ”

The exact moment that Khameneh'ie pointed at Mahmood Vahidnia

Some people rose their hands and one person stood up. Khameneh’ie let him go to the podium and ask his question. This student calmly gave harsh criticism to Khameneh’ie. He introduced himself as a student in Mathematics at Sharif University of Technology. He said: those who were here as representative of “elite” students and read something from paper, were not representative of all “elite” students , we did not choose them , at this point everyone in the room applauded him and he continued

Mahmood Vahidnia , Math Student at Sharif U

what I am going to say is different from what other friends said. I divide my question into three categories

1 – unfortunately the state-run media (“Seda o Sima”-TV and Radio) does not reflect what is going on in the country. Do you think if the media faithfully reported on what happened in this country (post-election unrest ) ? or was it distorted? although I am putting this in question form but what I really mean is clear! unfortunately when the main media and most important element in informing the public is behaving like this, we cant expect anything better from smaller media in the country. The state-run media (“Seda o Sima” ) is directly under your order and you appoint its head. So now there are only two cases: Either they do this under your order, or you don’t know what is going on there.
The question is, in the past 30 years, has our society moved towards being more Islamic and ethical? If the answer is even a partial “no” then we have to doubt our actions in the past 30 years.

2- I will raise the second problem by an analogy. In a family … if the father of the family uses violence towards the younger son, then the older brother learns to be violent towards his younger brother. Now, that you are like a father, when your attitude towards people who oppose you is like this, those under you take up the same attitude and we all know what happened in the prisons. Regarding what happened in the prisons , I remember that in one of your speeches you said that we will confront those who were responsible but …. I personally was in one of those silent protests. Plainclothes and men in uniform attacked us and beat all of us.

3 – I don’t know why in this country nobody is allowed to criticize you? I have been reading the press for the past 5 years and did not see anyone criticizing you even the assembly of experts, whose job is to supervise the leaderships action,s in practice has never criticized anything that you have done.

During his talk, Basijis tried to interrupt him shouting that time is up , stop it ,…  someone gave him a piece of paper. and he turned to Khamenhe’is and said they are telling me that my time is up , but if you allow me there is more that I want to talk about. Basijis tried to interrupt him again. Khameneh’is said well from the very beginning we were out of time, but now you can continue your questions, this was accompanied with long applause by those present in the meeting . Khameneh’s started answering him and he said we did not want this kind of issues to be raised in here and we liked to talk about problems that our “elite” are facing and talk about science and in response to the student said what we all heard on TV [note: the state media did not show the student who asked the questions but only showed Khameneh’s response ]
….
he said: who says nobody criticizes us? ! I have asked them to establish a “chair for freedom of thoughts” in universities [!!] why didn’t you do that? go and criticise ….
….

and after Khameneh’s disappeared . based on the plan there was supposed to be a prayer with Khameneh’s as the Imam but they said that the plan has changed and there is no prayer …
I did not see the student who asked the questions after that

Side Note: Interestingly a day after this incident, Ahmadinejad who was visiting the province of Khorasan, in a speech said , that “we need to change the definition of elite!” , those who can not see the difference between friend and enemy are not the elite, and it doesn’t matter what kind of university degrees they have”

Here you can see the BBC Persian report on this

White House reverses statement on Iran election !

Well, I think the original statement which now appears to be just a screw up (I hope) has been reverted.

“Let me correct a little bit of what I said yesterday. I denoted that Mr. Ahmadinejad was the elected leader of Iran. I would say that’s not for me to pass judgment on,” Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One

I wonder if this was a response to the strong reaction from the public, or he really screwed up, if the later is the case, he must be reminded that he is the spokeman for the most influential office on this planet. A mistake of this sort has a very high cost.  One day life time of a false statement occupying major headlines can severly damage the reputation of an administration, and disappoint milions of people who are fighting for their freedom. Mind you that whebn it comes to the media you do not always deal with symmetric and reversible events.

Ahmadinejad is the president elect of Iran? Thanks President Obama!

Well done! I admire the honesty of the new administration by making it clear that the only thing that the United States cares about, when it comes to Iran, is the nuclear issue and perhaps the safety of its allies in the Middle East (all of them with astonishing human rights records!), and not the Iranian people and violation of their basic rights, which apparently is considered to be the internal affairs of Iran.

However, I do not believe that calling Ahmadinejad the “elected leader” was necessary.

Perhaps not calling him the elected leader would have not been considered as meddling in Iran’s internal affairs (and as we saw even as you didn’t meddle in Iranian matters, they killed and arrested hundreds and accused them of being funded by the US)

So why was he called the elected leader then? Don’t you think that it is taking sides ? Clearly this was a disputed election and even hight ranking Iranian officials have made it clear that they do not belive that Ahmadinejad is the elected leader. And none of them as I know (even the highest ranking Ayatollahs did not call him so).

So does it mean that the White House considers Mr.Mousavi and other candidates who did not accept the election results as crying babies who just can’t accept the defeat ?

By the way how many examples in the history do you know in which for more than 50 days after an election in which the “elected leader” gets 64% of the votes thousands of protesters are still on the streets despite the brutal crackdown coming from the “elected leaders” police force and para-militants ?

How many “elected leader”s do you know whom their plainclothes guards arrest, torture and rape their people?

I hope calling him the “elected leader” was not just because of the safety of 3 American hostages in Iran , mind you that there are 70 million human beings taken hostage there.

And I hope that this is not becasue you rather deal with the “devil that you know”, since the “devil” that you think you don’t know are the Iranian people, and they will win this war. Just watch them!

Hanging by a green rope

The author of Kahrizak report, in  his new note mentions that he  is now in Turkey.

In a part of his note he recalls a staged execution for him: Hanging him by a green rope

“…. they took me in the middle of the night into a room and asked me to write my will.  Why? I asked, you’ll be executed at the time of the morning prayer [dawn], one of the guards said. I didn’t take it seriously.  What is my crime? The answer was that I am a “Monafegh”[1] and “Mohareb”.  They made me belive that I will be killed and while crying I wrote a letter to my mother and kid sister, about two pages. They took me by the gallows. They said they have picked a green rope for me since I like the color green! where are you Mr.Mousavi? they tied my hands and lead me to a chair. I told to myself, what have I done? ! What is going on outside? Is that possible that they have killed everybody and now it is a lawless state ou there? You mean it is not possible for people to come and break the doors and rescue me? I recalled my childhood memories. God, if I am really a “Mohareb” forgive me. God you know that I always used to attend religious ceremonies. I was not good in praying though but I would fast! God forgive me!God! is my mom sleeping now? I’m sure she is looking for me everywhere. What about my sister…. I was supposed to buy her a new cellphone. Oh God! I had tears in my eyes, and I was shaking. There were 6 of them in the room. One of them saw my tears and [he] was crying [too]. I looked at him he turned his face and he cried too. I really believed that this is the end of it. Mr Shahroodi! [the head of Irans judiciary system] Imagine yourself or your own child in my place! one of them said its time, drop the chair! I closed my eyes and waiting for the chair to fall! and someone hit the chair so hard that it was thrown to the other side of the room, but [someone] grabbed me and didn’t let me fall. “

He now reveals the name of “Sadegh” the butcher of the camp, his full name is : “Sadegh Montazer-Al-Mahdi” , and apparently “Sardar Radaan” one of the commanders of the Iranian Police force (he is a member of the revolutionary guards] himself has been directly involved in Kahrizak’s concentration camp crimes.

He mentions that he will soon reveal his identity. Although at this point still there is no way to evaluate the authenticity of the reports, what he says are believable and consistent with other independent reports . In fact I remember an acquaintance who spent years in Evin prison during the 80’s, he himself has been put in front of the execution squad twice. And a couple of times he was asked to pull the trigger on his comrades (while a guard holding the gun) .

In another quick note he mentions that some of his friends have been released from the camp, however the rest have been moved to a different province. There are speculations that the reason that Khamenh’ie ordered the camp to be closed down is because it is no longer a secrete detention center  and they want to clean up the crime scene (the same goes with the floor -4 detention center of the Interior ministry where I have a translated a report about what happened there to students on this blog. )

__________________

Footnote

[1] Monafegh: Is a term that the regime started using to refer to the members of an armed opposition group “People’s Mojahedin of Iran”(PMOI), called “Mojahedin”  who branched off the body of the system in 1981. Now they are in exile in Iraq. I think the main reason that they picked the term Monafegh (hypocritsc) is because “Monafgeh” rymes with “Mojahed” ! Rhyming has been the backbone of the Iranian regimes Newspeak , probably a tribute to Iranians love for peotry!