As markets floundered amid the credit crunch, Iran's leadership celebrated the West's economic crisis. On Oct. 11, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared, "The claim that the free market manages all things is a huge lie and benefits only thieves and criminals." Two days later, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei decreed that the West's financial crisis was a sign of "the ineffectiveness of liberal democracy-based policies."
The Iranian leadership may rue their words. Ahmadinejad has run Iran's economy into the ground. On Oct. 11, just a day after Ahmadinejad declared prices in decline, the Central Bank reported inflation above 30%. Such figures are still likely low. Both Shahab News and Aftab-e Yazd have noted the tendency of Iranian officials to pull numbers from thin air.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
10/18/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Condoleezza Rice offers a defiant Tehran financial incentives.
George's ability to select subordinates never ceases astonishing me.
And so should chavez, castro, putin, all the usual suspects, all those tinpot disctators, tribal thugs and the like, but none will, why should they? They don't have to play by the same rules the West does. If mugabe can lecture the West and get standing ovation from african leaders, if castro can be praised by peopel supposedly appaled by the USA's rampant authoritarian streak, then we're in Bizarro world, and Bizarro world rules apply.
A body of Muslim scholars led by influential Sunni cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi has urged Shiite Iran to prevent sectarian strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
The International Union of Muslim Scholars issued a statement late Thursday saying it "invites the Islamic republic of Iran to assume its responsibilities to stifle sectarian sedition and extinguish the flames of this sedition."
The union issued the call following a meeting on Wednesday in the Gulf state of Qatar which was attended by the body's vice-president Iran's Ayatollah Mohamad Ali Tashkiri. The meeting, which was held behind closed doors, came after controversy triggered last month by the Egyptian-born Qaradawi who described Shiites as "heretics" and accused them of "invading" Sunni societies.
The dispute between Qaradawi and Shiite scholars emerged in the aftermath of statements the former made to the Egyptian independent al-Masry al-Youm in which he warned of a Shiite infiltration of Sunni nations. Qaradawi said at the time that he was responding to criticism by Tashkiri and another prominent Shiite cleric, Lebanon's Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, of earlier remarks he had made about a Shiite "invasion."
In its statement the union underscored "the need for mutual respect between" Sunnis and Shiites and said there should be a stop to any attempt to "spread one faith across regions dominated by the other faith."
Sunnis represent the majority of Muslims in the Middle East, but Shiites form the majority in Iran and Iraq and have a substantial presence in Lebanon.
Sunni leaders in the region have voiced concern about a Shiite resurgence following sectarian strife between the two communities in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime in the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 and its replacement by a Shiite-led government.
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Posted by: Fred ||
10/18/2008 00:00 ||
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Iran says the majority of the world countries never find the opportunity to have their say in the decision-making process at the UN.
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Posted by: Fred ||
10/18/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Still sitting at the kids table.
Posted by: Formerly Dan ||
10/18/2008 10:13 Comments ||
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Iran's foreign minister says the West is institutionalizing Islampophobia to pretend that Islam is an enemy that should be fought against.
"Islamophobia is a theory developed in the West," Manouchehr Mottaki said in a forum under "Common World: Progress through Diversity" in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, on Friday.
"Following the collapse of the bi-polar system of the world, the liberal democrats tried to institutionalize Islamophobia as a theory in the West, because they wanted to indoctrinate the public opinion that there is a new enemy and that they should fight against it," IRNA quoted Mottaki as saying.
"Islamophobia is a challenge for all, because the issue heavily influences international peace," Iran's top diplomat warned.
He added that resolving global challenges needs a global partnership, which should bring all the world's countries including the Western and Muslim countries together.
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Posted by: Fred ||
10/18/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Nope, Islamic actions are cementing Western Islamaphobia.
Iranian state-run television says the country's army air force has begun a military exercise near Iran's northwestern border with Turkey. Thursday's report says jet fighters, including American-made F-4s, F-5s and F-14s and Russian-made Sukhoi planes, are involved in the operation. The exercise in the northwestern town of Tabriz also includes the new domestically manufactured jet fighter called the Saegheh, or Lightning.
The broadcast says the exercise is aimed at boosting Iran's defense capabilities, upgrading the morale of the army and displaying the might of the country's air force.
Iran launched an arms development program during its 1980s war with Iraq to compensate for a U.S. weapons embargo.
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Posted by: Fred ||
10/18/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Or it is aimed at intimidating Iraq through a display of air power that Iraq would be helpless to defend against until it gets an Air Force of its own.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
10/18/2008 2:12 Comments ||
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#4
In the mid to late seventies Iranian pilots were receiving training at Reese AFB. A T-38 trainer at low altitude will set off an alarm to remind a pilot to deploy his landing gear. An Iranian pilot on a solo flight approaching for landing failed to deploy his landing gear. The tower yelled at him on the radio to deploy his landing gear.The pilot belly landed the plane. They asked him later why he did not deploy his landing gear after the tower yelled at him on the radio to do so. He told them he could not hear them because of a loud beeping noise inside the cockpit.
#8
Sounds like an excellent opportunity to test the airborne laser on some of their better aircraft.
That's the thing about Russian aircraft. It's just so darned unreliable. One instant you're flying along, and the next, *POOF*, you disintegrate into burning metal filings.
The mayor of Tehran, a possible contender for the Iranian presidency, said on Friday his country would welcome talks with the United States as supported by White House contender Barack Obama. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, a harsh critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, expressed hope that Obama would make good on calls to hold dialogue with Iran should the Democrat win the November 4 election.
"Senator Obama said in his ... campaign that he would like to have such a relationship," Qalibaf said, adding that any talks must be to the mutual benefit of the two countries and "without any sense of pressure."
"I think the world community, the Iranian society and the US society would benefit" from such talks, he said during a visit to Tokyo at the invitation of the Japanese government.
Obama has said Washington must engage in "tough, direct diplomacy" with Iran, and that as president he would have the right "to meet with anybody at a time and place of my choosing if I think it's going to keep America safe."
His approach contrasts with the current hard-line US policies. President George W. Bush famously named Iran as a part of an "axis of evil." An escalating nuclear standoff between Iran and the West and inflammatory rhetoric from Ahmadinejad has only deepened the hostility.
Qalibaf, seen as a contender for next year's presidential election, pressed the US to withdraw troops from Iraq and said "superpowers" must acknowledge an Iranian role in bringing stability to the Middle East.
Echoing other Iranian leaders, Qalibaf called for a country encompassing both Israel and the Palestinian territories to replace the Jewish state. "Muslims, Christians, and Jews ... must be allowed to return to their own land and, through a democratic and free election, choose the type of government they would like to have," he said.
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Posted by: Fred ||
10/18/2008 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
