Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert
5.8K posts
@KMooreGilbert
Academic. Author. Advocate. https://t.co/ZdxumawUcQ https://t.co/9vIz0sEnvZ Insta: @kyliemooregilbert Email: [email protected]
Back in 1996, the Islamic Regime of Iran funded the doctoral studies in Britain of Abbas Araghchi, who is now its foreign minister. He even thanked the regime’s Foreign Ministry, and Mr. Norouzi personally, for making his degree possible. And what a spectacular return on the Iranian people’s money: "thirty years later, we finally found someone citing his thesis, another Islamic Republic apologist, from Indonesia." The thesis itself is exactly what you would expect from a regime-funded diplomat: hundreds of pages trying to dress up theocracy as “political participation.” Araghchi admits that ultimate authority belongs to the faqih, that popular sovereignty is restricted by “God’s law,” and that the system is fundamentally theocratic, yet still tries to portray elections and consultation as evidence of democratic accommodation. Even more conveniently, he says examining how the Islamic Republic actually applies, or violates, its own Constitution is outside the scope of his study. In other words: ignore the prisons, censorship, executions, disqualified candidates and crushed protests, and suddenly the dictatorship begins to look wonderfully “participatory.” Three decades of waiting for one regime-friendly citation. Academic influence and waste of Iranian people's resources at its finest. #StopIRILobby
Hasan Piker: Mao Zedong is one of the great leaders of this world
The biggest winner of the Hormuz Strait closure has been Syria. Iran spent tens of billions of dollars and the lives of tens of thousands of Shia militiamen from Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan to prop up the Assad regime.
رسانهها در ایران روز یکشنبه ۲۸ تیر از آزادی هومن جوکار و سپیده کاشانی دو فعال محیط زیست شناخته شده ایران خبر دادند. کانال «پیام ما آنلاین» در تلگرام روز یکشنبه گزارش داد هومن جوکار، مدیر سابق پروژه بینالمللی حفاظت از یوزپلنگ آسیایی، و سپیده کاشانی، کارشناس و فعال حیاتوحش، که ۱۰ تیر بازداشت شده بودند، آزاد شدند. به نوشته این رسانه، تا زمان آزادی این دو، «هیچ گونه جزئیات یا اتهام رسمی تاییدشدهای از سوی مراجع قضایی درباره علت بازداشت موقت چندروزه آنها رسانهای نشده است». حجت کرمانی، وکیل دادگستری، روز پنجشنبه، ۱۱ تیرماه، از بازداشت دوبارهٔ سپیده کاشانی و هومن جوکار، دو فعال محیط زیست که پیشتر سالها در زندان بودند، خبر داد. به گفته این وکیل دادگستری، نیروهای امنیتی همچنین سیما کاشانی، خواهر سپیده کاشانی را نیز بازداشت کردند. پیام ما روز یکشنبه همچنین از آزادی سیما کاشانی خبر داده است. سپیده کاشانی و هومن جوکار از اعضای مؤسسه «حیات وحش پارسیان» هستند که به همراه چند فعال دیگر محیط زیست زمستان سال ۱۳۹۶ توسط اطلاعات سپاه بازداشت شدند.
Professor @vali_nasr latest @FT article on the military flare-up in the Gulf is a classic example of the poverty of analysis among some Western-based experts on Iran. There is no mention of the possibility that the mullahs in Tehran may be simply miscalculating in escalating their confrontation with the US or that they could be misreading the US’s determination to prevail in the Hormuz Strait. There are no hints of Iran’s own economic, military and strategic vulnerabilities; these remain unmentioned, as they have been throughout Professor Nasr’s recent coverage of the Gulf war. Instead, most of his article is devoted to allegations of how the US supposedly ignored the obligations it undertook in the MoU with Iran, by not releasing any frozen Iranian assets or by refusing to accede to Iran’s view on how Hezbollah should be treated in Lebanon. The fact that, in turn, Iran singularly failed even to begin clearing mines from the strait – as it was obliged to do under the MoU – remains unmentioned. And Iran’s determination to fire at shipping which ignored the mullah-imposed navigation routes is explicitly justified by Professor Nasr’s article. Indeed, he implies that US protection for ships that opted to ignore Iranian orders and navigate instead near the Oman coastline provides a key explanation for Iranian belligerence. Throughout, Professor Nasr portrays Iran’s leaders – whom he invariably equates with the country – as thoughtful and well-informed and as enjoying broad popular support. He claims, for instance, that “Last week’s mammoth turnout for the funeral of the slain supreme leader Ali Khamenei was also important in convincing Iran’s leaders that the population would support a hard stance on the strait,” without pondering for a second whether this turnout was manufactured rather than spontaneous. Support for the Iranian regime among Western academics comes in various shapes and forms. But probably the most insidious form is the provision of analysis that deliberately ignores key elements in the debate, that implicitly justifies the mullahs’ actions as reasonable and measured, conflates Iran’s rulers with the public at large and implies that Iranian leaders are both omnipotent, well-informed and visionary. Sadly, Professor Nasr’s analysis ticks some of these boxes. To clarify: all these remarks are my personal views, conveyed in my personal professional capacity, and most certainly do not represent either my Institute or the opinions of any of my colleagues. Why Iran is returning to war ft.com/content/22fdb2… via @ft
We're lucky that @StewGlobal follows these cases closely (the only journalist in Canada to do so, AFAIK). Otherwise the public wouldn't know the absurd arguments these guys advance ("patenty unreasonable" decision to deport, my ass) to avoid being sent back to the hellhole they've created. globalnews.ca/news/11966601/…
Very alarming: Araghchi says Iranian army unit are acting independently now and are isolated and they act on orders they got before! This is a freelancing army with units attacking whoever they want without a central authority!
