The Economist: “Signs of the regime’s fading legitimacy are numerous. In December, for instance, the head of Iran’s central bank issued a stern warning that from January 8th it would no longer accept bank notes defaced by extra words. In practice, this would mean taking millions of notes out of circulation, following a quiet campaign [...]
Read his obituary here. From al-Jazeera: “Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, Iran’s most senior dissident cleric, has died, official media has reported. Montazeri, 87, was an architect of the 1979 Islamic revolution who fell out with the present leadership. He had been held under house arrest for several years. ‘Hossein Ali Montazeri passed away in his home [...]
The Christian Science Monitor: Pro-government demonstrators in Iran launched a 10-day religious mourning period on Friday with nationwide rallies and calls for the execution of opposition leader and former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi. Pressure has been building from Iranian judicial authorities in recent days to arrest Moussavi and other top reform figures, who have [...]
BBC News: “A group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army has hacked Twitter and an Iranian opposition website, replacing it with an anti-American message. Traffic to the social networking website was redirected for nearly two hours on Thursday night. The opposition website mowjcamp.org remained disrupted on Friday. The opposition in Iran have used the websites [...]
See the al-Jazeera (English) video here.
Here are two movies to look out for this holiday season. Invictus (comes out today) and Avatar (next Friday).
See the video here. And here is coverage from CBS.
Excerpt: “His first impulse was to dismiss the ominous email as a prank, says a young Iranian-American named Koosha. It warned the 29-year-old engineering student that his relatives in Tehran would be harmed if he didn’t stop criticizing Iran on Facebook. Two days later, his mom called. Security agents had arrested his father in his [...]
See the video here.
See the video here.