Yet the official results are not announced, but this time the Iranian officials have a valid explanation for this: against all forcasts, the 2013 ballots were frequented by more than 70% of all eligible voters and thus had to be kept open for an additional 5 hours.
It seems that when the counting started at 9 pm CET or midnight in Tehran, the volunteers had a long and sleepless night to spent. Now, with the first pre-result estimates (after counting 90% of all votes) there seems to be a likely winner: Hassan Rouhani, who recently gave an enthusistic speech and demands more freedom, less dogmatism: a agenda, that was greeted with passion by his young and active supporters. If the estimates are right, than 51% of all Iranians trust Rouhani to lead their country into a better future. But it would be to simple to judge the election simply by numbers and percentages, as done in Western countries with their standard and almost boring regular democratic selection process. In Iran, the election day is also colourful and vivid, and looking into the faces of the voters makes us understand a little better what a nation of 80 millions dream of.

Bill posts showing the presidential candidates on Tehran streets. This particular candidate, Mr. Saeed  Jalili seems to attract much less attention from his own people than he got 4 month ago at the Munich Conference for International Security affairs. He is counted as a hard-liner and not much loved by the Iranian people who are desperatly hoping for change.

Long queues mark the polling stations and voters are waiting patiently to exploit their right to select the new president.  Due to the unexpected high voter turnout, the polling offices had to stay open till midnight.

Will this man, Hassan Rouhani end the 12 years of dim and rediculous Ahmadenijad leadership of the country ? Currently, at 11 am local Tehran time the estimates give Rouhani more than 51 %, almost 3 times more than the 2nd next.  In case that the remaining ~ 10% of yet uncounted ballots can not support Rouhanis winning position, there will be a run-off between him and the second best, Tehrans current mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.

As always in public activities, Iranian laws require a separation between men and women. At this well lid, fabric covered polling bay woman stay among their likes and might not only debate about the president to come, but also about where to buy cheap food and how to raise the children. In any case, both issues will also be strongly depend on the new president whom they give their votes here.

Men, in contrast, like to pose for the camera.

… And if one dares to wear blue glasses, he leaves no doubt whom he will support. The young, educated and modern Iranians hope that Rouhani will be the next president. Mr. Blue-Eyes and Blue Finger on this photography, however, is an Iranian expat in Washington D.C. So for him showing up a liberal and secular life style is easy.

For this Iranian young beauty, however, going to the polls with some inches of hair leaking under her chador is a demonstration of pride and courage.

Thanks BBC for the nice photographs. I hope you don’t mind me putting some intelligent captitions on them. In terms of copyright issues, I guess that you have neither asked the Iranian people whom you photographed for permission of publishing them at the BBC website.  So f…k up, old aunty BBC and let me give the people at least a more righteous voice.

The Berlin Academy of Fine Arts helds an exhibition of drawings on paper by Meir Hussein Mussavi. The exhibition opened with a vernisage on Friday, June 7th and welcomes visitors till Sunday, June 23rd 2013.  The Academy is located at Paris Square next to the Brandenburg gate. The exhibition flyer describes Mousavis abstract drawings as visual poetry.

Mir Hussein Mousavi: No Title

His oevre shows papers filled with grafic elements, resembling ancient writings, abstract coloured signs, and symbols inspired by geometric and organic forms. Abstract symbols, related to memories and philosophical metaphors merge to complex structures. Fractures, torns through the paper and burned marks reminds the observer of the frictions and conflicts of an individual person in a society full of political and social constrains.
Mousavi, who counts the Persian mythology as his main influence, was not able to come to Berlin to open his exhibition himself. The artist and former presidential candidate is banned from all political activities and kept under house arrest in Tehran.

Not surprisingly, no official delegate from the Iranian embassy in Berlin was seen at the exhibitions vernissage. Maybe IRI officials have to change their mind after Fridays presidential election and at least will join the finissage.

Further information only in German is here

Yesterday, June 1st during a pre-election campaign of Hassan Rouhani, his mainly young supporters shouted “Honour to Mousavi, Wellcome to Rouhani”. The meeting took place in Tehran’s Jamaran district. Rouhani urged all his supporters to attend the presidental elections. He demands the release of all political prisoners and the end of the securitized atmosphere. He called for a free, prosperous and peaceful Iran. The Rouhani campaign’s head of youth affairs was detained at this event.

It is good to see that the Bavarian Television placed its microphone right in front of Mr. Rouhani. So we will hopefully get all information first hand.

Ghazal dear, the following reply to a post of Bahmani I could have never written without experiencing the tightness of the relationship between you and your family and feeling how much a resistance this provides against any potential intruder (like myself).

In Iran, the frequently expressed demand to do something for the community/society is a compensatory reflex to the traditional 150% focus on familial relation as the only important ones. Neither the Shahs aristocratic wealth nor the religious dogma of Shia islam could provide any common framework for all Iranians. The aristocracy was always considered corrupt and only interested in rising the power and wealth of their own dynasty, and the islamic religion was from its very beginning alian and hostile towards the historic Persian values of the Archemenidian, Sassanidian and Parthians empires and their culture and faith.
So over centuries, the Iranians converted to their very own family worlds, which provided a sort of constant values, safety, and system of trust, pride, and historic continuity. But the rise of modern societies in the 19th and 20th century required a new social “contract”, and even though in both the capitalist and the socialist countries the economic models were so much different, in both cases the masses “sacrificed” their privat life to the socio-economic requirements. Japans rise to such a economic superpower would have been unthinkable without the devotion of the people to finally commit their whole life for the prosperity of their employer (or formerly to the prosperity of the shogun). In Europe the mostly benevolent dynasties had a similar function, or the republic values in France. All of these provide values systems to the individual, which could easily be transformed into the requirements of modern, anonymous, industrial societies.
But in a society where the main social relationships and values are provided by an extended family clan, this transformation is much more difficult. Because you can easily get rid of your faith (like in Russia) or loosen your devotion to the royal dynasty (like in England, where the Windsors became more or less decorative and cultural institutions), but you can never get rid of your parents, your grandparents and uncles and aunts. Everybody of us has them, and of course they will always try to keep the children, grandchildren, nices and nephrews as close as possible and as obidient as possible. And this in reality made any consense on a national or society scale very difficult. And because people deep inside are very aware of this, they invent the narratives of the hero who devotes his whole life for the sake of the society. These narratives are pure sublementations for the complex of lacking a minimal social responsibility. The second narrative that is reproduced again and again to satisfy this desire for a devotion of the individuum to the socium is the Shia victim mythology. Wunderful and so atractive to please god, if some martyres loos their life not to defend the family, but to spread the religion. These are the prototype of social workers: Giving their own life for the sake of a “higher” institution. But (thanks god) these cult of Shia islamic martyrdom could not supersede in primary family values in Iranian society neither. I was always fascinated by the observation that even though Shia islam has this dogma of the martyrdom, there were never suicide terrorists coming from the Iranian society. My guess would be that these very tight family relationships in which each person is imbedded, the idea to commit one family member to be sent out to give its life away for a “higher purpose” is extremely difficult to justify. The palestinians are always happy to do this, and the Iraqies and the Pakistany are always willing to do this. Iranians not. So they love these fantastic stories of Rustam or of Ali and Hussein, but the verve and absoluteness of this love says much more about their deep-down feeling that they lack such “higher purposes” in daily life.

regards, Michael

The idea of Persia has long fascinated Western minds. From the Middle Ages on, knowledge of Persia gradually expanded as a result of increased contact through trade, travel and diplomacy. Writers in Europe, such as Goethe, Chaucer, Dante and Shakespeare, reflected this understanding in the parallels with Persian literature and shared symbolism evident in their plays, poetry and prose.

Love and devotion showcases a rich selection of manuscripts from the world-renowned collection of the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, along with rare works from the State Library of Victoria and other Australian collections.

Two Princess: Miniature, Bodleian Collection

The exhibition celebrates the beauty of Persian manuscripts and the stories of human and divine love told through their pages from the early 11th century on.

Romantic tales were copied and sometimes reinterpreted over time, and reached far beyond the borders of Iran. The universal themes of Persian narrative and mystical poetry appealed especially to audiences in Mughal India and Ottoman Turkey, and eventually to audiences in the West. Transcending time and place, these stories continue to resonate today and to be retold through contemporary literature and popular culture.

Persian poetry from the secular tradition flourished in the princely courts of Iran, where illustrated manuscripts were crafted for elite patrons. Today, these provide viewers with the opportunity to experience examples of Persian calligraphy, illumination and miniature painting from the 13th to 18th centuries, one of the richest periods in the history of the book. Many stories from this period were embraced not only in the princely courts but in all sectors of society, told within families and at community gatherings.

Court Francais in Tehran

The persion feast of Norooz is traditionally a celebration of joy and hapiness about the rebirth of nature and life. Inside the grey and cold walls of the Tehran Evin prison, however, the men and woman arrested there for month or year see little evidence of the awaking nature. Many of them suffer from bad health conditions and are deprived of adequate medical care. So for them life is continously threatend, and the happiness about Norooz remains a very abstract and distant feeling.
Nevertheless, the authorities of the IRR regime try everthing to suppress traditional Norooz Mobarak activities among the inhabitants of Evin, since this tradition is considered not in line with the Shia faith. Therefore, on March 24th a simultaneous raids took place in two wards holding political prisoners at Evin prison, namely the female ward and the general ward 350 assigned to male political prisoners, on the eve of Persian New Year, Norooz.

On Monday March 18th, 2013, both the female and male wards holding political prisoners at Evin prison were thoroughly inspected in a simultaneous raid by a prison guards. As with similar, unexpected and often offensive raids in the past, according to accounts by political prisoners currently at Evin prison, the political prisoners protested the raid by singing [national and revolutionary songs] such as “Ey Iran”, ” Sar Oomad Zemestoon” and “Yare Dabestani” and chanting slogans such as “long live Mousavi and Karroubi”, ” death to the oppressor, whether it be the late king or the Supreme Leader”, “death to the dictator”, “Mousavi reclaim our votes!” and “Ya Hossein… Mir Hossein” resonated inside the wards.

During the past three years both the female ward and the general ward 350 housing male political prisoners at Evin have undergone several unexpected raids resulting in the violation of the personal privacy of prisoners, the disruption of their daily lives and stricter security measures. The political prisoners have strongly condemned such raids and in November of last year, one such raid on the female ward led to female political prisoners launching a hunger strike protesting the inappropriate bodily searches and the desecration of their personal space.

ورود به حریم خصوصی و بر هم زدن آسایش زندانیان، در آستانه سال نو

بازرسی ناگهانی از بندهای سیاسی زنان و مردان در زندان اوین

یکشنبه, ۴ فروردین, ۱۳۹۲

چکیده : روز دوشنبه ۲۸ اسفند ماه سال 91، تعدادی از ماموران حفاظت زندان اوین به طور همزمان به بند ۳۵۰ و بند زنان زندان اوین، یعنی دو بند زندانیان سیاسی این زندان، رفته و به بازرسی کلیه بند، پرداختند. …

در آستانه ی سال نو، دو بند زندان اوین که محل نگهداری زندانیان سیاسی در این زندان است توسط ماموران زندان مورد بازرسی قرار گرفت.

به گزارش خبرنگار کلمه، روز دوشنبه ۲۸ اسفند ماه سال ۹۱، تعدادی از ماموران حفاظت زندان اوین به طور همزمان به بند ۳۵۰ و بند زنان زندان اوین، یعنی دو بند زندانیان سیاسی این زندان، رفته و به بازرسی کلیه بند، پرداختند.

بر اساس این گزارش، زندانیان همچون تمامی دفعات گذشته که در این چند سال با بازرسی های ناگهانی و گاهی توهین آمیز روبرو می شوند با مقاومت در برابر ماموران، اقدام به خواندن سرود “ای ایران”، “سر اومد زمستون”، “یار دبستانی” و شعارهای “موسوی زنده باد کروبی پاینده باد”، “مرگ بر ستمگر، چه شاه باشه چه رهبر”، “مرگ بر دیکتاتور”، “موسوی موسوی رای مرا پس بگیر” و “یا حسین میر حسین” کردند.

طی سه سال و اندی گذشته این چندمین بازرسی ناگهانی از بند ٣۵٠ است که ماموران حفاظت با ورود به حریم خصوصی و شخصی زندانیان سیاسی باعث بر هم زدن نظم و سلب آسایش آنان می شوند و فضا هر بار امنیتی تر می شود.

بازرسی هایی که دفعاتی از آن با مقاومت و واکنش های شدید زندانیان سیاسی روبرو شده است و حتی آبان ماه سال جاری زندانیان زن سیاسی که بازرسی بندشان با هتک حرمت و آزار آنها همراه بود، دست به اعتصاب غذای دسته

Source: Banooye Sabz
Kaleme

Just cross the road from the Avicenna bookstore in Munich, with its huge assortment of Persian literature, is the old building of the Munich University. Seventy years ago it was in the main hall of this building that the antifascist resistance group “White Rose” spread around leaflets that should reveal and condemn the nazi-crimes against the Jewish population and against political opponents of the regime. The “brave” german custodian of the university trapped Hans and Sophie Scholl and reported them to the Gestapo. This lead to the discovery of the entire group, whom the Gestapo desperately wanted to get hold of after leaflets and wall paintings claiming “Freedom”, “Down with Hitler” and “immediate end of the war” arose the weeks before.
Most members of the “White Rose” were interrogated and beheaded, after they were sentenced at the notorious “Peoples Court” (Volksgerichtshof).

Sophie Scholl (+ 22.02.1943)
Hans Scholl (+ 22.02.1943)
Christoph Probst (+ 22.02.1943)
Alexander Schmorell (+ 13.07.1943)
Willi Graf (+12.10.1943)
Kurt Huber (+ 13.07.1943)
Gisela Schertling
Katharina Schueddekopf
Traute Lafrenz

Shortly after the capture of the members of the White Rose, Leaflet No. 6 was smuggled out of Germany and later copied by the Allies and dropped from aircraft as propaganda over Nazi Germany.

At several places in Munich memorials remind people of the brave activities of the White Rose students, like a black obelisk in the Court Garden and brass copies of their leaflets placed on the square in front of the University.

Coming back to the Avicenna bookstore nearby the University building, one might see the murdered German students as brothers-and sisters-in-mind with the student rebells that shook up the streets of Tehran in 2009. Sooner or later, there also will be memorial plates in Iran, comemorating their brave standing-up against an inhuman regime.

Recently I was invited by a friend in Munich to a reading of poetry by an Iranian writer, who died much too young in 1967, only reaching 32 years of age. Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967) was exceptional among woman in modern Persian literature, since only an extremely small number of Iranian women in general have achieved anything outside of the home without dependence upon a relationship with a man or male patronage.

From the poems of Forough Farrokhzad, which Kianoosh presented this evening I remember the verses from “Another Birth”

… Life may be that cloistered moment
When my gaze comes to ruin in your pupils
Wherein there lies a feeling
Which I shall blend …

During her short life, Forough not only wrote some of the most influential, beautiful and ever-lasting poetries of modern Persian literature, but she also became a proponent of childrens right, in particular for those from the poor families. Her engagement for the children being isolated and hospitalized for leprosis laid in her honest sympathy with those who are suffering. Unlike modern celebrities, who too often present themself in public with an alibi “social” project, Foroughs activites to help the children with leprosis came from her very personal desire to make the world a little bit better.

From the movie “Moon, Sun, Flower, Play” by the German director Claus Strigel one can listen to Foroughs voice, hear how colleagues and friends remember this extraordinary woman and watch scenes from the street-battle preceding the Shahs dismissal and from the childrens leprosis hospital.

Nahid Persson-Sarvestani, a former activist of the student branch of the Tudeh party and in the late 70s among the demonstrators against Shah Reza Pahlevi, now lives in Sweden as a film-director. In her 3 parts documentary, she interviews Farah Diba, the last empress of Iran, who now lives in exil in Paris.

part 1

part 2

part 3

Farah Diba speaks with a broken voice, and Nahid Persson, although with a politically active background, seems to be more interested in the private life of the Shahs widow. The Shahbanou, however, is a professional when it comes to any media contacts. She only repeats the details of her life with the Shah, how they first met, how Reza Pahlevi asked her to become his wife – stories, she already told too often to be published in the yellow press. Sometimes, Farah Diba tries to shift the conversation more into a political and historical context, asking Mrs. Nahid Persson-Sarvestani on which side she was on during the 1979 revolution, the communists Tudeh people, or the peoples Mudjaheddin, or the violent islamists of the Fedajin. Persson apparently fears a clear confession at this point, since the blunt anti-Shah activities she was involved in prepared the ground for the most inhuman, hypocrite and stupid regimes ever seen in recent history: the so-called “Islamic Republic of Iran”.
So these two woman who 35 years ago were on opposite sites of the battle line in pre-revolutionary Iran, now find them self in exile, one in Paris the other in Stockholm, and both see with bitterness their lost dreams. If the two would be ready to give up their wounded pride, maybe they would find out how much in common they had in their youth. Both were dreaming of a modern and liberal society, with secular education, open to the rest of the world, liberated woman and social and economic prosperity. But each of the two, the aristocrats and the socialist, both were wrestling for leadership in this movement. And both were loosing everything. What arose after the Shah and his family had to leave in 1979, and the Tudeh for a short moment thought their triumph is in sight, was the worst nightmare of an extreme conservative, religious, anachronistic and brutal dictatorship of uneducated and corrupt Mullahs.
The people of Iran have to suffer since 34 years under a totalitarian regime, that tortures, rapes, kills everybody who is not following its islamic hypocrisis and dares to question the political regime of the mullahs with their basidj thugs.
It would have been nice to see in the documentary that both, Farah Diba and Mrs. Nahid Persson-Sarvestani would finally admit that the two blocks they belonged to, the progressive Tudeh party and the Shahs court, did a historical mistake by not finding a way to cooperate and anticipate how much their dreams had in common.

Thank you, Ninelia, for pointing me to this gem of political documentation.

Dear Michael,

It is no secret that many Iranian woman do not value their impressive, arian noses very high. In contrast, they tend to follow a very questionable beauty picture that more and more seems to be coined by the Japanese manga figures. For them, a nose is merely anything more than a small ridge to hide the nostrils.
The historical form of Iranian noses, however, is impressive, and if an ancient myth is true that the nose is the main site of human character, than Iranians must have a lot of it (which I believe many of them will agree).

The more I regret that low self-esteem of Iranians when it comes to the shape of their facial “center of gravity”. Iranian woman try to raise their competetiveness in hunting for a good match on the vanity fair, and the men, beeing either the driving force behind this or the obidient donkey, quickly got trapped by this.

Here I will explaine to you (based on what I feel as a young woman and what I learned as a young geneticist) the short and the long term consequences of this:

1) In the short term, there will be a constant drop of beauty among Iranian woman, because more and more of them afford a “Nose Job”. So very soon, you will see less and less Iranian ladies whom their strong and proud character is clearly located in an equally strong, sharp and expressive nose. We might be confused soon, that Iranians with strong self-esteem decline to western beauty standard, have their face irreversibly damaged only to fill the pockets of those medics, who as all their colleagues from other disciplines agree, are the least qualified ones to distinguish between health and disease, let alone to cure any real sick patient.

The Iranian woman who had this attribute of an ancient, devine beauty surgically removed, will in fact increase her chances to catch a husband and have more children. That is what we know from natural selection of the fittest, which if we like it or not, becomes the natural selection for the most attractive in the human population.

But, thanks to genetic laws, there is not only hope in sight, as I will explaine in the following, but in the long term these “Iranian Nose Jobs” even have the potential to rescue the Iranian Nose from becomming extinct by natural selection.

2)  Because on the long term,  of course, no plastic surgery can change the genetic code, which over hundreds of generations turned Iranians, considered to represent the original Arians, as representatives of the niceest, sharp, impressive noses. No ordinary medic, let alone the half-educted plastic surgeons, have any clue where in the Iranian genome the key for nose shape is hidden, or how this could be manipulated. So with the current genetic knowledge and the status-quo of molecular technologies, the real treasure of the Iranian nose is still hidden and safely deposited deep in our genome.  So even if all Iranians have their “noses done”, the next and all following generations still carry the fertile seeds to grow proper Iranian noses again.

But this is only half of the truths, the real excitement comes here:  Without plastic surgery, large Iranian noses could in fact become extinct due to genetic admixture from (Iranian x Non-Iranian) partnerships (introgressing the Small-Nose-Gene-Variant from East-Asian or US or Latin-Americans) followed by preferential marriages between the descendents inheriting the Small-Nose-Genes (and consequently growing these dwarf nose variants reminiscent of a Hobbit face). Over just a few generations, there would indeed take place a natural selection for the Small-Nose-Gene-Variants, resulting in irreversible loss of the Iranian Large Noses.  But this, in fact, does not happen, thanks to the plastic surgeons and their messing up with the natural link between beauty, genes, and attractiveness, thus interfering with genetic evolution.  By virtually “hiding” the real (heritable) Iranian Nose variant behind a fake, non-heritable small nose, natural selection is fooled. Therefore, nose jobs to Iranian woman will guarantee that in the long term the precious Iranian nose shape with its distinct and impressive sharpness will always comes back in every new generation.