Happiness - Comment of the day

Rooz Online:

A Majlis deputy requests that the term happiness be defined and its terms identified! Mousa Alreza Servati who represents Bojnourd province in parliament and is now a member of its social committee, has told ILNA (Iranian Labor News Agency): “In our society, unfortunately no definition has been presented to the public about happiness.” He adds that people’s behaviour gets out of hand for the smallest expression of happiness. So he has asked the ministry of Islamic guidance to come up with standards for holding marriage weddings, as one specific form of expression of happiness, and punishing those who violate it! Interestingly this request comes at a time when president Ahmadinejad hold a weekly session for his cabinet that addresses moral and ethical issues, and a Dr Tehrani has been appointed as the lecturer for the sessions. READ MORE

On another front indicative of still more disenchantment with the regime, Mehdi Karoubi who was an insider from day 1of the Islamic revolution until his presidential bid last June was brutally and allegedly illegally quashed by more powerful clerics in the Islamic Republic who eventually did get into the presidential palace, announced that he, along with thirty other prominent clerics, would not participate in the mourning ceremony for Haj Dawood Karimi, because of the insults he and moderates have been subjected by high ranking officials. He has also complained about the religious titles that continue to be bestowed on presidential Ahmadinejad, who is not a cleric at all. Some of these titles used to be reserved to prophet Mohammad himself. Observers have said that the purpose of giving Ahmadinejad such titles is to provide more divine legitimacy to him!

While Ahmadinejad is getting his hat and shoes ready for the flight to New York to attend the largest ever gathering of states at the UN General Assembly for its annual meeting, behind the corridors of the presidential palace debates continue how to deal with US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice when he meets her. Not only is she the highest ranking diplomat from the “imperialist” US, but she also happens to be a non-Muslim woman, for which Islamic protocol has reserved special treatment. The new foreign minister, Manoutchehr Motaki, who will be travelling with the president to New York along with Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council that is the lead in Iran’s talks with the Europeans, and others, on Iran’s nuclear issues, says “The case is very clear. If the president is welcomed, he will respond accordingly. So let’s wait and see what happens.” He also forewarns that Ahmadinejad is going to announce his nuclear initiative at the UN meeting. Reports have it that since Iran prefers that the nuclear issue not go to the UN Security Council where sanctions and blockage may be the order of the day, Ahmadinejad is going to hold talks with the Europeans, the Governing Council of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and UN officials to torpedo their recent warnings. Motaki even calls this approach a lose-lose scenario, while the Islamic republic, he claims is playing a win-win game. There are of course those who do not take the Western warnings seriously, and Heshmatollah Falahatpishe, for example, who is a Majlis deputy from West Islamabad province, who says both the US and the Europeans are only bluffing when they say that they will take Iran’s nuclear issue to the UN Security Council. On that, his statements require further analysis by political scientists when he says that Iran can increase the general Middle East strategy through critical pressures!

To welcome Ahmadinejad to New York, Iranians have already held a few demonstrations in front of the UN building and call Ahmadinejad a principal player in spreading the culture of terrorism and fundamentalism in the Middle East.

On the economic front, MEES (Middle East Economic Survey), published in the UK publishes a report that Iran’s $16 billion reserves may really be non-existent as the money has already been spent.

On the human rights conditions in Iran, the name of Akbar Ganji once again makes headlines as the game of promising to release him continues to baffle everyone. His wife again writes to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan requesting him to intervene. News leaks out that another journalist, who also happens to be ill, has been kept at the infamous 209 ward of Evin, which is reserved for torturing detainees and keeping them in the tiniest dungeons, for the last eight months without any charges brought against him officially. Judiciary officials in West Azarbaijan bring news that they have received 10 press complaints. The lawyer for a person who had been arrested on international labor day in the Kurdish town of Saggez says his client has been issued a bond for his release until his trial.