Chavez and Ahmadinejad

Just married! Hurrah!


The newly married couple posing for the cameras / Reuters



The first dance:


The happiness of Hugo and Mahmoud was visible throughout the wedding / Reuters

In Iran, it's not always about religion

After the presidential elections of 2005, many had tried to explain Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's surprising victory by pointing to his promises on solving the economical problems in the country. After all, the only thing that mattered to the common people were not ideological issues, nor the veils, but the very basic needs of mankind: enough food, clothes and a shelter.

You shouldn't think that this is recent problem in Iran. Academicians have argued that the underlying cause of the revolution against the Shah in 1979 was not really his authoritarian rule or his Westernist policies, but the bad economical conditions. Yet, the mullahs were no saviors, nor economists, so the situation remained.

If I had been a mullah (who I assume to be devout), I would have already left the country. I mean, the fact that the problems were continuing despite the rule of religion was surely a sign of Allah, wasn't it? Is there a better way to say "beat it you mullahs!"?

Ahmadinejad, the first non-mullah president of the Islamic Republic, has been in office for two years now, but has not succeeded in improving the conditions of the masses either. Instead, he has sought confrontation with Western governments and is facing harsh sanctions now. Well, you don't have to be an economist to see that this will aggravate the economical situation even more.


Iranians burn a gas station / AP

The decision to ration gasoline is the first measure of the government to deal with the threat of sanctions. The riots after the declaration of this decision, however, seem to be the first signs of public opposition against the government.

A hymn chanted out of place

On wednesday last week, a group of Egyptian bloggers and activists, partly from the Muslim Brotherhood, held a conference and demonstration in favor of online press freedom at the Press Syndicate in Downtown Cairo. Read more about it here.

It seems that at a certain moment the Muslim Brothers started to sing the Muslim Brotherhood hymn. I don't know what that is like, but I can imagine that the other participants weren't really enthousiastic about this. I mean, it's like only singing the Belgian national hymn at the start of a game between Belgium and the Netherlands (random pick). Really stupid.

If I would have been at the site, I surely would have started chanting the Internationale (preferably in Arabic). Not that I'm a socialist, no I just like annoying and provocating others in such situations!

By the way, check out this Arabic version of the Internationale. They play it with the oud! Hah!

Ah, almost forgot to say! You can find pictures of the conference on Hossam el-Hamalawy's blog.

The Turkish dilemma

Two ordinary Turks having a chat:

Ali: If you were rowing a boat with only one extra seat and passed by a deserted island with the Prophet Muhammad and Ataturk, whom would you save?

Veli: Ataturk is resourceful. He can save himself. I'd take Muhammad.

The Birth of Venus

It was time for a banner update!

What you see now is a detail of Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus". A beautiful painting, one of my favorites!

According to Roman mythology, Venus was born as a full grown woman out of the sea. This was actually the result of - it may sound strange, I warn you - Uranus' genitals falling into the sea and fertilizing the water. In case you might ask why his genitals fell in the first place - and here I warn you again - well, his son Cronus chopped them off!

In reality, Venus arrived in Rome from the east. The Romans had borrowed her from the Greeks, who were calling her Aphrodite, but the goddess had her origins even further to the east. According to the Ionian historian Herodotus, the Greeks had borrowed her from the Phoenicians. In fact, she was known as Astarte in the Levant and as Ishtar in Mesopotamia. The Sumerians, creators of the first Mesopotamian civilization, called her Inanna. From Mesopotamia to Rome, quite a journey huh?!

I wonder why there is no sign of the goddess in her native lands nowadays. Might it be that she has fled the violence as well?

Khatami shaking hands of na-mahram women

Lately there has been much fuss in Iran about the former president Mohammad Khatami. The thing is that he shook the hands of women during his visit to the Italian city of Udine. "What's so special about that?" I hear you say. Well, the act is forbidden in Iran! That's the fuss about!

When are people going to stop blathering about such trivial things?



(I myself count two three hand shakes; one two around 4.30 and one around 4.40)

Khuzestan: a new theater of war?

Since the start of the war in Iraq, there has been a widespread concern that the conflict could lead to a regional war, involving such countries as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel. It has caught my attention that the number of news items referring to this danger has been rising lately.

I'm not only referring to the Turkish desire to enter Northern Iraq, but also to the (apparently) growing tensions in Khuzestan (also called Arabistan), an Iranian province in which the majority is constituted by Arabs.


Source: Google Maps


"Iranian Arabs in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan in southwest Iran have expressed a strong will to split from Iran and restore their own state, accusing Tehran of suppressing them racially, economically, and politically."

I was bowled over when reading these lines in an article entitled "Iran Arabs denounce discrimination" on Al Jazeera. I knew that Arab separatist movements existed in the region, but these lines make it seem as if the whole Arabic population of Khuzestan is engaged in a struggle for independence. Does that sound reasonable to you in any way?

Well, I myself am quite sceptical about it. I don't question the claims of suppression or discrimination, but I do think that being suppressed or discriminated doesn't automatically make one aspire independence. Independence is a political ideal, not the practical solution that comes to the mind of the ordinary man. It is possible to spread such ideals among the people, but in order to do that, one has to have effective propaganda tools at its disposal. As far as I know, no such thing is the case in Khuzestan.

Secondly, the indifference of the common people towards this political ideal has in fact already been demonstrated during the First Gulf War (1980-1988). In those days, Saddam Hussein had expected that the Arabs in Khuzestan would join the Iraqi forces against Tehran, but this appeared to be a big miscalculation. Most Arabs did not join the Iraqi forces at all and a considerable number even allied with the Iranian forces!

Of course, things may have changed since the First Gulf War, but I believe that things have also changed since the war in Iraq. Confronted with images showing the brutality of war in the media everyday, I don't think many are willing to open up a new theater of war.