Reactions to Iran’s Peaceful Presidential Election 2013

At a time when much of the news coming from the Muslim world is rather depressing, the peacefully held presidential elections in Iran this week are surely to be welcomed. The voter turnout of 72.7% would look good against the record of most Western democracies.

So, it is worth taking a look at the response of some in the international community to Iran’s 2013 presidential elections.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu is quoted today in the Jerusalem Post as calling Iran the “world’s greatest threat” and urged the international community not to soften the sanctions regime against Iran which have unquestionably hurt the Iranian economy. Israel routinely incites the USA to bomb Iran so Netanyahu’s response was not unexpected, though in the wake of the recent belligerent statements from nuclear-armed North Korea, his characterisation of Iran as the “world’s greatest threat” might perhaps have less effect than previously. And as the Middle East’s only nuclear weapons state, Israel has perhaps only itself to blame if countries in the region decide that they too must have nuclear capabilities.

The White House spokesperson, Jay Carney, responded by pointing out that the election “took place against the backdrop of a lack of transparency, censorship of the media, Internet, and text messages, and an intimidating security environment that limited freedom of expression and assembly.” The US Secretary of State, John Kerry said:  “President-elect Rowhani pledged repeatedly during his campaign to restore and expand freedoms for all Iranians. In the months ahead, he has the opportunity to keep his promises to the Iranian people.”

The US response was not inaccurate – to be sure, the Iranian presidential elections had many flaws, particularly the disqualification of many candidates and the prohibition on women candidates. Even so, it is worth noting that the US very rarely criticises the most awful regimes in the region such as that in Saudi Arabia where women are prohibited from even driving cars. As long as the Saudi regime spends a fortune on buying US arms and doing the bidding of the US, then the White House appears more than willing to overlook its ghastly human rights record. So, the US response to the Iranian elections smacks more of hypocrisy and a desire to plunder the wealth of the Iranian nation rather than a genuine concern for the welfare of the Iranian people.

For all its many flaws, Iran is an independent country in a region sadly still awash with plenty of US client regimes.

British Museum: Iran Elections 2013

I went along yesterday evening to listen to a panel discussion on the ‘Iranian Election 2013: Questions of Cultural Identity’ at the British Museum.

Surprisingly, the event – which went on for around one and a half hours did not discuss much about the Iranian presidential elections due to be held this week at all. One of the panellists, Rose Issa (I think she was described as being a curator somewhere – but I could be mistaken) said that she had misgivings about being on the panel because she was not very interested in the Iranian elections especially as ‘women are not allowed to stand’. She did have a point.

The event did, however, serve to showcase some of the wonderful Iranian exhibits at the British Museum, including the Cyrus Cylinder and the Xerxes Jar.

We were told that today’s Iran was a very bleak environment for the arts and that many talented Iranian filmmakers had been forced into exile as too many restrictions were being placed on their work in their own native country. Still, many artists were trying to find ways to get their message and works seen and heard. We were shown this artwork from the Iranian Hossein Valamanesh which apparently says – in perhaps an implicit criticism of current Iranian government policies –  ’This too shall pass’.

It is a shame that more was not discussed about the forthcoming presidential elections. The last elections in 2009 resulted in huge controversy and protests over the outcome with allegations of massive vote-rigging to ensure the victory of the incumbent Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Whether these allegations were true or not, it is clear that Iran is facing huge Western-led pressure to curtail its nuclear programme with the Saudi puppet King Abdullah famously calling on the USA to ‘cut off the head of the snake’ as the Wikileak cables revealed.

The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 served to provide a huge boost to Islamic movements in the region. It would have been interesting to hear what impact the panellists thought that the subsequent thirty-odd years experience of the Islamic Republic had taught the regions Islamic movements, if anything.

An Evening With Al Pacino

I received a call yesterday (Saturday) from a dear friend asking whether I would like to attend a special event at the London Palladium with Al Pacino. The event was booked out within a few hours of being announced some months ago. Well, in true Godfather style, it was an offer I could not refuse.

The format of the evening was very simple. It began with a 5 minutes or so montage of clips from many of the movies Pacino has acted in. Emma Freud was the interlocutor for the evening and posed a series of questions to Pacino. The questions were interspersed with additional clips from Pacino movies including The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon, Scarface, Scent of a Woman, Looking For Richard (a movie that Pacino said he was very proud of and which he spent two million dollars of his own money to make) and an upcoming film Wild Salome – based on Oscar Wilde’s play - to be released in October this year.

Pacino is not known for doing many interviews and we were told by Emma Freud at the outset that this event was not going to be filmed or released on DVD – it was a one-off. That added to the specialness of the occasion but did we really learn much more about Pacino that we did not already know? His passion for Shakespeare (not ‘obsession’ he pointedly corrected Emma) is well known. He did say that he does not drink alcohol anymore and had not touched alcohol for twenty-five years. That was interesting but was not followed up by Emma. It was interesting because twenty-five years ago would be circa 1988. In 1984, Pacino made Hugh Hudson’s Revolution which was a massive flop at the box office and contributed to the UK movie production firm Goldcrest going broke. (As an aside, Pacino said that he believed that Revolution had been released six months too early and that more production work had been needed. He praised the director Hugh Hudson for releasing a recast of the movie – I had not known that Hudson had re-edited the movie). Anyway, Pacino did not make another movie after 1984′s Revolution until 1989′s Sea of Love. So, could his movie comeback have been related to giving up alcohol?

Pacino ended the night with a reading of an extract from the Oscar Wilde poem, Reading Gaol. Wilde wrote the poem when he was incarcerated for ‘gross indecency’. This was a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK. Pacino rightly remarked on the ‘tragedy’ of how Wilde was persecuted because of his sexuality. Still, it was a reminder of how today’s UK is a more tolerant place than a hundred years ago.

Update: Here is an exclusive photo of the charismatic leading actor himself dressed in a rather fetching blue suede jacket. No idea who the weird bloke on the poster behind him is though…

Why Is The Muslim World Stuck In Its Own Dark Age (Part 1)?

When I was younger I used to read a lot about the past glories of Islamic civilisation. It was thrilling to know that Muslims once led the world in learning, that Muslims were once engaged in a systematic endeavour to translate influential books from other cultures into Arabic and to absorb and pass on that learning to others.

It was eye-opening to learn that at a time when the largest library in France held 700 books, the library in Muslim Cordoba contained over a half a million books.

However, that thrill and excitement would always be heavily tinged with sadness at the present state of the Muslim world. No one can point at the Muslim world today as being leaders in very much at all really. And this has been the case for a number of centuries now.

Why has Europe and the West generally been able to make such sustained progress in science and technology (and much else besides) for well over four hundred years now? And why is most of the Muslim world still showing little sign of being able to do the same?

Ironically, when Muslim civilisation was at its height, Europe was still stuck in what historians refer to as the Dark Ages: a period following the collapse of the Roman Empire covering approximately the 6th to the 13th centuries. Could it be that the most of the Muslim world is stuck in its own version of the Dark Ages? If so, is there anything to be learnt from the West’s incredible progress in recent centuries?

A few months ago I purchased a book called ‘The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform The World’ by the award-winning theoretical physicist David Deutsch. Deutsch examines what has driven improvements in the West in everything from our scientific understanding to our politics and moral values.

Deutsch covers a huge amount of ground so it will probably take me several posts to do his ideas any semblance of justice.

One pre-condition for sustained knowledge growth, according to Deutsch, is what he refers to as Fallibilism. In his own words:

“…the recognition that there are no authoritative sources of knowledge, nor any reliable means of justifying ideas as being true or probable – is called fallibilism. To believers in the justified-true-belief theory of knowledge, this recognition is the occasion for despair or cynicism, because to them it means that knowledge is unattainable. But to those of us from whom creating knowledge means understanding better what is really there, and how it really behaves and why, fallibilism is part of the very means by which this is achieved. Fallibilists expect even their best and most fundamental explanations to contain misconceptions in addition to truth, and so they are predisposed to try and change them for the better. In contrast, the logic of justificationism is to seek (and typically, to believe that one has found) ways of securing ideas against change. Moreover, the logic of fallibilism is that one not only seeks to correct the misconceptions of the past, but hopes in the future to find and change mistaken ideas that no one today questions or finds problematic. So it is fallibilism, not mere rejection of authority, that is essential for the initiation of unlimited knowledge growth – the beginning of infinity.” (p9)

To be continued…

Sunday Telegraph: Muslim Leaders Oppose Gay Marriage Bill

A huge number of Imams and Muslim community figures have written a letter published in the right-wing Sunday Telegraph today expressing ‘serious misgivings’ about the Gay Marriage Bill. Here is the letter in full:

SIR – We have serious misgivings about the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, which seeks to legalise gay marriage.

As imams and Muslim leaders we have a responsibility to fulfil our sacred trust to God and present our view on these proposals on behalf of the Muslim communities we serve.

Marriage is a sacred contract between a man and a woman that cannot be redefined. We believe that marriage between a man and a woman is the cornerstone of family life and the only institution within which to raise children.

We are concerned that this radical change to the institution of marriage will impact on what is taught in schools. Muslim teachers will be forced into the contradictory position of holding private beliefs, while teaching a new legal definition of marriage. Muslim parents will be robbed of their right to raise their children according to their beliefs, as gay relationships are taught as something normal to their primary-aged children.

We support the numerous calls from other faith leaders and communities who have stood firmly against gay marriage and instead support marriage as it should be, between a man and a woman.

The letter should not come as any great surprise. Most religious groups tend to be very conservative in their outlook. In a democratic society, they should have every right to air their religious views. That does not mean that their views should not be scrutinised though.

The signatories say:

“Muslim teachers will be forced into the contradictory position of holding private beliefs, while teaching a new legal definition of marriage. Muslim parents will be robbed of their right to raise their children according to their beliefs, as gay relationships are taught as something normal to their primary-aged children.”

I am not convinced that this is actually true. Muslim teachers can still preach that they believe that gay sex is sinful as is gay marriage – if they wish to do so. Even though abortion and sex before marriage between adults is lawful, those whose religious beliefs instruct them otherwise can still entertain those beliefs and teach them to their children in the privacy of their own homes.

I am pretty sure that many of the very same religious figures would also like to deny the right of a woman to have an abortion, for unmarried adults to have any type of physical relationship,  for authors to publish books that they deem blasphemous or ‘deviant’, for movie makers to include scenes which they regard as being ‘lewd’ or ‘unacceptable’, the right of biology teachers to teach kids about evolution etc.

In short, they would prefer to impose on the rest of us a far more restrictive society. I am not at all convinced that it would lead to a better society. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Karl Popper famously wrote about the virtues of an ‘Open Society’ and the differences with other types of societies. His arguments are still every bit as valid today.

Cisco’s Interactive Magazine: The Connective

Cisco have posted the above new video about their partnership with Wired magazine to publish an interactive magazine, The Connective, which gives a glimpse of what the Internet of Everything will hold in store for us. You can download The Connective as an app for both Apple and Android devices from here.

Impressive.

 

 

Hawking’s Courageous Stand Against Israeli Apartheid

The decision by Professor Stephen Hawking to support the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement against Israel is a hugely courageous one and he deserves support for speaking out on the issue of Israeli apartheid – an issue on which too many people are afraid to speak out.

As the award-winning journalist Nick Davies observed in his splendid book about the UK media, Flat Earth News:

“…the most potent electric fence in the world is the one erected on behalf of the Israeli government.

“Journalists who write stories which offend the politics of the Israeli lobby are subjected to a campaign of formal complaints and pressure on their editors; most of all, they are inundated with letters and emails which can be extravagant in their hostility…

“The result is that some facts become dangerous: to report Palestinian casualties; to depict the Palestinians as victims of Israeli occupation; to refer to the historic ousting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes; to refer to the killing of Palestinian civilians by Zionist groups in the 1940s. The facts are there, but the electric fence will inflict pain on any reporter who selects them.”

Hawking has been in poor health for some time now. He is undoubtedly going to have pain inflicted on him as a result of breaking through the ‘electric fence’. The Times (where Daniel Finkelstein and the odious Oliver Kamm both hold senior editorial posts) yesterday published a disgraceful editorial belittling Hawking and describing his decision as ‘stupid’. Hawking will surely be remembered as someone who has done far more for improving our understanding of the world around us than either of those two little shits.

The best support we can give Hawking, is to join him in speaking out against Israel’s continuing racist and violent oppression of the occupied Palestinians. Just like South Africa, it’s apartheid policies will be it’s downfall.

Many of our politicians and much of our media may have been bought out by the Israel lobby. But they can’t buy all of us.

Hat-tip: Thanks to Jews Sans Frontieres for bringing my attention to the graphic which I nicked for this blog.