Is this Tehran coffee shop owner Iran's new public hero? ▪ Iranian.com

THE HERO: Owner (until last week) of Tehran's Cafe Prague.

THE VILLAINS: The hated religious police and the detested Khamenei, Assad's identical twin.

THE EVENT (See the following excerpt)

As the June presidential election in Iran draws near, authorities have
stepped up political surveillance by ordering coffee shop owners to install cameras on their premises and turn over the recordings on demand.

Cameras have proliferated in Tehran coffee shops since last summer. "Most people thought they were part of the security systems installed by owners to protect against theft," one Tehrani said. However the cameras are now required to be on during work hours and police have demanded access to the tapes, according to several business owners.

The practice became public when Café Prague, one of the most popular coffee houses in Tehran, closed down last week after its owners refused authorities' orders to install a video system. Café Prague, a stone's throw from Tehran University in the heart of the capital, has been a sanctuary for students, activists and young intellectuals since its opening in 2009.

NOTE: Readers will especially enjoy the final message from the owner and his staff to the rotten government. See the link below for that.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl...

A PERSONAL OBSERVATION:

Georgia Orwell's could have reset his "1984," his classic portrait of totalitarian rule, in Khamenei's brutal Islamic Republic--a place where the media replicatess the book's satirical slogans in which reality is turned on its head ("Love Is Hate" and "War Is Peace") and where Big Brother (Khamenei) is omnipresent via his security force thugs, plainclothes and otherwise..

The IRI--a regime no one can love!

Khamenei--A leader no one can love! The man who ordered his death squads to eliminate the son of Ayatollah Khoumeini, the regime's founder during the Khatami presidency. The victim had become a highly inconvenient critic of Khamenei's totalitarian tendencies.

You couldn't dispose of someone like this through Khamenei's ordinary means--house arrest or dropping him into Evin Prison. Nor could homicide be obvious. Like an otherwise healthy young doctor who died of a "heart attack" after speaking too openly of events in a Khamenei-approved prison after 2009, Khoumeini's son was given a convenient injection.

I'd still like to see what would happen were Khoumeini's grandson, a ferocious critic of the same Khamenei tendencies, were to decide to run for the presidency in 2013. How would it look if the Guardian Council were to vet him out? But after Mousavi's success in 2009, how could it afford to let him run. Nothing would put the regime in so bad an electoral bind. Given present circumstances, it could not come at a worse time!

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Syrian civil war devastatestrates farming (and the impact will continue after Assad's fall)

http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-civil-war-devastates-farming-u-n-says-153655273.html

SUMMARY: We all note the devastation to housing and infrastructure (schools, hospitals, etc.) caused by Assad's choice of a "Take the country down with me rather than leave" approach. We tend to miss the long-run effects of damage to agriculture infrasture. Syria used to be self-sufficient agriculturally.

Meanwhile, of course, Saddam has no prospect of a safe and peaceful exile anywhere. Precisely because of the above choice, no one is likely to take this hot potato--not even Iran.

It would be funny if he sought escape by flight to Iran. Like a Khoumeini presidential candidacy, it would put the regime in a lose-lose predicament. It could refuse landing rights and pay a political cost or it could allow him to land, thereby emphasizing the parallels in Assad's behavior and Khameneni's rule. That too would create political problems both at home and abroad, where the SL still dreams that in spite of everything, muslims would want to emulate the "terrific" model known as the Islamic Republic of Iran.