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Aytollah Khamenei

  • ZipDialog Roundup for Sunday, April 9

    By Charles Lipson
    Sunday, April 9, 2017 0 Aytollah Khamenei, Consumers and Consumption, Core Western Values, Donald Trump, Iran, Islamic terrorism, Media and Reporting, North Korea, Putin, Religion, Religious Toleration, Russia, South Korea, US foreign policy, ZipDialog Roundup of News Beyond the Front Page Scandal, Seattle Permalink

    Topics and articles chosen with care. Linked articles in bold purple

    ◆ “Trump’s Syria Missile Strike Ramps Up Tensions with Moscow” (Bloomberg)

    The Trump administration warned that it’s ready to take further military action if the regime of Bashar al-Assad wages another chemical attack, even as this week’s missile strike ratcheted up tensions with Russia. . . .

    Russia pushed back. “Our western colleagues live in their own parallel reality, in which they first try to build joint plans single-handedly and then — again single-handedly — change them, inventing absurd reasons,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said by phone. –Bloomberg

    Comment: Equally important, the strike puts Iran’s huge investment in Assad in peril.

    ◆ Oddly, Vogue‘s glowing article on Bashar Al-Assad’s wife doesn’t seem to be online anymore at their site. Not sure why.  (The Atlantic on the story gone missing. And here, dear readers, is the actual article, “A Rose in the Desert,” in Vogue, which has been preserved by Gawker.)

    Comment: Still checking to see if GQ ran something on Bashar’s attire for launching chemical-weapons attacks.

    ◆ Good morning, Pyongyang: US sending aircraft carrier group to Korean Peninsula  (CNN)

    US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump and [China’s] Xi agreed on the “urgency of the threat of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program” and agreed to work together to resolve the issue “peacefully.” –CNN

    Comment: The Vinson carrier group is a message, not a foreshadowing of conflict. China has hard choices to make here, as does the US.

    ◆ He lobbied for gay rights and opposed Trump — now Seattle’s mayor is accused of sexually assaulting minors  (Washington Post)

    Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, a nationally famous champion of gay rights and progressive causes, has been accused by three men of having sex with them as children. –Washington Post

    Comment: These scandals are equal opportunity. Yesterday, the sex scandal involved Alabama’s socially-conservative Republican governor. (Here’s a CNN report on it.) Today, it’s Seattle’s ultra-liberal mayor.

    ◆ Creative Destruction: Online purchases driving out bricks-and-mortar retailers faster than ever (Bloomberg) Both high-end and low-end stores are affected.

    At the bottom, the seemingly ubiquitous Payless Inc. shoe chain filed for bankruptcy and announced plans to shutter hundreds of locations. Ralph Lauren Corp., meanwhile, said it will close its flagship Fifth Avenue Polo store — a symbol of old-fashioned luxury that no longer resonates with today’s shoppers. –Bloomberg

    ◆ Another Islamist attack on Middle Eastern Christians, this one on a Coptic Church in Egypt (BBC)

    Comment: These crazed terrorists come from regions and religions that have not transitted through the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the hard-won achievement of political and religious tolerance.

    The only reason you don’t read about even more such attacks is that intolerance and terror has driven them, as well as Jews, from these countries.

    It is shameful that, for several years, the US has done so little to speak out against these systematic, lethal attacks on Christians in the Middle East. Let us hope that changes now.

     

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  • ZipDialog’s Roundup of News Beyond the Front Page . . Thursday, September 29

    By Charles Lipson
    Thursday, September 29, 2016 1 Aytollah Khamenei, Barack Obama, Election 2016, Healthcare, Higher education, Iran, Israel, Media and Reporting, ZipDialog Roundup of News Beyond the Front Page Diabetes, Ebrahim Raisi, Gary Johnson, Groucho Marx Permalink

    Hand-picked and farm-fresh–
    ⇒Linked articles in bold purple

    ♦ Great Medical News: FDA approves ‘artificial pancreas’ for diabetes. This breakthrough is “the first device to automatically deliver the right dose of insulin to patients with type 1 diabetes, freeing them from continually monitoring insulin levels throughout each day.” (Reuters)

    raisi-of-iran-200px-left-margin

    ♦ Iran’s next Supreme Leader likely to be just as hardline as current one, maybe worse, says Ray Takeyh in the Washington Post. 56-year-old Ebrahim Raisi has spent his entire career as an “enforcer” for the Mullahs and Revolutionary Guard. He is said to be favored by current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

    The candidate Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards are grooming to ascend to the post of supreme leader is one of the most reactionary members of Iran’s ruling elite. Ibrahim Raisi. He has spent his entire career in the Islamic Republic’s enforcement arm, serving as prosecutor general, head of the General Inspection Office and lead prosecutor of the Special Court of the Clergy, which is responsible for disciplining mullahs who stray from the official line. In one of his most notorious acts, he served as a member of the “Death Commission” that, in the summer of 1988, oversaw the massacre of thousands of political prisoners on trumped-up charges.  –Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations, writing in the Washington Post (Ibrahim Raisi’s first name is also spelled Ebrahim)

    ♦ Why concepts in academic psychology “creep to the left,” asks Prof. Jonathan Haidt. His answer: social justice warriors in the professoriate.

    As psychology has become politically purified, its concepts have morphed to make them more useful to social justice advocates trying to prosecute and convict their opponents. This political shift poses a grave danger to the credibility of psychology.   –Jonathan Haidt, NYU Stern School of Business

    ♦ Will a lame-duck Obama undermine Israel after the November election, when it cannot hurt Hillary?  (Gregg Roman, The Hill)

    ♦ Headline of the day: “Burglar found with drugs strapped to his penis claimed he was hiding them from his wife“ (UK’s Daily Mirror) I’m guessing the drug wasn’t blow.

    rufus-t-firefly♦ Poor Gary Johnson. “Can you name any foreign leader?” Gary whiffed at that softest of softballs from MSNBC host, Chris Matthews. The same fellow who did know what “Aleppo” was blanked on Trudeau, Merkel, May, Netanyahu, Abe, Xi, Kim Jung-Un, Raúl Castro, Assad, Khamenei, or that fellow who runs Russia. In a perfect world, the Libertarian Party candidate would have named the leader of Freedonia, Rufus T. Firefly. Instead, crickets…..  (See Mr. Firefly in action below)

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    zd-hat-tip-facing-inward-100px-w-margin♥ Hat Tip for helpful suggestions:
    ◆ Ed Lasky 
    for the article on Iran’s next leader
    ◆ Michael Lipson for the Gary Johnson story
    ◆ Jihan Varisco for the story on psychological concepts
    ◆ Rufus T. Firefly for one of the most inventive moments in movies: the “Mirror Scene” from Duck Soup (1933)

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