“In the issue of oil, the economy has not been the sole important factor,” Rouhani said. “International politics and plots” have also affected prices, he said, without elaborating.
NCRI – The Iranian regime is facing a deepening financial crisis as the price of crude oil plunges on international markets.
The regime’s budget deficit was reported by the state-run Ebtekar daily newspaper on November 8 issue as totalling 1.5 billion dollars. But economists believe the true figure is much higher.
Russia, whose economy is forecast by the central bank to run zero growth next year, is struggling under the weight of a plummeting ruble and sanctions imposed over the conflict in Ukraine. Brent crude, the grade that underpins prices for Urals, Russia’s main export blend, is set for a record losing streak amid speculation that OPEC will refrain from cutting production to ease concern of a supply glut.
A pressing question lies in determining what effects considerable cuts in the price of oil, the glut in oil supplies, and the remarkable growth of the U.S. oil industry, has and will have on international politics as well as on the global economy. Almost certainly, the United States and Western countries will benefit both politically and economically, while most of the members of OPEC, and countries including Russia, Iran, and the Islamic State of Iraq, and Syria, will be hurt. More broadly, there will be a global economic benefit as lower energy costs will help both producers and consumers.
Abductions, beheading, mass slaughter — headline grabbers!
Commodity pricing?
Squint.
While post-feudal North America has been working on greater achievement in energy independence, it appears some oil cash flow addicts have puffed and bluffed their way into an anticipated but unaddressed cash crunch with consequences looming on the near horizon, this perhaps despite deep pocket brags.
The number of political groups that are inclined to support Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is growing, both in the ruling parties of the European countries and in the opposition; from Hungary’s Victor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party to the far-right opposition parties that are performing spectacularly well in national elections, such as Marie Le Pen and her Front National of France. Sympathy and support also comes from Hungary’s Jobbik radical nationalists, the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn, Austria’s Freedom Party, and Italy’s Lega Nord, just to name a few.
I would expect Russo-Iranian methods in the development of power and wealth to expand until stopped cold. The interior mythology in both units, to be clinical about it, have zero incentive to stall or stop aggression on the basis of the political accommodations and levers owned by others. That implacable will may be buttressed by an equally sociopathic view of humanity. For evidence of that in addition to Ukraine (and how Yanukovych milked it): Bashar al-Assad’s behavior in Syria.
I’ve joked about the dictator “Putin-Assad-Khamenei — together they are defending political absolutism”, but recently I’ve become curious about the roles played by Putin’s FSB and Khamenei’s VEVAK in the middle east and in relation to drawing down U.S.-NATO resources and resolve.
Khamenei coming out and pointing the finger the CIA for ISIS, a huge absurdity, makes me want to point the finger back at VEVAK by way of blackmailed private money in KSA and Qatar. I know I know I know and promise not to indulge further in conspiracy-think but given the consolidation of wealth in Iran’s Setad operation, the dictator “Khamenei-Putin-Assad” might make some sense.
The public — any public — knows one thing about secrets-keeping in times of war: if the authorities aren’t talking candidly, conditions might be larger and worse than imagined.
So if ISIS has not been a Washington project, whose baby might it turn out to have been after all?
Who invested some seed money in it?
Given the criminal abuse of its own subjugated people – by theft or by hanging — and its long demonstrated indulgence in deception, deflection, and dishonesty with others, might it be . . . ?
. . . Shole Pakravan, said Wednesday morning that her daughter has heard nothing about the execution and is being pressured to sign a document that denies there was any attempt at rape and that there was no third party present at the time of the alleged murder.
As if more proof were needed of Ayatollah Khamenei’s ______ (you fill it it in — the writer’s tired), the entire world has now the spectacle of this smiley old white haired fella torturing a young woman not only by denying her an inherent right to an authoritative, honest, fair, just, and open — and openly audited — trial before the Iranian public but by degrading and humiliating her all the way to the gallows — or freedom, God willing.
Reyhaneh Jabbari’s first lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei, had apparently made it clear that Jabbari’s death sentence was signed by the courts even after the evidence had been destroyed or went “missing.” Possibly those who signed her death sentence in the Islamic Republic of Iran are not even sure of Jabbari’s guilt themselves, or could be just trying to blame her for the murder, regardless.
The government announced that the execution will be postponed but did not give any indication the sentence had been overturned. It also did not disclose if any future execution date had been set.
Jabbari, who has already served seven years in prison, claims Sarbandi drugged her and attempted to have physical contact with her.
Modafe website 31 Aug 2010 News Report- (Human right Lawyer Mr Mostafaei’s Official site)
Reyhaneh Jabbari is a girl from Iran. She is now 22 years old and has been in Tehran’s Evin prison where the last Wednesday of every month a number of prisoners are hanging. She has spent the best years of her life in the prison and she will. Maybe some other days of her life have left.
Proposed film title: “Iranimania II: Death Cult Hanging Orgy!”
Each of the above reports, published in 2009, 2011, and 2014, comments on the acceleration of the rate of hangings by the Iranian regime: more arrests, more “trials”, more hangings, never fewer, often if not predominantly similarly unjust — and when a hanging is “unjust” it is only a common act of murder.
Delara Darabi was put to death by hanging on May 1, 2009.
______
Crocodiles smile too.
What can be said about such pleasant looking men whose mirrors wall them off from the blood and horror suffered directly at their own criminal will?
One may only imagine how modern Iranians feel knowing that the murder that will take place about 6 days from this one is not an aberration in the politics attending their lives but perfectly normal now, an atmosphere of fear maintained for Persians in a manner no different than that which would be meted to them by any other conquering agent in history. In fact, Ayatollah Khamenei and President Rouhani, Iran’s two leading political sadists and sociopaths, have obtained from Iranians in general what conquest obtains: compliance, passivity, plunder, silence, and subjugation.
What follows has been only loosely put together, but as so much of blogging may be, it’s a snapshot of the Jabbari case as emblematic of the regime’s despotic, misogynist, piratical, and sadistic mentality and the machinations and politics attending it.
______
President Hassan Rouhani’s public criticism of Mr Cameron came as Amnesty International warned of the imminent execution in Tehran’s Evin Prison of a 26-year-old woman found guilty of murder.
If Reyhaneh Jabbari is hanged, she would be the 600th person to suffer the death penalty since Mr Rouhani took office in August last year – giving Iran the highest number of executions anywhere in the world, apart from China.
Therefore, Jabbari was sentenced to death for her action under the Islamic judiciary system of Iran. Why would a young professional woman be executed for defending herself against unwelcome actions from her superior, a sexual abuser?
The profound irony, and the peak of the Islamic Republic’s hypocrisy, became clear this week in a speech marking Women’s Day, when Iranian president Hassan Rouhani made international headlines by condemning any form of sexual discrimination and advocating for equal opportunities and rights for women.
Nazanin (Mahabad) Fatehi (Persian: نازنین فاتحی, born 1987) is an Iranian woman who was sentenced to death for stabbing a man who allegedly tried to rape her and her 15 year old niece, events occurring when she herself was a 17 year old. After more than 2 years in jail, Fatehi was cleared of intentional murder, ordered her to pay diyeh (blood money for the death), and released on bail (January 2007). As of 2012, Fatehi’s whereabouts were reported to be unknown to concerned supporters outside of Iran.
She was arrested after being raped by a 51 year old man. But according to Islamic Sharia Law, she was convicted for ‘crimes against chastity’, based on her admission, obtained through torture, that she repeatedly had sex with a 51-year-old ex-revolutionary guard turned taxi-driver Ali Darabi, a married man with children.[1] She was raped and tortured for 3 years,[2] a secret from both her family and the authorities. However, while in prison, she finally told her grandmother, saying that afterwards she could only walk on all fours because of the pain.[3] In the court the judge was Haji Rezai. As Atefah realised she was losing her case, she removed her hijab, an act seen as a severe contempt of the court, and argued that Ali Darabi should be punished, not she. She even removed her shoes and hit the judge with them.[4] The judge later sentenced her to death.
On August 15th, 2004 a 16-year-old girl was hanged in a public square in Neka, Iran. Her death sentence was for “acts incompatible with chastity”. Her name was Atefah Rafavi Sahaaleh. The only evidence against Atefah was her own forced confession.
Rouhani’s justice minister, Mustafa pour-Mohammadi, has been accused of executing thousands of Iranian political prisoners in 1988. [7] As a matter of formality, both US and EU officials have publicly criticized Iran’s human-rights records under Rouhani, but at the same time they have restarted trade in exchange for Iran dismantling its nuclear program.
Rouhani has filled his cabinet with wealthy ministers. According to Elias Naderan, a member of Iran’s parliament, several ministers in Rouhani’s cabinet have wealth of around 800 to 1000 billion tomans (US$265 to $330 million) – the toman is a superunit of the rial. [8] While most Iranians are suffering from poverty, Rouhani’s wife gave a lavish party on April 19 in the previous Shah’s Sadabad Palace, which raised strong criticism in the Iranian media. [9]
Setad has become one of the most powerful organizations in Iran, though many Iranians, and the wider world, know very little about it. In the past six years, it has morphed into a business juggernaut that now holds stakes in nearly every sector of Iranian industry, including finance, oil, telecommunications, the production of birth-control pills and even ostrich farming.
The organization’s total worth is difficult to pinpoint because of the secrecy of its accounts. But Setad’s holdings of real estate, corporate stakes and other assets total about $95 billion, Reuters has calculated.
He reportedly first expressed his opposition to the theocratic nature of the Islamic government of Iran under which Islamic jurists rule or provide “guardianship” in 1994. He has been quoted as saying Iranians “are loyal to the fundamentals of the true religion and the Prophet’s mission”, but are “tired of the religion of politics and political slogans.”[1]
Boroujerdi and many of his followers were arrested in Tehran on October 8, 2006, following a clash between police and hundreds of his followers. Iranian officials charged him with having claimed to be a representative of Muhammad al-Mahdi, a venerated figure in Shi’i Islam, a charge he denies.
I have been told there are others today in similar danger to Boroujerdi and Jabbari.
One may recall here that the (malignant) narcissist is never wrong — or so sensitive to criticism as to suppress as much of that as possible. In the medieval mode in which Ayatollah Khamenei exists, this sort of thing, a combination of rivalry accompanied by excoriating observations, may have been what compelled the Grand Ayatollah to push another ayatollah off stage:
Of course, you were correct when you said that international sanctions could not accomplish a damn thing! Not only because you and your cronies and support system in general, suffered no setback; your provinces of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain also weren’t bothered, because they blatantly looted and pillaged the God given wealth and natural resources of our defenseless nation and laughed their way to the bank, while stripping them of their economic independence and their will to think freely.
You have filled these thirty five years of contemporary history with your disgrace and deceit; and the names and memories of the sons of Iran have been written in blood which is the legacy of an antiquated dictatorship that operates in the dark ages.
Uttered in politics, even if not remembered, they may develop influence, which may prove more powerful than mere encrustation in ink as thoughts take on lives of their own, passing from mouth to ear to mind to heart, one from the other, again and again, across the world and possibly out into the universe to God’s own ears.
Reuters found no evidence that Khamenei puts these assets to personal use. Instead, Setad’s holdings underpin his power over Iran.
To make Setad’s asset acquisitions possible, governments under Khamenei’s watch systematically legitimized the practice of confiscation and gave the organization control over much of the seized wealth, a Reuters investigation has found. The supreme leader, judges and parliament over the years have issued a series of bureaucratic edicts, constitutional interpretations and judicial decisions bolstering Setad. The most recent of these declarations came in June, just after the election of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani.
Parties engaged in argument tend to their arguments. Viewers, however, may observe how each uses — or abuses — not only language but their conversational partners, and “talking over” a partner, mouthing the same to near death, is abuse.
Keeping in mind “malignant narcissism”, listen for and to the script — and note how the “transcript” has been altered from the video.
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