Zan, Zedegi, Azadi
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Iranian human rights activist and journalist Narges Mohammadi. The award citation said Mohammadi received the prize for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and for promoting human rights and freedom for all.
The chairperson of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, made the announcement in Oslo. Reiss-Andersen began by quoting the slogan of Iranian human rights campaigners, in Farsi and English: “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi. Woman, Life, Freedom.”
Reiss-Andersen said that altogether the Iranian regime had arrested Mohammadi 13 times, convicted her five times and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. Mohammadi remains incarcerated in Iran’s notorious Evin prison.
Rights and freedom for all, but in effect the campaign is for women, as it is women who most lack those rights.
It should always be remembered that the (likely nuclear-armed) Frankenstein monster of the present Iranian clerical fascism was the creation of the British MI6 in cooperation with the American CIA. Those two outfits supported the 1953 reactionary overthrow of the democratically-elected regime headed by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Their motive was a grab for the enormous oil reserves of Iran on behalf of western oil companies.
Ultimately the Shah’s dictatorship was in turn overthrown and the present regime of the Islamic mullahs installed in its place, and at enormous cost to the Iranian people. They were plunged into a new Dark Age. Democrats and feminists like Narges Mohammadi have suffered persecution ever since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat#:~:text=The%201953%20Iranian%20coup%20d,Reza%20Pahlavi%2C%20on%2019%20August
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran#:~:text=1950s%20%2D%201960s-,Iran's%20nuclear%20program%20was%20launched%20in%20the%201950s%20with%20the,s%20Atoms%20for%20Peace%20program.
@2 as told by Robert Newman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sehmmzbi3UI
She is one really committed and brave woman, I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes.
Tangentially, Yesterday by chance I listened to an interview on RNZ Saturday with a guy who’s just written a book about growing of pistachios in California and the effect on water and other environmental and social issues. As an aside he mentioned that the Pistachio industry lobbied really hard against Obama’s accord with Iran, because prior to the Islamic revolution Iran was the largest supplier of pistachios. In Iran they are sold as a bulk food commodity. California is the current dominant producer and sells them as a luxury snack.