Khamenei’s fatwa regarding himself: “You must only obey me”

* * On Tuesday, August 3rd, a Kuwaiti court charged six men, including a soldier, and a woman with spying for Iran but the accused denied the charges alleging they had confessed under pressure. At the opening of the trial, judge Adel al-Sager read out the charges to the six men who are three Iranians, one Kuwaiti, one Syrian and the other two stateless. The defendants categorically denied all charges and claimed they were tortured during interrogation. The woman, an Iranian native, was not present in the court room. Unlike the six men, she had been released  without bail pending trial. The charges include passing on confidential military information to a foreign nation, taking pictures of Kuwaiti military installations and spying for Iran.

* * Iran to replace crashing Tupolevs. Following a high number of air accidents, Farhad Parvaresh, head of Islamic Republic National Airlines announced that by March 2011, Iran’s fleet of Tupolev aircrafts will be replaced with Boeing Md’s, though Parvaresh admitted: “Due to sanctions importing aircrafts is not an easy matter. However, as of next month, we will begin the process of gradually replacing the planes.”

In 2009, head of Iran’s National Aviation announced that the Russian made Tupolev engines are defective and that the manufacturers had been notified, adding that the discontinuation of the use of the aircrafts will depend on the response of the manufacturers. Iran received no direct response from the Russian manufacturers and  the news of replacement of Iran’s Tupolev fleet seems to have gathered momentum following the fatal crash of Polish President and his companions last April in a Tupolev plane which led to international air transport warnings against these aircrafts.

* * Beware of those corrupting foreign satellite broadcasts and websites! On Sunday, August 2nd in a speech at Qazvin International University, Mohammad Hosein Safar Harandi, Iran’s former Minister of Islamic Guidance and Culture claimed: “Foreign satellite broadcasts and websites threaten us, we must block them in order to stop them from further spreading corruption through these waves by filtering them.”

Harandi who spoke critically of Ahmadinejad’s inconsistent ‘cultural’ policies,  especially focused his attacks on the cultural policies of the reformist administration of Mohammad Khatami. He added: “The deviations in the arts occurred when the debate over commitment versus expertise was put forth.”
He cited Iranian filmmaker and Green supporter, saying: “Mohsen Makhmalbof is an example of this deviation; he was a proponent of ‘revolutionary art’ but later changed his path. The result of such exchanges was that individuals like Makhmalbof who subscribed to ideological art in the eighties, are now making films that are akin to pornography.”

* * Religious conversion, especially Buddhism spreading in Iran. , an Iranian regime-run site confesses: “In recent years followers of deviant sects and religions such as Christianity, Bahai’ism, Zoroasrianism, Sufism and Buddhism have increased. These devil worshippers try to attract our Shi’ites, especially the young and impressionable one in order to step up their propaganda inside our country. Each have their own forms of attracting the youth of course. Christians for example give away lots of free books and claim to be peaceful, kind and compassionate. Bahais use sexuality but Wahabbi Sunnis who are spies of the Saudis spread their elite’s money around and buy off the poor in small towns and villages in the southern parts of Iran. Then there are those so-called transcendentalists and Sufis whose beliefs are based on nothing but utter lies. The Buddhists however do shameless publicity in order to draw more people toward themselves, to spread their beliefs and corrupt our youth. They create blogs and websites in Persian in order to promote themselves.”