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Iran Says He is an Israeli Spy. His Former Cellmate Says He is Innocent

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Published by IranWire

The name Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd wouldn’t have rung a bell for most of us until a few days ago. That is, until the Iranian judiciary published a picture of him and claimed that he had been working with US and Israeli intelligence spy on General Ghasem Soleimani: the former commander of Iran’s external operations who was assassinated on January 3 by a US drone. Mousavi-Majd is now on death row.

But Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese IT specialist and internet freedom advocate who spent almost four years in arbitrary detention in Iran, has known Mousavi-Majd for a long time. They met in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

Iran Says He is an Israeli Spy. His Former Cellmate Says He is Innocent

Hotdocs Festival I Mayor (2020): Ramallah, Open City

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Published by Universal Cinema

Among the absurdly bad faith (or shockingly ignorant) arguments made to justify the occupation policies of Israel toward the Palestinian people are those that point out at how vibrant and fun can life be in many of the Palestinian cities under Israeli occupation. How could it be so bad if they post so many cool pictures on Instagram?

You don’t need to buy the racist, pro-occupation arguments to marvel at the vibrancy of life in Palestinian cities. This urban energy is only one aspect of Palestinian resilience in face of adversity and occupation, immortalized in a refrain of a poem by Rafeef Ziadah: “We teach life, sir.”

Hotdocs Festival I Mayor (2020): Ramallah, Open City

Revealed: The Key Role Iran Plays in Syria’s Economy

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Published by IranWire

The Middle East is perhaps the least integrated region in the world. Two of its biggest countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, are involved in a cold war, and numerous blocks pit countries big and small against each other, making inter-state trade difficult. Where there are close economic ties, the relationships are often massively unequal, one-sided and based on war-driven needs.

A case in point is the economic relationship between Iran and Syria. Before 2011, there were very few economic ties between the two countries despite their 30-year-long strategic alliance. But as Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad brutally cracked down on a nationwide uprising and led his country into a civil war, Iran became his main regional supporter — and economic ties began to develop on that basis.

Revealed: The Key Role Iran Plays in Syria’s Economy

The new man of power in Iran’s parliament

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Published by the Atlantic Council

According to an old dictum, the best leaders are those who don’t ask for the job. By such logic, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the fifty-eight-year-old who became the new speaker of the Iranian parliament on May 28, is not very qualified. The conservative soldier-cum-politician has never hidden his ambitions for power. His ascendancy to the top legislative position in the country comes after three failed runs for the presidency in 2005, 2013, and 2017.

In the complex structures of the Islamic Republic, the vast majority of power is constitutionally bestowed upon the country’s Supreme Leader, which is currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is also the commander-in-chief and whose appointees vet candidates for all elections except those for local councils. But the three men heading the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the government still wield much power. The speaker of the parliament is a major political figure who controls his own budget and institutions and has his own diplomatic profile. The wily Qalibaf is expected to use his position even more forcefully than his predecessors and to usher in a transition away from the failed pro-reform presidency of Hassan Rouhani to a new conservative and hardline-dominated era for the Islamic Republic.

The new man of power in Iran’s parliament

Khamenei’s Open Dream: Finishing Where Hitler Left Off

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Published by IranWire

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has many distinctive characteristics that ensure he stands out. He is the third-longest ruling leader in the world. He is one of the very few who claim a mantle of divine sovereignty. He is unique in asking for 300,000 of his own citizens, the Baha’is of Iran, to be socially isolated by the Muslim majority. This week, he added to these accolades. After publishing a poster that calls for a “Final Solution” for Israeli Jews, he is now a rare leader who, in 2020, uses the phraseology of the most widely-despised political figure of the modern world, Adolph Hitler.

The poster, published by Khamenei’s very own office, aims to commemorate the Quds Day, a tradition started by the founding leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomieni, in 1979. Using the Arabic name for the holy city of Jerusalem, the day aims to show solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, although Khomeini was adamant that this was “not just a day for Palestine, but a day for Islam, a day for Islamic government.”

Khamenei’s Open Dream: Finishing Where Hitler Left Off

UK’s Israeli Film And TV Festival Goes Virtual

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Published by Universal Cinema

If it wasn’t for the pandemic, London’s Jewish Community Center (JW3) was going to have a busy week ahead. It had long been scheduled to host Seret, UK’s Israeli Film and TV festival from 21 to 30 May, 2020. But the three cheerful women who founded the festival eight years ago won’t let a virus get in their way. The festival has elaborate plans for a virtual run in its ninth year, including screening of 14 films for UK audiences as well as Q and A sessions with some key stars of the Israeli cinema. While the films are only available to UK audiences, the Q and A sessions are open to the international public. Details are all available online.

Seret, Hebrew for ‘movie’, started eight years ago when three Israeli women Odelia Haroush, Anat Koren and Patty Hochmann came together. The three have stuck together to run a successful festival that brings crucial Israeli films to London and other British cities every year. The festival has expanded and now has versions running in Berlin and seven other cities in Germany as well as four cities in the Netherlands; and, over the oceans, in Santiago and Chile.

UK’s Israeli Film And TV Festival Goes Virtual

True History Of The Kelly Gang (2020) | Anarcho-Freudian Fantasies In The Antipodes

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Published by Universal Cinema Magazine

Ned Kelly, the late 19th-century Irish-Australian gang leader, has long had a hold on creative imaginations. Executed at the young age of 25 in 1880, Kelly had led a gang that fought the authorities head on in pre-confederation Colony of Victoria. He went on to become a legend of Australia’s bushranger culture and eventually a national hero. His story has proved irresistible for artistic adaptation. In fact, Australia’s The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) is sometimes known as the first feature-length dramatic film in world history. Among actors who’ve portrayed him are such household names as Mick Jagger and Heath Ledger.

Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang (2020) is the latest attempt. This is fourth feature by the 45-year-old Australian director whose 2011 debut, Snowtown, was based on the true story of a series of murders in the Australia of 1990s. With Macbeth (2016) and Assassin’s Creed (2016), Kurzel has previously shown his wide range in adaptation, moving seamlessly from William Shakespeare to a video game.

True History Of The Kelly Gang (2020) | Anarcho-Freudian Fantasies In The Antipodes

May Day Without Crowds

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A Historian Reflecting on May Day and the Pandemic

Published by Bare Life Review

Long before I decided to become a historian, taking part in May Day always made me think historically. The commemoration of the workers’ rally in Chicago on May 4, 1886, the “holiday of the proletariat,” has long had that historic ring. Writing on the celebrations in 1890, Friedrich Engels described the rally-turned-riot “epoch-making… in its universal character, which made it the first International action of the militant working class.”

I felt this universal character the first time I marched in the May Day Parade, a hundred odd years later, in the Tehran of early 2000s. The day is an official holiday in Iran and has been a source of conflict between the ruling Islamists and the left ever since the regime was founded in 1979. Showing up at a Tehran May Day rally in those years made me feel a strong connection both with the recent Iranian history as well as the longer history of global working-class action. Thousands of workers and socialists turned out on the streets, just as people did in Paris, Manila, and Beijing. For an afternoon, it felt like our isolated Islamic Republic was connected to the broader world.

May Day Without Crowds

Can Qasem Soleimani’s young daughter continue his path?

Published by the Atlantic Council’s Iran Source 

Late March marks the ancient holiday of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year. But with Iran one of the worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic, Nowruz had a somber tone this time around. Being avid users of Instagram, Iranians took to the photo-sharing app to share their mood on Nowruz. Among them, was a young woman in her late twenties and an unlikely rising celebrity in Iran and beyond.

Zeinab Soleimani was virtually unknown as a public figure before January 2020. She is the youngest child of Qasem Soleimani, a general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who led its foreign arm—the Quds Force—and masterminded Iran’s armed intervention in the Middle East. After the commander was killed in a US drone attack on Baghdad’s international airport on January 3, Zeinab quickly emerged as his most visible offspring.

Can Qasem Soleimani’s young daughter continue his path?

Why sanctions on Iran should be lifted now

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Published by the New Arab

They have all called for easing of the US sanctions on Iran which have hampered the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and thus endangered the lives of millions of people in Iran and the region.

Why sanctions on Iran should be lifted now