Iran's Supreme Leader Got Some Splainin' to Do!

In reviewing the Iranian President's blog (UPDATE: which may have been either hacked or taken down already) for the article below, I followed the link to the official English language site of The Office of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. Purusing the site, I found this featured article of interest, in which the Supreme Leader commends Iranian scientists (here reprinted in it's entirety):

The Islamic Revolution Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on Sunday commended a team of specialists who made a breakthrough in medical science to cure spinal injuries. The Islamic Revolution Leader said that the medical breakthrough is very significant in terms of developing scientific theories and making progress in research studies.

Ayatollah Khamenei said that those who are involved in hard work of research studies to help the nation overcome backwardness imposed on Iran for many years, would be rewarded by the Almighty.

Ayatollah Khamenei said that research studies in the field of basic sciences and developing theories need extra investment that should be provided by the government. In a reception for the team, the Leader appreciated the services of Dr. Saberi, the Executive Director of the Team of Researchers on Methods for Curing Spinal Injuries and Mrs. Firouzi, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Tehran University. The Iranian researchers have made a breakthrough in helping the patients with spinal injuries with culture of schwann cells enabling those suffering from paralysis to move.

Named after the German Physiologist Theodore Schwann, the Schwann cells are a variety of neuroglia that mainly provide myelin insulation to axons in the peripheral nervous system of jawed vertebrates.

I was not entirely sure what a Schwann cell was and did a Google search. Stumbling into a Wiki entry, I was surprised to see the following first sentence of the Wiki article (here reprinted with original Wiki links in place):

Named after the German physiologist Theodor Schwann, Schwann cells are a variety of neuroglia that mainly provide myelin insulation to axons in the peripheral nervous system of jawed vertebrates.

Hmmm, sound familiar? As I see it, the Supreme Leader has two problems. One, he stole the Wiki entry without making the required attribution, and therefore violates Wiki's copyright interests. Two, and more seriously for him, Wiki is, together with most of the rest of the extra-Iranian internet, banned in Iran. You see, it is a crime there to access "non-Islamic" sites.

So, not only did the Supreme Leader rip off an internet entry, he ripped off an illegal "non-Islamic" internet entry. tsk. . .tsk . . . tsk . . .

Funny, I didn't think the Supreme Leader looked anything like Captain Renault!

Summary only...

Newest Poliblog: A President Blogs

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has started the newest and, to my knowledge, most unique of political blogs -- his own. I am not aware of any other blog by a head of state. It even has a poll which would warm the hearts of our own neocons -- is the Israel-Hizbullah conflict a prelude to WWIII:

"Do you think that the US and Israeli intention and goal by attacking Lebanon is pulling the trigger for another world war?"

"No" is ahead as of this writing , 94% to 6% (apparently, Iranians are never unsure, much like our own neocons, so there is no "dunno" option).

His first entry is a rambling autobiographical essay. Among other things, we learn that in the first grade he realized that America was an enemy of the people of Iran:

I remember one day, when I was in first grade, by looking through a newspaper - with the help of the adults in our house - I read the news of the capitulation passage by the shah'’s so called "“parliament."” Even though I did not understand the meaning of that issue at that time, . . . I realized that Mohammad Reza attempted to add another page to his vicious case history which was the humiliation and indignity of the Iranian people versus Americans. That was the year that the extinct shah slaughtered many followers of Imam Khomeini.

Wow. When I was in first grade, I recall that the Pirates defeated the Yankees in the World Series, despite having been dominated throughout, with the most improbable of home runs in the home ninth . . . .

Nevertheless, even if the Iranian President's story is iconic, it is noteworthy that enmity against America had naught to do with our love of freedom, as much as it did our propping up of a brutal dictator. It was similar inept and immoral foreign policy which caused another revolutionary to develop such a strong hatred for America that he turned from the life of a comfortable middle-class physician to the proponent of people's revolutions against governments more friendly to American benefactors than to their own poor and working class.

The President goes on to tell the story of his tough life in a lower middle-class family, in which he had to work while attending high school. But he was a smart one, he tells us, and scored 132nd out of 400,000 on the exams for college. (Geeze, I was happy ending up about 20th out of 300 in my high school class (I goofed off the first two and a half years).)

He tells the story of the revolt against the Shah and the war with Iraq -- backed by the United ("why do they call us Satan") States. After several thousand words, he apparently tires and promised to be back with shorter entries in the future.

I left a comment, but I guess it must be moderated as it did not appear yet.

(A tip 'o the bowler to The Guardian for the report.)

UPDATE (8/14/06): It seems as if the President's new blog has either been taken down or hacked. After receiving "busy server" messages all morning, now the Iranaprez's blogsite URL pulls up a page called the "National Integrated Services Network", in Arabic or Farsi or something similarly unattainable to me. So much for the experiment. Or maybe he forget that political blogs are illegal in Iran.

UPDATE II: It appears that the Iranaprez may also be a bit of a clumsy oaf -- one site is claiming, with some detailed evidence, that the Iranaprez' website is attempting to send viruses to the computers of visitors originating in Israel. Nice touch. It also appears that the Iranaprez' site was not hacked -- the National Integrated Services Network is the Iranian government web censor/portal. They probably took the site down because after all of the reports this morning, and apparent publicity on Iranian television, half the world was trying to access it.

UPDATE III (8/14/06 3:05 pm ET): The Iranaprez' blog is back, but the English-language version of the site takes forever to load. The Poll is now closer, and has about 25000 more responses than last night. "No" is still ahead, 58-42.

Summary only...