Iran: How "Ahmadinejad v. Paul the Octopus" Became a Global Showdown

It was only a sentence in a very, very long speech.

After a rather slow start --- "if one really makes a big success of it, the middle age will be the period in which what was achieved in youth would be consolidated" --- President Ahmadinejad's talk at the closing ceremony of the Iranian Youth Festival in Tehran last Friday was full of juicy soundbites.

There was the denunciation of a US-led plot "to carry out a military invasion of one or two countries in the Middle East, which are our friends, with the help of...disgraced Israelis". There was the portrayal of a deceitful Russian President Dmitry Medvedev offering support by "perform[ing] at a US show". There was the declaration, "The Iranian nation will crush hundreds of America's propagandist plays with its will and unity."

Little wonder, then, that this sentence initially slipped by with little notice: "Recently in the World Championship [football's World Cup] you saw that those who proclaim to have reached the peaks of history wanted to manipulate people's minds through superstition, an octopus, fortune-telling and such things."

Enter the magic of the German newspaper Bild. On Monday, their intrepid reporters turned Ahmadinejad's aside into the Main Event: "He incites against Israel, against the US and the West in general --- but now the crazy Iranian dictator is going after Paul the Octopus!...For Ahmadinejad, Paul is a symbol of the propaganda and superstitions of the West."

Paul the Octopus, for those who have been away from Planet Earth this summer, was the unexpected star of the 2010 World Cup, picking the winner in all of Germany's matches (including, at great risk to his life, Spain's defeat of the Germans in the semi-final) and then calling the Spanish victory over Holland in the final. He had also allegedly intervened in Iranian politics, calling an ultimate win for opposition figure Mir Hossein Mousavi over the Supreme Leader.

Forget minor events like Ayatollah Khamenei's "I am the Rule of the Prophet" fatwa or the manoeuvres against the Iranian President. Paul v. Mahmoud was the story, sometimes the only story --- once you looked past mythical or real nuclear weapons, of course --- on Iran.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Daily Telegraph of London, which has a penchant for Wacky Ahmadinejad stories (see their superlative "Mahmoud is a Jew" effort), proclaimed, "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader, says Paul the Octopus, the sea creature that correctly predicted the outcome of World Cup games, is a symbol of all that is wrong with the western world." (There was no mention of Bild for its investigative coup.) And by Wednesday, British tabloids such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror, as well as the broadsheet The Guardian, were reprinting the story with minor changes in wording (although The Guardian deserves a bonus point for the headline, "West Spreads Evil Tentacles into Iran").

Time magazine picked up the tale --- "[Paul] just calls it like it is — or will be". Rory Fitzgerald at The Huffington Post attempted satire by penning Paul's response: "He...said that he had never before seen such a lack of a sense of humor in a human being, despite the fact that he lives in Germany." Fox News posted the item in its "Science and Technology" section. IsraelPolitik, "The Political Blog of the State of Israel", jumped in, "If Paul the Octopus is on Ahmadinejad’s 'hitlist', no one is safe."

By Wednesday afternoon, there were so many reprints or minor variations of the tale --- all without noting the original Ahmadinejad sentence, all without crediting Bild --- that The Los Angeles Times (which credited The Daily Telegraph) was publishing a round-up.

Is there a moral here? Probably not. It's just a tale of how the world works, when the fatwa of a Supreme Leader --- a Supreme Leader who may be in political trouble --- just can't match up to the scenario of Bad Guy Politician v. Eight-Legged Psychic.

And you don't even need Paul --- or Mahmoud for that matter --- to tell you that.

[Thanks to Borzou Daragahi for sending me a full copy of Ahmadinejad's speech]

MENA House: The Pharaoh's Music in Today's Egypt

Rafael Pérez Arroyo, author of "Music in the Age of the Pyramids" describes the music of that era: "A reasoned transcription of metre is a creation of the human spirit, while rhythm is a natural dynamic phenomenon. When we immerse ourselves in it we see the whole rhythmic form as one single indivisible movement and we begin to understand why some rhythms are uniform while others increase in tempo."

Dr Khairy Ibrahim Il Malt, composer and lecturer on music at the Academy of Arts in Cairo, has taken matters into his own hands and encouraged his students to perform the sounds of Ancient Egypt. Interviewed on 90 minutes, Dr Khairy said that he was inspired when he was touching down at Luxor Airport. Seeing a flashback of how his ancestors lived, he was prompted to immerse himself in the art of pharaonic music and bring it home to Cairo.

MENA House: “The Popular Coalition to Support Gamal Mubarak”

The instruments Dr Khairy encourages his students to use are similar to those depicted in drawings at the Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings: pipes/flutes, stringed instruments similar to harps/guitars, hand-held drums, and cymbals. Each instrument depicts a symbolic element of Ancient Egyptian life. Rafael Pérez Arroyo explains:

Flutes and other wind instruments were held in particular regard because they are ‘breathing’ instruments, produced by the life-breath of the musician. The harp was played by both men and women of high status, but perhaps the most prestigious and beautiful are the ‘Memphite’ harps, based, as the author shows, on papyrus forms.

It's easy enough to get a sense of the music through a clip on YouTube, but if you want to hear the sounds of Ancient Egypt in person, there is a daring way to do so. Dr Khalid Mourad, a local tour guide, reveals:

In April 2008 some American tourists entered a Temple in Luxor.  They walked up a  narrow ramp when they came acorss a "bald headed man with a white cloth wrapped around him". He jumped in front of them and then "rudely" pushed them out the way as he moved past....

Later the tourists informed the tour guide that Egyptians are very rude and when asked why, they told him this story.  The tour guide took the tourists back onto the cruise and returned back to the Temple to search for this individual. To his surprise he noticed that there were no locals sitting in the area as they always do.

The next day the tour guide returned to the site and met a local.  He asked the local where they all were the day before.  The local responded that on this day, every year, all the locals leave this particular temple as they hear and see "strange"goings-on. On this day, it is the birthday of Queen Hatshepsut.  Every year there are lights, music, and strange sightings so the locals avoid the area completely.

So if you want to hear "original" Ancient Egyptian music, Luxor is the place to be in the month of April.  You might just encounter your own time machine.

Afghanistan: What Did Wikileaks Reveal? What I Wrote in Kabul in 2005 (Shahryar)

Editor's Note: Josh Shahryar has promised more not-so-new revelations later in the week:

Nine years, hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of casualties later, the reality of the war in Afghanistan suddenly gets revealed...by Wikileaks.

Afghanistan: Why Wikileaks Should Not Be Plugged (Dissected News)
Afghanistan: After the Wikileaks “Petraeus to Stop Corruption” (Partlow)
Afghanistan & US Politics: National Interests and Ending the War (Mull)

Or so it seems if you were to believe all the major newspapers and broadcasters. There are steamy headlines, loud news analysts, and even louder pundits talking about these revelations. And what are these revelations? We have apparently just found out that:

*Pakistan is helping the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan;

*There have been more civilian casualties than announced;

*The Afghan government is corrupt and impossible to deal with;

*Afghans are slowly favoring the Taliban over the Karzai Government;

*And most importantly, the war is being lost.

The number of documents released by Wikileaks to support these points is staggering --- more than 90,000. Yet the most surprising fact is not that all these things are true, but that they have never been mysteries that needed to be revealed. Everyone apparently "knew" but had bigger fish to fry --- like Iraq (which by the way wasn’t helping al-Qaeda), Iran and its pursuit of nukes, and North Korea, minutes from unleashing doom upon us all.

But Afghanistan then, as now, was very important to one person at least. Me.

It was late November of 2005. In a dusty little office, covered in cigarette ash and alcohol stains, I was sitting behind an three-year-old laptop handed down to me by a colleague, writing at 3 a.m. I was in Kabul, Afghanistan. My country; my homeland.

I used to be a senior editor at Kabul Weekly, the nation’s largest newspaper, that attempted to cover events inside Afghanistan but rarely got any traction outside the country because the media in the "West" always thought it could rely on itself.

I churned out a story that was read by a few colleagues and some expatriates and I got a few pats on the back. A story that covered every single point that the Wikileaks documents supposedly brought to light.

Yes, we knew about Pakistan’s spy agency, InterServices Intelligence, helping Taliban and Al Qa'eda. Yes, we did know that civilians, far too many civilians, were being killed in air raids and in street shootouts. And yes, we knew of the government’s corruption, and we knew that ordinary Afghans favored the Taliban over that government. I added a couple of extra points on flaws that needed to be remedied, such as the spread of poppy cultivation and the lack of capability of the Afghan security forces.

Sadly, my editor edited out the part on government corruption because we didn’t want to be shut down. We ended up alluding to it vaguely, and I later remedied that by writing several articles on the issue, the last one published in December on EA. But everything else is there in 2005. Have a read.

Now I’d be a fool to think I’m the greatest investigative journalist in history. I don’t have any magical powers either. And Wikileaks did not send me a copy of its report 4 1/2 years in advance.

So how does someone like me come into possession of knowledge this important? Because it is right there in front of everyone to see. Then why didn’t anyone say this before? Well, they did –-- most people just chose to ignore it because Iraq was "more important".

That’s what the politicians talked about. That’s what the media covered. And yes, that’s what the general populace in the "West" cared about five years ago. If you don’t believe me, then just follow the money.

The war in Iraq has been raging for seven years: total cost $735 billion. Now, Iraq has oil and Afghanistan has no means of supporting itself except for illegal drugs. The war in Afghanistan has been raging for two years longer than the war in Iraq. So more than $735 billion invested in Afghanistan, right?

Wrong. The Afghan War has cost the US taxpayers $286 billion, a 3-to-1 inferiority v. Iraq. Less coverage and less money means one thing: less importance.

However, this does not mean that the issues I brought up weren’t brought up before. They were. Mostly by Afghan journalists, but also by some Westerners who were crazy enough to not only cover Iraq but the story in Central Asia. However, the politicians kept quiet, the media gave little air time, and, finally, the taxpayer was less informed.

Then, as if from nowhere, Wikileaks comes up with these documents and the US media has something to cover amidst the coverage of the Gulf Oil Spill, which frankly had become less than exciting.

The media wants something sensational. What better than this? The politicians are suddenly forced to answer hard questions and the taxpayers are suddenly interested.

You know what? It’s a little too late for that.

I can’t really fix what the US government does. And honestly, my attempts at publishing analyses on the situation in my own country are gently ignored by the US media most of the time in favor of American analysts who spend a few days drinking tea with Afghan warlords and lounging about the bazaars.

So if you’re a taxpayer and stumble upon me in this corner of the Web, hear me out: the war is going nowhere. A radical policy shift is needed immediately.

Pakistan has to be harshly rebuked and stopped from helping the terrorists. The Afghan government has to be replaced with a less corrupt elected government or dictator or king or something –-- something that’s better than the Taliban. And someone needs to stop the army from killing civilians. If you can force your politicians to pull that off, then you can win this war. If not, there’s another very obvious truth lying right in front of you. I’ll let you figure that one out.

The Latest from Iran (28 July): A Presidential Target?

2040 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Author and journalist Yahya Samadi has been arrested in Sanandaj in Kurdistan.

2030 GMT: International Front Update. The US has offered a cautious welcome to Iran's approach for resumed discussions on uranium enrichment (see 1630 GMT). State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley said, "We obviously are fully prepared to follow up with Iran on specifics regarding our initial proposal involving the Tehran research reactor....[We are interested in] trying to fully understand the nature of Iran's nuclear program. We hope to have the same kind of meeting coming up in the coming weeks that we had last October."

NEW Iran Analysis: The Hardliners Take on Ahmadinejad
Latest Iran Video: Ahmadinejad on Afghanistan, Sanctions, & the US (26 July)
Iran Document: Mousavi on Governing and Mis-Governing, Now and in the 1980s (26 July)
Iran Analysis: Interpreting Khamenei’s “Re-Appearing” Fatwa (Verde)
The Latest from Iran (27 July): Regime Wavering?

2007 GMT: Today's All-is-Well Alert. The President of Islamic Azad University, (IAU) Abdollah Jasbi, has declared, "In its fourth decade [of its existence, i.e., 2020]…the Islamic Azad University will become the greatest and most respected university in the world and competing with renowned universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and MIT has been placed on its agenda."

There is no quote from Jasbi on the recent attempt by pro-Ahmadinejad forces to take control of the University, including moves that could have removed Jasbi from his post.

2004 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. HRANA carries a report from political prisoner Saeed Masouri on conditions in Rajai-Shahr Prison.

2000 GMT: The Oil Squeeze. Deutsche Welle --- following earlier reports that Iran has received only three shipments of gasoline this month, rather than the normal 11-13, claims that the country is facing serious shortages.

1630 GMT: International Front. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says Iran, in a message sent on Sunday, has given an assurance that it will stop enriching uranium to 20 percent purity if other countries agree to a fuel swap.

Crucially, however, it is not clear if Iran has accepted that the uranium swap can take place outside its borders.

1615 GMT: MediaWatch --- One Non-Story, One Nearly-New Story. It's always interesting to see which tales break through into the "mainstream" media outside Iran.

One hot story may actually be a jumped-up urban myth. The Bild tabolid in Germany, not always known for scrupulous adherence to facts, put out the claim on Monday that President Ahmadinejad had denounced Paul the Psychic Octopus as a tool of Western imperialism. More than 48 hours later, the story --- almost always without referencing Bild as the source --- is now embedded in outlets from The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian of London to Time magazine to the Los Angeles Times.

Then there are Ahmadinejad's babies. Months ago, the President proposed a payment of about $1000 for every new child, with subsequent support payments until the boy or girl reached 18. That announcement escaped notice outside Iran. However, when Ahmadinejad restated the idea Tuesday, it was transformed into the news that he had "inaugurated a new policy" by the Associated Press, becoming the Number 1 Iran story in places like The New York Times.

1610 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Radio Zamaneh has more on the reported move of 10 political prisoners, including student activist Abdollah Momeni, journalist Bahman Ahmadi Amoui, and Ahmad Karimi, to solitary confinement (see 0840 GMT). The report claims that the 10 are being punished for protesting against the ill treatment of detainees and their families by guards.

1210 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. An appellate court has upheld the 9 1/2-year sentence of student and women’s rights activist Bahareh Hedayat. Hedayat will also serve two years that had been suspended from a 2006 arrest.

Mostafa Kazzazi, the publisher of the banned Seda-ye Edalat (Voice of Justice), has been sentenced to 11 months in jail for propaganda against the establishment, defaming the Islamic republic, and encouraging people to act against security.

Seda-ye Edalat was shut down in July 2009 for "insulting" Ayatollah Khomeini.

1145 GMT: Today's Conspiracy Theory. Back from an academic break to find that Iranian leaders are holding a competition for Biggest, Baddest Threat of the Day.

As good as President Ahmadinejad is in this sport, he only gets the runner-up spot for his declaration in Assalouyeh in southern Iran on Wednesday. His assertion that "Iran's efforts to proceed with giant national oil, gas and petroleum projects by [Iranian] experts have cut the dependence bonds with other economic powers and multinational companies" may be morale-boosting --- if somewhat oblivious to current realities --- but does not really fit in category of Threat.

Your winner? Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardian Council, is the runaway champion with this tale:

I have acquired documents showing that the Americans paid one billion dollars to leaders of sedition through Saudi individuals who are currently the US agents in regional countries. These Saudis, who spoke on behalf of the US, told the opposition figures that if you can overthrow the Islamic establishment, we would pay another 50 billion dollars.

The opposition leaders staged riots with the help of the US and they were confident that the Islamic Revolution will fall with the assistance of the US because it is a soft war which causes people to break away from the Islamic system.

We look forward to seeing those documents and perhaps also the made-for-TV movie for IRIB 1.

0840 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Rah-e-Sabz reports that Abdollah Momeni and other political prisoners are being moved out of Evin Prison's Ward 350 into solitary confinement. Earlier, it was reported that phones in the ward had been cut off this week.

0835 GMT: Moving Out. A reader folllows up our item on the Cultural Heritage Organization protest at transfer of offices outside Tehran: according to Jam-e-Jam, 40% of civil servants should be leaving the capital within the next month.

0740 GMT: We begin this morning with an analysis of tensions within the Iranian system, "The Hardliners Take on Ahmadinejad".

Meanwhile....

Tough Guy Larijani

Partly for his campaign to establish his leadership credentials, partly to challenge Mir Hossein Mousavi's latest statement, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani has continued to throw rhetoric at the US. Speaking in Kermanshah on Tuesday, he said:

The United States still seeks to break the Iranian nation's will. The more sanctions they issue against us, the stronger the Iranian nation's will becomes....US President Barack Obama cannot stretch his hands to the Iranian nation while the US Congress adopts moves against Iran....This imposed war [with Iraq from 1980-1988] was not Iraq's war with Iran, but it was a war of most big powers which support Iraq.

The Heritage Protest

The employees of the Cultural Heritage Organization have protested at Tehran's Mehrabad airport, objecting to their transfer to offices outside the capital.

The transfer order is part of the Ahmadinejad Government's plan to reduce the population in Tehran. The 700 employees of the CHO are amongst the first government employees to receive notices.

Fars News has recently published the name of 114 public companies who have been ordered to move from Tehran.

Iraq: The Billions of Disappearing US Reconstruction Dollars

I'll be appearing on Al Jazeera English's Inside Story today at 1730 GMT to talk about the latest revelations in the far-from-new story of US reconstruction funds in post-war Iraq. Within weeks of the "liberation", stories were circulating of truckloads of US dollars being carried around the country, with no apparent control or accountability.

Tarek el-Tablawy writes today for Associated Press:

A U.S. audit has found that the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.

The $8.7 billion in question was Iraqi money managed by the Pentagon, not part of the $53 billion that Congress has allocated for rebuilding. It's cash that Iraq, which relies on volatile oil revenues to fuel its spending, can ill afford to lose.

"Iraq should take legal action to get back this huge amount of money," said Sabah al-Saedi, chairman of the Parliamentary Integrity Committee. The money "should be spent for rebuilding the country and providing services for this poor nation."

The report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction accused the Defense Department of lax oversight and weak controls, though not fraud.

"The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss," the audit said.

The Pentagon has repeatedly come under fire for apparent mismanagement of the reconstruction effort — as have Iraqi officials themselves.

Seven years after the U.S.-led invasion, electricity service is spotty, with generation capacity falling far short of demand. Fuel shortages are common and unemployment remains high, a testament to the country's inability to create new jobs or attract foreign investors.

Complaints surfaced from the start of the war in 2003, when soldiers failed to secure banks, armories and other facilities against looters. Since then the allegations have only multiplied, including investigations of fraud, awarding of contracts without the required government bidding process and allowing contractors to charge exorbitant fees with little oversight, or oversight that came too late.

But the latest report comes at a particularly critical time for Iraq. Four months after inconclusive elections, a new government has yet to be formed, raising fears that insurgents will tap into the political vacuum to stir sectarian unrest.

In a sign that insurgents are still intent on igniting sectarian violence, at least six people were killed and dozens more wounded when a female suicide bomber blew herself up near a checkpoint in the holy city of Karbala, local police said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

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