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Saturday
May152010

MENA House: Mohammed al Fayed and How Harrods Became Egyptian

Last Saturday, the news struck the media that Mohammed al Fayed, the Egyptian business tycoon, would be selling Harrods.  Once surprise settled, the question was, "Who bought it and for how much?"

The answer...to the Qatari royal family’s investment company, Qatari Holdings for a reported £1.5 billion. Al Fayed invested well, considering he purchased Harrods in 1985 for "only" £615 million.

MENA House: Sinai Liberation Day in Egypt


In Al Fayed’s true, colourful style he has left his mark on Harrods, spending a total sum of £300 million.  In a rare interview with an Egyptian presenter, conducted in 2002 by Hala Sarhan, al Fayed discussed the refurbishment Harrods had undergone during his ownership.  It was not just a complete face-lift; it was a cultural reconstruction.  Taking Harrod’s back to his Egyptian roots, al-Fayed altered the internal structure of the building.


Permanent structures

Al Fayed added his own special touches such as the infamous Harrods escalator.  The historical distinction is that Harrods was the first building with a "moving stairlift" in the UK.  At the official opening on 16 November 1898, nervous customers were given brandy at the top of the escalator to calm themselves down.

In 1985, under the new ownership of al Fayed, the escalator became a "£20 million homage to ancient Egypt".  William George Mitchell, the Director of Design at Harrods, and experts from the British Museum of Authenticity, designed the stairlift to be a walk-in sculpture: "The viewer would be transported on the escalator, as if travelling through the Lower Nile to the Upper Nile."

Both the "Egyptian Room" and the Egyptian escalators are listed as "English Heritage", meaning they cannot be removed.

"Ancient Egypt"

William Mitchell also carved spectacular Ancient Egyptian images from the top floor to the ground level.  Each floor represents a different site from the Temple of Denderra to Giza.

In addition, each floor reflects the items being sold on that level.  For example, where a harpist and group have been carved into the walls, musical instruments are for sale.  Where the "Chairman of Eternity" lays, there is an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus --- similar to that of Tutakhamun (but, somehow, with an image with very similar features to al-Fayed) --- "holding" Harrods.

Mohammed Al Fayed’s Legacy

A colourful character indeed, al Fayed ensured that he would leave his mark on what is not only a shopping exhibition but also a tourist attraction. Despite or because of being rejected on several occasions in his efforts to gain British citizenship, the Egyptian business tycoon has ensured that he is stamped into British history.

Al-Fayed insists on ensuring his legacy and that of his family will live on and Harrods is the place to do it. In one of the most famous stores in the world, a memorial for Dodi al-Fayed (Mohammed al Fayed’s son) and Princess Diana is a permanent reminder of al-Fayed's connected with British Royalty.

Al Fayed also wanted to be buried in a sarcophagus, placed in a glass studio on the top floor in his private suite.  In Hala Sarhan’s interview, the eccentric character claimed that he wanted to be buried in Harrods so that his spirit would roam the infamous store forever more.

Since the sale of Harrod’s to a fellow Arab, Qatar’s Amir, al-Fayed's burial wish will remain a mystery. Wherever his body eventually lies is tangential, however: Mohammed al-Fayed’s legacy will remain in Britain for a long time to come.
Saturday
May152010

Thailand: The Latest in the Crisis; At Least 16 Dead (Mydans and Szep/Ahuja)

Writing for The New York Times, Seth Mydans summarises Friday's violent escalation in Thailand's political crisis. Jason Szep and Ambika Ahuja, reporting for Reuters, add information on the roots of the conflict:

MYDANS

Thai troops on Friday fired tear gas and bullets at protesters, who responded with stones, slingshots and homemade rockets, turning parts of downtown Bangkok into a battlefield as the military tried to tighten its cordon around a broad area where the protesters have camped for weeks.

Sixteen people were killed and 141 wounded, according to the government-run Erawan medical center, in some of the worst violence in two months of unrest. The standoff has paralyzed the Thai government and further fractured a society struggling to cope with the growing demands of its poor.

The fighting followed an assassination attempt on Thursday on a renegade general who had declared himself a protector of the protesters before he was critically wounded by a sniper’s bullet.



The antigovernment protesters, mostly poor rural residents known as red shirts, seized and vandalized several military vehicles, setting at least one truck on fire and cheering as soldiers with riot shields looked on. Protesters pulled soldiers from their vehicles and beat them severely.

Plumes of black and brown smoke rose into the air, and large explosions and gunfire were heard well into the night.

On Friday, streets that would normally have been bustling with traffic were instead littered with stones and bottles and sealed off by soldiers building roadblocks with sandbags and coils of razor wire.

Troops in battle gear crouched behind traffic barriers, pointing their rifles at the bands of motorcycle riders who formed a mobile force for the protesters, while other troops ran along a highway overpass as traffic crawled behind them.

Although the violence has been confined largely to the city’s central area, reports of the political chaos in recent months have hurt tourism, one of the country’s main industries, and left some hotels in the downtown area just 20 percent full.

The army officer who was shot Thursday, Maj. Gen. Khattiya Sawatdiphol, was on life support late Friday, and his doctor said his chances of survival were “almost nil.”

Thai officials had blamed General Khattiya for playing a part in earlier violence and for blocking any chance of peace with protesters. Leaders of the red shirts had also disavowed him, but he nevertheless took control of security for the protesters and was supported by a small, hard-line group of demonstrators.

On Friday, amid the sounds of gunfire and explosions, the United States Embassy, which is near the disturbances, shut down and offered voluntary relocation to employees who lived near the protest area. Other nearby embassies, schools and businesses also closed.

If it is not contained, the violence could widen into the kind of broader conflict that the government has been trying for weeks to avoid. Just several days ago, it appeared the long sit-in might end peacefully when the government offered to move up elections, a proposal that won tentative support from protest leaders.

But that support began faltering even before the general was shot, as the opposition movement bickered over whether the government was doing enough to meet its demands, including the dissolution of Parliament and the holding of a new election.

In response, the government withdrew its offer of an early election and said it would no longer negotiate with the red shirts.

Protest leaders have said that if the military tries to disperse them, supporters elsewhere in the country may stage similar takeovers of streets or government buildings.

However the occupation of parts of the capital ends, deep divisions and tensions are likely to persist in a country that is increasingly split between its poor and its urban elite. Over the past four years, political and personal enmities have hardened, making reconciliation more difficult.

Inside the barricaded protest area on Friday, leaders addressed thousands of demonstrators, vowing to hold their ground and resist any military incursion. “They are tightening a noose on us, but we will fight to the end, brothers and sisters,” one leader, Nattawut Saikua, told the crowd.

Another leader, Kokaew Pikulthong, issued what appeared to be a veiled threat to the government. In the event of a crackdown, he said in a telephone interview, protesters may be forced to break into shopping malls “to survive.”

The protest area, covering about one square mile on roads that surround a major intersection, has grown filthy and fly-infested, with garbage stacking up since the government cut off waste collection and water deliveries for the rally’s storage tanks.

The deputy governor of Bangkok, Pornthep Techapaiboon, said that portable toilets in the protest area would remain in place for sanitary reasons, but that the workers who cleaned them had already withdrawn after being assaulted by protesters.

Because of new military checkpoints, the protesters, who sleep on mats on the street, can leave the site if they choose, but are not being allowed to return.

Those wounded in the clashes on Friday included a camera operator for a French television station and a Thai photographer, both of whom had been shot.

At the perimeters of the conflict zone, demonstrators poured gasoline over high barricades of concrete blocks, tires, barbed wire and sharpened bamboo poles, threatening to ignite them if attacked. They splashed oil on the street in front of one barricade and scattered pellets to create a slippery dry-land moat.

Protesters attached homemade explosives to the ends of sticks, as they do during a traditional rocket festival, propping them inside plastic traffic cones before aiming and sending them with a whoosh in the direction of soldiers. They also fired in the direction of military helicopters.

Some protesters wore motorcycle helmets and carried homemade weapons, including bows and arrows, slingshots and sharpened bamboo poles.

Some prepared to fling plastic bags filled with pungent fish sauce and hot chilies at soldiers.

A man who identified himself as John Redshirt, a disc jockey for an antigovernment radio station, watched as men sat on the ground in a makeshift workshop constructing crossbows from plastic pipe and bamboo.

“We are never scared of the military,” he said in English. “If they come, we have the right to fight back. We can’t just let them kill us and do nothing.”

A nurse at a first aid station inside the camp, Jenny Tan, 56, spoke of possible worsening violence with tears in her eyes.

“We are afraid for the soldiers, too,” she said. “The soldiers are our sons. We are mother, father, sister, brother. So we don’t want any of them to die. Very, very sad. Very, very sad for Thailand.”

---

SZEP/AHUJA

Thai troops fired at protesters on Saturday in a third day of fighting on Bangkok's streets that has killed 16 people as soldiers struggle to isolate a sprawling encampment of demonstrators seeking to topple the government.

Clashes continued across central Bangkok as soldiers behind sand bags or atop buildings fired live rounds at protesters armed with petrol bombs. One was shot in the chest while trying to ignite a tyre in Bangkok's usually bustling business district.

At Din Daeng intersection, north of the protest site, three bodies were evacuated on stretchers, a Reuters witness said. Two suffered head wounds. Troops also swarmed into a parking lot at the popular Dusit Thani hotel outside the protest site.

That followed a long night of grenade explosions and sporadic gunfire as the army battled to set up a perimeter around the 3.5 sq-km (1.2 sq-mile) barricaded encampment where thousands refuse to leave, including women and children.

"We'll keep on fighting," said Kwanchai Praipana, a leader of the red-shirted protesters, calling on Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to resign and take responsibility for Thailand's deadliest political crisis in 18 years.

He said supplies of food, water and fuel were starting to run thin as their usual delivery trucks were blocked but that they had enough to last "days".

Hardcore protesters, gathering in small numbers, set fire to vehicles, including an army truck, and hurled rocks at troops who set up razor wire at checkpoints and asked residents to show identification cards to stop people from joining the mostly rural and urban poor "red shirts".

The crisis has paralysed Bangkok, squeezed Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy, scared off tourists and choked off investment in one of Asia's most promising emerging markets.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon expressed concern over "the rapidly mounting tensions and violence".

"He strongly encourages them to urgently return to dialogue in order to de-escalate the situation and resolve matters peacefully," his spokesman said in a statement.

The Canadian government urged both sides to return to talks after a Bangkok-based Canadian journalist was shot three times, one of three journalists wounded in fighting that has spiralled into chaotic urban warfare where front lines shift quickly.

"UNLIKELY TO END QUICKLY"

The government said on Friday it would restore order "in the next few days" as the city of 15 million people braced for a crackdown to end a six-week protest by thousands of "red shirts" packed into an area of high-end department stores, luxury hotels, embassies and expensive residential apartments.

The Erawan Medical Centre in Bangkok said 16 people had been killed and 141 wounded in the latest fighting.

"It's unlikely to end quickly," said a source close to army chief Anupong Paochinda, fearing more protesters would arrive to surround and attack soldiers.

"There will be several skirmishes in the coming days but we are still confident we will get the numbers down and seal the area," added the source, who declined to be identified by name.

The number of protesters in the main encampment appeared to have dropped overnight but several thousands remained, many singing and listening to speeches by protest leaders. Some leaders, including the movement's chairman, have disappeared.

Protesters are barricaded behind walls of kerosene-soaked tyres, sharpened bamboo staves, concrete blocks and razor wire.

Before fighting began on Thursday with the shooting of a renegade general allied with the protesters, the two-month crisis had already killed 29 people and wounded about 1,400 -- most of whom died during an April 10 gun battle in Bangkok's old quarter.

The fighting is the latest flare-up in a polarising five-year crisis between a royalist urban elite establishment, who back the prime minister, and the rural and urban poor who accuse conservative elites and the military's top brass of colluding to bring down two elected governments.

Those governments were led or backed by exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, a graft-convicted populist billionaire ousted in a 2006 coup who is a figurehead of the protest movement.

The red shirts and their supporters say the politically powerful military influenced a 2008 parliamentary vote, which took place after a pro-Thaksin party was dissolved, to ensure the British-born, Oxford-educated Abhisit rose to power.

Five-year Thai credit default swaps, used to hedge against debt default, widened by more than 30 basis points on Friday -- the biggest jump in 15 months -- to 142 basis points.

"With gun battles and grenades going off, investors will look elsewhere," said Danny Richards, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

"I don't think many see the end of this protest as the end of the crisis. When there's an election, either side will reject the legitimacy of the other and we'll be back to square one."
Saturday
May152010

Iran: Last Words of Executed Alamhouli "For God's Sake, Let Me Hear My Mother's Voice" (Ghazi)

Fereshteh Ghazi writes for Rooz Online:

The tradition for prisoners facing the death sentence is that they are informed of their execution the night before so they can pronounce their will and say farewell to their family. Even though they did not do this with Shirin Alam-Hooli, she was suspicious when prisoner guards asked her to step out of her cell, which they immediately locked behind her after she was out. She was then dragged out of the ward.

Shirin did not want to go. She expected to be at least told where she was being taken to. Why were they not allowing her to even put on her prison scarf? Why were they taking her without the usual required trench coat and scarf?

The next day, her ward mates spoke about the last words they heard her say: “I am in your hands so why are you not letting me at least say goodbye to my family? Let me say my final farewell to my friends. Why all this when there is no way for me to escape. For God’s sake let me hear my mother’s voice for the last time . . .”


Shirin Elm-Hooli’s death sentence was neither announced to her nor to her attorney. She was taken out of her cell deceitfully as she was solving math problems as she prepared herself for the 11th grade math exam coming up in two days. She had signed up to study in the adult literacy program and had promised herself that she would go to college and study law so that one day she could defend the rights of her compatriots.

Shirin’s cell mates stayed up that night, expecting her to be returned. They were shocked the next day when prison authorities came and took away her personal belongings, which confirmed to them that Shirin was gone for good.

Shirin was hung in Evin prison while her cell mates remembered her as a symbol of love and thirst for freedom. They remember her for her resistance and her nightly distresses caused by the cruel Middle Age tortures she had suffered at the hands of individuals who viewed her as a terrorist while truly believing they themselves were the representative of God.

In talking about Shirin, her cell mates talk of a woman who shared the little money or clothes that she had with the new comers. She would forego her telephone conversations with her family so she could attend to more pressing issues of helping other new prisoners and share whatever she had with them.

Shirin was hanged with four others, [such as] Mehdi [Eslamian], Ali [Heydarian], and Farhad [Vakili] and left us, while the Islamic republic continues to stay. But even in its stay, it is fearful of the corpses of these five citizens. The regime denied these five citizens and children of this land the basic right of saying goodbye to their loved ones, but now it is resisting returning the corpses of these victims to their family members.

One wonders, "Why does a regime that claims to represent God on Earth is afraid of returning the corpses of five people to their next of kin even after the lives of each one of these victims was shamelessly taken from them?" The executed were stars who were mercilessly pulled down and wiped out. Shirin had not been arrested in connection with Iran’s post 2009 election turmoil. She was a Kurdish activist who spent her energies on helping others.

Indeed, a regime such as this must live in fear. Even the dead haunt it. Have those running this regime forgotten that despite all their hangings and executions, the ancient regime eventually fell and disappeared? All the killings, executions etc of Shirin and her other fellow Iranians are carried out for the purpose of staying in power. Even if that means only for just a few more days.
Friday
May142010

Middle East Analysis: Russia's Strategy on Israel, Palestine and Beyond

On Wednesday, during a visit to Ankara following meetings with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and Hamas Political Bureau Chief Khaled Meshal, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reiterated Moscow's Middle East policy. Both Russia and Turkey stated that the International Community must deal with Hamas due to the party's support from the Palestinian people in the 2006 elections and called on Hamas and Fatah to unite.

In February, Meshaal had been welcomed in Moscow. So latest Medvedev’s meeting is another step forward helping Hamas build strategic relations in the international arena.

Turkey Inside Line: Ankara & Russia Press Israel on Hamas Issue


As for Moscow, the move is filling the space left by Washington. Unlike the US inability to approach the problems of the region by connecting them, Moscow is showing its willingness to treat Middle East actors in a complicated and inter-linked context. This includes Iran's nuclear technology, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the challenge of Palestinian unity dilemma, and the triangle between Israel, Iran, and Syria.


Moscow is investing directly in Hezbollah through Syria and Iran, but now it is moving directly over Hamas. The Kremlin urged the Gaza leaders to release the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and to move towards reconciliation with Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah within the framework of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Finally, Moscow's latest gambit in Syria posed another challenge for Israeli officials. Medvedev said that the Middle East must be free of nuclear arms, otherwise the situation could lead to a regional or even global catastrophe.

Israeli decision-makers have tried to manipulate Russia's involvement in the region, asking it not to sell S-300 missiles to Iran in 2008 and to halt the sale of advanced MIG-31 fighter jets to Syria. West Jerusalem also sees a "finishing role" for Russia on sacntions against Iran, leaving China in isolation on the issue.

Russia, in response, agreed to the Israeli demands on military deliveries to Iran and Syria but is still holding its card on sanctions. The recent visit to Syria and the second round of its direct investment in Hamas are extra bargaining points.

Syria? As a country accused of transferring weapons to Hezbollah, recently re-sanctioned for another year by Washington, Damascus got a breather with Medvedev's visit and his proclamation of Syria as  "one of the most important political centers of the Middle East. Two cooperation agreements in the fields of air services and information and communication technology, two agreements on technical, scientific, and environmental cooperation, and a joint work programme to implement cooperation on tourism cooperation were also signed. According to Stratfor, Russia also signed agreements to sell the Syrians MiG-29 fighters, Pantsir short-range surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft artillery systems, and anti-tank weapons.

After Israeli criticism in February, the Kremlin said that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was the highest-level official Meshaal would meet. Its ambassador assured West Jerusalem that the Meshaal visit did not signal a swing in Moscow’s policy toward Hamas, and he said that Lavrov would reiterate that the Islamist movement must abide by conditions to recognize Israel, give up violence, and honour past peace accords.

This time, the Israeli Foreign Ministry slammed Medvedev's call to involve Hamas in the Mideast peace process and likened the organization to the Islamist Chechen rebels. In response, Andrei Nesterenko, the Russian foreign ministry spokesman, said in a statement:
Hamas is not an artificial structure. It is a movement that draws on the trust and sympathy of a large number of Palestinians. We have regular contacts with this movement.

It is known that all other participants of the Middle East quartet are also in some sort of contact with Hamas leadership, although for some unknown reason they are shy to publicly admit it.
Friday
May142010

The Latest from Iran (14 May): The Meaning of the Strike?

2035 GMT: Film Corner (cont.). Earlier we reported on the unclaimed chair for the Grand Jury at the opening of the Cannes Film Festival (see 0615 GMT)

The seat was to be filled by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who had to send this message:
I salute you from my narrow and dark cell in Evin Prison. Unfortunately it is only today that I heard of your valuable efforts [to release me] during the Festival of Cannes....I greet you from here and would like to express my gratitude to all festival organisers for their humanity and decency.

NEW Iran Analysis: The Economic Squeeze and the Real Sanctions Story (Colvin)
UPDATED Iran Video: Strike in Kurdistan (13 May)
Iran Special: Executions, Politics, and the Attack on Nazila Fathi and The New York Times
Iran Transcript: Mousavi “Do Iranian Mothers Have Rights?” (12 May)
Iran Document: A Letter from Majid Tavakoli About the Executed (11 May)
The Latest from Iran (13 May): Justice, Legitimacy, and a Strike in Kurdistan


2030 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. RAHANA reports that Bahman Khodadadi has been missing since Saturday, when he was summoned to the Ministry of Intelligence in Isfahan. The website also claims Azeri civil rights activists Reza Abdi and Alireza Hosseinzadeh were arrested Tuesday in Tabriz.


1945 GMT: The Executions and After. RAHANA offers a useful summary of "The Week in Kurdistan".

1820 GMT: The Oil Squeeze. Rah-e-Sabz reports that because of sanctions, lack of investment, and government mismanagement, oil production dropped by 750,000 barrels (almost 20%) to less than 35. million barrels per day. Sales fell by 450,000 barrels daily, as Saudi Arabia took up more of China's demand for imports.

1812 GMT: The Writing on the Wall. EA's German Bureau brings me this picture of graffiti in Iran. It is from January, but it has a current resonance, I think.

"Execution = End of Islamic Rule".



1750 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. RAHANA reports that Arash Saboonchi, a student activist and member of Mehdi Karroubi’s presidential campaign in Arak in northwest Iran, has been arrested and taken to an unknown location by plainclothes agents.

1725 GMT: Larijani, Nuclear Dealmaker? A whiff of a most important story in Khabar Online, the website connected with Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani. It uses purported remarks from Kazem Jalali of Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission to play up Larijani's role as broker in talks on Iran's nuclear programme:
According to Khabar Online correspondent, [in] the hallway of the Majlis, Kazem Jalali commented on diplomatic positions expressed by Larijani and f negotiations at international summits: "A collective body monitored by the Supreme Council of National Security decides and authorizes the Parliament Speaker to take such measures, given that as a body corporate and senior member of the council, he has a mastery of the standards of the Islamic Republic's diplomacy....

In many instances the international negotiations conducted by the Parliament Speaker are more productive in breaking the impasses

Jalali supposedly added, "We have never excluded the issue of nuclear fuel exchange from our agenda. We are ready to receive fair proposals on the issue and it has been underlined by Iranian officials several times. But I believe that through their mediations Brazil and Turkey can play an important role to resolve the problem. Obviously we will welcome their contribution."

The significance, however, is not just the international dimension, with the further signal that a deal mediated by Brazil or Turkey is a possibility for Tehran. It is also internal: last October the uranium enrichment talks broke down in part because of opposition within Iran.

Larijani, speaking on his behalf or representing the Supreme Leader, was part of that opposition to the President's aspirations. If he is now portraying himself as a factor for a deal, it not only shifts the international equation but also the power equation vs. Ahmadinejad.

1500 GMT: Keep the Children at Home? Khabar Online claims that the children of administration officials are being stopped from studying abroad.

1450 GMT: The Executions and Pressure on Kurdish Teachers. RAHANA reports that Heydar Zaman, Mostafa Sarbazan and Ramin Zandnia, three activists of the Teachers Trade Union in Kurdistan, were summoned to Intelligence Headquarters in Sanandaj. The questioning took place a day after the execution of teacher Farzad Kamangar.

Four other activists of the union were arrested on Sunday and released after long interrogations.

1440 GMT: Friday Prayers Amended (No Sinful Earthquakes But Lots of Bad Hijab). Seems I judged today's Friday Prayer Speaker, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, too quickly (1300 GMT).

He did have a whip-'em-up line, much better than the G-15 summit and the Tehran Book Fair, for the audience. Apparently a "soft war" against hijab has started in the name of "freedom". Western officials of Satan, who once Reza Shah to get rid of the hijab, are carrying out their subversion by bringing women with "bad hijab" to Qom.

Seddiqi did have to backtrack on his previous big hit of breasts=earthquakes, announcing that sin is not the only reason for natural disasters in the West.

No matter. Looks like Seddiqi's "bad hijab" routine is going down well with the critics: Ayatollah Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, has given it a round of applause.

1430 GMT: Where's Mahmoud? President Ahmadinejad has delivered a speech in which he announced that God has chosen the Iranian people to promote justice and monotheism on Earth.

1300 GMT: Your Friday Prayer Summary. Last time Hojatoleslam Kazem Seddiqi took the podium for Tehran Friday Prayers, he became a global religious star with his warning that women's breasts can cause earthquakes.

He didn't shake things up as much today. His hook-line of Iran's prominence at the G-15 summit of non-aligned countries just didn't have the same appeal, and he had to fall back on a shout-out for five million people at the Tehran Book Fair showing the culture, civilization and ideals of Iran and its youth.

1155 GMT: The Executions. Nine expatriate and domestic parties and political organisations have called for rallies abroad this Sunday to protest recent executions. Those involved in the call are Republicans, Democratic Party of Kurdistan, Komeleh, Democratic Party of Iran's People, National Front Europe, Feddayin-e Khalq (majority and minority), Provisional Council of Leftist Socialists, and Movement of Democratic and Secular Republicans.

1145 GMT: Cultural Vaccination. Mahmoud Salari, the director of the Tehran Book Fair, has declared that books by famous authors such as Forugh Farrokhzad, Hushang Golshiri, and Sadegh Hedayat are like palm-reading (faal va kafbini). He declared that all books published before 2005 will be removed as a vaccination against "cultural disease", and he said that only religious thinking should be promoted to maintain the honour of the Iranian system (nezam).

It looks like Salari and the Book Fair organisers may have more serious worries than palm-reading, however. Khabar Online publishes a photograph of the state of the booths as the Fair formally opened.

1130 GMT: Interrogation. Kalemeh reports that reformists in Tabriz in East Azerbaijan have been summoned by authorities and questioned for up to four hours on subjects such as the alleged involvement of the "terrorist" Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO) in the opposition movement.

1005 GMT: Cultural Jeremiad. Grand Ayatollah Makarem-Shirazi has pronounced that, with satellites, the vice of the Internet and its websites swashes from west to east and back. He declared that those moral vices have become political and social, and politicians of the world promote them for their goals.

1000 GMT: Karroubi Watch. Speaking with student activists and the family of the detained Majid Tavakoli, Mehdi Karroubi has declared, "Rest assured that the situation won't remain like this.

0950 GMT: The Executions and the Strike. Nazila Fathi reports in The New York Times:
Iranian Kurds staged one of their largest strikes in recent years, closing shops and bazaars in nearly all Sunni Kurdish cities and towns in eastern Iran to protest the executions of five people, including four Kurdish activists, on Sunday, according to opposition Web sites and witnesses....

Many analysts and opposition figures interpreted the executions on Sunday as a warning that the government would not tolerate protests next month on the election’s first anniversary.

Rah-e-Sabz has a lengthy account of the day in Kurdistan, with a heavy security presence and Kurdistan's largest city Sanandaj and many other towns mostly deserted.

0940 GMT: The Executions and the Opposition. Reporting from Tehran, Thomas Erdbrink of The Washington Post picks up on the political context of last Sunday's execution of five Iranians. He quotes Ali Shakorirad, a leader of the reformist Islamic Participation Front, "The government is trying to create a security atmosphere as a crucial month approaches," and gives the pro-Government counterpoint from "Amir Mohebbian, "Their [opposition] movement has lost steam, and its leaders are disillusioned and hopeless. Those executed were terrorists. They who sympathize with terrorists are terrorists themselves."

Erdbrink also quotes an office clerk, "Fahrzad", who says, "We have all tried to return to normal, but there are killings and arrests. Maybe some are smiling on the outside, but inside we are all still upset."

0745 GMT: Economy Watch. We've posted an analysis from Ross Colvin, "The Economic Squeeze and the Real Sanctions Story".

0625 GMT: The Executions and the Opposition. EA readers may have noted the recent attempt by to deride coverage of Sunday's executions, with the claim that The New York Times showed "pro-Green" bias with the analysis that the hangings might have occurred to deter the opposition from protests on 12 June, the anniversary of the election.

A follow-up to the executions from Kayhan, the "hardline" Iranian newspaper (hat-tip to an EA reader):
The leaders of the recent plots have supported the five terrorists whose hands were stained with the blood of innocent people, and who were executed in Evin prison on May 10th. This shows that these people cannot be expected to retreat, and it would be very naive to believe that they would repent. It is all over now, and no phrase can better describe the plotters’ situation than "some people have joined the anti-Revolution and terrorists camp".

0620 GMT: Subsidy Cuts. President Ahmadinejad has said that his subsidy reduction plan will begin in the second half of the Iranian year, i.e., from late September 2010.

Previous reports said some reductions would be implemented from 21 May.

0615 GMT: Film News. As the 63rd Cannes Film Festival opened, one of the nine chairs for jury members was unclaimed.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi, detained in March, remains in Evin Prison.

0600 GMT: Kurdistan Funeral. A copy of a flyer has been posted which indicates that the service for Farzad Kamangar, executed on Sunday, will be in Mohammad Rasoolollah Mosque tomorrow from 9 to 11 a.m.

0555 GMT: Thursday's Top Comment. "Dissected News" on Twitter: "Only the ghosts of Iran's martyrs seem to be on the (Kurdish) streets."

0545 GMT: The Executions...Aftermath. RAHANA reports that the house of Shirin Alamhouli is surrounded by security forces, who are denying entry to relatives. Iranian authorities reportedly are refusing to let the family bury Alamhouli n a Muslim cemetery because she was a "mohareb" (warrior against God).

0530 GMT: Beyond a doubt, the major story yesterday was the stoppage in Kurdistan, a response to Sunday's execution  of five Iranians, four of them Kurdish. The logistics meant that confirmed news was slow to come out, but the reports, the pictures, and even the videos emerged.

We had asked earlier this week whether the anger and  dismay expressed outside Iran over the executions would be matched by public reactions within the country. We now have an answer --- we will watch how far that answer extends with responses beyond Kurdistan.

Persian2English features a further report, with photos, on yesterday's events.