88 Tehran University professors risk their livelihood in signed letter to Khamenei

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

That was arguably yesterday's biggest event in Iran, with 88 professors from Tehran University signing a letter to Khamenei denouncing the violent crackdown on protesters within university grounds. The university has a total of 1480 professors and teachers, but remember that these 88 are pretty much doing so on the assumption that they will be fired and/or detained for doing this, so it's not simply just laying pen to paper as one might do on a petition in another country.

The letter in Persian can be seen in full here.

The government announced about a week ago that as of January 8 it would no longer accept money that had writing on it as legal tender, and so in response to that the day before is now National Money Writing Day (روز ملی اسکناس نویسی). Every bill in sight gets written on it on National Money Writing Day.

The next expected round of clashes is written about today here in Time, including some speculation that the government is now attempting to use the same tactics China used after Tiananmen Square and whether they will be successful in that or not.

Ahmadinejad's web site also got hacked today, and doesn't seem to be in much of a hurry to change the text (it's already been almost a day since it happened). Just in case it finally changes here's a screen shot of what it says right now:


"Dear God, In 2009 you took my favorite singer - Michael Jackson, my favorite actress - Farrah Fawcett, my favorite actor - Patrick Swayze, my favorite voice - Neda. Please, please, don't forget my favorite politician - Ahmadinejad and my favorite dictator - Khamenei in the year 2010. Thank you."

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