Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The Gift to Ban Ki-Moon that Was Misappropriated

Hand woven Persian carpets have long been a quintesential Iranian gift. Some of these hand woven carpet gifts, like the one made by the Tabriz weavers with the picture of the American Howard Baskerville,  have occupied a permanent place in Iran’s recent history.

Howard Baskerville was an American teacher in the Presbyterian Missionary School in Tabriz , who was killed fighting alongside Iranian freedom fighters during Iran’s Constitutional Revolution in 1909. Tabriz weavers then made a carpet with Howard Baskerville’s face in recognition of his courage and sacrifice as a special gift to Baskerville’s mother.

It looks like the hand woven silk carpet gift, given to the UN General Secretary, Ban Ki-Moon,  by Ahamdinejad, will also occupy a place in the Iranian history, although for much less noble reasons as the one that was made for Howard Baskerville.

Ahmadinejad presented the carpet gift, shown in the above picture, to Ban Ki-Moon, three years ago. The carpet displayed a woven map of Iran with the words of the unofficial Iranian national anthem above it. Ahamdinejad presented this gift as “A symbol of Iran’s culture, civilisation, peace and friendship to the General Secretary of the United Nations”.

Now, three years later, it turns out the carpet was never Ahmadinejad’s to give as a gift to anyone in the first place. The carpet belongs to an Iranian businessman, Asghar Taslimi, from Isfahan, who had left the piece with the National Iranian Carpet Centre as a demo sample, so he could get  approval for a loan to mass produce that design.  Taslimi was told to go back to Isfahan and someone would contact him with an answer, but no one ever did. His efforts to have his demo sample returned to him were to no avail either and he was passed from one department to another. Taslimi had given up on ever seeing his carpet again, until one day; his family phoned him and said they had just seen the sample he had left with the National Iranian Carpet Centre,  on the state television news, being presented to Ban Ki-Moon by Ahmadinejad, in New York!

The Iranian businessman swears he was never paid for the carpet nor did he ever give consent for his sample to be given to anyone as a present, and so technically the General Secretary of UN, Ban Ki-Moon is now in possession of stolen goods.

The Carpet Woven in Honour of Howard Baskerville






Monday, August 18, 2014

Riding on the Waves of the Success of Iran's Female Mathematician

Rouhani's PR savvy team who update his tweets, came up with another master tweet in English to gloss over his international image outside Iran. In this tweet shown on the left, not only Rouhani congratulates the Iranian mathematician for being the first ever female to win the mathematics Fields Medal, but also places a picture of Maryam Mirzakhani without the mandatory hejab that she would have to wear if she still lived in Iran; hence inducing the idea of a moderate Iranian president that the Western media is so fond of believing.

The truth however is that had Maryam Mirzakhani stayed in Iran, like many other Iranians, not only she would not have had the opportunity to excel in what she is good at, but she would have been treated as a second class citizen for being a woman. Her success is partly due to her decision to leave Iran and the opportunities that living in a free country has brought her way. Many of Iran's elite brainiacs decide to leave Iran, in what has become known as Iran's brain drain.

Thirty four years ago, the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, made a prologue to Iran's so-called "Cultural Revolution" catastrophe, by saying:
"They keep talking about a brain drain, to hell with them leaving. Let these educated people who constantly talk of science and Western civilisation leave, These hypocrites say there is a brain drain. Let them go. We don't need this kind of Western science and civilisation"

Maryam Mirzakhani was fortunate to be able to leave Iran, she was also lucky to survive a bus crash that killed seven of Iran's elite mathematics pupils in February 1997.



Maryam Mirzakhani is seen in this photograph below, taken two years before the fatal crash, with other Iranian elite brainiac pupils. She is the third from the right in the front row.


And below is a brief tragic tale of what has happened to some of the other Iranian elite pupils and geniuses who were unfortunate not to be able to leave Iran:

Foad Sojoodi Farimani - a PhD student at Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran. He registered two inventions, both related to robotic surgery, was arrested in 2010 and sentenced to eight years in prison, for insulting Islam, "acting against national security" and insulting Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei

Mitra Aali - Bio-Material graduate from Sharif university, who had come 7th in the national university entrance exams, was arrested in 2009.

Omid Kokbai - won the physics olympiad in Iran, arrested as he was about to leave Iran, now serving a 10 year sentence.

Ali Akbar Mohamadzadeh - Also a Sharif university graduate sentenced to 6 years in 2009

Amin Niayifar - Also one of the elite pupils who graduated from Tehran Technical university in Mechanical Engineering, was flogged for insulting Iran's officials.

Arman Rezakhani - winner of the national Mathematics olympiad, also arrested in 2009. Now studying computer engineering in Texas university.

Soroush Sabet, winner of a bronze medal in the Computing Olympiad and a silver medal in the Mathematics Olympiad, was sentenced to two years prison in 2009.

Maryam Mirzakhani's husband is not Iranian, he is from the Czech Republic. Their 3 year old daughter, Anahita, therefore can not get a visa to travel to Iran, unless Mirzakhani's husband officially converts to Islam. According to the laws of the Islamic Republic, the marriage between a Muslim woman with a non-Muslim woman is not officially recognised.

And this is how Maryam Mirzakhani's picture was published in the Iranian newspapers to avoid the Hejab problem, her head was merged into the blackboard, so the faithful don't get tempted by seeing her hair!