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The protesters demonstrating against Iran’s clerical regime have already shown that they are brave. And they seem to be meeting with more and more success. Women walk around unveiled in Tehran and are hailed by drivers for their courage. It seems some security forces have given up on policing certain remote areas, effectively surrendering control of the streets to the
Social media is a powerful tool, for both good and ill. In Myanmar, social media — and Facebook in particular — has been put to cruel and dangerous use. In Myanmar, as in other countries, before the most recent episode of genocide against the Rohingya Muslims, racists and bigots took to Facebook to spread their ideas. Celebrity Buddhist monks, most notably Ashin Wirathu, used
The Iranian state has tried to squash the country’s protesters with threats. It has tried to crush the demonstrations with violence. We have seen this before, many times in recent years, and the state is well used to inflicting mass killings to maintain its hold on power. This time, however, it does not appear to be working. The protests continue. Led by women, Iranians have
Iran’s leaders would prefer it if their people chanted “Death to America,” but instead protesters in towns and cities across the country are calling for “Death to the dictator.” The spark, as in so many protest and revolutionary movements in history, was the murder of a young woman. Mahsa Amini, 22, from Kurdistan province, was traveling with her family to Tehran when she was
In any political system, the way the government runs an economy is a fairly good proxy for how well they run other aspects of society. Economies that are run attentively, with an eye to growth and prosperity, tend to exist within orderly, open societies. The opposite is also true. Economies that are run badly — with little care given to the suffering of the people — or