Word: westernizes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Iran's state radio says seven people died in clashes in Tehran after an "unauthorized gathering" occurred following a mass rally over alleged election fraud. The report says the seven died in shooting that erupted after several people at the gathering on Monday night in western Tehran "tried to attack a military location." More than 100,000 opponents of President Ahmadinejad had marched through Tehran earlier on Monday protesting alleged vote-rigging in last week's elections. The report on Tuesday gave no details. It was the first official confirmation of shooting in Tehran's Azadi Square. Witnesses there...
...promise either undelivered, or delivered so shoddily that the project at hand, a bridge or a road, was unusable. I applied for official permission to report a story on the President's popularity outside Tehran and was turned down. Given the government's constant griping about the Western media only assessing Ahmadinejad through urban attitudes, this seemed suspect. (See pictures of Iran's response to the election results at LIFE.com...
...notion that Ahmadinejad won this election by a landslide is farcical. And the tepid response of Western governments, who are clearly most concerned with nuclear negotiations under another Ahmadinejad government, has been shameful. If it hadn't been for the extraordinarily high turnout in Friday's election, the fraudulent result would not have been such a watershed moment for Iran. That Iranians buried their cynicism and turned out in such record numbers to vote is what makes this such a bleak and precarious moment for the nation. Any vestige of legitimacy that the government might have had in many Iranians...
...Cooperation Organization (SCO), a Chinese-driven body aimed at improving ties with Russia and Central Asia, and the so-called BRIC group - a gang of four emerging world powers in Brazil, Russia, India and China. With the SCO and BRIC meeting at the same place, much of the non-Western world's geopolitical muscle is now rubbing shoulders in the shadow of the Urals. And the Iranian President, who never shies from making bold pronouncements, was not going to miss an opportunity to let loose his usual rhetorical flair. Soon after landing, Ahmadinejad launched a broadside at the fortunes...
...much as some Iranian conservatives may wish otherwise, the Islamic republic has never been able to seal tight state rule over society: it is a sloppy authoritarian state with elements of democracy. Iranian democracy may not be recognizably Western, but its dynamic seeps into the highest echelons of power, even if it is embodied in an instinct for consensus among a clerical élite with diverse opinions. It is a dynamic that even Khamenei has to answer...