The world’s most dangerous arms dealer, June 29, 2023
He’s a key figure in the clandestine wranglings of two superpowers: the United States and China. The FBI announced a five-million-dollar bounty for information leading to his arrest. Intelligence agencies and investigators have been trying for decades to stop him in his tracks: the arms dealer Karl Lee.
The Chinese businessman has helped Iran develop its huge missiles arsenal. Missiles that kill in the Middle East, that are supplied to Russia for possible deployment in Ukraine and have the potential to carry nuclear warheads. The documentary is the first to tell the story of the hunt for the phantom-like Karl Lee, alias Li Fangwei, probably the world’s most dangerous weapons dealer. He’s been indicted in absentia in the US and American presidents have even personally asked Beijing to take action against him. But his network continues to be active; and he’s still high up on the FBI’s most-wanted list. And this, at a time when missiles and nuclear warheads are becoming a tangible threat to humanity.
The documentary follows Karl Lee’s trail across four continents, from Washington and New York to Tel Aviv, from Europe to Teheran, Beijing and Karl Lee’s factory in northeastern China. The prize-winning investigative journalists Philipp Grüll, Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer provide unique insights into the world of spy agencies and diplomacy. At the same time, the film is a lesson in the powerlessness of the West and the rise of China - as well as an unflinching appraisal of the new world order.
Students in Iran refuse to back down from protests sparked by death of young woman, November 3, 2022
Iran’s ongoing crackdown against protestors continues as nationwide demonstrations sparked by the death of a 22-year-old woman in police custody are now in their seventh week. Nick Schifrin and producer Zeba Warsi have been speaking with students there and report that despite Iran’s attempts at suppression, the protests persist.
Another pro-MAGA activist has been outed as a Chinese spy, according to the Washington Post.
Just as Elon Musk is taking over Twitter, the company uncovered three China-based operatives pretending to be influencers in American politics as part of an effort to polarize Americans ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
In a cache of data released by the site, nearly 2,000 users were uncovered as they claimed election-rigging and attacked members of the transgender community. They also promoted pro-China narratives to their American audience.
if you make fun of people cutting their hair in solidarity with iranian women, you’re ignorant and bigoted. cutting hair is a part of our culture and literature, it is done in order to grieve for losing loved ones.
if you try to tell us what to do, you have a savior complex, you think that you know about our lives more than we do. you don’t know the amount of times i’ve seen non-iranian people calling our revolution pointless or cia-planted. i’ve seen a woman saying that iranian people aren’t politically aware. while there are thousands, literally thousands of political activists in prisons right now, some of them have been in prisons for 40 fucking years and you have the audacity to call us politically unaware?? our whole life is political. we live in a fucking theocracy and religion decides everything for us, even the most personal things. we’ve been through this shit for 4 fucking decades and we know the dangers of a revolution, we know all the stuff that might happen after that, we’re not fucking stupid.
and lastly, if you call iranian people islamophobic than fuck you. when we burn our sign of oppression you call us islamophobic but you stayed silent when they murdered muslim people a week ago WHILE THEY WERE PRAYING. you don’t know shit about the oppression that sunni muslims face in iran and you support a regime that kills innocent people, including muslim people. so please stop making this about yourselves. stop with your “but what about that country where they did that bad thing” bs, this is not about you. after almost 44 years people are finally listening to us, people are finally realizing how fucking oppressed we are. so stop spreading misinformation. if you don’t want to support us that’s ok but repeating the government’s propaganda is fucked up and cruel.
there are people dying in the streets because we can’t wear whatever we want, because we can’t love whoever we want, because we can’t believe in another god, because we can’t choose what to do, because the government is erasing our culture and language, because we lost our loved ones because of them. i want you to feel what we’re going through, i can write about our oppression for weeks, i can define freedom in thousands of ways. i’ve never smiled from the bottom of my heart and i know i never will. i’ve been through a lot and i know people who’ve been through more trauma than me. so for once please support us, stop with your “all lives matter” kind of bs, donate and sign petitions and most importantly talk about us.
Stencils seen in Iran featuring the names and faces of women murdered by cops during the ongoing protests following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22 year old Kurdish woman who was murdered by the morality police after being arrested and beaten for supposedly incorrectly wearing a hijab.
For Mehsa, Nika, Sarina, Mino, Hadith, Hajar, Hadida, Hanana, Aisan and every other woman whose life was stolen these days, because she cried out for freedom.
Shervin Hajipour is an Iranian singer known for his song Baraye, which has been described as “the anthem” of the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests. He was arrested shortly after publishing the song.
An Iranian mother holding a picture of her son who got killed in the protest over the tragic death of Mahsa Amini and shouting his name. Listen how proudly she is crying for justice. She wants everyone to say his name and to stand up for freedom.
Nika Shakarami was nearly 17 years old when she went missing during a protest rally on september 20. when she was found, dead, 9 days later, her family was not allowed to see her head when asked to identify her body. she was filled with injuries including a smashed nose and broken skull.
another teen girl, 16 year old Sarina Esmailzadeh, was also killed. she was reportedly hit repeatedly in the head by the police.
Iran cracks down on protests after death of young woman as global demonstrations grow, September 27, 2022
Protests mostly led by women are spreading in Iran and around the world. They were sparked by the death of a young woman in the custody of the so-called “morality police.” Over the last ten days, images have emerged of women burning their headscarves, cutting off their hair and marching in the thousands, chanting “death to the dictator.” Reza Sayah joined Amna Nawaz to discuss the demonstrations.
A mysterious ancient writing system called Linear Elamite, used between about 2300 B.C. and 1800 B.C. in what is now southern Iran, might have finally been deciphered, although some experts are skeptical about the findings. What’s more, it’s unclear whether all the artifacts used to decipher the writings were legally acquired.
Only about 40 known examples of Linear Elamite survive today, making the script challenging to decode, but researchers say they’ve largely accomplished just that, they wrote in a paper published in July in the journal Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie (German for the “Journal of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology”). Key to their decipherment was the analysis of eight inscriptions on silver beakers.
Other research teams had previously decoded different Linear Elamite inscriptions, and the new study’s authors built on this previous work by comparing the writing system in the eight Linear Elamite inscriptions with cuneiform (an already-deciphered script used in what is now the Middle East) texts that date to around the same time period and likely contain the names of the same rulers and their titles and use some of the same phrases to describes the rulers. Read more.
