Like its leaders, Iran’s motorists are now ‘directionless’
Hebrew has a wonderful word for fools – ‘Schlemiels’. It differs from the Yiddish word ‘schlimazels’, who are prone to misfortune. An example of revealing the fine distinction between the two is of the traveler who spills his coffee on another. The spiller, if a frequent occurrence, is the ‘schlemiel’ and the ill-fated recipient of the coffee stain, the ‘schlimazel’.
Both words resonate regarding Iran these days, whose citizens suffer like ‘schlimazels’ being led by ‘schlemiels’!
Bunch of Blockheads
Iran to Ban “Zionist” Waze
This was all too evident in Iran’s decision this October 2017 to re-block the world’s top GPS-based navigation application WAZE due to “some disturbing issues”. The issues “disturbing” Iran, was its Israeli origin. The free crowdsourced Israeli navigation app that allows users to share traffic information automatically in real time, was acquired by Google in 2013 for over one billion US dollars.
Access to the app was temporary blocked in Iran earlier in March, but the ban was later removed, now to be again re-blocked. A characteristic of WAZE is that it warns of temporary obstructions and road closures. In Iran, WAZE could introduce a new feature to help drivers avoid the most dangerous obstruction – its government!
Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, secretary of the Iranian cyberspace watchdog (Teheran Times)
The traffic jams in a city like Teheran with a population of 8.8 million is horrendous. Designed “to beat the traffic”, the Israeli designed WAZE would be a welcome tool to Teheran motorists. But no, the secretary of the Committee for Determining Criminal Web Content, Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, knows better. Treating his countryfolk as a nation of still camel riders, he insists that the Information and Communications Technology Ministry block the app.
The irony of this proposed boycott is that it is being championed by a committee whose concern is – “Criminal Content”!
Where is the concern over “Criminal Content” when Khorramabadi’s own country:
– Is the biggest global culprit in spreading terrorism causing deaths to thousands across the Middle East and further afield?
– Proudly displays “Death to Israel” “and “Death to the USA” on its intercontinental ballistic missiles?
– Is in cahoots with North Korea’s lunatic leader in developing its nuclear’ programme?
– Has one of the worst human rights records in the world?
Amnesty International’s 2017 report asserted that Iran’s persistent use of cruel and inhuman punishments – “including floggings, amputations and blinding – exposed the authorities’ utterly brutal sense of justice.”
Hundreds are routinely flogged in Iran each year, sometimes in public. On 5 January, a journalist was lashed forty times in Najaf Abad, Esfahan Province, after “a court found him guilty of inaccurately reporting the number of motorcycles confiscated by police in the city.”
Risky business being a journalist in Iran wanting to report the truth!
Imagine what the fate could be of a journalist reporting on the number of Iranian motorist using the “Israeli” WAZE.
That might just qualify him or her, from being hung in public from a crane!
Iran has one of the highest rates of executions in the world and Iran Human Rights (IHR) estimated at least 570 prisoners, ten of whom were women, were hanged during the first half of 2015, with a rate of three executions per day. The figure had increased by 40% compared to the first half of 2014.
The majority of the executions occurred in Ghezel Hesar, Iran’s largest state prison with 20,000 prisoners (four times its official capacity), where dozens of inmates were executed in June after they gathered in the prison yard to ask Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for forgiveness.
One of those condemned was reported to have said: “They take about two people at a time out of our hall and execute them. Then they bring 20 more people to the prison. Nothing changes, the cycle repeats. Honestly, what we did doesn’t warrant death. The least they can do is give first-time offenders a second chance so we may resume our lives.”
Many of the executed, included the ‘crimes’ of “waging war against God” and “corruption of the heart”.
Iran Human Rights spokesperson Prof. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam
All the executions were carried out by hanging. An IHR spokesperson Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam told IBTimes UK that there are different ways of hanging inmates. In Iran, prisoners are usually pulled up by their necks with the use of cranes.
“It takes them many minutes to die, it’s a way of torturing them along with the execution,” said Amiry-Moghaddam. He reveals that “Two years ago, a man had survived fourteen minutes of hanging before dying. So, hanging is not intended as the standard way of momentary pain. It’s not that they just die, it is a slow strangulation.”
Not even juveniles are exempt from Iranian ‘justice’!
Iran allows capital punishment for juveniles in case of “qesas” (retribution-in-kind) and “hodoud” (offences and punishments for which there are fixed penalties under Islamic law).
In August 2017, Alireza Tajiki, was executed following his conviction as a child. Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa Magdalena Mughrabi said:
“By going ahead with this execution in defiance of their obligations under international law, and despite huge public and international opposition, the Iranian authorities have again cruelly demonstrated their complete disdain for children’s rights. This shameful act marks a critical turning point for Iran, and exposes the hollowness of the authorities’ claims to have a genuine juvenile justice system.”
Alireza Tajiki was the fourth person executed so far in Iran this year who was arrested as a child. “His execution,” says Mughrabi, “which was carried out despite his allegations that he was tortured into “confessing”, consolidates a horrendous pattern that has seen Iran repeatedly send people arrested as children to the gallows, often after deeply unfair trials.”
‘WAZE’ out of Control
None of his country’s inhumanity concerns Khorramabadi, who is too preoccupied in blocking WAZE. Maybe using WAZE to avoid traffic snarls in Teheran could be construed as “waging war against God” or “corruption of the heart”.
Can you imagine motorists in Teheran using WAZE and driving past a construction site and thinking, “Golly; maybe I could be hanging from that crane one day!”
Reza Ghazinouri
Reza Ghazinouri, co-director of human rights group United for Iran, told MWL (Mobile World Live) that “Iranian officials’ recent attempt to block WAZE is the newest assault in a long battle they have waged against Iranians’ right to freedom of information.”
“Statements by Iran’s officials that they plan to block WAZE because the initial app was developed in Israel demonstrates what little weight they give to their responsibility to protect individual rights in Iran.”
He further added that “We urge Iran to review their stance and comply with its own national law and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which it’s a signatory, and allow Iranians full access to all information and technology that’s available to the public.”
Boycotting WAZE says less about Israel and more about Iran – its hypocrisy its stupidity and some of its friends – notably South Africa.
It was reported in South Africa’s on-line defence portal, defenceWeb, that in January, the Islamic Republic of Iran and South Africa signed a memorandum of understanding to boost defence and military cooperation. Iran’s growing ties to South Africa come as no surprise, superseding decades of diplomatic cooperation.
South Africa, that toys with reducing ties with Israel, has no problems in cozying up a country that belittles the scale of the Holocaust and seeks to destroy Israel. In fact, South Africa is planning on more than just cozying up.
While South Africa is quick to constantly hark back on Israel’s relations with the Apartheid regime – factually far less than most countries it does massive business with today, including Saudi Arabia who provided it with oil – it will have no qualms of suppling the bloody regime and human rights violators with “Denel Rooivalk helicopter and a host of missiles.”
Morality out the door “South Africa stands to gain hundreds of millions of Rands.”
WAZE – A Capital Idea
It’s crazy this all-out war waged by the Islamic republic on the shared navigation app because of its Israeli roots. Justifying its obstructing of access to the app, Iran asserts:
“Waze was invented by Zionist developers.”
Relying on user intelligence, the app enables drivers to take the quickest possible route to their destination. Now, due to a distinct lack of intelligence on the part of Iran’s leaders, its motorists will probably end up taking the longest – more congested – routes to their destinations.
Many Iranian users recounted recently using the app on Twitter with one even petitioning the company for Persian language support due its “thousands of users” in the country.
One daring Teheran journalist, Ali Noorani, braved admitting on his Twitter account:
“I used WAZE on my way to work today. Iran has already blocked the app, but it seems they [twitter] found a way to circumvent the blockage.”
Was Ali committing a future ‘capital offence’ in his country’s capital?
It seems for Iranians “to have a life” they need to find ways to ‘circumnavigate’ their leaders.
Maybe ‘The Start-Up Nation’ will come up with a suitable app for the hapless Iranian people!
The wAze -TEAM. (l-r): WAZE founders Uri Levine, Noam Bardin, Ehud Shabtai and Amir Shinhar topped “Globes” list of the most influential people in Israel’s economy in 2013.
