Iran says suspected schoolgirl poisonings occurred in more than 50 schools
pbs.org
pbs.org
https://giwps.georgetown.edu/event/the-future-of-irans-democ...
"Eight of the Iranian democracy movement’s prominent diaspora leaders presented a united vision for Iran’s future for the first time since the 2022 uprisings began at a summit hosted by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS).
The diverse group — which included actresses Nazanin Boniadi and Golshifteh Farahani, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi, activists Masih Alinejad and Dr. Hamed Esmaeilion; former soccer captain Ali Karimi, former crown prince Reza Pahlavi, and Kurdish leader Abdullah Mohtadi — plans to produce a joint charter by the end of February."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Leader_of_Iran#1979
In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh was appointed as the Prime Minister of Pahlavi Iran. After the nationalization of Iran's oil industry, he became enormously popular.
He was deposed in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, an Anglo-American covert operation that marked the first time the United States had participated in an overthrow of a foreign government during the Cold War.
. . .the U.S.- and UK-instigated, Iranian army-led overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh installed the monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
After the coup, the Shah became increasingly autocratic and sultanistic, and Iran entered a decades-long phase of controversially close relations with the United States and some other foreign governments. While the Shah increasingly modernized Iran and claimed to retain it as a fully secular state, arbitrary arrests and torture by his secret police, the SAVAK, were used for crushing all forms of political opposition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
The Shah tried to rapidly westernise Iran[1], and in doing so became deeply unpopular with Islamic Fundamentalists. His reforms also upset some of the Iranian 'elite' (whose land was redistributed), and his fig leaf democracy upset secularists who wanted more power.
The killing of around 400 protestors lead to a general uprising, with the 'elites', and secularists allaying with the fundamentalists to overthrow the Shah. The elites/secularists thought they would take over, but actually had the rug pulled out from under them and the fundamentalists taking over.
I’m curious about this. Not the short story. Is there a source you’d recommend?
https://tnimage.s3.hicloud.net.tw/photos/shares/AP/20190201/...
Also I am not sure "democratic movement" is at all correct. There was a revolution but the leading groups behind it were decidedly not democratic.
I was a newly minted teen in Tehran when this happened. Ostensibly the trigger event was an anonymous op-ed in a leading Tehran daily that strangely dragged the name of Khomeini back into center stage.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/mena/forty-years-since...
At that time, Khomeini was in exile in Iraq under the watchful eyes of Sadam Hussein.
Two basic dynamics set the revolution into motion. Leftist and Islamist. The leftists were card carrying USSR affiliates Tudeh Party (The Masses), various student-cum-revolutionary Marxists, Marxists-Leninists, Maoists, etc. Prominently (because of their armed attacks on police stations, banks, etc. earlier in 70s) there was hard left secular Fadayein and "Islamic-Marxist" Mujahedin Khalgh (MKO, ..., they have a whole collection of acrynoms).
Mujahedin had a sort of spiritual guide in Ayatollah Taleghani. But for a good while after the overthrow of the regime, they went around mouthing "Imam Khomeini" until the said Imam decided he didn't need them anymore. But we digress. Taleghani was one of the reasons people were beguiled because he made very socialist/democratic pronouncements. He ended up dying "suddenly" a few months after revolution, when Khomeini was asserting his demi-god status. So "democratic"? Well, the communists are democratics in their sense of the word, kinda like CPC is democratic if you ask them. As for MKO, a brief review of their sordid history and that whole bizare show they have going on with their all female army and female leader (complete with Hijab) also should give you an idea regarding their "democratic" credentials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Taleghani
Among the Islamists, you had people like Chamran. A genius geek who went Islamist radical. He started what became Hizbollah (or Amal). [He said he worked at Bell Labs and JPL.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostafa_Chamran
The only group having any real claims to "democratic" leanings were the National Front. Their leadership made a foolish error and went to Paris to kiss the ring. Khomeini may have enjoyed humiliating them. A lone dissenter from National Front, Shapur Bakhtiar accepted to become PM before Shah left Iran. He was the lone sane voice asking pointed questions about the "holy man who lies" and refusing to kiss the ring.
Khomeini in the interim flew into Tehran on Air France (yes! French military pilots, and packed with press, spooks, and handlers) and got a frenzied reception, and immediately upon touch down pretty much told all the also-rans to basically go fuck themselves.
Bakhtiar at this point, still head of the last government of Pahlavi dynasty, was betrayed by some key members of the military leadership. They started direct negotiations with Khomeini, at the urging of an American General (who flew to Iran before Shah left). This is what is alleged by former regime officials and military (see Harvard's Iran Oral History Project) but denied by the said general. Regardless, the military declared itself "neutral".
Bakhtiar did escape to Paris but ended up getting butchered (literally) by IR regime goons sent after him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapour_Bakhtiar
MKO and Khomeini later go on to lock horns, including spectacular assassinations by MKO and massive execution sprees by the Ayatollah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadegh_Ghotbzadeh
Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, who used to have a little Islamist revolutionary office right on Dupont Circle -- oh yes -- and who none other than Robert F. Kennedy intervened on his behalf to prevent his deporation -- visa issues -- is an interesting character and no doubt many quarters are happy he is quite dead. Now, Sadegh, unlike the guy from Green Book, didn't play the piano and was quite a ladies man, the very smooth and English speaking voice and face of Ayatollah in Paris and then later in Iran, so I am not exactly sure why RFK felt his personal intervention was necessary.
He was executed by Khomeini later on after admitting under torture to being a CIA agent.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/12/13/g...
"Only the timely intervention of a New Jersey senator and then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy saved him from a quick deportation. as a communist to face charges of treason in Iran." [that's actually funny.]
That's not even true in my European country, I'm pretty sure at most 50% of Iranians speak English (not even taking into account that to write comfortably you need B2 or better English proficiency).
Any kind of English-only media is automatically ignored by 90% of my countrymates, because most people prefer their native tongue.
The internet/computers were never designed for Farsi. And the situation was way worse for phones before smartphones. It’s only recently that efforts have been made to make it possible to communicate via Farsi, Arabic, or South Asian languages. But it’s still extremely hard.
Russia has a significant Russian only computer development program, so communicating over devices via Russian is more common. East Asian languages have spent a lot more time/energy finding ways to communicate via their own languages, and even there, the most popular text communication language is one which uses English characters. Also, English is spoken far less than in a country like Iran, which has a highly educated populace, that until very recently was very integrated with the English speaking world.
Communicating in English is absolutely obvious for such a diaspora.
eg getting upset on someone else's behalf, for something that doesn't actually bother them
https://www.reddit.com/r/NewIran/comments/11hwqnc/breaking_a...
https://www.livescience.com/18310-schoolgirl-mass-hysteria-y...
Certainly girls in Iran have good reasons to feel stressed right now, and there are indeed people out there who mean them harm. Poison isn't the usual way that malice comes out, though.
O...kay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morangos_com_A%C3%A7%C3%BAcar_...
Possibly multiple times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_student_poisoning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness#In_sc...
Unfortunately many people mistakenly believe a psychosomatic illness isn't "real" - when professionals tell them "These people have a psychosomatic illness" what they hear is "These people are lying" which is not what was said, and so when the same professionals tell them, "You have a psychosomatic illness" they hear "You are lying" and they're angry - how dare these professionals accuse them of lying! They know it's real!
"Are you saying that there's some widespread campaign to poison girls, with incidenbts in 50-60 schools so far?" Doesn't sound much saner.
There’s gas based chemical attacks happening and we have mx brains over here saying it’s mass hysteria.
What is the evidence?
I’m seriously asking, because this whole things looks likely to be ignored if evidence is being suppressed.
- https://t.me/VahidOnline (Even won an award) - https://t.me/mamlekate
Hundreds of people have reported that they have smelt vanilla-like smell, which is a classic smell in various chemical attack agents.
It's outright absurd to call this an event of mass hysteria, and I'm not really sure how anyone is even getting the evidence to call it that.
The person being quoted in that article literally worked for the Iranian government. They're not a trust worthy source, where it's looking more and more like this is happening with the blessing of the state (the scale, and lack of action by officials)
Someone needs to work to compile this into a credible report. (Rando Telegrams aren’t that.) Gas attacks raise questions, such as how adults in the vicinity weren’t impacted.
This person is not a trustworthy source of information. They've worked for the Iranian government.
As long as no direct cause is found, mass hysteria is a possibility. And while it's certainly possible there's a massive government cover-up, it's also possible there's nothing to cover-up.
People are confabulating a diagnosis here, based upon next to no information. Would you want them to be your physician?
I wouldn't want somebody without a medical degree to be my doctor, but I'd have no strong objection to random people privately discussing what they thought my disease was based on an anonymous report of the symptoms.
Hypochondria is a thing. Triggering many with hpochondria is possible. But they won't all be in one class of the same school.
If you have half of all girls in a class hospitalized, it's downright ridiculous to claim hypochondria as the cause.
That said, if a third of my class was already going to the hospital because they were "poisoned," I could very easily see myself getting overly worried about my own health to the extent where I would join them in the hospital. And I wouldn't consider myself a hypochondriac by any means.
That "mystery illness" is an invention to explain away cases of unknown cause. An argument by ignorance essentially.
Observe how in this particular instance the spread of the disease does not conform to what would be expected if the cause was information.
These are very similar to mass hysteria. But they are connected to very real things like subsets of the population experiencing trauma. War and covid was traumatic mentally for a lot of people and that can manifest as other physical symptoms. Whether everyone in the group has a direct connection to those things or get grouped through circumstance and general interest by doctors/scientists/media is a big differentiator.
(Not saying this poisoning case fits this but it’s always good to be suspicious).
Essentially, you are confabulating a cause where there is not enough evidence.