{"id":2463,"date":"2007-12-17T13:17:10","date_gmt":"2007-12-17T13:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=2463"},"modified":"2007-12-17T13:17:10","modified_gmt":"2007-12-17T13:17:10","slug":"2007-12-17-in-eigener-sache-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=2463","title":{"rendered":"In eigener Sache"},"content":{"rendered":"
Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ulrich Ladurner of Die Zeit (one of Germany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s largest and most influential papers) travelling to a remote Iranian province to find out whether Ahmadinejad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s promises to improve life in the country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s regions were fulfilled. <\/p>\n

(Which is a laudable intention, as few bother to look at the country beyond nuclear bomb issue.)<\/p>\n

The article simply ends up being about how difficult it is to find information in Iran (title: The Persian labyrinth \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Has President Ahmadinejad improved the situation of the poor in the provinces? To find an answer to that is as difficult as decoding the truth on
the Iranian bomb.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Now, the author talks to a doorman working at a local authority:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Our president is the best president in the world,\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd he says, without being asked.
You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to believe he means what he says. [\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6] What he really thinks? Maybe he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that himself. Iran is a country in confusion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t this highly discriminating of Middle Easterners \u00e2\u20ac\u201c just because the khawaga <\/em>correspondent doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going on on someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that someone himself doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what he has on his mind.<\/p>\n

This is a feature, ok, but if you ask whether provinces are benefiting from what the capital promises, the words economic growth, investment and unemployment shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be totally missing from your text, should they (he does mention inflation).<\/p>\n

Instead Ladurner travels to an industrial area and tries to measure the province\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s economic development by glancing at factories and roads from the outside.<\/p>\n

One paragraph really struck me: The author finds out a school that gets promoted as being built within six months of Ahmadinejad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arrival in fact was built by a local business man two years before Ahmadinejad got elected. <\/p>\n

He gets the business man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mobile number, but then he stops short of calling the guy because he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to endanger the one he got it from (well, you just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell anyone).<\/p>\n

Local business men, affiliated with the centre of power or not, can be a good oral source in the absence of reliable social and economic data.<\/p>\n

So instead of calling up that potential source of information, he spends much of his text (and research, presumably) on complaining about Iranian state officials putting him off from office to office instead of giving him information.<\/p>\n

But the bureaucracy of some Middle Eastern states is a result of these countries\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 political economy (for which the West often is responsible) and not of the mindset of Middle Easterners, as suggested by the author in an almost Michael Friedmanian manner. <\/p>\n

(In eigener Sache<\/em> is the German media\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s slug for announcements on internal issues.)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ulrich Ladurner of Die Zeit (one of Germany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s largest and most influential papers) travelling to a remote Iranian province to find out whether Ahmadinejad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s promises to improve life in the country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s regions were fulfilled.
\n(Which is a laudable intention, as few bother to look at the country beyond nuclear bomb issue.)
\nThe article simply ends up being about how difficult it is to find information in Iran (title: The Persian labyrinth \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Has President Ahmadinejad improved the situation of the poor in the provinces? To find an answer to that is as difficult as decoding the truth on
\nthe Iranian bomb.<\/em>)
\n
\nNow, the author talks to a doorman working at a local authority:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Our president is the best president in the world,\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd he says, without being asked.
\nYou don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to believe he means what he says. [\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6] What he really thinks? Maybe he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that himself. Iran is a country in confusion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t this highly discriminating of Middle Easterners \u00e2\u20ac\u201c just because the khawaga <\/em>correspondent doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going on on someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that someone himself doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what he has on his mind.
\nThis is a feature, ok, but if you ask whether provinces are benefiting from what the capital promises, the words economic growth, investment and unemployment shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be totally missing from your text, should they (he does mention inflation).
\nInstead Ladurner travels to an industrial area and tries to measure the province\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s economic development by glancing at factories and roads from the outside.
\nOne paragraph really struck me: The author finds out a school that gets promoted as being built within six months of Ahmadinejad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arrival in fact was built by a local business man two years before Ahmadinejad got elected.
\nHe gets the business man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mobile number, but then he stops short of calling the guy because he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to endanger the one he got it from (well, you just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell anyone).
\nLocal business men, affiliated with the centre of power or not, can be a good oral source in the absence of reliable social and economic data.
\nSo instead of calling up that potential source of information, he spends much of his text (and research, presumably) on complaining about Iranian state officials putting him off from office to office instead of giving him information.
\nBut the bureaucracy of some Middle Eastern states is a result of these countries\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 political economy (for which the West often is responsible) and not of the mindset of Middle Easterners, as suggested by the author in an almost Michael Friedmanian manner.
\n(In eigener Sache<\/em> is the German media\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s slug for announcements on internal issues.)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[21,60],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2463"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}