Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Rumors, rumors

This reminds me of the day I ripped a UPI headline from the teletype machine (I'm obviously talking about ancient times) and read on air a bulletin that said Nikita Khrushchev had died. He hadn't, but the rumor died quickly. This comes from al Arabiya.

Iran's supreme leader rumored to be dead
The closure of the official website of Iran's supreme leader fueled rumors that have been circulating for the past few days that Ali Khamenei has died after he collapsed last week.

Further fueling the rumors were the closure of the official websites of Iran’s radio and television all of which were not said to have been closed due to technical problems...

The 70-year-old supreme leader reportedly collapsed last Monday and drifted into a coma...

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is reported to have met with Mojtaba Khamenei, a hard-line cleric and son of Khamenei, to discuss potential successors and speculate on who the Assembly of Experts, the body in charge of electing the Supreme Leader, would choose.


Khamenei photo disproves death rumors
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's office released a picture of the leader from an official meeting he held Saturday with Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade.

The picture is the first to be published since rumors about the Ayatollah sinking into a coma surfaced. Earlier this week, a website with close ties to the Iranian government claimed the rumors stemmed from western propaganda aimed at confusing the Iranian public and destabilizing the country...



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