D10HW2 Annotated Bibliography

"A Brief Biography of the Life of His Eminence Ayatollah Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran." khamenei.ir.10 July 2006. Institute for Preserving and Publishing Works by Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. 31 Oct. 2007 < http://www.khamenei.ir/EN/home.jsp >.

This is a website I found using google. It was built and maintained by a institute in the Iranian government and as such alot of the information I found in it I consider unreliable. It is a website on the Supreme Leader of Iran. He is essentially a shadowy dictator. The man behind the curtain. Most of what we see is the President, Mahamoud Ahmadinejad. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, is a heavy religious figure as his title of Ayatollah implies and he has a history with the Islamic Revolution serving under Khomenei. What I ended up picking out of the biography were statements of his activities with the Revolution as I figured they would be reasonably trueful. One thing I read that struck me in the biography, and which really pushed home to me the fact that this is a big propoganda website, was a sentence equating satanic activities to American.

Khamenei, Sayyed. "Ayatollah Sayyed Khamenei's Statement."25 Feb. 2006. Aspiring Shia. 1 Nov. 2007 < http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-IjbSK44icqKEbe9dJuBBUbA-?cq=1&p=42 >.

This is a speach that the Iranian Supreme Leader gave last year comenting on fighting that occured in Iraq which affected two holy Shiite shrines. I found this source backed up alot of things I found elseware. Particularly, Khamenei's anti Western and Israel leanings game out in the speach. He never refers to the U.S. directly instead refering to us as "occupying power" or "dominance seeking powers." In his speach the Ayatollah does call on Muslims not to combat each other and he states that Muslims should not be fighting Muslims. It's interesting seeing these words which came out of the horses mouth. When I look at pictures of the Ayatollah you might think he was just a sweet old Grandpa when in reality he is a Islamic revolutionary with a heavy background in military force and anti American leanings.