#most of the last few posts have been queued but there was some mobile website lurking

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Writing A Blind/Visually Impaired Character: Canes, Guide Dogs, O&M

Wow, back in June I decided to take a few months break from blogging to recharge and focus on my mental health. About a month ago I began writing this specific post, slowly and in stages because of how demanding, detailed, and long it is.

I’m not sure when I planned to come back. I have about 200 posts with tags and image description in my drafts folder, waiting to be queued, but I wanted to finish this guide before I fully came back.

Come back with a bang, right?

But this blog, and specifically, my Writing a Blind or Visually Impaired Character  guide, has gotten so much traffic and support that I felt incredibly motivated to come back now.

So I finished the guide, and now here it is. It’s been a year+ in the making. Since the very beginning of this writing advice series about writing blind characters, I’ve promised to write a guide specifically about canes, guide dogs, O&M, and other accessibility measures the blind community relies on. 

In fact, if you look at my master post for this guide (now pinned at the first post on my blog) you’ll find that it was reserved as Part Four, even as other guides and additions were added over the last year.

In this post I’ll be explaining 

What Orientation and Mobility (O&M) is

How one learns O&M

About canes, from different types of canes and their parts, as well as how to use a cane. 

I will be explaining the sensory experiences of using a cane and how to describe it in narrative. 

I will include small mannerisms long-time cane uses might develop. 

At the very end will be a section on guide dogs, but this will be limited to research because I have no personal experience with guide dogs, being a cane user.

Disclaimer: I am an actual visually impaired person who has been using a cane for nearly three years and has been experiencing vision loss symptoms for a few years longer than that. This guide is based on both my experiences and my research. My experiences are not universal however because every blind person has a unique experience with their blindness

What Is Orientation & Mobility

Orientation and Mobility (O&M) is the specific skill of understanding and navigating the world safely and confidently with vision loss.

I’m going to quote Vision Aware’s specific definition [link]

"Orientation" refers to the ability to know where you are and where you want to go, whether you're moving from one room to another or walking downtown for a shopping trip.

"Mobility" refers to the ability to move safely, efficiently, and effectively from one place to another, such as being able to walk without tripping or falling on steps or elevation changes, crossing streets, and using public transportation

O&M can involve :

-learning how to use a cane, as well as what cane works best for you

-safely navigating obstacles with your cane, including stairs, ramps, elevators, uneven or curved sidewalks, through crowds, around furniture

-learning safe strategies for crossing the street

-planning routes to new or recurring locations

-using technology enroute, including GPS and apps like Uber and Lyft

-safely accessing public transportation

-how to ask for help when needed

-working with human sighted guides

A Note on the Blind Community and Their Relationship with Canes

The Perkins School for the Blind estimates that only 2-8% of the blind community rely on canes for navigation. The rest rely on remaining vision, guide dogs, and sighted guides. Only about 2% of the blind community relies on guide dogs however, and to get a guide dog in the first place, a person must go through O&M classes and use a cane for six months before they can sign up for a guide dog.

What this means is that 90% of the blind community don’t use a cane.

I didn’t know this fact until I begun research for this guide, and that number astounds me. 

Truth be told, while I have navigated my life without a cane before, I can’t imagine going back to the way it was before I got it. Even if I only need my cane some of the time, I can’t bear to not use it in the situations I need it. Having a cane made my life a lot easier, a lot safer.

I don’t know what to attribute this number to.

I might attribute it to the concepts of invisible vs. visible disability, internalized ableism, or the feeling of ‘not being blind enough’ for a cane, as well as accessibility to the blind community and knowledge, and access to buying a cane in the first place. I could write a thing about it, but if I try it’s gonna be its own post.

Onward~

How Do You Learn O&M? How Will My Character Learn?

You will have to find an Orientation and Mobility instructor and have them personally teach you O&M skills.

The O&M Instructor is a sighted adult who has gone to school for a bachelor’s degree and gone through O&M training themselves while blindfolded, usually fulfilling a certain requirement of hours (one program required 400 hours of O&M practice blindfolded before you could become certified), and apply for certification to teach O&M.

(Or, as is the process to become an instructor in the United States, where I am from. Becoming an instructor would vary in other countries, I’m sure)

To find an O&M instructor, you would reach out to your local school or foundation for the blind. Finding your nearest school for the blind could be done through…

Google search

Your Ophthalmologist (eye doctor) referring you to a school for the blind

A Social Service Worker reaching out to you and helping you contact the school

Possibly your school (as in grade/primary school, high school, university) reaching out to the nearest school for the blind on your behalf.

Unfortunately, there is not an abundance of schools and foundations, so your nearest might still be a far travel distance. My local school is a 45 minute drive away. For some it might a few hours away. 

This is, again, a U.S. experience, because our land mass is spaced out, and something like a six hour drive feels like nothing to most people (although is highly impractical and very difficult to a blind person who cannot drive themselves), but in other countries a six hour drive would mean crossing several borders, and other countries have different social programs.

There is not a full and complete database of every available school for the blind either, no one website to find every possible option. For example, the school I went to wasn’t listed in most of the website resources I found, even though it has seven branches and locations. 

This is more a complaint at the real life struggle to find disabled services, that there are few comprehensive resources out there. If you ask me, it should be made significantly easier to find and access your local blind communities. Accessibility and disabled services should be easily available everywhere.

If your story is based in a real world location, googling ‘school for the blind (city/county/country)’ should suffice in finding the one most local to your setting.

What might a school for the blind provide for your character?

Well, on top of helping your character connect to an O&M instructor, a school for the blind might provide other rehabilitation classes and access to additional resources.

Those rehabilitation classes could include lessons on:

-Reading/Writing Braille & using brailling machines

-Technology classes for screen readers, magnifiers, etc on your computer and smart phone.

My local school has separate classes specific to Andriod, iOS, JAWS, Zoomtext Fusion

-Independent Living skills (cooking, cleaning, organizing, planning how to get groceries and medications)

-Self Improvement (dancing, art, music, self defense. These were classes my school taught)

The additional resources form these schools might include- 

Referrals to counselors for coping with vision loss

Access to their audio-book and braille library

Access to magnifier devices, brailler machines (think of a typewriter for writing braille)

Some schools also offer grade-school or high-school education, meaning blind children/teens learn there instead of a mainstream school.

Some schools have lodgings for clients to stay at while going through rehabilitation, especially if the vision loss is sudden and severe. They live on-campus and take part in classes. Other schools only have day classes offered and you need to find transportation for every visit. Many schools might have a rehabilitation specialist or O&M instructor visit you in your home.

My local school did the last two. They had on site classes, but the school is a 45 minute drive from me, so I only visited a few times. They were able to send an O&M instructor to me. 

On Wednesdays at 3 pm she would drive to my house and give me lessons on using my cane. Those included her driving me to different locations to practice certain skills (like using stairs and escalators at the mall, or crossing a moderately busy intersection, or visiting a bus station to practice boarding a bus safely and communication with a bus driver where my stop was).

She also brought multiple different types of canes for new students to try out and determine which felt best for them.

The Many Types of Canes

Long Canes are used to sweep the immediate area in front of the cane user as they’re walking. This is the cane type that the general public is most familiar with seeing. There are several sub-types of long canes. They can also be called white canes or probing canes.

[Image Description: Man in business clothes traveling on the side walk with a white and red cane. End Image Description]

White cane can be a misnomer for two reasons: One, the concept of the standard cane for the blind can look different in different countries. In America, the standard is white with a red tip. In some countries the standard is an all-white cane. In some countries an all white cane might mean the user is blind while a white cane with a red tip means the user is deaf-blind.

Two, some companies like Ambutech allow customers to customize their cane colors and tips. Example: Molly Burke’s hot pink cane. My white cane with a purple tip. An all black or all sky blue or all red or all purple cane. A black cane with a blue or purple tip. Ambutech also allows customers to request neon-colored reflective tape to make their canes more visible at night.

Probing cane is not a term I’ve personally heard before, but it is a term Vision Aware uses on their website.

There are three main types of long canes:

Non-folding Canes: a cane that has no sections, cannot be folded or collapsed.

[Image Description: stock photo of man in business suit with a non-folding all white cane. End Image Description]

Folding Canes: The cane has 3-6 sections depending on its height. The taller the cane, the more sections it has. The sections are separate pieces that are made to snap together and are held together by a strong elastic rope inside the sections.

[Image Description: a folding cane with four sections, white with a red tip, and a rolling marshmallow tip. End Image Description]

Telescopic Canes: in which the sections slide into each other, similar to a telescope/spyglass, rather than pulling apart and folding. The handle is the widest section, and the tip section is the thinnest.

[Image Description: Three stacked images of a blue telescopic cane. First is of the cane completely collapsed. Second is of the sections partially sliding out. Third is the cane sections completely out and locked.]

Beyond that is also the Identification Cane. The function of this cane is to visibly identify the user as blind. It’s not used for O&M the way long canes are, there is no sweeping out the next two steps. It can be used as a support cane, however. 

It’s appeals most to the elderly who not only make up a huge percentage of the blind community, but might also benefit most from having both a support cane and an identifier for their blindness, in case they need assistance. 

[Image Description: identification cane with curved handle. All white with red tip. End Image Description]

A note: From what I’ve heard in the blind community, some people prefer solid/non-folding canes over folding or telescopic canes. The reason for this is that solid canes transfer vibration better than folding or telescopic canes. It’s said that the more sections a cane has, the less precise the vibrations are. 

Some cane users train themselves to understand the vibrations of the surfaces their canes are touching. It tells them what kind of surface they’re on (wood vs. marble vs. concrete), if there are nearby objects to their cane. While I rely somewhat on cane vibrations to tell me what surface I’m walking on (more on that later), it is beyond my current O&M abilities to use cane vibrations to sense nearby walls or objects.

Cane vibrations are just an additional information-sense to add to the others in use, and extra bit of data input.

Parts of the Cane: Materials, Handle, Tips, Sections, Elastic Band

Material

The three most common types of materials used to make canes are aluminum, carbon-fiber, and fiberglass. Each material has some drawbacks and benefits.

The ideal cane is lightweight and durable. It should be strong enough to withstand hitting something solid without bending or splintering.

Aluminum is strong and durable, but heavy. If it’s damage, it’s more likely to bend than break entirely. A bend can be straightened out, but it takes considerable strength.

Carbon-fiber is lightweight and durable. It’s stronger than fiberglass, and it can bend out of shape rather than splintering.

Fiberglass is lightweight but a bit rigid. If it breaks, it splinters.

Handles and Elastic Bands

While some canes can have specialized grips (plastic, wood, corkboard) the most common handle material is a black rubber handle that is about ten inches long, give or take. In the previous photos you’ve seen, the canes have had black rubber handles.

Here is an example of a cane with a wood-mesh material used as the handle.

[Image Description: a four section white cane with a red tip and a orange wood mesh handle, with black elastic band attached. End Image Description]

The benefits of black rubber handles over others are that it’s easier to hold onto, especially if your palms are wet or sweaty, than a plastic or polished wood handle. It also wouldn’t show the indents or scratches from wear and tear daily use. I’m guessing that is cheaper to make on the manufacturing standpoint, and thus is conveniently the standard.

Pay attention to the black elastic band attached to the handle in the above photo. Notice how it has a tied off loop? That is so that when the cane is folded, that loop can be stretched over the folded sections to hold it together.

[Image Description: a four section folding cane folded up with the black band around them. End Image Description]

Additional benefits or functions of the elastic could be to use it as a wrist strap while using the cane, or hanging it up on a hook while not in use. I tend to have my cane folded up and tuck my wrist under the strap to hold it more securely while carrying it. Images of that ahead in my cane-isms section.

Cane Height

Ideal cane heights depend on the user. For most users, you want your cane height to be to your shoulder, give or take a few inches. You might need a longer cane if you are a fast walker with long strides, or a shorter cane if you prefer to hold your cane at a lower angle than is traditional.

What I mean when I talk about holding your cane at a certain angle is that the standard is to hold your cane handle in your dominant hand and position it in front of your belly button, moving it side to side with each step. Traditional grip methods are holding your hand palm side up with your cane in hand, or to hold the cane at the section joint closest to the handle with what is called the pencil grip, holding the cane like a fat pencil.

Depending on the height, a cane can have anywhere between three and six sections. Longer canes have more sections. The top section includes the handle, and the last section includes the stripe color (traditionally red, unless customized) and the tip. 

The sections of the cane are generally slightly reflective, regardless of color. If you hold a cane up to the light you’ll see tiny specks of light reflected back, almost like very fine, tiny particle glitter paint. This detail is important in cane production because it makes the cane more visible at night, especially if something like car headlights reflect off it while someone is crossing.

Additional visibility at night can be added by wrapping stripes of reflective tape along the shaft.

Cane Tips

There are several different tip options for canes.

[Image Description: four different types of cane tips on a blue background with labels. From left to right: marshmallow tip, ball tip, pencil tip, glide tip.]

[Image Description: a rolling marshmallow tip with a blue background. End Image Description]

[Image Description: Bandu basher tip with a white background. For anyone not familiar with the name, the long, curved cane tip that looks like a hockey stick. End Image Description]

Some of these tips are better for the tap-tap method of cane travel, as in tapping the spots where you plan to step. They can also be used to feel out the shapes of objects, stairs, etc. 

marshmallow tip, pencil tip, 

They should not be scraped over surfaces, the tips will wear down much faster than they should. There are better tips for rolling over surface

Some tips are better for the rolling method of cane travel, which is the method I use. They aren’t great for tapping, but it can be done in a pinch. 

rolling marshmallow tip, ball tip, glide tip

The Bandu Basher tip, the hockey stick shaped tip, is best for hovering an inch off the ground and lightly tapping objects. It could be tapped. It should not be scraped over the ground like a rolling tip. It hovers.

After enough use, the tips will wear down and need to be replaced. The part of the tip that has the most contact with the ground, usually the edge of the shape, gets scrapes, sands down, and eventually begins to look like it was shaved off while still having bits of plastic still gripped to it.

Never fear, cane tips can be removed and replaced when they wear out, replacing the whole cane is not necessary.

Some tips slip on or twist on. Others hook on. By hook on I mean that the elastic that keeps the cane sections together also has a loop at the tip end that a hook onto and stay held into place. Look back at the photo of the rolling marshmallow tip and you will see the hook that attaches to the black elastic.

Cane tips sell for about 5 - 10 U.S. dollars, plus shipping, so it’s advised to buy several back up tips with your cane. I replace my rolling marshmallow tips once every six to twelve months. I don’t know if that’s considered too much or too often. The last time I needed to replace mine was June 2019 (It’s July 2020 at the date of writing this, but I’ve hardly left my home for the last six months because of COVID-virus related quarantine/social distancing.)

Sensory Details/Describing What Using a Cane Feels Like

Every surface type feels and sounds different when tapping or rolling a cane over it. It’s this difference that tells us a lot about our environment.

It tells us when we stepped off the side walk onto the grass, when we’ve walked inside because the concrete changes to wood or carpet flooring. These little details become trail markers too, useful for places we anticipate traveling to a lot.

Example: A week before every semester in college, I would travel to each of the classrooms and learn necessary routes. I learned that certain paths had giant cracks in the sidewalk that would be distinct enough to use as a trail marker to where I was on a path, or that certain paths went from cement to gravel, or cement to brick.

Carpet: The sound is very soft, and if you’re rolling your cane across carpet it sounds like a quiet swish-swish-swish. Tapping sounds depend on how thick the carpet padding underneath is, the thicker the carpet the softer the sound. If there’s a lot of padding then taps don’t make much sound, but if the padding is thin or underneath the carpet is tile or concrete then you hear a louder thudding tap. It’s still pretty quiet. If you’re rolling the cane you would feel a little bit of drag, the cane moves slower over the carpet. The thicker or shaggier the carpet is, the more drag it has.

Wood floor: Cane tips make rumbling sounds when rolling over wood floors. The smoother the wood, the less it rumbles. There’s a little vibration moving from the cane tip, through the cane and into your hand as you roll over wood planks. Very small. The more sensitive you are to vibrations, the more you feel it. Tapping makes hallow, thudding sounds on the wood. Sometimes they sound a little snappish if you’re tapping harshly. You feel stronger vibrations when tapping. Older wood feels softer, with more give. New wood is stronger, more vibrations in the cane.

Tile:It depends on the size of the tiles and the wideness of the grout lines, but it’s not a pleasant feeling. Tiles have grout lines, which are little divets between the tiles. The smaller the tiles or rougher the grout lines are, the more the cane vibrates in your hands. Every bump is felt running from the cane to your hand. The sound is a little grating too. Imagine fifty sets of stiletto shoes walking on tile, that’s what it sounds like when you roll your cane over rough, small tiles. Larger tiles with smoother grout lines aren’t so bad. Tapping the tile with your cane sounds like one really loud step of a stiletto heal, one step for each tap. Tile floors are usually found in bathrooms, kitchens, and industrial locations where the room is going to have harder walls (more tile, concrete, etc) and few furniture, so the room echoes more.

Linoleum: is a smooth even surface. It feels like your cane is gliding when you roll it, barely feeling any vibrations. The rolling sounds are very soft because of the lack of bumps, however tapping sounds are a bit louder. Not as snappish as tile or marble, but almost.

Marble: is similar to linoleum in its smoothness. Your cane glides when rolling. Tapping sounds are sharp. Because marble floors are common in high end malls, luxury homes, and fancy office building entries, places that usually have high ceilings and hard walls with minimal decorations and minimalist furnishing, those sharp tapping sounds may echo. Assuming there isn’t too much noise and the environment is relatively quiet.

Concrete: (I’m referring to concrete found in parking garages and industrial buildings, not sidewalk) It depends on the age of the concrete and how it’s maintained. Old concrete with lots of cracks and mini-craters feels very different from smooth concrete that was set less than a year ago. With old concrete there’s a rattling sound as your cane tip rolls over the bumps and those vibrations travel up your cane. New concrete can feel similar to marble or linoleum. The taps are loud thuds on dull concrete and sharper on new concrete.

Sidewalks: are made of concrete, but in my experience they feel a little different than the above example. Sidewalks have a grittier surface, they’re slightly rougher, more dry. There’s a bit more rolling cane vibration with sidewalks and the taps have more of a thud sound. And because they’re outside, you’re unlikely to hear any echoes unless you’re walking in an alley or between buildings.

Asphalt: is one of the worst surfaces in my personal opinion. Asphalt is the material used in roads and it’s made to be rough and gritty so that car tires can grip onto it and not lose traction while driving. The older and more damaged it is, the rougher it is. Because it’s rough the vibrations are much stronger, sometimes irritatingly so. I can’t roll my cane over asphalt because the bones in my hand can’t handle those kinds of vibrations, so I almost always use the tapping method instead. The sounds are gritty and dull. Unfortunately, asphalt is an unavoidable surface, unless you can find a way to never need to cross a street or walk through a parking lot.

Note: the white or yellow lines that have been painted into asphalt sometimes feel smoother because of the material they’re made of and because they’re added after the asphalt has been laid down.

Note: There’s something called tarmac which is similar to asphalt, used for a similar purpose, and more common in the U.K. (I believe) but I can’t say that I’ve ever knowingly walked on it so I have no personal experience to give you.

Gravel: Another one of those evil surfaces. Gravel is just loose rocks and they’re common in rural roads, driveways, some landscaping. The looseness of them is what makes them untrustworthy. It makes a crunching sound. If you roll your cane, you’re likely to end up tossing small bits of rock and dust here and there. If you tap, you’ll hear the crunch but your brain might not translate that into “it’s gravel” until you’re walking on it and only realize when you walk over it and the sharp rocks begin digging into your shoes.

Wood Chips: I don’t have any experience with this since vision loss and getting a cane, so I’m using my memories of being on the playground in grade school because the surface on the playground was wood chips. I’d say wood ships are a love child between gravel and wood floors. The surface is loose and rolling your cane over it would kick up loose chips and dust. It would probably sound similar to walking on sand I think, because wood chips are much softer than gravel but not as consistent as wood. If it’s rained recently, then the waterlogged wood chips sound even softer.

Hard Dirt: I’m thinking dirt roads here, which are a lesser evil to asphalt and gravel. They can be rough like all roads, but the material isn’t has hard and solid. Rolling your cane will kick up dust on a dry day, but if it rained a few days ago you might hear a soft crunch as you roll over wet dirt. Tapping will have a very soft thud.

Soft Dirt: Think gardening dirt. Because it’s so soft, it makes very little sound and is easily kicked up. There’s a bit of drag, about the same or slightly more drag than grass or sand. Tapping has almost no sound but you might feel a slight give as your tip lands in the dirt, a slight resistance as it sinks in.

Mud: Yuck. I’m imagining this getting in my cane tip and how gross it would be after. Sound and feeling depend on how wet the mud is. Wet mud sounds slurpy. There’s more squish if you roll or tap your cane. Your character might not identify it right away until their shoes begin slipping as they walk over the mud. This is a personal experience. Drier mud sounds soft and feels almost solid underneath your cane. Wetter mud has more drag for a rolling cane. Muddy areas are also generally uneven because top soil has been displaced, so muddy hills and fields have unexpected but usually subtle changes in elevation.

Puddles: have both a slurpy and splash-splash sound. The slurpy sound is more common with rolling cane techniques. The splash sound is more common with tapping. The deeper the puddle, the louder is sounds and the more drag you experience. I am not fond of this texture/experience.

Snow: I have zero experience with snow since the development of blindness. So no experience of what it’s like to walk through with a cane. This is something I hope a blind reader can inform me on so I can edit this at a later date. My best guess is that it has a soft crunch, softer than the crunch of shoes in snow. A lot of drag too. Rolling through snow would probably be near impossible, especially if it’s deep snow or hard packed. Again, my best guess. The last time I experienced snow was when I was twelve.

Grass: One of my least favorites personally. Too much drag. Worse than shag carpeting. It’s very soft and doesn’t make much sound either. Like a crisp crunch you can barely hear. If the grass is wet or frosty you hear it a bit more crunch.

Surface with fallen Autumn leaves: Leaves everywhere! This is a bit dependant on whatever surface the leaves are on. It would soften the sound of cement, but there would be a louder crunch on grass. If the leaves are big and very curvy/pocketed then they’re easy to push aside. Smaller, flatter leaves don’t push as easily. The driest ones will crunch under your cane. It’s fun sometimes, if you’re the kind of person who likes stepping on leaves on purpose, but if you can’t see the leaves it might lose some of its fun and be more unexpected. 

Sand: I’ve never personally taken my cane to the beach, despite living so close to the coast. The reason is because beach sand is so squishy and loose that it’s already impossible to stay steady on your feet. The sand is always sinking under your feet, unless you’re next to the water line and the dampness has made it firmer. So a cane isn’t very useful to me at the beach. Not to mention that sand isn’t something you want inside your cane joints if you want the cane to last. Sand will erode and damage the joints, regardless of if they’re metal or plastic. If I were to take my cane to the beach, it would make the softest crunching-swishy noise of sand sliding over sand, similar to what your footsteps sound like on sand, but possibly even quieter because canes are lighter.

Side Note: My mother sarcastically asked about rolling your cane through dog poop or gum left on the floor. Can’t say I’ve ever rolled through it, so couldn’t tell you. Use your imagination I guess, Mum

The Invention of Tactile Paving

These are amazing! Tactile Paving are those yellow (or sometimes grey) bumpy squares you see on ramps leading into parking lots or when crossing the street. In 1965, Japanese engineer Seiichi Miyake used his own money to develop a tactile brick that you could feel even when walking over it with shoes, and he designed this because a friend of his was losing their vision and he wanted to help. These are amazing, and accessible to everyone, even the blind who don’t have a cane or guide dog. These are literal life savers. Before I got my cane, if I felt those bumps under my shoes I knew to immediately stop because I was about to walk into the road. Because less than 10% of the blind community uses canes or guide dogs, this is the most accessible form of blind aide available.

[Image Description: a yellow rectangle of tactile paving in front of a ramp leading into a parking lot. End Image Description]

Note: similar detail, most doors in commercial buildings (in my localized experience) have a metal plate on the threshold to hold the door in place so there are no cracks underneath. The metal scraping sound when you roll or tap your cane on it is distinct but temporary and non-repeating, so it’s a good indication that you’ve reached and passed the threshold.

Blind-isms

I have a section in this guide about blind-isms, but these ones are focused specifically on cane use.

-Do. Not. Touch. My. Cane. Don’t. Just fucking don’t.

-The above ism comes from the fact that our cane is our safety net, an extension of our body, our eyes, the one thing that makes sure we’ll get somewhere safely. For that reason, blind people hate having their canes (or their on duty guide dogs) touched by strangers, acquaintances, friends we’re not very close to, some family members.

Important Note: That is a universal thing for disabled people. Don’t. Touch. Their. Mobility Aides. It’s assault. Touching someone’s wheelchair or pushing them around without their expressed permission is assault. Moving their wheelchair while the user is currently standing is assault. (Most wheelchair users are not paralyzed, but they still need the wheelchair because of their medical condition, which is not your business to know). It doesn’t matter if the wheelchair is in the way, the disabled person needs it right there, do not touch it. Touching or grabbing someone’s support cane or their long cane is assault. Touching or moving someone’s walker is assault. Touching, poking at, or tampering with someone’s hearing aids is assault. Touching their oxygen tank or cannula is assault.

Back on topic-

-Idle motions with your cane while waiting in line. I often rest my chin on my cane or lean on it

-twirl my cane like a staff when I’m alone and no one can see. I would not ever do this in front of anyone because I don’t want anyone thinking it’s a toy or they can just touch or grab it. I’m just a little childish and bored sometimes and idle motions are a common thing for people with ADHD.

-When carrying my folded cane inside (like say a store) I hang it from my wrist by the strap.

-Keeping my cane within arms reach at all times, even in situations where I don’t need it currently. Example: if we’re doing a classroom assignment where I need to leave my desk, I know the classroom well enough to not use my cane, but I won’t leave it at my desk, ever. (This does not apply at home. And in the homes of a very few, very trusted friends I will leave it somewhere I deem safe.)

-Having a set, specific place in my home (living with my immediate family, who almost never have guests) for my cane. In my case, it’s the top of an antique dresser in the living room, across from the door. It has a little bowl for my sunglasses as well. If I move out and have roommates, my cane will be in my room.

-Love me a bag or backpack that has enough space to discretely store your cane, but most of my bags cannot do that.

-People with folding canes develop a muscle memory for folding and unfolding their cane, so they can do it without really thinking about it.

-Unfolding my cane: I hold the black handle between my thumb and palm with my other fingers folded over the remaining three sections, cane tip pointing up. I slide the elastic over the tip, loosen my four fingers and roll my wrist to the side. The red colored section unfolds first and snaps into place with its neighboring section. I roll my wrist in the opposite direction so the next white section can unfold and snap into place with it’s neighboring section. Roll it back in the first direction and the third section snaps into place with the handle. My four section cane is now unfolded and straight.

-Sometimes I just grab the black handle and let the sections fall and unfold as they will, but this is less controlled and risks your cane bumping into something or someone.

-Folding my cane: I start with the black handle, lifting it up so the joints unlock. I fold it down, grab both sections in my hand and lift the second section away from the third and fold it over. Wrap my hand over all three sections and unlock it from the red section.

-Because I have a four section folding cane, the cane tip and the handle are on the same side while the metal joints are on the opposite side. Those metal joints are what my elastic slips over.

-A three or five folding cane will have the head of the handle (and its elastic) on the opposite side of the cane tip, and you will be folding the elastic over the cane joints and tip.

-A six section cane has the tip and handle facing the same direction like the four section cane.

-People with non-folding canes like leaning their canes up against walls and other objects when not in use. Corners are popular, the corner of a desk up against a wall too.

-But oh god the frustration when the cane randomly rolls out of place and hits the floor, it’s a combination of “Not again” and “did that really just happen” and “you had one job. one job.”

-Sitting with our cane tucked between our legs. Picture a bit of man spreading, the cane tip leaned against the side of our foot to keep it stable and the cane leaning against our shoulder or opposite knee, possibly also held securely with our fingers too.

-The no-manspreading alternative of that is with the cane leaning against our shoulder, cane tip resting on the toe of our shoe or the outside of it, held securely with our fingers or our arm wrapped around it, elbow hooking it.

(Okay, a while back I was looking for photos of someone using a cane to use as a reference for drawing Ulric. I only found three, and two of them were Daredevil promo photos. Which, no offense to Charlie Cox, but he is not blind and he does not use a cane in his daily life, he does not have that relationship a blind person has with a cane and the concept of a fifth limb, and it shows. So the photos were stiff and unusable, so I had to like use several photo references of different poses and Frankenstein them together to get what I wanted.

And I still haven’t finished the painting... fuck)

-In a car with a non-folding cane: 

-Right passenger seat- The cane tip goes all the way into the corner of the foot well to the right of my feet, with the handle resting over my right shoulder or on the seatbelt. It pokes a bit past my headrest. The longer the cane, the harder it is to tuck into a car.

-The U.K. / Austrailian / New Zealand / Japan version of this (because they drive on the left side of the road with their drivers seats on the right side of the car) it’s like this: Cane tip in the foot well to the left of my feet, handle on my left shoulder or on the seatbelt.

Backseat: the absolute worst. There’s less foot well room, and if you’re in a sedan there is almost no room behind your shoulder for the handle. I position my cane diagonally with the handle on the shoulder closest to the door and the tip next to the foot closest to the middle. 

-For this reason, no one with a non-folding cane will want to be sitting in the backseat.

About Guide Dogs

While my knowledge of guide dogs is limited only to what I can research and not personal, I will give you some basic facts and practical knowledge from said research.

Guiding Eyes for the Blind estimates that there are 10,000 guide dog teams out there in the world. That makes up 2% of the blind and visually impaired community.

Guide Dog Training

Becoming a guide dog is the most difficult form of dog training there is. The majority of dogs who enter guide dog training wash out and either become family dogs or go into a different type of service dog training, like medical response or PTSD/anxiety response, or possibly become therapy dogs, which is a career altogether different from being a service dog.

Guide dogs go through two or three years of training, which includes puppy training, basic socialization, proper behavior when on duty and actual guide training. Most service dogs only go through a year to a year and a half of training before they are partnered with a disabled handler.

Between the cost of training, the cost of housing and feeding the dog and the cost of vet bills from birth until being partnered with a blind handler, the overall cost of a guide dog is something like 30k to 40k. While most service dog training organizations require handlers to fundraise and pay for the cost of training (usually something like 15-30k), guide dog organizations give their dogs to qualified blind clients for free. These organizations pay for the dog costs through their own fundraising and charities. Fortunately for these organizations, guide dogs are a highly respected field and have a lot more charity directed their way, while other service dog types have less public interest when it comes to charity.

Guide Dog organizations have an application process, requirements, and a wait-list before you can be partnered with a guide dog.

Requirements to get a guide dog are (usually) as follows: 

Must be legally blind (as in not visually impaired, but legally blind) and have had at least six months of O&M with a cane and demonstrate enough O&M stills to navigate by oneself. They also require you to be responsible enough to independently care for a dog, able to keep up with training and retraining of the dog, as well as financially able to handle food and vet bills (which are at least a few thousand dollars every year).

The reason for cane training before getting a guide dog is because the dog cannot do everything for you. You, the dog handler, are responsible for knowing where you are and how to get where you need to be.

The dog can’t read stop signs or tell when a light is green or red, nor do they have GPS to find a brand new location nor can they learn that route on the first try, nor will they know exactly where you want to go when you say “Starbucks” or “library” or “school” or “mom’s house” and guide you all by themselves. That falls on you, the dog handler, having enough orientation and mobility skills to know when a street is safe to cross and knowing how to learn new routes and how to keep on route and make sure you make the correct turns. A guide dog can’t communicate with bus drivers for you either, they don’t know which number bus to use or what stop to choose. That falls on the blind person’s own skill.

Other Guide Dog Resources

Molly Burke is a guide dog user and has made several videos about what kind of work guide dogs do, her personal experience being a guide dog user for over ten years, how she got a guide dog, specific commands, unique experiences with things like travel, etc. She has a playlist all about guide dogs, but here are some of my favorite videos.

How Guide Dogs Guide A Blind Person

Guide Dog User Answers the Most Googled Questions about Guide Dogs

How I Met My First Guide Dog

Final Thoughts:

There is a lot more to be said about Orientation and Mobility, such as:

How do you safely cross the street with a cane?

How do you learn new routes?

How does getting a cane significantly change your life?

How do family, friends, and strangers react to you “suddenly” having a cane?

I could also write a ton on other tools the blind community relies on so strongly, such as screen readers, magnifiers, etc. In fact, I originally promised to include those in my master post when Part Four was titled  Part Four: What Your Blind Character Needs to Survive and Not Die. However, this guide is ages long and it feels better to focus on this specific topic for here.

Did you like this guide?

Consider checking out my other guides, links of which can be found on the master post here.

Follow my blog, I write and curate writing advice guides outside of blindness, I reblog writing memes with image descriptions, reblog soothing aesthetic photos with image descriptions, talk about disability, lgbtqa+ issues, ableism, and mental health.

If you want to further support me, this is the link to my ko-fi (however there is no such requirement nor pressure to do so, and please don’t worry about it, especially if you are in a financial situation that can’t afford it)

[doujinshijo]

Comic City Spark 12 #3 - ticketing and what to prepare on the day

You can check out part 1 and part 2 here.

Right, now for ticketing. Basically, your ticket to CCS12 is your brochure:

This brochure is hefty. It’s about 2-3cm thick and contains all of the information about the event you could want including circle locations, maps and even a cartoon explaining how you should conduct yourself on the day. It’s invaluable, not to mention the fact that you physically must carry it around with you as it’s proof that you paid your entry fee. 

There are a couple of ways to get the brochure:

buy it in advance from an approved store. Most big anime/manga chains like Animate, Melonbooks etc are stockists, but you can check a list of confirmed stores on Akaboo’s site. It’s worth noting that this is both more expensive than buying it on the day (1,900JPY compared to 1,600JPY on the day) and subject to selling out pretty quickly. I wasn’t able to get one this way, but then I didn’t actually ask until the day before the event so…yeah.

buy it on the day at the event entry tents. The brochures are issued one per person, so you can’t buy one for you and your mate - they must buy it themselves separately. A word of warning - you can NOT use a single banknote higher than 1,000JPY to buy it. Make sure you have change.

I believe you can buy a separate entry ticket without brochure for 1,400JPY - but I'm not 100% sure that’s the case, and at any rate your brochure is your backup in case your online prep doesn’t cut it (particularly because it contains detailed maps which you can detach from the book itself). Plus, it’s an awesome souvenir.

The day before the event: This is your last chance to make sure you have everything you need for the big day. I prepared this handy dandy checklist of everything I brought and found useful:

Why a flat, shoulder-carried tote? Very simply - you will be buying doujins in very cramped quarters (there’s just about enough room for a 2-person-deep queue on each side of the row and a narrow lane of traffic to pass by in the middle) and at high speed to keep queues moving. A flat tote is easy to open and slide a book in, and will keep them flat. It also means you don’t need to take a backpack off your back, open it, put the book in, close it and put it back on…trust me, when you’re surrounded by people in a rush to get past you you will be grateful that you optimised your stashing speed. You also need your hands free to prepare money, pick up books, hold queue markers if necessary…so a simple flat tote will be your best friend.

Now, when I went to this event, my plan was to show up very early to get a good place in the queue. I got into the queue at 8am (opening time 10am) and there were a couple of hundred people in front of me. If you’re planning to show up late in the afternoon once the crowds have subsided you may not need items like snacks etc. Water though is always a good idea, particularly if it’s hot out as the halls can get warm and you may be standing/queuing for a while for popular circles.

Check your mode of transport. Akaboo ask that visitors do not come by car - instead, you should use public transport (which is adapted according to the demands of the event - Comiket influences the entire infrastructure of the area, including mobile phone services, when it’s on!). The closest station is Kokusai-Tenjijo which is about 7 minutes walk away and on a direct line (JR Saikyo line, which changes to the Rinkai line without leaving the train) from Shinjuku station. It takes about 35 mins from Shinjuku JR station. Note though that trains don’t run this full route as often as other JR trains, and part of the journey isn’t covered by the JRPass so will cost you an extra 330JPY one way. You can find more on Tokyo Big Sight’s website.

Finally, Akaboo recommend getting a good night’s sleep and to avoid attending if you’re sick.

The day of the event: Check the weather. If it’s sunny, make sure you bring something to cover your head/neck from the sun if you’re planning to queue early, and apply sunscreen. If it’s raining, bring an umbrella, for there is no cover in the queue area. You may also want to bring something to sit on as you will be perched on the tarmac until opening time - some of the more hardcore participants had mini folding stools. If you’re happy to sit straight on the ground (I was), that’s cool.

Wear flat shoes. Please don’t be tempted to make a statement in any kind of heels or fancy footwear - it’s not worth it if you will be hurrying about and queuing, plus there is literally nowhere to sit inside the halls.

Leave early to catch your train. Follow the crowds to TBS - you can’t miss it. Check the signs - there will should be signposts for the East halls (東) or West halls (西). Note it’s quite a long walk - maybe 10 minutes or more - to get to the East Hall queuing area from the station-end of the site, and you’ll end up walking all around the building feeling like you’ve been sent off to the middle of nowhere…trust me, it will all make sense when you get there. 

If you get stuck you can try asking the staff directing the crowds, but be aware that not many speak English as this is not really considered a tourist attraction. I used very broken Japanese - “Kippu kaimas (literally “ticket buy” - hey, all I had was my English-Japanese dictionary)” - to find where to queue if you didn’t already have a ticket, but I think people actually queue in the same place regardless so you can just ask where to go for East Hall 1, West Hall 3 etc (or, if you looked up which “Event category” your circles are in e.g. Splash!, RTS!! etc using Navio, you can point this out on the checklist carried by staff). The staff I spoke to all recognised the names of the halls in English perfectly, and certainly helped as much as they could by pointing me in the right direction. 

When you get to the start of the queuing area you will see the ticket tents. There are a couple of queue options which are clearly marked - 1,400JPY for (I believe) ticket only, or 1,600JPY for brochure entry (recommended). As I mentioned before, do not attempt to use any 5,000JPY or higher notes or - heaven forbid - credit cards to pay; you will be sent to a separate queue to get change first, and there are no facilities to accept credit card. Anywhere. Inside or out.

Next, if you’re queuing in the East area, you will be divided into queuing groups depending on which halls you want to go into. This is where your online prep pays off; head for the sign for your chosen hall. I wanted to prioritise East 1 as about 5 of my favourite circles were in there, so I headed to the sign marked  “東 1.2.3″. We were asked to sit in lines of 4 wide and about 40-50 long. Once the line was full, the next block of 4 wide would be started alongside. When the queue moves to the entrance you’ll be moved in your original block of 4 wide, so there’s no chance of you losing your spot to someone that arrived later than you. It also doesn’t matter if your friend queues beside or behind you as you will move together regardless (my partner sat behind me, but most people sat next to their friends).

And all that’s left to do is sit down and wait until the staff move you to the entrance area about 20-30 minutes before the door opens. There are (a very small number of) toilets that you can use, and you can stand up and stretch etc but that’s pretty much it. The beauty of queuing in Japan is that everyone respects the queue, so you can leave your stuff in your space and go stretch your legs briefly and will still be able to return without hassle - just make sure you remember where you were sat, as there are no landmarks to navigate by and it’s very easy to lose your bearings in a sea of visitors! Also, Akaboo warn that the queue can be moved at any moment if necessary, in which case you could lose your place. Try not to leave if you can.

This is a great time (provided you arrived early enough and everyone is settled) to go through your brochure maps and circle the tables you want to visit. Since this is quite a picture-heavy post I’m going to dedicate part #4 to it - so for more on looking up circles, please check it out!

When times comes to move, all instructions will be in Japanese so just follow the lead of the people around you. The queue remains remarkably well structured as they lead you to the doorway, so don’t try to push ahead or change lanes - stay in your original group of 4 wide and follow the person in front, and you will be fine. As I already mentioned, queues in Japan work very well so you don’t need to defend your spot from people pushing in (unlike London) - just keep up with the person in front.

Just before the doors open there was an announcement, after which everyone applauded. A few minutes later the door opened and the queue started filing in. At this point there had to be between a around 150-250 people in front of me in the queue, and we still got in in a few minutes - everyone moves quickly but in a controller manner, so there is zero reason to panic or push. Go with the flow til you get through the door - then it’s all hands on deck!

Next up - your brochure, and event etiquette.

[mariemary1]

10 Top Tips for Smarter Social Media Marketing with the Buffer Mobile App

How often do you read and share an article on your phone? Or how often do you snap, edit, and share a photo with your phone?

If you like creating and scheduling social media posts with your phone, we would love for you to try our mobile apps. They will make social media marketing on the go super easy and smooth for you.

In this post, you’ll learn more about the Buffer mobile apps (Android and iOS) and the top 10 features for smarter social media marketing.

Let’s get started!

Getting started with Buffer on mobile

If you don’t have our app installed on your phone already, you can download the Android version from Google Play or the iOS version from iTunes.

Adding your accounts

When you open up the app, select “I’m new to Buffer, let’s signup” if you are new to Buffer. You’ll be able to sign up with one of your social network accounts (Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn) or your email. Tap on your preferred signup option, and log in to give Buffer access to your account.

Once you have signed up, you’ll be brought to your Buffer mobile dashboard. You can connect more social accounts by tapping on your profile image in the upper-left corner.

From here you’ll be taken to the relevant network to log in and give Buffer access to your account. Then you can choose which profile or page you want to add.

6 social network integrations

With our recent addition of Instagram, you can now connect social accounts from the six major social media platforms.

With the free Buffer account, you can connect up to three social profiles. For instance, you could connect three Twitter accounts or one Twitter account, one Facebook profile, and one Instagram profile.

Here are the 10 different social accounts you can add to your Buffer account:

Twitter profile

Facebook profile

Facebook Page

Facebook group

LinkedIn profile

LinkedIn Page

Google+ profile

Google+ Page

Instagram profile

Pinterest profile (only for Awesome or Buffer for Business account)

To upgrade to the Awesome or Buffer for Business plan, tap on your profile image and scroll to the bottom. Tap on “Upgrade to Awesome” to find out more about the Awesome and Small Business plans and purchase a subscription.

Using Buffer to manage your updates on the go

Setting up your schedule

First, it’ll be great to set up your schedule according to your preference. We would have set a default schedule for you, which you can keep or change.

To change your schedule, click on the settings gear icon in the lower-right corner and tap on “Posting Schedule”.

Here, you can select the days and times you want to have in your social media sharing schedule.

Sending your first update

Let’s add your first update from the mobile app!

Tap on the plus icon at the bottom and you’ll see the composer where you can type your update, attach photos or video, and select the accounts you’d like to share the update with.

When you’re done, tap on the “Buffer” button to add the update to your queue, or tap “Share Now” to send it right away.

If you are on the Awesome or Buffer for Business plan, you’ll also have the option to schedule your post (Schedule Post) or add it to the top of your queue (Share Next).

Managing your queue

Tap on the Content tab to see your queued social media posts. You can tap on a post to edit it, or tap and hold with your finger to rearrange its position in the queue.

10 top features to make the most of the Buffer mobile apps

Now that you’ve learned the basics of the Buffer mobile apps, let’s check out some of the more advanced, more powerful features.

1. Share from any app

Our app takes advantage of the built-in share menu that shows up in most apps, to let you add updates to Buffer from anywhere on your device. Once you have Buffer installed, just tap the share menu inside another app, such as your browser or Pocket, and tap on Buffer to send an update to your Buffer queue.

Here’s an example of how this looks when sharing from Safari on iOS:

For iOS, you’ll first have to turn on the extension. You can do so under “Settings” > “Set up Extension”, where you’ll see a set of short instructions.

2. Schedule native retweets

Here’s another cool thing you can share quickly via the mobile app — native retweets.

When you see a tweet you want to retweet or quote, tap on the menu arrow in the upper-right corner of the tweet, select “Share Tweet via…”, and tap on Buffer.

If you don’t add any message with the retweet, we’ll post it as a native retweet. If you do, it’ll become a quote tweet with your additional comment.

3. Get reminders for Instagram posts

Unlike most social media platforms, Instagram does not allow apps to post directly to Instagram. While Buffer cannot post to Instagram on your behalf, we would love to help you at every step.

Whether you add an Instagram post to your Buffer queue via the desktop or your mobile, the Buffer mobile app will send you a notification when it’s time for you to post. After you tap on the notification, Buffer will load your photo into Instagram and have your prewritten caption saved to your clipboard.

4. Drag and drop to copy posts across social accounts

Besides dragging and rearranging posts in your queue, you can also copy a post from one social account’s queue into another social account’s queue by dragging and dropping it into that other queue.

With the multitasking feature in iOS, you can even drag and drop images to Buffer to start a draft in Buffer immediately.

5. Pause queue in times of emergency

There might be times when you want to pause your social media posting urgently because of any breaking news and events that have happened.

You likely have your smartphone with you more often than your laptop. And that’s why there’s a pause button in the mobile apps. Anytime you want to pause your Buffer queue, just whip out your phone and toggle the pause option in “Settings”.

Pausing is done on a per social account basis. So if you have multiple social accounts that you’d like to pause posting for, you will need to pause each queue individually. You can read more about how pausing and unpausing work here.

—

The following few features are available in the Awesome or Buffer for Business plan. You can upgrade to either of these plans within the mobile apps or from the web dashboard.

6. Quick re-Buffer to boost your reach

One of our favorite social media tips is to re-use your top social media posts. While these posts have performed well previously, not all your followers might have seen them. Resharing them allows more followers (and even non-followers) to see them.

Here’s how to do that swiftly with the Buffer mobile app:

Tap on “Analytics”

Tap on “Recent” beside the date and select “Most Popular”

Find the post you want to share again

Tap on the tiny arrow in the upper-right corner and select “Rebuffer”

Edit the post as you like

You can then share the post immediately or schedule it for later.

7. Shuffle queue to mix things up

If you often share a few quotes from the same article or a few links from the same site in a row and want to mix them up, you will be happy to know that you can shuffle your Buffer queue.

The shuffle button is located just above your queue in the app. When you tap on “Shuffle”, you’ll see a confirmation message. Once you tap “Yes”, the posts in that queue will be shuffled randomly.

8. See how your posts are performing

We hope to make it easy for you to check your social media performance as and when you want. Just open up the mobile app and tap on “Analytics” at the bottom of the screen. Buffer for Business customers will get these three reports.

Posts Report: You’ll see a history of your published posts and each of their key engagement metrics. There is also a comparison with your average post performance from the past 30 days to help you instantly understand if the post is performing better than previous posts. (Read more about the Post Report here.)

Overview Report: This report gives you an overall view of your engagement levels, as opposed to the per-post basis that you would find in the Posts Report, for your Twitter account and Facebook Page. (Read more about the Overview Report here.)

Insights Report: You’ll find charts of engagement metrics, such as clicks and reach, over time in this report. If you tap on any of the points on the chart, you’ll see the absolute figure of that point.

9. Get a preview of your Instagram gallery

This is one of our most requested Instagram features — the Instagram Grid Preview.

With this preview, you can see how your upcoming posts will look like on your Instagram gallery, alongside the published posts. You can even drag and drop your scheduled posts in the preview to create your perfect Instagram gallery.

10. Share articles from your Content Inbox

Curating content is a great way to provide your followers with valuable insights, establish your authority, and get more followers.

You can easily discover great content and immediately schedule them using the Content Inbox feature within the Buffer mobile app. The Content Inbox can be found in the Content tab, last from the left in the top navigation bar. (You might have to swipe the navigation bar to the left to find your Content Inbox.)

Once you have set up your RSS feeds, you’ll see all the new blog posts from the websites in your Content Inbox. You can then tap on the link to check out that blog post and tap on “Add” to Buffer that link.

How can we improve our apps?

It’ll be great to hear from you. If you have tried our mobile apps, what do you like most about it? How can we make it better for you and your business?

If you have not tried our mobile apps, we would love for you to try them (Android or iOS) and experience better social media marketing on the go.

—

Image credit: Unsplash

This blog post was originally written by Belle Beth Cooper in 2013 and has been updated to reflect the improvements in our mobile apps. 

Thank 10 Top Tips for Smarter Social Media Marketing with the Buffer Mobile App for first publishing this post.

[rafguinabroad-blog]

March - May 2017

One of the reasons I missed out writing the blog for the last couple of months, is that there really isn’t much to write about, all I do is sit at home writing, playing computer games, reading and masturbating*.

As to the writing, my word count is:

Relative Ties – 60,000 Words (vampires and revenge) Apprentice – 30,000 Words magic and war) Librarian – 12,000 Words (sequel to Librarian,) Playboy Cop – 21,000 Words (playboy solves crime – shit title, I need a better one) Orcs – 17,000 Words (orcs join humans and go to war, everyone dies) Sapphire – 2000 Words (outline/plot only – female sheriffs’ deputy and white supremists)

Part of the problem is there is so much on the internet, especially addictive content like Facebook; I’m in my mid-fifties and am addicted to the crap that’s on there. I am also job hunting, and to date have applied for over twenty jobs. These range from forklift driver, courier, office manager, and office assistant, and haven’t had a single reply.

It’s quite dispiriting. Some of the employment agencies have a counter on the web-page when you apply for a job. This means you can see how many other people have applied for the position, one of them was up to 167, and most are hovering around the one hundred mark.

I am hoping to use my remaining Enhanced Learning Credits to do a HGV course, we’ll see how that pans out; it also means these coming weeks will be filled with the Highway Code and Hazard Perception practice.

Myself, Matt, Marc, Pat, Ashley, and Matty, spent the other Saturday at the Cambridge CAMRA beer festival. My first impression was that it was organised by a bunch of Doolally** monkeys who had problems organising a piss up in a .... oh wait! When we arrived, we spent 10 minutes queuing, got to the end of said queue, and discovered that we were in the CAMRA Members only queue. There was no sign or any information that we were in the privileged line, until we got to the part where we had to pay.

We then had to go to the end of the queue snaking in from the opposite side, and requeue for another 10 bloody minutes. This may not sound a lot, but when you have already had a shit load of coffee, water and beer, and your bladder is the size of an under developed orange, those extra 10 minutes are quite emotional.

Anyway, once we were in, CAMRA redeemed themselves with good overall organisation, and a superb selection of beers and food vendors. For those of you who don’t know how a beer festival works, the first thing you do is buy a one-pint beer glass.

This glass is marked up with measurements at the one-third, one-half and one pint marks, so when you womble up to the counter you can order those sizes, this helps prevent you only ordering pints all day and getting totally smashed.

There were approx. 216 beers, ciders, and meads. There was also a stand with wine, which I didn’t taste. To give you an example of how seriously the Brits take their drinking, here is a selection of my favourite beer names taken from the Cambridge Beer Festival website: • Twisted 7.0% • Lavender Honey 3.7% (with real lavender added) • Milk Shake 5.6% • Mariana Trench 5.3% • Black Pig 4.2% • True Blue 3.9% • Henry Tudor 5.0% • Death or Glory 7.2% • Strawberry Sundae 4.5% • Lonely Snake Citra & Simcoe 3.5% • Repetitive Strain Injury 5.6% • Brainstorm 4.0% • Slightly Foxed 3.8% • Ginger Panther 3.7% (this one made me think of Craig – but replace the Panther with a Sloth) • Dark Side of the Moo 7.0% • Chocolate Orange Stout 6.7% • Marcus Aurelius 7.5% (apparently it’s an Imperial Roman Stout) • Spiffing Wheeze 3.9% • Horny Goat 4.8% • Crispy Pig 4.0% • Prince of Denmark 7.5% • Fallen Angel 4.2% • Visions of Heresy 5.7% • Hand of Doom 8.2% • New Balls Please 3.7% • Mad Monk 4.8% • Back Sack & Quack 4.2% • Scream If You Want To Go Faster 8.1% • Smooth Hoperator 4.0% • Fall of Man 6.0% • Hot Dog Chilli Stout 5.0% (Just enough chillis to produce a pleasant aftertaste) • Bitter Invention of Satan 8.6%

Remember, these are beers or ciders, and all of them are handmade with love and affection. I enjoyed drinking them, not only for the taste, but also so I could walk up to the counter, hand over my glass, and say “New balls please.” Or “May I have Visions of Heresy please.” The other good thing about the day, was I was not the largest person there, not by a long way, in fact some of the women could have easily dominated me.

Matt and I had a most fantastic handmade pizza, which was made in front of us for lunch, and although it was slightly expensive, it was worth it. The only downside to the day was that my back had given way the week before, so I was in the most terrible pain. I was alright when I was walking, but struggled with sitting down. So the rest of the lads decided to show their caring side, and we walked the couple of miles back to the train station, and had bit of a pub crawl on the way back.

Marc held his 48th Birthday in his back garden, and he and I did a BBQ. For those of you who are unaware, Marc has a bar and a reasonable sized hot tub in his back garden, and as the weather was okay, most of us had a good time.

The only two creepy events of the evening were; Marc seemed determined to get me in the hot tub with him – I fought him off bravely; and I spent 20 minutes using a rolled-up towel to gently flick the bottom of a 6 year old girl in a swimsuit as she ran back and forth daring me. All present seemed comfortable with it. But I suspect that come my trial, it’ll be used as evidence against me.

Anyway, moving on. I’m currently looking for love, or just good old sex, on Tinder, and my age range is 45 – 60; apparently, it’s wrong of me to put 16 – 25 – who knew! One thing I have noticed is that a large number of women around my age, post pictures of their dogs, cats, horses, etc, instead of themselves. Why, do they think I’ll find the pets sexy?

How am I as a middle aged-to-old man, supposed to know if I can love you, or mate with you, in a loving and non-kinky way, when all I can see is a picture of a parrot, a pussy, pug or poodle, are the women subconsciously sending out a message as to what they think they look like? If so, they need to be seeing a psychiatrist, not looking for rejection or perverts on tinder.

Every couple of months I get my haircut by a gentleman of Brazilian descent, and the other day as I was sitting in the chair all tucked in, I couldn't help but notice that, a) he wasn't wearing underpants, and b) he was quite well endowed. Imagine if you will somebody walking around you in a tight circle, occasionally brushing your arm, with a small snake wiggling around in his pants. It was the closest I've been to sex in years, even if it was with the wrong gender.

Envisage if you will, a snake charmer whose snake is hiding in his pants and swaying gently from side to side, and it occasionally brushes up against you like a cat, or rather a snake, behaving in a non-threatening manner.

A few blogs ago I queried why manufacturers made deodorant that was good for 48, 72, or 96 hours. Since I have stopped working, quite often I'll not bother showering every day, and my record is three days. In other words, the manufacturers make deodorant for the unemployed. And I suspect it's not because we're all skint, it's because we either can't be bothered or we lose track of time.

The other week Whilst in Norwich, I went to Jacamo to get some t-shirts for myself, and when Marc found out I was going, he asked me to pick up a couple of things for him. He wanted sleeveless t-shirts, and when I questioned him about his poor choice, he told me that sleeveless was the correct dress code for the gym. Now, to be honest, I’ve seen him wearing nothing but a pair of swimming trunks, and trust me the correct dress code for him at any time, never mind in the gym, is a burqa and gimp mask.

Julie and Pat came round the other day for dinner, and as she walked in, the first thing Julie asked was “Jim can I use your Spermy keyboard?” Great! How well she knows me. First thing she saw when she sat down at the desk was a pubic hair, I swear it wasn’t, she insists it was; I did however, strongly suggest that once she’d finished, she wash her hands thoroughly.

A few weeks ago, Craig suddenly out of the blue asked me if my mobile was a Samsung Galaxy S6, and when I confirmed it was, he said did you know they're all wireless charging - it must be true because his mum said so. After mocking him for 5 mins, we drove to the only place we knew with wireless charging points - McDonald's, and arrived there at nine o’clock at night.

We bet a McDonald's meal on it. I was right, when we put the phone on the recharge pad nothing happened; however, Craig had more faith in his mum than McDonald's technology, and went and tried a different recharge point. Bastard phone started recharging, so we stayed and Craig tried to eat his own bodyweight.

Quote of the month:

Quote: All the Islamists from Saudi Arabia are wasabi. *** Corrected quote: All the Islamists from Saudi Arabia are Wahhabi.

How do you know that your friends are following the Slimming World diet? They turn up at your house for a dinner party, and bring Best Of Both (BOB) milk because they want to be healthy when they have their obligatory cup of tea or coffee. They also quiz you on the ingredients used in the making of the meal, and then spoil it by having four or five cookies along with their coffee!

Myself, Marc and Pat are on one of our diets again. We’ll eat healthily, but also cut out all booze for June – let’s see how that goes and who crumbles first. Marc’s trying to turn it into a competition, and is giving me daily updates as to his weight, food, and toilet schedule – and people say nothing exciting happens in my world!

That’s it for now, hopefully I’ll get a job and have something interesting to talk about in future. Jim

*Five, the record is still five, and I’m not going to lie, I thought my dick was going to drop off by the end. **To 'lose one′s mind'/an idiot or, Temporarily deranged or feeble-minded. ***Wasabi'ist – someone who loves hot Japanese condiments.

[chpatdoorsl3z0a1]

Iranians Demanding Change Deliver Emphatic Victory For Rouhani

DUBAI/BEIRUT, May 20 (Reuters) - Iranians yearning for more freedom at home and less isolation abroad have emphatically re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, throwing down a challenge to the conservative clergy that still holds ultimate sway.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmanifazli announced Rouhani’s victory on Saturday on state television. Rouhani secured 57 percent of the vote in Friday’s election, compared to 38 percent for his main rival, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, according to figures cited by Rahmanifazli.

Although the powers of the elected president are limited by those of unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who outranks him, the scale of Rouhani’s victory gives the pro-reform camp a strong mandate to seek the sort of change that hardliners have managed to thwart for decades.

Rouhani’s opponent Raisi, a protege of Khamenei, had united the conservative faction and had been tipped in Iranian media as a potential successor for the 77-year-old supreme leader who has been in power since 1989. His defeat leaves the conservatives without an obvious flag bearer.

The re-election is likely to safeguard the nuclear agreement Rouhani’s government reached with global powers in 2015, under which most international sanctions have been lifted in return for Iran curbing its nuclear program.

And it delivers a setback to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the powerful security force which controls a vast industrial empire in Iran. They had thrown their support behind Raisi to safeguard its interests.

“I am very happy for Rouhani’s win. We won. We did not yield to pressure. We showed them that we still exist,” said 37-year-old Mahnaz, a reformist voter reached by telephone in the early hours of Saturday. “I want Rouhani to carry out his promises.”

Nevertheless, Rouhani stills faces the same restrictions on his ability to transform Iran that prevented him from delivering substantial social change in his first term and thwarted reform efforts by one of his predecessors, Mohammad Khatami.

The supreme leader has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security forces.Rouhani has been unable to secure the release of reformist leaders from house arrest, and media are barred from publishing the words or images of his reformist predecessor Khatami.

“The last two decades of presidential elections have been short days of euphoria followed by long years of disillusionment,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who focuses on Iran.

“Democracy in Iran is allowed to bloom only a few days every four years, while autocracy is evergreen.”

The re-elected president will also have to navigate a tricky relationship with Washington, which appears at best ambivalent about the nuclear accord reached by former U.S. president Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has repeatedly described it as “one of the worst deals ever signed,” although his administration re-authorized waivers from sanctions this week.

Trump arrived on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, his first stop on the first trip abroad of his presidency. The Saudis are Iran’s biggest enemies in the region and are expected to push hard for Trump to turn his back on the nuclear deal.

TURN-OUT

Rouhani, known for decades as a mild-mannered member of the establishment, campaigned as an ardent reformist to stir up the passions of young, urban voters yearning for change. At times he crossed traditional rhetorical boundaries, openly attacking the human rights record of the security forces and the judiciary.

During one rally he referred to hardliners as “those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut.” In a debate last week he accused Raisi of seeking to “abuse religion for power.” The language at the debate earned a rare public rebuke from Khamenei, who called it “unworthy.”

The contentious campaign could make it more difficult for Rouhani to secure the consent of hardliners to carry out his agenda, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.

“Rouhani upped the ante in the past ten days in the rhetoric that he used. Clearly it’s going to be difficult to back down on some of this stuff.”

The Guards could also use their role as shock troops of Iran’s interventions elsewhere in the Middle East try to derail any future rapprochement with the West, said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born lecturer on Iran at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya.

“Since the 1979 revolution, whenever hardliners have lost a political battle, they have tried to settle scores,” he said. “I would worry about the more confrontational policy of the IRGC in the Persian Gulf ... and more confrontational policy with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

Khamenei praised Iranians for their big turnout after voters queued up for hours to cast their ballots. High turnout appeared to have favored Rouhani, whose backers’ main concern had been apathy among reformist-leaning voters disappointed with the slow pace of change.

Many voters were particularly determined to block the rise of Raisi, one of four judges who sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death in the 1980s, regarded by reformers as a symbol of the security state at its most fearsome.

“The wide mobilization of the hardline groups and the real prospect of Raisi winning scared many people into coming out to vote,” said Nasser, a 52-year-old journalist.

“We had a bet among friends, and I said Raisi would win and I think that encouraged a few of my friends who might not have voted to come out and vote.”

The election was important “for Iran’s future role in the region and the world,” Rouhani said on Friday after voting.

Raisi, 56, had accused Rouhani of mismanaging the economy, traveling to poor areas and holding rallies where he promised more welfare benefits and jobs.

Despite the removal of nuclear-related sanctions in 2016, lingering unilateral U.S. sanctions that target Iran’s record on human rights and terrorism have kept foreign companies wary of investing, limiting the economic benefits so far.

(Additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Writing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rCNc4H

[repwincoml4a0a5]

Iranians Demanding Change Deliver Emphatic Victory For Rouhani

DUBAI/BEIRUT, May 20 (Reuters) - Iranians yearning for more freedom at home and less isolation abroad have emphatically re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, throwing down a challenge to the conservative clergy that still holds ultimate sway.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmanifazli announced Rouhani’s victory on Saturday on state television. Rouhani secured 57 percent of the vote in Friday’s election, compared to 38 percent for his main rival, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, according to figures cited by Rahmanifazli.

Although the powers of the elected president are limited by those of unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who outranks him, the scale of Rouhani’s victory gives the pro-reform camp a strong mandate to seek the sort of change that hardliners have managed to thwart for decades.

Rouhani’s opponent Raisi, a protege of Khamenei, had united the conservative faction and had been tipped in Iranian media as a potential successor for the 77-year-old supreme leader who has been in power since 1989. His defeat leaves the conservatives without an obvious flag bearer.

The re-election is likely to safeguard the nuclear agreement Rouhani’s government reached with global powers in 2015, under which most international sanctions have been lifted in return for Iran curbing its nuclear program.

And it delivers a setback to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the powerful security force which controls a vast industrial empire in Iran. They had thrown their support behind Raisi to safeguard its interests.

“I am very happy for Rouhani’s win. We won. We did not yield to pressure. We showed them that we still exist,” said 37-year-old Mahnaz, a reformist voter reached by telephone in the early hours of Saturday. “I want Rouhani to carry out his promises.”

Nevertheless, Rouhani stills faces the same restrictions on his ability to transform Iran that prevented him from delivering substantial social change in his first term and thwarted reform efforts by one of his predecessors, Mohammad Khatami.

The supreme leader has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security forces.Rouhani has been unable to secure the release of reformist leaders from house arrest, and media are barred from publishing the words or images of his reformist predecessor Khatami.

“The last two decades of presidential elections have been short days of euphoria followed by long years of disillusionment,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who focuses on Iran.

“Democracy in Iran is allowed to bloom only a few days every four years, while autocracy is evergreen.”

The re-elected president will also have to navigate a tricky relationship with Washington, which appears at best ambivalent about the nuclear accord reached by former U.S. president Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has repeatedly described it as “one of the worst deals ever signed,” although his administration re-authorized waivers from sanctions this week.

Trump arrived on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, his first stop on the first trip abroad of his presidency. The Saudis are Iran’s biggest enemies in the region and are expected to push hard for Trump to turn his back on the nuclear deal.

TURN-OUT

Rouhani, known for decades as a mild-mannered member of the establishment, campaigned as an ardent reformist to stir up the passions of young, urban voters yearning for change. At times he crossed traditional rhetorical boundaries, openly attacking the human rights record of the security forces and the judiciary.

During one rally he referred to hardliners as “those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut.” In a debate last week he accused Raisi of seeking to “abuse religion for power.” The language at the debate earned a rare public rebuke from Khamenei, who called it “unworthy.”

The contentious campaign could make it more difficult for Rouhani to secure the consent of hardliners to carry out his agenda, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.

“Rouhani upped the ante in the past ten days in the rhetoric that he used. Clearly it’s going to be difficult to back down on some of this stuff.”

The Guards could also use their role as shock troops of Iran’s interventions elsewhere in the Middle East try to derail any future rapprochement with the West, said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born lecturer on Iran at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya.

“Since the 1979 revolution, whenever hardliners have lost a political battle, they have tried to settle scores,” he said. “I would worry about the more confrontational policy of the IRGC in the Persian Gulf ... and more confrontational policy with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

Khamenei praised Iranians for their big turnout after voters queued up for hours to cast their ballots. High turnout appeared to have favored Rouhani, whose backers’ main concern had been apathy among reformist-leaning voters disappointed with the slow pace of change.

Many voters were particularly determined to block the rise of Raisi, one of four judges who sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death in the 1980s, regarded by reformers as a symbol of the security state at its most fearsome.

“The wide mobilization of the hardline groups and the real prospect of Raisi winning scared many people into coming out to vote,” said Nasser, a 52-year-old journalist.

“We had a bet among friends, and I said Raisi would win and I think that encouraged a few of my friends who might not have voted to come out and vote.”

The election was important “for Iran’s future role in the region and the world,” Rouhani said on Friday after voting.

Raisi, 56, had accused Rouhani of mismanaging the economy, traveling to poor areas and holding rallies where he promised more welfare benefits and jobs.

Despite the removal of nuclear-related sanctions in 2016, lingering unilateral U.S. sanctions that target Iran’s record on human rights and terrorism have kept foreign companies wary of investing, limiting the economic benefits so far.

(Additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Writing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rCNc4H

[stormdoors78476]

Iranians Demanding Change Deliver Emphatic Victory For Rouhani

DUBAI/BEIRUT, May 20 (Reuters) - Iranians yearning for more freedom at home and less isolation abroad have emphatically re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, throwing down a challenge to the conservative clergy that still holds ultimate sway.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmanifazli announced Rouhani’s victory on Saturday on state television. Rouhani secured 57 percent of the vote in Friday’s election, compared to 38 percent for his main rival, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, according to figures cited by Rahmanifazli.

Although the powers of the elected president are limited by those of unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who outranks him, the scale of Rouhani’s victory gives the pro-reform camp a strong mandate to seek the sort of change that hardliners have managed to thwart for decades.

Rouhani’s opponent Raisi, a protege of Khamenei, had united the conservative faction and had been tipped in Iranian media as a potential successor for the 77-year-old supreme leader who has been in power since 1989. His defeat leaves the conservatives without an obvious flag bearer.

The re-election is likely to safeguard the nuclear agreement Rouhani’s government reached with global powers in 2015, under which most international sanctions have been lifted in return for Iran curbing its nuclear program.

And it delivers a setback to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the powerful security force which controls a vast industrial empire in Iran. They had thrown their support behind Raisi to safeguard its interests.

“I am very happy for Rouhani’s win. We won. We did not yield to pressure. We showed them that we still exist,” said 37-year-old Mahnaz, a reformist voter reached by telephone in the early hours of Saturday. “I want Rouhani to carry out his promises.”

Nevertheless, Rouhani stills faces the same restrictions on his ability to transform Iran that prevented him from delivering substantial social change in his first term and thwarted reform efforts by one of his predecessors, Mohammad Khatami.

The supreme leader has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security forces.Rouhani has been unable to secure the release of reformist leaders from house arrest, and media are barred from publishing the words or images of his reformist predecessor Khatami.

“The last two decades of presidential elections have been short days of euphoria followed by long years of disillusionment,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who focuses on Iran.

“Democracy in Iran is allowed to bloom only a few days every four years, while autocracy is evergreen.”

The re-elected president will also have to navigate a tricky relationship with Washington, which appears at best ambivalent about the nuclear accord reached by former U.S. president Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has repeatedly described it as “one of the worst deals ever signed,” although his administration re-authorized waivers from sanctions this week.

Trump arrived on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, his first stop on the first trip abroad of his presidency. The Saudis are Iran’s biggest enemies in the region and are expected to push hard for Trump to turn his back on the nuclear deal.

TURN-OUT

Rouhani, known for decades as a mild-mannered member of the establishment, campaigned as an ardent reformist to stir up the passions of young, urban voters yearning for change. At times he crossed traditional rhetorical boundaries, openly attacking the human rights record of the security forces and the judiciary.

During one rally he referred to hardliners as “those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut.” In a debate last week he accused Raisi of seeking to “abuse religion for power.” The language at the debate earned a rare public rebuke from Khamenei, who called it “unworthy.”

The contentious campaign could make it more difficult for Rouhani to secure the consent of hardliners to carry out his agenda, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.

“Rouhani upped the ante in the past ten days in the rhetoric that he used. Clearly it’s going to be difficult to back down on some of this stuff.”

The Guards could also use their role as shock troops of Iran’s interventions elsewhere in the Middle East try to derail any future rapprochement with the West, said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born lecturer on Iran at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya.

“Since the 1979 revolution, whenever hardliners have lost a political battle, they have tried to settle scores,” he said. “I would worry about the more confrontational policy of the IRGC in the Persian Gulf ... and more confrontational policy with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

Khamenei praised Iranians for their big turnout after voters queued up for hours to cast their ballots. High turnout appeared to have favored Rouhani, whose backers’ main concern had been apathy among reformist-leaning voters disappointed with the slow pace of change.

Many voters were particularly determined to block the rise of Raisi, one of four judges who sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death in the 1980s, regarded by reformers as a symbol of the security state at its most fearsome.

“The wide mobilization of the hardline groups and the real prospect of Raisi winning scared many people into coming out to vote,” said Nasser, a 52-year-old journalist.

“We had a bet among friends, and I said Raisi would win and I think that encouraged a few of my friends who might not have voted to come out and vote.”

The election was important “for Iran’s future role in the region and the world,” Rouhani said on Friday after voting.

Raisi, 56, had accused Rouhani of mismanaging the economy, traveling to poor areas and holding rallies where he promised more welfare benefits and jobs.

Despite the removal of nuclear-related sanctions in 2016, lingering unilateral U.S. sanctions that target Iran’s record on human rights and terrorism have kept foreign companies wary of investing, limiting the economic benefits so far.

(Additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Writing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rCNc4H

[pat78701]

Iranians Demanding Change Deliver Emphatic Victory For Rouhani

DUBAI/BEIRUT, May 20 (Reuters) - Iranians yearning for more freedom at home and less isolation abroad have emphatically re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, throwing down a challenge to the conservative clergy that still holds ultimate sway.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmanifazli announced Rouhani’s victory on Saturday on state television. Rouhani secured 57 percent of the vote in Friday’s election, compared to 38 percent for his main rival, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, according to figures cited by Rahmanifazli.

Although the powers of the elected president are limited by those of unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who outranks him, the scale of Rouhani’s victory gives the pro-reform camp a strong mandate to seek the sort of change that hardliners have managed to thwart for decades.

Rouhani’s opponent Raisi, a protege of Khamenei, had united the conservative faction and had been tipped in Iranian media as a potential successor for the 77-year-old supreme leader who has been in power since 1989. His defeat leaves the conservatives without an obvious flag bearer.

The re-election is likely to safeguard the nuclear agreement Rouhani’s government reached with global powers in 2015, under which most international sanctions have been lifted in return for Iran curbing its nuclear program.

And it delivers a setback to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the powerful security force which controls a vast industrial empire in Iran. They had thrown their support behind Raisi to safeguard its interests.

“I am very happy for Rouhani’s win. We won. We did not yield to pressure. We showed them that we still exist,” said 37-year-old Mahnaz, a reformist voter reached by telephone in the early hours of Saturday. “I want Rouhani to carry out his promises.”

Nevertheless, Rouhani stills faces the same restrictions on his ability to transform Iran that prevented him from delivering substantial social change in his first term and thwarted reform efforts by one of his predecessors, Mohammad Khatami.

The supreme leader has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security forces.Rouhani has been unable to secure the release of reformist leaders from house arrest, and media are barred from publishing the words or images of his reformist predecessor Khatami.

“The last two decades of presidential elections have been short days of euphoria followed by long years of disillusionment,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who focuses on Iran.

“Democracy in Iran is allowed to bloom only a few days every four years, while autocracy is evergreen.”

The re-elected president will also have to navigate a tricky relationship with Washington, which appears at best ambivalent about the nuclear accord reached by former U.S. president Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has repeatedly described it as “one of the worst deals ever signed,” although his administration re-authorized waivers from sanctions this week.

Trump arrived on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, his first stop on the first trip abroad of his presidency. The Saudis are Iran’s biggest enemies in the region and are expected to push hard for Trump to turn his back on the nuclear deal.

TURN-OUT

Rouhani, known for decades as a mild-mannered member of the establishment, campaigned as an ardent reformist to stir up the passions of young, urban voters yearning for change. At times he crossed traditional rhetorical boundaries, openly attacking the human rights record of the security forces and the judiciary.

During one rally he referred to hardliners as “those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut.” In a debate last week he accused Raisi of seeking to “abuse religion for power.” The language at the debate earned a rare public rebuke from Khamenei, who called it “unworthy.”

The contentious campaign could make it more difficult for Rouhani to secure the consent of hardliners to carry out his agenda, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.

“Rouhani upped the ante in the past ten days in the rhetoric that he used. Clearly it’s going to be difficult to back down on some of this stuff.”

The Guards could also use their role as shock troops of Iran’s interventions elsewhere in the Middle East try to derail any future rapprochement with the West, said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born lecturer on Iran at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya.

“Since the 1979 revolution, whenever hardliners have lost a political battle, they have tried to settle scores,” he said. “I would worry about the more confrontational policy of the IRGC in the Persian Gulf ... and more confrontational policy with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

Khamenei praised Iranians for their big turnout after voters queued up for hours to cast their ballots. High turnout appeared to have favored Rouhani, whose backers’ main concern had been apathy among reformist-leaning voters disappointed with the slow pace of change.

Many voters were particularly determined to block the rise of Raisi, one of four judges who sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death in the 1980s, regarded by reformers as a symbol of the security state at its most fearsome.

“The wide mobilization of the hardline groups and the real prospect of Raisi winning scared many people into coming out to vote,” said Nasser, a 52-year-old journalist.

“We had a bet among friends, and I said Raisi would win and I think that encouraged a few of my friends who might not have voted to come out and vote.”

The election was important “for Iran’s future role in the region and the world,” Rouhani said on Friday after voting.

Raisi, 56, had accused Rouhani of mismanaging the economy, traveling to poor areas and holding rallies where he promised more welfare benefits and jobs.

Despite the removal of nuclear-related sanctions in 2016, lingering unilateral U.S. sanctions that target Iran’s record on human rights and terrorism have kept foreign companies wary of investing, limiting the economic benefits so far.

(Additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Writing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rCNc4H

[rtscrndr53704]

Iranians Demanding Change Deliver Emphatic Victory For Rouhani

DUBAI/BEIRUT, May 20 (Reuters) - Iranians yearning for more freedom at home and less isolation abroad have emphatically re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, throwing down a challenge to the conservative clergy that still holds ultimate sway.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmanifazli announced Rouhani’s victory on Saturday on state television. Rouhani secured 57 percent of the vote in Friday’s election, compared to 38 percent for his main rival, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, according to figures cited by Rahmanifazli.

Although the powers of the elected president are limited by those of unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who outranks him, the scale of Rouhani’s victory gives the pro-reform camp a strong mandate to seek the sort of change that hardliners have managed to thwart for decades.

Rouhani’s opponent Raisi, a protege of Khamenei, had united the conservative faction and had been tipped in Iranian media as a potential successor for the 77-year-old supreme leader who has been in power since 1989. His defeat leaves the conservatives without an obvious flag bearer.

The re-election is likely to safeguard the nuclear agreement Rouhani’s government reached with global powers in 2015, under which most international sanctions have been lifted in return for Iran curbing its nuclear program.

And it delivers a setback to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the powerful security force which controls a vast industrial empire in Iran. They had thrown their support behind Raisi to safeguard its interests.

“I am very happy for Rouhani’s win. We won. We did not yield to pressure. We showed them that we still exist,” said 37-year-old Mahnaz, a reformist voter reached by telephone in the early hours of Saturday. “I want Rouhani to carry out his promises.”

Nevertheless, Rouhani stills faces the same restrictions on his ability to transform Iran that prevented him from delivering substantial social change in his first term and thwarted reform efforts by one of his predecessors, Mohammad Khatami.

The supreme leader has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security forces.Rouhani has been unable to secure the release of reformist leaders from house arrest, and media are barred from publishing the words or images of his reformist predecessor Khatami.

“The last two decades of presidential elections have been short days of euphoria followed by long years of disillusionment,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who focuses on Iran.

“Democracy in Iran is allowed to bloom only a few days every four years, while autocracy is evergreen.”

The re-elected president will also have to navigate a tricky relationship with Washington, which appears at best ambivalent about the nuclear accord reached by former U.S. president Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has repeatedly described it as “one of the worst deals ever signed,” although his administration re-authorized waivers from sanctions this week.

Trump arrived on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, his first stop on the first trip abroad of his presidency. The Saudis are Iran’s biggest enemies in the region and are expected to push hard for Trump to turn his back on the nuclear deal.

TURN-OUT

Rouhani, known for decades as a mild-mannered member of the establishment, campaigned as an ardent reformist to stir up the passions of young, urban voters yearning for change. At times he crossed traditional rhetorical boundaries, openly attacking the human rights record of the security forces and the judiciary.

During one rally he referred to hardliners as “those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut.” In a debate last week he accused Raisi of seeking to “abuse religion for power.” The language at the debate earned a rare public rebuke from Khamenei, who called it “unworthy.”

The contentious campaign could make it more difficult for Rouhani to secure the consent of hardliners to carry out his agenda, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.

“Rouhani upped the ante in the past ten days in the rhetoric that he used. Clearly it’s going to be difficult to back down on some of this stuff.”

The Guards could also use their role as shock troops of Iran’s interventions elsewhere in the Middle East try to derail any future rapprochement with the West, said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born lecturer on Iran at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya.

“Since the 1979 revolution, whenever hardliners have lost a political battle, they have tried to settle scores,” he said. “I would worry about the more confrontational policy of the IRGC in the Persian Gulf ... and more confrontational policy with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

Khamenei praised Iranians for their big turnout after voters queued up for hours to cast their ballots. High turnout appeared to have favored Rouhani, whose backers’ main concern had been apathy among reformist-leaning voters disappointed with the slow pace of change.

Many voters were particularly determined to block the rise of Raisi, one of four judges who sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death in the 1980s, regarded by reformers as a symbol of the security state at its most fearsome.

“The wide mobilization of the hardline groups and the real prospect of Raisi winning scared many people into coming out to vote,” said Nasser, a 52-year-old journalist.

“We had a bet among friends, and I said Raisi would win and I think that encouraged a few of my friends who might not have voted to come out and vote.”

The election was important “for Iran’s future role in the region and the world,” Rouhani said on Friday after voting.

Raisi, 56, had accused Rouhani of mismanaging the economy, traveling to poor areas and holding rallies where he promised more welfare benefits and jobs.

Despite the removal of nuclear-related sanctions in 2016, lingering unilateral U.S. sanctions that target Iran’s record on human rights and terrorism have kept foreign companies wary of investing, limiting the economic benefits so far.

(Additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Writing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rCNc4H

[repwinpril9y0a1]

Iranians Demanding Change Deliver Emphatic Victory For Rouhani

DUBAI/BEIRUT, May 20 (Reuters) - Iranians yearning for more freedom at home and less isolation abroad have emphatically re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, throwing down a challenge to the conservative clergy that still holds ultimate sway.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmanifazli announced Rouhani’s victory on Saturday on state television. Rouhani secured 57 percent of the vote in Friday’s election, compared to 38 percent for his main rival, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, according to figures cited by Rahmanifazli.

Although the powers of the elected president are limited by those of unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who outranks him, the scale of Rouhani’s victory gives the pro-reform camp a strong mandate to seek the sort of change that hardliners have managed to thwart for decades.

Rouhani’s opponent Raisi, a protege of Khamenei, had united the conservative faction and had been tipped in Iranian media as a potential successor for the 77-year-old supreme leader who has been in power since 1989. His defeat leaves the conservatives without an obvious flag bearer.

The re-election is likely to safeguard the nuclear agreement Rouhani’s government reached with global powers in 2015, under which most international sanctions have been lifted in return for Iran curbing its nuclear program.

And it delivers a setback to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the powerful security force which controls a vast industrial empire in Iran. They had thrown their support behind Raisi to safeguard its interests.

“I am very happy for Rouhani’s win. We won. We did not yield to pressure. We showed them that we still exist,” said 37-year-old Mahnaz, a reformist voter reached by telephone in the early hours of Saturday. “I want Rouhani to carry out his promises.”

Nevertheless, Rouhani stills faces the same restrictions on his ability to transform Iran that prevented him from delivering substantial social change in his first term and thwarted reform efforts by one of his predecessors, Mohammad Khatami.

The supreme leader has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security forces.Rouhani has been unable to secure the release of reformist leaders from house arrest, and media are barred from publishing the words or images of his reformist predecessor Khatami.

“The last two decades of presidential elections have been short days of euphoria followed by long years of disillusionment,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who focuses on Iran.

“Democracy in Iran is allowed to bloom only a few days every four years, while autocracy is evergreen.”

The re-elected president will also have to navigate a tricky relationship with Washington, which appears at best ambivalent about the nuclear accord reached by former U.S. president Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has repeatedly described it as “one of the worst deals ever signed,” although his administration re-authorized waivers from sanctions this week.

Trump arrived on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, his first stop on the first trip abroad of his presidency. The Saudis are Iran’s biggest enemies in the region and are expected to push hard for Trump to turn his back on the nuclear deal.

TURN-OUT

Rouhani, known for decades as a mild-mannered member of the establishment, campaigned as an ardent reformist to stir up the passions of young, urban voters yearning for change. At times he crossed traditional rhetorical boundaries, openly attacking the human rights record of the security forces and the judiciary.

During one rally he referred to hardliners as “those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut.” In a debate last week he accused Raisi of seeking to “abuse religion for power.” The language at the debate earned a rare public rebuke from Khamenei, who called it “unworthy.”

The contentious campaign could make it more difficult for Rouhani to secure the consent of hardliners to carry out his agenda, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.

“Rouhani upped the ante in the past ten days in the rhetoric that he used. Clearly it’s going to be difficult to back down on some of this stuff.”

The Guards could also use their role as shock troops of Iran’s interventions elsewhere in the Middle East try to derail any future rapprochement with the West, said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born lecturer on Iran at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya.

“Since the 1979 revolution, whenever hardliners have lost a political battle, they have tried to settle scores,” he said. “I would worry about the more confrontational policy of the IRGC in the Persian Gulf ... and more confrontational policy with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

Khamenei praised Iranians for their big turnout after voters queued up for hours to cast their ballots. High turnout appeared to have favored Rouhani, whose backers’ main concern had been apathy among reformist-leaning voters disappointed with the slow pace of change.

Many voters were particularly determined to block the rise of Raisi, one of four judges who sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death in the 1980s, regarded by reformers as a symbol of the security state at its most fearsome.

“The wide mobilization of the hardline groups and the real prospect of Raisi winning scared many people into coming out to vote,” said Nasser, a 52-year-old journalist.

“We had a bet among friends, and I said Raisi would win and I think that encouraged a few of my friends who might not have voted to come out and vote.”

The election was important “for Iran’s future role in the region and the world,” Rouhani said on Friday after voting.

Raisi, 56, had accused Rouhani of mismanaging the economy, traveling to poor areas and holding rallies where he promised more welfare benefits and jobs.

Despite the removal of nuclear-related sanctions in 2016, lingering unilateral U.S. sanctions that target Iran’s record on human rights and terrorism have kept foreign companies wary of investing, limiting the economic benefits so far.

(Additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Writing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rCNc4H

[rtawngs20815]

Iranians Demanding Change Deliver Emphatic Victory For Rouhani

DUBAI/BEIRUT, May 20 (Reuters) - Iranians yearning for more freedom at home and less isolation abroad have emphatically re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, throwing down a challenge to the conservative clergy that still holds ultimate sway.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmanifazli announced Rouhani’s victory on Saturday on state television. Rouhani secured 57 percent of the vote in Friday’s election, compared to 38 percent for his main rival, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, according to figures cited by Rahmanifazli.

Although the powers of the elected president are limited by those of unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who outranks him, the scale of Rouhani’s victory gives the pro-reform camp a strong mandate to seek the sort of change that hardliners have managed to thwart for decades.

Rouhani’s opponent Raisi, a protege of Khamenei, had united the conservative faction and had been tipped in Iranian media as a potential successor for the 77-year-old supreme leader who has been in power since 1989. His defeat leaves the conservatives without an obvious flag bearer.

The re-election is likely to safeguard the nuclear agreement Rouhani’s government reached with global powers in 2015, under which most international sanctions have been lifted in return for Iran curbing its nuclear program.

And it delivers a setback to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the powerful security force which controls a vast industrial empire in Iran. They had thrown their support behind Raisi to safeguard its interests.

“I am very happy for Rouhani’s win. We won. We did not yield to pressure. We showed them that we still exist,” said 37-year-old Mahnaz, a reformist voter reached by telephone in the early hours of Saturday. “I want Rouhani to carry out his promises.”

Nevertheless, Rouhani stills faces the same restrictions on his ability to transform Iran that prevented him from delivering substantial social change in his first term and thwarted reform efforts by one of his predecessors, Mohammad Khatami.

The supreme leader has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security forces.Rouhani has been unable to secure the release of reformist leaders from house arrest, and media are barred from publishing the words or images of his reformist predecessor Khatami.

“The last two decades of presidential elections have been short days of euphoria followed by long years of disillusionment,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who focuses on Iran.

“Democracy in Iran is allowed to bloom only a few days every four years, while autocracy is evergreen.”

The re-elected president will also have to navigate a tricky relationship with Washington, which appears at best ambivalent about the nuclear accord reached by former U.S. president Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has repeatedly described it as “one of the worst deals ever signed,” although his administration re-authorized waivers from sanctions this week.

Trump arrived on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, his first stop on the first trip abroad of his presidency. The Saudis are Iran’s biggest enemies in the region and are expected to push hard for Trump to turn his back on the nuclear deal.

TURN-OUT

Rouhani, known for decades as a mild-mannered member of the establishment, campaigned as an ardent reformist to stir up the passions of young, urban voters yearning for change. At times he crossed traditional rhetorical boundaries, openly attacking the human rights record of the security forces and the judiciary.

During one rally he referred to hardliners as “those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut.” In a debate last week he accused Raisi of seeking to “abuse religion for power.” The language at the debate earned a rare public rebuke from Khamenei, who called it “unworthy.”

The contentious campaign could make it more difficult for Rouhani to secure the consent of hardliners to carry out his agenda, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.

“Rouhani upped the ante in the past ten days in the rhetoric that he used. Clearly it’s going to be difficult to back down on some of this stuff.”

The Guards could also use their role as shock troops of Iran’s interventions elsewhere in the Middle East try to derail any future rapprochement with the West, said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born lecturer on Iran at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya.

“Since the 1979 revolution, whenever hardliners have lost a political battle, they have tried to settle scores,” he said. “I would worry about the more confrontational policy of the IRGC in the Persian Gulf ... and more confrontational policy with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

Khamenei praised Iranians for their big turnout after voters queued up for hours to cast their ballots. High turnout appeared to have favored Rouhani, whose backers’ main concern had been apathy among reformist-leaning voters disappointed with the slow pace of change.

Many voters were particularly determined to block the rise of Raisi, one of four judges who sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death in the 1980s, regarded by reformers as a symbol of the security state at its most fearsome.

“The wide mobilization of the hardline groups and the real prospect of Raisi winning scared many people into coming out to vote,” said Nasser, a 52-year-old journalist.

“We had a bet among friends, and I said Raisi would win and I think that encouraged a few of my friends who might not have voted to come out and vote.”

The election was important “for Iran’s future role in the region and the world,” Rouhani said on Friday after voting.

Raisi, 56, had accused Rouhani of mismanaging the economy, traveling to poor areas and holding rallies where he promised more welfare benefits and jobs.

Despite the removal of nuclear-related sanctions in 2016, lingering unilateral U.S. sanctions that target Iran’s record on human rights and terrorism have kept foreign companies wary of investing, limiting the economic benefits so far.

(Additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Writing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rCNc4H

[exfrenchdorsl4p0a1]

Iranians Demanding Change Deliver Emphatic Victory For Rouhani

DUBAI/BEIRUT, May 20 (Reuters) - Iranians yearning for more freedom at home and less isolation abroad have emphatically re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, throwing down a challenge to the conservative clergy that still holds ultimate sway.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmanifazli announced Rouhani’s victory on Saturday on state television. Rouhani secured 57 percent of the vote in Friday’s election, compared to 38 percent for his main rival, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, according to figures cited by Rahmanifazli.

Although the powers of the elected president are limited by those of unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who outranks him, the scale of Rouhani’s victory gives the pro-reform camp a strong mandate to seek the sort of change that hardliners have managed to thwart for decades.

Rouhani’s opponent Raisi, a protege of Khamenei, had united the conservative faction and had been tipped in Iranian media as a potential successor for the 77-year-old supreme leader who has been in power since 1989. His defeat leaves the conservatives without an obvious flag bearer.

The re-election is likely to safeguard the nuclear agreement Rouhani’s government reached with global powers in 2015, under which most international sanctions have been lifted in return for Iran curbing its nuclear program.

And it delivers a setback to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the powerful security force which controls a vast industrial empire in Iran. They had thrown their support behind Raisi to safeguard its interests.

“I am very happy for Rouhani’s win. We won. We did not yield to pressure. We showed them that we still exist,” said 37-year-old Mahnaz, a reformist voter reached by telephone in the early hours of Saturday. “I want Rouhani to carry out his promises.”

Nevertheless, Rouhani stills faces the same restrictions on his ability to transform Iran that prevented him from delivering substantial social change in his first term and thwarted reform efforts by one of his predecessors, Mohammad Khatami.

The supreme leader has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security forces.Rouhani has been unable to secure the release of reformist leaders from house arrest, and media are barred from publishing the words or images of his reformist predecessor Khatami.

“The last two decades of presidential elections have been short days of euphoria followed by long years of disillusionment,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who focuses on Iran.

“Democracy in Iran is allowed to bloom only a few days every four years, while autocracy is evergreen.”

The re-elected president will also have to navigate a tricky relationship with Washington, which appears at best ambivalent about the nuclear accord reached by former U.S. president Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has repeatedly described it as “one of the worst deals ever signed,” although his administration re-authorized waivers from sanctions this week.

Trump arrived on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, his first stop on the first trip abroad of his presidency. The Saudis are Iran’s biggest enemies in the region and are expected to push hard for Trump to turn his back on the nuclear deal.

TURN-OUT

Rouhani, known for decades as a mild-mannered member of the establishment, campaigned as an ardent reformist to stir up the passions of young, urban voters yearning for change. At times he crossed traditional rhetorical boundaries, openly attacking the human rights record of the security forces and the judiciary.

During one rally he referred to hardliners as “those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut.” In a debate last week he accused Raisi of seeking to “abuse religion for power.” The language at the debate earned a rare public rebuke from Khamenei, who called it “unworthy.”

The contentious campaign could make it more difficult for Rouhani to secure the consent of hardliners to carry out his agenda, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.

“Rouhani upped the ante in the past ten days in the rhetoric that he used. Clearly it’s going to be difficult to back down on some of this stuff.”

The Guards could also use their role as shock troops of Iran’s interventions elsewhere in the Middle East try to derail any future rapprochement with the West, said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born lecturer on Iran at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya.

“Since the 1979 revolution, whenever hardliners have lost a political battle, they have tried to settle scores,” he said. “I would worry about the more confrontational policy of the IRGC in the Persian Gulf ... and more confrontational policy with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

Khamenei praised Iranians for their big turnout after voters queued up for hours to cast their ballots. High turnout appeared to have favored Rouhani, whose backers’ main concern had been apathy among reformist-leaning voters disappointed with the slow pace of change.

Many voters were particularly determined to block the rise of Raisi, one of four judges who sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death in the 1980s, regarded by reformers as a symbol of the security state at its most fearsome.

“The wide mobilization of the hardline groups and the real prospect of Raisi winning scared many people into coming out to vote,” said Nasser, a 52-year-old journalist.

“We had a bet among friends, and I said Raisi would win and I think that encouraged a few of my friends who might not have voted to come out and vote.”

The election was important “for Iran’s future role in the region and the world,” Rouhani said on Friday after voting.

Raisi, 56, had accused Rouhani of mismanaging the economy, traveling to poor areas and holding rallies where he promised more welfare benefits and jobs.

Despite the removal of nuclear-related sanctions in 2016, lingering unilateral U.S. sanctions that target Iran’s record on human rights and terrorism have kept foreign companies wary of investing, limiting the economic benefits so far.

(Additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Writing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rCNc4H

[grgedoors02142]

Iranians Demanding Change Deliver Emphatic Victory For Rouhani

DUBAI/BEIRUT, May 20 (Reuters) - Iranians yearning for more freedom at home and less isolation abroad have emphatically re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, throwing down a challenge to the conservative clergy that still holds ultimate sway.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmanifazli announced Rouhani’s victory on Saturday on state television. Rouhani secured 57 percent of the vote in Friday’s election, compared to 38 percent for his main rival, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, according to figures cited by Rahmanifazli.

Although the powers of the elected president are limited by those of unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who outranks him, the scale of Rouhani’s victory gives the pro-reform camp a strong mandate to seek the sort of change that hardliners have managed to thwart for decades.

Rouhani’s opponent Raisi, a protege of Khamenei, had united the conservative faction and had been tipped in Iranian media as a potential successor for the 77-year-old supreme leader who has been in power since 1989. His defeat leaves the conservatives without an obvious flag bearer.

The re-election is likely to safeguard the nuclear agreement Rouhani’s government reached with global powers in 2015, under which most international sanctions have been lifted in return for Iran curbing its nuclear program.

And it delivers a setback to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the powerful security force which controls a vast industrial empire in Iran. They had thrown their support behind Raisi to safeguard its interests.

“I am very happy for Rouhani’s win. We won. We did not yield to pressure. We showed them that we still exist,” said 37-year-old Mahnaz, a reformist voter reached by telephone in the early hours of Saturday. “I want Rouhani to carry out his promises.”

Nevertheless, Rouhani stills faces the same restrictions on his ability to transform Iran that prevented him from delivering substantial social change in his first term and thwarted reform efforts by one of his predecessors, Mohammad Khatami.

The supreme leader has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security forces.Rouhani has been unable to secure the release of reformist leaders from house arrest, and media are barred from publishing the words or images of his reformist predecessor Khatami.

“The last two decades of presidential elections have been short days of euphoria followed by long years of disillusionment,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who focuses on Iran.

“Democracy in Iran is allowed to bloom only a few days every four years, while autocracy is evergreen.”

The re-elected president will also have to navigate a tricky relationship with Washington, which appears at best ambivalent about the nuclear accord reached by former U.S. president Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has repeatedly described it as “one of the worst deals ever signed,” although his administration re-authorized waivers from sanctions this week.

Trump arrived on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, his first stop on the first trip abroad of his presidency. The Saudis are Iran’s biggest enemies in the region and are expected to push hard for Trump to turn his back on the nuclear deal.

TURN-OUT

Rouhani, known for decades as a mild-mannered member of the establishment, campaigned as an ardent reformist to stir up the passions of young, urban voters yearning for change. At times he crossed traditional rhetorical boundaries, openly attacking the human rights record of the security forces and the judiciary.

During one rally he referred to hardliners as “those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut.” In a debate last week he accused Raisi of seeking to “abuse religion for power.” The language at the debate earned a rare public rebuke from Khamenei, who called it “unworthy.”

The contentious campaign could make it more difficult for Rouhani to secure the consent of hardliners to carry out his agenda, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.

“Rouhani upped the ante in the past ten days in the rhetoric that he used. Clearly it’s going to be difficult to back down on some of this stuff.”

The Guards could also use their role as shock troops of Iran’s interventions elsewhere in the Middle East try to derail any future rapprochement with the West, said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born lecturer on Iran at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya.

“Since the 1979 revolution, whenever hardliners have lost a political battle, they have tried to settle scores,” he said. “I would worry about the more confrontational policy of the IRGC in the Persian Gulf ... and more confrontational policy with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

Khamenei praised Iranians for their big turnout after voters queued up for hours to cast their ballots. High turnout appeared to have favored Rouhani, whose backers’ main concern had been apathy among reformist-leaning voters disappointed with the slow pace of change.

Many voters were particularly determined to block the rise of Raisi, one of four judges who sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death in the 1980s, regarded by reformers as a symbol of the security state at its most fearsome.

“The wide mobilization of the hardline groups and the real prospect of Raisi winning scared many people into coming out to vote,” said Nasser, a 52-year-old journalist.

“We had a bet among friends, and I said Raisi would win and I think that encouraged a few of my friends who might not have voted to come out and vote.”

The election was important “for Iran’s future role in the region and the world,” Rouhani said on Friday after voting.

Raisi, 56, had accused Rouhani of mismanaging the economy, traveling to poor areas and holding rallies where he promised more welfare benefits and jobs.

Despite the removal of nuclear-related sanctions in 2016, lingering unilateral U.S. sanctions that target Iran’s record on human rights and terrorism have kept foreign companies wary of investing, limiting the economic benefits so far.

(Additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Writing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rCNc4H

[porchenclose10019]

Iranians Demanding Change Deliver Emphatic Victory For Rouhani

DUBAI/BEIRUT, May 20 (Reuters) - Iranians yearning for more freedom at home and less isolation abroad have emphatically re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, throwing down a challenge to the conservative clergy that still holds ultimate sway.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmanifazli announced Rouhani’s victory on Saturday on state television. Rouhani secured 57 percent of the vote in Friday’s election, compared to 38 percent for his main rival, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, according to figures cited by Rahmanifazli.

Although the powers of the elected president are limited by those of unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who outranks him, the scale of Rouhani’s victory gives the pro-reform camp a strong mandate to seek the sort of change that hardliners have managed to thwart for decades.

Rouhani’s opponent Raisi, a protege of Khamenei, had united the conservative faction and had been tipped in Iranian media as a potential successor for the 77-year-old supreme leader who has been in power since 1989. His defeat leaves the conservatives without an obvious flag bearer.

The re-election is likely to safeguard the nuclear agreement Rouhani’s government reached with global powers in 2015, under which most international sanctions have been lifted in return for Iran curbing its nuclear program.

And it delivers a setback to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the powerful security force which controls a vast industrial empire in Iran. They had thrown their support behind Raisi to safeguard its interests.

“I am very happy for Rouhani’s win. We won. We did not yield to pressure. We showed them that we still exist,” said 37-year-old Mahnaz, a reformist voter reached by telephone in the early hours of Saturday. “I want Rouhani to carry out his promises.”

Nevertheless, Rouhani stills faces the same restrictions on his ability to transform Iran that prevented him from delivering substantial social change in his first term and thwarted reform efforts by one of his predecessors, Mohammad Khatami.

The supreme leader has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security forces.Rouhani has been unable to secure the release of reformist leaders from house arrest, and media are barred from publishing the words or images of his reformist predecessor Khatami.

“The last two decades of presidential elections have been short days of euphoria followed by long years of disillusionment,” said Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who focuses on Iran.

“Democracy in Iran is allowed to bloom only a few days every four years, while autocracy is evergreen.”

The re-elected president will also have to navigate a tricky relationship with Washington, which appears at best ambivalent about the nuclear accord reached by former U.S. president Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has repeatedly described it as “one of the worst deals ever signed,” although his administration re-authorized waivers from sanctions this week.

Trump arrived on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, his first stop on the first trip abroad of his presidency. The Saudis are Iran’s biggest enemies in the region and are expected to push hard for Trump to turn his back on the nuclear deal.

TURN-OUT

Rouhani, known for decades as a mild-mannered member of the establishment, campaigned as an ardent reformist to stir up the passions of young, urban voters yearning for change. At times he crossed traditional rhetorical boundaries, openly attacking the human rights record of the security forces and the judiciary.

During one rally he referred to hardliners as “those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut.” In a debate last week he accused Raisi of seeking to “abuse religion for power.” The language at the debate earned a rare public rebuke from Khamenei, who called it “unworthy.”

The contentious campaign could make it more difficult for Rouhani to secure the consent of hardliners to carry out his agenda, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.

“Rouhani upped the ante in the past ten days in the rhetoric that he used. Clearly it’s going to be difficult to back down on some of this stuff.”

The Guards could also use their role as shock troops of Iran’s interventions elsewhere in the Middle East try to derail any future rapprochement with the West, said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born lecturer on Iran at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya.

“Since the 1979 revolution, whenever hardliners have lost a political battle, they have tried to settle scores,” he said. “I would worry about the more confrontational policy of the IRGC in the Persian Gulf ... and more confrontational policy with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

Khamenei praised Iranians for their big turnout after voters queued up for hours to cast their ballots. High turnout appeared to have favored Rouhani, whose backers’ main concern had been apathy among reformist-leaning voters disappointed with the slow pace of change.

Many voters were particularly determined to block the rise of Raisi, one of four judges who sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death in the 1980s, regarded by reformers as a symbol of the security state at its most fearsome.

“The wide mobilization of the hardline groups and the real prospect of Raisi winning scared many people into coming out to vote,” said Nasser, a 52-year-old journalist.

“We had a bet among friends, and I said Raisi would win and I think that encouraged a few of my friends who might not have voted to come out and vote.”

The election was important “for Iran’s future role in the region and the world,” Rouhani said on Friday after voting.

Raisi, 56, had accused Rouhani of mismanaging the economy, traveling to poor areas and holding rallies where he promised more welfare benefits and jobs.

Despite the removal of nuclear-related sanctions in 2016, lingering unilateral U.S. sanctions that target Iran’s record on human rights and terrorism have kept foreign companies wary of investing, limiting the economic benefits so far.

(Additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Writing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rCNc4H