Ahmadinejad urges girls to marry at 16

[sufrommich]

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged young girls to marry at age of 16 in his latest rejection of the country's once effective family planning program, local newspapers reported on Sunday.

Following record birth rates in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran implemented an internationally praised family planning program in the 1990s that dramatically reduced the growth rate. Ahmadinejad has criticized the program as an ungodly and a Western import.

"We should take the age of marriage for boys to 20 and for girls to about 16 and 17," he said, according to the state-owned Jam-e Jam daily. "The marriage age for boys has reached 26 and for girls to 24, and there is no reason for this."

Since coming to power in 2005, the Iranian president has sought to increase of the country's population, which is already at 75 million, with a third between the ages of 15 and 30.

In July, he inaugurated a new policy to encourage population growth with financial incentives for every new child born, having previously said the country could feed a population of 150 million.

Critics said the policy will only exacerbate unemployment, currently set 9 percent officially. There are an estimated 3 million unemployed people of working age in the country.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40298045/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

[YOY]

1. This is a country run by villagers.

This is not something anyone should ever emulate.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

2. I don't agree.

Ahmadinejad comes from a small village, it's true, but Ayatollah Ali Khamenei comes from Mashhad, Iran's second largest city.

[YOY]

4. The villager provincial mentality is never truly limited to rural areas.

Even in NYC (and quite more often on Long Island) can one find those who think along the lines of Sarah Palin's "Real Americans".

The villager mentality is a global phenomenon and not limited to any one nation or geolocality.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

6. If it's found in cities too, in what sense is it a "villager mentality"?

Surely a villager mentality would be a mentality which is characteristic of those who live in villages but not of those who don't? Otherwise you could describe "has feet" as a villager physical characteristic...

[YOY]

7. Invent your own term then. By all means. For the uneducated, xenophobic, and angry.

I connect it to my own personal experiences worldwide. I found more of it in rural areas but it exists still in urban areas.

I talked to an Iranian colleague recently...he was in Iran during the past election Those guys who stormed out of the mosque during the riots last year to beat the protestors...were bussed in from the villages and paid a sum to enforce the law. The protesters he said were mostly from the educated.

[sufrommich]

3. Treating females as baby making mills is not confined to the

village.

[YOY]

5. As above the mentality isn't confined to those from Rural areas.

n/t