editorial prerogatives [i confess]

TAL: fine print (i.e., the glue that keeps a regime together, even if some parts don't realize it)
Act 1: In Tehran in 2004, Omid Memarian confessed to doing things he’d never done, meeting people he’d never met, following plots he’d never heard of. Why he did that, and why a lot of other people have confessed to the same things, is all in the fine print.
(Act 2, on health care also recommended.)

NYT: cut to: mass trial for demonstrators and pro-reformists in Iran today
The Iranian authorities opened an extraordinary mass trial against more than 100 reformist figures on Saturday, accusing them of conspiring with foreign powers to stage a revolution through terrorism, subversion and a media campaign to discredit last month’s presidential election...

Some of the main charges seemed to come out of a confession by Muhammad Ali Abtahi, a cleric who served as vice president under the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami. Mr. Abtahi, one of Iran’s most widely read bloggers, was arrested shortly after the election, and word later emerged that he had appeared in a tearful videotaped confession. Such confessions are almost always obtained under duress, human rights groups say...

Some senior government officials touted Mr. Abtahi’s confession as proof of the opposition’s malign intent. But the confession, which was disjointed and at times almost incoherent, seemed to be a kind of compromise with what his interrogators wanted him to say. At one point, Mr. Abtahi said, “I think there was the capacity for what the deputy prosecutor called a ‘velvet revolution,’ but I don’t know if the intention was there or not.”

++
Vanity Fair: translating Sarah Palin's exit announcement into English