Politics
In November 2010. Iranian state television announced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was to auction off his 1977 Peugeot 504 to raise money for charity. The car is white with a sky-blue interior, and has covered only 37,000 km since new. The political significance of the car being a 504 is that it was used as a working-class status symbol to draw electoral support from the less well-off during the 2005 presidential campaign. The money earned from the sale at international auction is to be donated to the Mehr housing project, a network of cooperatives that provides affordable housing for low-income families.
Soon after being put on auction in January 2011, a bid of $1 million was received from "an Arab country". When the auction closed in March 2011, the final bid was $2.5 million.
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Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“The politics of the family are the politics of a nation. Just as the authoritarian family is the authoritarian state in microcosm, the democratic family is the best training ground for life in a democracy.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“... privacy is ... connected to a politics of domination.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)