Posted on 10/12/2004 9:31:38 PM PDT by DoctorZIn
The US media still largely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, “this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year.” As a result, most American’s are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East. In fact they were one of the first countries to have spontaneous candlelight vigils after the 911 tragedy (see photo).
There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in Iran today. I began these daily threads June 10th 2003. On that date Iranians once again began taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Today in Iran, most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy.
The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movement in Iran from being reported. Unfortunately, the regime has successfully prohibited western news reporters from covering the demonstrations. The voices of discontent within Iran are sometime murdered, more often imprisoned. Still the people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against the regime.
In support of this revolt, Iranians in America have been broadcasting news stories by satellite into Iran. This 21st century news link has greatly encouraged these protests. The regime has been attempting to jam the signals, and locate the satellite dishes. Still the people violate the law and listen to these broadcasts. Iranians also use the Internet and the regime attempts to block their access to news against the regime. In spite of this, many Iranians inside of Iran read these posts daily to keep informed of the events in their own country.
This daily thread contains nearly all of the English news reports on Iran. It is thorough. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary. The news stories and commentary will from time to time include material from the regime itself. But if you read the post you will discover for yourself, the real story of what is occurring in Iran and its effects on the war on terror.
I am not of Iranian heritage. I am an American committed to supporting the efforts of those in Iran seeking to replace their government with a secular democracy. I am in contact with leaders of the Iranian community here in the United States and in Iran itself.
If you read the daily posts you will gain a better understanding of the US war on terrorism, the Middle East and why we need to support a change of regime in Iran. Feel free to ask your questions and post news stories you discover in the weeks to come.
If all goes well Iran will be free soon and I am convinced become a major ally in the war on terrorism. The regime will fall. Iran will be free. It is just a matter of time.
DoctorZin
| By Lawrence Auster FrontPageMagazine.com | October 13, 2004What is the one thing that animates the tree-like Senator from Massachusetts? The answer, in a word, is appeasement. Of course, that is not the word used by Kerry or by Matt Bai, author of a revelatory profile of the senator in the New York Times Magazine. The word they both use is diplomacy, which, Bai tells us, is Kerry's panacea for all problems. "The only time I saw Kerry truly animated during two hours of conversation," Bai writes [emphasis added], was when Kerry talked about his ability to build releationships with foreign leaders, particularly Muslim leaders:
We need to engage more directly and more respectfully with Islam, with the state of Islam, with religious leaders, mullahs, imams, clerics, in a way that proves this is not a clash with the British and the Americans and the old forces they remember from the colonial days. What excites the Botox Man is the prospect of going hat in hand to Arab and Muslim dictators who see our country as the Great Satan (if they're Shi'ites), or as the Greater Unbelief (if they're Sunnis), and humbly assuring them that we are no longer the "arrogant," "haughty" nation that we were under George W. Bush (and that we have been through most of our modern history), but instead, now that Kerry is president, a nice, compassionate, respectful nation. Kerry believes that this mollifying approach to Muslims will accomplish ... what? What does Kerry think his grand diplomacy will actually achieve? He provides a key later in the interview, with his by-now famous remark that he wants America to reach the point where we see terrorism as a "nuisance," as something we cannot eliminate, but can live with. Clearly, Kerry's foreign policy is not aimed at defeating our Islamist enemies and removing the specter of terrorism from our nation. What, then, is its purpose? More than anything else, its purpose is to convey certain attitudes. That, I would suggest, is what Kerry means by his continuing refrain that we must pursue the war on terror in the "right" way. When he speaks of the need to "do it right," he's not talking about how we can achieve success and victory in the war against our enemies; he's talking about how we can be liberally correct in our own statements and actions, which means pursuing the path of peaceful cooperation and diplomacy rather than of force and the readiness to use force. Kerry's animating faith in diplomacy is for him a kind of religious faith, with its own god, international coalition building, and its own devil, American autonomy and assertiveness. As an orthodox believer in this left-liberal religion, Kerry sees any manifestation of American strength as evil and despicable, and diplomacy as its virtuous opposite. Diplomacy is the way to tie up and hamstring "arrogant" America and subordinate its wildness to civilized norms as embodied in the UN and certain European governments. An example of this "diplomatist" faith is its adherents' understanding of Resolution 1441. Kerry and his soul mates at the UN viewed Resolution 1441 not as a gravely serious declaration with an unambiguous meaning (that Iraq must immediately reveal all its WMDs and all its information about WMDs to the UN weapons inspectors or face war), but as merely a nuanced step in a ritualized diplomatic dance leading to further diplomatic steps that could go on, as far as Monsieur Kerry was concerned, to the end of time. Which was why Kerry and the French and Germans treated President Bush's invasion of Iraq as a monstrous crime, instead of as an act clearly authorized by the UN itself. It is the same with Kerry's numerous statements about the congressional resolution to authorize the president to go to war, which Kerry endorsed in strong terms on October 9, 2002, and which he and 76 other senators voted for two days later. Kerry's repeated, after-the-fact, claim that in supporting the measure he was only authorizing the president to threaten the Hussein regime with the use of force, rather than to use force against it, is a monumental falsehood, as is his insistence that the resolution prohibited the president from using force until all possible negotiations and inspections had been tried and force had become the "last resort." As can be seen from a perusal of its key provisions, the resolution contained no such language. Instead, it made it clear that the president could proceed with force against Iraq based on his own determination that reliance on further diplomatic measures "will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq, or ... is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." [Emphasis added.] There is nothing here about "last resort," or about mere "threats" to use force, or about any presidental obligation to exhaust every possible channel of negotiations. Yet through his outrageous lies about this resolution (which he himself voted for), Kerry has succeeded in re-interpreting it in accord with his religious imperative of eternal negotiations. The wonderful thing about the diplomatist faith is that its hopes can never be falsified. After all, can we ever really say that we've reached the point of "last resort," which Kerry says (dishonestly) is the only moral and operative test for the use of force? Isn't there always something else that the negotiators could try? For Kerry, diplomacy, with its wonderfully imprecise and impenetrable language (and its fuzzing of perfectly clear language as in the Congressional war authorization), is a way of constructing a world in which determinations of truth, and meaningful action stemming from such determinations—particularly military action in the national defense—can be avoided, literally forever. And this is what Kerry means by "doing it right." Moreover, Kerry insists that his studied avoidance of confrontation, his soft and apologetic approach to Muslim leaders, can be "dramatically effective," even in the short term. "A new presidency with the right moves, the right language, the right outreach, the right initiatives [see how "right" Kerry wants to be, as though he were following a rule book or catechism?] can dramatically alter the world's perception of us very, very quickly," he tells the Times writer. He continues: I know Mubarak well enough to know what I think I could achieve in the messaging and in the press in Egypt. And, similarly, with Jordan and with King Abdullah, and what we can do in terms of transformation in the economics of the region by getting American businesspeople involved, getting some stability and really beginning to proactively move in those ways. We just haven't been doing any of this stuff. We've been stunningly disengaged, with the exception of Iraq. In other words, Kerry thinks that by means of a little sophisticated schmoozing with Mubarak (whether in English or French, he doesn't say), he can persuade the Egyptian despot to reduce the virulently anti-Jewish and anti-American outpourings that are a regular feature of the state-authorized Egyptian press. Kerry also proposes that it is somehow in America's power to transform the entire economy of the Arab world "by getting American businesspeople involved," and—sounding like Thomas "Laptop" Friedman during the heady days of the Oslo "peace process"—he implies that once this modernizing transformation occurs, the Arabs will be so eager to join the global economy that they will stop seeing America and Israel as enemies and will stop supporting terrorism. Just as the anti-anti-Communists in the Cold War believed that Marxism is caused by poverty, Kerry, the anti-anti-Terrorist, believes that Islamic terrorism is caused by poverty. In both cases, massive economic betterment programs directed at Third-World countries are seen as the solution. The reality, of course, is that terrorism comes not from economic despair but from the hope of global conquest; not from poverty but from the belief in jihad, and that this jihadist crusade against us can only be stopped through the assertion of our own moral authority, political will, and military might. If it were true that merely "doing good" for Muslims could win their affection, wouldn’t our rescue of Kuwait in the Gulf War; wouldn't our support for the Muslim Kosovars against the Christian Serbs; wouldn't our massive aid to the starving Somalians; wouldn't our exhaustive involvement with the Mideast "peace process" and our government's support for a Palestinian state; wouldn't our openness to Muslim immigration and our multicultural welcoming of Islam in our country; wouldn't our vast efforts to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq as free nations—wouldn't any of these good deeds have won Muslim hearts and minds? Anyone who still believes at this point that Muslims' hostility toward America can be assuaged by our being "nice" to them is stuck in a Jimmy Carter version of "Ground Hog Day," eternally kissing Leonid Brezhnev on the cheek just before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Kerry evidences the same terminal obtuseness with regard to the Arab-Israeli "peace process" as he does with regard to the prospect of winning Muslim hearts and minds: I mean, you ever hear anything about the "road map" anymore? No.... Do you hear anything about this greater Middle East initiative, the concepts or anything? No. I think we're fighting a very narrow, myopic kind of war. Kerry's analysis of the failed "road map" is as false as his lie about Resolution 1441. In the latter instance, he has repeatedly charged that President Bush failed to get the support of the UN Security Council for the Iraq war because the president, instead of trying to win over our allies, arrogantly ignored them; the truth, of course, is that our "allies," after we did everything humanly possible to get them aboard (and we thought we had gotten them aboard), stabbed us in the back. In the same way Kerry says that the Israeli-Palestinian "road map" has gone nowhere because Bush hasn't worked hard enough to make it work; the truth is that Bush (and I do not respect him for this) fully committed the U.S. to the insane "road map," but that the Palestinians, in their violence and madness, once again showed their total inability and unwillingness to be serious negotiating partners. For Kerry, any failure in a diplomatic initiative must always be America's fault, a view that requires us to keep trying, again and again, forever, regardless of the evident impossibility of reaching the desired diplomatic goal. For us to say that the failure is the other party's fault, because the other party doesn't want to reach a deal with us, would be "arrogant," and thus a violation of the divine law of diplomacy. Kerry's cult of diplomatism, his metaphysical disdain for American power, his gut instinct to side against America in any international disagreement, and his denial that there can ever exist an unrelenting enemy whom we must simply oppose and destroy—in short, Kerry's politics of appeasement—all come together in his "nuisance" remark, which he made in response to a question from his interviewer about what it would take for Americans to feel safe again: We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life. Amazingly, Kerry equates jihadist terror with the relatively minor crimes of prostitution and illegal gambling. His reasoning is, just as we accept a certain amount of prostitution and gambling in our society because it's impossible to do away with them completely and because they don't threaten the existence of the social order in any case, we can accept a certain amount of terrorism as well. From this logic it follows that if there were terrorist attacks being carried out (say) once every couple of months in America, and if only (say) 50 people were killed in each of these attacks instead of 500 or 5,000, Kerry would regard that as a "nuisance" that we could live with. The scenario is not absurd, since Kerry himself has identified as his desideratum the Clinton policy of doing nothing while America is repeatedly attacked. Kerry has often been accused of pompous vacuity. In fact, he is a visionary. His vision is of an America that wisely adjusts itself to domestic terrorism, seeing it as a routine thing, as no big deal—an America that is too proud to fight. This is the ultimate end of Kerry's "right" approach to foreign policy and national defense. Lawrence Auster is the author of Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation. He offers his traditionalist conservative perspective at View from the Right. |
TEHRAN - Two Iranian men convicted of murder were hanged in a Tehran prison Wednesday while a woman convicted of murdering and chopping up her husband was given a last-minute reprieve, officials and reports said.
One of the men, identified only by his first name, Arash, had been found guilty of murdering a woman after she refused to marry him. The second man named Abbas had killed a person during an argument.
According to the student news agency ISNA, a woman slated to be hanged on Wednesday was given a reprieve by the head of the Islamic republic's judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, who has ordered a review of the case.
Fatemeh H. had been convicted of murdering and chopping up her husband -- who was a drug addict -- after he allegedly tried to rape the woman's daughter from a previous marriage.
The report said the woman's daughter had written to Ayatollah Shahrudi appealing for clemency.
Murder, armed robbery, rape, apostasy and serious drug trafficking are all punishable by death in Iran.
According to reports in Iran's main newspapers and other media monitored by AFP, at least 83 people have been executed in Iran since January 1, 2004.
Amnesty International has reported that at least 108 executions took place in 2003, and 113 in 2002.
SMCCDI Note:The Islamic regime uses various labels, such as, Drug Smuggler, Spy, Rapist, Bandit or Hooligan in order to qualify its armed opponents in an effort to help its European and Japanese Collaborators in their effort to justify the continuation of their Economic relations with the Mullahcracy.
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Senator Dayton (D-Minnesota) has moved his staff from Washington, D.C. to another location until after the elections. He is being pooh-poohed for this.
I wonder........
Perhaps we are being baited into attacking these sites in Iran in order to provide justification for their planned spectacular terrorist assault.
Wednesday October 13, 02:57 PM
| Crackdown on Internet journalists in Iran
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian authorities have arrested at least six Internet journalists and webloggers in recent days, colleagues and relatives say, in a further blow to limited press freedoms in the Islamic state.
News-based Internet sites and online journals known as Weblogs have flourished in Iran where the disproportionately youthful population often turns to the Internet for information and entertainment.
The hardline judiciary's muzzling of print media through the closure of some 100 publications in the last four years also meant the Internet became a haven for liberal journalists seeking a place to write.
Journalists and relatives named the six arrested journalists and Webloggers as Shahram Rafizadeh, Babak Ghafouri-Azar, Rouzbeh Amir-Ebrahimi, Hanif Mazroui, Omid Memarian and Mostafa Derayati.
"We do not know where they are being held. We heard they have been kept in solitary confinement," said a relative of one of the detainees, who asked not to be named.
Iran's pro-reform Press Association, denounced the move.
"We protest against these arrests. Ignoring the detainees' right to a lawyer is unlawful," Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a leading member of the association, told Reuters.
International human rights groups frequently criticise the lack of freedom of expression in Iran which they say has more journalists in jail than any other country in the Middle East.
Judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad told the ISNA students news agency on Tuesday that several journalists from "illegal Internet sites" would soon go on trial.
They will face charges of "propagating against the regime, acting against national security, disturbing the public mind and also insulting religious sanctities," he said.
Analysts linked the arrests to a recent shift to the right in Iran's domestic politics as pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami's seven-year effort to foster greater social freedoms, justice and democracy fizzles to an end.
Khatami's second and final term in office ends in mid-2005 with Islamic conservatives opposed to any watering down of Iran's system of clerical rule poised to recapture the government from reformers just as they re-took parliament and local governments in the past two years. |
Did you see this:
The Najaf resolution had virtually excluded involvement by the Administration of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and elevated the Qom-based Ayatollah Al- Sayyid Kadhem al-Haeri into a theological position equal to that of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, legitimizing Iranian influence in Iraqi Shi’ite affairs. Further, the subsequent deal with Moqtada Sadr had convinced many in the region that, as one GIS source put it, “Moqtada — not the US — is so far the winner. Chalabi knows that Iran is winning and he’s using Moqtada as the gateway.”
?????
"Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November.....
TEHRAN, Oct 13 (AFP) - A prominent deputy in Iran's hardline-controlled parliament has found "faults" in a deal with French carmaker Renault amid increased scrutiny by hardliners of contracts with foreign firms, state news agency IRNA reported Wednesday.
"The contract is not free of faults or ambiguities," said Ahmad Tavakoli, who heads the parliamentary research center. "If they are not corrected, parliament will use its authority to protect the nation's interests and workforce."
The parliament, or Majlis, already gave itself last month the right to veto an airport operating contract signed with a Turkish-led consortium and a deal with Turkcell, Turkey's biggest mobile phone operator, to set up the first Iranian private mobile phone network.
The move was an embarrassing blow to President Mohammad Khatami, whose government signed the deals, and reformists in the government have accused hardline deputies of simply being against foreign investment.
Since throwing into doubt the Turksih deals, hardliners have set their eyes on the Renault deal.
Tavakoli did not offer any explanations about the nature of the "faults", but insisted it was the right of the Majlis to inspect foreign contracts and said foreign companies "wanting to make a profit in Iran must consider our national interests".
Renault earlier this year signed a deal with Iranian partners to produce the L-90, a budget car designed to fill a major gap in the booming Iranian market.
Renault executives here have put the initial investment by the company at some 300 million euros, but said that could more than double over the next few years.
It would be the largest direct and long-term investment in Iran by a French company since the formation of the Islamic republic in 1979. In the deal, Renault holds a 51 percent stake.
Hardliners and conservatives took control of the Iranian parliament after most reformists and moderates loyal to the government were barred from standing in polls in February.
Iran Facing Pressure to Cooperate with IAEA
Steve Herman
Tokyo
13 Oct 2004, 13:42 UTC
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| AP | |
| Richard Armitage (File photo) |
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Officials from the Group of Eight, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Undersecretary of State John Bolton, say they will explore a common strategy on Iran just days after Tehran rejected European efforts to halt the Islamic Republic's uranium enrichment program.
Speaking in Tokyo, Mr. Armitage praised Germany, the United Kingdom, and France for trying to stop Iran's program, saying the Iranians had made the decision to conceal it.
"They continue to hide their program and they have made some very scurrilous statements publicly. We hold a view that Iran needs to be brought to account," he said.
While saying Washington is open to all ideas, Mr. Armitage told reporters Tehran should understand that the G8 wants to see an Iran free of nuclear weapons.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Tuesday his country would not be forced through negotiations to stop its enrichment activities.
The United States and others believe Iran's nuclear activities are aimed at developing atomic bombs. Iran says the program is for generating electricity and wants to enrich uranium so that it does not have to depend on imported fuel.
The United States has been pressing the International Atomic Energy Agency to find Iran in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog last month called on Tehran to halt its enrichment activities. The IAEA said it might refer the issue to the Security Council if Tehran fails to take action before the Agency's governors meet on November 25.
Iran cracks down on blog protests |
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"People charged for having illegal internet sites... will be put on trial soon," said a judiciary spokesman. The trials would be "open" and charges included "acting against national security, disturbing the public mind and insulting sanctities". Web journals flourish in Iran where the youthful, reform-hungry population has gone online for news and entertainment. The popularity of the internet has grown as hardline judges closed about 100 printed publications since 2000.
"We do not know where they are being held. We heard they have been kept in solitary confinement," a relative is quoted as saying. Correspondents say Iran has a poor record of press freedom, with more journalists behind bars than in any other Middle Eastern country. The head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, announced new laws specifically covering "cyber crimes" on Monday, AFP reported. According to the law, "anyone who disseminates information aimed at disturbing the public mind through computer systems or telecommunications... would be punished in accordance with the crime of disseminating lies". Journalist grounded Media freedom advocates have strongly protested against a travel ban imposed on Iranian journalist Emadedin Baghi, who was due to fly to the United States last week for an award recognising his work. Mr Baghi was jailed in 2000 for publishing articles criticising Iranian intelligence agents' role in the murder of intellectuals and dissidents in 1998. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said that even after his release in 2003 "the authorities continue to persecute" Mr Baghi. "Although it is too late for Emadeddin Baghi to receive his well-deserved Civil Courage Prize, we urge Iranian authorities to lift this travel ban immediately," said CPJ executive director Ann Cooper. Mr Baghi's passport was confiscated at Tehran's airport on 4 October and he was prevented from leaving Iran by security agents, citing a court order banning him from leaving the country. |
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TEHRAN, Oct 13 (AFP) - Iran has accused the European Union countries of committing "blatant human rights violations" in a response to fresh EU criticism of the Islamic republic's own record, press reports said Wednesday.
"The issue of violating the rights of Muslims, as well as other discriminatory laws regarding minorities, worries the Islamic republic of Iran," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted as saying.
"Regarding the blatant human rights violations in Europe, (Iran) expects European countries to take positive actions towards improving human rights."
A meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday resulted in a statement saying the bloc remained "deeply concerned (that) serious violations of human rights are continuing to occur in Iran."
The statement also said there has been "little overall progress" since a human rights dialogue between the EU and Iran began in December 2002.
The EU also voiced concern that "the situation with regard to the exercise of key civil rights and political freedoms such as freedom of expression has deteriorated since the parliamentary elections of February this year."
The Iranian parliament fell into the hands of hardliners and conservatives after most reformist candidates were barred from standing.
But Asefi said the EU declaration was based on "incorrect and inaccurate information", and accused the European of not understanding "the realities of the Iranian society."
"The Islamic republic of Iran, based on its religious values, indigenous culture and national agenda, is pursuing the improvement of human rights within the framework of its political and social development and so far there have been achievements," he said.
TEHRAN, Oct 13 (AFP) - Iran has accused the European Union countries of committing "blatant human rights violations" in a response to fresh EU criticism of the Islamic republic's own record, press reports said Wednesday.
"The issue of violating the rights of Muslims, as well as other discriminatory laws regarding minorities, worries the Islamic republic of Iran," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted as saying.
"Regarding the blatant human rights violations in Europe, (Iran) expects European countries to take positive actions towards improving human rights."
A meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday resulted in a statement saying the bloc remained "deeply concerned (that) serious violations of human rights are continuing to occur in Iran."
The statement also said there has been "little overall progress" since a human rights dialogue between the EU and Iran began in December 2002.
The EU also voiced concern that "the situation with regard to the exercise of key civil rights and political freedoms such as freedom of expression has deteriorated since the parliamentary elections of February this year."
The Iranian parliament fell into the hands of hardliners and conservatives after most reformist candidates were barred from standing.
But Asefi said the EU declaration was based on "incorrect and inaccurate information", and accused the European of not understanding "the realities of the Iranian society."
"The Islamic republic of Iran, based on its religious values, indigenous culture and national agenda, is pursuing the improvement of human rights within the framework of its political and social development and so far there have been achievements," he said.
Great!
ping to #10
If you know of journalist who can attend please send them to the press release below.
bttt
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We do not know where they are being held. We heard they have been kept in solitary confinement 