Iranian Alert -- August 20, 2003 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

The Iranian Student Movement Up To The Minute Reports ^ | 8.20.2003 | DoctorZin

[DoctorZIn]

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movment in Iran from being reported.

From jamming satellite broadcasts, to prohibiting news reporters from covering any demonstrations to shutting down all cell phones and even hiring foreign security to control the population, the regime is doing everything in its power to keep the popular movement from expressing its demand for an end of the regime.

These efforts by the regime, while successful in the short term, do not resolve the fundamental reasons why this regime is crumbling from within.

Iran is a country ready for a regime change. 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.

Please continue to join us here, post your news stories and comments to this thread.

Thanks for all the help.

DoctorZin

[DoctorZIn]

To find all the links to all 72 threads since the protests started, go to:

[DoctorZIn]

Join Us at the Iranian Alert -- August 20, 2003 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

Live Thread Ping List | 8.20.2003 | DoctorZin

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[Pro-Bush]

Satellite file image shows a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran. It was reported 20 July that UN nuclear inspectors have found traces of enriched uranium at the Iranian nuclear facility south of Tehran, raising renewed concerns over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program.(AFP/Digital Globe/File)

[DoctorZIn]

I met tonight with US Senator Sam Brownback. The senator from Kansas is one of the biggest champions of the Iranian people in the US Senate. He was in southern California to meet with his republican Iranian supporters.

He held a press conference with the media, including Zia Atabay of NITV and Behrooz Suresrafil of Azadi TV. We had a chance to discuss recent events in Iran and US policy.

He opened with a statement on the progress of the Iran Democracy Act. He appeared convinced that the Act will get through congress. He said the Act declares that Iran is “not a democracy.”

To read the full text of the Act, go to:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.RES.82:

He was asked about the reasons for the apparent conflicts between the president and the department of state. He argued that the administration’s policy on Iran is still in formation. He argued that the president is clear and unwavering in his support of the Iranian people, but that people need to understand that we have a “noisy democracy” where all opinions are discussed. He expressed hope that the Iranian people will have one in the future.

Behrooz asked him why the US supported Voice of America and Radio Farda supports the reformist movement in the Iranian regime. The senator said that he was unaware of this and asked that evidence of this be sent to his office.

I asked him about what the US was preparing to do about the jamming of the LA based Iranian broadcasts in Cuba. He said that the Senate is just about to take a further look into this issue. Zia Atabay then stated that his reporter in France had just confirmed that the Cuban government had determined the source of the jamming to be coming from inside the Iranian Embassy in Cuba.

In conclusion he gave an admonition to the Iranian community for them to put aside their differences and unify under the single banner of a referendum in Iran regarding the type of government they want for their future.

DoctorZin

[DoctorZIn]

Tehran Seeks Additions to Nuclear Protocol

August 19, 2003
The Financial Times
Roula Khalaf and Najmeh Bozorgmehr

Iran is seeking to win some concessions before signing the additional protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would allow for enhanced inspections of nuclear facilities as demanded by the international community.

Officials say any additions are aimed at easing opposition within Iran to the signing of the protocol, which is intended to address fears over Iran's nuclear capabilities. But foreign diplomats say the attempt to negotiate on the standard protocol is designed to buy time and split the international community.

Tehran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful energy use but the US suspects the country could be close to having the capacity to develop a nuclear bomb.

Although Europe has joined the US in calling on Iran to sign the protocol, Tehran thinks the next report of the International Atomic Energy Agency, due early next month, will not be tough enough to increase the international pressure.

According to Hossein Afarideh, head of parliament's energy commission, Tehran wants to "add pages" to the protocol in which the IAEA would pledge to do its best to convince countries to transfer technology to Iran for peaceful use.

Although this would be an apparent softening of Iran's earlier stance that it would only sign the additional protocol if the west agreed to a transfer of technology, it is unlikely to find support at the IAEA.

According to another source in the Iranian regime, Tehran is also looking for an attachment to the additional protocol, setting terms of inspections and ensuring for example that inspectors would not enter religious shrines or top officials' houses.

"Iranians have bad memories of what happened in Iraq," said the source. "There's a feeling that the Americans would use the protocol to create a crisis, by demanding that the inspectors go to the leader's house."

In June the IAEA called on Iran to sign the additional protocol promptly and unconditionally. Its position has long been that the protocol, which allows for short notice inspections, is an agreement common to all countries and not subject to negotiations with individual states.

Diplomats say that although there could be some legal room for additions to the protocol, Iranian demands are unlikely to be heeded. "No one is in the mood to bargain with Iran," said a western diplomat.

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059479157454&p=1012571727172

[DoctorZIn]

Another article by one of my favorite Middle-East journalists. -- DoctorZin

"International Flap Over Islamist Headgear Is Political, Not Religious"

August 19, 2003
Chron Watch
Amir Taheri

France's Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has just appointed a committee to draft a law to ban the Islamist hijab (headgear) in state-owned establishments, including schools and hospitals. The decision has drawn fire from the French ''church'' of Islam, an organization created by Raffarin's government last spring.

Germany is facing its hijab problem with a number of Islamist organizations suing federal and state authorities for ''religious discrimination'' because of bans imposed on the controversial headgear.

In the United States several Muslim women are suing airport security firms for having violated their first amendment rights by asking them to take off their hijab during routine searches of passengers.

All these and other cases are based on the claim that the controversial headgear is an essential part of the Muslim faith and that attempts at banning it constitute an attack on Islam.

That claim is totally false. The headgear in question has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the Koran, the fundamental text of Islam, or the hadith (traditions) attributed to the Prophet. This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had won the leadership of the Lebanese Shiite community.

In an interview in 1975 in Beirut, Sadr told this writer that the hijab he had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself inspired by that of Christian women in classical Western paintings. (A casual visit to the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the Louvres in Paris, would reveal the original of the neo-Islamist hijab in numerous paintings depicting Virgin Mary and other female figures from the Old and New Testament.)

Sadr's idea was that, by wearing the headgear, Shiite women would be clearly marked out, and thus spared sexual harassment, and rape, by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian gunmen who at the time controlled southern Lebanon. Sadr's neo-hijab made its first appearance in Iran in 1977 as a symbol of Islamist-Marxist opposition to the Shah's regime. When the mullahs seized power in Tehran in 1979, the number of women wearing the hijab exploded into tens of thousands.

In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic, announced that ''scientific research had shown that women's hair emitted rays that drove men insane'' (sic). To protect the public, the new Islamist regime passed a law in 1982 making the hijab mandatory for females aged above six, regardless of religious faith. Violating the hijab code was made punishable by 100 lashes of the cane and six months imprisonment.

By the mid-1980s a form of hijab never seen in Islam before the 1970s had become standard gear for millions of women all over the world, including Europe and America.

Some younger Muslims women, especially Western converts, were duped into believing that the neo-hijab was an essential part of the faith. (Katherine Bullock, a Canadian, so loved the idea of covering her hair that she converted to Islam while studying the hijab.)

The garb is designed to promote gender Apartheid. It covers the woman's ears so that she does not hear things properly. Styled like a hood, it prevents the woman from having full vision of her surroundings. It also underlines the concept of woman as object, all wrapped up and marked out.

Muslim women, like women in all societies, had covered their head with a variety of gears over the centuries. These had such names as lachak, chador, rusari, rubandeh, chaqchur, maqne'a, and picheh among others. All had tribal, ethnic, and generally folkloric origins and were never associated with religion. (In Senegal, Muslim women wear a colourful headgear against the sun, while working in the fields, but go topless.)

Muslim women could easily check the fraudulent nature of the neo-Islamist hijab by leafing through their family albums. They will not find the picture of a single female ancestor of theirs who wore the cursed headgear now marketed as an absolute ''must'' of Islam.

This fake Islamic hijab is nothing but a political prop, a weapon of visual terrorism. It is the symbol of a totalitarian ideology inspired more by Nazism and Communism than by Islam. It is as symbolic of Islam as the Mao uniform was of Chinese civilization. It is used as a means of exerting pressure on Muslim women who do not wear it because they do not share the sick ideology behind it. It is a sign of support for extremists who wish to impose their creed, first on Muslims, and then on the entire world through psychological pressure, violence, terror, and, ultimately, war. The tragedy is that many of those who wear it are not aware of its implications. They do so because they have been brainwashed into believing that a woman cannot be a ''good Muslim'' without covering her head with the Sadr-designed hijab.

Even today, less than one per cent of Muslim women wear the hijab that has bewitched some Western liberals as a symbol of multicultural diversity. The hijab debate in Europe and the U.S. comes at a time that the controversial headgear is seriously questioned in Iran, the only country to impose it by law. Last year the Islamist regime authorized a number of girl colleges in Tehran to allow students to discard the hijab while inside school buildings. The experiment was launched after a government study identified the hijab as the cause of ''widespread depression and falling academic standards'' and even suicide among teen-age girls.

The Ministry of Education in Tehran has just announced that the experiment will be extended to other girls schools next month when the new academic year begins. Schools where the hijab was discarded have shown ''real improvements'' in academic standards reflected in a 30 per cent rise in the number of students obtaining the highest grades.

Meanwhile, several woman members of the Iranian Islamic Majlis (parliament) are preparing a draft to raise the legal age for wearing the hijab from six to 12, thus sparing millions of children the trauma of having their heads covered. Another sign that the Islamic Republic may be softening its position on hijab is a recent decision to allow the employees of state-owned companies outside Iran to discard the hijab. (The new rule has enabled hundreds of women, working for Iran-owned companies in Paris, London, and other European capitals, for example, to go to work without the cursed hijab.)

The delicious irony of militant Islamists asking ''Zionist-Crusader'' courts in France, Germany, and the United States to decide what is ''Islamic'' and what is not, will not be missed. The judges and the juries who will be asked to decide the cases should know that they are dealing not with Islam, which is a religious faith, but with Islamism, which is a political doctrine. The hijab-wearing militants have a right to promote their political ideology. But they have no right to speak in the name of Islam.

Amir Taheri is an Iranian author of 10 books on the Middle East and Islam. Mr. Taheri is reachable through www.benadorassociates.com.

http://www.chronwatch.com/featured/contentDisplay.asp?aid=3927

[DoctorZIn]

Another article by one of my favorite Middle-East journalists. -- DoctorZin

"International Flap Over Islamist Headgear Is Political, Not Religious"

August 19, 2003
Chron Watch
Amir Taheri

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/967077/posts?page=6#6

[DoctorZIn]

Cuba says Iran was jamming US satellite broadcasts: State Department

August 20, 2003

Cuba has told the United States that an Iranian diplomatic facility in or near Havana was the source of the jamming that disrupted US Farsi-language satellite broadcasts to Iran last month, the State Department said.

And, in an unusual display of cooperation between the Cold War enemies, Havana appears to have actually acted on pledges to halt the interference which had prompted a formal protest from Washington, it said.

"It has ceased," said Jo-Anne Prokopowicz, a department spokeswoman.

After denying that it was responsible for the jamming but pledging to investigate the US complaints in mid-July, Cuba told the United States that it had found the source and had acted to stop it, she said.

"Cuba informed us on August 3 that they had located the source of the interference and had taken action to stop it," Prokopowicz said.

"The government of Cuba informed us that the interference was coming from an Iranian diplomatic facility," she said, adding: "We will be following this up with Iran."

On July 15, the US government-affiliated Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) accused Cuba of jamming its programming, as well as that of private US-based Iranian opposition satellite television stations, to Iran.

The jamming, which affected all Farsi-language broadcasts carried by the Loral Skynet satellite, became pronounced amid growing protests in Iran against the Tehran government.

Iran said at the time that the US broadcasts into the country were interference in its internal affairs and accused the US-based Iranian opposition of inflaming the protests.

Shortly after the BBG complaint, which was accompanied by request for a formal diplomatic protest about the jamming, the State Department said the interference appeared to be emanating from Cuba, but could not say exactly who was behind it....

To read the rest of the post, go to:

http://www.terra.net.lb/wp/Articles/DesktopArticle.aspx?ArticleID=101846&ChannelId=4

[F14 Pilot]

Iranians hopeful on reporters' release

Relatives of two Iranian journalists held by US troops in Iraq have gathered outside the British Embassy in Tehran, asking the British Government to facilitate their immediate release.
After meeting a top UK diplomat, the relatives said the British were convinced that both Soheil Karimi, 31, and Saeed Abutaleb, 34, were genuine reporters and promised to follow up the case.

"We are optimistic... we hope they will be released soon," Mr Karimi's cousin, Iraj Karimi, was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

The UK Foreign Office declined to comment on the case.

US forces arrested Mr Karimi and Mr Abutaleb on 1 July for "security violations", saying the pair were acting suspiciously.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3161103.stm

[F14 Pilot]

Iran will not bow to US

Tehran - Iran's supreme leader has said his country will never give up its nuclear technology under pressure from the US and others, who are urging Tehran to agree to more stringent inspections of its programmes.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a gathering of Iranian ambassadors late on Monday that "the position of the United States and certain Western countries, which require Iran to give up nuclear technology is unsuitable, unjust and oppressive, and the Islamic Republic of Iran will never accept these requests".

"The conditions in which the United States deals with the rest of the world as a creditor, always asking for more, make any weakness and surrender the greatest strategic error," the state news agency IRNA reported him as saying.

"Iranian nuclear science is indigenous and peaceful, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on religious principles, will never use weapons of mass destruction," Khamenei added.

On Monday Tehran said it was still discussing with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) whether to allow snap UN inspections of its nuclear sites.

"We are still discussing the additional protocol" to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), foreign ministry spokesperson Hamid-Reza Asefi said.

Tehran is under strong international pressure to prove it is not secretly developing atomic weapons by signing the extra NPT clause, which would allow UN inspectors to descend on suspect sites without warning.

The IAEA's board of governors will review the Iranian case on September 8, with the threat that it might be forwarded to the UN Security Council.

Asefi told reporters "to wait and see what will happen during the (September 8) meeting".

"Any decision will depend on the explanations given by the agency, on the ambiguities that exist (over the additional protocol), our responsibilities and those of the international community with regard to Iran," he added.

Oil-rich Iran said on Thursday it was going ahead with the second phase of a nuclear power plant to satisfy its growing demand for power and prevent long-term energy shortages, denying US allegations that it is covertly developing nuclear weapons.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1404344,00.html

[F14 Pilot]

12,000 protest letters decried by Iran human rights body

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=17545&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

[AdmSmith]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/967229/posts

copy of the post:
Cuba has told the United States that an Iranian diplomatic facility in or near Havana was the source of the jamming that disrupted US Farsi-language satellite broadcasts to Iran last month, the State Department said.

And, in an unusual display of cooperation between the Cold War enemies, Havana appears to have actually acted on pledges to halt the interference which had prompted a formal protest from Washington, it said.

"It has ceased," said Jo-Anne Prokopowicz, a department spokeswoman.

After denying that it was responsible for the jamming but pledging to investigate the US complaints in mid-July, Cuba told the United States that it had found the source and had acted to stop it, she said. "Cuba informed us on August 3 that they had located the source of the interference and had taken action to stop it," Prokopowicz said.

"The government of Cuba informed us that the interference was coming from an Iranian diplomatic facility," she said, adding: "We will be following this up with Iran."

On July 15, the US government-affiliated Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) accused Cuba of jamming its programming, as well as that of private US-based Iranian opposition satellite television stations, to Iran.

The jamming, which affected all Farsi-language broadcasts carried by the Loral Skynet satellite, became pronounced amid growing protests in Iran against the Tehran government.

Iran said at the time that the US broadcasts into the country were interference in its internal affairs and accused the US-based Iranian opposition of inflaming the protests.

Shortly after the BBG complaint, which was accompanied by request for a formal diplomatic protest about the jamming, the State Department said the interference appeared to be emanating from Cuba, but could not say exactly who was behind it.

[DoctorZIn]

US - EU Citizens Among al-Qa’ida Arrested in Iran

August 20, 2003
Middle East Media Research Institute
MEMRI News Ticker

The Saudi daily OKAZ said that according to Iranian governmental sources, European and American citizens are among the al-Qa'ida members arrested in Iran.
(OKAZ, Saudi Arabia, 8/18/03)

Iran's expediency council chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said Iran is too strong to be defeated. 'God punishes tyrants with tyrants; enemies of Iran were punished with each other, but Iran is now firm and stable, being concerned about the condition of Muslim Iraqi people.'
(Kayhan, Iran, 8/18/03)

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said a ruling issued by an argentine court against Iranians is null and void, as it is politically motivated and not based on judicial procedures. He said Tehran was following through diplomatic channels the ruling that had been dictated by the Zionist regime.
(Jumhour-e Eslami, Iran, 8/19/03)

Commenting on a recent news story which said Iran's 3-million-dollar financial aid to the Islamic jihad has been confiscated, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said, 'this is only a rumor and Iran dismisses such information.'
(Yas-e no, Iran, 8/19/03)

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said that diplomats had no right to comment on the highly technical and expert-level issue of enriched uranium without knowing the details.
(Jumhour-e Eslami, Iran, 8/19/03)

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said a foreign presence would not guarantee the security of the Caspian Sea region and of the littoral states, but would only further complicate the situation. 'We believe that regional security and interests can be guaranteed by increased understanding, conference and collaboration.'
(Aftab-e Yazd, Iran, 8/19/03)

http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2003&m=08&d=20&a=7

[DoctorZIn]

US - EU Citizens Among al-Qa’ida Arrested in Iran

August 20, 2003
Middle East Media Research Institute
MEMRI News Ticker

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/967077/posts?page=13#13

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[DoctorZIn]

Chaos as an Anti-U.S. Strategy

August 20, 2003
The New York Times
Thom Shanker

WASHINGTON -- The bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad provided grisly evidence of a new strategy by anti-American forces to depict the United States as unable to guarantee public order, as well as to frighten away relief organizations rebuilding Iraq.

Military officers and experts on terrorism said the bombing fit a pattern of recent strikes on water and oil pipelines and the Jordanian Embassy, although they emphasized that it was too early to uncover any connections among the attacks.

In recent weeks terrorists have conducted almost daily attacks on the American military. But after the bombing [Tuesday] there is a growing belief that anti-American fighters, whatever their origin and inspiration, have adopted a coherent strategy not only to kill members of allied forces when possible, but also to spread fear by destroying public offices and utilities.

President Bush was defiant. He said: "Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam's brutal regime. The civilized world will not be intimidated, and these killers will not determine the future of Iraq."

Speaking at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, he added that the assailants were "the enemies of every nation that seeks to help the Iraqi people."

But the problem now posed for American forces in Iraq is an acute one. Put simply, if Iraqis are afraid and unconvinced that their situation is improving, their hostility to the United States may grow.

The attacks on foreign embassies and the headquarters of international organizations, as well as water and oil pipelines, appear specifically devised to halt improvements in the quality of life for average Iraqis.

"The goal is to deny the American occupation force the ability to pacify Iraq, to prevent the Americans from winning the hearts and minds of the people," said Loren Thompson, a military affairs analyst with the Lexington Institute. "If Iraq is in constant chaos, the United States can never move on to the next stage."

It is unclear whether the fighters are remnants of the former government or foreign Islamic zealots who have crossed into Iraq to kill Americans.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. But it seems clear that any improvement in the standard of living of Iraqis is viewed by opponents of the occupation as a victory for the United States and its efforts to create a stable, democratic Iraq.

Across the government today, officials said the tactics and procedures used by the bombers were highly proficient but so standard as to offer no technical "fingerprint" to immediately identify those behind the attack.

Car and truck bombings are a signature tactic of religious-based Middle Eastern terrorism. The technique was used by Hezbollah in its fight against Israel and spread around the world over the last two decades, including the attacks against two American embassies in East Africa that intelligence agencies attribute to al Qaeda.

But one Pentagon official said that Saddam Hussein's secret service had trained in those methods, and that the Baghdad government was accused of planning a car-bomb attack to assassinate former President George Bush in Kuwait in 1993.

"You can't arbitrarily eliminate regime elements as involved in this attack," one official said. "They're well versed in these techniques."

Military officers and American administrators in Iraq have warned that fighters from Ansar al-Islam, a murky organization whose bases in northeastern Iraq were destroyed during the war, escaped to Iran but were returning.

Ansar is a small fundamentalist group accused of having links to al Qaeda, and it acts as an underground network for handfuls of disaffected Iraqis and many foreigners who want to take part in missions against the American military and its interests in Iraq.

About 150 fighters with ties to Ansar are now believed to be inside Iraq, and American intelligence had warned they were preparing to attack allied military forces or the administrative offices of those involved in reconstruction.

Ansar fighters may have carried out the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad on August 7 that killed at least 17 people, Pentagon and military officials say, but there is still no final determination.

American officials said today that their military and intelligence agencies had gathered no specific information about an attack being planned on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.

Last spring, even before the war began, the Central Intelligence Agency warned that terrorists operating in Iraq would carry out attacks against American and allied forces there after any invasion, government counterterrorism officials said.

"Inherent in a terrorist's strategy, through the ages, is to embarrass the ruling power and depict the ruling power as inept and incompetent and unable to maintain even a modicum of authority," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist at the Rand Corporation.

One military affairs expert said the attack could backfire on those who had planned it.

"The attacks on the oil pipelines and the water are in some ways stupid, because if the United States plays it right, the government can run that back against these elements pretty effectively as hurting the average person," said Richard H. Shultz, director of the international security studies program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

He said the bombing might also quiet some critics of American policy.

"In hitting the United Nations, it could put into a rather tough position those in the U.N. who might have opposed what the United States is doing in Iraq, and even opposed our entry into the war to begin with," Mr. Shultz said.

In other words, by attacking the United Nations the bombers may have made it easier for President Bush to convince European and Arab nations that they have a stake in a peaceful, stable Iraq.

"This will be a loud call to them to get involved," said Rachel Bronson, director of Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/08/20/nyt.shanker/

[DoctorZIn]

Chaos as an Anti-U.S. Strategy

August 20, 2003
The New York Times
Thom Shanker

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/967077/posts?page=15#15

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[DoctorZIn]

Judiciary Chief Orders Probe of Semirom Unrest

AFP
Politics Section
Aug 20, 2003

Tehran -- Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi here on Tuesday ordered setting up a committee to probe the recent unrest in Semirom that left eight killed and tens wounded.

Shahroudi, speaking at a meeting with Judiciary ranking officials, voiced regret over the Semirom developments, and called on the State Inspection Organization and the State Prosecutor's Office to form a special committee and prepare a report on the unrest, IRNA reported.

He said the people must be encouraged to raise their demands through constitutional means to prevent tensions in the society.

The unrest started on Saturday night after a decision by the Isfahan Governor General's Office to incorporate Vardasht district in Semirom within the municipality of Dehaqan provoked the ire of the people of Vardasht.

The people staged a demonstration to protest against the decision but the protests later turned violent. Eight people were reportedly killed in the violence, including two police officers, and some 150 were injured.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1836.shtml

DoctorZin Note: Who are they trying to fool?

[DoctorZIn]

"Only 4 or 5 university students still in jail "

Wednesday, August 20, 2003 - ©2003 IranMania.com

Tehran, Aug 20, IRNA -- Member of the committee appointed by Majlis Speaker to follow up the case of detained university students said that only 4 or 5 students are still in jail.

Mohammad Hassan Abu Torabi said here Tuesday that upon the order of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to the effect that the detained students should be released, the judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi has stressed the speeding up of the process.

He explained that these students are still in jail because their indictments are being considered in the Revolutionary Court while those released had no such files in court, he added.

The parliament member also remarked that in a letter to the Supreme Leader, while depicting the overall situation in universities, it was suggested that those who have done no damage to the life and properties of people and were not involved in the unrests should be treated in a different manner.

“This was immediately approved by the Supreme Leader," he noted, "because the ayatollah is of the opinion that the students who have committed offenses should be dealt with within the universities rather than referring them to the courts."

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=17549&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

DoctorZin Note: More dis-information from the regime.

[nuconvert]

4 or 5, Right.

How about asking anxious parents who had sons attending university, if their sons are still missing or believed to be in prison? I think the number will be much higher.

[DoctorZIn]

Is this the US response to the jamming of the LA based Iranian broadcasts from within Cuba? -- DoctorZin

TV Marti May go Satellite

August 20, 2003
The Miami Herald
Nancy San Martin

The Bush administration will likely begin using satellite transmissions of TV Martí to make the U.S.-funded broadcasts more readily available for Cuban viewers and less susceptible to Cuban government interference, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

''It's possible that this is going to be happening soon,'' the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Herald.

Cuba now easily jams regular TV Marti signals, broadcast from a balloon in the Florida Keys. Satellite broadcasts would be available via as many as 15,000 satellite dishes across the island.

U.S. broadcasters are meanwhile skeptical about the Cuban government's assertion that it had nothing to do with the interference with U.S. satellite television broadcasts to Iran, which jammed both U.S.-government and Los Angeles-based private programs for nearly a month.

The jamming of the Iranian signals ceased Aug. 3 after Cuban officials told the State Department the interference was coming out of an Iranian diplomatic facility in or near Havana. The Cuban government has denied any role in the disruptions of the Farsi-language satellite broadcasts to Iran, often critical of Tehran's Muslim theocratic government.

But broadcasters affected say the disruptions would be difficult to do without the government's knowledge.

''That equipment for jamming is not available at the market,'' Fariborz Abbassi, owner of one of the affected private Los Angeles stations, said in a telephone interview. ``I don't believe what the Cuban government is saying.''

The interruptions affected U.S.-funded Voice of America programs out of Washington and private broadcasts from Los Angeles.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6577509.htm