The Anguished Contortions of Appeasement
Racial profiling is an unfortunate by-product of a fragile civil society seeking to protect itself by visually identifying (visible minorities) who have proven through their intentions and their deeds to wreak havoc for the purpose of: a) avenging itself on a society that marginalizes people of colour leaving them victimized and bitter, as lesser beings in a society of superior beings - as has occurred traditionally in black populations whose poverty has produced social disarray and the backlash of criminal distemper.
And, of course, b) a much later addition to the profiling-for-protection methodology which identifies people of Middle Eastern heritage, or those fitting the profile of disaffected Muslims whether nurtured within the bosom of an accepting Western culture, or having immigrated to the West carrying the baggage of tribalism, religious intolerance and cultural improprieties with them. To stigmatize an entire collective for the vile work of a minority is unfortunate.
On the other hand, when it comes to a world-wide phenomenon such as fanatical Islamism with its determination to mount violent jihad against infidels, Muslim quislings and Jews, the threat is so alarming and so wide-spread that it is inevitable that innocents will be swept into the net of apprehension and fear. The authorities of the West fear attack, so they must remain vigilant with the intent of apprehending potential jihadists.
Yet there are certain sensibilities and sensitivities toward the plight of those swept into the net, the vast numbers of innocent and law-abiding Muslims, themselves prime victims of the vicious Islamists. Countries as sensitive to being labelled racist and discriminatory as Britain, for example, have succumbed to the kind of 'correctness' that leads them to infer, absurdly, that a perceived 'balance' will protect them from these labels.
And from the righteous wrath of the jihadist enablers.
Great Britain's Home Office has released a list of individuals who are persona-non-grata in that country. For their anti-social and dangerously right-wing activism. Not that the country wishes to stifle freedom of association and freedom of speech, but it would far prefer to be proactively engaged to keep foreign elements whose political preoccupations present a danger to the stabilization of society, from entering the country.
It is most certainly embarrassing if that list is comprised of mostly 'militant' Muslims, so to that list add anti-gays and far-right racists and neo-Nazis - deservedly. Throw in a Jew or two also, just to give added balance, if it can be construed that his right-wing talk show presents an unbalanced view that attracts the attention of nutters on the right. The nutters on the left are quite all right and can be dealt with. In a society surfeit with them.
The disclosure by Britain's
Daily Mail newspaper that political calculation at the very highest level of British government administration - the executive level - has sought to balance the make-up of the exclusionist list reveals the mindset of a governing body that will not allow itself to publicly acknowledge the very real threat it faces from Islamist jihadists. Lest it offend.
The delicacy behind the choreography of fairness and justness in not holding Islam to account for its fundamentalist wayward minority reveals a Chamberlain-like attitude of not upsetting the applecart when the apples have long since rolled away from the cart that was kicked off kilter, one that a Churchillian attitude would have righted and called the offenders to account.
Labels: Political Realities, Societal Failures, World Crises
Distinctive Dress Codes - Fashionable Islam
AghanistanThe all-enveloping burka (usually blue, with mesh over the eyes) is technically optional, but mandatory in conservative areas, particularly those with a predominately Taliban presence.
EgyptIn secular Egypt, Islamic dress is optional, but increasing numbers of women wear the headscarf. Face veils (niqab) are rare.
IranIranian women must wear either the all-enveloping black chador, preferred by conservatives and government officials, including policewomen (who add black trousers to their uniform), or a headscarf/overcoat combination worn over trousers. The face may remain uncovered.
PakistanSalwar kameez, tunics over pants, with a dupatta, a long scarf that can be used to cover the head, are standard.
Saudi ArabiaSaudi women must wear the abaya, tarha, and niqab in public. The garments must be loose and dark-coloured. Some authorities say only one eye should be exposed in a bid to discourage eye makeup.
SudanPants are considered un-Islamic and wearers can be fined and flogged even if they are not Muslim. Headscarves are a must.
Lubna Hussein, a former journalist working for the United Nations wore green slacks in a restaurant along with other women and all were charged by the 'vice and virtues' police of public indecency, earning them 40 lashes and a fine. Because she has made a public issue of this matter, inviting international press to witness her day in court, she has also been charged with defaming police. She will not seek immunity from Sudanese law, as a UN employee, insisting that the case continue and that the unjust law to repress women's rights be fought. Women in Sudan are responding, dressing themselves in slacks and jeans, waving signs reading "Lashing people is against human rights".
TunisiaHeadscarves are banned from schools, government offices and public places. Wearers risk being stopped in the street by police and ordered to remove them.
GazaThe Hamas-led government in Gaza has approved guidelines requiring modesty patrols to ensure women wear head coverings. Hamas's Gaza's chief justice has ruled that female lawyers must wear a headscarf and long, dark coloured cloak under their billowing black robes. Islamic law, it was stressed, requires women to cover themselves in public, wear loose garments, and show only hands and faces.
Labels: Human Rights, Middle East, Religion
United In Blatant Anti-Semitism
Not to be outdone by the public service unions, by the university cliques of left-leaning academics allying themselves with the usual run-of-the-mill anti-Semites in society, here comes the United Church of Canada in solidarity with the suffering Palestinian masses, struggling under the fascist boot of the State of Israel. The dire social and economic conditions of the Palestinians as a result of forced expulsion from their ancestral homeland presents as the world's 'reason' for anti-Israel rhetoric, opprobrium and action.
Israel and its people unveiled as racists, imperialists, more than content - determinedly jubilant with persecuting innocent Palestinians. How could any decent, civil society that prides itself on even-handedness in justice for all, equality for all its people in a background of liberal democracy turn Janus-like toward apartheid and oppression of another ethnic, tribal, cultural tradition - oh and yes, religion - and expect the respect of the world community?
This, then, is the response of the world at large, the world of other democratic states, of international academia, trade unions, (and just for good measure we can throw in religious secularists) who with banners of courage waving aloft (the colours of Hamas and Hezbollah, for example) reveal Israel for the monster that it is. What is this creation of a state for Jews in any event, but a racist ploy to dis-entitle others?
Such civil perfidy and inhumane practise will not go unchallenged. Not if the United Church of Canada has anything to say about it. And obviously it does.
At the Church's general council there will be a call for a "comprehensive boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions at the national and international levels", citing as reason enough Israel's 'assault on Gaza', representative of an "visible reminder of the ongoing Israeli regime of exclusion, violence and dehumanization directed against Palestinians."
Fatah, Hamas and Hezbollah can rest easy. Their all-consuming 'resistance' to the pressures of the international community to reach a peace agreement with Israel that will acknowledge its presence as legitimate, while offering the opportunity to the Palestinians to form a state of their own alongside that of Israel, can be relaxed. Their propaganda, while necessary and successful, has been overtaken in volume, urgency and success by others.
Not that those others are more competent to prosecute and proselytize on behalf of Palestinians, but their combined efforts will prove to be infinitely more isolating for Israel, with other countries more condemnatory and willing to sit by and observe while Israel flounders and finds its own solutions to its problems, impervious to international interventions on its behalf.
Inconsequential little problems like terror groups allied with the suffering Palestinian populations continually assaulting its territorial integrity and its civilians with a view to successful blood-letting on as wide a scale as possible. Tribal commitment to grievance and the heritage of the death cult is somehow seen as sympathy-evoking.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Political Realities
Subversion of International Human Rights Tribunals
Special Dispatch - No. 2459 |
| July 23, 2009 | No. 2459 |
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Egyptian Liberal Magdi Khalil: Muslim Representatives Are Subverting the International Human Rights System from Within
In a May 2, 2009 article posted on the liberal website www.elaph.org, the director of the Middle East Freedom Forum, Coptic Egyptian-American journalist Magdi Khalil, [1] wrote about the activity of Muslim representatives in international human rights organizations. He argued that these representatives were trying to subvert the human rights system from within by using it to stifle criticism of Muslim countries and of Islam while promoting hostility towards Israel. Following are excerpts from the article: [2]
"The current situation of the international system is unstable, which is possibly a sign of changes to come. The world order may shift away from unipolar American leadership towards multi-polarity, and the order established after World War II may cede its place to a new one that is in step with the post-globalization era. The uncertainty may also herald a global war giving rise to a new world order. Alternatively, it may herald a state of global chaos and the subsequent downfall of full state sovereignty, or a change in standards that will allow for entities other than national states to join in, such as mega companies, regional institutions, prominent civil society organizations and powerful factions like Hizbullah and Hamas that are effectively controlling states. "In any case, the international system is going through a confusing transition - which may last several years or even decades - and throughout this period, the world's nations will continue to vary in their perceptions and their actions while playing their [various] roles in developing and shaping the new order. "The actions of most Islamic states within various international organizations and conferences strongly suggest that they are attempting to take advantage of this international turmoil to subvert the human rights system. The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies noted in its 2008 report about human rights conditions in the Arab states: 'The Arab and Islamic states are exercising their influence within the U.N. Human Rights Council to affect legislation and formulate new international criteria that set lower standards for human rights, or deny those rights.' "The actions of Arab and Islamic representatives in international forums are designed to prohibit criticism against Islam and defend its reputation, to support the Palestinian cause and promote hostility towards Israel, and also to block any attempt to condemn the Arab and Muslim states, even when they are responsible for large massacres such as the genocide in Darfur." "On March 27, 2009, after two years of hard campaigning, the Arab and Islamic states managed to pass a resolution against 'defamation of religion' in the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC). Twenty-three of the HRC member-states voted in favor of the resolution. It was championed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Palestine, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and supported by Russia, China, and a number of African states, while 11 members, mostly from the West, opposed the resolution, and 13 abstained. "The resolution stipulates that respect for all religions and protection against defamation are fundamental to the freedom of speech, expression, thought, belief and religion. It also states that the HRC 'notes with deep concern the intensification of the overall campaign of defamation of religions, and incitement to religious hatred in general, including the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001.' It emphasized that 'everyone has the right to hold opinions, without interference, and has the right to freedom of expression, the exercise of which carries with it special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to limitations as are provided for by law and are necessary for respect of the rights or reputations of others, protection of national security or of public order, public health or morals, and general welfare.' "Glancing at these statements, it is possible to think that they originated with the Egyptian Ministry of Information or the Pakistani parliament, rather than with a council whose basic mission is to safeguard rights and freedoms - primarily the freedoms of thought and expression. Geneva-based human rights activist Professor Elham Manea appropriately described the resolution as scandalous, asking sarcastically whether the council had left any work for the Saudi Authority for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. "The Western nations are privileged to have constitutions that are in harmony with the international charters of human rights, including the Universal Declaration, which hold the utmost respect for the freedom of expression. Hence they will not heed a resolution that negates the basic right of thought, expression and the freedom of conscience. As for the Arab and Islamic states that pushed for the resolution, they are mostly interested in intimidating and blackmailing the Western world, while they themselves continue to show no respect for religious diversity in their own states, as proved by the daily slurs against all religions - except Islam - in those states. "Islamic and Arab nations are adept at using intimidation tactics to influence proceedings and manipulate decisions in the civilized world. One such incidence took place in an HRC session in June 2008. The council was discussing human rights reports dealing with such issues as the status of women in Muslim states, the provisions of the Islamic shari'a regarding women, the stoning of adulterers, and child marriages. During the discussion, the Egyptian delegate interrupted, saying: 'Shari'a law will not be subject of discussion, and Islam will not be crucified in this council.' His words had the desired effect, since the council president gave in and adjourned the meeting. Former U.N. Human Rights High Commissioner Louise Arbour commented on the incident by saying, 'It is very concerning that a council which should be the guardian of freedom of expression [observes] constraints or taboos, or subjects that have become taboo for discussion.'" "Below are some further incidents, noted by the Cairo Institute, of subversive behaviour by delegates of Arab and Muslim [HRC member-] states in the Human Rights Council in 2008. In most of the cases, these states purported to defend Islam or protect Palestinian rights, but the facts indicate that their real goal was to undermine the international human rights legacy that the council aims to uphold. "- Egypt, backed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), strongly opposed sending a team of experts to further investigate the Darfur situation. "- The Arab and Islamic states strove to protect the Sudanese regime by offering lame and misleading explanations for the situation in Darfur. "- They made similar efforts to protect the coup regime in Mauritania. "- The majority of the Arab states voted against the creation of a mechanism for comprehensive and periodic reviews, which would allow non-governmental organizations and independent experts to comment on the human rights practices in the country under review. "- The Arab and Islamic states used the Palestinian issue to distract the council from the deteriorated human rights situation in their own states. In 2008, three of the five special sessions to discuss critical issues were devoted to Palestine; furthermore, the Arab and Islamic states managed to dedicate a hearing session on the Palestinian cause at every council meeting. "- The Arab and Islamic states were hostile to NGOs and did their best to marginalize their role inside and outside the council. "In sum, the Arab and Islamic states pursued a negative agenda with regards to human rights, whether within the council or at various international forums. They hindered rather than helped, justified the violations instead of expressing regret, and attempted to export their regressive values instead of interacting positively with the values of the rest of the world. "Unfortunately, the Islamic states rely on a 'bloc voting' system, which bears more resemblance to the modus operandi of outlawed gangs than to that of respectable nations. For instance, the first article of the OIC charter establishes the concept of 'unified voting,' whereby the Muslim states must present a unified front and vote together as a bloc. This principle is based on an interpretation of a saying in Arabic, 'Champion the cause of your Muslim brother whether he is oppressor or oppressed.' Given that the Arab and Islamic groups hold 26 out of 53 seats in the HRC... they have much influence and can steer the council in the desired direction." "The fanatical and disparaging approach of the Arab and Islamic states cast its shadow not only on the Human Rights Council but on several other international organizations and forums as well. However, far more dangerous is their ability to stir up Muslim communities in Europe and incite them to hatred and violence. "Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu Al-Gheit played a well-known role in setting off the crisis of the Danish cartoons, and Syria used the incident to spur the rabble to attack foreign embassies in Syria and Lebanon as a warning message to the Western states. This hysterical behaviour recently reached new heights of absurdity when the Swiss Muslim League organized a demonstration in Geneva, on April 19, 2009, to protest Swiss racism! If Switzerland, which allows the construction of mosques and the free practice of all religions, is being labelled a racist country that discriminates against Islam, we will be hard pressed to find an appropriate label for the attitude of Islamic states toward other religions. "The Arab and Islamic states use a strategy of obfuscation and blackmail to prevent the rest of the world from discussing problems rampant in Islamic states, such as violence against women; the absence of religious freedom; the distribution of religious texts that promote violence, hatred and the perception of non-Muslims as infidels; discrimination against non-Muslim minorities; the intimidation of intellectuals through threats of imprisonment, murder and confiscation of property; acts of violence against non-Muslims; the use of internationally-proscribed punishments dictated by shari'a; child marriages; rape of minors and harassment of non-Muslim women; the integration of religion and state in a way that reinforces a culture of oppression; human rights violations under religious pretexts; the justification of terrorist acts committed by Islamist movements; and the presentation of jihad as a sacred Islamic concept that should be above criticism. (Note that we have yet to see a single fatwa issued against bin Laden). "To conclude, I would like to reiterate an observation of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies regarding the actions of the Arab and Islamic states in the Human Rights Council: 'The Arab states are grouped into political and regional blocs within the HRC. They are most active and influential, and they are also most determined to manipulate the council's resolutions in order to shield their own governments and the governments of their allies from criticism. The member states of the OIC group and the Arab group are the most vociferous within the African and Asian blocs, and have the advantage of occupying 26 out of a total of 53 seats.' "When will the world wake up to the danger that awaits the international human rights legacy and the international human rights charters?"
[1] Magdi Khalil is executive director of the Middle East Freedom Forum, and executive editor of the Egyptian Coptic weekly Watani International. A syndicated columnist for several Arabic Language newspapers, he has also authored and co-authored 20 books and numerous articles on the topics of the Middle East, Arab-Western relations, Islamic extremism, and the situation of non-Muslim minorities in Islamic states. He is also a prominent political commentator on a number of Arab satellite channels. [2] http://www.elaph.com/Web/ElaphWriter/2009/5/435596.htm. |
Labels: Human Rights, Justice, Middle East, United Nations
Is This Logical, Legal, Just?
While France awaits the extradition of Hassan Diab - who has dual Lebanese-Canadian citizenship - from Canada, Mr. Diab, who was arrested by the RCMP in November of 2008 at the request of French authorities, has the exceptional and liberating privilege of being invited back to teach a course at Carleton University. Where his common-law wife Rania Tfaily, who believes in his innocence, also teaches.
French authorities are convinced that Mr. Diab is responsible for the 1980 bombing of the Rue Copernic synagogue in Paris which killed four people and injured many others. Although there has been no claim of responsibility, it is believed with good reason, that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Special Operations was behind the operation, and that Mr. Diab, as one of their operatives, was the synagogue bomber.
He has been identified by intelligence sources, his handwriting is a match for that of the bomber, and former friends have come forward to identify him as a member of the PFLP. He has been placed in France at the right time of the bombing, although he has claimed his Lebanese passport was stolen, claiming that someone else used it to enter France. Mr. Diab has been under house arrest since his apprehension.
His bail conditions are fairly strict, requiring that he wear an electronic monitor, that he obey a curfew, and report regularly to the RCMP. Before Canadian intelligence authorities were alerted by France that this 55-year-old man who has held dual Canadian citizenship since 1993 - and with it travelled widely throughout the Middle East - he taught university courses in sociology at both University of Ottawa and Carleton University.
Law-abiding citizens, and people who believe that those accused of horrible crimes, including terrorist attacks against innocent civilians should stand before a criminal court of justice to either have their record and reputation cleansed of false accusation, or, having been found guilty as charged on the evidence, pay the due penalty for such atrocities against civilization. We might find ourselves abused of such naivety.
It has now been revealed that because of the extremely serious charge of murder and terrorism levied against this man - in an investigation that is still ongoing, and an extradition process that remains as yet unfulfilled - Mr. Diab's 'normal' life would not include anything aside from his current status awaiting extradition, under house arrest. But no, Carleton University appears to have received a special dispensation.
"An unforeseen leave" by the instructor who was to have taught an introductory sociology course has caught them short-handed, and the university has hired Mr. Diab to teach that course, similar to one that he has taught in the past, before it was revealed that he was under suspicion of having been involved in terrorism. His bail conditions require that he be escorted to the university, but not that an escort remain with him within the university.
He is free to teach, and to go about his business at the school which may necessitate that he show up there on a daily basis for as long as the course takes; presumably several weeks through the summer. Which startling turn of events might give many pause to take second thought about the manner in which our institutes of higher learning give soberer second thought to grave injustices committed by 'intellectuals'.
And the forgiving and understanding compassion extended to those considered to be 'resisting' what leftist-intellectuals relish considering the imperialistic and apartheid ambitions of the democratic State of Israel. Regardless of the inconvenient reality that the 'resistance' took the form of a brutally violent attack on innocent civilians, Jews and Parisians who lived far from Israel.
Tacit consent to viciously fanatic 'liberators'.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Canada, Conflict
Iran's Revolution Unmasked
Special Dispatch - No. 2463 |
| July 27, 2009 | No. 2463 |
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Bahraini MP: Iran's Islamic Democracy is Exposed, In All Its Dictatorial Hideousness
In a June 21, 2009 article in the Bahraini daily Akhbar Al-Khalij, Bahraini Shi'ite MP and columnist Samira Rajab lambasted the Iranian regime, particularly its top officials, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Her article, which included personal attacks on Iranian leaders, such as an allegation that Ahmadinejad is from a Jewish family and insults about Khamenei's tearful June 19, 2009 speech, provoked much criticism among Iranian circles. The day after the article's publication, the Bahraini Culture and Information Ministry banned distribution of the newspaper, citing "matters related to violation of the Publications Law." However, the ban was reversed the following day. In response to the incident, Samir Rajab said that she had received no formal complaint about her article, and that the authorities were entitled to shut down the daily "in order to protect the interests of the state." She added, however, that such decrees undermined press freedom and freedom of expression. In response to the claim that her article could cause political tension between Bahrain and Iran, she stated, "What I said about Iran and its regime is not new, and has been the subject of intensive discussion even in Tehran itself. Even my claim about Ahmadinejad's Jewish origins was made previously, by presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi in a public debate." At the same time, Rajab stressed that her articles reflected only her own opinions as a journalist, not those of the Bahraini parliament. [1] Akhbar Al-Khalij editor Anwar 'Abd Al-Rahman expressed unqualified support for Rajab. In an interview with Radio Monte Carlo, he said: "As chief editor, I take full responsibility [for what is published in the paper]. I read every word of the article by [Samira] Rajab, whom I respect. As for Iran's role in the region these past 30 years - [the role] of the Iranian government and the Iranian Revolution - [I say] that Iran has done nothing for its people, but has managed to arouse apprehension among other nations, especially those of the Gulf... Ms. Samira [Rajab] told the truth about these [Iranian] theocrats, who have exploited their country in the most hideous manner." [2] The Bahraini ministry's move of suspending the newspaper's distribution was denounced by the Bahraini Journalists Association, which stated in a June 23 communiqué: "The association is deeply concerned about this decision... and calls on the ministry to reconsider it, so as to enhance the spirit of democracy and freedom that Bahrain is experiencing under the leadership of King Hamad bin 'Issa Aal Khalifa." The association expressed its "complete solidarity with the daily [Akhbar Al-Khalij] and its employees, and [its belief in] their full right to express their opinion and carry out their journalistic mission in unrestrained freedom." [3] It also protested that the decision to suspend the daily's distribution had been issued by government officials rather than by a court. It should be noted that officially, Bahrain was fully supportive of Ahmadinejad's reelection as Iran's president. Immediately following the release of the election results, Ahmadinejad received letters of congratulation from top Bahraini officials, including its king, crown prince, prime minister, and deputy chief of staff. Following are excerpts from Samira Rajab's article, which was posted on the Akhbar Al-Khalij website. [4]
Because Iran Aims to Spread Its Ideology in the Arab World, It Is Our Duty to Alert the Public to the Nature of This Regime "Had the [Islamic] Revolution and [Islamic] Republic confined themselves to their true dimensions and role in the world, and had they not purported to be divine and undertaken a missionary role, both religious and political, that transcends their [own] borders - then the [entire] Iranian issue would not have interested us. "However, since they claim to have a metaphysical dimension and a missionary theocratic role of exporting [the revolution] to all the Arab and Muslim societies, it is our primary duty [as part of] the region's media and political arena to take an interest in the Iranian issue and to alert public opinion to the real scope and role of the [Iranian] mullah-run regime. "It is from this perspective that we have followed the Iranian regime in the past and will continue to follow it in the present and future. "[The Iranians] have tried to stifle every voice that harms their 'holy' regime that is run by 'saints.' They have presented the leaders of this 'holy' republic as infallible, and the fathers of the 'Islamic' Revolution as Allah's emissaries on earth. They have imbued their leader with the absolute authority of Allah, and they have prepared their 'holy' republic for the coming of the 'Hidden Imam,' [5] who, according to a 2006 prophecy by President [Ahmadinejad], was supposed to come within two years. "The religious seminaries that support [the Iranian] regime have churned out thousands of robed, turbaned graduates [whose function is] to spread false concepts [such as] the 'holiness' of the republic, the infallibility of its founders and the [absolute] authority of its holy leader. [The Iranians] have raised the banner of the Islamic caliphate, and have spread their missionary propaganda throughout the world in order to disseminate their 'sacred' way and the tenets of their 'divine' revolution. "They have distributed their 'pure' money among their allies in our [Arab] countries, in order to recruit supporters and undermine the security [of these countries]. [With their message of] infallible [leaders] who cannot be wrong, who never lie and who cannot be held to account, they [naturally managed to] recruit followers. Since money blinds people's eyes, they managed to buy supporters and propagandists, and since religion and religious creeds are unbeatable weapons, they have used them to build strongholds in their own country and in ours. "Thirty years - that is the age of the 'holy' [Islamic] Revolution, the republic of the Hidden Imam, the 'Islamic' democracy regime [with its] 'infallible' leaders. Thought this period, our Arab region has been in a state of constant war. It has suffered from constant political crises, discord and internal division, from political militarism, from sectarian-based recruitment [of the masses], and from [the practice of] hiding behind [religious] creeds and sacred [symbols]. Behind all of this is a blatant political goal that has nothing to do with religion or Islam. "Suddenly, after 30 years, the truth about this holiness, this infallibility, and these infallible [leaders] has come to light... Iran's Islamic democracy has been exposed in all its dictatorial hideousness. The fig leaf has fallen away, revealing the biggest political lie ever [invented] in the name of religion. The events that occurred following Iran's recent presidential elections... and the images of barbaric oppression that accompanied them, revealed the hidden [true] face of the 'Islamic' Republic. The falseness of its sanctity was exposed to all, revealing the blood-soaked truth about this republic and this regime. The 'pure' revolution uncovered its fangs of oppression, the 'holy' republic was revealed as a fraud, and the infallible [leaders] were exposed as people who lie, cheat, arrest, and torture to protect their interests." June 12, 2009 Was the Greatest Election Fraud in History "...[But] the fathers of Iran's 'Islamic' revolution [really] showed their true face by perpetrating the greatest election fraud in history. I say 'the greatest election fraud' because most cheaters [arrange to] beat their opponents by a small margin of votes. This was the case with George Bush Jr., who won his first term in office by a single vote [cast] in a single state, as part of a big election fraud exposed by film director Michael Moore in his movie Fahrenheit 9/11. [But] Ahmadinejad was elected to a second term in office on June 12, 2009 by a margin of millions of fake votes, which boosted him from third place to first. This was confirmed by an Iranian Interior Ministry [source] who supervised the elections and was directly responsible for them. [6] [It is also confirmed by] the millions who took to the streets in Iran after the elections... "...Let me also mention some of the events that accompanied these elections, which were reported by all the media outlets as well as on websites and in emails... [In these elections,] for the first time, leaders of the Iranian revolution questioned the religious roots of some of their fellow leaders. In a televised debate, Mehdi Karroubi referred to Ahmadinejad's origins, [asking him]: '...What is your full name?' His interlocutor answered, 'I am Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,' declining to mention his [real] last name. The Iranians know that [Ahmadinejad] comes from a Jewish family with a Jewish name, and Mehdi Karroubi attempted to reveal this to the public. [7] "This was also the first time that the president of the Iranian republic revealed that some of the regime officials held fake diplomas, or [diplomas] granted by colleges that [grant them] easily. One such incident was when [Ahmadinejad] made allegations and questioned [the authenticity] of the Ph.D. of the wife of [presidential] candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. In an earlier incident... [the regime] had to justify its decision to retain Interior Minister Ali Kordan... when [Kordan's] university diploma and credentials were revealed to be fake, Ahmadinejad [acknowledged] that 'the diplomas of several regime officials are fake and worthless.' "Also for the first time, [we] discovered the depth of the financial corruption of Iran's ruling elite, and the involvement of the fathers of the revolution - including clerics, political leaders and their families - in this corruption and in stealing public funds. For the first time, Iranian presidential candidates revealed that [the leaders of] the regime are distributing [state] resources to organizations around the world, when in their own country poverty is spreading, development is failing, and eight million are unemployed - that is, unemployment is at over 30%." Iran's Leaders Are Neither Holy Nor Infallible "There is much to say about [the quality of] democracy in the 'Islamic' Republic. I will mention only two things. According to Article 57 of the Iranian constitution, the Supreme Leader - who is 'the absolute religious leader and the Imam of the Nation' - holds every [conceivable] authority, since he is in charge of the legislative, judicial and executive branches. Article 110 grants him every administrative and legislative authority, as well as the authority to appoint or dismiss any senior official in the state - from the president to the head of the broadcasting authority - and the right to 'declare war and peace and [order] a general draft,' and to resolve problems [that cannot be resolved by the Expediency Council in the usual manner].' "These [constitutional] articles clarify the origin [of the problem] and explain the events that began on June 12, 2009 throughout Iran. Even if the mosque preachers of Qom try to conceal these events, and if [some of them] remain unknown in the coming time period, they will continue to seethe beneath the surface, preparing the ground for the next [outburst of] protest. After all, young people, women, and the elderly were suppressed, beaten and tortured in public; blood was spilled in the streets, and the regime provoked the youth, which constitutes two-thirds of the Iranian people. "The most important point is the lies and falsehoods of all [the leaders] of this regime, which are meant to create a halo of sanctity around them and their regime, and which have been exposed by the [recent] events in the country. [These leaders] have turned out to be ordinary people, who, like everyone else, bear grudges, have interests, and [can be] involved in conflicts, corruption, lies, fraud, oppression, killing, and torture. "The ayatollahs have lost their [halo of] religious immunity. The taboo [on questioning] their sanctity has been lifted, as has [the prohibition] on criticizing these religious authorities and holding them to account - [because] they are involved in politics, with all the depravity and earthly ambitions that that entails. "This is the place to mention how saddening it was to see Supreme leader [Khamenei] in his June 19, 2009 political speech to worshippers at Tehran University, and to see him weep in the end, saying in Persian... 'My life is worthless, my body is flawed,' in a shameful attempt to move [the audience] and to arouse their religious sympathy. This was when the rest of his speech contained so many warnings and threats. The crowd responded with their own dramatic weeping. "In sum, it can be said that on that day [June 12, 2009], the curtain came down on the penultimate episode of the clerics' hegemony over our societies."
Akhbar Al-Khalij Cartoon On June 23, 2009, when the ban on its publication was lifted, Akhbar Al-KhalijAkhbar Al-Khalij Was Suspended." [8] published the following cartoon under the title "The Day the Distribution of 
[1] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), June 23, 2009. [2] Akhbar Al-Khalij (Bahrain), June 24, 2009. [3] www.alaan.cc, June 23, 2009; Al-Raya (Qatar), June 16, 2009. [4] http://www.akhbar-alkhaleej.com/ShowArticle.aspx [5] The Twelfth or Hidden Imam is awaited by Shi'ites as the Messiah. [6] This is presumably based on a June 15, 2009 report on the Saudi TV channel Al-Arabiya, which claimed, citing a source on the election board of Iran's Interior Ministry, that Mir Hossein Mousavi had won the election with 21 million votes (57%). It was further claimed that the ministry had faked the elections using a special computer program and had prepared them for publication in advance. www.alarabiya.net, June 15, 2009. [7] To MEMRI's knowledge, no such exchange took place in any televised debate between Karroubi and Ahmadinejad. [8] Akhbar Al-Khalij (Bahrain), June 23, 2009.
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Labels: Middle East, Political Realities, Traditions, Troublespots
Next Act
"Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Khamenei has got to go." How utterly rude.
What do protesters around the world know, after all? Mass hysteria. People do react in predictable ways, do they not? First it was a mass wail-in for Michael Jackson. Now it's a unified global call for change in Iran. "Freedom ... Now!" the crowd roars during the globally-staged "Iran Global Day of Action", taking place in 85 cities around the world. Not in Syria. Not in North Korea. Not in Russia. Not in China. Not in Iraq. Not in Pakistan. Not in Afghanistan, I daresay.
*But the country does have its detractors. From among both the non-Muslim and the Muslim world, to be fair. "United We Stand again Dictatorship in Iran." "Stop mass arrest and torture of Iranians." "Release all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience." Those tedious slogans. There were no signs of note pleading for "Recognize Israel", or "Stop Nuclear Weaponization". But we can read those message into the total, if we so desire.
Expatriate Iranians living in democratic freedom elsewhere in the world than Iran say they want Iranians to enjoy democratic rights and freedoms. They claim that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a criminal. That he must be deposed. Nothing about the Supreme Leader, and the other ayatollahs whose program President Ahmadinejad prosecutes? He is where he is, after all, at the behest and the connivance of the ruling theocratic council.
No protests against the growing and extremely sinister militarization of the country under the increasing control of the fanatic Islamist Revolutionary Guards? Who are increasingly in control of the country's nuclear program. As in the Guards commander-in-chief's statement: "If the Zionist Regime attacks Iran, we will surely strike its nuclear facilities with our missile capabilities."
Secure in the belief is Mohammad Ali Jafari, that as the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, and the country that controls the passageways in the Persian Gulf, the world would not tolerate such an attack on Iran, disrupting natural gas and oil pipelines and beggaring multinational oil refining corporations and sending the world's economy into a financial and energy-procurement panic.
No intelligence on President Ahmadinejad's father-in-law, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie's loving statement on Israel? And Ahmadinejad's forgiving installment of his father-in-law to the post of first vice-president? And Ayatollah Khamenei's refusal to accept this choice, and Ahmadinejad's eventual reversal? And the resignation of the newly-assigned culture minister, the firing of the intelligence minister?
Conceivably because the intelligence minister discovered a clear lack of same within the cerebellums of the ruling elites? Next up, please.
*Whoops, forgot Venezuela, didn't I?Labels: Middle East, Technology, Traditions, Troublespots
Honour And Duty
Isn't it a good thing that the State of Israel has the Palestinian Authority with whom to bargain for peace. Otherwise, heaven forfend, it might be reaching about in the dark searching for an entity to fairly and justly represent the genuine needs and aspirations of the Palestinian people. Isn't it disappointing to discover that the genuine needs and aspirations of the Palestinian people are being represented by the Palestinian Authority, as being exclusive of the existence of Israel in the Middle East?
The Fatah-led and -administered Palestinian Authority claims to recognize Israel's existence as a reality in fact, but not necessarily its existence in reality as a Jewish state. And this is an oft-stated fact. This semi-recognition is sufficient however, for the international community to feel mollified about the status of the situation vis-a-vis the two solitudes, giving them ample cover to continue supporting the PA. The international community is singularly disinterested in details, they are quite simply annoying.
As, for example, that the PA actively conspires with its various Fatah cells to encourage ongoing and continued 'resistance' to the 'occupiers'. The 'occupiers' occupied with the proven need to defend their citizens' life-and-limb against the 'resistance' efforts to murder as many Israeli civilians as possible to ensure that their underlying message is well understood. There not by choice but through a need to defend sovereign borders and lives.
Palestinian children in grade school are scrupulously taught to abhor their 'occupiers', taught to believe their long-range aspirations are to murder Palestinian children, to ensure that they will never acquire national status of their own, and that it is incumbent on brave and loyal children to grow into the mantle of courageous and honour-loving suicide bombers in the sacred name of heritage, culture, tribal vengeance.
Now comes the proud announcement from PA Minister of Prisoner Affairs, Issa Qaraqi that a hundred streets in PA-controlled cities are to honour the names of Palestinian martyrs, who were once children taught to hate and to destroy and to wreak vengeance on Jewish upstarts. Those Palestinians who succeeded in defying death while still managing to murder Israelis will also be honoured by having streets named after them. Major ceremonies to mark these commemorative events are to take place shortly.
"This is the legitimate right of the Palestinians" said Minister Qaraqi. "We have the honour and duty to honour our prisoners in recognition of their sacrifices and steadfastness in Israeli prisons." This is the official Fatah-administered Palestinian Authority talking. Israel's partner in peace talks that are to lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state next door to Israel.
This is the international agenda, however; that of the PA is somewhat different. Theirs is to establish one Palestinian state where none existed previously, encompassing the West Bank, Gaza and Israel.
Preparatory to holding the first general assembly of Fatah in decades, two senior members of Fatah, close associates of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas affirm that Fatah has no intention - ever, of recognizing "Israel's right to exist". This, according to senior Fatah member Rafik Natsheh is the truth, and what is reported in the media is 'nonsense'.
Furthermore, he was at pains to explain, the PA 'recognizes' Israel because it must be seen to do so, in its service to the Palestinian people. Fatah, according to Natsheh and another senior Fatah member, Azzam el-Ahmed, will never abandon its call to wage war on Israel, never give up its armed struggle. "Let those who are deluding themselves hear: this will never happen."
There may be many Palestinians who fervently hope for peace, and who wish for the opportunity to live in a state of their own, alongside that of Israel. For that matter there are many Israeli Palestinians who are anxious to see a Palestinian state established alongside that of the Jewish state which has given them citizenship. Should that ever occur, however, they have no intention of leaving to reside in the new Palestinian state, to surrender opportunities open to them in Israel.
Israelis too, sick and tired of incessant violence directed against them, necessitating that their armed forces react, forcing them to do unto others what they wish were not done to them, hope that this may come to pass. Hoping, they understand, will not make it so. They understand full well how difficult it is to battle demons, the anguish of forced and optioned removal that will not die.
It is not permitted to fade into history. It is deliberately nourished as a raw wound, a reminder and a spur to rebel and incite to violence.
It is little wonder, then that in a recent telephone poll of a representative sampling of Israeli Jews, the belief, by a 62-27 margin is that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas intends to replace Israel, not merely establish a side-by-side state, the public line offered to assuage any potential suspicions of the international community.
A majority percentage of 58 believes that any successor to Mr. Abbas would reflect the current thinking of the PA.
And finally, when asked which solution would better represent Israel's interests, a sovereign Palestinian State or an autonomous Palestinian area obliging Palestinians to control their own fortunes and pursue a path leading to economic, social and political stability and growth, while having the borders and airspace under Israeli control, 70% of respondents chose the autonomous route.
Trust there is none. And little wonder, given past expeditions by suicide bombers into Israel which succeeded in obligating Israel to build a physical barrier to protect its people. Despite which, and inclusive of the unilateral evacuation of Gaza, Palestinians made no effort to help themselves to become a responsible civil state-in-waiting.
Instead belligerence and dedication to ongoing assaults from dedicated terrorists allied with Fatah and Hamas pave the way for ongoing low-grade warfare. In the service of peace, needless to say.
Labels: Israel, Political Realities, Traditions, Troublespots
Is There Honour In Killing?
Canada is horror-struck that three young sisters and their step-mother were discovered to have been deliberately murdered by their father, Mohammad Shafia, their mother Tooha Mohammad Yahya, and their son, sibling of 19-year-old Zainab Shafia, 17-year-old Sahari, and 13-year-old Geeti, along with 50-year-old Rona Amir Mohammad. The three - father, mother and brother of the murdered girls were arrested and charged with murder in the first degree and conspiracy to commit murder.
How it is possible for people to become so humanely degraded, so incapable of recognizing the enormity of the aberration they represent as people taking deliberately intentional steps to murder their kith and kin is beyond most peoples' imaginings. The primary consciousness of empathy, the connection between children and parents so irretrievably corrupted. This is the face of evil. It is beyond comprehension that a mother would be complicit in planning the murder of her three daughters.
It begs belief that a young man would agree to assist his parents to kill his sisters and the step-mother who had been the major female influence in his life. Cultures that practise a version of religious observance that claims through its primitive kind of heritage that women are inferior to men, and must be violently subjugated in recognition that they are a source of troubles and afflictions of temptation have infiltrated their presence around the world.
Fundamentalist religionists from Sikh to Muslim to Buddhist, Christian or Judaic practise a misogynistic heritage of patriarchy which insists on controlling every facet of a woman's life. From infibulation to duennas, from binding feet to the wearing of burkas and the niqab. Women are sequestered within the confines of the family home, taught no skills other than those she will require as a wife - which is basically to please her husband - and must accept arranged marriages.
Not all religious traditions wreak the horrible dead-end discipline on women that "honour killings" represent. Daughters who disgrace Christian households were traditionally disowned and thrown out of their families to fend for themselves. Orthodox Jewish households said a prayer for the dead, and cut off all contacts with their young women who were felt to have offended orthodoxy and cultural normatives. As uncongenial as these practices were they were emotionally abusive, not physically murderous.
Islamic fundamentalists may not be the only groups in the world that practise this kind of theocratic fanaticism in condemning young girls and women to stoning, public shame and humiliation, lashings, being outcast, and above all, murdered to cleanse the family's honour of the shame they have brought upon it, but they are the most visible in the prevalence of these honour killings. Young girls can be said to have brought dishonour to their families through their unacceptable mode of dress and manner.
More egregious disobedience to family values were represented by girls defying tradition by appearing in public with a male outside of the family group. Expressing affection for a male or even interest in one was considered an unacceptable offence. Actually having a physical affair with a man outside of marriage was anathema and deserving of death. A young girl or woman being the victim of rape would be viewed as deserving punishment by somehow provoking that incident of rape.
Muslim groups within Canada are angry that the media and the general public have reacted with aghast outrage at the dreadful deaths of these four women at the hands of their family members. Claiming that as soon as an event is labelled an 'honour killing', it is seen as condemnation of Muslims. As long as such a dreadful tradition resonates within the Muslim community, even within a minority of the ummah, it becomes incumbent on the greater community to condemn it and root it out, not insist it is a fabrication of a febrile Western mind, celebrated by the international media.
In the instance of this family, Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya and their children having emigrated to Canada to begin a new life, that new life should have meant abandoning the primitive and hateful practises left behind in their native Afghanistan. That it did not occur in this manner, that the head of this family remained an unreconstructed monster that insisted on controlling the women in the family is a tragedy.
But it should surprise no one. Long ingrained customs and traditions are not easily shed. They are lightly abandoned when one is an impressionable young girl emerging into early adulthood, witnessing the manner in which all other young women live out their lives in a new and open environment, but this is no reflection of what their domineering father demanded of his female charges. Zainab's attraction to a young man of whom her father disapproved was her death sentence.
It is abundantly clear that the 18-year-old son, Hamed Shafia, was successfully inducted into the traditions of his heritage and culture, given the influence of his father. That love for his sisters and his step-mother could not transcend the influence of such a debased culture may not be surprising given the needful attachments of young people, but it is disappointing. Hamed Shafia was emotionally and culturally coerced to abandon his humanity.
Perhaps the worst place in this affair was that played out by Tooha Mohammad Yahya, the biological, though perhaps not emotionally-bound mother of the three young girls. Even if she represented the persona of an abused woman, she was complicit with her husband in planning the murder of her children. We are all the beneficiaries of free will; when put to the test we are capable of choosing another path than that down which we are led.
Tooba Mohammad Yahya ensured her place in infamy by having surrendered her sensibilities and sensitivities to a culture of blame, vengeance and death. She helped murder her three daughters and she helped to stifle the emerging maturity and humanity of her oldest son. Where is the honour to be had in lending oneself to the most horrendous of human acts of betrayal?
Labels: Canada, Social-Cultural Deviations
Urgent Response Required...!
The ongoing drama of dissent among the religious and political elite of Iran is still playing out behind the scenes in that country. It is claimed by sources who claim to know that thousands of dissenters have been arrested, among them the brother-in-law of Mir Hossein Mousavi who contested the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The regime's thugs are in the process of extracting confessions under torture from the regime's detractors affirming for public display that they are acting as minions of Great Britain or the Great Satan, the United States (or the Lesser Satan, Israel) in trying to undermine the legitimacy and union of Iran.
Instead of the 20 protesters who the state-controlled media in Iran has claimed to have been killed in the melees that erupted with the public protests, those in the know claim that the real number is well into the hundreds. Families hoping to find their missing children have been shown hundreds of bodies in cold-storage facilities, where they are allowed to search for their young family members.
And, as long as they agree to certify that their sons and daughters died through 'natural causes', they may be allowed to retrieve the bodies for burial.
Those languishing in prisons may continue to be stored there, awaiting interrogation, perhaps torture, perhaps death. Deserved by the irrefutable fact that their seditious activities were being directed by the international community in a singular foreign conspiracy to unseat the current religious-militaristic state.
Should the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei eventually be forced to recant and withdraw his support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and allow Mir Hossein Mousavi to become president, not too much will change. Iranians will have proved a point, however; that the public has the power to effect change.
The trouble is, far greater change must take place. The control of the ayatollahs must be challenged. The fanaticism of the theistic state with its tyrannical control of the population and its ruinous policies with respect to directing the state's finances toward nuclear-weapons building, robbing the country of needed upgrades in infrastructure will simply limp along as long as the public allows it to.
Until the Iranian people decide, finally, that the majority has an obligation to join the efforts of the courageous few, to attain true democracy for themselves, the current trajectory will continue.
The international community is appalled and fearful at the prospect of a fundamentalist state coming into possession of nuclear weaponry. Most of the other countries in the Middle East are in terror of Iran possessing nuclear weapons. The incendiary hatred between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam bespeak irreconcilable relations.
That is, as long as each is represented by such rigidly totalitarian religious regimes as Saudi Arabia on the one hand and Iran on the other. Each has been responsible for encouraging, training and arming violent jihadists, unleashing on the world the prospect of ongoing terror.
Civil societies are talking about impacting the Iranian economy to the extent that it will eventually fall into penury, destroying the hold of the ayatollahs through a popular uprising of Iranians demanding surcease from the current impasse. German, Swiss, Dutch, French, Finnish companies all do business with Iran, and those companies like Siemens and Nokia along with oil refineries, banking interests and the producers of hard goods are being pressed to halt their business dealings with the country.
Alternatively, countries like the United States and Canada, through initiatives from elected officials are being encouraged to boycott those companies who do business in North America and Iran - ensuring that a choice be made; one or the other.
U.S. law forbids commercial ties with Iran. Washington insists banks and financial institutions withhold giving Iran credit. Exerting this kind of economic pressure is supposed to bring Iran to its knees in a concerted international effort to force a change of either regime or programming.
Obviously the one country that stands most to gain from this concerted effort at constraining Iran's policies with respect to nuclear production and its determination to achieve nuclear weaponization is the very country in the Middle East that has been at the receiving end of Iran's promise of eradication. With nuclear devices, if need be - and what other reason conceivably for owning such weapons, since this is their stated purpose?
To that end, Israel has been busy on the diplomatic and propaganda front, asking nations to sever their relations with Iran, to impose sanctions, embargoes, reduction of commercial ties. Startlingly, a writer for Haaretz writes that international companies enjoying close commercial ties with Iran still operate in the Israeli marketplace.
Siemens having earned billions of shekels selling gas turbines to the Israel Electric Corporation. Siemens' tender to the Israeli airport authority is said to represent the sole company capable of meeting complex technical requirements. Israel still permits international banks with connections to Iran to work with Israeli banks.
Politics and business make strange bedfellows.Labels: Middle East, Traditions
Terror Targets
Something else for the Canadian public to digest. As though home-grown and -nurtured terrorists, young people born and raised in Canada to immigrants from majority-Muslim countries turning against the country that has succored and educated them and socialized them weren't enough of a trial. Now we also learn through a recently-divulged report put together by Canada's Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, that there is more, much more.
"Hezbollah's military wing is responsible for planning and executing terrorist acts and collecting intelligence" according to the Canadian government report. Which also warns that Hezbollah has been "rearming and recruiting" for yet another war to be mounted against Israel, but not stopping there.
Intention has been made clear that Western targets will be struck, as well, in response to the possibility that Iran's nuclear sites are destroyed by a pre-emptive attack on Iran, from either the United States or Israel.
Hezbollah is banned under Canadian law, as a terrorist organization; a client and surrogate militia of Iran, and by extension, Syria. Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah has laid blame upon Israeli agents for the assassination of Imad Mugniyah, even while many suspect he was murdered by Hezbollah agents. The intelligence report just published in Canada indicates that Nasrallah had "vowed to retaliate against Israeli interests anywhere in the world."
"Open war, without boundaries" is on the agenda. The countries hosting the greatest Jewish populations are, in descending order: Israel, the United States, France and Canada. Israel has an embassy in Canada's capital, Ottawa, and the country is host, through its Jewish-Canadian population, to over 200 Jewish institutions, including schools and synagogues, all of which are under heightened alert and have been for quite some time.
In response to the threat issued by Nasrallah, Canadian counter-terrorism authorities investigated a group of Hezbollah operatives engaged in scoping out potential targets within Canada. Hezbollah claims that its mandate is the destruction of the State of Israel. Claiming, disengenuously, that it has nothing against Jews; much as Hamas does, as well, whose charter also is invested in the obliteration of the Jewish State.
Israel has launched a formal complaint to the United Nations, informing them that Hezbollah has been re-exerting control in Southern Lebanon, and undermining the work of the UN peacekeepers. Made abundantly obvious by the week-end event that saw a munitions depot exploding, killing two Hezbollah militia and UN peacekeepers stoned by Palestinians when they attempted to investigate.
The United Nations itself, for the first time announced its own findings, that concurred with Israel's contention. It could hardly ignore the fact that the main road into the southern Lebanese village was blocked with burning tires, and physical resistance contained UNIFIL's response. Hezbollah had launched that civilian rock-throwing by shrieking women to detain the peacekeepers and render them incapable of investigating the source of the explosion.
In its defence and response to the charges against it, Hezbollah has itself charged that it is responding to Israel's intent to attack it. The arms smuggling and obstruction of movement of UNIFIL forces that Hezbollah has engaged in since 2006 has enabled Hezbollah to re-arm, recruit, and build itself toward another assault on Israel. Obviously their intent does not stop at Israel, given that its operatives have been busy elsewhere in the world, lining up Jewish targets.
Israel has claimed that the Lebanese army was helping Hezbollah to disguise the weapons depot incident, confirmed by the fact that the Lebanese army has informed UNIFIL that their actions represented a violation of Lebanese jurisdiction. "Israel", claims Nasrallah, "is speaking of war that will eradicate the resistance from the Lebanese territories". Calling on Lebanon to "embrace the resistance and the culture of resistance".
And this is the viral infection that has infiltrated Canada, seeking to do injury to Jewish interests wherever they exist
Labels: Canada, Israel, Terrorism
What About The News?
WashingtonHillary Clinton, The U.S. Secretary of State, said North Korea should not receive the attention it is seeking by launching missiles and likened Pyongyang's behaviour to that of unruly children. North Korea tested a nuclear device in May and fired seven ballistic missiles earlier this month in defiance of a UN resolution. "What we've seen is this constant demand for attention", Ms. Clinton, who is in India, said in an interview that aired yesterday on ABC's Good Morning America. "And maybe it's the mother in me or the experience that I've had with small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention - don't give it to them, they don't deserve it, they are acting out." Reuters.
Shades of Sonya Sotomayor...! Is it possible to recall this woman's appointment? Her experience as a mother and with unruly teenagers renders her capable of assessing the behaviour of an ideologically fascist, utterly power-deluded tyrant and his self-obsessed agenda for world recognition? Ignore the threat of nuclear armaments and long-range missiles tossed off like firecrackers? Ignore them, Ms. Clinton? And then? Back to the psychology-1 drawing board, Ms. Clinton.LondonA married Saudi princess who became pregnant during an affair with a British man has been given asylum after she claimed she could face the death penalty if she went home. A British court granted refugee status to the young woman, who is married to a member of the Saudi royal family, after she told the judge her adultery made her liable to death by stoning in Saudi Arabia, The Independent reported yesterday. A spokeswoman for the Home Office refused to confirm the report. According to the newspaper, the woman - who was granted anonymity by the court - is one of a few Saudi citizens who claim asylum in Britain but whose cases are not openly acknowledged by either government - Agence France-Presse.
Horrible instances of human-rights abuses, abysmal control of its citizens, refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of other religions, viral and vicious customs practised by a society that victimizes its women. A country ruled by despots claiming primacy over Islam's most sacred religious sites, and which funds the operation of religious schools dedicated to teaching impressionable young Muslim men the nature of jihad. Britain quietly deals with these issues, unlike her outright condemnation of a democratic country and a nation dedicated to protecting Jews from the incendiary hatred of just those countries whose legendary misogyny and 'honour killings' still render them respectable.TurkeyTwo retired Turkish generals went on trial yesterday accused of planning to engineer an army coup in a case highlighting a power struggle over Islam's role in the EU-candidate country. They were among 56 arraigned on charges they plotted a campaign of bombings and assassinations to trigger a coup against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, suspected of pursuing a secret Islamist agenda. Another 86 people, including army officers, lawyers and journalists, are already on trial accused of links to the shadowy right-wing group Ergenekon. The army, which has toppled four governments since 1960 but has seen its political influence reined in under EU-backed reforms, denies any link to the affair. - Reuters
The Turkish military has always aligned itself with secular politicians dedicated to ensuring that the country remained true to the vision of its modern founding father, Kemal Ataturk. The last fifteen years of Mustafa Kemal were dedicated to changing Turkey from a bastion of Islam into a secular nation state. He was determined to stop Islam's power to block the modernization of Turkey. From 1924 the Grand National Assembly passed legislation closing the Sufi orders and madrases, and replacing the Shariah with a modified version of the Swiss civil Code. Women were assured of equal rights with men in marriage, divorce and the inheritance of property, entered professions and offices. The real fear among progressives is that the Islamist party will turn modern Turkey back toward the Ottoman Empire at its decline. Those who conspire against their current Islamist government will suffer political imprisonment and psychic and ideological totalitarian-imposed impoverishment, if not death.BerlinTen people are fighting for their lives and dozens more were injured after a 260-car pileup on a German autobahn caused by a thunderous downpour, police said. The accident, which happened late on Sunday on a 30-kilometre stretch of the A2 expressway near Braunschweig in northern Germany, was the worst in the road's history. More than 300 ambulances, fire engines and police cars rushed to the scene to tend to the 66 people injured in the crash, which was blamed on cars aquaplaning on puddles of water while a low sun dazzled drivers. Speed was also a factor. Traffic jams several kilometres long formed as cleanup crews worked to clear the mess. - Agence France-Presse.
Oh, speed was 'also a factor'. Who would've guessed that to be the case. Germany's famed autobahns which infamously, have no speed limits. Take it away boys! In the juvenile vernacular of North America, no word better describes this mess than 'duh!'
RomeAudio excerpts from a purported exchange between Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister and a call girl aired yesterday on the website of the weekly L'Espresso. A male voice said to be Mr. Berlusconi says "I'm going to have a shower too ... So wait for me in the big bed if you finish first. A woman's voice, purportedly that of Patrizia D'Addario, replies, "Which big bed ... Putin's?" referring to Vladimir Putin, the Russian President. "Putin's", the male voice says. Mrs. D'Addario has said Mr. Berlusconi, 72, has a bed Mr. Putin slept in. She is at the centre of a probe concerning an entrepreneur who allegedly paid call girls to spend the night at Mr. Berlusconi's Rome residence and a villa in Sardinia. Agence France-Presse.
Well, if a third party pays the bill, and just brings the 'girls' along for entertainment value, there is left to the inestimable Mr. Berlusconi the rascally and titillating adventure of the chase, sweeping women off their feet in their fervent desire to have sex with that alluring, virile, 72-year-old-powerhouse. Fascinating that despite this 'call girl scandal' Berlusconi's approval rating, although descending, has not yet slumped to the extent that the earnestly redoubtable Barack Obama's approval rating has. What's the moral of this story?Labels: That's Life, World News
"Be Very Careful"
Cautionary words, words spoken often by those who care about others' welfare, most often mothers speaking to their children, admonishing the young to take especial care lest they come to grief. The phrase has sinister undertones, however, when used as an oblique warning from a figure of authority to those whose unmitigated gall in opposing that authority proves to be an embarrassment and a threat to stability of the authority's regime.
And so, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, who brooks no questioning of his pronouncements, has issued a warning to those high-placed elite within his own government who have publicly denounced the outcome of the June 12 presidential election. He cannot simply authorize the Revolutionary Guard and other government militias to thrash these doubters, to arrest and torture them, as has been done with ordinary citizens-protesters, after all.
But he can, and he did, issue dire warnings that his patience has come to a shuddering end. Those who question the outright electoral victory of the current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when the Supreme Leader has firmly and under the authority of a higher spiritual level, given his assent, risk much. In their purported zeal to act as puppets of the West seeking to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran, they risk being accused as traitors to the nation and worse, to Islam.
"Elites should know that any talk, action or analysis that helps [the enemy] is a move against the nation. We should be very careful." The Supreme Leader's theistic zeal cannot be questioned. He cannot be accused of inciting to view dissenters as traitors to the state and to Islamic ideals. The general paranoia instilled among the population is fairly receptive to his message, giving the dissenters ample opportunity to recant and fall into line.
And the international community which indeed does conspire against the current dedicated interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran's insistence that it can, will and must achieve nuclear sufficiency as a forward-looking nation should now take the opportunity to exercise sound judgement in taking steps to deleteriously affect the country's financial state, already teetering thanks to misrule and misidentification of priorities.
A country that directs its scarce resources toward nuclear advancement while at the same time there are food and energy shortages most certainly represents an administration whose priorities are wretchedly out of tune with need and responsibility. An administration whose leaders and whose religious establishment iterates and reiterates unsubstantiated accusations against other countries, and utters its determination to destroy another country is ripe for destabilization.
Those countries that supply Iran's domestic gasoline could begin rationing it. While Iran is the second-largest importer of gasoline in the world, it is also one of the countries with the largest known fossil-fuel reserves. Instead of wisely investing in its own refinement facilities for its own raw natural resources, it has chosen to invest in nuclear installations and boasts of its nuclear program advancement, its thousands of centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment site.
"With great honor" crowed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "I declare that as of today our dear country has joined the nuclear club of nations and can produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale." All of the United Nations Security Council's resolutions have been ineffectual in persuading the country to stand back on its nuclear development. Attempts by the United States, the European Union and others to isolate Iran and sanction it have been useless.
But if the international community is indeed serious about disadvantaging Iran's nuclear program and avoiding having to face the very real possibility of its attaining nuclear weapons, it can and should assume some responsible action that will hit the country in its economy and finally make some inroads in the kind of 'diplomacy' that might be ultimately successful.
Iran's suppliers of gasoline, those who ship and insure and reinsure could be extremely effective if their services and their shipments were curtailed. Countries could conceivably disinvest in Iran, and others could legislate sanctions on any entity providing or helping Iran to obtain refined petroleum. The list of suppliers, shippers, insurance and reinsurance companies could be promulgated so that other countries could decline to do business with them and the choice is thus simplified.
The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have introduced meaningful legislation to impose sanctions on such entities. The House passed legislation forbidding the provision of U.S. government export support to such entities. And in Canada, MP Irwin Cotler recently introduced the Iran Accountability Act which would divert Canada from investing in Iran. Canada's diplomatic relations with Iran are virtually non-existent, in any event.
But these measures would be a clear response to Tehran's incitement to genocide, illegal nuclear program and their legendary and extensive human rights abuses, inclusive of their huge use of capital punishment on a scale not matched by any other country but China.
Labels: Middle East, Technology, Troublespots
News Of The World, July 2009
BrazilFive major hospitals in Brazil's crime-ridden city of Rio de Janeiro are to be bullet-proofed because of frequent gunfights involving drug gangs, the state news agency, Agencia Brasil reported Saturday. The federal hospitals, all located in risky zones, will have concrete walls built around them and steel shutters installed over the windows, some of which will also be reinforced to stop bullets.
What is this? The wild, wilder, wildest West? Isn't Brazil challenging advanced world economies as a South American financial tiger-in-the-making? What's with the third-world criminal status?
ChinaChinese police shot dead 12 "mobsters" during unrest in Urumqi on July 5, state media reported Saturday, quoting a local official saying the action was taken to prevent further bloodshed. Three died on the spot and nine after unsuccessful treatment, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The report did not give details of the ethnicity of the deceased or those involved in the unrest, but blame for the violence in the Xinjiang regional capital that day was previously pinned on ethnic minority Uighurs.
Oh those splittist monsters. Never, ever the innocent Han Chinese who wish only to establish a state of even-handed opportunity to all of China's inhabitants. The evil Uighurs threaten to secede, and this is a criminal offence of the highest order hence the designation of miserable mobsters.
LebanonFourteen United Nations peacekeepers were injured in south Lebanon on Saturday (18July) when protesters tried to stop an investigation into an arms cache that exploded in a Hezbollah stronghold last week, a spokeswoman said. Ammunition stored in an abandoned house in the village of Khirbet Selm, 20 kilometres from the Israeli border, exploded on Tuesday. The UN had launched an investigation into the cause of the blast in co-ordination with the Lebanese army, and around 100 people gathered on Saturday and tried to stop it by throwing stones at the troops.
Hel-lo!? These are terrorists and their fervidly conscienceless supporters. This is akin to faulting al-Qaeda for not recognizing the civil niceties of the Geneva Convention. As for the Palestinians, they are consummate rock-throwers; political 'refugees' so utterly consumed with hatred and tribal vengeance a mere peacekeeping unit is no match.
HondurasOusted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya agreed Saturday to give his enemies a share of power if he is allowed to return to office, but they rejected any deal that puts him back in the presidency. Zelaya, who was toppled in a military coup on June 28 and is in exile in Nicaragua, backed the proposal for a government of national reconciliation put forward by the mediator trying to negotiate a deal between Zelaya and interim president Roberto Micheletti, the former speaker of Congress. Also Saturday, Zelaya again vowed he would soon return to Honduras despite warnings he would be arrested.
And then the scenario following his arrest would be a signal for his supporters to come out in full array, challenging the country's government, its Supreme Court, its Congress, its respectable elected officials and its military. Civil disobedience in this instance leading to civil war, and a good time by all in pursuing their ends.
IndonesiaThe bombings at the Jakarta JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels that killed nine people, including two suspected attackers, are probably linked with the mastermind of the 2002 Bali blasts, an Indonesian official said. The attacks days earlier bear the hallmark of tactics and explosive devices used by Malaysian terrorist Noordin Mohammad Top, said Ansyaad Mbai, who coordinates Indonesian counter-terrorism efforts. Top and Azahari Husein were the alleged masterminds of the Bali attacks that killed 202. Indonesian police killed Azahari in 2005, while Top escaped during the raid. Top, the chief ideologue of the most violent wing of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network, was probably looking for the right moment to strike, such as the presidential election and a planned trip by the Manchester United Football Club, said Mbai.
Jemaah Islamiyah is out to demonstrate, indelibly, that the thugs of the Manchester United are no match in their sports zeal for the peerless energy and aggravated hostility of Islamists' religious ardour.
EnglandHenry Allingham, the world's oldest man and oldest First World War veteran, who put his longevity down to "cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women", died Saturday at the age of 113. The Queen and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown led the tributes to Allingham, who symbolized the stoicism of the last generation of servicemen who saw the horrors of the Great War. The veteran spoke of his experiences in the 1914 - 1918 conflict in order to remember fallen comrades shorn of the chance to live as long as he did, and hoped there would be "no more wars".
Clearly, God was not listening, hasn't his ear attuned, is not all that engaged with the puny, petty affairs of humankind, sitting high and complacently on His throne.
United StatesThis marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's Lunar Module Columbia Moon landing when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down at the Sea of Tranquility 40 years ago Monday, 20 July to spend 3-1/2 hours walking on the Moon. To the present time, a dozen men have walked on the moon, in splendid lunar isolation in a series of 'one small steps' for humankind.
The event has not, other than with technically-advanced materials-creation, changed human life forever, as the famed astronomer and science fiction writer Fred Hoyle claimed it would.
BritainA British student who converted to Islam was jailed for a minimum of ten years yesterday for plotting a suicide attack with home-made explosives last year. Andrew Ibrahim, 20, also known as Isa Ibrahim, was found guilty of plotting to blow himself up with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury in April 2008 in Bristol, southwest England. The son of a hospital consultant was arrested in a Bristol suburb, where police found two home-made vests, ball bearings, pellets for an air gun, nails and screws, wired circuitry and batteries. In a refrigerator, police found a quantity of the high explosive HMTD, used in the 2005 London bombings. Prosecutors alleged that Ibrahim, a drug addict who had been expelled from a number of schools, was planning to mount an attack on a shopping centre in Bristol.
What a way for an enterprising free-wheeler to end up, miserably incarcerated so he can live out his fantasies in a jail cell. He blew it, poor slob, and will never now be venerated as a living martyr - or a deservedly dead one - by the international coterie of vicious jihad.
RussiaChechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov is suing the head of the Russian rights group Memorial after he accused the Caucasus strongman over the murder of activist Natalya Estemirova, his lawyer said yesterday. "I have prepared and will file to court a complaint on protecting the honour, worthiness and professional reputation of the president of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov", lawyer Andrei Krasnenkov told Interfax. Memorial's head Oleg Orlov had accused the pro-Kremlin Chechen leader of being responsible for the murder of Ms. Estemirova, saying he was guilty irrespective of who ordered the killing. Mr. Kadyrov is suing for defamation, and Mr. Krasnenkov said he was sure that the case would be won "as the statements by Orlov carried a clearly expressed slanderous character". Ms. Estemirova, 50, was found dead Wednesday afternoon with gunshot wounds to the head and chest. She was seen being bundled into a car outside her home in the Chechen capital Grozny.
A neat balance of judging the value of a reputation already deep in a hellish chasm, against that of a well-lived and courageous life elevated in repute beyond anything Mr. Kadyrov can declare inside or outside a court of law.
IranIn apparent defiance of Iran's supreme leader, a powerful cleric declared the Islamic Republic in crisis after a disputed election, and tens of thousands of protesters used Friday prayers to stage the biggest show of dissent for weeks. Clashes erupted in central Tehran between police and followers of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who still contests official results that showed hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been re-elected by wide margin. "Police fired teargas and beat supporters of Mousavi in Keshavarz Boulevard, a witness said, adding that protesters were carrying hundreds of green banners - Mr. Mousavi's campaign colour - and chanting "Ahmadinejad, resign, resign."
Well good luck there, protesters, and keep up the good work. Pity that regardless of who heads the country, under the savagely fanatic ayatollahs, nothing much will change. Iranians, rise up! and do more than protest; have yourselves a much-needed revolution toward the evolution of your humanity.
PakistanThere is a genuine risk Islamist terrorists may get their hands on Pakistan's nuclear weapons or nuclear material for a dirty bomb, according to a British security expert. "Knowledge that such a transfer has occurred may not become evident until the aftermath of a nuclear 9/11 in Pakistan or elsewhere in the world", says Dr. Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan Security Unit at the University of Bradford in Britain. "The challenge to Pakistan's nuclear weapons from Pakistani Taliban groups and from al-Qaeda constitutes a real and present danger, he writes in an article to be published in the Combating Terrorism Center's magazine Sentinel at the U.S. Military Academy West Point.
Saying it can't be so, won't make it so. The threat is real and the world simply is not ready to face the finality of the End of Days. Thanks so much for your concern.
CanadaA 77-year-old Pakenham woman is mourning the loss last week of four cement figurines she hand painted and placed on her veranda every spring. Donna Pierce noticed that Snow White and the Three Dwarfs were missing while sitting out on her veranda, and called Lanark County OPP. Snow White stands 40 centimetres tall, has blond pigtails and wears a blue dress with an apron filled with multicoloured flowers. One dwarf is multi-coloured and pushes a wheelbarrow, the second has a bag marked "seeds" draped over his shoulder, and the third carries a pickaxe. Anyone with any information about the theft is asked to call Lanark county OPP at 613-267-2626 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-TIPS (8477).
Sigh.
Labels: World Crises, World News
MAD? Not Quite
Mutual Assured Destruction was a desperate protocol that the-then two disaffected super-powers exercised during the Cold War in a human trust that neither would be so foolish as to succumb to the provocation of using a nuclear device, one on the other. Although on each side, the finger to thrust that little red button was always on alert, behind the determination that each would not be surprised by a pre-emptive strike.
Behind which, nonetheless, was the understanding that to unleash that massively destructive armament would be tantamount to relieving oneself of one's humanity.
The inhuman and some still insist needful decision to drop relatively primitive nuclear devices in the shape of two atomic bombs, one on Hiroshima and the other, days later, on Nagasaki providing ample opportunity for the world to witness the destructive horrors of such devices. The universally-felt dismay at the extent of lost lives and generations of affected individuals from the radioactive fall-out served as a point lesson in restraint.
Nuclear-possessing countries of the world, while having acquired a nuclear arsenal, possess them without serious thought of ever having to use them other than for their deterrent effect. That, at least, is the prevailing wisdom. Neither the United States, Russia, France, England, China or India, let alone Israel would or could imagine themselves to be the cause of such a mass disaster that using a nuclear device would cause to the world.
Yet when Pakistan achieved their nuclear breakthrough, and their rogue nuclear scientist sold nuclear plans and technical assistance to countries like North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Libya all bets were off. Pakistan and India came fairly close to cataclysmic war over Kashmir, and Pakistan's incendiary hatred for India. North Korea has achieved rudimentary nuclear weaponry. Syria is on the cusp, along with Iran, of doing the same.
South Africa and Libya remain the two countries which did manage to become nuclear-arms owning, but South Africa voluntarily discharged their program, and Libya was prevailed upon through the success of isolation by the West and a protocol of imposing economically harmful embargoes to surrender theirs. In most of these instances cooler heads finally prevailed.
In the case of Iran, North Korea and Syria the world trembles in anticipation.
Iran's belligerently Islamist theocracy is determined to achieve nuclear power leading to nuclear weapons. It has been forthright in declaring its determination to wipe Israel off the map of the Middle East. American military chief Admiral M. Mullen claims "My concern is that the clock continues ticking. I believe that Iran is very much focused on getting that capability. this is a very narrow space we have."
The nightmare vision of Iran successfully acquiring nuclear weaponry makes the world an uneasy place. The tacit agreement that MAD exemplified in arms control and reduction and the assurance that neither protagonist during the Cold War would unleash hell upon themselves simply does not work in the Iran-Israel equation. Iran, mindful of the imminent appearance of the Hidden Imam, the 12th Madhi heralding Armageddon, is complacent with the idea of mass destruction of an imperfect world, inducting the faithful into Paradise.
If Iran unleashed a nuclear device on Israel, a 100-kiloton device would instantly kill 9,000 people in Tel Aviv, injuring 4,000 more and in the space of three weeks the toll would soar to almost a million dead from the plume of radiation spreading outward from the bomb blast. Iran would have succeeded in replicating what Nazi Germany succeeded in doing. Six million Jews would be killed. Iranians are the original Aryans, given honourable Third Reich status by the Nazi regime whom they admired and aligned with.
Israel's instant retaliation would result in sending off a much more powerful nuclear device with a far more accurate delivery, killing 57,000 Iranians in Tehran, soon increasing to 1.5- million, and ultimately 5.1 million injured with a week. With Israeli nuclear weapons targeting other major Iranian cities and military bases, a total of 16 to 28 million people might be destroyed within a three-week period. Horrible conjecture.
There is much to apprehend most sane, realistic heads of state from abandoning humanity and launching such a truly catastrophic human disaster. But the fanatically divinely inspired insistence of Iran's ayatollahs, not merely its Supreme Leader, but all of them, claim guidance from Allah in the execution of such an attack. And since it would inspire the 12th Mahdi to finally return and finalize the destiny of the faithful, there is nothing to lose and much to be gained for believers.
Clearly, this is a scenario representing the very worst that the world can envisage; humankind bringing utter and irreversible destruction upon itself. For once that genie is out of its bottle, it would be extremely difficult to repress and contain other insanely-inspired fanatics, either religiously-inclined or ideologically, state, or non-state actors from repeating those final fireworks.
Labels: Social-Cultural Deviations, Technology, World Crises
