Free Thoughts

This blog is: right-wing,pro-U.S.,pro-free-market,pro-israel,anti-islamist,secularist and pro-democracy Email: stefania07@hotmail.com

FEW BARBARIANS WON'T...

FEW BARBARIANS WON'T UNDERMINE THE EFFORTS FOR A FREE AND DEMOCRATIC IRAQ..FALLUJAH,SUNNI TRIANGLE..SOME BARBARIANS BURNED A CAR WITH SOME WESTERNERS WHICH WERE WORKING FOR IRAQ'S DEMOCRATIC AND CIVIL RECONSTRUCTION.THIS BARBARIC ACT SHOWS THE INHUMANE AND BARBARIAN NATURE OF THE SADDAM'S LOYALISTS.

Horror in Fallujah

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115703,00.html

CHANTING AND ENJOYING AFTER BURNING AND MUTILATING THE BODIES OF THE SUPPORTERS OF A FREE AND DEMOCRATIC IRAQ..

Postato da: persialover a 19:55 | link | |

Taiwan's democracy

Taiwan's democracy

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040330-090537-9897r.htm

Taiwan's election a week ago was a mess. Hundreds of thousands of protesters hit the streets to dispute the outcome. There are still questions about a bizarre assassination attempt. Charges about spoiled ballots have undermined acceptance of the vote by some, and a court challenge by the defeated opposition sought to invalidate the election and schedule a new one. On the surface, Taiwan's democracy appears to be in serious trouble. But this conventional wisdom is wrong. Taiwan still serves as a thriving example of democracy for the rest of Asia — especially for the rest of China.
    A more accurate reading of the political troubles in Taiwan suggests that the nation's system is healthy. After decades of military-backed one-party rule, a society can expect a few growing pains during the transformation to a multiparty system based on popular suffrage. Given the close vote, it can be no surprise that there are volatile controversies surrounding the outcome. Out of 13 million ballots cast, President Chen Shui-bian was re-elected by only 30,000 votes — less than 0.2 percent of the electorate.
    The 2000 presidential election in the United States proved that a contested election in and of itself does not harm the stability of a democracy so long as the solution to the controversy is based on the rule of law. In Taipei on Thursday, the High Court rejected the opposition's lawsuit. In doing so, the justices also rejected the idea that one party can attempt to undo an election when the results do not suit their interests. On Friday, the Election Commission certified Mr. Chen as the winner. Now the country will move toward a recount, but the legitimacy of the original polls has been given an imprimatur by the judiciary. This is how a nation of laws is supposed to work.
    The situation in Taiwan does not look nearly so grim when the stability of the island democracy is compared to the worsening political climate in Hong Kong. On Friday, the Chinese Communist Party announced that final interpretation of Hong Kong's Basic Law was the prerogative of Beijing. When the British handed their colony over to the Communists in 1997, Beijing promised that Hong Kong would be allowed to govern itself under an arrangement known as "One Country/Two Systems" — meaning it was part of greater China but not subject to the laws of the Communist mainland. The Basic Law, which is Hong Kong's mini-constitution, protected Hong Kongers' political and civil rights and defended traditional freedoms. Beijing's announcement that the Communist Party is the ultimate arbiter of Hong Kong law is the end of the "One Country/Two Systems" framework and marks the beginning of the political subjugation of the people there.
    The Communist clampdown in Hong Kong is proof that Taiwan cannot reunify with mainland China under Beijing's terms without sacrificing its democracy and its freedom. Taiwan's democratic institutions have been tested, but they successfully withstood the challenge. Hong Kongers can only wish they had elections like Taiwan.

Postato da: persialover a 19:39 | link | |

PASSING THE BUCK ON ...

PASSING THE BUCK ON TERROR

By AMIR TAHERI

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/17800.htm

March 31, 2004 -- WHEN a bureaucrat wants to bury an issue, he refers it to a "special committee." And when heads of government wish to do the same, they call for a "special summit."
This is what the European Union leaders have just done with regard to their role in the global War on Terror. A ministerial conference last month failed to agree on a strategy, referring the whole package to the forthcoming "summit." But even then there is no guarantee that the E.U. summit won't try to pass the buck. Some E.U. members are already calling for the matter to be referred to yet another summit, this time that of the G-7 industrialized nations, meeting in the United States in June.

Those who are trying to pass the buck have a short memory: The G-7 have discussed terrorism at eight of their summits since 1976. The Halifax, Canada, summit in 1995 approved what was presented as an in-depth analysis of the threat that international terrorism posed to global stability.

The next year's G-7 summit (in Lyon, France) came up with a raft of measures to combat terrorism - which was designated as "a clear and present danger to international law and order." But only 11 of those 44 measures have so far been legislated by the nations concerned.

Why have the major powers been reluctant to treat the War on Terror as a genuine war? There are at least three reasons.

1) Many Western leaders can't free themselves from the philosophy of "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter."

This leads to a division of terrorist movements into good ones and bad ones. For example, successive British governments had no difficulty seeing the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as evil. But when it came to terrorist groups using British territory for planning and organizing attacks on other countries, the "freedom fighter" shibboleth quickly came to the fore. Until 9/11, visitors to London's Regent Park could see groups of bearded militants collecting money for terrorism in half a dozen Muslim countries while the British police watched with a straight face.



The French, for their part, wouldn't dream of classifying the Corsican terror gangs as "freedom fighters." But they turned a blind eye to terrorists who used French territory as a base for planning and financing mass murder in Algeria. Even when acts of terror were conducted on French territory, the authorities chose not to act for as long as the targets were not French citizens. (Between 1979 and 1997, for example, 17 Iranian opponents of the Khomeinist regime were murdered in France. The French didn't try to catch many of the culprits.)

In some cases, the Western elites manifest their pernicious admiration for some terrorist groups by using the phrase "resistance movement." A good part of the European media has banned the very term "terrorist" as an adjective for organizations that kill in the name of this or that cause, replacing it by euphemisms such as "militant," "radical" and (borrowing a term from Noam Chomsky) "people-based."

Few people noticed that Jose Luis Zapatero, leader of Spain's Socialist Workers' Party, used the term "Arab resistance" throughout the March election campaign in order to avoid the term al Qaeda, which had been favored by his rival, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.

2) Many nations are tempted to obtain an opt-out from the terrorist threat.

France tried this in the 1970s when it secured an "opt out" from Palestinian groups that then specialized in hijacking passenger aircraft. (For a while, Air France became the safest carrier in Europe.)

In the 1980s, when the Khomeinists practiced a policy of seizing hostages against the West, the Germans secured an "opt out" from Tehran. The mullahs ordered the capture of hostages from 21 different nationalities, from Americans to South Koreans and passing by French and British. The Germans were spared. (To thank the mullahs, the Germans invited Iran's Minister for Intelligence and Security Ali Fallahian to pay a state visit to the federal republic in 1991.)

The "opt out" trick played a key role in persuading millions of Spanish voters to switch from the governing People's Party to the opposition Socialist Workers' Party. Many Spaniards deluded themselves into believing that by withdrawing their troops from Iraq, they would secure an insurance against future terror attacks.

3) Many of the Western elite believe that terrorists can be weaned away from their evil ways through negotiations.

Such a delusion is almost natural in the case of politicians and intellectuals educated in a democratic tradition. But when it comes to facing terror, it could weaken the resolve without which victory cannot be achieved.

Even in the best cases, negotiating with terrorists can't produce a dependable outcome. The IRA has entered into a power-sharing process with the British government and the democratic parties of Northern Ireland. But it has been careful not to jettison its military assets. In other words, it is committed to normal politics for as long as this suits its interests.

Sometimes, the illusion that terrorists can be integrated into the normal political process leads to absurd claims. For example, there are those who call for "some form of negotiations" with the remnants of the Taliban or even what is left of al Qaeda.

What these would-be deal-makers don't realize is that terrorists of the Taliban and al Qaeda type don't believe in compromise and give-and-take. They would not be satisfied even with an unconditional surrender on the part of their real or imagined adversaries. They want those adversaries to become robots that can be manipulated the way the sheiks and mullahs desire.

This was amply illustrated in Afghanistan in 1998, when the Hazara of the Bamiyan and Maydan provinces surrendered and negotiated a peace settlement with the Taliban. It wasn't enough: The Taliban wanted the Hazara to abandon their Islamic faith and convert to the cult of Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. When the Hazara refused, they were massacred by the thousands.

FOR the global War on Terror to succeed, it is imperative that all those fighting it convince themselves that there is no good terrorism, and that the real or imagined nobility of a cause cannot justify the murder of innocent people.

Does this mean that armed struggle against oppressors should become something of the past? Not at all. Armed struggle obeys the rules of war, while terrorism recognizes no law. Also, armed struggle could be justified if it is in pursuit of goals that do not affect the freedom and dignity of individuals. Thus armed struggle to impose Taliban-style fascism on a whole people cannot be justified.

The major democracies must shed their illusions about ways of wiggling out of the War on Terror before they can mobilize the rest of the international community to face what is a serious threat to us all. The best insurance against terrorism is firm resolve.E-mail:

amirtaheri@benadorassociates.com

Postato da: persialover a 19:37 | link | |

Freedom�s Groupies

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/alt200403310820.asp

Democracy in Iraq
Its start date won’t be June 30.

http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200403310820.asp

Postato da: persialover a 19:07 | link | |

ONE YEAR AGO,THE CUB...

ONE YEAR AGO,THE CUBAN COMMUNIST DICTATOR FIDEL CASTRO HAS ARRESTED 75 CUBANS ACCUSED OF "SPYING FOR THE ENEMY AND ATTEMPT AGAINST THE STATE'S SECURITY".. THEY WERE INDEPENDENT JOURNALISTS,WRITERS,POETS,ACTIVISTS,BUT MAINLY THEY WERE SIMPLE SERES HUMANOS QUE BUSCAN LA LIBERTAD (SIMPLE HUMAN BEINGS SEEKING FOR FREEDOM). IT WAS ONE YEAR AGO,WHILE THE WORLD AT WHOLE ARE LOOKING AT IRAQ...WELL,THAT REPRESSIVE WAVE HAS ANGERED THOUSANDS OF ORDINARY CUBANS.THE FAMILIES OF THE POLITICAL PRISONERS AND THE PRISONERS THEMSELVES ASK FOR YOUR HELP..YOU CAN DO A LOT,BY SIMPLYING "SIGNING FOR FREEDOM"..YOU CAN LEAVE A MESSAGE WHICH MIGHT BE READ BY THE PRISONERS.IT'S IMPORTANT FOR THEM AND THEIR FAMILIES TO KNOW THAT THEY ARE NOT ALONE..LET'S MAKE OUR VOICE HEARD! LET'S SUPPORT THE CUBAN PEOPLE IN THEIR FIGHT FOR FREEDOM !!

http://www.firmaporlalibertad.com/english.asp

LIST OF ARRESTED :

Pinar del Río
Víctor Rolando Arroyo Carmona CONDENADO 26 years
· Eduardo Díaz Fleitas - 30 years
· Horacio Julio Piña Borrego - 25 years
· Fidel Suárez Cruz - 25 years
Ciudad de La Habana
Osvaldo Alfonso Valdés - CONDENADO 18 años
· Jorge Olivera Castillo - 15 years
Ricardo González Alfonso - CONDENADO 20 años
· Orlando Fundora Alvarez - 15 a 25 years
· Pedro Pablo Alvarez Ramos - CADENA PERPETUA
Roberto de Miranda Hernández - CONDENADO 20 years
· Julio C. Gálvez Rodríguez - 18 years
Efrén Fernández Fernández - CONDENADO 12 years
· Edel José García Díaz - 16 years
Omar Rodríguez Saludes - CONDENADO 27 years
Marcelo Cano Rodríguez - CONDENADO 18 years
· Orlando Zapata Tamayo - 15 a 25 years
· Angel Moya Acosta - 15 a 25 years
Oscar Espinosa Chepe - CONDENADO 20 years
· Manuel Vázquez Portal - 18 years
Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez - CONDENADO 20 years
· Adolfo Fernández Saínz - 15 years
· Mijail Bárzaga Lugo - 15 years
· Carmelo Díaz Fernández - 15 a 25 years
· Nelson Aguiar Ramírez - 12 years
· Nelson Molinet Espino - 20 years
Antonio Díaz Sánchez - CONDENADO 20 years
Regis Iglesias Ramírez - CONDENADO 18 years
· Arnaldo Ramos Lausurique - 18 years
Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello CONDENADA 20 years
Raúl Rivero Castañeda - CONDENADO 20 years
Héctor Palacios Ruiz - CONDENADO 25 years
· Miguel Valdés Tamayo - 15 - 25 years
Marcelo López Bañobre - CONDENADO 10 years
La Habana
· Miguel Galván Gutiérrez - CADENA PERPETUA
· Alfredo Felipe Fuentes - 15 years
· José Miguel Martínez Hernández - 15 a 25 years
· Héctor Raúl Valle Hernández - 15 years
· José Ubaldo Izquierdo Hernández - 20 years
Matanzas
· Guido Sigler Amaya - 20 years
· Ariel Sigler Amaya - 30 years
· Miguel Sigler Amaya - 15 a 25 years
· Iván Hernández Carrillo - 30 years
· Félix Navarro Rodríguez - 30 years
· Diosdado González Marrero - 15 a 25 years
Villa Clara
· Librado Linares García - 20 years
· Margarito Broche Espinosa - 25 years
· Léster González Pentón - 20 years
· Arturo Pérez de Alejo - 20 years
· Omar Pernet Hernández - 25 years
· Omar Ruiz Hernández - 18 years
· Antonio A. Villarreal Acosta - 15 a 25 years
Sancti Spíritus
· Blas Giraldo Reyes Rodríguez - 30 years
Ciego de Avila
· Pedro Argüelles Morán - 15 a 25 years
· Pablo Pacheco Avila - 22 years
Camagüey
· Alejandro González Raga - 18 years
· Alfredo Pulido López - 15 years
· Mario Enrique Mayo Hernández - 20 years
· Normando Hernández González - 30 years - CADENA PERPETUA
Las Tunas
· José Luis García Paneque - 20 years
· Jorge Luis González Banquero - 20 years
· Alfredo Domínguez Batista - 10 years
· Luis Enrique Ferrer García - CADENA PERPETUA
· Reynaldo Labrada Peña - 10 years
Holguín
· Próspero Gainza Agüero - 15 a 25 years
Granma
· Julio Antonio Valdés Guevara - 15 a 25 years
Santiago de Cuba
· José Ramón Gabriel Castillo - 25 years
· Claro Sánchez Altarriba - 15 a 25 years
· Luis Milán Fernández - 15 years
· José Daniel Ferrer Gª. - CONDENADO 28 years
· Alexis Rodríguez Fernández - 18 years
· Ricardo Silva Gual - 15 years
· Leonel Grave de Peralta - 20 years
· Jesús Mustafá Felipe - CADENA PERPETUA
Guantánamo
· Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta - 15 a 25 years
· Manuel Ubals González - 15 a 25years
Isla de Pinos
· Rafael Mollet Leyva - 15 a 25 years
· Fabio Prieto Llorente - 15 years

Postato da: persialover a 19:21 | link | |

Majority supports Bu...

Majority supports Bush on terrorism,claims liberal USA TODAY

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/polls/2004-03-29-poll_x.htm

Postato da: persialover a 18:54 | link | |

BUSH ADS ARE WORKING...

BUSH ADS ARE WORKING AND DAMAGING JOHN KERRY,SAYS LIBERAL USA TODAY

TV ads score big in Bush turnaround

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-03-29-bush-ads_x.htm

Postato da: persialover a 18:46 | link | |

�Tenor and Tone�
...

“Tenor and Tone”
The disingenuousness of Richard Clarke.

http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200403300850.asp

Postato da: persialover a 18:39 | link | |

MAR. 30, 2004: FLOWE...

MAR. 30, 2004: FLOWERS FOR MASARYK

http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/diary033004.asp

Fatal Approach
How the U.N. feeds Hamas.

By Arlene Kushner

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/kushner200403300906.asp

Postato da: persialover a 18:36 | link | |

From Armies of Liber...

From Armies of Liberation ( http://armiesofliberation.blogspot.com )

The Great Democracy Shuts a Newspaper 

Postato da: persialover a 13:34 | link | |

World Kangaroo Cou...

World Kangaroo Court

By P. David Hornik
The World Court's barbarism against Israel. More>

Hamas Declares War on America

By Ariel Natan Pasko
For Hamas leaders, Israel is not enough. More>

Postato da: persialover a 13:18 | link | |

RELATIVES OF CUBAN P...

RELATIVES OF CUBAN POLITICAL PRISONERS

PEOPLE PAYS TRIBUTE TO THE CUBANS DIED WHILE TRYING TO REACH FLORIDA'S SHORES.

Fifteen wives and mothers of Cuban jailed dissidents pray in front of the Santa Rita Church during a march from Cuba's National Prison Headquarters to the Cuban Parliament to demand for their sons and husbands' liberation one year after their detention, Friday March 19, 2004 in Havana, Cuba.

Miriam Leyva, wife of jailed Cuban dissident Oscar Espinosa Chepe, talks to Reuters in Havana, March 25, 2004. The Cuban government dismissed international criticism today of ill treatment of jailed dissidents by presenting medical reports and videotaped statements by wives of prisoners during a press conference. Leyva told Reuters her husband did not trust the doctors and said he had been getting better food and allowed to walk outside since the beginning of March. Cuba's record will be debated next month by the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Gisela Delgado, wife of jailed Cuban dissident Hector Palacios, talks to Reuters in Havana, March 25, 2004. The Cuban government dismissed international criticism today of ill treatment of jailed dissidents by presenting medical reports and videotaped statements by wives of prisoners during a news conference. Delgado said the government had 'manipulated' a one-and-a-half interview to extract a statement praising the medical care her husband had received. Cuba's record will be debated next month by the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Dalia Leal, wife of Cuban jailed dissident Nelson Aguiar, right, shows a paper with signatures of the 15 wives and mothers of the Cuban jailed dissidents, after their march from Cuba's National Prison Headquarters to the Cuban Parliament to call for their sons and husbands' liberation one year after their detention, Friday March 19, 2004 in Havana, Cuba.

Fifteen wives and mothers of Cuban jailed dissidents pray in front of the Santa Rita Church during a march from Cuba's National Prison Headquarters to the Cuban Parliament to demand for their sons and husbands' liberation one year after their detention, Friday March 19, 2004 in Havana, Cuba.

Fifteen wives and mothers of Cuban jailed dissidents demand the liberation of their relatives in front of the Cuba's National Prison Headquarters in Havana, Cuba on Friday March 19, 2004.

Fifteen wives and mothers of Cuban jailed dissidents march down a Havana street to demonstrate a call for their sons and husbands' release one year after their detention, Friday, March 19, 2004 in Havana, Cuba.

The mothers and wives of jailed Cuban dissidents stand together while showing pictures of their loved ones during a meeting in Havana, March 18, 2004. The women met to mark the first anniversary of the arrests of their husbands and sons and to call for their release. Dissident leaders said they were slowly recovering from the wave of arrests that began on March 18, 2003 and summary trials of 75 dissidents who got prison terms of up to 28 years.

Isabel Ramos, mother of Arturo Suarez, one of 75 jailed dissidents, right, wears a card with a picture of her son that reads: 'Freedom To My Son' during a commemoration where Cuban mothers and wives called for their sons and husbands' release one year after their detention in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, March 18, 2004.

Marlene Gonzalez, center, wife of Jose Luis Gonzalez, talks with reporters during a commemoration called for their husbands' release one year after their detention at Gisela Delgado's home, right, Thursday, March 18, 2004 in Havana, Cuba. Delgado is the wife of jailed dissident Hector Palacios.

Several mothers and wives of the 75 Cuban jailed dissidents, attend a commemoration called for their husbands' release one year after their detention in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, March 18, 2004.

Blanca Reyes, right, wife of jailed dissident Raul Rivero, shows a pin with her husband's picture during a commemoration called for their husbands' release one year after their detention in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, March 18, 2004. At left is is Gisela Delgado, wife of jailed dissident Hector Palacios.

Gisela Delgado, wife of jailed dissident Hector Palacios, is seen during a fasting where she called for her husband's release one year after his detention along with others in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, March 18, 2004.

Postato da: persialover a 19:42 | link | |

So Much for Saudi Re...

So Much for Saudi Reform
Does U.S. support for democracy in the Middle East extend to Riyadh?
by Ali al Ahmed

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Check.asp?idArticle=3923&r=usqnk
3/27/2004 12:01:00 AM, Volume 009, Issue 29

ON FRIDAY, MARCH 19, President Bush reiterated his commitment "to encourage reform and democracy in the greater Middle East as the alternatives to fanaticism, resentment, and terror." Anyone following the American media lately might actually believe that this policy is showing signs of success in Saudi Arabia. In the last six months, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and a host of other papers have carried articles claiming that the Saudi kingdom is liberalizing. On March 18, NPR's All Things Considered added its voice to the pro-Saudi chorus. In a story typical of its kind, veteran reporter Mike Shuster asserted that the Saudi religious establishment had lost power to reformers. In addition, Shuster suggested that next fall the kingdom would hold elections in which women might participate.

This glowing discussion of Saudi reform failed to mention one unpleasant fact: Two days before, the Saudi authorities had arrested 12 prominent reformers, charging them with "endangering the unity of the country." One of the detained men, the respected intellectual Abd al-Kareem Al-Juhaiman, is almost 90 years old. Another, Mohamed Saeed Tayeb, is one of the leaders of the Saudi democracy movement. The U.S. consul general in Jeddah, Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, on at least two occasions tacitly recognized Tayeb's stature by attending the weekly political salon held at his home.

The producers of National Public Radio are not the only ones turning a blind eye to the anti-reform activities of the Saudi government. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a Riyadh press conference ...

Postato da: persialover a 19:14 | link | |

Violent clashes rock...

Violent clashes rock N. Eastern Iran

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Mar 27, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4167.shtml

Violent clashes rocked, yesterday, the N. Eastern City of Gorgan as the regime special forces and its Afghan mercenaries moved in order to smash a peaceful protest actions against existing poor conditions and the repressive measures in the region.

Clubs and chains were used against young protesters who exited from a Volley Ball competition by shouting slogans against the local officials.

The brutality of the regime forces lead to the anger of the protesters and hundreds of residents who retaliated to the regime's plastic bullets, clubs and chains with pieces of stones and metallic and wood bars detached from public materials.

Several buildings, including mosques, banks and the governmental TV-Radio station were damaged or set on fire along with several patrol vehicles and TV mobile transmitting unit.

Tens were injured and arrested at the issue of the riot and the situation is very tense in the city and its neighboring areas.

Postato da: persialover a 18:58 | link | |

Iranians Parade in N...

Iranians Parade in New York with banned "Lion & Sun" flags

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Mar 27, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4166.shtml

Hundreds of Iranians paraded in Manhattan (New York), today, in order to celebrate the Iranian cultural heritage and over 3000 years of contribution to the World's civilization. This is was the first time that such event was taking place by Iranians especially in a city healing from its wounds inflicted by Islamist terrorists on September 11, 2001.

During this unprecedented two hours event, hundreds of Iranian Women, Men, boys and girls holding the banned "Lion & Sun" flags and chanting the banned "Oh Iran!" National anthem, marched, danced and exposed different aspects of Iran's cultural heritage for thousands of NY residents gathered to support them.

New York policemen and firefighters joined the Iranians by offering their assistance for security and orchestra which played the "Oh Iran!"

It's to note that several self called American-Iranian organizations and notorious political brokers, such as Houshand Amir-Ahmadi of AIC,(which has endorsed John Kerry ) had tried, hard, to avoid the use of the "Lion and Sun" flags by the participants, during several meetings held prior to today's parade, but they were, as usual, ignored by the participants who used the parade to show as well their deep believe in the illegitimacy of the Islamic republic regime and their strong support of Iran's National and Freedom aspirations.

Postato da: persialover a 18:57 | link | |

The Transition Has B...

The Transition Has Begun
One by one, Iraqis regain control of their own government operations.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/alt200403290959.asp

Postato da: persialover a 18:26 | link | |

Hezbollah had a role...

Hezbollah had a role in Ashdod bombing

Ha'aretz - By Ze'ev Schiff
Mar 28, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_5503.shtml

Hezbollah financing was behind the suicide bombings at Ashdod Port, which was carried out by Hamas members on March 14, killing 10 Israelis and injuring many others. The Lebanese-based Shi'ite organization was also involved in choosing the site, which is considered a prime target.

Funding for the attack was transferred in two stages. The first payment was made to Hamas following the agreement on the target. The second transfer was made after the attack was carried out.

During their investigation, Israeli intelligence services uncovered the Hezbollah link to the bombings at the Ashdod port. The planning was carried out by Hezbollah and Hamas but the actual attack was executed by Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades of the Fatah.

Inside container

The strike at the Ashdod port is considered in Israel as bold in view of the security at the site. The two suicide bombers exited the Gaza Strip in a container, through the Karni crossing, in a sophisticated ploy that has also harmed the ability of Palestinians to export goods from Gaza.

The attack against the Ashdod port was viewed by Israel as very serious and altered a previous decision regarding the targeting of Hamas leaders, including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

The direct link of Hezbollah to the attack against the port puts the incident in a broader strategic context.

In its relationship with the Palestinian organizations, Hezbollah is making great efforts to convince the Palestinians to concentrate on prime targets. From this point of view, Ashdod Port is considered an important target.

The two suicide bombers managed to kill 10 Israelis but failed to reach the dangerous and flammable materials stored at the port.

Penetrating cells

Since it began operating in the territories and Israel, Hezbollah has managed to penetrate mostly into Tanzim and Fatah cells in the northern West Bank.

A the same time, it is trying to get close to Israeli Arabs, with its primary concern being to use them in immediate terrorist action. Political efforts among the Israeli Arab population is regarded as secondary in importance by the Shi'ite organization.

To date, Hezbollah activity in the Gaza Strip has been of low intensity, compared to its efforts in the West Bank. However, Hezbollah has invested in tunnel digging for the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip from Sinai. In addition, Hezbollah is believed to have been behind the foiled effort to smuggle Russian-made, shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft missiles from Egypt, so that militants could target IDF helicopters.

Palestinians have also met with Hezbollah agents in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. In Lebanon, Palestinians were trained by Hezbollah in the use of weapons and explosives.

It is assumed that Hezbollah activities in the territories and Israel are being carried out in full coordination with Iranian intelligence and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

Hezbollah receives a great deal of financial and military assistance from Iran.

Both Hezbollah and Iran have a clear interest in disrupting any efforts at diplomatic initiatives between Palestinians and Israel.

Postato da: persialover a 18:24 | link | |

Zarqawi, Getting Aro...

Zarqawi, Getting Around

March 29, 2004
National Review Online
Michael Ledeen

http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200403290858.asp

Who bombed Madrid, and other interesting questions.

According to a usually reliable French investigator and author, Spanish authorities are now convinced that the Madrid massacre was organized by our old friend, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi has also been credited for being one of the major organizers of the terror war against the Coalition in Iraq, and was named by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his presentation to the Security Council prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom as a key al Qaeda leader, with ties to the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.

A busy and very wicked man, in short.

As memories are short, let's review the bidding on Zarqawi. I first wrote about him here on December 12, 2002, when I came across an article in the German newspaper Die Zeit. That article cited court documents drawn from the depositions of a Palestinian terrorist who was cooperating with German authorities. The terrorist revealed that Zarqawi wore several hats: He was a top officer of al Qaeda, and the leader of a terrorist group known as al Tawhid, and he lived and worked in Tehran. He noted that Zarqawi was a key figure in the "reorganized al Qaeda" (reorganized after the debacle in Afghanistan) and was "one of the major coordinators of Iranian-sponsored terrorism in Europe."

Al Qaeda's Iranian connection led German investigators to another important discovery: Al Qaeda and Hezbollah — arguably the world's most dangerous terrorist organizations — were working hand in glove. Die Zeit said that German intelligence had become aware of meetings between Osama bin Laden and Hezbollah's chief of operations, Imad Mughniyah.

A few months after I wrote that article, documents surfaced in Italian court cases that showed Zarqawi's involvement in terrorist networks in Milan and other northern Italian cities. And just last week, the Corriere della Sera reported that Zarqawi's name had surfaced in recent investigations into al Qaeda's efforts to recruit radical Muslims in Italy for guerrilla and suicide attacks in Iraq. And, like the German documents, the Italian evidence led straight back to Tehran, whence Zarqawi had issued orders to his agents in Italy.

As NRO noted at the time, Secretary Powell's speech to the Security Council actually proved more than the administration wished, since Powell was only trying to justify action against Iraq, and did not mention the Iran connection. But now that Zarqawi's name has surfaced in connection with Madrid, anyone who is serious about waging war against terrorism must find a way to deal effectively with the mullahcracy in Tehran.

The Corriere della Sera carried extensive excerpts from an interview with an al Qaeda terrorist currently serving time in an Italian prison, and if he is to be believed, a lot of the conventional wisdom on al Qaeda is gravely misleading. The man in question — a Tunisian identified as "Ahmed" — was actively involved in planning massive bombing attacks in Italy many months before September 11, 2001. One of these schemes was discovered by Italian intelligence in October of that year, leading to several arrests and the shattering of "Ahmed's" group. Another was foiled by Tunisian authorities, but the terrorists in North Africa had already sent a shipment of explosives to Italy, which has still not been found.

"Ahmed" also spoke of plans as early as January, 2000, to bomb the main railroad station in Milan on one of the busiest days of the year — December 24, for example. The creation of a clandestine terrorist network capable of such operations had begun in 1997.

These revelations have apparently been confirmed by Italian authorities, who have efficiently dismantled a series of terrorist cells all over the country, even as they warn that terrorist attacks on Italian soil are likely. They remember that Spanish intelligence officials were murdered in Iraq several months before the Madrid bombings, and that Italian carabinieri were killed in a suicide bombing in Nasiriyah a few months ago.

But there are broader, and far more important conclusions to be drawn from the recent information coming from Spain and Italy. For if "Ahmed" is telling the truth, then the targeting of European cities has nothing at all to do with the liberation of Iraq, or European support for American foreign policy, or even with the nature of the government in one European country or another. In 1997, when "Ahmed" began his work, Italy had a left-wing government, and Operation Iraqi Freedom was six years away.

As I have been arguing for many years now, September 11 did not mark a watershed in the terror war against the West. That war is properly dated to September, 1979, when the Aytaollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, branded the United States "the great Satan," and declared war against us. Iran continued to wage that war through the Beirut bombings and hostage seizures of the mid-80s — conducted by the Iranian surrogate, Hezbollah — and collected allies along the way, including al Qaeda.

Today Iran is either on the verge of, or has actually accomplished the acquisition of nuclear weapons, and is speeding ahead on bigger and better delivery systems. Yet Western policy toward Iran is either feckless or eager appeasement. Each revelation of the Iranian hand in terrorism is either ignored or shrugged off, and each new discovery of Iran's nuclear-weapons program is greeted with disappointment as action is postponed to the next meeting of the toothless International Atomic Energy Agency.

No wonder that, as the news of the Madrid bloodbath reached Tehran, a celebration was held in the residence of the Supreme Leader, and the turbaned rulers congratulated Ali Khamenei on the great event.

Instead of debating the details of past failures, our leaders should devote their energies to preventing the next September 11, which, you can be quite sure, is receiving enthusiastic support from our self-proclaimed enemies in the Islamic republic of Iran.

Faster, please.

Postato da: persialover a 18:23 | link | |

WHY TRUST THE U.N.? ...

WHY TRUST THE U.N.?

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/21985.htm

Postato da: persialover a 13:25 | link | |

Iranians boycott mas...

Iranians boycott massively official demo for Hamas leader

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Mar 26, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4164.shtml

The overwhelming majority of Iranians and especially Tehran's residents boycotted massively the official demo organized by the regime in order to mark the death of Sheik Ahmad Yassin and to show support of Hamas Terrorist group.

A crowd of the same usual professional demonstrators and militiamen, estimated at less than 5,000 individuals, were all what the regime and its "Islamic Dissemination Organization" were able bring into the streets while over 12 millions of Tehranis and 69 millions of Iranians ignored the official calls made by the governmental TV, Radio and newspapers.

It's to note that all official demos, organized in the last 3 years, in favor of Palestine and its extremist groups have been massively boycotted by the majority of Iranians who are rejecting massively the rule of terror, fanatism and do have friendly sentiment for Israel and its people who are subject of deadly attacks from Hamas. In addition Iranians are well aware of the role of Palestinian and Lebanese mercenaries in the violent repression of Iranians beside the regime's official forces.

Postato da: persialover a 18:46 | link | |

Regime warns Germany...

Regime warns Germany on Memorial for slained opponents

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Mar 27, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4163.shtml

The Islamic republic regime is using all its mouthpieces in order to warn Germany on "the consequences" of the construction, by Berlin's City Council, of installing a memorial piece for the victims of the Mykonos Restaurant tragedy.

While the regime's Foreign Ministry and its Ambassador, a former notorious Hezbollah thug, have protested beside the German authorities, the new Tehran Mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad who's reputed for murder of opponents himself, has warned Berlin's Mayor in a letter partially published in the today's issue of Tehran Times. Ahmadi-Nejad has threatened that "Tehran municipality is being pressed by the victims of chemical warfare and their families to list the names of the countries in a panel which provided the ousted regime of Saddam with chemical warfare, particularly Germany as the main provider".

Several Iranian opponents were slained by the Islamic regime's terrorists during a sit in gathering at the famous restaurant. The terrorists were arrested and condemned, in 1997, by the German justice particularly due to the integrity of Bruno Yoos, the German Prosecutor, who stood up against all pressures made by the German Government which was promoting the policy of "Constructive Dialogue" with the clerics.

"The Highest levels of the Islamic republic regime are involved in these murders" stated Mr. Yoos, who issued an International Arrest Warrant against several of regime's officials especially against the notorious Rafsanjani's Ministry of Intelligence Ali Fallahian.

It's to note that the majority of Berlin's City Council's members have resisted, so far and just as like as Bruno Yoos, against their Government's pressures; And that the German Government is still looking to use any occasion in order to release the jailed terrorists held in its prisons.

Postato da: persialover a 18:43 | link | |

Mandela postpones co...

Mandela postpones controversial trip to Iran
SMCCDI (Information Service)
Mar 27, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4162.shtml

Postato da: persialover a 18:39 | link | |

Former S. African "F...

Former S. African "Freedom Fighter" to receive Prize from mullahs
SMCCDI (Information Service)
Mar 25, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4161.shtml

Postato da: persialover a 18:33 | link | |

Khatami Bids to Hono...

Postato da: persialover a 13:05 | link | |

As the 9/11  Co...

As the 9/11  Commission continues to hear important US officials of the Clinton and Bush administrations,new truths came to light.The Commission now finally blames the  former Clinton Administration for ignoring the already well known threats posed by Bin Laden and failing to capture him since the same clinton admin. knew where the super terrorist might be hidden.In those same years,1996 and 1998,Mr. Clinton focused on his sexual affairs with Monica rather than on America's National Security.Clinton might have fought Al Qaeda and Bin Laden very immediately after the first attack on the World Trade Center,earlier on 1993.Instead of that,he spent his years in the Oval Office thinking of his own private affairs.Therefore,there is nothing to be blamed on the current Bush Administration.Maybe finally the Commission exposes the truth..

The 9/11 Hearings Indict Clinton

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12734

Postato da: persialover a 12:39 | link | |

They mourn and we.. ...

They mourn and we..

They mourn an assassin..They exalt his criminal action on the Achille Lauro..well, i think that while they mourn their "hero" , we should celebrate his death..Do it in the same day would be great..

Requiem for a Terrorist

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12754

Postato da: persialover a 12:24 | link | |

Democracy or Islamoc...

Democracy or Islamocracy

March 25, 2004
Iran va Jahan
Mehdi Mozaffari

http://www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2004&m=03&d=25&a=7

Postato da: persialover a 12:01 | link | |

Terrorist States for...

Terrorist States for Kerry

By Amir Taheri
Gulf News | March 26, 2004

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12739

If elected President of the United States, will John Kerry offer the Arabs a better deal? This is the question being raised in the Arab media these days. And, despite the many different answers given, a consensus seems to be emerging that a Kerry presidency will end what the Arab élite regards as "its worst nightmare" during the presidency of George W. Bush.

The Kerry debate was kicked off by the Saudi daily Al Jazeera, which published a photograph of the Massachusetts senator with Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, on its front page. The photograph was later run by several other Saudi newspapers to illustrate what they claimed is "the history of a long and close friendship between Senator Kerry and the Saudi kingdom."

The pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat, which also ran the "friendship photo," claimed that Kerry's recent promise to end the America's dependency on Saudi oil was nothing more than an electoral tactic by the Democrat Party's presumed presidential nominee.

The newspaper also claimed that Kerry was introduced to the Saudi ambassador by Edward Kennedy, the senior senator for Massachusetts in 1990. The two "worked hard" to organize an exhibition in Boston to introduce "Saudi culture and civilisation" to Americans.

The Saudi media also claim that they have seen "official documents" that testify to the "close friendship" that Kerry ostensibly developed with Riyadh for more than a decade. Kennedy's "Arab connection" is even older, dating back to the mid-1970s.

Presidential nomination

In 1976 Kennedy, with an eye to his party's presidential nomination, toured several Arab capitals, including Baghdad where he met Saddam Hussain, then Vice-President of Iraq.

"Kennedy understands the Arabs because he has visited the region and developed relations with Arab leaders," says a Saudi official. "As the senior figure of the Democrat Party, Kennedy will help put a Kerry administration on the right track with regards to relations with the Arabs."

Beyond Saudi Arabia, the assumption in Arab media and political circles is that Kerry as president will abandon Bush's "dreams of change" in the Middle East and restore Washington's traditional policy of support for the status quo in the Arab world.

"We are certain that a Democrat administration will be more realistic," says a senior advisor to Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak. "Bush's talk of imposing democracy can only destabilise the region and produce catastrophe for all concerned."

Arab chancelleries are doing all they can to freeze all issues pending the outcome of the American presidential election. Some Arab politicians, however, reject this "wait-and-see" position as "a sign of weakness."

"For decades, we have geared Arab politics to the rhythm of American presidential elections," says Lebanese politician Walid Jumbalat. "Each time we deluded ourselves into believing that a change at the White House would lead to a change in our favour."

Jumbalat is right. The Deus ex-machina of American elections has seldom helped save the Arab from a tight spot.

Fail to understand

Many Arab leaders also fail to understand the sea-change that the September 11, 2001, tragedy has produced in the average American's view of the world. What Bush has tried to do is to reflect that change, which, incidentally, goes against his original inclination to keep the U.S. as clear of international affairs as possible.

Today, it is safe to say that no one can get elected president of the U.S. on an antiwar platform. The rise and rapid fall of Howard Dean, the anti-war populist, was a sure sign of that. Congressman Kucinich, the most ardent of the antiwar hopefuls, has failed to rise above the one per cent level in Democrat Party primaries.

The Arabs should not delude themselves into believing that a Democrat administration will be able to abandon the war on terror or ignore its root cause which is the absence of democracy and human rights in countries where religious fascism has established itself as the key challenger to often corrupt and despotic ruling cliques.

The Arabs are not alone in deluding themselves into believing that a Democrat at the White House will let them do as they please. Kerry's recent claim that he has been told by several foreign leaders that they need him to beat Bush is not as fanciful as the Republicans have pretended.

Some "old Europe" politicians, including France's President Jacques Chirac, also hope that a future President John Kerry will dance to their tune, not only on Iraq but also on a string of other issues such as the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court.

Dominique de Villepin, France's foreign minister, makes no secret of his belief that the Bush presidency has been an "aberration" and that a Democrat president will "lift the fog of war."

A glance at America's relatively short history reveals that the Democrats have been the principal war party. The 1812 war, the first major military confrontation the then newly-created U.S. engaged in, was provoked by a Democrat administration.

In the Mexican War it was a Democrat, President James K Polk, that sent American troops into battle in the face of diplomatic efforts to avoid war. The U.S. joined both world wars under Democrat presidents. The Cold War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War were also started by Democrats. In 1962, it was John Kennedy, a Democrat President, who brought the world to the brink of annihilation over the Cuban missile crisis.

Even President Bill Clinton, the last man one would imagine as a war leader, led the U.S. into military action in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, both times without a UN mandate.

More interestingly, of the 22 wars, big and small, in which the U.S. became involved under Democrat presidents, all but one were what one may call wars of choice. The sole exception was World War II, when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour left President Franklin D. Roosevelt with no choice but to enter the foray. Even in the World War I the U.S. could have stayed on the ringside.

The Republicans, however, had always acted as the party that ended the wars started by the Democrats. Apart from the Civil War, started by President Abraham Lincoln, the Republicans have been responsible for only three wars: the first Gulf War to liberate Kuwait, and the latest wars to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and end Saddam Hussain's reign of terror in Iraq. (Some historians add the American-Spanish war to the list because it was conducted by the Whigs and Federalists who are regarded as precursors of the Republican Party).

American stand-up comedians often use the adage: "Vote Republican to get a Depression, vote Democrat to get a war!"

What the outside world must understand is that most Americans now believe that they are threatened by enemies that can strike in the very heart of the U.S.

Different reaction

But the average American's reaction is quite different from that of the average Spaniard, who changed his vote because of the terrorist attacks on Madrid on March 11. Few Americans are prepared to turn the other cheek for Osama bin Laden and societies that have helped breed, raise and finance him. Nor would they share the "old-Europe" illusion that one can change the nature of a man-eater by feeding him vegetables and cuddling him.

Kerry and Kennedy may be "sincere friends of the Arabs" as the Saudi media suggest. It is also quite possible that Monsieur de Villepin told Kerry "you've got to beat Bush for all of us."

But the problem that Arabs and some in the "old-Europe" have is that they do not yet understand that, for a majority of Americans, the war on terror is a real war and not a pose that could be altered with a change of administration.

Amir Taheri is an Iranian author of 10 books on the Middle East and Islam. He's reachable through www.benadorassociates.com. Email Benador Associates: eb@benadorassociates.com

Postato da: persialover a 11:58 | link | |

"They deserve death,...

"They deserve death, and we deserve life"
A look at the religion of hate dished out by Palestinian TV.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/899ryfnz.asp

Postato da: persialover a 19:26 | link | |

The Resistance which...

The Resistance which Media doesn't want you to know

As our so-called "journalists" and "reporters" continue to spread lies and call the Madrid and Baghdad's carnages' ,acts committed by resistants,a true Resistance is spreading all over the region,as reported below:.Not only a Democratic Revolution is underway in Iran,but also in Sirya .. Even if our so-called "reporters" don't want us to know..

The Kurdish Cry
Baathist oppression lives on in Syria.

By Nir Boms & Erick Stakelbeck

http://www.nationalreview.com/voices/boms_stakelbeck200403250858.asp

Postato da: persialover a 19:14 | link | |

Taking on Terrorists...

Taking on Terrorists
Why Yassin had to go.

http://www.nationalreview.com/babbin/babbin200403250855.asp

Postato da: persialover a 19:09 | link | |

L�Année de la Chine<...

L’Année de la Chine
Will Europe arm Red China?

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/tkacik200403250900.asp

Postato da: persialover a 18:55 | link | |

SHEIKH MUHAMMAK KAMA...

SHEIKH MUHAMMAK KAMAL MUSTAFA the imam of the mosque of the city of Fuengirola, Costa del Sol,was sentenced by a Barcelona court to a 15 month suspended sentence and fined € 2160 for publishing his book 'The Woman in Islam.' In this book, the Egyptian-born Sheikh Mustafa writes, among other things, on wife-beating in accordance with Shar'ia law.

BELOW IS THE IMAM WHILE TEACHING HOW TO BEAT THE WOMEN...

Postato da: persialover a 12:42 | link | |

I JUST FOUNDN THIS P...

I JUST FOUNDN THIS PIECE FROM THE NATIONAL REVIEW CORNER WHICH IS SOMETHING I DID NOT KNEW BUT THIS CONFIRMS MY PREVIOUS CLAIMS OF A NON-DEMOCRATIC EUROPEAN UNION..I WISH THAT THE EU CITIZENS KNEW ..

POLICE STATE? [Andrew Stuttaford]
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp

The EU’s bureaucracy has never been very tolerant of dissent, but even by Brussels standards, the arrest of a leading investigative journalist (he was held for ten hours without access to a lawyer, something that’s normal in Belgium, apparently) is something of a low point.

The EU 'constitution' (much more likely to be forced through, incidentally, in the wake of the change of government in Spain) is filled with highminded boilerplate, but the plight of Hans-Martin Tillak shows what this misbegotten 'Union' really stands for.

ANOTHER PIECE BY THE SAME JOURNALIST ..

ISLAMOPHOBIA? [Andrew Stuttaford]
The UK’s Muslim News is reporting that Atlanta Plus, a feminist organization, is campaigning to have Muslim countries that don’t send female athletes barred from the Olympics for, effectively, ‘gender apartheid’ (South Africa was banned for years). The newspaper, of course, is predictably outraged, and, needless to say, descends into familiar ideological slime with suggestions of, wait for it, “cultural imperialism,” “racism” and “islamophobia.” That’s the usual nonsense, of course, but it’s revealing as an example of the way that many Muslim activists often try to suppress any critical discussion of their religion as a ‘phobia.’ The truth ought to be perfectly obvious to anyone not deafened by the rhetoric of fanatic 'imams': th

e thuggish way in which a number of Islamic countries treat women as second-class citizens is a disgrace, and the West should say so. Often.

YASSIN, A MURDERER IN A WHEELCHAIR

YASSIN [Jonah Goldberg]
It's no shock that a group of fanatical murderers like Hamas is vowing to exact revenge for the death of their charismatic leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. But spare me the talking points, already emerging from Palestinian leaders and other apologists for murder that he was just a frail old man in a wheelchair. The issue is not whether he was or wasn't, let's stipulate that he was a frail old man in a wheelchair. The issue is that he was behind the organized murder of hundreds of old men, old women, little kids, fathers, mothers et al. I have no doubt that we'll be hearing a lot of moral equivalence about this. But let's not confuse arsonists with fire fighters. An old woman on a bus is not the same thing as a hateful carbunkle of a human who plans, advocates and celebrates the murder of innocents.

Taiwan's Enemies

Europe and France help China

THE DAY AFTER THE ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE THE TAIWANESE PRESIDENT ,THE MAJORITY OF THE ISLAND'S VOTERS HAVE ELECTED HIM . YET,THE FRAIL TAIWANESE DEMOCRACY IS MORE UNDER ATTACK THEN EVER. THE CHINESE THREATS AGAINST THAT ISLAND ARE WELL KNOWN.WHAT IS LESS KNOWN IS THE ACTIVE SUPPORT OF CHINA BY EUROPE AND IN A PARTICULAR WAY ,FRANCE. SEVERAL WEEKS AGO,EUROPE HAS DECIDED TO LIFT THE EMBARGO ON THE ARMS TO CHINA, A DECISION WISELY TAKEN AFTER THE 1989 TIENANMEN SQUARE'S MASSACRE. NOW,FRENCH SHIPS ARE RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE ISLAND OF TAIWAN,SUPPORTED AND PROTECTED BY THE CHINESE REGIME. WHAT IS BEHIND THIS MOVE, ONE WOULD GUESS ? THE ANSWER IS CLEAR: PROTECT CHINA IN ORDER TO SAVE THE EUROPEANS' ECONOMIC CONTRACTS.IF THE UNION SUPPORTED THE TAIWANESE DEMANDS IT'D MEET HOSTILITY FROM CHINA,WHICH MEANS LOSS OF IMPORTANT ECONOMIC CONTRACTS.ALL THESE POLITICS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION SHOW ITS TRUE NATURE: A GREEDY,OPPORTUNIST,COWARD AND SIMPLY IDIOT UNION.

HERE IS A PIECE,ON THE NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE, WHICH WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BY A TAIWANESE CITIZEN..

TAIWAN [John Derbyshire]
From a reader in Taiwan:

"The way the polling station where I live was set up was like this. You vote with a secret ballot for the president. (People can see that you vote but not who you vote for) After you vote for the President you had to go and get another ballot and go to a separate place in the same building to vote for the referendum. Again people could not see if you voted YES or NO but they could see if you voted at all. Since the KMT strategy was to have people vote for them for president and then not vote at all in the referendum this set up means that the KMT could keep a close eye on how people voted. This let them either make sure the voters they bought stayed bought or for their neighbors to intimidate them later. Since the setup of the polling stations was decided by local government and most local governments in the northern half of the island (where about 60% of the people live) are KMT most of the polling stations were set up like this.

"It will be interesting to see if the election scrutiny the KMT is asking for backfires on them. After all, even as a foreigner I know that they were buying votes in my city, the going rate was 30$-60$ US (about 2 days pay for the average Taiwanese) I actually hope the investigation reveals the vote buying on both sides as that will help Taiwan's democracy in the long run.

"The important thing about the referendum was not the result but the fact that they had one at all. China hates then idea of any expression of Democracy in Taiwan so they wanted people not to vote at all. The KMT listens to their masters in Beijing."

THE FACE OF SAUDI "REFORM"

13 academics arrested

JOHN BOLTON, A NEOCONS AT THE WHITE HOUSE.

THREE CHEERS FOR JOHN BOLTON [Rich Lowry]
Lawrence Kaplan has an excellent pro-John Bolton piece in the latest New Republic. Kaplan makes some deep points about the difference between conservative and neo-conservative foreign policy, but I just want to highlight here some of the points he makes about Bolton's work. It's good to see him get the credit he deserves:

-"The secret to Bolton's record is that, in a foreign policy team divided roughly between ideologues with no managerial skills and managerial types with no ideas, Bolton is that rare commodity: an operator and an ideologue."

-"During his 8:15 a.m. meetings with the assistant secretaries of state who report to him, for instance, the bureau chiefs stand the entire time, an indignity that has become part of Foggy Bottom mythology."

-"At one point last year, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Beth Jones went so far as to organize a mini-revolt against Bolton, penning a memo to Colin Powell, co-signed by the assistant secretaries from every regional bureau, which complained that Bolton's campaign for bilateral agreements exempting Americans from prosecution by the ICC had been a failure and should be abandoned. In response to the memo, Powell called a meeting between Bolton and the assistant secretaries. Both sides argued their case, and Powell ended up granting Bolton permission to proceed. In the months since Jones tried to abort Bolton's campaign, he has signed agreements with 81 countries."

-"As one mystified career State Department employee puts it, 'At first we thought that Powell and Armitage would control Bolton. We kept waiting, and now Bolton seems to be controlling them.'"

-"Indeed, while Bolton claims not to 'do carrots,' in both the Libyan and North Korean cases his 'muscular approach,' far from prompting a hardening of their positions, helped achieve the opposite result: Pyongyang's agreement to the long-held U.S. demand that it negotiate with America and her allies across the same table and Tripoli's decision to abandon its WMD programs."

-"'There's absolutely no question that Bolton's strategy of pressuring the iaea led its members to finally get serious about Iran's weapons programs,' says Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at National Defense University."

Postato da: persialover a 19:55 | link | |

AZNAR, A GREAT LEADE...

AZNAR, A GREAT LEADER WHICH OWES NO APOLOGY

The Truth About 3/11
This is no time to hand the terrorists a victory.

BY JOSE MARIA AZNAR

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004860

Postato da: persialover a 18:31 | link | |

A Safer World
Dom...

A Safer World
Dominique de Villepin should be sleeping in my hotel.

By Robert Alt

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/alt200403240840.asp

Postato da: persialover a 18:25 | link | |

MUAMMAR KHADAFY IS S...

MUAMMAR KHADAFY IS STILL A BRUTAL DICTATOR..

Are We Keeping Faith?
Meet Fathi Eljahmi, a Libyan freedom-fighter.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/?id=110004857

Postato da: persialover a 18:18 | link | |

SYRIANS RISE UP AGAI...

SYRIANS RISE UP AGAINST THE OTHER BAATHIST REGIME..THE WORLD IGNORES..

SYRIA: SEEDS OF CHANGE

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/21681.htm

Postato da: persialover a 13:22 | link | |

The united states of...

The united states of Europe and America(?)

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040322-082829-1512r.htm

Postato da: persialover a 19:31 | link | |

Happy Yassin Day

Happy Yassin Day
By Ariel Natan Pasko
Hamas' "spiritual leader" is now dead; Arafat should be next. More>

Postato da: persialover a 13:16 | link | |

The Moor's Last Laug...

The Moor's Last Laugh

Wall Street Journal - By Fouad Ajami
Mar 22, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/general....7.shtml

In the legend of Moorish Spain, the last Muslim king of Granada, Boabdil, surrendered the keys to his city on January 2, 1492, and on one of its hills, paused for a final glance at his lost dominion. The place would henceforth be known as El Ultimo Suspiro del Moro -- "the Moor's Last Sigh." Boabdil's mother is said to have taunted him, and to have told him to "weep like a woman for the land he could not defend as a man." An Arab poet of our own era gave voice to a historical lament when he wrote that as he walked the streets of Granada, he searched his pockets for the keys to its houses. Al Andalus -- Andalusia -- would become a deep wound, a reminder of dominions gained by Islam and then squandered. No wonder Muslim chroniclers added "May Allah return it to Islam," as they told and retold Granada's fate.

The Balkans aside, modern Islam would develop as a religion of Afro-Asia. True, the Ottomans would contest the Eastern Mediterranean. But their challenge was turned back. Turkey succumbed to a European pretension but would never be European. Europe's victory over Islam appeared definitive. Even those Muslims in the Balkans touched by Ottoman culture became a marked community, left behind by the Ottoman retreat from Europe like "seaweed on dry land."

* * *

Yet Boabdil's revenge came. It stole upon Europe. Demography -- the aging of Europe on the one hand and, on the other, a vast bloat of people in the Middle East and North Africa -- did Boabdil's job for him. Spurred by economic growth in the '60s, which created the need for foreign laborers, a Muslim migration to Europe began. Today, 15 million Muslims make their home in the European Union.

The earliest migrants were eager to hunker down in this new and (at first) alien world. They took Europe on its own terms, and lived with the initial myth of migration that their sojourn would be temporary. But for the overwhelming majority, Algiers and Casablanca and Beirut and Anatolia became irretrievable places. In time, there would be slaughter and upheaval in Lebanon and Iran, sectarian warfare in Syria, and a long era of sorrow and bloodshed in Algeria, just across the sea from Marseilles. Economic destitution would cut a swath of misery through the lands whence they came. Birth rates worked their way like a wrecking ball: It became impossible to transmit culture and civility and the old familiar world to the young. Migration became the only safety valve.

In the '80s, terrible civil wars were fought in Arab and Islamic countries -- with privilege on one side, militant wrath on the other. The despots and the military caste in Algeria and Tunisia and Syria and Egypt won that struggle. Their defeated opponents took to the road: From Hamburg and London and Copenhagen, the battle was now joined. If accounts were to be settled with rulers back home, the work of subversion would be done from Europe. Muslim Brotherhoods sprouted all over the Continent. There were welfare subsidies in the new surroundings, money, constitutional protections and rules of asylum to fight the old struggle.

"The whole Arab world was dangerous for me. I went to London." The words are those of an Egyptian Islamist, Yasser Sirri. In London, Sirri runs an Islamic "observation center" and agitates against the despotism of Hosni Mubarak. But Sirri, a man of 40, is wanted back home. Three sentences have been rendered against him in absentia: One condemns him to 25 years of hard labor for smuggling armed terrorists into Egypt; the second to 15 years for aiding Islamic dissidents; and the third to death for plotting to assassinate a prime minister. Sirri had fled Egypt to Yemen. But trouble trailed him there, so he moved to the Sudan, but it was no better. He turned up in London -- there, he would have liberties, and the protections of a liberal culture. There would be no extradition for him, no return to the summary justice of Cairo.

Sirri was not working in a vacuum. The geography of Islam -- and of the Islamic imagination -- has shifted in recent years. The faith has become portable. Muslims who fled their countries brought Islam with them. Men came into bilad al kufr (the lands of unbelief), but a new breed of Islamists radicalized the faith there, in the midst of the kafir (unbeliever).

The new lands were owed scant loyalty, if any, and political-religious radicals savored the space afforded them by Western civil society. But they resented the logic of assimilation. They denied their sisters and daughters the right to mix with "strangers." You would have thought that the pluralism and tumult of this open European world would spawn a version of the faith to match it. But precisely the opposite happened. In bilad al kufr, the faith became sharpened for battle. We know that life in Hamburg -- and the kind of Islam that Hamburg made possible -- was decisive in the evolution of Mohammed Atta, who led the "death pilots" of Sept. 11. It was in Hamburg where he conceived a hatred of modernity and of women and of the "McEgypt" that the Mubarak regime had brought into being. And it was in Hamburg, too, that a young "party boy" from a secular family in Lebanon underwent the transformation that would take him from an elite Catholic prep school in Beirut to the controls of a plane on Sept. 11, and its tragic end near the fields of Shanksville, Penn. In its economic deterioration, the Arab world is without cities where young Muslims of different lands can meet. A function that Beirut once provided for an older elite had been undone. European cities now provide that kind of opportunity.

Satellite TV has been crucial in the making of this new radicalism. Preachers take to the air, and reach Muslims wherever they are. From the safety of Western cities, they counsel belligerence and inveigh against assimilation. They forbid shaking hands with women examiners at universities. They warn against offering greetings to "infidels" on their religious holidays, or serving in the armies and police of the new lands. "A Muslim has no nationality except his belief," wrote an intellectual godfather of radical Islamism, the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, who was executed by Nasser in 1966. While on a visit to Saudi Arabia in 2002, I listened to a caller from Stockholm as he bared his concerns to an immensely popular preacher. He made Qutb's point: We may carry their nationalities, he said, but we belong to our own religion.

Radical Islamism's adherents are unapologetic. What is laicite (secularism) to the Muslims in France and their militant leaders? It is but the code of a debauched society that wishes to impose on Islam's children -- its young women in particular -- the ways of an infidel culture. What loyalty, at any rate, is owed France? The wrath of France's Muslim youth in the banlieues (suburbs) is seen as revenge on France for its colonial wars. France colonized Algeria in the 1830s; Algerians, along with Tunisians and Moroccans, return the favor in our own time.

France grants its troubled Muslim suburbs everything and nothing. It leaves them to their own devices, and grants them an unstated power over its foreign policy decisions on Islamic and Middle Eastern matters; but it makes no room for them in the mainstream of its life. Trouble has come even to placid Belgium. In Antwerp, Dyab Abu Jahjah, a young Lebanese, only 32, has stepped forth to "empower" the Muslims of that country. Assimilation, he says, is but "cultural rape." He came to Belgium in 1991, and he owns up to inventing a story about persecution back home; it was a "low political trick," he says, and in the nature of things. The constitution of Belgium recognizes Dutch, French, and German as official languages. Abu Jahjah insists that Arabic be added, too.

Europe's leaders know Europe's dilemmas. In ways both intended and subliminal, the escape into anti-Americanism is an attempt at false bonding with the peoples of Islam. Give the Arabs -- and the Muslim communities implanted in Europe -- anti-Americanism, give them an identification with the Palestinians, and you shall be spared their wrath. Beat the drums of opposition to America's war in Iraq, and the furies of this radical Islamism will pass you by. This is seen as a way around the troubles. But there is no exit that way. It is true that Spain supported the American campaign in Iraq, but that aside, Spain's identification with Arab aims has a long history. Of all the larger countries of the EU, Spain has been most sympathetic to Palestinian claims. It was only in 1986 that Spain recognized Israel and established diplomatic ties. With the sole exception of Greece, Spain has shown the deepest reserve toward Israel. Yet this history offered no shelter from the bombers of March 11.

* * *

Whatever political architecture Europe seeks, it will have to be built in proximity to the Other World, just across the Straits of Gibraltar and in the grip of terminal crisis. There is no prospect that the rulers of Arab lands will offer their people a decent social contract, or the opportunities for freedom. It is a sad fact that the Arab peoples no longer make claims on their rulers. Instead the "drifters," such as the embittered terrorists who blew into Madrid, now seek satisfaction almost solely in foreign lands.

You can't agitate against Mubarak in Cairo, but you can do it from the safety of Finsbury Park in London. The ferocity of the debate in the Arab world about France's decision to limit Islamic headgear in public schools is a measure of this displaced rage. Spain may attribute the cruelty visited on it to its association with America's expedition into Iraq. But the truth is darker. Jacques Chirac may believe that he has spared France Spain's terror by sitting out the Iraq war. But he is deluded. The Islamists do not make fine distinctions in the bilad al kufr.

Europe is host to a war between order and its enemies, fuelled by demography: 40% of the Arab world is under 14. Demographers tell us that the fertility replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman. Europe is frightfully below this level; in Germany it is 1.3, Italy 1.2, Spain 1.1, France 1.7 (this higher rate is a factor of its Muslim population). Fertility rates in the Islamic world are altogether different: they are 3.2 in Algeria, 3.4 in Egypt and Morocco, 5.2 in Iraq and 6.1 in Saudi Arabia. This is Europe's neighborhood, and its contemporary fate. You can tell the neighbors across the Straits, (and within the gates of Europe) that you share their dread of Pax Americana. But nemesis is near.

Five centuries ago, the Castilians took Granada from Boabdil. They were a hardy breed of sheep-herders driven by a Malthusian logic, outgrowing their grazing lands, pushing southward -- and into the New World from Seville -- to answer Castile's needs. Today there is great turmoil in Islamic lands, and a Malthusian crisis. Were it only true that those in harm's way in Europe are solely the friends of the Americans. The New World is a demon of this Islamism, it is true. But that old border between Europe and Islam has furies all its own.

Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins, is the author of "The Dream Palace of the Arabs" (Vintage, 1999).

Postato da: persialover a 20:09 | link | |

The murder of a terr...

The murder of a terrorist and the shameful reaction of the coward Europe.

Today is a day of victory for Israel and the Jews.One of the world's most dangerous terrorist murderers has finally been killed.No need to remind  this 'man' s  "accomplishments" during his whole life:murder of thousands of innocent jews,as well as citizens from numerous other countries..Incitement to his followers to eat (yes you read correctly ) parts of the body of the victims.After all, cannibalism is a common pratice taught by the Palestinian Authority to the palestinian children.What sucks more is the furious reaction of this coward and vile Europe with all of its leaders which condemned this as an "act against the intl. law".Yet,this is nothing new from the EU,always ready to condemn Israeli "crimes" against the palestinian terrorists and their leaders and keep silent on the true crimes of the palestinian terrorists and their leaders against the israelis and the palestinians themselves as well..No more need to explain more about this story. Whoever wants to hear is welcomed. whoever prefers to judg without knowing anything,he is free. But he won't be an objective and fair person.Something is for sure:Europe and its leaders (including the italian foreign minister,which also condemned the murder)are helping and financing the terrorists in order to finish the job that they did not in the 1940's: the eradication of the jews from this earth. Once again, America is and will be firm  and determinated to save the world and the jews from another Holocaust.

Postato da: persialover a 19:04 | link | |

"The other day here ...

Postato da: persialover a 18:50 | link | |

FINALLY...IT IS WHAT...

FINALLY...IT IS WHAT I WAS WAITING FOR...THIS IS A GOOD DAY FOR ISRAEL..

Hamas Spiritual Leader Killed in Israeli Strike

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,114784,00.html

PALESTINIANS HAVE LOST THEIR GREATEST LEADER..WILL THEY REALIZE THAT THEY HAVE LOST THEIR DIRTY GENOCIDAL WAR AGAINST ISRAEL AND THE JEWS??

Yassin Was Ideological Force Behind Hamas

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,114787,00.html

Postato da: persialover a 13:29 | link | |

Hi dear friends...So...

Hi dear friends...Sorry for not writing these 2 days.. My internet connection is not working. I have called the assistance and they are working to repair the damage.. I am writing from an internet cafe'.Please be patient and i hope to come back soon !!

Postato da: persialover a 13:24 | link | |

A Constitutional con...

A Constitutional construct for the post-mullah era

By: Elio Bonazzi & Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi



Most Iranian opposition forces active overseas, including the vast majority of the Iranian political spectrum, plus the opposition movement inside Iran, appear to agree on a referendum that should be held as soon as the mullahs’ regime is toppled. Iranian citizens will have to decide their new form of government. Up until now, however, neither prominent Iranian individual, nor political force has proposed a detailed referendum question. Given the history of the country, and the composition of the Iranian political spectrum, it is likely that the referendum question will ask Iranian people to choose between some form of Monarchy and some form of Republic.

It is definitely reassuring to see such a convergence on the idea of a referendum. Iranian political forces have been extremely fragmented and divided even on insignificant issues during the past 24 years. The fact that most Iranians today agree on the referendum sends a strong signal of political maturity that cannot be ignored.

It is crucial, however, that both the Iranian activist vanguard and all Iranians who care about their country and support the struggle for a free, secular and democratic Iran understand that a referendum is only the initial step towards the creation of a new Iranian State. Several fundamental decisions must be made, which will shape the future of the Iranian democracy.

The form of government (Monarchy, Presidential Democracy, Parliamentarian Democracy, etc) must be supported by an adequate electoral system. Irrespective of the form of government chosen according to the outcome of the referendum, it is very likely that the majority of Iranians want a multi-party system.

The Anglo-American electoral system is not suitable for societies that express a plurality of political formations, rather than two major parties. The winner-take-all plurality system that the US inherited from England represents only those voters whose candidates win a plurality of the votes in single-seat constituency races. Those who vote for loser candidates are not represented. The basic problem with Plurality-Majority electoral systems is the discrepancy between the percentage of votes received by a party and the number of seats in the Parliament/Congress attributed to it. In such an electoral system, a party could potentially receive millions of votes, and yet be under-represented or even not represented at all in the Parliament if none of its candidates won a direct race in at least one Electoral College. In the case of Iran, a Plurality-Majority electoral system could prevent traditional minority forces, which have been active throughout Iranian history and even more active after the Diaspora that followed the 1979 revolution, from representation in the Parliament.

On the other hand, proportional representation systems strive to reduce the disparity between a party’s share of the national vote and its share of the parliamentary seats; if a major party wins 30% of the votes, it should win approximately 30% of the seats, and a minor party with 10% of the votes should also gain approximately 10% of the parliamentary seats. This is achieved by assigning the parliamentary seat to the winner of the Electoral College context, like in the Plurality-Majority system; the votes cast in favor of loser candidates, however, are not wasted, but accumulated nationally and used for the attribution of further seats.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a perfect electoral system, and while proportional electoral systems are generally considered more “fair”, they introduce other problems. For instance, proportional representation systems increase the importance of political parties much more than Plurality-Majority systems. They do so by requiring that the people vote for party lists and for political parties rather than for individuals. Proportional representation usually assumes that the people vote to support political philosophies rather than to elect representatives.

A part from the more “philosophical” issues brought about by proportional systems discussed above, proportionally elected governments do have stability and governance issues. In a multi-party system, rarely one party obtains the majority of votes needed to form the government. A coalition of parties is needed to obtain the required majority. Smaller parties contributing to a coalition government can easily blackmail major parties, increasing the political price for their participation. In the worst case scenario, a smaller party initially participating in a coalition government could be tempted to break its alliance with the other parties half way through the period of office of the legislature, provoking a political crisis and potentially forcing the country to early elections.

Countries that have adopted a proportional electoral system have also put in place mechanisms to avoid the formation of an excessive number of small parties. Usually, that is achieved through the establishment of qualifying thresholds that parties must meet in order to be granted representation in the Parliament. Such thresholds can be a minimal percentage of votes that each party must obtain to gain the right to elected representatives, like in Israel where the threshold is 1.5% of the votes, or in Germany, where the qualifying threshold is 5%; in other countries, like Italy, each party must win at least one electoral college in order to achieve representation.

Most new democracies born after the collapse of communism chose proportional electoral systems; those societies had been oppressed by the tyranny of the single party system, and wanted to experience democracy to the fullest. But the eastern-European new States created after the fall of the Berlin wall “customized” the ideal of pure proportionality and adjusted it to their culture, traditions, political history and to avoid an excessive proliferation of small parties or to increase stability and governance.

The problem is that each correction or alteration to the electoral system is not politically neutral; each amendment could favor or penalize a specific party. A proportional electoral system could arguably work well in a new, multi-party Iranian society. But the amendments to the pure proportional system, necessary to ensure effective governance and to increase stability by mitigating the potential litigation between parties forming the coalition government, are likely to generate an involved debate among the Iranian opposition forces.

One more issue further complicates the creation of a new Iranian political framework. No serious Iranian or western statesman would question the territorial integrity of Iran after the collapse of the mullahs’ regime. But Iran comprises several different ethnic groups, usually geographically concentrated in specific areas, such as Kurdistan or Baluchistan. Some form of local autonomy, both at a political and at an administrative level, must be granted to those ethnic groups, to prevent civil unrest and the possible formation of break away, single-issue parties that could choose extremism as a simple way to assert their minority rights.

The alternative is between complete federalism, following the American model, or political unity in one National Parliament and strong regional/administrative autonomy.

Again, deciding between the two models is not politically neutral. Iranians must consider pros and cons of each model, and choose according to what is more suitable for their historical background and compatible with their political culture.

The debate on the future political and constitutional framework of a liberated Iran cannot be either neglected or postponed. Iranian opposition forces should start to seriously consider the various options and to make up their minds about what to propose after the toppling of the mullahs’ regime. Iranian opposition must buy precious time and start working on constitutional issues in order to achieve consensus on a few, fundamental ideas shared by a consistent majority within the political forces of the opposition. This sense of urgency originates from the following consideration: a power vacuum will inevitably follow after the ousting of the mullahs. Ideology-oriented minority parties, like the Tudeh or the Mujahedin parties, which organize well-disciplined militants, used to operate clandestinely, relying on an established network of dormant, but ready to reactivate cells, could try and exploit the situation to their advantage. The longer the period of power vacuum and the greater the danger of a “Bolshevik outcome”.

Given the current level of general disaffection towards the mullahs, it is very likely that the regime will crumble from within, unlike what happened in the neighboring Iraq. On the one hand, it would be a great accomplishment for the national pride of Iranians being able to get rid of the fascist theocracy with no external help; on the other hand, such an outcome would expose the country to a difficult transition phase, without American or international troops to act as the guarantor of order and democracy while the country decides on crucial aspects of its political life, like form of government and electoral system.

Iranians should work together to ensure a short and stable transition period, between the fall of the mullahs’ regime and the implementation of the new form of government decided through the referendum. Sectors of the Iranian army, led by those generals who have started dialoging with the opposition signaling their willingness to join forces with the anti-mullah movement, could fulfill the role of a neutral force that guaranties social order and prevents possible authoritarian twists, which could be attempted by the modern incarnation of the Tudeh party or by the Mujahedins during the transition phase.

What is needed, and sooner rather than later, is an agreement by most Iranian opposition forces, on a constitutional roadmap that will determine the steps necessary to drive Iran throughout the perilous journey of the next few months, in its passage from fascist theocracy to modern democracy. There are several historical examples on how to proceed in order to build the foundations of a new State. One way to accomplish this arduous task is to vote for the Referendum and at the same time for an assembly of a few hundreds legal experts who will have to write and approve the new Constitution. Such an assembly is democratically elected, and political parties, enjoying the newly found political freedom, actively campaign for candidates to the assembly. But in order to qualify, candidates must be versed in legal matters, able to understand and speak the technical language of Constitutional Jurisprudence.

The new Constitution can only be written after the Iranian people have expressed their fundamental preference on the form of government. It is likely that if a constitutional monarchy will emerge victorious from the referendum, the assembly writing the new Constitution will focus on the creation of check and balance mechanisms to prevent the constitutional monarch from progressively seizing more and more power, transforming the monarchy from constitutional to absolute; on the other hand, if the referendum decides in favor of a republic, the assembly can focus on different issues, such as the debate between presidentialism and parliamentarism.

The same assembly will also debate and approve a new electoral system. In substance, the crucial task performed by the assembly is to establish the rules of the political game. As soon as the new constitution is written and approved, general elections are called, following the rules of the new electoral system.

One of the major risks that democratic forces of the Iranian opposition face today is to be caught unprepared by a sudden demise of the mullahs without an agreement on a constitutional roadmap. Such an occurrence would delay the period of power vacuum, increasing the danger of an authoritarian twist in the worst-case scenario, or instability, looting and personal vendettas in the best-case scenario.

To mitigate the risks discussed above, as a matter of urgency Iranians should:



Identify and stand behind those sectors of the army able to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition
Agree on the necessary steps for the creation of democratic institutions, starting with a thoughtful and well formulated referendum question



The mullahs’ regime is at the end. The Western World has a chance to redeem itself for past mistakes, helping and encouraging Iranian opposition forces; the recent Iran Democracy Act, cosponsored by the US Senators Brownback, Cornyn, Coleman, Santorum, Bunning, Schumer, Inouye, Coleman, McConnell and Johnson is a step in the right direction. Other positive signs also come from Europe, where the Greek president of the EU recently sent a strong warning to the mullahs’ regime, saying that Europe’s patience towards the Iranian disregard for Human Rights is rapidly coming to an end.

Iranian opposition forces have the duty to respond to this historical call, rising to the occasion and unify and reach consensus at least on the constitutional roadmap. This is not a naïve call to set aside the profound differences that characterize the political forces of Iranian opposition. There will be plenty of chances for real political debate and struggle on social and governmental issues, after the toppling of the IRI; what is needed today, however, is minimal consensus on a limited set of “rules of the game”, that will drive the democratic process towards a new Iran.

Postato da: persialover a 19:20 | link | |

Double Standards and...

Double Standards and Deception: How the Left Treats Iran and the Middle East

Anaysis/Opinion.

By Elio Bonazzi.1

In an article that appeared in the New York Post, in early March 2003, prior to the Coalition war on Iraq, Iranian-born journalist Amir Taheri denounced what he felt were the deeply hypocritical position of the peace movement, which had, in the build-up to the 2003 US-led war against Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein, organized marches and rallies throughout 600 cities and 25 countries.

Stalin founded this “peace movement” movement in 1946, when the USSR was in a distinctly weak position; he was trying to consolidate the newly conquered empire in Eastern Europe without nuclear weapons to counter the military predominance of the West. Pablo Picasso designed the emblem of the movement, the famous dove, and world-renowned poets such as French Paul Eluard and Chilean Pablo Neruda composed odes inspired by Stalin. The goal of the movement was to extend the influence of the various communist parties over the more moderate center-left political formations, to push the Kremlin’s agenda in the West with the support of forces which would have transcended the meager political weight of the various communist parties operating in what was then described as “the free world”. The symbol was a dove, rather than hammer and sickle; the emblem color was white, rather than red. But the International Section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), operating behind the scenes in Moscow, orchestrated the “peace movement” to fulfill their goals.  

In the course of its existence, the “peace movement” never betrayed its origins.  

In his article, Mr Taheri reminds us that the movement was not opposed to all wars indiscriminately, but only to those that threatened the Soviet empire. The “peaceniks” (which is the appellation by which Mr Taheri refers to them) were comfortable with the Soviet annexation of 15 percent of Finland’s territory and the Baltic States, and did not demur when the Soviet tanks entered Budapest and Prague. But when the US led a coalition under a UN mandate to prevent North Korean communists from conquering South Korea, the “peace movement” was “up in arms”, denouncing the “imperialist ambitions” of the US. Peaceniks reached their peak during the Vietnam War. And once again they were silent when the USSR invaded Afghanistan, but became very vocal about the deployment of the Pershing theater-strategic surface-to-surface missiles in Europe in the years which followed that very invasion. The missiles were a response to the Soviet deployment of entire batteries of SS-20 ballistic missiles aimed at European capitals. But the peaceniks never asked for the dismantling of the SS-20s; their protest was only aimed at impeding the deployment of the Pershing SSMs.  

While the “peace movement” is probably the most evident example of double standards, tolerated and even encouraged by the left, the recent events which have occurred in Iran and the repercussion which those events had in the Western world are a revival of the hypocrisy and duplicity by those who theoretically should be staunch supporters of democracy and freedom for the Iranian people.  

The Islamic Republic of Iran is an extreme-right theocracy, which has increasingly lost consensus even among the clergy. It oppresses the large majority of Iranians, perpetrating what by accepted international standards would be described as “crimes against humanity” on a daily basis. Women are stoned to death, people [especially the young] are tortured and executed in public without trial, tens of thousands of political prisoners populate highly objectionable prisons; the oppressors must resort to Muslim foreigners for help in anti-riot policing, enlisting Palestinians, Afghani Talibans and even Syrians arriving straight from Damascus to Tehran via camouflaged chartered flights, because Iranian police will no longer beat fellow compatriots during demonstrations.

It is clear that Iranians want a secular, representative government ; anything short of that is not acceptable. Surprisingly, both liberals and left wing radicals have, up until now shown little or no support for a secular democracy in Iran. It is difficult to argue that the struggle for a secular democracy in Iran is not “progressive”. After all, the Iranian opposition forces are trying to defeat religious obscurantism, which is definitely not a left-wing ideological asset; they propose a modern democracy instead, which is certainly more in line with left-wing rhetoric.  

Historically, whenever a brutal dictatorship teetered on the edge of collapse, left-wing movements and media worldwide stood up in support of the “freedom fighters”. For instance, the autocracy in Nicaragua which lasted until July 1979 and proceeded the fall of the Pres. Anastasio Somoza had liberal media worldwide in a campaign which completely discredited Somoza’s Administration. The turning point was the assassination of journalist Bill Stewart by a soldier of the regular Nicaraguan Army, captured on the video camera of a fellow journalist and promptly distributed throughout the world.  

Something similar has recently happened in Iran. A Canadian-Iranian photojournalist, Zahra Ziba Kazemi, was raped and murdered (at the instigation of Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortezavi) in June 2003 while detained after being arrested for filming anti-Government riots outside the political prison of Evin in Tehran. After an initial pathetic attempt to cover up this assassination, [the Islamic Republic officials injected her body with rapid decomposing chemicals and burying her hastily] essentially refusing to return her body to Canada, in spite of an official request made by her family and demand by the Canadian Government. The murder of Ms Kazemi, however, did not provoke the same amount of public outrage which forced Nicaraguan Pres. Somoza to step down.  

For weeks during the month of June 2003 and on the occasion of the July 9, 2003, anniversary of the 1999 University protests in Iran, the opposition movement inside Iran challenged the authority of the Administration, marching and rallying, chanting anti-Government slogans, defying the guns and death squads of the various mullahs in key posts. As a result, thousands of political activists, students, and others, were rounded up and packed into prisons, subjected to torture, and in some cases murdered.

It is instructive to compare and contrast the articles about Nicaragua that appeared in liberal newspapers in 1979 and the articles about Iran today. In 1979 not a single liberal journalist strove to be “neutral”. From the perspective of the political left, there was no doubt: Somoza and his Government had to go.

The situation is totally different today. If it is to succeed, the growing opposition movement inside Iran needs tangible support from the West. Freedom fighters need laptops, fax machines and cellular phones to organize the uprising. If the Iranian opposition is to succeed, it also needs support from international media. But, significantly, that is not happening. The basic ingredients of the political situation in Iran — a growing opposition movement fighting against a leadership which oppresses the vast majority of the population — would normally be considered to be the perfect ingredients for a left-wing recipe to galvanize the masses in the name of freedom and democracy. It worked for Nicaragua, at the end of the 1970s; it worked for Poland and Solidarnosc in the 1980s. The question for analysts today is why the same recipe has failed to take hold in Iran.

Mainstream US liberal media barely reported on the Iranian uprising which occurred at the end of June and beginning of July 2003. Instead of praising the opposition demonstrators who literally risked their lives, soon after the end of the uprising, The New York Times, which in spite of recent scandals still remains one of the most prestigious national newspapers, published an Op-Ed by Mr Reza Aslan, a visiting professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Iowa.  

In that article, Mr Aslan argued that the Iranian opposition was fighting for a religious democracy, not secularism, and religion must play a rôle in the country. Mr Aslan completely misrepresented the reality of Iran, and could not be further from the truth. The New York Times, by publishing that article, sided with those who sought to maintain the status quo in Iran. The most prominent Shi’ite scholars, ayatollahs like Taheri and Montazeri, have distanced themselves from the “political” clergy (Khamnei and Rafsjani), openly criticizing the very concept of Islamic Republic. Hossein Khomeini, himself an ayatollah and the grandchild of the Islamic revolution’s very leader, recently joined Taheri and Montazeri, criticizing religious interference in State matters, in a significant blow to the theocratic establishment. Mr Khomeini left Iran, and is now in Najaf, Iraq, which has once again become the most prominent Shi’ite theological center, relegating the Iranian holy city of Qom to a secondary rôle. Coalition forces in Iraq recently discovered a plot to assassinate Hossein Khomeini organized by the Shi’ite extremists sent by Iran’s “Supreme Leader”, “Ayatollah” Khamene’i and former Pres. Rafsanjani’s assassination teams.

Taheri, Montazeri and Khomeini the younger understand that Islam today is losing consensus in Iran and that the harshness of the Islamic revolution backfired. As a result, it is no longer appealing to Iranian youth; they now respond with either religious apathy or by embracing Zoroastrianism [the ancient religion of Iran, before Persians were forced to convert to Islam by the Arab invaders].  

The “peace movement” taught us that only wars which were threatening the Soviet Union were worth protesting. Contemporary liberals would like to sell us a similar concept: siding with the “oppressed freedom fighters” against the brutal oppressors is not always politically correct. In the case of Iran, for example, the toppling of the mullahs could potentially benefit the US Bush Administration, simplifying the process of stabilization in Iraq, and extending US and Israeli influence in the Middle East. The perceived Bush-Sharon axis would come out undoubtedly stronger, after HizbAllah and HAMAS were left without their primary source of financial and logistic support, the Iranian clerics.  

It is easy to understand why it is in the interest of the left to deliberately downplay the growing opposition movement in Iran. Apart from the more evident reason explained above, as far as Iran is concerned, the left still has a few skeletons in its closet, and must come to terms with past mistakes and faulty assessments.  

To begin with, the left significantly contributed to the creation of the Islamic Republic, when US President Jimmy Carter deliberately destroyed the Shah, who had been a staunch ally of the US for 27 years. In the Shah’s White House visit of November 1977, Jimmy Carter and his aides — who demanded radical changes in the way the internal affairs of Iran were conducted — met the Shah with open hostility. They asked the Shah to institute the right of free assembly, at a time when the Soviet Union was stepping up a campaign of propaganda, espionage and even sabotage inside Iran, and Islamic fundamentalists where teaming up with the Iranian Communist Tudeh party to overthrow the Government.  

Nureddin Klanuri, head of the Tudeh Party, who was living in exile in East Berlin, officially sanctioned the party line in support for Khomeini:  

“The Tudeh Party approves Ayatollah Khomeini's initiative in creating the Islamic Revolutionary Council. The ayatollah’s program coincides with that of the Tudeh Party.”

Furthermore, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, a key figure in Khomeni’s entourage, was known for his strong connections with Soviet and Eastern European intelligence.  

The Shah was left with little room for maneuver; he had to succumb to the blackmail of the Carter Administration and release political prisoners, ending military tribunals and granting rights of assembly in order not to lose vital US military supply and training. But the mechanism designed by Carter to provoke an escalation of the opposition to the Shah was already in motion. In addition to the support of the Tudeh party and Eastern intelligence, Khomeini could also count on US leftist radicals like Ramsey Clark, who had served as Attorney-General in the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration. Mr Clark went to Tehran and to Paris, to visit Khomeini. Upon his return to the US, he played a behind-the-scenes rôle to influence prominent senators and congressmen not to allow the US military to back the Shah in case of popular upraising against the Peacock throne.  

Mr Clark is today still proud of his crusade of 1979. In a recent interview he talked of overthrowing the Shah as “the” accomplishment of his lifetime, quoting overly exaggerated numbers of supposed Shah’s victims as the moral justification for his actions. The smear campaign orchestrated by left media while the Shah was still on his throne, and which continued well after his fall, depicted the Shah as a mass murderer, responsible for the killing of 60,000 people, who died between 1963 and 1979. That number was fabricated by Khomeini, and never verified, not even by Western media, which took for granted the “official truth” of the newly installed Islamic Administration.  

Only recently a respected historian, Emad al-Din Baghi, who had access to the files of the so-called “Martyrs Foundation”, told the truth about the real number of Shah’s victims. For years, The Martyrs Foundation collected the names of the victims of the revolution against the Shah, classifying them by age, sex, education, etc. The findings where never disclosed by the Islamic Republic, in order not to contradict the official number “established by decree” by Khomeini. The statistical breakdown of victims covering the period from 1963 to 1979 adds up to a figure of 3,164. Emad al-Din Baghi left the Martyrs Foundation to write books about his findings. According to his historically accurate account, the worst moment of the uprising against the Shah, culminated in the massacre at Jaleh Square, gave the “revolutionaries” the chance to grossly inflate the number of victims, from 88 to initially 3,000, which later became 4,000. Western media never bothered to verify the accuracy of the numbers, based on rumors and anti-Shah hysteria, and helped perpetuate the inflated figures.  

Not only the left contributed to the creation of the Islamic Republic; in more recent years, during the US Clinton Administration, the media and left-wing politicians helped the Islamic Republic propaganda, repeating and magnifying the “Big Lie” about Iran and its “Reformist Leaders”. “Big Lie” is a term originally coined to describe a characteristic form of nazi (and later Soviet) propaganda. The essence of the Big Lie propaganda technique is that if one repeats the lie often enough over enough channels, people will soak it up deep into their pores and come to believe it as something of “common knowledge” or “fact”.

In this case, the “Big Lie” consisted of portraying current Iranian Pres. Hojjat ol-Eslam (Ali) Mohammad Khatami-Ardakani and his Government as a genuine force capable of reforming the Islamic Republic “from within”, expanding democracy and meeting the requests of Iranians who voted for change against hard-line clerics in 1997. The “Big Lie” remained credible for a short time, and even opposition forces of the Iranian diaspora initially credited Mr Khatami with good intentions. But soon after the electoral victory of May 1997, it appeared evident that Khatami was a mere façade figure, whose task was to restore an image of respectability, which the Islamic Republic had lost when Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsajani, the former President, had ordered the elimination of anti-Islamic Republic activists [carried out by Iranian killers] in Berlin. After several European countries recalled their ambassadors from Tehran to protest against the assassinations perpetrated on European soil and threatened to reconsider business deals with Iran, the clerical apparatus in charge of the Islamic Republic decided to give itself a new and more presentable look.  

The Iranian society had already sent strong signals of deep disaffection towards Islamic rule. It was easy to maneuver the elections; spiritual leader Ali Khamene’i handpicked a fossilized, ultra-conservative mullah, Nategheh-Nouri, the Speaker of Parliament (Majlis), as the candidate of the establishment, knowing full well that the electorate would have voted for the alternative candidate.  

But what kind of alternative was Khatami? One should not forget that “democratic elections” are in reality nothing more than a farce in Iran. Opposition parties that do not pledge their allegiance to the Islamic regime are banned. And as if that is not enough, the all-powerful Council of Guardians subjects all candidates to a close examination of their loyalty to the “system”. The latter represents the “will of God”, while the Parliament (Majlis) represents the “will of the People”. Needless to say, the will of God always prevails over the will of the people. The “Spiritual Leader” Ali Khamene’i, who presides the Council of Guardians, is, to all intents, an absolute monarch. Of the initial 240 candidates who wanted to run for the May 1997 election, the Council of Guardians chose four who were deemed sufficiently Islamic to run. All women candidate were filtered out, leaving Khatami, carefully screened by the establishment, as the only reasonable choice. With his image of well-spoken, clean-shaven mullah capable of debating without losing his temper, Khatami was the perfect choice to rebuild the shattered image of Iran, especially in the eyes of the European powers.  

The fictitious contraposition between “conservatives” and “reformists” and the “electoral victory” of the latter was the PR stunt that allowed the Europeans, anxious to continue usurping cheap oil and gas from Iran, to feel morally justified when they restored diplomatic and business relations with the Islamic Republic. The Western media on both sides of the Atlantic did the rest, generating a false sense of confidence in the “good guys”, the reformists, who, in spite of all the obstacles erected by the conservatives, would have eventually succeeded in fulfilling the needs and the democratic aspirations of Iranians. In all fairness, it has to be said that all mainstream media, irrespective of political leaning, initially praised Khatami’s election, to the extent of giving him the nickname of “Ayatollah Gorbachev”. The mullahs benefited from the newly-found line of political credit by cracking down on internal opposition with renewed vigor. A few months after Khatami’s “landslide victory”, journalists and intellectuals were killed in what went down the annals of history as the “chain murders”. In addition, real opposition magazines and newspapers were banned and forcibly closed down.  

In spite of the repression of internal dissent, Khatami was invited by the major European powers for State visits. He went to Italy in March 1999, where he delivered a speech to the Parliament, to France in October 1999, where he was welcomed by Pres. Chirac at the Elysée Palace, and to Germany in July 2000, where he met federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer.  

The Big Lie represented a perfect win-win situation for Iranian officials and European powers. It legitimized the Islamic Republic and its crackdown of the opposition, while justifying the Europeans in their renewed business interests with Iran, because, as German Foreign Minister Fisher claimed: “any opposition to Khatami only benefits his conservative opponents”. Khatami visited Germany exactly one year after the July 1999 student protests, during which security forces and Islamic militia murdered several young people. Khatami explicitly supported the repression of the protest, and in spite of receiving thousands of petitions; he did not intervene to stop the tortures and the arrests if students who were then sentenced to death after mock trials. But that was not enough to defeat the Big Lie; the sad reality of Iran was not convenient for liberal media and European politicians, anxious to clear the way to lucrative business deals with Iran.  

The latest elections held in Iran on February 2003 also showed that the Emperor had no clothes; in Tehran only 10 percent of voters cast their votes, in other parts of the country the percentage of voters was higher, but in average no more than 25 percent. That sent Iranian authorities and the world a strong message of the distaste the Iranian public felt towards Islamic rule. Initially, only the Council of Guardians was labeled “the unelected few”; today the same can be said about the entire ruling class.  

US non-liberal mainstream media finally woke up and started questioning the Big Lie, reporting on the June/July 2003 uprisings, realizing that Iran needed a secular democracy and not the false promises of a better future by a powerless mullah. In several occasions, however, liberal media still described the Iranian situation in terms of internal fighting between reformists and conservatives, demanding that the US State Department open a dialogue with “reformist forces” to reach a compromise on the Iranian interference in Iraq and the nuclear facility being built in central Iran.  

Left-wing radical fringes recently gave birth to a Committee called the “International Committee for Transition to Democracy in Iran”. Radical celebrities like Noam Chomsky, Costa Gavras and the Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago were among the founders of the committee, which mixes anti-US and anti-Imperialist rhetoric with legitimate requests for a genuine democratization in Iran. It is now time for the more moderate mainstream left to start the long overdue process of self-criticism of past mistakes, and to recognize that the only reasonable political position is to side with the growing opposition movement that wants to overthrow the mullahs to create a secular democracy in Iran. The left opposed the war in Iraq using morally charged messages like “no blood for oil”. In order not to lose its credibility, the left can no longer ignore the legitimate aspiration of Iranians for a secular democracy. If the left insists on perpetuating its mistakes as far as Iran is concerned [trading long term benefits for myopic short term anti-Bush gains], it will be caught, once again, on the wrong side of history. It is not too late for the left to recognize its mistakes and to rectify its position on Iran, after a factual and honest debate; but that must begin now.

The Author:

Elio Bonazzi is an Italian-born political scientist and IT professional, with extensive experience covering Iranian issues.

Postato da: persialover a 19:18 | link | |

Outlawing war: the u...

Outlawing war: the ultimate frontier of Euro-centrism



Europe claims to be the “cradle of civilization.” Such a notion is debatable, as it undermines the importance of the ancient non-European civilizations, like the Egyptian and Persian empires, which definitely contributed to the establishment of civilization, as we know it today. Furthermore, after the splendor of the Roman Empire, Europe went through a long period of decadence that lasted for a few centuries. During the same time, between the 7th and 12th century, the Middle East produced a superior civilization, in terms of discoveries and inventions, architectural achievements, poetry and literature.



It is unquestionable, however, that Europe is the initiator and the crucial contributor to the western civilization, the political and economical foundations of which (democracy and market economy) are European inventions.



Unfortunately, Europe suffers from Euro-centrism, or the tendency to consider only European facts, events, culture, history, etc. worth noting, and to disregard everything that happens outside of Europe. On the one hand, it is true that globalization is affecting Europe as well as other continents, and that American culture has a considerable influence on European countries; on the other hand Euro-centrism still survives as a snobbish intellectual attitude, common among educated Europeans.



The highest European achievement after WWII has been the establishment of the European Union, and the ability to overcome centuries of mistrust, rivalry and hostility during that process. It would have been inconceivable until 50 years ago to think of France and Germany as partners and allies, sharing the same political long-term views.



Intoxicated by their success, Europeans want to export their model, based on compromise at all cost, to the entire world. They go as far as contemplating the possibility of outlawing war and consider the US as a dinosaur, overgrown and too powerful to be controlled by its small brain, and therefore on the brink of extinction. By using the dinosaur metaphor, Europeans equate the powerful US military machine to the body, and President Bush and its administration to the small brain of the primordial beast. Evolution, they say, took care of the unbalance, by making dinosaurs extinct and promoting smaller mammals to a prominent position in the planet.



Europeans have fallen victims of their own Euro-centric vision of the world to the point that they don’t realize that outlawing war is as effective as outlawing cancer. Nobody likes either war or cancer, but neither can be defeated by legal means. Europeans forget that geographical proximity as well as cultural proximity are at the basis of the miracle operated by France and Germany in their transition from fierce enemies to best friends. There is no cultural proximity with the axis of evil, and no possibility of compromise with Iran or North Korea.

The real European paradox is in that Europe appears to be a “prisoner of history”, slow to adapt, blasé and cynical, always ready to provide historical references to the past to justify the ineptitude of the present, yet Europeans appear not to learn any lesson from history. The path of appeasement chosen by England and France to avoid confrontation with Germany in the 30s provoked the dissolution of the League of Nations and a war that killed 40 million people. Europe is doomed to repeat the same mistake today, but the outcome will be even more terrifying. Iran has set its course to become a nuclear power, and Europe is likely to be, after Israel, the primary target of nuclear attacks, since the Iranians are still years away from the technology needed to build intercontinental ballistic missiles, which could make the US a potential target.



Europeans appear unable to understand that their lifestyle is as outrageous to Islamic fundamentalists as the American lifestyle. Even if the islamist rhetoric today constantly blames America, Europeans won’t be spared by the fundamentalist fury.



Sometimes, out of frustration, the average American lets out an unconfessed desire to see a terrorist attack in Europe, a sort of wake up call for Europeans, who would finally join the US in the war on terror. What a naïve thought! Europeans would react by intensifying appeasement and diplomatic solutions, and by buying their way out of terror through dirty deals.


In 1993, while the American soldiers in Somalia were killed in the episode made famous by the movie “Black Hawk Down”, the Italian expeditionary force in Mogadishu was paying the militia of General Aidid in order not to get shot. And what to think of the behind the scene maneuvering of the British diplomacy, soon after the beginning of the war against Saddam? When it became clear that British troops would have been deployed to Bassora, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Mike O'Brien, a Foreign Office minister, visited Iran and made sure that they had an “understanding” with the Shiite Islamic Republic. The British occupation of Bassora, a predominantly Shiite region, proceeded smoothly without any killing of British soldiers, while in other regions of Iraq Americans were and are the targets of Saddam’s loyalists, international terrorists and Iranian killers. On June 19th, Tony Blair gave a strong warning to the Iranian theocracy, demanding the end of the nuclear ambitions of Iran, threatening to stop the business deals with the European Union, so desperately needed by the Iranian regime to survive. Five days later, after two months of absolute calm in the British controlled area, six soldiers were suddenly killed and eight injured. Tony Blair and Jack Straw understood the message, and were instrumental in orchestrating the recent masterpiece of appeasing diplomacy that allowed the Islamic regime to avoid economic sanctions while still pursuing a nuclear program with the blessing of England, France and Germany.



Old Europe is a lost cause for the war on terror. The US has to forge new alliances with east-European countries, which are part of the coalition of the willing, and still appreciate the values of freedom and democracy that they recently achieved after decades of communist ruling. The “new Europe” is less parochial, non Euro-centric and not prepared to compromise on crucial issues like national security. After 9/11 and the war against Saddam, America has found new friends in Europe; America can leverage its new friendships to counteract the suicidal tendencies shown by the old European block which will continue on the path of appeasement towards rogue states. The good news is that America is not any more isolated in Europe, in spite of what liberal media would like the American public to believe.

Postato da: persialover a 19:15 | link | |

Foreign news agencie...

Foreign news agencies' correspondents misinform on unrests

SMCCDI (information Service)
Mar 17, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_5387.shtml

The foreign news agencies' correspondents, located in Iran, have misreported the news in reference to the massive demos made, at the occasion of "Fire Fiest", and have kept their usual silence on the unprecedented unrests that rocked most Iranian cities yesterday night by resulting in several deaths and hundreds of wounded and arrested .

Most of what these agencies, especially Reuters and Agence France Press (AFP) have reported is misinformation based on official news reported by governmental affiliated sources, such as, ISNA the so-called Iranian Students News Agency which contributed for several years in the propagation of the sham theory of reforms made from whitin the regime.

A detailed study of these two agencies of European origin's precedent reporting and comparison with what is the confirmed trend followed by Iranians can show better how these so-called neutral reporting tools have become in reality the mouthpieces of the Islamic regime by fear of getting expelled or by following interests of EU members.

Postato da: persialover a 16:42 | link | |

Tens of militiamen i...

Tens of militiamen injured due to popular resistance

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Mar 16, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_5377.shtml

Tens of the usually feared Islamic regime's militiamen have been injured in the violent clashes which rocked, this evening, most Iranian cities at the occasion of the the popular celebration of the banned "Tchahr Shanbe Soori" (Fire Fiest). Unconfirmed reports are stating about the death of several militiamen in Tehran's Guisha district, Nasr avenue, and in provincial cities, such as, Khoram Abad and Bushehr where Militia's Colonel Ghassem Mattaf has been shot to death.

Tens of militiamen were wounded due to heavy burns inflicted by young Iranians who used of powerful hand made grenades and Molotv Coktails in order to break the security forces' brutal assaults.

Clashes were extremly violent especially in several areas of Tehran, such as, Eslam-Shahr, Guisha, Madar, Vali e Asr, Narmak, Rey, Sadeghieh, Karadj and as well in provincial cities, such as, Esfahan and Bushehr. Angry demonstrators used of heavy explosive devices and even guns confiscated from plainclothes men in order to resist to the regime forces and even to take revenge.

Tens of security patrol cars or bikes as well as official buildings and homes and facilities affiliated to the regime's men have been damaged by fire or explosion.

Thousands of pictures of the regime's founder, Rooh-Ollah Khomeini, and the current officials were burned by the various crowd in each city.

Postato da: persialover a 16:27 | link | |

New Year, New Destin...

New Year, New Destiny

Iranians fight for their future.

By Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/zandbonazzi200403171018.asp

On Tuesday night, Iranians celebrated Chaahaarshanbeh Souri, the feast of fire. This is an ancient Persian celebration, predating Islam by a couple of thousand years; it marks the approaching of the Iranian new year (which is also pre-Islamic), celebrated on March 21, the vernal equinox. People build small bonfires and jump over the flames to purify and purge themselves of all the negativity and pain of the passing year so that they can begin the new year with a clean spirit and fresh outlook. During this celebration, it is also customary to light sparklers and throw fireworks. Since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, the mullahs have done everything they could to dissuade the people of Iran from continuing these Persian celebrations, calling them pagan in an attempt to eradicate the Persian heritage from Iran.

Over the past few weeks, there were threats of major March 16 clashes, as the mullahs continued to force the issue of this celebration being haraam — religiously prohibited or unclean — because it occurs during the religious month of Mohharram, which is fraught with mourning for Shiite martyrs. Fatwahs were issued by various major and minor clerics. The regime also warned against sparklers and fireworks, insisting that they are banned.

Early Tuesday afternoon, in the wake of five days of severe clashes in northern Iran, in the town of Fereydoun-Kenaar (as well as other serious clashes in the southern part of Iran and weeks of clashes in Iranian Kurdistan, which began days before the scheduled February 20 elections), people all over Iran made good on the threat and took to the streets, not only to celebrate, but to also draw on the clashes up north, down south, and in Kurdistan. Clouds of smoke from the detonation of M80's, homemade mini-hand grenades, and Molotov cocktails filled the air. From one city to the next, similar stories were heard. One account mentioned plans to hang a life-sized puppet of Khamenei, intended to be burned in effigy under the Sattaar Khaan Bridge in Tehran. The effigy seems to have been blocked by the non-Iranian revolutionary guards, who are often Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Afghan Arabs, and Yemenis who are imported to beat up on the people of Iran, since it is only the rare Iranian who wants to beat up on other Iranians anymore.

For a while there was no sign of the police. This was the mullahs' way of performing for the foreign press who were visiting Iran; it was a way of looking liberal and easygoing. But by about 9 P.M., in the town of Gohar Dasht (a suburb of Tehran), the movement reached a fever pitch; demonstrators had taken over the roads and main arteries chanting and yelling slogans when eight pickup trucks carrying dozens of armed non-Iranian revolutionary guards arrived on the scene, savagely attacking people with knives, billy clubs, and chains. Tear gas was released in the streets in order to disperse the celebrants. People scattered-many into the homes of townsfolk who had stayed home-they left their doors open for the celebrants/protesters to take refuge. The people worked together to protect each other against the brutal regime-they all know its wrath too well.

In other cities like Gorgaan where a six-month-old child had been trampled by the guards, anger lead demonstrators toward the local police headquarters, proclaiming that they would set it on fire. In Mashhad, approximately 300 people were arrested, while many more were knifed and severely beaten by the terror forces of the government.

It must be noted, though, that despite the clashes, Iranians enjoyed the celebrations. Music played; people laughed (which is actually banned by the mullahs); girls and boys were seen dancing together (which is also banned); girls lifted off their scarves. There was a general a feeling of inspiration and dedication. And there was a special symbolic joy in the lighting of bonfires, using pictures of all the major mullahs.

Tuesday was a victory; it was one more jolt to the weakening anatomy of the theocratic fascists. All in all this was one of the most significant days in the seven-year course of bitter and fateful battles between the 70 million Iranian hostages of the mullahcracy. Few in the West are listening and hearing the cries of the people of Iran, but that's okay, because we will be the power behind forging our own future; for Iranians, the mullahs and their Western enablers will be history.

— Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, a native of Iran, is currently and activist and writer based in New York.

Postato da: persialover a 16:24 | link | |

IRAN ERUPTS? [Kathry...

IRAN ERUPTS? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Secondhand, from an Iranian:

I am listening to KRSI (Radio Sedaye Iran) right now. There are many Iranians calling (from Tehran, and Gorgan, etc.).

All reports indicate that almost every neighborhood in Tehran is on fire. People are throwing home-made bombs, Molotov cocktails, etc. into the homes of mullahs, and burning pictures of Khamenei in complete defiance of his recent edict to mourn during the month of Muharram.

Background: Khamenei delivered a declaration (not really a fatwa, although some say it was) to Iranians to honor the month of Muharram, which started about two weeks ago, and to mourn and not have any parties of merriment. Well, the problem is that the Iranian New Year (Nowrouz), March 20th (totally non-religious and cultural event -- although Zoroastrian in origin) falls in the middle of this, and Iranians were enraged about this edict.

Tomorrow is the last Wednesday of the Iranian calendar year (called Chahar Shanbeh soori), and traditionally Iranians burn small bonfires and jump over them and celebrate the ending of the old year and welcome the new.

As a measure of defiance of Khamenei's Islamic Rule, and in celebration of ancient (non-Islamic) Persian customs, Iranians have taken to the streets in complete defiance of Khamenei's edict, saying that they will 'burn the mullahs out of their homes'. They are celebrating Chahar Shanbeh Soori. There are huge bonfires, bomb-throwing, merriment and the welcoming of the last days of the mullahcracy. In their own way Iranians are making a huge statement.

You can listen to the news yourself (in Farsi of course) everyone is very happy and celebrating defying the mullahs and burning of Khamenei's picture and trying to burn all mullah's houses. There are people calling from all over Tehran, from Gorgan, and northern provinces... It is amazing!

 MORE FROM IRAN [KJL]
Click here. And, a "plea for help."

PROTESTING IRANIANS [Rick Brookhiser]
These are the bravest people on earth; God bless them. We haven't seen anything like this since the Gdansk ship yard workers almost 25 years ago

BYE BYE MULLAHS [John Derbyshire]

Kathryn: Tremendous news from Iran. God help the protesters. Let's pray this will not be another Tiananmen.

This works both ways with Iraq.

(1) A liberalizing of Iran will damp down calls for extremism among Iraq's Shiites.

(2) The liberation of Iraq must surely have been a factor in this uprising. My guess is that something of the sort would have happened anyway, but it sure can't have hurt to see Saddam go down, and to know that the U.S. armed forces were just over the border in strength.


BUSH ADMIN TO IRAN ON WEAPONS-INSPECTION SUSPENSION [KJL]

AP:
State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said, "It's time to come clean fully, unequivocally and completely."
Next, let's hope, some more words of support for the Iranian people.

Postato da: persialover a 00:02 | link | |

U.S. Renews Iran Cri...

U.S. Renews Iran Criticism

March 16, 2004
The Associated Press
Barry Schweid

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&ncid=693&e=1&u=/ap/20040316/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iran_nuclear

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration renewed its criticism of Iran on Tuesday, saying a two-week suspension of international inspections of its nuclear facilities "is a continuation of a pattern of delay and deception and denial."

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said, "It's time to come clean fully, unequivocally and completely."

But Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, took a softer line on Iran. "They understand they must come forward," the U.N. official said after a meeting with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

Referring to the discovery of hidden research and development programs, ElBaradei told reporters getting to the bottom of Iran's program was "a work in progress."

He also reminded reporters that Iran had said it made "a strategic decision to come clean."

U.N. inspectors are due to return to Iran on March 27 after a two-week suspension. Ereli said it was "regrettable" that Iran had called off inspections for two weeks.

But, he said despite some differences among the 35 nations that are members, the IAEA Board of Governors had again insisted that Iran disclose all its programs.

ElBaradei is due to meet with President Bush (news - web sites) on Wednesday. "The United States is very supportive of what we are doing," he said.

Iran suspended inspections last weekend after the U.N. agency adopted a resolution deploring recent discoveries of uranium enrichment equipment and other suspicious activities that Iran had failed to reveal. Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hasan Rowhani, had described the IAEA resolution as "unfair and deceitful."

On Tuesday, in Tokyo for a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, he confirmed the inspectors would be permitted to return. "It is certain, and it will be without any conditions," said Rowhani, who also heads Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

Iran says its nuclear activities are designed to generate electricity. The Bush administration suspects Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Postato da: persialover a 22:20 | link | |

The bombers "voted,"...

The bombers "voted," and Aznar's party lost in Spain.

Terror and Democracy
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004825

Postato da: persialover a 22:18 | link | |

Movement's Coordinat...

Movement's Coordinator speaks of the letter to US Congress in VOA interview
SMCCDI (information Service)
Mar 15, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4149.shtml

"Voice of America" (VOA) re-broadcasted, this morning, an interview made with Aryo Pirouznia of SMCCDI. The interview was initially broadcasted on Sunday evening for Iran.

In this interview and in response to VOA's Persian service anchor Behrooz Abassi, the Movement's Coordinator cheered the Iranian resistance and especially the imprisoned students and scholars while explaining the reasons of the public letter addressed, by SMCCDI, to the 108th U.S. Congress.

Wishing a Happy Persian New Year, starting on March 21st, to all the students and freedom lovers of Iran and expressing the firm conviction that the country's freedom is just around the corner, Pirouznia stated: " The letter was issued in order to focus the attention of the US Legislative body on the plight and aspirations of the Iranian Nation..

...The Committee which was, since its formation, one of the first entities to call for a political solution to the situation, via a monitored Referendum, judged opportune to seize the existing favorable International context in order to request for a public and legifered support of the Iranian Nation by US Congressmen...

... We hope to have made our people's voice heard by publishing this letter in the Washington Times. As you know, this well reputed newspaper had a big impact in addressing the Eastern bloc's issues and contributed greatly to alerting the US opinion on the aspirations of all people placed under the repressive rule of communism...

... In this letter, we have pointed to the impressionant struggle of Iranians against the Islamic regime and we have called on the US to help us the same way by supporting our nation in its noble endeavor. We have reminded the formidable expressed force of the Iranians and their committment to gain freedom and democracy while reminding that a US help do not require any military intervention....

... We have stated that just as like as the S. African freedom process, the end of dictatorship in Iran in very near and inevitable...

.... We have asked as well from the U.S. to study the possibility of having its appointed observers the day the referendum will take place as we do not trust those countries which have backed the ruling theocracy..."

The full version of this interview can be listened by visiting: http://www.voanews.com/mediastore/Abbassi14Mar04.ra

Postato da: persialover a 22:12 | link | |

Madrid Bombings High...

Madrid Bombings Highlight Extent and Capability of Islamist Networks

Reactivation of Bosnian Support Net for New US Attacks?

Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS. A series of tightly coordinated bombings on the commuter rail networks of Madrid, Spain, during rush hour on the morning of March 11, 2004, were clearly linked to the al-Qaida-related group, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which during 2003 and 2004 were engaged in geographically dispersed terrorist bombings in Ankara, Turkey, and against the UN compound in Baghdad, Iraq, in August 2003. More than anything, however, the March 11, 2004, bombings highlighted the extensive European network of the various Islamist groups and gave some indications of further activities.

There is now evidence to indicate a pattern of terrorist attacks during 2004 designed to help remove the governments of Spain, the US and Australia. In this context, in the US and Spanish operations, the Bosnian Islamist terror support network plays a key rôle, and GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs has continued to gain information which highlights this fact. [GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs readers are familiar with the extensive volume of intelligence material on this matter produced over the past decade; much of that is available in the Special Reports and Archival sections of the Global Information System.]

Operations of the magnitude of the March 11, 2004, “Operation Death Trains” (as it was described in the al-Masri communiqué which followed the bombings) require massive support infrastructures. The earlier and most recent al-Masri actions demonstrated a seamless and comprehensive capability which spans Western Europe, and involves networks which have embedded themselves into Western society over the past 15 or more years. In the case of the Iranian aspects of the support network — which not only has supported nominally Shi’i terrorists, but also nominally Sunni (Wahabbi) terrorists — the process of embedding support structures in Western Europe and North America has been underway since 1979, when extremist clerics seized power when the Shah left Iran.

In the case of the latest Spanish attacks, Iran had long coordinated terrorist activities, training and other support measures which linked Spain's ETA Basque separatist terrorist organization with other groups. ETA, which was apparently not represented at the gathering of terrorist organizations in Tehran earlier in 2004, has in the past attended Iranian terrorist conclaves, convened, ostensibly, to discuss the Palestinian issue. In reality, the more-or-less annual gatherings in Tehran — addressed and most significantly supported by the so-called “moderate” Iranian Pres. Hojjat ol-Eslam (Ali) Mohammad, Khatami-Ardakani — are gatherings to facilitate cooperation, training, interoperability and financing of disparate terrorist groups aimed at common enemies, particularly the US.

ETA routinely attends these gatherings, and its members meet with other Shi’ite and Sunni (and non-Muslim) terrorists from other areas. As well, ETA has trained and used Iranian-controlled terrorist facilities in Lebanon’s Beqa’a Valley. However, it is almost certainly the case that ETA was not officially involved in the March 11, 2004, bombings in Madrid, at least from the evidence known thus far. But it is almost certain that some individuals within ETA provided some of the logistical support or local area knowledge for the attacks.

Most significant in the European capability for the range of Islamist terrorist activities is the network built up, mostly since 1990-91, in Bosnia & Herzegovina. This network has become the hub of operations extending into Germany, France, Spain, Britain and elsewhere in Western Europe and North America.

The Bosnian-based operations — which engage a number of different Iranian-run terrorism/insurgency cadres as well as a variety of Arab mujahedin groups as well as direct Bosnian Islamist operations — provided the essential capability for the September 11, 2001, terrorists. That Bosnian network extended to the use of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Mission to the United Nations, in New York.

A September 17, 2003, report in Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, and entitled Bosnian Official Links With Terrorism, Including 9/11, Become Increasingly Apparent as Clinton, Clark Attempt to Justify Support of Bosnian Militants, noted:

A series of documents, just acquired by GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, highlight the links between radical Islamists in key positions in the Government of Bosnia-Herzegovina (B-H) and known and suspected Islamists with terrorist links. Significantly, one of the key Bosnian Islamist officials, Huso (he later called himself Hussein) Zivalj, was B-H Ambassador to the United Nations during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York. He arrived just before the attacks and left the post shortly thereafter.

It is now becoming increasingly clear that the movement of Zivalj to the New York post just before (and his departure just after) the September 11, 2001, attacks was not coincidental.

That extensive report also said:

Significantly, Zivalj, who is regarded as the most important radical Islamist in the B-H networks, working closely with al-Qaida and Iranian terrorist officials, has a US Green Card (permanent residency), and his family is believed to be living still in Florida. Zivalj now is believed to be a director of Islamic Bank, in B-H. He spent some time, during the communist era in the former Yugoslavia, in prison with Alija Izetbegovic, who later became the Islamist President of B-H. Significantly, Zivalj used his position in Vienna to issue, in 1995, a B-H passport to Safet Catovic [Passport No. BH-46600], and GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily has the documentation on this. Earlier, he had issued a B-H passport to Osama bin Laden, head of the al-Qaida networks.

Zivalj had been a Vice-President and member of the governing board of the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), which had been funded by Osama bin Laden, and with which Sheikh Omar Abd-al-Rahman (the so-called “blind sheikh”) was involved. The Egyptian Sheikh Omar was convicted for his rôle in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York. TWRA was founded in Vienna in 1987 and had links with the Izetbegovic Government in Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as with Dr Hassan al-Turabi and his terrorist operations in Sudan.

This network, which played a key and direct rôle in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, has been at the center of the so-called "green transversal", the line which runs essentially from Afghanistan through Western Europe to North America, running drugs and arms and supporting Islamist proselytization and terrorism. This network, essentially established and managed with the immense support of the late Bosnia-Herzegovina leader Alija Izetbegovic, remains in existence and is tied directly to both al-Qaida as well as with the Iranian Government, which stations Pasdaran (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps: IRGC) fighters in organized groups and compounds inside Bosnia.

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily has provided extensive reporting, with documented details and collateral, on this subject for some years, but particularly during the past year. A number of US and European officials engaged in monitoring the implementation of the 1995 Dayton Accords in Bosnia-Herzegovina, however, have consistently refuted the data, largely because it would imply a failure of their mission and, more significantly, it would imply that the current rundown of peacekeeping forces in Bosnia — to meet needs in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere — should not be undertaken.

Now, however, the messages emanating from Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades and other al-Qaida and Islamist sources is that “al-Qaida” was now 99 percent ready for another major terrorist attack on the United States. In fact, it is not just the amorphous “al-Qaida” — which is merely a convenient catch-all name for the activities now underway — but a heavy campaign to strike at the US and its allies, including particularly Spain and probably the UK (and perhaps Australia), before the US-led Coalition succeeds in helping Iranians remove the radical clerical leaders and find and destroy Osama bin Laden himself. The attack on Madrid, timed three days before general elections, was clearly not a coincidence, and was meant to warn voters that they must pay the price for their Government’s support for the US-led “war on terror”.

A similar campaign was clearly planned for the US in 2004, a year which gives the Iranian clerics the chance to achieve “regime change” in the US. Only the removal of the US Bush Administration would give both the Iranian clerics and the bin Laden hierarchy the breathing space they seek.

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily reported in 2003 that the Iranian clerics were known to have committed some $200-million to achieving “regime change” in the US. It is not insignificant that a major flow of funds through Albanian-Americans reached now-failed Democratic candidate Gen. Wesley Clark and significant funding is reaching the campaign of Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry through Iranian-Americans, even though the expatriates of both those countries may in large part be unaware why their help had been solicited in funneling funds to the candidates. But the Iranian-bin Laden attempts will go far deeper than that; they will almost certainly include attempts at staging terrorist “spectaculars”.

However, the timing and success of these attacks is critical. Clearly, the attacks must be seen to be overwhelmingly successful, and therefore all planning precautions will be taken to ensure that they do not appear to be “damp squibs” which merely embarrass the perpetrators.

Significantly, there are indications that the Bosnian support network in the United States remains intact and functioning. Even former BH Ambassador to the UN Huso Zivali remains at large; he has a US permanent resident “Green Card” and his family lives in Florida. One of his key functionaries in the build-up to September 11, 2001, Safet Catevic, and who was clearly involved in the US Islamist operations linked to the September 11, 2001, attacks, also remains at large and may still be in the US.

But more significantly, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs on March 11, 2001, uncovered extensive intelligence material on the background to the current Bosnia-Herzegovina Permanent Representative (Ambassador) to the United Nations, Kušljugic Mirza, a committed member of the Islamist leadership which had conducted the Bosniak side of the civil war with Iranian and bin Ladenist help in Bosnia, and which later was documented to have supported the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US. A translation from the dossier is quoted at length as follows:

Kušljugic Mirza, ambassador of BiH [Bosnia & Herzegovina] to UN, during the armed conflict in former Bosnia and Herzegovina, was a member of the highest leadership of Municipal Assembly of the town of Tuzla and the War Presidency of SDP Tuzla, where he planned, encouraged, ordered, committed or in some other way supported planning, preparations and executing the following:

1. Persecutions of Serbs in the municipality of Tuzla, establishing Muslim authorities based on ethnic and religious background in towns, municipalities and villages where the Serb population lived and worked;

He participated in a national rebellion in the party SDP BiH in Tuzla when Muslims in 1991 and 1992 informally took over the leadership, keeping all other Serb activists isolated from information and real activities. They created the ruling system based on national and religious background, preparing themselves to illegally attack the Serbs.¹

As a member of the War Presidency SDP in Tuzla and a member of the War Presidency of the Municipal Assembly (MA) in Tuzla, he contributed, by his deeds and actions, to the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in the region of municipality of Tuzla, which consequently led to a downfall of the number of Serbs from 22,000 to 2,000 in 1995.

Together with the other members of the War Presidency of MA Tuzla, he ordered and supported  illegal mobilization of Serbs although many of them had been incapable for military service and ill, manipulating mobilization in such a way to collect the Serbs on important scientific and professional positions and consequently changing the structure of the authorities.

During 1992, 1993, and 1994 he supported arresting and dismissing from work the respectable citizens of Serb nationality, and refused to protect them.

As a member of the highest leadership of the MA Tuzla, he supported torturing and beating of Serbs who had been regularly coming to work (for example, in the company "Solana" and salt mines).

Together with Ademir Mešetovic, Mevlid Vlaic, Jasmin Imamovic and the others he had been hiding those facts from the foreign politicians and officials of the International Community, humanitarian workers and foreign journalist, as well as hiding the war truth about what was happening in the municipality of Tuzla. In addition, he created a false image on Selim Bešlagic, a president of the War Presidency of MA Tuzla, glorifying his “war charisma” and falsely presenting him in public as a multi-ethnically oriented and democratic politician.

Together with Rusmir Mahmutcehajic he formed an international forum “Bosnia”, which used the motto of democracy, human rights and multi-ethnicity   to cover the position of the absolute domination of Bosniaks in BiH aimed at achieving not - democratic goals in the whole territory of BiH.

2. War Crimes against Serbs (illegal arrests, imprisonment, liquidations, inhuman and brutal treatments)

As a member of the highest leadership of the municipality Tuzla he was acquainted with the fact that the secret lists for arrests and liquidations of Serbs had been made, thus he allowed and supported establishment of private jails in Tuzla kept by jailkeepers Faruk Prcic and Ahmet Šerija Zaimovic. All the members of the Presidency knew what was happening in jails, they refused to prevent torturing and abuse of prisoners. On one occasion when Faruk Prcic shot dead a Serb in premises of the Institute where one of the jails was based, he was told not to do it in that place.

As a member of the War Presidency, Kušljugic knew that the arrests and liquidations of Serbs had been going on but he did not do anything to prevent it nor to take them into his protection. Serbs had been arrested and liquidated in their apartments, houses, streets and factories, and the arrested ones taken to death camps Ljubace and Kladanj. The bodies of the liquidated Serbs had been thrown into pits, and afterwards dug-out and buried in some secret places by special forces of the central party SDA.²

The purpose of those crimes was to eliminate Serbs from a political and public life.

3. Hiding traces of the committed war crimes

As a member of the War Presidency he knew that the bodies of dead soldiers in Trnovo had been dug out next to the Orthodox cemetery. The bodies were removed to different locations three times. Excavations were done by Faruk Prcic and organized by Timun Mumic from the SDA headquarters, while an advisor was Amir Meševic.

4.  Involvement in preparations, planning and organization of attacks on the civilians and religious sites

Kušljugic participated in making decisions on the attacks launched at Dubica and Kalesije, refusing to forbid burning and plundering of Serbs' houses and churches.

In addition, he participated in making decisions on the attacks and cleansing in Caklovici, Simin Han, and Pozarnica where significant numbers of civilians were murdered, houses plundered and burned down; the rest of the population fled, and the Orthodox church was severely devastated (Faruk Prcic, a member of an engineering unit of the Tuzla's brigade, destroyed it), and nothing was done to prevent or forbid such activities.

Together with Sead Avdic and Selim Bešlagic, Kušljugic made decisions to launch attacks on Tinj and Duboki Potok, where they burned down, destroyed and plundered everything on their way with a purpose to make a military and logistic corridor  toward the North and Croatia. Within the War Presidency, Kusljugiæ was one of the decisionmakers  who launched attacks on Smoluca.³

5. Participation in weapons supplies to Muslims- Bosniaks and preparations of attacks against Serbs

Together with Ademir Mešetovic [Kušljugic] participated in illegal weapons supplies from Croatia in 1991 and 1992, making payments by distribution of newly build flats by "Tehnograd" Tuzla.

As a member of the War Presidency he participated in planning of the attacks launched at a convoy of JNA [Yugoslav National Army] although it had been arranged in advance, on May 15 1992, that the convoy would leave the town of Tuzla in peace;

6. Participated in illegal production an use of prohibited weapons

As a member of the War Presidency of MA Tuzla, Kušljugic participated in making decisions on production of chemical weapons based on chlorine. Adem Tucakovic alias Tuke was in charge of production of chlorine weapons in the "HAK". Shells filled with chlorine were made under the supervision of Faruk Prcic in "TTU". The chlorine shells were produced  in premises of "UMEL" behind the UNHCR field office.

7. Direct cooperation with Islamic fundamentalists

During the war in Tuzla, Kušljugic established a direct cooperation with the representatives of TWRA in Vienna, known for its undemocratic, Islamist, militaristic and intelligence role in the whole world.

8. Other

What gives the best description of Kušljugic’s personality is the fact that in his Cabinet based in premises of Electro-technical Faculty in Tuzla, he keeps stolen paintings of an artist Nezir Corbic from Tuzla. The paintings were stolen from the artist's studio in Tuzla in 1992. Allegedly, Kušljugic has bought the paintings from Cazim Sarajlic, a manager of the gallery of fine arts in Tuzla.

Footnotes to the Dossier

1. The war structure of SDP party and its leadership was a such one that it included only Muslims or rather Bosniaks, having eliminated all the Serbs, Croats and Bosniak- intellectuals who had refused to abide with the policy of a national selection.

2. The list had been made by Adnan Jahic, Rifet Haskic (SDA bought him an apartment), Vedad Spahic - Vana, Salih Brkic (at the time advisor and a coordinator), Meho Krainovic (supported those activities, a refugee from Bijeljina). One of the jails was in a basement of the Institute in Miladije, where distinguished citizens from Tuzla, Serbs, had been tortured and beaten. Only two floors above the jail, in the same Institute building, the War Presidency was based led by Selim Bešlagic. Citizens who resided next to the Institute on daily basis used to hear screams and moans of the tortured people, so they would sent their children away from the Institute. Zaimovic has received a pension from the Government of Netherlands, he freely goes visiting his daughter in the Netherlands, remaining free from any sanctions by the Federation BiH for having committed war crimes. 

3. Immediate carriers and perpetrators of crimes against Serbs were the following persons:

(i)     ŽILIC MEHMED, Chief of Security in the 2nd Corps HQ Army FBiH, so called ABiH, in charge of the death camps in Lubaca and Kladanj;

(ii)     ENES BECIC, today employed as an engineer in Tuzla;

(iii)    JAHIC- brother of SULJO JAHIC, employed in the Headquarters in Tuzla;

(iv)     AVDO MEŠIC (company "Tuzla - Broker")  had given his minibuses for the purpose of arresting and transporting Serbs into the death camps;

(v)     TUFIK SELIMBAŠIC, an armed escort of SIFET KREKIC, used to murder some of the arrested Serbs immediately on the spot. Today, an owner of a sawmill in Brateljevici near the town of Kladanj, enjoying protection of some Cauševic from getting arrested;

(vi)     MEHO BEGIC, at the time in charge of making lists of the Orthodox churches to be destroyed;

(vii)    JASMIN IMAMOVIC, in charge of the action of destroying the building "Borac".

The situation is now that both the Iranian and “al-Qaida” leaderships must move with increasing speed and rapidity if they are to remove their major opponents before they themselves can be removed: 2004 is the decisive year for them both. Striking Madrid on March 11, 2004, was intended to help remove the current Spanish Government of Prime Minister José Maria Aznar at the forthcoming elections. If the Spanish electorate responds by overwhelmingly supporting Sr Aznar’s Popular Party (Partido Popular, PP), then the Iranian and bin Ladenist leadership could conceivably reconsider how it conducted further attacks against, say, the US in the run-up to the November 2004 Presidential and Congressional elections. But if the Spanish electorate is perceived to react in a manner which reproaches Prime Minister Aznar, then the Iranian and bin Laden team would almost certainly move to implement major terrorist “spectaculars” in the US, attempting to show how the Bush Administration had failed to protect the US from terrorist attacks.

Having said that, it is now almost inconceivable that — regardless of the outcome of the Spanish elections — the Iranian and bin Ladenist leadership would not go ahead with attacks on the US in an attempt to influence the elections there. Equally, attacks will almost certainly be held to influence the elections which must be held in Australia before November 10, 2004.

In the interim, the “success” of the March 11, 2004, attacks in Madrid would provide impetus for the attacks which intelligence reporting indicates have been planned for the August 2004 Athens Olympic Games. In attacks on the US and the Olympics, as with the attacks of March 11, 2004, in Madrid, the Bosnian Islamist network plays a crucial rôle. Attacks on the Olympics would risk to a certain degree the operational planning, distribution and safe-have hub which Bosnia has provided for the Islamist push into Europe, just as attacks in Australia would end the safe-haven status of that country for Islamists who have wished to move out of sight.

However, given the fact that both Osama bin Laden and his team, and the Iranian clerics are fighting for their lives, the short-term objective of survival should be expected to prevail over the risk of such attacks to the long-term viability of the safe-haven bases. Indeed, if Iran and bin Laden were to be successful in removing the Bush Administration in the US, the Aznar Administration in Spain and the Howard Administration in Australia, then it is entirely likely that they would have broken the back of their opposition, and the “war on terror” would be sidelined.

The push into Western and Central Europe by the Islamists would then move forward, including a renewed outbreak of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina — to drive the Serbs of Republica Srpska out of that remaining territory in Bosnia — and in Serbia, to remove the Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija as well as the Raška area of southern Serbia; and in Montenegro, to ensure the removal of Montenegrin Christians; and in Macedonia, to ensure the geographic security of the Muslim territory which could provide a clean, almost unbroken link from Afghanistan to the heart of Europe.

In all of this, the Bosnian network is paramount. It has provided weapons and manpower for the conflict against the US-led Coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan during the past year, and provided the essential infrastructure in Europe which helped the Madrid attacks. Significantly, Bosnia-Herzegovina has in place in its UN Embassy in New York a committed Islamist, already tied to major war crimes. Just as it did in the run-up to the September 11, 2001, attacks. The US did not even investigate the links following September 11; the Bosniak leadership is counting on the fact that the US will not now look into the Bosnian link.

Postato da: persialover a 22:07 | link | |

France Receives Thre...

France Receives Threat From Islamists

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,114348,00.html

Postato da: persialover a 22:05 | link | |

A Plea for Help, on ...

A Plea for Help, on Behalf of the Iranian People
by ActivistChat.com

Dear citizen who supports the will of Iran's population:

The reaction and outpouring of support from fellow citizens of the world in response to the people's struggle for freedom in Iran has been truly remarkable. The one major principle that binds the Iranian people to the rest of us, regardless of creed, is love of freedom. Iranians wish to achieve it and to feel it, fully and for the first time in a long time.

As you may know, there have recently been uprisings in several cities in Iran; these were sparked by anger at the regime for years of repression,
illegitimate rule, and countless criminal acts that have been perpetrated by the ruling clerics against Iran's citizens. One such uprising has been initiated and sustained over the past few days in the Iranian city of Fereydoon-Kenar; recent
reports coming out of Iran reveal that the people's long-dormant fury has spread to other nearby cities.

There is no question that the regime in Iran has been responsible for the murder, torture, and repression of freedom-loving Iranian people. Less widely known are its roles in political assassinations worldwide and in supporting fundamentalist terrorism -- most notably Hizbollah and Al Qaeda, not to mention that the United States State Department has designated the clerical regime to be one of the most active state sponsors of terrorism for their increasing support to groups such as Hizballah, HAMAS, and the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), which seek to undermine the Middle East peace negotiations through the use of terrorism.

Even more disturbing are countless reports that reveal the movement of Al Qaeda personnel and leadership across the Afghan/Iran border, as well as reports of thousands of regime-sponsored clerics and operatives who have been entering Iraq since the fall of the Hussein regime. The creation of strong, stable and democratic governments in both Afghanistan and Iraq are a clear and present threat to the mullahs, and so it is likely they will do everything in their power to prevent such a threat from ever materializing.

In light of all the profoundly disturbing evidence that links the regime of mullahs to international terrorism, Middle Eastern instability, blatant and consistent violations of human rights, and oppression of a just and cultured people, the world's policies toward the regime -- inaction and tacit support chief among them -- are puzzling, as is the question of how the clerics maintain their grip on the nation.

As with so many other situations of international politics, what moves the world's governments to act -- or to look the other way -- is the scent of money. In Iran's case, foreign countries are beguiled by the regime's efficiency, which appears to others as shrewd business but in truth amounts to systematic exploitation of seventy million well-educated people who demand more than the current repression and exploitation they are consistently dealt. But these cold, lifeless systems are showing their age, and are threatened by the hot rage in the hearts of Iranians who hunger for new freedom. People around the world can show their support, can light the small fires of solidarity that will finally merge with the Iranians' and burn out every last vestige of the old regime.

To get a better understanding of the regime's brutality, the destructive and evil nature of the mullahs, and their most recent human rights abuses, one only has to take a glimpse at the US State Department's 2003 Human Rights Report on Iran.

We are the real noisemakers. We can spread the word. We must make the ears of our politicians ring sympathetically, and we must hear in return their firm support for our message. We can alert the media, silent for so long; we can amplify our voices through them until the world has heard of the regime's atrocities: murder, rape, beatings, oppression, evil.

To effect the change we desire, we must send emails and faxes and, more importantly, our voices (through the telephone network) to our representatives. International support for the regime must stop. It must be replaced by support for the wishes of the people, namely: freedom for the good people of Iran.

Please spread this message as far as you can.

-------------

We the people of the world demand that:

1) The Government of (your nation) and all political representatives call for the regime in Iran to release all political prisoners who are caged like animals across Iran;

2) The Government of (your nation) and all political representatives immediately cease the legitimization of the Islamic Regime in Iran;

3) The Government of (your nation) and all political representatives work with the United Nations to orchestrate a team of observers to be sent to Iran;

4) The Government of (your nation) and all political representatives issue an ultimatum to the regime in Iran, insisting that it step down peacefully;

5) The Government of (your nation) and all political representatives work with the United Nations to launch an investigation and, if deemed necessary, to prosecute in international courts every high-level regime official for crimes against humanity;

6)The Government of (your nation) and all political representatives
understand and acknowledge the fact that the Iranian people have declared the clerical regime to be illegitimate, a criminal operation not supported by its subjects.

By boycotting the illegal "election" of February 20, 2004, the Iranian people sent a clear message to the regime and to the world. Their wishes must be honored.

In the words of the famous Persian poet Saadi Shirazi,

"Human beings are all members of one body.
They are created from the same essence.
When one member is in pain,
The others cannot rest.
If you do not care about the pain of others,
You do not deserve to be called a human being."

-------------

Peace, Unity & Freedom,
ActivistChat.com.

Postato da: persialover a 20:28 | link | |

Regime anti-riot for...

Regime anti-riot forces start attacking

SMCCDI News Services
Mar 16, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4154.shtml
The Islamic republic regime's anti-riot units and plainclothes men have opened the charge, at this time 21:35 local time, against the demonstrators in southern Tehran, Esfahan's Tchahr Bagh and the city of Mashad by using knives, clubs and chains. Unconfirmed reports are stating about the use of plastic bullets in Esfahan and the Sadeghieh square of Tehran.

Several have been badly wounded during the attacks but fierce resistance is being made by thousands of young Iranians, male and female, who are opposing the attacks by the use of all available tools and especially Molotov cocktails which were made for such eventuality.

Postato da: persialover a 20:27 | link | |

Regime forces pull b...

Regime forces pull back from demonstrators in most Iranian cities!!!


SMCCDI (Information Service)
Mar 16, 2004


http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4153.shtml

The Islamic regime forces have pulled back from the demonstrators in several Iranian cities, such as, Tehran, Abadan, Shiraz, Bookan, Babolsar, Khoram-Shahr, Sannandaj, Bandar Abbas and Zahedan. It seems that fearing a general uprising while millions of Iranians are in the streets of all Iranian cities, has forced the regime to take such unprecedented decison or to be waiting for a specific moment to start the crackdown
In All these cities fires have been set and many residents have throwned pictures of the regime's leaders and its founder, Rooh-Ollah Khomeini, in fire while chanting and dancing under the eyes of the powerless forces of the Islamic republic. Astonishingly, the regime forces haven't even intervene when several plainclothes men were identified and arrested by maverick Iranian freedom fighters or that masked youth have thrown on them incendiary devices.

What's going on this evening has never been seen and the night is just at its start and will be very long for the regime.

Postato da: persialover a 20:02 | link | |

Sporadic and minor c...

Sporadic and minor clashes start with night fall and streets enflame

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Mar 16, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4152.shtml


Sporadic and minor clashes have started in several areas of the Iranian Capital, Tehran and its suburbs, especially in the southern, eastern and western areas as the night has fall and streets are enflame with thousands of fire set for celebrating the traditional but banned "Tchahar Shanbe Soori".

This time is no more the security forces that are taking initiative of attack but young exasperated Iranians who are throwing hand made grenades and powerful fire crackers against them and forcing them take distance. Several security patrols cars and bikes caught in the middle of the crowd have been damaged by fire or abandoned as its occupants preferred to escape from crowd which is making use of the sirens and speakers of governmental confiscated repressive tools for broadcasting songs under the desperate eyes of the regime forces.

Same trend is getting followed in several provincial cities, such as Esfahan, Shiraz, Hamedan and Kermanshah.

Never, never, Iran had witnessed such celebration as the issue has become of a matter of National and Freedom emblem for millions of Iranians.

The night is just at its start and major actions of defiance are expected till the early hours of Wednesday.

Postato da: persialover a 18:29 | link | |

THE WHOLE IRAN CELEB...

THE WHOLE IRAN CELEBRATES HIS ANCIENT CULTURAL TRADITIONS,DESPITE REGIME'S REPRESSION. THE WHOLE IRANIAN NATION IS DOING A BIG DEMOCRATIC AND SECULAR REVOLUTION AGAINST THE MULLAHS ON THESE DAYS.WHERE IS THE FOREIGN PRESS? WHERE ARE  THE WORLD LEADERS?

Noise of fire crackers and celebration start to echo in Iranian cities

SMCCDI (information Service)
Mar 16, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4150.shtml

Noise of fire crackers' explosions and celebration have started to echo in most Iranian cities before the night fall. Millions of Iranians have come into the streets, in the late hours of the afternoon, in another show of defiance to the regime and its security forces which are staying, for right now, afar contenting to look the crowd.

In practically each street and avenue of main cities, such as, Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz, Mashad, Tabriz, Kermanshah, Hamadan, Oroomiah (former Rezai-e) large fire crackers are exploding as a prelude to a massive and unprecedented celebration of one of main Iranian cultural heritage and Islamic taboo breaking events.

The night will be very long for the regime forces which have tried to get ready for avoiding popular demos and riots at the occasion of such night and thousands of freedom lovers are intending to create another nightmare for the ruling clerics.

Young freedom lovers are using various occasion in order to throw the big home made fire crackers under the errant security forces cars and motorbikes that are trying to reach their posts. More actions are planned for after the night fall.

Regime deploys thousands of forces in the streets

SMCCDI (information Service)
Mar 16, 2004

http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/article/publish/article_4151.shtml

The Islamic regime has deployed, at this time 18:00 Local time, thousands of its forces in the streets and avenues of main Iranian cities in order to avoid any popular riot from taking place at the occasion of the banned "Tchahr Shanbe Soori" (Fire Fiest).

Special forces of the Pasdaran brigades, Bassij force, Law Enforcement Forces, Anti-Riot units and even Islamic brigades are in a wait mode watching, for right now, the crowd which is becoming bigger and bigger. Traffic jams in main cities, such as, Tehran are blocking their fast move.

The night will be very long for the regime forces which have tried to get ready for avoiding popular demos and riots at the occasion of such night and thousands of freedom lovers are intending to create another nightmare for the ruling clerics.

Young freedom lovers are using various occasion in order to throw the big home made fire crackers under the errant security forces cars and motorbikes that are trying to reach their posts.

A lumber depot belonging to regime's affiliates has been set ablaze in the southern part of Tehran and It's like the sky's falling down. The Bazar perimeters and many official buildings are under massive watch as rumor has been spread that people will burn down all vestiges of the regime.

Noise of fire crackers' explosions and celebration are echoing in most Iranian cities before the night fall. In practically each street and avenue of main cities, such as, Tehran, Esfahan, Khorram-Abad, Mahabad, Shiraz, Abadan, Babolsar, Mashad, Tabriz, Marivan, Babol, Bandar e Anzali (former Bandar e Pahlavi), Kermanshah, Hamadan, Oroomiah (former Rezai-e) large fire crackers are exploding as a prelude to a massive and unprecedented celebration of one of main Iranian cultural heritage and Islamic taboo breaking events.

More actions are planned for after the night fall.

Postato da: persialover a 16:55 | link | |

AL QAEDA WINS--IN SP...

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