Protests in Bahrain Continue, Boy Killed by Tear Gas Cannister
August 31st, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Bahrain’s Shia majority continues to protest for greater social, political and economic rights while the ruling Sunni Al Khalifa family responds with more brutal crackdowns, this time taking the life of a 14-year-old boy. His death comes only days after the UN Human Rights Chief criticised Bahrain’s treatment of its pro-democracy protesters.
Warning: The reality of this clip is disturbing.
Facts vs. Fiction and the MEK’s PR Campaign
August 30th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
MEK leader Maryam Rajavi with Michael Mukasey, Rudy Guiliani, Frances Townsend and Tom Ridge.
In 1994, the U.S. Department of State produced a comprehensive report exposing the Mujahideen-e-khalq (MEK) for what it is — an exiled Iranian fringe group with a record of terrorism, violence, political opportunism and the abuse of its own members.
It states
…our mutual distaste for the behavior of the regime in Tehran should not influence our analysis of the Mojahedin.
and that
Shunned by most Iranians and fundamentally undemocratic, the Mojahedin-e Khalq are not a viable alternative to the current government of Iran.
But that was years ago and any day now the MEK could be delisted from the U.S foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) list. Virtually unchecked, its well-funded lobbying blitz in Europe resulted in its delisting from the U.K. and E.U. terror lists. This has enabled it to create a larger support base there than it has in North America. It particularly enjoys a significant audience among past and present British parliamentarians such as Lord Corbett of Castle Vale (Robin Corbett). Corbett is the chairman of the “British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom,” the main British MEK lobby group. In addition to the U.S. heavy-weights with high national security officials that the MEK has paid to appear at its European rallies are Iranians and non-Iranians like the people pictured here and here.
After its successful test run in Europe, the MEK set its sights on the world’s most wanted ally and now its crazed leader Maryam Rajavi (her husband’s whereabouts are unknown) is knocking on Washington’s door saying all the right things about the “Mullahs in Iran” while using key buzz words like “democratic”.
Over the years the FBI, Human Rights Watch, the Rand Corporation and several U.S. mainstream news outlets have produced in-depth investigations detailing the group’s past and present, some revealing the absurdly high “speaking fees” it provides to prominent figures who have appeared at its events. But even with a steady flow of damning information available, it is still spreading non-factual claims through its lobbying representatives. One way it does this is by issuing regular press releases through PR Newswire (a well-known online marketing tool) which are then reproduced as articles on news websites (see here and here for one example). Its lobbyists regularly talk to the press which is forced to quote them and MEK representatives have also been given full editorial slots in major U.S. newspapers.
Libya’s Hidden Casualties of War
August 30th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Lured by pipe dreams of a better life, African migrant workers pass through Libya en route to Italy or stay there as low-paid laborers. But ever since the civil war and revolution broke out, many have been stuck there with nowhere to hide or go.
Al Jazeera English reports that over 30 men from African countries have been imprisoned by anti-Qaddafi forces and that the migrants have been subjected to horrible crimes including theft, violent attacks and the rape of women. While there is no proof, the rebel forces are the most likely culprits as far as the night-time attacks go.
Everyone in Libya is suffering, but these people have sacrificed everything in search of work and now they are stuck in a sort of black hole produced by a political conflict that has nothing to do with them. Unlike Libyan citizens, these refugees have little to protect themselves with legally or physically.
Also read Evan Hill’s latest report about the rape of up to 2 dozen migrant women.
Center for American Progress Exposes U.S. Islamophobia Network
August 27th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are two notorious pundits exposed in CAP's report on the U.S. Islamophobia network.
According to a 2010 ABC News/Washington Post poll, only 37% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Islam — the lowest favorability rating since 2001. Relentless Islamophobic fear-mongering by a select group of U.S. political pundits, bloggers and think tanks is at least partially responsible for Americans’ negative view of the religion and those who practice it. Their alarmist commentary has far-reaching consequences — Anders Breivik, the Christian Norwegian who went on a bloody killing spree in July to prevent the “ongoing Islamic Colonization of Europe” has cited at length claims by some of these groups and individuals as supporting evidence for his hateful, violent theories.
A new, must-read report by the Center for American Progress titled “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of Islamophobia in America,” exposes the Islam-bashing network in America which has considerable reach in the U.S. news media and has an audience among some well-known politicians such as Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann.
The report includes detailed information about the more than $42 million that has flowed from seven key foundations to the network over 10 years, as well as the key “misinformation experts” who generate the false facts and materials which are then regurgitated by the media and certain politicians and grass-root groups.
Islamophobic misinformation is not only harmful for Muslims inside the U.S. and abroad who continue to be persecuted and isolated for crimes committed in the name of Islam even as the vast majority of Muslims denounce them. If accepted unchallenged, these claims can also lead to misguided and harmful U.S. domestic and foreign policy decisions which can further exacerbate national security threats.
Click here to read the report in full.
Like this:
Matthew Duss on Iran and the ‘martyr state myth’
August 25th, 2011 § 1 Comment
In “The martyr state myth” Matthew Duss of the Center for American Progress deconstructs alarmist and unsubstantiated arguments about the Iranian government’s alleged suicidal tendencies. He writes:
The “martyr state” myth is based upon two flawed assumptions. First, that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been uniquely willing to endure the deaths of its own citizens in order to achieve its policy goals. Second, that the Iranian Shiite regime’s End Times theology actually induces it to trigger a conflagration.
War-related casualties for both sides in the Iran-Iraq war (a war started by Iraq, not an “apocalyptic mission of destruction” by Iran) are estimated at about one and a half million. It’s unclear where Dershowitz got the idea that Iran “sacrificed millions” of its own people in the war.
Two states that did sacrifice millions of their own people, however, are the Soviet Union and China, the two states now being offered by Iran hawks as examples of states that could be deterred as Iran supposedly cannot. Some 7 million people are believed to have been killed in in the Ukrainian forced famine, known as Holodomor, under Soviet leader Josef Stalin, and many more in forced relocations and purges. Historians estimate the number of deaths during China’s Great Leap Forward (1958-61) to be between 20 and 43 million. Yet even these staggering domestic death tolls did not mean that these regimes had any interest in sacrificing themselves.
The idea that Iran’s rulers are, as a result of their Shiite Muslim theology, committed to triggering the apocalypse if and when they obtain a nuclear weapon is similarly suspect. It is true that some Iranian leaders, most notably Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, believe in the imminent return of the “Hidden Imam”, also known as the Mahdi, or Shiite messiah. Ahmadinejad lards his speeches with references to the Hidden Imam, so much so that several years ago he was publicly rebuked by leading Iranian clerics, who told Ahmadinejad he “would be better off concentrating on Iran’s social problems…than indulging in such mystical rhetoric.” Iran’s Etemad Melli newspaper quoted one of Ahmadinejad’s critics as saying that, rather than obsessing over the return of the Hidden Imam, “Ahmadinejad would do better to worry about social problems like inflation.”
Read the full article here.
Watch the Libyan Revolution on Al Jazeera
August 22nd, 2011 § 3 Comments
Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship in Libya is in its last days with the capturing of the ruler’s son Saif al-Islam and the capital city of Tripoli by anti-Gaddafi forces. The Libyan people’s jubilation is booming throughout the entire country. So many have sacrificed their lives and experienced the loss of their loved ones since the revolution began in February and during decades of Gaddafi’s brutal rule.
Watch Al Jazeera’s live feed for excellent coverage from Tripoli and Benghazi and its Libya Live Blog for regular updates.
For Arabic speakers, below is a video of Mohammed Gaddafi (Muammar’s eldest son) speaking to Al Jazeera Arabic before the line goes dead after gunfire is heard inside his house (near the end) and he begins reciting the Shahada. Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Shihab-Eldin tweets that Mohammed took a “apologetic tone and says its lack of wisdom caused revolution and crisis in #Libya.” He and his family are reportedly still alive and safe.
One on One – Gore Vidal
August 17th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Gore Vidal, the novelist, playwright, screenwriter and essayist has been a leader in American literary culture for six decades. He is nearly 86-years-old, but he still has his rich memory and trademark sense of wit and irony.
Rick Santorum’s “glaring falsehood” on Iran
August 15th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Paul Pillar of the National Interest has an important piece on last week’s Republican presidential candidates’ debate in Iowa where neconservative Rick Santorum perpetuated an unsubstantiated, alarmist claim about Iran.
Writes Pillar:
…Santorum also used a glaring falsehood: that “ Iran is a country that has killed more American men and women in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan than the Iraqis and the Afghans have.”
This was hardly the only factual error uttered during the debate (and Paul didn’t get things quite right in characterizing what the U.S. intelligence community has said about the Iranian nuclear program), but it was the biggest whopper of the evening as far as foreign affairs were concerned. It also was the most dangerous falsehood. Inaccuracies such as Tim Pawlenty calling Michael Mullen a general rather than an admiral, or Jon Huntsman mistakenly characterizing the pace of U.S.-Chinese diplomacy, are unlikely to make any difference in public perceptions that could have policy consequences. But Santorum’s assertion, against the backdrop of habitual demonization of Iran, is just the sort of falsehood that is likely to stick and to contribute to mistaken public beliefs that in turn could provide support for disastrous policies.
Read the entire article here and also check out Juan Cole’s must-read analysis of the event.
Jeremy Scahill on the CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia
July 17th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Also check out Tracking the CIA in Somalia featuring the excellent photography of Richard Rowley from Big Noise Films
In a new investigative report published by The Nation magazine, independent journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill reveals the CIA is using a secret facility in Somalia for counterterrorism as well as an underground prison in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.
Assange, Žižek and Goodman in London
July 17th, 2011 § 2 Comments
In case you missed it, on July 2 Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman moderated a discussion with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Slovenian Philosopher Slavoj Žižek on the impact of WikiLeaks on the world. The event was held in London and hosted by the Frontline Club.
