Where Truth is the enemy of the State, torture is put in service of the Big Lie - false confessions and more besides.
Islamic Declaration of Universal Human Rights
IX Right to Asylum
a) Every persecuted or oppressed person has the right to seek refuge and asylum. This right is guaranteed to every human being irrespective of race, religion, colour and sex.
b) Al Masjid Al Haram (the sacred house of Allah) in Mecca is a sanctuary for all Muslims.
VII Right to Protection Against Torture
No person shall be subjected to torture in mind or body, or degraded, or threatened with injury either to himself or to anyone related to or held dear by him, or forcibly made to confess to the commission of a crime, or forced to consent to an act which is injurious to his interests.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The Islamic Gulag in Khamenei's Iran - Mind Sucking Prisons
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Gaijin
The Iranian hardliners are trying the 30 year old prop of blaming foreign elements, Zionists and Americans.
Rumors say 3 Basij captured and being held in basements of homes. They only speak Arabic.
-twitter, via ASullivan
Other nations have used foreign pressure wisely. The Iranian Judicial Tyrants ... appear to have no plan but more of the same drudgery.
Until this past week, perhaps they haven't fully realized that, sooner or later, these falsehoods create their own wake, right? Allah u Akbar.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Khatami Freaks Out - Without the Foil of America-of-Satan, the Islamic State Would Fall
Update: This is Ahmed Khatami who made these comments, NOT the former President Khatami. As such, his alarming comments are seriously countermanded by those made during the week by Montezari, who made a point out of the use plainclothes as enforcers, reflecting badly on the government and its credibility.
============
WHEN GOVERNMENT BY PRONOUNCEMENT IS NOT ENOUGH
When I read the AP story, I thought they had interchanged "Khatami" and "Khamenei"; but it appears that Iran's former President Khatami, a "moderate/reformer", is at the limit of what we can consider to be a cleric's natural leadership abilities. Basically, under pressure, he's freaking out (once again).
Anyway, it's reported that he's sermonized "cruelty", "no mercy", and some despotic, extra-legal concept called 'making an example' out of people. (Crime and punishment are meant to be equal under the law, not influenced by such passions ...).
INSULTING THE MOST EDUCATED OF PEOPLES WITH SATAN BABY-TALK
He's gone along with reviving 'fear of the other' (Israel, America - 'Great Satan', and now adding Britain to their hate parade). Such fear and demonization has been the long-time prop for a regime obviously unable to stand on its own, without a foil. It's a prop with a considerable cost, a waste of the country's considerable resources, and a stalwart of the Guard's ability to self-enrich.
Face it, the system just doesn't "know" how to handle conflict, real conflict, a real contest of ideas, and a truly meaningful, peaceful exchange of power.
It's a very formalized system, at the top, that's fragile because of it, dangerously fragile. It's far too binary: either you live in a narrow row or DEATH.
Consider that Western pluralism, for all its faults, inequities, lethargy, corporate capture, and injustice, is not nearly so punishing as all that.
*Khatami may have been played. One of my suspicions is shared on Lede blog: "Last night Ms. Setrakian said that she had interviewed an analyst “who thinks Iran’s authorities are calling the new protests, bringing out front line of protesters so they pick them off.”
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Another, Gone Too Soon
Michael Jackson sings Gone Too Soon
For Ryan White, but sung also, in 1993. Jackson had a significant social conscience that seems to have not made it much above the glow of his super-stardom, somehow, even despite 'We are the world' and much else besides.
Khamenei Starts His 'Islamic Gulag' In Earnest
THE ELUSIVE 'PERMANENT REVOLUTION' UNDER TYRANNY OF THE JURIST
via NIAC:
4:05 pm: 70 university professors arrested – According to Kalemeh, 70 university professors were arrested today after meeting with Mousavi Trotsky. According to the report, “there is no information available on where these professors were taken.”
Update: Apparently "the guillotine" will be satisfied with just four (4). The rest will be released (until next time?).
Continuation of Daily Show Series:
The comedic interview with his father is also available.The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Ebrahim Yazdi's Arrest Daily Show
Full EpisodesPolitical Humor Jason Jones in Iran
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Ali al-Sistani - Islam is calling
BETTER WAYS TO RESTORE ORDER THAN SUPREME ARROGANCE
The emergence of the wrongful role of Khamenei's young son, both in action and in pretending to something as obscene as a right of succession to "Supreme Leader", may be something that gives older clerics room to do something.
One who could play a significant part is the very elderly Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in Najef but of Iranian ancestry. He could ask that people open up their homes, both in Iraq and Iran, to the politically disenfranchised of Iran.
This would be a humanitarian gesture that fits, that would also send an indirect signal to the hardliners to unclench their fist, presently, that there are limits, that "Islamic" show-trials for protesters with a universal right to express their beliefs will not be accepted.
The Hostile Indifference of the World?
When will the millions come to Western streets, to witness (who cares what Obama is saying, exaclty, parsed in every detail by the media and the political class)?
How can you start life at 20, with this? Khamenei - Molech - is eating the young of his Nation:
Update: other footage confirms that Basiji, whether authorized or not, involved in open fire.
Other news:
The Abiding Place for Private Health Insurance ...
A DIFFERENT KIND OF DEFENSE OF "THE PUBLIC PLAN"
The kind of insurance worth buying is catastrophic insurance. That is what the private market should migrate toward providing.
In the long run, you get your primary care, basic health and dental, from a government or govt-private partnership, unless you are wealthy enough to have super-pamper private access to something else.
American employers, eventually focus on providing salutary preventive care benefits and, possibly, catastrophic coverage, of both pre and post-retirement varieties.
In this way, the vexing problem of how much money is available for heroic treatments is not fully dealt with, until such time as the nation can afford to do so.
One could think of a phasing in and out period for this of seven years, just to pick a number. The government could help a catastrophic insurance market get started in that period, perhaps by underwriting residual risks or using creative ways to bring liquidity to the bonds that would...
Why "Government" Doesn't or Shouldn't Mean Monolithic
McArdle writes:
"So why did Walter Reed suck? And what guarantees that the VA is the system we'll follow, rather than the multiple other dysfunctional government systems everyone hates?"
Well, uh, two things: the voting public. And, uh, hopefully the Congress will be wise enough to leave room for a variety of approaches, within an overall framework.
YES, WE CAN.
Notice:
The reason for the disparities is not that one hospital charges a lot more for a given service than the others. Rather, the high-cost hospitals provide a lot more services for patients than the lower-cost hospitals: keeping patients in the hospital and in intensive care for longer periods, sending them to a slew of specialists and doing a lot more tests and procedures.
Own It America
... as Colbert might say.
An 18 year-old guy, with an IQ of 47 (that's well into the range for the category), gets 100 years in prison, after confessing yet still going to jury.
That's not a typo.
Yes, it's Texas.
Those Iranian Soccer Greenbands
Islamic Declaration of Universal Human Rights
XII Right to Freedom of Belief, Thought and Speech
a) Every person has the right to express his thoughts and beliefs so long as he remains within the limits prescribed by the Law.
What is a society that eats its best? Who but Khamenei has unleashed and fed this ugly Molech?
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Iran on Precipice of Following Communists, An Iron Veil Descending
Today, in Iran, from Tehran to Shiraz, in every household, there is an iron veil descending across one of the most culturally vibrant parts of the world.
Reading Henry-Levy, I'm thinking about Goebbels and "The Big Lie" again, mostly because of the emerging false confessions and false narrative wrought by the Iranian judicial tyrant's torture and terror.
Let us hope, therefore, that all our leaders learn the lesson that covering the truth, failing to do justice, no matter how good the intentions, eventually does more harm than good and is inimical to a functioning Republic... The Lie creates an insatiable Molech and an infectious attitude that more lying is okay, dutiful.
It's plain.
Bleg - Direct Action
THE IRANIANS CANNOT MARCH, BUT EVERYONE ELSE CAN
I am appalled that there are just 3,900+ visits to this Neda site.
I can spend some free time visiting all these - and so can you!
SANCTIONS? CONSEQUENCES? PSHAW!
When we had a Stalinist Soviet Republic, every nuclear missile deployment causes hundreds of thousands to take to the streets to stop the madness.
I continue to fail to see why more people aren't agitated to see the possible stakes in this showdown. We are looking at, potentially, another openly-Stalinist regime, perhaps worse, because it is run by a religious authority.
This will color politics of the next generation and the next, at least. Where are those whose lives are, once again, threatened so directly by the 'nuclear umbrella'? Those people who grew up during the Reagan darkness, who were happily unavailed of the precipice de mudo by their childhood? History is calling to them, right?
We don't need more government action. Sanctions. Punishments. Diplomatic statements. Doesn't it seem obvious that it is the voices of the peoples of the world who DEMAND peace, who want their governments to get out of the way, that need to find each other, NOW.
Netanyahu's "Choice for Peace"
THE SMILING, WALKING PROVOCATION
1. More settlements, via Army Radio...:
Ehud Barak, the defence minister, who oversees West Bank operations, had approved plans to construct another 240 units there, the radio said.
No idea of whether there are international 'audits' of "natural" growth, but I suspect not.
2. Almost excessively formal demands, that would be hard for any nation-state of the U.N. to meet (can the recognition of sovereignty be conditioned on ... ethnicity...I understand that they are after a formal end of conflict, but c'mon, I'd prefer to focus on day-to-day, hearts-and-minds first, the formal end can come in time, 20 years down the road, if all else goes well):
al jazeerah
Settlements Issue
Just because the editorial page of the WSJ called for a stop to settlement activity, once upon a time, did Obama's top two or three advisers think that they have all the subtleties covered, when they put him out on the issue so starkly, quite the way they did? (Frankly, I suspect it is why his poll numbers are down, but I have no proof of that, whatsoever...).
Andrew Sullivan writes:
I can't see any conceivable peace in the region without an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and dismantling of the settlements.
Look, "settlements" has a long history in Israel, and the "origin" of settlement has had many different political backdrops, over the course of 30 years. Why and how settlements occurred in the 1960s and 1970s is quite different than what Netanyahu / Sharon did in the 1990s and well into the 2000s, under the reign of George "The Decider" - there is a startling map that shows an almost fantastic relative rate of expansion under Oslo, as best memory serves.
What's more, there is a legal history to how land was "appropriated", that is important to come to grips with, even if it means learning the word "usufruct". (And please don't think I know the half of it!).
To my mind, "settlements" - restricted settlement activities - are best understood as prejudicial to the final peace. The language of "illegality" is ... well, so problematic, it's almost a dead end.
So, hear Judt, when he writes:
...no one seriously believes that these communities — with their half a million residents, their urban installations, their privileged access to fertile land and water — will ever be removed.
Or Mubark, when he writes:
Despite the setbacks of the last few years, it is important to remember that many of the elements of a solution have already been negotiated. After nearly two decades of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since the initiation of the Oslo peace process, many of the details of a final settlement are well known. Furthermore, the Arab Peace Initiative, adopted at the Beirut summit of 2002, provides a regional framework for such a settlement. For the first time in the history of the conflict, the Arab states unanimously committed to full normalization and security for Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal to the 1967 lines and a negotiated resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue.
Civil Disobedience within Islamic Law: "Without wearing green..."
LEARNING HOW TO EXHALE, PROPERLY
Here is how it is done, by experts, the wheels within wheels to remain within the drudgery of the exhaustive reach of religious "law", religious lawmakers, religious lawmaking, religious "volunteer" police/fedayeen-Khamenei, and religious "Guardians":
Bring your children too and very calmly – without shouting slogans – without wearing green – we will look as though we are going shopping but we won’t buy anything and will think only of shutting down the market, and will not leave any traces of ourselves.
-former Iranian President, Khatami, reportedly
An effort to mobilize the "business class" - very clever.
[This "game" can go on forever, sadly...just use your imagination for the counter-action; but so what, if it reduces the violence, maybe.].
From the Islamic Declaration of Human Rights:
Read more, with an eye toward the "special courts" that have been set up to "administer justice" to political prisoners (one of them, a student, snatched at the airport, reportedly, while trying to leave the country...yet another violation, quite possibly).
Senate Doesn't Apologize for Itself
How can the Senate apologize "for slavery", exactly?
Were they supposed to amend the constitution? Challenge the Dred Scott decision? Trample the Federalism that supported Jim Crow?
It would have been interesting, and perhaps timely, if this Senate had the courage to apologize for not doing more to stop lynching, at the Federal level... Too close to home, for that?
In the past 20 years, the Senate has done nothing at the Federal level to stem the tide of physical violence on gay citizens. One day, there will be an apology for that, maybe even in Trent Lott or Orrin Hatch's lifetime (one can hope).
[Special note: it was a voice vote, not a roll call. Make of that what you will. Lions in the Senate, today? Well, it seems there are few current day versions of Senator Sumner...]
Update: Other things the Senate could apologize for include not putting Social Security receipts into a "lock box", at least to some degree... other candidates include failing to get an international agreement on emissions done. The list goes on.