News From Iraq

On Friday night, soldiers from the 5th brigade 6th division of the Iraqi army captured 75 militants and confiscated their weapons in al-Yarmouk district in western Baghdad. Qasim Ata the spokesman of Baghdad operations said the militants were found hiding in a large container loaded on a truck. It’s not clear what the militants’ destination or plans were.

In the second operation 72 suspected terrorists were captured in raids in Samrra and Anbar. Bomb-making material was discovered too.

The details of the third operation are yet to be confirmed but if the report of al-Hurra is true then this one is the most significant of the three. Al-Hurra said that the artillery barrage was followed by raids by joint Iraqi-American forces on militants’ positions in Albu Eitha and around Dora and reported that the overall operation left 70 militants killed.

Meanwhile, something small in size, big in meaning is brewing in Adhamiya. Yesterday I was asked by our friend Bill Roggio (whose reporting I admire and recommend) whether I thought the Sunni in Baghdad would follow the example of the Awakening Council of Anbar. That council is made up of Sunni tribes that have turned against al-Qaeda and are now fighting a fierce war against them side by side with government forces.

I couldn’t answer that question. The difference in social structures between tribal Ramadi and urban Baghdad alters everything. The tribal structure allows for safe communication among the members of the same tribe or clan. They most often live in the same geographic area and tend to consider themselves “cousins”. In Baghdad this doesn’t exist, making it difficult to safely spread the word among many people.

Even so, it seems that the question might have an answer now, and a positive one.

Al-Sabah reported today that “some community leaders in Adhamiya are working on forming a salvation council for their own district they will be calling The Adhamiya Awakening. Sources close to the leaders said they (the leaders) have managed to win the support of some hundred people who agree with the new position. The sources asserted that the goal of the Awakening is to rid Adhamiya of the terrorists.”

Pajamas Media

US Democratic Party--Having It Both Ways

Go ahead and trace the public statements of leading members of the political party that controls the US Congress. Notice how easy it is for them to change directions when it is politically convenient. Millions will die as a result of their actions--if they are successful. But they are politicians first and foremost. They must go where the winds, the financial contributions, and the lowest common denominator voter takes them.

Iranian Teachers Protest

Here is much more from Pajamas media:

Teachers have been striking across Iran for at least the last eleven weeks, with many teachers arrested, according to the AKI Italian news agency and other sources familiar to Pajamas Media. The teachers are seeking higher wages (they have not been raised in years) and the reinstatement over a thousand colleagues who were forced into “early retirement” for disagreeing with the policies of the Islamic regime.

Hundreds of protesters have been beaten up and jailed, Pajamas Media has learned. The following video shows a recent teacher’s demonstration in front of the Iranian Parliament in Tehran. Banners and placards demand the regime pay teachers a fair wage and protest discrimination against Iran’s minorities in their educational system. Protesters can be heard demanding the release of imprisoned teachers and shouting “Proclaimers of Justice!… Shame, shame, shame on you!”

Source

Iran's government is a curse to the Iranian people, and a curse to the rest of the world. Time for them to go.

Too Stupid to Know.......

.....when someone is trying to kill you.

Remember what Islamic Sharia law would mean for you and everyone you know.

"A secularist represents a danger to society and the nation that must be eliminated. It is the duty of the government to kill him."

....just this week in the United States ... a Johnstown (western Pennsylvania) area imam Fouad El Bayly openly sanctioned the punishment by death of former Dutch Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali-born and raised a Muslim in Somalia-for her open avowal of secularism.

"Liberal democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom and attaches all possible value to each man or woman." ... Individualism is not a recognizable feature of Islam; instead the collective will of the Muslim people is constantly emphasized. There is certainly no notion of individual rights, which developed in the West, especially during the eighteenth century.

Source

....large majorities [of muslims] agree with goals that involve expanding the role of Islam in their society. On average, about three out of four agree with seeking to “require Islamic countries to impose a strict application of sharia,” and to “keep Western values out of Islamic countries.” Two-thirds would even like to “unify all Islamic counties into a single Islamic state or caliphate.” [Ed: Spain is considered a muslim country under the rule: once muslim, always muslim]

Source

the preponderance of contemporary mainstream Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia, apparently share with their murderous, jihad terror waging co-religionists from al-Qaeda the goal (if not necessarily supporting the gruesome means) of re-establishing an Islamic Caliphate. Polling data just released (April 24, 2007) in a rigorously conducted face-to-face University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org interview survey of 4384 Muslims conducted between December 9, 2006 and February 15, 2007-1000 Moroccans, 1000 Egyptians, 1243 Pakistanis, and 1141 Indonesians-reveal that 65.2% of those interviewed-almost 2/3, hardly a "fringe minority"-desired this outcome (i.e., "To unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate"), including 49% of "moderate" Indonesian Muslims. The internal validity of these data about the present longing for a Caliphate is strongly suggested by a concordant result: 65.5% of this Muslim sample approved the proposition "To require a strict [emphasis added] application of Shari'a law in every Islamic country."

Notwithstanding ahistorical drivel from Western Muslim "advocacy" groups such as the Muslim Association of Britain, which lionizes both the Caliphate and the concomitant institution of Shari'a as promulgators of "a peaceful and just society" , the findings from the University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org poll are ominous.

Source

Previously posted at Al Fin.

Iran's Fingerprints Keep Showing Up All Over Iraqi Terrorism

Mustafa smirks when he tells me he is a “secularist” who does not pray and boasts about enjoying whiskey, drugs and prostitutes. He is a Sunni who does not mind working for Shia, provided the pay is good. And far from being a patriot, he betrayed his country to work for Iran. Finally, his story shows that the terrorists are not supermen who are able to walk like ghosts through layers of security. At the street-level they are petty criminals who can be caught. What makes Mustafa’s story important is that it reveals the human side of the insurgency. It’s a tale of dirty cops, rivalry, revenge, recruitment and control that climaxes in a fireball in Halabja, Iraq in June 2005.

Although he had little choice in the matter, I asked him why he wants to talk to an American journalist. “I am very bored. I want to be executed now.” He has betrayed his country and everyone—his family, his girl friend, his former colleagues in the security service—who was ever close to him. He has no visitors and, as he says, “no hope.” The interview about his life is just a way to pass the time.

Born in Halabja, Mustafa was nearly two when Saddam Hussein carried out the infamous poisonous gas attacks there that killed tens of thousands in 1988.

....When he worked for an Iranian intelligence service, he would be given a document that would allow him to move freely through checkpoints and to avoid the official harassment that is a daily routine for Iraqi Kurds working inside the Islamic republic.

Higher-ranking terrorist leaders are given laminated cards that make them untouchable by all Iranian officials, aside from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Mustafa was told that these cards were issued on the personal orders of Ali Khamane’i, Iran’s ruler. The cards, which include a picture and other identifying details, simply say that the holder is a “political refugee”—or “Karti Panahandayi” in Persian—but everyone in Iran knows what it means. Ordinary refugees do not get these cards. The plastic cards, which he compared to a paid phone cards, are hard to forge, Mustafa insists.

....As Mustafa waited for his first mission, he began to learn more about Iran’s sponsorship of terrorist attacks inside Iraq. “I was told that Ansar al Islam members met with [Iranian] Brigadier [General] Qasim Sulemani,” a high ranking member of Iran’s Quds Force, on April 4, 2005, Mustafa said. “The meeting was in Kermanshah, at the head office” of Iran’s intelligence service there. He said that the Itilaat service also briefed him on upcoming missions of the al Qaeda-linked terror group. Iran often has advance knowledge of these attacks and helps fund and plan them, he said.

He was paid $400 a month, but he was eager for the bonuses that came with missions inside Iraq. Those could pay as much as $1500. By contrast, his police salary in Iraq was $220 per month in 2005.

At last, after four months, the mission came. He was given a small digital camera and sent to the Iraqi city of Kirkuk to photograph U.S. bases. From the window of taxi, he shot movies and stills of American checkpoints and base perimeter security operations. Over the course of a long day he shot some 55 minutes of movies of guards, bomb-sniffing dogs, and base buildings vulnerable to attack.

When he returned with the “flash movies,” Iranian intelligence officers were very happy.

Next, they sent him to photograph Iranian opposition figures in Iraq, especially those connected to the Democratic Kormala party. Col. Yacubi also wanted Mustafa to discover their home addresses. These men, Mustafa was told, would be targeted for assassination. Later, I would speak to the head of that party at his secret base in the steep hills east of Sulaimaniya. A charming former communist and now self-proclaimed “neo-conservative” who advocates a federal democracy in Iran, Secretary General Abdullah Mohtadi confirmed that the Iranians have tried to kill him several times. (I will post an interview with Mohtadi when I return to the U.S. next week.)

Then, one day in the summer of 2005, the Iranians asked Mustafa to kill. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ chief of sabotage, Mr. Amiri, wanted Mustafa to go to the Iraqi Kurdish mountain town of Koya, a farming community of low-slung concrete homes that climb the hillsides above sharply graded sheep pastures, and murder the head of Kurdish Democratic Party with three blocks of TNT. He was told to put it in a trash can near the official’s office window.

....Most insurgents either come from Iran or are somehow tied to that Islamic Republic, he says. “Iran knows about these groups and their movements,” he says matter-of-factly. He cites a number of towns just over the border with Iran, which his investigators believe that safe houses for terrorists are maintained: Mariwan,
Pejwan, Bokan, Sina, and Serdai.

“Iran is the top in terror in all the world,” he says. “If you want peace in all of the world, you change the authority in Iran.”

Is Iran actually in control of these groups, as Osman Ali Mustafa would lead us to believe? He scoffs. “If they want to close the border, no one can cross.”

Read more at the source.

Al Fin

Speaking of Iran, How Are Your Nuclear War Survival Skills?

As Iran and North Korea continue to develop and proliferate nuclear weapons technology--with the tacit approval of China and Russia--the probability of a nuclear engagement between the "warlord governments" and the developed western world is increasing.

When the USSR fell of its own centrally-planned ineptitude, most people believed they would never need to worry about nuclear war again. Scholar Francis Fukuyama even went so far as to predict "the end of history." Who can blame all of those naive optimists for believing that it would be downhill coasting from then on?

Well, they were wrong, and history is working overtime to create another world war and perhaps a nuclear world war. So what is a prudent, intelligent, and informed person to do? I barely have the heart to tell you that you need to brush up on your nuclear war survival skills.

I suggest that you begin with Chaper 1, and take your time with it. Most people believe that a nuclear war between the great powers would mean the end of humans on earth--or at least the end of civilisation. On the Beach by Nevil Schute was pivotal in shaping popular beliefs about the consequences of a world nuclear war. Several other post- apocalyptipc novels helped to round out this bleak outlook.

Make no mistake--a large scale nuclear war would the worst event in human history up until now. The huge nuclear arsenals possessed by Russia and the US, and the huge arsenal being rapidly built up by China, would guarantee a human and environmental disaster unprecedented in history.

Still, if you knew that you could survive a nuclear war--given a little luck--would you be willing to take the trouble to learn how? Many people would not. Many people feel that if such a disastrous cataclysm were to occur, with the horrific loss of life, that they themselves would not want to live.

I understand that. Any survivors of a large scale disaster of that magnitude would have to work like hell to have any kind of decent life at all. In other words, any survivor of a large scale disaster has to have personal competence, and hopefully good health and personal integrity. Because who would want to live in a world that was run by Pol Pot characters or Hell's Angels?

The personal integrity and good health are up to you, as is the general life competence that comes in so handy when the unexpected happens. But specific knowledge and skills that could help you and your family survive a nuclear war, is something that you just have to work at, to learn. Either you want to survive or you don't, should such an unspeakable horror occur.

I Had to Beat Her, for Discipline--Why Can't She Just Accept Her Medicine?

I saw this video about a year ago, but I am still struck by two things:

• 1. The male panelist doing most of the speaking appeared very ordinary, very self-confident.
• 2. The two females did not hesitate to speak up in this forum.

I suspect that neither of the women were married to this man, or they would have an accounting later that night. If a "light beating" is one in which the woman is not killed, I hope good muslim men do not give their wives heavy beatings often.

Radical Feminists and Islamic Fundamentalists--More than Just an Odd Couple

It is important for western feminists to understand the new modern view of human sexuality that is coming soon. The old ways simply cannot remain. Prepare for the enlightenment.

What is the old saying about fleas, and sleeping with dogs?

The Clever Mullahs and Their Crows

The National Council of Resistance in Iran announced that schools are closed across Iran:

[t]eachers went on strike in various cites throughout the country, according to the information received from the resistance sources in Iran.

In the capital ninety percent of high school and seventy percent of primary school teachers went on strike. Ninety percent of teachers in the north eastern city of Mashhad and fifty percent in the northern city of Sari did not show up for classes today.

Since last night, the State Security Forces (SSF) attempting to break the teachers’ strike attacked their residence and has arrested a large number of striking teachers in Tehran, Mashhad, Arak, Sari, Islam-Shahr, RobatKarim, Shahr-Ray, and Homayoon Shahr.

Adnkronosinternational reports that the schools remain closed, in protest against the arrests of many teachers:

Most schools in northwestern Iran remained closed on Monday due to a teachers’ strike to protest against the arrest of dozens of their colleagues in the past few days. The two-day protest which started Sunday was almost unanimous in the northwestern Kurdish cities of Sagghez, Marivan, Sanandaj and Bukan. “If our colleagues will not be freed, schools will probably remain closed in the coming days,” said Davood Rouhani, a spokesman for teachers in Sanandaj.

Iranian teachers have been staging protests across the country for the past 11 weeks and many leaders of teachers’ unions have been arrested. Teachers are demanding pay hikes — their salaries have not been raised for years — and protesting against the government’s decision to fire teachers who are not ‘loyal’ to authorities.

About one thousand teachers believed to be too secular or belonging to ethnic minorities have been fired or induced to retire early in the past few weeks.

So what’s a poor theocracy to do when it can’t get the teachers back in line? Simple: start the annual summer crackdown on women a little early this year:

Iran has issued more than a thousand warnings and arrested dozens in a new drive aimed at forcing women whose dress is deemed inappropriate to adhere to Islamic dress rules, officials said Sunday.

The nationwide drive — an annual pre-summer crackdown given greater prominence this year — is aimed primarily at women whose coats are seen as too tight, trousers excessively short or hijabs (headscarves) overly loose.

It foresees handing out warnings and guidance to women found to have infringed its dress code in public. Those who show resistance to change can be arrested and then be the subject of legal proceedings.

“Since the plan started at 10:00 am on Saturday, 1,347 women have been warned and given Islamic guidance,” the head of information at Tehran city’s police force, Mehdi Ahmadi, told AFP.

“There were 170 arrests. Of these, 58 were released after making a written commitment and rectifying their appearance. The cases of the rest, who already had a record, were handed over to the judiciary,” he said.

[…]

twenty shops selling inappropriate clothing were also closed down, Ahmadi said.

The programme was aimed at “improving the security of society with an approach of moral security,” he added.

“Its duration depends on when society feels that there are no longer signs of short trousers, tight mantos (coats), tight clothing and very skimpy hijabs.”

The authorities have argued the “bad hijab” drive is aimed at encouraging women to dress in line with Islamic dress code and it appeared the emphasis is more on handing out warnings than detaining offenders.

[…]

An editorial in the hardline daily Kayhan said that police were right to ignore the wishes of those who favoured a more softly-softly approach.

“Do not worry, the people support you (the police). The man who sees the robbers of his family’s chastity laughing in his face, the family that despairs over the drug addiction of their child… they are with you,” it said.

Women in Iran are obliged by law to wear the hijab and a full length overcoat that covers all bodily contours. Visiting foreigners and religious minorities are not exempted.

Some man in the culture committee of the Iranian parliament claimed that these women were obviously a danger to men:

“The current situation is shameful for an Islamic government. A man who sees these models on the streets will pay no attention to his wife at home, destroying the foundation of the family,” he warned.

What is it about Islamic women that they have such power over the men? Or is it that the men have so little self-control they have to make their women dress in those horribly hot, portable phone booths in order to control their own insatiable appetites?

Time to grow up, guys.

There were lots of pictures of the shrouding process.

Here are a few:

These first two images allow us to see the shame involved - not to mention the fear of being in an Iranian jail. If you click here, you’ll see a couple of others from this set. The whole thing looks like a bad dream, especially those women hijab enforcers. It is hard to imagine how they can bully so many women. These are definitely the personification of mean girls masquerading as crows.

These pictures of a spunky girl were particularly appealing.

- - - - - - - - - -
There are another nineteen pictures in the whole grouping that accompanies this second set. Some of them are haunting.

Unless you read Farsi, you’ll have to guess what’s being said. Looking at some of the photos, though, it is obvious that not all of the men agree with this edict. You will notice that any pictures with a full frontal shot of the Morality Police lets you see their badges. These are a bunch of mean girls dressed in black...don't you agree they look like crows? Sister Mary Agnes was positively benign in comparison.

My theory is that the big hullabaloo regarding women's modesty is just a con job to draw attention away from that unsolvable eleven-week old strike the teachers have staged.

Clever, those mullahs.


Hat tip: The Spirit of Man. This blogger describes himself as a Canada based Pro-America, Pro-Israel Iranian neo-conservative, seeking regime change in Iran! Winston is also a supporter of the Global War on Terrorism & President Bush’s policies in the middle-east.

Institutions of Higher Indoctrination--The Decay of the Western Will

Fresh from the makers of the film "Brainwashing 101" , comes the new film "Indoctrinate U." View the trailer for this new film above.

Universities in North America have become conformist factories of indoctrination, in service of a stagnant monoculture of groupthink. Instead of exposing young minds to intellectual diversity, universities forbid diversity of thought--the only meaningful form of diversity in an educational institution.

Scapegoating--A Proud Tradition

Scapegoating has a very long and illustrious history.

The term scapegoat, however, has evolved to refer to individuals or peoples who are symbolically or concretely made to bear responsibility for the faults or problems of others. For individuals, scapegoating is a psychological defense mechanism of denial through projecting responsibility and blame on others.[2] It allows the perpetrator to eliminate negative feelings about him or herself and provides a sense of gratification. Furthermore, it justifies the self-righteous discharge of aggression. For the perpetrator, it can provide a firm separation between good and bad.[3] Others describe scapegoaters as insecure, motivated to raise their own status, particularly relative to the target.[4] Having firmly convinced oneself that the other is responsible, it seems only logical to displace punishment as well.

Source

Scapegoating is a hostile social - psychological discrediting routine by which people move blame and responsibility away from themselves and towards a target person or group. It is also a practice by which angry feelings and feelings of hostility may be projected, via inappropriate accusation, towards others. The target feels wrongly persecuted and receives misplaced vilification, blame and criticism; he is likely to suffer rejection from those who the perpetrator seeks to influence. Scapegoating has a wide range of focus: from "approved" enemies of very large groups of people down to the scapegoating of individuals by other individuals. Distortion is always a feature.

Source

More on the psychodynamics of scapegoating here.

The most popular scapegoat for most journalists, bloggers, and interior dialogue legends in their own minds, is of course George W. Bush. Bush hatred is epidemic, and not to participate in Bush hatred is considered the mark of a neocon, another popular scapegoat. If there is any scapegoat more popular than the above, it would be the private oil and coal companies of the western world.

Creative individuals do not waste time on conformist scapegoats such as Bush and the neocons, but then most people are not creative, and are instead compleat conformists. Thus the mob-like nature of Bush hatred. Given the fact that the average world IQ is 90, and declining to 84 by mid-century--this is not a surprise.

Many otherwise intelligent persons indulge in projecting their inner shadows upon political figures such as Bush, with a near complete absence of insight into their own thought processes.

I am reminded of the "joke club" where the members sat in a group, with one occasionally shouting out a number, eg "84!". Everyone would laugh, because they had all heard the jokes so many times there was no need to repeat them. Just refer to them by number. The same type of automaticity is at work in political propaganda, which is what that most political journalism is.

In propaganda, words have magical powers. Imbuing words with a deeper meaning than they deserve, is the job of a propagandist. If he is successful, his audience no longer thinks--it reacts.

Eating Their Own Children

A good parent wants the best for her child. She wants the child to find its own way, independent of the parent's desires for the child.

A very bad parent will be like the parents in this video. They will use the child as an object for their own ends, rather than for the child's best happiness.

This ideology so prevalent in Palestine, Southern Lebanon, Iran, and other backward parts of the world, displays the very worst that humanity can be. It is difficult to see any redemption for those who sink this low.

Iran--A Good People, A Hopelessly Backward Government

First a key Iranian official defects

Next,Russia starts getting tougher with Iran on uranium enrichment

Then, Iran seizes 15 British sailors and marines

Next, the UN Security Council strengthens sanctions against Iran

Will the next move be for bombs to fall on Iran in April?

Update 1 April 2007: See here

The corrupt Islamic government of Iran is under assault by its own citizens. You have the teachers in revolt. You have the Kurds. You have a large number of other ethnic groups verging on the edge of revolt against the tyrannical theocracy.

But probably the group that represents the greatest danger to the brutal and bloody dictatorship in Teheran is the women of Iran.

Let us see what atrocities the fundamentalists have committed against women in Iran.

In truth, the people around the world have been informed of a very small portion of the tragedy that has affected women in my country. As you might know, misogyny is distinctive to the fundamentalist ruling Iran.

No one but Iranian women have experienced body and soul this misogyny.

The mullahs' rule came down on women's rights, liberties, culture, family and private lives like a huge avalanche.

- Executing thousands of female opponents, which is unprecedented anywhere in the world;
- Torturing tens of thousands of women political prisoners;
- Executing pregnant women, the torture of mothers in front of their children;
- Degrading women's social and economic standing to second class citizens;
- Imposing gender apartheid;
- Controlling women's presence in the streets;
- Imposing compulsory veiling, controlling the color and forms of women's attire;
- Lacerating and splashing acid on women's faces because of their clothing and make up.
- Systematic assault on women in prisons;
- Denial of the right to divorce and the right to custody of children;
- Promoting polygamy and temporary marriage, justified by the mullahs' disgraceful Sharia;
- Applying medieval and painful punishments such as stoning, whose victims are primarily women;
- Injustice and discrimination in economic participation, employment and education;
- The sale of small children by impoverished families and their trafficking to other countries by the mullahs' criminal gangs in a country as rich as Iran;
- Selling innocent girls' body parts due to impoverishment, hunger and many other calamities;

Indeed, these are only parts of the tragedy women have been experiencing under the rule of the fundamentalists. I must emphasize that these come at a time when the Iranian Resistance movement has been waging a relentless struggle against this regime for 27 years. Imagine what the fundamentalist mullahs would have done to women if this resistance did not exist.

Source

An invasion of Iran by a western coalition would be absurd. But clearly the current brutal Iranian dictatorship is pushing the limits of what the civilised world will tolerate.

Originally posted on Al Fin.