By William P. Narvey, new netWMD contributor

Relentless singular pursuit of self interest without caring that others are injured in the process in a word is greed. It robs one of moral clarity just as cataracts blur vision and it can also blind the greedy to the fact that they too risk ending up victims of their own avarice.

After the dust settled following the end of the 1979 American hostage crisis in Tehran, Iran, trade and commerce between Iran on one side and European nations on the other began to normalize. Whatever contempt and suspicion each side had for the other in the geo-political realm was glossed over or kept separate and apart, at least by the greed of the West from the economic realm where both sides engaged and derived great economic benefits thereby.

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Courtesy of the The Israel Project

                         Source: Electronic Intifada

How does the government work?
What are the issues?
How are candidates elected?
Who are the parties and who represents them?
What is the connection between politics and terrorism in the PA?

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By Kamal Nawash

No issue has the same global impact as the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. During the cold war, the United States and the Soviet Union twice raised their security alerts and aggressively challenged each other over this conflict. The oil embargo of the 1970s was inspired by the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Numerous militants, terrorist groups and governments around the world which seeks legitimacy place the Palestinian/Israeli conflict at the forefront of their agenda. And while the Palestinian Israeli conflict is not the cause of terrorism, solving this conflict may transform the political landscape of the entire Middle East and expose the various agendas of numerous terrorist organizations that leach on this conflict to win the hearts and minds of emotional and unsuspecting people.

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SMCCDI (Information Service)
January 25, 2006

Tehran’s Collective Bus drivers have issued another notice of strike, in order to protest against their poor conditions, the lack of the right of having an independent union and the persistent imprisonment of their colleagues. The strike is to take place this coming Saturday from early morning affecting most areas. It will include drivers, technicians and administrative employees.

Of course, the Islamic republic regime is expected to use once again of its entire repressive arsenal, in order to dissuade many drivers to participate, and to use its militiamen in order to fill the remaining vacuum.

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Yesterday, two well-known dictatorships decided to further isolate their own peoples, and build higher walls around the national prisons these “leaders” have created. China’s communists and Iran’s Islamists both banned publications, further starving their people of information, something that tyrannies fear most. China “shut down Freezing Point, a four-page weekly feature section of the state-run China Youth Daily that often tested the censors and challenged the party line…” Iran “…started to block the BBC’s Persian language internet site…” But what could China and Iran possibly have in common?

According to the Washington Post:

China’s ruling Communist Party on Tuesday suspended one of the premier publications in Chinese journalism, escalating a campaign to rein in the state media, part of the government’s toughest crackdown on freedom of expression here in more than a decade. …

Party officials summoned the senior editors of the China Youth Daily and ordered Freezing Point closed a day after distributing a five-page document that accused the section of “viciously attacking the socialist system” and condemned a recent article in it that criticized the history textbooks used in Chinese middle schools.

From the BBC:

When entering the BBC’s Persian site a sign comes up saying “access to this site denied”, says the BBC’s Frances Harrison in Tehran.

It is not clear if the filtering will be permanent, but many websites are routinely blocked in Iran, our correspondent says.

Two dictatorships acting alike on the same day. But what could China and Iran possibly have in common — besides being ruled by tyrants? China’s leaders claim to be communists, who professedly despise religion (the “opium of the people”). Iran’s rulers assert that religion and God are important above all.

The truth is that evil makes for strange bedfellows. From China Daily:

In 2004, Iran agreed in principle to sell China 250 million tons of liquefied natural gas over 30 years, a deal valued at $70 billion. China already imports 14 percent of its oil from Iran.

From the Asia Times:

Iran’s mammoth energy deals with China imply that Tehran is now integral to China’s national security.

According to the Middle East Quarterly:

Iran’s appetite for Chinese weaponry is far from sated. The Chinese government has sold Iran surface-to-surface cruise missiles and provided assistance in the development of long-range ballistic missiles. By November 2003, a year after Iran successfully tested the Shihab-3 missile—which can carry a 1,000 kilogram payload for a distance of 1,300 kilometers—the CIA issued a report that China, along with Russia and North Korea, were the leading providers of assistance to Iran’s ballistic missile programs.[8] Repeated U.S. sanctioning of Chinese firms for proliferating missiles and missile technology to Iran have so far not stopped the practice.[9]

Beijing has also contributed substantially to Iran’s nuclear and chemical weapons programs despite assurances to Washington that it has ceased such work. Perhaps the most egregious example was the supply of a uranium conversion facility and nuclear power reactors to Iran.[10]

But China and Iran acting alike, and doing business together, belies the complete hypocrisy of these two nations’ alleged ideologies. By the book, each should dogmatically hate each other, because their supposed belief systems are so contradictory.

The conclusion is that it is not about ideas or beliefs. It all boils down to a desire for power and control. Fascism, Communism, Islamism… a (stinky, black) rose by any other name.

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by Daniel Pipes
USA Today*
January 25, 2006
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3309
* Cross-posted with permission

As Hamas, the Islamist terror group, surges in the polls with a prospect of joining the Palestinian Authority or even running it, governments worldwide must decide on their responses.

An increasing number of voices are calling for Hamas to be recognized, arguing that the imperatives of governance would tame it, ending its arch-murderous vocation (it has killed around 600 Israelis) and turning it into a responsible citizen. Even President Bush made this argument in early 2005: “There’s a positive effect when you run for office. Maybe some will run for office and say, ‘Vote for me, I look forward to blowing up America.’ … I don’t think so. I think people who generally run for office say, ‘Vote for me, I’m looking forward to fixing your potholes, or making sure you got bread on the table.’”

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SMCCDI (Urgent Action Call)
January 24, 2006

Dear Iranians, Dear Americans, Dear Iranian-Americans, Dear Freedom Lovers,

Most Middle-Easterners and Iranians have been long among the first victims of Islamo- Fascism.

Iranians for their part have shown their deep rejection of the Islamic republic regime, at many occasions, by boycotting successive sham elections or by demonstrating, striking or some even resorting to violence at the price of their lives and due to total exasperation. Iranians in their vast majority have turned their backs to the totality of the theocratic regime and the degree of popular rejection is to the point that even some absconded former officials, living now in exile, are not trusted by the masses.

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Palestinian democracy so far has meant shooting and burning ballot boxes. Today it came to murder. In its usual crappy reporting, the AP revealed:

A leader of the ruling Fatah Party in Nablus was shot to death Tuesday in violence related to the Palestinian elections.

Despite the chaos in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in recent months, Wednesday’s vote has provoked limited violence.

Early this month, a Hamas supporter was killed in a firefight that erupted while rival factions were hanging election posters in Gaza City. Hamas blamed the ruling Fatah Party.

How the AP can put “shot to death,” “was killed in a firefight,” and “limited violence” in the same article is beyond me. Everything’s relative, right? Moral relativism, that is.

And now we’re faced with Hamas, one of the world’s most violent terrorist groups, sworn to the annihilation of all Israelis, winning a good number of parliamentary seats in these “elections.”

I fear it will be a long time before we see Palestinians working things out together peaceably in parliament, the press, or in court.

by Sana Nourani
Middle East Quarterly*
Winter 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/891
* Cross-posted with permission

Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji earned the Islamic Republic’s ire in 1999 as he investigated the murders the previous year of several prominent Iranian dissidents. His reports implicated former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, Expediency Council chairman and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Dungeon of Ghosts,[1] his exposé of the role of the “intelligence mafia” in the murder of 200 reformist intellectuals both inside and outside Iran, became a national bestseller.

In January 2001, an Iranian court sentenced Ganji to ten years imprisonment although this was later reduced to six years.[2] On May 20, 2005, declaring, “No one should be imprisoned—not even for a second—for expressing an opinion,” Ganji announced the start of a hunger strike, [3] which he suspended when briefly furloughed on May 29. Annoyed with his declaration about the fallacy of Iran’s elections,[4] on June 11, 2005, authorities returned him to prison where he resumed his hunger strike. As his health faltered, the White House issued a statement calling for his unconditional release.[5] While he ended his hunger strike on August 17, his fate remains uncertain; Iranian authorities have placed him in solitary confinement and prevented all visits.[6]

While Iranian authorities have prevented further communications by Ganji, during his hunger strike, he managed to smuggle out from Tehran’s Evin prison two letters that remain widely-circulated on the Internet[7] and published in the Arabic press.[8] The following translation of Ganji’s June 29, 2005 letter, here slightly amended for clarity and grammar, is derived from both sources.

Letter to the Free People of the World

In authoritarian systems, lying converts from vice to virtue. These scoundrels [the Islamic Republic’s leadership] claim: “We have no political prisoners, no solitary cells, and there are no hunger strikes in Iran’s prisons; indeed, our prisons are like hotels.” They solve their problems by changing names … [But] would an ass transform into a parrot, if we called it so? Prison means deprivation of freedom. Does a prison change its essence if we call it something else? …

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by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun*
January 24, 2006
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3308
* Cross-posted with permission

William Blum, a Washington, D.C. writer, responded delightedly last Thursday on learning that Osama bin Laden had cited his book in an audiotape. Blum called the mention of Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower “almost as good as being an Oprah book,” a reference to the popular American television host whose endorsement routinely makes a book a bestseller.

Asked if he was queasy about bin Laden’s urging listeners to read his book, Blum replied: “I’m not repulsed, and I’m not going to pretend I am.” Quite the contrary, he said: “I’m glad. … It’s good publicity for my book.” And, indeed, it was: Thanks to bin Laden’s promotion, Rogue State ascended from 205,763 to 26 on Amazon.com’s ranking of most-ordered books.

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SMCCDI (Information Service)
January 24, 2006

A US think tank group named “Committee on the Present Danger” (CPD) called, yesterday, for “Regime Change in Iran” to be the official policy of the Bush Administration. Such call is taking place few days before the next “State of the Union Speech” scheduled for January 31st.

The group which is based in WDC has several influential members, such as, James Woolsey and George Schultz as its co-chairmen. Mr. Woolsey is a former CIA Director and Mr. Schultz is a former US Army head. Senators Joseph Lieberman (D) and Jon Kyl (R) are the group’s honorary co-chairmen.

In its press release, the CDP has requested from the Bush Administration to adopt officially the policy of “Regime Change” and has urged “strong diplomatic and economic measures” to be taken against the Islamic republic regime.

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Just as I had predicted, Iraq’s Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) is reaching out to Kurdish and Sunni parties to form a new coalition government. Even though the UIA has imposed valid conditions on Sunni participation, the cessation of terrorist violence, the BBC reports:

Two leading Sunni politicians on Saturday expressed their interest in joining a coalition government.

And the Beeb gives the politicking a “positive assessment:”

The BBC’s Jonny Dymond in Baghdad says there has been a flurry of positive feeling about the idea of a national unity government.

Hussein al-Shahristani, deputy speaker of the current parliament and a senior member of the UIA, said the party would be happy to review the Iraqi constitution, a key demand of the Sunnis.

But he warned the Sunni parties that if they wanted to join the coalition, they would have to fight the insurgency actively.

“We’ll require them not only to condemn terrorism - as they do normally - but to work with us in combating terrorism and overcoming it,” he said.

The frontline of the battle against insurgents was often in Sunni areas, he added.

As an afterthought, I was discussing the latest Iraqi developments with a dear, old friend last night — a person who does not like Bush and has been suspicious about Iraq’s liberation. But he conceded that he now feels more hopeful that Iraqis will achieve democracy and stability.

We are living in interesting and exciting times…

SMCCDI (Public Statement)
January 21, 2006

Ms. “Vajiheh Cheguini” has passed away, on January 20, 2006, in Tehran.

The maverick and combatant woman never abdicated from her principles and humanistic beliefs, despite all pressures exerted by the Islamic republic regime, and she was always supportive of Iranian students and freedom fighters. Despite her age and physical conditions, she actively participated in the “July 9, 1999 Students’ Uprising”, beside her courageous daughter “Maloos Radnia known also known as Mariam Shansy”.

“Vajiheh Cheguini” raised the anger of the brutal “Ali Falhahian” (an Islamist Cleric known for his involvement in the killing of dissidents and a former Ministry of Intelligence) and hopes in the hearts of many arrested students due to her audacity. She was beaten and threatened many times at her home or in front of the doors of the infamous “Tohid Prison”. But just as like as a strong cedar tree, she always stood tall in face of the enemies of freedom.

Her last moments were spent in wishing for the liberation of Iran and of seeing her exiled daughter.

May she rest in peace and may her path be consistent!

Tehran, January 21, 2006

The “Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy
in Iran” (SMCCDI)

http://daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_3362.shtml

———————————-

Attached/Peyvast: Original Persian text in PDF
format/Neveshtar e Farsi be soorat e PDF

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I can understand coping with the cold in Moscow… But I’d really like to party with those monkeys and seals… From the AP:

Complaints about the cold came amid comical stories about coping by both man and beast.

At a zoo in Lipetsk, south of Moscow, director Alexander Osipov said monkeys would be given wine three times a day “to protect against colds,” the RIA-Novosti news agency reported, while Rossiya television said a circus sea lion was being treated for pneumonia with brandy body rubs.

;-)

Remember all the belly-aching and hand-wringing about Iraq’s Sunnis being left out, desperate, disenfranchised, hopeless, blah, blah, blah? It all started sounding a lot like the dogmatic apologizing for the Palestinians. Well the Sunnis are participating in Iraq’s democratic process, and will certainly hold significant power. The Shiite parties will have reach out to form a coalition, as they cannot “rule without partners.”

According to today’s Washington Post:

Shiite religious parties fell short of winning outright control of parliament in Iraq’s Dec. 15 national elections, compelling them to seek alliances with at least one other faction if they are to form a coalition government, official election results confirmed Friday.

The results released by the national election commission represented no significant surprises, other than confirming the strength of the showing by the minority Sunni Arabs in a vote that will seat Iraq’s first full-term parliament since the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

So now Sunni participation is not important or, not a “significant surprise?” Just the facts, huh? The Post continues:

Commission official Safwat Rasheed said the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shiite religious parties, captured 128 of the 275 seats, down from the 146 it won in January 2005 balloting. It needed 182 to rule without partners. A Sunni ticket, the Iraqi Accordance Front, won 44 seats. Another Sunni coalition headed by Saleh Mutlaq finished with 11 seats, Rasheed said. A few other Sunnis won seats on other tickets.

That will give the Sunni Arabs a bigger voice in the legislature than they had in the outgoing assembly, which included only 17 from the community forming the backbone of the insurgency. The December elections saw the first sweeping participation of Sunni voters, after threats of violence and boycott calls quelled Sunni turnout in the January elections.

Sunni participation will put further pressure on the “disenfranchised” cry-babies. As Iraqis put together a coalition government, hopefully they will then clamp down on the country’s homicidal Islamist terrorists (”insurgents”), who have killed about 30,000 innocents, mostly Shiite.

Only ruling together — working things out together in parliament, the press, or in court — will Iraqis bring true civilization to their homeland. Democracy must prevail — but that will mean learning that sometimes democracies have to take tough measures. The peaceful majority will have to tell the Sunni/Wahabi terrorists that the people have made a choice: stop your murdering, lay down your arms, be killed, or end up in prison for life. Period.

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