Free Republic

With bone-cracking brutality, the waves of baton-wielding police seemed to confirm what the already demoralised Iranian reform movement had been dreading: the dawn of a new era of political repression. Several hundred pro-reformists had gathered outside Tehran University to demand the release of a jailed dissident journalist, Akbar Ganji, who is in the fifth week of a hunger strike, when they were confronted by massed ranks of officers. In the melee, large numbers of demonstrators, including several women, were hurt. Among the injured were a former reformist MP, Mousavi Khoeini, who had a broken rib after being hit with an...

The gentleman who wrote this article is an expert on Middle Eastern affairs, especially Iran. I have met the man online and have had his bona-fides confirmed: He is who he says, and knows what he knows. I cant tell you more without giving away promised confidentiality, but I can personnaly assure the readers that he is an EXPERT on Iranian affairs and once worked in the government of the Shah of Iran. Below is an analysis and suggestion of what just might work to destabilize the government of Iran and allow the ruling Mullahs to be overthrown. His approach...

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti commentator Pyotr Goncharov) - Russia will not lose no matter who wins the second round of the presidential election in Iran. It has a fair chance of preserving its priority standing in Iran's foreign policy under any president - Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, technocrat and pragmatist, or his rival, the ultraconservative Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, who produced a furore with his surprise success at the election. This is the unanimous opinion of most Russian experts. Unlike Washington, which said the election in Iran was undemocratic and would not create a legitimate...

Michigan man pleads guilty to aiding Hizballah Yet we are not even to question the loyalties of Muslims in America -- to do so would be "Islamophobia." This story shows why such pieties must be discarded. "Dearborn resident helped terror group," from the Detroit News, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm: DEARBORN -- A Dearborn man pleaded guilty Tuesday to providing material support to Hezbollah, a foreign terrorist organization. Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, 33, admitted to hosting meetings at his Dearborn home during Ramadan in 2002 and allowing a Lebanese man to solicit donations from people there for Hezbollah. The U.S. government...

We read that "Prime Minister" Mahmoud Abbas is running in the elections on Sunday to succeed Yasser Arafat as "president" of "Palestine."Excuse me, but prime minister, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, means the "head of the executive branch of government in states with a parliamentary system." Despite tens of thousands of references to Mr. Abbas as prime minister, he in not a single way fits this description.Oh, and there is also the matter of there being no country called Palestine. Arab maps show it in place of Israel. The U.N. recognizes its existence. So too do certain telephone companies –...

<p>At least three men reportedly were taken into federal custody in two Pensacola malls as the FBI and the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service initiated a nationwide sweep Wednesday.</p> <p>Witnesses said plain-clothes agents closed Intrigue jewelry vendors at Cordova and University malls, Wild Things at University and possibly other shops.</p>

The Arab world is all one big happy family again. OK, dysfunctional, but happy. No, well, unhappy and as twisted as usual. While visiting Kuwait today, Palestinian presidential front-runner, Mahmoud Abbas, apologized for his people’s support of Saddam’s invasion of the Gulf emirate in 1990. Isn’t that special? (remember Dana Carvey as the “Church Lady” on SNL?). This happened just after Kuwait’s sultans (or whatever they’re called) forgave the Palestinian people for supporting Saddam’s invasion. Kuwait’s leadership went so far as to say they didn’t even expect a public apology for Palestinian support of the 1990 war. Now, isn’t that...

Violent protests against corruption and nepotism in Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, and the threatened resignation of his prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, have forced Mr Arafat to back off from putting a relative in charge of Gaza’s security forces... Arafat is feeling the wrath of his own people, who have become increasingly frustrated at the corruption, nepotism and sheer uselessness of his crumbling regime.... Arafat has for months been resisting pressure from America, Egypt, the United Nations and other powers to merge and revamp the PA’s 12 overlapping, ineffectual and mutually hostile security forces, and to put them under the...

A British government report made public yesterday provides new information showing that al Qaeda terrorists had contacts with Iraqi intelligence in developing chemical arms and that the group worked with a Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist.     The special report by former top civil servant Robin Butler on British prewar intelligence found gaps in reporting on Iraq's weapons and also disclosed new details of terrorist activities of al Qaeda associate Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is leading attacks in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.     On al Qaeda's efforts to obtain nuclear arms, the report stated that Osama bin Laden set up a laboratory in Afghanistan...

Calls Uday, Qusay 'Do-nothings' Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, the just-captured "ace of diamonds" from the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, last night blasted his number-four status, arguing that he should rank higher than both Uday and Qusay Hussein in the infamous deck of cards. "When the Americans told me I was number four, I practically fell out of my chair," Mr. Mahmoud told CNN's Larry King during an hour-long interview. "What were they smoking when they put together these rankings?" Mr. Mahmoud attempted to portray himself as a victim of nepotism, claiming that the Hussein sons' role in Saddam's...

WASHINGTON, June 20 — A top lieutenant to Saddam Hussein has told American interrogators that the Iraqi leader and his two sons survived the United States-led war in Iraq and that he himself had fled to Syria with the sons after the conflict, Defense Department officials said today. The officials said they had not yet assessed the accuracy of the claims by the aide, Abid Hamad Mahmoud al-Tikriti, who was arrested in Iraq earlier this week. But they said that the United States regarded the information as having enormous potential significance, and that it had ignited an intense burst of...

SADDAM'S BODYGUARD WARNS OF SECRET ARSENAL02feb03SADDAM Hussein's senior bodyguard has fled with details of Iraq's secret arsenal.His revelations have supported US President George W. Bush's claim there is enough evidence from UN inspectors to justify going to war. Abu Hamdi Mahmoud has provided Israeli intelligence with a list of sites that the inspectors have not visited. They include: AN underground chemical weapons facility at the southern end of the Jadray Peninsula in Baghdad; A SCUD assembly area near Ramadi. The missiles come from North Korea; TWO underground bunkers in Iraq's Western Desert. These contain biological weapons. William Tierney, a former...

Suzanne Goldenberg in Baghdad Wednesday February 19, 2003 The Guardian Iraq put on a rare public display of one of its weapons scientists yesterday, intensifying its battle with Britain and America for world public opinion. The appearance of Sa'ad Ahmed Mahmoud as the UN security council debates the future of the weapons inspections was intended to press home Iraq's claim that it has improved its cooperation. Mr Mahmoud, the deputy director of a company producing rocket motors, dismissed the contention by the US and Britain that Iraq has tried to divert aluminium rocket tubes to its nuclear programme. Officials in...