Iranian Alert -- August 10, 2003 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

The Iranian Student Movement Up To The Minute Reports ^ | 8.10.2003 | DoctorZin

[yonif]

Dore Gold: Lebanon, Syria, Iran directly responsible for Hezbollah terror

This comes as a 16 year old boy is murdered by Hizbullah terror fire on Israeli border towns.

[Valin]

The CIA once labeled Ghorbanifar “an intelligence fabricator and nuisance.

Translation, he doesn't work for us.

[Pro-Bush]

True, but isn't a constitutional democratic republic better than a true democracy?

Yes.

[dixiechick2000]

"Gulf News is a pro regime publication"

Dr.Z, F14 and I have already had that conversation. ;o)

[dixiechick2000]

Thanks for all of your posts!

I especially enjoyed Friedman and Gurwitz articles.

[F14 Pilot]

AIMING AT FORCING THE US INTO TALKS, IRAN OPENS UP THREE FRONTS

By Safa Haeri

PARIS, 10 Aug. (IPS) As American investigators are focusing on a Jordanian with ties to al-Qa’eda as the possible mastermind of the explosion of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad, Iranian political analysts said Tehran is using all its assets in Iraq and the region to force Washington entering negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The last Saturday blast that killed at least 19, all Iraqis, and wounded many more, is reported to be the work of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a noted terrorist affiliated with the Iran-backed Ansar al-Eslam.

At almost the same time, the Iran-supported and trained Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas fired shells over northern Israel, killing one person and injuring four other.

Hezbollah said the shelling was retaliation for the 2 August killing of Ali Hoseyn Saleh, one of its security official by a bomb in his car south of Beirut, blaming Israel for his death.

The Organisation’s Deputy Secretary-General Sheik Na’im Qasem said Sunday that Hezbollah "is fully prepared and ready to respond in the proper manner to any Israel aggression or threat."

British forces in the predominately Shi’ite region of Basra were not spared, as they also suffered new attacks on the same day, after irate Iraqis, waiting in the searing heat to fill up their cars with petrol, threw stones in frustration, according to a British army spokesman.

A foreign security guard and two Iraqis were killed in a second day of violence in Basra on Sunday in which British troops fired warning shots as crowds attacked vehicles and blocked streets with burning tires.

The British patrolled in tanks as hundreds of stone-throwing Iraqis rampaged in protest against fuel and power shortages. In one incident troops said they returned fire from gunmen, but a tense calm settled over Iraq's second city by evening.

The violence was some of the worst in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled by U.S.-led forces on April 9 and occurred in a city at the heart of the mostly Shi'ite Muslim south, which has been relatively peaceful in the wake of his fall. Iraq's majority Shi'ites were repressed under Saddam, a Sunni Muslim, according to "Reuters" news agency.

Following the Jordan Embassy blast, the U.S. civilian Administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer on Saturday said the security is far being satisfactory in Iraq and added that he suspected that foreign fighters, Ansar al-Eslam could have been involved in the attack.

He was referring to mounting and repeated attacks by the pro-Saddam Hoseyn Iraqis as well as both the radical Shi’ites and Sunnis backed by Tehran.

Since President Bush declared the end of major combat May 1, 122 service members have died -- 56 were killed in hostile fire. Since the start of the war, 260 U.S. troops have been killed, 171 of them in hostile fire.

Iran condemned the attack on the Jordanian Embassy and at the same time, repeated that it would try on its soil those of the al-Qa’eda whose identities were not established.

Tehran has acknowledged that it holds some 500 al-Qa’eda and Taleban members, prominent among them are, besides Zarqawi, Soleyman Abu Ghaith, al-Qa’eda’s treasurer, Saif al-Adel, the network’s chief of staff alleged to have organised the 12 May explosions in Riyadh, as well as Sa’d Ben Laden, Osama’s elder son, according to US intelligence and Administration sources.

Government official spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said recently that due to security problems, Iran would not disclose the names of the senior terrorists it has arrested and repeated that anyhow, none of them would be handed over to the Americans, who have placed the Islamic Republic in their list of "rogue states" and with whom Tehran has no relations.

An associate of Osama Ben Laden, the alleged mastermind of the 11 September terrorist attacks on New York and on Washington, Zarqawi has been named by the Bush Administration as an al-Qa’eda terrorist who fled to Iraq from Afghanistan in May 2002 for medical treatment, and then stayed to organise terror plots.

"The al Qa’eda affiliate, Ansar al-Eslam, is known to still be present in Iraq", the White House paper said. "Such terrorist groups are now plotting against U.S. forces in Iraq".

On Saturday, General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that the infiltration of Iraq by armed fighters from neighbouring countries could raise tensions between the United States and those countries.

Though he did not name Iran, but considering the situation of relations between Iraq and its neighbours, it is clear which country he was pointing to, as, according to the Israeli intelligence website "Debkafile", Ansar members "could only have returned to Iraq with a blessing, logistical aid and funding from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards special intelligence arm which owns a strong presence on both sides of the Iranian-Iraqi border".
Actually, the Ansar had been transferred by Iran to the area to safeguard members of Ben Laden family, after "Iran Press Service" had revealed their hideout in Tehran and later in the western city of Hamedan.

Early in the Iraq War, American bombers wiped out Ansar’s main headquarters in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq near the Iranian border.

"Based on the view that the Americans are at the heart of their troubles both at home and outside, Tehran has embarked on a make it or break it policy towards the United States. Either Washington buy Tehran’s bluff and in this case the regime will gain a breathing space, or it won’t and the result is open confrontation, including possible military engagement", the analyst added.

While reiterating that it is not seeking to overthrow the Islamic Republic, the State Department has advised the Bush Administration not to take side of any of the feuding wings of Iranian leadership, stating at the same time support for Iranian dissidents, as demonstrated with the recent students-led anti-regime protest movement.

At the same time, Washington, blessed by the European Union, has stepped up international pressures on the Islamic Republic with regard to its nuclear programs; its continued support for Arab and Palestinian groups opposed to peace with Israel and its black human rights records.

"By opening up at the same time three fronts against the Americans and their closest allies, Britain and Israel, the Iranian ruling clerics, sensing that their life is being counted and under mounting pressures both at home and on the international theatre, hope to be able to persuade Washington that it has no alternative but to sit and talk to them", one Iranian analyst commented.

http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2003/Aug-2003/iran_us_confrontation_10803.htm

[DoctorZIn]

Thanks for the post.

[DoctorZIn]

Translation of the astonishing and unprecedented letter of Dr. Maleki, Head of the University

SMCCDI (Fax & Documents)
Aug 10, 2003

The following is the translation, by SMCCDI, of the astonishing and unprecedented Public Letter of Dr. Mohammad Maleki, head of the University to the students and scholars of Iran.

Maleki will issue this letter on August 6th and following the issuance, by several students member of the Islamic Student associations, of a public letter calling on UN's Secretary General. These students, who are usually "better" treated than their arrested secularist colleagues, denounced, in their letter to which Maleki makes reference, part of the brutal investigative methods used against their imprisoned colleagues and have asked for the UN's intervention.

Anyone reading Maleki's letter, entitled “A drop is the sea, if it's with the sea”, must note that he was among those 1979 National-Religious revolutionaries who promoted the idea of a religious political system and who will promote, later, the useless and baseless theory of "reforms from within".

But despite his past and present believes, his letter, shall lift off any shadow of doubt on any remaining legitimacy of the theocratic system and shall be considered as a document pointing out to some small parts of the existing pressures and repressive actions used against the Iranian students.


Its translation is as follow:
In the name of Liberty, Knowledge and Justice
A drop is the sea, if it's with the sea

Knowledgeable students, my dear children,
I read the letters of your sufferings addressed to Kofi Anan and the nation of Iran. As I am a drop that’s within the sea, I want to talk to you now about “sorrow.” Because I know, and very well I know, how heavy a sorrow is weighing down your patient hearts.
“The sorrow for your brothers and sisters who have unjustly become caught behind the bars in jails. Jails that have become trysting places for noble broad-minded.

Yes, the brothers and sisters who not just yesterday or today, rather for decades, have been caught behind those bars and have held on to the promise with their lives.
And if your friends and comrades have been sent into prison cells from the class rooms in these days, based on the void belief that the fire that burns within their souls for the love of the country can be extinguished, ignoring that the flames of that fire are unyielding and can not be put down, And if your brothers and sisters have been caught under the torture of the oppressors and the guardians of the government of the “Supreme Leader” these days, let no grief in your hearts; For they are and have remained steadfast with their covenant; Because the “Student Movement” that is critical of the rulers has chosen the war against the unjust and struggle for democracy and its realization as its duty. Congratulations on their choice.

My children, dear students, when I see that you are worried about your fellow students; when you suffer from the knowledge of the fate of a lady reporter in a torture chamber; when you hear from the sidelines what they do to the male or female students in those rooms; When you have heard from your elders what exactly torture confession extraction in the horrific jail houses of the government of the “Supreme Leader” mean, you should be worried. You are justified to be worried because I know it and I know it well. I know, and I know very well. I know prison, torture, interrogation, exorcism, insult and belittling, the interrogator, the court, the religious ruler, the judge, judgment, and etc. in the “Religious Government” and the “Ruling Religion” very well.

I know. I know very well how it burns to your core every time the cable strikes the soles of your feet or any other part of your body.

I know. I know very well how your personality and you whole existence is stirred and disturbed when you are taken blind folded into the interrogation room and the guard closes the door, you can’t see anywhere or anybody, the interrogators hard slap throws you off your balance and you hit the wall hard and you spill on the floor and writhe in pain, you hear the voice of the interrogator who grabs your head by the hair and pulls you up to your feet as he shouts obscenities saying “Don't play dead you piece of sullen dirt. Sit on the chair and answer me.”

I know. I know very well what nightly interrogations mean and how the tired and worried prisoners are treated by the interrogators in the middle of nights.

I know. I know very well, if you happen to be young and inexperienced, how they can frighten you and trick you into writing and admitting whatever they say.

I know. I know very well what “repentant making” means and how they make a repentant out of an innocent prisoner as they make him confess to thousands of sins he did not commit.

I know. I know very well what the mind altering drugs, which they inject into prisoners, can do to your brain, mind, and senses. To the point that you start believing that you have been a spy in the service of Imperialism and “World Arrogance (USA)” since birth!

I know. I know very well what kind of a place the cell block 209 is; where due to overcrowding many are packed in there and what a problem it is to use the toilet. I know the things that can destroy your body and soul can happen to you there if you are there by yourself. And then they throw a woman whose husband has been executed in the cell next to yours with her two years old child. They take away the woman in the morning while the child is still asleep for “interrogation.” When the innocent jailed child wakes up and doesn’t see his mom he cries for few minutes and comes out of the cell towards the back of your cell. He claws on your cell door asking for his mother and you can see his feet through the opening at the bottom of the door where you receive your food and you can hear his moaning and crying. There is nothing you can do but to swallow your rage over the lump of hatred in your throat that is choking you and wipe away your tears with your sleeves. You endure a few burning hours of that feeling until you hear the child’s mother limping towards her cell, moaning and holding on to the end of a stick that is in the prison guard’s hand. Then you understand what happened to that woman in the interrogation.

I know. I know very well the difference between the “white” torture and the “black” torture. I know everything that happened in those 20 years (1981-2001) and whatever else that is still happening in the jail cells of the “Religious Government”, and those are now the cause of your worries.

I know. I know very well…

My children, dear students:
Let me confess. My generation fought against the dictator and the fascist instead of fighting dictatorship and fascism for it thought it can reach liberty and justice by just changing the garb and the name of the ruler.

My generation was after making a hero not after making the people. My generation thought the country would be our homeland again once the Shah was in his burial shroud. My generation’s motto was not death to despotism; rather it was death to the despot.
And we saw and witnessed the results of that erroneous motto. The”King’s government” just transformed into the “Supreme Leader’s government” and several generations, including yours, have been paying the penalty for that historic mistake ever since.

Now that after many ups and downs and a 15-20 year break the “Student Movement” has come to the conclusion that a true democratic system can not be pulled out of the belly of a dictatorship, and time for putting hopes on superficial changes and deceiving the people by the name of “Reforms” has ended, and that by painting a new façade over the decayed structure it can no longer be held up, and now that you have diagnosed the roots of the pain, you have the right to shout: “We no longer have anything to say to the ruling system and treat the system’s submission to the just expectations of the Iranian nation as an illusion and we saw that they give no regard to our just demands. The answer to our lawful actions became unlawful detentions and the result of our human demands became inhuman repression.” (An excerpt from the letter of the Islamic Students Associations to the Iranian nation. Dated Wednesday 23 July 2003)

And in these days that you dear ones, “as the pioneers of the Democratic Movement,” treat reliance on just one individual and “Hero making” and “Icon producing” as the wrong way of doing things, and know yourselves to be responsible and accountable before the Iranian nation, as on the Third Article of your declaration you have stated to remain steadfast and to ask all those who claim of democracy, rule of law, civil society, pursuit of justice, and rejection of foreign interference etc… to announce not once, but many times over again that: “Whereas the fate of every nation isn’t decided by anything but their own policies and contemplations, we recognize the nation of Iran as the rulers of their own destiny and we are of the conviction that, except by reliance on the people’s vote and the wisdom of the whole population, no kind of government will be acceptable.” (Article 3 of the declaration in the letter dated 23 July 2003)


Dear students, scholars,
Today your sacred mission is to publicize and plan the “Return to the Wisdom of the Whole.” Strive in this path and fear not its expenses. For if the rulers do not submit to it, they will loose this last chance for a civil and peaceful transformation and will undoubtedly encounter the storm of nation’s wrath in tomorrow that isn’t too far. The same way that the “Royal Governance” didn’t heed the advice of the advisers and the nation was forced to revolt and take action, certainly much more than a name and memory won’t be left of the “government of the Supreme Leader” in the near future if the repression of the students, journalists, and the scholars continues. And in conclusion, I assure you that as an Iranian, a citizen, and a scholar, I will remain by the side of my student children till my last breath.

And now a message to the so-called “friends:”
Why do you chastise me?
I was like a drop of water in a motionless pond, rotting and turning into slime.
There was a sound, A boulder broke of the mountain and fell into that pond.
I was hurled into a turbulent river that was heading for the sea.
I wanted to become of the sea. I wanted to wash my body, which still held the wounds and pus that the henchmen had inflicted on it, in the sea.
Doesn’t the “Sea” cure and cleanse?
I want to become clean and then die in the heart of the sea.
Like a swan, I want to die alone in a lonely corner of the sea.
Why do you chastise me?
I want to be by, and part of millions of drops of water.
I’d like to be a drop of water, in the sea, a stormy sea raging with waves.
I hate rotting and sliming and then dying.
Pity such existence , such death.
A drop is the sea, if it's with the sea
Then why do you chastise me? Why?

With salutations to all students and freedom lovers who are enduring jail and torture.

Tehran, 6 August 2003
Dr. Mohammad Maleki

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1675.shtml

[F14 Pilot]

Lari: Iranian foreign policy still dominated by policy of detente

Mashad, Aug 10, IRNA -- Minister of the Interior Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari said here Saturday that the policy of detente proposed by Iranian
President Mohammad Khatami still dominates the country's foreign
policy.
Making the remark at a gathering of religious scholars and
theological students in this northeastern province, he said that
by observing the policy Iran has been able to refute the "clash of
civilizations" theory with the idea of a "dialogue among
civilizations," thereby raising the prestige of the Islamic Republic
in international fora.
He further pointed to Iran's successful implementation of its
policy in dealings with regional states in spite of US efforts to
isolate the country.
Noting that the current global situation would not sustain any
real threat to Iran from the US, Lari noted that America is getting
desperate and is now accusing Iran of entertaining ambitions to
develop a nuclear bomb in order to turn the tide of global public
opinion against Iran.
The interior minister also spoke of the state of the domestic
economy, describing it as "positive," and attributed the country's
7.4 economic growth to the success of its economic policies.
The relatively high GDP growth achieved under the Third Five-Year
Development Plan has led to the creation of 680,000 jobs during the
period, the figure almost double that reported in the Second
Five-Year Development Plan, he concluded.

http://www.irna.ir/en/tnews/030811115735.etn00.shtml

[Pro-Bush]

Iran/Syria=Gulf War 3

[DoctorZIn]

Goodbye my friends!!

me ^ | 08/10/03 | Slater Bakhtavar
Posted on 08/10/2003 10:38 PM PDT by freedom44

For the past year and half i've kept you up to date on the pro-American, anti-government demonstrations in Iran through my ping list. The media has largely ignored, the biggest story to be told this decade (Michael Leeden), but i hope that through my ping list you've had accessibility of learning the truth about the Persian nation.

As Conservative Iranian-American i hope to one day serve you as a Senator pushing through legislation meant to perverse family values, faith, morality, principles, and traditional American values.

A strong step i'm going to be taking is law school in Texas on tuesday. I'll have no more time to keep up with my ping list, but once in a blue moon i'll be checking up on news and updates. So for now i'm going to have to say Goodbye!

I think DoctorZin, F14 pilot and others will everyone up to date on Iran's struggle for freedom.

I hope the next time we speak i'm a Senator speaking to you about our greatest ally in the Middle East, and perhaps in the world (similar to pre-79 days)--Iran!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/961743/posts?page=9

Visit his post and leave a comment to this great guy.

[F14 Pilot]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6494724.htm

[dixiechick2000]

Thanks for the link!

"Today, we have gathered here to tell the people of the world that freedom of the pen in Iran is restricted. Today, the biggest problem of journalists in Iran is absence of justice and freedom," Mohsen Kadivar, a leading reformist cleric and writer, told the audience.

"It's not a source of pride that Iran is known as the biggest jail for journalists in the Middle East ... the way you rulers behave has no consistency with the Quran, which respects the pen," he said, drawing applause from the journalists. The Quran is Islam's holy book."

I pray for his safety.

[dixiechick2000]

Bump!

[F14 Pilot]

Nice Tag Line!

[dixiechick2000]

Thanks! I'n glad you "got" it!

Good to see you in "real" time!

[DoctorZIn]

This thread is now closed.

Join Us at the Iranian Alert -- August 11, 2003 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

Live Thread Ping List | 8.11.2003 | DoctorZin

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[GOPJ]

bump