Iran: Military intervention in Syria will ‘engulf’ Israel

Any crisis caused by military intervention in Syria would “envelop the Zionist regime,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said Wednesday.

According to the Tehran Times, Larijani was referring to calls by “certain US officials” for a military campaign against President Bashar Assad’s regime following the recent massacre of civilians, many of them children, in the town of Houla.

“US military officials probably have a poor understanding of themselves and regional issues because Syria is in no way similar to Libya, and (the effects of) creating another Benghazi in Syria would spread to Palestine, and ash rising from the flames would definitely envelop the Zionist regime,” Larijani was quoted by the Tehran Times as saying during a speech in parliament.

Sqworld: Beating your kids: Right or wrong?

Good Lord: Body part mailed to Conservative Party HQ

Conservative Party headquarters at 130 Albert Street, Ottawa

Cops are investigating after reports that a body part — possibly a human foot — turned up in a package at the Conservative Party headquarters on Albert St. near O’Connor St.

Ottawa Fire spokesman Marc Messier said he doesn’t know much about the details of the call, except that a woman reported feeling sick after coming into contact with the package.

He said the firefighter hazmat crew and paramedics were called by police.

Messier said hazmat did air monitoring on the 12th floor of 130 Albert St. and isolated 10 people, who have since been released.

More to come.

You know who those rioting Quebec students are just like? Jesus!

You would think that when assessing the brutal silencing of dissent through the ages, the Romans’ crucifixion of Jesus would rank right up there.

But Ryan Fea, a United Church delegate, has news for you: Pontius Pilate had nothing on Quebec Premier Jean Charest. Mr. Fea explained to The Gazette  why the church’s Montreal and Ottawa Conference adopted a motion Sunday denouncing emergency legislation introduced by the Liberal government to address the three-month student strike.

“In our sacred scriptures, we as Christians see Jesus riding on a donkey into Jerusalem, surrounded by his faith community expressing their beliefs, and he did not have to give eight hours’ notice to the Romans,” Mr. Fea said. “He was making a very strong political statement that wasn’t quelled or quashed by his government.”

Revolutionary Guards admits Iran involvement in Syria

Tehran state media immediately remove interview, blame Israel for Syria bomb blasts.

Woman stalked by kangaroo

An Australian woman says she was “stalked” for two days by an angry kangaroo, which finally attacked, leaving her with a 12-inch scar.

“It was lucky it was cool weather and I had two layers of clothing; otherwise it could have been worse,” Kirrily McWilliams said.

The (Sydney) Daily Telegraph reports that McWilliams called the National Parks and Wildlife Services (NPWS) to report that the female eastern gray kangaroo was lurking outside her home, in Port Macquarie in New South Wales. But wildlife officials reportedly told her to simply ignore the kangaroo and that it would move on.

Instead, the kangaroo attacked her 143-pound mastiff dog the next day.

And the day after that, the kangaroo assaulted McWilliams as she was headed out to her car, on the way to pick up her daughter from school. When McWilliams saw the kangaroo approaching to attack, she curled into a ball on the ground.

“If you stand and confront them, they can easily tear you apart because that’s what they do to each other,” she told the paper.

But that wasn’t the end of the animal’s rampage. While McWilliams sat in the hospital recovering from her injuries, the kangaroo attempted to attack her husband. However, he was able to get grab a shovel, which he used to keep the animal at a safe distance.

The NPWS finally issued a 48-hour permit to kill the kangaroo, but it has since disappeared.

“I’m for protecting kangaroos, but there seems to be nothing in place to help people,” McWilliams said. “I had to be injured before they did anything. I have three children, and it could have been one of them.”

The eastern gray kangaroo is a formidable beast and larger than most other species of kangaroo. It can run at speeds up to 35 mph, covering more than 25 feet in a single jump and reaching heights of up to 8 feet. National Geographic reports that man-made water sources in Australia have become a boon to their population, leading to increased packs of the roos, which are perhaps appropriately referred to as “mobs.”

SOURCE

“You are torturing all men!”

Via ROP:

B.O. Outs Navy SEAL Team 6 Leader For Movie

“New documents obtained by a watchdog group show our commander in chief gave the name of a Navy Seal Team 6 commander to the makers of a movie about Osama bin Laden. Valerie Plame, call your office.

Those documents, recently obtained by Judicial Watch, reveal that the Obama administration not only spiked the football and did an end-zone dance after the Navy SEALs dispatched bin Laden from his Club Pakistan abode, but was also willing to expose to the other side our playbook and the name of a SEAL commander.

“These documents, which took nine months and a federal lawsuit to disgorge from the Obama administration, show that politically connected filmmakers were given extraordinary and secret access to bin Laden raid information, including the identity of a SEAL Team 6 leader,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

“It is both ironic and hypocritical,” Fitton noted, “that the Obama administration stonewalled Judicial Watch’s pursuit of the bin Laden death photos, citing national security concerns, yet seemed willing to share intimate details regarding the raid to help Hollywood filmmakers release a movie ‘perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost’ (as described by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd) to the Obama campaign.”

It was a Dowd column that told us of a Sony-produced movie about the raid being put together by the same pair that brought us the Oscar-winning “The Hurt Locker” — screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow.

Disclosing the name of a Navy SEAL Team 6 commander to them under any circumstances and offering his services as a consultant is unconscionable.

A July 14, 2011, meeting transcript reveals that the Defense Department provided the filmmakers with the identity of a “planner, SEAL Team 6 Operator and Commander.” (The name is blacked out in the document.) In proposing the arrangement, Michael Vickers, under secretary of defense for intelligence, said: “The only thing we ask is that you not reveal his name in any way as a consultant because … he shouldn’t be talking out of school.”

Just who, Mr. Vickers, is talking out of school?”

Twitter’s terror handle

Click the image.

Robert Mugabe asked to be UN ‘leader for tourism’

The Zimbabwe president, accused of ethnic cleansing and bankrupting his country, asked to champion tourism.

June 12, 2012: CIJR anniversary gala, with special guest, Melanie Phillips

Oh oh, Kofi Annan to have ‘serious and frank discussions’ with President Bashar Assad

Not kiddin’ around anymore

The terrorist ophthalmologist is in big trouble now……

Burny Farber: Leave Burny Farber alone!

Farber calls the waaaaaambulance!

Bush & Obama together at last: In misunderstanding the Middle East

In one of his first statements since leaving office, former President George W. Bush remarked on Middle East developments in an article, “The Arab Spring and American Ideals,” in the Wall Street Journal, May 18. The former president reflects certain American misconceptions about the Middle East that are starting to blow up big-time in the region.

 Bush writes:

“We do not get to choose if a freedom revolution should begin or end in the Middle East or elsewhere. We only get to choose what side we are on.”

While one should not overestimate U.S. influence, one should also not underestimate it. Consider:

–In the Gaza Strip, by supporting the inclusion of Hamas in elections for which it was not qualified to run (since it had not accepted the Oslo accords), Bush’s own administration ensured that there would be a radical Islamist revolution in the Gaza Strip. This weakened the already dim prospects for any Israel-Palestinian peace process, has already brought one war, and will certainly bring others.

–In Lebanon, by refusing to give strong support to the moderate forces, the last two presidents ensured that the “freedom revolution” in that country would end in an Iran-Syria-Hizballah takeover.

–In Egypt, by taking the side not only of a total overthrow of the regime and even openly and unilaterally supporting the possibility of a Muslim Brotherhood government, the Obama Administration did help ensure that the fundamental transformation of Egypt began with the inevitable end of an anti-freedom Islamist regime.

–In Iran, by ignoring the upsurge of protest following the stolen election, the Obama Administration ensured that a “freedom revolution” didn’t get started there.

–In Syria, by refusing for all practical purposes to help the rebels, the U.S. government ensured that the “freedom revolution” would be defeated. Equally bad, by giving disproportionate help to the Islamists, the administration made it far more likely that if the rebellion succeeded it wouldn’t be a “freedom revolution.”

–And finally, in Libya, the United States and its European allies determined pretty much everything, overthrowing Muammar Qadhafi and determining who would rule the country.

Thus, a simple claim by Bush, which is also about the closest he and his successor would agree on any issue, is easily and can be demonstrably proven false.

New computer virus hits Iran, West Bank in unprecedented cyberattack

Internet security company Kaspersky Lab announced on Monday that it had uncovered a ‘cyber-espionage worm’ designed to collect and delete sensitive information, primarily in Middle Eastern countries.

Kaspersky called the malware, named “Flame,” the “most sophisticated cyber weapon yet unleashed.” It said the bug had infected computers in Iran, the West Bank, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Anarchists attack science

A loose coalition of eco-anarchist groups is increasingly launching violent attacks on scientists.

A group calling itself the Olga Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation International Revolutionary Front has claimed responsibility for the non-fatal shooting of a nuclear-engineering executive on 7 May in Genoa, Italy. The same group sent a letter bomb to a Swiss pro-nuclear lobby group in 2011; attempted to bomb IBM’s nanotechnology laboratory in Switzerland in 2010; and has ties with a group responsible for at least four bomb attacks on nanotechnology facilities in Mexico. Security authorities say that such eco-anarchist groups are forging stronger links.

On 11 May, the cell sent a four-page letter to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera claiming responsibility for the shooting of Roberto Adinolfi, the chief executive of Ansaldo Nucleare, the nuclear-engineering subsidiary of aerospace and defence giant Finmeccanica. Believed by authorities to be genuine, the letter is riddled with anti-science rhetoric. The group targeted Adinolfi because he is a “sorcerer of the atom”, it wrote. “Adinolfi knows well that it is only a matter of time before a European Fukushima kills on our continent.”

“Science in centuries past promised us a golden age, but it is pushing us towards self-destruction and total slavery,” the letter continues. “With this action of ours, we return to you a tiny part of the suffering that you, man of science, are pouring into this world.” The group also threatened to carry out further attacks.

NGO Monitor’s analysis of Amnesty’s 2012 World Report

“The false allegations and double standards in the Amnesty report reflect the employment of Deborah Hyams, whose history of anti-Israel activism is well documented, as a researcher for “Israel, Occupied Palestinian Territories and Palestinian Authority”. In 2008, Hyams was signatory to a letter claiming Israel is “a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land.” In 2002 Hyams “said that while she does not condone suicide bombings, she personally believes they ‘are in response to the occupation.'” Hyams has worked for a number of radical advocacy NGOs, including the Alternative Information Center (AIC), Jews for Justice in Palestine and Israel (JPPI), Rachel Corrie Foundation, and Ma’an Network.”

Six sentenced to death in Pakistan for singing and dancing at a wedding

“It was decided that the men will be killed first, but they ran away so the women are safe for the moment. I have sent a team to rescue them and am waiting to hear some news,” he said, adding that the women had been confined to their homes.

The Power of Cool

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:

When Barack Obama two years ago joked at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that potential suitors of his two daughters might have to deal with Predator drones (“But boys, don’t get any ideas. Two words for you: Predator drones. You will never see it coming.”), the liberal crowd roared. That failed macabre joke would have earned George W. Bush a week of headline condemnation from the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Obama, in fact, has increased those judge/jury/executioner targeted assassinations tenfold during his tenure. But apparently, the combination of Obama’s postracial “cool” and the video-game nature of such airborne death — no CNN clips of charred torsos and smoldering legs, no prisoners with their ACLU lawyers in Guantanamo, no Seymour Hersh exposé on a Waziristan granny who was vaporized for being too near her terrorist-suspect grandson, no American losses for Code Pink and Moveon.org to demonstrate against — earned general exemption for that new liberal way of war. What bothered us about the Predator strikes in 2006–2008 was not the kills per se but the uncool nature of twangy Texan George Bush, who ordered them.

Last week 28-year-old, $17 billion-rich, jeans-clad Mark Zuckerberg took Wall Street for a multibillion-dollar ride, making his original buddies instant billionaires and his loyal larger circle millionaires. Note that there is no Occupy Wall Street protest at Facebook headquarters. Just as there are none at Oprah’s house or the residence of Leonardo DiCaprio, despite their take each year of between $50 and $100 million.

No one has suggested that Hollywood lower movie-ticket prices by asking Johnny Depp or Jennifer Lopez to walk away with $10 or $20 million less a year. Steve Jobs found ways to dodge taxes comparable to those deployed by any Wall Street fatcat, but he was iPad cool, and so his iPhone billions were exempt from the Occupy nonsense. Cool capitalists are immune from the neo-Marxist critique of capitalism — a racket that $40-billion-rich Warren Buffett learned late in life, but well enough, with the “Buffett Rule.”

We simply don’t mind that Google and Amazon rake in billions, but we despise Exxon and Archer Daniels Midland for doing the same. It is not that we need social networking and Internet searches more than food and fuel, but rather that we have the impression that cool zillionaires in flip-flops are good while uncool ones in wingtips are quite bad.

MORE

Did the State Department just create 5 million Palestinian refugees?

“At the heart of the issue is what constitutes a “refugee.” The entire thrust of the Kirk amendment was to challenge UNRWA’s definition, which includes the descendants of refugees — children, grandchildren, and so on. That has resulted in the number of Palestinian “refugees” skyrocketing from 750,000 in 1950 to the 5 million figure quoted by Nides today.

An analysis by the academic journal Refugee Survey Quarterly projected that if that definition remains intact, there will be 11 million Palestinian refugees by 2040 and 20 million by 2060.”

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Israeli Scientists Transform Patient’s Skin Cells into Healthy Heart-Muscle Cells

Israeli scientists for the first time succeeded in transforming the skin cells of heart-failure patients into healthy heart-muscle cells, suggesting that it may be possible to repair the organ with a person’s own tissue.

Peace Activist Mossarat Qadeem Enlists Mothers to Fight Terrorism in Pakistan

Her phone rang at 9 p.m. “Can you come tonight? He’s home.” The voice was anxious. “My son left those extremists he took up with, but maybe just for the night.”

Mossarat Qadeem, a peace activist in Pakistan, considered the dangerous four-hour drive through checkpoints and dark mountain roads into the northern region of the country. “I’ll be with you for breakfast,” she said. “Try to keep him home until morning.”

At 4 a.m., before first light, Qadeem was driving north from Islamabad, through rough rural roads into an area so dangerous that U.N. workers and U.S. soldiers are prohibited from entering. Her goal: to save a boy’s future.

Qadeem is fighting extremism in Pakistan one child at a time, meeting with mothers and their children to discuss the dangers of radical groups. To do so, she left academia several years ago, giving up 13 years of political-science teaching at the University of Peshawar, and focused on gaining the trust of mothers living on the front lines of extremist recruitment. She now runs an aid group called Painam, or “Promise,” to talk with kids and steer them into jobs and away from the false promises of radicals in the Taliban and other groups.

Pat Condell on the filthy Wahhabis

The Moral Idiocy of the United Church

Chair, United Church of Canada working group on Israel/”Palestine” policy, Rev. David Giuliano

A recent high-level United Church of Canada report recommends that the United Church should confirm its hostility to Israel. Written by three prominent United Church officials, the Report of the Working Group on Israel/Palestine Policy endorses Palestinian “resistance” to Israeli occupation.

The church officials do specify that such resistance should be non-violent, but as with much in their report, the call for non-violence means less than it might.

I’ve never worried about United Church ministers strapping on suicide vests and blowing up busses in Jerusalem. But while officially condemning such violence on the part of Palestinians, the United Church also vigorously promotes the Palestinian Kairos Document. Written by Palestinian Christians, the Kairos Document explicitly okays terrorism, calling it “legal resistance.” (More on the Kairos Document here.)

Do ordinary members of the United Church share the anti-Israel obsession of the clique at the top? Not at all. And I think they’d be appalled if they noticed what their leaders were up to.

In the most offensive paragraphs, the report compares the Palestinians to Holocaust victims. Usually, such comparisons come from obvious antisemites. In this case, I think the church officials are simply so self-absorbed, so wrapped up in anti-Israel politics, so shuttered from reality that they’re unaware of their offensiveness, like a four-year-old who’s overheard the word ‘nigger’ and admires his own cleverness as he runs about shouting it.

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32 Syrian children die in artillery attack, says UN

More than 90 people have been killed by regime forces in a district of central Syria, with the head of the UN team in the country confirming at least 32 children and 60 adults were killed the attack.

The assault on Houla, an area northwest of the central city of Homs, is one of the bloodiest single events in Syria’s 15-month-old uprising.

The head of the UN observer team in Syria verified Saturday that at least 32 children under 10 years of age and more than 60 adults were killed in fighting in the center of the country Friday.

Gen. Robert Mood condemned the attack in Houla and called it a “brutal tragedy.” He said observers found artillery tank shells at the site of the fighting.

Activists from the region said regime forces peppered the area with mortars following a large anti-regime protest on Friday.

After the bombardment, pro-government thugs known as shabiha raided the villages, killing men on the streets and stabbing women and children in their houses.

Iran Is Seeking Lebanon Stake as Syria Totters

Iran’s eagerness to shower money on Lebanon when its own finances are being squeezed by sanctions is the latest indication of just how worried Tehran is at the prospect that Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, could fall. Iran relies on Syria as its bridge to the Arab world, and as a crucial strategic partner in confronting Israel. But the Arab revolts have shaken Tehran’s calculations, with Mr. Assad unable to vanquish an uprising that is in its 15th month.

Iran’s ardent courtship of the Lebanese government indicates that Tehran is scrambling to find a replacement for its closest Arab ally.

Islamist Scholars Vow to Fight the Rise of ‘Shiite Tide’ in Egypt

Grand Imam Dr. Ahmed Al-Tayeb

On May 20, representatives from Egypt’s various Islamic political forces and movements participated in a meeting at Al-Azhar, which was led by Grand Imam Dr. Ahmed Al-Tayeb. At the meeting, these groups collectively agreed to categorically refuse all aspects of the “Shiite tide” and the celebrations of the Shiite Husseiniya in Egypt. They stressed that Egypt would remain a stronghold for Sunnis, who number 1.5 billion worldwide.

Infamous, lying, millionaire Canadian terror suspect, Maher Arar, wants an apology from Obama

“Human rights groups in the U.S. have sent a 60,000-signature petition to the White House, urging President Barack Obama to formally apologize to Syrian-born Canadian, Maher Arar, who was deported to Syria from the U.S. under the suspicion of having links to al-Qaeda.”

What you need to know about the liar here.

Life in Timbuktu under Islamist rule

An Islamist militant group has taken control of the fabled city of Timbuktu in northern Mali. Although the city was once a centre of Islamic learning, the group has objected to some local practises.

So what is their agenda? And will they respect the city’s unique literary heritage?

Since seizing the city in March, Ansar Dine has targeted Timbuktu’s precious Muslim heritage.

The shrine of a 15th Century sufi saint Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar has been attacked, according to Lazare Eloundou Assomo of Unesco.

“The entrance gate of the mausoleum was completely destroyed and burnt,” Mr Assomo told the BBC World Service. “The curtain that protected the shrine was destroyed.”

‘Prisoners’

Timbuktu is known as the city of the 333 saints, says Alida Jay Boye, author of Hidden Treasures of Timbuktu.

The fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam objects to the veneration of saints’ tombs, maintaining that it amounts to saint worship.

“Salafis do not want there to be any intermediary between the believer and God. It looks like Ansar Dine is going after shrines just like other groups have done in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia,” she says.

Neil Whitehead, a former hotelier in Timbuktu, has fled to Morocco because of the recent unrest.

He says that conditions are deteriorating in the city.

“The Salafis are turning on the locals, raiding their homes and taking anything of value, together with any food. All shops are shut and, in the words of our friends, ‘everything is broken’,” he said.

“They have introduced a form of Sharia and the locals feel like prisoners in their houses.”

Syria and Lebanon stare into the abyss

The Syrian infection is spreading. Whether Lebanon will be fully set aflame by the violence in its northern neighbor is as difficult to answer as who precisely started the clashes which engulfed at least two Lebanese cities over the past week.

Regardless, the chaos in both countries is growing…..

IDF Official: 20 Kidnap Attempts So Far This Year

A top IDF officer said Thursday that the army has had to deal with ever more aggressive and frequent attempts by Arab terrorists to kidnap IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians. So far this year some 20 kidnap attempts have been recorded in Judea and Samaria, the officer said.

The “hot threat” warnings are no longer limited to a specific time and place, as they had been in the past, but are ongoing, meaning that there is an imminent danger of a kidnapping taking place anywhere at any time of the day. “Terror groups are constantly on patrol looking for situations they can take advantage of,” the officer said. “Their preference is for soldiers, because they feel that can extract the highest ‘price’ for them.”

Canada’s refusal to arrest George W. Bush cited in Amnesty’s human rights report

Canada’s failure to arrest former U.S. president George W. Bush during a visit to B.C. is cited by Amnesty International in its annual report on human rights atrocities around the globe.

The report also takes issue with Canada’s treatment of aboriginal people, refugees and terrorism suspects and its refusal to hold a public inquiry into the arrests of more than 1,000 protesters during the 2010 G8 summit in Toronto.

Canada’s record of alleged human rights violations pales in comparison to the litany of torture, mass executions, and violent suppression of protests cited against countries like Syria and Uganda.

But Amnesty Canada spokesman John Tackaberry says the organization makes no attempt to rate the magnitude or seriousness of human rights abuses among the 155 nations listed in the 2012 report.

Rather, it includes any country in which there’s a “constellation” of violations that cause concern.

PA resumes crackdown on journalists, bloggers

After a two-week lull, the Palestinian Authority has resumed its crackdown on Palestinian journalists and bloggers in the West Bank.

The crackdown, which began three months ago, has targeted journalists and bloggers who reported about corruption cases in PA institutions or posted critical comments on Facebook.

Good news: Swastika mowed in field in Middlesex County, Ontario

A swastika has appeared in a green field in Ontario, Canada.

Google Maps captured the symbol at the location ‘1600 Gainsborough Rd, Middlesex County, Ontario, Canada’.

The shape has been deliberately mowed into the grass surrounding the rural community.

Most vile racists on earth observe World Day for Cultural Diversity

Yes, really:

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is happy to join the international community in the observance of May 21, as the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development as proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 57/249. The Day provides an opportunity for all people of diverse religions and faith and cultural backgrounds to celebrate diversity as a means to live in peaceful cohabitations in a spirit of understanding, tolerance and respect for each other.

The observance of this day serves as a reminder that the global community of the present day which has narrowed distances between communities through technological advancement still remains vulnerable to the agenda of hatred and intolerance pursued by extremist groups in society. In this context, I must mention that one of the major threats to peace in our present times is the growing scourge of Islamophobia. The campaign to distort the peaceful image of Islam and targeting Muslims in different parts of the world to face xenophobic acts, racial discrimination, negative stereotyping and stigmatization, is a matter of concern not only for the Muslim world but for the entire international community. The day therefore should serve as an occasion for all to take a renewed resolve to combat the forces of intolerance and hatred for diversity, including that which is based on religion and faith and to strengthen our determination to develop a culture of peace and respect for living in diversity.

SOURCE

Iranian student activists push Canadian gov to put Iranian Revolutionary Guards on terror list

JERUSALEM POST:

The establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 was the beginning of horror not only for Iranian citizens, but also for the process of peacemaking in the Middle East and the world.

After Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, took power and put in place Islamic laws throughout the country, he formed an opprobrious organization called the “Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

Aside from its primary goal, namely the protection of the Islamic system of Iran, the IRGC’s duty is to prevent uprisings or internal dissident. The IRGC consist of four distinct parts: Paramilitary Brigades; The Basij Militia, a paramilitary police force of 90,000; The Quds Force, a terrorist element; and the Ansar al Mahdi Force, a bodyguard for the senior members of the government and for the nuclear program.

In addition, the IRGC is linked to terrorist activities around the world, and supports terrorist organizations.

Like the Russian KGB or the SS of Nazi Germany, the IRGC are both the agents of order for a harsh ideological regime and its agents of oppression.

In recent years, especially under the government of the inhumane and Holocaust-denying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the IRGC has taken over many aspect of Iranian society; it has influence in the political, social, military and especially economic systems. The organization has turned into a business empire in Iran and is known as one of the wealthiest organizations after the National Iranian Oil Company.

During the early years of the Islamic Republic, the IRGC functioned more like an intelligence service and militia organizer. It was a vital organization for Khomeini, required to suppress his opponents. Later, Khomeini realized that the members of the IRGC were more interested in being involved in Iran’s politics than in defending the Islamic government.

Consequently, he prevented members from participation in politics by sending them to the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War. During the war, the IRGC received great support, including vast sums of money and supplies, from the regime’s clerics. During these years, Rafsanjani (the former president of the regime) who was appointed as the commander-in-chief of the war effort by Khomeini, developed close ties with the IRGC.

It was after Khomeini’s death that the organization became increasingly involved in Iran’s politics and, to an ever-greater degree, economy. When Rafsanjani’s presidency ended and Khatami, a former president of the regime who had promised reforms, came to power, the IRGC became one of the main players in the country’s economy.

One of the most significant actions of the IRGC was to bring an unknown political figure, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to power. Today it plays a key role in important sectors of Iran’s economy, such as oil, gas and other profitable industries. In addition, the IRGC has a great impact on Iran’s foreign relations, and by its presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) promotes various difficulties and creates obstacles for the process of peacemaking in the Middle East.

When it comes to terrorist activities, the IRGC is training terrorists in Lebanon and Yemen; sending paramilitary forces to shore up Syria, fighting alongside Hezbollah, or protecting drug smuggling operations in Latin America. Its Quds Force has worked with many terrorist groups (including liaising with al-Qaida), delivered terrorist attacks on its own and has murdered many Iranian dissidents and exiles around the world.

Some of the significant terrorist activities of the IRGC include the 1983 United States Embassy bombing in Beirut, the 1988 Kuwait Airlines hijacking, the 1992 Israel Embassy attack in Buenos Aires, and most significantly, the explosion of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994.

In addition, the IRGC played an important role during the 2006 Lebanon War and was responsible for firing missiles at Israeli naval vessels.

It further assisted Hezbollah to fire rockets into Israel across the Syrian border.

CANADA IS among the countries that have so far not considered the IRGC to be a terrorist organization. However, Canada has many reasons to put the IRGC on its terrorist list.

1. Canada has evidence that Zahra Kazemi, the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist, was raped and tortured before her 2003 beating death in a Tehran prison. Iran has always refused to release her corpse so an autopsy could be conducted. The IRGC runs Iran’s prisons.

2. Iran supplied weapons and explosives to the Taliban in southwestern Afghanistan, apparently since 2003.

Iranian-supplied material, under the auspices of the IRCG, has probably killed some Canadian soldiers.

3. Hezbollah has used Canada as a base for fundraising and specialist equipment, and their actions directly contributed to the death of a Canadian soldier with the UN in South Lebanon in 2006.

4. Iran has made enough noise about having nuclear weapons for any sober observer to conclude that once they have a working bomb, they will use it. This is a direct threat to many of our citizens living and working abroad, and an indirect threat to us.

5. On November 28, 2011, US District Court Judge John D. Bates handed down a ruling that showed Iran had been responsible for providing material support to al Qaida for the 1998 East African Embassy bombings.

Moreover, Judge Bates’ decision pointed out that Iran had agreed to provide training at Hezbollah camps for al Qaida as early as 1992. Again, Iran would have operated through the IRGC. Al Qaida attacks have killed Canadian citizens and caused massive economic harm to Canada, which is why it is listed as a terrorist entity.

6. Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iran has done its utmost to keep Iraq unstable by pumping in arms and support to different groups.

Again, the Quds force of the IRGC has been implicated in much of this activity.

7. Using the Quds force and IRGC, Iran has stirred up the Shi’ite Houthi tribesmen in Yemen and got them to stage attacks into Saudi Arabia in 2010 and 2011.

8. Members of the IRGC have been used to assassinate many Iranian exiles and dissidents since 1979 in many countries and recently were arrested in the United States for a planned assassination of the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

Finally, although the IRGC plays a key role in the protection of the Islamic Republic of Iran and suppression of Iranian citizens, it also extends the existence of a government that has taken the lives of many innocent individuals through its terrorist activities and brutal actions.

Therefore, we suggest that the IRGC should be named a terrorist organization by the Canadian government and other countries of the world that have so far not done so. In addition, its commanders and, more importantly, all the companies that are owned by the IRGC and their financial managers should be put on the sanction list.

The writers are Iranian student activists in Canada.

Iran killed its own nuclear scientist, pinned it on ‘Mossad spy,’ Arab TV station reports

Alleged Israeli spy Majid Jamali Fashi during his trial in Tehran

TIMES OF ISRAEL:

Iran killed one of its own nuclear scientists but blamed his death on a so-called “Israeli spy” who it executed last week, a leading Arabic news channel reported Wednesday.

Iranian authorities on May 15 executed Majid Jamali Fashi, who was convicted of assassinating nuclear scientist Masoud Ali Mohammadi in a car bombing in January 2010. The New York Times speculated that the assassination of Mohammadi was “part of a shadow war played out between Iran and Israel.”

But Dubai-based news channel Al-Arabiya, quoting Iranian opposition sources, said that Iran used Fashi as a scapegoat to please local public opinion. The opposition sources said they even doubted that Fashi was really executed, noting that the footage of his execution aired on public television was short and blurred.

The sources speculated that Iranian intelligence assassinated Mohammadi, the nuclear scientist allegedly killed by Fashi, because it had discovered that he intended to defect to the West.

Al-Arabiya said that the Israeli passport attributed to Fashi by Iran was so badly forged it “was not becoming of a country capable of building nuclear facilities.”

The channel reported that certain characteristics of the passport indicate that it was issued in the 1990s, not in 2003 as printed on it. Other obvious faults in the travel document include a misplaced passport number and a photo which displays the face tilted to the side rather than directly facing the camera.

“The Mossad would not place an illegal photo on a passport given to an agent in order to travel in Europe and elsewhere, as airport authorities would easily suspect it,” the report claimed.

Emanuele Ottolenghi of Commentary magazine also noted that Fashi is looking away from the camera in the alleged passport and that he appears to be an adult. If the 2003 date was accurate, Fashi would have been 15.

The Harry’s Place blog said that the facsimile displayed by Iranian TV shares exact details with a facsimile of an Israeli passport available through Wikipedia: Both were issued on Nov. 17, 2003 in Netanya.

Iran has repeatedly accused Israel of assassinating nuclear scientists in an attempt to thwart its nuclear program. Israel has not commented on such accusations.

HuffPo’s House Jihadi

A devout Muslim who has praised Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and publicly branded all non-believers as mentally ill “animals” was recently hired to serve as the Huffington Post’s political director in the U.K.

A new bill in Congress could slash the number of Palestinian refugees

A war is brewing on Capitol Hill. And while wars tend to create refugees, this one may result in fewer of them.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) is trying to get a handle on the real number of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East — a move that could result in a change of status for millions of Palestinians. His proposed language for the 2013 foreign appropriations bill would require the U.S. government to confirm just how many Palestinians currently served by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — the body tasked with providing assistance, protection, and advocacy for Palestinian refugees — are actually refugees. The bill, slated for markup on May 22, would challenge the status of the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Palestinian refugees — a great many of whom claim to be refugees despite the fact that they were never personally displaced in the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars.

The aim of this proposed legislation, Kirk’s office explains, is not to deprive Palestinians who live in poverty of essential services, but to tackle one of the thorniest issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: the “right of return.” The dominant Palestinian narrative is that all of the refugees of the Israeli-Palestinian wars have a right to go back, and that this right is not negotiable. But here’s the rub: By UNRWA’s own count, the number of Palestinians who describe themselves as refugees has skyrocketed from 750,000 in 1950 to 5 million today. As a result, the refugee issue has been an immovable obstacle in round after round of negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

How have these numbers swelled, particularly as the Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes in 1948 and 1967 grew old and died? This question lies at the crux of the Kirk amendment. And the answer is UNRWA.

The knock on UNRWA is that it exists to perpetuate the refugee problem, not solve it. It was UNRWA that bestowed refugee status upon “descendants of refugees,” regardless of how much time had elapsed. As a result, the Palestinian refugee population has grown seven-fold since the start of the Arab-Israeli conflict. As one study projects, if descendants maintain their current status, the number of “refugees” in 2020 will be 6.4 million — despite the fact that few of the actual, displaced Palestinians will still be alive. In 2050, that number will reach 14.7 million.

UNRWA, which calls for a “just and durable” solution to the refugee problem, has unquestionably been a silent partner to the Palestinian leadership. The agency’s administration fully understands that if Israel accepted the PLO’s demand, it would be demographic suicide. As Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas himself has admitted, asking the Jewish state to repatriate 5 million Palestinians “would mean the end of Israel.”

UNRWA’s warts notwithstanding, American taxpayers have rewarded it year after year. In the 2011 fiscal year, U.S. assistance to UNRWA stood at $249.4 million. Total contributions since its founding in 1949 amount to a staggering $4.4 billion.

In recent years, politicians and policy wonks, including one former UNRWA administrator, have called for UNRWA reform. The agency hasn’t merely demurred; it has girded for battle. UNRWA set up shop in Washington with two Hill-savvy professionals, despite the fact that its operations are entirely based in the Middle East, anticipating the need for what looks a full-scale lobby effort to defend its mission. The agency even toyed with changing its name last year in an attempt to burnish its image in the West.

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Iran: Eurovision is totally gay

Iran has withdrawn its ambassador from Azerbaijan after clerics criticised Baku’s hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest, further souring relations between the Islamic Republic and its secular neighbour.

Iran’s withdrawal of its ambassador, for consultations in Tehran, comes after months of accusations by the two countries of meddling in each other’s affairs and as the western-allied, mostly Shi’ite Muslim Azerbaijan is about to host a hugely popular international talent show.

Azerbaijan’s hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest – a flamboyant annual pageant of pop music from around Europe – has been condemned by some Iranian clerics and lawmakers who have referred to a “gay parade” – although no such event is planned.

A senior Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Sobhani, issued a statement urging Muslims in the region to protest what he described as anti-Islamic behaviour by Azerbaijan’s government.

“We heard that the government of Azerbaijan is hosting the international Eurovision Song Contest and that during this contest there will also be a gay parade,” the semi-official Fars news agency quoted the cleric as saying.

Iran was angered by subsequent anti-Iranian protests in the Azerbaijan capital Baku, where demonstrators carried pictures of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and banners that read “Azerbaijan does not need clerics-homosexuals!”

The latest spat between the countries that share a religion but have sharply different political systems is part of wider diplomatic tensions.

Iran has accused Azerbaijan of assisting Israel in what it says was the Jewish state’s assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Azerbaijan, for its part, arrested dozens of people this year on suspicion of links with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and of plotting attacks on targets that included the Israeli ambassador.

SHOWCASE

Azerbaijan won the right to host the contest by winning last year’s event in Germany, and sees the annual event watched by millions of television viewers as a chance to showcase the country. The final is scheduled for Saturday.

“I do not know who got this idea into their heads in Iran,” said Ali Hasanov, head of the public and political issues department in Azeri President Ilham Aliyev’s administration.

“We are hosting a song contest, not a gay parade.”

The song contest has cast a spotlight on Azerbaijan’s human rights record and exposed tension over religion. Azeri officials in private blame Iran for Islam’s growing influence in the officially secular country.

Hackers calling themselves Cyberwarriors for Freedom attacked official websites of the contest on Thursday and posted an Azeri-language message demanding Azerbaijan “stop carrying out Eurovision 2012 in Baku and not allow gay parades”.

Residents of Baku last week found in their mailboxes leaflets and a video disc condemning the contest and what the materials called a gay pride march.

The videos tell the stories of Muslim martyrs, accuse the government of closing mosques and informally banning head scarves in schools, and warn of natural disasters.

SOURCE

Time to Vet Private Lives of Journalists

“We now have three instances of three individual Politico writers digging up and publishing political oppo-research about the private lives of private citizens who don’t support Obama, and the motive behind these attacks can only be for two reasons:

1. To change the narrative of effective criticism of Obama to the less flattering moments of the private lives of these individuals.

2. To intimidate and frighten others who might consider supporting a candidate not named Obama.

So desperate is the media to Palace Guard for their Precious One that everyday Americans who dare ask Obama a question he flubs, appear in a Romney campaign ad, or donate to a pro-Romney super PAC, are now considered fair game.

But if this is the new MSM standard, what are those of us in New Media to do? In a perfect world we wouldn’t be faced with this question because in a perfect world the media has integrity and would never even consider attacking and intimidating private citizens.

But the world isn’t perfect and Politico’s lack of human and journalistic integrity begs a question…

If the media says the private lives of private citizens are now fair game, aren’t journalists private citizens?

Actually, journalists, in my opinion, are not private citizens. In fact, I believe they hold a public position of power, trust, and responsibility more important to our democracy than some private citizen who asks Obama a perfectly fair question, appears in a Romney ad, or donates to a super PAC.”

Audio: Ahmadinejad, Farrakhan & The Black Panthers form “beast axis”

The Nation of Islam, the New Black Panthers, a rouge Iranian regime with nuclear capabilities and fifty radical Imams collude atop a Manhattan hotel. Sounds like a great setup to a Tom Clancy novel.  However, this meeting actually happened and the alliance was forged between the groups against their ‘common enemy’ is very real.

National Black Panther Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz gave chilling remarks on Black Panther Radio Saturday detailing the nature and business of a secretive meeting between himself, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Minister Louis Farrakhan and ‘fifty’ Imams. The meeting, according to Shabazz, took place on September 27, 2010 in New York, NY during the Iranian president’s controversial visit to the UN. The details of the meeting have never been publicly revealed, but in new audio uncovered by The Blaze this week, Shabazz details the nature of this monsters’ ball and the scary, ‘Beast’ axis that was formed during the meeting

Cronkite and the Roots of Media Bias

An essential element of the mainstream media’s myth about its own impartiality is the notion that before Fox News came along we were living in a golden age of broadcast news reporting. The days when national news was the dominion of three networks and a few major newspapers is portrayed as Eden before the fall, an era when partisanship of the kind that is now both familiar and expected was unknown. A key element to this fairy tale is the idea that the journalistic icons of the time, like CBS’s Walter Cronkite, were Olympian figures who would never stoop to play favorites or inject ideology into the news.

But this view is totally false. As media news analyst Howard Kurtz writes in the Daily Beast, a new biography of Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley spills the beans on the godlike anchorman’s unethical practices, including blatant partisanship that would make the conservative talkers on Fox and the liberals on MSNBC blush. While Kurtz still admires Cronkite in spite of his flaws, the problem here is not just that god had feet of clay after all. It’s that the truth about Cronkite throws the entire narrative of the liberal mainstream media under the bus. It wasn’t Fox that poisoned the well of journalism, as former New York Times editor Bill Keller recently alleged. Fox and other such outlets were brought into existence in an effort to balance a journalistic establishment that was already tilting heavily to the left. The real sin here is not bias or even partisanship but the pretense of fairness that Cronkite exemplified.

10 Reasons to Abolish the UN

“The Iranian nation is standing for its cause and that is the full annihilation of Israel”

“Just in case anyone doubts the intentions of the Iranian mullahcracy if they start producing nuclear weapons, the top-ranking military officer in the regime made it clear yesterday.”

RIP Robin

Israel to Hizbullah: Next Time We Fight to Win

This week AFP published an important reportthat shouldn’t slip under the radar.

It quotes a “senior military official in Israel’s northern command” saying that, while Hizbullah may not want another war with Israel, Iran would order it to attack Israel in case of an Israeli strike on Iran. In that case, says the official, the Israel-Hizbullah clash would go “much faster” than the 2006Second Lebanon War.

That conflict, which lasted 34 days, ended with Hizbullah somewhat shaken by the prowess shown by Israel’s air force, mainly in the war’s opening days when it took out Hizbullah’s long-range rocket launchers in Beirut.

But it also ended with Hizbullah still essentially in control of southern Lebanon. Since then—despite halfhearted efforts by a beefed-up UNIFIL—Hizbullah has only tightened its grip not only over the south but over Lebanon as a whole.

And most problematically, it has kept importing Iranian rockets, missiles, and other weaponry via Syria, and now—UNIFIL or no UNIFIL—has over 50,000 rockets and missiles that, as Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasts, can hit any part of Israel.

Those considerations—the inconclusive results of the 2006 war and the power Hizbullah has amassed since that time—are undoubtedly what leads the senior military official to tell AFP that another conflict would be “much shorter, much faster…. The most important mission today is to win decisively in any kind of war in Lebanon. If you win, you win—everybody sees it.”

The official then cites what he says will be Israel’s “biggest challenge,” namely:

Hezbollah’s positioning of weapons in the heart of civilian areas in around 100 Lebanese towns and villages along the border.

“In the villages there are three-story houses: on one floor there are rockets, then there is a family on the next floor, then a (military) headquarters then another family. The people that live there are human shields….

“Every Shiite village has become such a compound. The great challenge will be to deal with all these compounds.”

Indeed, last year Israel released declassified maps to the Washington Post showing part of Hizbullah’s network of military facilities in southernLebanon. It was a way of signaling that Israel knows where these are and is capable of hitting them if necessary.

But apart from the operational aspect, what Hizbullah means to confront Israel with—by ensconcing itself in the homes of families, thereby dissolving any distinction between fighters and civilians, gun-toting warriors and mothers and babies—is a “moral” challenge.

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U.S., allies accelerating plans to secure chemical arsenal in Syria

The Obama administration is accelerating its planning with Middle Eastern allies for a series of potentially fast-moving crises in Syria in the coming months, including the possible loss of government control over some of the country’s scattered stocks of chemical weapons, U.S. and Middle Eastern security officials say.

The planning, involving intelligence and military officials from at least seven countries, includes detailed arrangements for securing chemical arms with special operations troops in the event that parts of Syria are seized by militants, the officials said. Western and regional intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Islamic extremists could attempt to seize control of whole towns and districts if the country slides into full-scale civil war.

How Much Is Mahmoud Abbas Worth? Try $100 Million

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has just discovered what every Palestinian child knows — that hundreds of millions of dollars had been embezzled during the era of Yasser Arafat.

The “discovery”, however, was not the result of a thorough and long investigation ordered by Palestinian leaders in Ramallah with the hope of restoring public funds.

Instead, it came after one of Arafat’s most trusted aides, Mohammed Rashid, threatened to expose corruption scandals in the Palestinian Authority.

U.S. lawmakers want to halt aid to nations hosting Sudan’s Bashir

A U.S. House of Representatives committee voted early Friday to cut off economic aid to any country that hosts Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and other crimes.

The provision is not yet law, and could change as foreign aid legislation moves through Congress this year. It was approved by the House Appropriations Committee as part of that legislation, which would slash spending on the U.S. State Department and foreign assistance by some 9 percent.

The legislation denies some aid the Obama administration sought for Pakistan, places conditions on some spending in Afghanistan and rejects a special fund that President Barack Obama wanted to set up for “Arab spring” countries.

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