| Al Jazeera, June 16, 2009 | |||||||
An Iranian state radio channel has reported that seven people were killed after an attack on a military post close to a rally disputing the results of a presidential election. The violence occurred on Monday in the capital, Tehran, amid protests against the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Radio Payam reported on Tuesday. “Several thugs wanted to attack a military post and vandalise public property in the vicinity of Azadi Square,” the radio said, referring to the site of the rally.
“Unfortunately, seven people were killed and several others wounded.” Also on Tuesday, the Iranian authorities arrested two prominent reformists, Saeed Hajjarian and Mohammad Ali Abtahi, their aides said. The arrests came amid mounting unrest in the capital as Mousavi supporters pledged to continue their demonstrations. Ahmadinejad supporters said they too planned a demonstration on Tuesday at the same location, raising the possibility of further clashes between the rival camps. State television reported that Iran’s highest legislative body, the Guardian Council, was willing to recount the votes and that the recount may lead to changes in cadidates’ tallies. Ahmadinejad in Russia The news of the deaths came as Iran’s president arrived in Russia for a security conference, despite the popular protests at home against a vote in which the authorities declared him the winner. Ahmadinejad landed in Yakaterinburg for the Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation (SCO), in which Iran has observer status. “We welcome the fact that elections took place, we welcome the new president on Russian soil and see it as symbolic that he made his first visit to Russia,” Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, told reporters after Ahmadinejad’s arrival. “This allows hope for progress in bilateral relations,” he said. Ahmadinejad’s trip had been scheduled for Monday but he postponed it in the wake of the protests. Violent clashes Initial reports suggested that armed men loyal to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard opened fire during the protest rally in Azadi Square which was attended by tens of thousands of people.
An Associated Press photographer in the square said one person had been shot dead and several others appeared to be seriously wounded.The incident occurred in front of a local base of the Basij, Iran’s volunteer paramilitary force, which had been set ablaze. Many at the rally were supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the election candidate defeated in Friday’s poll. Mousavi addressed the rally, his first public appearance since his defeat. Clashes were reported hours after the demonstration, which was held in defiance of a ban imposed by the interior ministry, began. Police fired tear gas as dozens of protesters set several motorbikes on fire. “There has been sporadic shooting out there … I can see people running,” said a reporter of Iran’s English-language Press TV who was at the demonstration. Peaceful protest The demonstration had been largely peaceful until the shooting. Robert Fisk, a writer and journalist who was observing the rally, told Al Jazeera that he had heard shots being fired and saw demonstrators break into a run, but that things had continued to be largely peaceful. “It’s extraordinary to me that anyone would start shooting at such a huge crowd of people,” he said. “Especially people who have been continuously non-violent all the way from the start of this march, which has of course been prohibited so I suppose that will be the excuse.” Fisk said that not all the protesters were supporting Mousavi and that many were simply making a statement about the vote. “I don’t think they [the demonstrators] are all supporting Mir Hossein Mousavi, they are objecting to the presence of Ahmadinejad as the president. They don’t believe he won those votes,” he said. The official results of the election gave Ahmadinejad 63 per cent of the vote and Mousavi 34 per cent, figures Mousavi has dismissed as a “dangerous charade”. Alireza Ronaghi, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Tehran, said several different police units were at the rally. “There were several kinds of police there; riot police were easily distinguishable from the rest of them with their gear and vests and helmet,” he said. “There were normal police, with their green outfits. There were also plainclothes police who you could only recognise because they were carrying wireless communicators. And there were also others, who were just walking but looked like they didn’t belong to the rally.” Poll backlash Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, on Monday ordered officials to look into the complaints against the veracity of the election. The 12-man Guardian Council said it would rule within 10 days on the two official complaints it had received from Mousavi and Mohsen Rezaie, another losing candidate.
The council, headed by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who endorsed Ahmadinejad before the vote, vets election candidates and must formally approve the results for the outcome to stand.Earlier in the day, about 400 pro-reform students, many wearing green face masks to conceal their identity, gathered at a mosque in Tehran University and demanded Ahmadinejad’s resignation. Iran has faced a growing international backlash over the validity of the polls. Barack Obama, the US president, said on Monday that he was deeply troubled by the post-election violence. Saying the world was inspired by Iranian demonstrators, he added that free speech and the democratic process must be respected. France and Germany summoned the respective Iranian ambassadors to account for events. |
Several killed at Iran rally
June 16, 2009
Former US President Carter: Gazans “are literally starving”Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
June 15, 2009
|
|||
|
Amnesty International cites “shocking” beating of Iran protesters
June 15, 2009Middle East News, June 14, 2009
London/Washington – The human rights organization Amnesty International Sunday condemned reports of excessive violence by Iranian security forces against people protesting the results of Friday elections and called for an investigation.
‘The shocking scenes of violence meted out by the security forces need to be urgently investigated and those responsible for human rights violations must be brought to justice,’ said Hassiba Hadj, an AI official, in a statement e-mailed to dpa in Washington.
Hadj is deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa programme of the London-headquartered organization.
Amnesty International said that at least 170 people were arrested on Saturday as supporters of Iran’s opposition leader Mir-Hossein Moussavi protested the results that declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad re-elected by a 62 per cent majority.
Iranian police said 60 people had been arrested as some protestors threw rocks at store windows and carried out other acts of violence.
Amnesty International said it had reports that plain-clothes security forces used batons to beat and disperse many non-violent individuals, causing many injuries.
The report cited several incidents, saying University of Tehran students had reportedly been chased by 100 riot police. It said police on motorcycles had beat Moussavi supporters who were staging a peaceful sit-in in Tehran’s Vanak Square.
According to the rights organization, protests had spread to other cities including Rasht, Mashahd, Shiraz, Ahwaz, Zahedan and Oroumiye.
‘We deplore that the new presidential term is heralded with widespread abuses,’ the group said. ‘Amnesty International considers anyone arrested simply for demanding transparency and for questioning the results of the election is to be a prisoner of conscience who should be immediately and unconditionally released.’
Obama’s Cairo speech
June 15, 2009
Dr Mahathir Mohamad, chedet.co, June 15, 2009
Finally Obama, the black President of the United States has made his much awaited speech outlining his views and policies on Islam, the Muslims and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a carefully crafted speech and certainly it is different from those of George W. Bush or even other US Presidents.
2. The arrogance and the preachings are out but two things American still stand out, and that is the United States is a world super power and that American loyalty to Israel is undiminished. Other things can change but not these two.
3. Hamas is asked to give up terrorism because like the struggles of the blacks of America and South Africa, violence achieves nothing. This is not quite true, at least with other national struggles for freedom and justice. The white Americans themselves fought a war against the British and another war to prevent the break-up of the United States.
4. Elsewhere the struggles for freedom and justice e.g. the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution just to name two, all involve violence.
5. It is not the Palestinians who choose violence. It was the Jews who violently seized Palestinian land, massacred the Arabs and expelled them from their country. With no one prepared to restrain the Jews, the beleaguered Palestinians had to resort to violence. The world, the United Nations, even fellow Muslims have deserted them.
6. I am against violence but when Israel seized more Palestinian land, build settlements, impose military rule, divide the Palestinians with high walls, barred the Palestinians from using roads built by the Israelis on Palestinian territory, denied the Palestinian right to a homeland, denied the right of return of the expelled Palestinian while upholding the rights of return of Jews who for centuries had been citizens of other countries, labelled Palestinians as terrorists while exonerating the Israelis for the massive attacks on Gaza and other places, left the Palestinians helpless when attacked by the Western-armed Israeli Military Forces, incarcerated thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails, unnecessarily provoke the Palestinians by Sharon’s visit to Jerusalem and many, many more assaults and provocations, is it any wonder that the Palestinians resorted to violence?
7. And now they are asked to stop violence to respect agreements. But what about the Israelis? Shouldn’t they be told to stop their massive violence; shouldn’t they be told to respect agreements and all the UN resolutions, such as those against their setting up settlements on Palestinian soil, the occupation of land beyond the UN set boundaries for Israel?
Netanyahu defies Obama with harsh conditions for Palestinian ‘entity’
June 15, 2009The Times Online/UK, June 15, 2009
(Baz Ratner/Reuters)
Binyamin Netanyahu refused to halt Israeli settlement-building in his speech
Image :1 of 2
Same old, same old on Israeli settlements
June 14, 2009Joel Brinkley | San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, June 14, 2009
It’s a familiar story: An exceeding popular president with a strong electoral mandate decides soon after taking office that, to advance Middle East peace efforts, he must push Israel to freeze construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
“The most significant action Israel could take to demonstrate good faith,” the president says, “would be a settlement freeze.”
As soon as he voices the idea, Israel’s prime minister publicly refuses. Within weeks, reporters discover that settlers are putting up even more new West Bank homes, in defiance of the president’s request. The White House expresses irritation, and the matter passes.
The episode just described took place in 1983, early in the Reagan administration. But look at the early years of almost any administration over the past 30 years, and you’ll discover a similar effort and similar disappointing results. President Jimmy Carter was an outspoken critic of settlements. Shortly after leaving office, he declared: “Settlements are illegal and an obstacle to peace.” At that time, 23,000 Israeli Jews lived in West Bank settlements.
Now it’s President Obama’s turn. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” Obama told an appreciative audience in Cairo this month. “The construction violates previous agreements.”
Well, Mr. President, I wish you luck. You’ll need it.
Why can’t the president of the United States, who authorizes an annual gift to Israel of at least $3 billion, persuade any Israeli government left, right or centrist to stop building settlements? The settlements violate international law, and Israel has agreed, more than once, to freeze settlement growth. The European Union, the United Nations and many other individual states have all inveighed against settlements. No other nation anywhere in the world endorses Israel’s settlement policy. In fact, the majority of Israelis disapprove of continued settlement expansion. And so it has always been.
After Reagan left office, President George H.W. Bush made settlement expansion his signature issue with Israel. At that time, tens of thousands of Soviet Jews were emigrating to Israel, and Jerusalem asked Washington for a $10 billion housing loan.
Bush said repeatedly that Israel would not get the money until it froze settlements. But the prime minister then, Yitzhak Shamir, didn’t even seem troubled.
“Settlement in every part of the country continues and will continue,” Shamir said with his characteristic nonchalant shrug. “They try to link the two things, but no one said aid will end. I don’t think it will happen.”
And he was right. Bush finally relented, late in the 1992 election campaign, when the president feared he could lose the election because he had so angered American Jews and their political allies. And, of course, he did lose.
Shortly after President Bill Clinton took office, in 1993, he cut the loan guarantee by almost 25 percent because Israel was once again refusing to stop new settlement construction. By then, 10 years after Reagan’s effort, 112,000 Israeli Jews lived in the West Bank. After the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993, Israel more or less stopped building new settlements but aggressively expanded existing ones.
President George W. Bush, chastened by his father’s loss to Clinton in 1992, chose not to make much of the settlement issue. The White House called the settlements “unhelpful,” and its “road map” for peace called for a settlement freeze. But when Bush took office 177,000 Israeli Jews lived in the West Bank. When he left, the number approached 300,000.
This month, Obama said “part of being a good friend is being honest” with Israel. Well, I would argue that Carter was honest. So were Reagan, Bush and Clinton. On the settlement issue, it did no good.
A week or so ago, TV news recorded Israeli security officers tearing down an illegal settlement outpost in the West Bank. That tape got a lot of air play. No one was there with a camera that same evening, NPR reported, when settlers came back and put up even more buildings.
Perhaps Obama will be able to do what none of his predecessors has. Maybe he can persuade Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze settlements and to make peace with the Palestinians. Maybe, though I doubt it. The political costs of following through are too high, and the Israelis know that.
Obama does at least seem to be aware of the risks. Asked this month what the president might do if Israel ignored his request, a White House official pointedly noted that holding back loan guarantees “is not under discussion.”
Joel Brinkley is a professor of journalism at Stanford University and a former foreign policy correspondent for the New York Times. To comment to him, e-mail brinkley@foreign-matters.com. Contact us at forum@sfchronicle.com.
Neocons Using Iran Election To Push For War
June 14, 2009
It helps that the neocons in both the United States and Israel made emphatically clear how much they wanted Ahmedinejad re-elected. If they had kept their mouths shut — and pretended that they preferred the moderate Moussavi — they would have a bit more credibility now as they shout that Ahmadinejad’s election justifies an end to diplomacy.
But they didn’t prefer Moussavi; they preferred the thug and said so. The internal contradiction in their argument can be seen in these words from Israel’s very neocon deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon today.
“We had no illusions about these elections in Israel,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, “because on the nuclear issue there was no fundamental difference between the candidates.” Nevertheless, he added, Ahmadinejad’s election removes “any glimmer of hope for change in Iran.”
Got that? Even though there was no difference between the candidates, Ahmadinejad’s “victory” removes “any glimmer of hope….”
Here is Elliot Abrams: “Both the apparent victory and the apparent fraud greatly complicate the Obama strategy. My advice is that they had better be thinking about more sanctions….Sanctions that bite might be a powerful tool and might push the regime into a serious negotiation. But it is more likely that the engagement strategy has been dealt a very heavy blow.
So what do these guys want?
They want confrontation with Iran, no matter who runs the government. Above all, they want President Obama to stop thinking about diplomacy and give Israel the green light to attack Iran that George W. Bush refused to give.
It’s not going to happen that way because the argument for diplomacy, and against war, is as strong after the stolen election as it was before.
America’s interests are the same regardless of the state of democracy in Iran. And those interests (the safety of American troops in Iraq, the survival of Israel and our other allies in the region, the supply of oil, eradicating Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and preventing Pakistan’s collapse, etc) all require us to prevent the neocons from leading us into another debacle — a twin pillar of failure to erect next to the Iraq war.
I’ll leave it to the experts to explain exactly why and how to pursue diplomacy. But for now, here’s my rule of thumb. The neocons are always wrong. They were wrong when they led the American cheering for Ahmadinejad and they are wrong when they lead the moaning over his “victory.” In fact, they have not been right any issue in the 30 years or so since Norman Podhoretz invented neoconservativism.
Neocons are a great and true weathervane. They always point in the wrong direction, the very opposite of a moral compass.
Should the U.S. also suppress evidence of civilian deaths in Afghanistan?
June 15, 2009Glenn Greenwald | Salon.com, Friday June 12, 2009 07:13 EDT
Something that has happened repeatedly in Afghanistan over the last eight years happened yet again this week:
After U.S. Strike, Dispute Over Afghan Deaths
KABUL, Afghanistan — Sharply conflicting reports on an American airstrike this week continued to trickle out Friday from American military and Afghan officials as to whether the attack killed civilians.
The airstrike in Ghor Province in western Afghanistan Tuesday had targeted a local Taliban militant, Mullah Mustafa, but instead killed 10 civilians and 12 insurgents, according to Sayed Iqbal Munib, the governor of Ghor Province.
But American officials Friday said the strike killed up to 16 militants and no civilians.
I obviously don’t know what the truth is about this latest incident, but let’s assume just for the sake of argument that — as has been true so many times before — it is the claim of local Afghan officials, rather than the U.S. military, that is accurate, and Afghan civilians, once again, really were killed by our airstrike.
Continued >>
Share this:
Tags: Afghanistan, civilains killed, Glenn Greenwald, US airstrikes
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, crime, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war, war crimes | Leave a Comment »