UN expanded talks with Iran

Remember that old song 'You talk too much'?...This story reminds me of it.

Senior UN officials are holding a third round of talks in Tehran to discuss Iran's nuclear programme.

In July, the two sides announced a two-month arrangement aimed at clearing up outstanding questions and giving the IAEA better access to nuclear sites.

Under threat of further UN sanctions, Iran appears anxious to co-operate and has kept to the timetable it agreed with the UN, a BBC correspondent says.

Ledeen on 'talking to Iran'

Good article here. Some excerpts:

For some time now, the chattering classes have debated whether the United States should negotiate with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both sides have endowed the very act of negotiating with near-mythic power.

The advocates suggest that "good relations" may emerge, while opponents warn it is somehow playing into the mullahs' hands. Both seem to believe that the three recent talks in Baghdad are historically significant, since they are said to be a departure from past practice.

That claim is false. Every administration since Ayatollah Khomeini's seizure of power in 1979 has negotiated with the Iranians. Nothing positive has ever come of it, but most every president has come to believe that a "grand bargain" with Tehran can somehow be reached, if only we negotiate well enough....

...The current administration has maintained the pattern. Despite a considerable volume of criticism of the mullahs, and open warnings of undefined consequences if Iran did not become more cooperative, various American officials and the usual private emissaries have explored the possibilities of better relations.

In 2001 and early 2002 we negotiated the future of Afghanistan after the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban, and although some diplomats praised Iranian "cooperation," military intelligence had hard evidence that the mullahs had sent killers into Afghanistan to attack our troops. Meetings were subsequently held with Iranian representatives in Geneva and Cyprus, and just last September, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Mr. Gonzales to try again. He returned to Tehran, and emerged empty-handed.

The current negotiations are thus part of a well-established pattern. If anything, there is far less reason for optimism than in the past, since our knowledge of Tehran's war against us--notably in Iraq and Afghanistan--is broader and deeper than before. The Europeans' failure to make any progress at all in their diplomatic efforts to convince Tehran to abandon its nuclear weapons program should further convince an honest observer that the mullahs intend to build an atomic arsenal and use it against us and our allies.

As Jonathan Swift put it, you cannot reason a man out of something that he did not reason his way into. The Iranian war against the U.S. rests upon fanatical convictions, and Tehran has no interest in resolving it at a conference table.

Iran authorities lash man for having bible in car

And this is the place that so many mainstream media organizations call a 'democracy' - get real.

Iranian authorities in Tehran lashed a man on his back earlier this year for having a bible in his car, an Iranian Christian group said in a report on its website on Friday.

The man was only identified by the initials A. Sh.

On 5 May, the man, driving his vehicle, was involved in a road accident with a car belonging to security guards for a government official in Tehran.

A bible and a video of Jesus Christ were found in the man's possession upon inspection of his vehicle by the state security forces (SSF).

A. Sh. admitted to being Christian, prompting the security agents to beat him up, the report said. He was arrested and taken to a holding cell in Detention Centre 102.

During interrogation security agents accused the man of converting from Islam to Christianity, a practice banned under Iran's strict theocratic laws.

He was subsequently subjected to lashes on the back and underwent physical and psychological torture, the report added.He was released two days later after his family made bail.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards join US terrorist list

That's good news - hopefully the US can be more active against them now...

The Washington Post and New York Times are reporting that the US is preparing to "designate" Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a foreign terrorist organisation allowing it to target the organisation's finances among other things.

The Guards work independently of Iran's armed forces and have long been connected to many terror organisations in the Middle East most notably Hezbollah in the Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza.

More recently the US and Britain have accused Iran of using them in Iraq and Afghanistan to supply the insurgents and Taliban with weapons and training.

That said this move is a provocative one as the Guards are still an officially sanctioned unit of the Iranian state even if they are more a clerics private army. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is said to be behind the move, according to the New York Times.

iran-us@war.com

Video: Iranian girl shot down by the mullahs' henchmen

Iran: Release Mansour Ossanlu and Mahmoud Salehi and help end legalised discrimination against independent trades unions

Amnesty Int'l reports. What a shame, this guy seemed to genuinely be trying to fight against the regime...

In support of the International Day of Action for Mansour Ossanlu and Mahmoud Salehi on 9 August 2007, Amnesty International joins voices with the ITUC and ITF in calling for the two men to be released immediately and for any charges that have been levelled against them in connection with their peaceful and legitimate trades union work to be dropped.

Mansour Ossanlu, head of the Union of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, and Mahmoud Salehi, Spokesperson for the Organisational Committee to Establish Trade Unions and former head of the Saqez Bakers’ Union, are trades union leaders who have been detained on vaguely worded charge in order to halt their efforts to build strong trades unions capable of defending the human rights of workers against the discriminatory laws and practices that curtail workers’ rights in Iran.

Securing freedom for Mansour Ossanlu and Mahmoud Salehi will help independent trades unions move beyond the discriminatory ‘gozinesh’, or selection, regulations that enable the Iranian authorities to decide who is able to form trades unions and seek employment in a range of sectors.

Michael Ledeen: On the brink...

Good article, which can be found in full here.

Some excerpts are below...

President Bush is annoyed that Afghan President Karzai and Iraqi President Maliki are both speaking about Iran in words reserved for an ally, rather than the main engine driving the terror wars in their countries. But if you look at the world through their eyes, it is easy enough to understand. They fear that the Americans will soon leave, and the Iranians will still be there. They know that Iran is a mortal threat, and they are now making a down payment on the insurance costs that are sure to come if the Democrats in Washington have their way. For extras, Maliki has certainly noticed that the United States is paying off the Middle Eastern Sunnis, hoping that the Saudis, Jordanians, and Gulf States will manage to contain Iran in the future. This cannot be good news in Baghdad, where the Shiites are struggling to put together a government capable of managing the country's myriad crises....

...That the Iranians are at the heart of the region's violence is proven most every day. So while Karzai was publicly kissing up to Tehran, Colonel Rahmatullah Safi, the head of the border police along the Iranian frontier, told the London Times "it is clear to everyone that Iran is supporting the enemy of Afghanistan, the Taliban," and U.S. Army Colonel Thomas Kelly confirmed that the infamous EPFs, the new generation of explosive devices that can penetrate most American armor, are now coming into Afghanistan. Col. Kelly notes that these devices "really are not manufactured in any other place to our knowledge than Iran."

The same holds true in Iraq, where these devices accounted for a third of American combat deaths in July (99 such attacks were directed against us--an all-time high). General Odierno blamed 73 percent of attacks on Iranian-supported Shiite terrorists....

...In simple English, there is so much poverty in Iran that the minister wants to change the reporting requirements so that nobody can really know the full dimensions of the Iranian people's misery. Even their current language (what is "the absolute poverty line" anyway?) is designed to mislead.

Iranians are not stupid people; they know they are ruled by tyrannical incompetents. Listen to the words of one Reza Zarabi, in the August 5 Jerusalem Post: "Iranians have become accustomed to dictators, yet an incompetent despot that bases his economic policies on the future benevolence of the coming Islamic Messiah is another thing altogether. . . It is quite remarkable for such economic damage and global ridicule to be heaped upon a nation in (so) short a time. Yet the policies of the current Iranian administration have left nothing for the imagination."

I ask you, is this not a perfect description of a revolutionary situation? And you reply: So why aren't we doing anything about it? Which, I think, is precisely the question our military leaders in Iraq, and the people of Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, are aiming at Washington.

Update

Hi all,

I am still extremely busy and have not been able to update the site for a while now. Hopefully work will calm down and I'll be able to get back to blogging!

NtB

Update

Hi all,

I am still here, but just extremely busy and have had no time to keep the site updated for the past 4-5 days. I will try my best to update it throughout the coming days, but not making any promises at this point.

As usual, please send me any news that you think I'd find interesting.

All the best,

NtB

Are these people (the BBC management) serious? Melanie Philips asks...

Nice little (and very appropriate) stab at the BBC from Melanie on her blog.

The BBC is apparently in crisis. We are told that its top brass take very, very seriously the blow to its integrity delivered by the recent series of scandals involving the reversed footage of the Queen and the phone-in scams. Yet the Chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons, whose whereabouts when the furore exploded on July 19 in New Zealand were revealed when his phone-line went down in the middle of his interview on the BBC Radio Four Today Programme, appears therefore to have conducted his stern encounter the previous day with the Director-General, Mark Thompson — in which we were told Thompson was summoned to explain the BBC’s behaviour — in a long-distance telephone call. Some stern summons. Now we read today that the Commons Culture Select Committee, which was due to grill Mr Thompson yesterday, had to make do instead with his deputy, Mark Byford, since Mr Thompson had gone off on a family holiday - forcing the committee to listen incredulously as Byford declared that every BBC employee would be sent on courses teaching them about the importance of not lying to the public. Thus the BBC’s response.

Like Macavity, it seems, Mr Thompson is never there to face the music in person. What does this tell us about the seriousness with which the BBC takes this fundamental blow to its integrity?

Cuban doctors head for the US - Michael Moore must be upset now...

Good article from Gateway Pundit about the reality of Cuba, and not the illusions which the left would have everyone believe.

Hundreds of "Sicko" Doctors Flee Island Paradise For US

Michael Moore's favorite doctors are resisting those lucrative $15 per month wages and fleeing to the US.

Jacob Laksin at Front Page Magazine has some stunning figures for Sicko propagandist Michael Moore on his Cuban health care system...

...The doctors have a hard time making ends meet on $15 monthly wages on the Island Paradise...

France summoned the Iranian regime's charge d'affaires

More positive signs coming out of France, but unlikely they'll actually do anything (in policy or action against the mullahs)...they're getting too much free oil still.

The charge d'affaires was summoned by the ministry Wednesday at the request by Rama Yade, French minister of state in charge of foreign affairs and human rights, according to a ministry statement.

During the meeting, "we took the opportunity to express our extreme preoccupation and underscored our opposition to the death penalty, our commitment for its universal abolition, our commitment to see that Iranian authorities uphold the 2002 moratorium against stoning, our appeal that no one should be condemned to stoning," according to the statement.

France condemns the execution of 12 Iranians, which occurred on July 22 and is "particularly concerned" with the fact that on July 10 an Iranian official announced that sexual orientation was one of the charges brought against those who were executed, according to the statement.

On July 5, 2007, an Iranian man was condemned to die by stoning after being convicted of adultery, according to the same source.

Iran hangs man in public

Another day, another death by mullah.

Ayatollahs’ lobby In Washington offering human rights as a negotiating item

Interesting article on how the mullahs' lobbyists use human rights as a bargaining tool.

Binding accountability for Iran’s suppression of its population to nuclear issues and Iran’s meddling in Iraq amounts to doing the bidding of the ruling ayatollahs.

The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and its president Trita Parsi have organized a panel in the US House of Representatives on July 26th, 2007, titled “Human Rights in Iran and US Foreign Policy Options.”1 According to the published agenda, representatives from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch will participate. The sponsors of the program (NIAC and Trita Parsi) are key players in the lobbying enterprise of Tehran’s ayatollahs in the United States. The Iranian regime’s violations of human rights have reached unprecedented levels. Its barbaric suppression of women, workers, students and dissidents, and the stoning of a man after 11 years of imprisonment, have been the subject of broad international condemnation. The reason Iran’s lobby is organizing the program is twofold:

1. To present “human rights” as a negotiating item on the “engagement” table with hopes of having human rights entities argue for Tehran-friendly rapprochement, easing of sanctions, and tolerance of a nuclear Iran. In a nut shell, the lobby’s message is that the more the West pressures the regime, the more violent it becomes; hence, lift the pressure.

2. To keep the Ayatollahs’ friends and inner circle in control of international reaction to Tehran’s human rights abuses.

The Iranian regime’s lobby has continuously tried to justify Iran’s clerical behavior and especially its record of human rights violations, by arguing that its causes are external factors and coercive US policies. If Iranian-American scholars are arrested, blame the US administration for allocating funds for Iranian activists. If Ahmadinejad has embarked on a policy of total repression inside the country and antagonism abroad, blame the US administration for the famous axis of evil speech and not supporting Khatami.