(Surely Imam Obama will soon issue a fatwa proclaiming that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not Islamic. Right? Meanwhile the P5+1 Iran Scam continues unabated. — DM)
Hassan Rouhani / AP
Iran executed a record-shattering 411 citizens in the first half of 2014 and a total of 852 people in the last 15 months, including at least eight juveniles, according to a new United Nations report that will be introduced to the organization’s General Assembly Tuesday.
In addition to a surge in state-sanctioned killings that a U.N. official referred to as “shocking,” Iran continues to torture imprisoned individuals using techniques such as amputation, electroshock, flogging, and burnings, according to the report, which details human rights in the Islamic Republic.
Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N.’s special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, described the situation in the country as “shocking” and pushed countries such as the United States to finally speak up about it.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who was hailed by the Western media as a “moderate,” has not lived up to promises to reform the judicial system, Shaheed told reporters on Monday.
Rouhani “is unable to address the issues, unable to arrest this trend, to convert his promises which spoke to arresting this trend into action,” Shaheed, who is barred from entering Iran, was quoted as telling reporters on Monday.
Executions in particular have hit record levels in Iran, according to the report.
“Between July 2013 and June 2014, at least 852 individuals were reportedly executed, representing an alarming increase in the number of executions in relation to the already-high rates of previous years,” the report states. “The government also continues to execute juvenile offenders.”
Human rights organizations have put the number of those executed during Rouhani’s term at 967, while Iranian opposition groups have claimed it surpasses 1,000.
Iranian authorities over the weekend carried out the execution of a 26-year-old female rape victim who had killed her attacker in a violent struggle.
Multiple Iranian refugees who have fled the country reported being tortured during stints in Iranian prisons, according to the report.
Many were subjected to “psychological and physical torture” meant to elicit false confessions of crimes, according to the report.
Others who spoke to the U.N. “reported torture and ill-treatment and psychological abuse, such as prolonged solitary confinement, mock executions, and the threat of rape, along with physical abuse, including severe beatings, use of suspension and pressure positions, electroshock, and burnings,” according to the report.
Prisoners also faced “amputation and corporal punishment,” such as flogging, according to the report.
Democratic rights such as freedom of expression also were reported to have led to executions in Iran, a development the report dubs “deeply troubling.”
“Members of ethnic minority groups, in particular those espousing ethnocultural, linguistic or minority religious rights, appear to be disproportionately charged with moharebeh [‘enmity against God’] and mofsed fel-arz [‘corruption on Earth’], sometimes seemingly for exercising their rights to peaceful expression and association,” the report states.
Iran is gearing up to further crack down on democratic displays.
Draft laws in existence “appear to further undermine the rights to freedom of expression” and will facilitate “discrimination against women” by rolling back protection against forced marriage and education rights, according to the report.
Women in Iran continue to face great oppression and state-sanctioned violence.
At least 66 percent of Iranian women reported being a victim of domestic violence, with the current legislative framework in the country being “insufficient to combat such violence,” according to the report.
“Laws continue to explicitly allow for non-consensual sexual relations in marriage,” the report found. “There are insufficient safe houses for women in need of refuge.”
Any Iranian women seeking to leave an abusive relationship, for instance, must “first prove that there is a significant risk of bodily harm or a threat to her life,” the report explains.
Moreover, under Iranian civil code, women seeking to obtain a divorce as a result of domestic violence must first prove that the abuse was intolerable,” the report says.
Restrictions on the Internet in Iran also continue to grow.
“Severe content restrictions” continue to be imposed and many who skirt the laws can face harsh prosecution, according the report, which put the number of blocked websites at 5 million.
When confronted by the U.N. about this, Iran maintained that it, “(like many countries) blocks all immoral websites in the arts or social groups,” according to the report.
The head of Iran’s human rights council over the weekend dismissed the U.N. report.
“Our first problem is that they should explain why [the U.N. wants to send] a special rapporteur, what has happened in Iran that they have appointed a special rapporteur and why this rapporteur is needed for Iran and not for other countries,” Javad Larijani was quoted as saying on Sunday by Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency.
Larijani accused the United Nations of fabricating information about the country’s human rights record.
Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns.
Although the definition references “abnormal mental or behavioral patterns” [emphasis added], the behaviors here involved have become increasingly “normal.” Multicultural linguistics are part, but only part, of the problem.
Insane responses to Iran nukes, terrorism support and human rights
As the P5+1 negotiations continue under Obama’s guidance, Iran appears increasingly likely to get or keep nukes. Iran knows Obama.
The Iranian president’s senior advisor has called President Barack Obama “the weakest of U.S. presidents” and described the U.S. leader’s tenure in office as “humiliating,” according to a translation of the highly candid comments provided to the Free Beacon. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
And with the deadline quickly approaching on talks between the U.S. and Iran over its contested nuclear program, Younesi’s denigrating views of Obama could be a sign that the regime in Tehran has no intent of conceding to America’s demands.
. . . .
“Americans witnessed their greatest defeats in Obama’s era: Terrorism expanded, [the] U.S. had huge defeats under Obama [and] that is why they want to compromise with Iran,” Younesi said.
. . . .
“We [the Islamic Republic] have to use this opportunity [of Democrats being in power in the U.S.], because if this opportunity is lost, in future we may not have such an opportunity again,” Younesi said. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
The criticism of Obama echoes comments made recently by other world leaders and even former members of the president’s own staff, such as Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Do enough of us, and of perhaps greater importance enough of our “leaders,” know Him as well as Iran does?
The P5+1 negotiations were a scam from the beginning and the scam continues, enhanced by perceived needs to work with the (Shiite) Islamic Republic of Iran to degrade the Sunni (but “non-Islamic”) Islamic State and otherwise to “degrade” terrorism.
The Iranian government is well known for its funding of terrorism. The U. S. Government has long been well aware of it.
The United States State Department describes Iran as an “active state sponsor of terrorism.”[2]US Secretary of StateCondoleezza Rice elaborated stating, “Iran has been the country that has been in many ways a kind of central banker for terrorism in important regions like Lebanon through Hezbollah in the Middle East, in the Palestinian Territories, and we have deep concerns about what Iran is doing in the south of Iraq.”[1]
So is the Obama Administration.
In July 2012, the United States State Department released a report on terrorism around the world in 2011. The report states that “Iran remained an active state sponsor of terrorism in 2011 and increased its terrorist-related activity” and that “Iran also continued to provide financial, material, and logistical support for terrorist and militant groups throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.” The report states that Iran has continued to provide “lethal support, including weapons, training, funding, and guidance, to Iraqi Shia militant groups targeting U.S. and Iraqi forces, as well as civilians,” despite pledging to support the stabilization of Iraq, and that the Qods Force provided training to the Taliban in Afghanistan on “small unit tactics, small arms, explosives, and indirect fire weapons, such as mortars, artillery, and rockets.” The report further states that Iran has provided weapons and training to the Assad regime in Syria which has launched a brutal crackdown on Syrian rebels, as well as providing weapons, training, and funding to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, among others, and has assisted in rearming Hizballah. [Emphasis added.]
Iran is also remarkable for its failure to provide even minimal human rights. For example, it has been reported that Iran executed more than four hundred people during the first half of 2014. That’s more than two per day.
Despite Iran’s state anti-Semitism, the recent arrest of U.S. journalists, and the continued oppression of women, the Obama administration has been attempting a rapprochement with the Iranian regime. Fending off Iran hawks in Congress and the D.C. punditocracy, the administration has argued for a policy of constructive engagement, pursuing diplomacy over military action to halt Iran’s nuclear program. The execution of two gay men, while it may not be surprising, certainly doesn’t make that “engagement” any easier.
Iran’s cooperation also is seen as essential to managing the chaos in Iraq and the Islamic State. With U.S. airstrikes against the Sunni militants, on-off (now definitely off) support of Iraq’s Shiite (ex-) Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the possible disintegration of Iraq, this cooperation—or at least not overt opposition—is surely of more strategic importance than the latest human rights abuse. [Emphasis added.]
Iran’s support for terrorism, abysmal violation of even the most basic human rights — and what these Iranian characteristics suggest that Iran is likely to do with its nukes — appear to be deemed of no importance by the P5+1 negotiators.
Domestic terrorism
Terrorism is often labeled “workplace violence,” a “traffic accident“ or just about anything but Islamic. This is from Jihad Watch:
A traffic incident in Jerusalem. Another traffic incident in Canada just a few days ago. Odd coincidence: both drivers were devout Muslims who killed Infidels “in the name of Allah” (as the Canadian bad driver put it). Meanwhile, also in Canada, a mentally ill man shoots up the Parliament building and murders a soldier. And in New York City, a man wielding a hatchet injures several police officers. Another odd coincidence: both the Canadian mentally ill man and the New York hatchet-wielder were also devout Muslims. The father of the former waged jihad in Libya, and the latter called for armed revolt in the U.S. But you must put all of these odd coincidences out of your mind right now. We know that none of this can have anything to do with Islam, and that greasy Islamophobes are the only ones who think otherwise.
“Memo from US Consulate refers to Jerusalem terror attack as ‘traffic incident,’” by Itamar Eichner, Ynet News, October 24, 2014 (thanks to Hamish):
Hours after a Palestinian terrorist drove his car into a crowd waiting at a light rail station in Jerusalem, the US consulate in the city issued a memo referring to the attack as a “traffic incident”.
A three-month-old baby was killed and seven other people were wounded when Abdel Rahman a-Shaludi drove his car across incoming traffic to strike the people waiting at the station. The baby girl, Chaya Zissel Braun, had American citizenship.
The memo was sent to employees of the American consulate, which is based in East Jerusalem. It asks staff to report “any emergency.”
AnneinPT (Israel) provides an actual Associated Press news headline about the “traffic accident.” “Israeli police shoot man in east Jerusalem.”
Here’s how the AP, consistently with its customary reporting on things Israeli, might treat Palestinian rockets thwarted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system: “Palestinian rockets damaged beyond repair by Israeli counter-measures.”
“Lone wolf” Islamic terrorists are exceedingly rare.
[N]umerous examples show that terrorist actors are almost always part of a network who were involved in recruiting and tasking terrorist activity. As Max Abrahms at Northeastern University has observed:
Since the advent of international terrorism in 1970, none of the 40 most lethal terrorist attacks has been committed by a person unaffiliated with some terrorist group, according to publicly available data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, which is funded by the Department of Homeland Security and stored at the University of Maryland. In fact, lone wolves have carried out just two of the 1,900 most deadly terrorist incidents over the last four decades.
So why “lone wolf”? Simply, it was a mechanism promulgated by the CVE [countering violent extremism] industry, with willing cooperation from law enforcement and intelligence officials, to exonerate themselves when a terrorist attack happened. At its core is terror agnosticism: “There is possibly no way to predict who will turn to terrorism, so therefore we can’t be held responsible when it happens. Oh, and give us more money so we can better improve how we won’t be able to predict terror attacks.” [Insert added.]
It’s Islamic terrorism all the way down:
Yet there has been great reluctance to associate terrorist attacks with the “religion of peace.” Here are examples of media and official reactions to the recent terrorist attacks in Canada: “CBC’s Derek Stoffel tweeted: ‘Amid the speculation in the #OttawaShooting in #Canada, it’s important to remember #ISIS hasn’t shown interest in attacks abroad.’” However,
Stoffel should have known that in late September, the Islamic State’s spokesman, Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani, urged Muslims to murder non-Muslims in the West. “Rely upon Allah,” he thundered, “and kill him in any manner or way however it may be. Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict.
“The hard-Left Vox reacted to the revelation that Zehaf-Bibeau was a Muslim by dismissing the fact as irrelevant.”
Not to be outdone in multicultural empathy,
In the wake of the shootings in Ottawa, the police chiefs of Toronto and Ottawa wrote to local Muslim leaders, assuring them of their good will and urging Muslims to contact them in case of a “backlash.” These politically correct cops appear to have learned their lesson well: after every jihad attack, Muslims are the victims, and need special reassurances.
Eventually, the Canadian terrorist attacks were labeled “terrorism.” Even the White House called them “despicable terrorist attacks,” without mentioning the words “Islam” or “Islamist.”
In 2008 we the people elected Obama as “our” President. We did it again in 2012. He was viewed by many as the one for whom they had been waiting.
He was seen as the “God of all things.”
Fortunately, some seem to be recovering from their dementia.
However, all too many are still infected with insanity and continue to be contagious. Here’s a video of James O’Keefe talking with college students about vote fraud:
Vote fraud is apparently good when done for a “good” purpose.
When Obama spoke about Democrats running for reelection appearing to desert but really supporting him, he said
“So this isn’t about my feelings being hurt. These are folks who are strong allies and supporters of me. And I tell them, I said, ‘You know what, you do what you need to win. I will be responsible for making sure that our voters turn out.'” [Emphasis added.]
He may not have intended to encourage voter fraud, but “you do what you need to win” may well have been taken seriously by Obamabots. It has, as a minimum, an unpleasant odor.
How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.
. . . .
We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted. [Emphasis added.]
With early voting starting Thursday, North Carolina’s election board found 154 ineligible voters on its poll lists — and officials are examining thousands more questionable registrations.
The State Board of Elections said late Tuesday that more than 9,000 additional voters’ names are being checked for legal status. They do not expect to finish checking before early voting starts Thursday.
It’s necessary for Republicans to win outside the “margin of fraud,” and there have already been signs of voter fraud. In Arizona,
A Republican party official in the largest county in Arizona says surveillance tape shows a progressive Hispanic activist blatantly and openly engaging in vote fraud.
. . . .
Between 12:54 and 1:04, LaFaro said, he observed a man wearing a “Citizens for a Better Arizona” T-shirt loudly drop a box containing hundreds of early-voting ballots on a table.
Citizens for a Better Arizona is a progressive group.
The man then began “stuffing the ballot box,” LaFaro said. “I watched in amazement.”
In Chicago, Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan’s votes for Republican candidates, including for himself, were registered as having been cast for Democrats. He noticed the problem before pulling the ultimate lever and it was determined that the machine had been “improperly calibrated.” There is no indication in the linked article whether other machines were also “improperly calibrated” or whether any of them were examined to find out. Obviously, voters need to check for whom the machines say they have voted before pulling the lever. How many will bother to do so?
Since voter fraud may be insufficient, President Obama has diligently prevented voters from understanding what He intends to do about immigration soon after the election. Jonathan Turley, Esq., a “liberal” in the old fashioned sense rather than a leftist, wrote this about Obama’s refusal to disclose or even discuss His post-election plans for immigration “reform.”
[Y]esterday [October 23d] White House CBS reporter Major Garrett broke from the mainstream pack and pressed White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on a report that the Administration has order material for a “surge” of immigration IDs of up to 9 million in one year. Ernest called the questions “crazy” and encouraged everyone not to speculate . . . before the election obviously. [Emphasis added.]
[T]his Administration is openly withholding any information in its plans for unilateral presidential action despite the President’s pledge to take action after the election and before the New Year — only a matter of weeks. It is a cynical decision to prevent voters from being fully informed of the plans in a major policy area. Regardless of how one feels about immigration policies, it should be condemned by people across the political spectrum. [Emphasis added.]
More importantly, the media has to show some independence from the White House in this and other stories. Garrett is one of the few such reporters to press the point. His extraordinary exchange however was not covered by the mainstream press and, once again, the stonewalling on the issue was again dropped. I expect given the record of the White House corp, such questioning from Garrett does seem “crazy.” After all, disclosure of such plans might harm the White House in the upcoming election and only a “crazy” reporter would pursue such a story. [Emphasis added.]
Get your excuses for not voting prepared if you like the status quo:
If you don’t like the status quo, vote and remind your friends to do so as well.
Conclusions
From the P5+1 negotiations with Iran and the failure of our “leaders” even to pause on their path to Iranian nukes due to Iran’s abysmal human rights record, its support for terrorism and the dangers Iran already poses for what’s left of the free and democratic world — and will pose in even greater measure with nukes — to rampant antisemitism to Islamic attacks on and persecution of Christians qua Christians, to domestic Islamic terrorism to voting fraud, far too many are either insane or extraordinarily devious. Those who appear to be insane either do not recognize the nature of our enemies or do not care. Some are perhaps complicit.
As this insidious form of insanity spreads we seem to have no antidote more powerful than reason and common sense, both increasingly rare. Will our enemies have to provide a more effective antidote in the form of an attack on the United States so severe, clear and obvious that insanity can no longer be ignored even by our lunatics?
(These are the barbarians likely to be allowed to get or to keep nukes. Please see also “Goodbye, Dear Mum”: Iran Executes Rayhaneh Jabbari — UPDATED. Will Obama declare that the Islamic Republic of Iran in not Islamic or will he simply vote “absent? ” — DM)
Her case highlighted not just the archaic and abusive elements of Sharia “courts” but the absurd lack of basic procedural and substantive rights of defendants in Iran.
****************
We previously discussed the pending execution of Rayhaneh Jabbari, 26, for killing a former Iranian intelligence official who she said had raped her. Early reports that the execution had been carried out were premature and international efforts intensified to save Rayhaneh. I regret to report that the Associated Press is now reporting that today the Iranians hanged Rayhaneh in the latest outrage to come from that medieval legal system.
Jabbari claimed that a former Iranian Intelligence Ministry employee tried to rape her and that she stabbed in him the shoulder to escape. Despite the fact that a drink given to her was found to contain a date rape drug, the Iranian officials still wanted her hanged and they have now carried out their intent. Earlier this month, a guard showed mercy and gave her his phone to type a final message to her mother. Her reported message below is poignant and tragic as a final goodbye to her mother.
Jabbari wrote:
“I am currently handcuffed and there is a car waiting outside to take me for the execution of the sentence. Goodbye, dear Mum. All of my pains will finish early tomorrow morning. I’m sorry I cannot lessen your pain. Be patient. We believe in life after death. I’ll see you in the next world and I will never leave you again because being separated from you is the most difficult thing to do in the world.”
When her mother called the prison to ask what she could do, they told her to pick up the body of her daughter.
Jabbari was a decorator who said that she was contacted Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, who arranged a meeting. She said that Sarbandi drugged her and tried to rape her after the two met at a café and she agreed to go to his office to discuss a business deal. She said that Sarbandi took her to a remote building and offered her a fruit drink which was later found to contain the date-rape drug. Her family noted that the wounds from a small pocket knife to the shoulder would not have caused death.
After her arrest, her family said that she was tortured to confess.
The official IRNA news agency says Reyhaneh Jabbari was hanged at dawn Saturday for premeditated murder.
The execution was carried out after Sarbandi’s family refused to pardon Jabbari or accept blood money. Blood money is still used in countries enforcing the Sharia “legal” system based on Islamic principles.
Her case highlighted not just the archaic and abusive elements of Sharia “courts” but the absurd lack of basic procedural and substantive rights of defendants in Iran.
Executed for making claim that Jonah did not emerge from whale’s belly
Iran officially executed 373 people in 2013. But according to Cornell University’s Deathpenaltyworldwide.org database, there were between 624 and 727 last year, up from an estimated 314 to 580 in 2012.
The U.S.-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre puts the total number of executions at 531 for this year.
***********************
(Reuters) – A former psychologist has been executed for heresy in Iran after eight years in detention, human rights groups said, in the latest example of what activists say is a worrying rise in the use of death penalty by the Islamic Republic.
Mohsen Amir Aslani was hanged in a prison near the city of Karaj west of Tehran on Sept. 24, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which is based outside Iran, for “corruption on earth and heresy in religion”.
Iranian opposition news websites have said Aslani, 37, had given religious classes where he propagated a new interpretation of the Koran. He was also accused by the authorities of insulting the Prophet Jonah.
The Iran Wire website reported that in one of his classes he told his audience that Jonah could not have emerged from the whale’s belly, and it was this statement that led to his charge of insulting the Prophet Jonah.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed alarm at a reported increase in executions in Iran. Iran has one of the highest levels of executions in the world, second to China, according to Amnesty.
Some human rights activists and others fear that hardliners who oppose pragmatic President Hassan Rouhani and his negotiations with Western powers over the country’s nuclear program are pushing the executions to weaken him.
Iran officially executed 373 people in 2013. But according to Cornell University’s Deathpenaltyworldwide.org database, there were between 624 and 727 last year, up from an estimated 314 to 580 in 2012.
The U.S.-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre puts the total number of executions at 531 for this year.
On Thursday, in an open letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, 18 physics Nobel laureates called for the “immediate and unconditional” release of Iranian physicist and prisoner of conscience, Omid Kokabee, according to a statement by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
He is suffering serious health problems, according to the campaign.
Kokabee, who was arrested while on a visit to Iran from the United States in 2011 where he was studying, was charged with “communicating with a hostile government,” and receiving “illegitimate funds.”
In an open letter from Evin prison, in April 2013, Kokabee wrote that his imprisonment was the result of his refusal to heed pressure by Iranian intelligence agents to collaborate on a military research project.
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