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Ay Iran Ay Marze Pour Gohar!
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has added a new journalDoes anyone know of any good Iranian lounges in the Toronto area? I'm pretty sure there are some good ones out there but I need help finding em :(
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has added a new journalWe all remember Im sure the 19 year old girl who had been sentenced to death for stabbing her alleged rapist who just happened to be a pasdaran.
Her case was revisited and she was freed, here's the link. save.nazanin.googlepages.com
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has added a new journalI was just surfing around checking out Norooz stuff and didn't realize that it was as widely observed as it is, I'm sorta stoked. I think it's really cool heres the intro paragraph but I included the link for further reading. This is why I think Islam is so great, It allows for such cultural diversity.
Norouz (Persian: Ù? وروز‎ , various local pronunciations and spellings) is the traditional Iranian new year holiday celebrated by Iran, Kurds,Turkey, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Albania, Georgia, the countries of Central Asia such as Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, as well as among various other Iranian and Turkic people in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, India, Northwestern China, the Caucasus, the Crimea, and the Balkans.
As well as being a Zoroastrian holiday, it is also a holy day for adherents of Sufism as well as Bahá'à Faith. In Iran it is also referred to as an Eid festival, although it is not an Islamic feast. Shia Nizari Ismaili muslims, who trace their origins to Iran, celebrate the festival under the name Navroz. In their religious protocol, Navroz is officially recognized as an Eid, as with Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha, although it involves a distinct set of religious ceremonies.
Norouz marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the Iranian year as well as the beginning of the Bahá'à year. It is celebrated by some communities on March 21st and by others on the day of the astronomical vernal equinox (start of spring in northern hemisphere), which may occur on March 20th, 21st or 22nd.
en.wikipedia.org
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has added a new journalRecently we reported on TomPaine.com one facet of the repetition?that Congress, not the president, has had to ask for National Intelligence Estimates that would shed light on a key foreign policy issue on the front burner in the Bush White House. The demand described there pertained to Iraq, but Congress has also pressed for an NIE on Iran, where many worry that the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which denies it, is secretly conducting a nuclear weapons development program.
Now that the Senate has called for the NIE, the first marker has gone down, in the form of a report released this week by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Peter Hoekstra. Disguised as a technical review of ?gaps? in knowledge, the report tosses together speculations on the array of Iranian enrichment facilities, charges of its deceptions on these programs, notes on Iran?s missile development efforts with extraneous material?indications of an Iranian role in the Iraqi mess plus charges against Tehran on terrorism and support of Hezbollah in Lebanon?to conclude that ?Iran is a serious security threat.?
Let?s take a moment to recall the Iraq prewar intelligence manipulation. The Bush administration asked the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community for data on Saddam Hussein?s Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had private channels to Iraqi exiles feeding them alarmist fabrications. When the CIA?s reporting emerged as less dark than hoped for, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and their staffs, asked for new looks at the data. When revised analyses came out the same, the manipulators surfaced their exile fabrications and demanded evaluations of those. The fabricated material was also put before the public in the form of leaks to friendly media. Halfway through the process, intelligence officers were put on notice that their jobs were on the line when John R. Bolton, at the time undersecretary of state, started a vendetta against top analysts at both the State Department and the CIA. Meanwhile, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others, made speeches and gave public declarations that asserted as fact elements of the data that intelligence analysts were being asked to assess. That effectively put out markers to the CIA as to what conclusions were permissible to Bush officials when the NIE was finally requested, as mentioned, by Senate Democrats in September 2002.
Now to Iran. Readers will be aware that charges and denials regarding the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and its rate of progress, have been swirling for years. That has been especially true since late 2004, when the Iranian exile group National Council for Resistance in Iran publicly charged that the Iranian Ministry of Defense was operating a major secret nuclear site. The Iranian government has been in on-again, off-again negotiations with the Europeans on curtailing its alleged program, and has accepted inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, though with little enthusiasm. The Iranians have devoted a large effort to generating nuclear power for peaceful purposes and consider themselves as having a right to nuclear weapons, whether or not they are actually developing them.
The Bush administration has alternately refused to engage with Tehran on these issues, aligned itself with the European group of concern, pondered military strikes on Iran, or lately, sought United Nations sanctions against Tehran. Bush?s diplomatic initiatives have extended to sending out a tag team of diplomats and nonproliferation experts who travel to any country that will listen and give an ?intelligence? briefing designed to paint black hats on the Iranians. Despite all this activity there seems to be no current NIE on Iranian nuclear development. Late this May, five Democratic senators wrote President Bush asking that he request such a study.
What is it with this administration? Bush seems consistently to resist hearing what U.S. intelligence can tell him about the issues that are central to his own foreign policy. In the case of Iran, it seems that the White House is uncertain what it will learn from an intelligence estimate. The consensus among U.S. intelligence analysts--as reflected in annual threat reports to Congress and briefs on worldwide acquisition of technology for weapons of mass destruction--has waxed and waned. In 2001 the CIA was sure Iran had the intention of seeking weapons but conceded a limited capability. Over the next two years, during which the agency learned of Pakistani exports of nuclear technology to Iran, the view became more alarming. A report at the end of 2003 declaimed, ?The United States remains convinced that Tehran has been pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program.? But CIA director George Tenet in February 2004 acknowledged that Tehran had admitted its covert nuclear activity and agreed to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), retreating to the posture that Tehran was ?trying to preserve its WMD options.? The CIA?s technology acquisition report for 2004, actually released shortly before Porter Goss became the agency?s director, posited only that Iran ?may have? a clandestine nuclear weapons program. In fact, the initial IAEA inspections had weakened the WMD charge by finding no conclusive evidence of mass production of the highly enriched uranium necessary for nuclear weapons.
The analysts who draft NIEs were burned by the Iraq prewar estimate, which has been used to try and blame the war on the CIA. They are going to be doubly careful this time around, and the judgment that Iran?s nuclear fuel cycle is being diverted to weapons is an inherently difficult one. Despite difficulties collecting intelligence in Iran, there is a lot more data for this case than for Iraq. A computer hard drive purloined from an Iranian official is reputed to be chock full of information. Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte?s analysts also have the material gleaned from the breakup of the Pakistani nuclear smuggling network, plus what the U.S. has received from Russia, Iran?s main nuclear supplier; the IAEA inspection data; that from exiles and spies; plus everything collected by satellites and drones. There is also an official today who is in charge of shaping collection on Iran, a ?mission manager,? S. Leslie Ireland, a longtime Iran hand among CIA analysts.
But the intelligence problem is the classic one of identifying how long it will take before a putative Iranian threat can be a serious one. Technical experts from the International Institute of Strategic Studies, as recently as last September, held it would be at least five years until Iran could enrich enough material for a single nuclear weapon. Public reporting of the intelligence community?s own timeline agrees, expecting the emergence of a weapon sometime between 2010 and 2015. That?s not much of an excuse for bombing Nantaz today, or Tehran for that matter. In February, Negroponte, in his own threat briefing, remarked ?we assess that Iran seeks nuclear weapons,? but hastened to add ?We judge that Tehran probably does not yet have a nuclear weapon and probably has not yet produced or acquired the necessary fissile material.?
Which brings us back to intelligence manipulation. The staff paper released by Hoekstra was not considered by the full committee, which took no vote on releasing it. Its lead author was Frederick H. Fleitz, who in 2002 was John Bolton?s henchman in his attempted ambush of the intelligence analysts, and is now on the committee?s majority staff. Fleitz?s substantive expertise at CIA, it should be added, was in peacekeeping operations, not weapons of mass destruction. Hoekstra publicized this report unilaterally. That act sends the message that any NIE which takes a less alarming view will be deemed suspect.
All this should be read as fresh politicization of intelligence, the very ?Boltonization? that crippled efforts to prevent war in Iraq. The fact that this act has been perpetrated by a congressional committee whose job it is to oversee U.S. intelligence is further evidence that intelligence oversight has become part of the problem, not the solution.
www.tompaine.com
NecroDervish
I think they want more then to control the oil, which the Iranians think will dry up in the next two decades. But what exactly is hard to say, annex Khuzestan to Iraq to make a super state "Guardian of the gulf" style. Or prevent a thirdworld country from full nuclear technology. There are all kinds of reasons, China has a hugh presents in Iran right now to extract oil and gas for them selves, they only hire Chinese to work on there rigs. Iran is a new armors manufacturer, and has threatened to start selling oil in other then dollars which would make the dollar worth nothing almost. Lots of greedy reasons for it but nothing related to there plan to sell it to the ignorant public here.
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has added a new journalnews.bbc.co.uk
Iranians have voted in two elections seen as the first test of public support for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since he came to power.
Voters were choosing new local councils and a powerful clerical body known as the Assembly of Experts.
Reformists are hoping for a comeback following comprehensive defeats by conservatives in recent years.
Officials said turnout was high, with polling was extended by three hours in many places, to 2200 (1830 GMT).
No figures were immediately available, but Mojtaba Hashemi Saremeh, the deputy interior minister in charge of elections, described the turnout as "unprecedented".
Reformists and conservatives have both run campaigns urging people to cast their ballots. About 46.5 million Iranians are eligible to vote.
Powerful body
There has traditionally been a low turn-out for the assembly elections, with many Iranians scarcely aware of its deliberations.
In theory, the Assembly of Experts is the most powerful body in Iran's complex network of religious institutions.
Its job is to elect, dismiss and supervise Iran's top political figure, the Supreme Leader - currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says voting in the capital started slowly but picked up in the afternoon to a brisk pace.
There is still some confusion over how and where the votes will be counted, she says.
Opponents of the government want the votes to be counted in the polling stations, rather than centralised locations, to reduce what they say is the possibility of fraud, our correspondent says.
Many government supporters said they had voted as a show of solidarity with Iran's Islamic system, our correspondent says, and as a blow to the US and Israel, who claim the Iranian government has no popular support.
But some Iranians refuse to vote, not wanting to endorse Iran's electoral system where the authorities vet all candidates, our correspondent adds.
The reformists are barely present in the assembly race, because candidates must be passed by a conservative panel.
Analysts are watching to see whether the body will be dominated by conservatives aligned with Mr Ahmadinejad or pragmatists close to the former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
'Don't boycott polls'
The local council elections, in contrast, are likely to witness a higher turn-out and will provide a clearer reflection of trends in public opinion, analysts believe.
Reformists are hoping for gains after being roundly defeated in polls in 2003, in which turn-out was very low.
"Boycotting elections has not worked in previous elections, please vote for the reformist candidates," a reformist campaign text message said.
But many are backing the conservatives.
"I think Ahmadinejad supporters will win," Mohsen Jahanian, a political science teacher, told Reuters news agency. "Iranians still do not trust reformists to vote for them."
"I will vote for Ahmadinejad's supporters," said taxi driver Hasan Alimardani.
"He is the people's man, he goes to remote places and sees the problems at first hand. We need to give him time to deliver on his promises."
The municipal council race in Tehran will be keenly watched as a barometer of political sentiment. Reformists dominated the council until 2003, but conservatives currently hold all the seats.
Reformists are hoping to win some seats, while two competing conservative factions - one loyal to Mr Ahmadinejad and the other to Tehran's current mayor, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf - are challenging each other.
Mr Ahmadinejad emphasised the importance of the elections on Iranian TV.
"I am certain that our dear people will be present on the scene tomorrow and will demonstrate their grandeur and honour to the world," he said.