According to the BBC:
An Iranian weblogger has been jailed for 14 years on charges of spying and aiding foreign counter-revolutionaries.
Arash Sigarchi was arrested last month after using his blog to criticise the arrest of other online journalists.
Mr Sigarchi, who also edits a newspaper in northern Iran, was sentenced by a revolutionary court in the Gilan area.
His sentence, criticised by human rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders, comes a day after an online ‘day of action’ to secure his release.
Yikes! Fourteen years in an Iranian jail for blogging. I could make a joke, but it’s far from funny. Meanwhile…
A second Iranian blogger, Motjaba Saminejad, who also used his website to report on bloggers’ arrests, is still being held.
I hope the Eurocrats doing the negotiating with Iran over nuclear weapons are paying attention. This the BBC, practically their house organ. The Iranian Mullahs are serious fascists. Is Europe going to roll over for that another time? God help us.
“Is Europe going to roll over for that another time?”
Need you even ask?
What we need is some financial or legal reason for Chirac to care. That would get them moving.
The same applies to Darfur.
I wonder where the Persian princess, Christiana Amanpour, is? Is she laughing at the murder of the 16-year-old girl and now the imprisoning of these people with her mullah friends in Iran?
Is Europe going to roll over for that another time?
That’s a rhetorical question, right?
Roger,
I don’t care if they call us cowboys but someone has to stop the Mad Mullahs of Iran from going nuclear.
It’s time for us to step up to the plate no matter what the rest of Europe may think.
One of these days I hope they realize it’s been the force projected by the US and the American people that has kept their countries free.
At least they can keep their whinning to a dull roar.
See my post I just wrote over at Dean’s World:
Link Here
You all know the answer but still clinging on a faint desparate hope for a miracle that they are not what you know deep down who they are. They are cowards who had only courage to protest those protecting them, bullying those they know won’t do anything to harm them but when facing brutality, murderous thugs, they will show their true color. I saw those faces before in South Vietnam before summer 75, and I see those faces again anywhere freedom and liberty still allowed to them to do so, especially in Western Europe, Canada and in the USA.
Don’t waste your breath. Give it up and take the task ourselves.
I heard that Bush charmed them in Europe, but I wonder how charmed they were when he talked about Iran.
Those missiles of Iran’s can reach Europe too, but then so could the Soviet’s and they sucked up to them often as not too.
I don’t know, the only thing that will make Europe step up and put real pressure on Iran will be the belief that if they don’t we will.
So let them think that.
Roger:
The euro’s have been rolling over since 1938 and they have made an art of it. They just do enough so that we stay in NATO and free themselves from having to spend money on their own defense. Up until a year ago I would have never suggested this but I think it is about time that we get out of europe and make them grow up and take care of themselves. I do not think we can count on using the bases their on future battles and all we do by staying there is allow the Europeans to stay in their infantile state. Except for the UK, Italy and some of the eastern states I do not think that we can hope for any support and if we pull out they may learn to appreciate the defense that we have provided for them all these years and payed for all these years. When they have to pony up the money for their own defense structure then we can compete on the economic field on a more balanced field. It was the correct thing to do after WWII but we have stayed their too long. They resent our being there and when Russia starts building their defense structure back up they can start spending their euro’s to defend themselves. I imagine we could make individual deals with seperate states and do that on a ad hoc basis. I don’t expect Europe to bow down like a slave and follow our orders but I am sick of having our country and our soldiers spit on.
Complain to the US govt.
They support the European position.
Europe doesn’t care about a few lousy journalists and bloggers. In fact, media that tells the truth is to be snuffed out in their twisted world view.
Keep up the pressure bloggers. It may be their only chance. I don’t think there’s a government on Earth that will step in to help these prisoners. Including ours.
If the Europeans weren’t all that exercised about the spread of fascism on their own continent, why would they care about it in the ME. Perhaps they could visualize a fascist Germany with nuclear capabilities. That might give them pause.
This is terrible news. I took a tour of some the Iranian blogs to see who, if anybody, was commenting about this. I found only one and he was walking very very softly and speaking only metaphorically (another did not mention Arash but spoke again of his own imprisonment).
In my travels I came across a University of Oslo post-graduate thesis about Iranian blogging which turned out to be pretty interesting. Apparently the Iranian government doesn’t bother blocking access to outside sources (many bloggers link to US & European news websites); pornography appears to be the major concern among the clerics. However, they watch the bloggers closely. When the mullahs began a crackdown on both blogs and the independent press late last spring, many bloggers discontinued regular postings for months or went out of business altogether. For those who have picked it up again, the difference in tone and substance is marked. While the internet provides Iranian dissidents with information and a window to the world, given the draconian penalties, its use as either a communication medium or a means of political expression seems very limited at this time. Sad.
Just wanted to say that I saw the Meet the Fockers last night.
I want to say that the old Hollywood contrast between Jewish family and stiff Waspy joke is playing old and tired. I’m Jewish and its a self-parody that is pathetic at this point. If I were an average American guy like most of the guys I grew up with it would make me resentful already.
Then throw in some liners about the L CIA, the 60′s etc.. new age yoga and how the stiff Wasp gets it finally in the end… its just enough.. and it wasn’t even done well or funny in this movie, just CHEESEY… at least Larry David show is funny… and clever.
The problem is Hollywooders are in their own fantasy world, they don’t have a clue about regular Americans outside of Manhattan and LA… and I’m not even a Red Stater from Mid America, just a guy from the country suburb of NYC….
Its just a symptom of the larger picture of what’s going on at Berkeley and other places….
Roger you agree?
Mike
Mike, I won’t see entertainment with “JAP” stereotypes in it, or any overdone ethnic cliches. I agree Hollywood has the pathalogical fear of doing anything new. But hey – it works!
speaking of oppressed dissidents, I just saw this sad example of the end of Amnesty International as a non-partisan truth-telling force.
Yehudit
Yes, but you are merely recycling condemnations. I doubt whether either yourself or Gateway Pundit has read AI’s report. The blog simply quote a headline from Arabic News. Its very easy to pick a headline to fit your worldview.
AI’s reports are evidenced, based on research. To dismiss it you need to engage it on that level. I doubt you are equiped to engage in that manner, so easy quips will have to suffice then?
Roger:
Europe and the left refuse to recognize just how over the edge that the Iranian government is. When the canadian journalist was murdered and the Iranian family of the murderer was forced to pay reperations to the canadians victims family it exposed an ugly sign of how the Mullahs look at the rest of the world. I am not commenting on the system of paying money to the family of the deceased instead of imposing or in addition to jail time. It is the formal system of paying less for a non-muslim then for a muslim. By half. They see no shame in saying that they legally consider a non-believer half as valuable as a believer. It is a signal that they consider non-Muslims sub human. It is one thing to have theological differences. It is different then saying that non believer will be treated differently in the afterlife. It is a signal that they consider non believers sub human and once you have taken that step you will have no compulsion in deciding to treat non belivers they way you would treat an animal. Just as nazi’s comforted themselves in killing the Jews because they believed them to be sub human and thus it was no problem to set up a system to exterminate them. this is how the Mullahs look at the non-Muslim world and this is how they will treat them. But the pc police won’t point this out and they will be the first on the Islamo-fascist chopping block.
Harry:
To hear the Europeans tell it the position of our government is not their position but it should be, so what you say is not true.
Amnesty International has an agenda of its own and so far that agenda has been to support and sustain dictators. Once upon a time I thought they were a good thing, but when one considers that a man like Saddam Hussein who used to have the eyeballs of babies poked out in the presence of their parents would still be in power doing what AI knows damn well he was doing if that organization had its way then I just consider the source when it comes to a lot of their propaganda.
They are becoming irrelevant.
And by the way if Amnesty International, the latest left wing attack group to come forward and trash young people risking life and limb has any real evidence that the women in Iraq are being abused by the Americans then they should bring that evidence to the commanding officers of those young men, because our military considers that criminal activity.
The same however, can not be said for Saddam Hussein who put rapists on the payroll. And if Amnesty had their way those rapists would still be collecting their paychecks.
I am a woman and I really resent the patronizing condascending attitude of western lefties that says that somehow women are not better off when they have an oppurtunity to participate in the poltical process.
The women of Iraq have some hope for a future now, and if Amnesty had their oway those same women would always just remain sad but interesting subjects for one of their self important little reports.
Kevin P and Terrye,
You’ve hit the mark. Islamofascisim is a failed ideology in the modern world. They’re still stuck in the 12th Century. A society ruled by a male dominated hegemony and theocracy is doomed to failure, when it considers and treats women as sub human. Not to mention all the rest of us infidels who they must trade with.
The Mad Mullahs of Iran see religious justification for hanging a 16 year old female. We need to appeal to the women of the world to stop this terror.
See the anthology of essays in my post above:
A War of Ideas, Ideologies, Cultures, Religon, and Good vs. Evil
Link Here
The bloggers of the world must barrage female opinion setters to take a stand on this. The MSM isn’t covering this story. My suggestion was, “Take it to Oprah.”
Trite, but an appropriate analogy, women are the “control rods” that can temper a nuclean reaction.
The incarceration of these voices of reason is a debacle of human rights. We need to support the opinions against radicalism in the region as part of a greater effort to change the anti-American sentiments harbored by many in the Middle East.
Here is what we discussed recently on the matter.
http://www.rightviews.com/article.php?id=286
http://www.RightViews.com