What's this about really? Why has it been planned for the 28th, the same day as the EDL demo in Bradford? [The EDL march has now been banned by the Home Secretary Theresa May but a static demo will go ahead.]

There is somehing very fishy about this article. The way it is worded and the anti Islam agenda. The term "progressive" has been used time and again by an Islamophobic fascist activist in his writings about EDL and in rants against campaigns against the EDL. He has used this word in public when the EDL were discussed and who he clearly supported.

Is this even a properly planned day? I doubt it. Can indy mods remove this? It's been written by an Islamophobic EDL supporter.

It does seem co ordinated though. There is a nasty agenda against all Muslims at the moment.

This action has been planned for ages and will be well attended by the left. If your not into English racists then get involved and do something important instead of chasing the 'distraction of the day' about.

Come on people forget the meat heads. Let's get stuck in like the good ole days. Where were the edl when the Iraq war was on, during the financial crisis, the lebanon war, the Gaza bombing eh.

Nowhere, that's where. Back on track everyone, back to the matter at hand please. You only have so much energy and the edl want it all. Don't give them your energy, give your energy to those who really need it.

Ignore the trolls asking for this to be banned - I'm sure half of them are EDL fans trying to make Indymedia look like crazy religious conspiracy theorists.

As people have so often said here, criticizing Islam is NOT the problem - that isn't why we hate the EDL. We hate them because they are racist bigots with authoritarian political leanings. Opposing religious extremism isn't really what the EDL are about - that is just their excuse for existence.

Islam is a steaming pile of shit, just like all religions, and if it is used to justify things like stoning women to death for adultery or other reasons then it is quite rightly slated.

Just because the US is sabre-rattling to invade Iran doesn't mean we should forget about these issues or cover them up. Your enemy's enemy is not necessarily your friend!

"Iran doesn't stone anyone! This is disinfo spread by the CIA. Wake up people! The Agency, backed by Mossad, want to overthrow the legitimate Iranian government. They plan to do this by stoning a woman to death and framing Iran for it. "

Iran carries out stonings for the crime of adultery. It has just recently commuted sentences for women who it had tried to stone, but through international pressure had to halt.

Iran also carries out industrial mutilation of its citizens for petty crime including theft and hangings in public using scaffolding gantries and rope. The numbers of executions in Iran is the highest it has ever been, mostly because Iran has been hanging those who have been taking part in anti-regime protests and protesting against the fraudulent elections of 2009.

None of this has anything to do with the US Central Intelligence Agency although clerical loyalists and Iranian backed poli sci officers like to suggest that it does.

One continuing tactic that is used to protect Iran and its clerical mollahs, is to conflate its human rights abuses with that of the US. Those who rightly speak out against the human rights record of the US, forfeit any credibilty they might have by failing to speak out against the human rights abuses of Iran.

Failure to criticise, is protection of those who commit these human rights abuses.

Indymedia has a small band of detractors that are only interested in the human rights abuses of the US and are prepared to turn a blind eye to the equally vile human rights abuses of Iran. To complicate things further, it also has an even smaller number of hidden trolls only interested in disrupting Indymedia itself.

Add to this the complication of hidden political loyalties with people claiming to be one thing while working for the other and you have the reason these vile regimes are able to act with impunity and continue to cause serious loss of life.

The comment by the previous commentator isn't just wrong, it is murderously wrong.

PS - Here's the proof:

 http://www.observer.com/2010/time-storys-point-view-mirrors-cias-0

"the issue at hand was faltering public support of the war and the solution was promoting women's horror stories.... The fix? Instead of using generals in desert camo as the face of the NATO mission, use oppressed Afghan women"

The CIA have deliberately use women they have mutilated to drum up support for the ongoin Afghan blitzkrieg. It would be naive to suppose they weren't inventing a similar story around the woman in this so-called stoning case.

"The CIA have deliberately use women they have mutilated to drum up support for the ongoin Afghan blitzkrieg. It would be naive to suppose they weren't inventing a similar story around the woman in this so-called stoning case."

Naive indeed.

The so-called proof you allude to is nothing of the sort.

This is a highly provocative piece run by Time magazine which has been routinely mistrusted for years. That it would run a piece like this is no surprise at all. Time is "local America" on your doorstep. It has a long standing habit of allowing the US senate and military to effectively write its own articles.

Cutting and pasting a link to this story does not in anyway prove that the CIA are executing people in Iran, by stoning or hanging. It is the clerics and revolutionary courts which hand these executions down from the Iranian courts. Are you saying that the court judges are CIA.

The CIA might be many things to many paranoids around the world. Competent they are not. The CIA are an odious, incompetent organisation that gets by on 'suggestion', 'inference', artificially inflated reputation and spreading its own disinformation, which others who are not so wise to the world haplessly stumble over and regurgitate.

The woman pictured on the front cover of Time is an Afghan girl mutilated by religious fanatics in Afghanistan. This is a tragedy.

The women sentenced to stoning in Iran was also sentenced by religious fanatics. This fortunately, didn't become a tragedy.

Those sentenced to death, and then executed in Iran in public from mobile gallows by police officers, are also dieing at the hands of religious fanatics. Because they are not supported, because some in the UK cannot see past their own personal paranoia, they are dead.

This is a supreme tragedy.

You are fortunate you are not an Iranian. If you had protested on the streets and had been caught organising those protests, even if it were simply spreading text messages, you would be now hanging by your neck from a gallows...as a rapist or drug pusher.

And your family would be treated to the humiliation of reading commentators on your death, thousands of miles away, claiming that you had deserved it...because you were a rapist or drug pusher!

I'm sorry to say it, but America has made you blind as a bat. And America's counterparts in Iran...love them for it.

The enemy of your enemy...is your enemy!

I think we've heard enough of your blatant Islamophobia, T. Islam is a religion of peace and does not condone mass murder like our so-called "democracy". That a Friend of Israel would join the genocidal campaign against all Muslims comes as no surprise at all. As anon says, there is a nasty agenda to smear the entire Muslim faith - welcome to the dark side, T!

"I think we've heard enough of your blatant Islamophobia, T."

My "Islamophobia" as you call it is a heartfelt disgust at regimes who carry on severe human rights abuses against the ordinary people. I have an endearing respect for all faiths. If people wish to believe in a GOD of any kind it would be wretched of me to object.

I am not an authoritarian and I am not Islamaphobic. The Iranian regime is disgusting, abusive and obnoxious. The fact that it is in the place where it is and has Muslims living there is entirely beside the point.

What has the fact it is a Muslim country got anything at all to do with the way its government treats its people?

Stoning is a fucking horrific crime. Any scum that are involved torture and murder need to be challenged and violently by decent people. This is all about sheer bloodlust and I hope that the perverts involved meet a nasty end themselves. I don't care whether they call themselves Muslims or not, both Catholics and Protestants sent millions of mainly women but also men and young children to the fire and gallows, obliterated (and continue to do so) the Americas of indigenous peoples and invoked the slave trade. Am I "anti christian" if I criticise the scum involved? Christianity is supposed to be a religion of peace but has been used to justify horrific atrocities, Islam is often used in the same way. It is not Islamaphobic to criticise torture and murder nor does calling oneself a Muslim mean that you are absolved from all criticism certainly not if you come up with crap such as "stoning doesn't happen" or " she deserves it because she was impure because she allowed herself to be raped by 5 nonces". Islamaphobia is about hating everyone who is a Muslim and must be vigorously challenged. Many Muslims are opposed to the grotesque bloodlust in Iran and other Islamofacist regimes, are they Islamophobic too? Grow up.
Good luck with the demos both against stoning and against the EDL. BTW I do think that the EDL are a major threat and should not be given a free reign either by ignoring religious dogmatism allowing them a monopoly or by ignoring them in the hope they will go away, they will not.