Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, spoke on two anti-war platforms in London this week. A report from CASMII.
A successful judge prior to 1979, Shirin Ebadi lost her position following the Islamic revolution and spent years at home writing articles and books on Iranian law. Finally in 1992 she was granted her lawyer's license. She has been an outspoken campaigner for democracy and greater rights for Iranian women and is credited with being a driving force behind the reform of family laws in Iran by seeking changes in divorce and inheritance legislation. She has come into conflict with the law in Iran on a personal level and been imprisoned as a result.
Dr Ebadi is a popular figure in Iran and a key figure in reformist movement. Despite her criticism of the current regime is firmly of the belief that Iran’s problems must be solved by the Iranian people. “Improving the situation in Iran is solely the business of the Iranian people and not a matter for foreign soldiers” she told the British Pugwash Group meeting on 1st June. Any attempt by the media to represent her call for reforms as a plea to the world for ‘regime change’ would be a disingenuous misrepresentation both of her views and those of the vast majority of ordinary Iranians. “If the US and British repeat the mistake they made in Iraq and attack Iran, the people of Iran will put aside their differences and defend their country.”
At the meeting on the 2nd June attended by over 600 people Dr Ebadi said:
“The recent parliamentary and presidential elections showed that people are distancing themselves from the government. There are 49 million eligible voters in Iran, but during the second round of the presidential elections the new president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won just 14 million votes. When Mohammad Khatami won the presidential election in 1997, 22 million people voted for him. This gap is a sign of the growing dissatisfaction with government.
The first reason for this dissatisfaction is economic – at least ten million people live below the absolute poverty line of $1 a day, out of a population of 70 million. For a country rich in resources, such as oil, gas and uranium, this is a calamity. This poverty is due to wrong economic policies. People are demanding a more advanced form of democracy. People are not free to vote for who they like. The suitability of candidates must first be approved by Iran’s guardian council.
The first step in democracy is free choice and free elections. During the past 28 years Iran’s people have experienced a revolution and eight years of war with Iraq. They are tired of violence. They are looking for reforms. The reform movement has depth. It is a movement fighting for democracy and is not in favour of violence and weapons. Civil disobedience comes at a price, and this means having political prisoners. I want to express my support for them.
What are the solutions? The first is that there must not be a military invasion or bombing of Iran. Any attack would mean that people have to give up their desire for greater democracy. People would defend the security and integrity of the country. There would be harm done to the democracy movement, which has been nourished and continued by Iranians for many years. When governments face a foreign threat they suppress freedoms and those fighting for freedom.
The West and particularly the US expresses an anxiety that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons the security of the Middle East will be threatened. They say that Iran is not democratic and if fundamentalists have access to nuclear weapons the whole region will be set on fire. If the US is sincere, I should tell them that there is already danger in the region—Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons. Its president Musharraf did not come to power through democracy. The only difference is Pakistan is a close friend of the US, while Iran does not obey US diktats.
These double standards show why the people of the world have lost faith in the US. Saddam Hussein fought against Iran for eight years. He used chemical weapons against Iran and Iraqi Kurds. He was a close friend and ally of the US.
The US attacked Iraq under the pretence that it was establishing democracy and because Saddam Hussein was a dictator. Were there no other dictators in the world? Unfortunately the world is full of dictators, but they do not have oil in their country and Saddam Hussein did.
Please do not conclude that I am favour of Iran possessing nuclear weapons – they were not manufactured for humanity’s happiness. No country needs nuclear weapons – not the US, Israel or Pakistan. Countries should cut their military expenditure in half and spend it on the welfare of the people. That would make a much better world. Iran has claimed it wants to use nuclear power peacefully, but the world does not accept its word.
The solution is to establish a more advanced form of democracy so that the world trusts Iran’s word. As a first step people should be allowed to vote freely by annulling the law that allows the guardian council to check candidates’ credentials.
We will defend our country. We will never allow it to become another Iraq.”
Dr Ebadi is a popular figure in Iran and a key figure in reformist movement. Despite her criticism of the current regime is firmly of the belief that Iran’s problems must be solved by the Iranian people. “Improving the situation in Iran is solely the business of the Iranian people and not a matter for foreign soldiers” she told the British Pugwash Group meeting on 1st June. Any attempt by the media to represent her call for reforms as a plea to the world for ‘regime change’ would be a disingenuous misrepresentation both of her views and those of the vast majority of ordinary Iranians. “If the US and British repeat the mistake they made in Iraq and attack Iran, the people of Iran will put aside their differences and defend their country.”
At the meeting on the 2nd June attended by over 600 people Dr Ebadi said:
“The recent parliamentary and presidential elections showed that people are distancing themselves from the government. There are 49 million eligible voters in Iran, but during the second round of the presidential elections the new president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won just 14 million votes. When Mohammad Khatami won the presidential election in 1997, 22 million people voted for him. This gap is a sign of the growing dissatisfaction with government.
The first reason for this dissatisfaction is economic – at least ten million people live below the absolute poverty line of $1 a day, out of a population of 70 million. For a country rich in resources, such as oil, gas and uranium, this is a calamity. This poverty is due to wrong economic policies. People are demanding a more advanced form of democracy. People are not free to vote for who they like. The suitability of candidates must first be approved by Iran’s guardian council.
The first step in democracy is free choice and free elections. During the past 28 years Iran’s people have experienced a revolution and eight years of war with Iraq. They are tired of violence. They are looking for reforms. The reform movement has depth. It is a movement fighting for democracy and is not in favour of violence and weapons. Civil disobedience comes at a price, and this means having political prisoners. I want to express my support for them.
What are the solutions? The first is that there must not be a military invasion or bombing of Iran. Any attack would mean that people have to give up their desire for greater democracy. People would defend the security and integrity of the country. There would be harm done to the democracy movement, which has been nourished and continued by Iranians for many years. When governments face a foreign threat they suppress freedoms and those fighting for freedom.
The West and particularly the US expresses an anxiety that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons the security of the Middle East will be threatened. They say that Iran is not democratic and if fundamentalists have access to nuclear weapons the whole region will be set on fire. If the US is sincere, I should tell them that there is already danger in the region—Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons. Its president Musharraf did not come to power through democracy. The only difference is Pakistan is a close friend of the US, while Iran does not obey US diktats.
These double standards show why the people of the world have lost faith in the US. Saddam Hussein fought against Iran for eight years. He used chemical weapons against Iran and Iraqi Kurds. He was a close friend and ally of the US.
The US attacked Iraq under the pretence that it was establishing democracy and because Saddam Hussein was a dictator. Were there no other dictators in the world? Unfortunately the world is full of dictators, but they do not have oil in their country and Saddam Hussein did.
Please do not conclude that I am favour of Iran possessing nuclear weapons – they were not manufactured for humanity’s happiness. No country needs nuclear weapons – not the US, Israel or Pakistan. Countries should cut their military expenditure in half and spend it on the welfare of the people. That would make a much better world. Iran has claimed it wants to use nuclear power peacefully, but the world does not accept its word.
The solution is to establish a more advanced form of democracy so that the world trusts Iran’s word. As a first step people should be allowed to vote freely by annulling the law that allows the guardian council to check candidates’ credentials.
We will defend our country. We will never allow it to become another Iraq.”
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CASMII, just another pro-Iran-war propaganda front
13.06.2006 16:18
An argument that defends Iran by attacking Pakistan and Iraq. Hitler and his propaganda masters LOVED articles where one group of jews would attack another group of jews, as if the nazis were neither a threat nor responsible for the consequences of their actions- can you guess why?
Here's a few messages you won't be getting from CASMII.
- Blair and Bush are war-criminals
- Blair and Bush are responsible for the 'supreme crime' as defined by the Nuremberg war trials, AGGRESSIVE WARFARE
- Blair and Bush PROMISED to use nuclear weapons during their invasion of Iraq, if Iraq attempted to defend itself with (non-existent) chemical weapons.
- Israel is a terrorist nation funded by Germany and the US.
- Israel has been provided with the means to mass produce nuclear and genetic weapons by UK, US, French and German governments.
- Iran has the ABSOLUTE right to defend itself against any and all threats posed by Israel, Germany, France, UK and US.
- Iran has the EXACT same rights to any and all weapons systems current held by other nations on this planet.
- Iran has a greater immediate need for advanced weapon systems than any other nation at this moment, due to imminent threat from Israel, UK, US, France and Germany.
- Israel is currently involved in the vilest racist atrocities against the Palestinian people, with the absolute support of UK, US, France and Germany.
- Iran was the main partner of the US in the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq (the significance of this point cannot be overstated, even though most of you will wrongly think that, if true, it makes a US attack against Iran less likely)
CASMII is a propaganda body created to AID Blair's intention to genocide Iran. It does so using tried and tested psy-op methods. Remember, the first rule of psychological operations is DO NOT FIGHT THE OPPOSITION IF INSTEAD YOU CAN BECOME THE OPPOSITION. The CASMII posts here serve the same purpose as the Outrage! ones a few months back.
Shirin Ebadi is genuine, but intelligence services exist to extract the greatest use from all those powerful figures that are at any kind of odds with a target regime. She understands this, and has often adjusted her words to minimise the probability that they can be used by anti-Iranian forces. However, she cannot avoid the kind of use seen above.
How does this work? Well both the current BBC and ITN teletext news index pages have a story going "Kahar against violence" (one of the brothers targetted by police during their vile raid). It uses the old trick of smearing a state target by word association, while at the same time seemingly forcing him to be in favour of the violent police activity that targetted him.
To the naive sheep, unskilled in the psychology of propaganda, the headline seems harmless. THE MOST EFFECTIVE PROPAGANDA OF ALL USES 'TRUTHS' RATHER THAN 'LIES'.
Meanwhile, the BBC calls the 'arabs' that protected themselves against a jewish gunman that went on a racist murder rampage butchering 'arab' civilians on a bus last August a 'lynch-mob' (story just breaking). PLEASE NOTE THIS NAZI USE OF LANGUAGE BY THE BBC.
CASMII and the BBC work to the same purpose using the same methods. SELECTION is the first, primary tool, allowing difficult truths to be handled by NEVER refering to them. Secondly, the use of language controls the message received, even when the surface meaning seems harmless or factually helpful to anti-Blair causes.
The Israelis butcher holidaymakers on a Gaza beach because they are muslims, the Israelis butcher the doctors that came to the assistance of an Israeli attack against a car in Gaza, the Israelis arrest those 'arabs' that defended themselves againsts a jewish gunman on a bus full of 'arabs', and yet CASMII finds nothing useful in these facts to point out the obscenity in targetting Iran rather than Israel?
twilight
One for one, then it must be one for all.
13.06.2006 21:00
How many bombs have been decommisisoned since the Soviets collapsed? - by the USA.
Ilyan