Buenos Aires city mayor Mauricio Macri has appointed Jorge Palacios, a disgraced former Argentine Federal Police officer suspected of involvement in the cover up of the AMIA massacre, to be the head of the city’s first autonomous police force. Such is the strength of the suspicions attaching to Palacios’s role in the aftermath of the AMIA attack that State Prosecutor Albert Nisman is believed to be on the point of indicting him on charges of having warned a suspect , Kanoore Edul, that he was under investigation and that his home was about to be raided by the police. Speaking for one of the groups representing victims of the attack, Sergio Burstein stated his “complete rejection” of the appointment and described it as “an insult to the dead.”
Continue reading ‘AMIA Suspect Gets Top Cop Job’
The increasingly nauseating Max Blumenthal is ably taken apart by Dvar Dea here. Serendipitously, Dvar’s piece came into my in-box while I was reading Blumenthal’s whine on the Huffington Post (look it up, I ain’t linking) comparing Israel’s security forces with those of Iran.
Should it ever dawn upon Blumenthal that intrepid journalism involves more than filming a bunch of drunken kids in the safety of west Jerusalem, perhaps he might venture to Tehran. Or at least London, where Press TV may well be willing to take him on, given that so many other pundits are bailing out on the voice of the Iranian regime.
Also recommended: Claudio Lomnitz and Rafael Sánchez in The Boston Review write about antisemitism in Chavez’s Venezuela.
Over at Harry’s Place, habibi congratulates UK pundit Iain Dale for announcing that he will no longer appear on Press TV, the Holocaust-denying mouthpiece of the Iranian regime which masquerades as a legitimate news outlet. And The Times has an excellent piece here. It’s clear that Press TV, which is based in west London, is violating UK broadcasting regulations. The UK government must act - and shut it down.
I have already written here and here about a violent attack on a street celebration in the city of Buenos Aires of the 61st anniversary of the foundation of Israel and later about the petition signed by various pillars of the Argentine human rights movement calling for the attackers to be released forthwith. On Wednesday last there appeared in Pagina /12 a lengthy article by Osvaldo Bayer justifying his support for the petition and today in the same paper there’s a brief reply from Daniel Goldman.
Continue reading ‘Antisemitism, Human Rights and Acceptable Jews in Buenos Aires’
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was part of a death squad that killed three Kurds in Austria, according to Green party security spokesman Peter Pilz. He said Ahmadinejad had been involved in the killings in Vienna in 1989 and may have pulled the trigger on one of the guns used to kill the men.
Continue reading ‘Ahmadinejad the Assassin’
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
In the June 23 issue of the anti-fascist magazine blick nach rechts (”A look to the right”), Anton Maegerle notes that European neo-Nazis have been expressing their solidarity with the Tehran regime.
Continue reading ‘“Heil Ahmadinejad, Foe of Imperialism”’
It’s three years to the day since Gilad Shalit was kidnapped and incarcerated by Hamas. The Red Cross has been denied access to him, his family has had no contact from him, no-one knows what his condition is or the circumstances he is being held in. Which is why the Israeli government will perhaps want to revisit all the options available to it, including the complete sealing of the border with Gaza (with the exception of, as Gilad’s father Noam has said, urgent medical and humanitarian requirements) until Gilad is released.
This is a guest post by Modernity.
I recently commented on this blog that I am against the State enforcing dress codes and Ben kindly asked me to elaborate.
I should say, from the outset, that I am a secularist, as well as being an atheist and a lover of French history (if I could ever finish that volume by Colin Jones!)
Continue reading ‘The State and the Burqa’
French President Nicolas Sarkozy: “We cannot accept to have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity. That is not the idea that the French republic has of women’s dignity. The burqa is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience. It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic.”
And there’s this too:
Continue reading ‘Sarkozy: “The Burqa is a Sign of Subservience”’
This is a guest post by Petra Marquardt-Bigman.
The Quilliam Foundation in London prides itself for being “the world’s first counter-extremism think tank.” The organization’s expertise in this field is clearly unique given that it was founded by “former leading ideologues of UK-based extremist Islamist organizations.” When it comes to Zionism, however, Quilliam’s former Islamists find it hard to really leave behind the ideology they now oppose.
Continue reading ‘Zionism and Islamism: A New False Equivalence’
The exquistely pro-government Artepolitica has a new post from a knuckle dragger called Eduardo Real in which he identifies the current upheaval in Iran as nothing more than the latest example of a series of US-organized “color revolutions” mounted against governments uncongenial to its interests. He lists five of these as having been successful: those in Serbia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Lebanon, and another seven as failures: those in Belarus, China, Burma, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina (!). Commentary on this kind of stuff is really superfluous but I just can’t resist ….
Continue reading ‘Crisis in Iran: A Reaction from the Peronist Left’
Dear friends and colleagues,
Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian-Canadian intellectual, has sent us this statement, asking us to solicit the signatures of our editors and writers. Both of us have signed it and urge you to do so. We plan on posting the letter and the names of signatories on our website, and Ramin also plans to send the statement to the New York Times and various other news sources.
If you would like to be added to the list of signatories, please respond to this email or email David Marcus at marcus@dissentmagazine.org
-Michael Walzer and Michael Kazin
We, the undersigned scholars, academics and writers around the world, are concerned about the human rights crisis in Iran. We request the United Nations to condemn the current coup d’état and support Iranians in their demand for a fair and democratic election. Deeply worried by the reports of Iranian paramilitary groups and security forces firing upon and arresting peaceful civilian demonstrators, we demand that the international community act now to prevent further violence and bloodshed. We call on the government of Iran to respect and uphold the right to peaceful protest. We call upon democratic institutions and organizations around the world to condemn government-sponsored violence against peaceful Iranian protestors. We also call on governments around the world to ask the UN Secretary General, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Human Rights Council to appoint a UN special commission to monitor the post-election situation in Iran and to inform the Security Council about the arbitrary arrest and detention of student activists and leading reformists in Iran.
The Iranian regime is murdering its own people on the streets. Any further comment is superfluous. Video here. And here.
Here is a guide to setting up a proxy server for Iranian citizens.
