In this mailing:
- Yves Mamou: Is Hezbollah
Eating the Iranian People's Bread?
- Denis MacEoin: Iran Sends More
to the Gallows
- A. Z. Mohamed: Egypt: State-Run
Media vs. President el-Sisi
by Yves Mamou • January 4, 2018
at 5:00 am
- Ironically, Iran's
receiving more than $100 billion in frozen assets succeeded in
breaking the solidarity between the Iranian people and the
Ayatollahs' regime better than the sanctions did.
- Without Iranian
money, Hezbollah would not exist. At least, not exist as an
Iranian foreign legion, militarily engaged against Israel and
in other Middle East regional conflicts. Without Iranian
subsidies, Hezbollah would be just a narco-mafia.
- Hezbollah has
developed deep connections to Mexican and Colombian drug
cartels, directly to facilitate the distribution of drugs
throughout the Middle East and the US.
Pictured:
Portraits of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (left) and Iran's
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (right) in Beirut, Lebanon,
in 2006. (Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images)
In the holy city of Qom in Iran, on December 30,
2017, anti-regime demonstrators shouted "Death to
Hezbollah", "Aren't you ashamed Khamenei? Get out of
Syria and take care of us", and "Not Gaza, or
Lebanon".
In an Islamic country, whose official slogan is
"Death to America" and "Death to Israel", to
see Iranian people shouting "Death to Hezbollah" is
totally surreal.
By wishing "Death to Hezbollah", Iranians
demonstrators were not only protesting a "rise of the price of
eggs" as the Ayatollahs' propaganda machine tried to claim.
The demonstrators were demanding that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei spend Iranian money for Iranian people -- and only for
Iranian people.
by Denis MacEoin • January 4,
2018 at 4:30 am
- Iran's judicial
authorities "continued to impose and carry out cruel,
inhuman or degrading punishments that amounted to torture,
including floggings, blindings and amputations. These were
sometimes carried out in public." At least one woman,
Fariba Khaleghi, remains under a sentence of death by stoning.
— Amnesty International.
- What is worse, the
vast majority of those put to death in Iran have not committed
crimes that would be punished with that severity (or at all)
almost anywhere else in the world, least of all in Europe,
Israel, or 23 states (and the District of Columbia) in the
USA.
- Even before their
trials, individuals accused of anti-state convictions are
mistreated, tortured, kept in solitary confinement for months
on end, and denied access to their families and lawyers.
"'Confessions' extracted under torture were used as
evidence at trial. Judges often failed to deliver reasoned
judgments and the judiciary did not make court judgments
publicly available." — Amnesty International.
- As for the mullahs,
they brook no criticism from any quarter and intend to keep
Iran and its people under their iron grip forever, even if
that means putting to death every dissident voice.
The
notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran. (Image source: Ehsan
Iran/Wikimedia Commons)
At the end of December 2017, something almost
without precedent happened in cities across Iran. It started in the
largest shrine city of Mashhad, then moved to Kermanshah, which had
not long before suffered a major earthquake in which some 600
people died and where survivors had been neglected by the state.
After that, large-scale protests moved to Sari and Rasht in the
north, the clerical city of Qom, then Hamadan, and by the December
29, Tehran itself. In the following days, people were on the
streets across the country. Starting on the third day, protesters
were challenged by massive turnouts of pro-regime marchers.
Anti-government protests, which these were, had not been seen in
this quantity since the brutally-crushed risings after the 2009
presidential elections. By January 2, at least 20 protesters had
been killed and more than 450 arrested. It was reported on the same
day that Iran's Chief Justice, Mousa Ghazanfarabadi, claimed that
protesters might be considered "enemies of God", and
executed.
by A. Z. Mohamed • January 4,
2018 at 4:00 am
- Egypt's state-run
press persists in the practice of condemning the United States
and Israel -- an attitude that contradicts President el-Sisi's
positions and vision for reforming Islam.
- This is one of the
conflicts that still beleaguer Egyptian society -- or perhaps
signs of a growing power struggle.
Egyptian
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty
Images)
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi responded to
U.S. President Donald Trump's official recognition of Jerusalem as
Israel's capital with cautious pessimism. He warned his ally in the
White House not to take measures that would undermine prospects for
peace in the Middle East. The delicate balancing act he has been
performing, to avoid jeopardizing his relationship with Washington,
and at the same time not antagonize the Palestinians and much of
the Egyptian public, was probably to be expected.
Not expected was the depth of extremist
anti-American and anti-Israel sentiment spread by Egypt's state-run
media. Two particularly jarring examples illustrate this disturbing
trend.
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