Where are Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi...?

The Iranian authorities could not resist the temptation to take credit for the uprisings currently taking place across the Arab world.
Last month, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared that the Iranian nation is witnessing the echo of its voice in other parts of the Muslim world.
That the revolutions have been secular in nature was not deemed relevant by the regime’s luminaries. They looked forward to a new Middle East, characterized by waning US and Israeli influence.
The Iranian opposition Green Movement, led by Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, seized the opportunity afforded by the uprisings and the regime’s purported support of them to call for a mass demonstration to express solidarity with the people’s movement in the region against their oppressive regimes, they wrote.
The Iranian government, arguing that this would be a political act, refused to authorize the demonstration even though it was called to support developments in the Arab world that it itself had encouraged…
The contradictions and hypocrisy of the regime were clearly exposed, which may also have been one of the objectives of Karroubi and Mousavi.
Despite the ban, Iranians took to the streets nevertheless, on February 14, notably in Tehran, where they converged on Enghelab and Azadi Square…
Two demonstrators were killed in clashes with the security forces.
Both Karroubi and Mousavi were prevented from attending and placed under house arrest.
The following day, 50 or so member of the Majlis, Iran’s parliament, shouted Death to Mousavi, death to Karroubi inside the chamber.
Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi are corrupts on earth and should be tried, others told the official IRNA news agency. The death penalty usually follows a conviction on such charges in the Islamic Republic…
Since their house arrest on February 14, nothing has been heard from them…
The two are currently in their home. There have only been some limitations on their contacts with suspicious elements, a justice ministry official told the Fars news agency last Monday.
Iran’s Prosecutor General, Gholam Hossein Moshseni Ejei, was more explicit.
Judicial action has been taken (against them), ultimatums have been issued. In the first step, their communications, including their comings and goings, and their telephone conversations have been restricted, and if need be, other steps will be taken, he warned last Monday as well.
Interestingly, four days later, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s Foreign Minister, in an interview with Euronews, claimed that those gentlemen you refer to are in their homes, they are living ordinary lives…To the best of my knowledge, they are at their homes. They are always moving from one place to another. They are free to visit their families. They may have made their own decision to move.
He thus implicitly stated that they were no longer in their homes nor under house arrest.
Yet, if that is so, why has no one seen them?
We, like any other children that suddenly have been cut off from communicating with their parents, are highly concerned. We live in an absolute news blackout about our loved ones. It is clear to us that our loved ones are held by those who hate them only because of their ideals. We are concerned because we read that our parents have not been imprisoned, and are not under house arrest, but are only escorted by security agents, and that we, their children, can see them. But it has not been that way. We the children have not seen our parents, have not heard their voices, and what concerns us most is the contradiction between what the regime says and what is actually taking place, Mousavi’s three daughters declared in a statement quoted by tehranbureau last Thursday.
Opposition activists claim that the two men, along with their wives, Zahra Rahnavard and Fatemeh Karroubi, have been arrested and imprisoned.
It has been more than two weeks that Iranian authorities have put Mousavi and Karroubi in a situation such that no one has any reliable information about their conditions and health. There have been many speculations. For us, after we investigated, the report about the transfer of Mousavi and Karroubi and their wives to Heshmateiyeh (a Tehran jail) is considered credible, Amir Arjomand, a senior Mousavi advisor, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda.
According to some sources, Vahid Haghanian, the Supreme Leader’s own deputy chief of staff, arrested Mr. and Mrs. Karroubi.
The fact that they are being held incommunicado is not a good sign.
Arbitrary and incommunicado detention in unknown locations is often associated with torture and ill treatment, even extrajudicial execution in Iran. Time and again opposition figures in Iran are detained without contact with their families or lawyers, only to undergo abuse and appear on TV weeks later confessing to baseless charges, Hadi Ghaemi, a spokesperson for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, declared.
The precedents are numerous and alarming…
Given the current context of uprisings throughout the Arab world, has the regime finally opted to do away with the opposition’s most prominent leaders in hopes of crushing it, even if it means flouting its own laws, let alone international law?
As such, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH in French) and the Iranian League for the Defense of Human Rights officially seized the United Nations Working Group for Involuntary Disappearances.
The houses of four opposition leaders have been surrounded by the security forces and all their contacts were under scrutiny for months. Now they have disappeared. Their case constitutes a clear application of enforced or involuntary disappearance. The Iranian authorities are responsible for their safety, Dr. Karim Lahiditi, vice president of the FIDH, announced.
Where are Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi?
We must insist that the thugs who rule in Tehran answer that question, and answer it now…
The events in Libya and elsewhere should not lead us to neglect their fate, or encourage the Iranian despots to believe that no one is currently concerned with their wellbeing…
(the photograph of Karroubi and Mousavi was found here)

Is this the treatment one should expect in Obama's America...?

PFC Bradley Manning, suspected of having transferred troves of classified material to WikiLeaks, can no longer be trusted to sleep with any clothes on at all, according to officials at the Marine Brig at Quantico, Virginia, where he has been held for ten months...
As a result, he has been compelled to surrender his underwear lest he injure himself…
How he could possibly manage that feat, the authorities did not care to explain.
This new regulation is for his own good, a simple precautionary measure, according to the military authorities detaining him…
Consequently, he will have to undergo morning inspections stark naked as well, to prevent being injured, presumably, by a potentially lethal piece of  under clothing…
Why has this new procedure been put in place?
The military authorities will not elaborate, because to discuss the details would be violating the detainee’s privacy, they claimed.
For the Obama administration, stripping a detainee on a regular basis and subjecting him to daily inspections without any clothes on, does not qualify as a violation of Manning’s privacy, however…
Coincidentally, this precautionary measure, taken, naturally, for the detainee’s own good, came one day after the Army charged Manning with 22 additional counts, including aiding the enemy. That is a capitol offense.
The prosecution announced that it would not seek the death penalty, however.
Should that be the case, Manning could still face life in prison…
The Obama administration's strategy is clear: it is increasing the pressure on Manning, who has been held under harsh conditions since June of last year.
This type of degrading treatment is inexcusable and without justification. It is an embarrassment to our military justice system and should not be tolerated, David Coombs, Manning’s lawyer declared.
Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell characterized Manning’s behavior at Quantico as exemplary.
Yet, this clearly does not matter since it is administration policy, evidently, to humiliate and intimidate Manning, now matter how he behaves.
He remains in his cell 23 hours a day.
Because of his Prevention of Injury status, the guards check up on him every five minutes.
At night, they can wake him up at any time if they cannot ascertain that all is well…
Yet, Manning is steadfastly refusing to cooperate with the prosecution and reach some kind of plea agreement conditioned on incriminating Julian Assange, editor in chief of WikiLeaks, as a co-conspirator, the real target of this case.
The increasingly abusive and disgraceful treatment inflicted on Manning suggests the authorities have no elements against Assange, and thus must obtain incriminating evidence from Manning
The young soldier is now accused of aiding the enemy, thus…
Yet, who, in fact, is the enemy? WikiLeaks, for releasing the classified material, or the Taliban, al-Qaeda or similar parties?
If the former, then since when has a media organization been considered an enemy for simply publishing information?
If the prosecution is referring to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, then traditional media organizations such as The New York Times should be prosecuted as well, for they were intimately involved in the vetting and publication of the classified material, which, the authorities claim, aided the enemy…
They also published the material before WikiLeaks actually did....
This charge of aiding the enemy may prove difficult to establish in court, thus the administration’s current efforts to extort a plea agreement from Manning.
So, this is the treatment that one should expect in Obama’s America?
Bush and Cheney could have done no better, and are surely pleased with this administration’s approach to civil and constitutional rights….
How frightening that, today, in America, there should no longer be a major political party to condemn such practices…Who now represents those who still believe in justice and individual rights?
Not only US, and international laws demand that human beings be treated in a dignified manner, particularly when they are in detention, and thus at the government’s mercy, but simple, common decency does as well.
Is that now also extinct in Washington?
One would have hoped that someone in the capital learned something from the despicable Abu Ghraib events.
Imagine the outcry in Washington and on the sets of 24-hour cable news networks if a US citizen held abroad was subjected to such degrading treatment?
Alas, it seems that abuse and humiliation are now standard procedure in US-controlled facilities, when detainees are deemed to hold potentially significant information, regardless of who is in the White House….
(here shall you find the photograph posted on top)

Joan is back, and lives in Washington...

The illustrious pundit, enthralled with American might, the universal panacea to this poor planet’s conundrums, and ever the Francophile (did he not recently refer to King Louis XV in one of his sagacious sorties…?) feels some kinship with Joan of Arc! He is now hearing voices…
Voices around the world, our medium tells us, from Europe to America to Libya, are calling for US intervention to help bring down Moammar Gaddafi..
What voices? Only those in this pithy pundit’s wandering mind, it seems.
No matter, if he hears them, then they must exist, thereby vindicating his hero’s freedom agenda, a perpetual preoccupation…
For the obtuse, this refers to George W. Bush, that great leader no one in Iraq, Afghanistan, or New Orleans for that matter, is about to forget…
US intervention? No one is demanding any such thing, thanks, first and foremost, to the Iraq and Afghanistan precedents…The Libyans, like the Tunisians and Egyptians, would like to conquer their freedom themselves…Yes, alas, they are not keen followers of the George W. Bush freedom agenda, whose enthusiasts will consider bestowing democracy upon the deprived, after weeks of relentless bombing and years of occupation (to misquote Chairman Mao, in the Bush/Cheney world view, it is democracy that flows out of the barrel of a gun), but under certain conditions.
It must be easy (no military opposition, thereby rendering its shock and awe demonstration that much more potent), and there must be dividends….Do Libya’s paltry 2% of the planet’s oil resources qualify?
The Bush and Cheneys of America, the indispensable nation, are much more ambitious…
How dare these people conquer their freedom without George W. Bush in mind?
Yet, that is precisely what the Libyans wish to do. They do not want to be robbed of their revolution!
I think there’s a consensus that no one wants (foreign) troops on the ground. I think everyone-as a compromise-supports air strikes (on Gaddafi) under United Nations cover, a representative of the revolutionary committee of Benghazi, told TIME.
United Nation cover? How very French of them!!! That is exactly what President Chirac demanded in 2003 and that the supporters of the Bush freedom agenda found superfluous when they enthusiastically backed the invasion of Iraq, and thus splendidly ignored as they proceeded to shock and awe the ancient yet proud Mesopotamian civilization…
No matter. Do genuine freedom fighters fret over such bureaucratic details?
It’s time to get tough, the former Republican candidate for President John McCain, declared last week.
Now is the time for action, not statements, his faithful sidekick, Senator Joseph Lieberman, enjoined. I would also provide them with the arms to defend themselves, he added…
The fearless freedom fighters (though intervening, albeit, far from the front lines, as is their wont) were about to open a new chapter in the glorious George W. Bush’s freedom agenda saga…
Yet, something happened on the way to the Bushian liberation of Tripoli…
Two early proponents of military action in Libya, Senators John McCain and Joseph I. Lieberman, muted their comments in joint appearance on Thursday at The Brooking’s Institution.
« We are not advocating military (action) at this time», said McCain, Republican of Arizona. « We are not calling for military assistance to a provisional government at this time», the NYT reported. Surely, our intrepid Senators have not been consulting Jacques Chirac? Perhaps, quite simply, the Senators discovered that there was no provisional government to speak of, and that the issue is not one of weapons per se, but of transporting those weapons and the revolutionaries who wield them from Benghazi in the east, to Tripoli in the west?
Even our Bushian freedom fighters have to contend with the vexatious demands of geography, alas…
Should the West impose a no-fly zone?
So far, the Libyan Air Force has proved singularly inept, and done little damage…
Alternatively, perhaps, the pilots have deliberately missed their targets to spare their compatriots…
In any case, should a representative revolutionary Libyan entity make such a request, then we should seriously entertain it.
Let’s call a spade a spade, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses and then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down…
Surely, our prolific pundit has no qualms about attacking Libya. War is a sign of vitality and of America’s resolve to defend its noble and superior principles.
The more wars it wages, the stronger and more virtuous it becomes…
This revolution belongs to the Libyans as the preceding uprisings belonged to the Tunisians and Egyptians…Hopefully, the Algerians, Saudis, Yemenis, Syrians, Jordanians, etc will follow suit…
We, in the West, should provide whatever assistance we can, upon request, and in accordance with international law, the exact opposite, thus, of what the Bush Doctrine stipulates…
Facebook and Twitter have surely mediated this pan-Arab (and Iranian) reach for dignity and freedom. But the Bush doctrine set the premise, our poetic pundit concluded…
The premise? The man single handedly responsible for Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Falluja, extraordinary renditions, secret prisons, ghost detainees, military commissions, indefinite detention, torture (what our delicate pundit and his like-minded colleagues could not bear to call anything else but enhanced interrogation techniques, unless inflicted by foreigners, then it definitely qualifies as torture), warrantless wiretapping,  yes, the list is a distressingly long one, is it not?
What revolutionary worthy of the name and seeking to overthrow a dictatorship in order to establish a democratic regime would seek inspiration there?
The Libyans know what to do, and have nobly begun to conquer their fundamental rights.
They need no one's advice, and certainly  not the Bushian freedom fighters' bellicose nonsense...
(the painting of Joan hearing voices was found here)

Why are we empowering the extremists...?

The minister had just left his home, which he shared with his mother, and was on his way to a cabinet meeting.
His car was intercepted near a market in the nation’s capital, Islamabad, by a white Mehran filled with gunmen donning shawls. Four people were sitting in the car. One of them got out with a Kalashnikov. He came in front of the car and opened fire. I ducked. Minister died on the spot, his driver Gul Sher, who survived the ambush, told Reuters.
Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian Pakistani, and Federal Minister for Minority Affairs, hit by 25 to 30 bullets was declared dead upon arrival at Shifa International Hospital. He was 42.
The Qaeda and the Taliban of Punjab took responsibility for the assassination in leaflets found on the scene of the crime. This is the punishment of this cursed man, it wrote.
Bhatti was accused of being at the head of a governmental body charged with revising Pakistan’s blasphemy law. With the blessing of Allah, the mujahidin will send each of you to hell, the leaflets warned…
The Christian minister was the second high profile official campaigning against the blasphemy law to be assassinated since the beginning of the year (another prominent militant, Sherry Rehman, a member of parliament, is currently in hiding).
On January 4, Salmaan Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, was also gunned down.
He had been openly and publicly campaigning (one brave feat) in favor of granting a presidential pardon to Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman with four children sentenced to death last year for committing blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad. Enraged by his campaign, one of Taseer’s bodyguards assassinated him.
The killer, caught at the scene, was immediately embraced by many Pakistanis, and became the champion in the cause to preserve the country’s blasphemy law, resurrected in the 1980s by the authoritarian and Islamic government of General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq.
The law, according to its critics, is designed to repress the nation’s small religious minorities. Christians account for about 2% of Pakistan’s 170 million people.
Conviction under the law is conditioned on the testimony of witnesses, and thus, easily obtained….
Although no one convicted has received the mandatory death penalty, many of those accused and later released on appeal were murdered by mobs seeking justice.
This law is being misused. Many people are facing death threats and problems. They’re in prison and are being killed extra-judicially, Bhatti declared last November, during the effort to obtain a pardon for Bibi.  
After Taseer’s murder and the public reaction praising the Governor’s assassin for his deed, the government publicly abandoned all efforts to reverse the blasphemy law, thereby emboldening the extremists and undermining its own agenda.
This kind of attack (Bhatti’s murder) was expected after the government’s response to governor Taseer’s assassination. Because of the government’s very weak response, it has encouraged the hardliners in society, Amir Rana, of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, told Reuters.
Bhatti himself knew he was under threat.
They want to impose their radical philosophy in Pakistan, and whoever stands against their radical philosophy, they threaten them. When I’m leading this campaign against the Shariah  laws, and for the abolishment of the blasphemy law and speaking for the oppressed and the marginalized, persecuted Christians and other minorities, these Taliban threaten me…I am ready to die for a cause. I’m living for my community and suffering people and I will die to defend their rights. So these threats and these warnings cannot change my opinion and principles. I will prefer to die for my principles and for the justice of my community rather to compromise, he declared in an interview.
In fact, his bodyguards were not by him at the time of the ambush, but were waiting for him in his office, at his request.
Bhatti clearly knew what was coming and that nothing or no one could prevent it.
I am sad and upset but not surprised. These people have a long list of targets, and we are all on it. It is not a matter of if, but when, Tahira Abdullah, a Pakistani human rights activist, told The Guardian.
The Pakistani government denounced the assassination, and President Asif Ali Zardari characterized it as a heinous act.
Yet, the reluctance of the authorities to alienate the extremists even after the Taseer murder, their refusal to confront directly and energetically those who seek not only to deny the right of free speech to their opponents, but have no qualms about brazenly killing them as well, in the capital’s streets and in broad daylight, has dangerous and pernicious consequences.
The radicals are now dominating the debate and manipulating the government’s agenda at will.
Unlike the government, they are not afraid to voice and defend their convictions, no matter how lethal or odious.
And the ideology that led to this assassination has now sent another determined and deadly message to the state-that it will continue to fight till the last liberal falls, wrote Aamer Ahmed Khan, editor of the BBC Urdu Service.
If the authorities choose not to react out of political expediency or pusillanimity, then the President and government should resign….The people should then be left free to elect whatever government it wants after a democratic electoral campaign…
It is time to implement the law and not surrender in front of extremists. Our founding fathers did not wage a struggle for an intolerant society. They wanted equal rights for all human beings regardless of their caste, creed and religion. We must reclaim our tolerant heritage. Pakistan cannot let the blood of Mr. Taseer and Mr. Bhatti go to waste. RIP Shahbaz Bhatti. A brave man like you will surely be missed, wrote the Daily Times in an editorial…
The Pakistani authorities have squandered that heritage and  lost the courage and the will to defend, let alone promote, their own values.
Yet, what have we, in the West, done to help them?
In the name of eradicating Islamic extremism in Afghanistan, we have infected Pakistan, where offshoots of al-Qaeda now prosper and boldly attack those who embody the values we profess to defend and advocate for the region, purportedly with the support of the Pakistani government who pretends to share them, but is now too weak to defend itself.
Has not our war in Afghanistan simply moved next door?
Are we sure that military means are the best and only way to reach our objectives?
Just yesterday, Western forces killed nine youngsters (9 to 15 years old) in Afghanistan. They were gathering wood on a hillside…
NATO, naturally, apologized. We are deeply sorry for this tragedy, General David Petraeus declared, but the damage, alas, was already done.
Ten years, $383 billion, and tens of thousands of casualties later, we are still fighting in Afghanistan.
Does any one in Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere else for that matter, still believe that we are there to help and protect these people?
How many more supporters of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban did this latest tragedy spawn?
Is there any objective reason why, at this rate, we should not still be fighting the same war with the same results ten years from now?
What state will Afghanistan or Pakistan be in then?
In what state will we be in?
If we truly desire to thwart extremists in the region, then we must propose a radically different agenda, based on development, not the eradication of evanescent enemies: schools, clinics, water, electricity, trade; this is what these people yearn for…
Helping people to help themselves, and mobilizing the necessary resources to do so is a noble project, and that only we can offer.
How can the Taliban, of whatever variety, even begin to compete with that?
(the photograph above of Shahbaz Bhatti is by AFP)