Friends of the Ayatollahs

It looks like Selma was right. The world, Western media and American media have found a new toy to play with. Iran has grown silent over the recent few days, and the interest has waned. But some of us are still looking, and finding out, about the kind of thug who is now installed for a second term in Iran and the regime that sustains him.

Here is an article by Karl Pfeifer on Z-word blog:

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. [-]

Khatami justified those executions like this:

“We’re at a university, the cradle of science, so we can speak of it scientifically. In all schools of thought and in all religions there is punishment and punishment is not a form of violence. Punishment is seen as a response to violence or deviance in society and if there is no punishment in a society a society cannot run effectively (…) As an expert of Islamic sciences I tell you that capital punishment is accepted in Islam (…) So yes you are correct homosexual activity is a crime in Islam. And crimes are punishable. (…) And that we must differentiate between punishment and violence.”

Khatami has also spoken out against women’s emancipation:

“One of the major mistakes in the West has been women’s emancipation which has disintegrated the family… Staying in the home does not mean being pushed to the sidelines. Looking after the home does not prevent one from a say in the destiny… We must not think that being social beings means having work outside the home. Housekeeping is among the most important tasks.” Salaam, May 11, 1997

Khatami described Israel during a meeting with Jordanian politicians when he was president as a “plague” and “the greatest enemy of Islam and humanity.” Iranian state radio quoted the president as saying during the meeting that in order” to resist this plague there is no solution except for unity among Muslim countries.”

Ben Dror Yemini, an Israeli journalist, asks:

Tell us, where is everyone? Where did all the people who demonstrated against Israel's brutality in Operation Cast Lead, in the Second Lebanon War, in Operation Defensive Shield, or even in The Hague, when we were dragged there unwillingly after daring to build a separation barrier between us and the suicide bombers, disappear to? We see demonstrations here and there, but these are mainly Iranian exiles. Europe, in principle, is peaceful and calm. So is the United States. Here and there a few dozens, here and there a few hundreds. Have they evaporated because it is Tehran and not here?

All the peace-loving and justice-loving Europeans, British professors in search of freedom and equality, the friends filling the newspapers, magazines and various academic journals with various demands for boycotting Israel, defaming Zionism and blaming us and it for all the ills and woes of the world -- could it be that they have taken a long summer vacation? Now of all times, when the Basij hooligans have begun to slaughter innocent civilians in the city squares of Tehran? Aren't they connected to the Internet? Don't they have YouTube? Has a terrible virus struck down their computers? Have their justice glands been removed in a complicated surgical procedure (to be re-implanted successfully for the next confrontation in Gaza)? How can it be that when a Jew kills a Muslim, the entire world boils, and when extremist Islam slaughters its citizens, whose sole sin is the aspiration to freedom, the world is silent?