 by Lt.Col. Ralph Peters The Taliban scored a powerful psychological victory yesterday, as fewer than two dozen suicide attackers brought Afghanistan's government and capital city to a standstill. In a dramatic wave of attacks (possibly planned with help from Pakistani intelligence operatives), the Taliban struck Kabul's presidential palace, several government ministries and a multistory shopping complex. And they did it just as President Hamid Karzai was swearing in his new Cabinet (despite a battle with parliament over the legitimacy of his picks).
Think that gave Afghans renewed confidence in their government? We've been told, repeatedly, that Afghanistan's army and police are improving, yet US forces had to rush to their aid in responding to 20 or fewer attackers right in Kabul. Still worse: The attack's planning was meticulous and media savvy. In smooth coordination with simultaneous suicide bombings and small-arms attacks, Taliban public-relations agents popped up online and in the media to thump their chests over their win. When it comes to media relations, these thugs aren't backward barbarians. Indeed, the Taliban does it far better than our military, which slowly issues defensive statements that nobody takes seriously. (And where our bureaucracy's paralytic, NATO's is comatose.) Inevitably, our guys in Kabul will play down the attacks, claiming that "Saigon's back to normal, people are going about their business." But weigh the psychological impact yesterday's strikes had on Afghans unsure of which horse to back in this deadly race. Yesterday's wave of bombings was a mini-Tet Offensive -- a small-scale repeat of the attacks that triggered US public opinion's turn against the Vietnam War. They were designed to explode Western claims of progress and embarrass our leaders -- and it worked. Our self-delusion stinks of the early years in Vietnam, when Gen. Paul Harkins, our man in Saigon, claimed (in 1963) that the Vietnamese army was doing a great job, the war was being won and our troops would be home by 1965. Recently, I read a report by an official US visitor to Afghanistan calling Karzai "brave" and describing him as the leader Afghanistan needs.
Good God -- he's hiding in his presidential palace, afraid to visit the front lines and see what kind of shape his country's really in. Yesterday, the war came to him. Our insistence on propping up Karzai is so uncanny a replay of our support for South Vietnam's incompetent Diem regime five decades ago that the similarity's unnerving. We saw what we wanted to see then. And we see what we want to see now. The problem is not our troops: They're doing everything we ask and more. But they're pit bulls led by miniature poodles. Senior military leaders refuse to see our enemies for what they are -- religious fanatics with a durable tribal base -- and insist on treating them as 20th-century ideological insurgents. Earth to Gen. Stan McChrystal: Those suicide bombers yesterday weren't Sandinistas. Special Forces and other personnel down-range (far from the gee-whiz briefing rooms) understand that there is no Afghan nation, that we've stuck ourselves in the midst of complex tribal wars super-charged by religious fanaticism among our enemies. And, in tribal wars, you have to pick your tribes. It's not that the war in Afghanistan's unwinnable. It's just not winnable on the ludicrous terms we've imposed upon ourselves. We want to build what can't be built and refuse to do what must be done -- and sacrifice our troops for foreign scoundrels. Poll the Afghans on the streets of Kabul today. Ask them if we're winning. Ralph Peters' latest book is "The War After Armageddon." NYPost
 By Alan Caruba When President Obama delivers a speech on why he is going to send more thousands of U.S. troops and spend more billions on the eight-year-old conflict in Afghanistan, it would be a good idea to better understand why so much of what is reported from the Middle East suffers a great disconnect from the truth.
In 1998, Joris Luyendijk , a Dutch student who had studied Arabic at Cairo University for a year, was offered a job as a Middle East correspondent for a Dutch news agency despite having no experience as a reporter. What followed was his real education about the Middle East and the way it is presented to the West by the news media.
His book about that experience, “People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East” was initially published in the Netherlands in 2006 and has since then it has been translated and published in Hungary, Italy, Denmark and Germany. In October an English edition was published by Soft Skull Press, an imprint of Counterpoint, a Berkeley, California publisher.
Having begun my career as a journalist, I was interested to learn what Luyendijk had taken from his years hopping around the Middle East before and after 9/11 and during the two Iraq wars waged by the U.S. to resolve a problem called Saddam Hussein.
For anyone digesting the news from his morning newspaper or watching it on television, suspecting that it might be biased or wrong, this book that focuses on reporting from the Middle East is a revelation because Luyendijk strives mightily to expose the way the news is manipulated by all the parties involved.
Covering his experiences from 1998 to 2003, the author is refreshingly candid, admitting that, despite his student year in Cairo, he had little or no real understanding of Egypt or the rest of the Middle East.
There is, however, one thing that anyone can understand. The Middle East is composed of dictatorships and the sole purpose of each one is to survive. To do that, their people must be constantly indoctrinated and fearful. That is made possible by rendering them, individually and as a group, powerless. There simply is no such thing as justice or the opportunity to express an opinion in opposition to the leader.
Significantly, those living in the Middle East cannot make an informed judgment of what is occurring around them because they operate two points of view that are very real to them. First is a widely accepted sense of victimhood, and, second, they believe that Israel, ultimately, is manipulating the entire world!
Conversely, Americans who have no contact with the Middle East beyond the headlines and snapshots of bloodshed and warfare are comparably unable to make informed judgments about a people who differ among themselves in many ways.
The Middle East is very different from the West and Luyendijk believes that few in the West are even vaguely aware that those who live there live in a parallel universe; one that functions by the rules of ruthless dictatorships, by tribes, and by a religion that is hostile to all others.
Democracy is not likely to take root in the Middle East and this can be traced to the prevailing religion of the region, Islam. The only reason democracy occurred in Turkey is because the founder of the modern state, Ataturk, isolated Islam from the conduct of governance and that has been backed up by an army that has, thus far, ensured the separation.
 by Patrick Poole I was giving a briefing on Islamic radicalization and current domestic terror threats at a military conference earlier this year when I was approached afterward by an Army colonel who asked exactly what could be done to counter such threats. He was taken aback when I replied, “The military can’t and won’t do what it needs to about jihadism, and we are going to see body bags coming out of our recruiting centers and military bases for the foreseeable future.” Sadly, the killings at the Little Rock Army recruiting station in June and at Ft. Hood last Thursday confirm my analysis. Much of the hand-wringing that has occurred in the media since the Ft. Hood shootings has been in the attempt to avoid the hard questions about the jihadist problem. In fact, significant energy is being expended by the media to assure us that there is no problem to solve. Many talking heads now claim that this incident was entirely unpredictable and the cause ultimately unknowable. This widespread agnosticism is an element to the overall problem of why we will continue to see shootings at military facilities. There are other identifiable reasons why there will be future incidents. I offer these three observations, which are by no means exhaustive: 1) The Pentagon has yet to attempt to create a threat model that identifies, let alone addresses, the internal and external jihadist threat.
In January 2008 my colleagues LTC Joseph Myers, Dr. Terri Wonder, and I delivered a series of lectures at the Department of the Army’s annual anti-terrorism conference focusing on three issues: 1) that our national security strategy has yet to incorporate any threat model for jihadist ideology and how that hampers our counterterrorism operations; 2) mosque-based scenarios that provide important indicators and warnings of potential local community radicalization; and 3) the sources of jihadist ideology and the need for military force protection personnel to engage their local community to identify potential threats. In the audience were 350 of the top military counterterrorism, force protection, and law enforcement officials from Army commands and bases around the globe. The military brass can’t claim that they haven’t been warned. In the two years since, some limited educational efforts have been made in response to our warnings, but on the command level there is an institutional obstinacy that prevents any substantive discussion leading to concrete policies to put into place DOD-wide. Under the present administration, that doesn’t look to change. 2) The military has made no apparent effort to address some of its stunning failures. For example, take the case of Ali Mohamed, al-Qaeda’s military chief who served as a U.S. Army sergeant at the Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg and gathered extensive intelligence in his position that advanced the terror group’s understanding of warfare and helped to plan the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa.
As documented in Peter Lance’s book Triple Cross and the National Geographic documentary of the same name, Mohamed was allowed to continue in his position at this sensitive facility despite warnings from the Egyptian military and acknowledgment from his Army superiors that he held jihadist ideas.
In light of what we presently know about Major Nadal Malik Hasan, it already seems clear that there were many obvious warning signs that were intentionally ignored, giving proof that very little has been learned from Ali Mohamed and several other similar cases since 9/11. Read more here,,,, Source: Pajamas Media Patrick Poole is a regular contributor to Pajamas Media, and an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.
By Phyllis Chesler We are entering an all-spin zone, a wild, weird and spooky season and I am not talking about Halloween. With a few exceptions, the mainstream media continue to kill stories about honor killings and attempted honor killings in North America. How often did you read stories about the honor killings that took place in Toronto (07), Dallas (08), Atlanta (08), Oak Forest, Illinois (08), Alexandria (08), Buffalo (09), and Kingston, Canada (09)—on and on, until the most recent attempted honor killing in Phoenix? There are two killers still on the loose: Yaser Said, the Dallas monster out of Egypt who abused, stalked, and murdered his two daughters with the help of his wife, their mother, and his son, their brother. Read more ...Source: PJM
By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz Virulent anti-Semitic content thrives on a Dutch social media website used by nearly half of the entire population of Holland, according to a report released Thursday. Yet, many of the online instigators appear to be Dutch-speaking Arabs. The report, produced by investigators from Yad VaShem, the Dutch-language Israel Facts Monitorgroup and the Network on Anti-Semitism based in the Netherlands, was provided to all the political parties in the Netherlands, as well as to members of the Dutch government. As the Internet is becoming an increasingly important and influential facet of Dutch life, the investigators are hoping to provide some insight into how it is used in the Netherlands to propagate anti-Israel rhetoric and anti-Semitic views. "Anti-Semitism and hatred toward Israel containing anti-Semitic content is a common phenomenon on the Internet in the Netherlands," the report declares. "Remarks which were unthinkable only ten years ago are now common practice and do not seem to raise eyebrows anymore." In fact, after three months of regular monitoring, the investigators concluded, "The climate in which the public debate about Israel and the Middle East conflict is taking place on the Internet is deteriorating." Titled "Anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity on the Internet in the Netherlands", the report presents examples and trends of anti-Israel blood libels, violent anti-Semitic hate speech and, simultaneously, Holocaust denial, smearing Israelis as Nazis, and calls for returning Jews to the death camps. For the purpose of gauging online Dutch social media, the investigators monitored closed and open groups on the Facebook-like Hyves social networking website, which can claim around nine million members, and the talkback section of de Volkskrant, one of the leading newspapers in Holland. Open Praise for Suicide Bombings
Among the public groups on Hyves, there are 35 groups that the report defines as either "pro-Palestinian" or "anti-Israel". The majority of these groups, according to the investigators, "are run by young Arab immigrants or descendants of Arab immigrants living in the Netherlands." While the most popular anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian groups have several thousands of members, the largest pro-Israel Hyves forum has 900. Read more here ... Source: INN
 by Khaled Abu Toameh The article in the Swedish tabloid that suggested that Israel has been killing Palestinians to harvest their organs has caused huge damage to the Palestinians’ cause and the profession of journalism. If the tabloid’s goal was to help the Palestinians, then it is clear that the article has had a boomerang effect.
As one Palestinian journalist put it, “This is a nice story, but it’s harmful to the Palestinians because it’s not based on any evidence. Who’s going to believe us the next time we cry ‘Wolf!’” The “investigative report,” which is based on a rumor that has been circulating among Palestinians for many years, makes it more difficult for Palestinians to market their perspectives and views to the world. The journalist who wrote the report has since admitted that he does not have any proof to back up his allegations.
Even the family at the center of the article, the Ghanems from the village of Imattin in the West Bank, say that they do not recall that they had ever complained to a Swedish journalist that the organs of their son, Bilal, had been removed after his death.
At a time when Jews are anxious about how Israel will fare in negotiations with the Obama administration over a peace deal with the Palestinians, the Stork and Whitson affairs present an unfamiliar problem to HRW: how to reassure liberal Jews, including HRW’s founder and one of its current board members, worried that the organization is playing into the hands of anti-Israel activists from New York to Riyadh. Whether or not its staff actively seek out ways to target Israel, as Netanyahu’s office claims, by appearing to focus so many of its resources on Israel—five reports have been issued already since the Gaza War, three of them criticizing the IDF’s conduct, and another report about Israel’s “wanton destruction” is forthcoming—and by hiring people like Stork and Whitson, HRW, under executive director Ken Roth, leaves those doubts unanswered. “Ken feels their facts are right, and the critics are wrong, next case,” said Sid Sheinberg, the former Hollywood mogul and vice-chair of HRW’s board. “I don’t believe that’s the way the Israelis should be treated.”... “They frequently say, ‘We’re trying to be evenhanded,’” said Robert Bernstein, the founder of Helsinki Watch and now a board member emeritus at HRW. “I don’t understand trying to be evenhanded, because to me Israel is interested and a believer in human rights and it stands out in the Middle East as practicing it in their country.” Read more here ... Source: The Weekly Standard
H/T WeaselZippers
 August 09 | By Aaron Klein JERUSALEM – A new study asserts Hamas is engaging in a "spin" effort of phony rapprochement with Israel in order to continue engaging with the West, while its leaders are explaining in Arabic they are still seeking the Jewish state's destruction and denying any real accommodation with Israel. "Hamas is conducting a 'smile spin' for the West, particularly the United States. Its main objectives are to ease its political isolation, improve its position vis-Ã -vis the Palestinian Authority and get funds to rebuild the Gaza Strip," concludes the study by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at Israel's Center for Special Studies.
"For the Palestinians, [Hamas] stresses that its fundamental anti-Israeli pro-terrorism strategy remains unchanged." The study quotes liberally from multiple recent Hamas interviews to U.S. and British news media outlets and compares those statements to Hamas rhetoric to the Palestinians during the same period. Khaled Mashaal, the overall chief of Hamas, was interviewed in Damascus two weeks ago by the Wall Street Journal. During the interview, Meshaal told the newspaper his group is willing to agree to an immediate reciprocal cease-fire with Israel as well as a prisoner exchange for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Meshaal claimed Hamas and other Palestinian organizations would be ready to cooperate with any American, international or regional effort to find a "just solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict," end so-called Israeli occupation and allow the Palestinian people their "right to self-determination." In a separate interview with the British Economist, Ahmed Yousef, Hamas' chief political adviser in Gaza, was quoted as stating, "Hamas is very close on recognition of Israel … We show all sorts of ideological flexibility on this." Read more here ... Source: WND H/T JihadWatch
Latest recipient of the World-Class Hypocrite Award
Friday, June 26, 2009 Joy Tiz For previous generations, the question: “Where were you when Kennedy was shot” has served as a conversation starter as well as a catalyst for exploration of a shared history. It would seem that the quintessential question will soon be: “where were you when you found out Michael Jackson was dead?”? For the record, I was at the gym. Credulous, I trusted that the Jackson story would get a few minutes of coverage before Bret Baier returned. My jejune confidence that Charles Krauthammer would momentarily be providing commentary about actual news was hastily crushed. Abstrusely, Fox News brought Shepard Smith in to cover this astounding turn of events. You know what would be really shocking? Michael Jackson dying at the age of 87. That would have been a real stunner, well deserving of the nauseating nonstop narration that should be reserved for heads of state. Time really stands still on the treadmill when you are listening to a fervid Geraldo lamenting Anna Nicole Jackson’s “shocking” death. All other news of the day having been declared inconsequential, Fox proceeded to indulge in unnecessary and disproportionate keening about the calamitous death of the world’s most famous pedophile. The same Michael Jackson who once told a reporter it was “sweet” and “charming” to sleep with little boys and ply them with “Jesus Juice” (known to lucid people as “wine”) has been deified. Jackson, who dangled one of his babies off of a hotel balcony also obtained those children via a bizarre and labyrinthine arrangement, named one of them Blanket and made them wear burkas. Jackson is exceedingly popular in the United Kingdom, confirming Mark Steyn’s reflection that the United Kingdom is further along than the United States in the march toward complete social and economic collapse. But not to worry, we won’t quit until we’re Number One. Michael Jackson recently converted to Islam. Michael’s brother, Jermaine, converted to Islam in 1989. Even the Religion of Peace failed to deliver true bliss. Americans know far more about Michael Jackson than they do about the history of Iran and its relationship to the United States. Most of what America knows is wrong, having been subjected to pertinacious propaganda in Ayers’ based public education. Which is why the interest in the life and death of Neda Agah-Soltan was so facilely dwarfed by the opulent freak show that surrounds Michael Jackson. Neda was the beautiful young Iranian woman who was gunned down in the streets of Tehran for the crime of showing up. She showed up to take a stand for freedom and took a bullet in the neck for her aspirations. A relative in the United States had cautioned Neda not to attend any demonstrations, telling her “They’re killing people.” To which the lionhearted and prescient Neda replied: “Don’t worry, it’s just one bullet and its over.” For just a flicker in time, Neda became an icon, a symbol of the young Iranians’ longing for the most elemental liberties. It was easy for Americans to be incensed at the barbarous slaughter of a young woman so lovely and earnest. Young Iran has caught a glimpse of freedom, the inescapable byproduct of advancing technology. The noteworthiness of Neda is in no small measure due to the ease with which young Americans can appreciate her as not so unlike themselves. Part of the delusive indoctrination that goes on in public schools includes the rewriting of Iranian history in a way that abets the left. In actuality, before the Jimmy Carter regime, the United States and Iran were on friendly terms. The Shah of Iran was the least backward of all Muslim leaders.
The shah, who is erroneously characterized as a villain, was responsible for giving women the right to vote. In other Arab states, they still don’t have the right to leave the house without a husband or other male relative.
Unimaginable though it may be post-Carter, Iran and Israel were not always bitter enemies. The current government of Iran is as much an enemy of the Iranian people as it is of Israel.
Iranians are understandably horrified by the new American president who has referred to the Ayatollah as Supreme Leader, a show of respect for the legitimacy of the barbaric regime. Barack Obama went so far as to send a letter to the Ayatollah Khomeini weeks before Iran’s June 12th election. Obama was pandering to the brutal, backwards and oppressive Iranian leadership. Back when the news still took the trouble to cover the bloodbath in Iran, the world saw young Iranians holding signs in English. Urgent pleas were coming through computers worldwide begging the leader of the free world to help the Iranian people. Many Americans would be amazed to learn how many Iranians were educated via petrodollars in the United Kingdom or the United States. Some Iranian young people speak far better English than your local high school kids. The late shah’s son reached out to Obama for support: “I would like to take this opportunity and tell the President this is a crucial moment - on behalf of my compatriots and millions who have been turning to the outside world, particularly to this President - to say: don’t let us down.” While Barack Obama was eating ice cream, Neda’s parents were forced from their home by government agents. Public displays of mourning were shut down. Nineteen year old Kaveh Alipour was gunned down by government barbarians. After frantically searching for news about his missing son at hospitals and eventually the morgue, Alipour’s father was told he would be required to pay a $3000 “bullet fee” to reimburse the government for the ammo expended in executing his child. Barack Obama did eventually deliver the obligatory “we are outraged” statement. He held off as long as he could, until public opinion became too clamorous to overlook. While he gabbled, the violence in Iran escalated. Iranian citizens were being massacred in the streets with axes and machetes. Students were being routed from their beds in their dorm rooms. Ronald Reagan responded to a similar cry for help from the people of Poland who were then enslaved by the Soviet Union. Reagan minced no words in decrying the Soviet Union as an “Evil Empire”. He never expelled gibberish about how the United States shouldn’t “meddle” as innocent citizens suffer. Then, as today, pantywaist liberals were caterwauling about toning down the rhetoric so as not to pique oppressive dictators. Thankfully, Reagan ignored such nattering. The Poles were doing what the Iranians are today: insisting on the most basic of human liberties. Ronald Reagan had no intention of sitting on the sidelines waiting to see how this thing played out: “In a stiff note to Soviet boss Leonid Brezhnev; Reagan said that if the Russians kept up their thuggish response to Poland they ‘could forget any new nuclear arms agreement.’ Gone too would be better trade relations, and in their place would be the ‘harshest possible economic sanctions’ if they even thought of invading Poland as they had done with Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Hungary in 1956.” The Soviets responded by declaring martial law and shutting down the Polish borders, as well as squelching communications with the outside world. Reagan was unflinching. He wrote in his diary: “I took a stand that this may be the last chance in our lifetime to see a change in the Soviet Empire’s colonial policy re Eastern Europe. We should take a stand and tell them unless and until martial law is lifted in Poland, the prisoners were released and negotiations resumed between Walesa and the Polish government, we would quarantine the Soviets and Poland with no trade or communications across their borders. Also tell our NATO allies and others to join us in such sanctions or risk an estrangement from us. A TV speech is in the works. “ Reagan helped spirit the defecting Polish Ambassador out of the country and to the United States. Leonid Brezhnev was livid. Reagan was delighted; Brezhnev’s outrage confirmed to Reagan that he was on the right track. Ronald Reagan went on to use every tool at his disposal to topple Brezhnev’s regime and replace him with Lech Walesa. Ronald Reagan won the battle to liberate the Polish people. They have not forgotten. He is considered, in the words of the Polish president, the ”architect of democracy.” Barack Obama is certainly no Ronald Reagan. The entire world, including the United States would be better off and more secure if the Ayatollah’s government toppled. The death of a pedophile has created a distraction from having to deal with the knotty problem of full scale slaughter in the streets of Iran. Source: Canada Free Press
 By Khaled Abu ToamehThe leaders of the Palestinian Authority do not want the international community to hear anything about massive abuse of human rights and intimidation of journalists that its security forces are practicing almost on a daily basis in the West Bank. They do not want the world to see that, with the help of the Americans and some Europeans, they are building more prisons and security forces than hospitals and housing projects for the needy. They want the US and the rest of the world to continue believing that peace will prevail tomorrow morning only if Israel stops construction in the settlements and removes a number of empty caravans from remote and isolated hilltops in the West Bank. The Palestinians do not need a dictatorship that harasses and terrorizes journalists, and that is responsible for the death of detainees in its prisons. In the Arab world we already have enough dictatorships. The Palestinians do not need additional security forces, militias and armed gangs. In fact, there are too many of them, both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. American and European taxpayers' money should be invested in building hospitals, schools and housing projects. Investing billions of dollars in training thousands of policemen and establishing new security forces and prisons will not advance the cause of peace and coexistence. There is no doubt that many Palestinians would love to abandon the culture of uniform and weapons in favor of improved infrastructure and medical care. As for the international media, it's time to abandon the policy of double standards in covering the Israeli-Arab conflict. For many years, the mainstream media in the US and Europe turned a blind eye to stories about financial corruption under Yasser Arafat. The result was that Arafat and his cronies got away with stealing billions of dollars that had been donated to the Palestinians by the Americans and Europeans. Back then, many foreign journalists said they believed that the stories about financial corruption in the Palestinian areas were "Zionist propaganda." Other journalists said they would rather file an anti-Israel story because this way they would become more popular with their editors and publishers. Recently, a Palestinian TV crew was stopped at a checkpoint in the West Bank, where soldiers confiscated a tape and erased its content. This incident, hardly received any coverage in the mainstream media in the US and Europe. The reason? The perpetrators were not IDF soldiers, but Palestinian Authority security officers. And the checkpoint did not belong to the IDF; it was, in fact, a Palestinian checkpoint. The story of the detention of the TV crew -- which, by the way, belonged to Al-Jazeera and the erasure of the footage did not make it to the mainstream media even after Reporters Without Borders, an organization that defends journalists worldwide, issued a statement strongly condemning the assault on the freedom of the media. Read it all here....Source: Hudson New York
By Julie Steinberg A hastily created Web site called NedaNet has formed in honor of a young woman, Neda Soltan, who was killed during a Tehran protest. The site’s founder, Eric S. Raymond, created the page to serve as a jumping-off point for hackers who want to help Iranian citizens. “Our mission is to help the Iranian people by setting up networks of proxy servers, anonymizers and any other appropriate technologies that can enable them to communicate and organize — a network beyond the censorship or control of the Iranian regime,” the site says.  Associated Press A video widely circulated online shows a young woman, Neda Soltan, who was reportedly killed during a protest in Tehran, Iran.
Iran’s censors have spurred protesters and activists to circumvent the system in any way they can. Mr. Raymond solicits bandwidth and computing power that will enable citizens on the ground to rapidly disseminate information and thus puncture the country’s firewall. He acknowledges the danger that hacking into the network entails. He’s also received death threats and intimidating messages from purported Hezbollah and Iranian agents. Still, he ends his online plea with the sentence: “For any jihadi interested in asking me questions face to face, I’ve got some bullets slathered in pork fat to make you feel extra special welcome.” Source: WSJ Online
 GOOGLE and Facebook have set up Farsi versions of their websites and services, saying that they were responding to the importance of the internet as a communications tool for Iranians during the turmoil in the country. The web has made it possible for many Iranians to communicate since last week's disputed election, and the international media have used services such as Twitter and YouTube in their reporting of the protests. Recognising the internet's role in events in Iran, Google added a Farsi dictionary to Google Translate, its online translation service. It will enable millions of Iranians who are trying to get their message out to the wider world to translate any text, from blog posts to Twitter messages, from Farsi into English and vice versa. A Google spokesman said: "This is not a political statement. There's a huge amount of interest in the events in Iran and we hope this tool will improve access to information for people inside and outside the country." The company said that it was working to provide Farsi translations for the other 40 languages in the service. Facebook hastily launched a Farsi version of its website. The website had appealed to its Farsi-speaking users around the world to help. A Facebook spokesman said: "We could not have made this happen so quickly without the more than 400 Persian speakers who submitted thousands of individual translations of the site." Despite attempts by the authorities to control the flow of information from Iran, those angry at the disputed election results have been finding ways around the virtual barriers. Until now, Twitter and YouTube have been central in the protesters' efforts to communicate with each other and with the wider world. Tweets -- messages sent through Twitter -- have been used to organise the time and place of protests. At the request of the US State Department, Twitter delayed shutting down the site for maintenance last week to ensure that Iranians could continue to use the service. YouTube, the video-sharing website, appears to have been blocked by Iran's censors. Google, which runs the site, reported that traffic from within Iran to the site was down by 90 per cent since the protests began. However, this has not prevented thousands of videos pouring on to the site, showing skirmishes and the enormous scale of the protests. It is believed that most of these videos have been emailed from Iran to people outside the country, who have then loaded them on to YouTube. Early reports from Tehran after the announcement of the election results suggested that the authorities had tried to interfere with, or had disabled, access to many websites and had blocked text messaging. But hackers are helping to keep web channels open and have taken down President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's website. Iran is a computer-literate society, with an estimated 700,000 bloggers, making Farsi the second-most popular language on the web after English. Source: The Australian
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI | June 17 | TEHRAN Iran's most powerful military force is warning online media of a crackdown over their coverage of the country's election crisis. The Revolutionary Guards, an elite body answering to the supreme leader, says Iranian Web sites and bloggers must remove any materials that "create tension" or face legal action. It is the Guards' first public statement since the crisis erupted following the presidential election last Friday. Iranian reformist Web sites as well as blogs and Western Web sites like Facebook and Twitter have been vital conduits for Iranians to inform the world about protests over the declaration of election victory for hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The government barred foreign media Tuesday from leaving their offices to report on the street protests. Source: Washington Post
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by Lt.Col. Ralph Peters
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