Part 3 - Iran in the World Press 06 Jan 2010 #Iranelection

continued from PART 2 Full body searches option as common sense is hijacked IT IS the duty of all public officials to do something whenever a new threat appears, even if there is nothing sensible to be done. If they don’t make a show of solving the problem, the media will punish them severely. So we have had a vigorous United States Government response to the recent apprehension of the Underpants Bomber. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was from Nigeria, and he was Muslim. Therefore, the US Government has announced that all travellers to the US from Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Yemen and seven other Muslim or partly Muslim countries will face extra checks at airport security. They will be patted down by hand, and their carry-on bags will also be searched by hand. So that’s all fixed, then. No more exploding underpants. Except that Abdulmutallab’s underpants were on his body, so hand searches of cabin baggage aren’t going to help much. Moreover, it is far from certain that a physical pat-down of Abdulmutallab would have detected the guilty underpants. Then there are the curious Taranaki Daily News | 2010-01-06 | New Zealand | Page: 10

New air traveler screening focuses on 14 nations WASHINGTON: Air travelers from 14 countries will face full-body pat downs before boarding airliners under new security screening procedures targeting foreign passengers announced by the United States on Sunday. The procedures, which went into effect yesterday, follow the botched Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound US airliner blamed on a Nigerian man who US officials believe was trained by Al-Qaida in Yemen. Passengers traveling from or through nations listed as “state sponsors of terrorism” — Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria — as well as Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen, will face heightened screening, an Obama administration official said. Nearly all of those are Muslim countries. Nigeria made a formal protest at its inclusion in the list. Such passengers will be patted down, have their carry-on luggage searched and could undergo advanced explosive detection or imaging scans. The Transportation Security Administration, the US agency  China Daily | 2010-01-05 | China | Page: 12

Foreigners arrested Iran said yesterday that several foreigners conducting “ psychological warfare” against the clerical system were arrested in last month’s bloody clashes between opposition supporters and security forces. Meanwhile, dozens of Tehran University professors appealed yesterday to Iran’s supreme leader to halt the ongoing violence against protesters, adding a new and respected voice in support of the opposition. In the bloodiest unrest since the aftermath of a disputed June presidential poll, eight people were killed on Dec 27. China Daily | 2010-01-05 | China | Page: 12

US terrorism watch lists grow WASHINGTON – The names of dozens more people have been added to the government’s terrorist watch list and no-fly list after a failed terrorist attack on Christmas prompted United States officials to closely scrutinise a large database of suspected terrorists, an intelligence official said yesterday. People on the watch lists get additional checking before they are allowed to enter the United States; those on the no-fly list are barred from boarding aircraft in or headed for the United States. The review of the National Counterterrorism Centre’s massive Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database was prompted by the attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound jetliner. That incident also spurred enhanced security screening that took effect yesterday for people travelling to the United States from or through Yemen, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and 11 other countries. The official was not authorised to speak publicly about the watch lists and requested anonymity, but said that after the December 25 incident Daily Nation (Barbados) | 2010-01-05 | Barbados | Page: 11

Iran gibt Festnahme von Ausländern zu TEHERAN (rtr/apd) — Die iranische Regierung hat erstmals bestätigt, dass bei den jüngsten Unruhen auch mehrere Ausländer festgenommen worden sind. Geheimdienstminister Heidar Moslehi warf den Inhaftierten im staatlichen Fernsehen vor, einen psychologischen Krieg zu führen. Angaben zu ihrer Nationalität machte er nicht. Ein Sprecher des Auswärtigen Amts sagte, es gebe keine Informationen, dass Deutsche unter den Festgenommenen seien. Die Regierung von Präsident Mahmud Ahmadinedschad hat der Opposition wiederholt Verbindungen zu „Feinden im Ausland“ vorgeworfen. Die Verhaftungen erfolgten nach Angaben Moslehis bei den Protestkundgebungen Ende Dezember. Damals wurden mehr als 300 Demonstranten festgenommen, mindestens acht Menschen kamen bei Zusammenstößen mit Sicherheitskräften ums Leben. Hintergrund der Proteste ist der Vorwurf der Fälschung bei der Präsidentenwahl im Juni. Professoren üben scharfe Kritik Eine Gruppe von 88 iranischen Professoren kritisierte die blutige Niederschlagung der Demonstrationen  Neumarkter Nachrichten | 2010-01-05 | Germany | Page: 4

USA fürchten neue Terroranschläge NEW YORK (dpa) — Aus Furcht vor Terroranschlägen sind die Kontrollen für Reisende an US-Flughäfen weiter verschärft worden. Unter anderem werde das Handgepäck aller Passagiere stichprobenartig genauestens kontrolliert, auch die Passkontrollen würden intensiviert, teilte die US-Flugsicherheitsbehörde (TSA) mit. Die verschärften Regeln schreiben auch vor, dass Reisende aus 14 terrorverdächtigen Ländern ausnahmslos genauestens kontrolliert und abgetastet werden. Zu diesen Ländern gehören unter anderem der Jemen, der Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, aber auch Kuba. Die Sicherheitsvorkehrungen bei USA-Flügen waren nach dem vereitelten Anschlag von Detroit bereits am 26. Dezember generell verschärft worden. Sie seien fortan das normale Maß für alle Flugreisen in den USA, hieß es nun. Die Regierung von US-Präsident Barack Obama habe am Sonntag alle Fluglinien informiert. Heute wird sich der aus dem Urlaub zurückgekehrte Obama im Weißen Haus mit den obersten Chefs der zuständigen Geheimdienste über Konsequenzen aus de Neumarkter Nachrichten | 2010-01-05 | Germany | Page: 4

Reframing recession F or the first time in recent memory, Deb Chappel is listening to music. And as strange as it sounds, she says she has the recession to thank for it. Before the recent financial crisis, she was a successful lawyer, and her husband was a business executive. They owned three properties, a Ferrari and their children were able to indulge in every after school activity available. Life was good. But in two short years, the recession that nearly toppled the global economy cost them their house, their car, his job and, ultimately, their marriage. As stocks plunged, the world they thought they knew changed in an instant. Now, as a single mom raising three young children in joint custody with their father, she feels that their two-year struggle to survive has actually helped her become a stronger person, and helped her to rediscover inner strengths she had forgotten were there. She’s not alone. Thousands of people across Canada have found new strength and empowerment because of the lashing they experienced at the h The Sault Star | 2010-01-05 | Canada | Page: 20

Today in history TODAY is Wednesday, January 6, the 6th day of 2010. There are 359 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1492: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ride victoriously into Granada after their armies defeat Boabdil, the last Muslim ruler of Spain, completing the Christian reconquest of Spain. 1540: England’s King Henry VIII weds fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. The marriage lasts six months. 1810: Turkey agrees to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and Kuban with the enactment of the Treaty of Constantinople. 1838: Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates his telegraph, in Morristown, New Jersey. 1852: Louis Braille, French inventor of a system to enable blind people to read, dies. 1884: Gregor Mendel, Austrian Augustine monk, biologist and botanist, dies. He pioneered the study of biological heredity and laid the mathematical foundation of the science of genetics. 26th US president (1901-1909), dies. An expansionist politician, he acquired the Panama Canal Zone (1903). He also made an unsuccessful The Southland Times | 2010-01-06 | New Zealand | Page: 10

World’s tallest building a giddy monument to vanity LESS is only more where more is no good.’’ I wonder how many guests squinting into the Gulf’s blue skies before the sublime, coruscating, vitreous surfaces of the blasphemously vertiginous Burj Dubai at Monday’s opening ceremony knew Frank Lloyd Wright’s sardonic remark. Wright was the Welsh-American architect— part bardic mystic, part technophile, complete megalomaniac — who proposed in 1956 the Illinois Sky City in Chicago. This was an outrageous, mile-high building: 528 floors, each with a height of 3.5m. Wright’s business was to shock and awe all mankind while doing what he could to epater la bourgeoisie at the same time. In 1956, there was neither the technological, nor indeed the financial possibility of Wright’s Sky City being built. It was a fantasy designed to impress. So, too, is Burj Dubai— or Burj Khalifa, the Khalifa Tower, as we must now call it, after it was renamed on Monday in honour of the President of the United Arab Emirates. And Wright was its inspiration. Burj Khalifa is the work of t The New Zealand Herald | 2010-01-06 | New Zealand | Page: 21

Air security needs more common sense IT IS the duty of all public officials to ‘‘do something’’ whenever a new threat appears, even if there is nothing sensible to be done. If they don’t make a show of solving the problem, the media will punish them. So we have had a vigorous Washington response to the recent apprehension of the ‘‘Underpants Bomber’’. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was from Nigeria, and he was Muslim. Therefore, the US Government has announced that all travellers to the US from Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Yemen and seven other Muslim or partly Muslim countries will face extra checks at airport security. They will be patted down by hand, and their carry-on bags will also be searched by hand. So that’s all fixed, then. No more exploding underpants. Except that Abdulmutallab’s underpants were on his body, so searches of cabin baggage aren’t going to help much. Moreover, it is far from certain that a physical pat-down of Abdulmutallab would have detected the guilty underpants. Then there are the curious additions and omis The New Zealand Herald | 2010-01-06 | New Zealand | Page: 11

Time’s running out for bullies in Tehran THETERM‘‘theocracy’’ trips readily enough off the tongue and is an accurate description of a system where mortals claim the right to dominate other mortals in the name of God. But it is also a word that has uncomfortable implications for those who hope to stay out of the ‘‘internal affairs’’ of other societies. The Iranian theocracy, and the crisis of its regime, is a near-perfect illustration of this dilemma. By the rule laid down by the mullahs, the Iranian people are not even allowed to meddle in their own internal affairs. They are counted as wards of the state, as children in the care of a paternal priesthood. The immediate result of theocratic policy when measured by the standard of repression is pretty clear and getting ever clearer— any government that imagines it has a divine warrant will deal with its critics as if they were profane and thus illegitimate. But now see how this plays out in the ordinary world: In 1988 a certainMr Rafsanjani paid a call on a certainMr Khomeini to tell him that Iran The New Zealand Herald | 2010-01-06 | New Zealand | Page: 11

Tropical case of rising damp THEY have come from the Mekong and Myanmar, from Iran and Indonesia, from North Korea and New Zealand. And when cutting-edge artists in the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT6) feel the need to kick back in Brisbane this summer, some end up on a platform designed by a dozen artists in Melbourne. DAMP is a group who ‘‘explores the potential of working collaboratively’’. Collaboration in art is a main thread in APT6, now showing at the Queensland Art Gallery. So, it made perfect sense they should come together. But even QAG director Tony Ellwood was surprised by the monumental scale of DAMP’s plinth. Crafted from ‘‘mixed media’’, Untitled 2009 (to use its official name) rises 5m and looks — in the words of its makers — ‘‘a bit Franco Cozzo’’. A cubby-house is secreted inside the plinth — DAMP calls it ‘‘a zone between art and everything else’’ — and the roof is big enough for small groups to hold meetings. Not just artists but knitters, choristers, book club members . . . anyone who asks and Herald Sun | 2010-01-06 | Australia | Page: 47

Up against the great wall of China H ours after Barack Obama landed in Beijing and headed to the St Regis Hotel, a cavalcade of black sedans travelled out the other way. The Monday morning airport procession, against the traffic, was led by China’s security chief, Zhou Yongkang. Without the customary fanfare, he slipped out of China to meet an old Sudanese friend accused of genocide in Darfur. Zhou’s three-day visit to President Omar al-Bashir coincided with the US President’s time in Beijing with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. It was a vivid statement of how differently the US and China might view the world when they are running it together. Obama brought some of his heaviest hitters to enlist China in confronting “the major challenges of the 21st century, from climate change to nuclear proliferation to economic recovery . . . challenges that neither of our nations can solve by acting alone.” Over three days, Obama and Hu spoke positively of each other’s efforts but struggled to list concrete achievements on any Obama priority The Sydney Morning Herald | 2009-11-21 | Australia | Page: 30

Goodwill hunting: Obama treads delicately with China B arack Obama has come to the end of his week-long trip around Asia, with stops in Japan, China and South Korea as well as Singapore for APEC and a meeting with ASEAN leaders. The tour went pretty well. There were no big mistakes (unless, like right-wing bloggers in the United States, you trouble yourself with the depth of the President’s bows), but there were no memorable achievements either. The week did add to our understanding of his approach to four issues that matter to Australia: the future of Asia; US relations with its competitors and allies, and human rights. Some analysts think that among American politicians, only Republicans care about this part of the world. Democrats are supposedly too interested in Europe to understand Asia. Yet last week shows that the region matters a great deal to Obama. He knows more about the Pacific than most of his predecessors and there was nothing desultory about this trip. The Europeans are certainly feeling a little anxious about his Asia focus. More than one c The Sydney Morning Herald | 2009-11-21 | Australia | Page: 33

Last-ditch attempt to stop Iranian boy’s deportation LONDON: British lawyers for a nine-year-old boy due to be removed from Britain were yesterday urgently trying to stop his deportation. The Iranian boy, known for legal reasons as Child M, has been locked up in Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire, north of London, Britain’s main immigration removal centre for women and families, since he was arrested with his mother and older brother in Manchester this week. They were due to be put on a flight to Iran at 6.30pm (5.30am today, Sydney time). Child M’s mother has been trying to claim asylum, saying her life is in danger if she returns to Iran because photocopied extracts of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses were found in her house and business. Richard Jones, Child M’s lawyer, has given a new report to Britain’s border agency in which an independent expert testifies that there is a genuine arrest warrant for her and that the family would be in grave danger if sent back. If the agency dismissed the report, the lawyers would apply to a High Court judge for an i The Sydney Morning Herald | 2009-11-21 | Australia | Page: 20

Watch out for the Fed Express ROGER Federer has answered his doubters by suggesting he may enjoy an even better year than last. Federer, whose triumphs in the French Open and Wimbledon took him to a career total of 15 grand slam titles, reckons it is quite possible that he will win more titles on the new ATP World Tour than he did in 2009. ‘‘I think I can definitely, if my body allows me, win many more tournaments than I did last year,’’ the 28-year-old Swiss legend said. ‘‘I really just had to focus on the big tournaments, the major events last year. Obviously those are the hardest ones to win, and it reflects in the tournaments I was able to win. I hardly played any smaller events.’’ Geelong Advertiser | 2010-01-06 | Australia | Page: 50

Cast Lead scars still raw in Gaza INA clearing at the northeast end of the Gaza Strip, amid a sea of drab canvas tents and half-cleared war detritus, a small, carefully tended flower bed stands out. For the man who planted it, the blooms represent both an escape from the squalor of forced homelessness and a reminder of his once beloved garden. The red rosebush in the middle is of special significance. Until a year ago, Kamal Awaja would often spend the hour before dusk in his garden, teaching his six children the names of the trees and flowers, and encouraging each one to pick a shrub as their own. Ibrahim, his nineyear-old son, chose the rose. But then, everything changed. Israel began its military offensive against the Hamas militants who run Gaza. After a week of fierce fighting, the gun barrel of a tank smashed through the Awaja family’s living-room window, forcing the family to flee to nearby fields as their house was demolished. Then, as they crept back at dawn to salvage warm clothes, Israeli soldiers opened fire on them. Both paren The Dominion Post | 2010-01-06 | New Zealand | Page: 21

Europe airports seen ignoring U.S. security steps LONDON — Airline passengers bound for the United States faced a hodgepodge of security measures across the world Monday, but most European airports did not appear to be following a new U.S. demand for increased screening of passengers from 14 countries. U.S. officials in Washington said the new security measures would be implemented Monday, but there were few visible changes on the ground in Europe, which sends thousands of passengers on hundreds of daily flights to the United States. In addition, few if any changes in airline procedures were reported in the 14 countries named by the U.S. as security risks, although officials in Saudi Arabia said extra security personnel had been placed at the airport. No changes were seen Monday at international airports in Syria, Algeria, Libya or Lebanon, four other countries on the list. “Everything is the same, there is no extra security,” an aviation official in Lebanon said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. The ch Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Weekday | 2010-01-05 | USA | Page: 2

Tehran professors criticize violence TEHRAN, Iran — Dozens of Tehran University professors appealed Monday to Iran’s supreme leader to halt the ongoing violence against protesters, adding a new and respected voice in support of the opposition. The government, meanwhile, stepped up its accusations that the West is fomenting Tehran’s postelection turmoil, saying that foreign nationals were among those arrested in the most recent clashes between security forces and pro-opposition protesters. Officials didn’t provide the nationalities of the arrested but accused the foreigners of leading a propaganda war and warned they face possible death sentences for seeking to topple the government. The letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — signed by 88 professors and reported by a proreform Web site — reflected a challenge to the Iran’s clerical leadership, since it is sure to further arouse the anger of authorities. Iranian students were the driving force of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and they led anti-government protests last month that revi Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Weekday | 2010-01-05 | USA | Page: 4

They still don’t love us If you thought America would quickly regain the world’s love, admiration and—most important—its willingness to follow the U.S. lead once Barack Obama came to power, the news is disappointing. A useful guide to what has transpired comes from Venezuela’s president and his most peculiar sulfurometer. Hugo Chavez, it seems, can smell the devil, especially when the Prince of Darkness takes up residence in the body of an American president. Watching Chavez’s devil-spotting shows that efforts to turn America’s foes into friends will, in many cases, prove utterly useless. There is an important lesson there for everyone, including the resident of the White House. Chavez’s first supernatural sighting came at the United Nations in 2006, when the Venezuelan leader took the podium after President Bush gave a speech and announced in the solemn chamber that he could smell sulfur still hanging in the air from Bush’s presence. The air cleared up nicely after the 2008 elections. “It doesn’t smell of sulfur. It’s gone,” decl Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Weekday | 2010-01-05 | USA | Page: 10

Reconciling rights and common sense Profiling is not always a dirty word. Travelling from or through Iran, Saudi Arabia or one of a dozen other countries on one’s way to the United States is, as of yesterday, going to bring intense security screening, of a higher order than the screening of a traveller from Montreal or Brussels. This may be deemed country profiling, but whatever one calls it, it seems reasonable and fair, in light of a heightened threat of terrorism exemplified by the near-miss over Detroit on Christmas Day. Some might say it is ethnic or religious profiling, but that would be inaccurate. U.S. or Canadian citizens who happen to be Muslim will not be subject to the extra layers of screening. (Whether they will be subject to extra screening because of their country of birth is still unclear. More on that in a moment.) Indonesia, the world’s largest Islamic state, is not on the list. The fact that all the countries on the list but Cuba have Muslim majorities is a recognition that many of the Islamist terrorists who have declared  The Globe and Mail (BC Edition) | 2010-01-05 | Canada | Page: 10

IRANIAN PROFS CALL FOR END TO VIOLENCE New York - Risking expulsion and possibly arrest, 88 professors at Tehran University signed a letter yesterday calling on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader, to end the use of violence against protesters, saying it is a sign of the government’s weakness. An opposition website, Jaras, reported that in another open letter released yesterday, five leading opposition figures from outside the country called for the resignation of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, free elections, release of political prisoners, greater freedom of speech and an independent judiciary. The Globe and Mail (BC Edition) | 2010-01-05 | Canada | Page: 9

Lax U.S. rules let Chinese evade Iranian sanctions Chinese companies blacklisted in the United States for selling military equipment to Iran have been skirting sanctions due to weak enforcement, researchers said yesterday. The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a private group that opposes proliferation, found that U.S. companies have taken imports from sanctioned Chinese firms without facing consequences or even knowing they had done so. Chinese companies banned from the U.S. for dealings with Iran have managed to enter the market using alternate names or identities of their subsidiaries which may not appear on the U.S. blacklist. The study listed 42 U.S. companies that since 2006 have imported from China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corp., which U.S. officials brand a “serial proliferator” for long-time sales to Iran of missile technology. AFP The Globe and Mail (BC Edition) | 2010-01-05 | Canada | Page: 17

Iran’s filmmakers fight against ‘soft war’ New York Times News Service I ran’s government can’t silence the filmmakers. It keeps trying. Films are censored. Directors are prohibited from leaving the country and prohibited from returning home, forced to cancel projects and threatened with punishment if their films are too probing or too critical of life in the Islamic Republic. But the films keep coming, and so do the filmmakers. Bahman Ghobadi’s latest work, No One Knows About Persian Cats, is banned in Iran but is being passed around for free, offering a searing portrait of life through the prism of a vibrant underground music scene. The film took the Jury’s Special Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, turning the red carpet of an international film festival into a platform to draw attention to the political crisis in Iran.

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