Burying The News
Which is that the mullahs would like to bury the opposition.
I’m trying to figure out why this CNN report would leave out Khatami’s “worthy of execution” remark.
Here’s the remark, from a WPost/AP compilation by the Dallas Morning News:
TEHRAN, Iran – An influential cleric told worshippers Friday that those stirring unrest in connection with the recent election should be punished “ruthlessly and savagely” for waging war against God, a crime that under Shiite Islamic law is punishable by death.
“Anyone who takes up arms to fight with the people, they are worthy of execution,” Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami said in a nationally broadcast sermon at Tehran University.
And here’s CNN in its entirety, leading with Khatami’s threat to deal “firmly” with protestors, not using the “e” word:
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Two weeks into turmoil, Iran’s leaders turned up the heat Friday as a high-ranking cleric warned protesters that they would be punished “firmly” and shown no mercy.
“Rioters and those who mastermind the unrest must know the Iranian nation will not give in to pressure and accept the nullification of the election results,” said Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami during Friday prayers in Tehran, according to Iran’s state-run Press TV.
“I ask the Judiciary to firmly deal with these people and set an example for everyone,” Khatami said.
Khatami also blamed demonstrators for the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman who emerged as a powerful symbol of opposition after her death a week ago was captured on a cell phone video. Khatami said the foreign media had used Neda for propaganda purposes.
International journalists have been restricted from covering events unfolding within Iran. Many journalists, both Iranians and foreigners, have been detained by the government.
The human rights group Amnesty International called Friday for their release.
“The Iranian authorities must immediately release dozens of journalists arrested since 12 June and who are at risk of torture in detention,” the rights group said in adopting detained journalists in Iran as prisoners of conscience.
“Rather than trying to investigate alleged abuses, the only message the authorities are sending is that they are seeking to hide the truth, both from their own citizens and the rest of the world,” Amnesty said.
It said 20 of 25 employees of Kalameh Sabz, a newspaper established by opposition candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, were arrested at their office in Tehran’s Haft Tir Square on Monday and have been detained at an undisclosed location. Amnesty gathers its information from media reports and a network of local correspondents.
Human Rights Watch, another group that has been monitoring the situation by interviewing people in Iran, said Friday that Iran’s paramilitary Basij is carrying out brutal nighttime raids, destroying property in private homes and beating civilians in an attempt to stop nightly rooftop chants of “Allahu Akbar” (God is great).
The nighttime chanting is emblematic of the protests 30 years ago during the Iranian revolution, which toppled the monarchy of the shah.
“While most of the world’s attention is focused on the beatings in the streets of Iran during the day, the Basiji are carrying out brutal raids on people’s apartments during the night,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for Human Rights Watch.
“Witnesses are telling us that the Basiji are trashing entire streets and even neighborhoods as well as individual homes,” she said.
Residents from northern Tehran neighborhoods told Human Rights Watch that the Basij fired live rounds into the air, in the direction of buildings from which they believed the chants were sounding.
Basij members kicked down doors and “when they entered the homes, they beat” people, a resident said.
The rights group said it had collected similar accounts of violence from several other neighborhoods.
The accounts are consistent with numerous accounts CNN has received of nighttime roundups of opposition activists and international journalists from their homes. Amateur videos sent to CNN also show members of the Basij, wearing plain shirts and pants and wielding clubs and hoses, dispersing protesters and beating a handful of Iranians at a time.
Unrest in Iran erupted after the June 12 presidential elections in which hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. Ahmadinejad’s chief rival, Moussavi, called the results fraudulent and has asked for a cancellation of the vote.
Members of Iran’s National Security Council have told Moussavi that his repeated demands for the annulment are “illogical and unethical,” the council’s deputy head told the government-run Iranian Labor News Agency.
Esmaeel Kowsari told the news agency Friday that the council met with Moussavi, former presidential candidates Mehdi Karrubi and Mohsen Rezaie, and former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who now chairs the Assembly of Experts. The assembly is responsible for appointing or removing the supreme leader.
The National Security Council, which includes dozens of political leaders, assists Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s unelected supreme leader. Together, they set the parameters of regional and foreign policies, including relations with Western powers, and the country’s nuclear programs.
It was not clear when the Security Council meeting took place, but based on information from it, the NSC will prepare a report and make recommendations to parliament in light of the candidates’ complaints, the Ministry of Interior, the Guardian Council and “higher levels,” Kowsari told the news agency.
The Guardian Council, which approves all candidates running for office and verifies election results, has declared that there will be no annulment of the votes.
Nope, no “worthy of execution,” which I have to tell you as a career newsman, is the kind of eye-grabbing rhetoric most media professionals enjoy sticking in headlines, ledes or at least somewhere in the story. Let me know if I missed it somewhere.
No one can say “execution” is not dealing “firmly” or setting “an example,” but I thought CNN had been embarrassed, much like the Obama admin, by its unbashed suckupism. Apparently not.
Meanwhile, no hurtful schadenfreude please about how Ahmadinejad isn’t charmed by Obama’s efforts to be better liked. Via the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, because it’s more fun that way:
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanded that President Obama apologize for criticizing the Iranian government’s crackdown on protesters.
In a speech at a chemical plant in southern Iran, Ahmadinejad accused Obama of acting like former President George W. Bush and said he was “interfering” in Iranian affairs, according to media reports.
…
“I hope you avoid interfering in Iran’s affairs and express your regret in a way that the Iranian nation is informed of it,” Ahmadinejad said. “Do you want to speak with this tone?” he said. “If that is your stance, then what is left to talk about?”
He added that Obama had “fallen into this trap and repeated the comments that Bush used to make” and that it will “only make you another Bush in the eyest of the people.”
Ahmadinejad has been playing for a domestic audience all along with the “If You’ve Seen One Great Satan, You Seen ‘Em All” strategy, but the result is that, much the way hard facts have forced Obama to adopt Bush GWOT policies, hard slaps are forcing Obama to be less than fully self-abasing. LA Times:
Q: Thank you, Mr. President. I was wondering if you had a response to his call for you to apologize, or if he should apologize for calling you someone like Bush.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I don’t think — I don’t take Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statements seriously about apologies, particularly given the fact that the United States has gone out of its way not to interfere with the election process in Iran. And I’m really not concerned about Mr. Ahmadinejad apologizing to me. I would suggest that Mr. Ahmadinejad think carefully about the obligations he owes to his own people. And he might want to consider looking at the families of those who have been beaten or shot or detained. And that’s where I think Mr. Ahmadinejad and others need to answer their questions.
Why do some people have to make it so hard to be partners for peace? You know, if Ahmadinejad keeps it up, Obama may actually to be forced to start defending U.S. interests and advancing the cause of freedom and democracy in the world. He may have to start sounding like he intends to, that is.
Surber’s having a 1979 flashback, visions of Carter. Notes the odd coincidence of CNN’s Tehran and Baghdad policies.
Meanwhile, more on how Obama is like Bush via Memeorandum, as Obama endorses the Bushitler regime’s shocking Constituiona-stomping abuse of signing statements!
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:31 am Comments (5) on Saturday, June 27, 2009
5 Responses to “Burying The News”
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June 27th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Gosh, Does that last paragraph mean “The Won” might actually have to follow through on an oath he took on Jan 20th 2009? Just in case he forgot, here’s a refresher “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
IMHO, he seems to have forgotten that preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, part.
June 27th, 2009 at 10:11 am
This is Obama’s biggest problem: he doesn’t take Ahmadinejad seriously. What this means, of course, is that we are being lead by a fool.
June 27th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Wouldn’t it be a beautiful thing to see the Basiji thugs experience a “Home Alone” moment? But then we Americans must be a sick lot, to revel in the fantasies of watching poor misunderstood hoodlums paying for their mistakes… Must report to the WON and only approved reeducation center to confess thought crimes… Officer Krupke on duty?
June 27th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
[...] Crittenden spots “the odd coincidence of CNN’s Tehran and Baghdad policies”, noting that CNN is a full-service news PR firm, happy to airbrush the [...]
June 29th, 2009 at 9:55 am
“The Iranian authorities must immediately release dozens of journalists arrested since 12 June and who are at risk of torture in detention,”
Oh my God!
Is it possible that they could be waterboarded?