Tag: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mitt Romney | Echoes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American Taliban, Bullying, Homophobia, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mitt Romney

Romneynejad: We didn’t have gays in the 1960s

Via:- Juan

Mitt Romney, accused of harassing gay students when he was in high school, tried to get out of the charge by pretending that being gay was not a big issue in the 1960s.

“Romney moved quickly to counter any suggestion he had targeted students because they were gay.”

“That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case,” he said, adding that the students involved “didn’t come out of the closet until years later.”

As Andrew Sullivan asks, “And there was no homophobia in the 1960s?”

Romney’s attempt to deny that there was consciousness of gayness in a past era resembles the denial by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that there is any consciousness of gayness in Iran today.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies that there are any gays in Iran. “I don’t know who told you we have this:

‘Radicalised agnostics’ threatening to derail Middle East war process

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Comic Relief

‘Radicalised agnostics’ threatening to derail Middle East war process

nothing wrong with a little healthy disagreementThe irresponsible actions of a group of radical agnostics are threatening to jeopardise the glorious battle that awaits the holy lands, warned Israel and Iran today.

‘These people are dangerously sensible and naively human in their outlook,’ said Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a joint statement. ‘We have a clear roadmap for war in the region, but the soft-line approach to international politics of these fundamentalist equivocators could prevent millions of martyrs from fulfilling their destiny. The Middle East is like a powder keg that could explode any minute – the last thing we need is some crazed pacifists standing around with fire extinguishers.’

Radical agnostics have hit back at the attack, but insist they don’t want to offend anyone. ‘We’d just prefer it if religious leaders didn’t blow the world to oblivion,’ stated Daniel Olszewski, a spokesman for the group known as The Silent Unsure. ‘We may be in the minority, but we just think that mass human extinction through warfare should be avoided. Agnostics get a lot of stick from both believers and atheists for sitting on the fence, but the one thing we’re sure about is that we’re not quite ready yet to find out if there is an afterlife.’

Using insidious techniques such as writing sensible letters to people in power and offering to grovel if that would help, the group claims that war might be avoided if everyone just thought about things logically for a while. It’s a stance that has earned them some powerful enemies, but there were signs today that it might be beginning to bear fruit with Israel and Iran finding some common ground.

‘It turns out that we and America have a lot more in common than we thought with Iran, Russia and China,’ said Netanyahu. ‘When what you believe in most is under attack from the nagging voice of reason and an underground network of people that discusses things, listens to both sides of the argument and looks for compromise, it’s time to join with your enemies and act. Diplomacy, sanctions, military action – we will do whatever it takes to defeat this threat to international warfare.’

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Saudi ‘Witch’ Beheaded for Black Magic

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Religious barbarity, Religious Cretins, Religious Terror

Saudi ‘Witch‘ Beheaded for Black Magic
Benjamin Radford, Life’s Little Mysteries Contributor

An accused witch, Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar, was beheaded in Saudi Arabia earlier this week. She had been convicted of practicing “witchcraft and sorcery,” according to the Saudi Interior Ministry. Such a crime is a capital offense in Saudi Arabia, and so Nassar was sentenced to death. Nassar’s sentence was appealed — and upheld — by the Saudi Supreme Judicial Council.

Nassar, who claimed to be a healer and mystic, was arrested after authorities reportedly found a variety of occult items in her possession, including herbs, glass bottles of “an unknown liquid used for sorcery,” and a book on witchcraft. According to a police spokesman, Nassar had also falsely promised miracle healings and cures, charging ill clients as much as $800 for her services.

Many Shiite Muslims — like many fundamentalist Christians — consider fortune-telling an occult practice and therefore evil. Making a psychic prediction or using magic (or even claiming or pretending to do so) are seen as invoking diabolical forces. Fortune-telling, prophecy and witchcraft have been condemned by Saudi Arabia’s powerful religious leaders. There is some question as to whether Saudi law technically outlaws witchcraft, though in a country where politics and religion are so closely aligned the distinction is effectively moot.

Just last year a Lebanese man named Ali Sabat, who for years had dispensed psychic advice and predictions on a television show, was accused of witchcraft. Sabat was arrested in Saudi Arabia by the religious police, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. His crime, like that of Nassar, was practicing sorcery, and Sabat was condemned to death in April 2010, though it’s still unknown if his sentence has been carried out.

Accusations of witchcraft and sorcery are not unheard of around the world, especially in political campaigns where they are used as a smear tactic. Close associates of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were accused last year of using witchcraft and summoning genies by influential clerics in that country. According to news reports, about two dozen of Ahmadinejad’s close aides have been arrested and charged with being “magicians.” One man, Abbas Ghaffari, was reportedly accused of summoning a genie who caused a heart attack in a man who was persecuting him.

Even the United States is not immune; Christine O’Donnell, the Republican who ran a failed bid for a Senate seat in 2010, had to answer political questions about whether she had practiced witchcraft. For centuries, accusations of (and laws against) witchcraft have been used as a tool by those in power to silence dissenters; whether that was the case with Nassar is unknown, but her death is a reminder that belief in magic is taken very seriously in many parts of the world — and can have grave consequences.

This story was provided by Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries. His website is http://www.BenjaminRadford.com.

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Iran Detains 6 Documentary Filmmakers, Activists Say

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Free Speech, Human Liberty, Human Rights, Islam, State Oppression, State Suppression, Uncategorized

Iran detains 6 documentary filmmakers, activists say

September 19, 2011|By the CNN Wire Staff
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, pictured on August 26, is being urged to free filmmakers and journalists.
Iran has detained six documentary filmmakers on accusations that they worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Persian service, activists said on Monday.The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran urged authorities to end the “ongoing intimidation and arrest of filmmakers and journalists” and called on diplomats and journalists in New York to press President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his country’s rights record during his reported visit to New York this week.”These arrests prove yet again that President Ahmadinejad and his intelligence apparatus have no tolerance for independent filmmakers and journalists,” Aaron Rhodes, a spokesman for the group, said in a statement.

“If the president expects the international community to respect his right to speak in New York, then he should be forced to explain why filmmakers and media are subject to repression in Iran,” he added.

Citing sources, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said the six documentary filmmakers were detained over the weekend and taken to prison.

It said a pro-government news agency accused the filmmakers of working for BBC Persian and spying for the service.

The BBC said Monday that no one works for the Persian service inside Iran and noted that the arrests came one day after the service broadcast a documentary on Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

The documentary was an in-house production and none of the detained filmmakers worked on it, the BBC reported.

In a news story posted on its website, the BBC quoted its language service chief, Liliane Landor, as saying the arrests are part of the “ongoing efforts by the Iranian government to put pressure on the BBC.”

Also Monday, the Iranian minister of culture and Islamic guidance told the semiofficial Iranian Students’ News Agency that the intelligence ministry is responsible for providing details on the filmmakers’ case.

“BBC Farsi was a major actor in the disturbances during and after the elections,” Seyed Mohammad Hosseini told the agency, referring to the 2009 presidential elections.

“It agitated and guided the people in the hopes to create problems for the country. This is why the representative office of the BBC was shut down in Tehran. Those who are working legally in Iran must now pay close attention and be very careful. We do not plan on supporting a network that engages in anti-Iran activities and works against the interests of the country,” he said.

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