“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
– Samuel P. Huntington
“By alleging Iran has some problems, America’s problems aren’t resolved. Just alleging that Iran has problem is not going to resolve Mrs. Clinton’s problems for her.”
– President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking with Charlie Rose, May 3, 2010
On Wednesday afternoon, in a joint press conference, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner announced that the United States had imposed a new set of unilateral sanctions, including a travel ban and freezing of assets, against a number of top-ranking Iranian officials whom it accused of “serious and sustained human rights abuses” since the presidential election last year. The measure, which comes less than four months after the UN Security Council’s latest illegal resolution and the Obama administration’s last round of economic sanctions, was enacted via an Executive Order signed into effect last night by the President.
This marked, as Clinton pointed out, “the first time the United States has imposed sanctions against Iran based on human rights abuses.” Every US administration since Carter’s has issued unilateral sanctions against Iran due to its continued opposition to US imperialism and insufficient deference to American diktat. However, the sanctions have previously been justified using the pretense of Iran’s alleged “active support of terrorism,” its totally legal and fully monitored nuclear energy program, as well as the wholly fabricated notion that “the actions and policies of the Government of Iran constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States” and required “the declar[ation of] a national emergency to deal with that threat.” This last hysterical claim was introduced by the Secretary of State’s Presidential husband back in 1995.
This time around, Hillary Clinton stated, with regard to the eight government officials specifically targeted by the new order, “on [their] watch or under their command, Iranian citizens have been arbitrarily arrested, beaten, tortured, raped, blackmailed, and killed. Yet the Iranian Government has ignored repeated calls from the international community to end these abuses, to hold to account those responsible and respect the rights and fundamental freedoms of its citizens. And Iran has failed to meet its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
Apparently, the United States’ own recent history regarding the invasion and occupation of two foreign countries, the kidnapping, indefinite detention without charge, and the physical and psychological torture of thousands of people, including at places like Guantanamo, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib (where prisoners were raped by their American captors) is irrelevant to the administration’s finger-pointing charade and ongoing demonization campaign against Iran. Prisoners held by the United States in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, in addition to being “chained to the ceiling, shackled so tightly that the blood flow stops, kept naked and hooded and kicked to keep them awake for days on end,” have also been beaten to death by their interrogators. Of the fifteen soldiers charged with detainee abuse ranging from “dereliction of duty to maiming and involuntary manslaughter,” all but three have been acquitted. Those three received written reprimands and served, at most, 75 days in prison for their crimes.
In contrast, after reports of torture at Iran’s Kahrizak prison surfaced, the Iranian government moved swiftly to close the facility because it “lacked the standards” to maintain “rights of detainees” and launched an investigation into the allegations. Around the same time, 140 detainees were released from Tehran’s Evin Prison at the urging of the head of the Judiciary and Majlis ministers.
Additionally, according to a Financial Times report from June 25, 2009 and featured only as an insert in the print edition, several students who had been arrested during the post-election protests, rallies, and riots, were freed in order to join 1.3 million other young Iranians in taking the national university entrance exam.
In December 2009, Iranian authorities announced that twelve prison officials from Kahrizak had been arrested and charged with murder and other crimes, including abuse, negligence and deprivation of prisoners’ legal rights. This past June, courts passed down prison sentences and other punishment to those accused and two prison guards were convicted of murder and “intentional assault and battery” and were sentenced to death. It was reported this week that the death sentences have been rescinded at the request of the families of the victims.
Of course, human rights abuses in Iran are indeed serious and deserve condemnation. Most recently, Hossein “Hoder” Derakhshan, Iran’s so-called “blogfather,” has been convicted of “collaborating with hostile governments, committing blasphemy and propaganda against the Islamic Republic, and managing an obscene website” and sentenced to 19.5 years in prison.
Meanwhile, the United States firmly protecting its own war criminals, maintains a two-tiered justice system, routinely criminalizes dissent and whistleblowing, and breeds soldiers who kill civilians for sport and dismember corpses for fun.
“The steady deterioration in human rights conditions in Iran has obliged the United States to speak out time and time again. And today, we are announcing specific actions that correspond to our deep concern. The mounting evidence of repression against anyone who questions Iranian Government decisions or advocates for transparency or even attempts to defend political prisoners is very troubling,” Clinton continued, at the press conference. The Secretary of State also noted the distressing treatment of Iranian “human rights lawyers, bloggers, journalists and activists for women’s rights.”
This heartfelt announcement came just five days after the FBI launched its latest surreal assault in the US government’s “war on dissent” (as termed by former FBI agent and courageous whistleblower Coleen Rowley) by kicking down doors, raiding homes at gunpoint, issuing grand jury subpoenas, and seizing the personal property, including “documents, files, books, photographs, videos, souvenirs, war relics, notebooks, address books, diaries, journals, maps, or other evidence,” such as computers, cell phones, and emails of several American peace and justice activists in the Midwest. The raids were conducted under the guise of determining whether the targeted peace organizers and human rights advocates were actually devious supporters of “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Elderly anti-war protesters, graduate students, neuroscientists, and civil rights attorneys have all been held for years by the US government and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences on bogus charges.
Furthermore, the claim that the US government supports “transparency” is deeply ironic, considering Obama’s obsession with invoking “state secrets” and “sovereign impunity” in order to shield illegal programs like warrantless wiretapping and spying, extraordinary rendition, torture, drone warfare, and the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens from proper scrutiny and prosecution.
Whereas American officials are quick to declare their unqualified promotion of “new tools of communication” and support for “a free and open Internet,” as President Obama did last week at the United Nations General Assembly, the US is itself a surveillance state, which relentlessly monitors its own citizens. The CIA and other intelligence agencies have invested in technology and companies that specialize in monitoring social media and, this past summer, a Senate committee approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that may grant the US president the authority to unilaterally shut down parts of the Internet during a “national cyber-emergency.” Just this week, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration will propose new legislation to mandate US government access to all forms of electronic communications, “including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct ‘peer to peer’ messaging like Skype.”
“In signing this Executive Order,” Clinton declared on Wednesday, “the President sends the message that the United States stands up for the universal rights of all people” and serves “as a voice for the voiceless.”
Nima Shirazi is sticking up for a bunch of ruthless dictators that abuse people. There is no comparison between Iran and the US. And the criticism is largely exagerated. Iran will torture people until they are reduced to crushed bones and a pile of bloody flesh. They do this to regular citizens. I can hardly say this is compared to water boarding hard core thugs caught in the act of terrorism in order to get info from them that saves lives. We don’t hard innocent people. Nor do we stone and maim our women for spectacle and amusement. Nima Shirazi might as well be sticking up for American’s worst serial killers. What is the difference? I suppose the world will always have a mouthy buch of idiots.
Please, can we step back and look at this issue from a realistic, logical point of view? Yes, the world if full of idiots, but idiots are people who are utterly ignorant. Maybe instead of believing a bunch of lies and all the terrorist propaganda you have been brainwashed with, you could open up a few history books. Maybe you could read about some history of Iran, how the people tried for years to establish a fragile democracy in the 1950s, and how the US literally CRUSHED that democracy by staging a coup and replacing the prime minister with a KING. Let me tell you why… the prime minister was not letting Britain hold a monopoly on IRAN’s oil, so they got upset. Iran was NEUTRAL during cold war time, so they thought, hey, let’s put some mouse as king and have him do whatever we want him to. Why don’t you find out how people have SUFFERED because of that? You know the hostage crisis? You know when that happened? After a bloody revolution that shook the country and resulted in HUNDREDS of lives LOST—YOUNG LIVES…..and you know what? the US was such a big bully at that time that everyone was afraid that they were going to come and stage ANOTHER coup and THAT is why there was a hostage crisis. People wanted freedom, people wanted democracy. People don’t go looking for trouble. They wanted to live calm, rightful, just lives. And ever since, the US has been harassing Iran. They help trigger the Iran-Iraq war. they gave TONS of technology to Iraq, and so did FRANCE. All of these powers combined, and Iran still won. Do you know why? Because people like my uncle, who was a teenager at the time and forged a birth certificate to look like he was old enough to fight, were KILLED in that war for the love of their country. And now, the US forgets all this and is still combatting Iran from half a world away!!!!!!!!
Let me just say that they are fighting the same government they helped establish! If it were not for their IDIOTIC COUP the current government of IRAN would NOT EXIST because there would have been no REVOLUTION, and Iranians’ lives would not have been destroyed!
Please let me add that I am not at all in no way supporting what the government of Iran is doing right now. BUT all of this is the US’s own fault and the ONLY ones suffering are the regular people where prices are rocketing with inflation, practically doubling within weeks, and unemployment is crazily high and the government ignore them. You think they care about sanctions? Hah! They’ll just jack prices up higher and crank up taxes…
So all this said, I just want to conclude that Iranians are for the most part good, regular people just like Americans. The fools you see leading the country are just an example of power-seeking idiots, which exist all over the world. Have you ever even known an Iranian? Are you aware of their rich culture, beautiful language, great history? Its tragic that a couple of people can become “leaders” of countries and screw up the livelihoods and lives of MILLIONS of people from a little office. The unfairness makes me want to cry.
A fascinating reading of my article, Mr. Culver. Thanks for this beautifully crafted gem of cultural superiority, wrapped in denial, and devoid of any truth.
Which “ruthless dictators” do I stick up for? Where do you get your information about Iran? Who has been “reduced to crushed bones and a pile of bloody flesh”? Who exactly are the “hardcore thugs” who have been “caught in the act of terrorism”? Whose lives have been saved by torturing people? Are you aware of what torture is? Do you know what extraordinary rendition is? Do you know what indefinite detention is? Are you aware of international law? Are you aware of what human rights are? Are you aware that hardly anyone who has spent years upon years of their lives in American gulags like Guantanamo and Bagram has actually been charged with a crime, beyond perhaps simply being Muslim? Do you know what habeas corpus is? Do you know that 72% of Guantanamo detainees who finally were able to obtain minimal due process in the form of a habeas hearing – after years of being held cage without charges – have been found by federal judges (yes, United States federal judges) to be wrongfully detained? Are you aware of the civilian death tolls as a result of the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan? What about the illegal drone attacks in Pakistan?
American’s worst serial killers are sitting comfortably in Creech Air Force, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and on Capitol Hill. And I’m not sticking up for them.
If you’re going to fling invective rife with assumptions and accusations, the least you can do is know what you’re talking about.
Thanks for reaching out. I eagerly await your answers.
Thank you. There still are some clear-minded people in the world. Man midanam che dardi mikeshi va hame irani ha vaghean che deghi darand.
Nima Shirazi, is
another person who is on payroll by stinky mullahs in Iran. The criminal gangs who took power since 1979 in Iran have a long history of turture, rape forceful disappearance and murder of their opposition during last 31 years.
Massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in summer of 1988 was vivid example of brutality of these monsters.
The brutality of Islamic thugs who impose the barbaric laws of Islam such as lashing in public and stonning Iranian people to death just came to the attention of westerners These Islamic bastards who has no respect for human lives took power by using lies and tricks. One of their trick was to set a fire in Cinema Rex located in City of Abadan in 1978 . They blamed fire to shah and savak and provoked people against shah. That was a major terrorist attack in the world before 9/11. About 500 innocent women , children and families turned to the ashes by these Islamic bastards whom Nima Shirazi representing them in this article. Nima Shirazi and people like him back stab and sell their own people for the money they are receiving from Islamic criminal gangs in Tehran. Shame on them.
1. Aren’t people on someone’s payroll, supposed to get paid? I have yet to receive a dime. Do you think it’s forthcoming?
2. Are you aware of the Shah’s brutality against his own people – tyranny and oppression bankrolled by the United States for a quarter century after the CIA overthrew the democratic government in 1953?
3. Thanks for reading and not disputing a single point I made in my article.
Cheers!
ogic is really GONE
The US has no moral ground to judge anyone on human rights, as it is engaged in human rights violations at home and abroad. Moreover, it protects and supports the human rights violations of its apartheid allies, Israel. EXAMPLES OF US HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS—–
1) Minorities in prison and on death row due to racial discrimination and being poor. Secret prisons and people being held for long periods of time without due process, ICE is good example.
2) Human rights violations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan
3) Voted against the UNHRC Report on the Gaza Flotilla because the report accused apartheid Israel of human rights violation and murder.
4) Refused to condemn apartheid Israel for committing piracy and assassinating 9 Turkish peace activists on the Gaza Flotilla in international waters.
5) Stopped UN from condemning Israel for Gaza Flotilla crime with a veto threat.
6) Refuses to condemn or sanction Israel for beating, harassing, killing, and imprisoning peaceful protestors every Friday at peaceful demonstrations.
7) Refuses to condemn Israel for evicting and ethnic cleansing Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
8) Stopped UN from lifting the blockade of Gaza.
As an american, i am embarrassed by the double standards and hypocrisy of the US. We are becoming a joke, as everyone knows the US has no moral ground to stand on when speaking on human rights.
THANK YOU!!!! YOU ARE TOTALLY RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I AM NOT SAYING THAT EITHER THE IRAN OR THE US ARE RIGHT IN THEIR ACTIONS, BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT. BUT, BUT, BUT, THE US IS NOBODY TO KEEP POSING THREATS ON OTHER COUNTRIES WHEN THEY ARE ALMOST AS BAD THEMSELVES BUT ARE JUST BETTER AT COVERING IT UP!
THEY SIT IN A TINY OFFICE AND DECIDE,OH LETS GO INTERFERE IN THIS COUNTRY’S BUSINESS, THAT COUNTRY’S POLITICS, LETS GO AND RUIN THESE PEOPLES LIVES. WHY DONT THEY JUST SHUT UP AND TAKE CARE OF THE HUNDREDS OF ISSUES THEY HAVE THEMSELVES?????!!!!!!!
All the dictators do in the Middle East is keep soaking there pockets with billions in oil revenues. They keep there people poor to control them. And they don’t want their peoples to turn on them. So they fill there heads with religion which passifies them like opium. And they crack down on disent with violence. They create false enemies on the democracies of the world and make them think that they are poor because of the West, Israel, Europe, India, and everywhere else is the cause. This is just a diversion to keep their people from turning on them. Hopefully some day these evil empires will fall and a large middle class will arrise, and everyone can profit from the oil. God Bless the people in the middle east who have to put up with their dip shit leaders.
May God Bless the People oppressed in Iran, Iraq, and Palestine who have to put up with this ridiculous imperialism of the US and governments who are not brilliant enough to feel an ounce of human sympathy in their hearts. Amen. For a better tomorrow.
Hey Mr. Culver,
why don’t you stop wasting your time and go back to good ole’ Fox News?
Mr. Shirazi
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
You’re right about “the United States’ own recent history regarding the invasion and occupation of two foreign countries, the kidnapping, indefinite detention without charge, and the physical and psychological torture of thousands of people…” but that doesn’t mean the US should keep quiet about human right violations in other countries.
By the way. What are you trying to achieve by defending the Iranian government?
..Recent history you say? what about Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Nicaragua, Panama,..shall I go on?? America have been engaged in state sponsered hegemony for the last sixty years. The US has no right to be critical of any country considering it is the biggest terrorist state on the planet. Do your homework!!
Nothing. He doesn’t want to achieve anything and you are totally right. Two wrongs DONT make a right. But I think it was worth making a point of the double standards and bias of the US. Don’t you think it hypocritical to be so corrupt yourself and then go and try to mess with other governments who you’ve already deteriorated enough?
Mr. Hadi,
Yes two wrongs don’t make a right.
“but that doesn’t mean the US should keep quiet about human right violations in other countries.”
Yes it does. This was the whole point of the article. I am sure you have heard the saying that those who live in glass houses should not be throwing stones.
Seems US put all card on the table …… sanctions after sanction, each one is called the Crippling , Result: Iran got Gasoline of its own (Gasoline considered to be the last straw), fuel went into the Nuke chamber (after all pressures on Russia) , the Worm, no effect yet and is going to be eliminated one way or another,….. So far these sanctions put A +20 to Iranian regime. What next, War…the worse scenario for UAS and A +30 years for Iranian regime.
The damage that the US does when it presumes to lecture others about human rights is that it makes it obvious that human rights is just a ploy and a tool to be cynically deployed whenever convenient. Now, what real aspiring human rights activist is going to risk his life in order to be seen as a tool?
Great Article, Mr Shirazi! Thanks! US government is doing to the world what Iranian government is doing to their own people. U.S is a much bigger threat with all its appetite for violence -.. from day one when europeans set foot on Native American land, they have brought so much death, destruction and pain to the world, – Their history is filled with lies, hypocrisy and violence….. but who in the world cares when the same people offer a mobile phone that makes pancake? People have been dumbed down like the movie “Idiocracy” thats why US. government can get away with so much blood on their hand.
This was an eye opener article.
This is good to keep a logical list of all deeds of involved parties. We, as humans, usually forget and fail to see things out of the box. This article can help to see things from a higher perspective. Hopefully, this would help us to understand our duties, to help the US improve and Iran to progress. We need the good to prevail. Please keep up with similar articles with historical references so it could be refered to. Such articles would be make a good tool enabling people to talk to people and argue for corrective actions in administrations. The references would be very helpful.
The above quote is indeed meaningful. We speak of Western colonialism in the past tense, whereas the Western colonial system is very much with us today. The colonial complication after WWII was unlike that of post WWI. With the despised treaty of Versailles and its concomittant legal arm, better known as the League of Nations, the colonial spoils were divided between the victors, Britain, and France. Specifically the ME was divided between the two victors with Britain in dominant position. After WWII, the Soviets colossal played the spoiler of the Western colonial loot game, The UN with three major colonial powers in the Security Councll, the US, Britain, France, holding the three vetos failed to play neatly the same role as its previous incarnation, the League of Nations. Both, the League and the UN, were meant to uphold and legalixe the Western colonial rule. By imposing the sanctions on Iran, the US is attempting to control the trade routes as much as Britain did in the previous two centuries. By doing so, with oil fields of the ME, the SAudis, Kuwaite, Iraq, in its possession, it can dictate to the world who gets what and how much and at what price. Iran is thus a litmus test, in the wild colonial orgy that began with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the only obstacle in the path of the Western colonial rampage. With it history of genocide, slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynching, nuclear bombings of Japanese civilians, the fascist US has absolutly no moral authority whatsoever.
There are many flaws in this writing as well. How come the writer comes to the conclusion that Kahrizak is so went on legally and every thing was according to standard legal procedure and therefore nothing is wrong with the human rights violation in Iran? Is the author only worries about so called ” Blogfather” in Iran and not those who has been killed and raped and murdered in last 30 years? and what is this idea which looks like Ahmadinejad sophistry oriented that you pick some thing and make a parallel without any base? how come is that legal system in US looks comparable to Iran judiciary system to you? or when you say ” Elderly anti-war protesters, graduate students, neuroscientists, and civil rights attorneys have all been held for years by the US government and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences on bogus charges.” do you think its totally bias and not related to the point? By the way I recommend that you publish this in farsi, I am sure Ahamadinejad, Irna and Raja News will pick you as their hero and then you will be ” the voice of voiceless” and enjoying life of Nosferatu and you might desire.
Just a note: only comments in English will be approved.