Parrots in Parliament: Politicians Jump on Terrorist Bandwagon
Maryam Rajavi, one of the leaders of the Iranian terrorist organisation, People's Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), was on a visit to Finland on 11-12 March 2010. Ms Rajavi met with many Finnish politicians, public officials, church leaders, and other public figures. I wrote several letters to MPs, ministers, and officials urging them to reject any contact with Ms Rajavi and her representatives. Some of the responses I got were less than satisfactory, while others served as evidence of the sane judgment of many of our elected representatives.
Maryam Rajavi should be in jail
I wrote several letters to Finnish politicians and public officials urging them not to have any contact with the Iranian terrorist leader Maryam Rajavi and her representatives. Below is my letter to former Conservative MEP Piia-Noora Kauppi, who has a long-standing relationship to Ms Rajavi's organisation. Ms Kauppi is now Managing Director of the Federation of Finnish Financial Services. Dear Piia-Noora Kauppi,I am writing to you to express my deepest concern about the recent visit to Finland of Maryam Rajavi, one of the leaders of the People's Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI). I have learned that you have cooperated with organisations that Ms Rajavi represents for some time. I wish you would hold human rights foremost in your mind when considering your attitude toward organisations that use or have used terrorism to further their political aims.
Finnish MPs fall under Rajavi's spell
Finland's political elite has fallen under the spell of the Rajavi cult. The Iranian terrorist leader Maryam Rajavi has ensnared legislators in several countries and the European Parliament. When two MKO terrorists were detained in Finland, few really knew what the group stood for. Before her "charm offensive" targeting political leaders in Europe and elsewhere, Maryam Rajavi ordered her cult members to kill their own people and to attack the Iraqi Kurds at the behest of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. See the Al Jazeera documentary about the MKO.
Another Iranian Revolution?
The Islamic Republic of Iran is not about to implode. Nevertheless, the misguided idea that it may do so is becoming enshrined as conventional wisdom in Washington. Assertions that the Islamic Republic is now imploding in the fashion of the Shah's regime in 1979 do not hold up to even the most minimal scrutiny. The Obama administration's half-hearted efforts at diplomacy with Tehran have given engagement a bad name. As a result, support for more coercive options is building up. The president will do a real disservice to American interests if he waits in vain for Iranian political dynamics to "solve" the problems with his Iran policy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/opinion/06leverett.html
For years, regime apologists in the US have suggested that Washington's efforts to negotiate with Iran are half-hearted, or that all the clerics in Iran want is some respect. Events of the last seven months show the problem is not in Washington, but in Tehran, and with the nature of the regime. Khamenei knows that anti-Americanism is his raison d'être. The United States can either stand with the people of Iran, and support their quest for democracy or it can side with those who defend the moribund regime. In the past, every time the United States has listened to the Leveretts of the day, it has reaped nothing but the wrath of the people and a loss of influence. The same would happen this time.
http://www.tnr.com/article/world/the-state-the-opposition-strong
The Death of Theocracy
The term "theocracy" 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. A country that attempts to govern itself from a holy book will immediately find itself in decline: the talents of its females repressed and squandered, its children stultified by rote learning in madrassas, and its qualified and educated people in exile or in prison. Any government that imagines it has a divine warrant will perforce deal with its critics as if they were profane and thus illegitimate by definition. A failed state that cannot allow any grown-up internal debate, or any appeal against the divine edict, will swiftly become an even more failed state and then a rogue one because its limitless paranoia and self-pity must be projected outward. Thus we have a very direct interest in having the Iranian people permitted to interfere in their own internal affairs.http://www.newsweek.com/id/228744
