“FRC Pledges to Oppose President's Proposals to Sexualize the Military ... - YAHOO!” plus 3 more |
- FRC Pledges to Oppose President's Proposals to Sexualize the Military ... - YAHOO!
- Iran Continues Focus on Outside Provocateurs, Now Blaming Germany - New York Times
- Criticism of 'Avatar' more interesting than film - AZCentral.com
- GAC students stranded in Peru flooding - Mankato Free Press
| FRC Pledges to Oppose President's Proposals to Sexualize the Military ... - YAHOO! Posted: 27 Jan 2010 08:11 PM PST 20 seconds ago 2010-01-27T20:50:06-08:00 Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Iran Continues Focus on Outside Provocateurs, Now Blaming Germany - New York Times Posted: 27 Jan 2010 08:11 PM PST CAIRO — Iranian officials continued to cast blame for the nation's recent political crisis on foreign interference on Wednesday, focusing their ire for the first time on Germany, one of the country's closest trading partners, with an accusation that its diplomats and intelligence agents helped organize protests at the end of December. The accusations followed stronger statements against Iran's nuclear program by German officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, who raised the scpecter of new international sanctions against Iran, and an announcement on Tuesday by the Munich-based engineering giant Siemens that it would seek no new business there. "There is a long tradition of economic cooperation between Germany and Iran," Mrs. Merkel said Tuesday at a news conference with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, at the conclusion of his four-day visit. "But we believe it is only effective if you try to introduce international sanctions on as broad a base as possible." The accusations also coincided with a round of meetings between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and foreign ministers from Russia, Indonesia and Turkey over Iran's nuclear program. Iranian news reports on Wednesday said that an official with Iran's intelligence ministry told reporters in Tehran that two German intelligence agents — "Yogi" and "Ingo" — were part of a German team that helped recruit young people to join protests that turned violent during a normally somber Shiite holiday, Ashura. "Individuals who were arrested on Ashura were from various groups, one of which was linked with the German intelligence services and was being led by German diplomats," said the unnamed intelligence official, according to the semi-official ILNA news service. The official told reporters that the protests were organized abroad and cited what he evidence to support his contention: a Facebook page in support of Mir Hussein Moussavi, an opposition leader, run by Iranian expatriates living in Germany; "incitement" from BBC Farsi and Voice of America; invitations from the People's Mujaheeen, an exile group Iran considers a terrorist organization; and the fact that many arrested protesters were from outside Tehran. But some details of the Iranian account were a matter of confusion; several Iranian new agencies reported that German diplomats had been arrested, while others said only that German diplomats had been involved. One report said that it was an aide to Mr. Moussavi who was arrested. Those that reported the German arrests — including state television — did not say if the diplomats were still in custody, while other news agencies reported that the authorities only arrested an aide to Mir Hussein Moussavi, a principal opposition leader. "Two individuals from among Germany's diplomats participated in Ashura Day unrest, and they had Green symbols alongside themselves, and they were distributing even these Green symbols, including T-shirts, to this group of boys and girls," was how the ILNA semi-official news agency reported the accusation. The MEHR and ISNA semi-official news agencies reported the arrests, while English-language Press TV did not. The challenge of following events in Iran has grown more complicated since the disputed presidential election last year set of enduring unrest. The government continues to limit foreign access and independent reporting and to penalize local news organizations that offer what the state deems critical reports. For its part, the German government denied that its agents played any role in the protests, or that its diplomats were arrested. "We reject these accusations in every possible form," Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday. But Andreas Peschke, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry, appeared to leave open the possibility that German nationals might have been arrested, telling a news conference in Berlin, "No German diplomats were arrested on December 27th last year." The German news service dpa reported that two German police officers who worked at the embassy but did not have diplomatic status had been arrested, but a spokesman for the German Interior Ministry in Berlin said that such reports were "rumors and nothing more." Whatever the details, it was clear that the Iranian leadership continues to blame its political unrest on an international conspiracy of foreign governments and expatriate Iranians seeking to topple the government. Iran experts said that the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, in particular, believe that the West is trying to mastermind a revolution. The Iranian intelligence official, in his statement to reporters, said that a group of expatriates function as liaisons between foreign governments and the opposition inside Iran. They include, he said, a former minister of culture, Atollah Mohajerani, and a prominent cleric, Mohsen Kadivar, both now living in the United States. "Anti-Islamic Revolution agents, networks backed by Western intelligence services" and those who seek to promote "sedition" in the country planned the Ashura protests, ISNA quoted the official as saying . From the start of Iran's eight-month-old political crisis, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his allies in the military and intelligence services have blamed foreign governments for attempting to organize and promote the kind of soft revolutions that brought down governments in Eastern Europe. Until now, Iran had focused its accusations on the United States, Britain and Israel. Germany is one of Iran's biggest and most important trading partners, but Berlin has been trying to curtail business with Iran as part of the increase in international pressure to stop Iran's nuclear program. At the time of the Ashura demonstrations, Mrs. Merkel condemned the violence as being "a result of the unacceptable actions of the security forces." At the news conference on Tuesday Mrs. Merkel said that the international community had shown "great patience" with Iran, but that "the time has come for us to discuss sanctions also on the international level." On Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton, in London for conferences on Yemen and Afghanistan, tried to jump-start the global effort to press Iran on its nuclear program. She also planned to meet Thursday with the foreign minister of China, which has been reluctant to consider fresh sanctions against Tehran. The chief executive of Siemens, Peter Löscher, told shareholders on Tuesday that the company's board had decided last October to stop seeking new contracts with Iran by mid-2010. "Iran sees itself, so to speak, confronted with the developments on the German side, from Siemens and especially by the clear statements from Merkel during the visit by Peres on harder sanctions," said Konstantin Kosten, an expert on Iran at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. On Monday, Iranian officials summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents American interests in Iran, and to complain about American involvement in the recent assassination of Masoud Ali Mohammadi, though according to his friends and his writings, he supported the reform movement — not the hard-line leadership. Iran also implicated Israel and Britain in the killing. In a speech on Tuesday, Ayatollah Khamenei said that the protesters would fail because they are "dependent on the enemy." "America has spent $45 million in fighting the Islamic system through diplomacy, sanctions, the deployment of spies, hiring mercenaries, and other methods, but has not reached a single positive result," he said. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Criticism of 'Avatar' more interesting than film - AZCentral.com Posted: 27 Jan 2010 08:04 PM PST Somewhere between "Avatar's" first billion-dollar gross and its subsequent $841 million take lie my 10 bucks. "Avatar" is about blue-skinned beings who confront Earthlings actively strip-mining their natural paradise on the moon Pandora. Many groups, from the Vatican to political conservatives to multiculturalists, have objected to various messages in the film (as they hear them). I'm glad to have seen it, if only to understand the heartfelt critiques of a movie that, for me, went in one ear, out one eye and was promptly forgotten. The commotion set off by "Avatar" recalls the fuss made over another cultural phenomenon, "Jurassic Park," in 1993. France's cultural guardians were especially upset that Steven Spielberg's blockbuster, full of expensive rampaging dinosaurs, had overshadowed thoughtful lower-budget movies made in Europe. For the record, I enjoyed "Jurassic Park." As for me and "Avatar": After the first half-hour of gee-whiz special effects, I found myself taking off the 3-D glasses to check the time. Under all that visual splendor lay a cliched plot, stereotyped characters and humorless dialogue. That left the action - but how many video games can you watch? As I said, the criticism is what made the movie interesting. In "Avatar," the Vatican protested, "nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship." Backing that view, conservative columnist Ross Douthat calls "Avatar" a "long apologia for pantheism - a faith that equates God with nature and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world." Where Douthat errs is his assumption that director James Cameron was trying to justify anything. He wasn't. He was totally cool with Earth worship. (My movie companion, who used to teach Baptist Sunday school, said she detected several Christian messages - for example, the theme of forgiveness.) Conservatives have called the movie anti-American, and I agree. References to the Iraq War were especially unfair. I don't join right-leaners in their pans of "Avatar's" environmental preaching. My problem was not the sermonizing but its simple-mindedness. Disney's 2008 computer-animated movie "WALL-E" did a better job on the environmental theme by being 10 times more clever. There are attacks from the left, too. Some objected to the crypto-racist theme of a White man coming to save the indigenous population. (see "Dances with Wolves"). Why can't its savior be one of them? Good question. My favorite beef comes from an anti-tobacco group. The Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education grumbles that the scientist Sigourney Weaver smokes as she tries to save Pandora from the environmental wrecking crew. As the center sees it, heroes don't smoke. What made this my favorite gripe was Cameron's response: "If it's OK for people to lie, cheat, steal and kill in PG-13 movies, why impose an inconsistent morality when it comes to smoking?" Since when has it been immoral to smoke? Bad for one's health, yes, but immoral? It's no more immoral to smoke than it is to worship Gaia. It's nobody's business but one's own. Now my complaint about the complainers. Many of you refer to the blue beings as "aliens." Technically, they're the natives on Pandora. The humans are the aliens. Just thought I'd point that out. The Golden Globe Awards have just named "Avatar" the best drama of the year. From my standpoint, "Avatar" wasn't even the best drama of the night. After seeing it, I thought, I've got to see a movie. So later that evening, I viewed the 1944 film-noir classic "Laura." It was in black and white, and my eyes were glued. Guess you can see what planet I'm coming from. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| GAC students stranded in Peru flooding - Mankato Free Press Posted: 27 Jan 2010 08:11 PM PST MANKATO — A group of Gustavus Adolphus College students and faculty members are among those trapped and awaiting evacuation in a flood-ravaged area of Peru. The group, part of a January term study abroad course called "Education, Health Care and Poverty in Peru," is stranded near Machu Picchu. It includes 21 students and two faculty members. Extreme rains and flooding near Machu Picchu have made ordinary routes impassable, the college said. There are an estimated 2,500 tourists and others currently awaiting evacuation near Machu Picchu. College officials stressed that, as of right now, the students are not in danger and have plenty of food and water. All evacuation is being done by helicopter and heavy rains have delayed flights. A triage system for evacuation priority has been set up that calls for elderly and ill tourists to leave first, followed next by children, and then everyone else. Carolyn O'Grady, director of Gustavus's Center for International and Cultural Education, said the students' spirits remain high. "Their spirits are good overall considering everything," O'Grady said. "They're getting an incredible, amazing educational experience that they didn't expect." Gustavus has declined to release the students¹ names. O'Grady declined to speculate on when the group might be evacuated, but a statement issued by the college today said they¹re hoping to get out in the next few days. Trip leader Debra Pitton, professor of education at the college, is in touch with campus officials. She indicates the group is safe and morale is good under the circumstances In a college-issued statement, she said "The students are very supportive of one another," she said. "Everyone is lifting each other's spirits. Parents should be so very proud of how the students are handling the situation. Fortunately, we are able to stay in a hotel and there is enough food and water. We also had a wonderful opportunity to see Machu Picchu on this trip. The students are appreciative of that experience and will come back with wonderful pictures." The weather problem has afforded a deep learning experience for the students, Pitton said. "We agreed as a group at the outset of this trip that we wanted to really understand this country and its people. This situation has certainly been an incredible learning opportunity in that regard." See Thursdays print edition of The Free Press for a full report.
Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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