Ban Ki-Moon's priorities: Who gives a damn about dead Syrians?
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon UN's 'human rights council' on Monday that there are 23,000 dead in Syria's uprising, but they're being killed by fellow Muslims so who gives a damn! What really matters to Ban is that those 600 millionaires in Gaza are being deprived of more opportunities to get rich and that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are being deprived of material for weapons.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza Monday during a speech to the UN Human rights Council in Geneva where he devoted 169-words of a 1,528-word address to Gaza and the Palestinian issue, and 153 words to the bloodbath in Syria.
Various estimates put the number of dead in the Syrian civil war at between 25,000 – 33,000, half of them civilians.
But that's not all. No, that's not all.
Ban also made no mention of Iran, its human rights abuses or genocidal threats. The secretary-general defied US and Israeli requests last month to stay away from the Non-Aligned Movement conference in Tehran that the regime there used to prop its legitimacy both domestically and around the world.
"This is part of the UN's institutional bias against Israel, and is par for the course," one Israeli government official said. "I would like to say I am surprised, but I am not."
Wait a minute.... Wasn't Ban supposed to be more pro-Western less hostile to the West than his predecessor? Silly me. Israel isn't part of the West at the UN either. In fact, Israel isn't part of anything at the UN. It's a nation that stands alone.
But priorities man, priorities. Who gives a damn about dead Syrians or Iranians when there are Joooz who can be accused of oppressing millionaires?
Back in 2006, when Binyamin Netanyahu was trying to convince people that it was worth worrying about Iran, he had an ally: Rick Santorum (Hat Tip: Catholic Lisa via Twitter).
His opposition to tyranny abroad has been a constant in his political career. Even in the final days of his losing 2006 re-election campaign, Mr. Santorum never stopped calling for action against Iran and Syria. Apparently, Pennsylvanians weren't impressed by his Iran Freedom and Support Act, enacted in 2006, which imposed sanctions on the regime and authorized $100 million annually for the democratic opposition, or his 2003 Syria Accountability Act.
But today he looks prescient and gutsy. Back then, the Bush administration was trying to run away from such ideas. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at one point turned to a Democrat, then-Sen. Joe Biden, to block Mr. Santorum's Iran bill, before it finally passed. But Mr. Santorum's basic vision has prevailed.
He foresaw that we would eventually have to confront the Iranian and Syrian regimes, and he was one of the first to point out the intercontinental anti-American alliance involving Iran, Syria, Russia, China, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras and Nicaragua. He calls this a "gathering storm," as members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps enter our hemisphere through the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, accompanied by military equipment and components.
He is right to be concerned. Former supporters of the Hugo Chávez regime in Venezuela, worried at the direction of events in their country, have told American officials that there are Iranian missiles in Venezuela capable of hitting the U.S. More obvious are the Shiite mosques suddenly popping up in Venezuela and its near neighborhood.
If we keep leading from "behind," as the president puts it, the lowest common denominator of Western resolve will define our policy. That's disastrous for people in other countries who are standing up to tyranny, and it emboldens America's enemies like Iran or the Taliban. Mr. Santorum believes things would be different if we were committed to defeating those enemies, and he is convinced that the region and the world would be far safer if there were regime change in Damascus and Tehran.
That's why he has long called for support for the Iranian opposition and favors arming and training the Free Syrian Army to bring down the Assad regime. He advocates zeroing in on the foreign scientists—from Russia, for instance—who work on the mullahs' nuclear-bomb program and declaring them enemy combatants.
Mr. Santorum hopes that American financial and moral support for the Iranian opposition will catalyze the simmering democratic revolution there, which in turn would likely tilt the balance of power in Syria once the regime in Tehran was no longer there to support Damascus. If that strategy fails, he said in Florida in January, he would go with the military option against Iran's nuclear weapons project, in close cooperation with Israel.
Unlike President Obama, Mr. Santorum believes that an explicit linkage of American and Israeli military and intelligence assets would greatly increase chances of success. And since we'd be blamed for any unilateral Israeli strike, he sees no point in separating from the Israelis on this most crucial issue.
The country is preparing to hold parliamentary elections on March 2, the first time Iranians will go to the polls since President Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election. The government denied any fraud in the vote, which ignited street protests that were crushed violently by security services after eight months.
The new Internet blockade affected the most common form of secure connections from Friday, according to outside experts and Iranian bloggers. Traffic was said to have returned to normal on Monday. "I haven't been able to open pages for days but now it's working again, although slowly," said Hamid Reza, a 20-year-old student in Tehran, who was reluctant to give his surname.
The cut-off appeared to target all encrypted international websites outside Iran that depend on the Secure Sockets Layer protocol, which display addresses beginning with https, according to Earl Zmijewski of Renesys, a US company that tracks Internet traffic worldwide.
Google, which uses SSL for its Gmail service, reported that traffic from Iran to its email system fell precipitously.
Iran's Ministry of Communications and Technology denied knowing of the disruption, saying the origin was elsewhere.
"The government is testing different tools," said Hamed Behravan, who reports on Iranian technology issues for the US government-funded Voice of America. "They might have wanted to see the public reaction."
...
Opposition supporters believe Iranian authorities were targeting their attempts to hold a rally calling on the government to release leaders of the opposition Green movement, Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi.
The two leaders were placed under house arrest on Feb. 14 last year after they urged their supporters to join a rally in support of uprisings across the Arab world.
Iranian authorities have vowed to quell any public protest against the protracted house arrest of Mousavi and Karoubi.
I'll bet they now wish they had gone the North Korean route. In North Korea, there is no internet.
British company with ties to Hague accused of selling phone tracking software to Iran
A British company with ties to Foreign Secretary William Hague is being accused of selling phone tracking software to Iran shortly after the 2009 elections.
The Telegraph writes that Creativity Software signed a contract two years ago to "provide lawful intercept solutions" to Iran, and alleges that this software could have been used to track protesters.
The deal was signed with one of the biggest mobile phone networks in Iran, Irancell, on 1 August 2009. An Iranian journalist, Saeid Pourheydar, says that the technology was used to track down protesters, even when they were not using their phones. He adds that he was "presented with his 'entire phone history' when he was arrested".
The newspaper report adds that a major shareholder in Creativity Software is a company called MMC Ventures; and both the CEO and chairman of this outfit contributed towards William Hague's private office.
However, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills told the newspaper that the software was not covered by export controls and therefore Creativity Software has done nothing wrong. A spokesman said: "The Government actively discourages all trade with Iran. We take any reports of exports being misused overseas seriously. It does not appear that the exporter has broken the law."
I must be missing something here. Does the government discourage all trade with Iran or only 'illegal' trade with Iran? There's far too much trade with Iran that is legal. But what's more important: A few schillings or the future of western civilization?
There were anti-government protests in Iran on Thursday as well.
Let's go to the videotape.
Here's another one. Let's go to the videotape.
Meanwhile, opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi's Kalame website has published a call for protests on Sunday, 1 Esfand, or Feb. 20, by an umbrella reformist group. The Unity Consolidation Bureau (Tahkim-Vahdat, main reformist student and alumni organization of Iran) said the turnout is to commemorate the deaths of the two slain 25 Bahman protesters and to show support for Iran's Green Movement leadership. Mousavi has disappeared and has probably been arrested by the regime.
On Wednesday, supporters of Ayatollah Ali Khameni were seen on television for the first time chanting slogans calling for the death of 'moderate' Iranian former President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Iran: Pro-government legislators demand death penalty for opposition leaders
Iran had quite a cheering section when there was an uprising in Egypt over the last couple of weeks. But when it comes to demonstrations in their own country, Iran's leaders say "shoot to kill."
Hardline Iranian lawmakers called on Tuesday for the country's opposition leaders to face trial and be put to death, a day after clashes between opposition protesters and security forces left two people dead and dozens injured.
...
At an open session of parliament Tuesday, pro-government legislators demanded opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mahdi Karroubi and former reformist President Mohammad Khatami face be held responsible for the protests.
Pumping their fists in the air, the lawmakers chanted "death to Mousavi, Karroubi and Khatami."
"We believe the people have lost their patience and demand capital punishment" for the opposition leaders, 221 lawmakers said in a statement.
Hardliners have long sought to put senior opposition figures on trial, but the calls for the death penalty signaled an escalation in their demands.
Parliament formed a special committee to review the case and decide in coming days about how the government should deal with the opposition leaders.
There is weakness in Washington and therefore everyone does what he sees fit. Read the whole thing.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon UN's 'human rights council' on Monday that there are 23,000 dead in Syria's uprising, but they're being killed by fellow Muslims so who gives a damn! What really matters to Ban is that those 600 millionaires in Gaza are being deprived of more opportunities to get rich and that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are being deprived of material for weapons. 
