Iranian Man Sentenced to 4 Months in Jail, 30 Lashes for Walking Dog

A 70-year-old Iranian man was arrested and sentenced to four months in jail and 30 lashes for walking his dog, Adnkronos.com reported Tuesday. Police caught the man on the street with his dog in Shahr Rey, a suburb of Tehran.

Owners of domestic animals are forbidden from taking them on the streets of the city because Islam considers dogs to be impure. An Islamic judge later charged the man for "disturbing the public order,” Adnkronos.com reported.

Despite repeated warnings by the police, dog owners continue to defy authorities by taking their dogs outside their homes. Typical punishment for people caught with dogs outside is a fine or the "detention" of their animals in a pound, Adnkronos.com reported.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently provoked debate in Iran about dog ownership when he took possession of four guard dogs, bought in Germany for approximately $161,040 each.

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Gays Deserve Torture, Death Penalty, Iranian Minister Says

Homosexuals deserve to be executed or tortured and possibly both, an Iranian leader told British MPs during a private meeting at a peace conference, The Times has learned.

Mohsen Yahyavi is the highest-ranked politician to admit that Iran believes in the death penalty for homosexuality after a spate of reports that gay youths were being hanged.

President Ahmadinejad, questioned by students in New York two months ago about the executions, dodged the issue by suggesting that there were no gays in his country.

Britain regularly challenges Iran about its gay hangings, stonings and executions of adulterers and perceived moral criminals, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) papers show.

The latest row involves a woman hanged this June in the town of Gorgan after becoming pregnant by her brother. He was absolved after expressing his remorse. Britain said that this demonstrated the unequal treatment of men and women in law and breached Iran’s pledge to restrict the death penalty to the most serious crimes.

A series of reported executions of gays, including two underage boys whose public hanging was posted on the internet, has alarmed human rights campaigners.

The Pet Shop Boys dedicated Fundamental, their Grammy-nominated album, to Mahmoud Asqari and Ayad Marhouni, who were hanged in Justice Square in Mashhad in 2005. Graphic photographs of the execution of the youths, who were under 18 when arrested, were released by the Iranian Students News Agency.

Gay rights groups in Britain, such as Outrage!, accuse Iran of cloaking executions for homosexuality with bogus charges for more serious crimes.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the FCO released papers to The Times about the death penalty being used in Iran for homosexuality, adultery and sex outside marriage.

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lolz - Snapped Shot is pwning the Jihaders

Brian over at snapped shot is at it again. This time he found out a jihadi site was hotlinking some of his images. Big mistake. You can read more here. He even picked one of my images to go up on the jihader's site.

:::UPDATE:::

Looks like he found someone else hotlinking some of his images. See here.

This is good stuff.

'Dozens died in Syria-Iran missile test'

Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the proliferation and development of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in Jane's Defence Weekly, which reported that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.

According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a Scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas.

Reports of the accident were circulated at the time; however, no details were released by the Syrian government, and there were no hints of an Iranian connection.

The report comes on the heels of criticism leveled by the Syrians at the United States, accusing it of spreading "false" claims of Syrian nuclear activity and cooperation with North Korea to excuse an alleged Israeli air incursion over the country this month.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1189411428847&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Immigrant saga cuts Iranian "honor killing"

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - The National Iranian American Council has claimed a "mutual victory" after convincing a filmmaker to remove a family "honor killing" from the immigrant drama "Crossing Over."

In writer-director Wayne Kramer's original script for the Weinstein Co. film -- which stars Harrison Ford, Sean Penn, Ashley Judd, Cliff Curtis and Ray Liotta -- an Iranian-American woman is killed by her brother after having an affair with a Latino man. The act is sanctioned by their father.

An Iranian-American actor who read the script but wasn't associated with the film casually mentioned the plot point to NIAC assistant legislative director Emily Blout. Concerned that the depiction was "highly unlikely and potentially inflammatory," she contacted Kramer and one of the stars during the film's Los Angeles shoot.

NIAC president Trita Parsi said the star wished to remain anonymous, but all parties began "a constructive dialogue from the outset."

In the final version, which Parsi said required reshoots and script changes, there is no discussion of "honor" in any killing. He said it was agreed that the group would not disclose the plot revision in the final film.

"'Honor killings' are accepted in some Middle Eastern cultures but not accepted in Iranian culture," Parsi said. "They sometimes happen in remote areas of Iran, but there are no cases of Iranians doing this in the U.S."

Said Weinstein Co. spokeswoman Sarah Rothman: "We are pleased the filmmakers and NIAC were able to resolve this issue in a way that addresses NIAC's concerns and maintains the creative integrity of the film. While we believe strongly in freedom of expression, we also believe in the importance of constructive dialogue between artists and the communities they seek to portray."

"Crossing Over," which examines tensions among several Los Angeles immigrant groups, is scheduled for release in December.

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Highly unlikely? When you have laws on the books designed to protect the people that commit these crimes, what's to stop them? If it's not accepted in Iranian culture, why leave the law on the books?

According to the report of the Special Rapporteur submitted to the 58th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (2002) concerning cultural practices in the family that reflect violence against women (E/CN.4/2002/83):

The Special Rapporteur indicated that there had been contradictory decisions with regard to the honor defense in Brazil, and that legislative provisions allowing for partial or complete defense in that context could be found in the penal codes of Argentina, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Peru, Syria, Venezuela and the Palestinian National Authority.

Though Israel is mentioned in the report, Israeli law does not allow for "family honor" as a defense in murder, partially or completely.

Iranian Unit to Be Labeled 'Terrorist'

U.S. Moving Against Revolutionary Guard

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 15, 2007; A01


The United States has decided to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group's business operations and finances.

The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran's nuclear program, officials said.

The designation of the Revolutionary Guard will be made under Executive Order 13224, which President Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to obstruct terrorist funding. It authorizes the United States to identify individuals, businesses, charities and extremist groups engaged in terrorist activities. The Revolutionary Guard would be the first national military branch included on the list, U.S. officials said -- a highly unusual move because it is part of a government, rather than a typical non-state terrorist organization.

The order allows the United States to block the assets of terrorists and to disrupt operations by foreign businesses that "provide support, services or assistance to, or otherwise associate with, terrorists."

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Two Journalists Sentenced to Death in Iran

TEHRAN, Iran — The Iranian judiciary confirmed that two journalist from the country's Kurdish minority have been sentenced to death, a rare verdict against media people here, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported on Tuesday.

"Adnan Hassanpour and Hiva Boutimar have been sentenced to execution on the charge of Moharebeh," the agency quoted Ali Reza Jamshidi, spokesman of judiciary, as saying. Moharebeh, which literally means "fighting" in classical Arabic, is used in Iran's Sharia law to describe a major crime against the religion and the Islamic state.

The official new agency did not specify what crime the two Kurdish journalists were precisely accused of.

The journalists were also seen as activists in Sanandaj, the capital of the western Iranian province of Kurdistan, bordering Iraq.

They have been detained after Kurds protested in Sanandaj in 2005.

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Oh Boy..

Iranian soldiers gather around an anti-aircraft machinegun inside the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, 300 kms south of Tehran, March 2006. Commercial satellite imagery indicates Iran is tunneling into a mountain near its Natanz uranium enrichment complex, possibly to protect nuclear equipment against air attack, a US think tank reported Monday. Photo:Behrouz Mehri/AFP