Mujahedin Khalq as a Destructive Cult

How Fast Can Someone Be ‘Radicalized’?

The FBI released this image early Friday, April 19, 2013, showing “Suspect 1″ in the white cap and “Suspect 2″ in the black cap, walking through the crowd in Boston on Monday, April 15, 2013, before the explosions at the Boston Marathon. (FBI/AP)

Of the many questions that have yet to be answered in the marathon bombing investigation, the toughest question may be: Why?

News reports indicate Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, exerted a lot of influence on his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Investigators say Tamerlan did frequent jihadi websites, but Dzhokhar’s friends say he was not a Muslim radical.

“… very intelligent, educated people from good families can be recruited and indoctrinated into something totally against their values system.”

–Steve Hassan Steven Hassan is a mental health counselor and author of “Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs.”

In the 1970s, Hassan was drawn into Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, and now helps people break away from cults.

His personal experience, he said, could shed some light on what might have happened in the case of the Tsarnaev brothers.

“For me, I was recruited when I was 19 years old, and it took two weeks for me to drop out of my college, quit my job, donate my bank account and believe the messiah was on the Earth. It took me, I’d say, another year before I was willing to die or kill on command. But I can tell you in 36 years as a therapist, very intelligent, educated people from good families can be recruited and indoctrinated into something totally against their values system.”

And “loners” aren’t the only ones susceptible to recruitment, Hassan said.

“I was an extra-honors student and popular and was not interested in joining a group,” he said. “My girlfriend dumped me and three attractive women flirted, and then it was history.”

Hassan says there are ways to help prevent recruitment to cults or extremist groups.

“Masoud Banisadr, a former Iranian MEK [Mojahedin-e-Khalq] cult member came up with this idea – he said after a civil trial, there should be a sharia trial. An Islamic cleric should come in and basically try the person and say, ‘You’re going to hell, because the Koran explicitly states you should not harm women, children, elderly,’” Hassan said. “And I’d like to see ex-jihadists come and give lectures on campuses, at mosques and such. I’d like to see more people taught about how social influence works.”

Steve Hassan’s BITE Model of Mind Control

Video: Steve Hassan interviews Masoud Banisadr, former member of MEK

hereandnow.wbur.org

May 1, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

No use eating cake across from the White House

The formerly terrorist designated Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) eat cake in the opening ceremony of their “sleek” office in Washington, just a hundred meter from the White House. The event was celebrated with a bunch of American outstanding figures who been greatly paid by the MKO to lobby the US congress and administration to get the group removed from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations of the US State Department."The former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton removed the MEK from its terrorist list last September after an intense lobbying Campaign that included millions of dollars paid to prominent lawmakers and former government officials", the Hill reported.[1]

US politicians who attended the fete included Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I) who had recently traveled to Sweden to speak at the group’s demonstration in Stockholm. Previous to the Stockholm gathering, Kennedy and his other comrades had been offered trips to Paris and other on first class fights and luxury hotels to speak on behalf of the group. Various reports on the large amounts of money paid to the MKO supporters point out that "Money" really "Talks".

Besides, the event indicated that the MKO propaganda has been roughly successful to whitewash its violent past and even the image it had as the assassin of the 6 US citizens in the 1970s. Haward LA Franchi of the Christian Science Monitor suggests, “From prominent former members of Congress to former national security officials and high-profile diplomats, the caliber of the American advocates on hand for the ribbon-cutting demonstrated how effective the Iranian opposition organization has been at transforming its image – from that of a fringe group with a violent past to one in which it is the embodiment of the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people.”[2]

The news of the opening on the website of the MKO propaganda arm the NCRI comes with the 10point plan Maryam Rajavi had declared for “ a future Iran” in April 2006.

The first item of the alleged plan claims to consider the ballot box as “the only criterion for legitimacy “. The claim by a cult-like group sounds ridiculous. Even in the media note the office of the spokesperson of the State department released on delisting of the MKO in September 2012, the Department expresses " serious concerns “about the group,” particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members” [3]. The reports on human rights abuses committed in the MKO published by HRW and RAND institution based on testimonies of former member of the group and eye-witnesses who visited the group camps might be the origin of the DOS’s concerns.

The title “President Elect of the Iranian Resistance” referring to Maryam Rajavi never symbolizes her claim of “the ballot box”. Who elected Maryam Rajavi as the President Elect?

As Maryam Rajavi calls the upcoming Iranian election a “sham”, videos and documents indicate that as her "ideological" leader – read Cult Guru- Massoud Rajavi ordered her to become the so-called President of the Resistance. A quick search in Youtube on the election of Maryam Rajavi provides you with no "ballot box".

The leaders of the MKO are widely accused of running a notorious cult of personality. Elizabeth Rubin of the New York Times Magazine who visited Camp Ashraf in 2003 and whose famous article “The Cult of Rajavi” is still considered as one of the most reliable sources on the MKO, again in 2011 advised Secretary Clinton to ignore the group’s propaganda. she suggested,” Mujahedin Khalq is not only irrelevant to the cause of Iran’s democratic activists, but a totalitarian cult that will come back to haunt us.”[4]

By the way, Mrs. Clinton ignored the advises of the MKO critics and delisted it in September 2012. However, Daniel Larison of the American Conservative asserts that the “delisting of the MEK was mostly a quid pro que to get most of the group members in Iraq to relocate from its old base at Camp Ashraf.”[5]

Regarding the MKO undemocratic cult-like substance Larison writes,” many of the people at Camp Ashraf were being held there against their will “and “it remains on its own organization a totalitarian quasi Marxist cult”.[6]

Comparing the fifth item of Mrs. Rajavi’s Ten-Point plan for the Future of Iran with what Elizabeth Rubin eye witnessed in Camp Ashraf, expresses the fraudulent PR of the MKO. “When I arrived at Camp Ashraf, the base of the group’s operations, in April 2003, I thought I’d entered a fictional world of female worker bees. Everywhere I saw women dressed exactly alike, in Khaki uniforms and mud-colored scarves…“Rubin writes. [7]

This is “the right to choose their clothing” Maryam Rajavi promises Iranian women! And about the “freedom of marriage, divorce, education and employment” that Maryam Rajavi claims, Rubin reports,” Members were even forced to divorce and take avow of lifelong celibacy of ensure that all their energy and love would be directed toward Maryam and Massoud.”[8]

As the Hill reports the group PR admits that the opening of its office is “consistent with” its “ expanding efforts inside and outside Iran aimed at bringing democratic change to Iran and the timing could not be better with the failure of the nuclear talks and the upcoming Presidential election in Iran.” The MKO boasts of warm relationship with US policymakers saying that the opening of its office “sends the strong political message to Tehran that the real Iranian opposition is back in business. And it is just across from the White House.[9]

Ostensibly according to the MKO leaders to bring democracy to Iran, you need to have the support of the US not the Iranian people. The MKO have been “in business” with the enemies of their people since their expulsion from Iran –once sheltered by Saddam Hussein and now under the umbrella of Israel and the U.S. “The MEK is an awful group all on its own” and "hated in Iran for its long period of collusion with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war and afterwards “,Daniel Larison states.[10]

The MKO is probably the most hated political group among Iranians. The upcoming Iranian election is not the first one which is boycotted by the MKO. After the early elections in the Islamic Republic in which Maryam and Massoud Rajavi were not support by the Iranian public and government, the elections in Iran have been boycotted by the MKO!

Regarding the aggressive lobbying campaign the MKO has launched since a decade in western capitals particularly Washington DC, opening of the MKO office in downtown Washington appears to have no significant impact on the Iran-U.S. relations, let alone on Iranian internal affairs including the June elections. Nevertheless as Rubin says the group may happen to "haunt” the West.

By Mazda Parsi

References:

[1] Pacquet, Julian, Iran’s MEK to open Washington office, the Hill, April9, 2013

[2]La Franchi, Howard, For former Iranian ‘terrorists’ a warm Washington welcome, The Christian Science Monitor, April 11, 2013

[3]U.S. Department of State, delisting of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, Office of the spokesperson, September28,2012

[4] Rubin, Elizabeth, An Iranian Cult and its American friends ,the New York Times, August13, 2011

[5] Larison, Daniel, The “Rehabilitation” of the MEK, the American Conservative ,April16, 2013

[6]ibid

[7] Rubin, Elizabeth, An Iranian Cult and its American friends ,the New York Times, August13, 2011

[8]ibid

[9] Pacquet, Julian, Iran’s MEK to open Washington office, the Hill, April9, 2013

[10] Larison, Daniel, The “Rehabilitation” of the MEK, the American Conservative ,April16, 2013

April 24, 2013 0 comments

Massoud Rajavi

Rajavi abused women in the cult: Ex – member

In an interview on December 5, 2012, Zahra Mir Bagheri, former member of MKO’s leadership council, spoke of the tragic fate of women who were murdered in the terrorist Mujahedin e-Khalq organization.

She clearly named people who were involved in those murders and asked the international Human Rights communities to act against these tragic inner-cultish murders.

Revealing the misogynistic nature of Rajavi’s cult, she emphasized she had witnessed killing of women in the leadership council and blamed Massoud and Maryam Rajavi for the secret murders in the cult.

She said Rajavis had issued a death sentence on those women who had decided to escape the cult and after they were detained by Saddam’s security forces, the issued verdicts were executed in any possible ways. She named a number of victims and testified she had witnessed their killing.

Mir Bagheri had revealed the sexual assault on women in the cult before:

“We were called to Massoud by different excuses and we faced celebrations every time. There were no ideological discussions. It was all about Massoud, the ideological leader, and unique relations with him. We were given various gifts such as shower towels, underwear, perfumes and other things which we wouldn’t understand why they were given to us.

We were encouraged by higher ranking members in the council who had gone through all this before, to establish unique emotional connections to Massoud and speak with him romantically. It was always hard for us because we considered all this as an ideological connection.

We thought we couldn’t yet understand it. We thought we had to learn from higher ranking members who had completed these levels before us and that was how our brains were washed deeper. For instance, except those presents, some golden bracelets were also given to us. It was first a bracelet with a picture of Maryam on it. When we were receiving these gifts, Massoud used to touch our hands and that was the beginning. He sometimes joked about it or he would say “just like my own [wife].”

We wouldn’t understand what he was meaning by saying “just like my own” and we used to repeat it. If we had just paid a little more attention we would understand it. It was said before that Massoud and Maryam are not included in mandatory divorces. So we had to go through these levels just like Maryam.

The women in the second layer of leadership council were presented with another bracelet which had a picture of Massoud Rajavi on it. “

Zahra Mir Bagheri was forced to crawl combat-style over a kilometer for hours in the dark to escape Camp Ashraf. Her body was so lacerated and bleeding that the Iraqi soldiers who found her wept on seeing her injuries. She spent several weeks in hospital recovering from this ordeal. In addition she has had to undergo various operations in Germany.

April 18, 2013 0 comments

Massoud Rajavi

European intellectual views on the Cult of Rajavi_Part 6

Dena Peace and Freedom Association interviewed a European intellectual on the Cult of Rajavi(MKO/MEK). Ms. Shemeltz who is an expert and scholar on psychotherapy has personal and scientific experience about cults.
As the representative of Dena Peace and Freedom Association, Mr. Mohsen Abbasslou talked with the honorable expert, Ms. Shemeltz.
European intellectual views on the Cult of Rajavi_Part 6
Mr. Abbasslou: Dear Ms. Shemeltz, as a person who is familiar with the cults and their functions, do you think we should feel pity for Mr. Rajavi?

Ms. Shemeltz: personally, I really feel pity for such a person, I’m so sorry for him.

Mr. Abbasslou : Ms. Shemeltz, I got shocked by your answer. Do you really feel pity for a criminal?

Ms. Shemeltz: yes, it is with a great sorrow that an individual has to commit so many criminal acts in order to please himself and to survive. Yes, I feel pity for Mr. Rajavi and also for his victims.

What makes me upset is that a human being has such capacities and there is no mechanism or practical solution to control him. In the world of business many people like that such individuals exit. Individuals like Massoud Rajavi bring benefits to many and are considered as a source of making a living and achieving benefits.

Rajavi is an example. Anyway, he is a human being. The sufferings he caused to his victims impose pressure on his inner self more than anyone else. It may seem bizarre but people like Rajavi feel the suffering of his victims more than anyone else.

Victims have gone but the pain exists in the sole of Rajavi. Rajavi still feels pain, his pain is more than anyone else because he has victimized hundreds of people and their families. His pain and sufferings are more than anyone else.

Mr. Ababsslou: dear Ms. Shemeltz, I couldn’t get what you exactly mean! Do you mean than MR. Rajavi suffers from his victims’ sufferings?

Ms. Shemeltz: Mr. Rajavi is a miserable person. He cannot see others’ sufferings because his own sufferings are more than anyone else. He is deeply drowned in his tormenting world. He views himself a sun that gives life to the earth. He views himself the centre of the world.

He cannot realize what the origin of this negative feeling is. He is kind of dramatized human being living in a shock. He has always been involved in this shock and cannot get out of it. He is looking for the origin of this shock. He is seriously busy with himself.

Mr. Rajavi has had a good picture in the mirror of the society. He definitely has been a charismatic personality for his followers who have not simply diagnosed his psychotic desease. I guess that so far no one has seriously and deeply investigated or analyzed Mr. Rajavi’s mental problem.

First of all, we should know Mr. Rajavi to know the cult under his control. Understanding people like Mr. Rajavi is a complicated task requiring detailed scientific research and studies. As I said none of the above mentioned theories are precisely right; they are just theories. To suggest an exact argument about Mr. Rajavi, He should be monitored in a treatment center under our control. I wish I could talk to him. I wish he would write his opinions if he read the interview.

Mr. Rajavi is able to move other’s feelings. He can manipulate their feelings and emotions taking them out of normal condition and make them decide and move in favor of his own goals and ideas.

To be continued

April 16, 2013 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

MKO office in US, violation of international law

Victims of Mojahedin Khalq Terrorism: ‘MKO office in US, violation of international law’

The families of the Iranian victims of terrorism have condemned the opening of an office by the terrorist Mujaheeden-e Khalq Organization (MKO) in Washington as a violation of international law. MKO office in US, violation of international law

“The Mujaheeden-e Khalq [Organization] is a terrorist group in the real sense of the word,” the Tehran-based Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism wrote in a letter to US President Barack Obama.

Pointing to the dictatorial nature of the group, the letter said Maryam Rajavi has led the terrorist group for over 18 years, adding that, “The structure of the organization is completely devoid of democratic principles and is run in a completely dictatorial fashion. [Its] members do not have any say in determining policies and approaches.”

“The claims of such a group about human rights and democracy, when it does not respect the most basic needs of its members and does not care for democratic principles in managing its own internal affairs, are not genuine,” the letter further read.

The MKO’s office, located a block from the White House, was officially opened on April 11 only months after the United States formally removed the anti-Iranian group from the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.

The MKO was taken off the State Department’s blacklist on September 28, 2012.

This was while the terrorist group has carried out numerous acts of violence against Iranian civilians and government officials.

Out of the 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist attacks since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, some 12,000 of them have fallen victim to acts of terror carried out by the MKO.

The MKO fled to Iraq in 1986, where it received the support of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up its camp near the Iranian border.

Members of the MKO terrorist group were later transferred from Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf, which is situated about 120 kilometers (74 miles) west of the border with Iran, to Camp Liberty near Baghdad Airport.

April 15, 2013 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

European intellectual views on the Cult of Rajavi_Part5

Rajavi’s childhood should be studied

Mr. Abbaslou: Ms. Shemeltz, imagine that Massoud Rajavi is here with us. What should we do with him? How Rajavi’s childhood should be studied should we deal with him?

Ms. Shemeltz: As I said, if I study the past and present life of Mr. Massoud Rajavi, psychologically, I will make sure that he is a sever psycho. He suffers from narcissism.
He thinks he is the best human being on the earth. He has no emotions for others. He is not committed to any basic moral principles. The laws of the society are not regulated for him. He doesn’t care for laws and people at all.

He views himself as superior to others; he is a God. However, at the bottom of his heart he feels no value for his ego and he lacks enough self-confidence. He has the illusion of an important saint person. He has psychological problems.

If you investigate the past life of people like Mr. Rajavi, you may find out that he has been abused or deprived in his childhood. Of course, these are just likely cases. Rajavi is the only one who knows about it.

To get an exact, detailed knowledge on Massoud Rajavi’s personality and psychological characteristics, you should definitely focus on his past. You should view the environment and his family in which he grew up. You should know how his family treated him as a child. You should search about the environment in which he grew up since his birthday until he turned 3-4 years old. This early age is very crucial because it’s the time when basic psychological behavior forms and they get reinforced during the following ages.

For example, in case of Adolf Hitler, it is believed that he grew up in a violent family atmosphere. He was beaten by his parents. His family life was really tense.

On the other hand, to investigate an individual’s childhood you should be very careful because there are people who suffer a deprived childhood but when grown up they do not turn into criminal adults but they become great people. This is originated in people’s flexibility. This is a very complicated issue that should be studied from various aspects so we shouldn’t only look into the childhood. The person has also the will and power to decide.
Getting back to your question, you asked what we would do if Mr. Rajavi was here. In Europe, there are places where criminal psychos are kept. By the way, in my idea Mr. Masoud Rajavi is a criminal. He should be kept under control forever. He should be tried.

Mr. Abbasslou: why should he be tried?! As you said he suffers from a serious psychological problem, it is fair to try a psycho?!

Ms. Shemeltz: Mr. Rajavi has done criminal acts that he should explain about. Yes, in any case, he should be tried. There are two separate issues. On one hand, Rajavi has been a psychotic and on the other hand he has begun doing criminal acts sinc a time.

Anyway crimes has been carried out, the society should be protected from such people to stop harming others.
If individuals like Mr. Rajavi are left free in the society, they will harm public and the damages can be irreparable. In such a condition, there is no democracy. He is a danger, a great danger.

Mr. Abbaslou: Ms. Shemeltz, as a person who is familiar with functions of the cults, should we feel pity for Mr. Massoud Rajavi?!

Ms. Shemeltz: Personally, I feel pity for such a person. I am so sorry for him.

Mr. Abbaslou: I am shocked by your answer; do you feel pity for a criminal?

To be continued

March 9, 2013 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

European intellectual views on the Cult of Rajavi_Part4

Massoud Rajavi suffers from narcissism

Dena Peace and Freedom Association interviewed a European intellectual on the Cult of Rajavi(MKO/MEK). Ms. Shemeltz who is an expert and scholar on psychotherapy, has personal and scientific experience about cults.
As the representative of Dena Peace and Freedom Association, Mr. Mohsen Abbasslou talked with the honorable expert, Ms. Shemeltz.

Mr. Abbaslou: Ms. Shemeltz, most of audiences may want to know how you have such a deep insight on the MKO Cult. They surely want to know more about you.

Ms. Shemeltz: I’d prefer to publicize personal identity only to the extent we have agreed on. I am a researcher and I’d like to do my job without tumult and distracting elements, this way I will achieve my research objectives with more energy and tranquility.

As you know, I have been closely working with cults for years. I even traveled to Africa to live in a cult. That was a precious experience for me. It offered me the opportunity to get to know about cult functions more closely. Mr. Abbaslou, you know the name of that cult and you notice how much it is similar to the MKO. I’d like to compare the Cult of Rajavi with the African cult regarding their structures and functions, in my next investigative project.

All cults in the world follow common rules and they are always headed by a charismatic but actually hypocrite person. Of course each cult has its own characteristics that should be investigated separately.

The issues regarding the MKO should be studied in a large political scope. In my idea, the MKO Cult is not a play ball in hands of others that everyone can use it for his own interests. The leaders of the Cult know it well but intentionally they pretend that their cult is useful and valuable for that person or government.

They play such a role to make others think that their cult is like a ball that everyone can play with in order to achieve his goals. Actually, the MKO itself is active in politics. It hides itself in political crisis and controversies and uses them to survive and to prolong the life of its organization and thus it runs its own policies.

It is a narrow-minded belief to think that the MKO is a victim of other political movements or states. I don’t think so. They are politically active and seek their own interests.

Mr. Abbaslou: Ms. Shemeltz, Imagine that Mr. Massoud Rajavi is here now. What should we do with this man? Should he be executed? Should he be jailed? How should we deal with him?

Ms. Shemeltz: As I said, if I psychologically study Mr. Rajavi’s past and present life and his behavior, I will be sure that he suffers from a severe mental disease. He is suffering from narcissism. He thinks that he is the best person on the earth. He has no feelings for others…

To be continued

February 26, 2013 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Memoirs of Nasrin Ebrahimi, MKO ex- member_Part1

Nasrin Ebrahimi is a former member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization, who fled the group in 2006. She was one of the first survivors of the Cult-like MKO who dared to reveal the corruption of the leaders of the group. She was the first person to speak of the “Summit Operation” which was a cult jargon through which a large number of female members of the group became infertile by Hysterectomy surgery.
Nim Negah Website is publishing series of interviews with Ms. Ebrahimi. Nejat society translated excerpts of her memoirs of the sufferings of living in the MKO cult.

Collapse of Dream!

… I was attracted by the MKO when I was 13 and I joined the group in Iraq a year after. As I lived in a town near Iraqi border where the MKO TV Channel was available, I was absorbed by the group propaganda. I decided to join it. I was fourteen when I took some money from home and paid a human–smuggler to pass me through Iraqi border.
As a teenager, I had no correct information on either the Iranian government or the MKO. I had no idea of politics.

From the first days of my residence in Camp Ashraf, I realized Rajavi’s version of democracy, freedom, equality and human rights.

…. In a short time Rajavi found out that female members of the group can better run his plans. This way, women would think that they were promoted in the cult hierarchy and they would feel superior over their male comrades…Massoud Rajavi made women feel that they owe their position to him …

I remember Maryam Rajavi saying in a meeting for women:”Without Massoud, you are nothing so for your own promotion and your own growth you must blindly obey Massoud”! … Thus women in Ashraf were living in an illusion world that was built by the Rajavis. They were stranger to their inner self.

… Women in Ashraf had no freedom to choose their clothing; otherwise they would be oppressed by the worst methods. Cosmetics were forbidden in Ashraf. Women were not allowed to tide up otherwise they would be interrogated; they would be asked about what they had in their mind.

This was the “freedom of clothing” the MKO claims.

… We were not permitted to look at men and were constantly supervised by our superior officials. We had to confess all our thoughts; For example, if we had recalled a man, our husband or our boyfriend, we had to confess it in the meeting. We had to verbally abuse ourselves before others because we had betrayed Rajavi. We shouldn’t let our mind think of any other person except Massoud Rajavi who, was as we were told, our possessor.

Do you know any other place where women are so ruthlessly suppressed ? Even in Saudi Arabia the rules are not as anti-woman as it is in the MKO.

A Typical Day in Camp Ashraf

Camp Ashraf is like a prison in or in better words like Nazis Forced Labour Camps.

We were woken up by a dreadful march-like sound every morning at 5 or 5:30. A quarter later we had to go to the eating place for breakfast. After a quarter, we were supposed to do our public task, in public places until 6 o’clock. Then from 6 am until 13 pm, we were horribly forced to do exhausting labors including cleaning up the streets, pulling weeds in Iraqi arid desserts, moving goods from one place to another. We were regularly supposed to carry objects to a new place and again we had to move them to another location after a few weeks. This was just a way to keep us busy and exhausted. We had to clean and grind a set of old artillery that hardly ever could go more than a few Kilometers…

13:00 was lunch time. The food was so bad… after the US army was settled in Ashraf, the food became a little better because the group leaders wanted to pretend that everything was fine there…

After lunch, sometimes we had an hour to relax and again we had to start working until night. After dinner, we had to attend meetings such as Current Operation and Daily Cleansing (Two cult jargons practiced regularly in the MKO). Both sessions were like a court in which you had to report your thoughts during the day; others would humiliate you and abuse you verbally …

At 12:00 we had to go to bed. In the middle of night, we had to get up and get on guarding posts for 3 or 4 hours…Regarding such an awful condition don’t Iwe have the right to compare ourselves with Nazi forced labourers?

to be continued

February 25, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Idolizing the Dead, MKO’s Survival Desideratum

MKO needs flow of fresh blood to sustain its structure and accomplishment of its causes

Hardly may you encounter an organization struggling for a political, social, or any other cause to be highly Idolizing the Dead, MKO’s Survival Desideratum dependent on the blood of its devoted members, calling them martyrs. The terrorist cult of Mojahedin Khalq (aka. MKO, MEK, PMOI, NCR, NLA) is just one among a handful. And what is the necessity of such ever-growing dependence? The reason is simple; MKO needs flow of fresh blood to sustain its structure; it needs more and more martyrs to keep the whole enterprise going; it is a necessary means for the accomplishment of its causes, survival, and keeping its impressive propaganda machine going. As a vindication of its rightness in its struggle path, the group has always boasted about the counts of its members killed, injured and disabled as well as imprisoned members who are believed to substantiate its hegemonic legitimacy over all other opposition groups antagonizing the Iranian regime.

Blood, shed from its own members or those in opposite front, builds the cornerstone of MKO. The Rajavis, the husband-wife leaders of the group, are of the opinion that the rightness of any ideology is maintained by the number of its casualties and martyrs; included in their political and ideological framework, the life and death of man is so simple an issue like drinking water. Ask any defected member and they would promptly enumerate plain examples of the glorification of violence and death-seeking attitude within the organization, an experience that can better than any other theoretical sources of ideology lead you to fathom why the organization delights in victimization of its own members. And open a MKO-run webpage and you will see highlighted reports of Maryam Rajavi’s attending some ceremony to pay homage to the victims of some incident or glorification of the casualties of a certain attack or clash.

Due to the internal demand for constant indoctrination, the MKO cannot hold back from advertising its martyrs, better to say people who die for Rajavi. In fact, MKO longs and prays for a frequent bloody raid and aggression by any outsider against its insiders and in many cases, plots instigation of violent reaction. For instance, once in Camp Ashraf, before residents’ relocation to Temporary Transit Location TTL, the residents had the strict order to provoke a bloody clash since the group needed fresh blood and a few martyrs and wounded people to feed its new round of propaganda against the Iraqi government to maintain its gripe on the camp. As a result, at least twice in 2011 insiders provoked harsh clashes that led to many casualties from the both sides. MKO uncompromisingly refused to cooperate in transferring the insiders to TTL and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq, Martin Kobler, had repeatedly expressed his concern about the possible eruption of violent clashes between the sides.

MKO’s settlement in TTL has totally gone against its expectation as the group never expected such indefinite prolongation of being kept in limbo. As the group was sinking into a political oblivion and there was an increasing number of members demanding to defect and there were instances of escapes, new blood was an urgent necessity. Just on February 9, rockets hit TTL leading 7 to their death and leaving many more injured. The media coverage presume MKO has received an awful shock and busy mourning for the killed, condemning the attacks and accusing this and that for committing what they call an appalling human tragedy. But in the heart the leaders are jubilant and behind the closed doors they are celebrating the bloody incident; they wish and hope the injuries hasten the injured to their death to make more martyrs.

The attacks carried out by any party have provided excellent excuses for MKO to display an exhibition of martyrs long victimized within the cult themselves. They could be free people like those escaped or defected and MKO is not uninterested to make all residents martyrs to demonize the Iraqi and Iranian governments as well as securing a much more extended period of stay in Iraq with all needed sympathy directed in its own favor. The world should be concerned about any plotted violence from the side of terrorist MKO that threatens the life of the insiders. The only words instilled into them are those that connote death and violence. They need to hear murmurs of love and life.

February 14, 2013 0 comments

MEK Camp Ashraf

Camp Ashraf, Rajavi’s Cult Milieu

Camp Ashraf was Rajavi’s ideal and practical milieu for thought reform techniques

As one among many of the psychological techniques used to control the minds of the insiders under the tag of ideology, MKO inaugurated the ideological revolution to introduce a charismatic authoritarian leader to exert control over every aspect of his adherents’ life and to establishing a totalitarian pyramidal structure where the chosen devoted commanders would act as the leader’s deputies in his absence. But the leader needed certain facilities to implement the newly devised mind control. The most important prerequisite was of course a remote place isolated from the outside world to disconnect the contact of their followers from the outside world, particularly from their families and friends and even from their past. To phrase it in technical terms, MKO was desperately in need of a cultic milieu, the most central in creating the thought reform environment as depicted by Robert Jay Lifton:

“The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication. Through this milieu control the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual’s communication with the outside (all that he sees and hears, reads or writes, experiences, and expresses), but also – in its penetration of his inner life – over what we may speak of as his communication with himself. It creates an atmosphere uncomfortably reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984.”

Initially, a place had to be found to meet Rajavi’s needed features for the thought reform environment, a place totally cut and isolated from the modern world. But Rajavi had already made his decision on the place even before the initiation of the ideological revolution when he met with Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, on 9 January 1983 in France. Consequently, grabbing at the granted opportunity to enhance close relations with Saddam and Iraq’s Baath Party, Rajavi made his flight to Iraq after the French government pressed the organization to leave the country’s soil. To justify his relocation to Iraq, Rajavi reportedly announced that he had decided to settle in Iraq as it was a strategic site to carry out operations aimed to overthrow Iranian regime.

He moved to Iraq at a time when the Iraqi forces had many kilometers of Iranian lands under their boots, a move that none of the opposition could tolerate. No doubt, MKO was empty handed when it arrived in Iraq in 1986 and in need of aid. Rajavi’s consequent meeting with Saddam and then with other Iraqi ranking officials followed with dollar allocations as well as granted military camps and logistics boosted a broad collaboration that lasted until the fall of Saddam. Settled in Iraq, the members were forced to stay on military compounds, the biggest one being Camp Ashraf.

In fact, when Saddam in 1986 granted Camp Ashraf to MKO, it was nothing more than a piece of wasteland as it is geographically the case with other parts of the region. But Saddam’s granted huge sums of money cut from the pocket of the Iraqi people, and Rajavi’s physical and psychological exploitation of his cult’s victims, turned the scorched piece of land into an oasis that none of the people around it had the right to enter nor to use. Nobody knows the many secrets behind this forbidden land; nobody knows the whereabouts of those who entered the mysterious stronghold and never came out; it is full of souls who are claimed to have died of unknown causes, suicides, heart or brain stroke, cancers and self-immolation. Under any brick and stone you can come upon scores of men’s lost lives, wills and wishes. And nobody forgets many instances of the confirmed unearthed mass graves reflected in the Iraqi media.

Once Dr. Ali Shariati, the late Iranian thinker, in one of his books entitled “Ye Brother, That’s The Way it Was” written soon after his return from Egypt, related the sad history of how the Great Pyramids had been built. He regretted that what people appreciated as wonders were the product of many victimized, oppressed people who had been brutally exploited by the pharaohs to build the wonders. Neither Rajavi is to be compared with the Pharaohs nor the Pyramids with the Ashraf nor the latter’s victims with the former’s. But, it is rather a shame to witness such things happening just in the modern third millennium. And the history is repeated just in the heart of Iraqi deserts where “the pearl of the desert”, as some locals call Ashraf, emerged out of some land hardly you can chance upon green life. It has been repeatedly stated that Rajavi is the one who has openly raised the slavery flag over his bastion with no clear objection to it. His victims are the laborers who are enslaved physically and psychologically; they have to work for him and worship him as well.

Besides providing an ideological bastion for cultic practices and total disconnection of the insiders from the outside world, MKO needed a strategic bastion as it was an armed organization at war with Iranian regime. Strategically, MKO needed a military base close to Iranian borders for training and a military depot for substantial munitions especially after the formation of the so-called National Liberation Army (NLA). And from a political point of view, MKO regarded Ashraf as the symbol of power and resistance in its propaganda campaign for certain reasons, to impress Iranian and non-Iranian supporters and western politicians and also to recruit new members by a superficial depiction of a utopia.

January 30, 2013 0 comments

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