Mujahedin Khalq Terror group

MeK fully supports Israel

MeK fully supports Israel, worry of blocking Salafists’ road to Syria

The Zionist Regime attacked the 1.7 million Gaza Palestinians who are already living under an MeK fully supports Israel, worry of blocking Salafists' road to Syria Israeli occupation and blockade. Having assassinated Ahmed Jabari, the head of Hamas’ armed wing, on November 14, Israel expanded the scope of its attacks, attacking Gaza from land, air and sea and killing everyone indiscriminately.

As of Wednesday last week (up to Nov 6 morning), the number of casualties has risen to 130. And there were about 1100 people wounded in the attacks. The dead include innocent infants, whose bodies were pierced with Israeli shells.

Yet, the terrorist group MeK by issuing a statement attempted to purge the Zionist Regime and in a strange and irrelevant claimed: "the war in Gaza is part of the Regime’s [the Iranian Government’] plan to export crisis out."

Rajavi’s gang support for the Zionist Regime and their effort to purge its crimes are synchronized with the group’s stance on legal measures of Iraqi government to control the borders with Syria, a move that prevents Salafist insurgents and remnants of Saddam, who are now fighting Assad Government under the command of Al Qaeda, to cross into Syria. It is considerable that the MeK leadership has made clear her concern over this measure of Iraqi government.

Rajavi remnants that on every occasion inveigh Nouri Maliki, who tossed them out of Camp Ashraf, this time in the guise of defending rights of the Kurds in Iraq, are seeking to provoke some Kurdish groups’ opposition with Iraqi government to realize aims of the Ba’athists in destabilizing Iraq through weakening the government and exacerbating internal divisions. Obviously, theses goals are plotted under supervision of the Zionist regime and the Rajavi’s traitor gang has undertaken the task of propagation on it.

November 27, 2012 0 comments

Iraqi Authorities' stance on the MEK

Iraqi MP describes MKO’s crimes as “unforgivable”‎

A member of Iraqi Parliament describes Mujahedin-e Khalq’s crimes in Iraq as ‎inexcusable, and said the group’s presence in Iraq is a new challenge ‎for the government.‎
Iraqi MP describes MKO’s crimes as “unforgivable”‎
According to a report by Habilian Association, Arabic language news site Ashraf-news quoted ‎Haitham al-Jubouri as saying that Mujahedin-e Khalq is a new challenge for the ‎Iraqi government in addition to other active terrorist groups inside the country.‎

‎“Iraq’s position towards the group has not changed,” he added, calling MKO a ‎terrorist group who has perpetrated many crimes in Iraq.‎

The member of the Finance Committee parliamentary Haitham al-Jubouri went ‎on to say that, “the crimes of the group are inexcusable and will not be ‎removed from the memory of Iraq.”‎

He added that Iraq maintains complete information on MKO involvement in ‎‏1991‏‎ Shiite Intifada and suppression of Shiites and Kurds in Iraq.‎

The terrorist group assisted the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his ‎brutal suppression of Shiite and Kurd uprisings in ‎‏1991‏‎.

November 19, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Mojahedin Khalq , a Tool for Political Games

MKO has no explanation for explicitly glorifying machine-gunning American citizens

The undeniable fact in the removal of Mojahedin Khalq Organization MKO/MEK/PMOI/NCR from the State Department’s list of FTOs is that the decision is entirely a political move and has nothing to do neither with the worldwide coalition against terrorism nor with the reasons by which the group was put on the list. In its last issued statement on July 31, 2012, just two months prior to delisting MKO, the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counter-terrorism concerning to MKO’s activities states:

The group’s worldwide campaign against the Iranian government uses propaganda and terrorism to achieve its objectives. During the 1970s, the MEK staged terrorist attacks inside Iran and killed several U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran. In 1972, the MEK set off bombs in Tehran at the U.S. Information Service office (part of the U.S. Embassy), the Iran-American Society, and the offices of several U.S. companies to protest the visit of President Nixon to Iran. In 1973, the MEK assassinated the deputy chief of the U.S. Military Mission in Tehran and bombed several businesses, including Shell Oil. In 1974, the MEK set off bombs in Tehran at the offices of U.S. companies to protest the visit of then U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger. In 1975, the MEK assassinated two U.S. military officers who were members of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group in Tehran. In 1976, the MEK assassinated two U.S. citizens who were employees of Rockwell International in Tehran. In 1979, the group claimed responsibility for the murder of an American Texaco executive. Although denied by the MEK, analysis based on eyewitness accounts and MEK documents demonstrates that MEK members participated in and supported the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and that the MEK later argued against the early release of the American hostages. The MEK also provided personnel to guard and defend the site of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, following the takeover of the Embassy.

These have been the recognized reasons of perpetrating terrorist deeds just against the US interests and citizens that justified the maintaining of MKO on the list for 15 years, regardless of many more thousands of terrorist atrocities against Iranian people and then against Iraqi people when taking safe haven there. If we accept, and that is the fact, that these above mentioned anti-American terrorist operations have been considered the actual involvement in terrorist activities against the US, the fact is reaffirmed in The Secretary of State’s media note details when announcing the MKO’s delisting:

With today’s actions, the Department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992.

However, neither has MKO ever renounced its anti-American stances nor has apologized the US government and the families of the assassinated. Instead, MKO devoted considerable efforts to deny what it named the accusations of “assassinating six American citizens in the 1970s” and to put the blame and responsibility on “a group (that) took advantage of the situation and expropriated the Mojahedin name” (Democracy Betrayed, 1995).

But what the group publicized in its papers published in Farsi was altogether different and approves the veracity of American’s claims and facts stated in the published reports and findings. In Mojahed No. 18 dated 8 January 1980, under an article entitled “Under the reign of repression and dictatorship, the fire of whose machine-guns targeted the American hirelings and attache?” we read:

The criminal Americans themselves have no doubt about the organization’s anti-imperialist stances because from the very beginning years of the organization’s armed operations (from 1970 onward), they have experienced the fire of Mojahedin Khalq machine-guns shot through the hearts of their hirelings and attaches. … From the very beginning of the occupation of America’s spy-den, the organization willingly mobilized all its forces to protect the move.

Then, has MKO any justifiable explanation for what it has explicitly stated and glorifying about machine-gunning American citizens and supporting the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran? Unless it totally denies its gazette and the contents and makes another effort to attribute all to a different group! Although it is removed from the terror list and allowed some privileges to be utilized as another possible bullying force in a political game, as it is a truth that MKO is a fierce militant and dictatorial group maintaining high terrorist potentialities, MKO is never trusted with anything on the US soil as the reports and findings are still in effect.

Mojahedin.ws, November 15, 2012
http://www.mojahedin.ws/en/?p=16795

November 18, 2012 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Exhibition on the cult of Rajavi in Shiraz University campus

Islamic Society of Shiraz University held an exhibition on the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) in Fajr hall of the campus from November 4th until November 13th.
The exhibition included films, banners, posters and articles on the substance of the cult, its violent past and its current approach in today world as well as Q&A meetings with defectors of the cult and university professors.

The event was welcomed by students and scholars. Former members of the MKO were constantly present in the gallery hall to discus students’ questions. Visitors were eager to know who the mujahedin Khalq were, how the members were fist recruited by the group and what motivated them to leave the group. Trying to reveal cult-like nature of the cult and its threat against the international community, they described how they were victims of a full-scale manipulative system under the order of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.

Ebrahim Khodabandeh was one of the cult defectors who was received at Shiraz University to enlighten the minds of students who rarely had any idea of the MKO. He described cult-like techniques Rajavi uses to manipulate his members in order to achieve power in Iran.
As experts believe that the threat of cults is a crucial issue in the world today, the objective of the organizers of the exhibition was to illuminate the minds of their audience about the danger posed to the victims of Rajavi’s destructive cult and the risk of involvement of any ordinary person with mind-control cults including the MKO.

November 14, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Former US Official: I wish MEK Died out in ‎‏1980‏‎’s

Former deputy director of the US State Department’s Middle East Intelligence Office believes the U.S. ‎scratched off Mujahedin-e Khalq organization from the FTO list to pressure Iran over its nuclear ‎program.‎

‎“The MEK has a rather unsavory history of opposing the release of the US hostages in January ‎‏1981‏‎, ‎terrorism in Iran, a long period when much of it was a mercenary brigade in Saddam’s Army, and, of ‎course, its cult-like and bizarre internal politics that have involved some insider human rights ‎violations,” Wayne White told Habilian.‎

‎“That’s why, if someone wants to place the list game with it, it probably should be on the list, not off of ‎it,” he added.‎

Asked if MEK poses a threat to U.S. national security, White said, “they are intensely pesky, have tons ‎of (typically naive) supporters, and if they chose to act against the US they have assets.”‎

‎“Since plenty of silly Americans comprise their only major source of support (and probably funding), I ‎doubt they would want to bite the hands that feed them,” Wayne White, now a scholar at the Middle ‎East Institute of Columbia institute, further added.‎

He finally said, “I personally just wish they had died out by the late ‎‏1980‏‎’s after their defeat in Iran & ‎were barely a memory.”‎

November 8, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US move to delist MKO terrible in every respect: Ex-US top official

A former American official says the removal of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) from the US’s blacklist of terrorist organizations was a “terrible move [by Washington] in all respects.”
Wilkerson, who served as the chief of staff to former US Secretary of State Colin Powell,
“I think [the delisting of the MKO] was a terrible move in all respects, … terrible move in the way the Iranians perceived it, and a terrible move because it basically acknowledged a terrorist group is now not a terrorist group anymore, and they clearly certainly still are,” Lawrence Wilkerson said in an interview with the Real News Network.

Wilkerson, who served as the chief of staff to former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, stressed that despite the US measure to remove the group from its blacklist, the MKO is “still a terrorist group.”

On September 28, Washington formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations one week after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move.

The MKO is responsible for numerous acts of terror and violence against Iranian civilians and officials.

In September, Iranian Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani said the terrorist group was responsible for the murder of over 17,000 Iranians.

The group also cooperated with the executed Iraqi dictator Saddam in the massacres of Iraqi Kurds and in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq.

November 7, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Russian Institute: US Main Supporter of Extremist Groups in Region

Director General of the Institute for Foreign Policy Research and Initiatives in Moscow Veronika Krasheninnikova criticized the United States’ open and rude support for extremist groups in the Russian Institute: US Main Supporter of Extremist Groups in Region region, including the anti-Iran terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as the MEK, NCR and P1I).

Krasheninnikova said that, unsatisfied in "crippling" Iran with sanctions, the US looks to be set for active operations in Iran, and already has a terrorist organization in mind: a group called Mojahedin-e Khalq, which in the near future could become the Persian equivalent of the so-called Free Syrian Army.

She went on to say, on September 21, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton passed Public Notice 8050, delisting the MKO from the State Department’s Specially Designated Global Terrorist list, effective on September 28.

The director general of the institute said that MKO is an anti-Iran terrorist organization in exile that advocates the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since its inception in 1965 in Iran, the group conducted assassinations of US military personnel and civilians working in Iran in the 1970s, jubilantly supported the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and opposed the release of American personnel, calling for their execution instead, fought against the Islamic Republic together with Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran War (1980-1988) and set up headquarters in Iraq at Camp Ashraff.

She added that, in recent years, according to various sources including NBC, the MKO teamed up with the Israeli secret service to kill Iranian nuclear scientists, adding NBC reported that US officials confirmed that "the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign but has no direct involvement".

She said that, in 1994, the State Department sent a damning 41-page report to Congress on why the MKO is a terrorist organization; that designation was enacted in 1997. The report concluded, "It is no coincidence that the only government in the world that supports the MKO politically and financially is the totalitarian regime of Saddam Hussein."

The report said that, the MKO’s mission to overthrow Iran’s leadership has not changed since, but the US agenda has, in a vertiginous about-face, Washington became the powerful protector of the MKO.

She said that, over the past few years, a formidable fundraising operation and campaign to delist MKO from the Specially Designated Global Terrorist register was carried out by the US.

Krasheninnikova added that, when speaking about terrorist groups, one might think of MKO as a ragtag bunch of cutthroats in shreds and tatters, confined to an unsanitary tent city, but the truth is nothing of the sort.

She said that, well-versed in American political mores, the MKO’s leadership says the group is "pro-democracy". However, even the New York Times disagrees, in the middle of the 2011 delisting campaign; it described MKO as "a repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis".

The director general of the institute went on to say that, totalitarian cult is indeed the most frequent label applied to the MKO by people who come in contact with the group, adding that American support for MKO is not limited to military protection, for instance, Seymour Hersh, in his New Yorker piece "Our Men in Iran?" revealed that beginning in 2005, MKO fighters were trained in Nevada by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

She said that as General Shelton said at a conference in February 2011, "When you look at what the MKO stands for, when they are antinuclear, separation of church and state, individual rights, MKO is obviously in the way that the US wants Iran to go. … By placing the MKO on the FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organizations) list, we have weakened the support of the best organized anti-Iran group."

She added, in an interview with Germany’s WDR TV back in 2005, ex-CIA operative Ray McGovern explained the logic, "Why the US cooperates with organizations like the MKO, I think, is because that they are local, and because they are ready to work for us."

McGovern said that, "Previously, we considered them a terrorist organization, and they exactly are, but they are now our terrorists and we now don’t hesitate to send them into Iran …. for the usual secret service activities including attacking sensors, in order to supervise the Iranian nuclear program, mark targets for air attacks, and perhaps establishing secret camps to control the military locations in Iran."

Krasheninnikova explained that, Karen Kwiatkowski, formerly with the Department of Defense, makes a long story short for WDR TV, "MKO is ready to do things over which we would be ashamed, and over which we try to keep silent. But for such tasks we’ll use them."

Director General of the Institute for Foreign Policy Research and Initiatives concluded that, now is the time for Russia and the world community to take active political measures preventing the United States from launching another proxy war in the Middle East. This time, unlike in Syria, the world should not ignore the march to war, and must take steps to prevent it from happening again.

The MKO, founded in the 1960s, blended elements of Islamism and Stalinism and participated in the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Ahead of the revolution, the MKO conducted attacks and assassinations against both Iranian and Western targets.

The group started assassination of the citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran’s new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President, Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief, Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by MKO members in 1981.

The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it was protected by Saddam Hussein and where it helped the Iraqi dictator suppress Shiite and Kurd uprisings in the country.

The terrorist group joined Saddam’s army during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) and helped Saddam and killed thousands of Iranian civilians and soldiers during the US-backed Iraqi imposed war on Iran.

Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group, which now adheres to a pro-free-market philosophy, has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who argued for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.

The US formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations in early September, one week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move. The decision made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton enabled the group to have its assets under US jurisdiction unfrozen and do business with American entities, the State Department said in a statement at the time.

November 7, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Apparent Hypocrisy in War on Terror

The sponsor of terrorists by US shows hypocrisy in the war on terror has reached its heights

The diplomatic crisis created between Iran and the United States following the collapse of Pahlavi’s regime in Iran intensified even further after the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran by a number of radical Iranian students in opposition to the US’s hostile policies, and the presence of the ousted Pahlavi’s monarch there seemingly allowed for cancer treatment. The incident was the hottest focus of the global media for 444 days, from 4 November 1979 to 20 January 1981. The incident, however, granted many opportunists to fish in troubled waters and intensify the crisis.

As many truly say and the evidences verify, Mojahedin Khalq Organization MKO/MEK/PMOI/NCR played no key role in the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran, but it is true to say that the group played a role to aggravate the situation to turn it into a real crisis. At the time, the organization showed no open antagonism against the newly established regime and tried to highlight a coalition with it to inoculate an extreme anti-imperialism and anti-American vision in the Islamic state and among the public. The US State Department’s Report of 1994 explicitly discloses facts on the group’s role in the crisis and strong opposition to the release of the hostages; “As part of that struggle, they assassinated at least six American citizens, supported the takeover of the U.S. embassy, and opposed the release of American hostages”.

The embassy takeover ended diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran, a rift that persists to this day. But America’s explicit deal and affiliation with the ones who fanned the hostility and aggravated the situation has offered a new sacrifice to an already born double standard which is referred to as the cancer at the heart of Western foreign policy. Although hypocrisy in the age of the war on terror and confronting terrorism fails to be a new subject to touch on, but it seems that it has reached its heights and most have lost their trust in those who chant it. There are more than enough written and spoken proofs to prove, the latest of which is delisting of MKO from the State Department’s FTO. As Edward Herman further explains:

The most recent display of the terrorism double standard is the State Department’s September 2012 removal of the Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), from its list of designated terrorist organizations. The MEK worked earlier on behalf of Saddam Hussein and sometimes killed Americans, and reportedly has collaborated with the Israelis in assassinating Iranian scientists, but with the escalated U.S.-Israel low-level warfare against Iran, MEK can be moved into a new, more positive “freedom fighter” category. This has other amusing features. For one thing, MEK has very large amounts of money that it has spent in organizing protests and lobbying in Europe and the United States, the funding suspected to come from the freedom-loving Saudis and other governments hostile to Iran. Even while on the terrorist list, MEK was able to organize, propagandize and lobby in the United States and elsewhere in the West. It has also paid large sums to U.S. notables like Howard Dean, Tom Ridge, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich and Ed Rendell to write and speak on their behalf. No prosecutions are in prospect for “material aid” to terrorists in this case.

The latest evidence is a grisly video showing killing of Syrian soldiers in an execution-style at a checkpoint by “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) terrorists. The ruthless deed is believed to be only the tip of the iceberg of the killings and other similar slaughters by these foreign backed terrorists, whom MKO enthusiastically acclaim and support and who the US plans to make an example for MKO to follow. Let’s now imagine what the reaction of the supporters of these terrorists would have been if the killers had been Syrian forces. Although hard to believe but it is the truth that today the nightmare of the institutionalized double standard and hypocrisy hunts the communities far beyond the terrorists themselves.

November 6, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Wilkerson: Delisting Mojahedin Khalq a terrible move by US

Obama’s or Romney’s Foreign Policy: Does it Matter Who Wins ?

Larry Wilkerson: All US administrations have similar foreign policy, but the neo-con group around Bush/Cheney was more dangerous and many of the same characters are advising Romney

Bio

Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled "National Security Decision Making."

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore.

A lot of people have suggested that the Obama foreign policy is not that much different than Bush term two’s foreign policy, that Bush term one, invasion of Iraq, was somewhat of an aberration, and in fact it really doesn’t make that much difference who’s president, because you get the Pentagon, you have the military-industrial-security complex, a whole whack of foreign-policy professionals, and the presidents kind of go along with their opinion. So does it really matter whether it’s President Obama, a President Romney, when it comes to the next four years and U.S. foreign policy?

Now joining us to talk about all of this is Lawrence Wilkerson. Larry is a retired colonel. He was the former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. He’s currently an adjunct professor of government at the College of William & Mary. He’s a regular contributor to The Real News Network. Thanks for joining us.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FMR. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL: Thanks for having me, Paul.

JAY: So does it matter whether it’s Obama or Romney? We haven’t seen a heck of a lot of difference, I think, between Obama and Bush term two, as I said.

WILKERSON: There was a marvellous consistency to U.S. security and foreign policy over the period from, say, 1947 to the present, aberration being George W. Bush in 2001. But to say as I’ve said before—and you know this, Paul—that there would be no difference, really, in terms of that policy, regardless of who’s elected, has begun to take on a new tone and tint, if you will, of late.

And there are basically two reasons for that. One is the fact that I don’t know what Mitt Romney thinks. I simply do not know what he thinks, because he said everything from A to Z from the primaries to now, the general election. And while that’s explicable in terms of the extremism in the Republican Party and what one has to do to cater to that extremism in the primaries in order to get to the general election, it’s not entirely explicable. I really do not know where Mitt Romney stands.

Then the second issue is the people he’s arrayed around him. Many of these people are the neoconservatives, like John Bolton, for example, whom I have seen before. And I see them singing off essentially the same sheet of music they sang from in 2002 and early 2003 when they essentially took an inexperienced president and marched him into war with Iraq—one of the most disastrous decisions the U.S. has made in the post-World War II era. So I see these same people around him, and I see an inexperienced man in terms of security and foreign policy, and I see them being able to manipulate him much the same way these neoconservatives—indeed, many of them the same people—manipulated George W. Bush.

So I have to revise my views about whether or not I believe Barack Obama, now with four years of experience, or Mitt Romney would be the same, roughly, with regard to foreign and security policy. I do think Barack Obama would probably promise a better decision-maker in that regard.

JAY: Now, it’s not to say that Barack Obama hasn’t carried on and even extended some of Bush’s policies, his drone attacks and other such things if anything are setting all new precedents for the kind of behavior that the U.S. does abroad. Doesn’t that concern you?

WILKERSON: It does. And I think you put your finger on what is the most concerning aspect of his security policy overseas, and that is the drone attacks. We are creating far more terrorists, potentially, in the future than we are killing with those drone attacks, not to mention the fact that we were crossing whole chasms of international law, even of domestic law, as we do this and do it rather cavalierly.

But the other aspects of his security policy domestically bother me too, everything from the Patriot Act to the FISA Amendments Act to the national security letters, to his unprecedented prosecution of whistleblowers. All of that bothers me. But when it comes to Mitt Romney, I don’t see a relaxation of any of those things. Indeed, from his rhetoric [inaud.] is an even more ardent pursuer of those things.

JAY: So you’re not a great admirer of President Obama’s foreign policy, but your point is you think Romney and the kind of people around him would be significantly worse.

WILKERSON: There are people who are—as I understand it, they range the gamut. Now, there’s a gentleman who is president of Washington College over in Chesterton, Maryland, and he was the second director of policy planning for Colin Powell when I was there. So I know Mitchell Reiss quite well. Mitchell is a moderate in the sense that he takes the middle road, usually, in U.S. national security and foreign policy. But Mitchell was an advocate for the delisting of the MEK, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the terrorist group—still a terrorist group, in my mind—from Iran. So you take someone like Mitchell Reiss, who normally is a person with whom I find a great deal of agreement with regard to security and foreign policy, and here he is advocating for the delisting of the MEK, which I think was a terrible move in all respects, because terrible move in the way the Iranians perceived it, and a terrible move because it basically acknowledged a terrorist group is now not a terrorist group anymore, and they clearly certainly still are.

So, I mean, you actually see people like that who you would normally cheer being in an administration, who’ve taken on a tone and tint that’s very different from what I consider to be sound and rational national security policy.

JAY: And to what extent do you think people like Karl Rove, even Cheney, Kyl, some of the—Senator Kyl—some of those people that were very much part of that foreign-policy cabal, how much are they going to have to say if there’s a Romney administration?

WILKERSON: I don’t know, Paul. That—I’m concerned about that, as I said before. But my biggest concern stems from at least I don’t—my lack of knowledge. I simply don’t know who’s going to influence Mitt Romney, because I don’t know who Mitt Romney is.

I think you’ve heard me say this before. I was searching for a Republican candidate for whom I could vote. I would vote for Mitt Romney at the drop of a hat, and therefore feel good about my political party’s candidate once again, if I thought I knew where he stood and I had a reasonable approximation of that stand being [roughly congruent]. I don’t even know where Mitt Romney stands, so how can I make a decision to vote for Mitt Romney? I can’t.

JAY: Alright. Thanks for joining us, Larry.

WILKERSON: Thanks for having me, Paul.

JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

End

The Real News,

November 6, 2012 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Will the victims of MKO Cult be forgotten?

Notes on removing the name of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from the US State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTO)

The US State Department has recently come to the conclusion that the MEK is no longer a terrorist organization. The reason given is that the group has apparently not committed any terrorist act for more than a decade and has seemingly abandoned the use of violence to reach its political goals. The question this raises is, according to the US administration and the US judicial system, how many years are needed to consider the crimes of a terrorist group whitewashed? Certainly in a different international political situation with different interests, conditions would have differed. No doubt the US government would not adopt the same policy towards Al-Qaeda and would consider them terrorists for good.

But despite the claims made by the State Department, the leader of the group Massoud Rajavi has said again in the past week that armed struggle will never be removed from the ideology and strategy of the MEK, and the group has never even in theory distanced its thoughts from using violence. As far as the Iranian people are concerned they consider the group as terrorists and traitors and do not care what the US thinks about them. Removing the name of the MEK from the FTO does not give the group any credit in public opinion; on the contrary it discredits the list and brings discredit to the US administration and the State Department.

There is no doubt that the Rajavi cult has committed widespread acts of terrorism and claimed the lives of many civilians. The group also co-operated with the invading enemy and killed the defenders of Iran’s borders. This is the clearest betrayal of the nation according to any standards. The organization has also taken part in suppressing the Iraqi people along with the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and more importantly the cult has violated the most basic rights of its own members and subjected them to mind manipulation.

The victims of the group are the people of Iran, the people of Iraq, and the very members of the cult. The families of these victims have a common demand. That justice should be served on the totalitarian leader of the cult in an international criminal court.

Although the State Department has tried to whitewash the criminal past of the group and its leader, the report admits that the basic human rights of the followers are systematically violated. It is understandable that the list of FTO is modified according to the US international interests, but it is worth bearing in mind that trying to give credit to the most hatred group in Iran’s history and working hard to save it from being demolished does not help restore the image of the US government in the eyes of the Iranian people who have always witnessed a hostile attitude.

(The last paragraph has been petitioned on the WHITE HOUSE for signatures – please go to the link below and sign it)

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/will-mek-victims-be-forgotten
/jR2RRqPC?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl

November 6, 2012 0 comments

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