Brights News Feed

The government of Pakistan has today added its voice to the official condemnation against the British government’s honouring of novelist Salman Rushdie (now “Sir Salman”) in the bi-annual British hounours ceremony. Iran had already passed a resolution of condemnation yesterday.

Of course, the rent-a-mobs are back out for their now-traditional bi-annual effigy burning photo opportunity. There have been renewed calls for Rushdie’s death.

(Iran’s official position as of 1998 is that Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie was void, but the Iranian state media famously followed the announcement with news that leading clerics considered the fatwa irrevocable, leaving the actual state position somewhat ambiguous.)

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Less than a week after David Frum — who wrote the original “axis of evil” speech for President Bush in 2002 — said that “a speechwriter helps his principal make the best speech he can, even if he may not necessarily agree with all of it” (see Ynetnews) the “axis of evil” language has been co-opted by Iran.

Yahya Rahim Safavi, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said today that “America, Britain and the Zionist regime [Israel] are an axis of evil against the Islamic world and the whole of humanity. They are trying to make enmity among Islamic countries and to make divisions among Shi’ites and Sunnis.” (See Reuters.)

The Sunday Times (UK) this morning, cited “several Israeli military sources” as revealing that Israel has been training two airforce squadrons for specific nuclear missions. (Sunday Times: “Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran“.) The missions would target three out of four “critical” Iranian sites south of Tehran, all associated with the country’s nuclear program; in Natanz, near Isfahan, and at Arak. In the first attack:

conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

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On 24th July this year, the President of the Reform Party of Syria, Farid Ghadry, responded (The Media Line: “Understand the Importance of Laylat al-Sira’a wa al-Miira’aj“) to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s last pronouncement on the subject of anti-nuclear incentives offered by the US.

Ahmadinejad had set the date of his response to the incentives as 22nd August (Rajab 27 in the Mulsim calendar). Knowing Ahmadinejad’s personal history of vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric (Guardian), knowing his probable involvement with Hojjatieh (Asia Times) (a group that believes the return of the “Twelfth Imam” can be encouraged by actively bringing about the phophesized “chaos” that will precede his return), knowing that he may view himself as the Imam’s “deputy” (Ashbrook Center), and knowing the meaning of Rajab 27, Farid Ghadry argued that setting the date of reply as 22nd August amounted to a threat of the nuclear annihilation of Israel. This is because Rajab 27 is the traditional date for when Mohammed took his infamous and disputed supernatural night flight to Heaven via the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, “while a great light lit-up the night sky”.

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